On March 20, 2010, Tim Hayden, Jen Wojcik and Brian Massey joined the Austin AMA at Cool River Cafe for a fireside chat (minus the fire) to share practical marketing strategies to generate business and impact bottom lines. Tim Hayden is Chief Strategy Officer and Partner at Blue Clover. Jen Wojcik is CEO andCo-Founder of Pinqued.com. Brian Massey is The Conversion Scientist.
[podcast]http://www.austinama.org/wp-content/show-me-the-money.mp3[/podcast]
On Sales and Marketing Alignment
Jen: Sales wants Marketing to identify and deliver target markets to them by communicating a solid value proposition, not make stabs in the dark. Put your best people on MarCom duty—don’t leave it to the interns.
Brian: Your content is digital and amorphous. A blog post can become a video, which can become a podcast, which can become an email series, which can become Twitter posts. Think about all the ways your content can be morphed to go out to all of your available channels.
Tim: Everything you do is a content opportunity.
On Design and Communication
Brian: Chill on the design. Focus on the content. Position your Web site not as a brochure but as a service that addresses the customer’s problem. Marketers need to find good copy writers, let them do their thing, and push that content out to all available channels (blog, Facebook, Twitter, email, etc).
Tim: But keep the designer in the loop. Presentation matters to increasingly savvy consumers, who are liable to take screen shots of your Web site or cell phone photos of your product to share and aid in the decision-making process.
Jen: Content may be king, but communication is emperor. If you don’t get the message across, what’s the point? Good design matters in visually communicating your content.
On the Sales Funnel
Jen: Would rather have 10 prospects developed through “relationship funneling” than 100,000 prospects targeted through “broadcast funneling.” Social media provides relatively easy and inexpensive ways to develop and maintain relationships.
Brian: Practice serial testing: When you make a change (for instance, to your Web site), know how the change affects your bottom line. Track small incremental changes, and be ready to roll back if a change makes things worse instead of better.
Tim: The concept of having your customers sell for you (a la Joseph Jaffe’s book Flip the Funnel) is lost on a lot of businesspeople. There are three types of people in the world: your customers, your past customers, and people you want to be your customers. Find out where your customers congregate online (for instance, by running a search on LinkedIn) and go there to communicate with them about the things they care about. Talk about their problems and needs—not about your product.
The Bottom Line?
Build relationships with your customers by delivering great content that addresses their needs. Deliver that content through as many channels as possible. Within your sales and marketing teams, keep communication lines open. Always, always track the results of your efforts so you know what works and what doesn’t.
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