blog

Are you looking at e-mail open rates as a success metric? Well, it’s time to get past that. While this measure does provide some indication of interest in your newsletter, it still doesn’t get the recipient into the sales cycle … and that’s what matters most! Of course, there is still some value to open rate, as it helps gauge interest in your message, but it’s only a first step, and you need to track the entire set of results.

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Long sales cycles are frustrating not only because it delays revenue but because they also introduce the risk that you won’t. The longer it takes to bring a prospect from the mouth of the funnel to a closed deal, the greater the likelihood is that you either won’t finalize the relationship or that it will come in at a much lower amount than you expected.

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Back when Twitter had only 3 million users or so, you could market by developing a rich, high-value following, engaging in conversations with your target market and … well … not really marketing. Now that Twitter has topped 125 million users, using the microblogging service as a newsfeed has become far more effective, even though it ostensibly shuns much of what makes social media “social.” Yet, marketers have adapted to this evolution in Twitter, continuing to find ways to use the service to drive traffic to blogs and websites in the hope of luring prospects into their sales cycle.

And just when you were getting comfortable, it’s all about to change again.

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For so many IT solutions, TCO is the easiest selling point: it isn’t hard to show a company how it can save some money. When you focus on the cost argument too much, though, you miss a golden opportunity to sell based on ROI, too. Every TCO play has an ROI component, and getting there requires no mental gymnastics.

It’s all about moving resources around … prudently.

Let’s assume your solution can cut TCO for a particular platform by 50 percent in dollars and two full-time employee equivalents. That’s a savings — great! Now, your client needs to know what to do with the “leftover” resources. Raise the issue of redeploying both the cash and the bodies to initiatives that will advance the company in the marketplace. The cost savings becomes fuel for a growth engine.

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As you get ready to jump into the social media marketing fray, the draw of just getting started can be powerful. The potential associated with this form of marketing is high, and the pressure to claim your space on the most visible social networks is intense. It’s also fraught with risk, especially if you leap before you look.

Want to make your corporate blog – and Facebook page and Twitter presence – a success? Here are four crucial objectives to focus on:

1. Publishing regularly: this may seem counter-intuitive, as it deals with your company, not your market. Dig a little deeper, though, and you’ll find that both sides of the equation are affected. Without regular content, your market has no reason to engage. Further, it’s challenging to create interesting and useful content regularly, so you need to make that a clear goal.

Objective to set: frequency of publication

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Either you’ve been tasked with starting your company’s blog, or you just think it’s a good idea. Now what?

Unless you’ve already dipped a toe in the blogging pond, the entire experience can seem overwhelming. Since any corporate marketing initiative comes with a lead time – consisting of everything from design and development to legal approvals – the best first step is to start a blog of your own. As your company is going through the necessary machinations, you can take the time to get a feel for what blogging is.

This may seem like a big step, but it’s actually rather tame. Don’t spend too much time planning (or worrying about what you’ll write). Just head over to WordPress, register and look around.

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It’s tough to stay current. After all, you already have a full-time job (you know, servicing clients), and making time to keep up with technology sector developments isn’t easy — it has to come at the expense of something else. Skip this effort at your own risk, though. Our market moves quickly, and something as simple as keeping an eye on new products and solutions from your IT manufacturing partners can be a powerful differentiator.

Here are three ways you can keep up with the market:

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I recently read the book “Rework” by the gang over at 37signals (creators of the excellent online project management tool Basecamp). My big takeaway: keep it simple. And as I thought more about this, I realized that keeping it simple is really more than just a management mantra. It’s actually an “everything mantra” … and especially a marketing mantra.

Too often, I see marketing programs focused more on bells and whistles than on sound processes that will lead to results – especially channel partner support marketing programs that roll out of IT manufacturers. I’ve seen a program take a year to roll out, when it should have taken a month. And, I’m no stranger to watching IT marketing professionals chase the “next big thing” and in doing so cloud their judgment. As a result, they lost what would have been an effective “thing right now.”

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It’s the marketing mix that leads to better demand generation — not a focus on one particular approach. To fill your sales pipeline, it’s best to use a combination of new and traditional marketing techniques. Don’t ignore social media, but at the same time, be sure to build in some direct mail and telemarketing. The key is to pull it all together into an integrated go-to-market strategy.

Instead of thinking about marketing tactics, start with your objectives. What do you want to accomplish? This can include revenue goals, new account wins and existing client penetration. Once you’ve figured out what you want to reach, it’s time to figure out how you’re going to get there.

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Do you spend a lot of time knee-deep in Google Analytics, looking at the rise and fall of pageviews, unique visitors and referred traffic? While it pays to know your audience, focusing too much on the numbers isn’t the best use of your time. To gain more value from your marketing blog, think less about organic traffic growth and more about the impact of your blog on your pipeline.

A corporate blog’s success isn’t measured in pageviews or any other traffic metric. Why not? Well, your objectives are totally different. You aren’t trying to amass impressions to generate advertising views, which is the prevailing model used by most of the blogs you probably read. Rather, you want to attract attention that will translate to inquiries from prospects, who you then hope to advance through the sales cycle.

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