For most technology sales people, getting into the C-suite is the holy grail. But I think that often when selling to C-level executives there's a tendency to assume that once these people reach the C-suite, they're all the same – that they must have the same, or very similar, needs and concerns and challenges given the attainment of the corner office. In my experience with enterprise customers that hasn't been the case.

So it was refreshing to hear the results of CIO Magazine's annual State of the CIO survey. Because the survey brought to light something that we’ve believed here for a while – not all Cs are created equal, or at least they're not all created the same.

The survey revealed that in fact there are three types of CIOs, and which archetype a CIO aligns with has nothing to do with the industry they're in or the size of their organization (it's so tempting to simply segment your audience by vertical industry or revenue). In fact, it has everything to do with how they perceive their role in the organization, the organizational imperatives they believe they should be supporting and leading, and what they feel they, and their organizations, should focus on. It's about how they behave, not simply what they do.

The three CIO archetypes identified by the research team include:

1. Functional head
2. Transformational leader, and
3. Business strategist

One archetype isn’t better than the other, rather it’s about where a CIO allocates his or her time. Functional heads drill down, focusing on improving IT operations and systems and managing the IT budget. Transformational leaders lead change efforts and identify opportunities to redesign business processes. Business strategists take an even broader approach, putting IT in the context of the business by developing and refining business strategy, understanding market trends and identifying opportunities for competitive differentiation.

Continue reading "All C's Are Not Created Equal" »

Posted by Jennifer O'Connell at 09:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Recently I attended INTEROP Las Vegas. Roaming a trade show floor stacked high with servers and switches, routers and security devices. While I was there checking out how various companies were positioned, how they attempted to set themselves apart from the competition across the aisle using the same language to sell a similar offering, I noticed some trends.

Blogs. If you couldn't make it to Las Vegas for the show, reading blogs was the next best thing to being there. From exhibitors to editors to attendees walking the floor, it seemed everyone was posting about what they saw or heard. Pictures of booths were posted, video interviews, or just reactions to what exhibitors were saying (see below). But the blogs did more than simply give non-attendees a glimpse of the show, it also allowed attendees to share their immediate thoughts on what worked, what didn't, and what is worth learning more about long after the booths are packed up and shipped back to their warehouses. In short, blogs were the real-time eyes and the ears of the show. 

Green is the new black. From Nortel's booth enticing attendees to "Calculate your Cisco energy tax" to the show organizers proclaiming INTEROP’s aisle carpets were made of 60% recycled materials, "environmentally friendly" was the talk of the day. Granted, when it comes to network equipment, reducing power means reducing costs, so in addition to helping the environment a more energy efficient device can also help the bottom line, but there's no denying that the "energy efficiency" message is here to stay.

Show No Fear. From Nortel's jab at Cisco's energy consumption to Xirrus' "Ditch the Switch" theme and Motorola's attempt to drive home the point that wired networks are prehistoric (that's a dinosaur made out of Cat 5 cable), exhibitors weren't afraid to promote their own offering by drawing explicit, sometimes aggressive, comparisons to their neighbor.

Continue reading "INTEROP -- The View from the Floor" »

Posted by Jennifer O'Connell at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

On March 29th, millions of people from Albania to Zimbabwe, Atlanta to Phoenix, turned off their lights as part of Earth Hour 2008.This global event was intended to make a statement and act as a call to action for countries everywhere to find new ways to reduce their impact on the environment.

While the idea of joining like-minded individuals together to champion a cause is nothing new, when momentum really starts to build and awareness increases, companies start to take notice. Today it seems like every company is anxious to "go green," from Wal-Mart's experimental concept stores, which have a goal of using 100% renewable energy, creating zero waste and selling products that sustain resources and the environment, to GE's ecomagination campaign. While its nice that companies are recognizing the social benefits of going green, they’re also probably hoping that, in addition to making them a good corporate citizen, green will sell.

And buyers know that.

In the technology space green data centers are getting a lot of attention. Automobile companies have been adding greener models to their offerings. You can practically feel the judgmental stares when your checkout cashier asks, "paper or plastic?"  and then diverts her eyes to the green reusable bags for sale on the rack next to the check-out line. The pressure to go green is huge, so it's no wonder we're seeing company recycling efforts (Sony), corporations seeking ways to reduce their carbon footprint (IBM), even truck fleets running on vegetable oil (Safeway).

But companies have a fine line to toe between doing what's right because it makes sense and doing what's popular because it makes them look good - what could be called the greening of marketing. Can a company or brand create awareness for its social responsibility without coming across as patting its own back - or worse, merely jumping on the green bandwagon to capitalize on a growing trend?

Can a green message be integrated into promotional campaigns or will customers view the mixing of commerce and social responsibility with skepticism?

Continue reading "It Ain't Easy Being Green" »

Posted by Jennifer O'Connell at 08:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When it comes to technology there are two types of marketers. The brand marketers who communicate an aspirational vision that establishes their company as a category thought-leader while connecting with prospects. And the demand generation marketers, who feast on the pain points of prospects to convert them into leads and ultimately sales.

The reality of the situation is that it's tough to be aspirational when constantly yelling fire in the theater. It's equally as difficult to drive action while preaching what a wonderful place the world is. No wonder there's been many a rumble within technology marketing teams.

What is more important, connecting or converting?

BOTH

Your brand communications, even though striking an aspirational tone, need to also give a reason for your prospects to take action. No action means no revenue. That eventually leads to a visit from your CFO and another round of the very fun game of tourniquet budgeting.

Your demand generation communications need to pay attention to the brand impression they leave behind, especially, to the other 98% who didn't convert. Ignore this and miss the opportunity to set the stage for future sales. You can also suffer from a lower sales conversion as opportunities can fizzle late in the process if your message doesn't resonate with the senior level decision makers who actually own the budget.

So how can you connect AND convert?

Continue reading "Aspirational Pain?" »

Posted by Doug Fox at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Money can't buy you love, but when it comes to channel marketing, sometimes it's expected to. Technology channel marketing organizations invest significant time and dollars making sure they have the right mix of product portfolio, certification, training support, and the icing on the cake – market development funds, rebate programs, and rewards for lead generation activities.

But if the channel has been trained to chase dollars, now hardware and software providers are learning the hard way that services, not products, are earning greater margin for the channel, as much as three times more according to some surveys. So how do you remain relevant to your channel partners, and ultimately, the customers they serve?

If there's one thing the increased emphasis on services has taught us, it's that tech customers are through buying boxes. It's not solely about the product but instead about what the product enables customers to do, whether converging multiple services on a single network, aligning packaged applications strategy to business drivers, improving mobility or securing enterprise network data and resources, among others. 

As technology marketers attempt to move "beyond the box," channel partners begin to play an even bigger role in creating solutions, as they’re on the front line listening to customers talk about their organizational pains and what they specifically need to achieve business goals. 

That's why today's channel marketers need to develop solutions and value propositions that move beyond the product by addressing specific vertical market needs or enterprise/SMB pain points that not only enable channel partners to bundle products and services, but allow them to become more entrenched in the very issues driving technology adoption and purchase. The marketing support and programs behind these channel efforts are vital for success because they set the stage for how solutions are positioned and delivered to customers.

So what if you're still pushing product through the channel?

Continue reading "What The Beatles Knew About Channel Marketing" »

Posted by Jennifer O'Connell at 02:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In most Enterprise technology firms, Account Based Marketing (ABM) is often marketing in name alone. In the typical sales and marketing church-and-state environment, ABM seems to be falling most often on the sales side of the fence and used to augment the key account planning function.

Many CMOs are fine with this arrangement. After all, the skill set required, half inside sales/half research person isn't readily available in most marketing departments. Let the sales team handle it and there will be one less turf war to fight over and one less thing to worry about, right?

So, why should marketing get involved in Account Based Marketing?

Account Based Marketing is typically reserved for the largest 5% of your prospect base, the whales or the elephants, which in some categories represent more than 50% of the potential revenue. Landing one of these prospects will make your quarterly revenue number in one fell swoop.

Guess who is the most important target of your marketing efforts? The exact same prospects.

And what do you think will be the single biggest influence on their perception and consideration of your brand and offering? With apologies to your advertising, PR and event budgets, without a doubt, the ABM efforts.

Case in point: If your desired brand attributes are innovation and thought leadership, but your ABM efforts focus on reliability and value, guess what is going to show up on your next brand tracking study? A giant gap with your most important audience.

So how can this be avoided?

At the very least, marketing should work with the ABM teams to ensure the corporate brand is infused into the overall efforts. Message maps to drive each conversation will at least ensure alignment is achieved.

However, ideally marketing should control this function. It is a terrific way to build a better relationship with sales and have a major and easily demonstrable impact on company revenue.

And if you need another more selfish reason, ABM works and budgets are going up. According to ITSMA's State of the Marketing Profession Address, ABM budgets are going to increase almost 50% in 2008, an almost 250% increase since 2006. I think you'd be hard pressed to find any part of your budget that's experienced that type of growth. And since there is only so much marketing budget to go around, chances are that growth may actually be at your expense. 

So the choice is simple, embrace Account Based Marketing and increase your staffing, budget and stature. Or let someone else do it and take your chances. I'd recommend the former.

Posted by Doug Fox at 03:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As I sat in the large meeting room with hundreds of fellow marketers at the Marketing Sherpa’s B2B Demand Generation Summit here in Boston, I was not only energized by the brainpower in the room, but also with the willingness to share experiences of success and failure.  After all, a lot of us are trying to reach the same, sometimes elusive, B2B technology audience.

I found myself nodding in agreement when the moderator listed the top 5 challenges we face:

1. The growing committee of decision makers involved in the research and buying process.  Head nod – I’d written a blog posting on the subject several months ago.
2. The right content at the right time.  Head nod – we’ve discussed many times both internally and with clients the value of testing offers at various points in the process.  For example, is a prospect really ready for an in person assessment when they’re only at the awareness phase in the decision making process – probably not.
   
3. Building and testing landing pages.  Head nod – yes the samples of landing page looked so familiar.   Yet without the commitment to testing up front how will we know we couldn’t be doing a better job?
   
4. Being everywhere. Marketers think they’ve found their target audience but in reality that’s because they’re everywhere.  Head nod – our audience is everywhere.  They’re online, they’re reading magazines, blogs, emails, and mobile devices so our budgets need to work harder and harder to reach them.
   
5. Handing off the right leads.  Head nod - the sales team will appreciate fewer more qualified leads than being bombarded with leads that are no where near ready to speak to a sales rep.

They were preaching to the choir…So why is it that beyond the walls of this summit and within the walls of our client offices does it often feel like these challenges are ignored?

I don’t think they’re ignored.  Rather we as marketers need to keep our first target audience in mind – our clients.  In fact they are facing these same five challenges every day.

As we’re in the throes of 2008 planning we have a great opportunity to address the challenges our clients face as we develop our strategies and recommendations.  We need to keep the following in mind:

Continue reading "Knowing Your Audience" »

Posted by Kara Tierney at 05:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We’ve all been in meetings, or stuck in traffic, or even in the elevator when you look over and someone is checking email on their BlackBerry, Treo, or iPhone, with that frantic look on their face – I’ve got to read my email NOW! In fact, a recent study by MarketingSherpa indicates that 64% of key decision makers are viewing email on their mobile device.  And we can only hypothesize that in some segments (like technology) this number is probably even higher. So, as marketers we cannot take for granted that a significant portion of the emails we serve up are read on mobile devices.

So what can we do to be smarter email marketers?

The research indicates that many use their mobile device as a way to skim their emails for the most important topics until they’re back at their computer. So we need to understand how to develop our emails for the best mobile device user experience – as well as via desktop.

Here are some simple rules of the road to follow:
 

Continue reading "What do your emails look like on your prospect's mobile device?" »

Posted by Kara Tierney at 02:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

AT&T has decided that after many years and billions (yes that’s bllions with a B) building a hip, memorable wireless brand that putting the word "new" in front of initials that stand for American Telephone and Telegraph is a better option. Uggh. (American for a global business in this day and age? Telegraph? What?)

Well, these are the same people after all who, upon acquiring MediaOne (one of the best and potentially most powerful names ever for a potential consumer triple play offering of cable-phone-internet) chose to change the name of that company to AT&T Broadband. Double uggh.

And what about two HUGE investments in the Cingular brand – American Idol and the new iPhone from Apple?

I think this is a case where one of the world’s least hip brands (AT&T) may actually do harm to two very hot brands (Idol and Apple).

Continue reading "The "new" AT&? – A Cingular mistake" »

Posted by Ken Dec at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

As a general rule of thumb the more complex the technology and the more expensive the investment, the more players that are involved in the decision making process.  Not many companies empower one person (or even department) with exclusive decision and purchasing authority.

What does this mean for marketers who are trying to influence this long and complex decision?  First, you need to understand the people involved in the decision and each of their roles’ in the process.  Talk to your sales team, talk to your customers, utilize syndicated research (Marketing Sherpa’s Business Technology Marketing Benchmark is a great resource), sponsor a brief survey…find out what your up against, find out what makes them tick. 

For example:

• Senior staff may be charged with the brunt of the groundwork – researching the solutions available to solve their problem.  How do the solutions interact with legacy systems?  These folks may be more impressed with the technology than others.  They want to understand how your solution will improve their life (and I don’t mean personal life)…

• The CIO on the other hand, will be more concerned with how the solution advances the business goals of the organization.  Marketing Sherpa notes that in many cases they’ve seen the CIO come in at the last minute and often overrules a senior staffers recommendation.

Once you understand who they are, then you can develop targeted communications that address each of their individual needs.  This can mean slight tweaks in messaging as well as the offer.  Test and refine, test and refine.

Increasing awareness across all individuals involved in the decision making process (combined with a solid solution) will increase your sales. Try encouraging dialogue between the involved parties – incorporate refer a colleague functionality in to your communications.  Give the decision makers and influencers something to talk about.

And test and refine, test and refine.

Posted by Kara Tierney at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Enterprise technology firms tiring of the shark infested waters in the large enterprise market are targeting the perceived blue sky of the small and medium enterprise space in droves. After all, why wouldn’t a smaller company desire the same solutions as their larger brethren?

Unfortunately, targeting small and medium business customers is a little more complicated than a solution and pricing strategy. That’s why so many of the largest and most successful tech players in the enterprise world have failed in their attempts to market downstream.

Based on many years of learnings from working with a variety of technology companies, I offer a few tips to improve the odds of implementing a successful SME marketing strategy.

Clarity is king. Clarity is the name of the game in B2B communications; in the SME space it's even more critical. Chances are your SME decision maker wears more hats than his large enterprise counterpart. Their familiarity with your new offering may not be as top of mind as your current enterprise messaging. Conduct research to be certain your SME messaging resonates.

Focus on a solution. There is all kinds of pain in the SME space. Find out what hurts the most and lead with a laser-guided solution. The more solutions-focused your message can be towards a specific challenge – be it industry-specific, region-specific or size-specific - the more likely your message will engage that audience. Give them reason to believe you are the perfect solution for their needs.

Don’t mention size in messaging. “Not just for large companies anymore”...screams..."large company trying to force big solution in small box." Such hyperbole is completely transparent. One company's definition of "small" is very likely another company's "big". SME is fine for internal targeting, but should be avoided in external messaging. Instead of focusing on size, demonstrate you can solve their challenges. This kind of authenticity very quickly demonstrates that your business is in a position to serve their market.

Lastly...

Channel your energy. Too many technology firms enter the SME space only to sign up any VAR with a heartbeat willing to hawk their products, later questioning the lack of focus and commitment of their partner network. Instead, choose quality over quantity, and select partners who are the best fit for your company's solutions and target audiences. Then invest in these partners. You will both reap the rewards of a long-term partnership.

Posted by Doug Fox at 04:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For the ultimate mind bend – here’s a special report on whitepapers?  Okay it’s called a “special report” but you and I know this is a whitepaper on whitepapers.  Does this signify a cosmic event? The end of the universe as the comedian Louis Black would lead you to believe because there’s a Starbucks on all four corners of an intersection?

No, it reinforces the value of whitepapers and the need to write a good one in order to stand out in the sea of whitepapers. They are valuable content in the technology industry – particularly when a prospect is in decision making or buying stages.  Here are three tips to help increase downloads, content, and pass along and separate your paper from the masses.

1. A smart title. Keep it to the point (not funny or trite).  Try testing whitepapers names to see which receives more downloads.  Michael Stelzner author of the book “Writing Whitepapers: How to Capture Readers and Keep Them Engaged” and founder of www.whitepapersource.com suggests trying numbers in titles.  For example, “Ten things you need to know about compliance”.  The title is one of the most important factors on whether your paper is read, not an afterthought or something that should be left to a technical writer.
2. Keep it short and relevant.  While a short whitepaper sounds like a contradiction, we all know how hard it is to find the time to read a 25-page paper.   Instead try 4-6 pages and make it’s direct and easy to scan online.
3. Use key words. Using the right key words in your abstract/paper summary will help ensure your paper can be found via search engines and within your site.  You wrote this great content – you want it to be easy to find and determine whether it’s relevant for them.

Keep in mind that whitepapers are a valuable marketing tool and should be given the same attention and care that a high profile ad campaign warrants.

Posted by Kara Tierney at 04:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I cannot leave the keyboard these days without someone asking me a question regarding an interface technique they saw on suchandsuchasite.com. I am not talking about Web 2.0 crazy, hip, content and applications (ie – canitblend.com, a talking alien shoshkalee screaming across my screen). Rather, I’m referring to business-related solutions (can you believe it) such as e-commerce, processes, and data visualization. Users are realizing that the browser is finally starting to take form and relief is in sight.

Continue reading "So What the Heck is a Rich Internet Application (RIA)?" »

Posted by Jim Burke at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)