By Erin Lynch-Klarup

Looking for help developing your social media strategy?  Want a new Facebook application but don’t know where to start? The growth of social media has given rise to a flood of new vendors proffering solutions to almost every aspect of social media marketing.

To help harness collective knowledge of vendor performance, the Marketing Leadership Council launched a Social Media Vendor Review Tool, where marketers can review vendors they’ve worked with and access other reviews from peers.

We’ve collected 36 reviews to date, and we’ve noticed a few general trends across these reviews: Read More »

Although we all know peer recommendations are the most trusted source of brand information, we don’t always know who our advocates are or how to get them to share recommendations.

Qwest Communications really struggled with this.  In certain markets, up to 50% of Qwest’s prospects request a customer reference before agreeing to purchase.  With no systematic approach to sourcing references, sales reps would spend an average of 4 hours (across 2 or 3 weeks) to find each reference.  Not only did this slow down the sales cycle, but reps would also burn out happy customers by over-contacting them or turn to less satisfied customers and get poor references.  Then Qwest found a creative new approach to references. Read More »

By Whitney Satin

Sales and Marketing leaders don’t typically agree on a whole lot, but they’re certainly on the same page when it comes to messaging: it matters, and we’re not doing a great job at getting it right.  When there’s little message consistency across the different interactions with the company, customers lack a clear understanding of why they should choose one company’s products or services over another’s.

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With the Super Bowl not too far in the rear-view mirror, and basketball’s March Madness in full swing, B2C marketers break out the checkbook for new TV campaigns integrated with broader marketing communications efforts. We’ve seen everything from babies talking stock options to houses made from beer cans. But the overarching question remains: do the campaigns work?

The Council’s work on marketing communications has always stressed the primacy of client-side creative brief writing. Many heads of advertising will tell us they can ascertain the relative success of a campaign in advance simply by reading the creative brief sent to the agency. Our research shows that the best briefs contain three can’t-miss elements: Read More »

We are deep into my favorite time of the year – the NCAA tournament – “March Madness.”  Every year we’re treated to the drama of David vs. Goliath matchups and the promise of an upset around every turn (sorry Kansas…).  While I’m eagerly awaiting my beloved Syracuse to steamroll their way to a championship – I also enjoy the egalitarian nature of the tournament that gives all of its entrants the chance to walk away with the trophy at the end.

What do these teams have in common?  Thousands of hours of practice and significant investments from many different sources that got them to the tournament in the first place.  Coaches, families, schools, and the drive of the athletes themselves, are all integral parts  of getting a team to the level needed to compete in the NCAA tournament.  Malcolm Gladwell puts the number of hours training to reach a level of mastery at 10,000.  In real terms, that’s about 10 years of practice. Read More »

Note to self: Scandinavia is cold in March. But my visit there this past week will be memorable for more than chills. One member visit stands out against the rest for the remarkable shift the marketing function has made in the last few years.

Four years ago, this Council member was spending 100% of its marketing resource in a traditional “fire and forget” manner—campaign-driven with traditional media featuring heavily. Today, that mix has shifted to three-quarters digital and emerging media.

The speed and magnitude of the shift is remarkable in its own right, but more interesting has been the shift in the operating mentality of the marketing team. Fully half of the marketing team’s resources, time and energy is managed in an “Always On” mode, not on a fire-and-forget basis. This Always On mentality, more than anything else, has poised the company to see great success with digital media and social networking in the coming years. Read More »

Einstein proffered that doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results is the very definition of insanity.

Then I must ask the rhetorical question: how close do marketers come to that definition when it comes to marketing planning? The search term ‘marketing planning’ has appeared in the top five search terms on the MLC website for 24 months running. Our annual executive survey has reported ‘planning’ as a top-five area of improvement nearly every year since the poll’s inception.

Sincerely now, what do marketers keep doing year after year that keeps yielding the same underwhelming results?

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Looking across the 50+ campaigns on MLC’s B2B Marcomm Showcase, it’s clear that the very best get 3 things right: 1) they engage the sales force; 2) they maximize cross-channel synergies; and 3) they capitalize on a customer insight. 

As all 3 are easier said than done, we’ve surfaced tips and tactics from the marketers behind some of last year’s best campaigns – Alcatel-Lucent, National Instruments, and Qwest Communications. Read More »

By Whitney Satin

Early results from our commercial integration diagnostic have been telling: fewer than 30% of sales and marketing leaders believe their company’s messages to customers are consistent and reinforce one another.

If that doesn’t startle you, it should.  As the number of different information outlets continues to explode, B2B companies must treat every interaction as a critical opportunity to convince customers of their unique value.  Everything—from the sales pitch to marketing collateral to corporate communications—is a chance to hammer home what differentiates you from the next guy.  And the more consistent you can be across channels, the more likely customers are to internalize this differentiated mantra.  But we’re clearly not getting the job done. Read More »

Let’s face it – as the frontline for cutbacks in consumer spending, traditional retail has suffered through a miserable two years. Abercrombie & Fitch gambled that higher prices would keep its panache and lost terribly. Sears Holdings’ stores had their best quarter since 2005 – with a 2.3% year-on-year same store sales decline. Even the McDonald’s ‘I’m lovin’ it’ juggernaut stumbled to a 0.7% same store sales decrease this January. Does the rest of 2010 provide any hope for recovery? And if so, can retailers take advantage of it? Read More »