Tag Archives: marketing

Create a Culture of Innovation With This Professional Development Plan for B2B Marketers

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This post originally appeared on MarketingProfs.

The pandemic has given B2B marketing leaders a golden opportunity to rethink the culture of their marketing teams. Rather than worrying about how to recover, the best B2B marketers are thinking about how to get stronger. While true culture change takes time, one of the best ways to start is by integrating it into your employees’ professional development plans. After all, you are what you measure. According to Campbell’s Law, if my raise is solely dependent on meeting a sales quota, I’m going to do everything I can to meet that quota, even if that means slacking on other parts of my job (managing my teams, developing my own skillset, etc.).

That’s why you need to build innovation into development plans and, subsequently, into employees’ annual reviews. This way, you can start holding them (and yourself) accountable for the change you want to make. The metrics of what a successful employee is has to start including those behaviors you want to see. Otherwise, your teams will treat culture change as a “nice-to-have” rather than giving it the focus it needs.

Unfortunately, telling your employees to “be more innovative” or “take more risks in your work” isn’t all that helpful. Instead, focus on creating professional development goals that are specific, attainable and measurable, and then provide detailed recommendations that are time-bound and actionable.

If you’re a B2B marketer, use the pandemic as an opportunity to assess your professional development plans, both for yourself and your teams.

  • Do you have a development plan? Do your employees? When was the last time it was updated?
  • What are your strengths and weaknesses?
  • What are your career goals? This year? Over the next 3-5 years?
  • What do you need to accomplish those goals? From yourself? From your team? From your boss? From the organization?
  • When was the last time you spoke with your team members about their personal career goals?
  • Do you have a plan for how to help them achieve those goals?
  • Do you hold them accountable for meeting their goals?
  • When was the last time you went down on the factory floor to better understand the complexities of your product manufacturing?
  • Do you monitor industry associations and know what the latest trends are?
  • Have you shadowed your sales force to truly hear the voice of your customers and understand their needs and what they are looking for?

Once you’ve assessed the current situation, start creating plans that will form the foundation for a more innovative and effective marketing communications department – one that will attract, develop and retain innovative employees.

Professional development plans should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timely). Here are a few sample development plans for employees up and down your org chart that will build a foundation for a more innovative marketing team that could actually apply those strategies and tactics you see in conference agendas, blog posts and white papers.B2B Development Plan for Senior Leaders

B2B Development Plan for Mid-Level Employees

B2B Professional Development for Junior Employees

These plans should always be customized to the individual employee – everyone has different strengths, weaknesses, goals and interests – but they provide a good framework for creating lasting culture change in your B2B marketing.

The pandemic may have forced us to adapt on the fly and come up with creative solutions to challenges we couldn’t have imagined a year ago, but it’s also showed us what’s possible if we think beyond best practices and identify new solutions. Let’s do more than recover from this. Let’s make this the start of a new beginning for all of us.

 

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We Have Infinite Creative Opportunities to Solve Customer Experience Problems

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It’s been said necessity is the mother of invention. Well, we’re all going to find out just how true that is really soon. On March 11, 2020, everything changed. From manufacturing to travel to sports, every industry was forced to rethink everything.

Over the last few months, companies around the world moved millions of office workers to remote work in a span of just a few weeks. Restaurants moved their entire business to carryout and delivery. Retailers figured out how to do curbside pickup without months of red tape getting in the way.

I’ve been particularly impressed at how agile brands (big and small) have been in adapting to this “new normal.” And while some of these adaptations have been most welcome (no middle seats!), they’ve been driven primarily  by survival. What happens when brands start using this as an opportunity to strategically think about how to transform…everything?

Looking forward, there won’t be a return back to normal. The story won’t be about recovery. It will be about transformation. The agility that we’ve seen over the last few months will become the new expectation, and the brands that realize this will come out on top.

Across industries, there are virtually limitless first mover opportunities for brands to creatively address some of the most long-standing and frustrating customer experience issues. I’ve listed some below but could easily come up with a dozen others over a beer or two.

Home Improvement

  • Will contractors that commit to wearing PPE while in your home become a permanent policy?
  • What commercial hygiene products (sanitizers, air dryers, etc.) will become “must-have” items for today’s homeowners?
  • Will homeowners look to create permanent “quarantine spaces” to allow for easier separation of sick family members?
  • What builders will focus on retrofitting homes with multi-generational spaces to allow older family members to cohabitate vs. going to a senior living facility?

Retail

  • Will contactless payments via phone replace credit cards much faster than we thought?
  • How should shoppers navigate the store differently?
  • Is there a more hygienic way to touch and try out in-store products before you buy?
  • Have masks and hand sanitizer received permanent placement in checkout aisles?
  • Will self-checkout become the new standard at all retailers – clothing, toys, electronics, etc.?
  • How can the dressing room be re-imagined to keep people coming into the store to try things on?

Dining

  • Which restaurants will replace the traditional tipping on the receipt with Starbucks’ “post-purchase tipping” method?
  • What’s the most realistic/effective face covering for cooks? Servers?
  • Is there a new algorithm for determining the optimal seating arrangement in a COVID-19 environment that minimizes the spread of the virus?
  • Which traditional sit-down restaurants will embrace the pizza slice model and transition entirely to carryout and delivery?

Sports

  • Can we develop a new way for football fans to watch a game at the stadium?
  • What’s the new way to sell hot dogs, beer, and cotton candy to fans in their seats?
  • What’s the new way for players to give autographs to kids?
  • Beyond touchless toilets and faucets, is there a way to make stadium restrooms more sanitary and efficient for fans?
  • What do live broadcasts look like when there’s no fans?
  • What sports broadcast will finally move forward with the most obvious of innovations – real-time on-field audio?

Travel

  • What’s the future of the hotel check-in counter?
  • What’s the new standard for cleaning hotel rooms?
  • How can we eliminate middle seats on planes forever?
  • Is there a safer, more efficient way to board passengers on a flight?
  • Can seatback touchscreens be made touchless?
  • What’s the optimal post-COVID seat design on trains, buses, and planes?
  • Do we really need to still manually adjust the fan dial above our heads?
  • Will subway cars reorient seating so no one faces one another? Will car occupancy be limited?

Amusement Parks

  • Is there quick and effective anti-viral material or spray that can be used to disinfect rides in between runs?
  • What can be used to show you purchased a ticket instead of relying on wristbands?
  • What replaces the turnstiles everyone touches as they enter the park?

Beauty/Fitness

  • How can makeup counters be adapted to be more sanitary?
  • Nike’s created hijabs using performance material – who’s going to innovate face masks optimized for sports?
  • Is there a better way to sanitize gym equipment in between uses or will we continue to use sprays and paper towels?
  • We’ve already seen companies specialize in creating gym equipment that fits into your décor – who’s going to create furniture that doubles as gym equipment? Chairs that convert into weight lifting benches? Rugs that double as yoga mats?

Commercial Real Estate

  • What’s an optimal post COVID office seating plan look like?
  • How many office buildings are going to install walk-through body temperature scanners?
  • Touchless faucets/soap dispensers/toilets and toilet lids seem obvious, but what companies will use this opportunity to rethink the very way a toilet or a sink is designed?
  • What will doors without door handles look like? More automatic revolving doors? Foot-operated doors?
  • Will we see voice-activated elevators?

Electronics

  • What TV brands will make webcams and microphones standard in their TVs (to allow for easier at-home fitness sessions and remote learning classes)?
  • What laptop brand will make ring lighted webcams standard?
  • Which company will create the mobile UV light sanitizer that can be attached to your phone?

Education

  • Learning to live with roommates is a key part of the college experience. What college will be the first to rethink the way dorms are set up?
  • Sitting students every other seat is the most simplistic way to create social distancing, but is there a more creative way to rethink the traditional classroom setup?
  • What college will entirely rethink remote learning as a core part of the four-year college experience?

Whatever industry you’re in, there are unlimited opportunities to write a new future, all while your competitors are trying to return to the past. And if you don’t, someone else will…push the envelope, create the headlines, fail (and learn) quickly, and create an entirely new reality, one that may or may not include you.

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Social Media Could Have Transformed Marketing — Instead, It Amplified Its Flaws

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This article originally appeared in MediaPost.

In 1999, Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger said the Internet would turn markets into conversations, audiences were actual human beings, and companies would come down from their ivory towers to create meaningful relationships. Eight years later, I read their book, “The Cluetrain Manifesto.” Social media was going to change the world, and I wanted to be at the tip of the spear.

I joined a rapidly growing cadre of change agents using social media to radically transform everything from fixing potholes and broken stoplights to managing city budgets. 

Social media wasn’t the realm of any one person, department or organization. It was owned by everyone and no one. The only thing early adopters of social media had in common was the desire to create change.

These conditions applied:

  • People were people, not fictionalized digital personas.
  • No one talked about social “content.” These platforms were for conversations with constituents in real time.
  • The organizational hierarchy flattened dramatically. Corporate silos crumbled as people throughout the org chart could easily collaborate with other departments.
  • Customers talked to one another about brands all over the Internet, and marketers were invited to join.
  • Social media accounts were run by actual people, with real names and personalities.

We enforced these changes because this was an opportunity to do things differently, to do things better.  We could say, “No, senior director, you don’t get to approve every tweet we write. Do you follow me around and pre-approve my conversations, too?”

But social media became too popular, too fast. It didn’t take long for marketers to start measuring the ROI of every tweet, post, and photo. Eventually, they were able to overwhelm the change agents with processes and best practices.

Instead of recognizing social as an opportunity to fundamentally change how companies interact with employees and customers, companies did what they always do: blanketed people with ads, driving as many impressions as possible, as cheaply as possible, until they derived every last piece of revenue. “Social media” became less social. It became another place for brands to push out advertising.

Other things happened:

  • Conversations gave way to content.
  • Social media got integrated into IT, with complex usage permissions.
  • Thriving unofficial fan sites were shut down in favor of sanitized (read: boring) official sites.
  • Humans with personalities and names were replaced by corporate personas and branded voices.
  • Success was measured in clicks and likes rather than relationships and loyalty.

Rather than fundamentally changing how marketing works, marketing fundamentally changed what social media was.

Today I see a world where social media has been weaponized to manipulate the public, and where everyone — brands, influencers, politicians, friends, and family members — is no longer interested in conversations, but in capturing the most likes, clicks, and views as efficiently as possible.

Still, there are signs the pendulum is starting to swing. Unilever recently said it will no longer work with influencers who buy followers or use bots. Mozilla and Sonos pulled Facebook ads after the Cambridge Analytica scandal. And many direct-to-consumer brands like AllBirds, Warby Parker, and Glossier have grown without losing their soul: their personality and relationships with their consumers. Maybe they’ll be the change agents that reverse the trend.

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Omnichannel Marketing is the First Step, Not the End Game

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This post originally appeared in MediaPost.

Dominoes

True omnichannel marketing is about understanding how the dominoes fall across the entire organization, not just in marketing.

Congratulations on your integrated marketing plan, your omnichannel marketing strategy, your paid-earned-shared-owned media strategy — you’ve now completed the bare minimum of what customers expect.

Just because marketers have finally started to consistently create integrated cross-channel plans doesn’t mean we should toot our horns too much. After all, we’re the ones who embraced channel-specific media plans over integrated strategies and working with dozens of specialized agencies instead of one or two integrated agencies-of-record. The fact that we’re now unpacking these silos, because customers have demanded a more consistent experience, is simply the beginning.

This was a problem of our own doing. And rather than focusing on the real challenge — creating a consistent brand experience at all touchpoints — we focused too much on the how rather than the why.

Over the last few years, I’ve worked with plenty of clients, spoken at dozens of conferences, and connected with hundreds of colleagues. Unfortunately, a common thread has emerged – every customer touchpoint has become specialized and sophisticated. And while that’s made each channel more efficient and effective, it also results in a fundamental fracturing of the customer experience. In our rush to optimize every tweet, email, and click, we’ve created inconsistency and unpredictability not just for customers, but for people in the organization too.

When someone talks about “omnichannel marketing,” they’re usually talking about the channels marketing controls — social media, digital, TV, print, PR. The list goes on. Unfortunately, just because it doesn’t fall under marketing doesn’t mean it’s not a marketing channel. If you want to create a true omnichannel plan, you better make sure you’re also addressing channels that are supported by other departments. The following questions don’t have easy answers. But guess what? The customer doesn’t care about your politics. They care about the experience.

  • Before you start brainstorming the next big campaign, are there other departments doing something incredible that could be proof points?
  • How are you going to use internal communications to activate employees?
  • Have you equipped the customer service team with new talking points?
  • Does the investor relations team have new messaging for the next quarterly report?
  • Does the new campaign impact the advocacy issues your government relations team is tackling?
  • Are operations committed to making marketing a reality on a day-to-day level?
  • Is the C-suite aligned with how you measure success?
  • Is sales using the content you created? Or are they using what they’re comfortable with instead?
  • Can your IT team even create that microsite you’ve proposed?

Unfortunately, there’s no quick fix for cross-department collaboration challenges. The reality is it requires more human-to-human communication and conversation. It can’t be fixed via a memo from the CEO or an employee town hall meeting. It can’t be fixed with a steel cage wrestling match between the CMO, the CIO, and the CSO either. What it requires is a fundamental shift in marketing strategy. And marketing cannot be the sole owner and creator.

This may seem obvious but it’s become abundantly clear, to both employees and customers, that more often than not, “omnichannel strategies” really mean “consistency across a few different-channel strategies.” Let’s start creating true omnichannel strategies that address all of the channels available to us.

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