26 October 2012

Successful investment management businesses formula for social media

In my second blog for Visible Banking, following an event I chaired at London Social Media Week.

I share two shining examples of investment management firms that demonstrate their formula for achieving success in social media. Click here

23 October 2012

What gets measured by marketing gets valued.



One of my all time management hero’s, Jack Welch, often uses this quote from Peter Drucker “Because its purpose is to create a customer, the business has two – and only two – functions: Marketing and Innovation. Marketing and Innovation produce results. All the rest are costs.”

Everyone in marketing recognises this to be true, but few follow through with the responsibility it places on us

I have relied on this quotation on more than one occasion to help protect mine or a client’s marketing budget with varying degrees of success. In each instance, my success came down to how effectively I could demonstrate the value of the activity produced to date.

B2B marketing teams must be able to measure the things that lead to sales, just as sales must understand they have a responsibility to marketing to provide valuable insight and genuine feedback on leads.

The most obvious (and I would suggest minimum) metrics that all B2B marketing functions should publish are:
The number of leads generated from marketing activity
The number of opportunities generated from marketing activity and
The number of revenue generated from marketing activity

Now I know this can be difficult for some businesses. Different lead times and buying cycles mean that a sale today can be from lead two years ago and reporting is rarely perfect at first attempt. But we can’t let these challenges become excuses not measure. We can all get bogged down in figures and statistics but we have to rely on some metrics everyone buys into to demonstrate the value being delivered. The process can crafted over time with input from both sales and marketing.

While this collaboration to report with sales is going on, marketing can get to work on benchmarking how many interactions or reach £1 can buy. This doesn’t measure the things that lead to sales, but does indicate the value for money on the volume of the activity being delivered.

I have done this for an entire marketing budget in the past by taking a base year of activity and budget to cost a primary lead, interaction and reach. It works something like this.

Let’s say you are planning to attend a major trade show that will cost £100k, excluding travel, subsistence and time. The event will have 10k visitors, of which you expect 500 to visit your stand over 3 days.

     £100k ÷ 10k visitors is a potential reach of 100 from a £1 unit cost.

     £100k ÷ 500 visitors is a potential interaction of 2.5 from a £1 unit cost

We can now bench mark this event against all activity in the previous period/year. Let’s say all the activity last year including direct mail responses, web visits over 3 minutes, social media posts and PR cost £600k. Let’s also say it generated reach of 900 and 2.8 interactions for £1 cost respectively, we know the event is in the ball park and is worth investing in.

I hope that helps. Of course the one thing that all B2B marketers know that the text books will never tell you. You only have to generate one lead per year that generates a big enough deal for you to have no trouble securing your budget next year. The trouble is, you have to rely on the sales team to admit it came from marketing.  Infographic

18 October 2012

What to do with ideas when you step out of the shower.


When we think about innovation at work, we most often start with the idea generation process.

The best ideas come when we let our subconscious run free. I find this happens most when I’m running, driving on the motorway and when I’m showering. My wife often finds me, much to her annoyance, sitting on the bed dripping wet and scribbling notes.

Indeed I provided two more ideas on how to generate innovative ideas at work in a recent blog and touched on successful innovation being mainly about delivery. In this blog, I want to explore the value of evaluation stage of innovative ideas that comes after we have the idea and before we start on making them a reality.

As the great actor Rex Harrison puts it better than me "exhilaration is that feeling you get just after a great idea hits you, and just before you realise what is wrong with it."

Being critical of our own ideas is essential, but if we find ourselves continually ruling out our new thoughts, this can lead to creative paralysis. So how do we carryout a meaningful evaluation of ideas without preventing our ability to go on to and create more. Well, here is a great model I recently learned about that not only addresses this dichotomy, it can actually lead to more sustainable ideas.

Any list of the great innovators of the last 100 years includes Walt Disney. Walt Disney by any measure was an extraordinary creator. Not just artistically, but commercially too. He understood the value of his art and how to present it in a way that we could all enjoy it most and he could build a business from it.

Academic Robert Dilts analysed Disney’s approach and modelled a clear separation between his state as a dreamer, a critic and a realist, called the Walt Disney Pattern

After having your idea in the shower, you need to see the process as a storyboard and then step back into it in 3 different roles, or mind states.

Firstly as the realist - think very realistically and devise a specific plan to put your new idea effectively into action.  Secondly, become the critic. Find out if anything is missing or needed and turn the criticisms into questions for the dreamer to address.

Finally, step back into the idea as the dreamer (take another shower if this helps). Think creatively to come up with solutions, alternatives and additions to address the questions posed by the critic. Repeat as many times as required until you go all wrinkly, run out of water or have a blockbuster idea.

15 October 2012

£1.65bn is the cost of denying customer choice.


I imagine that Santander is as disappointed as RBS, that their plan to acquire 318 branches and 250,000 small business customers from UK’s state owned bank has collapsed due to a technology issue; A technology issue that most utilities addressed almost 20 years ago.


UK telcos started planning for number portability in the mid 1990’s as they knew they would never grow with out it. After lengthy consultation by UK telecoms regulator, Ofcom, all telcos, including the fledgling start ups and mobile companies had to offer customer portability of their telephone numbers from 19th January 2000.

The deregulation of gas and electricity regulators delivered a similar protocol, enabling customers to switch easily between providers within the terms of their contracts.

While telecoms and utilities companies have come and gone, customer portability being enabler of success or failure, not the root cause. Businesses with the best service and value proposition thrive, regardless of the industry.

Yet the UK retail banking sector has closed its ears to consumer group’s calls for account number portability, and now the whole industry is paying the cost; £1.65bn in RBS case. Had RBS enabled account number portability, the challenge they are facing today in preparing to transfer customers would have already been solved.

This is the ROI case for customer experience and brand. This is the case for delivering the best you can for customers to deliver shareholder value.

So isn’t it time, the new banking regulators take up the mantle for customer choice? Even if it’s just to save the UK retail bank’s shareholders from themselves.

10 October 2012

The meaning of communication is the response you get


Business to business marketing professionals are increasingly understanding the value of a content led marketing strategy. 

Charles Green, author of The Trusted Advisor says “Valuable content is the focus of all successful marketing today.”

Engaging current and potential customers through thoughtful and useful content is more powerful than above the line and direct mail. It can be delivered through channels that customers have opted into, removing its disruptive nature, and can much more effectively targeted.

I accept that writing a blog can seem like producing popcorn if are used to delivering more detailed white papers and magazine articles. I accept that a single blog can never give justice to a large and complex topic. I know that blogs are as transient as the paper we use to wrap fish and chips in.

However, I firmly believe the meaning of communication is the response you get, and one of the most effective ways to get an immediate response to a business idea is to publish it as a blog that will resonate with your customers.  

I am not for a moment advocating producing blogs for the sole purpose of provocation, but obtaining a response is a valuable outcome for blogging commercially.  Longer written pieces have their place, and sometimes anything less may seem vacuous. If you are writing to stand out and generate business, a series of regular blogs focused on the audience you want to engage with is powerful way to start. 

Blogs are low cost, fast to produce and an effective way to get some personality onto your business brand.

Don’t just take my word for it. Last week I attended a super seminar at The British library arranged by Kogan Page.

The highlight for me was two experienced and talented commercial content producers Sonja Jefferson and Sharon Tanton, who’s new book Valuable Content Marketing is much longer than this blog, and even more informed.