Worldly Marketing Wisdom- What is the One Key to Marketing Success?

So why am I sending you this newsletter? 

My goal every day is to try and live up to the advice of Warren Buffet's business partner. 

“Go to bed smarter than when you woke up.”
— Charlie Munger

I try to read as much as I can. About marketing. Sales. Design. Startups. Software. Business. Economics. Personal improvement. 

Some of the things I read are crap and not worth sharing. Some, however are pretty good.

With that in mind, take a quick break and check out these articles:

What caught my eye in the past month?

1. Tesla, software and disruption, Benedict Evans
2. How the Blog Broke the Web, Amy Hoy
3. Building a Storybrand: The 7 Prospect Desires Your Business Depends On, MarTech
4. 50 Split Testing Ideas (You Can Run Today!), Neil Patel
5. The Websites Of 35 Unicorn Startups Before They Became Billion-Dollar Companies, CB Insights

If your marketing plan isn't functioning as well as you'd like, email me and we'll schedule a free consultation.

Must-Read Marketing Articles for Your Spring Time Pleasure

April Showers Mean More Must-Read Marketing Articles!Spring seems to have finally arrived.

Regular baseball games are being played and the NBA playoffs have started.

Am I going to pass along some great articles about how to make your marketing better, faster and more measurable?

You bet I am.

Take a few seconds and check out these excellent readings:

• How Winners Really Differentiate, Andy Raskin
• How To Systematically Reduce The Risk & Uncertainty Of New Ideas, Strategyzer
• A Marketing Budget Example that Covers All Bases and Ensures ROI, Adhere
• 101 Sales Email Templates You Can Use Today To Close More Deals, Reddit Marketing
• Humanity’s remarkable economic history, CapX

If you have a few marketing priorities that aren't getting enough attention, email me and we'll schedule a quick call to review Honeycomb's capabilities.

Fall of the Wall Dividing Sales and Marketing?

Traditionally, the relationship between sales and marketing was fraught with distrust and misunderstanding. Sales people were reluctant to share any information about their sales activity and funnel, while marketers were blindly messaging market segments without direct feedback from sales teams and their prospects.

Over the past 5-6 years, this situation has changed. The deployment of powerful cloud based tools to sales teams, like Salesforce, and to marketing teams, like Hubspot, have allowed companies to break down these silos. The goal is to build a transparent data-based funnel from lead to close to referral and track how, where and when your sales and marketing dollars are working...and not.

Want to learn more about how Honeycomb works with our clients to build this kind of sales and marketing infrastructure? Click here and schedule a call to learn more about how long it takes to set up these programs and how to use them to increase conversion rates and grow revenue.

As far as must-read marketing articles, what caught my eye in the past month?

1. LinkedIn launches conversion tracking capabilities, Fierce CMO
2. 27 SaaS Products for the Marketing Department, David Cummings
3. 19 content marketing ideas that aren’t blog posts, 500 Startups
4. B2B marketing budget planning tips for 2017, Fierce CMO
5. 5 Psychological Principles of High Converting Websites (+ 20 Case Studies), Kissmetrics

Must Read Marketing Articles for July

For the past 10-15 years, marketing has been undergoing a series of shifting changes in strategy, tactics, feel and tone. As you know, the basics of human communication are eternal, but the methods  by which we, the professional marketers, reach customers are constantly being tested, improved or discarded.Keeping up to speed on the latest techniques is a challenge for all of us. The whole reason I started this blog nine plus years ago, was to share the articles I felt were important for my fellow marketers and non-marketing business leaders to read.

What caught my eye in past few weeks?

1. The Recursive Product Strategy That Musk Used To Build An Empire, First Round
2. Building Your Content Marketing Workflow Part 1: Identify Content Needs, Kapost
3. Content marketing used to drive leads, customer engagement, brand awareness, FierceCMO
4. 5 lessons for building a scalable SaaS sales machine, TNW
5. AngelList: What is it, who is it for, should you care?, Emerging Prairie

Want to learn more about Honeycomb and how we are helping our clients address their strategic and tactical marketing priorities? Click here.

Do You Know the Number One Objection in Your Sales Funnel?

What's the one objection that's preventing your leads from turning into clients?

No idea? Then you should probably read this article:

The Number One Objection In The Sales Funnel, Tomasz Tunguz

13 SaaS Marketing Pros Reveal Their Lead Generation Strategies

Lead generation is part of the basic blocking and tackling of marketing. Lost? Read this article...

13 SaaS Marketing Pros Reveal Their Lead Generation Strategies

Summer Reading: 9 brilliant business books you can read in an afternoon

I'm always looking for business, economics and marketing reading ideas. The Business Insider just had a post with some good ideas.

Read the whole thing here: 9 brilliant business books you can read in an afternoon

Or just download them from Kindle...

1.'Who Moved My Cheese?' by Spencer Johnson
2. 'As a Man Thinketh' by James Allen
3.'How to Lie with Statistics' by Darrell Huff
4. 'The Greatest Salesman in the World' by Og Mandino
5. 'The One Minute Manager' by Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson
6. 'The Investment Answer' by Daniel C. Goldie and Gordon S. Murray
7. 'The Richest Man in Babylon' by George S. Clason
8. 'Marketing: A Love Story' by Bernadette Jiwa
9. 'Rich Habits: The Daily Success Habits of Wealthy Individuals' by Thomas Corley

Which Types of Brand Communications Most Influence Purchase Decisions?

Marketing Charts Link: Which Types of Brand Communications Most Influence Purchase Decisions?

Measurable Business Results? Uh, How about Revenue and Growth.

A new report on content marketing is out. It shows marketers feel they are doing a good job creating content, but are having trouble tying their efforts to measurable business results.

Uh, how about revenue and growth?

Source: Content Marketing Trends: Goals, Distribution Channels, and Budgets

Content marketers have fairly clear-cut objectives, but the majority are falling short of meeting them, details a new report [download page] from OneSpot and 614 Group. The survey finds that B2B marketers are largely focused on lead generation, echoing other research on the subject, while brand engagement is the top objective among B2C marketers. For the time being, though, a slight majority feel that they’re not meeting their content marketing objectives, and most feel that they’re underperforming when it comes to the business results of their efforts.

How Do Enterprise Buyers Research New Software?

Marketers often have a hard time explaining the value of content marketing. I hear sales focused teams ask "why do we have to write all of this stuff?"

Well, one of the many, many reasons is that prospects evaluate various sources when making a buying decision. Everyone starts with a google search and gets deeper from there.

Your company needs to be creating or influencing the creation of as much content in the chart below.

Source: How Do Enterprise Buyers Research New Software?

Why Asking Sales What They Want Is NOT Sales Enablement

A very good read on how to engage with the sales team and methodically determine how marketing can create the content that best improves the sales cycle...

Why Asking Sales What They Want Is NOT Sales Enablement - MarketingProfs

Basically,

1. Define Sales Activities

2. Identify the Coordinating Goals

3. Create an Activity Map

4. Perform a Materials Analysis

But click through to read the whole article...

Aligning Sales and Business Goals...Even Possible?

I've providing b2b marketing services to technology companies since 1999 or so. In that time, I've heard a lot of the same issues pop up at many firms. One of the them is the pain that is generated when a company is making a change in strategy, direction or focus- and the sales team becomes reactionary and resistant.

A common example of this is when a product based company realizes that its products are becoming commodities and attempts to re-position itself as a solutions or services company. This change always seems to cause consternation with the folks who have been happily selling the products. With good reason...lol.

I just read a very good article by Steve Blank, a Silicon Valley luminary about just this issue. It is a very good read, and you should read the whole thing...but here is a snippet...

The Land of the Living Dead 

I see this same pattern in early stage startups. Early sales look fine, but often plateau. Engineering comes into a staff meeting with several innovative ideas and the head of sales and/or marketing shoot them down with the cry of “It will kill our current sales.” 

The irony is that “killing our current sales” is often what you need to do. Most startups don’t fail outright, they end up in “the land of living dead” where sales are consistently just OK but never breakout into a profitable and scalable company. This is usually due to a failure of the CEO and board in forcing the entire organization to Pivot. The goal of a scalable startup isn’t optimizing the comp plan for the sales team but optimizing the long-term outcome of the company. At times they will conflict. And startup CEO’s need a way to move everyone out of their comfort zone to the bigger prize. 

Burn The Boats 

In 1519 Hernando Cortes landed in the Yucatan peninsula to conquer the Aztec Empire and bring their treasure back to Spain. His small army arrived in 11 boats. As they landed Cortes solved the problem of getting his team focused on what was ahead of them – he ordered them to burn the boats they came in. Now the only way home was to succeed in their new venture or die. Pivots that involve radical changes to the business model may at times require burning the boats at the shore.

Sales and Marketing are Still Sales and Marketing. Right?

Today, Marc Benioff of Salesforce.com said that "Facebook and Twitter are a phenomena" , according to ReadWriteWeb. He also let it be know that Salesforce is actively integrating both services, something he calls, "the biggest development for the company in the past ten years."

Some of the features to be found in Service Cloud 2 Sales Cloud 2:

Twitter integration: In Sales Cloud 2, uses may Twitter stream into Salesforce so sales people can engage in conversations with people and add that information into the sales funnel. In Service Cloud 2, customer support may follow Twitter and respond to people with real-time customer support.

Answers: This is a pretty cool feature. A Dell executive showed how an "Answer," tab can be added into Facebook where customers may pose their questions.

Mobile: A sign that moble apps are here to stay. Sales people may use the platform to send documents through the Salesforce platform.

I say it almost every day, but the real value of social media is enabling PR, marketing and sales to work together more effectively. Generating a warm lead out of a conversation with a group of people self-selected to be interested in issues the surrounding your product or service is a hell of a lot more likely to close than a cold lead generated from a palm card sent to 10,000 names on a spreadsheet or an email sent to 100,000 names in some rental email database.

Social media is interesting in itself, but not compared to the real, measurable results you can generated when you align and integrate it with your sales and marketing strategy, plan and team.

Another interesting post that focuses on the idea that social media is just a part of the marketing mix. Read it here: Don't Call Me A Social Media Guy by Rohit Bhargava at Ogilvy.

Social media is just one of the tools that I use on a daily basis. To focus on just that and make it my identity would be like calling a runner a "sneaker guy." They might love their sneakers, but it's still the method they use to get from where they are to where they want to be. The way I use social media is similar ... I use it for marketing. I'm a marketing guy first and foremost. It's why my blog is called Influential Marketing and why you won't ever hear my introduce myself as an expert in social media. I use it often, and do know what I'm doing - but my expertise and my career is in marketing.

So many people are fixated on the tools of social media that they are missing the big picture. Marketing is still marketing, you just use additional channels- channels with some different rules and best practices.

Looking for a job? Have a high pain threshold? Then cover the Nats!! WaPo Seeks New Nats Writer

This is one of the most high profile and rewarding beats in Sports because our coverage of the city's MLB franchise is at the center of our department's mission. It is also a very demanding job. It involves covering upwards of 140-150 games per year, in addition to spring training and the off-season.

The beat writer is also responsible for regular posts to the Nationals Journal blog, which has a large and passionate following of baseball fans. A background in sports is not essential, though the ideal candidate would be someone who has high energy, a willingness to travel and a love for the game of baseball.

We would like to fill this position soon to give the writer time to acclimate before the start of spring training in Florida in mid-February.

Hmmmm. Tempting.....but no.

Webinar: Using Social Media to Target the C-Suite and Close Deals

Last week, I had the great opportunity of serving as a moderator for a Webinar on the use of social media to target executives and close complex sales, hosted by the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA). There were two excellent presentations and a fascinating Q&A session. The speakers were:

Steve Ressler, Founder, GovLoop
Jim Fowler, CEO, Jigsaw

Download the PDF of the 36 slides here and listen to the audio here (about 60 minutes).

What do you think? Please leave a comment or drop me a line!!

The fourth and final Webinar is coming up a few weeks. Take a second and mark it down on your calendar:

Social Media for Brand Awareness, Thought Leadership and Other Traditional PR Activities
Price for SIIA Members: Free, Non SIIA Members: $89
Monday, December 7th - 1:30pm - 2:30 pm EDT
Social media should be an integral part of your PR strategy, not just your sales function. To run a successful campaign Marketing, Sales and PR need to be integrated using today's popular social media tools. How can you effectively integrate your social media strategy across the enterprise?

Moderator:
Robert Carroll, VP Marketing, Clickability

Panelist:
Richard Dym, CMO, OpSource, Inc.

Two other panelists are TBD

The Most Important Thing in a Recession- Sales

On the very day Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th President, the stock market tanked by 3-5% depending on what index you prefer. Our economy is in tatters, confidence is shot, businesses are failing. It's hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

But fear not. Your sales pipeline is probably half as robust as it was last year, but by getting back to basics while integrating your efforts with the latest marketing and social media best practices, you can survive 2009 and get yourself positioned for strong growth in 2010.

What are the sales basics? It's easy to forget, but here are three, compiled by a great resource I read regularly, justsales.com.

1. Establish a relentless focus on talking with prospects and customers at every moment of each sales day. Sales requires contact. Make contact your first priority.

2. Be prepared with one to three absolutely solid statements that communicate the reasons someone should buy from you now – buy from you... now. These should be powerful statements that create a sense of urgency and make it clear why you and your offering are the solution to their situation at this very moment – scripted and rehearsed to a point where you can deliver these benefits with appropriate voice intonation, literally, in your sleep. (please remember: being the biggest, oldest, or "premier" provider is rarely a reason someone should buy from you... in fact, sometimes it could be the reason not to)

3. Be ready with an approachable, non-defensive method of responding to the top three objections you and your team hear each sales day. Again, these should be scripted and rehearsed to be delivered without hesitation.

New Podcast with Jean Foster, VP Marketing at BT Americas

Hi all, I want to share with everyone a podcast I did this morning with Jean Foster. Jean is the VP Marketing for BT Americas, a division of global telecom powerhouse British Telecom. She shares best practices on marketing strategy, competing against bigger rivals (Verizon! AT&T!), merging marketing departments from acquired companies, integrating social media into a large enterprise B2B marketing and sales strategy and how to sell social media to internal audiences.



Full disclosure: Jean selected my employer, Strategic Communications Group, to develop and execute targeted campaigns to support her marketing and sales initiatives. Check out BT America's sustainability blog and their managed security services Twitter feed.

How do you think BT is doing?