Demand Gen BizBlogging about the Demand Generation Business

I hear a lot about interruption marketing but I really have trouble with its definition, especially when it comes to emails. I can have a relationship with a company, subscribe to their email blasts, like their content – but when that email hits my inbox it still requires me to quickly scan it and see if it is worthy of a closer look. If it is, I then choose to either invest the time to review it now or later. If it isn’t I delete it, ignore it or maybe unsubscribe. I apply this same process to every email that hits my inbox whether the email is from a close or trusted friend or a seller of Viagra.® I am constantly “interrupted” by email, phone calls, door knocking, text messages, etc. etc. Interruption is simply part of my life and likely yours as well.

To try and reposition interruption we as Marketers believe that we need to first establish a relationship with the recipient of our emails. I have heard the argument that an email from a “trusted friend” gets your attention and that as a brand or a business we can create this trust with a recipient over time. The belief goes that once we have the trust our emails will be welcomed and our content happily consumed. Lets be honest here, a brand or a business is not a trusted friend no matter how long I have been on their subscriber list. People are friends, a dog is a friend, but Tide® is not my friend.

Perhaps the issue is not about interruption, but about relevance. At that moment I scan an email to see if it is worthy of a closer look, its content is what is going to get me to pay attention. If it’s relevant and meaningful to me then I deem it worthy, if not it gets ignored.

I recently wrote about the Google Grants program. You can read about it here. We decided to do a small experiment and sent out an email to 100 non-profit organizations. In the email we described the Google Grants program, how they can benefit and how our company is willing to provide some pro bono work. We didn’t have a relationship with any of these non-profits and they did not know our company. We got a 60% response rate. By any metric, a huge success.

Why did this happen? Because the message was incredibly meaningful and relevant to them. The majority of this group did not care if they never had a relationship with our company or the fact that they never subscribed. They responded because the message and the content had meaning and offered a solution to a problem common among their group.

Relevance and meaning for the recipient is the only thing that matters. As Marketers we think that sending an email without first getting permission is somehow an interruption and therefore wrong. But in fact if you take the time to really understand the challenges of your customers and have a real solution to their problems – go ahead and interrupt them.

Marketing Automation is hot. As a tool, it is as important to a Marketer as a saw is to a Carpenter. But, as a Carpenter wanting to purchase a saw - the most difficult decision he or she may have to make in choosing one vendor over another is what the color should be. Why? Because standards have been established in the tool industry. If I decide I need a circular saw, I know exactly how the product should work - I pull the trigger, the blade spins and then I can cut my material. If I want to purchase a circular saw, I go to the tool isle of my local hardware store and check the specifications on each vendor’s product.  After I do a comparison I see that the products are virtually identical… except for the color.

Not so in the Marketing Automation industry. There are at least 85 vendors that claim to offer some form of a Marketing Automation product. Check out the list for yourself. Each vendor defines Marketing Automation a little differently. Some say personalized emails and auto-responders qualify them as a Marketing Automation product vendor. Others say landing-pages with contact forms make them a contender. Some are CRM vendors trying to morph their product and others are simply email service providers. As a Marketer trying to decide the best Marketing Automation product to purchase (because of course we want to purchase the best for the budget we have), it is almost impossible to make a really well informed decision.

Forester Research recently published a report that narrowed the list of vendors down to 10. I think they did a good job. Check out the report here.

In an effort to try and further understand what we should be looking for in a Marketing Automation product and how to better define a “standard” for what a Marketing Automation product should offer - we did a small experiment. We visited each of the 10 vendor’s web sites from the Forester Research report and gathered a list of their product features as described by them. The list contained a total of 350 words which we then entered into a word cloud. Here is the visual representation of those words (the most frequently mentioned words are those that are most prominent):

Then we adjusted the word cloud to only show the 10 most frequent words. Here are the results:

Maybe these 10 words can serve as a starting point for a “standard” on what qualifies as a Marketing Automation product. If your product does not offer these 10 features, maybe you should be in different isle of the marketing tool store?

Google has a really great program for non-profit organizations called Google Grants™. It provides non-profits with up to $10,000 a month in free advertising using the Google AdWords™ program. Check out the details here.

Non-profits can use these advertising dollars to inform people about there cause, attract donations and find volunteers. I applaud Google for making this program available to non-profits organizations, of which many are challenged today to find both more funding and more volunteers.

A $120,000 per year AdWord budget is big, so big that if I had access to a budget that size (without any risk) for my company, I would be able to generate a ton of incremental business. It stands to reason then, the non-profits could also benefit substantially from this program. The problem is that running an AdWord campaign requires an investment of time, people resources, program knowledge and other assets (like landing pages, lead-management systems, inquiry routing processes, etc.) to make it work. Funny thing is, all these are things that most non-profits don’t have.

A colleague of my by the name of Colleen, recently took it upon herself to address this issue and provide some pro bono work to help non-profits take advantage of the Google Grants program. She is helping with the application, creating the ads, developing the key words list, designing the landing page, mapping out the follow-up processes and a whole lot more. She says “it’s all about the good karma”. I think she’s right. Without her help, the non-profits would likely not be able to take advantage of the program.

Pro bono is Latin and means “for the good of the public” and is generally used to describe professional work undertaken voluntarily and without payment as a public service. Colleen as a professional Marketer is using her skills and experiences to help non-profit organizations. Pro bono work is not new as Lawyers have a long standing tradition of providing a certain amount of their time to assist those that do not have the skills or resources to navigate the legal system. What is new and interesting is that the Google Grants program creates a framework of resource requirements and complexity (like the legal system) that may be best navigated by a professional Marketer not a layperson. I think this is an opportunity for Marketers everywhere to lend a hand.

Maybe as Marketers (and humans) we all need to volunteer some of our time and provide pro bono work to help these non-profit organizations take advantage of this program. Maybe in the past it was unclear where and how you could volunteer by using your unique skills and experiences as a Marketer. I think the Google Grants program might be the opportunity you have been waiting for. Take a look at the program and see if you can help. I guarantee there is a non-profit organization in your area that will be pleased you did. Good karma for all.

A friend of mine was telling me about a great new sales person he just hired. He told me he was expensive, but he was sure he would be a big contributor to the sales revenue this year. That got me thinking. “Expensive” in his world is going to mean a six figure salary, plus commission and bonuses. Let’s conservatively guess a total investment of $150K for the first year. I know from working with him that their Demand Generation pipeline is just barely supporting their current sales group… in other words when the new sales person starts, he is going to spend most of his time trying to find leads rather than closing deals. Question: would it be better to invest the $150k into Demand Generation to create qualified leads that can be then routed to a sales person to close?

I recently had the opportunity to dig deep in to another company’s Demand Generation processes with the goal to establish some benchmarks for the ROI. What I found might help answer the question. There are some similarities with my friend’s company, so I feel the comparison could be relevant for him. If I take the benchmark model I created and plug in his average value of a sale of $50,000 and use the annual cost of the sales person at $150,000, these are the results:

1.    The cost of acquiring a new customer through ONLY the activities of a Sales Person is $19,637
2.    The cost of acquiring a new customer through ONLY the activities of a Search Marketing is $7,846

Both numbers are big but the difference between them is what tells the real story. Based on this model, if you invest $150,000 in a sales person and let him or her generate their own leads, they would close about 8 sales for a 255% ROI. Spend the $150,000 in only search marketing and then route qualified leads to the sales person and you would close 19 sales with a 637% ROI.

While the model is not exact science and there are lots of factors that could change the outcome, it provides enough information to at least ponder the question: Should I invest in mores sales or marketing resources? Sales people are absolutely necessary for any organization, but working towards making your sales teams more efficient and profitable through Demand Generation activities might be a strategy worth a closer look.