Indeed, this particular tango is all too familiar to marketers. No matter how great a fit your product or service may be, more than 90 percent of B2B customers aren’t ready to buy right away. According to the 2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report, the biggest challenge faced by almost half of all marketers is a sales cycle that continues to grow – a challenge exacerbated by shrinking budgets and a troubled global economy.

Until prospects are ready to commit, organizations need to keep the music playing in the background. Staying connected to early-stage leads and – more importantly – keeping them engaged requires an effective lead nurturing program.

By delivering relevant content directly to the prospect, timed to keep apace of key steps in the decision-making phase, lead nurturing can help keep your business top-of-mind while systemically advancing the early-stage lead through the sale pipeline. “Educational” content progressively and consistently delivered to prospects can become the information they need to drive and ultimately finalize their purchasing decision.

Successful lead nurturing campaigns are built on a foundation of the following three elements:

Target

Know who you’re dancing with before the music starts.

Identify your target audience(s), and segment them as much as possible. In what ways are they and/or their sales cycles alike? How are they dissimilar? Where are they in their individual decision-making processes? Understanding which buying behaviors a group of prospects share can help fine-tune the messages they receive from your organization.

Messaging

Be in tune and on beat.

Repeatedly sending the same generic message to all prospects can result in your leads tuning you out.

The content you provide to leads must deliver value rather than a naked sales pitch. Whether you offer case studies, whitepapers or podcasts, each message has to pay off the recipient’s implied “what’s in it for me?” question in order to propel the prospect to answer your call-to-action.  Content should position your brand as a thoughtful caring partner with expertise in solving the prospect’s specific “pain.”

Planning and Execution

Carefully choreograph the steps, then enjoy the dance.

In most cases, the heaviest lifting in any nurture campaign comes up front. Successful deployment hinges on initial planning, message development, content/asset creation and scheduling. Once mapped out, however, much lead nurturing is “set it and forget it,” as your message automatically disseminates via email on schedule and in sequence.

Lead nurturing campaigns work. A well-defined process that cultivates a relationship with your early-stage leads not only boosts conversion and move leads through the sales cycle faster, but lead nurturing also helps build your database and grow your brand, to help you start – and keep – dancing cheek-to-cheek with your key prospects.

Unless you’re among the lucky few, another difficult year is drawing to a close. While 2011 has seen more than its fair share of economic and business turmoil, there is significant worry that 2012 will not necessarily see the strong revival everyone so badly needs (sorry to be a downer, folks!). Political and macroeconomic uncertainty will likely persist, and critical economic benchmarks such as employment, inflation and business spending will remain under pressure. Business abhors volatility – and we will probably continue to see reticent markets and customers at least though the earlier part of 2012. On the positive side, global negative macroeconomic factors seem to be improving, and the economic screw has been tightened far too much. This gives us good reason to  believe that business spending, corporate employment, and pricing are ready to “pop” on the upside as confidence grows.

Given these conditions, us marketers must once again grapple with how to move the business needle forward. We need to understand what needs to change, what’s not working, and identify the critical marketing-related drivers as we move into a potentially tough new year.

Based on market trends, needs and forces, here are 10 rules I’d suggest as imperatives to consider as we strategize  for 2012. Many, if not all, of these rules have been evolving during the past few years – and some are more permanent than others. However, because of the business climate headwinds we now face, they become essential components of a plan for success in 2012.

Rule 1 > Prioritizing Revenue Streams

The gap between Sales and Marketing is well known – and a painful experience for many of us. If there is one area where Sales and Marketing must come together, it is a common understanding and agreement on the revenue plan. Most sales revenue plans tend to focus on numbers and dollar figures. As a marketing lead, you need to work with your sales leadership to better understand revenue  streams, product SKU prioritization, and how the components of the  product/service suite contribute to the overall revenue plan.

Once that picture is clear, Marketing can perform an analysis on how to allocate its resources and budget to ensure that the marketing plan aligns and serves the all-important revenue plan. More than any other factor, that alignment, and good execution, will ensure a significantly better partnership and positive interaction between Sales and Marketing.

Rule 2 > Audience Micro-Segmentation and Profiling

Nothing is more off-putting to your audience than the  perception that your message does not affect or relate to them at all. The only way to ensure (to the greatest extent possible) that your message resonates with the reader is to understand the audience. Your market is very diverse, no matter how defined your product/service might me. Three letters – KYC – Know  Your Customer!  Micro-segmentation of your audience, and profiling (which, in marketing, is a wonderful thing!) of that segment is a must!

Data lies at the core of this goal – and the year-end is an excellent time to visit your data plan. Are you positioned for success with regards to your data quality and  adequacy for 2012?  How granular and detailed is your data? Does your organization have an Enterprise Data Management solution in place? These are essential requirements that impact the overall demand generation program plan.

Rule 3 > Customer Social Networks

Social media is an overused term, and frankly, a fashionable talking point nowadays. As marketers, we must concern ourselves with one specific instance of social media in the enterprise context – Customer Social Networks (CSN). These are social networks developed by your team to connect, communicate and collaborate with your audience. The audience typically comprises current  customers, prospects, broad market, media, analysts, and partners. The goal of the network is to add value to your audience – not to sell to them. There are several very important considerations when developing a truly effective CSN.

Rule 4 > “What’s in it for me?”

The more we are bombarded with unsolicited messages, the harder we try to shut them out. As a marketer whose aim is to have your message read by your audience, breaking  through is not easy. While there are several contributing factors to the effectiveness of a message, one easy and often overlooked factor that  directly impacts open-rates is the “offer”. Create an incentive for your audience to look at your message. Whether the  incentive is a valuable trends analysis report, or a free Starbucks card, the offer must be of perceived value to the reader.

Rule 5 > Optimizing Content Value

Like other organizations, you probably have a treasure-trove of white papers, solution brochures, data sheets, sales  presentations, demos, product brochures, etc. Take inventory of all your content assets and revise them by keeping three considerations in mind:

• Make them business-centric and offer a clearly articulated solution to a business problem. Technical documents don’t belong in marketing.
• Simple and short – concise and to the point means more effective.
• Talk numbers. Narrative is more impactful with real numbers that demonstrate the performance of your product/service. Try to make your content media-rich with videos, interactive demos and podcasts. The order of effectiveness is media, pictures, and words.

Rule 6 > Cross-Channel Communications

Marketing happens across multiple channels – email, website, events, sales interaction, customer service calls, social media, advertising, promotions, corporate communications, etc. One of the most frustrating experiences for customers is when there is a lack of synchronization among these channels. If I am a customer and have registered on your website, I expect that the customer service rep who calls me knows who I am, and knows what product and version I own. Similarly, I would be delighted if my information or relevancy was pre-populated in your social media platform, or on the badge at your customer conference.

The good news is that few larger organizations do this well; to the extent you can, it leaves a very pleasant and favorable impression on your audience.

Rule 7 > Going Offline and Wireless

We talked earlier about the growing digital cacophony. One of the easiest ways to circumvent that noise is to go “old-school” – with direct marketing (using paper and snail-mail), 3D marketing (meaning packages with exciting swag items, gifts, etc). Letters and packages get opened a lot more than unsolicited email does. That can be used to your advantage.

Another area gaining a lot of traction is mobile marketing, i.e. marketing optimized for mobile PDAs and smartphones. Some of this depends on your particular suite of products/services, and its applicability to being rendered effectively on mobile platforms. At the very least, your website and marketing portals must be mobile compliant. Similarly, focus on your marketing programs being simultaneously developed to meet mobile platform best-practices, thereby ensuring that your audience is able to view your messages on their tablets or smartphones.

Rule 8 > “Trapping Eyeballs” – Focused Advertising

Marketers generally come in two flavors – those that are revenue and demand-generation focused, and those that are more media and advertising focused. For those of us who tend to think along demand generation goals, and are acutely focused on revenue, advertising is an area we sometimes overlook.  Let’s be careful – we are not talking about mass advertising such as on billboards or TV. That’s very expensive, and except in a certain category of situations, not an efficient use of precious marketing budget.

Think more along the lines of digital advertising. Your audience is spending greater amounts of time in their trade communities, blogs, association websites, professional communities, etc. Most of these communities or websites sell advertising and promotional space and sponsorship opportunities. These forums tend to be naturally more targeted, with higher persistence of viewers and audience.

Rule 9 > Detailed, Real-Time Performance Analytics

One of the most pervasive and rapid shifts in the world of B2B enterprise marketing is the shift toward making the entire discipline much more measurable, scientific, and calibrated. There is acute focus on return-on-budget, marketing-contribution-to-revenue (MCR), as well as detailed metrics, analytics, and reporting across the entire revenue pipeline – which includes both the Marketing Funnel, as well as the Sales Pipeline.

Developing detailed, real-time performance analytics accomplishes at least two very valuable objectives:

• The ability to measure and improve the performance of programs and marketing spend
• The ability to demonstrate factually to executive management the positive impact of your team’s marketing activity on the overall company top-line revenue

Rule 10 > Stakeholder Buy-in

Marketing tends to be an inherently thankless job – when done well, credit is often shared across multiple groups and not marketing alone, and when done less than perfectly, there is a lot of focus on what wasn’t well done. Additionally, marketing tends to get pulled in multiple directions from various teams in the organization. This situation tends to get a lot more difficult in tougher economic times when demands and expectations of marketing start to get unrealistic.

One important first step for any annual marketing  plan, and certainly for 2012, would be to identify ALL stakeholders that have  direct or indirect involvement/influence over your team’s activities and success. It is important to understand each  of their goals, concerns and priorities, accommodate them to the extent possible, and develop a plan that meets the matrix of needs. Finally, and most importantly, it is critical that you or your marketing lead present the annual plan to all these stakeholders in one single meeting, and require that all of them buy into and sign-off on the annual plan. Such a deliberate process mitigates the risk of a mid-stream course change, missed expectations and the lack of support from other teams while executing the plan.

And while these 10 steps are imperative to success next year, it may be worthwhile to throw in a few prayers that the market situation cooperates and the business trajectory starts turning north. Good luck!

You may  contact the author at ssharma@northbounddgs.com, or visit the Northbound DGS website at www.northbounddgs.com for more information.

For companies already testing the waters in mobile marketing and looking for ways to improve their results, and those who are just starting to consider this option, let’s consider the following best practices for mobile targeted email marketing:

• Subject and from lines – The first clues leveraged by the reader in determining whether or not to open an email are the subject and from lines. In order to pass the credibility test, B2B marketers need to ensure email marketing messages use a consistent and trusted name in the “from line.” For example, it’s often best to avoid marketing messages coming from an account such as sales@companyabc.com. For the subject line, consider keeping the length to 15 characters or less to ensure the subject is viewable on a mobile device. If a longer subject line is required, keep the most relevant information at the beginning instead of the end.
• Formatting – Although most devices enable html email viewing, it is best to send critical email marketing messages as text instead of html allowing the email to be readable on any mobile email client. For added compatibility, consider sending emails in multi-part MIME format. This allows equal viewing on both mobile and computer email clients. To find the optimal formatting for email marketing, dig into analytics to determine what mobile devices are accessing the site most often over an extended period of time.
• Message – A recipient’s inbox is a privileged destination and they would rather keep it clear of non-relevant email. To achieve effective open rates, marketers  must keep messages relevant to the reader or risk having the message deleted. This includes keeping the subject line and body of the email relevant and useful to the recipient. It also involves keeping the message shorter as most readers would rather not scroll on their mobile device. The call to action should be easy to find quickly within the copy.
• Design – A key element to recipients opening mobile emails is the design. If the design of an email is set beyond the screen size or includes heavy graphics, most mobile email recipients will simply delete the message. To ensure optimal viewing, keep email message’s width between 500-600px.  Ensure any links added are after the main body of the message and break up paragraphs for easier viewing.

Understanding how key elements of mobile email marketing help deliver messages gives marketers the edge needed for effective and relevant communication on mobile devices. With Android and iPhone claiming almost 500,000 activations a day, the market will only continue to increase offering subsequent opportunities to augment traditional lead generation activities by connecting with prospects while they are on-the-go.

-What benefit has your function brought to the organization?

-Has your strategic plan and tactical mix helped contribute to topline revenue?

-How effectively marketing is helping to create demand.

Here are five metrics that you simply must be armed with the next time you find yourself on the firing line.

Inquiries - This first metric is the fuel that at a baseline makes your demand creation engine run. When all campaigns have been accounted for and all sources totaled, how many raw responses – hand-raisers, if you will – did the marketing function generate?

Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) – With a group of raw inquiries in hand, it is now marketing’s job to nurture those leads to a level that has been mutually agreed upon by sales. Marketing leaders must track and report on the conversion rate of inquiry to MQL; they can then demonstrate how improvements in target marketing and messaging have improved this rate from quarter to quarter.

Sales Acceptance – With a definition (or definitions) of an MQL that have been agreed to by marketing and sales, an organization is now ready to create a formal process for acceptance of these leads by inside, field or channel sales.

Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) – By initially accepting a lead, a salesperson is not committing to anything beyond the basic tenets of the MQL. Marketers are looking at two metrics at this stage of the funnel, including the conversion rate of sales accepted leads to SQLs, as well as the cumulative size of the opportunities now in the pipeline.

Closed Business – Although much happens to leads once they leave the control of marketing, understanding the ratio of SQL to closed business is still critical for marketers.

It’s hard to believe that five fairly straight forward metrics have so much power, but they do. With these metrics in hand, marketers can make a strong argument for additional program dollars; identify gaps in communications with sales; understand their impact to the organization’s pipeline and revenue; and build a series of processes that makes the entire set of activities around demand creation much more systematic.

With marketing automated CRM, you can automatically capture leads when people find your site and fill out your Web forms. You can then route those leads to your reps for immediate follow up. Because consumer behavior changes constantly, so do lead-generation opportunities. The latest opportunities for getting leads come from social networking sites. For that reason, it’s important to revisit your lead capture strategies periodically to take advantage of evolving consumer behavior and technical trends.

Here’s are 4 ways a CRM can help you get more leads, process them more effectively, and refine your lead-generation efforts.

Use Web-to-lead functionality

People who visit your website are already interested in your product or service. You can capture visitor information automatically to create leads in a CRM, ready for your reps to qualify.

Know your target audience

Before creating your Web-to-lead form, think about what information you want to collect in standard and custom fields during the initial contact. Taking the time to define these details also helps define your internal process. For example, if a lead is interested in a particular product, you can use assignment rules or queues to assign that lead to a product expert. 

Consider “where” and “how much”

When designing your form, decide where to place the input fields and how much information to ask for. Usability tests show that contact information fields near the bottom of forms generate more leads than those near the top. Also, don’t ask people for too much personal information at the first contact—it’s the most common reason people don’t complete forms.

Don’t be afraid to multiply

Use several forms to capture different types of information, depending on where the form appears. For example, you may want to collect different information in a “Contact me” form than in an “Event Registration” form

This being said let’s take this example and corporatize it:

Worker bee – an employee that is working to attain success and performs specific tasks that are at par or above expectation for an organization he/she works for. Taking this reference let’s focus on customer service.

Customer facing employees play an integral role that sets a company apart from others. The attitude he or/she has a direct effect on attaining or retaining customers. All business units would have to be in sync and work towards the common goal –i.e. generate revenues or in the bee world it would be to generate honey.

Customer service/ Customer facing personnel are regarded as the one of the most important group/individuals in an organization. The investment a company makes in training and educating customer service professionals when dealing with customers is crucial. This is because they are representing the organization they work for to the outside world. The message they convey has to be consistent and positive. Going back to our bee hive analogy, a disconnect between a worker bee and the queen bee would cause complete chaos. If  a lack of communication and coordination exists among them, it would dismantle the inner structure of the organization. A bee hive works as a well oiled industrial machine/organization!, It embodies an order of process and each member of the hive is directed to perform a task. If tasks are not cohesively conducted, a complete chaos would occur and dismantle the inner structure of the organization.

Referring to the organizational lessons from the bee hive example and applying it to customer relations, In reality, it is not uncommon to find that companies forget  to follow the same principles the following key rules of engagement when dealing with their customers which results in a disconnect and causes chaos/loss of revenue aka honey!  Some of the key issues that customer service should avoid at all cost are:

Not Listening
Of all the mistakes that we make in business, not listening to our customers would have to be near the top. Whether we are handling a complaint or simply trying to make a sale, listening closely to our customers is the most vital skill that employees must learn.

Being Rude or Short
If we have someone as the face of our business in a meeting or on the phone, they simply must be kind and considerate. There is absolutely no excuse for taking out a bad day on a customer.

Not Understanding Our Product or Services
Another very common customer service mistake involves not having adequate knowledge of products and services. Training service professionals on products and services is crucial.

Not Knowing When to Escalate the Problem
Some problems are best handled by upper management. It is very important that our frontline customer service representatives understand what types of problems fits this criteria. This can only be accomplished by training and experience. Management should be involved in gauging and addressing the issues that come up from time to time and to also be in-sync with the changing business environment.

Improper Follow Through
Another common customer service problem involves not following through after the initial customer conversation. If a promise is made to a customer, it should be our top priority to follow through.

In today’s competitive business world, retaining your customer base is critical to your success. If you don’t give customers a good reasons to stay, competitors will give them a reason to leave. Customer retention and satisfaction drive profits. It’s far less expensive to cultivate your existing customer base and sell more services to them than it is to seek new, single-transaction customers.

I recently had a discussion with a non-marketing professional who reminded me that many of his colleagues do not understand what integrated marketing is.

For these 2 reasons, I thought this topic worthy of a blog posting. To succeed in a Demand Generation 2.0 world, integrated marketing is an absolute must.

Without looking up (or linking to) any other definition of integrated marketing, let me define integrated marketing based on my own experience.

What is it?

Integrated marketing (also referred to as Integrated Marketing Communications or IMC) occurs when every activity and communication within a marketing organization is a part of, and blended with, a larger plan or superset plan over a specific product, solution, topic, audience, target, message, etc. To understand this, lets first describe the major segments of a marketing organization. I’ve also included a high level list of their charters (which is not meant to be a complete list):
a) Corporate marketing – branding, messaging, corporate events, analyst relations, public/media relations, website, SEM, collateral, success stories, etc.
b) Product marketing – product requirements, product positioning, product launch, messaging, targeting, product collateral, etc.
c) Demand marketing – lead generation, events, seminars/webinars, trade shows, targeting/segmentation, SEO, social media, analytics, etc.
d) Channel marketing - co-marketing with partners, partner promotion, partner events, partner collateral, lead generation, etc.
e) Field marketing - field support, lead generation, targeting/segmentation, local trade shows/conferences, local events, etc.

As we can see, many marketing activities can overlap. For example, demand generation, channel marketing and field marketing can all execute lead generation. Likewise, adjacent activities can be performed by different parts of marketing. For example, SEM can be handled by Corporate Marketing and SEO can be handled by Demand Marketing.

This is why integrated marketing is important. If an organization does not integrate their activities across the whole of marketing, we see multiple messages, gaps in messaging and targeting, duplication of efforts and most important a substantial increase in marketings failure rate.

Why Integrated Marketing

As a first step, let me provide an example of what integrated marketing is not. I once worked with a client who focused their demand generation budget on 3 product lines, which we will call Product A, Product B and Product C. All marketing activities for Product A and Product B were integrated perhaps more by accident than by design so the message to media, customers, marketplace and analysts was consistent (e.g., ONE message) and the branding, website content, positioning, targeting, lead generation, partner management and field marketing were all aligned.

Product C was a different story. Product C was developed by Engineering who thought it was a good product but unfortunately, it did not fit in with the companys message or target audience. It solved a completely different business problem for a completely different audience. In spite of this, sales viewed Product C as a tactical revenue opportunity, dedicated 3 full time sales representatives and required Demand Marketing to run lead generation activities. Corporate Marketing was not supporting any activity over this product line other than requiring the Product Marketing Manager to independently develop web page content, presentations and collateral without any oversight to ensure brand or messaging consistency.

The results? The team barely generated leads and the cost per lead was way out of line in and of itself and compared with the other product lines “ over $9,000 per sales lead  300-400% higher than the cost of a sales lead for Product A or B.

There are books written about how to integrate marketing but let me just add a few sentences as to what integration looks like.

An integrated marketing approach includes a Go-to-Market (GTM)plan that incorporates and aligns all marketing activities and assigns tasks and timelines across the whole of marketing in an organized, self-supporting way. It identifies the 3-5 key marketing themes for Product C and articulates the key message(s). It should include a plan to (a) align the website and collateral with the themes, (b) publish press releases and articles and (c) create a buzz in the marketplace. It identifies one or more compelling events(e.g., product launch, major conference/show, webinar series, industry event, etc.) which demand marketing can use as a centerpiece activity for lead generation campaigns (not isolated lead generation activities).

Marketing integration is fun because a relentless focus on it will generate results. If you agree (or if you don’t agree), I welcome your comments.

Other relevant links:

What is Integrated Marketing?
The Adoption of Integrated Marketing is Essential.
Behold! A New Marketing Concept

Here are 7 tips to help you be successful interacting with customers in a successful Demand Generation 2.0 environment. These tips are designed with a DG 2.0 philosophy in mind “ that is, these tips take an outside-in view of what Marketing should do. To keep our focus personal, lets call our prospect/customer John.

What Does John Want From You?

(1) John wants to easily find (discover) you when HE needs you. Hence the importance of good brand recognition, a good SEO/SEM strategy, a good website, good media relations, etc.

(2) John wants to be educated about who you are and what you can do to solve his business problems at HIS pace. Hence the need for collateral and nurturing demand generation activities, webinars, seminars, trade shows, conference participation, press releases, articles, a good web site, on-going analyst relations, etc.

(3) John wants you to listen to him and know him. Hence the need for social communities, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, etc.,

(4) John wants to be valued, respected and treated like an individual. Hence the need for enticing Johns collaboration and thought leadership ideas through social communities, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, survey participation, user/focus groups, etc. Also important is the need for segmentation and personalization.

(5) John wants access to you when HE needs it. Hence the important of a world-class call center, good customer support, customer-focused sales representatives and a good customer experience program.

(6) John wants to be happy and have a positive experience and the kind of relationship that HE wants to have. Hence the need to establish a customer reference program, customer service surveys, developers sites, social communities, user groups, etc.

(7) John wants to be successful. Hence the need for good product, good customer
support, demonstrated ROI and a good customer experience.

It is my opinion that if you keep these 7 tips in mind as you develop your marketing charter and plans going forward, you will keep your eye on the ball.

1. Collaboration inside the organization > This is the use case that has the largest footprint – and is currently the most prevalent use of social media in the enterprise.  The widespread deployment of this solution is likely because intranets and knowledge management systems were key IT initiatives over the past 10 years as companies started to drive internal organizational efficiencies, and as a result, expanding these wins further by employing social media technologies was certainly the least expensive and lowest risk approach for organizations starting to make forays into enterprise social media realm.  While it is the low-hanging fruit, and certainly offers indisputable advantages to the enterprise, this is also the use case that is most difficult to measure in terms of value, ROI, or tracking results.
2. Brand management, development and tracking > A quick aside – “Brand” is a highly misunderstood term even by marketers.  It is not a company’s logo, signage, taglines etc.  Nor is it what the enterprise wants to project about itself.  The brand of an enterprise is what people (customers, employees, media, etc.) believe about the company – and the values, image and attributes that they, as a collective, confer upon the enterprise.  While I can’t get into a more detailed discussion of “brand”, I felt a clarification on brand was critical to this discussion on social media.  Tracking, managing and developing one’s brand is perhaps the most obvious and valuable use cases for social media for the enterprise.  “Listening campaigns” that follow the “chatter” about the company in social networking forums such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Google, Yahoo, etc. are very important in understanding what the real brand perception is.  This in turn enables the enterprise to address issues, and manage, control and steer its brand.  For this reason alone, this area is going to be one of the most popular and critical areas where companies will invest in social media initiatives.
3. Demand Generation 2.0 > Given the economic headwinds, and the overall recessionary climate, deploying a successful demand generation campaign via social media has enormous benefits.  Besides the obvious potential for driving incremental revenue, a demand gen campaign will result in increased net market-share (at the expense of competitors), an automatic positive impact on the corporate brand, and greater traction with core constituencies such as customers, key employees, partners and the media.  Also, the natural outcome of a successful demand gen campaign would be an increased propensity to fund and extend the enterprise social media initiative to other solution areas that may be less easy to measure.  Companies such as Zappos.com, Dell, and Amazon, to name just a few, are shining examples of how to social media-based demand gen can be a phenomenally profitable initiative.  This particular solution area is the new frontier in enterprise social media – but I expect this area will get a lot of interest and focus as businesses grapple with economic challenges, and seek more innovative ways to counter that downturn.
4. Projecting thought leadership and domain expertise>  Closely related to the earlier discussion on brand development, the use of We 2.0 tools such as blogging, micro-blogging (Twitter, Yammer etc.) and rich-media and wikis (audio and video podcasting, interactive web sessions, etc), moderated community forums etc. enables the enterprise to educate its audiences in the areas of its expertise.  This ultimately serves to establish the organization as a domain- and subject-matter expert, and thought-leader in the market, resulting in downstream benefits such as driving demand.
5. Improved Service Level >  A more tactical use of Web 2.0 technologies is their use in offering a more timely, richer and more complete service level to customers, partners, suppliers, vendors, employees, etc.  Examples of such initiatives include sophisticated sales agents, automated technical support, employee self-service etc.

While the use cases above are the most widespread and popular deployments of social media in the enterprise context, there are numerous variations and specialized instances of how they are used by business.  I always find it of great value to start with the basic understanding that social media is ultimately nothing more than a highly sophisticated and effective manner for people to exchange ideas, information and content – and given that foundation, one can conceive of addressing and improving almost any challenge that involves interaction among people.

No area is more critical to a business enterprise than demand for its products and services in the marketplace and thereby enabling revenue growth. Indeed, enabling market demand has always been the holy grail of business – but enterprises today are faced with a completely new realm of challenges and possibilities – all brought about as a result of the evolution of these new paradigms. Continuing to drive sustainable and accelerating demand in this new world requires newer skills and capabilities – and many of the practices from even a few years ago are no longer effective.  This is DEMAND GEN 2.0

Let’s examine these Demand Gen 2.0 challenges and opportunities in more detail. Three fundamental forces affecting virtually all business are noteworthy – Virtualization, Super-Specialization, and Social Media.

VIRTUALIZATION – Businesses are getting increasingly virtual – geographically, functionally, and organizationally.  Many of today’s organizations are dispersed across multiple locations, indeed, the trend of having more and more critical staff working or located remotely is accelerating. Companies are realizing that technology enables them to hire top talent without being constrained by their place of residence or location.

Even more intriguing and impactful is the trend to virtualize from a functional standpoint – essentially outsourcing. Maintenance and staff functions are being increasingly outsourced to vendors – these include marketing, demand generation, legal and tax functions, human resources and benefits management, finance functions, payroll, IT support, maintenance engineering etc. Companies are realizing that virtualizing these administrative and maintenance functions enables them to dedicate more resources, energy and focus to their core competencies and business.

Of particular interest is that companies find that outsourcing their demand generation enables them to save significantly on costs while at the same time having a far more accountable and productive demand gen engine.  It also enables them to migrate their sales organization to more skilled individuals that are focused on closing deals, as opposed to “wasting” their valuable time on prospecting / building the pipeline.

SUPER-SPECIALIZATION – Broad business specialization is not a new trend at all – it’s been around forever. However, we are talking about extreme specialization – each industry vertical is not being split into very fine sub-verticals and sub-sub-verticals – and businesses are competing in those highly-niche domains.

The driving force behind this level of super-specialization is once again technology. Technology has enabled companies to extend their market reach globally – meaning that they have access to far bigger markets. However this also means a dramatic increase in competitive pressure – and businesses are responding by differentiating themselves based on their expertise in increasingly defined and niche areas. As we will discuss in the next paragraph, the social media paradigm has become a powerful tool for teams that want to project and market their product, services or domain expertise – and thereby build a strong brand.

Given this growing trend of super-specialization, demand generation gets even more critical and challenging.  The demand generation engine needs to account for brand integrity, critical on-target messaging to the marketplace, and always maintaining the very delicate balance between driving a broad market demand while at the same time ensuring that that market’s needs can be served successfully and profitably.

ENTERPRISE SOCIAL MEDIA – Among all the trends affecting businesses over the last year or two, none is perhaps more powerful than the social media paradigm.  At a fundamental level, what social media enables is very seamless and effective collaboration and idea-exchange between a community of individuals, teams or businesses.  The rapid adoption of social media and networking technologies and applications into the business enterprise has started to have radical impacts on how business is getting done.

Social media offers businesses a new and powerful medium to propagate their business.  Starting from brand development and management, to driving thought leadership and subject matter expertise, collaborating with various different constituencies of the enterprise, and leading into demand generation – enterprise social networking is a extraordinarily powerful tool to drive demand for any enterprise.

These three trends discussed above are subjects of far-more detailed study and discussion.  These three trends combine together to radically alter and create a new landscape for demand generation for businesses – and it is for this very reason that we believe that we need to look at Demand Generation 2.0 – as a generational evolution of this critical enterprise function.