{"id":600,"date":"2013-02-02T19:33:38","date_gmt":"2013-02-03T00:33:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.feedthebeast.biz\/?p=600"},"modified":"2013-02-19T12:20:43","modified_gmt":"2013-02-19T17:20:43","slug":"the-day-marketing-automation-stopped-working","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.feedthebeast.biz\/index.php\/the-day-marketing-automation-stopped-working\/","title":{"rendered":"The Day Marketing Automation Stopped Working"},"content":{"rendered":"
How the Laws of Engagement Can Save the Day<\/em><\/h6>\n

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There\u2019s a problem brewing in B2B marketing land. The stuff that used to work\u00a0doesn’t\u00a0seem to be working as well anymore. Below is a chart from Marketing Sherpa\u2019s<\/a> 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report (click here<\/a>\u00a0for the 2012 report excerpt). You\u2019ll notice that the 1,745 B2B marketers in the study are losing faith in every marketing tactic there is. And shiny, new marketing automation software doesn’t seem to be helping. Presumably, this means that the leads marketers are generating are not converting to sales at the expected rate. What\u2019s going on?<\/p>\n

\"Marketing<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the world of possibilities (assuming there’s actually a market for the product or service being offered), here are the usual suspects for marketing underperformance:<\/p>\n

1.<\/strong> The marketers’\u00a0targeting<\/strong> is off (they\u2019re attracting the wrong people).<\/p>\n

2.<\/strong> The marketers’\u00a0offers<\/strong> are off (they\u2019re attracting the right people, but the incentive to create real engagement is too low).<\/p>\n

3.<\/strong> The marketers’\u00a0communications<\/strong> are off (they\u2019re attracting the right people, the offer is good, but the value of the offer is being lost on the audience).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Desktop Publishing\u00a0didn’t\u00a0make everyone a graphics whiz<\/strong><\/p>\n

When desktop publishing became available to the average person years ago, a funny thing happened. The quantity of brochures and flyers increased significantly, but the overall design quality plummeted. Putting enabling technology in people\u2019s hands\u00a0didn’t\u00a0make them great designers. The principles of good design didn’t change. It just became easier to disseminate mediocre\u00a0design.<\/p>\n

Fast-forward to today, and we see the same thing happening with marketing technologies such as email, landing pages, pay-per-click ads, social media of all stripes, Search Engine Optimization, and marketing automation systems. The quantity of \u201cstuff\u201d marketers are producing has increased exponentially. As in the past, putting enabling technology in people\u2019s hands\u00a0didn’t\u00a0make them great marketers. The rules of good marketing remained the same.<\/p>\n

In a nutshell: \u00a0just because you can,\u00a0doesn’t\u00a0mean you should.<\/em><\/p>\n

So in the interest of contributing something useful to the whole discussion, here are some baseline marketing strategies that are too often lost in the rush to get the next email campaign out the door. We call them the Laws of Engagement<\/em>, and if you want to convert more prospects to sales, you have to honor the Laws ahead of the Technology.<\/p>\n

1. The Law of Targeting<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you find more customers like your best customers, you will sell more.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Law of Targeting<\/em> <\/strong>states that in order to engage your prospects,\u00a0you’ve\u00a0got to be talking to the ones who will buy. Well, how obvious is that? Apparently not very. Most companies violate this Law every day, by targeting too widely and pursuing too many prospects who don\u2019t tightly match what they have to offer. The secret to Targeting is to identify those prospects who share the same business pain as your best customers<\/em>, then target them.<\/p>\n

2. The Law of the Offer<\/strong><\/p>\n

Your offer must be valuable, timely, and relevant.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Law of the Offer<\/em> states that in order to engage your prospects, you must offer them \u00a0information and insight that they value<\/em>, and which will help them to better understand and deal with the business problem they\u2019re facing (which you must be able to address). Your offer, be it information or a webinar or an analyst study or a white paper, must match their needs at the time (i.e. where they are in their Decision Cycle). If it\u00a0doesn’t, you\u2019ll have to refine your offers until there\u2019s a fit.<\/p>\n

3. The Law of Value<\/strong><\/p>\n

Your value proposition must be presented in terms of your prospect\u2019s pain and viewpoint.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Law of Value<\/em> states that in order to engage your prospects, you must talk to them in their<\/em> language about their<\/em> pain. What is their pain? A business problem that they have that you appear able to solve.<\/em> If you\u2019re making an offer to these prospects, they need to be able to connect the dots between the value<\/em> in your offer and the pain they\u2019re trying to remedy. To really understand your prospects\u2019 language, you need to talk to your prospects (or their able proxy, your best customers).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Marketing\u00a0doesn’t\u00a0have to be complicated, no matter what\u00a0you’ve\u00a0heard. In a world of shiny objects (the latest technology innovation goes here) and hyper competition (good ideas travel faster than ever), the basics still apply: buyers have pains, and if those pains are big enough, buyers will pay to have those pains resolved. But to do that, you have to engage them first.<\/p>\n

0<\/span><\/a><\/div> <\/div>
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<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How the Laws of Engagement Can Save the Day
\n 
\nThere\u2019s a problem brewing in B2B marketing land. The stuff that used to work\u00a0doesn’t\u00a0seem to be working as well anymore. Below is a chart from Marketing Sherpa\u2019s …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":610,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,3,4],"tags":[57,56,34,54,55],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.feedthebeast.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.feedthebeast.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.feedthebeast.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.feedthebeast.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.feedthebeast.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=600"}],"version-history":[{"count":103,"href":"http:\/\/blog.feedthebeast.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":667,"href":"http:\/\/blog.feedthebeast.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600\/revisions\/667"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.feedthebeast.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.feedthebeast.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.feedthebeast.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.feedthebeast.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}