graphic courtesy of turn.com
The Oracle/Eloqua All About Revenue blog published an interesting infographic recently, posted below. It contains data points from various sources that illustrate the challenges facing CMOs as they attempt to quantify the ROI of their marketing efforts.
In many ways there has never been a better time to establish these metrics. The inherently data rich nature of online and the power of new marketing automation packages hold great promise for giving CMOs what they want. But as this infographic shows, serious obstacles remain. This is especially true when trying to provide a personalized, consistent customer experience across different types of company content — paid, earned, shared and owned.
These challenges also face many of my B2G clients. As I reviewed some of the B2B-related percentages and recommendations in the infographic, I thought how I could tweak them to better describe the public sector challenges I’ve seen.
In general, the B2G percentages are even higher than the numbers shown in the infographic. Part of that is due to the nature of most public sector organizations, since they are distinct and often very autonomous from the rest of the company’s marketing team. That autonomy often has many benefits. But it does make a unified picture of all marketing across digital platforms very challenging to achieve.
With some editing and added detail, I think the four tips provided are useful for public sector marketing teams:
- Create an ideal customer profile and promote the actions you’d like customers to take – More of my clients are doing this in a more structured way than in the past. Most clients intuitively know who they want to reach, yet constructing a “persona” helps focus the content development and promotion efforts. And I strongly agree with the point about giving clear indications of actions you’d like prospects and customers to take online. A design firm I work with calls that “providing clear swim lanes,” which I think captures it exactly.
- Get real about defining success and focus on moving the needle forward in near and mid-term – Admittedly a bit vague, but you can’t argue that if you don’t define exactly what success looks like, you will never achieve it. Clear KPIs developed collaboratively at the start of an engagement fill this role. To me, the short-mid term comment means get out there and start executing. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, as a former partner of mine liked to say.
- Break down organizational walls and create opportunities for increased collaboration – YES! This is a big one. I see this the most between marketing and sales. If the sales team understands the consultative approach, and that we’re creating content designed to help them move prospects through the pipeline, the results are dramatic. Some of the most challenging yet also rewarding work I do is working one-on-one with sales people, making sure they are utilizing the thought-leadership content being produced.
- Simplify efforts to centralize marketing activities – You can effectively centralize while still utilizing specialized resources. On most of my engagements I focus on the Owned portion of the content mix, and work closely with internal and/or external personnel who handle other areas. Clients can create a healthy environment for collaboration in which everyone understands the full picture, not just their portion.
That’s my take. What obstacles have you found that get in the way of ROI-driven B2G marketing? Drop a comment here, or reach out via your favorite social media channel.
CMOs Face a Major Dilemma [Infographic] is from Eloqua’s It’s All About Revenue, a Blog Covering Business To Business Marketing