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Suggest You - Bridging the Chasm Between IT and Internet Marketing
More and more these days the top salespeople are on the road making deals and that means they're using cell phones. The problem with using a cell phone, as a salesperson is the reliability of cell phones isn't exactly what it should be and to top off matters there never seems to be enough juice left in your battery when you really need it.There you are about to close the big sale on the phone and all of a sudden the battery goes dead; oh great you say? If you really want to look stupid to a customer then I suppose you can offer the excuse; my battery died and then they will just think you're an idiot, but at least you are an honest idiot and told him the truth.You could lie to the customer and say I don't know what happened to cell phone; it just dropped me and then you look like a dummy because you have the worst cell phone service around, probably trying to save money and went with a cheapo service plan? There is no easy answer for the salesperson on the road except to have extra batteries and a special battery charger, which can charge them every night and
Results and relations would improve appreciably if marketing were to send a representative to IT project meetings and IT were to assign a technical liaison to each marketing team. Even involving an IT developer in a weekly sales and marketing planning meeting will have a beneficial impact. While the developer may have little understanding of marketing concepts like CPM, CPA, ROMI, and what have you, at least he can give an honest answer on whether your current CRM technology can handle the sales management mandates or reporting requirements. The average IT person can also bring your meeting back to Earth in a hurry when you casually suggest launching your next product via a worldwide webcast of
You know just how important business card holders are for you. You know how efficiently it helps you get organized. You know that they're a fixture of your corporate identity. And because you know all these, you buy yourself a business card holder. Of course, you put a high premium on tastefully selected items, so naturally, you don't settle for a simple business card holder. You get a leather business card holder, no less!So, how do you take care of your leather business card holder?1. Keep your leather business card holder dust-free. In caring for any piece of leather, the best thing to do is keep it free of dust. The dustier leather business card holders are, the more creased they become. In fact, dust acts like sandpaper, cutting on the finish.There are many ways for you to keep your leather business card holders clean. Different kinds of dirt, however, are remedied in different ways.Dust: Wipe this off with a dry cloth or a brush.Ink and pen marks: Pump your hairspray once or twice on the area with ink and pen mar
For many companies, this proved to be a great strategy. Nimble e-commerce groups created websites and strategies quickly and started producing almost immediate results. However, this approach has lost its luster over the past few years as IT departments are finding their budgets shrinking and staff stagnating. In some companies where the IT department has not had a significant hand in Internet strategy and web site development, a great deal of animosity has grown on the part of IT managers toward anything “Internet,” including Internet marketing. Migrating from an exclusionary mindset to a collaborative mindset is not something that comes easily to some companies. Egos, politics, logistics, and relationships are usually altered in the process. Countless companies are still hobbled by the lack of communication between IT and marketing, inefficient vendor relationships, and archaic processes, all of which compromise customer service. Sure, there are positives to the aforementioned separatist strategy, but there are countless negatives, as many companies have recently discovered. The tide is slowly turning towards cooperation as marketers realize they cannot go it alone anymore in the Internet space, the customers and the technology simply move too fast.
Who’s to blame for this? Both marketing leaders who do not understand the need for soliciting cross-functional support and IT leaders who fail to bridge communication gaps across functional teams play a role in creating the gap that separates IT from Marketing.
A new study recently done in the UK by CatchFIRE Systems reported that nearly three quarters of IT departments are not involved in the initial planning stages of online marketing campaigns, leading to 24% of UK organizations suffering from web overloads and site crashes. Sound familiar? It does to me, I can recall bringing down our web servers SEVERAL times when we began doing email marketing before I thought to involve the IT department.
The study goes on to indicate that almost 75% of those organizations surveyed admitted to not knowing how many users the corporate web site could support. Even worse, over 60% were unaware of how many users were leaving web sites with incomplete transactions, and barely 1 in 10 could put a figure on the consequent monetary losses to their organization. These statistics underscore the basic problem: how can we act as goodwill ambassadors to our customers when we do not have an adequate technical understanding of the tools that are at our disposal? Any good sales manager knows how many calls his sales staff can make in a day, week, or month. Yet, the average marketing manager hasn’t taken the time to inquire about how many visitors her website can handle in a day. This status quo clearly indicates the need for increased contact between IT and Marketing.
Results and relations would improve appreciably if marketing were to send a representative to IT project meetings and IT were to assign a technical liaison to each marketing team. Even involving an IT developer in a weekly sales and marketing planning meeting will have a beneficial impact. While the developer may have little understanding of marketing concepts like CPM, CPA, ROMI, and what have you, at least he can give an honest answer on whether your current CRM technology can handle the sales management mandates or reporting requirements. The average IT person can also bring your meeting back to Earth in a hurry when you casually suggest launching your next product via a worldwide webcast of a
Let's be honest, when you're writing sales material for a product, there are a frightening number of things that can go wrong, aren't there?Remember Murphy's Law: what can go wrong will, and at the worst possible moment. Well, we're going to try to gain some control over events and the best way to gain control is to know what makes things tick ...The Communication ProcessThere are four recognised steps in the communications process:1. The message originates as an idea or concept 2. The sender transmits the message 3. The message is sent 4. The message is received(Academics get paid thousands of dollars to come up with earth-shattering findings like these!)As with most things in life, the system can break down at any one of these stages.The IdeaIn marketing, the source is usually a product (or service) concept that the sender wants to tell potential buyers about. The key point at this stage is to be certain that your product is going to meet the needs of your target group.Some time ago, a manufactur
Who’s to blame for this? Both marketing leaders who do not understand the need for soliciting cross-functional support and IT leaders who fail to bridge communication gaps across functional teams play a role in creating the gap that separates IT from Marketing.
A new study recently done in the UK by CatchFIRE Systems reported that nearly three quarters of IT departments are not involved in the initial planning stages of online marketing campaigns, leading to 24% of UK organizations suffering from web overloads and site crashes. Sound familiar? It does to me, I can recall bringing down our web servers SEVERAL times when we began doing email marketing before I thought to involve the IT department.
The study goes on to indicate that almost 75% of those organizations surveyed admitted to not knowing how many users the corporate web site could support. Even worse, over 60% were unaware of how many users were leaving web sites with incomplete transactions, and barely 1 in 10 could put a figure on the consequent monetary losses to their organization. These statistics underscore the basic problem: how can we act as goodwill ambassadors to our customers when we do not have an adequate technical understanding of the tools that are at our disposal? Any good sales manager knows how many calls his sales staff can make in a day, week, or month. Yet, the average marketing manager hasn’t taken the time to inquire about how many visitors her website can handle in a day. This status quo clearly indicates the need for increased contact between IT and Marketing.
Results and relations would improve appreciably if marketing were to send a representative to IT project meetings and IT were to assign a technical liaison to each marketing team. Even involving an IT developer in a weekly sales and marketing planning meeting will have a beneficial impact. While the developer may have little understanding of marketing concepts like CPM, CPA, ROMI, and what have you, at least he can give an honest answer on whether your current CRM technology can handle the sales management mandates or reporting requirements. The average IT person can also bring your meeting back to Earth in a hurry when you casually suggest launching your next product via a worldwide webcast of
Companies have been branding their collateral materials such as letterhead, envelopes, business cards, etc. for years. In fact, we often identify a company by its familiar logo or special color scheme. Branding works!! At the same time, many companies send customers and vendors large files, proposals and presentations on CD-Rs. Since CD-Rs have become the “new and more efficient” way of exchanging important information, it would seem that more companies would find it valuable to brand their CD-Rs also.Most CD-Rs purchased by businesses come from retail office supply stores. These generic CDs usually have the logo of the retail store or disc manufacturer printed on the label. So why promote the store that sells the media? Companies are missing an excellent opportunity to brand themselves in this manner!Another positive to branding with this type of media is in the perceived value of the media itself. People tend to keep CD-Rs because they are perceived as something of value.To make sure that you don’t miss this important branding opportunity, here i
Who’s to blame for this? Both marketing leaders who do not understand the need for soliciting cross-functional support and IT leaders who fail to bridge communication gaps across functional teams play a role in creating the gap that separates IT from Marketing.
A new study recently done in the UK by CatchFIRE Systems reported that nearly three quarters of IT departments are not involved in the initial planning stages of online marketing campaigns, leading to 24% of UK organizations suffering from web overloads and site crashes. Sound familiar? It does to me, I can recall bringing down our web servers SEVERAL times when we began doing email marketing before I thought to involve the IT department.
The study goes on to indicate that almost 75% of those organizations surveyed admitted to not knowing how many users the corporate web site could support. Even worse, over 60% were unaware of how many users were leaving web sites with incomplete transactions, and barely 1 in 10 could put a figure on the consequent monetary losses to their organization. These statistics underscore the basic problem: how can we act as goodwill ambassadors to our customers when we do not have an adequate technical understanding of the tools that are at our disposal? Any good sales manager knows how many calls his sales staff can make in a day, week, or month. Yet, the average marketing manager hasn’t taken the time to inquire about how many visitors her website can handle in a day. This status quo clearly indicates the need for increased contact between IT and Marketing.
Results and relations would improve appreciably if marketing were to send a representative to IT project meetings and IT were to assign a technical liaison to each marketing team. Even involving an IT developer in a weekly sales and marketing planning meeting will have a beneficial impact. While the developer may have little understanding of marketing concepts like CPM, CPA, ROMI, and what have you, at least he can give an honest answer on whether your current CRM technology can handle the sales management mandates or reporting requirements. The average IT person can also bring your meeting back to Earth in a hurry when you casually suggest launching your next product via a worldwide webcast of
So often when folks ask me for advice on business they mention they want to get funding from a Venture Capitalist who specializes in funding projects in a certain industry. I then say; So You Want Venture Capital Do You? Are you totally sure about this? I mean they do often call venture capitalists; Vulture Capitalists right. And one would think there is a reason for all this labeling, libeling and name-calling. Indeed there is.Venture Capitalists often do business quite a bit differently than you might imagine and they are serious about how they do it. They have the money, you and they both know it. You need and both you and they know that too. There are hundreds of other deals better than yours out there and they know it and you should too. Of course as an entrepreneur you are probably in love with your idea and may I make a statement now.If you are truly in love with your idea and you want to do this the rest of your life then you are probably barking up the wrong tree with looking into getting Venture Capitalists involved in the financing of your project, b
The study goes on to indicate that almost 75% of those organizations surveyed admitted to not knowing how many users the corporate web site could support. Even worse, over 60% were unaware of how many users were leaving web sites with incomplete transactions, and barely 1 in 10 could put a figure on the consequent monetary losses to their organization. These statistics underscore the basic problem: how can we act as goodwill ambassadors to our customers when we do not have an adequate technical understanding of the tools that are at our disposal? Any good sales manager knows how many calls his sales staff can make in a day, week, or month. Yet, the average marketing manager hasn’t taken the time to inquire about how many visitors her website can handle in a day. This status quo clearly indicates the need for increased contact between IT and Marketing.
Results and relations would improve appreciably if marketing were to send a representative to IT project meetings and IT were to assign a technical liaison to each marketing team. Even involving an IT developer in a weekly sales and marketing planning meeting will have a beneficial impact. While the developer may have little understanding of marketing concepts like CPM, CPA, ROMI, and what have you, at least he can give an honest answer on whether your current CRM technology can handle the sales management mandates or reporting requirements. The average IT person can also bring your meeting back to Earth in a hurry when you casually suggest launching your next product via a worldwide webcast of
The true definition of marketing is setting up automatic, repeatable systems that create an environment where people want to buy from you instead of you having to sell them. Just as a bee is lured to the nectar of a flower, business people are lured to money. Entrepreneurs are the honeybees of our economy. Ultimately the goal of an entrepreneur is to extend the life of his or her enterprise for a lifetime. As a business owner, your ultimate product is a satisfied customer.Some facts about the Internet and search engines:Over 80 percent of Internet users use search engines to find informationA typical search can often generate thousands if not millions of resultsOnly those websites listed in the top 100 will ever see any significant trafficEach day, millions of online businesses are competing for those top 100 spotsThe best marketing advice I can give you is find the right audience, ask people what they what, and after that, simply give it to them. Marketing is the science behind encouraging interested people to buy. The success of
Results and relations would improve appreciably if marketing were to send a representative to IT project meetings and IT were to assign a technical liaison to each marketing team. Even involving an IT developer in a weekly sales and marketing planning meeting will have a beneficial impact. While the developer may have little understanding of marketing concepts like CPM, CPA, ROMI, and what have you, at least he can give an honest answer on whether your current CRM technology can handle the sales management mandates or reporting requirements. The average IT person can also bring your meeting back to Earth in a hurry when you casually suggest launching your next product via a worldwide webcast of a real-time speech from your CEO and an exclusive Rolling Stones concert to millions of viewers.
At the end of the day, your sales and marketing team needs an embedded IT team member, especially if you are placing a great deal of emphasis on CRM, Internet marketing and your website to drive your sales numbers. Moreover, if you have designs on ANY integration of your CRM, ERP systems and your web presence, you’re in a far better position with an IT person on board than if you try to go it alone or make that integration happen through the flavor-of-the-month vendor that you’ve hired for the job. If you’re scratching your head on how to get more involved with IT, or what all the elements are in the equation, here are ten points to consider when engaging your IT department. 1. Treat IT like a partner. Your IT department is not a vendor that you can give orders to. Seek the department’s input. An IT solution is a tool that requires technical input and information sharing.
2. Embed IT personnel into your team. If possible, have IT and marketing staffs sit nearby so they can get a sense of each other's day-to-day activities and concerns. Have an IT person go on several sales calls to get a better sense of a rep’s daily needs.
3. Choose a project champion to lead both the IT and marketing aspects of a project, regardless of whether they are from the business or technical side. Also, get executive sponsors from both departments. Nothing kills an initiative faster than a lack of upper-management support.
4. Share funding between all departments that will realistically benefit from the IT project, rather than placing the financial burden on a single department.
5. Cross-train individuals on basic technology and marketing skills, or encourage the migration of tech-savvy marketers or business-savvy techies to the other side.
6. Develop shared metrics for IT and Internet marketing. IT is usually concerned about ROI and seeing projects implemented, while marketing wants leads, sales, and conversion. Develop metrics in tandem that apply equally to the objectives of each department.
7. Use collaborative knowledge management tools. By using a project extranet, shared MS project files, or a project weblog, members of both teams can be kept up to date on projects.
8. Build for CRM. Consider how you will be using the data that you will be collecting, and how it can be integrated with both existing, and future, systems, tools, processes, and initiatives. Don’t collect information in a vacuum, even worse, miss opportunities to collect it.
9. Forge vendor relationships together. If marketing is going to be using an ASP for email marketing or web analytics, involve the IT folks in the decision and implementation to extract the most value from the tools.
10. Work out an SLA (service level agreement) between the parties. IT has many projects on its plate and marketers are almost never on time. Make sure the SLA requirements and expectations are clearly and unambiguously defined, along with measurement criteria, consequences, and performance monitoring contingencies. This will help keep things honest and serve to sustain consistent levels of expectation.
If you’re a marketing consultant and you’re reading this thinking, “Whew
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