A specific personal experience I had lives vividly in my mind and always brings a smile to my face, whenever I recall it. When I was posted overseas to Kazakhstan where I was responsible for sales and marketing of confectionery for a leading Western brand, I was invited to the home of our warehouse director for a feast called ‘datsarkhan’. The host brought out a sheep’s head that had been boiled in broth and offered me the eye to eat as an offering to give me increased wisdom. I won’t go into the details of what I did then but thought it would be as good a starting point for this entry as any.
The world is certainly flat and organisations are increasingly following their customers as they become more international in their outreach. Given this, senior marketers are finding themselves leading more and more projects and initiatives that span multiple geographies. Even if marketers are only responsible for a domestic remit, increasingly they are finding a greater level of involvement and collaboration with their overseas peers.
The question to ask then is ‘What attributes or best practices are there to effectively manage teams across a global arena?’ It is this that I am looking to try to address here.
Stepping back for a moment, it’s important to remember why such a global reach, local touch model should exist in the first place? After all, why not let every market just conduct their own marketing? That would be most relevant to each market but could prove fatal in terms of lack of brand consistency and inefficient use of marketing resources that could be utilised across the organisation as a whole. In a previous entry I talked about the differences between a local model, a global model and a hybrid approach to international marketing. What is undisputable however is that by considering marketing across borders you are responsible for using the organisation assets to their fullest to provide the greatest economies of scale from reuse and broadest possible adoption and ensure you are providing a consistent message yet demonstrate that you have a local presence and can understand and meet local requirements.
My suggestions are not embedded in science but rather experiences, as I have sought to deal with initiatives that have an international focus.
1. Seek to Understand Your Markets First.
One of the critical factors for success in leading an international market initiative is to ensure you identify the key local stakeholders and gain deep insight into their markets and uniqueness. Ideally, you should do this first before you do anything else. Almost like taking a blank piece of paper and seeking to understand their business, what has worked and what hasn’t. An empathetic point of view where you take time to learn about their markets, their culture, their challenges will be time invested that will reap huge rewards as you work with those markets to build out effective marketing. If you can get beyond the immediate operation and meet with some of the local partners and customers, that would be highly invaluable and will also demonstrate to the host local operation that you are taking the international initiative seriously . If budget allows, you should attempt to do this face to face and should plan for repeat follow ups on a periodic basis.
2. Define a Common Sense of Purpose
As a leader it is imperative that you clearly articulate the common purpose and goals of any international marketing initiative. Rather than conceiving this in isolation, realise that you now have access to the wealth of local expertise in the field. It would be wise for you to consult with those markets to gain ideas and build as much consensus as you can. Don’t just talk with local marketers but also ensure you have direct engagement with the wider business. This will ensure that your planned initiatives are aligned with the business.
3. Always Provide Situational Context
Whenever you c communicate with your international peers, always make a habit of providing them with context around thoughts and decisions. I have seen far too many communications without this and sometimes it can leave the recipient a little confused, particularly if there are language barriers.
4. Build a Collaborative Environment
Use whatever works for your virtual team. Whether it is frequent phone calls, a knowledge sharing application or combinations of these or others, work with your teams to understand what works best for all without becoming a hindrance to their day to day tasks. Building a meaningful collaborative infrastructure will help all team members keep abreast of progress against initiatives and allow them to pick ideas from others that can work in their markets. You role as leader is to act as the central conduit of information. Also be mindful of time differences in certain markets and mix the call times to show you respect and understand them.
5. Be Sensitive to Different Levels of Market Maturity
It goes without saying that different countries will be at different levels of market maturity and adoption levels of your goods and services than others. Likewise some messages that currently work in some markets may not be applicable to others. As a leader you need to manage to this complexity but by seeking out some of the examples from more mature markets, who have already crossed the chasm, you can offer significant value to those markets seeking guidance and support so they can adapt previous initiatives to their local and specific requirements.
6. Recognise Unique Talents
Recognise the unique strengths of your team players. In this respect, it is no different than managing a local team but every opportunity to engage with your local marketing teams is an opportunity for you to learn. Some will be more creative at idea generation whilst others may be masters at lead nurturing etc. Take an inventory of your team as a whole and understand the wealth of talent your teams possess.
7. Build Success and Communicate
Whatever initiatives you plan to work on, try to pick a few smaller projects to get your team used to working together effectively first. Ensure you communicate progress against plan not only to those immediate team members but wider across the organisation and ensure you give recognition to those individuals who have made specific team contributions.
Marketing across borders is challenging yet exciting and provides you with an opportunity to apply your chosen profession to meet the needs of a wide and diverse audience. If you plan your approach with these 7 habits top of mind you will not only deliver more value to your organisation as a whole but also feel much more connected with an ever increasing globalised word.
The 7 Habits for Effective International Marketing
Why Email Marketing Alone is a Thing of the Past
Online marketing is increasingly becoming the de facto mechanism by which B2B organisations enter into dialogue and relationships with prospects and buyers. And with the increasing demand for marketers to demonstrate value to their board for every dollar/pound/euro invested and the constant need to demonstrate quality and a continuous feed at the sales pipeline level, it is now time that marketers took a more unified and holistic view of their interactions with their intended audiences.
Today’s audiences are more discerning and better educated than before and effective marketing now needs to leverage multiple modes of communication, multiple messages and is done over a longer time span than can be accomplished with a one shot effort.
Email systems were the ‘in thing’ a few years back and still have value but savvy marketers today understand the limitations of such solutions alone, particularly when you consider that customer interactions are typically across many points of touch that support the full marketing lifecycle. The real value is when you can automate processes across the online world, track behaviours and take informed sales and marketing decisions based on those decisions – so you can fuel your sales pipeline with higher quality leads.
The other point worth noting here is that whilst organisations typically take a ‘department centric ‘ view of sales and marketing customers do not take that view and look across all points of touch. It is imperative therefore for organisations not to lose customer insight when leads are handed over from marketing to sales.
A new pack of solutions has recently emerged which addresses the challenges marketers face in a more systemic way - under the banner of ‘demand generation’ solutions. The leader of the pack is Eloqua but there are others who have recognised the winds of change and are scurrying to help marketers address this shortfall. As a previous power user of Eloqua myself, I have witnessed how the power of process automation, targeted messaging and behavioural analytics can all come together and integrate into a CRM solution of choice, to provide a richer sales pipeline with data that better allows sales and marketing professionals to enter into meaningful interactions which can translate into fruitful business.
For any B2B marketers out there who have not yet given such solutions due consideration, I firmly believe they will be disadvantaged in the medium term. I am a convert and now suggest anything less is a step backwards rather than a step forwards. Here a few suggests: Eloqua, Manticore Technology, Vtrenz, Hubspot, Market2Leads, Marketo, LoopFuse, einsof, iHance, Precience. Happy hunting.
Are your solutions too convergent with the rest of the industry? Take a look at the Innovation Radar
In a world of slower market growth, globalisation and increasing commoditization, all companies struggle with how they set themselves apart from the typical convergent ‘me-too’ offerings so prevalent in industries. As such they look to innovation to help them but tend to take a myopic view of innovation across dimensions of R&D and New Product development.
Mohanbir Sawhney, director of Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management's Center for Research in Technology and Innovation, and Kellogg fellows Robert C. Wolcott and Inigo Arroniz have compiled data on the innovation habits of companies such as Boeing, eBay , DuPont, Microsoft, Motorola and Sony . The results of their research show that, rather than taking a limited view, companies can innovate across many different dimensions, creating far more opportunities to achieve competitive advantage.
The radar features four major dimensions that serve as business anchors:
1. Offerings a company creates (WHAT).
2. Customers it serves (WHO).
3. Processes it employs (HOW).
4. Points of Presence it uses to take its offerings to market (WHERE).
Spread over these 4 main dimensions, companies can innovate their businesses far broader in scope than product or technological innovation: a company can actually innovate along any of a total of 12 different dimensions:
1. Offerings.
2. Platform.
3. Solutions.
4. Customers.
5. Customer experience.
6. Value capture.
7. Processes.
8. Organization.
9. Supply chain.
10. Presence.
11. Networking.
12. Brand.
The innovation radar can help to broaden the innovation focus in companies and the important point, as the authors define it, is that business innovation is “the creation of substantial new value for customers and the firm by creatively changing one or more dimensions of the business system.” This implies that business innovation is about new value, not new things, that it comes in many flavors, and that it is systemic, requiring careful thought to be given to all aspects of a business.
The authors point to the iPod as an example of innovating in multiple dimensions. In this case, Apple engaged not only in product innovation, but also in terms of customer solution, offering, platform, supply chain, presence, networking, and brand. Other examples, including innovations by Nissan Motor Co., Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Virgin, and Edmunds.com, illustrate the multiple paths that innovation can take.
But companies can generate more value by thinking of the dimensions of innovation as interconnected within a business system. The authors believe the innovation radar can help companies compare their current innovation strategy to that of competitors, then identify opportunities and prioritize dimensions in terms of where to focus.
Go to http://sloanreview.mit.edu/smr/issue/2006/spring/14/
H.I.T.S - The disconnect between sales and marketing
A high tech firm was looking to prioritize their plans for the coming year. The full senior management team was in attendance. In reviewing their efforts the head of marketing noted that they were averaging 12,000 hits per month on the company web site.
Unfamiliar with the term, the CFO asked what ‘hits’ were and before the marketing executive could answer the sales executive said. “It’s an acronym and stands for ‘How Idiots Track Success’ ”.
The story above is designed to highlight a point that I have read and heard about many times over, and that is apparent disconnect that seems rampant between sales and marketing but as a marketer, what if your sales teams raved about the quality of leads from marketing? What if marketing was pivotal in helping sales make their numbers? And What if sales and marketing could work effectively together - effectively.
Yet there really does NOT need to be a misaligned sales and marketing organisation. Let’s start by looking at what I have seen sales and marketing want. These are what I have seen and I am sure readers can add their own points of view:
I’m a sales guy and this is what I want from marketing
— Good qualification processes that are agreed with me, so I get high quality leads and not just excessive quantity.
— Consistent pipeline feed that allows me to manage my time effectively and meet or exceed my quota.
— Process which mirrors our standardised sales methodology. E.g. strategic/consultative sales methodology.
— Elimination of duplicate leads that have already been contacted.
— Elimination of double entry so lead data in our CRM system is complete and accurate when passed over to me.
— Help with managing those leads that are not yet that far along in the buy cycle but are nonetheless possible opportunities later down the line.
— Deeper mining within an account (‘triangulation’) to identify the pains and politics of the wider decision making unit.
— Marketing materials and assets that can support my prospects during all stages of their learning , scoping and selection processes
— Helping me with more accurate forecasting (dependent on better and more accurate understanding and profiling of opportunities and their propensity to purchase)
I am the marketer and this is what I want
— Demonstrable marketing ROI so I can prove and improve the results of my programs
— Multi modal closed loop integrated campaigns across all learning, scoping and selection stages that a prospect will go through e.g. blogs, podcasts, newsletters, micro-sites and proposition landing pages, telemarketing, events, direct mail etc.
— Better agreement with sales of what constitutes a lead, what constitutes and opportunity and all in between
— Agreed measurement metrics that bridge the gap across marketing and sales so we are all on 'the same page'
— Lead nurturing systems that ensure marketing dollars are not wasted and leads are followed up, diarised or qualified in or out, so we can continue to refine our processes
— In an environment where prospects are ‘pulling’ information, a more unified view of prospect touch points so we can better segment according to behavioural activity e.g. who downloaded the whitepaper, who clicked on the email link as well as outbound calling notes.
— Ideally, unification of touch points or ‘moments of truth’ in a single system of record like a CRM system so we can analyse behavioural action make real time decisions based on the derived intelligence of the those behaviours
— Marketing process workflow services and best practice to support all aspects of prospect and customer activity. E.g. An event registration. Outbound emails, registrations, reminders, pre event outbound calling, post event follow ups etc.
— Reusable campaigns across international markets that have the capability to be localised yet are consistent with overall brand.
The most common area of contention seems to be where sales and marketing meet. That is, around the sales pipeline and demand generation activities. The way to resolve such problems is to establish a common understanding of business objectives and establishment of an agreed vocabulary of what constitutes a good lead and an opportunity. Just as importantly, there need to be clear definitions of what does NOT constitute an opportunity. There need to be processes for lead nurturing and opportunity management as well as clearly defined processes of how leads are passed over from marketing to sales and how leads are followed up and reported on through the whole sales cycle, so that there is transparency for all. If you believe in the term ‘what you measure is what you get’ then clearly the measurement metrics also need to be considered. So ‘hits’ in themselves might not be wholly appropriate and the organisation should ask themselves what high level SMART (Specific, Measurable, Accurate, Relevant and Timely) metrics would be appropriate for analysis of progress against plan.
There really is no need to have a misaligned sales and marketing operation in any organisation and if that is the case then senior management and teams need to come together with a blank canvas and rather than naming and shaming, work together to build out an infrastructure that makes sense for the organisation and its raison d’être.
A multi-modal approach to marketing? The new business imperative
As I have been marketing B2B propositions for several technology firms, some things have become very evident and I am sure many of the points will resonate with my sales and marketing peers:
- Complex sales with different buying influences and politics imply that as a seller, you are going to have multiple points of touch before you close the sale. I like the term ‘moments of truth’ to explain that each point of touch is your opportunity as a marketer to further establish or break the ongoing relationship amongst the universe of prospective organisations you touch.
- Decision making units in organisations go through cycles of discovery such as learning, processing and eventual vendor selection and therefore a one size fits all approach to marketing will not be as effective as recognition of the differing needs of your prospects.
- As we are in a ‘pull’ economy rather than a ‘push’ economy, prospect organisations come to us already highly informed. They are using newer collaborative and web technologies to refine their search and selection and are more knowledgeable even before we have recognised them as a lead or an opportunity.
- People are now more inclined towards self service, having information delivered to them in a manner they like and at a time to suit them.
Given the conditions above and the dynamic and ever complex changing ‘marketscape’ marketers need to think more systemically about how to plan and execute and enter into conversations with their universe of prospective buying organisations.
One thing for sure is that a single point of touch is not good enough and even less so now. As buyers go through their own lifecycle of discovery they will have differing requirements - from a recognition of a need, to how the utility of your offering will satisfy their needs. As the stages are different for every organisation then the associated messages should be too.
Single touch marketing such as an outbound calling campaign for example, in itself will provide you limited success. Organisations are leaving digital footprints everywhere and tracking such behaviours can prove highly beneficial when segmenting your leads and going through your own lead qualification process. The idea is to be able to track such footprints back to your sales and marketing automation systems and plan future actions based on such behaviours. As an example, take a prospect that attended a webinar and then scoured your website and downloaded your whitepaper. A month later you sent out an email blast and tracked that the very same prospect clicked through several of the links to landing pages. What if all those behaviours could be tracked back to a single system of record such as a CRM system so you had a more complete view of the activity against any particular prospect? Would that be valuable? What if you were now having an event with some of your key customers standing up and singing from the rooftops about your offering? Would that prospect be a candidate for an incitation? Most likely he would be.
The above is clearly a hypothetical scenario but the point I am making here is that by working out how your prospects engage and matching your outreach programs to those processes and by tracking behaviours you enter the domain of multi modal marketing and achieve better success in engaging with your universe. Think about it. Makes sense doesn’t it? None of this is pie in the sky and is all entirely possible today.
The question then is why aren’t even more companies taking a more systemic multi-modal view towards their intended target audience?
Organisation Strategies in a downturn?
I was recently directed to an article suggesting that Trader Joes, MTV and iPod were all born during times of recession and if handled correctly a downturn can be a good thing for a company. The article went on to suggest that whilst everyone else may be turning their backs on advertising, companies should be advertising more.
I am not sure it is totally correct to suggest that if handled correctly a downturn can be a good thing for a company. Sounded a little too much like journalist spin and I aplogise for a my slight cynicism here. Whenever there is economic movement such as growth or recession, there are going to be winners as well as losers. The examples quoted of MTV, iPOD and Trader Joes may indeed be winners but the article failed to provide their subscribers a balanced point of view - just to make their case and press home their point. However to the point to which I think article should have been making, a recession does not necessarily mean a downturn in organizational fortune.
The article really referred to companies who have all rethought what VALUE means to their customers. An example here would be all the costly feature/functions that your products and services have that are not really used or appreciated but are there more to try to keep abreast of the competition. Look at your word processor for example, how much of the functionality do you actually use? Do you even know about all the features? I certainly don't but perhaps I am just a word processor novice!
The premise is rather than cut costs, companies should look to eliminate those 'costly' factors that the industry takes for granted but are not deemed valuable to their customers and improve or enhance those factors that are. This can mean thinking out of the box and applying creativity to problems and you may say 'Easier said than done', but still possible nonetheless. So instead of benchmarking your competitors, you actually bypass them.
Benchmarking can be dangerous if used on its own as it can lead to market convergence with typical 'me too' offerings. When I talk about features/functions I am talking about all dimensions of the product/service offering such as how customers engage and how they are serviced well beyond the sale -all aspects of a prospect's processes from learning to scoping to selection and beyond.
This then leads me to the most interesting observation about the whole article that came my way. Why should organisations wait for a recession to do this? Imagine if they adopted the same approach during growth? Isn't that what true market oriented versus product oriented companies really do?
And to the last point, about advertising more and bucking the trend whilst others are scaling back. If nothing else it can provide you with more relative more share of mind. However I think the decision to do this or not must depend more on what your advertising objectives are and will have to be set against wider organisational priorities in times of scarcity and uncertainty. As the saying goes, sometimes you should take what you read with a pinch of salt.
Global Reach, Local Touch Marketing
Very few technology companies are restricting themselves to just a single geography and the term globalisation is a common term understood by most. But whilst there are increased opportunities associated with expanding your geographic footprint, there are also increased complexities with marketing and communication activities across borders.
The challenge for any marketing professional who has a multi-geographical remit is to maximize the best use of resources available across all markets, remove duplication and unnecessary overheads, ensure message consistency and yet maintain impact at the local level. There are also significant organisation benefits if the marketer is able to promote cross border learning and sharing of best practice amongst sales and marketing professionals in local markets.
There are basically two models that companies can adopt - a centralized or a localized model and yes a third option or a hybrid approach.
The central model
This is usually the early model for companies that have recently decided to step beyond their domestic markets or have generic products and services and where only a minimal amount of decision making is devolved to the local level. The main disadvantages of this approach arise from paying insufficient attention to the knowledge held by local teams, the differing cultures and style of work and the perceptions of the company in a particular territory. The central model also stifles cross border knowledge share.
The local model
The local model represents the complete opposite where there is little or no co-ordination between different territories. This may be deliberate - to give business units in each country as much autonomy as possible such as in the case where very local products and services are represented. Each country may then establish its own marketing and PR activities. The local model, with no organised co-ordination, has a number of disadvantages. Multinational companies have multinational customers who now expect to deal with the same organisation, regardless of location. The greatest danger of the local model is inconsistent messaging across the territories in which a company operates, leading to a dilution of core values and positioning. A lack of co-ordination leading to inconsistent messages for an organisation cannot only damage the brand in that territory, but the organisation as a whole. Furthermore, the overheads and administration costs are duplicated many times over in each country, leaving fewer resources for actually implementing campaigns and achieving desired results. It can become a costly exercise if you add up all the elements, yet there will undoubtedly be those at the local level who argue for an entirely local model. What they are in fact doing in many instances (apart from companies who have very different highly localised products in different markets), is arguing against a truly centralized approach. Enter the hybrid approach
The hybrid model
The hybrid model offers the optimum balance and takes the best features from the local and central models to create a framework which combines organised and deliberate central co-ordination alongside greater input and autonomy at a local level to programs that are both effective at a national and supra-national level.
In the hybrid model the centre is responsible for ensuring that the strategic elements of a program, such as key objectives and messages are consistent and appropriate for each country as well as acting as a conduit for information and best practice share. Typically when dealing across borders there are some local markets that may be less sophisticated in terms of adoption of your goods and services than others. The centre can assist here by creating reusable programs and assets which can then be tailored to local use. They can also cherry pick best practices from local markets and offer these as suggestions of fruitful campaigns for other markets. The centre has a significant opportunity to play here in conjunction with local functions in each country, and will work collaboratively to develop plans for the company on a cross border basis, with tailored programs developed for each country. The central hub will further reduce duplication and overheads by managing budgets, campaign evaluation and reporting to HQ.
