Tag: digital marketing

Build a Better Brand Narrative and Create Apps People Actually Want to Use

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Becoming a great B2B company starts with one thing: creating a better brand narrative. The story you tell about your brand is the driving force behind every action your team takes. An influential brand narrative inspires quality product design and links every team member to your common values and goals.

Throughout this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite, Drew and Barry discuss why marketers need to go out and be the face of the company through making sales and speaking with customers. Barry also shares his best tips for creating apps people ACTUALLY want to use. You can learn from his clear insights that break down app design into a few easy ideas.

Click here to learn how to create the brand narrative you’ve always wanted.

What You’ll Learn

Professionals should do these 3 things in the B2B marketing industry

B2B marketers do more than create content to be shared. The best professionals break out of the marketing mold regularly and become salespersons for the day. By going out and talking to prospects, understanding their problems, and making sales they are better equipped to create campaigns that target the heart of a prospect.

Barry explains that marketing professionals should also do these 3 main tasks in order to best serve the company:

  1. Develop the “why change” and “why change now” stories
  2. Express and condense the brand narrative into 2-3 sentences that can be repeated by every team member
  3. Create authentic content that backs up the brand narrative

Here’s how to build a better brand narrative for your company

Drafting a better brand narrative goes beyond restating the company’s mission. A truly great narrative paints a picture to the customer that resonates deeply with their problems and need for solutions. Writing a better brand narrative becomes a process of deconstructing and reconstructing your company’s mission, values, core principles, and positioning. Barry explains this process in full detail on this episode. It’s not an easy road, but it’s one that 100% worth it.

Your app shouldn’t be just a mobile website – give it a job to do and problem to solve

Barry explains the 3 main types of apps: those used to waste time, those used to connect people together, and those used to save time. The entire idea behind productivity-based apps is to minimize the amount of time a user spends on the app itself. If you understand the fundamental reason behind WHY people need your app, you can use those insights to design a better, more efficient user experience. And remember, not everything should be about marketing within your app!

To hear more about why user-first app design is so important, and even more details behind authentic brand narratives, be sure to give this episode your full attention.

Timeline

  • [1:20] Barry’s Renegade Rapid Fire segment, and why marketers need to become salespeople
  • [15:20] Could machines take over a creative marketer’s job?
  • [18:35] Constructing a great narrative for your company
  • [25:57] Professionals do these 3 things in the B2B marketing industry
  • [32:40] Barry’s best advice for creating apps that people ACTUALLY want to use
  • [38:42] Barry’s #1 tip for designing great apps

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Here’s Why Your Brand Must Deliver on a Marketing Promise

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Creating the perfect marketing promise is one of the biggest goals for CMOs. But a marketing promise without a product to back it up will not succeed. On this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite, Drew interviews Jennifer Deutsch, CMO of Park Place Technologies – a company that specializes in third-party data center maintenance. She shares her experiences in pairing the perfect marketing message with a brand-changing product and it’s an episode you don’t want to miss.

Jennifer shares her expert opinion on how your team can identify the “aha moment” for your brand. She and Drew also discuss how sales leads are directly connected to marketing and the importance of simple marketing.

Learn from Jennifer’s recent success with marketing promises – click here to listen now.

What You’ll Learn

A product MUST deliver on your marketing promise, or else it won’t succeed

If your CEO says “we don’t have a new product, but we need a new campaign” – consider finding a new company. Marketing without a deliverable promise isn’t really marketing, and it won’t make an impact on your customers. It’s the CMO’s job to find a position that supports a new product and then deliver on that marketing promise. A stellar new product and a foolproof marketing plan create a 1-2 punch that will fundamentally change perceptions about your brand.

Anticipating your customer’s needs will allow you to crush your competition

Jennifer and her team at Park Place Technologies have created the perfect tagline for their latest product and marketing releases, “Up-time is everything.” They recognized that for data centers and technology companies, “downtime” (where servers and technology aren’t functional because of repairs or unplanned incident) directly equates to lost profit. Jennifer and her team decided to passionately pursue the idea of “up-time” and make it a new cornerstone for Park Place Technologies. That was their “aha brand moment.”

On this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite, Jennifer explains her process for internal and external rollout after identifying customer needs and creating a marketing campaign to support the product. They spent 1 month explaining the “why” and the inspiration behind the new campaign. This allowed internal audiences to buy into the new direction. Then, the global external rollout followed with digital and print marketing efforts. Combining these two rollout plans, just as Park Place Technologies did, will allow your company to see the greatest levels of success when delivering on a marketing promise.

Simplicity in marketing key, but hard to master

Effective marketing begins by simply understanding what makes your audience tick. Jennifer encourages CMOs to speak their customers’ language and identify their needs. After you’ve identified those puzzle pieces you can begin to craft messages that speak to those needs. Drew and Jennifer discuss why simple marketing is as valuable as gold, but why it’s so hard to perform in the right ways. Simplicity in the right places is genius, but simplicity in the wrong marketing places isn’t strong enough to make an impression on your customers. For their solutions on how to simplify your marketing while have it be backed up by a product, don’t miss this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite.

Timeline:

  • [1:12] Jennifer’s diverse experience brings a high level of expertise to this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite
  • [2:35] Jennifer’s Renegade Rapid Fire
  • [12:02] How did Jennifer and her team come up with the idea of anticipating customer needs?
  • [17:46] What percentage of leads are driven by marketing?
  • [19:43] A new product launch delivers on your marketing promise
  • [23:53] How marketing & PR is directly tied to Park Place’s global leads
  • [26:24] Why simple is marketing is hard
  • [28:07] The biggest lessons Jennifer learned while at Park Place Technologies

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Best Strategies to Improve Your Marketing Technology Stack

Posted on by Drew Neisser

In this second installation of Drew’s interview with Eric Eden, CMO of Receipt Bank, they discuss additional strategies to improve your marketing technology stack. Be sure to listen to part 1 of this conversation on episode 71 of Renegade Thinkers Unite.

You have to have the right technology stack in place in order to be effective in today’s B2B marketing environment. After securing a budget and receiving buy-in from company leadership teams, selecting the right pieces to add to your stack is the next big step.

There are countless programs and applications available, but CMOs must avoid getting caught up in the newest, shiniest options on the market. By identifying your organization’s marketing and revenue goals you can then decide which programs will help you achieve those goals. Hiring the right staff and giving them the right training will ensure these pieces will positively impact your marketing efforts, which will drive leads to your sales team.

Don’t miss the engaging conclusion to Drew’s conversation with Eric – be sure to catch this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite. Click here to listen.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts – Stitcher – or Podsearch

Marketing technology stack additions are expensive and extensive – ensure you know what it entails upfront to avoid disappointments later on

Adding a new piece to your organization’s marketing tech stack puzzle can be a complicated, lengthy process. In order to receive the highest level of buy-in from company executives, they have to understand all of the costs associated with the new product. Eric explains to Drew that CMOs have an organizational responsibility to outline all of the costs of the purchase, implementation, and staffing so that other key organization members are not caught off guard later on in the process. It’s better to have to fight harder for new team members upfront than try to secure additional budget figures after committing to a piece of technology. To hear Eric fully explain why being upfront when considering a new piece of technology is so critical, don’t miss his interview on this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite.

Why the people you hire to manage the technology can make or break its success

Very few companies already have the necessary team members in place to handle a new piece of marketing technology. Drew and Eric discuss the importance of having multiple employees that can handle writing a campaign, implementing the campaign, and then analyzing and reporting on the data. If you only rely on one employee to handle these tasks the chances of critical information going unnoticed rises significantly. Your organization’s tech stack team needs to be flexible, highly skilled, and knowledgeable about areas such as system security and data flow. CMOs need to be able to convey this necessity to company leadership in order for new tech stack pieces to be most effective. Eric explains that “You’ll avoid countless problems by hiring the right people with the right skills.”

Avoid “new and shiny” distractions to focus on what your business truly needs

There is an abundance of programs on the market that can satisfy any B2B marketing need. But Drew and Eric urge listeners of this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite to not be distracted by the “latest and greatest” programs or products. As the CMO of your company, you have the responsibility of identifying what it is you want to achieve and then finding a system that helps you achieve that goal. If you simply set out to build a marketing system, you can build layers forever. You should also avoid system overlap. Revenue goals and budget restrictions will also help you narrow down the available options. Finding the right piece of marketing technology and seeing it succeed within your company will be worth the extensive upfront research. You don’t want to miss this conversation and more, so be sure to give this episode your full attention.

What You’ll Learn

  • [0:30] Drew reviews part 1 of his interview with Eric Eden
  • [1:18] You have to understand all of the costs associated with implementing and staffing a new piece of technology
  • [6:03] Your tech stack team for new technology needs to be flexible and highly skilled
  • [9:54] Don’t get caught up in the new and shiny applications, focus on what systems will help you achieve your organization’s goals
  • [16:31] Narrowing your universe through account-based marketing (ABM)
  • [17:48] Using business intelligence to visualize your tech stack data
  • [20:15] Eric’s biggest frustration and challenge in B2B marketing technology stack spheres
  • [24:24] The future of B2B marketing technology and how artificial intelligence will impact the industry
  • [26:47] Final thoughts on marketing tech stack tools and the importance of product contract negotiations

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How Kofax Clicks with Its Digital Community

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If one phrase could be used to describe the philosophy of marketing in 2017, it would be “customers come first.” Gone are the days of product pushing as a surefire advertising strategy. Consumers want to find solutions to the problems they encounter. Marketers have to address those needs from first contact to have a shot at a sale. And really, that’s how it should be—marketing brands as answers and showing that there are people behind the brand who care about the consumer.

Kofax CMO Grant Johnson is leading the way in putting the customer first. His team speaks its clients’ language, delivering an authentic persona at every buying stage.

Below, you can listen to part one of Grant Johnson’s interview with Renegade Thinkers Unite host Drew Neisser, and Bill Carmody, entrepreneur and Inc. magazine author.

If you don’t have time to listen to the whole podcast, check out these sample questions and answers from this episode:

Drew: What is one non-traditional technique that you have used with success? Why do you think it worked so well? 

Grant: I think we are a bit nontraditional here at Kofax in that we follow an “aim-ready-fire approach” vs. the traditional “ready-aim-fire.”   Over 3 years ago I determined that we had to get to best-in-class in our digital marketing capabilities, but I didn’t have a completely baked plan on how to get there. I hired a very strong leader and we crafted the vision and started the journey together. Since then, we’ve doubled in size from just over $300 million to more than $600 million in revenues, and as we’ve integrated several companies, we’ve taken the best aspects and brought together the best people from each to become much better across the board in digital marketing. We also do a lot experimenting and iterating, and not everything works, so when we strike a rich vein, like some of our PPC or retargeting efforts, we pour gas on those fires and smother the less successful endeavors as fast as possible.

 

Bill: Once you’ve mapped out that journey and you really thought through the content strategies, how are you measuring the effectiveness of the content in each of those individual prototypes?

Grant: One of the ways that is a good proxy, is through social media. We have very active social media. We do something called go social. We encourage any field-facing staff to try to engage and share content. We have this great tool called push-button content. I just published my second blog on a 4-part serious about a step-wise approach to digital transformation. As people share that, they say “I’ve got this problem, can someone contact me?” It’s not a perfect science, there’s always art, but it helps.

 

Drew: It’s hard to get our marketing messages to stand out…what is one thing you do to make sure your marketing cuts through?

Grant: We take great pains to avoid the one-size-fits-all approach or what I call random acts of marketing. Instead, we work toward truly integrated marketing campaigns that encompass print, digital, social, etc. Part of cutting through effectively is a relentless focus on delivering consistent messaging across every touch point and element of a given campaign. Like many companies, our customer base cuts across a range of verticals – from Banking and Financial Services and Insurance to Healthcare, Government and BPOs. For some of these verticals, like banking, we frame the message around their primary concerns, e.g. how we can help enhance the customer experience (faster account openings and easier loan applications through mobile apps, etc.). We call that “customer speak,” instead of techno speak, and it really helps us stand out from the cacophony of competitors touting their offerings.

 

Drew: What is the toughest lesson you’ve learned when it comes to marketing?

Grant: Marketing never stops. It’s impossible to ever become complacent in anything I do or my team creates and delivers. In the past, you could sort of get the plates spinning, say your public relations and field marketing were going well, you could just let them run and focus on say bolstering digital marketing or fine tuning product marketing. Now, however, not only is the rate of change relentless, the mandate to continually improve is stronger than ever. We celebrate the little victories, but we can never rest of any achievement, we have to continually strive. Now this may sound daunting to some marketers, but to me it’s actually invigorating. I chose this career because it was dynamic and I’m restless by nature, so I love the disruptive innovation and measurability of modern marketing and all the challenges that presents. The only constant is change, and if you are adaptable and can thrive in what has become a very accountable function, there’s never been a more exciting time to be a marketer.

Final Thoughts

You can never have too many friends. Staying in touch with your digital community will keep your brand fresh and relevant. If you play your cards right, you’ll get plenty of referrals. All you have to do is maintain an active social media presence. (These show notes were prepared by Jay Tellini.)

It’s Not Digital Marketing–It’s Just Marketing!

Posted on by Drew Neisser

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Over the years, practitioners have been inclined to slice up marketing into increasingly small operational areas. When I started way back when there was “above the line” and “below the line” with advertising being elevated and all other forms of marketing being lumped together into an unglamorous morass of “oh yeah that stuff.”  From that morass emerged direct marketing then CRM then digital marketing then search engine marketing then social media, influencer, content, employee and most recently, account-based marketing. Add to this ever-splintering tableau books like mine which identified 64 discrete elements and you might imagine that there is no such thing as a unified marketing department anymore.

Well, that would be categorically wrong and don’t just take my word for it.  Paul D’Arcy, SVP of Marketing at Indeed, the top site for searching jobs in the world, makes it very clear in our interview below from his opening statement.  To generate over 180 million unique web visitors a month, Paul and his team at Indeed take a holistic approach in their efforts to bring job seekers and employers together.  An approach that includes storytelling of the highest order along with continuous testing of new channels and optimizing existing ones.  And though Indeed remains one of the fastest growing brands in the world, Paul still believes his team can double the impact of their marketing investment leaving little wonder Paul why was presented with the Growth Award by  The CMO Club late last year.

Drew: What new digital initiatives did you try in 2015 and how did these perform?  What were your goals and how did it work out?

We don’t think about digital: we think about marketing. I think the most interesting things we’re doing this year are very traditional. We’re trying to tell our story of helping people get jobs through strong, authentic creative that features real people. We focus on results — and results for us means bringing job seekers and employers together to help people get jobs. We tell this story wherever we can engage people whether that’s TV, social, online video, or on the printed ad engaging someone on their commute.

Drew: Were there any areas of your digital marketing that you were disappointed with? If so, what were some of the issues you encountered?

Yes! I often say that I want the mean return on investment of our investments to be high and for the median to be zero. This means that we try many things and that more than half will fail. But we scale investment on the things that work and see great results. If we’re not trying things that fail than we’re falling behind in a quickly shifting world. We find that we rarely get a creative strategy or new engagement channel right the first time. We always test multiple approaches to deepen our understanding and find the right way to engage our constituents.

Drew: A recent survey of marketers suggested that less than 10% feel they are leveraging data to the fullest extent possible.  Why is this such a challenging area to get right?

We’re at a point where there is really, truly endless data available to us. Analysis (or programmatic use of data) takes skill, time, and work. We need to pick and choose the data we want to understand and commit to do the work to get the insights that make us better. There will always be blind spots, and data that is out there but that no organization has the time to pull it together, organize it, and analyze it. Picking the right data to analyze and understand is a very important capability. We love hiring people who are naturally curious because they always take us a step or two deeper into the data than we would have gone otherwise.

Drew: Marketing, especially data integration, often requires skills sets beyond the typical marketer. How have you been able to corral the resources and skill sets needed to achieve your digital marketing goals?  Did this require new management skills?

We have chosen to build a team that blends, in equal parts, highly technical marketers, highly creative markets, and people with deep functional expertise. A large percentage of our marketers can code. We’ve had marketers move from our team into core product software engineering at Indeed. We have software engineers, data scientists, statisticians, economists, and mathematicians on the team. I think these skills — and the skills to lead and mentor these technical teams — are absolutely essential to building a great marketing function and measuring the impact of marketing investments.

Drew: With the plethora of digital marketing options, channels and content available today and increasing quickly, how do you decide where to “place your bets” in terms of marketing spend and choices?

We test first and scale the things that work. The key is to test as many things as possible. For us, this is complex because we’re in 50+ countries and it’s important to understand not just what works, but where it works and doesn’t work. We focus all of our teams on trying as many things as possible and measuring the impact. We encourage people to fail. But, as more programs do become successfully and scale, it does become hard to start with new programs with big potential but that start small. To help with this, we have a dedicated campaign lab team that reports to me directly and that focuses on testing large quantities of ideas that start small and are likely to fail.

Drew: What is the single biggest marketing challenge that you’d like to overcome?

I think we can still double the impact of every marketing dollar that we spend. As a relatively new brand, there is still so much that we don’t know. We have a long list of documented things that we don’t know and we’re working to create the measurements and experiments to answer these questions. I’m incredibly excited for what we’ll learn as a team in 2016.