How to Make Local Marketing Easier

This is the third of four posts dealing with distributed marketing. So far in this series, I've explained what distributed marketing is, described the major challenges facing distributed marketers, and discussed why technology is critical to improving the productivity of distributed marketing.

The diagram below shows that the distributed marketing automation "house" includes two core types of technological capabilities. In my last post, I discussed the marketing asset management component of distributed marketing automation. This post covers the technology tools used to streamline and automate customer engagement management activities and processes.



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 





One of the major challenges facing organizations that rely on distributed marketing is a lack of marketing resources and expertise at the local level. According to research by the Aberdeen Group, the lack of local marketing resources is one of the two biggest challenges for distributed marketing organizations. Because many local entities are small organizations or business units, this is compeltely understandable and probably unavoidable. One result of this lack of resources and expertise is that local partners don't market as frequently or extensively as they should to maximize revenues. 

What CEM Technologies Do

The customer engagement management technologies in distributed marketing automation solutions simplify marketing processes and empower local marketers to effectively and efficiently plan, execute, and measure the results of advertising and marketing campaigns and programs.

Customer engagement technologies build on the capabilities of marketing asset management by using customizable templates that enable local marketers to easily create advertisements and other marketing campaign materials. In general, the capabilities provided by customer engagement technologies fall into three broad categories.
 

Campaign Planning/Management

This category typically includes tools for planning and scheduling marketing campaigns and the tasks required to develop and execute those campaigns.
 

Campaign Execution

In addition to using templates to create campaign materials, most distributed marketing automation solutions enable local marketers to execute e-mail marketing campaigns either directly or through a link to an e-mail service provider. For direct mail campaigns, the solution will typically enable local marketers to upload mail lists, select recipients from the corporate database, or purchase a mailing list from a third party provider.
 

Campaign Performance Measurement

Distributed marketing automation solutions typically include tools that enable local marketers to measure the performance of their marketing programs. Some solutions provide corporate marketers access to this performance data, and some will also enable a local marketer to see the results obtained by other local marketers from particular campaigns. This capability enables "best practices" knowledge to be shared across the distributed marketing network.
 

Benefits of CEM Technologies

The cutomer engagement management technologies in distributed marketing automation solutions make it easy for local marketers to create and run marketing campaigns and programs, and they will usually reduce the cost of those programs. Therefore, these technologies encourage local marketers to run marketing programs more frequently, and increased local marketing will drive higher revenues for both the local entity and the corporate brand owner.

By supporting extensive and cost-effective customization of marketing messages and materials, CEM technologies also enable local marketers to create and run more relevant and therefore more effective marketing programs.

Finally, CEM technologies enable corporate marketers to maintain control of brand messaging and brand presentation, while simultaneously allowing local marketers to develop and run programs that fit local market conditions.

In my next post, I'll discuss why distributed marketing automation technologies can benefit organizations that aren't currently using a "classic" distributed marketing model.

Read Part 1 of the series here.
Read Part 2 of the series here.
Read Part 4 of the series here.

How Marketing Asset Management Improves Distributed Marketing

This is the second of four posts discussing how to improve distributed marketing operations. In my last post, I explained what distributed marketing is, and I described the major challenges facing distributed marketing organizations. I also made the point that you simply cannot maximize the productivity of distributed marketing without the right technology tools, and I introduced the model of distributed marketing automation depicted in the following illustration.

 

 

As this diagram shows, a distributed marketing automation solution contains two major technology toolsets - marketing asset management (MAM) and customer engagement management.

The marketing asset management component of a distributed marketing automation solution is the primary tool for managing the marketing assets and materials used in distributed marketing activities and programs. These materials will typically include marketing collateral documents, print advertisements, promotional items, and point-of-sale materials.

What MAM Technologies Do

 Marketing asset management technologies enable corporate marketers to maintain control of brand messaging and brand presentation, while simultaneously allowing local marketers to easily customize marketing materials to fit their specific needs and market conditions. MAM technologies also streamline and automate the process of procuring marketing materials.

The principal features of MAM technologies include:

• Central asset repository - A centralized repository, or library, that contains digital versions of the marketing assets used by the brand owner in distributed marketing activities and programs
• Online catalog/ordering system - A catalog of marketing materials that local marketers can access via a secure website. The MAM system will also enable local marketers to order (and, if appropriate, pay for) marketing materials.
• Customizable templates - Templates of marketing materials that identify which content elements of each item can be modified and which elements cannot be changed. For those elements that can be customized, the template will provide a set of pre-approved customization options. To customize an item, a local marketer simply selects a template and chooses the desired customization options.

How Marketing Asset Management Enhances Distributed Marketing

The marketing asset management component of a distributed marketing automation solution provides several financial and operational benefits. For example, MAM technologies will:

• Eliminate the internal costs of processing and fulfilling requests for marketing materials
• Reduce the time required to process and fulfill requests for marketing materials
• Enable corporate marketers to maintain effective control of brand messaging and brand presentation
• Simplify and automate the process of creating customized marketing materials, thus lowering customization costs. In addition, MAM technologies expand the degree of customization that can be done, thus allowing local marketers to create more relevant and compelling marketing materials.
• Reduce the use of obsolete marketing materials
• Reduce the costs of marketing materials obsolescence

Marketing asset management can drive significant improvement in the productivity of distributed marketing. But for a complete solution, you also need tools for automating the creation of marketing campaigns and programs. I'll discuss this aspect of distributed marketing automation in my next post.

Read Part 1 of the series here.
Read Part 3 of the series here.
Read Part 4 of the series here.

How to Make Distributed Marketing More Productive

Thousands of companies sell products and services through regional or local outlets. These outlets may be branch offices or company-owned retail stores, or they may be related but independent business organizations such as franchisees or independent agents. In many cases, the local organization or business unit shares responsibility for marketing with the corporate marketing department. When both corporate and local marketers make marketing decisions and perform marketing activities, we call this distributed marketing.

This is the first of four posts about distributed marketing. In this post, I'll describe some of the major challenges facing distributed marketing organizations, and I'll introduce a model that describes the components of an automated distributed marketing system. In the next two posts, I'll describe how the right technology tools can make distributed marketing more productive. The final post will discuss why distributed marketing concepts have become important for organizations that don't use a classic distributed marketing model.

Distributed Marketing Challenges

Organizations that use distributed marketing face the same marketing challenges as everyone else. They must manage communications across a growing number of marketing channels, create and deliver more relevant marketing messages and materials, and improve marketing productivity to maximize the return produced by every dollar invested in marketing.

These challenges are formidable enough on their own, but companies with a distributed marketing model also face challenges that organizations with centralized marketing operations don't typically encounter. In a recent study by the Aberdeen Group, survey participants were asked to identify their top two distributed marketing challenges. By a large margin the top two challenges were:

• Maintaining the consistency of our brand (56% of respondents)
• Lack of marketing expertise at the local level (48% of respondents)

Because of these and other challenges, distributed marketing operations are often less effective and efficient than they need to be.

A Model for Distributed Marketing Automation

The good news is, technologies now exist that can enable companies to improve both the effectiveness and the efficiency of distributed marketing operations. As a practical matter, you simply can't maximize the productivity of distributed marketing without the right technology tools.

In the marketplace, these technologies can be called marketing asset management, distributed marketing automation, or local marketing automation. We'll refer to these technologies generically as distributed marketing solutions.

Distributed marketing solutions enable companies to:

• Streamline and automate the creation, procurement, customization, and distribution of marketing materials, including marketing collateral documents, promotional items, and point-of-sale materials
• Streamline and automate the creation, customization and execution of advertising and marketing programs by local marketers

To enable corporate and local marketers to achieve these objectives, distributed marketing solutions provide a range of functions and capabilities. The "house" diagram below depicts the major components of a distributed marketing solution.

 

 

As this diagram shows, a distributed marketing solution is built on a foundation that includes a sound distributed marketing strategy and a solid technology infrastructure. Distributed marketing solutions also contain two critical technology toolsets - marketing asset management and customer engagement management.

 

In my next post, I'll discuss the role of marketing asset management in a distributed marketing solution.



 

Read Part 2 of the series here.

Read Part 3 of the series here.

Read part 4 of the series here.

Why BANT No Longer Works for Qualifying Leads

One of the most widely-used methods for qualifying B2B sales leads is known by the acronym BANT, which stands for Budget - Authority - Need - Timeline. The basic idea is that you will  have a strong sales opportunity if you identify a lead who:

• Has a recognized need that your company can address
• Has the authority to make the buying decision
• Has the budget to purchase the kind of product or service you provide
• Has an identified timeline for purchasing the kind of product or service you provide

At first glance, BANT appears to offer an entirely reasonable way to qualify sales leads. It's hard to argue that a lead who meets these four requirements would not be highly qualified.

In reality, however, BANT is no longer an effective way to qualify sales leads for two reasons.

• Some of the criteria are all but impossible for an individual "lead" to meet. So, a strict use of the BANT criteria will cause you to ignore many valuable leads.
• By the time a lead is fully "BANT-qualified," it's probably too late. Your odds of concluding a sale on your terms are greatly diminished because a competitor has probably established a favored position.

To understand why BANT no longer works well, let's look at each of the criteria.

Budget
B2B companies no longer budget for many purchases in advance. Surveys by DemandGen Report indicate that only 20% - 30% of purchases are budgeted at the beginning of the year. Between 70% and 80% of survey respondents say they evaluate potential solutions, build a business case for immediate adoption, and then obtain spending approval. Therefore, if you require qualified leads to have established budgets, you will obviously miss out on many sales opportunities. Instead of requiring a specific budget, what you have to do is make a judgment call about whether a prospect has the financial ability to purchase your product or service.

Authority
In the 2012 Sales Performance Optimization survey by CSO Insights, 76% of respondents indicated that 3 or more individuals are involved in making the final buying decision. Purchasing by committee is now the norm. In this environment, most of the leads you encounter won't have full purchasing authority, but many of these leads will play a major role in the final buying decision. The right criteria for lead qualification is influence or involvement, not authority.

Need
Of the four BANT criteria, need is still obviously essential. In most cases, if there's no need, there won't be a sale. Even here, however, the idea of "need" is changing. In the past, the goal was to find a lead who recognized the need and understood it. Now we know that a seller can often have greater influence with a lead who does not fully understand the scope or implications of the need, at least at the beginning of the engagement. This can enable the seller to use marketing content and sales messaging to shape and influence how the lead thinks about the need and possible solutions.

Timeline
The primary problem with using timeline for lead qualification is that by the time a prospect has set a timeline for a significant purchase, the prospect has probably completed most of the buying process. In this sense, timelines have become like budgets. Potential buyers identify needs, evaluate potential solutions, and then get spending approval and set a purchase timeline. In fact, a purchase timeline may not be set until after the supplier has been selected.

For many years, BANT provided a useful framework for qualifying sales leads. Given the new realities of B2B buying, however, BANT no longer works for lead qualification. Today, the BANT criteria develop and evolve as the buying process moves forward. But, you can't expect them to exist at the beginning of a prospect relationship.