By Mark Helfen
There are still only 24 hours in a day - your need to fight for your customer's time and attention in an ever more difficult environment.
As the number of products available and ways to communicate with your customer explode, your life as a marketer gets more difficult. It almost seems impossible.
At next Monday's MarketingSIG, Adrian Ott, CEO of Exponential Edge will speak about how to successfully compete for time and attention in a today's market. Her talk titled "Snack, Trigger, and Shop! How to Attract and Retain Today's 24-hour Customer," will describe some new ways of thinking about time and attention.
PLEASE NOTE NEW LOCATION - After many years of meetings at DLA Piper (many thanks for the help) this month we will meet at a new location:
EMC
2831 Mission College Blvd Santa Clara CA 95054
In the San Francisco Conference Room
Same time - 6:30 p.m.
map here
And thanks to EMC for hosting the location (and food!)
In researching her book The 24 Hour Customer, Ott learned about "the dynamics of time and attention," and developed a framework to make this work in your favor - Time Value Innovation.
According to Ott's research, people spend only about six minutes a day on e-commerce web sites. They spend only two to three percent of their time researching, looking up and buying things, both on-line and in person combined, a figure that hasn't changed since the 60s while the number of products available, and the ways of reaching your customer has "exploded." The result is a time war - companies battling for customer's limited time and attention. Trying to occupy as much time as possible - the time you spend on Google is time your not spending on Facebook.
My initial thinking was that this was only about advertising, but when I spoke to Ott she showed that thinking about a customer's time can help with the design of all kinds of products and services, both business and consumer. She gave several examples of how time, and thinking of time, can change a product:
Time slicing - Writing a blog entry took too much time, so Twitter created shorter time slices.
Time shifting - Your favorite show is on at the wrong time, so Tivo, or Hulu lets you shift time.
Time Sharing - Zip cars allow you to share the use of a car without ownership.
So come by Monday, and hear about the eight triggers that can help redirect customer time and attention in your favor. So you can make time, as little as there is, work for you.
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Mark Helfen is a freelance writer, journalist, and marketing consultant. He can be reached at:
mhelfen@wordpixel.com
Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/markhelfen
Facebook: facebook.com/mark.helfen
Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/mark_helfen
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Sunday, October 31, 2010
Monday, October 18, 2010
Its more effective to nurture the relationship with a current prospects than to find a new one...
By Mark Helfen
► Instead of the marketing department just finding more leads and throwing them over the wall to sales, how about prospects that get nurtured until they become real sales leads.
► Instead of trying to sell potential customers who aren't interested, or at least aren't interested yet, how about letting customers educate themselves until they are interested in your product.
► Instead of your direct sales force spending time prospecting for customers from large list of unqualified names, spending time educating early stage prospects and working a wide pipeline, how about those same reps spending time with people who are ready to buy, or at least educated enough to decide if they are interested.
At Monday's (October 11) SDForum Marketing SIG, Jon Miller, VP of Marketing at Marketo, talked about broadening your thinking from a sales cycle to a highly effective revenue cycle.
According to Miller, "the internet has changed everything," and the result is "customers have seized control of the [sales] process." Marketo's model reflects the change in power from sellers to empowered buyers. Potential customers can get information about your products with no help from you or your sales force. They won't speak to sales reps until they want to. They're in charge.
Marketing needs to take responsibility for the entire revenue cycle, including the sales cycle, and 'nurture relationships" with potential customers not yet ready to consider buying. Miller said that just like its easier and cheaper to sell to an existing customer than a new one, its easier and cheaper to sell to a prospect once they have a relationship with your company, than to start with a new prospect.
In this model, marketing finds names, and nurtures them until they become leads. Marketing becomes a publisher, providing useful information - documenting best practices, or generating white papers. Eventually Miller plans to ad video to the mix.
By providing valuable information you gain permission to keep in touch and stay in contact. By tracking your prospects interests and their activity on your web site, you can find when there is enough interest for a name to become a lead, and it's given to sales.
Marketo's software system tracks information about names and leads, and generates statistics on how the whole process is working. Miller claims that the information tracked allows him to predict the number of leads that will be given to sales over a quarter, and visibility into revenue that will be generated.
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Mark Helfen is a freelance writer, journalist, and marketing consultant. He can be reached at:
mhelfen@wordpixel.com
Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/markhelfen
Facebook: www.facebook.com/mark.helfen
Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/mark_helfen
=============
► Instead of the marketing department just finding more leads and throwing them over the wall to sales, how about prospects that get nurtured until they become real sales leads.
► Instead of trying to sell potential customers who aren't interested, or at least aren't interested yet, how about letting customers educate themselves until they are interested in your product.
► Instead of your direct sales force spending time prospecting for customers from large list of unqualified names, spending time educating early stage prospects and working a wide pipeline, how about those same reps spending time with people who are ready to buy, or at least educated enough to decide if they are interested.
At Monday's (October 11) SDForum Marketing SIG, Jon Miller, VP of Marketing at Marketo, talked about broadening your thinking from a sales cycle to a highly effective revenue cycle.
According to Miller, "the internet has changed everything," and the result is "customers have seized control of the [sales] process." Marketo's model reflects the change in power from sellers to empowered buyers. Potential customers can get information about your products with no help from you or your sales force. They won't speak to sales reps until they want to. They're in charge.
Marketing needs to take responsibility for the entire revenue cycle, including the sales cycle, and 'nurture relationships" with potential customers not yet ready to consider buying. Miller said that just like its easier and cheaper to sell to an existing customer than a new one, its easier and cheaper to sell to a prospect once they have a relationship with your company, than to start with a new prospect.
In this model, marketing finds names, and nurtures them until they become leads. Marketing becomes a publisher, providing useful information - documenting best practices, or generating white papers. Eventually Miller plans to ad video to the mix.
By providing valuable information you gain permission to keep in touch and stay in contact. By tracking your prospects interests and their activity on your web site, you can find when there is enough interest for a name to become a lead, and it's given to sales.
Marketo's software system tracks information about names and leads, and generates statistics on how the whole process is working. Miller claims that the information tracked allows him to predict the number of leads that will be given to sales over a quarter, and visibility into revenue that will be generated.
=============
Mark Helfen is a freelance writer, journalist, and marketing consultant. He can be reached at:
mhelfen@wordpixel.com
Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/markhelfen
Facebook: www.facebook.com/mark.helfen
Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/mark_helfen
=============
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