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A talk that I gave at SVForum's Marketing SIG on 7/11/11 entitled What The CEO Really Thinks of Marke
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What the CEO Really Thinks of Marketing and 5 Things You Can Do About It
Dave Kellogg
www.kellblog.com
Intro and Disclaimers Intro
Techie turned marketer Product marketing VP marketing CEO Ran marketing at BusinessObjects for 9 years
during growth from $30M to $850M CEO of MarkLogic from $0 to $80M run-rate
Disclaimer B2B background and bias During Q&A let’s see how we can apply these
lessons to consumer-oriented businesses
Let’s Cut to the Chase
What does the CEO really think of marketing?
or more specifically
When most CEOs think marketing, they think this
John Wannamaker’s Famous Quote
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.”
Scott McNealy At Sun’s Ten Year Anniversary Celebration Thanks to engineering for building our fine
products Thanks to sales for selling our systems Thanks to customer support for servicing our
customers Thanks to finance for accurately recording our
profit and loss Thanks to facilities for maintaining our fine
buildings Thanks to IT for running our internal systems
Thanks to marketing for … whatever it is they do.
Business Objects GM Quote
“Until I hired Charles, I must secretly admit that I never felt comfortable spending money on marketing.”
Why? Most CEOs do not understand marketing Few CEOs have worked in marketing
Most come up through product or sales Marketing costs a lot of money Marketing spending is usually variable /
discretionary cost … and easy to cut in a pinch Marketing delivers ambiguous returns Marketing agencies like bravado and the
implication of voodoo and black magic (“marketing guru”) (We do it to ourselves)
Why?
“If I hire an incremental salesperson, I get $1.7M. If I hire an incremental marketer, I get <what>?”
I have a strong marketing background I have been a CMO for over a decade I believe in marketing I consider myself a marketing person I confess to having had this thought
The Even-Darker CEO Thought
The board wants 6 more points of operating margin
I wonder if I stopped marketing completely would anybody even notice?
What Can We Do About It?1. Remember my marketing exists
2. Measure helpfulness
3. Be metrics driven
4. Be accountable
5. Do periodic ROI work
1. Why Does Marketing Exist?
If we had a three-person company, what would we have?
1 founder 1 developer 1 salesperson
“Code, sell, or get out of the way.”
Why Does Marketing Exist? Why might we add marketing
Let’s not have every salesperson make his/her own slides
Let’s be consistent in what we tell people Let’s generate leads for sales so they can focus on
selling Someone needs to build the website Let’s capture that technical message in a white
paper Let’s get the word out so sales isn’t calling on cold
prospects …
Marketing exists to makes sales easier
Make Sales Easier I first heard this a product manager in 1987
from Chris Greendale (who went out to found CTG)
I embraced it and used it as a mantra that drove my marketing career from product manager to CMO of a $1B company
Its simplicity is disarming It does not imply that marketing is tactical and
not strategic Designing products that sell more easily in is
included Strategic acquisitions (e.g., of competitors) are
included Use this as a North Star to orient your
organization
2. You Can Measure Helpfulness Periodic marketing internal satisfaction survey
What tools have you used and to what extent are they useful?
How is our marketing in an absolute sense? How is our marketing compared to other companies
you’ve worked at? Please allocate 100 units of marketing resource to these
categories of spend? What do you think of the website? What percent of your leads come from marketing? If you could change one thing in marketing, what would
it be? Use the same research techniques on your internal
customers as on your internal ones
The Ever-Popular People Quadrant
% awareness
% wouldwant to take on salescall Superstars
Best-kept secrets
The pack
Soon to be formeremployees
Get Respondee Demographics Have long have you worked at the company? How long have you worked in the industry? Did you make your quota last year?
Enables slice-and-dice which can reveal very interesting patterns
The Helpfulness Key is Intelligent Debate
Any idiot can show up and say “what do you want” and then do it
A value-added marketer challenges sales during the conversation
A “tough love” conversation I know you think you want that, but I think you
don’t. Let me explain why.
You are my customer, and I am not a doormat
3. Be Metrics-Driven Could be a two-hour speech in itself
Use systems like Salesforce for leads and opportunities and Eloqua or Marekto for incubation
Report back on these metrics (e.g., at ops reviews)
Do not gag your audience with data Show them data; talk about insight and action Our top 5 campaigns were … and we are going to … Our bottom 5 were … and we are going to … as a result
Easy Areas for Metrics Website Advertising / adwords Leads PR Salescalls Support calls Speeches Analyst meetings Trainings …
Take an Intelligent Approach to Metrics
Don’t be a metrics slave Never do stupid things in the name of driving a metric Don’t incent your people blindly
Thinks of metrics as a cockpit / dashboard Need to look at multiple panels to understand the situation
Ask good questions that close loops Test your “knowledge” Do our A-scored leads actually convert at a better rate than
the Bs?
Hire a quant – if you’re not one, then get one
4. Be Accountable One of the fundamental tensions between
sales and marketing results from marketing’s perceived lack of accountability
Sales feels (and usually is) highly accountable Marketing can be perceived as a country club One way to make yourself more accountable
is to publish goals and do quarterly assessment (e.g. , at ops review) They will never see you as accountable as
themselves, but they will appreciate the effort And it’s a best-practice anyway if only for
alignment Wait a minute, you’re cancelling the XYZ! We love
that!
5. Do Periodic ROI Work Most B2B sales processes are complex and involve
multiple touches to multiple individuals from an organization over the course of months and years
Most ROI studies are not believed by the people who read them Either on a external or internal basis (Aside: prefer ROI tools to ROI calculations for external
use)
Ergo measuring ROI of B2B marketing is extremely difficult on a forward basis Which programs lead to which sales?
Do Periodic ROI Work I prefer to periodically run it on a backwards
basis Which sales were influenced by which programs? Marketing-influenced pipeline
Helps the organization understand the difficulty of the problem
Do not count angels on pinheads e.g., use surrogates like credit the last program or
the first contact or the first program, etc.
Summary Most CEOs don’t understand marketing All CEOs worry that marketing money is wasted Marketing money is usually variable and easy to cut Marketing can proactively protect itself from the “I
wonder if we stopped doing this would anyone care” question that the CEO will occasionally consider
Marketing can do this by Remembering why it exists Measuring helpfulness Being metrics-driven Being accountable Periodically doing ROI work
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