We were fortunate to escape the confines of the office in order to attend a NEDMA (New England Digital Media Association) Conference at the Boston Common Hotel and Conference Center.  From the moment we walked up to the second floor, we were immediately submerged in innovative ideas and new data that will help shape future marketing campaigns.

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An effectively designed website is only one element of an effective web marketing ecosystem. To achieve effective  web presence and drive qualified leads, we developed an easy to remember mnemonic “AEIOU” (attract, engage, influence, optimize, understand).

AEIOU helps to consider the strategies that make up a digital marketing strategy. But to really power the  strategies, companies need marketing automation tools. Platforms like Hubspot (www.hubspot.com), Act-on (www.act-on.com) and Marketo (www.marketo.com) and many others  are very powerful ways to manage multi-stage buyer processes and map content and engagement at each stage of the process – nurturing relationships from awareness to customer.

When budgets are a little smaller or the sales cycle is a little less complex, we often recommend using a component-based approach as a marketing solution. Some of our preferred solution components and web services include:

  • WordPress content management system- we often recommend WordPress due to its ability to integrate nicely with other preferred web marketing systems and the ease of use our clients enjoy (www.wordpress.com)
  • Unbounce landing page setup – easy to create and test marketing landing pages to drive qualified leads (www.unbounce.com)
  • MailChimp – email marketing system – we set up custom email templates for this easy to use email marketing tool and measure the effectiveness of email marketing campaigns (www.mailchimp.com)
  • Revenizer – a marketing dashboard we created (sister company) specifically to help measure the effectiveness of web and social presence and increase revenue from web marketing campaigns (www.revenizer.com)
  • CRM –  Salesforce is the leading CRM and is often a great choice, however it is worth looking at many of the more “social CRM” solutions like Batchbook.

In selecting these solutions, we recommend that you find sets of solutions that work well together with strong APIs and integrations. If your needs are not too complex a component based approach can be a very affordable and effective way to deliver marketing automation.

 

Advice on looking beyond system features to find a product that will meet your needs today and tomorrow

Marketing automation systems are a great way to improve marketing capabilities and productivity. Your success with this technology depends heavily on your ability to choose a solution that will adequately fulfill your firm’s needs. With the wide variety of marketing automation systems available, this can be a daunting task.

It’s an easy mistake to select the system that is simply the most popular in the market or has the flashiest features. Just because the product is popular does not mean it will work well for you, and fancy features might look attractive, but unless they are useful to you extra features add unnecessary cost and complexity. Any system that you consider must at least be capable of tracking website traffic, sending mass e-mails, and reporting data; anything less is not worth considering, and an abundance of extra features should be carefully evaluated for necessity.

Your best bet is to look beyond popularity and determine what your firm needs most from the system. Define how you plan to use the system, what advantages you hope to gain, and what financial value you would like these advantages to bring. Once you set clear, prioritized goals of what your firm is hoping to achieve through implementing a marketing automation system, you will be able to narrow down the specific details and features the right system will need to provide, thereby greatly narrowing your search.

The next step after finding a system that seems to fit your firm’s particular needs is to carry out a test. Design a specific scenario based on how you plan to use the system and have the vendor demonstrate its execution. This will allow you to see the features that you will need to use in action without getting distracted by the features that you will not use, and will overall give you a better understanding of how the system will work for your firm.

Another important factor to take into consideration is the system’s references. At the very least, exploring a vendor’s references will give you an idea of the kinds of companies that have found success in using the system. You might also be able to glean some insight into the implementation process. Furthermore, you should take into account the usability of the system and what user support is available.

Once you determine through these factors which marketing automation system is a good fit, you will be able to maximize the value of your system and will be well on your way towards improving your firm’s marketing strategies.

At the Schwab Advisor Services meeting in New York yesterday, about 40 advisors joined to discuss a broad vision for achieving a digital presence with social media. In describing the “how to” I shared ways of thinking about digital presence and the role of social media. To help describe ways to get started, I outlined strategies that included actions for revenue strategy, revenue systems and revenue programs. But even this breakdown of strategy and planning recommendations are a lot to tackle for a busy advisor getting started with social media. I often get the question – “OK, but what are the top three things you suggest? Here are three things I would start with to get established online:

1) Solid Website – all roads lead back here, so make sure you have a foundation you are pleased with and relevant content as well as the ability to engage your audience to download items and register for interactions.

  • Clean professionally branded
  • Relevant content
  • Conversion capabilities

2) Professional LinkedIn Profiles – This is the easiest to manage from a compliance point of view and it is very well aligned with the advisor business of referrals and relationships.

  • Keyword aligned, current, descriptive profile and business page
  • Professional photo
  • Active network and # of connections

3) Active Content Sharing – With these two platforms in place, a steady stream of relevant publishing will help place you in the minds of your audience as knowledgeable and help reinforce your credibility when it is time to make a decision.

  • Sharing relevant material, text
  • Use video if you can to explain and introduce your firm (host on YouTube)
  • Publish regularly using a blog format with an RSS feed

Is “Marketing Automation” an Oxymoron?

I like the term “Marketing Automation” – sounds great…. This is going to automate my world of Internet visibility, demand management, lead generation – fantastic. I will simply plug in a trusty CRM tool like Eloqua or Marketo, hook it into my salesforce.com application… and – like magic – next week, the leads will start to poor in. Right?

I don’t think so….

Marketing Automation is incredible technology. I love it!  However, I see it as only a small part of the overall solution. There are two broad elements of the category according to Wikipedia – demand generation and marketing workflow automation. I think the workflow automation part is pretty nice to have… taking care of repetitive tasks with software tools… But it takes a lot more than technology to get it right. Demand generation also requires a lot more than automation. What are the underlying values of the brand experience? The offer?  Actually, using the software is a very small part of what makes integrated marketing and sales successful. There are a lot of questions to consider.. here are just a few:


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Helping the Greensboro Association Go Online

Over the last few years, I have worked with a number of larger associations to modernize their online experience and build and enhance community among their membership. With the advent of web 2.0 and social media, these associations recognized that to sustain their membership and attract new members, they needed to deliver a more compelling experience online.  At the same time, I have had the good fortune to serve on the board of the Greensboro Association in Vermont. We are a very small community organization to enhance the village and the beautiful Caspian Lake area by promoting practices that enhance community interaction, protect the lake and serve members and visitors to this idyllic place in northern Vermont.  As the demographics of the community are changing and fewer summer members spend an extended time in the village and local residents become more engaged in the Association, the community will increasingly rely on the online experience to stay engaged with the community and the Association on a continuous, year round basis.

As part of this team, I volunteered to help launch a new web site and services for the community. Naturally, with the size of the organization, we did not have the luxury of a fully customized web presence and needed to deliver value within a low budget! What was the solution? I worked with the committee to select and launch the site on a strong back-end Joomla platform so we could take advantage of the plug and play modules and extensions available in the open community and the long term flexibility. The site was deployed with an off-the-shelf template, which provides a lot of flexibility- though we know that, over time, we will want to enhance the user experience. We decided on a number of extensions to enhance the functionality to include:

 

  • Online member directory
  • Resources application
  • Discussion forum
  • Community calendar and event listing
  • Connected Facebook group

 

Our membership is diverse demographically and not all members are fully comfortable with online experiences. Going forward, we will need to help committee and association leaders take a more active role in managing the online discussions, publishing content and engaging the site as an extension of the collaborative experience of the Association. We consider the online experience an extension to our already rich human interactions among the membership – while also appealing to those more comfortable and familiar with online 24×7 access now available.

I am sure an approach like the one we took would work with community organizations of a similar size and focus. Below is a presentation I made recently at the Annual Meeting. This presentation will give you an idea of the site and its functionality.

 

 

 

Use new technologies to enhance your education and information delivery strategy! I think we all agree that education and learning is critical – for students, educational institutions, corporations, and governments. An educated workforce delivers competitive advantage of nations, and our educational institutions and information resources must deliver the best possible learning experience. Corporations and governments need to address the full spectrum from concept education to on-demand learning, information delivery, and electronic performance support. These organizations need to educate their audience with new concepts, processes, policies, procedures and products on a continuous basis and deliver insights and help at the point of delivery and execution.

The traditional classroom education paradigm is no longer adequate to ensure students receive the education and learning insights they need. We know there is significant value in the face-to-face, instructor led educational experience, but the traditional model needs to be enhanced with new information delivery models that take advantage of the new second circle technologies available today. What are some of the challenges we experience with the traditional model?

  • It is difficult for educational institutions to deliver a compelling and accredited educational experience to students while under increasing cost pressure
  • Students learn at different paces and preferring different learning styles and media and need to balance group learning with individual study to avoid distraction
  • The classroom schedules are not always convenient or accessible when restricted to specific times and locations – especially with the competing classes, sports and extracurricular activities
  • Not all instructors are created equal (see Bill Gate’s talk at TED) and with Virtual Learning, we can scale our very best instructional talent
  • Companies need to continuously educate their rapidly changing employee base and inform customers and partners on new products, procedures, policies and processes – these programs must satisfy the full spectrum from learning broad concepts to gaining tactical content at the point of customer interaction.
  • Employees move rapidly between companies, positions and roles while procedures change; companies need on-demand learning and support solutions especially for high turnover positions
  • The costs of traditional in-person classroom education is high and with increased pressure to manage the cost/value equation for students and meet difficult budget constraints, new models must be considered

I worked with a large insurance company with a non-captive agent workforce spread broadly across geographies. They needed a solution that delivered critical insights at the point of client delivery and communication, but they also needed to deliver a broader educational foundation for these agents. Delivering formal educational programs to an audience this diverse was prohibitively expensive and couldn’t support the day-to-day support needs. They needed both a performance support solution AND an online teaching solution. Increasingly, educational institutions need new sources of income while providing the services that are being demanded by students. Major online education providers are signing up well over 20,000 new online students a month – I think we can confirm the demand is here. Prestigious educational institutions should naturally preserve the integrity of their educational brand and foster the complete on-campus educational experience that includes personal relationships, but they can also begin to more effectively compliment their delivery model with enhanced delivery methods and media.  Tufts is working on programs that will deliver the Tufts-brand of education through distance learning to places like Dubai. In another business example, a leading retail bank needs to better leverage their expert knowledge about innovative products and services across the branch store network. Why lose a valuable product cross-sell or adoption because branch platform personnel were not yet up to speed on key product features and advantages?  Use experts to deliver content on-demand at the point of sale. They need both a broader educational content foundation and live video services that deliver   real-time branch to branch and web-based video conferencing and delivery services. Education and learning delivery should blend traditional classroom learning with new on-demand virtual teaching and information delivery models. New virtual education and information delivery technologies provide the mechanisms to deliver education at the pace students need and provide critical knowledge content on-demand to a company’s customers, employees, partners and students. One example is Panviva’s Supportpoint solution which is being used by companies that need a performance management solution delivered at the point of delivery. The technology integrates with existing applications to provide context-sensitve help and educational performance support. Another compelling solution is being delivered by Retrieve Technology in Henniker, NH.  Retrieve’s vBook technology delivers rich educational content in video /multi-media on-demand to governments, corporations and educational institutions. Teachers and publishers can record their content/classroom using green screen technology and  blend text book, assessments and evaluation structures. The teacher can collaborate with students both on-line and in person using collaborative web 2.0 services to deliver a rich educational experience.  These technologies can be applied in a wide range of contexts – including traditional education, corporate and government training and individual eBook authorship. Some of the features to look for in a winning new media education solution include:

  • Deployment flexibility using either cloud-based or installed platform
  • Human factors oriented design (e.g. using familiar and proven metaphors: books, chapters, sections, book shelves, index, FAQ, etc)
  • Efficient online course creation and delivery with user/ content owner controls
  • Powerful Boolean Search and browse access methods to gain access to the full range of content and zero in quickly on what you need to see
  • Full multi-media – text, graphics, images, audio and video – to enhance the learning and engage audience
  • Tools that facilitate grading and evaluation and certification
  • Branding flexibility to allow institutions to control the learning information and content assets and distribution
  • A balanced approach that facilitates a blend of virtual and live instruction
  • The ability to manage individual content segments and manage version control
  • Notification for students and users for changes to subscribed content
  • Asset and content manageability for individual accounts and groups with full accounting and tracking
  • The ability to track detailed usage and apply custom commercial models with maximum flexibility

Take a look at the new second circle solutions that are out there – the industry is changing quickly, and solutions – like Retrieve Technology – are transforming how we educate and learn. Please comment at Revenue Architects or contact me if you want to learn more about these exciting technologies and the economic value they create!

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:

  1. Understand audiences and messaging strategies along with new media and “web native” delivery opportunities
  2. Inventory and assess the existing portfolio with characteristics about the user audience, technologies being used, costs and commercial arrangements, business importance and functional quality
  3. Build a case for change and align support from top management
  4. Define an achievable road map that embraces common architecture standards and appropriate technology solutions and services
  5. 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