This is the fourth in my series of how the Imperatives of the Marketing Revoloution apply to Business-to-Business (B2B) marketing.  This imperative is titled "Engage Customers with Conversations."   I've included a link to posts on the first three imperatives at the bottom of this post.

Engage is the new “overused” word but it sounds so right…engage, discuss, talk openly. We have to include our prospects and customers in product design and input. We have to listen to the issues they are having…not only with features and functions but with usability, services, support or maintenance. We’ve all heard that product management is changing….Communities are changing the way we get and process feedback. You have to get involved…there are free mechanisms funded with, as Jeffrey Hayzlett former CMO of Kodak and industry thought leader puts it, OPM – Other People’s Money. Of course I mean Twitter, Linked In and Facebook to name a few. Get in and start listening at least. 

Our engagement with customers used to be restricted to our annual customer event, occassional on-site visits, and fly bys at industry trade shows.  Now, thanks to the availability of networks like Linked In and our own private communities, we have the opportunity to be in almost constant dialog with our customers.  You are making key decisions on everything from Product and Marketing strategy to paid search.  Wouldn't it be great to have customer input?  I think many are concerned about tipping their hand, impacting deals in the sales pipeline or not responding to every piece of input customers provide.  But, in reality, customers feel better when you listen and they generally understand that you can't do everything.  The end result of listening has relationship benefits on a 1:1 basis and great benefits on the overall decisions you make.  I think the face-to-face events are still a key piece of the puzzle but the new online community can fill in the long gaps.

The best executed Marketing Automation tactics will fall short if they don't reflect the needs of your customers.

The tools are there...Engage!

Here's a link to the previous posts -

1. Marketing Must be Accountable
2. The CMO as a Change Agent
3. Let Go, Customers Control Your Brand

 Not Your Parent’s Old Company Newsletter

At the same time, Aprimo recently reintroduced eNewsletters to our customers, partners and prospects. Why? Anyone who receives information from Aprimo marketing knows we strive to provide useful tools to make marketer’s jobs more strategic and productive. Yet, in our internal marketing meetings, we always came back to a need for an interactive channel that tied all of our nurturing campaigns, thought leadership papers, resources, tools in best practices in a summarized, hyperlinked and easy-to-digest resource. We also wanted to turn up the dial on our listening meter.

In my last post, I introduced our Imperatives for the Marketeing Revolution.  I'm taking each of these and proviing a B2B perspective. So, here's the second imperative - The CMO Must be the Change Agent.

For the past few decades B2B Marketing has largely played the role of support to sales. They tend to be largely task-oriented and focused on providing sales tools and feeding the sales pipeline to an ever-changing quality standard defined by the sales organization. However, B2B marketing can’t look to sales to change what they demand from the marketing department. Marketing, and in particular, the CMO has to drive this change. The objective isn’t to finally get out from under the rule of sales. Rather, the goal is to step up next to sales and jointly define a combined marketing and sales process that will align from the marketing messaging through the sales messaging delivered to qualified prospects. The change associated with this will permeate the organization and require strong leadership and joint visioning with sales leadership. This level of change and leadership needs to come from your CMO. 

About two years ago, my wife and I entered another phase of life - empty nest.  Just to clarify, our second of two headed off to college and wasn't looking back.  Our first was entering his senior year with grad school in his sights.  So, we were staring a very quiet house in the face.  Now, I don't want to say that my wife and I were celebrating this event.  in fact, we really enjoy the company of our sons and were lamenting this loss. 

Fastforward two years....during the first year and part of the second year we ended up welcoming a friend into our household that was going through some tough personal problems (a divorce).  This was good for us and helped transition us to the actual quiet time.  During the first summer, our sons returned home and we added two cats to the mix. During the second year, we experienced a fair amount of the empty nest so our jobs consumed much of the empty space. Now we have gone through another summer and one son stayed at school and the other graduated from an intense one-year business degree focused on Financial Management.  Needless to say, the job market is decimated, so he is still with us and studying for actuarial exams. 

So, what's my point (you should be asking)?  Marketing is just like our life...hard to predict and full of unexpected surprises (some good and some not).  For this reason, you need to be constantly tracking your marketing finances from an overall perspective so you know what money is spent, what is promised and what is forecast.  How else can you know how to react to new opportunities (Social Media Marketing), new competitive moves (product launches), needs for the sales pipeline or economic changes?   It's hard to find automation
that will help you deal with life's unexpected changes, but marketing automation software can definitely help a marketing operation stay swift on its feet.