Converting Leads to Cash in the Digital Age of Marketing

By Kate McPherron, technology evangelist

Based on a talk given by Jason Palmer, WebTrends VP of marketing, at the SAO Marketing SIG on Tuesday, October 17, 2006

This meeting summary was written to accompany Jason Palmer’s PowerPoint presentation

Managing the art and science of marketing
The pressure on the chief marketing officer (CMO) continues to intensify. New media channels are coming online every day. The Internet is reshaping how customers are communicating with businesses. And the board room is mandating greater accountability across all marketing programs.

Jason Palmer tells how he manages the art and science of marketing at WebTrends, using persona-based marketing to identify the key needs within marketing organizations, which WebTrends solutions serve. He discusses his philosophy on closed-loop marketing programs that build brand, drive thought leadership and most importantly, create quality leads.

Shifting to the digital age of marketing
As we shift from print to digital media, from push (e.g., TV and print news) to pull (web), consumers are taking control. One example is car buying where research before contact with a dealership used to be minimal; mostly it took place after leaving the dealership with a handful of brochures. Now with the web, around 90% of new car buyers do their research before coming to a dealership. With high gas costs, web-based services are successfully pushing into “errands” like filling prescriptions or grocery shopping. And the travel industry has been transformed by the web.

The chief marketing officer, whose average tenure is only a little over two years, must make this shift, plus be in tune with how selling will change in the future. Any print or TV advertiser knows their power is declining, and will have to consider how to gain advantage as the Internet and television converge. PVRs such TIVO can pause a show and be connected to the internet, and soon there will be premium ads that PVRs can’t skip. It’s easy to make the jump to a day when PVRs are given away for free – with ads – while ad-free versions retain today’s for-cost model.

Chrysler is expected to shift 25% of its ad spending online – interactive ads, including mobile phone games, sponsorship of microsites, and streaming video.

Because interactive media are more efficient and more measurable they demand that the CMO be more accountable. In addition, because it is now possible, these media also require marketing to become more direct, more personal, more one-on-one.

How does WebTrends sell to the CMO?
First, find the pain points – unmet needs. This big one (we already know) is accountability. But WebTrends goes much deeper; identifying distinct marketing personae, each with their own unmet needs as aspects of their job roles, and then works to illustrate how WebTrends can meet those needs. Tracking is done through a lead-to-cash process, with sub-processes along the path from suspect to sale.

Vertical markets are key
Companies start to fall down if they are not doing a complete program to support the lead process for each vertical, because each step is essential to establishing credibility. For example, for the travel industry WebTrends has a travel white paper, a travel demo, belongs to travel trade organizations, etc., each piece speaking to the needs of the travel marketer. Because there is so much to do, it’s only possible to do so many end-to-end programs for verticals. Some of the steps WebTrends follows in handling verticals include:

• Expertise. WebTrends assigns specific professional services people with experience in those verticals to help “own” that vertical.
• Membership. Palmer cites the value of becoming a member of trade associations; for its $10,000 membership fee, a vertical industry association gave WebTrends two trade show booths at their shows, co-sponsorships, and membership lists. “For about 120 man-hours and $10,000, we now own this vertical – it was very efficient.”
• Pocket Guides. To generate leads, WebTrends issues “best practices guides,” created in cooperation with trade publications. The guides include a forward by an industry thought leader along with selected articles from the publications that have to do with WebTrends customers and marketing performance measurement. Palmer says that people keep the pocket guides for a long time, a fact supported by one marketing SIG audience member, who said he has kept an old “Web Analytics 2.0” pocket guide for over four years.
• White Papers. WebTrends also issues periodic white papers for verticals, for example, the Retail Holiday Guide, which is based on a customer survey.
• Vertical microsites. For the key verticals, WebTrends creates microsites to house all the components relevant to that industry.
• Presentations. Palmer doesn’t think it is that difficult to tailor a presentation for a vertical. WebTrends standard presentation has 18 slides in its core deck, and most vertical presentations are easily expanded to leverage research, industry-specific challenges and best practices from WebTrends business analyst group, and quotes and case studies from other customers in that industry.
• Demos. Palmer feels strongly that you must tailor demos for each vertical, at very least by including a few screenshots that have an industry customer. In WebTrends’ case, they have a sample data set and sample screens for each vertical.
• Measurement. Each of the tools fits into one of the sales stages in the lead-to-cash process, and it’s important to track each step. Measuring everything means you know how many leads move from suspect to qualified lead, the length of time of the sales cycle, and lets you identify what might be causing you to be off-track.

Question and answers

Leveraging visitor intent. Palmer cites Orbitz, which sends an email to someone even if they just came to look, to do research. They know that most travel decisions are made in a 48-hour window, so the targeted email, with information about the cities in question, is a personal touch. At the same time, it can also be anonymous, behavioral targeting if you don’t have the customer profile.

Podcasts. WebTrends is not using Podcasts, but is working with customers who are. For instance, Internet Broadcasting, the nation’s largest publisher of TV station web sites, is doing video podcasting and figuring out how to target content to different types of news consumers.

Changes for consumers in 5 to 10 years. Here is where leveraging “intent” will become more important. Today’s consumer is already overloaded with email offers and irrelevant direct mail, and marketers are finding traditional mass-marketing less effective, as network TV reaches smaller audiences yet continues to charge premiums. Marketing will need to seek to better engage consumers and understand their “intent,” and according to a recent survey of more than 250 senior marketing executives, the majority are leveraging the Web as the hub of all marketing strategies in order to accomplish this. What this means for the consumer is a future where irrelevant advertising fades away, and it becomes more common to receive the perfect offer at the perfect time. Perhaps we’ll reach a point where marketing becomes convenient for consumers, creating a virtual shopping list that ensures they get the best services at the best price for all their considered purchases.

Tomorrow’s consumer will be able to pause her favorite show, clicking on a character’s new “BMW” to search for available features and price. On resuming program viewing, the consumer may be surprised at first to see another BMW ad, this one more detailed and hard-hitting with customer testimonials. Perhaps it drives her back to BMW’s site to enter a sweepstakes and opt-in for future communications, which of course will be tailored to her X5 SUV preference, and refined over time. Perhaps, by the time she enters the buying process, BMW has come to understand that she’s just looking for enough seats for her growing family and the luxury sedan is the better fit.

Biography: Jason Palmer
Palmer has more than 17 years of experience directing high-performing teams to achieve world-class results at e-commerce, retail and technology companies, including NOW Software, Wal-Mart Inc., Qualcomm, and Clientele Software. As a founding executive of 800.com, Jason led operations, development and marketing teams to help develop a whole new way for consumers to research, choose and buy electronics. Sales soared to over $50 million and 800.com became the largest online-only consumer electronics retailer in the nation. Leveraging pioneering interactive marketing technologies at the time, Jason directed teams that won Advertising Age's first award for best use of streaming video.

As vice president of marketing for WebTrends, Jason is responsible for defining WebTrends next-generation products and go-to-market strategies for the industry’s leading marketing analytics solution, which helps enterprise organizations prove and improve their online marketing initiatives. The market is responding, and WebTrends is experiencing its highest bookings in the history of the company, including adoption by leading customers such as Microsoft, Orbitz, Coca-Cola, Monster.com and HSBC. As a committee member of the Interactive Advertising Bureau and member Web Analytics Association, Jason is a frequent speaker at industry shows, including Search Engine Strategies, e-Tail, Shop.org and AD:TECH, educating the industry on the rapidly changing world of interactive marketing. He is a graduate of Oregon State University with degrees in marketing and economics.

About the author
Kate McPherron, a technology evangelist, has helped technology and industrial firms manage and market their products and services for the past 20 years. She can be reached at kate@freepdx.com.