Segmentation - Getting To No

Sales is all about getting to "yes". Marketing is all about getting to "no".

As counter intuitive as that sounds, think about it. Sales people are charged with turning prospects into customers by getting them to say "yes" to your products and services. With marketing the goal is to get qualified leads (prospects) into the sales channel.

To do that, your marketing team needs to sort through the sea of potential customers to identify, target, and qualify only those market segments that ultimately may want and have the resources to purchase your wares.

In other words, disqualifying large portions of the available market to qualify your most likely prospects. Your marketing team needs to say "no" to certain segments so your sales teams can get to "yes" with the rest.

I first saw this put into practice years ago as a young marketing manager overseeing my company's lawn care marketing. After a careful analysis of our customer database, we discovered specific segments that consistently purchased and repurchased our products - regardless of geography.

Using this information and the marketing tools we had at the time, I launched a lead generation direct mail campaign into a target city in Florida, aiming at zip codes and neighborhoods that best matched our existing customers.

Not being familiar with the metro area I did not know how many of our current buyers actually lived in the targeted zip codes. Turns out, we inadvertently hit uncharted territory.

I can still recall the local branch manager's absolute surprise at the new leads they were receiving from neighborhoods that his sales team had never before penetrated. The marketing team brought the leads in and the sales team turned them into revenue producing customers. From that day forward, I was sold on the power of segmentation.

The interactive marketing tools available today are a far cry from the direct mail campaigns of the 1990's, thank goodness. Immensely measurable, simple to change, and quick to create, tools such as Search Engine Marketing (SEM), pay-per-click advertising, or web site display ads allow you stretch your marketing dollars and hone in on those segments that may say "yes" to your products, converting them into a lead.

Given the economic fall out of the past couple of years, mid-sized companies are really pressed to deploy their limited sales and marketing dollars into segments that should be their most profitable or hold the best potential for growth. How are you doing with segmentation at your company?

Get Going.

Before the week is out, take the time to do some simple analytical work on your current customer base. Think about how you can segment those customers that are or should be buying from you:

• How can you segment or break down both your customers or your sales channels into different groups?
  
• Specifically, how is each different from one another? Is it they way they buy, the reasons they buy, how often they buy, or how much they buy?
  
• Which segment gives you the best margins?
  
• What motivates each segment to make a decision on a product like yours?
  
• Given that, what makes your specific product or service stand out versus your competitor - what is it that your company brings to this market segment?
  
• What key words or adjectives describe how your company, product, or service stands outs to these segments? How are you working those key words into your on-line and off-line marketing tools?
  
• What assumptions about these market segments, as they relate to your product categories, may have changed over the last two years since the start of the Great Recession? Has the recession created a potentially new segment for your company?

And finally, based on questions above what three changes could you make this week to allocate your marketing funding to focus on saying "yes" to profitable segments and getting to "no" with the others?

Does Your Marketing Staff Match Your On-line Strategy?

Structure follows strategy. It is one of the basic tenants of organizational management. The question is, does your marketing structure match your on-line strategy?

There have been so many changes with interactive marketing in the last few years that the skill level and focus of your marketing staff may no longer be effective. Think about all that has happened since the middle of the decade - a company's basic on-line strategy has evolved from a single web site to search marketing to display ads to social media. The way you interact with your customers and prospects has evolved from simple emails to email marketing to social media and twitter. If your marketing team is still structured around "the web site" as your only on-line marketing element, then it is time to reevaluate your staff's skills and your team's structure.

Don't get me wrong, there is a healthy mix between on-line and off-line marketing. Each may have their place as an element your product's marketing mix. But as a leader you need to make sure your tactics and team are evolving with the times.

Companies between $50 to $500 million have quite the range of marketing sophistication and staffing - from a one person show to a specialized team of over 20. Though the tactics used to market products and services have evolved since my early days as a Marketing Analyst with a freshly minted MBA, we are still trying to accomplish the same goals - build brand awareness within target segments, convert a prospect into a lead or sale, and reinforce the buying decision so a customer comes back to buy again. You need the right team structure and talent to achieve these goals in the rapidly evolving reality of interactive marketing.

I suggest that you take a step back and look at your group. Ask yourself these questions to see how well your structure is matching your interactive strategy.

• Are you still staffed and structured to the off-line world of print brochures and catalogs, old media advertising, or direct mail?


• How deep of a role does interactive marketing play in your current marketing mix and in your future marketing plans?


• Do you have the talent, skill level, and structure to explore and implement the range of interactive marketing tactics such as Search (SEO & SEM), Display Advertising, E-mail Marketing, Social Media, or Mobile Marketing?


• What three steps can you take this week to begin aligning your team's skill level and structure to your interactive strategy?

Marketing is evolving at a rapid pace, make sure your team is keeping up or your company will be left behind.

Why Branding Matters

It conjures up images of John Wayne leading a cattle drive across the Red River and into Oklahoma. Branding.

But whereas brands in old westerns would help sort out the cattle once the Duke got to Dodge City, your company and product branding tells customers and prospects who you are on both a rational and emotional level.

What I have found over the years however is that many mid-sized companies, especially those B2B companies selling industrial or technical products, fail in establishing their brand identity. They get enamored with their product and features, but not with their brand.

Branding is the starting point for thousands of marketing decisions that go into creating an integrated marketing strategy. While the ultimate goal of marketing is to drive qualified leads to the sales channel, the first step in doing so is establishing the company or product brand in the mind of a prospect. Before you can get into the mind of a prospect, you must have already created your brand personality.

You may be thinking, "we sell technical products by the part number, there is no brand personality to what we do." Actually, there is a personality to your product brand and you are allowing your customers and competition to define it. Taking a page from PR 101, if you are not out telling people who you are, somebody else will.

As you consider your brand personality, consider the following:

• Branding tells the world who you are. The market is cluttered, but here's the chance to stake your claim to key ideas. What specific adjectives would you use to describe your company or product line? What do you want a prospect to think when they see or hear your brand? What sets you apart from competitor A, B, and C?


• Branding forces your company or product to define what they are. If you don't think that there is an emotional element to branding, bring in board with new company logos to your next executive staff meeting and watch the reaction. Creating a brand personality forces choices as to what your product or company stands for in the eyes of a buyer. I have seen simple branding definition exercises become the spark that ignites a larger strategic discussion about what the company or product line is trying to accomplish.


• Branding should be consistent across your on-line and off-line marketing. The colors, tone, words, or images that are used to define your brand should be consistent from your web site and interactive marketing to your sales channel support materials and training to your traditional advertising and PR. No matter how a prospect interacts with your brand the message should be the same, with each marketing element reinforcing the other.


• Branding is too valuable, don't be shy to call in the pros. I will repeat again, branding is the starting point for thousands of marketing decisions that go into creating an integrated marketing strategy. It may be worth the few thousand dollars you'll pay a professional marketing / branding / advertising firm to work with you on creating your brand. Ask to see their work for other clients first including tone boards, the process they went through to define the brand, and how the final product was used across both on-line and off-line marketing elements.

Take the time to define your brand. You may not drive cattle to market, but you may drive new customers to your product.

Five Things To Ask About Your Web Site

Your web site is the cornerstone of your company's Internet presence, but have you taken a serious look at it recently?

Don't get me wrong. There are plenty of great sites out there, usually created for Fortune 1,000 companies or for well funded not-for-profit organizations. But one thing I have noticed about the web sites of mid-sized companies, particularly those in the manufacturing arena where I've spent the bulk of my career, is how their sites have not really evolved beyond the "catalog on-line" mindset.

That mindset may have gotten the job done in years past, but today a company's web site is more than an easy to access product catalog, it is the face of the company - sometimes the only face - to millions of perspective buyers, investors, and partners. The problem is that as buyers, investors, and partners expectations of their web experience have grown over the years, many sites for companies from $50 million to $500 million have not.

If your organization is like many medium sized companies, then you have ample opportunity to not only enhance the experience of your web site's users, but to also increase key conversions from your site such as leads, quotes, request for information, e-newsletter sign ups, transactions, and on and on.

When evaluating your current site or planning a new web site, there are five base questions you need to ask. Implement the answers to these questions into your site design, and you may very well best your competitors' web site - their face to your mutual perspective customers.

1. Who is the audience for your web site? You must understand who you want to attract to the site, and the days of "everybody" are long gone. Understanding who the target audience is will drive site design, content, key word placement, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and the conversions you hope to drive.


2. What do you want them to do on the site? Once you bring your target audience onto your site, what is it that you want to accomplish? Is it to increase awareness of your brand, introduce a product or service, convert them into a lead, sell them your product through a shopping cart, gather information about them? The possibilities are endless and only you can define what want to accomplish. These decisions will help your web designers understand the main goal of the site.


3. What does your audience want to do on the site? Now put yourself in front of your user's key board or mobile key pad - what experience are you looking for? Why have you come to the site and what do you want do you want to get out of being there? Understanding what motivates your audience will help guide your web designer with how a user interfaces and experiences your site.


4. What is your definition of web site success? Define what success means up front. For example, if your key conversion is leads, then how many leads per week or month are expected? Being clear with your web designer about expectations before the first line of code is written is important. Doing so may also uncover a budget constraint to meeting your expectation, which could lead you down a different path altogether.


5. How will you measure the key conversions that define success? The web is immensely measurable - with the analytic tools readily available you can easily get a good read on what is working and what is not on both your web site and your interactive marketing programs. Before the design work is started make sure you have all agreed to the analytics that will be used to evaluate the site.

So, take 20 minutes to take a serious look at your current web site and see how well you can answer these five questions. Then, take 10 minutes and look at your top competitor's site and ask yourself the same thing. A half hour's worth of work may uncover a good opportunity for your marketing and your company.

The Right Person For The Job

It may be one of the oldest corporate bromides around - people are our most important asset. But talent really does make the difference between winning and losing in the marketplace.

Especially in medium sized companies where resources were constrained even before the Great Recession took its toll on the bottom line, you no longer have the luxury of fielding a team of mediocre players.

"If you are not working with "A" list talent, then you are not getting grade "A" results. "

As many industries begin to stabilize, albeit at much lower levels than a few years ago, now is an excellent time to evaluate the talent that remains in your organization to see if your current team can truly bring outstanding future results. With so many talented people to choose from in the job market, after being cast off due to downsizing, retrenchment, or corporate bankruptcy, mid-sized companies should not be shy about taking a hard look at the skill level of those that remain on the payroll.

If your organization can get more talented employees, then it is time to upgrade the staff.

Get Going.

This week take a step back, look at the members of your executive or department team, and ask yourself three questions:

1. Do I have the right person?
2. In the right job?
3. Doing the right things?

Many times you may have a very talented individual who can bring in great results, but you have placed him or her in the wrong job - in which they are either struggling or are not being challenged. Other times, you may have the right person in the best position to match his or her talent, but they are not focused on the right actions. You both need to sit down together and gain a clearer understanding of expectations and goals.

Of course, there will be those who are not a good fit for the position and, realistically, will be hard pressed to ever bring in the results that are required. In those cases, I suggest that you quickly move that person out and upgrade with a better suited individual.

Now is the time for companies to fish in a very large and deep talent pool, upgrade their teams, and position themselves with the right players today who will lead their growth tomorrow.

It's Your Call

In a business communication culture of texts, email, social media, and twitter there is still one decidedly old school method that your sales team should not forget.

The phone call.

Think about it. When was the last time you actually talked to one of your customers? Not communicated, but talked. With your voice. Your outside voice.

I know that I can fall into the electronic trap - emails and texts make it so bloody easy to communicate, reach, and stay in touch with customers. They are quick, efficient, and a great communication tool (I'll save the virtues of email marketing campaigns for another day).

But what electronic communication gains in speed, efficiency, and reach, it loses in intimacy. With the simplicity of electronic communication these days, it almost seems as if you earn phone calling status with a customer...that you are worthy enough to merit a real conversation. Which makes the old fashion phone call such a powerful way to communicate one-on-one with your customers.

A phone call can break you out of the Joe Friday "Just the facts, ma'am" mode with a customer. With a call, you've got the opportunity to literally hear the voice of the customer...and their tone. Let's face it, the 160 character limitation of a text can make it difficult to dig deep.

So try this before the week is out, call one of your key customers and talk to them. You may need to use email or a text to let them know you'll be calling, but nonetheless fire up the Blackberry and push the call button. Ask about something non work related - their family, holiday plans, their favorite college team. Take just a minute to make a personal connection before you get down to business.

Don't worry, you can always follow up with an email summarizing the call!