Why Customer management is an essential lens for all your marketing investment decisions – Maybe not the way you think about customer management technology
The constant row for resources is invariable driven around the new versus established customers or communications, versus demand generation or even infrastructure investments for lower cost communications going forward (social media, CRM), versus marketing for the now. These debates are hardened by the skills and philosophies of those in each camp (hunters for new accounts and farmers for established business), infrastructure builders for CRM and demand generation swat teams for the now.
With hyper-limited resources and far more choices to select from it is too easy for these camps to selectively choose variables that suit their argument or position. For the CMO and senior marketers the issue should evolve around some shared and simple truths.
If you have ever had to handle these debates then we believe we will be seeing even more of them going forward because of the following 6 facts: Each should be shared by all so you can at least discuss what the trade-offs really involve. We cannot expect to get through this chaotic environment and make rational decisions without an agreed set of truths.
Universes stabilize
The number of BtB influencers in the US has not changed dramatically in a number of years. This is especially true in the mid market and enterprise segments and naturally lends itself to the thesis of build big CRM’s and own the targets. Our hesitation here is that while the universes have stabilized the target’s desire for direct communications is nearly half of what it was three or four years ago.
There is no golden arrow
We track thousands of potential sales marketing combinations in the INE tools. There is no golden arrow. For example, if Google is 15% of all choices that work, how you execute (content, sequencing and pairing) can move this from 2% to over 25% of combined choices. Accepting that no one choice is the only choice a target uses is critical to recognizing that this is about choice and not absolutes. This equally applies to the events, social media, online, print, analysts and sales choices. For example, of those that actually purchase direct at least 20% of them “shop” in the indirect channel. Even those who might be highly event driven will not just use one type of event, so even with the most narrow of choices there are no absolutes.
The same is true for content, sequencing or pairing situations. We have to accept that with targets choosing an average of 7 choices in the purchase cycle and probably 5 types of content that we cannot choose them all. The debate is over the mix. For example, it is logical to be attracted to new forms of media or to abandon aspects like print, however customers rarely behave with such black and white intentions.
Targets in and targets out (for awhile at least)
In collaborative and high consideration type purchases, while there may well be core influencers, this is nearly never a situation where one influencer is the sole decision maker. Even on devices such as smart phones in the mid market and enterprise, other influencers have a percent of important impact. CRM systems are great at sustaining the core influencer, but rarely are they built to capture or execute communications to these in and out influencers such as the line of business manager (LOB) or the CXO target.
Purchase cycles
It is far too simple to see purchase as an event when, in fact, it is a set of interconnected activities and portions of a journey for multiple targets. This sentence many appear very obvious, but it has some important assumptions we need to work towards solving: [1] It isn’t just one set of activities that work all the way through; [2] targets dance in and out of specific forms of sales and marketing so we have to tie pieces together; [3] if there are multiple targets we need to set out to get the pieces in place that they share (consciously or subconsciously). The bottom line is no single choice can do all this so we have to find a way to cooperate
Too many choices means target a mean
Seven. Remember that is the prototypical number of sales and/or marketing choices a customer takes in their journey. Every marketing plan should ask which 7 they are using.
And/and not either/or
This sounds awkward but we have to make sure our activities do sets of the following portions of the journey. No matter where we feel or believe we are, activities need multiple angles of value.
- Builds leads and delivers follow up from sales
- It is shared by two or more of the key targets in the journey
- Activities that work both for cultivating and for hunting
We only ask that before the resource wars start for 2010 that we sit down and understand where we can better cooperate with each other. The best customer management technology systems and processes focus on the customer’s journey and needs.
