Revenue-driven Marketing

Revisiting the ROI of Trade Shows

Trade Shows have long been on my list of least favorite Marketing Tactics. Perhaps it's because they've been a "Least Effective" Marketing Tactic in my experience. But being a bargain hunter in a high-supply, low-demand market, I'm willing to rethink the ROI of Trade Shows.

It's no surprise that B2B Trade Show spending is down this year (and has been declining steadily over the past few years). Forrester Research recently published a study on B2B Marketing Spend, The 2009 Economic Impact on B2B Marketing Budgets and Activities. As budgets are tightening, marketing spend is shifting from more traditional activities such as tradeshows and print advertising to digital media. 49% of B2B Marketers surveyed by Forrester stated that they planned to REDUCE Trade Show spend.

But as demand drops, it's easier to negotiate better deals. And with corporate travel budgets at an all time low, trade show attendance is restricted to those with a serious business need and/or budget.

I planned a client's presence at a trade show last month, RFID Journal Live, and though attendance was down, the seriousness of the conversations was up. So it reinforces my recession theory on trade shows. The tighter the T&E budget, the more likely attendees will have an budgeted project:

This may be the first time I've seen qualified leads come in on Day 3 of a 3-Day show! It's more common for decision makers to attend the first couple of days of a show and have the vendors stay behind and talk to each other as the show nears its end.

So though I'm not entirely bullish on Trade Shows in general, I'll be more open-minded when evaluating their effectiveness. With better deals and better-qualified buyers, they may have a new place in the marketing budget.

The Case for Specialized Sales Talent

The common yardstick for quantifying sales performance is Revenue.   If your product/service has a long sales cycle, you won't be able to measure performance for months.   

In The Perfect Salesforce, Derek Gatehouse has done a good job of quantifying what makes a salesperson great, and how to hire and coach sales talent based on their sales stage :  Not every salesperson is skilled at both "opening the door" and "closing the sale" for a complex sales cycles.

"Door openers" often have plenty of deals in the pipeline forecasted at 10% and 20%, but may not have the skills to realistically qualify a deal and make the committee sale to drive it to closure. Conversely, seasoned closers are generally not the right salespeople to generate new business, because they deal in quality, not quantity. It takes a staggering volume of outbound "cold" calls to get a potential prospect on the line -- and top salespeople know that to optimize their time, they need to focus on deals that have the greatest potential of closing.

There's a reason that so many telesales firms are staffed with great "openers" (who often moved from direct sales to inside sales once the sales process became protracted), and so many direct sales teams are staffed with great "closers". But neither functions can stand alone.

Matching the right openers with the right closers ensures that you'll have sales people in place to make goal (and a support team to make the assists).

Is your product recession-proof?

Depends on what product category it's in, and whether you're leading with brand reputation or value.

Whether you're a B2C or B2B marketer (and I've mostly been the latter) there are many brand cues to take from CPGs and Retailers – after all, they’re the companies who spend the most on branding.

The October 08 issue of CPG Matters cites a recent consumer study by Unilever:  Winning Shoppers in Turbulent Times  detailing which Consumer Product categories are more vulnerable during an economic slump.  

According to the study:

(To save money) the top dozen categories shoppers will not abandon preferred brands (for a generic brand) include:

• anti-perspirant and deodorant
• batteries
• canned vegetables
• fresh meat and seafood
• hair care
• household cleanser
• laundry detergents
• margarine
• pain relievers and cold medicines
• personal wash
• pet food
• tissues and toilet paper

The top five categories where shoppers would reduce spending if the economy continues to struggle (…going to a private-label or generic brand) include:

• air fresheners
• cookies
• beer/wine
• frozen dinners
• soda/pop 

So is your product laundry detergent, or cookies?    Are you a brand leader, or a value leader?  

A great primer on the competitive dynamic between consumer goods companies and retailers, which I recently re-read is Private Label Strategy by Nirmalya Kumar and Jan-Benedict Steenkamp.  It is a fast read that describes the power shift from brands to private label goods and the underlying dynamics of establishing value for consumers.

Food for thought for B2B and B2C marketers alike…

Marketers: Are You a Newscaster or a Reporter?

About 15 years ago, I learned a valuable lesson:  Marketers are either Newscasters or Reporters.   I hate to think in black and white terms, but this theory has held up for the past decade and a half, without exceptions.   To clarify,  a Newscaster is most comfortable reading from a telepromter, comes across as incredibly savvy, but has difficulty coming up with their own material.   A Reporter is most comfortable in the field, collecting information and putting it to work.  But they have to clean up for the camera.  Both roles have their strengths and weaknesses, but understanding them well has helped me make better hiring decisions, and challenge myself as well.

The incident that formed this theory was recruiting a well-respected marketer in my organization, whom I admired greatly,  for a product launch.  To be honest, I was a bit intimidated by her, and wanted to make sure she had ownership in the project.  So I walked through the key ideas and asked her to prepare the slide deck for the launch (I had witnessed this marketer deliver dozens of presentations, flawlessly).   

Two days later, I checked in, and the PowerPoint had not been started.  I inquired whether there was a problem using the program (not everyone knew how to use it in 1993...).   But the problem was, according to this superstar marketer, as follows:  "I know how to use PowerPoint, but I don't know what to put in it!".   I was shocked that a fellow marketer with 10+ years more seniority and experience couldn't tell a story.   But she was a Newscaster -- and a darn good one, at that.    So in the end,  I wrote the story, and she delivered it -- together, we hit a home run. 

I am, by nature, a reporter (and I do clean up good..),  but I'm uncomfortable reading canned speeches unless I make them my own, with anecdotes and stories.   And when I do need to present someone else's work,   I need to practice extra hard to get it right.   That said, I get involved in the work I'm doing that I have no trouble presenting "on-the-fly", because I know the material so well.   

I strive to be a better Newscaster, so I won't have to spend endless hours memorizing someone else's Power Point deck, and worrying less about the lighting of the stage and the position of the podium than I have to!    And I'm still in touch with the Newscaster I mentioned in the story.  Last time I checked in, she had taken on more "Reporter" challenges, and had earned my admiration once again. 

Election '08: A Marketer's Dream, or Never-Ending Nightmare?

Confession:  the Democratic Primary has turned me into a political junkie.  Why?   I'm an unlikely addict.  I'm not a registered Democrat, or a Republican, for that matter.  I'm an "uncommitted" or Independent voter, who, until recently, couldn't even vote in a presidential primary in my home state.   And I'm highly skeptical of political spin, since I do competitive positioning for a living. But I keep hitting "refresh" on political blogs to see if anything new has transpired (even if I only browsed the site 10 minutes ago) and I'm losing sleep on primary nights to listen to the same banter over this seemingly-endless Democratic race.   

After weeks of puzzling over this strange new addiction (I suppose it could be worse...), it finally dawned on me why I succumbed so easily.   I'm a marketer.   

We marketers position our companies for success.   If we are outmaneuvered by a competitor, we re-position, and make it fit into the overall plan.  We're always making adjustments, to meet a changing market, new prospects, new competitive threats. Election '08 is marketing on steroids.  In our drive-thru news culture, it's point-counterpoint every few hours.   And if you thought CMOs had short tenures (I believe Coopers and Lybrand measured the average CMO tenure at 14 months), we have long runs compared to campaign staff, who are hired and fired in the time it takes to make and retract a stray comment.   

So I'm empathising with my fellow sleep-deprived marketers on the campaign trail, and coming up with fresh strategies for them in my mind (for all candidates, by the way), because I can't help thinking of the next chess move (I position in my sleep).  It may have been an interesting puzzle for starters, but there's no need for me to go the distance to Puerto Rico, South Dakota, or the convention.

Now that I have this all figured out,  I think I will get some sleep, for a change.