T.J. O’Connor and I are looking forward to speaking on June 25-7: Ritz Carlton-Lodge Reynolds Plantation One Lake Oconee Trail Greensboro, GA 30642 Abstract: Companies are undergoing a massive shift in investment away from traditional media toward online media. New web sites and social networks are accelerating brand awareness and audience engagement. Customers are making their product purchase selections and engaging brands online. While they follow a familiar buying process, the selling process needs to adapt to a more dynamic online environment that you can’t fully control. How do you capture customer value in a complex online environment? The answer is to use new online marketing strategies to nurture and engage your direct and indirect audience across the buy-sell process. opei_newsletter09_spread
Revenue growth focused posts
When setting out to develop an Internet Marketing strategy, you need to connect the dots between a wide range of business, marketing, technology and project elements.
A web strategy today involves a lot more than your web site. In the late 1990s it was very much about defining your branded online presence via the web site and related web services and online applications. Today, with the important roll of Search and Social Media, your brand presence must now consider delivering impact and engagement across the broader social web and involves a far more sophisticated strategy for inbound marketing and lead capture. With that in mind, if you are about to embark on a comprehensive Internet Marketing Strategy, you might want to get answers to a range of questions. So, here is a list, but let’s add to the list- what have you found as critical success factors and key issues that should be addressed in developing your internet strategy.
1) Market, Audience and Sales Model – You need to define the underlying business model for marketing and sales so that you can tie your Internet Marketing Strategy to business goals:
- What is your revenue generation strategy?
- How will you capture market share?
- Who is your customer and what are their needs, intents and values?
- What are the major market segments we wish to target?
- What defines these segments and what are their major characteristics?
- What is the typical customer life cycle for each segment?
- What are the various dialogue needs across the life cycle chain and what implications does that have for the business operations model?
- What are the demographic, psychographic, and channel preference factors of the targeted audience segments?
- What capabilities will be needed to meet this targeted audience’s needs?
- Who is the competition and what are their strengths, weaknesses?
- What is the overall differentiating business strategy to capture market share?
- What is the closed-loop marketing model and funnel process?
- What opportunities are being created by the emergence of new media and technologies?
2) Functionality and Services – Now that you understand your core business model and your audience, what are the capabilities that your audience will be seeking to engage your brand online – both at your site(s) and across the social and mobile web?
- What segment needs and intents will be addressed?
- What is the unique functionality required? (transaction, database, content, syndication, lead capture, community, collaboration, forms, Configurator, eCommerce transactions, search, customer service, eNewsletters, events, eMail database, browser requirements? Privacy and Security? Accessibility?
- In addition to basic site requirements, will the project seek to include interactive web platforms (such as logins, BLOGS, Forums, and Q&A chat rooms) in aims to enhance outreach tools?
- Have you considered strategies regarding mobile devices/ web / social media?
- Do you currently have any site utilization monitoring tools in place?
- What role will your supplier play in determining the audience analysis?
- Design concepts development and selection
3) Branding and Design – maybe you already have a brand identity – including logo marks and look and feel -but you may also need to develop a “brand architecture” that ties together all your related product and services into a unifying identity – both on and offline.
- Do you have an overall brand strategy? Offline and Online?
- Have you a set of creative concepts under consideration?
- Have these creative concepts been mapped to specific audience needs and/or business strategy drivers?
- Which existing sites best approximate the desired look and feel? functionality?, info architecture?
- Do you need a logi, brand architecture or single mark?
- What are the various branding concepts that will suit our identified target segment?
- Is the brand achieving Completeness, Transparency, Flow and Dialogue with the user?
- How will we roll out the branding?
- How will it be represented and communicated to the market?
4) Content and Information Architecture – How do you arrange your content into a clear information architecture that your audience can understand and access?
- What content will the business will deliver (media types?)?
- Do you have readily available content?
- What effort is needed to design and develop the content? Initial? On-going?
- Are there content partners and providers/ syndication that we have to consider?
- Is there an archive of photos or other art that might be used for the site?
- If appropriate, would the company commission original illustration or photography?
- What is a representative site map?
- Is their a wire frame model outlining envisioned experience?
- How do the navigation scheme and content schema function?
- are we considering tagging models? taxonomy? semantic models?
- How should the content be organized for usability? What IA works best given known constraints?
5) Marketing and Promotion – After you build out your sites, Internet presence, content and services, how are you going to attract the audience?
- What are our traffic growth estimates and how do we intend to achieve them?
- What is our awareness strategy, advertising strategy?
- What are the SEO/ SEM marketing requirements?
- Are their viral or velocity marketing opportunities?
- How are you engaging the social web and online influencers?
- Do you have a print and media marketing plan?
6) Technical Architecture Design – Once you have defined an overall business and functional blueprint, it will be a lot easier to select the right technology foundation to handle your needs.
- Do we need to address an existing systems/ technology assessment, existing technology?
- Are there preferred technology standards?
- What content management and web services platform is required?
- What are the hosting and managed services requirements?
- What kind of user volumes will you expect at the site?
- Do you need listening platforms to gauge sentiment on the broader web?
- How effective is your audience intelligence platforms and data management skills?
- Do you need specialized technology for mobile deployment, database marketing?
7) Operating Model – This is a key step to your strategy – defining a core business and process model that will ensure your digital assets and systems are well managed and that your content and services are up to date.
- What are the operational procedures that will need to be in place to deliver the Internet Marketing Strategy?
- What are the staffing skills and capability needs? Content? Service?
- Do you understand what the potential impact on your existing organization will be?
- Is there a team currently in place for site management? Do they require continuing training and support?
8) Implementation Plan – With all the core business, marketing and technical elements framed out, you can now better layer in an overall project time line driven by critical business commitments.
- Is there a compelling event or critical implementation date? What is the required time line/ milestones?
- Is there a project charter?
- Is there a Business Case in place? Benefits? Investments?
- Is there budget to match ambition?
- Have stakeholders & team members been identified?
- What are the key assumptions, constraints and risks?
Feel free to add to the list and contribute to the discussion..
With the advent of new media and digital marketing, marketing and sales needs to be joined at the hip. There is a lot of focus now – even more than usual – on sales and the revenue model and how to make it work. With tougher economic times, business leaders are looking with even greater scrutiny at how the revenue model is working and what levers to pull to make it work better. The usual focus is on the sales team– putting in harder metrics and drivers in place to force the issue and make sales happen. The real opportunity, however, is by looking a little more broadly and connecting the pieces that make an overall “revenue architecture” work. There are 100s of drivers for revenue generation – including pricing and product quality – but what is often overlooked is how effective marketing and sales are coordinated to link the complete value change from awareness to closed deals. With the advent of digital marketing and social media models, the line between marketing and sales is increasingly blurred. Organizations need to be thinking less about one-off campaigns and more about continuous conversion strategies across the value chain funnel from brand awareness to closed deal. Successful organizations are using a new marketing model – increasingly centered on using digital marketing platforms to drive end-to-end awareness and demand, nurture opportunities and close business. Here are some elements we see within high-performing organizations- put these in place successfully and your marketing and sales machine should begin to work well: Setting and communicating clear strategy
- Identifying the differentiated market positioning
- Organizing the target market into durable segments
- Tailoring messages and offers to each segment
- Setting a go to market strategy that aligns resources to opportunity
- Price your products and services competitively
Driving visibility and awareness
- Create awareness and brand identity with the right mix of new and old media
- Become visible digitally with SEO, your web presence and your digital outposts in social media
- Provide value to your audience across each stage of the buy-sell process
- Offer a consistent and quality brand experience at each interaction
Engaging across the funnel
- Use information and tailored offers to nurture prospects across the funnel
- Work all the channels with your content- web, events, blogs, social media outposts, digital video
- Maintain achievable metrics for frequencies (e.g. sales calls)
- Ensure sales force effectiveness – including product/ service knowledge and sales skills
- Motivate your sales teams effectively based on your target markets and product mix
- Use your customer evangelists to help you articulate your value
- Recognize the value of your investments in sales people
- Increase share of existing clients with crop rotations, continuations and colonization’s
- Deliver to drive client satisfaction – keep clients from going out the back door while you’re new clients are coming in the front door
We are working with a few clients to build and deploy solutions for Closed Loop Marketing. I was reviewing my materials and presentations in preparation for a meeting next week and thought I would scan the web to see what is out there.. I wanted to see a visual image – or diagram – that painted a good picture of closed-loop marketing. I found a huge amount, bit very little that was on target with a good CLM vision and captured the key elements of both traditional and new media marketing. Marketing is one of the last business functions to embrace integrated technology solutions to automate the management of marketing logistics. Unlike ERP and CRM, Marketing Automation is only now beginning to hit the growth curve. With the advent of new media and the business complexity in managing data and blending traditional and new media channels with CRM/ sales force automation, leading companies are now adopting more sophisticated solutions. New technologies and new approaches are make Marketing Automation more attractive. My google search for images around CLM resulted in quite a number of images – few that made sense for my purposes.
So what is next? I am going to put together the story and make sure it includes a comprehensive view of CLM – in particular – for this client -from a B2B perspective. Elements of the model must include:
- Market Segmentation & Targeting
- Data Management and Cleansing
- Campaign Management
- Lead Capture
- Scoring & Routing
- New Media, Web and Traditional Channels
- Business and Audience Intelligence
- Marketing Dashboard
By focusing on five things, you will begin delivering projects more effectively and build a better “project culture”. We understand that effective project and program delivery is vital to support the agenda of and organization and that good project management is a critical business skill. Even in the challenging climate, typically the demand for projects exceeds the capacity to deliver. In addition to good project management, organizations need to effectively manage a portfolio of projects. Different groups within the organization compete for scarce resources and priorities and needs change over time. Too often, we see the same set of issues go wrong in project delivery and we also see the most mature organizations succeed across a number of dimensions. These successful organizations are, in particular, strong at linking projects and programs to business strategies, establishing strong cases for change, and maintaining a good “project culture”. Success is less about the fact that a set of project management standards exist, it has more to do with the quality and commitment of people, the collaborative culture of project delivery (business and technical) and the maturity of ingrained project delivery practices within the organization. Some of the problems we often see include:
- Objectives not clear and agreed – too often projects begin without clear direction or alignment on outcomes, business value and scope. No Charter exists that clarify the rationale for the investment and the outcomes expected.
- Approach is wrong – teams have not taken the time to plan an overall approach that considers the impacts and objectives. The business and technology change are not fully considered and the approach (e.g. waterfall vs iterative) often does not match business goals and technical requirements.
- Change not fully considered – a great deal of misunderstanding and confusion occurs within teams and across organizations when program and project objectives and approach are not well communicated and the impact on business is not well understood and managed.
- Resource not aligned – projects too often begin without the benefit of having the right skill sets and adequate levels of resources on the team. Part time assignments and cutting corners often leads to a lack of progress and late, over-budget delivery.
- Inadequate project control – the core aspects of maintaining a project schedule, budget and resource tracking is too often poorly managed. Projects lack risk and issue management procedures and quality and acceptance processes . While this is often the first thing one thinks about when considering improvements to project delivery, it can’t be addressed by procedures alone. Good project control requires both the right procedures and the right people managing projects – bringing skills in client relationship management, scope management as well as the mechanics for project control.
So, how can you ensure improvements in project delivery? The answer is in focusing on an the end-to-end approach of portfolio management, ensuring business change is managed, and delivering on objectives with a credible projects culture: 1) Manage the project portfolio: Before you even begin, ask yourself the question; Should we be doing this project? Successful organizations manage a portfolio of projects well and understand the interrelationships and architecture impacts. They also establish the clear linkage between projects and business strategies. 2) Architecting the solution and approach: the project approach and timeline must reflect a complete understanding of both the business and technical aspects – and clarify how the project will be delivered around milestones and collaborative working. Successful projects are characterized by the right mix of management, technical and business skills, as well as the underlying infrastructure. It is also important to select technologies based on business need rather than technology elegance. How well does the solution design fit with the organization-wide systems architecture? Ultimately, a well designed solution that ties into the overall enterprise model will deliver far greater value to the business – as long as you consider the business needs for time-to-market. 3) Setting up proper resourcing and commercial structures: How should the project be sourced? What are the critical skills and specializations? What existing solutions could accelerate the project delivery and improve quality? Who should you engage? Ensure that you have structured and effective commercial and service interface arrangements with your partnering suppliers. 4) Delivering Change: Most technology projects are 20% about technology and 80% about business change and adoption. You can’t skip the steps in delivering change- ensuring the project is rational and the case for change is clear and agreed, making sure the project is ready with the structures and plans for success, delivering the project well- with both the business and the project teams, and importantly – making the delivery stick by embedding the changes in the organization. 5) Project Control: How effective are team members and time allocations? Use clearly defined procedures appropriate with to the project objectives. Be pragmatic, rather than bureaucratic. Manage to quality and benefits, while effectively tracking and communicating time and budget with the right set of technology tools and reporting. Successful delivery of technology projects is about more than implementing project management procedures and controls. Successful organizations effectively manage the complete portfolio of projects. They also have more then a set of standards, they have the right people with the good delivery skills, values and collaborative working styles to ultimately build a “projects culture” within your organization.
Semantic technology addresses the data-explosion problem by providing more intelligent ways to search, sort, and filter data based on business and user relevance. So, what is Semantic Technology? Here is what Tim Berners-Lee stated as a vision back in 1999: “I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages will finally materialize.” Semantic Technology is often referred to as “Web 3.0”. At it’s core, Semantic technology is a new and more innovative way data is created, stored, and exchanged. Instead of the classic relational approach, where data is used in a software application based on its relative position in a tabular framework, semantic data is created with embedded meaning. This meaning is assured by creating the data using a pair of standards called the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL). RDF creates flexible data, free of the tabular constraints of the relational approach. OWL defines ontologies, which are domains of described data relationships. Semantic technology mates RDF’s flexible data with OWL’s intelligent descriptions, which results in “smart data”. With smart data, the user can experience data’s utility within context. With data in a semantic format, a variety of new IT capabilities become possible. Because the data is self-describing (has meaning) there is much greater flexibility in designing, modifying, and changing semantic applications. This will help address several major challenges facing IT today.
- Developing applications that support event-based processes
- Capturing data “in flight” and acting on its content in the context of the current business environment
- Discovering, adapting, composing, and automating the services scattered both inside and outside of an organization
- Extending the potential of SOA and driving down the costs of application maintenance
- Designing and implement solutions without relying on IT
Advanced semantic middleware frameworks are being created by software leaders like Cambridge Semantics (Sean Martin and Lee Feigenbam ) and architected by colleagues at CrossTech Partners including Colin Britton, John Saber, and TJ O’Connor. Cambridge Semantics has also developed a powerful set of solutions to unleash data from the 1,000s of spreadsheets being used across enterprise clients and dramatically enable data collaboration. Best practices and development models are becoming increasingly available, making semantic technologies more accessible to a broader group of developers. As these technologies move from the “third circle” (bleeding edge) to the “second circle” (today’s innovative technology) we can fully implement compelling new solutions for advanced search and relevance engines for information access. We can integrate these new applications with social software and deliver compelling new experiences for big brands and their audiences. Lee Feigenbam is a contributing author to this article.
I am working with a global financial services company that needs to overhaul its portfolio of communications technology. These include their public/customer facing web sites to intranets and broadband communication services serving their internal associates across functional areas. To add further complexity, this is a global organization across time zones embodying different cultural norms and styles of communication along with different languages. Typical of many organizations, the communications technology portfolio has grown out of different business organizations that have changed and been re-aligned over the years. While IT has been working hard all along to deliver and manage a set of solutions that align with business needs, the changes in business structure and focus has increased the “value gap” over time and resulted in a highly disparate systems portfolio that can no longer support the business. Multiple email systems, disparate intranet channels and internal web sites, experimental broadband video services, third party communication platforms, and multiple public facing or customer-specific web sites have been deployed across the businesses have created a complex communication portfolio making it impossible to deliver a consistent and timely brand message to either the internal and external audiences. What’s the solution? They need a rational communications technology portfolio and the governance structures to manage it well over time. A rational communications technology portfolio is characterized by a number of elements:
- Aligned with audience – communication channels respond to the needs and consumption patterns of the target audience
- Consistent and rationalized – where possible, platforms are based on common standards and shared globally
- Embracing new media – methods and mediums stay consistent with current new media practices and technologies
- Appropriately governed – portfolio and policies are monitored and adjusted for performance
To help them define a strategy, we are pursuing a five step process:
- Understand audiences and messaging strategies along with new media and “web native” delivery opportunities
- Inventory and assess the existing portfolio with characteristics about the user audience, technologies being used, costs and commercial arrangements, business importance and functional quality
- Build a case for change and align support from top management
- Define an achievable road map that embraces common architecture standards and appropriate technology solutions and services
- Implement governance structures including sourcing models, policies and procedures that mitigate technical diversity
The benefits of a rational communications technology portfolio come from both cost reductions and communications impact. We have seen cost reduction from 15% to 35%+ through the elimination of duplicate systems and related support costs while dramatically simplifying and unifying communications. By embedding a portfolio governance process, they will have a common language to explore and resolve issues around application rationalization planning. Maintaining an application inventory will support future planning and decision-making and provide a consistent framework to analyze performance, effectiveness and progress
As A-Rod has taught us, steroids accelerate performance – MVP seasons!
No matter what your view of A-Rod (I live in Boston, so I don’t have to go far to get an opinion), we can see that steroids can drive performance. While we may not want to use this controversial approach, there are some things we can do to drive the performance of our marketing spend by better connecting marketing with sales and embracing digital strategy.
At a recent event, I was asked by the Boston Business Journal to comment about trends in technology that may impact the Boston metro area in this difficult economic cycle. I described two competing trends – a positive macro trend we see around the seismic shift in spending from traditional media to digital media and a negative micro-trend of increasing day-to-day pressure on spending on current marketing programs. The overall macro trends support a move toward digital media and new marketing strategies which help drive down the costs of marketing, sales and lead generation and enhances relationship selling throughout the buy-sell cycle. Traditional marketers offer strong brand identity and creative thinking, but we need more linkage between marketing and sales and better systems to synchronize with the sales process. We need to embrace the principles of permission marketing and “opt-in” lead collection that are tightly aligned with the buy-sell process.
So what are the strategies?
Here are six steps you can take to build an integrated sales and marketing program “on steroids”:
First, understand audience. Starting with the existing customer base, segment your audience (customers and target customers) into logical groups and align the marketing approach to each segment. Understand what each of the audience segments really want so you can tailor your content and better connect. We recognize a shift in power from the company to the customer and need to recognize that the customer now has controls at his/her fingertips. The customer expresses their intentions every time they go online and type in key words into a search engine. You can educate this audience in a very crowded space. Begin by mapping audience segments to understand their needs.
Second, align marketing to the sales cycle. Each individual will be at a different stage in their personal buying life cycle. Align your marketing channels and strategies to each stage of the buy-sell cycle. Here is a typical buy cycle: explore… learn… interact… review… acquire… use. Map communication channels and strategies to the buying cycle: attract… engage… educate… transact… fulfill… support… Spend most of your face-to-face time and money on the later stages of the buy-sell cycle and use digital channels to nurture opportunities in the early stages of the buy-sell cycle. I call this a Nurture Program.
Third, embrace new media. New media helps engage an audience with quality interactions and compelling experiences. These strategies drive influence at a lower cost. The audience can “opt-in” to the conversations qualifying themselves as interested in solutions. New media will also enhance awareness and “buzz” by accelerating conversations across the social web. Outreach to bloggers and engage in forum discussions where your products and services are being considered. Use Webinars, Twebinars, and YouTube videos to deliver content that reflects your expertise or value and build a brand identity. For selected audience segments, offer a velvet rope community – a tailored private channel of conversation and information delivery tailored to the unique interests of the targeted audience. Use these channels to build a special relationship with this invite-only audience and keep this segment tightly connected to your brands and offerings. Careful, we can only participate in a finite number of social and collaborative networks, so you may need to determine whether to build your own community or engage in one that already exists – or both. With your own community, you can build strong relationships – just set the right expectations about the level of engagement you should expect.
Fourth, use digital channels to nurture your audience. Your web site(s) should engage users with usable content and be visible to the search engines based on your key words. Sites and landing pages must be optimized and have conversion points so that your visitors can easily “opt in” to engage in a dialog about areas of interest. Blogs offer more dynamic and current content and increase the visibility and relevance of your area of expertise. I wrote a blog post two weeks ago and my post was on the first page of Google search results for the key words “application rationalization:. You also need to embrace the mobile web by ensuring your site is WAP enabled – and if it makes sense for your business, build an iPhone or Blackberry application!
Fifth, don’t give up on face-to-face. Digital does not and should not replace the value of face-to-face interactions with your community. Events and meetings are an effective way to build a network, provide education, nurture opportunities and develop sales leads. Just like a visit to your web site, a registration at an event is a declaration of intent. Your goal is simply to deliver on that intent no matter what part of the buy-sell cycle the individual is on. Provide education, engage in a business discussion, and convert the opportunities. The key is to deliver a compelling event experience end-to-end.
Sixth, gain audience intelligence with data management. You need to understand your audience yet traditional CRM methods are outdated. CRM is limited to your “known” audience of prospects and customers. CRM is being replaced by what we call Market Relationship Management. Today, you need to understand the broader market – the complete audience of known and registered community and those that are connecting to your brand through social media sites and RSS subscriptions. You may not have all the details for this wider audience, but an effective listening and intelligence platform will give you needed insights about the sentiments in the social web. You can use this data and historical trends to target in more effective ways. By linking these systems to your sales process, you will be in a position to focus your sales energies on the audience members that have chosen to engage in conversations with you – these are your most qualified opportunities. In summary, for full disclosure, I am Red Sox fan, so perhaps I am not the biggest A-Rod fan. However, I do like “steroids” when it comes to accelerating a marketing strategy. If you embrace a digital strategy that ties marketing more closely with the sales process and engage the wider social web to nurture your audience intelligently – your sales with increase and costs will go down. Good luck and good selling..!
At a recent event, I was asked by the Boston Business Journal to comment about trends in technology that may impact the Boston metro area in this difficult economic cycle. I described two competing trends – a positive macro trend we see around the seismic shift in spending from traditional media to digital media and a negative micro-trend of increasing day-to-day pressure on spending on current marketing programs. The overall macro trends support a move toward digital media and new marketing strategies which help drive down the costs of marketing, sales and lead generation and enhances relationship selling throughout the buy-sell cycle. Traditional marketers offer strong brand identity and creative thinking, but we need more linkage between marketing and sales and better systems to synchronize with the sales process. We need to embrace the principles of permission marketing and “opt-in” lead collection that are tightly aligned with the buy-sell process.
So what are the strategies?
Here are six steps you can take to build an integrated sales and marketing program “on steroids”:
First, understand audience. Starting with the existing customer base, segment your audience (customers and target customers) into logical groups and align the marketing approach to each segment. Understand what each of the audience segments really want so you can tailor your content and better connect. We recognize a shift in power from the company to the customer and need to recognize that the customer now has controls at his/her fingertips. The customer expresses their intentions every time they go online and type in key words into a search engine. You can educate this audience in a very crowded space. Begin by mapping audience segments to understand their needs.
Second, align marketing to the sales cycle. Each individual will be at a different stage in their personal buying life cycle. Align your marketing channels and strategies to each stage of the buy-sell cycle. Here is a typical buy cycle: explore… learn… interact… review… acquire… use. Map communication channels and strategies to the buying cycle: attract… engage… educate… transact… fulfill… support… Spend most of your face-to-face time and money on the later stages of the buy-sell cycle and use digital channels to nurture opportunities in the early stages of the buy-sell cycle. I call this a Nurture Program.
Third, embrace new media. New media helps engage an audience with quality interactions and compelling experiences. These strategies drive influence at a lower cost. The audience can “opt-in” to the conversations qualifying themselves as interested in solutions. New media will also enhance awareness and “buzz” by accelerating conversations across the social web. Outreach to bloggers and engage in forum discussions where your products and services are being considered. Use Webinars, Twebinars, and YouTube videos to deliver content that reflects your expertise or value and build a brand identity. For selected audience segments, offer a velvet rope community – a tailored private channel of conversation and information delivery tailored to the unique interests of the targeted audience. Use these channels to build a special relationship with this invite-only audience and keep this segment tightly connected to your brands and offerings. Careful, we can only participate in a finite number of social and collaborative networks, so you may need to determine whether to build your own community or engage in one that already exists – or both. With your own community, you can build strong relationships – just set the right expectations about the level of engagement you should expect.
Fourth, use digital channels to nurture your audience. Your web site(s) should engage users with usable content and be visible to the search engines based on your key words. Sites and landing pages must be optimized and have conversion points so that your visitors can easily “opt in” to engage in a dialog about areas of interest. Blogs offer more dynamic and current content and increase the visibility and relevance of your area of expertise. I wrote a blog post two weeks ago and my post was on the first page of Google search results for the key words “application rationalization:. You also need to embrace the mobile web by ensuring your site is WAP enabled – and if it makes sense for your business, build an iPhone or Blackberry application!
Fifth, don’t give up on face-to-face. Digital does not and should not replace the value of face-to-face interactions with your community. Events and meetings are an effective way to build a network, provide education, nurture opportunities and develop sales leads. Just like a visit to your web site, a registration at an event is a declaration of intent. Your goal is simply to deliver on that intent no matter what part of the buy-sell cycle the individual is on. Provide education, engage in a business discussion, and convert the opportunities. The key is to deliver a compelling event experience end-to-end.
Sixth, gain audience intelligence with data management. You need to understand your audience yet traditional CRM methods are outdated. CRM is limited to your “known” audience of prospects and customers. CRM is being replaced by what we call Market Relationship Management. Today, you need to understand the broader market – the complete audience of known and registered community and those that are connecting to your brand through social media sites and RSS subscriptions. You may not have all the details for this wider audience, but an effective listening and intelligence platform will give you needed insights about the sentiments in the social web. You can use this data and historical trends to target in more effective ways. By linking these systems to your sales process, you will be in a position to focus your sales energies on the audience members that have chosen to engage in conversations with you – these are your most qualified opportunities. In summary, for full disclosure, I am Red Sox fan, so perhaps I am not the biggest A-Rod fan. However, I do like “steroids” when it comes to accelerating a marketing strategy. If you embrace a digital strategy that ties marketing more closely with the sales process and engage the wider social web to nurture your audience intelligently – your sales with increase and costs will go down. Good luck and good selling..!
I wrote a few weeks ago about strategic outsourcing and technology rationalization. Today, I am sharing some further views on successful technology portfolio assessment and a transformation strategy to Second Circle Technology ™. As the economic downturn continues we are seeing and increasing number of companies looking at cost reduction through application portfolio transformation. Application transformation with Second Circle Technology drives more flexible and lower cost while legacy systems constrain IT’s ability to meet business needs. We have seen reductions in cost that range from 15% to 30% of IT spend. At the same time, legacy application portfolios constrain the ability to meet business needs. Some of the typical constraints are:
- applying systems and processes consistently throughout the company
- adapting quickly enough to address changing business needs
- ensuring the skills needed to make critical changes to systems
There are also inhibitors that make changing the application portfolio a challenge:
- Users have grown up with ‘their’ application (often built in-house) and are very protective over them
- Users perceive risks from the fear of unknown while others dislike possible loss of exclusive ownership/control
- Change may appear to be more manually intensive to the users than the existing applications
- Technologists push new technology based on personal interests and to develop their own skills and market value
- Organizations lack an effective approach to maintaining an effective portfolio and demonstrating how all the pieces fit together.
We see many instances where companies fail in their efforts to transform their application portfolio. Often, there is insufficient up front focus securing business sponsorship and commitment. Transformation to a new or updated application portfolio is complex and there is an insufficient focus on the culture changes and buy-in needed to support the new approach. If you are trying to assess your application portfolio, you must ensure the transformation is driven by the business strategy – establish the business vision, leadership and sponsorship required to drive the program. When evaluating each application in the portfolio, you can use a structured analysis to select the most appropriate transformation approach. Begin with an inventory of applications and an overall mapping of how systems all fit together. From that point, you can assess each component of your architecture for the right strategies. Once the overall view is in place, you can make decisions at the application level. Options include:
- No change to current systems – leave current situation apart from routine support and maintenance
- Incremental enhancement or “bolting on” extensions to existing systems/architecture or “ring-fencing” legacy applications
- Replacement with a Software Package – use best of breed commercial off the shelf package or combination of packages to replace existing systems
- Replacement with a Custom Developed Application – replacement of existing systems with new, purpose-built applications
- Outsource with an on demand service provider– pass applications, infrastructure or development to a 3rd party. This is particularly popular with the advent of cloud computing and service provider expertise.
To ensure success, make sure you treat your initiative as a business change program – put in place the required capabilities, skills and resources to deliver the transformation, define and communicate your approach.
Resources
Service Offerings
SUPPORTING
- The Pan Mass Challenge
- Best Buddies Challenge
- Vermont Council on Rural Development
- Greensboro Association