Guest post by Chris Frank, TreeHouse Interactive Director of Marketing

Marketing CMOs and VPs have some very unique challenges in 2010. The marketing processes and tools for influencing the buying cycle have changed rapidly and will continue to change. This necessitates being educated not only in new marketing methods, but staying up to date with new marketing automation technology. The end goal really, for any CMO or marketing VP, is to provide real, measurable results. I would argue that these results are becoming less about up front metrics like open rates and number of leads to being more about revenue contribution. To address this you really need to look at the buying cycle and adjust how you communicate in the awareness, consideration and decision buying phases, as well as examine how you’re enabling all resources in your organization to better close business.

The Rise of Inbound Marketing
The concept of using social media, search engine optimization and blogs together in driving early awareness stage traffic is still a fairly new one. Marketers over 2010 will get much savvier about doing this, however. Beyond the basic tactics for using each tool, there are going to be innovations in marketing automation that will help marketers better manage their efforts, measure results and target prospects.

On an execution level, we will see marketing automation vendors including ways to manage downloadable content that powers meaningful inbound marketing efforts. This includes the ability to control the “gate” or absence thereof for accessing content and then measuring interaction on an aggregate and individual level. This, when combined with other behavioral insights, will drive better targeting and lead nurturing, which leads to more revenue.

These behavioral insights will not necessarily be tied to those that have interacted with you in the past either. There is reverse IP lookup, normalization and contact query technology that will help identify more inbound traffic on a non-personal level and give marketers in their marketing automation systems new ways to expand their database and increase the number of people in their pipeline.

Cohesive Communication
Of the marketers that I talk to in the industry that are not on the consultant side, many are still struggling to escape from being reactionary to being more proactive. It is a huge shift for marketing teams to make, but a very important one to use marketing automation technology correctly. I see teams that make the shift being better able to compete on a campaign-by-campaign level, better satisfy sales team needs and ultimately being able to drive more pipeline opportunities. A funny thing happens when you start planning out communication—it actually happens, it addresses buying cycle gaps and it becomes more effective because it’s cohesive.

To this end we will see marketing automation solutions continue to become better at incorporating communication methods beyond standard email. Here I’m talking primarily about social media and mobile. In marketing automation solutions we will see new ways to monitor these channels, as well as new ways to support or even have it be the primary communication method. We will also see continued convergence here. Landing page and email sharing on social media sites with URL shortening is an example of this. We will see this and other integrations refined in 2010. The upshot of all this is that you will be better able to connect with people via their chosen method of communication with the type of content they need at their particular spot in the buying cycle… So consistent, but progressive messages delivered through your marketing automation system that address individual needs.

Getting Along
One of the biggest benefits of using a marketing automation solution is that it has the potential to put sales and marketing teams on the same page. The ability to define what a lead really is and then use your marketing automation system to qualify, nurture and pass along those leads is a basic benefit. In 2010 there will be many integrations between marketing automation and CRM systems that will change how teams work together to close business.

One thing that we’ve seen already is some intelligence passed on marketing history both on an aggregate and detail level. This information, put at the salesperson’s fingertips, can make a consistent difference in the depth and types of conversations that happen. Knowing what emails a lead has opened, what links they’ve clicked on and what upcoming nurturing they have scheduled can be very powerful. This type of lead intelligence will increase over 2010. On the flip side, we will see information flowing from other systems to the marketing automation system too. This will improve the marketer’s ability to automatically calculate campaign ROI regardless of sales model—combining the information in a dashboard that includes all campaign metrics.

More importantly, we will see some bi-directional integration between CRM and marketing automation systems that extends a company’s ability to address individual nurturing needs and smooth internal processes. So whether a marketing team needs to know if a lead is accepted, a company needs to automate communication based on contact qualities or sales teams need to initiate nurturing for leads that have fallen out of the buying process, new technology will address this. We should also see enough flexibility here that sales and marketing teams can define these points together and use marketing automation system logic to plug the holes in both internal operations and sales processes.

To get tips on setting up marketing automation and demand generation processes for your company, download the "6 Steps to Building a Successful Demand Generation Program" quick guide.

According to BtoB and the Association of National Advertisers, 66% of marketers have started using social media. They’ve figured out that the inbound marketing capabilities of social media are important and started using it—ideally to drive more awareness phase traffic to company expertise and perspectives that are important to the buying process. Even given this ideal use, many marketers don’t leverage social media fully. What many don’t realize is that social media and outbound marketing are not silos. By leveraging company, team member, customer, and prospect social media profiles in outbound marketing, you can significantly increase campaign reach and realize new blood in your database that you can begin marketing to. These are additional benefits of social media that come from going beyond typical use.

So just how do you go about integrating social media and outbound marketing efforts? Below are a few best practices we’ve found in working with our customers.

Best Practice #1: Add social media links to the headers or footers of email and landing pages

These links are not to your social media profiles. Many marketers incorrectly link back to their inbound marketing efforts.  This may increase awareness to the value you provide through these profiles, but it doesn’t help increase the success and reach of that specific campaign. The better thing to do here is enable the sharing of your email or landing page. When someone clicks on the Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn link on your email or landing page, they should be able to share your content with their friends and followers. This increases campaign reach. Even the 5-10% typical share rates and average 70-120 friends or followers (depending on the social media site) translate into an impressive increase in reach. When that expanded audience opts in to your campaign, you’ve just added someone new to your database at no additional cost to you.

Best Practice #2: Measure immediate results of integrating social media with outbound efforts

It’s important to look at how this integration of social media and outbound marketing is going. For each of the emails you send, this means monitoring how many shares you have via different social media tools and who is doing the sharing. With just this simple tracking in place, you can learn a lot. Understanding who is sharing helps you identify your promoters. You can then reward them, talk to them about a case study, educate them about your next big thing, etc. This can have a significant influence on future campaign success. By understanding where and in what frequency your content is getting shared you can also adjust your inbound marketing strategies. For example, if you see your target audience sharing more on LinkedIn than any place else, yet you put all your effort into Twitter, it may be time to re-examine your strategy.

Best Practice #3: Change your approach to what you deliver in outbound marketing

For many marketers, the next promotion is all they think about with campaigns. Email and landing pages focus on the same tired things. But social media users can sniff out a sales pitch from a mile away. If you want your content to get shared, it has to be compelling. Compelling here doesn’t mean you try to convince someone why your products are superior. They don’t even know who you are most of the time. The idea is to provide content that addresses a specific lack of knowledge or need. You provide value via the white paper, webinar, quick guide, etc. while at the same time making your expertise known. Giving useful content to the new people your message is getting shared with is what gets them to engage with you. 

Best Practice #4: Dedicate a resource

To really succeed in inbound marketing you have to be active in it.  It requires regular (daily in some cases) updates of your social media profiles. If your content is not fresh or interesting, or worse, is 100% sales focused, you will not be successful. Find someone in your organization that is passionate about social media and your company to run this effort and measure your results.

These are just a few best practices to get you started with integrating your social media and outbound marketing efforts. It can help you increase campaign reach, identify and leverage your promoters, and add another element to your customer acquisition strategy.

Download the free white paper below for a more in-depth discussion, as well as some information on technology from TreeHouse Interactive that can help.

Download the White Paper >>

I had scheduled a demand generation post for this week but came across this outstanding article from Tom Nixon and changed my mind.  Almost every day you meet someone who tries to deny the power and presence of Social Media.  I used to be one of them.  I am not sure if Social Media will always have the same impact it does today.  But today it HAS an impact. Social Media is going to be around for a while. Our customers who have implemented Social Media strategies are seeing dramatic increases in site visits, engagements and promotion responses.  Tom provides an insightful rationale as to why companies cannot ignore this new opportunity while providing some common mistakes in developing a Social Media approach.  Read on...

Whether you’re a channel manager or marketer, it’s important that your email messages get opened and read. Running your channel effectively and filling your lead pipeline often depends on it. Yet I think there are many cases where companies shoot themselves in the foot. Getting people to open your email isn’t so much an art as it is avoiding common pitfalls. Below are some of the common pitfalls you should avoid. Knowing them will help you increase open rates and get people to engage with your company in the way you desire. Note that this post doesn’t deal with infrastructure required to get email delivered and opened. That is a topic for another day.

Pitfall #1: Oversaturating Your Database
Sending too much email is an easy thing to do. Between newsletters, alerts, and promotions, you can “burn” your list very easily. If you don’t already have a single person or committee overseeing email priorities and frequencies, it’s time you do. With most email service or demand generation providers, you’ll be able to see how many people are opting out of future communication and who they are. Anything approaching the 5% range on a single email campaign should send up red flags. You’re sending email too often. On the flipside, a .1 to .5% opt-out rate may indicate you’re not sending enough email. Check the type of people that are opting out as well. Are they your ideal target or important contacts you shouldn’t be losing? If your open rates are plummeting, it’s likely another sign that you’re sending too much.

Pitfall #2: Using Lame Subject Lines
Subject lines are your primary hook for getting partners, prospects and customers to open your email. Put some time and effort into them. They should be succinct and stand out without being cheesy (i.e. looking like spam). 35 characters or less is a good target for length. You want immediate understanding of what the benefit is of opening your email. If someone can’t see the whole subject line because it’s cut off in their email client, you can’t accomplish this. Focus on your relationship with them, on something they would want to know or on an emotions-based need. If you haven’t done the research to know what these things are, it’s time to start.

Pitfall #3: Betraying Trust
When someone gives you their email address, there is generally a certain amount of trust that goes along with it. The unwritten expectation is that you will deliver content that is of interest. News Flash!—no one cares you opened a new office location, so stop sending this kind of content.

Pitfall #4: Failing to Target
Many channel managers and marketers fail because they don’t segment their database and produce targeted communication. Marketing and IT buyers are very different, as are C-Suite and middle manager audiences. You can’t send the same message to all of them and expect it to resonate. Many companies also send the same message multiple times. Both of these mistakes contribute to lower open rates and more unsubscribes.

Pitfall #5: Failing to Educate
You need to train people how to interact with your email and let them know it’s coming. Asking people to add you to their safe sender list or address book is the single best thing you can do for deliverability. In turn, it will also help you get in front of more people and give you the chance to have your message opened. You should also be using live events to help increase email open rates. Whether these events are webinars or things like user and partner conferences, make people aware of the email they will receive and what the value is. These little education and awareness opportunities go a long way in getting more people engaged with your email.

Pitfall #6: Delivering the Same Old Thing
If you consistently try to squeeze dollars out of your database through promotional email campaigns, your open rates will inevitably end up in the toilet. This applies specifically to B2B marketers and channel managers. The same is true if you don’t switch things up like your newsletter content or don’t have professional looking communication. The idea is you want to provide consistent and readily apparent value in your communication. That value might start with an educational webinar, industry quick guide or white paper, or industry news and events. What I’m really talking about here is content marketing. By becoming a trusted source for information, not promotional spam, you encourage higher open rates and recognition of both your expertise and point of view.

Pitfall #7: Not Leveraging the Power of Social Media
Most demand generation systems now offer at least rudimentary social media integration. If not, program the integration with social media sites manually. If your message is of value to your market, teaches them something or shows them how they can improve their business, many of them will post your message to social media sites like Twitter and LinkedIn. My daughter recently got a promotional email from a major clothing chain that she and a friend frequent. The first thing my daughter did was share it on her Facebook page. Enabling the sharing of your email is a great way to expand campaign reach and opens. (Download our “Using Social Media in Demand Generation” webinar for more information on this point.)

What pitfalls have you fallen into with your email? What have you experienced by avoiding them?

Many marketers today are trying to figure out a way to leverage the boom in social media technologies to create leads. But before an effective strategy can be developed, it’s critical to understand some key differences in how inbound social media marketing differs from traditional outbound marketing.

Inbound marketing through social media sites requires building a community of followers (prospects) by providing content of interest. The key concept here is that inbound marketing prospects proactively seek out and discover a company because of the value they place in the content offered and the interactive relationship the company is able to form with their prospects, vs. being on the receiving end of an unwanted, sales-focused message through print or email advertising, for example. It’s about delivering exactly what the prospect wants, when they want it vs. disrupting their day with unwanted communication. 

Social media sites like YouTube, Twitter™, Facebook™, LinkedIn™ and others are perfect resources for those who leverage their networks to get the information they want, when they need it.  For savvy inbound marketers who know how to engage people and produce the right content for them, social media sites can be valuable tools to drive new prospects into the sales funnel. This blog is an example of inbound marketing. 

If the content is valuable and relevant, an inbound marketer has an opportunity to use it to drive awareness of his/her company and increase the likelihood that prospects will buy his/her products when and if there is need and budget to do so. It is important to note here that if all you do as an inbound marketer is use social media sites to publish messages to sell your products, you will fail. The key is to help educate, inform or even entertain potential buyers via social media in order to earn the right to be considered when a need develops for the products your company sells.

Below is a short list of some of the ways inbound or social media marketing differs from traditional outbound marketing. What other differences do you see and how have you changed your mind set in approaching inbound marketing?

Last week’s blog post generated a question from Wendy M.  I want to thank her for her question and I am sharing the question and answer here because many I have spoken to share the same issue.

Can you provide some guidance on compensation when both the partner and the internal salesperson have both provided value within a sales transaction?

First, having a system that can accurately track that both parties contributed to the sale is critical. A partner portal with deal registration, which is integrated into your CRM, is my recommendation if it is possible. I have seen many cases where poor technology leads to questionable behavior on both the part of partners and sales teams.

Assuming you have a high level of confidence both parties participated in the sale, I like to reward both if you have the margin to do so. For a lot of the companies I work with who sell indirect via distribution, channel sales teams are paid on sell through. This is based on POS data from distribution.  In this case, the inside team gets credit towards their quota and the partner gets whatever carrot you provide as part of the deal registration process.  This is typically a few extra margin points and exclusivity to this registered opportunity as long as the deal meets your company’s requirements. Some typical requirements include:
• Minimum size in dollars or units
• The type of account being sold to (i.e. not a national, government, named account, etc.)
• Has not been registered by another partner previously
• Is not being worked by internal sales team members (see below)
• Is updated at least every 30 days to keep it active

In the case where partners buy directly from your company, this gets a little tougher. The model I like to see is to reward the partner for registering the deal with you as mentioned above. If you have an internal sales team that works with partners, I like paying them for sales through their partners so they again would get credit towards their quota—which should be part of a compensation plan that is already in place.

From your question it is my suspicion, however, that neither of the two scenarios above apply.  If neither case above applies it means there is some kind of channel conflict between a direct sales team and your partner network. This arises many times from the lack of a deal registration program or a poorly implemented one with unclear rules of engagement. In this case, a partner is working an opportunity with a customer and a direct sales team member is working the same opportunity simultaneously. The deal closes. Now who do you pay?

At this point, my philosophy is that you must pay both. If you don’t, you will lose your relationship with the partner. If this partner was part of a nice sized opportunity that closed, do you want to lose them? Do you want them to spread the news to other partners that your company “steals opportunities from partners”? If you don’t pay your internal sales team member, you have a similar problem.

The solution in this scenario isn’t who to pay, but to prevent the conflict from the beginning. A good partner program with solid opportunity or deal registration and clear rules of engagement will help to prevent this type of conflict. In the case above, if the partner registered the opportunity in the company’s partner portal and the sales team was already working it, they would have been denied the deal registration and subsequently the incremental commission. Conversely, if the partner working the opportunity registered it and received approval for it, prior to the sales team member working on the deal—then when the sales team member went to enter the opportunity or lead into the CRM system, s/he would see that the partner got there first and would move on.  

I want to thank Wendy again for her question and the inspiration for this week’s blog post.

I run into many folks who try to grasp the difference between managing a sales team that is selling direct to customers versus a team that is focused on selling through a partner network or two tier distribution model. The list below is not exhaustive, but it is a good place to start to understand how the models are different.

First, the direct sales model is just as it sounds. I sell to you. You buy my product. Case closed. I manage all the inventory myself and have visibility to all stages of the sales process.

In the indirect or channel model, I sell to a partner, who may sell to you, or I sell to a distributor, who sells to a partner, who sells to you.  In this case, the distributor or partner takes title to my goods and can hold them in inventory.

Unlike the direct sales model, I have limited or no visibility to stages in the sales process. I have inventory scattered across the country and possibly the globe that I have to manage. I have to sell partners on my value proposition and get them to market my product over competitor’s products they may carry in addition to marketing to end users.

Here are just some of the complexities of managing channel sales:

Sales Compensation
You have to pay your teams on partner sales. So, in essence, you are measuring your team on how well the partners they work with are selling. There are many issues involved here, including getting partner sales data, getting POS data from distributors, and making sure it is all complete and accurate. Who you pay for a sale can be problematic. Let’s say a sale goes through a partner in New York, but the end user customer is in Connecticut. Inside sales worked with the end user, but the channel account manager worked with the partner. Who do you pay? When you pay is also a potential problem.  Do you pay on sales in (God help you if you do) or sales out (sell-thru to end user).

Channel Conflict
One version of channel conflict is preventing one partner from stealing a deal another partner is working. This is tough enough. If your company has direct sales or OEM sales teams in addition to indirect sales teams, this can make the potential for conflict even worse.

Inventory Management
Even though channel partners and distributors take title to a company’s goods, most of those partners these days have the option to return the goods within a certain amount of time. This means that not only do companies who sell through the channel need to understand what they have on hand, but they also have to understand what their partners have on hand to accurately recognize revenue. Given all the new reporting requirements for public companies, this is no longer a “nice to have” but a must have for finance departments.

Price Protection
Price Protection is another very sticky part of channel sales management. Regularly, manufacturers will introduce new products. As they do, existing products will be discounted. If a distributor or reseller partner has bought the goods at the old price, they are almost always entitled to be “protected” against the decrease in cost. This makes understanding the inventory situation mentioned above even more critical.

Special Pricing Requests
Partners have the same needs and problems as direct sales team members. Many times they run into a competitive situation or large volume deal that requires some special pricing. If you have 100s or 1,000s of partners, how do you manage this in a way that doesn’t require hiring on a bunch of people to run pricing decisions to Sales VPs?

Channel Spending
Good partners who support a manufacturer’s products expect support in return. Making co-op or marketing development funds (MDF) available to the very best partners is typically one way companies show this support. Partners are supposed to use these funds to create demand/leads. There are two big management issues here. One is just getting, approving and budgeting these requests. It is a huge undertaking. It never ceases to amaze me how manual the process is for this in most companies, even those that are large. 

The second issue here is understanding the benefit of the spending. Understanding ROI by channel partner is critical to running effective programs. I have yet to walk into a customer who has this handled properly. It is truly amazing that companies will spend hundreds of thousands or even millions per year supporting their channel partners but not know whether it did any good on a partner by partner basis. Surprisingly, all it takes is a good channel SFA/CRM solution and good POS data. 

For the uninitiated, hopefully this post has provided a primer for understanding some of the difficulties in managing channel sales vs. sales in the direct model.

It wasn’t too long ago that the red-headed step child of most marketing programs, channel marketing, was lucky to get a few emails here and there to help with partner recruitment and channel revenue. But all that is changing. As internal sales teams have shrunk, channel marketing has become more important for many companies. This newfound importance is also spurring on some use of new tools by channel marketers, namely social media.

Social media has been a game-changing tool for B2B and B2C marketers in general, but channel marketers have been slower to adapt and use these tools to drive recruitment and channel sales. Part of the reason is not knowing how to leverage social media in the channel.

For many channel marketers, repurposing data sheets and training materials is all they can handle in terms of marketing collateral. But this content does little in the awareness stage of the buying cycle. What social media sites like Twitter and LinkedIn help you do is to engage and educate both end users and resellers much earlier in the sales process. This can drive more channel revenue for you over time and help you create top-of-mind referral sales from distributors and resellers that recommend your products or services.

Below are some tips for getting started.

Engaging

• Get your educational content ready to share
• Get your channel blog up and running
• Join/participate in applicable LinkedIn groups
• Research and go after targets  via Twitter (industry distributors, resellers, media, analysts)
• Listen and jump into the conversation, talking about what’s important to them

Educating

• Start by pointing to others content first
• Point to your own content sparingly
• Position yourself by who you talk to and how you talk to them
• Tap into community to increase reach and have them become part of your message

Selling

• Search for keywords via social media that indicate people are further along in the sales cycle
• Throw your hat in the ring or offer advice
• Take the conversation offline as soon as possible

This is just a start. TreeHouse has a webinar on “Channel Marketing and the Role of Social Media” if you want to find out more.

I have a customer who has planned on launching a channel program with a Partner Relationship Management (PRM) system for a while now.  I visited this customer at least once per quarter for the past two years on other business.  Each time I saw him I would ask “When are we going to build that Partner Portal and launch PRM for you?” Almost inevitably he would respond with “soon”. 

He called me last week and told me the time had come to implement his Portal/PRM system.  A little stunned, I was very curious as to what the motivation was for starting now when the program had been in development for the better part of two years.  His answer really hit home with me and I thought that others may benefit from the experience so I am sharing it here.

Essentially, my client’s answer was that his program had now exceeded his ability to manage it manually.  At 5-10 partners, he could personally respond to requests for documents, manually transfer deal registrations into his CRM, generate and distribute logos, copy etc.   He was also able to execute trainings on a one to one basis with each new partner. 

Now, however, his program had grown to almost 100 partners and he was spending almost all of his time and the better part of another team member’s time responding to the needs of partners.  This was not beneficial for him nor the members of his partner network.  Thus, he needed to implement a PRM so partners could have self service access to the tools and training they needed to successfully sell, service and support his company’s product line when they needed them.

That got me thinking.  How many partners does it take for PRM to make sense?   Below are a few analyses that take a very conservative approach with respect to what resources a partner may need, how often during a year they might need them and the estimated time to respond to each.  What shocked me was how few partners it took to completely occupy the time of a full-time employee.  Please feel free to share your thoughts and comments.

As a PRM vendor, we are sensitive to things that help partners successfully sell, service and support a company’s products.  That’s why it always surprises me when companies treat their partners like second class citizens or worse. If you want to grow your partner network, and have it produce the revenue it should, you have to provide resources to partners just like you would a direct sales team.

Resources both direct sales teams and partners need to succeed:

• Product Training
• Sales Training
• Product Sales Materials
• Product Marketing Materials
• Technical Resource Availability (SE’s where appropriate)
• Leads or Marketing Programs to Generate Leads
• Sales Pipeline Visibility
• Sales Goals
• Quota Accountability
• Financial Incentives
• Pricing Flexibility – Meet Comp., Special Pricing Authorizations

This is not an exhaustive list but a good start.  If you have an existing partner program or are planning to implement one, I encourage you to think about these and any other resources you make available to your internal sales teams.  Then I encourage you to reflect  on what you are providing or going to provide to your partners.  Is there a disparity?  Why?  Could you sell with what you are providing to your partners?

If you can answer these questions you will be that much closer to empowering your partners to successfully sell, service and support your brand in the marketplace.