by William Walsh | Sep 20, 2023 | 2023
By Scott Gillum
Estimated read time: 2 Minutes
Here’s an observation for my friends in tech marketing.
Above is an extract from research we recently conducted. Close to 500 C-Level IT buyers (CTO, CIO, CISO, etc.) were interviewed or surveyed.
The graph represents the top 4 purchase drivers. Each of the 4 categories include the platform and the people. Technical expertise includes not only the solution, but also, the people selling, integrating and supporting it.
The “people” component in the other categories is pretty obvious. The question is, how are you communicating the value of your people in your content and messaging? Are you?
In my observations, most organizations have shifted to almost exclusively focusing on the technology/platform. We’ve become very myopic in marketing our solution. It could be pressure coming from the product group or senior management. It’s pushed marketing too far in one direction.
People use technology to get an output. They don’t buy it because of what it is, they buy it because of what it does…oftentimes, for them specifically. How you sell and support your tool most often dictates whether or not you’ll get the renewal, add-on or even a referral.
People also buy from people. If you’re leaving the human piece out, you are doing the customer, company and your colleagues a disservice.
by scott.gillum | Feb 1, 2022 | 2022, Insights
As previously published on 1/26/22 in The Drum
by Scott Gillum
Estimated read time: 5 Minutes
Does the answer to improving B2B marketing success tie back to a problem discovered during World War II? Perhaps.
The B-17 plane was quick and inexpensive to build with a goal of “blackening the sky” over Europe. The problem with that strategy was because they were designed to be quickly built they ended up being easily shot down. In fact, soon after entering the war, the B17 was getting shot out of the sky faster than they could be built.
Recognizing that something had to be done to keep them in the air, the decision was made to assemble a group of engineers to study the returning planes, and assess where to add armour.
The team was about to submit their findings when Abraham Wald, a lead engineer on the project, pointed out that they were thinking about the problem the wrong way. Instead of putting armour on areas that were damaged by bullets, they should be thinking about adding armor to the areas where there were no bullet holes, because those areas were most vulnerable.
This phenomenon, known as “survivorship bias,” can be seen all over B2B marketing. Survival bias is a type of selection bias. It’s a logic error that occurs when focusing on things that survive rather than looking at things that didn’t. By selectively leaving data out of the analysis it can cause one to make the wrong conclusion, like putting armor on the bullet holes of returning planes.
In B2B marketing, there are signs of this bias in almost everything we do. We try to scale and “optimize” a 3% response rate or 10% open rate. Focusing on the “returning planes,” missing the opportunity to assess, and understand, how to improve on the 90%+ of our effort that didn’t return a result.
This myopic view on scaling the “3%” drives us to an endless cycle of investing in new technologies. Providing a momentary boost in performance which quickly dissipates. This stacking more tools on the “stack” has now put us at the top of the yield curve. Essentially, marketing tools are now being shot out of the sky faster than they can be built.
Scale has become the enemy of the good. Remember this for 2022. Volume will not necessarily get you to your goals. For example, according to Hubspot’s 2021 Industry Survey (over 100K companies) email performance dropped by 30% from the previous year, which was historically low. So what did companies do? They sent even more emails, increasing by over 120%. (I believe that is commonly referred to as the definition of insanity.)
For years, I searched for an answer for why marketing performance continued to be poor, despite advancement in new technologies. Stumbling upon survival and selection bias helped to explain some things but what I’ve concluded is that at the core, it’s a motivational issue. Confusing activity for performance is convenient. Searching for, assessing and acquiring new tools offers hope and can feel like you’re making progress.
It’s time to stop looking external for a solution and turn our efforts internally. The answer to improving performance lies in the insight from the missing data.
To win the war on poor performance will require a commitment to thinking differently, like Wald. Not everyone will be willing, or able, to make this journey, but as another WWII hero, Winston Churchill once said; “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” Onward soldier!
by scott.gillum | Oct 1, 2021 | 2021, Marketing, Sales
Scott was a guest speaker at the WVU Marketing Horizon podcast, a sub-series of WVU Marketing Communications.
Marketing Horizons is forward-thinking, looking ahead, through the front windshield and beyond, into the marketing future. Hosted by Cyndi Greenglass and Ruth Stevens, Horizons is a podcast dedicated to looking ahead to the new ideas, technologies, tools and strategies that are emerging to help marketers navigate over the marketing horizon.
Listen here. https://bit.ly/2ZNfYpC
by scott.gillum | May 11, 2021 | 2021, Business Trends
Productizing an organization’s intellectual property makes sense for many reasons. It can help build scale, improve valuations and create efficiencies. The challenge is to get the desired outcome it may require new skill sets, a change in culture and significant investment. Learn how to avoid the pitfalls and create a strategy for success from Eisha Tierney Armstrong, author of Productize in our latest podcast.
To hear Scott’s entire conversation with Eisha Tierney Armstrong, author of Productize about “How To Productize Professional Services IP”, listen or download here:
by scott.gillum | Apr 20, 2021 | 2021, Business Trends
As previously published on 4/16/21 in The Drum
by Scott Gillum
Estimated read time: 5 Minutes
How ‘false positive’ personality types disrupt B2B intent data.
There is no argument that when a B2B buyer begins their journey, they start online. All of the research and data points are right, the journey starts with a search; often times with a solution and/or vendor in mind. Do you know what else B2B buyers do? They search for information even when they’re not in a buying cycle, which is a problem because our tools don’t know the difference. Here’s what you need to keep in mind.
If your organization is in the “advisory” or information services industry, and/or considered to be a thought leader in the industry, congratulations, the majority of the people consuming your content are not buyers, they’re fans.
The expensive intent data you’re buying or retargeting campaign is going to waste because it is tracking engagement, and not real intent. To get to intent, you must first understand the audience’s motivations.
In particular, there are two segments of your audience who actively search and use content but neither doing as part of a buying journey, and if they are, they’re planning to make things difficult. Take for example these two scenarios.
1. The false positive “C-level”. Nothing will set off the bells of a lead nurturing program like a C-Level hitting your content. A senior executive “Seeker/Sharer” personality type is constantly scanning the horizons searching for new insights. The problem is they don’t own anything. They love finding new solutions, ideas, tools and vendors, but a resulting action will require someone else’s involvement. These personalities will “turtle” on you, hitting your content especially if you’re a thought leader, and then disappear only to reappear again in three to four months. It’s super frustrating for lead nurturing programs because they are not linear. They’ll hop around from topic to topic as they search for information to share with others. Unfortunately, this personality type only meets the “A” on a BANT scoring index, the budget and need, most often, will sit with someone else.
2. The entrenched “status quo seeker”. This is a tough one. Not only can this personality fool marketers, they can also trick sales into thinking there is interest. The “Neophobe” personality type seeks to reinforce their own point of view by consuming information that aligns with their own beliefs. Think of this person as someone who only watches Fox News or CNN as their source for political news and information. Your content doesn’t move them to take action, it entrenches them in their own world. Even if it was different from their POV, they will read it through their own filter that will align with how they think. As for confusing sales, this personality is friendly, in fact, it’s one of their key attributes, but they will do nothing to advance a sale, advocate for your brand and/or solution. It’s just not in their DNA.
Once you are able to filter out the false positives, you can get to real intent. “Intent” is shown through intentions…e.g. someone has to do something. Downloading a piece of content or attending a webinar doesn’t dig deep enough into motivations to satisfy that criteria.
To do that you need to understand how different personality types interact with each other in the buying group, this requires watching their online behaviors. The key is not consumption of content or engagement, it’s sharing.
The “Seeker/Sharer” whom I mentioned earlier, they are the most important audience for marketing. Stop chasing them and find out who they are sharing your information with…that’s your target. Seekers will find the “doers” inside the organization. And those people will most likely also have the need and the budget.
Now you have intent, that person intends to drive the buying process forward… because it’s their personality, they champion other people’s good ideas. Sharers need champions, champions need sharers, and you need to know them to be successful.
