Demand creation is...well...demanding.  Marketing teams are often responsible for the majority of demand creation activities and tactics.  That responsibility translates into pressure; pressure to ‘fill-the-funnel’ with new, high-quality business leads while spending wisely and showing measurable results.

Adding to the chorus of pseudo-sympathetic violins, let’s layer on the complexity of creating demand for a relational (i.e. account-based) sales model which lacks the immediate performance feedback of a transactional sales (direct response) model.

Marketer or Firestoker?

Combine the above with the other strategic and operational challenges within the demand function and you’ve got an all-consuming marketing environment...eagerly snatching up resources.  

As such, marketers can quickly become the boilerman tirelessly (and sometimes blindly) focused on feeding fuel into a hungry sales engine.

[Note: steam train metaphor comes from watching an inordinate amount of Thomas the Tank Engine lately.]

The Problem | Funnel Blindness - A Symptom Of Demand (hyper)Creation
With so much focus on demand creation, marketers can lose strategic visibility into what their demand engine is actually producing.  However marketers, responsibly looking for a quantitative measure of their efforts, often turn to funnel metrics to provide key insights.  

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy demand funnel and waterflow metrics as much as the next marketer, but they are aggregate measurements.  As a consequence, these metrics - taken without other analytical perspectives - run the risk of carrying aggregate-analysis bias.

Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls (Seriously)
Again, thinking about demand creation for a relational or account-based selling model, we need more than just aggregate views of our funnel; massed numbers of inputs (leads), transitions, and outputs (opportunities/deals) only lead to general theories...not causal relationships.

We cannot optimally refine the strategic components of our marketing mix, message, or market approach with aggregate metrics.

The results we see in our ‘funnel math’ are directly related (with statistical significance) to the attributes, contexts, and motivations of the leads (and their associated inquiries) we feed into the top of the funnel.  That’s no surprise...and certainly not worth of a post (or your click)...but it is hard to measure.

The Inquiry Taxonomy - A Solution For Funnel Blindness
I developed the ‘The Inquiry Taxonomy’ to provide the necessary level of visibility and provide actionable insight into our demand funnel fuel.

The Inquiry Taxonomy is a simple but wildly insightful piece of analysis that organizes inquiries into key, actionable classifications.

How It Works
Quite simply, an Inquiry Taxonomy identifies the type of leads your demand activities have generated and visually aligns them to a position within a buying or sales cycle.

Operational Elements	Insights
Components: Sales-aligned taxonomy Marketing campaign/lead sourcing methodology	Analysis: Data mining from CRM, MAP, etc. (must capture status of leads/accounts) Taxonomy calculations
Inputs: Inquiries captured within a given time period Campaign/lead source attached to inquiries	Outputs: Clear, unique classifications Key taxonomy endpoints (furthest level of depth)

Making It Actionable

Moving this analysis beyond a pretty visual, there are two key outcomes from this taxonomy analysis:

1. Mix Effectiveness - Visual representation of your marketing mix which can be easily rationalization against your goals and objectives.
2. Demand Management - Each key endpoint of the taxonomy is an area for specific operational focus for driving targeted groups further into your sales/buying funnel (e.g. tactics like nurture, tele-qualification, and targeted content.).

Within these key outcomes we have information that can be immediately actioned with our marketing and sales processes...and actioned with extremely valuable context (e.g. customer versus prospect messaging).

Give it a try and let me know how the tool works/doesn’t work for your particular industry, organization, or marketing culture.

Marketers are busy. Email marketing is a particularly relevant example of marketing-production-overload; massed demand, retention, informational, and nurture campaigns are significant contributors to the tens-of-billions emails sent on a daily basis (80-85% of which is considered SPAM*).
 
With such incredible volumes of emails, it only stands to reason that we’re going to have some small mistakes...a broken link here, bad contextual reference there.
 
But what if this isn’t always an operational issue?  Can small mistakes be a really BIG deal?
 
Small Mistakes. Strategic Indictments.
As Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval detail in their book The Power of Small: Why Little Things Make All the Difference, small can be big.  The authors tell the story of New York City restaurateur Danny Meyer who found that, “you can’t fool people” and thoughtful attention to the small details is required for competitive success. 

I believe the spirit of that concept is illustrated in the following email from LinkedIn.

As you may notice, there is a big disconnect between the intended and actual message.  Adding a skill to my LinkedIn profile will differentiate me.  But I’ll be ‘differentiated’ through my inclusion in a group of 582,014 professionals?  Wait. What?

This 'be one-in-a-million' message is so smirk-worthy that it's hard to see the root issue.

Sure you could change the message to something like, 'Did you know that [x number] of people are searching for people with 'online marketing' skills every [time period]'…but that's just addressing the symptom.

Not The Best Experience. But What's This BIG Problem?
The message is inauthentic and, consequently, blinds marketers to the small, tactical nuances so critical to creating relevancy.

A Case for Inauthenticity

The ‘Literal’ Message And Its Context

 LinkedIn is positioning the message as a value to members; explicitly stated that adding such skills 'makes it easier to find [your profile]'.  The implicit context of the message; the more skills you add the greater your chances of ‘getting paid’ with a flood of job/consulting/investment opportunities...boom!

 What I See

 The reality, very likely conscious, is that LinkedIn wants you to fill their system with revenue-generating information.That information, which only its users can provide, is a key driver in their advertising and, likely, a selling point in their ‘hiring solutions’ products.**

Far Fetched Theory Or Likely Reality?
There’s a very good chance that the LinkedIn sales people are quoting similar numbers (plus, I’m guessing, some wildly interesting quantitative analysis we don’t see) to their prospective advertisers and hiring professionals.

My theory prompted me to review the volume of unsolicited email messages** from LinkedIn in January - March of the last three years.  Below are the results (note: LinkedIn’s IPO was in May of 2011).

Should I Stop Using LinkedIn?
No, that is not case I am making.  The value I have currently found with LinkedIn still outweighs their use of my information and the deletion of a handful of emails.

As a student of marketing, I love this example when used as a case study to check our marketing bravados.  

We need to be honest about our intentions and find ways to authentically meet objectives by returning true value.

From Platitude To Action
Rather than a ‘This Benefits You [starburst]’ campaign perhaps LinkedIn could reward members for completing their profiles.  

Continuing with that concept, LinkedIn could establish an exchange rate for profile information and certain premium features.  

For example, members filling out x number of skills and actively maintaining them would receive complete visibility into views of their profile for 14 days or x number of Inmails.

Sure, this takes some operational investment, but is most definitely a better way to engage the foundation of LinkedIn’s revenue streams...its users.

Notes:
*    Cisco IronPort Threat Operations Center - http://www.senderbase.org/index
**   LinkedIn 2011 10-K Annual Report - http://investors.linkedin.com/releases.cfm
*** Unsolicited emails - to define ‘unsolicited emails’ I excluded individually variable messages such as invitation requests, direct messages (and InMail), and subscribed groups.

 

 

Just a few weeks ago, in an amazing twist of fate, I ran into Rihanna while shopping at Target. That’s right Grammy-winning, megastar Rihanna!

When you see something so memorable, what do you do?  Take a picture of course...and that’s what I did.  With total respect and class, without a hint of paparazzi, I took the following picture.

Fine, fine.  You got me.  It wasn’t in-the-flesh Rihanna...just a massed collection of underselling, overstocked, Rihanna-branded fragrances.  

Or, perhaps more correctly, a branding nightmare.

Brand Overexposure - A Lesson From 1994
As solidly argued by Al Ries and Jack Trout in their perpetually relevant book The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, line extensions can be powerfully negative influences on the long term strength and clarity of a brand.

I see the spirit of that law manifested in the Wall Of Rihanna Clearance; a brand-extension initiative only providing short term ‘value’ but, more seriously, carries potentially long term harm.

Wait, wait.  We’re not talking about some commoditized consumer product...this is Rihanna.  Rihanna is a talented, award winning entertainer with international popularity that has sold millions of records/downloads...the rules of Ries and Trout don’t apply.  Right?

Not necessarily. 

Risk - What You Don’t Know And Who's Protecting The Celebrities

Admittedly celebrity can sell.  Tying recognized and trusted public figures to relevant brands can bring credibility and create demand for products/services.

The purchase-motivating popularity of celebrity, and especially sustained growth, is extremely fragile; subject to a wild, dynamic collection of outside forces like consumer taste, competitors, socioeconomic trends, etc.  

When considering the development of a fragile brand, like celebrity, marketers need to understand the one critical risk-point:

What we don’t know will be more impactful than what we know (or think we know).

I imagine that the people managing these star brands are smart, creative people that carefully review different brand/endorsement/merchandising opportunities.

However, my key point is that we truly do not know what affects popularity and over what time frame.  Apart from the dramatic consequences of a negative ‘front page event’, a decline in popularity may be due to a slow erosion by micro-events.

Back to our earlier example, it’s likely that a consumer sees both the product AND Rihanna on clearance at Target.  What are the collateral effects of those thoughts?  How are the perceptions of ‘cool’, ‘exclusivity’, and ‘glamour’ affected by seeing a star dominate a clearance rack?

Brand Clarity

Eventually, without thoughtful management, the defining vision of ‘Rihanna’ could become fragmented.  Is Rihanna coconut water? Gucci? Discounted fragrance? NIVEA? Barbados?
 

And what could happen to that fragmented brand when confronted with the next generation of amazing entertainers?

Granted, my thoughts come from an outsider to the world of entertainment and celebrity marketing.  A comment on the realities of building and sustaining a music industry brand may best come from an insider...say...Billy Joel:
 

Today I am your champion, I may have won your hearts
But I know the game, you'll forget my name
I won't be here in another year
If I don't stay on the charts

The Entertainer
Billy Joel

My marketer’s takeaway: put down the we’re-so-popular-we-can-sell-anything ego and pick up some perspective (i.e. re-read your copy of The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing).

 

For many of us ‘tis the season for strategic planning...and it’s much less like sugar plums and gum drops and more like budget battles and resource land-grabs.  

It’s not all bad, we certainly enjoy skipping through the wild-flowered fields of strategy, delighting in our own brilliance.  However, our romp generally creates some kind of operational burden or conflict.  Our new (again it’s safe to say ‘brilliant’) ideas have to be funded, resourced, and executed...from a limited set of constrained resources in very high demand.

In preparation for corporate battle we done armor, gather our allies and head into battle.

My Ideas. Your Ideas.  Our Resources.

Inevitably, our planning process involves rationalizing our concepts against our available/planned resources...and those of our colleagues.  

As a result, there are likely to be some strong negotiations and maybe even some maneuvering.  However, the real stress falls on the core groups usually charged with executing these grand visions; like our IT, development, reporting, and design teams.

One of those main points of stress is getting ‘the business’ to understand what can reasonably be accomplished with the resources available.

From small to large business, resource managers and executives (especially in IT/development) struggle with getting business owners to understand the concept of limited resources.
Throughout my career I have seen some very creative and complex solutions for detailing/illustrating the delta between business demands and available resource hours.  

At some point, however, those solutions - independent of their technical superiority - lose their ability to effectively communicate a very simple problem:

We have more work than we have available time.

Why This May Happen

My belief is that we [business owners] are eventually overwhelmed with the technical tools of project/resource planning - Gnatt and burn down charts, critical pathing, process maps, etc. - and reach our cognitive limits of understanding.  

Consequently, resourcing devolves into micro-discussions of time, people, and efficiency (ask an IT professional how many times they’ve been critically challenged by a marketer on ‘how long’ a task should take).

My Concept...And Super-Simple Solution
So, here we are in our annual planning, left with two frustrated, opposing sides and seemingly no mutually productive way to communicate our operational realities (no, no...’happy hour’ is just the application of a Band-Aid to wet skin).

Time for the Ducks and Buckets!

In my experience, when we’ve reached such a stalemate it’s time for kindergarten-like solutions...we’ve got to oversimplify rather than reach for spreadsheets, Project, ERPs, etc.

Ducks and Buckets is my participative and physical process of high-level, organizational prioritization and resource planning.

As Chip and Dan Heath discuss in Made to Stick a tangible, physical exercise or story can powerfully deliver a concept.  Extending that concept to the unglamorous process of prioritization a physical process delivers ‘stickiness’ that rote rows of spreadsheets or presentation slides simply cannot.

The Players: Ducks. Buckets (And Blackholes). 

 

1. Ducks - represent available resources; FTE, contractor, outsourced, consultants, etc. over a period of time.
   1. For longer term planning, the ducks are better used as a representation of productivity - which can be flexibly adapted to standards of the business (e.g. a week of development) - than a person.
   2. For example, one FTE over two fiscal quarters may be represented by four ducks.
2. Buckets (in various sizes) - represent the resource demands of the business; the larger the bucket (work) the more ducks (resources) it takes to fill (complete).
   1. Especially important for organizations that operate as strategic business units and shared services.
   2. Blackholes - special buckets representing resources consumed by normal business operations:
      1. Issue investigation
      2. Meetings
      3. Routine responsibilities (e.g. audits, code review, etc.)

Blackholes? Sure I’m willing to admit its a little dramatic, but it represents resources sucked into, often critical, activities that are difficult to quantify (light escaping).

The Simple Process:  Purchase Ducks and Buckets. Put Ducks In Buckets.  Discusss.
Okay, that may be an oversimplification, but that is really all that is needed to have a pretty meaningful, high-level discussion of organizational priorities.  

Beginning the exercise is usually a process of defining the Ducks and Buckets and then followed by allocations into:

1. Projects in process.
2. Project planned.
3. Blackholes.

From there a facilitator would lead a discussion on where and how to allocate the remaining (should there be any) ducks.  

Any conflicts, restrictions, or allocation issues demand the group discuss and, importantly, play out the following options;

1. Ducks need to be physically moved from buckets (i.e. re-prioritization).
2. Buckets need to be re-sized (i.e. reduction in scope).
3. Ducks need to be added.
4. Ducks need to be made more efficient; which introduces some level of cost: financial, operational (learning), implementation, etc.

The Result: What It Is. What It Isn't.
This exercise is not intended to solve the operational constraints and conflicts faced by an organization nor is it designed to document projects.  This exercise is meant to have leaders physically face the realities of its operations and tangibly discuss their options.

And, in the right organizational culture, this exercise can be fun.

This type of prioritization exercise allows leaders to move past the mental block of what-resources-do-what and the quicksand effect of detailed project review.  

In doing so, leaders can focus their discussion on how projects and initiatives align with organizational objectives and potential ROI...and that’s how ducks should find their home.

 

 

My Infamous Life promotional pictures: Simon & Schuster

As originally published on Lumension's Corporate Blog - Optimal Security

The Responsibility of Data Ownership and the Care it Demands

Anonymous data isn’t always anonymous...despite our intentions or best efforts.  Just this week, I received an startling reminder of this fact in an email Newsletter from TheLadders CEO, Marc Cenedella.  

Through the contents of that email, TheLadders may be leaking the exact, personally-identifiable salaries of its customers (likely without their knowledge).

If so, this isn’t a mistaken release of sensitive data but rather an oversight of data management and process.

The Vehicle For Leaking Salary Information

TheLadders (theladders.com) is a online, paid subscription resource that assists high-earning professionals ('$100K+ positions') in their career/job search. The Monday, August 15th edition of Marc Cenedella’s newsletter was a positively themed message reminding business professionals and job seeks that ‘companies are hiring’ (in spite of our, still uncertain, economic times).  Marc supports those claims with data collected from TheLadders' own hiring records (quote and screenshot below):

In the interest of "show, don't tell", here's just a sample of 50 of the jobs accepted already this month by your fellow subscribers here at TheLadders

Marc then goes on to list the impressive collection of job titles and salaries for those 50 subscribers (screenshot below).

Totally Harmless.  Totally Anonyous.  Right?  Not Exactly.

As I read through the email I began to see a pattern developing within the set of job titles; some of them were very specific...unique almost.  Additionally, the salaries themselves were very specific; no ranges, no mention by Marc if they were modified from their actual amount.

My initial perception, as I’m sure TheLadders marketing team intended, was that the information was powerfully authentic.

Soon after, however, I began to think that the uniqueness of these titles might be a problem.  What if I knew someone that recently moved positions with one of those unique titles?  I could potentially know their salary.  Taking that thought a step further...what if I’m simply connected to one of those people?  

So I turned to the advanced search on LinkedIn.com and found, what I believe, are some very unsettling results.

TheLadders may be inadvertently releasing the salaries of its customers and the salary ranges/negotiation practices of its recruiting customers.

Tying An Email To A Person’s Salary

Here was my very simple process:

1. Copied titles listed in TheLadders' newsletter that Marc sent.
2. Pasted them into the title field within LinkedIn’s advanced search, selecting ‘Current’.

Using the advanced LinkedIn search, I found several examples of extremely narrow results...including single matches (one person).  Even in examples with larger results set, simply adding a geographic location narrowed results sets to single digits.

(Note: I have intentially blurred the data so as to not continue the potential exposure of individuals/companies and focus instead on the number of results.)

Again, What Could it All Mean?

It is potentially possible to tie salaries provided in a simple TheLadders’ newsletter to personally identifiable information...down to the exact individual.  A little context like location and company is all that is needed to reach near certain accuracy.

Additionally, this same information can be tied to the hiring company which exposes potentially morale damaging salary information throughout an organization.

Marketers, Your Responsibilities Have Widened Exponentially

We [professionals and organizations] are the keepers of an ever increasing set of very sensitive data that, even when we don’t expect it, can cause harm to our customers, audiences, and employees when not treated with extreme care.  This reality has been tangibly manifested in the form of governmental regulation for some industries, but situations such as TheLadders’ email illustrate the need for strict data discipline in every industry.

Our headlines are increasingly dotted with the stories of malicious data breaches by hackers and organized, electronic crime.  As our marketing operations are collecting an increasingly valuable set of data, our systems and processes are now prime targets for attack. Marketing databases provide hackers of wealth of potential victims for their 'social engineering' attacks (e.g. phishing).  

This concern is not a marketing-doomsday prediction it is a very real threat.  

Marketing Systems Have Been Dramatically Breached

In a recent example, marketing email service provider Epsilon ('the world’s largest permission-based email marketing provider' - Epsilon.com) revealed in April that their database had been compromised by hackers.  

Analysis later revealed that 2% of its clients' had been exposed.  A look at the list of companies exposed by the Epsilon breach (SecurityWeek) contains some very well know and respected brands (e.g. Best Buy, Marriott, Capital One).  The theft of email addresses has potentially exposed individuals to socially engineered attacks.  The threat is so real that Epsilon's homepage, four months later, prominently features a message about thwarting such attacks.

Our responsibility as marketers has grown beyond the traditional principle of 'honesty in advertising/messaging'; we must protect the data with we are entrusted.

From a marketing perspective we need to:

1. Identify the sensitivity of data we are using in our marketing activities.
2. Think about the consequences, however unlikely, should that data be misused or used in error.
3. Depending on the answers above: find alternatives that meet our goals but mitigate those risks.

So What Now...Just Do Nothing?

Absolutely not, we have a duty to tell stories and reach audiences with engaging content...we just need to be more careful in our approach.

For example, alternative approaches to Marc’s email could have been:

• Good: Replace the specific title with a general role or type of position
• Better: Replace both the specific title and salary with general role and range of salary
• Even Better: Remove the titles, group into functional areas (e.g. marketing, IT, etc.) and average salary

Any of the above, while not providing the exact same result, would result in comparable efficacy and an equally powerful message...and do so without jeopardizing customers’ privacy.

A Final Note...The Benefit of A Doubt (Hopefully)

I don’t know the full story and there may be some reasonable explanation, perhaps:

• TheLadders team is aware and accepts these risks.
• These aren’t the actual salaries (and that notation was missing from the email; if true, that is an issue in and of itself).
• These customers - individuals and companies - explicitly (i.e. not buried in a EULA) agreed to have this information released.
• People are much more open with their salaries in today’s business climate.
• These aren't the actual people (in spite of our strong evidence)...not every professional is on LinkedIn (although it seems like users of TheLadders would have a higher liklehood to use LinkedIn).

 

I am certainly not an investigative journalist...and at some level I hope I’m wrong.  

In any event, we have to recognize that our users, customers, and visitors are trusting us with their data and our multi-page privacy-policy-manifestos are no excuse for, or defense against, mismanagement or carelessness.

 

 

Arguably, we marketers are not known for our strict adherence to process standardization.  Sure, there are a handful of us fighting for change but a quick survey of our non-marketing colleagues will generally reveal us to be perceived as a collection of wild, fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants professionals.  [Insert any story from an IT professional on trying to get a marketer to understand and follow a change control process].

This perceived-reality can certainly be applied to our marketing reporting and analytics...especially in calculating return on marketing investment (ROMI).

Now...granted we’re really trying here...we’re maturing beyond ‘impressions’ and ‘unaided recall’ into more tangible reporting.  However, in the highly complex environment of relational sales cycles it is easy to get lost in the ever-shifting relationships between leads, accounts, and sales engagements.  We need some structured guidance in our demand generation reporting and return on marketing investment analysis.

Who can help?  Our colleagues in Finance.  

Yes, that’s right Finance, the people that keep trying to teach us the difference between accrual and cash-basis accounting and why invoices ‘found’ after the close of a month are stressful.

How? (If you’re still with me.)  I’ve taken two fundamental financial accounting documents and converted them into powerful demand management tools.

Those Tools are:

1. Lead Balance Sheet
2. Statement of Lead Flows

 

The Lead Balance Sheet

What It Measures
This financial-marketing tool measures the progress of specific leads - generated within a time period - through a demand management process.

What It Solves
Using this tool clears up the ambiguity we typically observe within our data and reports when looking at aggregate masses of leads and their status.  Most importantly, this tool demands that we account for and reconcile our demand generation and demand management processes.

Very simply...what leads came in over a time period and what happen to those leads.

How You Use It
It the spirit of balancing assets against liabilities/equity, this tool is used on a periodic basis to: 

1. Account for the specific outcomes of leads generated.
2. Evaluate the efficiency and strength of a demand management process (i.e. reasons for not balancing, percent of conversions, velocity, etc.)

Statement of Lead Flows

What It Measures
This financial-marketing tool measures the total impact to a prospect base over a given time period through marketing and sales activities (gains and losses).

What It Solves
Managing a prospect base - especially in relational sales - requires careful measurement and analysis of multiple activities (both sales and marketing) over multiple time periods (weeks, months, and quarters).  

This tool consolidates those activities into a manageable set of key measurements to provide an accurate picture of how a prospect base has been affected by operational activities within a given time period.

How You Use It
Operationally, this tool highlights the performance of key sales and marketing activities; especially when measured against forecasted/expected results.  Strategically, the results of this analysis provides important measurements for future forecasts and budgeting.

While this analysis can be performed by itself, it can be powerfully combined with the Lead Balance Sheet to understand operational affect of demand generation efforts toward an organization’s future, marketable prospect base.

 

I know, in a world of ‘big data’, complex attribution, and predictive analytic
s these solutions seem overly simple.  Even I was a little hesitant.  Could financial statement really be applied to dynamic sales/marketing environments?  Surprisingly, I have found these tools to be wildly valuable in bringing once hidden realities to the surface.  Something even complex regressive analytics processes had been missing.

Depending on your data sources and processes you will find that these tools bring valuable information to your analysis and forecasting efforts.

As a note, my examples are illustrative and would likely need some modifications based on the particulars of an organization and its demand generation/management processes.

From GAAP to GARP?

So my fellow marketers...Give Finance a Chance (I’m thinking bumper stickers or T-shirts for that one).  And maybe someday we’ll all unify our marketing measurements under a set of GARP (Generally Accepted Reporting Practices)...or maybe not.  For now, give these tools a try and see what new demand/pipeline visibility you can achieve and new dimensions you can bring to return on marketing investment.