Marketing Through the Gloom

Is there doubt in anyone’s mind that 2009 is going to be tough on B2B tech marketing budget (and probably marketers, as well)?

There are so many ways in which marketing, especially in the bean counter’s eye, looks like pure, unadulterated discretionary expense. So it’s exceedingly easy to hit the delete key on that expense line. Even in companies where marketing head counts don’t roll, marketing expense counts likely will. Frankly, in some of this we’ve been our own worst enemies in turns of contributing to this perception by letting “them” marginalize “us” in such a way that we’re spending more of our time on fluff and stuff than we should be.

The truth is that there’s an awful lot of marketing you can get done that doesn’t involve spending a lot of money - things that can both help your company in the short term, and make sure that you’re on a more solid platform when the turnaround comes (which it will).

Over the next few months, I’ll likely be revisiting many of these topics in greater detail, but for starters.

• Reach out to your customers - and not just because you’re trying to sell them something. See how they’re faring, and do a little commiserating (if things warrant it) - we’re all in this together, after all. If there’s little things you can do to help your customers get by, do them. No, you shouldn’t be giving everything away - you’re in business. But there may be things you can do for the duration that will solidify your relationship and make those customers look more kindly on you when things ease up.
• Reach out to your customers -and find the ones that can work with you to come up with meaty case studies that demonstrate what everyone’s interested in these days: how your products and services help save money or make money. You’ve got the time - don’t skimp on the detail, don’t just get a customer to say, ‘Sure, we saved 10% last year,” or “Yeah, we found more customers.” Make sure you learn how. If it’s a state secret and they really can’t/won’t tell you, keep looking until you find someone who can turn your fatuous, nonsense “benefits statements” into something meaningful.
• Reach out to your customers - develop an ideal customer profile by vertical, or by whatever other way you want to slice and dice. What are the characteristics of the companies and the individuals who buy, especially those who have the greatest success with your products, and which are the most profitable. Where do they come from? How did they find you? When everything’s going well, when you’re profitable and growing, it’s easy to overlook this task.
• Analyze your losses, in as much depth as you can. Don’t expect a lot of help from your sales people here. They don’t really want to look back, and you really don’t want them to. But talk to the sales engineers, talk to anyone who was involved in the sale, look at where the lead came from (real scrutiny, here), and - if they’ll let you- talk to the actual prospects who decided not to buy. Find out as much about the losses as you do about your ideal customers.
• If you want to really get daring, get out there and talk to people who aren’t even looking at products in your space - yet who really should be. Maybe you can figure out what it will take to move those who haven’t budged to do so.
• If you’ve been putting off figuring out what to do about social media, get going. No, it’s not free, but it’s less costly in terms of pure outlay than many other forms of communication. (Plus you’ll be building your resume.)
• Learn about your products. Yes, you’ve memorized a feature list, now go see if you can really figure things out the next level down. Marketing sometimes gets a sometimes deserved bad rap for not understanding what the widget actually does and how it’s used. No one expects you to become a junior developer, but you really should be able to do better than “let me find out what operating system it works on.”
• Walk a mile in the shoes of sales. If you have a direct model, sit in (or go on) some calls. I scorn sales people as much as the next marketing guys, but if you’re not fully aware of what they’re up against with your products/company/message, now’s the time to start figuring it out.
• Walk a mile in the shoes of customer support. Maybe they won’t let you actually handle a call, but they should let you slip on a headset and listen in. It won’t just be an eye-opener, it’ll be an ear-opener.
• Update your boilerplate - make sure you have current elevator pitches (and stuck in the elevator pitches), and product and company slides, and everything else that sees a lot of re-use. Hunt down and eradicate all out of date stuff - clean out your intranet.
• Clean out your tsotchke closet. Give the two cartons of “Sales Kick Off 2005″ tee-shirts to a homeless shelter. And they might also be interested in the kick-off pens, folders, pads, and any other dated goods. Send to customers, raffle off, or just leave out for the taking, those goofy things you have just a few of.

There are a lot more things you can be doing with an empty purse. Get going.

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