Inbound, Outbound Marketing and Quality Content The Power of Three in Marketing

Given the impact of Web 2.0 and social media in the online world, it was inevitable that the changes unleashed on the public would eventually find its way to the business world. I've sat in on webinars touting the benefits of inbound marketing with titles like, "The Marketing Playbook is Broken" - Hubspot. And it's a scary thought, isn't it? Do our customers finally have the upper hand with all this online information at their disposal?

As marketers we want to actively influence and impact customer purchasing decisions. Set up a compelling marketing program, create some assets, push out the assets with a call-to-action (CTA), measure the results, re-calibrate. But is the average person so overwhelmed with information that they prefer to research purchase decisions themselves, guaranteeing the quantity AND quality of information they get? Think about it, how many complaints have you heard from prospects and customers about marketing fluff? The reality is on the B2B software side of the world, you may move through a path of software developers, product managers, product marketing, marketing programs and marcomm people before your outbound content reaches the ears of your prospect. And like a game of Telephone, the further down this path the information takes, the more diluted the marketing copy becomes.

I personally have written up many pieces of marketing collateral that absolutely HAD to go through the brand team for edits before being approved. Having been an IT manager, I like to think I have a pretty good idea of what needs to get communicated and with my marketing background, how it needs to be communicated. When the final document was approved by my brand team, the verbiage had changed a bit. In all honesty, I don't think much value was added and some of the sharpness had been lost along with three weeks of time. But if you need to get your assets blessed and printed, you don't have much of a choice.

When you talk to technology people from administrators to executives, losing the authenticity and credibility in your voice isn't a wise idea. So how can you blame B2B technology folks for putting your emails aside and going online to search for more unbiased and accurate information? IT people are as busy as anyone else in the building with little time to spare and guess what? They're also pretty darn bright and understand what marketers are trying to do, regardless of any social awkwardness.

The reality is that certainly, marketing focus may be shifting towards inbound (passive) marketing versus the more traditional playbooks that focus on emails, direct mail, events, roadshows and sales enablement materials. But regardless of which marketing vehicles you use, inbound, outbound or otherwise, you need to have quality content! Content that reassures and validates concerns of all technology stakeholders as they go through the awareness, evaluation, consideration and purchase cycle. The ability to provide needed and credible information to your prospects ultimately relies on the same item: quality content. Whether that content is sourced internally, crowd-sourced or through analysts and third-party groups is another question.

So let's not argue about whether or not inbound or outbound marketing is the way to go for your customers. As usual, you need to find the right marketing mix and vehicles to communicate your value prop and message at the right time. Just make sure you've got informative, interesting content, regardless of how it gets delivered. If you do, your marketing efforts will be rolling downhill and driving your business to the next level.

The Danger of Trusting Your Sales Rep Too Much...

When making a technology decision, your vendor sales rep can be a mixed relationship. On one hand, you rely on them to provide you with detailed information on pricing, service options and technical expertise. And on the other hand, let's face it, they've got quotas and commissions to worry about. So while it's important to have a good relationship with your sales rep, you really have to be careful to make any decisions as objectively as possible, outside of the framework of that relationship.

Looking back to my days as a network manager, I had a relationship with a Lucent rep that was pretty comfortable. We had purchased some remote access boxes that had performed well and Lucent was a high-flyer in the networking side of the world in the late 90's. My company needed to expand their network capacity and bandwidth so I led an initiative to put in a new core switch. Research and familiarity brought me to the Lucent Cajun P550 switch, a workhorse that had performed well in head to head comparisons with competitors. Our rep brought in a sample switch that we tested on in the IT lab. My sales rep assured me it was a simple and basic operation to drop in a new switch. Everything looked good during testing and yes, I trusted my Lucent rep! So we schedule a long weekend outage and ask 350 workers not to plan on being in the office over the weekend (oh the horrors!). And yes, I promised the entire office improved file transfer and application performance once the work was complete.

On Friday night, I'm breaking down the networking rack and cabling of our old switch. Re-labeling mystery cables, pulling out power cables and FINALLY installing the Lucent switch. It's tedious, physical labor but important since no switch means no desktop connectivity. Late Saturday, cables are plugged back in and the switch is turned on, voila! It's time to do some desktop testing and hopefully call it a night. Or so I hoped. Out on the floor I turn on some PC's and do some file transfers. Gosh, boot-up times seem to be sluggish and the file transfers shows that we're now running slower than the old switch. Checking several additional desktops show the same problem, uh-oh. I go home late Saturday scratching my head and hoping that what I saw was just late-night fatigue.

The next morning there's still the same problem: slow network performance. Reviewing the documentations for the switches, I'm trying all sorts of configuration settings in vain to improve the performance. I try upgrading the firmware on the PC's to see if that helps, no go. By late Sunday afternoon, I'm re-installing the old network hubs in an attempt to jury-rig a hybrid network of new and old devices in an attempt to just get performance to where I had started. Two and a half long days of work over the weekend, just to end up, maybe where you started. On Sunday night, a notice was sent out that the work was complete but yes, you might not notice an increase in performance. In ten years of working as an IT administrator, I had rarely needed to eat crow and I can tell you for sure, it didn't taste good on Monday morning.

What's the lesson here? That even after doing my due diligence and research, even after having a good and trusted relationship with my sales rep, I had made a professional misstep that cost me the entire weekend and set my technology environment back $75K. Now I don't know if my Lucent rep really knew how good or bad the Cajun P550 switch really was and if it was problematic but I do know she wasn't there suffering with me over that long weekend. Definitely a hard lesson to learn.

Vendor reps are there to support you the best way they can, within their product lines. They have a vested interest in solving your problems but only within their solution offerings. Knowing what I know now and how the world has changed, the use of online forums, social media and the internet may have revealed this potential issue earlier as a technology buyer. And I would never make the mistake of trusting my sales rep and the relationship, more than I should. An empowered buyer can be a challenge from the Marketing and Sales side of the world but in the end, if you've got the right solution, content and messaging, it can only strengthen your business relationship. Your prospect not only becomes your customer, but also your ally and supporter over the long-run.

If You Want the Truth, Trust the Techie!

Over the years I spent in IT administration and as an IT manager, you often learn the hard way about technology implementations. Products over-promise and sales people often under-deliver. And if you really want to know how good a product is, talk to an engineer or support person who knows the product intimately! Sometimes I was the tech person and I would be cornered by one of the business folks to get to the truth of the matter. Techies don't think in shades of gray, it's pretty black and white and binary for us. Truth is our mantra and we're not very good liars, white or otherwise.

Now that I've moved into the marketing side of the world, I'll admit that my speech has become quite flowery and yes, I certainly do see shades of gray now. But not always in a bad way! And there are definitely some lessons I learned on the tech side that have been applicable to my marketing activities and philosophy. Going back many years ago, I was working as a Senior IT Analyst for a large specialty retailer out in San Francisco. We had a monitoring tool deployed called Sitescope that was extremely reliable, flexible and accurate. In comes a team of consultants from Deloitte on a technology project and they unfortunately, recommend deploying an enterprise management system (EMS), a la HP, IBM, CA or BMC software. Budget is limited (about 100K), we have our check-box list and end up with two primary EMS candidates. Time to bring in the main players for some testing!

Company 1 comes in for their one week onsite trial to set up a test-bed. They bring in a slew of consultants, all dressed sharply in blue suits. I get introduced to each one over the course of the week, even though I really have no understanding of their importance and role with regards to the onsite trial. Over time, the sales rep lets me know that he has a VERY comfortable relationship with our VP of IT (golf buddies) and promises to take care of everything for a quarter million. Of course, even with all these suits and brainpower, there's nothing to show for at the end of the one week implementation. No integration between tools, no data being collected, agents crashing on machines, the single pane of glass isn't showing much, not a very good show.

Company 2 sends one youngish Solutions Architect. He installs the product and has it running and collecting data in two hours. We spend the next day and a half going over my questions and concerns. Integration with our existing tools, deploying agents to our AIX platforms and Oracle DB's. Review of tech resources and maintenance questions. We reviewed pricing and came up with a solution for a bare-bones deployment with a small consulting package attached. And after 48 hours Sergey is done and traveling to his next client. Can you guess which product I went with?

Understand that I personally wanted to extend our existing monitoring platform but was over-ridden based upon the consultant's recommendations. I had concerns over both tested EMS systems and the political ramifications over deploying an enterprise tool in our environment. But in the end I was in the mode of risk mitigation with my EMS project. I HAD to make a decision, even if the project would be swimming upstream (limited budget, political concerns). So I sat down with my VP and carefully showed him our existing monitoring platform and carefully laid out the results of the two trials. I made it very clear that Company 1 had failed to show any significant progress or met their promises and that a technology implementation with them would be very high-risk. He accepted my recommendation and we did the purchase and deployment with Company 2.

So what's the takeaway? That technology buyers and decision-makers come at all different levels and are often, driven by risk management. While Company 1 thought they had a done deal given their relationship with the VP, there was NO way I was putting my job on the line by choosing a platform that was driven by political relationships, sales-speak and smoke and mirrors. My relationship with sales reps were driven by my primary need to get access to pricing information and technical resources where the truth could be uncovered. And while the sales reps may drive the deal for the final 20% of the purchase process, the other 80% of the real legwork was done online through individual research and with their tech resources.

Enterprise IT buyers and decision-makers are bright people and more than capable of seeing through traditional marketing efforts, CTA's and the transactional nature of sales relationships. They're busy people and can sometimes barely keep their heads above water, fighting fires and keeping their businesses running. Their technology purchases must bring some level of reassurance to their world and that reassurance can be delivered through your tech resources, online information and forums. Developing that trust and re-assurance with your decision-makers through easily accessible, unbiased information is key to influencing them and the process properly. And there's no better to way to deliver that information then through the mouths of one techie to another to keep things real. Plus just maybe a LITTLE bit of marketing...