Highly Competitive - software industry insights

Managed Services -- Building Real Customer Experiences and Relationships

 

Just like any other business, Managed Services Providers have an important path to follow, to distinctly set their services apart from other MSPs. This path pivots on the commitment to ensuring continuously improved customer and user experiences. High quality experiences for clients comprise a great differentiator in the ever-growing world of new managed services firms and cloud solution vendors. Many services can quickly become commoditized, and too often MSPs resort to "differentiating" on price, a dangerous path that can lead to failure.

As customer and user expectations rise, putting strong focus on their experiences with the MSP organization and its services is a must-have. Customer and user experiences are made up of all interactions across all channels during the entire lifecycle of the client company as an MSP customer, which introduces numerous opportunities to better engage and serve clients.

 

Experiences across the Customer Organization

There are often multiple roles in a single organization that make up the 'customers' and 'users' for technology services. This means very different experiences take place from role to role.

The customer experience frequently aligns with the buyer journey, and post-sale account management for a particular client company. The customer-as-buyer often is a composite of roles: mid-level managers who choose services and technology, VPs who approve purchases, CEOs and CFOs who influence or dictate purchase decisions, and even accounting staff who enact purchase transactions. Defining and engendering excellent experiences for a customer or buyer journey comprised of all of these roles usually requires a lot of work. But this is work that should be done for MSPs to better understand their "customers".

The user experience is much more than utilizing technology services – it's all the interactions that occur during the life cycle of services for a particular set of end users and customers. The term user journey may be the best for describing the ongoing relationship between users and MSPs and the services they provide, including customer support.

Within client organizations, communication disconnects often occur between the customer-as-buyer and end users that can jeopardize the customer relationships that MSPs need to build.

 

Customer Relationships Suffer when Communication Breaks Down

Customer Centricity has taken a look at the communication gaps that can adversely affect customer experiences. The quadrant diagram below spans both the client and MSP organizations to depict how collaboration and communication can fall apart due to disconnects between MSP roles and client roles. Enhanced awareness of these roles should help MSPs consciously improve communications and processes between their organizational roles and client roles, ultimately to ensure positive long-term relationships.

 

            Customer Centricity - Communication Disconnects

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image & explanation: Customer Centricity

 

Quadrant 1: The (customer) business manager doesn't truly understand the value that is being delivered by the MSP. They only hear reference to the MSP when there is a service problem. When it comes time to reduce expenses, they are hard pressed to justify the line item representing the cost of the MSP.

Quadrant 2: The (MSP) Sales Representative has little to no insight into how the (client) company is "truly" leveraging the product, the benefits that are being realized, the issues being experienced by those using the product and the value being delivered by the "service organization."

Quadrant 3: The customer's end-users and technical contacts play a key role in the effective use and performance of the MSP's service. They are also key in shaping the business manager's perception of the MSP. However, the only time that they discuss the MSP is when there is a problem. They don't discuss all the great things that the MSP has done on a day-in / day-out basis.

Quadrant 4: (MSP) Customer Service / Technical Support typically observe that "all things are well with the customer." This impression, which can often be false, is created because the customer's end-users maintain a courteous working relationship with the MSP's service personnel, to make sure that they can continue to "get things done" when they really need to.

Problems Impact All Quadrants: When a significant business disrupting problem occurs (which it WILL), the customer's end-user remains calm, cool and collected when speaking with the MSP's service team. The service team doesn't find it necessary to escalate awareness of the "incident" to the MSP's Sales Representative or Senior Management because they don't understand the level of impact

 

Building Real Customer Relationships

Many of the "business-as-usual" activities for MSPs are rich opportunities to enhance customer experiences and build long-term relationships. Important areas that make a difference are already in play: basics like consistently meeting or exceeding SLAs, delivering on all promises, usability and ease-of-use, high performance, and so on. This is how trust is built for real relationships.

MSPs can make sure that new client relationships are built on great customer experiences by starting with onboarding processes and/or service activation. MSPs should allocate strong resources that will make these introductory functions engaging, effective and worthwhile. Obviously when done well, a positive tone has been set for ongoing business.

While MSP ecosystems of complementary service providers are extremely beneficial, in most cases one major function should remain under the control of each individual MSP organization: help desk and customer support. Customer support interactions are critical for growing customer relationships and to expand knowledge about different kinds of customers. It's also an opportunity to thoroughly document customer environments and conversations about business needs, to help these customers better utilize all MSP services now and in the future.

The information and data gained from all interactions with customers and users become the fuel for customer-focused analytics that help MSPs learn more about current and potential customers and the sorts of services that they want and need. Such detailed customer intelligence is an invaluable competitive edge.

 

But Who Owns the Customer Experience?

As illustrated by the Customer Centricity communication quadrant, MSPs would be smart to facilitate better communication with – and within – their client companies, to make sure the value of their services is obvious to the relevant customer and user roles.

MSPs must work to improve their own internal collaborations across functions to engender continuous high quality customer and user experiences. MSPs also need to implement ongoing analytics processes to generate and share customer insights across the organization.

Within the MSP organization, the responsibility for nurturing and shepherding ongoing customer experiences belongs to all teams that impact customers. At the core, much of the work should be accomplished by strong, continuously evolving collaborations between functional teams. To keep an agile customer focus, MSPs cannot afford to allow functional silos to exist within their organizations.

In the end, only the customer can own the customer experience – but MSPs have a great deal of power to enhance all customer interactions and the quality of services provided to clients.

 

Customer Image source: hudsonvalleynewsnetwork.com

 

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for Midsize Business and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic visit IBM's Midsize Insider. Dedicated to providing businesses with expertise, solutions and tools that are specific to small and midsized companies, the Midsize Business program provides businesses with the materials and knowledge they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

‘Tech Savvy’ for Midsized Companies Means ‘Customer Savvy’

 

Technology is no longer simply back office automation or work productivity tools addressing the day to day of the business. Technology has become a core pillar for company strategies, as well as for change and success. The biggest transformation any midsized company can make to become a business that sustains growth over time is to strategically and proactively use technology to achieve the goals of the business. Such a transformation through technology often takes midsized companies into new markets and new ways of doing business. The strategic positioning of technology leads to strengthening the organization, improving competitive edge and opening new doors for growth and opportunity.

In parallel to technology considerations, the single most important success factor for most companies is The Customer. These days all activities related to the customer must be ramped up and more responsive to customer needs and desires. Companies must change how they function to better serve customers. Proactive use of technology in many areas is essential to ensure top notch customer experiences and interactions at any time and place.

Midsized companies that make the customer a core focus will achieve better outcomes. When deciding on how to best leverage technology, companies should use customer strategies to drive and define technology strategies. When companies combine technologies with effective practices and processes around meeting customer needs on every level, competitive edge and revenue growth usually follow as natural outcomes.

The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) completed a global study focused on midsized and smaller companies to assess the impact of technology on business performance and growth:

Adopting technology in an intelligent way is critical to the future business success of many SMEs. More than 90 percent of leaders said that IT is important to their business's future, and almost two-thirds said that new technologies will lead to higher revenues and profits or more jobs at their company.

The study presents clear evidence that midsized and smaller businesses with higher rates of technology adoption grow faster and create more jobs than their counterparts that maintain low levels of technology adoption. Looking at U.S. SMB companies, BCG projected that if 15 percent of technology 'laggards' and 30 percent of technology 'followers' evolved into high technology adoption companies, the result would be the addition of more than two million jobs and an additional $360 billion flowing into the U.S. economy.

 

Midsized companies that want to be top competitors should evaluate all functional and operational areas that help the company shine as a customer-responsive organization to see how improvements can be made with the right technologies:

• Marketing and business interactions through mobile devices and digital channels
• Customer service and support
• eCommerce and payment services
• Gaining insight from data analytics for everything Customer
• CRM and Marketing Automation platforms
• Customer onboarding and education channels
• Deployment of Cloud / SaaS solutions for enterprise capabilities that keep up with customer and market trends

 

The goal should always be to wow customers. There are many robust technologies that can help midsized companies do that every day, in every interaction and channel. Companies that are "tech savvy" quickly show how they are "customer savvy".

 

Image Source: Sabre Travel Network

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for Midsize Business and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit  IBM's Midsize Insider. Dedicated to providing businesses with expertise, solutions and tools that are specific to small and midsized companies, the Midsize Business program provides businesses with the materials and knowledge they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

Customer Journeys Trump the Traditional Sales Cycle

                                Originally published on CMSWire

 

While pointless debate continues in organizations as to who "owns" the customer experience (the customer of course!), the responsibility for nurturing and shepherding the continuous customer experience belongs to all teams that impact customers. At the core, much of the work should be accomplished by strong, continuously evolving collaborations between marketing and sales. Unfortunately in many companies there are still ridiculous and harmful walls between sales and marketing – and a lot of political nonsense, mainly tied to the 'blame game' when forecasts aren't met and deals aren't closed.

In reality marketing and sales have intertwined roles for engendering positive outcomes from customer journeys, whether they realize it or not. But all too often the efforts of these roles are disjointed. Both groups should work together to serve customers in every sense. Sales and marketing teams already have highly complementary activities when it comes to customers – the effectiveness of these activities is amplified when these two teams deliberately work together.

To connect authentically to what customers need and want, customer journeys trump the traditional sales cycle. The sales cycle has been an inside-out process, tied primarily to sales goals and operations. The customer lifecycle with a company comprises an ongoing journey before, during and after individual sales events. Sales and marketing teams need to be part of continuous customer engagement for the entire journey. Persistent nurturing of customer experiences also plays an important role in customer retention and advocacy, and sales has a responsibility here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: Gary Magnone

 

 

The Customer Journey: Sketching Potential Experiences

There are organizations that still think that they can "design" customer experiences or regulate customer behavior. That's not ever going to happen, and it's a waste of time. The journey - the experiences - always belong to the customer, based on customer decisions. Many customer journeys are complex and erratic. Customer behavior can be unpredictable – journeys take twists and turns due to external influences and events beyond the organization. For one company and its products, there can be multiple customer / buyer journeys – just as there can be multiple customer categories and segments. It all depends on the products, how they are sold, the targets, and how well a company wants to interact with customers.

Customer journey square pegs cannot be hammered into company-desired round holes to fit inward-focused business processes. This is especially true for sales cycles or processes that only care about how a sales team wants to function – without any connection to how customers want to buy products and services. But organizations can design and orchestrate inspired and comprehensive support for customers across all internal functions and interaction channels anywhere. They can make sure that customers encounter consistent experiences anytime and that customers get what they need at any point in the journey.

Deep and broad customer understanding is necessary to: map customer journeys from customer perspectives; segment customers realistically; and comprehend customer needs and wants. Continuous customer intelligence is invaluable for nurturing better customer interactions that will make it easy for customers to buy from a company – and want to come back for more. Many current marketing processes provide what the sales team and others can put to good work: collections of customer action / transaction data, and the results of various analytics such as behavioral, social media and marketing automation.

Organizations also need to do a much better job of constructing integrated customer strategies at all levels, and should designate customer insight as a strategic core capability for the entire organization. Many companies still fall short on customer strategies, including specific customer experience strategic practices, as a recent Forrester study shows:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: Forrester Research

 

 

Aligning Sales Functions with the Customer Journey

Far too often organizations fail to:

• Understand customer journeys at all
• Connect sales process to customer journeys and to what marketing is doing to improve and nurture customer experiences
• Build content marketing approaches that support how the customer wants to buy and interact – and then interrelate sales process to these approaches

Too many organizations still only think in terms of the traditional sales cycle when considering sales interactions with customers – frequently with revenue as the main goal. There is little acknowledgement of what the customer needs or how the customer wants to do business. Of course revenue matters. But when the main focus of sales efforts shifts to the customer's journey, and the goal is positive customer experiences that can lead to purchases, revenue follows. When revenue is the main focus, the customer seems to disappear along with potential sales.

The customer journey at its core is about people learning about products, finding out how to buy, deciding if they want to buy, then buying or not. The right content plays a key role for many steps in the journey. The customer journey can also include: coming back multiple times, getting post-sales support, recommending products to friends and colleagues, "keeping in touch", and growing a relationship. So sales must be very much a part of all of this, especially in a world where many buyers may be halfway through (or more) their buying journeys before considering talking to sales.

 

 

 

                                            

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: Forrester Research

 

 

 

Content Approaches that Serve Customers, Marketing and Sales

First and foremost content marketing must provide high quality content that potential customers want and need at different points of the customer journey. And that same content can align well with the needs of sales teams. But this will happen only if key elements of sales processes are mapped appropriately to the customer journey. The continuous exploration of customers and what they value throughout the customer journey points the way to the content that will deliver authentic value to customers and help to build trust in the vendor organization, particularly sales.

Sales teams want to take advantage of the same customer intelligence that greatly improves content, especially for targeted, highly personalized messages and information sharing. Intelligence delivered by behavioral analytics, marketing automation, and other customer-focused processes have parallel purposes to help both marketing and sales better engage and serve customers. And for content marketing to deliver timely and relevant information from the customer perspective, continuously updated customer intelligence is critical.

Content that answers customer questions about the business problems they face, or addresses their interests in certain types of products and services, is not only the right content for effective content marketing but also the right content for sales teams. Both sales and marketing will better engage customers with content that demonstrates a deep understanding of the customer's business, particularly when that content explores how to solve problems, improve operations or expand business reach. Content that pushes the current customer mindset while teaching new ideas for the business is highly effective.

Many customer journeys begin well in advance of an active search for solutions. Potential customers are often more receptive to exploring new thinking long before they have defined a problem or need. Content marketing opens the door to planting ideas in the back of customer minds, regarding potential business issues and opportunities, and new ways to handle them. Content that addresses topics of interest to specific customer segments has the strong potential to deliver unique value and increase meaningful engagement.

In many companies, sales teams don't put much time into current customers – until they want to sell them something new. Content marketing is a means to keep sales teams in touch with customers continuously after the sale, without having an overt ax to grind. Sales teams can make use of quality content to interact with customers and find out real information about their ever-changing needs and desires. The right content can be a great conversation starter – as long as sales teams sit back and listen to what customers have to say.

 

The Engaged Customer is the Glue of Marketing and Sales Success

It could be said that everyone in a company is in sales and marketing. But the better notion is that everyone is in the business of improving customer experiences to make it easier for customers to purchase and make use of products and services. Personalizing the journey before, during and after the sale needs the involvement of all levels of the organization, driven by a hierarchy of customer-focused strategies.

As with responsive marketing approaches, sales teams must abandon one-size-fits-all "sales cycles" and personalize interactions with prospects using continuously updated customer insight and sophisticated content marketing approaches. By truly interacting with customers throughout the customer lifecycle, sales teams should have a better understanding of when a customer is ready to purchase and what it will take to help them make the buying decision.

 

About the author: Julie is an independent consultant and industry analyst for B2B software solutions, providing services to vendors to improve strategies for customers and target markets, products and solutions, and future direction. Julie has expertise in several solution spaces including: data integration and data quality; analytics and BI; business process, workflow and collaboration; digital marketing, WCM and social media; and the pivotal importance of user and customer experiences. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

Data Smarter Marketing: Big Data Analytics for Continuous Customer Insight

  

Comprehensive customer intelligence has become a priority for midsized companies. Insight derived from advanced analytics expands understanding of current and potential customers, and helps to achieve competitive advantage based on improved and more targeted marketing and sales. Sophisticated marketing technologies such as adaptive marketing and marketing automation require very precise customer knowledge to provide value both to companies and to their customers. To accomplish these imperatives, marketers need continuously updated and full-bodied views of customers and prospects to strengthen communications and support for all interactions and activities during the customer lifecycle.

McKinsey has focused on the ROI of big data analytics for marketing functions:

McKinsey analysis of more than 250 engagements over five years has revealed that companies that put data at the center of the marketing and sales decisions improve their marketing return on investment (MROI) by 15 – 20 percent. That adds up to $150 – $200 billion of additional value based on global annual marketing spend of an estimated $1 trillion.

 

            

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                 Source: IBM (full infographic below)

 

Many relevant information sources for advanced analytics related to marketing fall into the 'big data' category, which requires specialized skills and analytics processes. Marketing groups in midsized companies still have obstacles to overcome to gain the full use and benefits of advanced analytics, including adding more team members with the right skills and finding the right-fit analytics solutions. Information Week shared this information from a study by the Economist Intelligence Unit:

When asked which skills were most necessary for a successful marketer today, 37% of executives said that "using data analysis to extract predictive findings from 'big data'" mattered most. Five years ago, just 17% of executives said this was true, the EIU report says.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: IBM (full infographic below)

 

Marketing investments for working with a wider range of data sources through sophisticated analytics can bring big dividends to the entire organization. The results of customer and product analytics are of great value to functions across the organization including: customer service, product strategy and development, corporate strategies, and financial planning. In this sense, marketing analytics should be a holistic investment and obviously a strategic initiative from top to bottom for midsized companies.

Making use of advanced analytics is not meant to replace the creative vision and innovative ideas that humans develop and that are so important for effective marketing endeavors. But marketing functions need advanced analytics to keep the customer in full focus as the most important element for applying insightful context and relevance. In many cases, creativity is made better with insight from analytics for validation and amplification of the creative spark, as well as indicators of how to apply creative thinking. Marketers in midsized companies need to be 'data smarter' so as not to waste valuable (and frequently expensive) creative efforts and programs.

 

IBM Analytics Infographic: A Big Advantage for Midsize Businesses

IBM provides a great deal of research on analytics for Midmarket organizations, including the white paper: Analytics: A Blueprint for Value in Midmarket Organizations

 

IBM Infographic

 

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for Midsize Business and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit  IBM's Midsize Insider. Dedicated to providing businesses with expertise, solutions and tools that are specific to small and midsized companies, the Midsize Business program provides businesses with the materials and knowledge they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

 

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

Analytics Fortify Resilient Midmarket Companies

 

In the U.S. midmarket companies constitute a unique and highly fruitful business realm. Many midsized firms are purposefully not on a trajectory to become large enterprises. These firms are finding continuous success because they know how to operate well as midsized companies, and have advantages not available to much larger organizations. Lighter on their feet than larger enterprises, midsized companies can more quickly adapt to change and opportunities. And unlike small companies, the midmarket has stronger finances to fund growth and weather down times. Growth for the midmarket often comes from organic expansion – and understanding what it takes to engender it, including business model innovation and re-invention.

Midsized companies are much more in touch with customers and their own employees. They are truly interested in nurturing both of these relationships because they know that the right employees foster distinctive and positive interactions with customers. Midsized companies offer talented employees a better chance to stand out and drive innovative efforts, both for offerings and for how the business is run.

 

 

The most recent performance data from the National Center for the Middle Market provides more insight into the success of midmarket companies over time:

• Consistent with the past 12 months, a solid majority (63%) of middle market leaders continue to report improved overall company performance versus one year ago.
• Companies have sustained the rate of increase in year-over-year revenue growth as reported in the last quarter, with a mean total revenue growth of 6.6% for Q2 2014.
• While the proportion of middle market firms experiencing revenue growth consistently outpaces the proportion that added workers in the past year, middle market firms have maintained the significant increase in hiring reported in the first quarter of 2014. For Q2 2014, more than 40% of firms report increased employment compared to one year ago.
• Middle market leaders from all revenue segments continue to express higher levels of confidence in the global, U.S., and local economies. The percentage of respondents expressing some level of confidence in the local and regional economy is an impressive 77%.

A final statistic: 63% of midmarket companies plan to continue to invest in the growth of their companies. This last statistic is interesting since part of that investment continues to flow into the implementation of cutting edge technologies such as advanced analytics (including big data analytics) to help fuel growth, innovation and competitive advantage. There has been a steady increase in analytics solutions that are a good fit for the midmarket, as well as providing better access for less technical business users.

 

Analytics are not limited to the functions of operational performance, financial and risk management, and supply chain optimization. Midsized companies are especially interested in analytics in support of improved marketing and sales, with customer insight as a top priority. Midsized companies have competitive advantage over larger organizations when it comes to more quickly implementing the results of analytics processes, through decision-making processes and actions.

Analytics options that currently appeal to midsized organizations include reports and data visualizations that help all levels in the business make good use of data to recognize patterns of change, as well as new trends that impact target customers and markets, products and services, and revenue. Predictive analytics help midsized companies pull in new kinds of data to go beyond traditional BI to anticipate future and unexpected trends and changes. Big data analytics provide the means to use large datasets and non-relational data sources to improve and expand intelligence initiatives.

 

Midmarket companies seek many of the same outcomes that larger organizations want:

• Faster, more informed analysis for making better decisions, identifying compelling opportunities, and spotting market changes (good or bad)
• Continuous customer intelligence to improve customer experiences and relationships
• Timely insight for the development of products and services
• Business model innovation
• Operational improvement and reduction of risk

 

Image source: National Center for the Middle Market

                        (a collaboration between The Ohio State University Fisher College of Business and GE Capital)

 

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for Midsize Business and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit  IBM's Midsize Insider. Dedicated to providing businesses with expertise, solutions and tools that are specific to small and midsized companies, the Midsize Business program provides businesses with the materials and knowledge they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

One on One Engagement: Mobile Content Marketing

 

Mobile-first is a phrase often heard when discussing web and content design, as well as marketing strategies. The mobile-first focus propels companies into strategies that reflect the amazing growth of mobile usage for business purposes, both on smartphones and tablets. And we are likely to see more vendors move towards mobile-only strategies, as mobile becomes the core customer communications platform for their businesses.

Many reports show that B2C vendors are quickly taking rewarding advantage of marketing and selling through mobile channels. But B2B vendors greatly lag their B2C counterparts, continuing to miss out on a significant opportunity that brings distinct competitive advantage. B2B customers bring with them the positive experiences that B2C vendors give them on mobile – B2B vendors must engage well on mobile if they want to continue to gain and retain these customers.

The average person spends two hours per day looking at a mobile screen. Think about that. Two hours out of every twenty-four – 8% of an entire day – on a mobile device. That's more time than users spend watching TV or using a personal computer. Whether it's at home, at work, or in between, users seem to be inseparable from their mobile devices.   (Source: High Impact Prospecting )

For midsized vendors the message is clear: mobile is wide open right now for smart vendors to reach more customers in very direct and compelling ways – every day. It's time to jump in to create effective mobile marketing strategies and a creative approach to mobile content marketing.

 

Mobile Content Design

Mobile devices offer new ways to create and deliver content which opens up many new possibilities for content marketing teams. Content marketing strategies and content creation have to recognize how different mobile content is from content that is delivered on traditional computing devices. For instance, Google search algorithms are constantly updated to reflect the rising creation of mobile content of all kinds, so it's important for content marketers to develop the right mobile content that aligns with successful semantic search results.

                        

        

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mobile marketers also have to understand the mobile behavior of target customers: how do they use their mobile devices for different activities? Tablet usage is different from smartphone usage, so marketers need to segment user behavior by device. The available space on a smartphone is obviously premium real estate, while tablets offer a larger canvas for content. The wealth of information that comes from tracking and analyzing how people use mobile devices adds significant intelligence to correctly engaging customers one on one, in ways that they will accept.

Beyond the knowledge about how people use their mobile devices, marketers need to consider what these people are doing when they are consuming mobile content. They could be commuting on a train, plane or bus; in the office; or at home. In different settings, mobile content has to compete with all kinds of distractions. To grab and hold the usually brief attention of the mobile user, content should follow a mobile-smart model:

• Bite-sized content that quickly gets to the point
• High impact "wow" content
• Easy-to-spot actions to take
• Streamlined layouts
• Visual elements instead of text, whenever possible
• Easy-to-read fonts
• Vibrant colors for overall content

There are vendors experimenting with longer form content for mobile engagement. Instead of longer content as the initial view, it may be more effective to offer links to that longer content or to videos. This approach gives control to the mobile user who can then decide when to view additional content that can be time and resource consuming. Vendors can then track click through and conversion metrics to determine the success of longer form content approaches to learn more about customer desires and attention span, and to fine tune marketing efforts.

 

Mobile Content Marketing Strategies

Mobile content marketing is a component of overall content marketing strategies. It should fit well into a unified and consistent experience for customers, no matter what device / channel is used for engagement. And for some companies, mobile is becoming the dominant component, so content marketing strategies must reflect the growing significance of mobile for marketing and selling.

81% of mobile leaders say that mobile fundamentally changed their businesses    (Source: IBM )

Many midsized businesses lack any sort of mobile strategy, let alone planning for effective mobile content marketing. These businesses are missing tremendous opportunities to reach more customers and are likely giving away competitive advantage to other vendors.

  

Image source: Content Marketing Institute

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for Midsize Business and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit  IBM's Midsize Insider. Dedicated to providing businesses with expertise, solutions and tools that are specific to small and midsized companies, the Midsize Business program provides businesses with the materials and knowledge they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

  

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

Content Marketing for Midsized Companies: Who to Target, What to Create

 

An integral part of creating a strategy for content marketing initiatives is to identify which of your customers are the targets of your content: what are their roles in their companies, what part do they play in the buying process, what are their preferred channels for different kinds of content. Then decisions must be made for the types of content that will be created, based on the preferences of target customers and different phases of the customer or buying journey. Just as companies should be segmenting target markets and target customer roles to better connect their products to customer needs, the same segmentation should be used for content.

 

Software solutions are important tools for learning more about customers and their buying behaviors, to provide the continuous intelligence needed for effective content marketing. Advanced analytics can process data from many disparate sources, such as social media, master data and CRM systems, and provide customer insight that helps with customer segmentation, mapping customer journeys, and relating customer content preferences to specific channels for publication. Content management and marketing automation solutions enable dynamic management of the customer / content matrix as it relates to buying processes and customer desires. Various software solutions also nurture consistent customer experiences across channels, to enhance positive perceptions. Most of the above technologies provide capabilities for tracking activities and outcomes, to be able to repeatedly measure effectiveness, and fine tune approaches and processes.

 

 

What Kind of Content Should You Create?

Forcontent to provide superior customer engagement, the focus is no longer on vendor offerings and product features. It's about content that helps prospects and customers solve their problems and improve the performance of their organizations. The kind of content that attracts your customers will change on a regular basis, as media options evolve along with customer interests and needs. Companies must keep on top of these changes through different industry reports, analytics on the effectiveness of current content marketing activities, direct feedback from customers, and continuously tracking changes to buying / customer journeys.

 

Content categories that currently catch the attention of different kinds of customers include:

à Content Optimized for Mobile Consumption

Mobile is rapidly becoming a top channel for connecting to customers. To engage customers, content must be specifically optimized for the device, particularly smartphones where display real estate is at a premium. Content has to make sense for how customers use mobile devices and generally should be simple, very interesting and to the point.

à Video

Customers like video content when it covers topics relevant to their needs. High quality, sophisticated video is greatly preferred over amateurish efforts. Customer expectations for engagement look for entertainment combined with information.

à White papers and Product Information Sheets

These types of content are primarily of interest for B2B customers. White papers will only be useful if they cover topics and issues that matter to customers. Customers are strongly turned off by marketing "brochureware" masquerading as a white paper, and may well reject the vendor that created it.

à Customer Stories and Case Studies

Customers still find great value in customer stories with useful details around the customer problem and how it was solved. Include the value and benefits that were gained by the customer after solving the problem – and keep the focus on the customer, not your company.

à Interactive Elements

Engaging customers with interactive elements, such as embedded video or hyperlinks, frequently builds customer interest in your content, and can take customers further into the buying process. Be sure to overtly identify what each interactive element will do. For example, you may be losing customer follow-through on links if it's not clear what will happen when the link is clicked.

 

Content Marketing Doesn't Stop at Purchases

The bonus value of content marketing is to nurture and build positive customer experiences beyond the purchase, throughout the lifecycle of a customer. Customers and markets can change very quickly; agile and sophisticated software technologies, processes and creative practices are needed to grow and sustain positive customer relationships. Content marketing is an integral part of what it takes to positively engage customers on any channel at any time.

 

 

Image source: ironpaper.com

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for Midsize Business and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit  IBM's Midsize Insider. Dedicated to providing businesses with expertise, solutions and tools that are specific to small and midsized companies, the Midsize Business program provides businesses with the materials and knowledge they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

 

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

Content Marketing Strategies for Midsized Companies

  

Content marketing isn't anything new but it has proven to be an effective marketing strategy for companies of all sizes. For 2014 the Content Marketing Institute reports that overall amounts spent on content marketing is segmented by B2B companies allocating 30% of their marketing budgets, while B2C companies earmark 24% of their marketing budgets. In 2012, midsized organizations spent 22% of their marketing budgets on content marketing.

 

Midsized organizations are using content marketing to support multiple objectives:

• Brand awareness – thought leadership and trusted source of quality information
• Customer retention and loyalty – nurturing ongoing relationships
• Lead management activities (lead gen, nurturing, presales buyer journey touchpoints)
• New customer acquisition
• Improving website traffic and eCommerce activity

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

        Image source: Post+Beam

 

 

 We see a lot of articles about how organizations go wrong when it comes to content marketing.And most of what's called out is not surprising: failure to write properly on topics that customers prefer or to even find out what customers want to read; poor writing quality and non-engaging material; promoting marketing brochure-ware instead of useful, thought-provoking material. Organizations can fail to understand how to match the right content to the right channel, or lack the knowledge as to which channels different customer segments prefer for various kinds of content. These organizations may not even have clear customer segmentation for their products.

The existence of these missteps usually indicates the lack of a cohesive long-term strategy for content marketing. And it's just as likely that there is no overarching marketing strategy that ties into corporate goals and objectives. This may mean that not only does content marketing lack executive backing, but the overall marketing function is suffering the same fate.

 

Well-Crafted Strategies

So before an organization can create a well-crafted content marketing strategy, upper management must make the commitment to be customer-focused and marketing savvy. The value of content marketing to reach the customer-as-buyer must be given credence, support and enablement. Content marketing is not a short term campaign or project; it's a strategic commitment that impacts the entire enterprise.

Content marketing (if done well) keeps the company focused on understanding and meeting the needs of customers – something companies should be doing anyway. Align the business with the customer, align content with the customer. Content marketing is a natural progression from recognizing that the customer-as-buyer drives more of how, when or even if sales happen. The work to be done to understand how to deliver the right content to customers and prospects is the same work that organizations should be doing to deliver the products and services that customers and prospects want and need.

Strategic decisions need to be made regarding the technology tools to assist content marketing initiatives. For well-targeted content, marketing teams need sophisticated analytics for customer segmentation and behavioral insight to create the right content for the right customer segment, delivered where the customer wants to find it. Digital marketing technologies interoperate with content marketing initiatives, including marketing automation and omnichannel experience management platforms.

 

A comprehensive content marketing strategy provides a wellspring for all company content so that organizations connect with customers consistently and clearly. The content marketing strategy pulls together individual marketing programs and initiatives resulting in a more seamless transition for the customer from channel to channel. Connecting the tactics of marketing to a content strategy makes it more possible to construct metrics that track the effectiveness of quality content, that then can be mapped to functions such as lead gen, sales funnel and overall marketing ROI.

 

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for Midsize Business and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit  IBM's Midsize Insider. Dedicated to providing businesses with expertise, solutions and tools that are specific to small and midsized companies, the Midsize Business program provides businesses with the materials and knowledge they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

 

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

 

Shaping the Future of Customer-Responsive Marketing Automation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marketing automation has shown that it can be a smart tool (when done right) for shepherding and converting leads, and automating marketing processes. The near future role for marketing automation has begun evolving as MA technologies have become more sophisticated to deliver customer-responsive interactions on any channel. If this evolution continues, the name 'marketing automation' will become inadequate to describe what can be accomplished with these technologies when combined with customer-focused processes, practices and strategies.

Within the marketing realm, marketing automation capabilities are becoming an important component of integrated marketing and communications, for seamless interaction management on any channel and support for omnichannel customer experiences. Marketing automation is also converging with cross-enterprise customer-adaptive processes and 'sense and respond' models, both of which have been in practice for quite some time for various enterprise functions, with customer needs as a strong focus.

Marketing automation has growing relationships with 'anything customer', such as customer service and customer master data. Content marketing strategies and initiatives are essential partners for effective MA. To deliver better buying experiences, marketing automation integrated with other customer-focused systems can reveal a great deal about customer behavior, motivation, and needs. Organizations can interact more authentically with customers anywhere using such intelligence.

 

Speeding Past 'Sense and Respond' to "Predict and Act"

Retail and eCommerce take advantage of customer-adaptive processes to personalize and propel buying journeys. And supply chain management and retail have successfully utilized 'sense and respond', aka agile/lean or just-in-time management, to optimize supply chain functions while speedily fulfilling end customer requirements. For these models, important common denominators aren't just responding to customers more quickly and accurately, but also delivering more value to customers - on customer terms.

The increase in real-time multichannel communications and interaction touchpoints has brought 'sense and respond' processes to marketing. Mobile is a particular focal point for sense and respond, particularly with the increasing use of 'in the moment' marketing and buying opportunities. Touchpoints become more effective with sense and respond and customer-adaptive processes behind them. The customer intelligence attained through integrating data and analytics from marketing automation, customer service and other customer-focused functions will power smarter touchpoints that include faster, more customer-accurate responses. The implications for competitive advantage are clear.

The strategic combining of marketing automation with cross-functional integrations results in continuous highly personalized communications delivered to customers. Adaptive processes based on context continuously respond more accurately to every customer action on any channel. Marketing and other customer functions are now in the world of real-time, location-aware customer experiences, moving past the basic mechanics of interaction.

Predictive analytics behind both customer-adaptive processes and 'sense and respond' are moving organizations from analysis of past and in-process interactions to anticipation of near future activities in order to better understand and fulfill customer desires. The continuing transformation of marketing automation is rapidly changing to "predict and act".

But all of this takes strategic commitment, the right experts, much preparation and testing, improved processes, and a lot of hard work. Done right, there is much to be gained for nurturing and growing ongoing customer relationships. To achieve more valuable use of marketing automation, you have to start with thoroughly understanding customers, buyer journeys, trigger events and key touchpoints. This means a great deal of research, analysis and segmentation at sophisticated levels – all of which will have to be constantly refreshed.

    

Technologies as Evolutionary Tools

When marketing automation is first introduced into an organization it's easy to get caught up in the tunnel vision of how to use new technologies and the tactical tasks that can be accomplished. It's easy to fail to see the big picture of how all the pieces fit together to achieve higher level objectives and corporate strategies. Many are still struggling to connect these technologies to overall marketing functions, and larger objectives – and to add all of the right people: designers, marketing technologists, analytics experts, data managers, content professionals, and strategists of all kinds.

As marketing automation technologies have progressed to better manage multichannel interactions and an omnichannel customer experience, they're addressing the complexities of understanding interactions during buying journeys, accurate customer segmentation and better personalized communications. A comprehensive view of the customer requires more than what the marketing automation platform covers. Extensive integrations are essential with other systems and processes, such as CRM, content management, content marketing, and social media tools. Marketing automation works best when it includes bi-directional integrations with other customer and product focused systems to deliver the most accurate intelligence in real-time - to any function.

Business process design, automation and event processing must be done at sophisticated levels to respond to circumstances and participants that can change at any time. All of this comes into play to both manage and maintain response-ready processes for today's more complicated customer experience lifecycles.

 

Overcoming Organizational Obstacles

Like much in the enterprise, cross-functional collaboration and integration of business processes are key elements for successful outcomes. The entire organization must be empowered to make a strategic commitment to the customer and to nurturing improved experiences. Upper level management must ensure that the entire organization can focus on the customer first, with top notch execution of practices and processes.

Organizations that continue to see marketing as an add-on function will not achieve improved customer experiences. Organizations that allow functional silos to persist are equally destined for failure. Because of these organizational flaws, most obstacles to successful marketing automation and customer-adaptive processes are not directly related to marketing automation itself:

• Inadequate budget for all aspects of marketing automation and multichannel interactions
• Reluctance to invest in quality content creation for all customer interactions (which also impacts the content marketing strategy)
• Lack of the right staffing and skillsets -- and no budget to invest in them
• Poor cross-team integration and collaboration
• Lagging systems integration across the organization
• Deficient data quality and analytics processes
• Badly designed business processes across the organization

 

The Future is Now

The idea of the customer-focused organization has been around for a while, but there's still a lot to be done to do it well – and to earn value in the eyes of customers. Continuously positive customer interactions obviously create immeasurable return for an organization. Such experiences result in more resilient customer loyalty – but to achieve them requires sophisticated actions and orchestration of practices and processes across the organization. Non-integrated silos for communications, marketing, customer service, and product development cannot ever achieve a holistic customer experience that matters to customers.

The strategic potential of marketing automation isn't about a single campaign or even the marketing function, and it isn't about the technology platform. It's about customer experiences throughout the lifecycle of a customer with a particular organization. Customers and markets can change very quickly; agile and sophisticated technologies, processes and creative practices are needed to grow and sustain positive customer relationships. Marketing automation can evolve into a customer-focused platform that offers new possibilities as an orchestration hub for a significant portion of customer interactions and for nurturing improved customer experiences with a vendor.

Marketing automation has the potential to become an important catalyst for the multi-dimensional intelligence that is critical for digital marketing processes and many other corporate functions . To achieve this, not only is a change in the marketing mindset essential, but the overall corporate mindset where marketing objectives become an integral part of corporate strategies.

 

Image Sources   business2community.com      clarkstonconsulting.com

 

 

About the author: Julie is an independent consultant and industry analyst for B2B software solutions, providing services to vendors to improve strategies for customers and target markets, products and solutions, and future direction. Julie has expertise in several solution spaces including: data integration and data quality; analytics and BI; business process, workflow and collaboration; digital marketing, WCM and social media; and the pivotal importance of user and customer experiences. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

 

Timely, Relevant and Wanted: How to Succeed with Mobile Push Marketing

 

 

Not only are people spending more time on mobile devices, much of it is dedicated to using apps. Because of the intimate nature of mobile, marketers have to take on new ways to effectively target consumers both for in-app and mobile website engagement.

Push notifications or messages only happen if mobile users opt in to activate them. These notifications focus on very specific purposes: relevant / requested vendor offers, customer service alerts, new content availability, social updates, various reminders, or notifications tied to current consumer location. Push messages require an immediate action, which has compelling value to vendors:

• In-the-moment marketing that is simple but with lots of room for creativity
• A new way for delivering memorable customer experiences
• An inexpensive way to keep in touch with already interested customers
• A highly detailed targeting and metrics tool

But marketing through push notifications comes with a serious warning. Marketers must be very respectful of the trust mobile users are extending by giving vendors access to their mobile devices – and their attention. Similar to marketing automation and content marketing, mobile users expect highly personalized relevant content. The difference is that push notifications are extremely targeted to very specific interests and actions of individual consumers, often related to the exact moment or current location. If marketers fail to deliver what consumers want in push messages, the messages are ignored and deleted – and the consumer is likely opt out of future push notifications as a waste of their time.

 

A recent JiWire study found that 75 percent of shoppers act after receiving a location-based message.

 

Consumers who are heavy app users are also the most interested in push notifications:

According to a report from Maz, consumers spend 40 percent more time reading content in apps than on Web sites, but marketers are still hesitant to ramp up in-app ad spend. At the same time, Juniper Research just put out a report that predicts that in-app advertising spend will grow to almost $17 billion by 2018, so that reality may be changing in the near future.

    

While in-app marketing is growing in importance, not all customers want to interact with a vendor through apps. Mobile websites continue to draw customers. Consumer actions on mobile websites can dynamically set off the display of personalized content, as a "push" response. And push notifications can be used to drive consumers to specific web pages.

 

Push Notification Relevance Depends on Continuous Analytics

As with marketing automation, a robotic one-size-fits-all won't cut it for consumer-personalized push messages. And as with content marketing, marketers must avoid anything that smacks of blatant sales propaganda. The focus has to be on the consumer perspective, what they need and want.

This is an interesting new direction for effective marketing. Push notifications require personalization on steroids to generate the right timely targeted offerings. This calls for continuous advanced analytics, detailed segmentation, and location-based services. Vendors should already be constructing well-informed segmentation and profiles of customers for marketing automation, content marketing and product development. Push notifications now take it deeper and add new dimensions to customer behavioral data.

Push notification processes introduce the opportunity for very detailed metrics to determine the engagement quality of the communications: what specific actions were taken, which messages were opened immediately, how many app opens occurred, the amount of time spent in the app. The preferences set by mobile users also generate useful data, particularly if the options are quite granular.Marketers have immediate intelligence about what works and what doesn't, and can make quick changes to approaches.

Beyond the specific needs of continuous improvement of push messages, this new customer intelligence should be shared with all other customer-related functions in the company. Push notifications should never exist in a vacuum, but must be part of an integrated cross-channel strategy for customer engagement.

 

The Omnichannel Customer Experience

While mobile is a unique world, mobile marketing still needs tight integration with all multichannel strategies such as a direct marketing. Push marketing must exist as a consistent component of the omnichannel experience for each customer. It should complement messaging tactics on all digital devices for orchestrated actions and engagement across channels.

The consumer intelligence gained from understanding how mobile users react to push notifications should strive to relate the impact of such messages to subsequent cross-channel behavior. As the sophistication of push notification analytics grows, many possibilities should emerge for highly engaging and creative push interactions anywhere anytime.

 

Image source: 99mobileapps.com

 

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for Midsize Business and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit  IBM's Midsize Insider. Dedicated to providing businesses with expertise, solutions and tools that are specific to small and midsized companies, the Midsize Business program provides businesses with the materials and knowledge they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective