Where to start?
This is my third week at the new job and I’m loving it! Day one started with a client visit at 9:00am, it’s always interesting to learn the new vernacular and understand the clients needs.
My role is split between working with customers and managing our own marketing. Of course I’ll be using Eloqua to execute our marketing in concert with our website and blog. The blog is still in the design phase and will be added to the website. In addition we’re developing a social media plan to ensure we cover the usual social properties i.e. LinkedIn Company Page, Facebook Page and a Twitter Company Page.
These assets are in play and are live, however there’s lots of work to do in order to increase traffic and engagement. So, that requires a plan and measurement.
Planning for success
Without a plan, it’s a struggle to come up with the right message at the right time. So, I’ve created an excel spreadsheet with dates through until the end of the year. I’ve captured 15-20 various topics that we believe prospects would potentially see as business problems. For example:
- Lack of quality leads being accepted by Sales.
- Inability to automatically manage events.
- Too many ‘systems’ making up our Automated Marketing solution.
- Sales have a lack of insight around campaigns and prospect responses…
…and many others. Taking these key business problems and mapping them to a blog schedule gives me a framework to develop and build on. Remember, content is king.
Don’t forget measurement.
LinkedIn Talk about Measurement of Social Media Campaigns
I ran my first campaign last week, an email into a group of sales people at Oracle. (We’re working on some social campaigns as well). The email invited them access and download a Customer Success Story. Reporting showed me that while the email was opened by all of them, in some cases many times, only two people actually completed the form and downloaded the Customer Success Story.
Damn! So, that means I need to review the email and work out how I can make the message more enticing so that they see value in reading the Customer Success Story. I’ll keep you posted on that campaign.
Reporting & measurement is key.
I had a conversation last week with a previous colleague who now works for one of Australia’s big four banks. His role is to manage their digital marketing campaigns. There are many moving parts and it seems through these many moving parts some of the fundamentals are being ignored.
For example, he receives a target list of contacts from the marketing team. He then has the various digital assets built and then through a third team executes the campaign. However, the only measurement they seem to have in place is click-through. In one example he was given a list of 11,000 contacts and only 50 people clicked through from the link.
There’s no insight around previous behaviour, little profiling to ensure the target list of people is actually best suited to the ad and no thought given to the overall plan for these contacts.
Top 5 Lessons from my first few weeks on the job.
- Plan for success, understand your buyer and build appropriate assets.
- Avoid the spam mentality, map your buyers journey and target them accordingly. Quality is always better than quantity.
- Measure, measure and measure some more. But do this in the context of success metrics you up set for the campaign.
- If a campaign does not deliver what you expect, analyse it, measure it and keep going. Review your segmented target list and try again.
- Always include sales in the process, if the delivery of marketing qualified leads to the sales team is your objective, don’t attempt to do this by yourself.
