Tag: Aberdeen Group

Cutting Through the Crap – The Grand Content Experiment

A week doesn’t go by that I don’t hear clients express concern about their ability to produce a consistent flow of quality content, yet every day my inbox is full of emails offering white papers, research, webcasts and blog posts.

So we set out to solve this “paradox of content marketing.”  How is it that clients are not able to produce quality content for their purposes, but I get an average of 35 emails a day offering me content?

Our Approach

With the help of our summer intern, Sergio Pianko from Georgetown, I archived a weeks worth of content related emails sent to my primary work email.  For this experiment, I did not include any other personal email accounts, social media or offline publications.

The Findings

Content Volume

For the week, I received 217 unique emails containing access to 1,131 pieces of content.  Thursday was the peak day of the week, which surprised me, with 9 am being the peak time of day, which didn’t.   I received an email offering me content, on average, almost every 15 minutes.

Slide1

Content Type

A new report by the CMO Council entitled Better Lead Yield in the Content Marketing Field found that 87% of the respondents said that online content plays a major or moderate role in influencing vendor selection.  The content they trust and value most?  Professional association research and whitepapers 67%, industry research reports and whitepapers and customer case studies. The least valuable was vendor content, with 67% saying they don’t trust it.

What’s in my inbox?  Well, I’m partial to content aggregators.  My two favorites providers are MediaPost because of their ability to narrow the scope on relevant topics, and their expansive content producers (including this author).  I also like SmartBrief publications, they provide e-newsletters on behalf of others, like the BMA. I find the layout to be quick and easy to peruse, and they usually feature a research offer.

Slide2

It was interesting to see that even though White Papers were mentioned to be the most valuable content piece according to B2B buyers, it represented less than 2% of the content I received.

Key Insights

Stop Calling Me

Downloading content that you offer for free does not make me a prospect.  Save the $25 dollars you’re spending on the outbound telemarketing call and use it to track my behavior until I am qualified.  Still not enough for you, we get that “free” comes with a price so consider this payment.  According to the CMO Council report 87% of B2B buyers share your content with 5 or more people.  Remarkably, 28% mentioned that they share it with more than 100 folks.

Overweight Content related to the Business Case

The first phase of the buyer journey is research. A prospect can cycle in this phase for weeks, even months, never reaching the next step, which is the business case.  If you want to qualify real prospect, focus on providing them content that is related to making a business case for buying your product or service.  For lead nurturing, overweight the scoring for pages or content that relate to this as well.

Content is not King, nor is Relevancy, Actionable is the Opportunity

Sergio sorted the content using four filters; Relevancy, Usefulness, Credibility, and Actionable, based on the definition in the chart (below).  For the most part, I had selected information sources that produce relevant content, and because of my use of aggregators it kept me informed about industry develops or issues relating to my clients.  We then check into the backgrounds of the content authors and found that for the most part, they were credible using our definition (below).  But along the way Sergio did discover a couple of frauds, not surprisingly in the social media space.

Slide3

The most interesting findings was that very little (less than 10%) of the content was “actionable” in that it provided recommendation/s or solutions to the problem or issue discussed.  And most of the actionable content came in the form of Webcasts.  As a content marketer this is the opportunity and, given its value, think strategically about how you deliver it.  Because of the scarcity of this type of information, you can request an exchange of value with the audience, be it contact information, attendance at a webcast, etc.

Opportunity #2 – Video

Numerous studies have pointed to the growing influence and use of video content. Yet it represented only 1% of the content I was offered.  Yes, it is more complex, time consuming and expensive but it will also drive better results.  It’s worth exploring, from past experience early innovators reap the greatest rewards.

Develop Buyer Personas

To understand some of the findings it may be helpful to know my email and content profile.  I am an active content seeker and email deleter.  Unlike some colleagues and friends, I like to keep a neat and tidy inbox.   I delete emails early in the morning, and late afternoons.  During the day I may delete emails as previews flash on the screen.  Also, because of my consulting background, I am drawn to market research and data oriented content.   I download and archive many items that I later review…typically on planes.

That’s my content “persona.”  Agencies have been creating audience personas for years and now, if you’re a client side marketers, it’s your turn.  According to the Demand Gen Blueprint survey only 25% of marketers have developed buyer personas, and of those who have, only 35% have mapped content to buyer stages.

Who Does it Best?

To win, you have to make it in the inbox, get the email open and the content viewed.  The organization that does that best, in this man’s opinion, is IBM.  For their insight into the C-Suite, quality of research, and frequency of contact…which is only when they have something of value.  They are the only “vendor” I let in my inbox.

Runner up is McKinsey, for their “big picture” thinking and ability to take complex problems and explain them in very simple terms (especially in 2 min videos).  Best New “Up and Comer” is the Aberdeen Group, a recent change in their business model allows free access to quality research, which this “freegan” appreciates.

Content marketing will only grow in importance for business marketers over the next few years.  There are opportunities to get your information viewed, and shared, but to accomplish that you have to understand your audience’s content consumption behavior, provide them something of value, and deliver it in the channel and/or through the content provider they prefer.

There is a lot of work to be done, so have at it.  Looking for a starting point, do a similar experiment with your customers.  Ask them to send you a weeks worth of content related emails, you’ll be surprised by what you find.

Half of Your Sales Pipeline is Junk

John Wanamaker was an innovator, a merchandising, and advertising genius. But when he made the statement; “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, the trouble is wasted, the trouble is I don’t know which half.” He left legacy that has haunted marketers ever since.

Screen Shot 2013-05-10 at 11.32.49 AM

New research from CSO Insights suggests that the day may have come for sales. In their annual Sales Performance Optimization study of over 1500 companies across multiple industries, CSO found that the accuracy of sales forecasting fell to a near all-time low of 46.5%.   Or as John Wanamaker might say; “Half of your sales efforts are wasted, you just don’t know which half. “

And since the forecast, defined in the study as near-term (30, 60 and 90 day), is an output of the sales pipeline, one could also conclude that half (or more) of the pipeline is “junk.”

With the wide spread adoption and utilization of CRM (84% of the firms surveyed), marketing automation, and analytical forecasting tools, the question is how can this be?

Here are some thoughts on why this might be happening, and five tips to help you improve your forecast.

Reasons for poor forecasting:

  • Impurities in the System – let’s go after the big one first.  “Garbage in, garbage out”…as they say.  There’s a laundry list of things to look for — from reps putting leads in the system right before they close, to not updating opportunity consistently, and leaving in dead leads too long.
  • Sales Optimism – yes, the economy seems to be recovering but it may not be moving at the “speed of sales.”  Sales folks are an optimistic bunch; they want to believe things are better than they may be in reality.   For example, the average length of the sales cycle.  In a report earlier this year by BtoB Magazine, 43% of marketers reported that the sales cycle had increased over the last 3 years.  Which is consistent with the CSO Insights report where 42% of Chief Sales Officers stated that the sales cycle had lengthened, in particular with new acquisitions.
  • Incentives & Goals – take a look at how reps are being incented, and/or their sales goals.  You may find the reason why reps leave opportunities in the pipeline too long, and/or are over optimistic with their forecast.  Pressure to build and maintain pipeline can sometimes cause counter productive behaviors.
  • Gut Feel – even if the troops in the trenches are putting in accurate and timely data, the generals may change it to fit the political environment and/or their own personal bias.
  • Changing Buyer Behavior – recent research has shown that the buyer’s journey, and the typical sales process are not aligned.  Buyers frequently start and stop the journey, or will cycle at a stage, and even move backward in the process.  CRM systems are typically designed in a linear approach, progressing from a lead to a close.  It’s an internal view, and increasingly out of alignment with buyers’ preferences.

How to improve:

  1. Active Pipeline Management – The pipeline and forecast will never be 100% accurate. That said, you should have a feel for how far off it is, and what is needed to improve.  For example, do you have an inspection process to keep the pipeline current?  If so, consider doing it more frequently.  Move quarterly reviews to monthly.  Also, if everyone is responsible for updating the pipeline, then no one is responsible.  Consolidate the “maintenance and hygiene” of the pipeline to one person.  Others may be responsible for providing updates, but one person needs to police the system.
  2. Discount Probability and Value – conduct a post-mortem on past forecasts over last year or two.  Assess the difference between forecasted and actual results.  Create discounted probabilities based on that delta for: lead movement (from stage to stage), and lead value. If implemented, evaluate the accuracy of your “pre-set” discounts.  It should help bring forecasts more in-line and ground “sales optimism” in a bit of reality.
  3. Govern the Process – to improve the accuracy of “output”, focus on implementing and managing a standard process.  Accenture’s Connecting the Dots on Sales Performance found inconsistencies among reps in using their company’s defined process and methodologies to selling.  A quarter of Chief Sales Officers surveyed stated that sales reps used their sales methodologies 50% of the time, 31% said it was used 75% of the time.
  4. Leverage Marketing – close the feedback loop with marketing to improve the quality of leads from campaigns and activities.   In a report on Sales & Marketing Alignment by the Aberdeen Group, marketing accounted for 47% of the sales forecasted pipeline in the Top 20% of companies studied, compared to only 5% of laggard organizations (bottom 20%).
  5. Utilize Business Intelligence Tools – high penetration rates of CRM may equate to high visibility, but doesn’t automatically mean that it provides the best insight.  Despite high adoption rates of performance dashboard, few companies are using business intelligence or analytics tools according to the Aberdeen Group report on sales forecasting.  However, the report found that 44% of the highest performing sales organizations were using predictive analytics to reduce “gut feel” in the forecast.

Screen Shot 2013-05-10 at 11.30.06 AM

Of all the options, perhaps the best lever for impacting accuracy is the rep.  As Ashish Vazirani, a Principal in the Hi-Tech practice of the sales consultancy, ZS Associates says;  “A sales person needs to be coached, or apprenticed on how to discern and input the right information for accurate forecasting. Technology can make us lazy and reliant on the tools to do the thinking, we need to emphasize the importance coaching plays in keeping the garbage out of the system. ” 

 Helping the troops become better soldiers through coaching should help improve the accuracy of the forecast.  As well as, implementing the tips mentioned above.  But you may still find that half of the pipeline is wasted, but hopefully, unlike Mr. Wanamaker, you’ll understand which half.