It will no longer be updated here so direct yourself on over to where the party is!

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I recently returned from the Inbound Marketing Summit (IMS09) in Boston and had the chance to meet several social media junkies; many of them already had the support of their management teams. However, I know that we are in the minority and many of you are still trying to get positive support to use social media in your business.  It’s kind of like putting together the pieces to a puzzle that looks complicated at first, but afterwards it seems far simpler.

 Here are my thoughts on a couple of the objections I heard from you in regards to return on investment (ROI).

 You can’t show ROI in social media – While it is true that tracking ROI in social media is not as clear cut as other channels, you can absolutely track ROI. It does require an engaged IT team to connect your social media monitoring tool (I like Radian6) with your CRM, making it not only possible, but realistic.  And trust me, ROI is extremely important; you’ll never hear me say otherwise.  However, there are some misnomers that you need to be aware of if you are getting ready to fight this battle.

Prospecting – First, the sales cycle is likely to be longer if your first engagement with a prospect is through social media. Why? First, because you aren’t out their pimping your services to everyone who will listen. Instead you are building relationships hoping that if your products and services fit your new “friends” needs they will consider you. Also, you might be engaging them long before they’ve searched for a solution or even know they need one. This part of the research phase typically doesn’t include any involvement by your company and is handled solely in the minds of your consumers. At some point they will decide they need a solution and likely do some sort of search and you hope that they think of or remember you. Direct intervention in the pre-research stage of the sales cycle has always been out of reach for businesses. Because of this millions get spent for “branding” campaigns, all aimed at trying to increase recall of your brand. Now you have a chance to engage people and be on their minds while they are in the “thought” stage.  To me, not participating in the discussion at this stage is nuts. The ROI will be there if you do your job well in social media, but the close rate and time to buy may be different. So what do you say to that disbeliever?

Well, I liken this to a sales executive telling you not to make that phone call or sales call to a prospect unless you know for sure you are going to get the sale. Could you imagine having to prove out the ROI before you could make the call? That’s ridiculous, and so is not participating in discussions about your industry and your brand within social media channels.

Customer Service – Second, when looking at the benefits of using social media to provide better customer service it can get really dicey. Many times, the revenue is already in the door, but you are looking to build relationships for future purchases. If you were to put the customer service provided in conjunction with social media, up against your traditional customer service channels I believe you would see that it increases efficiency within your service team. I believe the ROI will be the same as with any customer service channel that provides superior service. I won’t go into what would happen if you were providing cruddy service before. If you were to measure the incremental lift in future business when comparing both channels of service, that would be your ROI for social media. If you also showed the value of a more efficient service model, you’d be golden. But you haven’t sold your executive yet. So what can you say to that skeptic?

If our phones in customer service were ringing off the hook, would you tell our agents not to answer them unless they could prove they would lead to future sales? Of course not. So why can’t we answer the phone? It’s ringing…it just happens to be in cyberspace.

The bottom line is that if you can put social media into the perspective of the current things you are doing within the organization, you may have an easier time selling social media through. And if you can talk of social media with stories related to the first time your company tried another new selling method such as a telesales force or even their first e-commerce site, hopefully they’ll remember that the beginning was slow but the ROI came. It might be a different volume of ROI and it might be a different conversion rate, but it’s there. And it will be for social media too. Good luck! Please share your story in the comments section.

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At IMS09 with Brian Solis

I came to Boston knowing that I was going to meet amazing social media folks and learn some amazing things. What I didn’t know is that I would also develop amazing friendships that I will carry long past the 2 day summit. And that really is the interesting thing isn’t it. We spent 2 days talking about social media and how people are people are using it to exist and participate in conversations where their customers are. We heard case studies, talked with thought leaders, and a lot of authors as it turns out and at the end of the day it all came down to one thing for me.

Social media is a tool that helps you develop deeper relationships with your customers and prospects. The relationship is truly what it is all about as has been true for the last 100 years. I really loved Shiv Singhs modification of Peter F. Drucker’s quote ”The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.” Shiv said, ” The purpose of business is to create a customer that creates a customer.”  That doesn’t happen if you don’t have a relationship.

“The difference is that social media makes the distance between you and your customers nill”, stated brilliantly by Tim Walker. Why? Because you can easily SEE what they are saying, WHEN they are saying it, WHERE they are saying it and WHO they are saying it to.  Marketers in the 50′s would’ve gone biserk over this type of information. And knowing what is being said about your brand is critical. But the most important thing is WHAT you do next.

There was a lot of talk about listening at the summit. And I agree with the speakers if you aren’t listening you are an idiot. It’s too easy to not be doing it. The question is when do you engage?

Are people complaining about your brand? A simple How Can I Help You can go a long way, “the first thing to do is answer the phone and say how can I help you” from David Alston. Chris Brogan and Julien Smith’s 3 A’s that they define in Trust Agents are a great way to manage complaints. “Acknowledge, Apologize and Act.” This really goes into the authenticity theory. Actually care that people had a bad experience and FIX IT! It’s amazing how fixing someone’s problem will deepen your relationship with them. If you can’t fix it, be honest about it.

Are people raving about your brand? “Always say thank you when someone praises your brand online.” Another great thought from David Alston.

This really is simple stuff. It’s not rocket surgery as Chris said. But we all know that it does sound really simple but in practice it can get really complicated…really quick. Questions like how do you get buy in? How do you assemble your team? What do you do when you make a mistake? There were great insights into this as well. I’ll cover some of the tips on that in my next post!

Thank you to all of the presenters who really are game changers and some of the most down to earth, genuine people I’ve met. And of course to Justin Levy and Chris Brogan who gave us the opportunity to connect. And the real magic happened with the attendees who connected over a few drinks and forged friendships.

If you missed it go to slideshare and search for IMS09. Most of the presentations are there.

In looking at the #smroi conversations on Twitter recently, one of the big discussions is the ongoing debate of whether or not social media will prove a positive ROI.  In addition, there are many who are using ROI to talk about value rather than an actual monetary return and it is causing confusion about the true value that social media can bring to an organization and how to explain it to stakeholders in a meaningful way.

To get started you need to develop a plan. I’m not a huge believer in the let’s try it and see what happens strategy. Not that you can’t try and see, but the trying it out should lead to a well-defined plan. There are four-steps to creating your plan.

1. Define Goals and Objectives
2. Align Strategies to Meet Goals and Objectives
3. Create Metrics to Measure Success
4. Develop Execution Plan

As I’ve said in my previous posts, I focus on three core goals. Will you use social media to retain existing customers, generate brand awareness and/or acquire new customers? For social media newcomers, I’d be very cautious about starting a social media plan geared towards acquiring new customers. This takes finesse that comes with experience and I’d wait until you’ve mastered the other two before broaching customer acquisition. Once you have determined what your goal for social media is, you can then start to align strategies with those goals, determine how you will measure if those strategies are successful, and put together a plan for execution. I’m not going to spend much time on those areas in this post, perhaps in a future post if readers are interested. Rather, I’m going to focus on how to create a model to measure success and then give you some ideas on different metrics you can use to build your model.

In order to be able to explain the value of social media to your stakeholders I prefer to use Key Performance Indicators as the term of choice.  Mainly because this is a standard term that people are familiar with and you don’t have to do a lot of explaining about what it means.

Social Media KPIs

So here I’ve defined 10 Key Performance Indicators for social media and I ranked them in importance from 1 to 10. Then I assigned a weight to each ranking.

Click here for the full list. Social Media KPIs

Social Media Monthly Worksheet

Then I took the 10 KPIs and put in metrics for how to measure them on a monthly basis. For each one I used a baseline measure of 0-1 either through doing a percent to goal or a ratio. I used a 1,000 point system to determine where I stand on each of the measure and apply the weight to determine how many points each measure received. The actual formula is (Score on 0-1 scale)*(Percent Weight*1000) to determine the number of points that indicator received for the month. To see the full worksheet click here. Social Media Value Index Worksheet 

Finally, I took the sum of each KPI score as the total for the Social Media Value Index. This gives you a baseline measure for how the all of your social media activities are performing over time. The closer you get to 1,000 the better closer you are to reaching your goals.

Social Media Value Index Score

You can chose any key performance indicator that you believe adds value to the organization. You can also choose more than 10 if you like. I chose to use ROI as one of my KPIs, but on its own I don’t think it tells the whole story, which is why I developed this model. Choosing your KPIs may be the hardest part. So I’ve included some ideas of what you can measure below.

Twitter

• Number of Followers
• Number of People You Follow
• Relevance of Followers (I only follow people that are relevant and use a ratio of followers to those I follow to measure this)
• Number of Retweets
• Number of @replies to you/from you (you can do a ratio here also)
• Number of Clicks on Links Posted
• Twinfluence metrics
• Twitter Grade

Social Networks i.e. LinkedIn, Ning, FaceBook, MySpace

• Number of Connections Made
• Number of Discussions
• Number of Comments
• Number of Groups Participated In
• Level of Involvement in Groups

Video Sharing/Live Webcasts

• Number of Monthly Views/Attendees
• Monthly Average of Views/Attendees
• Number of Linkbacks to Videos

There are many more I could list here. Joe LaTona did a really nice job of providing a list to start from in his “What Are Your Social Media Goals” post.

Now that you have your plan it’s time to execute, measure, and refine!

I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on how you are measuring, suggestions you have for refining this model and what you would add to the list of possible KPIs.

If you would like a copy of the excel worksheets used to develop the model please email me at nikkikelly09@gmail.com and I’ll send you a copy.

Measure the Marketing Mix

I’ve seen a lot of buzz about marketing operations, marketing measurement and marketing ROI on blogs and Twitter lately. There are certainly very good reasons for organizations to put resources behind taking a hard look at the contributions of all of their departments including marketing. The buzz swings all the way to the left with people
claiming you can’t measure marketing and back out to the right with here’s how you measure it. What I’ve noticed is even those who claim to be able to measure, haven’t really detailed how. As we are building marketing plans and marketing strategy we must start to include measures of success that we can deliver on.

In organizations, the pressure can bring “old school” and “new school” marketing to a clearly drawn battle line. Many times I’ve heard the claim: you can’t measure __________ (fill in the blank) marketing, brand awareness, social media or anything else requested. I often wonder, do people really believe this? Or are these people just scared to be measured? This type of clear-cut measurement certainly puts a new perspective on whether or not you are a “good” marketer. It could equally be a result of people truly not knowing “how” to measure results effectively. It doesn’t help when there are a lot of theories about measurement and few true industry standards beyond “yeah we measure ROI.” Really?!? Who does it, how do they do it, when do they do it, what do you do as a result of it, and the big question…how long does it take them to pull the report together?

Many marketers are pushing the envelope at organizations and looking for ways to measure everything. The problem we are all finding is that we can measure almost everything and it’s easy to get caught with paralysis by analysis. What should you measure? How often? And what metrics really matter?

I recently read an excellent blog post called “Mapping the Marcom Mix to the Lead Funnel”. I was impressed with the thought process behind this as I have been doing a lot of work on integrating funnel management and marketing strategies for marketing and sales. This spawned what I like to call, a moment of brilliance! I admit they are sometimes fleeting, but occasionally things just align themselves in a way that provide previously unseen clarity. When I started to consider how all the activities map to the funnel, I immediately wanted to measure their impact.

So, I worked on creating a model to measure the Return on Marketing Investment. There were three core considerations to building a model that I believe would actually work.

Measure the impact of the entire marketing mix

Like many marketers I’ve tried to measure the success of individual projects and campaigns with varying levels of results. The challenge was measuring long-term, mid-term and short-term strategies and relating them to ROI.  Because, ROI is return on investment which naturally requires you to track directly to revenue mid-term and long-term strategies end up with a result that looks like it was a failure. With  strategies like Brand Awareness it is much harder to tie them to current revenue as the impact of your activities today may not pay off for several years,  yet we struggle because we are being held accountable for these activities today. Trying to measure each item individually can lead to poor decisions based on short-term results. What really matters is how is the entire marketing mix contributing to overall lead generation.  I believe the whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts in marketing.

Make sure your measures are actionable

I think it is mission critical that the data you surround yourself with represents items that you can clearly use to make better decisions. A bunch of foo foo numbers that aren’t clearly aligned with the input and the output just increase the confusion. Use measures that matter and can be used as a diagnostic tool and a success measurement tool and you’ve hit the sweet spot!

To be effective your marketing dashboard should:

1. Enable you to identify failures
2. Enable you to identify successes
3. Enable you to see where those failures and successes lie within your mix and/or tell you where to dig deeper to figure it out

Don’t stop at the marketing team

In my previous experience, every position I’ve held had one purpose. To use marketing to generate more revenue and more profit for the organization. All of the best marketing in the world will fall flat if your sales team is not equipped to close the deal. Therefore, it is critical that you measure all the way through the sales organization. This is certainly not so you can point fingers at the sales team, rather it is an opportunity for more open discussions about the impact marketing is having on the organization and how sales is delivering on that impact. Never forget, we’re all in this together.

So what does this look like? As a visual person, I use graphics to help tell the story and here is what it looks like to me. Now to tie it all together, how does this deliver on the three considerations?

Measure the Marketing Mix

Measure the impact of the entire marketing mix

As you can see at the top of the funnel you are keeping track of all of the leads delivered from each type of source. I chose to do this independently by source. However, ROI is not calculated on one item, it is calculated based on all of the inputs and the resulting outputs. I went one step further, and decided to measure based on the time frame (short, medium, fast) to an anticipated purchase and the expenses for the lead nurturing that is being done for each of those groups. Certainly for you the break-down may be different. I’m a big fan of the old KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid!) philosophy so I go with the core things that matter to both marketing and sales and that is their possibility of conversion or how “warm” are they.

Make sure your measures are actionable

The proof really is in the pudding here. By looking at this graph regularly I can identify several critical things in order to gauge success over time. First, are leads piling up in one of the tracks? If so, we aren’t moving them along effectively and need to take a look at our lead nurturing and/or sales activities in that group. Second, are there enough leads coming into the funnel to deliver the revenue we’ve forecasted for the period. Over time, you will get a better perspective of conversion rates and how many leads you need to generate a certain level of sales. This certainly helps when you need to ask for more budget $$$ to fill the pipeline. Third, from a budget perspective you can see where you spend your budget and whether or not it is delivering the leads you expected. Once you identify where the problems are you can do more investigation into that particular area simply by digging into the raw data behind the item with a simple click  instead of searching for the needle in the haystack.

Don’t stop at the marketing team

As you can see, leads are tracked all the way to revenue.  By measuring all the way through you can clearly see whether or not your marketing activities are having an impact on sales. If not, you have some work to do. If they do, how can you make it better? Or you may find that some of the activities you are spending a lot of money on are preventing you from being able to spend where you are generating the biggest results.

So go big, be bold. Measure it and see how your team stacks up. If you don’t like what you see, fix it. If you do, congratulations! Fuel an environment where old and new school thrive.

As a marketer who likes to push the envelope on creativity and innovation in the field, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what is going to be the next “big thing” in the industry.  I’ve also worked on many extensive web projects and have been watching the latest trends with web 2.0 and social media integration.  Well, MLK Jr. put it best, “I have a dream.”  I envision that my website experiences will be customized to me and provide me with the information I want – when I want it, the information I need – when I need it, and the information I don’t know I need or want – when I don’t realize I need or want it. I want every web experience to have an “A-ha” moment for me and extend that to my customers and prospects.

Today, we all pretty much start our web search at Google.  We type in a search term and review the organic listings which are comprised of a few things: Business listings with relevant content, Individual blog listings will relevant content, and Business sponsored content provided by individuals, think reviews etc, and then we might move over to peruse the paid search options.  If your company comes up anywhere in the organic listings(first) or paid results (second) then we’ll take a look at you.  If not, we quickly determine that you aren’t swimming with the big dogs and aren’t worth our time or the risk of our professional reputation to investigate further. Once we get to your site, you have either pointed us to a page that provides content based on our search term and/or we find ourselves needing more information. So our typical web experience may start by checking out the navigation on the page and see if we can find what we are looking for. If I’m really interested I may resort to the little search box on your site.  We type in a word that we think will deliver the result we are seeking. Depending on the sophistication of the website it either delivers a relevant result and we take a look or it doesn’t and we leave. I could get into an even lengthier discussion on what stage I am in the buying process and how it changes this, but I’ll leave that to another day.

With the advent of marketing automation we can now track every action a prospect and/or customer takes on our website and respond based on their real activities rather than information provided on a form or what they tell us they want.  This is the first step towards being able to provide relevant and actionable content.  The days of site visitors being lost in the black hole of the “unknown” are dwindling.  Through progressive customer profiles we can now collect information in little bits and reconcile it back to who you are and act accordingly.  As a marketer it truly is a beautiful thing!  Now, I have the ability to truly test, monitor, and refine campaigns and content based on your activity in ways that were impossible as little as 5 years ago.  Even more beautiful is that I can measure the results in terms of action/inaction and ultimately the Return on Marketing Investment, put simply the revenue that is returned to the organization over the investment that was required to generate that revenue.

These are huge steps forward for marketers, steps I honestly never even considered a few years ago.  At the same time, it opens new doors and new avenues to truly be able to satiate the known and unknown desires of people who WANT and NEED what my company has to offer. But as my husband would tease, like any woman I am never satisfied! I want more…I want to take it to another level…I want to drive us into a web 3.0 world now!

Why?  Because we are on the cusp and with today’s technologies it is possible.  So why wait? As Marketers we are all shifting to become content producers for our companies as we are learning that content is king, so why not take it to a new level?

Imagine producing content in bits, chunks, and larger heaps but giving it to people in the serving size that suits them best? To put it into context, perhaps you would produce an excerpt that leads to a blog post then to a mini e-book then to a technical white paper. Okay, so maybe you do it backwards and start with the  most extensive and build backwards, whatever suits your fancy.  The next question is, “What do I do with this progressively expanded content?”

Remember, those progressive customer and prospect profiles that marketing automation is allowing us to create and all the previous web activity that we are reacting to? What if we could turn that into a concept similar to a tag cloud so that we understood what truly drives THAT customer? Sure we can look at an entire segment, but the actions of the whole do not tell the story of the individual.  And web 3.0, well I’m hoping it will focus on one-to-one marketing. What does that mean? It means that the real estate  of your website can be divided into dynamically generated sections of content based on the profile of the individual and the activities you have logged for him or her. It’s Amazon’s personalized recommendations concept flipped upside down, spun around and thrown at you in a website that changes based on what you say you want, distilled by who you say you are, and refined by the actions you take over time.

What a web 3.0 site might look like

Hard to picture? (Well, don’t knock me for my lacking graphic design skills but look at this in terms of dynamically generated content buckets that would obviously look a heck of a lot better with a web designers touch.)

As you can see, the concept is that each bucket has content that changes based on what I know about you.  I allow you to tell me if you like the content either through rating or by watching your activities and if not I try something else until I find content that you are responding to and clicking to take a deeper look.  If I find out that you really like e-books, I may show all e-books on the left side, etc.  If I find that you like 3rd party blog posts and product reviews, I may focus on showing you those.  Every time you answer the customer profile question, the next question appears.  Bits, pieces, chunks, of your “Digital Body Language,” as Steven Woods coined, add up to deliver a custom one-to-one web experience.

Now, I’m not a techie so I don’t know how to tell you to do this.  I certainly have some ideas from my web experience.  But I know it isn’t as hard as it sounds.

I certainly could be wrong, but I’m hoping that this is the direction web development starts moving and I’ll certainly be pushing it that way.  And if it finally catches,  I’ll be a customer for sure!

Where does your company stand on Web 2.0 adoption?

So here’s my recipe for success:

Step One: Create an As-Is Value Stream, Document what you are doing now

Important:  Pick a manageable process to start with.  Don’t pick something that has tons of steps and variation the first go round.  Pick something that impacts the company’s objectives, but in a small way first.

If you are unsure of how to do this check out my post on A Picture Says a Thousands Words| Documenting Your Workflows.

Step Two: Create a Transitional Value Stream, Document inefficiencies

Look for bottlenecks in your process.  These can be areas where work seems to pile up and have heavy delay times, or areas where the work gets trapped in a loop that goes back through several times.  In marketing, this usually happens with reviews and approvals.  If your process only shows it going through once or twice that’s great, but I usually see anywhere from 4-12 times through the same circle.

Look for unnecessary steps.  Are there any steps which can be eliminated?  I see this when a company has been doing things a certain way for years and years and it has just become a habit that is hard to break.  Can any steps be combined and handled by a single individual, a single document, or a single process?

Look for steps that are happening after one another, but are not dependent.  In marketing this happens a lot with graphic design teams and copy writing team.  The designers wait to start designing until copy is final.  This is great if you have time to wait, but if you don’t the general layout template can be created independent of the final copy if you give a general word-count guideline to both groups.

Look for steps that are missing.  Sometimes there is a critical step that is not being done which causes bottlenecks later.  Perhaps it is a kick-off meeting to get everyone on the same page, or a document that could be added that would streamline the process downstream.

Look for waste.  These are parts of the process that do not add value to your customer.  Value is anything your customer is willing to pay money for.  At the end of the day, every cost that goes into a project is paid for by your customer in the cost of your product.  Is your customer willing to pay for a lengthy review process?  Probably not.  They only care if the piece you’ve created speaks to their needs and wants in a time frame that is fulfilled when they need it, not how you got it done.

I find it extremely helpful to chunk the process and break up each area that is interrelated.  Then I look at them separately, rather than as a whole.

Step 3: Brainstorm Improvements

Think about ways you can reduce or eliminate these bottlenecks.  Why is the work getting trapped there?  Is it not correct the first time its done?  If so, how can you get it done right the first time.  Are there too many people involved?  If so, kick out people who are just there to make them feel involved or change it to an FYI versus an approval.  There are many, many reasons why this happens.  Your job is to find a way to stop it or at least significantly reduce it. What steps can I eliminate?  What steps do I need to add? How can I separate non-dependent processes?  Document how you want to stream line each area you’ve noted for improvement.
 

Step 4: Create a Future State Value Stream, Document the future process

Now, go back into Visio and create your new process.  Provide timeline estimates for how long you think it will take for each new step or streamlined step.

Now, I’ve been doing this for a few years now and I’ve guessed fairly accurately along the way.  But recently I learned how to actually provide some fidelity to my guesses so I can confidently say that the future state is better than the as is state.

Step 5: Analyze Your New Process, Pseudo reality-check

Bear with me while I geek out a little. I’ve been documenting workflows for years, but never really had a way to say with any real certainty that the process was better before testing it with the team.  I’m not a huge math junkie, but I took a Risk Assessment class for my MBA and learned some ways for the non-math geek to be able to apply statistical analysis to your process.  Really cool!

So here we go, throughout this process you have put some statistics down and you’ve guessed at how much better you think it will be.  Why not take your process for a little test-drive?  I like to use the @Risk Excel plug-in by Palisade Decision Tools for this.  I assign a best-case, worst-case, and most-likely case timeframe to each step and use a PERT distribution.  Then I look for steps that are correlated and assign a correlation, .8 for strong, .5 for somewhat correlated, and -.8 for a strong inverse correlation.  Next, I use a RiskSim table to assign the probability of re-work and the timeframe re-work will take.  After I have all the inputs to the process put in, I run the simulation 20,000 iterations.  Sometimes, I find that I messed up my excel sheet and have to adjust.  But in the end, I find out some really cool stuff.

Here are some examples: Which steps in the process have the biggest impact on your total process time.  Why does that matter?  Well you know you need to really keep those in check or your process will take the maximum time to finish.  How sensitive is your process? How beneficial is it to be able to say, as a result of the simulation we can with 95% confidence expect the process to be completed +/- 1.55 days of the mean of 15 days with a 2% error margin. Pretty powerful if you ask me.

After all this is done, I put together a document to “sell” the new process.  Here’s the table of contents for the last one I did.

• Executive Summary
• Introduction
• Project Definition
• Project Background
• Statement of Business Needs/Requirements
• Objectives
• Implementation Plan and Target
• Schedule Re-occurring Review Meetings
• Create Project Definition Document
• Create Project Naming Convention To Facilitate Supermarket Project Assignments.
• Separate Non-Dependant Processes’
• Train Staff on New Process Methodologies & Get Buy-in
• 60-Day Transition Phase
• Process Refinement Phase
• Project Scope and Timeframe
• Project Details
• Project Costs (Including Initial Support)
• Tangible Benefits
• Time Evaluation
• Intangible Benefits
• Risk Analysis
• Sensitivity Analysis
• Modeling Details
• Implementation Implications/Issues

So now, what?  Prepare for objections and sell your idea.

I’ve included some sample documents below.  I’m still trying to figure out how to include the entire report and supporting excel documents that I did.  Darn, wordpress!  If you want it, email me at nikkikelly09@gmail.com and I’d be happy to share. You’ll notice my copy of @Risk is  from Loyola College where I’m working on my MBA in Marketing and discovered this valuable tool.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Supplies:

• A very large roll of brown craft paper
• Several packs of different colored Post-Its
• Roll of string or that curly ribbon for gifts
• Scissors
• Sharpies – The wider the better – But needs to write legibly on said Post-Its
• Tape
• Three-ring binder
• Three-hole punch
• Optional – Pictures of people who are involved in the process (you’ll need several copies of each photo

Schedule a meeting with anyone who has input in the process.  You can do this as an entire group or if you have a decent grasp on the start, middle and end you can set up timeframes for each person to go through their part.  I like to do this in a fairly informal setting.  Bring in bean bag chairs, beach chairs, something to lighten the mood.  Typically this meeting takes awhile!  Depending on the length of your process it can be from 1 hour to several 2-3 hour sessions.  Anything beyond 2-3 hours and you will be staring at a group of Zombies!

Before the meeting cover a large wall or space with brown craft paper and get your supplies in order.

Now that you have everyone together tell them that your goal is to find out every step in the process you are working on.  Recently, I reviewed small projects that require copywriting, artwork, and printing.  It was a fairly simple process but it was riddled with inefficiencies.  Ask them to bring copies of any documents/forms that are produced in the process and define someone to be the runner to get things that are forgotten.  There will be some!

Assign a person to be your scribe, this person writes everything on the Post-It Notes.  Assign a person to be an Artist, this person organizes everything into a pretty picture on your brown paper.

Then ask how is this process started, who does that, how do they do it, how long does it take, is a document or form used?  What percentage of the time is it complete and accurate? Write all of these answers on your post its.  I how found that using different colors for each of these questions and stacking them helps bring clarity.  If you have pictures of who does it then tape that to a post it.  If there is a document produced or form used label it with a number on the post it and then place the document in a 3-ring binder.  Place the post-its on the brown paper at the far left side.  Then go to the next step and ask the same questions.  Then the next step, and on and on until the process is complete.  Make sure you are consistent in how you document.  For example, turn the post it so it looks like a diamond, for a decision which has to require a yes or no answer.  Just a thought, but I typically start by documenting either the all yes track or the all no track and then work back to fill out the other track.  It just makes it easier. Then I take my string or ribbon and start connecting post-its.  This shows information and work flow from one post-it to the next.  I’ve also created stickers that are arrows, but it gets cumbersome throwing all those stickers up there and string or ribbon is so much faster.

I’ve actually created an area, that is now called the Brown Bag room because I use brown paper so much! You will find that you move Post-its around a bunch because there will be a little bit of debate and controversy.  I have found that you have three types of people in the room.  Contributors, those who provide specific input that is relevant and useful.  Dead Heads, those who say nothing unless they are asked.  And, the infamous Askhole, the person who asks a million meaningless questions generally just to hear themselves talk and feel important, contradict others in the group and generally just make you want to punch them in the face.  Twice.  Now, it is possible to have some people who at times are more than one of these, but it’s rare. As a facilitator it is your job to keep everyone engaged and get the Askhole to shut up.  In a nice, professional way of course!  I do this by giving them a job to keep them occupied.  Hey, can you be another scribe?  We’re getting a little backed up here.

Once you have the entire process documented, take a picture with a high resolution camera.  Then go to your computer and redraw the workflow in Visio.  Now you might say this is a bit inefficient, but the large visual picture really helps get the group engaged.  So, I permit the efficiency for the effectiveness.

Next I go back to my desk I go into our tracking system and start to verify or adjust the “how long does it take section” based on actual projects.  I find that people tend to underestimate this category.  And they overestimate the percent complete and accurate category, so I put some reality into that estimate as well.  People don’t mean to lie, it’s just that it typically takes way longer than anyone realizes and they like to think that they do things right and many times they don’t.

Then I update the document with the numbers I came up with from the reality check and move to the next step.  For the complete process look at “Cutting the Fat out of Marketing| Using Workflow Analysis and Risk Assessment to Increase Operational Efficiency”.

Marketing Integration means that you must take activities that are currently being executed individually and work to do them in tandem ultimately with the goal of making them support one another.

Now that’s just my spin on it and I’m sure others have their own.  But why is this really important?  Well, take a minute and think about the activities that you do today within your own sales and marketing department.  Here’s my list from marketing: Brand Strategy, Brand Awareness, PR, Advertising, Lead Generation Campaigns, Lead Nurturing Campaigns, SEO, SEM, Social Media, Product Marketing, Customer Retention Programs/Campaigns, Events, and Product Demonstrations.  From the sales side of the house there’s: outbound telesales, inbound telesales, field sales visits, and relationship-building contacts. I’m sure I missed a few, but you get the point.

Pretty much every company likely does these activities regardless of the role of the person doing them or which side of the house they fall.  What I find really interesting is how many companies do NOT align these activities so they achieve a common goal. Further, how many times I’ve seen individuals steaming ahead down a path and how the other side of the house has absolutely no idea the project is even going on!  I’ll admit I’ve been guilty of this in the past.  Sometimes, you get so busy that stopping to put together yet another death by power point presentation seems daunting.  I’ll get into my thoughts on how I feel about power point presentations in another post, I suppose!

I truly believe the perception at many companies is that the entire marketing mix does in fact work together because it is the sum of all the inputs that delivers the expected output, right? Sure, but do you want to deliver the sales results you had yesterday for the next 5 years?  Or do you want to exceed projections and deliver unprecedented profitability?

Well, I sure as heck do.  And here’s how I think it can be done.  Now, I’ll admit I’ve never been allowed to actually do all of these things in tandem because someone who doesn’t get it always cuts something out.  But it’s my theory and if you want to prove it for me, AWESOME! Let me know, I’ll watch you and cheer every step of the way.  So you wanna be a rockstar?  Well I don’t know what business you’re in, so I’m just gonna call whatever you do…well, IT.

Theme It

In order for your audience to get it, and for you to be able to keep it straight internally you need to have relevant themes of what you are trying to accomplish so everyone can align themselves to support it.  Now don’t go all crazy here and drink from the cup of stupid. You need to pick no more than 4 or 5 common themes or it will get confusing.  Ideally, you could keep it to 2 or 3.  And it doesn’t really even matter what your themes are, think of them almost like secret mission code names.  Now, that could be fun couldn’t it!  So my favorite three themes are Customer Acquisition, Customer Retention, and Brand Awareness. Why?  Because they are simple and I don’t know a single company who isn’t trying to accomplish all three at any given moment in time.  If you get really good at those things, then you can get all fancy schmancy and expand.  But quite frankly, I have yet to work for a company that had mastered all three.  So, if I was going to be clever and come up with some codes names for that..hmmm…let’s see…bear with me…YES!…Here you go…I would call it…Operation Kidnap the Baby, Operation Friends in Low Places, and OperationPerez Hilton.  Now the deal is, EVERYTHING you do has to fall under one of those operations.  Now it is possible you’ll have some that straddle the fence and support multiple operations. And for some people that just sends them for a loop, they can’t throw it into a bucket and therefore it is wrong.  Well I say, I wish everything I did supported multiple objectives.  Why?  Because that is freaking integration and you can truly peg like 1,000 birds with one stone if you play your cards right.  I say peg because I’m an animal supporter, but I’m not all nutso fanatic about it and couldn’t find a cooler way to say it.  No really, it is all about the cool.  So here we go.

Promote It

How do you promote yourself today.  Yeah, that.  Do that.  Tie it into your direct mail campaigns, your web campaigns, your social media activities, your PR activities.  Everything.  See what fits together and push the issue to make them work together.  Gasp…did you say align PR with sales campaigns???  Yup, sure did.  And here’s how.  Stop using campaigns that are about your product to open the door, unless your like mega-huge and everyone wants your product.  I’ll admit, Sherwin-Williams could get away with this effectively and so can Apple and every other mega-brand out there.  But you know what, chances are…YOU can’t.  So do something that the customer finds value in and promote that. Capture their information, and then Kidnap the Baby!  Use something people care about whether it’s a free training class, e-book, chotzky or something else, and then give it to them.  Yes, give it to them FREE.  Why because we all walk around still believing that you can really get things for free.  Now, us marketers, all know that NOTHING is ever really FREE!  Because you are going to give us your information to get it, and then we are going to use it to Kidnap the Baby and afterward we’re going to tell everyone you are one of our Friends in Low Places.

Socialize It

One of my brilliant co-workers who taught me everything I know about social media, whether she knew it or not, coined that term and I totally just stole it!  You know who you are, @JessieX! So, if you are using social media then you know it’s a two-way street as I’ve mentioned before.  And as long as you haven’t upchucked your marketing messaging all over your followers then you still have followers, right!  And since they are still following you then you have done something to provide value to them.  And no, tweeting freaking article links all day doesn’t count. So tell your network what you are doing and start a conversation around it.  Do they like it, hate it, jump up and down on it, or what?  You need the feedback to do better next time, so you might as well get it from your loyal followers.

PR IT

Yeah, I know press releases are pretty much worthless pieces of space but you have to do them.  All companies have to do them.  So if you have to waste your worthless piece of space on some corporate crafted puppet-speak then make it work for you.  Don’t just send out the press release and check it off your list.  Create an optimized version of the release for your website. What does optimized mean?  Well first it means you started with a list of keywords that are relevant to your announcement and you have interwoven them in, and second it means you include links and make it easy for others to link to the page using those cool little web 2.0 linky icons.

Community IT

Do you have a community?  Yeah, I think most companies have invested a couple of dollars in some kind of community board at least.  And some have really set the standard for what community is all about.  My two cents on that starts like this.  A real community offers ways for people to connect, draw value, and find other like-minded individuals to be “friends” with and then use that opportunity to suck the information I need out of them like a Hoover. Because unless you are Mary Theresa, you’re probably a little narcissistic like the rest of us and mostly care about your own needs.  I found a great one in my research.  www.intronetworks.com The level of information they collect in their profile is truly astounding, and they do it in the coolest way I’ve ever seen.  Did I mention, it is all about the cool.  And back to the Hoover, you can use that information to profile groups of your customers into nice little common categories so you can address their needs in one fell swoop.  Now, hold on a minute.  I’m trying to see how many useless catch phrases I can throw into one post.  So count ‘em with me and throw a comment with your guess.  At some point I’ll go back and count them myself.

Rave It

Do you have people who don’t respond?  Sure all of us do.  Well make sure you tell them what they missed and then if you can turn around and give them whatever they missed it’s even better. For example, if you’re holding a webcast record it and send a link to the people who missed it, then turn around and put the video on YouTube so people who don’t come to your site have a chance of seeing it.

Support It

I read a really great two-part e-book called funnelnomics that really drove this home to me. http://is.gd/vXOC You’ve just got to stop doing things one time, or even twice and expecting some phenomenal results.  The key is to keep doing it and measuring it when you have some true data to work with.  Some of the best ideas don’t pay off the first time they are tried.

Don’t Forget About It

Make sure you put every single person into a lead funnel.  If you’re talking about your Friends in Low Places then there is a retention funnel that should exist for them.  You’re still working on Kidnapping the Baby?  Okay well you probably have some funnels for that to.  I personally, like the slow, medium and fast track. Oh, but what about Perez Hilton? We haven’t talked much about him?  Well, all of his friends go into a track to.  You should have a communication plan for all of your press outlets, your advertisers, your tradeshow associations and anyone else.  We get caught into the trap of viewing these as activities or projects that we execute.  But you have to remember that on the other end there are people.  And anytime there is a person you have an opportunity to build a relationship. And when you truly have “friends” in both high and low places who you work to equally support, the rest is history!

What I see happening around us in mid-size companies with conservative cultures:

In Sales Departments- Sales people are struggling to make their numbers and are using aggressive tactics to close the deal that they never would consider in an up economy.  But the market is tough and they have to fight, really fight, for every sale.  They have become quick to blame marketing for not giving them enough leads but haven’t realized that there aren’t as many leads out there and they are killing off the ones that do come in.  In the meantime, they keep turning over the same rocks hoping that a pile of money will be under them.

In Marketing Departments- Marketing teams are trying to balance long-term lead generation with generating short-term sales.  Budgets that focus on long-term lead generation are being slashed and everything is going into the short-term win.  For companies that did not have strategies to manage this before their marketers are rushing around trying to come up with a game plan.  Once they do, the game plan gets trapped in the approval process and either gets approved too late or the items that carry the most risk and likely largest payoff are stripped out of the plan before it is executed.

Here’s the reality.  What used to work ain’t gonna work anymore!  And what you’re probably finding is that some of the people who seemed totally competent two or three years ago are really total idiots who were able to ride the wave of others success! It’s easy to be successful in an up market because pretty much anything you do will work.  It takes really strong leaders who are willing to take risks and innovative marketers prepared to break out of the pack when the market is tough.  Do you see the ability for that to happen in a conservative company?  The ability to see the payoff in the long-run while capitalizing in the short-term?   The ability to trust your experts and have faith that they know what they are doing? The ability to make quick decisions on something you might not fully understand? In the conservative companies I’ve worked for there is zippy chance that they are going to take a leap of faith while their asses are being held to the fire. They want to be in the comfort zone, the place they know and can explain in three words or less.  I’ll go back to my previous statement.  What used to work ain’t gonna work anymore!  If you can’t get out of your comfort zone and try something new and don’t have a ton of cash in the bank to see you through low or no-profitability for a couple of years, you will fail.

Here is what companies can do to break out of the pack and capture market-share from their competitors.  Because let’s face it.  That’s the only way you are going to grow in the short-term.

Be Bold! Don’t be scared to take risks on ideas that seem a little crazy at the time.  Do you think anyone besides Jack Dorsey and a few investors ever thought that telling a bunch of people that you’re eating lunch at your desk on Twitter would ever be a business model that would work?  Probably not.  If you want to break out of the pack you need to have a group of like-minded creative individuals at the helm who are willing to do the same old, same old while taking risks on a few “seemingly” crazy ideas to the old bureaucratic cranky folk. That doesn’t mean take on any idea that comes you way.  Check it against reality, but if you can do something with minimal investment that doesn’t risk the company but could be huge then try it!

Integrate, Integrate, Integrate! Take all those things you’ve been doing for years in little silos and look for synergies.  Look for ways they can support each other and do it.  Make them work together or don’t do them anymore. This is especially crucial when it comes to sales and marketing teams.  Sales can’t offer a discount to every person who calls and undervalue the value proposition for your product that marketing has worked so hard to establish.  Marketing can’t spend hundreds of thousands of dollars running brand awareness campaigns when sales are in the tank.  Create a supportive environment, on both sides of the house.

Get Rid of Pet Projects! Every company has at least one.  Some project a member of the executive team came up with that is totally stupid but no one has the chutzpah to stand up and say it. So a limited number of people are assigned to work on the idea and it stays under the radar enough that people forget about it.  Stop the project!  NOW!  And if you have a hard time knowing what people are working on look for a web-based project management system.  There are many out there but I’ve had a lot of success with Marketing Central in managing small and large complex projects.

Get on the Social Media Bandwagon! This is one of the most cost-effective tools you can start using TODAY to connect with your customers and prospect.  Please notice, I said connect.  I didn’t say vomit your marketing message on the world. When you get involved with social media remember that if you want to be relevant to your customer and prospect base you need to have two-way conversations.  You need to talk about things they care about and let them know you care about their perspective if you want them to listen to your marketing speak when you deliver it.  Make sure you have a person behind the tool who engages with people and doesn’t talk like a corporate puppet.  You need to have a blog and Twitter account, not some corporate BS blog or Twitter account, but corporate accounts run by individuals that provide value and lets people know that you actually have human beings who work for you. If you don’t trust anyone let your CEO be your spearhead, but if you do let your training team give out tips and tricks, let your marketing team share their expertise with other marketers, let your sales team talk about what they are hearing is happening with other customers (no names unless you get permission.)  Let your company’s real personality shine and you won’t be sorry!  At least not too often.  Eventually, someone will say something you don’t want to be said, or say it in a way you wouldn’t have said it.  But you know what.  GET OVER YOURSELF. You aren’t perfect either.  Choose people you trust.  That is the key.  This allows you to truly be in relationship with your customers, rather just casual acquaintances who exchange money every once in a while.

Stop Doing What You’ve Always Done And Expecting the Same Result

That really doesn’t need a lot of explanation.  But if you think you can be successful today by doing what you did yesterday, you are sadly mistaken and unfortunately tomorrow you might be out of business.

But there is some good news.  This is an opportunity for the small and the mid-size company to aggressively take market-share from their large competitors while they try to break through the own bureaucracy and correct course.  Progressive, forward-thinking companies that are able to quickly adapt will come out ahead!

In summary, if you aren’t already, you’ve got to start Thinking Big and Acting Small.