The Marketing Practice has been shortlisted for two Marketing Week Engage 2012 Awards.

This is the first year we have entered the awards and it’s brilliant to be recognised in a completely open national marketing field.

We have been shortlisted in the Business to Business and Market Research categories for the Reduced Cost and Complexity (RCC) campaign we created with O2. Following its joint venture with 2e2, the campaign positioned O2 as a partner who could join up clients’ communications and IT networks to facilitate new ways of working for employees and with customers.

There is more information on the campaign, (which also won Best Lead Nurturing Campaign 2011 at the B2B Marketing Awards last November) on the B2B Marketing website.

The awards ceremony will take place at the Grosvenor House Hotel, Park Lane, London, on Tuesday 22 May 2012 – keep your fingers crossed for us!

Sometimes stark examples make the case for account based marketing (ABM) better than any ROI calculator can.

For the un-initiated, ABM is the approach to creating individual marketing plans aligned to specific accounts. We’ve got an overview blotter on the subject here.

So back to the stark example – see if it rings true with anything happening in your business right now. One of our clients has a customer worth over £200m per year globally – it’s one of their largest accounts. We’ve just started work at the last minute on a bid where they’re pitching to retain and grow the contract.

At the minute, they’re in 3rd place on the bid (behind one incumbent and one potential new supplier). The team at the customer has recently changed, and they’re saying that they’re not aware of any benefits from the last couple of years of the contract, and they don’t feel like they’re seeing any innovation or desire to keep the business.

Both of these objections are key areas where account based marketing could have helped. Highlighting the benefits and talking about the good work being delivered is a relatively simple job. Sharing innovation and ’showing the love’ are slightly more difficult, but there are some good places to start. Having seen the account plan, there are some obvious things that could have been done simply to build awareness across key contacts around the world – something that an account team of 12 people would struggle to do.

So even if it had only started 6-12 months ago, an ABM programme could have created a significantly different position going into this bid.

And this is really still only talking about retaining existing business in the account – there’s some obvious ROI to be shown in uncovering new opportunities or expanding into new areas/geographies. ABM seems to be gaining momentum as a practical strategy in complex B2B markets, and examples like this show how relevant it can be.

But anyway, there’s no point crying over spilt milk (unless it’s stained your favourite loafers) – there’s a bid to be won…

Why do we need a single customer view?

The idea of a single customer view (SCV) has been around for many years, born out of the need for businesses to understand how customers are interacting with their brand, and to obtain a complete view of customer interactions and purchases.

Understanding engagement at the customer or prospect level (and not just campaign by campaign) can drive more in-depth campaign analysis, resulting in more informed business decisions and demonstrating return on marketing investment — something that’s high on every marketer’s agenda, especially in the current economic environment.

Historically consumer focused, the fairly straightforward idea of having one single record that delivers a summarised view can be applied in so many areas – not least in B2B lead generation and prospecting programmes.

What are the key benefits of a single customer view?

I would summarise the main benefits as follows:

1. Improved productivity and efficiency from lead generation activity
2. Increased likelihood of conversion – the more we know about a prospect’s engagement, the more influence we can have over the prospect journey to increase the likelihood of conversion
3. Better budget allocation on higher value prospects through smarter segmentation of data
4. Creation of bespoke contact strategies using analysis and insight to identify the best mix of communication channels
5. Greater depth of understanding through tailored data collection, analysis and output – allowing more relevant communication with prospects
6. Improved forecasting control – a SCV can support data insights to measure the potential of the prospect universe
7. Cross-selling opportunities to current customers where the SCV integrates customers and prospects
8. Informed acquisition of new customers based on insight derived from current customers

How difficult is it to achieve, and is it worth it?

A true SCV is deemed the ‘holy grail’ as it is very difficult to achieve due to the continual evolution of technology and data. The ever-increasing number of marketing channels also presents challenges. In reality, I’m sure that very few businesses can honestly say that they have a complete SCV currently in place for marketing – if they do, I’d love to see it!

Is it worth it? Well yes it is…or should be! The more information we can collect, the more questions we can ask and answer, the better informed we are.  Consumers are making more and more information about themselves available in the public domain, and it’s down to us to start hoovering it up. We need to gather it, integrate it and use it to help shape marketing strategies.

Even at a simplistic level, using a SCV will enable us to analyse the channels a prospect is engaging with, and should help define how you communicate to them in future.  It might be seen as Big Brother behaviour, but for enterprise account based marketing, building a profile of high-level contacts and knowing things like individual interests and hobbies, group memberships and employment history can help start a very effective communication process.

What are the main steps in obtaining strong enough data for a single customer view?

Now more than ever, the wealth of data available on any one customer or prospect is immense. Offline media, websites, social media, events, direct mail, email and telemarketing are all areas and channels where data can be collected and fed into a SCV.

In the B2B environment, the challenge is increased by the complexity of company structures and contacts responsible for multiple areas. Getting to the right decision maker or influencer for the product you are selling is, and always will be, a key focus for B2B marketers.

By adopting some of the SCV thinking and techniques, we can create group views, company views, department views and influencer views that can all be linked, with information flowing between the multiple levels delivering all the benefits of a SCV in the consumer market.

Our next challenge? Making sure we ask the right questions of the data and get the insight needed to deliver successful results-driven sales and marketing campaigns.

What tools are available to help us?

Many CRM systems and solutions now implement the SCV from within, using increasingly intelligent data gathering and integration techniques. Sales and marketing software such as Salesforce.com is widely used by big enterprise organisations and is continually evolving to integrate with new data collection channels and digital data.

But are businesses actually using these types of systems to their full potential, especially from a marketing point of view? Experience tells us that this is infrequently the case. We know that getting to a true SCV is and always will be challenging, but these tools can be extremely useful for getting as close to customers as possible.

Through the right technology and effective planning, the challenges we face in increasing our customer and prospect views can be significantly reduced. We may never achieve a complete single view but we can get pretty close if we use all the tools and data at our fingertips.

It’s that time of the year again, and there were plenty of April Fool’s gags that didn’t disappoint.

As usual, Google pulled some amusing pranks, including new maps for the 8-bit NES, a self-driving NASCAR, and the launch of Chrome’s multi-task mode.

Sir Richard Branson launched Virgin Volcanic and planned a journey to the centre of the Earth. And Warby Parker, an American eyewear retailer, released a range for dogs, aptly titled Warby Barker.

Atlassian, an American provider of tracking, collaboration and software development tools, released a tongue-in-cheek video introducing a new way to boost developer happiness – spooning.

Great for marketing

Ultimately, the point of all these gags is that they’re great for PR. They’re a fun way of getting the media to take notice of you in an interesting, less expensive way.

As long as your organisation’s PR and social media activity is aligned to your sales and marketing strategy, it’s a huge opportunity to improve your website’s search engine ranking, build awareness and inspire your staff.

Measurable results

The economic downturn has forced marketing departments to prove their worth by delivering against measurable metrics. Now PR is under the same pressure to keep its place in the budget.

So seasonal opportunities, like April Fool’s Day, need to be well thought out. Will your planned activity increase web traffic? Is it in line with your SEO strategy? Will it deliver tangible results?

What’s the strategy behind your tweets and blog posts? Tweeting and blogging ‘just to be out there’ doesn’t really cut it.

So, where should you start? Here are three ideas to get you started:

1. Be focused – Write down your business’s key words – and use them. Constantly ask yourself why you’re doing it and how it relates to these key words and your end goal.

1. Be consistent – Tie all your activity together. Make sure that if someone visits your site it matches the news you’re putting out – the serious stuff as well as the fun stuff.

1. Measure the results – and work on improving them. Which tweets got re-tweeted? Which blog articles are most popular? Which press releases generate a spike in traffic? Monitor and then adjust your strategy accordingly.

On that note, I’ll leave you with a look at what The Guardian considers the ten best April Fool’s Day gags.

It’s been a fantastic year so far for new starters at The Marketing Practice. We’ve hired 21 people since September 2011 alone, and we plan to recruit another 14 by the end of August 2012.

Growth has come across all our teams – creative, data, lead generation and client services (which has grown by 50% this year and now has an average of around 5 people working for each client).

We’re interested in hearing from people from a wide variety of backgrounds who want to join a vibrant and dynamic team and be part of our continued success.

If you think you have what it takes, email careers@themarketingpractice.com

John Crane, former CIO of National Australia Bank, and John Suffolk, former UK government CIO, spoke at our recent Sales & Marketing Forum on the opportunities available to suppliers when an organisation goes through transformational change.

Discussion points included:

• The challenges of transformation – what’s the real role of the CIO and their team?
• A glimpse behind the scenes – how are major decisions made?
• Knowing IT’s place – should you be approaching IT or the wider business?
• Inside the IT function — it’s not just about the CIO
• Why do they turn to certain suppliers?

Finally, we asked our guest speakers to put their marketing hats on and come up with some ideas and suggestions on how suppliers should engage with CIOs.

The full forum write-up can be read here or viewed below.

We’re hosting a charity ball this summer. The ball is part of our pledge to raise £24,000 for YoungDementia UK this year.

The ball will take place on 16 June at The Oxford Thames Hotel, Sandford-on-Thames and the theme for the evening is 50’s inspired Rock n’ Roll.

A professional jive instructor will teach us some moves, and a live performance from The Stylettes is guaranteed to have us all dancing the night away.

Some amazing prizes will be up for auction, including:

• A week-long stay for up to six in a Spanish villa
• An England rugby shirt signed by this year’s world cup players
• Two tickets to the Touring Car Championship race series at Silverstone
• A two night stay at an Intercontinental Hotel
• Dinner at the Leathern Bottle
• Two tickets for the King of Rift event at Essex Arena
• Four tickets to a West End show of your choice

Tickets are £50 each which includes entrance, a reception cocktail, three course dinner and wine. Please email charityball@themarketingpractice.com for more information and tickets.

YoungDementia UK, who are based in Witney, work directly with younger people with dementia and their families and friends in Oxfordshire. Young onset dementia refers to a progressive degeneration of the brain occurring before the age of 65.

You can follow YoungDementia UK on Facebook here.

The rise of email, text, social media, and video for marketing has changed the way we engage with our prospects and customers. We can reach them in a matter of seconds, at half the price, without having to leave our desks. And we can measure responses and track the success of a campaign with relative ease.

However, the explosion of virtual communication has raised doubts over the importance of face-to-face communication, which can be time-consuming and often costly.

In person is still best

But I believe that face-to-face interaction is vital for building trust and growing relationships. In fact, it may be more important in these tough economic times than ever before.

At our S&M Forum in January this year, former UK government CIO, John Suffolk, highlighted the importance of face-to-face meetings in building the trust needed for complex B2B sales decisions.

According to a report from Meeting Professionals International (MPI), 40% of prospects converted to new customers through face-to-face meetings, while 28% of current business would be lost without face-to-face meetings¹.

A white paper released in 2010 called “The Future of Meetings: The Case for Face-to-Face”, found that in-person events are better suited for capturing attention, inspiring positive emotions and building networks and relationships².

A paper by the National University of Singapore states that “face-to-face business meetings afford participants opportunities to develop transparency and trust among each other in ways that are not always possible in other types of communication.”

It also says that “trust is an integral part of the business relationship and building it is a function of having repeated personal interactions with one another. This is not to say that trust cannot be built using computer based technologies, but the evidence suggests that it takes longer to build.”

And don’t forget the all important fringe benefits. Face-to-face business meetings allow side-line conversations that are often very valuable in obtaining background information, politics or contacts that could really make or break a lead generation process.

So, the lesson is that when you need an important decision to be made, face-to-face is the way forward. But, there’s more to it than simply setting up these sales meetings. You need to think about the marketing collateral and tools your sales team can use before, during and after the meeting.

First, you need to get them interested enough to accept a meeting with you. Think about how would introduce your company in a new and interesting way. During the meeting, simple, strong PowerPoint slides can help you to engage with the prospect. Showing examples of your successes, or charts and diagrams all help you make the right impression. And lastly, think about what you’l leave behind to make sure you aren’t forgotten.

So there you have it. Whilst social media and electronic interaction play a vital role in getting those messages out there, we mustn’t cast aside the value of good old fashioned contact. It’s just a question of finding the right balance of electronic and personal channels and working out where they belong in our sales cycles.

Sources

1 http://www.mpiweb.org/Libraries/NTA-Reports/Meetings_Deliver.pdf

2 http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/chr/pubs/perspective/perspective-15297.html

3 http://www.iacconline.org/content/files/WhyFace-to-FaceBusinessMeetingsMatter.pdf

To some marketing is a science, to others a craft. To a select few however, it’s a disaster waiting to happen. History is littered with examples of well-thought-out marketing plans crashing and burning against hubris, bad translation and rank stupidity.

In the days before the internet such mistakes could – if the company was lucky – remain confined to localised markets or the pages of industry publications. However, luckily for us, the web and social media not only means that mistakes can garner an audience in the millions before you can say: ‘fancy a flight to the US for buying this £100 vacuum cleaner?’, but technology also gives companies even more opportunity to show how not to do it.

Here’s some of our favourites:

Qantas – on the face of it launching a twitter competition to describe a  ‘luxury in-flight experience’ seemed quite a straightforward way of engaging with customers. But as Tommy Cooper knew, timing is everything. Which is why launching said campaign soon after you’ve grounded all your flights during a dispute with your workforce, is only ever going to encourage your customers to share experiences you’d rather the world didn’t hear.

Kenneth Cole – American shoemaker Kenneth Cole is an enthusiastic user of social media and even makes a habit of signing his tweets with his initials. Apparently he also makes some great footwear – although I wouldn’t know anything about that, being a bit of a philistine as far as those things are concerned. What he isn’t is a comedian, which is why the tweet below at the height of Egypt’s recent revolution was followed almost instantly by a grovelling apology.

Netflix – is an incredibly successful company, which rents DVDs via the post – just like Love Film. Since its formation, it has diversified into providing films, TV shows and other media through internet streaming – and been equally as successful. Last year it announced that it was splitting the company in two, with its DVD business to go under the name of Qwikster. Press releases were sent and executive statements aired, which again was successful until someone pointed out that the company had failed in the rudimentary responsibility of buying up the Twitter hashtag of the same name. Worse still, the Qwikster tag is actually registered to one Jason Castillo – whose expletive-filled tweets on the wonders of dope, women, sports and avoiding all kinds of schooling make great reading.

Walkers Crisps – apparently we only ever need to look back at history to learn our future, which makes you wonder what Walkers Crisps were up to when it came up with its ‘Guess where it will rain and win £10’ wheeze. A handy code on every crisp packet led to a website where punters found a map of the UK. All they then needed to do was choose a point where they thought it might rain and sit back – having first of course checked the Met Office site for a bit of ‘background’. The company was allegedly looking at a £1m bill before the site ‘went down’; those responsible seem to have completely missed the Hoover Marketing Masterclass from the early 90s.

Pepsi – there’s a great many challenges to doing business in China and among the cultural, regulatory and geographical difficulties any enterprise needs to navigate, surely the most difficult is shooting yourself in the foot. In the West, the slogan Pepsi gives you zest for life, is a fairly straightforward encouragement to partake in its sugary wares; in China it comes out as Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave.

Coke – whatever Pepsi can do, Coke can do better. Apparently. When it launched itself on unsuspecting Chinese soft drink aficionados it called itself Ke-Kou-Ke-La. In a full on marketing blitz it made sure that the many thousands of signs and other red-based collateral proudly displayed the name, before discovering that the phrase means ‘bite the wax tadpole’ or ‘female horse stuffed with wax’ – depending on the dialect. As Napoleon Dynamite might say: sweet.

Chris wrote recently about some parallels between Spanish bank BBVA’s deal with Google and The Marketing Practice’s own experience of running IT in the cloud. There are a few marketing lessons that are worth taking as well from the story (Google’s largest enterprise software deal, covered here by the BBC).

It’s interesting that a lot of the commentary in the BBC’s article is from BBVA’s Director of Innovation. Not a job role commonly considered in broad-brush “target the IT Director” or “sell to the Business” marketing campaigns. And certainly missed by anyone concentrating only on “c-level”. But this is exactly the kind of person that makes an ideal target for marketing activities – someone with a vested interest in bringing new ideas into the business and who presumably isn’t bombarded with speculative sales messages.

So next time you’re considering data requirements for a marketing programme, consider if you should be looking for the equivalent. Heads of Sales Operations (for CRM projects) and Finance Directors within the IT department (for projects designed to take cost out of IT) are a couple of other examples that spring to mind of roles that are less obvious but often more relevant for campaigns. And then there are the “special project directors” and their equivalents who you only tend to find through deeper company research, on-going campaigning or (in the longer term) through smart inbound marketing activities.

Aside from that, other parts of the article highlight interesting messages/consequences of this kind of deal:

“BBVA stressed that customer data and key systems would “stay in our own data centres” and be completely separate from the cloud solution.” – Risk aversion is clearly here to stay.

“A bigger worry will be whether BBVA’s computer network will be able to cope with the sharp rise in network traffic that cloud-computing solutions demand.” – Highlights the comms infrastructure opportunities driven by cloud computing and high-bandwith activities like video conferencing.

“The biggest challenge for BBVA and other firms switching to cloud computing could indeed be cultural issues.” – Suppliers marketing ‘revolutionary’ cloud solutions often forget the wider organisational change barriers facing their clients; these are ripe topics for content to demonstrate how a supplier can share advice and offer support.

“Also driving the change was the increasing mobility of the bank’s workforce. A lot of the bank’s computing needs had moved to smartphones, tablets, laptops and computers at home.” – Mobility and consumerisation are starting to live up to the hype!