Strategies for CMOs to Protect the Golden Playbook

CMOs have a tough enough job as it is. The way that consumers interact with their brands is changing at lightning speed. And there’s the constant drumbeat of new technology disrupting traditional advertising channels.

To keep up with the rapid pace of change, it’s tempting to broaden the circle and find new perspectives to help create fresh marketing strategies. But, you need to balance this gut instinct with the reality that your marketing strategies are your company’s nuclear launch codes.

If a proactive competitor knows how you’ll spend your ad budget, and what the messages will be, you’re sunk.

The Threat of Corporate Espionage is Real – Especially in Marketing

Examples of corporate espionage aren’t difficult to find. However, companies usually don’t broadcast the fact that they’ve suffered a marketing team defection. So, the overwhelming majority of these events remain in the shadows.

I’ve had to clean-up the aftermath of a rogue marketing employee jumping ship. While I would never embarrass that client here, I’ll just share that the former ad placement specialist was offered a $40,000 sign-on bonus by a competitor. Eventually the employee was sued for violation of their NDA, but it was an expensive legal battle. Not to mention the cost of rewriting the entire marketing playbook from scratch.

Some of the most highly publicized acts of corporate espionage involve attacks on U.S. businesses by Chinese intelligence operatives. The relationship between China’s businesses and government is very different than the corporate / government landscape in the US.

From marketing plans to corporate negotiating strategies, the threat of a breach is always there. It’s always better to invest in safeguards, rather than suffer through an expensive clean-up. 

CMOs Need to Build a Digital Moat Around Their Marketing Intel

There are a number of ways that CMOs can better defend their marketing data against bad actors.

Data Encryption

Data encryption involves the use of complex algorithms to encode information in storage and in transit. Once information is encrypted, it can only be decoded by other authorized devices with the key. Even if the data is intercepted, or firewalls are breached, the information is unreadable.

While it is possible for quantum computers to run a series of tests until the right combination of variables are found, it would take months or even years for the mathematical puzzle to be solved.

Protecting Data in the Field

If you’re anything like me, you live a mobile lifestyle. I regularly work from coffee shops, hotel rooms and in-flight WIFI. It’s the nature of being a consultant. To help protect my privacy, and all of the corporate data my device comes in contact with, I use a VPN service that utilizes OpenVPN protocols.

This is the most private and secure type of connection because it involves multiple layers of encryption, a tightly controlled set of keys and is still being updated to compensate for emerging threats.

I feel confident servicing my clients and handling sensitive campaign data when properly secured behind a quality VPN connection.

Per-User Access Restrictions and Logs

The other important thing that I see more and more companies deploying are per-user access logs with account-level restrictions. While this is old-hat in many industries, marketing teams have, until recently, valued diverse input over data security.

After all, the hackers are going after corporate financials and customer data, not boring marketing plans, right? Wrong. Thankfully, CMOs are waking up and smelling the coffee.

The most secure companies that I work with use the same virtual data handling protocols deployed by high-level government agencies. Everytime I access an internal marketing file, my credentials are watermarked into the document. I am required to reauthenticate everytime I access the database, and anything I download or print is heavily watermarked with my personal information.  

Access logs allow for internal security teams to monitor access and quickly identify potentially compromised accounts. And per-user access levels only allow me to view a narrowly focused set of information.

Prioritize Engagement of Marketing Employees by Communicating Value

But, even with the best technology and access protocols in the industry, losing key marketing personnel can be a body blow – especially in the leadup to a busy holiday shopping season, where retail fiscal years are made or lost. And if that individual heads to a competitor, things go from bad to worse. All of the training and insight into your operations travel with the people you hire and fire.

The things that have the biggest impact on an employee’s decision to stay or leave include:

1. The ability of leaders to communicate a clear vision to their team and gain buy-in.

2. The opportunities for training, advancement and interesting projects that broaden horizons.

3. The sense of respect an employee feels – something that can be difficult to balance with oppressive security protocols.

The happiest marketing teams that I’ve had the pleasure of working with operated like a team of freelancers. Everytime few months, members were offered to opportunity to jump between campaigns. This kept the team feeling engaged and excited about what was coming around the corner, and how they could contribute to the company’s bottom-line in a fresh, creative way.

If CMOs can learn to better secure their human talent, and develop better strategies to secure their marketing data, they’ll enjoy a less stressful and more productive career. Maybe it’s time for you and your CTO to grab coffee and discuss some new protocols for the new year?

Now that you know how to defend your data, learn how CMOs weigh in on other challenges, including how they can skillfully decipher, understand, and leverage the abundance of available data to engage with customers. Download The Data Driven CMO. 

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Our 25 most popular blog posts of 2017

We’re a matter of hours away from 2018, but let’s not turn the page on the calendar just yet. The waning days of December are a great time to look back at the previous 12 months and take stock of what truly resonated with our readers. Countless critics and publications have compiled their best-of lists for 2017, and we want to get in on the action. So we took a look at which articles on the VerticalResponse blog were most popular this year. What did we find? Our readers really, really enjoy lists.

Take a look at our 25 most popular articles in 2017:

1. 4 ways to retain customers and keep them coming back — Every business wants to keep customers coming back (yes, that’s even true of airlines and cable companies, believe it or not). No wonder this short and sweet set of tips cracked the top 25.
2. 5 tips for creating a sense of urgency in your writing and emails — Get those customers to click with email marketing that demands attention. Here was our take on how.
3. 5 event ideas that attract customers — Creative event ideas are always welcome. Here, we brainstormed on new and unusual ways to generate foot traffic.
4. 10 questions to ask in your business demographics survey — Looking to learn more about your customers? Here were 10 can’t-miss questions to help you better understand your clientele.
5. 6 free SEO tools to boost your search engine rankings — Everyone likes free tools. Fortunately, the internet abounds with them. Here were six of our favorites.
6. How to create an effective small business advertisement — Delving into the world of advertising can be daunting. Our blog post helped make it easier to navigate. Interestingly, this article was one of only three in the entire top 25 that was not a numbered list.
7. 25 holiday email subject lines that shine — Like a lot of people, we can’t get enough of subject lines, and we can’t get enough of the holidays. Put the two together? Pure magic, as evidenced by the popularity of this entry.
8. 7 golden steps to creating an effective email newsletter — An email newsletter has the potential to be one of the trickiest campaigns to create. We broke it down into seven manageable steps.
9. You’re invited: 6 components of a successful event email — Event invitations can sometimes cause an email marketer as much anxiety as a newsletter. What will entice invitees to come, and what will turn them away? We highlight the six elements that can ensure success.
10. 25 comical subject lines + tips for funny writing — Did you hear the one about the funny email? It got a lot of clicks. That’s not humorous (or even a joke), but here were our tips for crafting comedic gold in your email campaigns.
11. 5 ways to create added value for customers — What do customers want? Value! When do they want it? Now! These tips explained how to put that extra cherry on top of your already stellar customer service.
12. It’s the law: 7 email marketing rules you should know — Ignorance of the law is not an excuse for breaking it, which is why we’re glad these tips stayed in our top 25. As an extra measure, be sure to check out our global anti-spam laws infographic, too.
13. 50 unique ideas for your next email — Who doesn’t love ideas? Who doesn’t love more than four dozen of them? Our readers certainly love them.
14. 7 tips to creating a memorable slogan — Need a tagline or slogan? Many readers did; this is where they went for guidance.
15. 75 email newsletter content topics you can use ASAP — You know what’s better than 50 ideas? Seventy-five of them. Here is our exhaustive — but not exhausting — list of topics to use in your email newsletters.
16. 29 ways to collect email addresses for your newsletter — List-building can be difficult at times. We took some of the guesswork out of the process with these 29 tips. (And, of course, we literally wrote the book on email list management.)
17. Oops! What to do when email mistakes happen — Mistakes happen to all of us. That must be why this article, the second of only three in the top 25 that isn’t a list, was so popular.
18. The surprisingly best times to send your email marketing campaigns — Our highest-ranking article that wasn’t a list was this post about the best times to send email campaigns. That it was so popular shows that there may never be one truly satisfactory answer to when “the best” time actually is. But we’ll keep trying to answer it!
19. 10 retail marketing ideas to boost sales — Boosting sales is never a bad idea. Here was our take on how retail businesses could do it.
20. 50 all-time great retail subject lines — Was it the number 50 that made this article so popular? The fact we called these subject lines the “all-time great” ones? Whatever it was, this subject line post had our readers clicking.
21. The 9 emails your business should be sending — For those starting an email marketing program, the questions may seem endless. What should you send? When should you send it? What should you even say? What do your customers want to hear? This post, our fifth most popular in 2017, helped answer many of those questions.
22. The top 20 places your business needs to be listed online — Last year’s champ was still hugely popular in 2017. It dipped slightly to no. 4, but clearly online listings are a perennial favorite.
23. The 30 magic marketing words you should be using — Magic makes everything better. Here were 30 words that seem to have power over customers and readers. No wonder it was so popular in 2017 — or maybe it was the 10 bonus marketing words we snuck in at the end of the post.
24. 10 examples of highly effective welcome emails — Welcome emails are one of the most important tools in your customer outreach kit. Our 2017 runner-up was dedicated to our tips for making those welcome emails successful.
25. 20 powerful marketing words & phrases that sell or repel — No business wants to inadvertently repel its customers. This article highlighted the difference between effective and egregious, with vivid examples. No wonder it was our most trafficked post of 2017.

Those are the top 25! What will 2018 bring? Only time will tell. In the meantime, VerticalResponse will continue to bring you entertaining and educational content about making email marketing work for you — smartly and easily. Happy New Year!

Join 140,000 small business owners Get expert tips and email inspiration biweekly. Subscribe today and download our FREE Guide to Email List Management eBook. Subscribe

© 2017, John Habib. All rights reserved.

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Why the Top of Your Funnel is Almost Always More Profitable than the Bottom

Yes. AdWords converts better than most other channels. Anywhere, ever.

But. That doesn’t mean it’s the only option. Or even the best option.

Two reasons why:

First, your cost per lead tends to be higher than other inbound channels. Chiefly because…

Second, AdWords doesn’t scale as well as other options. So you hit a point of diminishing returns. ‘Cause only 3.4% of search queries results in an AdWords click.

That ain’t a lot. ‘Specially on your ~5-10 niche keywords that actually convert.

The trick is to turn your attention from the bottom of the funnel back to the top.

Here’s why the top of your funnel is almost always more profitable than the bottom.

Closing and scaling BOFU deals isn’t sustainable

AdWords has intent. People search, click, and opt-in or buy.

It’s literally trained people to give you money.

It’s the ‘last touch’ so often that it becomes “easy to track ROI.” So like any self-fulfilling prophecy, the more attention it gets, the more “it works.” The more budget and labor and buy-in.

The problem is scale.

Especially when you’re paying $25 to $50+ per click. (Or more — I see you insurance and law.)

Conversions might be good on AdWords. But in many cases there’s (1) not enough to grow your business past six figures. Or (2) there’s not enough margin to reinvest in other areas.

Bottom-of-the-funnel advertising like this works well because you can throw down a few bucks and see a few more bucks come in not long afterward.

But here’s where more problems crop up.

High-end CPCs dramatically push up your Cost Per Leads. That, in turn, pushes up your minimum monthly ad budget. So it’s not uncommon to see ~$30k/month budgets in competitive niches on the low end (I’ve worked on a few myself).

You need so many leads to turn into customers. So you need to cast the net wide enough to convert a few measly percentage points.

Here’s the additional wrinkle, though.

According to a Salesforce B2B benchmark report, it takes an average of 84 days for a lead to become an opportunity:

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And that’s not even a final sale.

84 long, hard days to transition from a lead to an opportunity, and 18 more days to close the deal.

Now. What are your payment terms? Net 30 or worse?

You’re now looking at not recouping a single dollar from that $30k/month budget until the next quarter (at the earliest).

So in reality, you need like four or five times that budget to sustain you. It’s like working capital in finance. You need enough to keep the lights open until the money, eventually, flows back into your bottom line.

Fortunately, all hope isn’t lost.

There’s a powerful antidote to a sluggish, budget-sabotaging funnel. It goes by the name of: Brand Awareness.

The stuff that big, mega enterprises have invested in for years. But most SMBs and tech geeks shy away because it “doesn’t convert.”

Generating brand awareness is a cheap investment

Brand awareness is typically the goal of any top-of-the-funnel campaign.

You want to start positioning your brand favorably within the minds and hearts of consumers.

Unfortunately, it’s often overlooked. It’s the Great Brand vs. Performance Marketing debate.

On the one hand, ‘branding’ is like a clichéd buzzword that’s lost all meaning. And on the other, it’s only seen as viable for large companies with massive budgets. It’s a “nice to have,” not a “must have.”

To make matters worse, it’s nearly impossible to draw a direct line from brand building activities to sales. So it gets dismissed by all hardcore data geeks (even when data itself lies).

But here’s the thing.

When done correctly, brand building is an investment in future sales.

Take a look at Facebook ad expert Jon Loomer’s current ad campaigns:

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What do you notice?

First off, it’s all divided by a typical marketing/sales funnel.

Traffic/reach – TOFU
Lead generation – MOFU
Conversions – BOFU

Now take a look at the daily budgets for each. This is where it gets interesting.

He dedicates the majority of his budget to-top-of-the-funnel marketing activities.

Around $1,500 per month goes to top-of-the-funnel campaigns, and he only sets $300 aside for MOFU and BOFU tactics.

That’s a massive difference.

Why?

Why on earth would he invest $1,500 a month into campaigns that have zero chance of converting?

Why not dump that money into MOFU and BOFU campaigns with sale-based offers?

Because he’s making a future investment. You can’t convert sales when there isn’t enough built-in demand in the first place.

Let me explain with some data.

Nielsen conducted a massive study on understanding what drives sales, and they found that 59% of people buy products and services from brands that they recognize.

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Familiar faces are more likely to get the final deal.

But that’s not all.

SurveyMonkey and Search Engine Land found that 70% of consumers look for a known retailer when deciding which search result to click:

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That’s not surprising at all, really.

Think about it:

When you searched for “inbound marketing” recently, did you click on HubSpot or joeschmoe.net?

I’m gonna go out on a limb and say it wasn’t the latter.

Even if joeschmoe.net were ranking #1, you’d probably still click HubSpot at #5.

Cuz: Brand awareness = trust.

Brand recognition is a powerful way to drive sales.

And once you develop a brand reputation within your own space, you end up being able to drive traffic without having to take the normal funnel stage route.

Meaning you don’t have to pay to drive traffic anymore.

You don’t have to pay for ads and lead magnets.

You just have to focus on closing. You reduce your costs dramatically.

It’s time for some good news:

Building brand awareness is cheap.

I’m talking dirt freaking cheap. Pennies to the dollar cheap.

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According to Moz, Facebook Ads have the cheapest CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) of any advertising platform ever.

Except they “don’t work,” right?

Maybe, maybe not. But try comparing that cost to the freaking newspaper, magazine, and radio CPMs then:

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And guess what?

You only have to spend $1 per day on Facebook as the minimum daily budget. That means you can reach 4,000 more people a day with ads based on brand awareness for a single measly dollar.

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Using expert-level mathematician skills, that’s 120,000 brand impressions each month for only $30.

That’s just about the cheapest brand exposure you’ll ever get. Like, ever.

That’s 120,000 more people seeing your brand than last month.

Here’s how to implement cheap branding on Facebook to keep your top of the funnel profitable and growing like never before.

Create a self-sustaining TOFU campaign on Facebook

Self-sustaining campaigns run and run and run.

It only takes three easy steps that you can complete in just minutes today.

Create a new, medium-sized saved audience based on your target market.
Create a remarketing audience based on those engaged users.
Create a new lookalike audience based on leads.

With this, you’ll only be spending a few bucks a day while simultaneously creating a campaign that maintains itself.

You just rinse and repeat each time the cycle completes to replenish your audience.

This way, you’re generating thousands of new visits and impressions to build brand awareness every single month.

More brand awareness = more recognition/trust = more sales in fewer funnel stages = less money out of your pocket.

To get started, fire up the Facebook Business Manager and head to the audiences section:

From here, select the option to create a new saved audience:

The saved audience is a great starting point to generate a big enough list for brand awareness campaigns.

Start by entering the basic demographic data associated with your target customers:

Next, it’s time to narrow it down a bit.

You can’t target 200,000,000 people with brand awareness ads. Unfortunately, there aren’t that many people who care about your company.

Start adding various interests related to your company. For example, if you sell SEO services, add that as an interest:

Are your services B2B? Narrow it down further:

Lastly, finish it off with some exclusions to avoid targeting users who typically don’t respond well to your products or services:

Next, hit save and name your audience so that you can recognize it later.

Now, head to the Ads Manager and create a new campaign based on the brand awareness objective:

Then, scroll down to the audience section and choose the saved audience you just created:

Next, set your budget to just a single dollar per day (or more if you have a larger budget):

Now it’s time for the creative.

For brand awareness ads, you don’t want to focus on converting someone to sales. Offers like that won’t resonate with users who have no clue who you are.

Give them value associated with your brand without asking for anything in return.

For example, take your latest blog post and use that as your creative.

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You’re done with the first step. Next up, it’s time to set up a remarketing audience based on visits to your brand awareness blog post.

First things first, you need to get your Facebook Pixel setup if you haven’t already. Head to the Events Manager and select the Pixels option.

Click to create your Pixel and give it a recognizable name for your site:

Next, install your Pixel code by selecting any of the listed options:

From there, simply follow the directions for each based on your choice to get your code installed.

Now, go back to the audience section and create a new custom audience based on website traffic:

Make sure that you select “People who visited specific web pages” as your criteria, and then enter the blog post you drive traffic to for your brand awareness ads:

If you want to get even more specific, narrow down the traffic by refining the frequency to two or more visits:

Still with me?

Next, hit save, and you’ve generated your second audience.

With this audience, you can bring back users and narrow your list down even further to the most brand-aware visitors.

Lastly, you’ll want to take that new custom audience and turn it into a lookalike audience.

That will allow Facebook to wrangle up more users for you to target who have similar interests and tendencies as your best performers in these campaigns.

Genius, right?

Head to the audiences section and create a new lookalike audience. Select the second remarketing audience you just saved as the “Source:”

Next, be sure to choose the 1% audience size to keep it targeted and dirt cheap (See: this study).

Hit save, and you’ve just created a self-sustaining top-of-the-funnel campaign to generate tons of brand awareness.

Phew. You made it.

Now it’s time to sit back and reap the rewards of a well-sown crop.

Conclusion

Yes. You should invest in AdWords.

But invest all you’ve got?

No. Probably not.

Not when you’re looking at ~four * $30k/month to start getting your first few customers. Not unless you’ve got a rich uncle hiding somewhere. Or a private equity firm cutting the checks.

Instead of following the typical playbook, flip the script. Invest in the stuff that’s going to make future sales easier and less expensive.

Invest in branding activities, that you have no way of tracking today, in pursuit of an easier tomorrow.

Brand awareness has the power to drive faster, funnel-skipping sales, at scale. And when done correctly, it can even be a cheap investment that will pay off dividends for years to come.

About the Author: Brad Smith is the founder of Codeless, a B2B content creation company. Frequent contributor to Kissmetrics, Unbounce, WordStream, AdEspresso, Search Engine Journal, Autopilot, and more.

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How to Connect the Dots that Can Make You a Star

So, it’s nearly January 1, the day we make our annual vow that this is definitely the year we get our shit together. Before Christmas, I wrote about why productivity advice can be tricky for creative people. And yesterday, I wrote about what I consider the most powerful tool to improve your creative output —
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Nucleus Research Finds That Retailers Prosper With Oracle Marketing Cloud

Analysts at Nucleus Research recently asked retailers how they are managing the challenges of the rapidly changing digital marketing landscape. They have concluded that retailers are increasing customer engagement, reducing costs, improving productivity, and increasing revenue with Oracle Marketing Cloud solutions.

Data silos make it difficult for retailers to know their customers. Timing and targeting of messaging has become more critical as customers open less and opt out more. Coordinating marketing campaigns across evolving channels is demanding, but essential for success.

“All customers Nucleus analyzed cited increased productivity as a benefit of moving to Oracle Marketing Cloud, with an average increase in marketer productivity of 50 percent.”

Increased productivity is allowing retailers to do more testing, more personalization, and more optimization of their CRM programs. Marketing campaigns can be more complex and respond to customers faster without intervention from IT. Improved access to disparate data through BlueKai and Responsys allow marketers to segment faster and better while increasing message personalization. 

“Nucleus found that many Oracle Marketing Cloud users in retail were specifically responsible for revenue targets from their campaign efforts, and they saw that the segmentation and targeting capabilities of the solution directly impacted their ability to meet those goals.”

Nucleus Research found that retailers are utilizing Oracle Marketing Cloud to reduce cart abandonment and improve customer reactivation. Send time optimization has been significant in improving customer engagement and driving revenue growth. Compared to our competitors, Oracle Marketing Cloud’s platform dependability and performance at scale were mentioned in the research as key differentiators. 

“Nucleus found that, on average, retail marketers moving to Oracle were able to increase their conversion rate by 20 percent compared with their previous solution.”

Cross-channel solutions in Oracle Responsys allow retailers to communicate with their customers across channels and devices. Our customers are leveraging SMS, push, display, and e-mail as an integrated solution to improve engagement with their customers. Retailers are able to control costs while improving their customer experience, resulting in an increase of revenue after adopting OMC products.

The Nucleus Research report can be accessed here.

 

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