Browsing Tag

ideas

Marketing IS in the Middle: Adam Shapiro

Everyone is in sales, especially marketing or at least marketing is in the middle of the business operations and sales.  Adam Shapiro is a long term sales leader and has spent the last couple of years building out market, product positioning and sales execution models for companies as the President of MS Strategies.  Adam also blogs at Sales Reform School, so check him out, since as a Lawyer turned sales leader he writes some interesting stuff.  Adam provides some interesting views on why Marketing is in the Middle in his thoughts/feedback below.

What marketing roles have you had and in what markets?

I am a sales and marketing process consultant.  For the past four years, I have helped my clients translate their brand and marketing message into conversational tools and processes for collateral, web sites, and one to one conversations.  Most of my clients provide technology tools or services to their customers, but I have also helped consultancies and  more service-oriented businesses.

When you look at your career in marketing, what discipline/component have you found most interesting/challenging?

Most interesting to me is that so many successful people are “intuitives”; that is, they go about their careers working from the seat of their pants rather than a process.  This works well until they have to expand their responsibilities to others within or outside their teams.  Knowledge transfer, coaching, managing, etc. fails because there is no “playbook.”

What do you feel the most important component of a successful marketing gig?  (Product, Brand, Positioning)

Integration with other teams that are stakeholders.  Too often, marketer’s efforts are either unappreciated, underutilized, or in the worst case, miss their mark because sales, customer service, product management, etc. were not involved or considered.


If you could design the perfect corporate environment for a marketer to be successful what would that be?

Sales, marketing and product management are on the same page about what the market needs or wants and how the company’s offerings help with those needs or attain those goals.  There’s a feedback loop between business teams so marketing plans are embraced and there’s follow through when input or output is necessary.

How far is this from reality?

Close for my clients; not so close others.  That’s why I am in business.

Marketing IS in the Middle: Mukund Mohan

With a technologist, operations expert, a development leader and an MBA out of the way in the series, the next participant is Mukund Mohan.  Mukund is the CEO of BuzzGain proves and continues to look for the next big thing as an entrepreneur.  Many thanks to him for participating and providing his take on why marketing is in the middle.

What marketing roles have you had and in what markets?

A bunch – Product Management, Product Marketing, VP Marketing and CMO.  Mostly in software (high technology) and now I’m working on my own thing, which is marketing+other stuff+fun+a bunch of work.

When you look at your career in marketing, what discipline/component have you found most interesting/challenging?

Actually interesting and challenging both require an answer: Most interesting: Market research and competitive analysis Most challenging: Lead generation and sales enablement for a large sales force

What do you feel the most important component of a successful marketing gig?  (Product, Brand, Positioning)

Great products make marketing easier than trying to market a so-so product.  Good products create loyal users and positive word of move.  If you have great positioning then a great product irresistible.

Since you selected Product, how have you see that contributed to revenue?

Great products appeal to the customer in a uniquely satisfying way, making marketing’s job to only create awareness.  Satisfied customer’s allow for faster product adoption and provides quicker time to revenue.

What experiences brought you to this conclusion?

At Mercury (HP) we had a product called Application Discovery and Mapping, which solved a very unique problem in automatically discovering components of your IT infrastructure in a quick, simple way, eliminating tedious manual processes.  Typically this was the writing and drawing maps of your infrastructure over and over again – not fun.

This was a breakthrough product in several ways – it appealed to the IT infrastructure owner because it worked, was quick and also solved a big pain point.  Marketing it was simply a matter of identifying the key infrastructure head and showing them a demo.  Real problems and real products mean easy marketing.

If you could design the perfect corporate environment for a marketer to be successful what would that be?
The right organization.  An engineering team that’s willing and happy to listen to customers and make rapid changes to product to facilitate adoption.  Sales team that’s providing custom pitches to prospects instead of cookie cutter product demonstrations. Marketing teams that are more agile and nimble to adopt new means of lead generation.

How far is this from reality?

Not very far for certain types of teams, but for the traditional corporations, this is more of a dream than a reality.

Marketing IS in the Middle: Chris Brogan

Marketers are EVERYWHERE and not all are formally trained, I for one am an accidental marketer so I thought it was important to reach out to other folks who aren’t formally trained.  So as I continue to look at marketing and my network, I thought it was important to engage not just traditional markets, but also folks that help drive the overall ecosystem.  Chris Brogan is just one of those folks.  I actually didn’t follow Chris at all until he responded to a corporate blog I participate on and piqued my interest.   I’ve had the opportunity to meet, read and appreciate Chris’ take on social media and the larger marketing opportunity with social media.    Make no bones about it – Chris is a marketer and his new venture as president of New Marketing Labs is proof.  Chris was cool enough to participation in the marketing is in the middle conversation and below is his view:

What marketing roles have you had and in what markets?

None. I was a technologist for the last 18 years, but got into marketing by way of joining an events marketing company (Pulvermedia), and just haven’t left the circus since. Over the last 10 years, I’ve been blogging and using social media for improved business communications. Turns out that *became* marketing when I wasn’t looking.

When you look at your career in marketing, what discipline/component have you found most interesting/challenging?

Interesting: listening. I think that listening and customer service are the new marketing. Screw your stupid tag lines and contests. If I listen to prospective customers’ needs, and I can improve the way a customer works with my company, then I’m doing what marketing really wants to do: acquire new customers and keep the existing ones happy. Have fun with your contests.

What do you feel the most important component of a successful marketing gig?  (Product, Brand, Positioning)

Moving a behavioral needle. Did I get something to change and stay changed from when I started until when I left.

Since you selected something I NEVER would have thought of how has that contributed to revenue?

Building loyal passionate communities is a great way to contribute to revenue. It’s lovely to ask people who are passionate about how you make them feel for money. They like giving. Revenue is a return on influence.

What experiences brought you to this conclusion?

I’ve run some very successful conferences, and I’ve also run some online marketing experiences for people. In both cases, my best proof is revenue. I hate the ROI question, because there’s no easy calculator that shows you what I’m going to deliver. So instead, I show revenue bumps as fast as I can. Seems like a fair trade.

If you could design the perfect corporate environment for a marketer to be successful what would that be?

Small, nimble, and focused on action, not beauty.

How far is this from reality?

Not far in my world. I’m working with some great companies, big ones, who love the idea that it’s as simple as listening, building relationships, and serving those relationships. I love developing quality content marketing for them, like group blogs or email marketing that delivers, instead of the same tired old marketing messages. I’m loving my ride, and looking forward to what comes next!

Marketing IS in the Middle: Vikram Singha

So with the recent examination of my overall social network I got to thinking about the people who responded and those that I engage over and over to learn from, either via social media or in person.  To that end, I’m starting a series of interviews on Marketing, which are essentially just 7 questions.  I’ve got a bunch in the queue already, but wanted to start with a key influencer to my marketing experience, Vikram Singha.  I had the pleasure to have Vikram in my group for like 4 years and to work along side him as a peer during his last role I worked with him in.

Vikram is the type of product manager that looks at the numbers – the opportunity and the revenue, plus one of the best statisticians I have ever met.  Vikram is one of the founding members of Global Energy Talent and responsible for Marketing.  To that end, below is Vikram’s overview on how Marketing’s in the Middle from his experience:

What marketing roles have you had and in what markets?
Strategic Marketing- Federal Express; Ecommerce and logistics; worldwide
Product Manager- Inovis; B2B software and services; primarily US
Marketing lead- Global Energy Talent; Human capital  services for the energy industry; worldwide

When you look at your career in marketing, what discipline/component have you found most interesting/challenging?
The sales and marketing interface.  At most of organizations where I’ve worked there has always been tension between these two functions. The push and pull happens on many different levels:

  • who to target?
  • What markets?
  • What to build and pitch?
  • How to price?
  • How to get to the decision maker?

The successful organization aligns the Sales leader and the CMO tightly and creates structures that allow these teams to interact both formally AND informally. The trick is to make sure there isn’t an echo chamber and that creative differences can be brought out and thought through. My sense is that short term focused organizations (typically the tech industry which tend to be more quarter-driven) tend to have more differences. Managing this is always a challenge, as well as part of the fun of marketing.

What do you feel the most important component of a successful marketing gig?  (Product, Brand, Positioning)
Positioning. At the end of the day Marketing’s role is to tell the organization’s story– to prospects, customers, employees and different stakeholders in the market at large. This all boils down to how you talk about yourself, how you empower everyone in the org to tell the same story. Once you sell the vision then its easier to make the transactional sale, whether it’s a product or service.

Since you selected Positioning, how has that contributed to revenue in your experience?
Example at my current gig: Am part of a startup providing recruitment, training and consulting for the energy industry worldwide. We’re competing with both large global generalists as well as regional specialists. The only way we can get access to decision makers is to focus very specifically in one vertical domain and immediately connect with a pain point that most in the industry are generally aware of but usually don’t verbalize- lack of technical talent and the process to fill the crew gap. We’ve done this in a variety of ways and channels, and as result have entrée (and ongoing projects) at quite a few global oil majors that wouldn’t have given us the time of the day if our story was uni-dimensional. Being in the services industry (read: low IP) the value has to be defined at a very fundamental level, else it then just becomes a nickel and dime game.

What experiences brought you to this conclusion?
Trial and error!

If you could design the perfect corporate environment for a marketer to be successful what would that be?
Probably an environment where there is freedom to experiment. Ability to learn, and more importantly, institutionalize this learning. Key point is that this is not a marketing issue, rather an organizing principle at its core.

How far is this from reality?
Some companies are doing this already. Toyota, Apple, P&G, Nokia, Ideo. In fact Ideo has some very interesting approaches to ethnographic learning systems that drive marketing design decisions.