Dialing in your marketing: The levers that impact results – tactics + measurement

In the ever-evolving landscape of marketing, it’s crucial to fine-tune every element to drive optimal performance. In previous episodes, we delved into the first eight essential marketing levers out of the 12 we believe need to be dialed in to optimize your marketing performance. On this episode, we're shifting our focus to the next two critical components: Tactics and Measurement. These elements are not just about execution; they are about precision and impact. By implementing strategic tactics and rigorous measurement practices, we can refine our approach, ensuring that every effort is aligned with our goals for sustained growth and success.

(00:00:21) Exploring the 12 marketing levers and why they need to ALL be dialed in

(00:02:04) The importance of effective marketing tactics to drive growth

(00:03:44) The reality of the longer buying cycle and the necessity for more marketing touchpoints

(00:06:14) Building an omnichannel approach to effectively reach diverse decision-makers

(00:10:36) A need for tailored content strategies to engage multiple decision-makers

(00:11:06) Exploring the 3 pillars of demand generation: strategy, content and distribution

(00:18:21) Marketing measurement and the issues marketers face in evaluating program performance

(00:21:06) The reliability of data and its impact on marketing performance evaluation

(00:25:06) Importance of analyzing marketing data trends rather than just presenting raw numbers.

(00:31:06) Suggestions for developing a comprehensive reporting mechanism

The Demand Gen Fix is hosted by Deanna Shimota, CEO of GrowthMode Marketing. Listen to our team of marketing experts and featured guests drop knowledge on how HR tech companies can maximize the success of their marketing for today’s B2B prospects. Learn more at www.growthmodemarketing.com.

Transcript

Jenni Geiser 00:00:01: Hey, everybody, it's Jenni from GrowthMode Marketing. You're listening to The Demand Gen Fix, the podcast where our team of GrowthModers and our guests discuss the ins and outs of demand generation and why we believe it's the key to long-term sustainable growth, especially in the high-tech industry.

Deanna Shimota 00:00:21: Hello everyone. Deanna and Greg from GrowthMode Marketing back for another episode of The Demand Gen Fix. This time, we are talking about dialing in your marketing again and the 12 levers that impact results. We're focusing on tactics and measurement, and this is part five of the six-part series. In the ever-evolving landscape of marketing, it's crucial to fine-tune every element to drive optimal performance. If you've listened to previous episodes, we've delved into the first eight essential marketing levers out of the 12 that we believe need to be dialed in to optimize your marketing performance. So in this episode, as I said, we're shifting our focus to the next two critical components: tactics and measurement. These elements are not just about execution.

Deanna Shimota 00:01:12: They are about precision and impact. By implementing strategic tactics and rigorous measurement practices, we can refine our approach, ensuring that every effort is aligned with our goals for sustained growth and success.

Greg Padley 00:01:30: Yeah. So in episode 57, we talked about audience and positioning. Then in episode 58, we covered strategy and budget. In episode 61, we talked about scale and your contact database. In episode 62, we talked about brand awareness and content. The remaining four levers are marketing tactics, measurement, marketing and sales alignment, and sales process. Today, as Deanna said, we're going to dig into tactics and measurement.

Deanna Shimota 00:02:04: Yeah. So let's start with tactics. There's a lot of potential issues or indicators that if they pop up are a sign that you need to dial in your tactics portion of your marketing, right? When we talk about tactics, we're talking about how you get all your great content out in front of people, how you create that brand awareness. It's basically the execution of your marketing programs.

Deanna Shimota 00:02:28: Right? One of the issues that we see companies have, and it’s becoming more and more common, I think, is the marketing tactics that previously worked aren't producing the same results anymore. For example, email marketing—people's inboxes are getting much more cluttered. We've heard it from a lot of other marketers out there: our email campaigns, the very ones that worked really well in the past, just aren't driving results at the same level as they did before. That's a problem, right? Just because marketing tactics worked previously doesn't mean they're going to continue to work for you. As buyer behavior evolves and new technologies emerge, it impacts the marketing programs. You have to look at it as constantly evolving what you're doing. In the example of emails, I think AI is part of the issue. There's a proliferation of emails coming into people's inboxes, more volume than ever before, right? What happens when there's too many emails coming in? People's inboxes start to not read their emails at all, and you get lost in the crowd, right?

Greg Padley 00:03:43: And it's tough.

Greg Padley 00:03:44: It's tough because we've talked about it numerous times, right? There's such a long buying cycle now, and people need so many more touchpoints. So you're trying to get those touchpoints, and you keep sending out more and more stuff. But maybe that's not the right way to do it.

Deanna Shimota 00:03:58: The right approach.

Greg Padley 00:03:59: But you still need to get out there with all of those touchpoints. So you're stuck in the middle. It's a tough one to figure out.

Deanna Shimota 00:04:05: Yeah, for sure. Which kind of goes into the next potential issue, which is we can't seem to reach our audience. It's the elusive buyer, right? Those elusive prospects who you know are out there, but you can't seem to find or reach them. It feels like you're doing a lot of marketing but not getting the traction. That's another flag that it's time to take a step back and evaluate what you're doing from a marketing tactics standpoint. Part of that is understanding who the audience is, what they are doing, where they are going, and actually getting out there in the market and having conversations with them.

Deanna Shimota 00:04:45: To ask them outright. Okay, do you read the emails that come into your inbox? If the answer's no, okay, good to know. I would never advise you to completely strip emails out of your marketing strategy. It's one touchpoint, though, and you have to have the perspective. Okay, some people may read emails, some people may not. Open rates are going down. Click-through rates are going down with emails. What other things can we layer in to help us reach their audience? Another potential issue is that these are all kind of tied together. Weird, right? But you need more touchpoints with the audience. That doesn’t mean send more emails, as you were making the point, Greg. By any means, and we're picking on email because that's an easy one that a lot of people have said, "Oh gosh, this is not getting the results that it used to across the board." I think marketing is getting harder because people are bombarded with so many messages every day.

Deanna Shimota 00:05:43: And so you need to look at it like, are we getting enough touchpoints with an audience? I think it was Gartner who reported a year and a half ago in one of their reports that it now takes an average of 66 touches to create that brand awareness for an organization where they remember who you are. That's a lot. Back in the day, I don't know what numbers you've heard before, Greg. I feel like it used to be like nine touches or something much more reasonable and manageable than it is today.

Greg Padley 00:06:14: Yeah, for sure. I think it's not just doing more of the same thing, right? Because obviously, if you know that it's not producing the same results, then just doing more of that isn't really going to produce the results either, right? It's just creating more of that. So then you need to start looking at an omnichannel approach to marketing. Like, where is your ideal customer sitting? What are they reading? What events are they going to? You want to start really maybe adding some other things or extending into other areas and trying to get those touches there and build the brand up there.

Deanna Shimota 00:06:45: Right. An omnichannel approach means we've got multiple channels running from a marketing standpoint, so there are those multiple touchpoints. So you're doing emails, direct mail campaigns, webinars, events and trade shows, digital advertising, print advertising, social media, public relations—the list can go on and on. We're not saying do every single thing that you possibly can do unless you have the budget to do it. But be smart about picking which things you're doing. Again, I think it goes back to talking to your ideal customer profile and finding out: Where do they go to learn about new solutions? Where do they go to educate themselves? What resources do they regularly seek out? Then build your marketing tactics around that because you want to show up everywhere your ideal customer profile is showing up. When you have those crossing paths between webinars, emails, LinkedIn outreach, public relations, and stuff, they start to see glimpses of you in different places.

Deanna Shimota 00:07:54: That's helping with those 66 touches it takes to build that brand awareness and to build that credibility, trust, and interest in your products.

Greg Padley 00:08:06: Yeah, and not to go backwards, but we did talk in episode 57 about audience and positioning, right? How it takes multiple decision-makers now to make a decision to make a purchase. I saw something the other day from a book. It's called The Jolt Effect. It was about overcoming prospect indecision. In that book, they said 40 to 60% of deals today end up in no decision. That's insane if you think about that, right? How do you overcome that? But because there are so many decision-makers, on a webcast that I saw the other day, they were talking about how many people on average are making a decision on a major tech purchase. They were saying from the data they had, from Foundry, that's the company that owns editorial brands CIO, CSO, InfoWorld, Tech Advisor.

Greg Padley 00:08:55: They said that 25 people could be involved in a tech purchase decision for enterprise-wide things. So if you're trying to convince 25 different people in one organization, that means you're going to have to talk in a different voice and with different content and different places to get to all of these people. So omnichannel just goes exponential when you think about how many people are actually making decisions on these purchases.

Deanna Shimota 00:09:20: Yes, those are really good statistics to think about and to put into perspective how heavy of a lift marketing is if you're going to build brand awareness out in the market and do it well, unfortunately, it takes an investment in time and resources and money to be able to build that engine out. And so if you've got 25 decision makers or influencers in a sales process, because you're selling an enterprise level HR technology, you've got to think about it from every angle. And yes, it's not just about the channels that you do with your tactics, but it's about the variations with the tactics. So if you're doing webinars, which one of those 25 buyers decision makers, influencers are you targeting with that? Be mindful.

Deanna Shimota 00:10:11: and do it well, unfortunately, it takes an investment in time, resources, and money to be able to build that engine out. So if you've got 25 decision makers or influencers in a sales process because you're selling an enterprise-level HR technology, you've got to think about it from every angle. And yes, it's not just about the channels that you do with your tactics, but it's about the variations with the tactics. So if you're doing webinars, which one of those 25 buyers, decision makers, influencers are you targeting with that? Be mindful.

It's not a broad brush stroke of one size fits all. So you've got to really evaluate all of your marketing tactics that you're doing. And of course, that means looking at the other 11 levers that are part of this 12 levers we talk about because it's knowing your audience and building your database and creating the right content and all the things. It's not an easy job to be a marketer these days.

Greg Padley 00:10:36: So as far as getting the content out there, the tactical approach, we look at it like a three-legged stool, right, with three different legs as part of your demand generation engine. So it's your website, something you control, managed channels where you have control over it but it's not totally your property, and third-party channels which are outside of your control, like if you're doing PR or something like that.

Deanna Shimota 00:11:06: Yeah. And let's dig a little bit deeper into that. When we're building a demand generation engine at GrowthMode Marketing for our clients here in the HR tech space and beyond.

We have three pillars that we focus on. The first is strategy. The second is content. The third we call distribution. The distribution is where you're talking about the three-legged stool, Greg. It's our approach to building the tactical arm of demand generation. So when you're building out, we call it distribution. But it's really like how do you get all that great content that you've created out in front of your ideal customer profile and all of the different buyer personas that are involved in that decision process, whether you're selling to small companies and there's one person that makes that decision or you're selling to enterprise and there's 25 people who are involved and have influence to some level in that decision process.

Deanna Shimota 00:12:37: With the website, think of that as your digital storefront. It's about creating quality content that is rich. So when somebody comes to your site, it answers all of the buyer questions they have and gives them enough information to fulfill their initial needs. Because according to Gartner, and we've seen this out in the market, prospects are making up to 80% of their purchase decision before they're willing to engage with a sales rep.

That means they're doing a lot of research up front. They're trying to figure everything out. They want to see product demos without talking to sales. They want to see basic pricing without talking to sales. They want to see case studies. They want to see all of these things about your product and educate themselves. So we look at the content phase of your website as how rich is it? Does it cover every stage of the buyer's journey from "I'm just looking for thought leadership type of content and educational content" to "I'm evaluating my options. How does this solve the pain points I have?" to "I've narrowed it down to a few options. Tell me why your solution is superior to the other options that I'm evaluating." I think it's also about creating content loops. I always describe that as when you go on Google and click on a link because you searched for something and land on a page, you read the article. Do you want your prospects to hop back out to Google and go to the next article? Or do you want them to continue to look at content on your site? These content loops, think of it as the "you may also like" feature where you're throwing up more content in front of them that they can click into to keep learning about a specific topic.

Greg Padley 00:14:02: It's like you want them to get stuck in a rabbit hole and you want it to be your website that they're stuck in.

Deanna Shimota 00:14:09: Exactly that. It's so compelling and it's so relevant to them that they just keep clicking on the next link and reading that information. The value with that, the longer they spend on your site digging into content, the better credibility and trust it builds in that person's mind as they're looking at your content. The second leg of that stool, as Greg mentioned, is managed channels. That's really about thinking along the lines of, from a marketing perspective, how do we build out an audience that wants to consume and engage with our content on a regular basis? The tactics that can fall under it include social media, podcasts, webinars, newsletters, emails, even digital campaigns. Lots of tactics can fall under that.

Deanna Shimota 00:14:59: But you're creating the content with the intent not of "I'm going to sell this person today," but rather "I'm going to get this person interested enough in what we have to say that they're going to continue to be interested in following your content." The value with focusing on managed channels is that at the end of the day, if they continue to consume the content you're putting out there, not only is it building that brand awareness, credibility, and trust over time because they've got this positive opinion of your company and your brand, you're going to be more likely to make the shortlist when they actually do enter the market and are ready to start seriously looking at options because they already know who you are. Ideally, they're looking at it and saying, "You know what? I love the content that company XYZ puts out there. I am going to work with them someday." If you can do this well, it really does work. We see it as an agency when we put content out there. We've had many conversations with people who say, "I don't have the budget today, but I really like the way you guys think. We will work with you someday." You want to be that "someday" for all of the prospects that are not in the market today, right? They already have it in their mind, "I want to work with you. I just have to figure out when." When the stars align, you're there and ready for them.

Greg Padley 00:16:10: The last one is the third-party channels. That's where you try to tap into existing relevant audiences of your ICP and then drive them back to your managed channels and website. You’re trying to reach out through PR, articles on other websites that you don't have control over necessarily, but that you get your name and information in there, to try and get your ICP to know more about you and then want to learn more about you. You want to drive them back to either your managed channels or your website.

Deanna Shimota 00:16:58: The key here when thinking about third-party channels is, where are your ideal customer profile type of companies hanging out today? Where are they going to consume information? There are resources out there that have already built that audience up.

It's their own managed channel, right? How do you tap into that? It could be industry influencers, analysts, review sites like G2 and Capterra, and some of the others where they've got audiences coming and searching for this stuff. How do you tap into that? Industry events and trade shows, publications, all of those things where either you're getting them to talk about you (hopefully in a positive light to add a layer of credibility) or you're able to tap into their audience to get your own content out there. There are a lot of pay-for-play options out there. There are certainly some that probably fall more into the category of PR where you get invited on to be a guest on their podcast, to speak in their webinar, or speak at the conference, things like that as well.

Greg Padley 00:18:08: As far as measurement, some of the issues that we've seen or indicators that you need to look at your measurement and see if you've set things up the right way.

Greg Padley 00:18:21: The big one is, it's hard to believe, but people come in and say, "We're not sure how our programs are performing."

Deanna Shimota 00:18:30: Well, yes, that actually happens more than it should, right? Bless their hearts, these marketers are going in there running 500mph, creating a lot of content and programs. But at the end of the day, if they're put on the line, the CEO says, "I need you to show me the ROI of these programs." They're at a loss because they haven't actually been measuring things. They maybe don't know or don't have a way to tie it back to revenue to indicate, "Yeah, you know what? What we are doing is clearly working," or "What we're doing is not quite getting us there." I think typically, when a company is doing well, there's less of a focus on "show me the numbers." "Show me how marketing is moving the needle for us," because the revenue is the ultimate number that matters, right? But the moment that sales stagnate or a company has trouble hitting its growth goals or, worst-case scenario, the revenue is way behind where it was the previous year, quarter, or month, that's when the pressure starts to come on to marketing to say, "Okay, we need more results. Marketing, what are you doing to solve this problem?" As marketers, we're like, "Well, we're doing this and this and this," and they're like, "But we're not hitting our numbers." "Okay, well, we need more budget to be able to do this," and the CFOs and CEOs are like, "Okay, show me how that will work. If I give you more money and it doesn't move the needle, that's a problem. I need you to show me that what you're doing is actually moving the needle," and tell that story, explain, "There is ROI in the marketing we're doing," or "There isn't." It's just so common in organizations where they haven't tracked these things, they don't know how to, but they need to justify ROI and make better-informed decisions on the marketing spend. Because if I'm the CEO and I give you, say, $1 million to run marketing programs and I'm expecting a ten X pipeline, and that pipeline is not there and the company is falling way short on the growth goals set in place at the beginning of the year, I'm going to be questioning it and saying, "Okay, how can we make the right decisions around marketing and the investments we're making if we're running at this blind and we're just throwing spaghetti at the wall?"

Greg Padley 00:21:06: And a lot of times, that's related to the data itself. Sometimes people ask, they don't really trust the data. Sometimes you can even go back and show some ROI, but then there's questions about the data, like, "Is this really true? Or I can't believe this is true." So sometimes there's just a lack of confidence in the data. You have to go back and rehash how you look at these numbers.

Deanna Shimota 00:21:30: Well, and I think a great example of where there may be a lack of confidence in the data is, let's say marketing has a goal to hit a marketing-qualified lead volume level. Let's say you're supposed to produce 100 leads a month and marketing is doing that. They're exceeding that. Marketing is sitting there saying, "We crushed our goals. Look at that. We're killing it. Let me report on this and tell you about all the MQLs that we created." Meanwhile, things aren't moving through the pipeline. You said that statistic earlier, Greg, about 40 to 60% of deals come to no decision and fall off the radar. Then you have the other deals where they make a decision, but the decision is no, right? Like it might leave a slim margin that actually can and will move forward. So you might be creating a ton of MQLs, but at the end of the day, if the revenue is not there, you need to take a step back and look at that. That's a red flag because if MQLs don't translate to revenue, then MQLs are worthless, right? And that's where the lack of confidence in the data comes from. Marketers are given that kind of goal, and we focus on, "Okay, how do we bring more leads in the door? How do we up those numbers?" and it's not moving the needle. That's a problem, and it's a very common problem, unfortunately.

Greg Padley 00:22:56: Maybe you need to redefine what that quality part of the MQL is.

Deanna Shimota 00:23:01: Right, for sure. Another problem that we see organizations have when it comes to measurement is that the data sits in multiple places. So it's actually disjointed, and it makes it really hard for an organization and a marketing team to have a holistic view. An example that I've lived firsthand when I was in the corporate world is I worked at an organization where I had a marketing automation system, they had Salesforce.com, and then they had a customer system, and none of the three were connected, right? So even getting basic data, you had to triangulate the three systems. But the three systems reported it differently, so it became nearly impossible to pull together meaningful and accurate data because of that. So if you're an organization where it's like, "Yeah, our data sits in multiple places, it's not easy for us to pull that information," that's probably an area where you need to look at because, at the end of the day, can you have really successful marketing programs without having the measurement? Yes, technically you can, but it comes back to how do you make those educated and informed decisions on where to cut spend and where to increase spend, which things to lean into and which things to back off of?

Greg Padley 00:24:26: The only thing we've seen a few times is that people have the data, but they don't know exactly how to extrapolate anything out of it, so they don't understand what it means or how to use it. So they actually have data, but they don't know what to do with it. Then they need help figuring that out. Sometimes that means setting up dashboards or whatever to make that more meaningful. But that's happened quite a few times too.

Deanna Shimota 00:24:52: I think one of the things that we've seen organizations do, like the marketing team will put together a dashboard or a report, and it'll be like, "All right, here's our open rates for email, and here's our click-through rates of those emails." They get so ingrained in reporting the numbers of things, but they forget to take a step back and explain to the audience they're giving this to the analysis of this data. It's not just putting numbers out there and looking at them, but understanding what are the trends? What is this data telling us? So for example, if you're running digital advertising campaigns and you pull all those metrics at the end of the day, you've got to be able to explain, "Okay, are these numbers trending positively or negatively? And what does this data tell us? What insights can we glean from this? Can we determine, like, this campaign is performing really well, and we think if we invest more money into it, it's going to bring more opportunities in the door?" Or on the flip side, "This campaign, we're burning through money fast, we're not seeing a lot of leads, and the leads that we have don't seem to be going anywhere. We probably need to pull back on this marketing spend for our digital campaign and rethink one, whether we continue to do digital marketing on a smaller scale or not at all, or two, whether we continue to do what we're doing, but we rework the actual campaigns because we feel like this is a good channel to be invested in, but our current approach with it is not working." Then I think the important thing to take away from looking at metrics and evaluating it is that the metrics don't always tell the whole story. Some companies and marketing teams get so wrapped up in, "We've got to report on the metrics," that they only focus on tactics that can be easily measured. So things like digital advertising and email campaigns, webinar attendees, social media likes, and stuff like that. But taking those and using that as, like, "Here's the story," is an incomplete story because the reality is, from a marketing standpoint, you're doing an omnichannel approach. It's the layers of all the marketing you're doing that collectively work together to drive results for the organization. And unfortunately, not every activity is easily measurable. For example, if you're doing a lot of work to get content placed in industry publications, how do you measure that? People may read it.

Deanna Shimota 00:27:35: Let's say it's a printed publication. You don't know how many people actually read it. They don't necessarily tell you when they come in the door, "Hey, I'm calling you because I just read your article on [publication name]." They're elusive to you. Same with podcasts and just different content that you might have out there that people are seeing and consuming, but you don't have a direct way to measure it like you would if they literally clicked on a link in your email campaign. That doesn't mean you should discount those things by any means, but when you think about metrics, you have to figure out, "What are the right metrics to measure, and how does this support driving more revenue?" Making those connections and ties and being able to tell the holistic story to say, "We're doing a podcast as one of the tactics. While we can't directly measure the results that podcast is bringing in, here are the reasons why we believe that this is an important part of our omnichannel approach and why we need to continue to invest in it."

Deanna Shimota 00:28:38: metrics standpoint, to make educated and informed decisions, but also to be able to tell the holistic story for your executive team to understand. This is the approach. This is why we're doing it. This is why we're continuing to do these pieces even though we can't directly measure, and getting creative with them.

Greg Padley 00:28:59: It's hard when you can't put a number against building credibility and trust. Unless you're going to spend tons of money on brand awareness and brand affinity types of studies, you're not going to know how that really affects everything. Until you strip it away, you might not notice a difference.

Deanna Shimota 00:29:17: So true. I just saw someone post on LinkedIn that they were talking about, "We spent a ton of money on digital advertising programs, and we didn't feel like they were driving results. So we decided to pull them out, and the good news is our revenue is up this quarter." Someone else responded and said, "I'd love for you to report back on this in 3 to 6 months when the reality of stripping out those branding things is more clear," because the timing on these things is not a "I pulled my digital advertising yesterday and today we met our goals, therefore the digital advertising had no factor in it" situation. Because how long are sales cycles? For a lot of organizations, it can be months to close those deals, especially reports being that sales for HR tech and technology in general have really slowed down in the last year. The sales process meaning something that used to take six months to sell on average now is taking nine months because buyers are not moving as fast as they did in the past, right? So you've got to keep that in perspective. What you do today does not necessarily correlate to the results you see today. Marketing is a long-term game, and to drive results, what you did six months ago might be the results you see today. What you do today might be the results you see in six months. So you've got to have that holistic view of it. If you're finding, "Okay, metrics is an area of our organization that we need to work on because you have any of the issues that we just talked about," you need to take a step back and make sure you've defined the metrics that you're measuring and are able to tell that story of how things are performing and why you're making those investments.

Deanna Shimota 00:31:06: Maybe you need to create a metrics dashboard that pulls all the data into one view. Maybe you need new analytics tools, but I think one of the important things to think about is how do you create a regular reporting mechanism for your team, for your executives, for anyone else in the organization that needs to be tuned into what you're doing in marketing and how that is impacting the success of the organization.

Greg Padley 00:31:33: Yeah. So I think as we wrap up this episode, just remember that dialing in these two marketing levers, tactics and measurement, is key for driving your marketing strategy forward. We've talked a lot about practical steps and some insights to ensure that these two components are tuned up and propelling your Demand Generation efforts. Remember, it's not just setting the wheels in motion but also steering them in the right direction. Stay committed to your tactics, measure the outcomes, adjust how you measure things if you need to, and then, like everything else with marketing, continuously refine and review, then head back out with a new iteration or a slightly adjusted iteration of what you did.

Deanna Shimota 00:32:14: Yes. So join us again next time as we unpack the final two crucial levers, which are marketing and sales alignment and sales processes. Be sure to reach out to our team at GrowthMode Marketing if you need help dialing in the marketing levers for your organization.

Jenni Geiser 00:32:31: Thanks for joining us on The Demand Gen Fix, a podcast for HR tech marketers brought to you by GrowthMode Marketing. I sure hope you enjoyed it! Don't forget to subscribe for more perspectives on Demand Generation and B2B marketing strategies. Plus, give us a like. Tell your friends. We'll see you next time.