Smashmouth B2B Blog: Sales & Marketing Demand Gen

Lead Gen Experts Should Take "Campaign" Out of Their Vocabulary

  

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Last week, I was out with the team at Focus.com and enjoying "bourbon and proteins" with Craig Rosenberg (The Funnelholic)  when the subject of campaigns came up from his point in a recent post to "forget campaigns, build a factory."  We agreed completely that marketers that think in the world of "campaigns" are shortchanging their results.

Marketing programs need

• Consistency
• Momentum
• Staying power
• Adjustment

It may be that campaigns seem normal because our needs change, strategies are modified or budgets are handed out piecemeal, but the most successful clients both Craig and I work with all treat marketing programs as ongoing efforts.

• Budget for ongoing activity - Treat it like headcount. Would you hire good talent and then shut them off 60 days later?
• Remain committed to the effort - Most common example here is when a marketer gets gung-ho to start blogging to boost inbound marketing and then stops publishing regularly.
• Results take time - In the world of B2B, sales cycles can be long. Don't try to measure pipeline results in just months. Give it time and commitment.
• Measure what you can measure - If you can't wait a year to measure revenue impact, measure tangible results: Did the introductory meeting result in a second meeting? Did the email sent result in a clickthrough?
• React - Make that adjustment -- but adjust, don't start and stop.  If you see something that needs a tweak, stay productive while you are tweaking or have your vendor/team work on something complementary to the project while you make that quick adjustment.
• Conserve Costs - Lastly, consider the cost impact of starting, stopping and switching gears.  There always are considerable startup and adjustment efforts and ramp-up costs.  Optimize your budget by creating programs with power.