Corporate comms Archives - The Rubicon Agency

The Rubicon Agency In Corporate comms, Enterprise demand generation, Programme planning

Is instigating a salesforce feeding frenzy so last season?

How the rules of engagement are changing.

It’s often alluded that sales teams are ‘coin operated’ and the single biggest motivator are pound/dollar signs. Although this is a very large brush to tar all tech sales teams with, there are clear advantages for marketers who have a very single-minded sales arm that they need to motivate or influence. But the question that has to be asked is, are these types of initiatives past their sell by date with the movement away from volume product sales?

SPIF (Sales Promotion Incentive Fund) campaigns have been traditionally used as a catalyst to boost a specific product, solution or service either to hit end of quarter/year sales targets or to provide stimulated demand for a new offering. Now that buyer sprawl has permeated outside the IT function into other business units such as marketing and HR, and conscious efforts have been made to sell into the boardroom, are product pushes now becoming constrained to traditional IT buyers?

Well in the purest sense, yes. In order to push through last minute deals requires a number of proverbial stars to align:

Product knowledge: The buyer needs to be up-to-speed with the technology and how it can impact the business. Lack of understanding or a more complex offering will increase lead times, size of decision maker groups and will ultimately not be suitable for a SPIF type campaign.

Imminent need: Technology purchases aren’t an impulse buy. The product, solution or service needs to already be on the radar of the prospect and preferably the vendor in question is already on the shortlist for a proposal.

Low risk: This ties into the above 2 points. Large scale, large ticket, transformative solutions are just too risk-laden to be purchased on a whim. Sure, they can tie into a longer term incentive programme but not in the ‘stack ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap’ mould of quarterly incentive schemes.

Funding: Budget cycles may be preventative to purchase so flexible funding or an Opex led model may be required to close the deal when funds aren’t readily available. If this isn’t an option then don’t be surprised if the deal falls flat.
So, if this technique has a captive audience, the traditional SPIF model needs to be re-engineered to reward sales teams that push technology solutions with longer lead times, more diverse and elevated decision maker groups which also have larger associated price tags. As we know figures and pipeline drive sales teams so instigating a programme of this nature needs to encapsulate a number of hooks to ensure buy-in. Failure to do so will result in an unengaged and unmotivated salesforce that defaults back to box pushing.

Accountability

Attribution modelling now allows complete visibility of the sales pipeline and the relevant touch point the prospect has received on along the way. By implementing such a transparent pipeline allows sales teams to be compensated even when lead times span over several quarters.

Short-term reward vs long-term pay-off

Like football managers, sales people are judged on results. Failure to meet quotas or quarterly benchmarks can be detrimental to their job prospects. Being able to change mindsets and focus from quick sales wins to longer term account penetration is no easy feat. But, if positioned correctly and sales teams adopt the vision then the rewards can prove plentiful and frequent.

Championing success

Recognition can be a potent tool on a number of levels. Kudos amongst peers shouldn’t be underestimated, by positioning members of the organisation as sales champions not only demonstrates campaign success, it also embeds a sense of aspiration coupled with a dose of healthy competition amongst co-workers “if they can achieve this then so can I”.

Ownership

Unlike selling point products to IT (with limited emotional attachment associated to them), the boardroom is completely different sales environment altogether. Being able to talk the language of business can deepen relationships, further embed the tech vendor into the organisation and open the door to future opportunities. The golden goose scenario is one where sales teams aspire to be, so once they have a foot in the door ensuring ownership and involvement is paramount.

To understand how to maximise the effectiveness of your internal sales programmes talk to The Rubicon Agency and see how sales enablement can be tailored to your organisation.

The Rubicon Agency In Corporate comms, Sales enablement

How to ensure internal adoption

In the realm of Technology marketing, influencing internal stakeholders can be a completely different beast to marketing to external channels.

Although a captive audience, the internal workforce requires a more emotive approach to changing perceptions, inspiring a following or rallying around a cause. Although a little crude, the tried and trusted method of stick and carrot does have its place in short term adoption strategy, but does it embed the longer term emotional commitment required for truly revolutionary initiatives?

Take for example, a transformation change in company direction, one where the organisation is re-inventing itself to the market, and as a by-product, requires a seismic cultural and behavioural recalibration of its staff. In this instance, incentives would achieve initial buy-in, but would it carry the emotional weight to embed a permanent change? Aided by natural churn and a revamped hiring policy the organisation could achieve the required internal posture over a period of time, but to mobilise rapid adoption of new models and mindsets requires a different approach altogether.

Below are 5 of the threads you should consider within a successful employee engagement programme. Of course, you can develop and adopt hybrid combinations that combine a selection of options below:

Hearts and minds

Incentives or compulsory on-boarding may drive raw numbers, but does it tap into the emotional and intellectual appeals of the workforce? Winning hearts and minds around a clear objective/aspiration aligns the organisations goals with individuals which should instil long-term support, commitment and advocacy.

Collaborative & empowered

Such programmes are often the brain child of senior business leaders, but to truly maximise buy-in and to improve success, employees desire to be empowered to provide feedback that will shape and evolve the programme for the good of the company…and the workforce.

The power of one

In large enterprise organisations individual contribution can seem as pointless when looking at the bigger picture. Harnessing individual efforts, rewarding small wins and embedding a degree of ownership all contributes to the sum of the parts being greater than the whole.

Being informed

Communication is key, being kept up to date with the latest information to make informed choices Is critical to the onboarding process. Ill-informed employees will feel alienated and not part of the initiative.

WIIFM

All the above are ingredients for success but most importantly are the benefits to the individuals. What’s in it for me? What’s the hook, what’s the driving factor to me engaging with the initiative? If the benefits are thinly veiled or non-existent, then success is likely to be compromised.

To help shape your next workforce engagement programme talk to The Rubicon Agency to ensure your programme resonates with all levels of the business.

The Rubicon Agency In Corporate comms, Miscellaneous, Our industry

Are the geeks now calling the marketing shots?

Geeks calling the marketing shots blog header

Information and insight has been widely recognised as the new oil within organisations, but has this movement towards ‘big data’ led to an evolution in the DNA of the modern marketer?

Historically, marketers hail back to the golden age of advertising, versed in the art of creativity, punchy headlines and establishing product USPs. The stack ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap philosophy of the early 20th Century spilled into the world of marketing as brands competed for market share.

The next wave of marketing evolution saw a more sophisticated approach to the buyer. Who are they? What are their purchasing triggers? What are their challenges and what do they want to see/hear from us? The birth of CRM saw a more consider approach to selling. Buyer journeys and sales funnels were more closely scrutinised. The age of analytics and accountability had well and truly arrived.

Fast forward to current day. Data has become invaluable and marketing is now a highly reactive and informed beast. Marketing communications are user led with interactions happening every few minutes, instead of weeks or months. Automation of marketing operations has meant content is predetermined and triggered by a set of rules. So, who sets these rules? Well marketers do.

But, here’s the rub, has the pendulum of the marketers skill set totally swung from right brain to left brain bias? On first glance, it appears so.

The next generation marketer

How many marketing jobs are now advertised specifying in-depth knowledge of CRM, automation and analytics platforms as an essential skill? How many marketing graduates are now equipped with some degree of coding acumen? The answer to both is the vast majority.

This begs the question, is there still a place for traditional know-how? Are skills such as the identifying the 7P’s, SOSTAC, acquisition and retention strategies, audience profiling and creative nous now redundant? Clearly not, but if left unchecked a decline in these skills can leave marketing campaigns exclusively dependant on data and low on ideas.

Machine learning, AI and Big data can’t be ignored and it would be foolhardy to do so. All provide organisations with unprecedented levels of customer insight that 20 years ago would have been impossible to collect, let alone analyse. This raft of information flooding into the business has, in its own right, cannibalised the role of the marketer. Being able to analyse and action data is a unique skill and one that should be embraced, but here is the million-dollar question. Should organisations be focusing exclusively on employing the new wave of marketing ‘geek’ at the expense of more traditional practitioners?

What’s the trade off?

A purely analytical approach to marketing will ultimately be number driven. The movement through the sales funnel is scoring based, attribution modelling can determine channel, persona and collateral hot beds and data can be mined to give the campaign the greatest chance of success, but does ‘all this science’ come at a cost? Ultimately yes, referring to the left brain, right brain balancing act, analytics informs and drives marketing but it doesn’t create the silver bullets that ultimately convert prospects to customers require a completely different type of marketer.

Yes, the ‘geek’ marketers are here to stay but it would be marketing suicide to give them exclusive power to call the marketing shots while ignoring or even replacing traditional skillsets.

Take a look at our quick guide to discover how content can be more ‘killer’ and less ‘filler’.

The Rubicon Agency In Corporate comms, Programme planning, Thought leadership

Killer content for technology marketing

Somewhere between quality and quantity there’s a point at which content can be more ‘killer’ than filler’.

A point at which content can fulfil its proper role as a bridge between broadcast marketing propositions and customer acquisition.

Finding that point requires objectivity bordering on ruthlessness.

When marketing began embracing the power of content in the new digital age, the initial challenge seemed to be creation and curation. Now, it seems there’s no shortage of content flowing from a multitude of channels towards a market that appears to be drowning rather than waving.

As the enabler of the digital marketing age, the technology sector not only has ‘paternal’ rights to its content distribution capabilities but should also be one of its biggest beneficiaries. Let’s face it, technology marketing is different. It needs all the help it can get in order to penetrate extended decision making groups; align with buying cycles; provide clarity on complex technical arguments, and translate innovations into ‘must-have’ market benefits.

Content objectivity begins with an audit of everything you have that falls into the content spectrum – from a white paper to a vision manifesto and everything else between. If you’ve read the best-selling book ‘The life-changing magic of tidying’ by Marie Kondo you’ll realise that with the right method and mindset, any mountain of accumulation (in this case, content) can be conquered.

There is a method and a mindset that can be applied to creating killer content. It includes a recognition of ten typical reasons to conduct an audit; a checklist of sixteen essentials; four alternative assessment enablers and four key criteria for creation and curation. And if that sounds complicated, the good news is you don’t have to do it yourself. In fact, you’re more likely to get the best result if you leave it to a specialist.

Find out more by downloading The Rubicon Agency free guide: ‘Killer or Filler – assessing content success for technology marketers’.

The Rubicon Agency In Account based marketing, Corporate comms, Digital lead generation, Programme planning, Sales enablement

Why technology marketing needs mojo

Somewhere between ‘influence’ and ‘sex appeal’ there’s another dictionary definition of mojo that could be applied to technology marketing:

‘A quality that attracts people to your technology and makes your product / service / solution / portfolio / brand successful and full of energy.’

Technology may be a considered purchase for organisations but mojo has the power to create that first spark of interest amongst business and technical decision makers. In a multi-media, multi-message world, that spark is vital.

So, what does mojo actually mean in marketing terms? If you believe marketing is a combination of left and right brain thinking then mojo is definitely generated from the right hemisphere. By generating the right combination of language, images and concepts, ‘mojo creativity’ can tap into whatever is most resonant to an influencer or buyer- whether that’s aspiration, frustration or any other trigger.

Marketing magic isn’t just window dressing

Make no mistake though, mojo isn’t a creative veneer that’s thinly applied to heavy layers of content. Mojo begins with a breadth and depth understanding of your technology proposition followed by what could be described as a creative ‘curation’ of content for your target audience.

With mojo, it’s easier to compel a line of business manager who may be more interested in collaboration than cloud-enabled communications or a CIO who’s equally bothered by both. Combine their curated content under an overarching campaign idea and you begin to influence and motivate a decision-making group. Mojo even has the power to set your brand or portfolio apart when product features can’t.

It seems simplistic to think of technology as a non-emotional purchase for organisations when at the receiving end of marketing content there are people. People can be drawn to content when it appears to have been crafted by someone who had almost read their mind. People also depend on a filtering process that allows them to focus on what they believe is essential and valuable and yet their interest can be piqued by content that has mojo – especially when it’s closely aligned with their care abouts.

Another definition of mojo is ‘a magic charm or spell’ – as if it were something which mysteriously happens. It doesn’t. To work effectively, content mojo requires extra effort and rigour, and a hybrid set of skills that fall somewhere between ‘creative’ and ‘analytical’. But when you do get your mojo working, the added attraction for your target audience can transform marketing success.

To find out if your content could do with a liberal sprinkling of fairy dust, register for our unique M4 content audit.