Top Ten Demand Generation FAILS (Part 5) This Building has Structural Issues

Have you ever been to the top of one of those Television towers or the Stratosphere in Las Vegas? These interesting structural designs seem to have a round building perched atop a very tall and very thin pole. What you can’t see is the very large concrete base buried below the surface, without which the entire structure would topple at the first puff of wind.

The same goes for a “structurally sound” Demand Center – much of the “structure” is invisible, below the surface, and absolutely necessary for proper function.

How sound is your demand center’s foundation? Since it is “invisible” how do you measure and keep track of its structural integrity? Let’s pretend for a moment that we’re engineers trying to determine the integrity of your foundation; how would we go about it?

As with any measurement, there are a few key characteristics we need to investigate. Let’s don our hard hats and dive in.

1.     Is the original design sound? Seems like a pretty good question. Does the plan reflect good engineering practices? Does it accommodate the needs of the building’s users with the correct infrastructure (Mechanical, Electrical and Plumbing)? Do the specified structural components meet codes and standards?

These are all great parallels to your Demand Center structure. Is your Demand Center plan sound. (Do you even have a set of “blueprints” for your Demand Center infrastructure?) Does the infrastructure suit the needs of your internal clients in terms of its ability to support all of the various Campaign elements necessary for your marketing programs? Do the individual components, such as email engine, website integration, CRM integration and database meet up to industry best practices?

2.     Did the plan accurately consider the building site environment? Were climate, severe weather, seismic and geologic conditions adequately accounted for in the design? How were each of these conditions determined and documented?

To properly design a Demand Center infrastructure, you need to adequately assess your Center’s environment. This requires a thorough Business Process Review (BPR) to determine that actual business requirements you plan to meet. These are your climate histories and soil samples, upon which you can base good infrastructure design. Do you have a set of documented (and agreed upon by the business stakeholders) business processes and associated goals by which your success will be measured?

3.     Is the structure built according to plan? You might have designed a great building, but is it actually built according to those plans? Are the building components exactly as specified in the plan or were there substitutions? Are the as-built measurements precisely as specified in the plan?

When assessing Demand Center structures, the answer 99 times out of 100 is a resounding NO. The correct skill sets for specific roles could not be hired and there isn’t time or budget to properly train them. Specific software or plugins to maintain data hygiene are in next year’s budget. Platforms won’t support needed process or functions. Integrations between critical systems can’t happen because of lack of internal skills or budget to hire external vendors. Once very important caveat to note here: if you don’t begin with a detailed Demand Center blueprint, you cannot claim the infrastructure isn’t built according to plan. You’ve heard it a million times, but failing to plan is planning to fail.

4.     Have environmental factors changed since the building was built? Has increased local development altered the surrounding micro-climate? Have repeated severe weather events altered soil conditions or associated codes?

Has your operational environment changed since you implemented your Demand Center? Mergers, acquisitions and reorganizations will all have an effect on how you operate.  Personnel changes in key positions can affect your operations, changing SLAs or quantity expectations. In general, how has the landscape changed since you originally designed your Demand Center?

5.     Have use factors changed since the original design was created? Has increased use of electronic devices changed the average power consumption per occupant? Does the building structure cause problems with the increased use of wireless devices? Has modern interior office design affected occupant density, affecting dynamic and static structural loads?

Interesting how these very same factors can and should be affecting the way your Demand Center operates. Does your Demand Center design accommodate the increased use of wireless devices, both internally and externally? How does this affect your QA processes? Can you adapt to the ever-changing technology landscape to include multi-screen, location-based advertising and the Internet of Everything?

What’s your plan? Do you have a set of blueprints that adequately document this plan in sufficient detail to build it? There is zero chance that your business environment is going to remain static for the next two, three or five years, so you need to prepare to “remodel” in the future. In order to remodel, you need to have an accurately documented plan to form the basis for that remodel. Design. Document. Build. In that order. Failure to follow that simple, prescriptive process leads to Demand Gen FAIL number 5.

Notes:

Your Demand Center infrastructure is like a building, requiring the necessary design diligence and documentation (blueprint) to build, maintain and remodel it in the future.

When troubleshooting, it is impossible to determine where a system is not working properly without a design document against which you can compare the operating process. This wastes valuable time at (almost always) a critical time in  the production process.

In next week’s edition, we will look at Demand Generation FAIL number 6: Lumpy Pancake Batter. Because we all love inconsistency (not).

Create Marketing Reports That Will Thrill Your CEO

Yes, you read that headline correctly. Thrill your CEO. In order to meet that expectation, you will first have to understand what kinds of things get your C-Suite excited. Those are called executive strategic drivers. Some examples of those drivers are Growth Strategy, Competitive Pressures, Regulatory Changes, Risk Management, Shareholder Value, Profitability and Technological Market Disruptions.

                                                                               

Let’s look at what was not in that list of strategic drivers. Unaided Brand Awareness, Total Impressions, Number of Leads, Funnel Metrics… that tactical list of things you are probably reporting on right now. I am not at all saying your current reports are not important. In fact, they are critical to building and maintaining a revenue pipeline. They just don’t address strategic challenges from an executive perspective. And you can change that!

                                                               

Putting Some Perspective on Reporting

If we simply change perspective from Demand Gen Success to Organizational Success, it is very straightforward to realign your reporting. We’ve already established that tying your Demand Gen metrics to revenue is critical to determining success. That never goes away. You are in a business and that business has a key objective (if not the key objective) of generating revenue, which provides livelihoods for employees and products and services for customers. Your executives are charged with not only keeping, but building that revenue stream and the profits it generates. Your owners (or shareholders) want to see a positive return on their investment and your company is but one of a myriad of investment options. How does Demand Gen contribute to success from that perspective? Let’s just look at Demand Gen performance from the perspective of three of the executive drivers:

• Growth Strategy
• Profitability
• Risk Management

Growth Strategy

First, let’s look at the strategy options for growth, which fall into three broad categories: organic growth, partnerships and acquisition. Demand Gen falls into the organic growth category, which means growing the organization by driving increased revenue. This is pretty straightforward, as demand gen is the primary driver of revenue growth. We don’t need to spend a lot of time expounding on the advantages of revenue growth, but we’ll come back to this issue.

Your reporting should reflect both retrospective performance and predictive future performance (for internal consumption only, of course). Your executives want to know how well you performed, but also what to expect in the future. The entire purpose of building a demand gen machine (we’ve often called it a “Marketing Factory”) is to drive efficient, predictable and scalable revenue generation. That includes growth. And growth thrills your CEO.

Profitability

Part of the equation for effective demand generation is how efficiently you can do it. Looking at this graph, we want the best possible combination of demand and the cost required to obtain those results, creating an Effective and Efficient demand gen machine.

As the graph indicates, you can spend more to generate more leads, or you can spend less and generate fewer leads, but neither is an ideal state. You are seeking the best combination of generating demand and reducing the cost of acquiring leads, thereby reducing overall customer acquisition costs.

Creating reports that show your trend over time – and the resultant reduction in cost for acquiring more leads for less cost per lead indicates increased profits. Profit thrills your CEO.

Risk Management

Since we’ve pared down our set of executive drivers, let’s now look at the associated risks. At the highest level, your CEO must balance the risks associated with growth: grow too fast and it is difficult to maintain the organizational infrastructure required to manage the additional business. How will manufacturing produce enough product to satisfy demand? How will the additional burden on staff affect customer satisfaction? Can our supply chain keep up with demand? Can we deliver the additional product through our distribution channels?

On the other hand, if growth is too slow the organization may be too big to maintain its margins and keep up with competition. Will we need to downsize the organization to keep costs in line with revenue? How will the market react to slow growth and potential layoffs? What will we need to do to correct the revenue outlook?

From the profitability standpoint, many of these same questions apply, with some additional flavor. Where can we cut costs with the least impact on product quality and delivery? Where can we consolidate functions or increase efficiencies? Where can we benefit from economies of scale?

To manage risk in each of these categories, your CEO really needs to see the roadmap because changing course before something bad happens is always preferable to changing course afterwards. Fortunately, you are on a course to build a predictable and scalable Demand Gen machine that will help your CEO chart the correct course. By providing your executives with a predictable course, you are helping them avoid risks associated with proceeding blindly on a course into the future. Your predictability reduces risk. Reduced risk thrills your CEO.

Change the conversation.

Your reporting needs to combine retrospective performance with a predictable performance forecast. Looking backwards and projecting forward provides your executives with the information needed to make smart course corrections. Your CEO wants to ramp production, supply chain and distribution that same 15% you have predicted an increase in demand. With that understanding, your reporting becomes a critical information source for business decisions with weighty consequences. Reporting with that perspective makes your Demand Gen team an extremely important part of your organizational success. And you CEO will be thrilled!

Notes:

Align your reports with executive strategic drivers.

Don’t just look backwards, look forward.

Be Predictable.

                                    

Thank You!

I want to thank the thousands of demand gen professionals who have spent the past 40 weeks on this journey with me. I am often surprised at what Google tells me about the number of readers of this humble blog post. We’ve traveled together down a long road to learn about building, organizing and managing our Demand Gen teams and I hope you’ve learned something that will make you a better marketer.

What’s next?

I’m going to take some time off from posting through the holiday season and the remainder of the year to regroup and refuel. I will be taking the fundamental ideas from this post and organize and compile them into an e-book that I will publish early next year. I hope you will be as excited to read it as I am to publish it. I’ll also be looking for new and exciting topics to cover in next year’s blog posts. In the meantime, I wish you much success and ever-increasing demand!