The Digital Business

This month, Tech Crunch Disrupt in New York will be focusing on Design during their Office Hours segment. Six companies will have a chance to spend time on-stage with some talented design experts. Startups will get to go up on stage, show the TC experts their designs, and receive advice and feedback.

Pretty cool considering the level of expert advice and insight these companies will get to turn their ideas into killer products. Design is critical to the R&D process, so much so that companies like Apple have been preaching design throughout it’s corporate culture, ensuring engaging design philosophies are engrained throughout everything they do, even marketing.

That’s because Steve Jobs was a design fanatic and lead by example. Steve Jobs was a firm believer that people love nice things, whether it be B2B or B2C.

Case in point…

Over the past few years, we’ve heard that it’s not only hard to find engineers. It’s hard to find great design talent. And if Apple’s still unbelievable and mind-boggling rise over the last 15 years shows anything, it’s that design matters. Design and simplicity made the difference between Instagram and every other photo-sharing app. It revived Path. It made Square stand out among all of the other credit card readers.

- Office Hours At TC Disrupt This Year Will Be All About Design

Yes, design does matter. Even B2B companies with great products are beginning to understand that great design is a competitive advantage. Take Cisco for example. They made routers look fantastic with their Human Network campaign. Routers! Go figure.

Even the former Apple engineers over at Nest incorporated everything Steve Jobs taught them about the importance of integrating a culture of elegant design when they developed a new “learning” thermostat. But Nest didn’t just make an innovative thermostat that is going head-head with Honeywell, they also incorporated a high end design approach in ALL of their marketing tactics. For example, you don’t see crappy Apple ads. You don’t see crappy Dyson marketing. Likewise, Nest’s website is a fantastic experience. Watch the Nest video when you get a chance. It’s illustrates exactly what I’m talking about.

My point is this: If you’re engineering innovative products, then take a page out of Nest’s playbook (or, Path, Instagram, Square) and step up all your design initiatives so that a competitive design standard can be maintained throughout your corporate culture.

How does your company approach the design process? Let us know your thoughts.

Although B2B Marketing has made great strides in the last few years, it’s time for B2B Marketers to get serious about making their marketing programs strategic growth initiatives that focus on capturing market share and driving revenues, rather than wasting valuable dollars on disconnected marketing tactics.

Case in point: B2B Marketing budgets will increase by 6.8% in 2012

According to a recent Forrester research post on MarketingProfs, B2B Marketing budgets will increase by 6.8% in 2012, with high-tech still leading the charge (see chart above). Interestingly, pharmaceutical, medical, and biotech have shifted from cutting their marketing budgets in 2011, to increasing them in 2012. That’s good news because that means more B2B Companies are beginning to notice that they need to do things differently in order to get noticed. It also means B2B Marketers need to be smart about how these budgets are spent, because as budgets increase so should revenues.

The report also emphasizes that as budgets rise in 2012, B2B Marketers need to focus on partnership and experimentation. I love this because I have found that the best relationships between client and agency happen only when both are willing to try new things, go to bat for each other and help each other succeed. B2B Companies like Cisco, Intel, and SAP, for example, have established long-term strategic marketing partnerships that have set the creative bar higher than normal by experimenting with creative campaign ideas that go way beyond the traditional B2B “bland” creative – even borderline B2C ideas such as Cisco’s “Human Network” or Intel’s “Intel Inside”.

As a B2B Marketer, it’s encouraging to see that B2B Companies are willing to compete by thinking different, developing a unique voice and moving away from the traditional boring B2B Creative we’ve seen for far too long.

What are your experiences with B2B Marketing budgets? Are they increasing or decreasing? Are you partnering and experimenting? Let us know your thoughts.

IdeaPaint Rocks!

When I was a kid, I got into trouble for writing on walls and tables. Not any more! Thanks to IdeaPaint and some fabulous woodworking by my dad, Reinhold, our boardroom is not just a meeting place anymore, it’s also a creative space.

IdeaPaint is easy to apply and once cured it converts any surface into a whiteboard. Now we get to write on the wall and on the table without getting into trouble! Woot-Woot!

Write On! A custom table too…

My dad built this custom table completely by hand using 3/4-inch finished plywood, 1/2-inch plywood, cedar 2x4s, some glue and a few screws, all thanks to The Home Depot, in Langley, BC.  It can easily seat up to 10 people comfortably.

So next time you stop by, be sure to grab one of those dry markers and take notes right on the table!  How cool is that?

Last week I shared a great video from Eloqua illustrating how Revenue Performance Management (RPM) can get your sales and marketing teams on the same page and working together to increase revenues.

One of the tremendous aspects of RPM is the benefit of marketing automation – automating the marketing process can give CEOs real data to analyze performance, measure ROI and legitimize the marketing investment (notice I didn’t say “spend”?).

The infographic below, courtesy of HubSpot, shows how marketing automation uses technology and software to help move prospects and leads through the sales funnel. For example, leads generated from blogging, social media, and other inbound marketing sources, can now be more sales-ready. But marketing automation is not a silver bullet solution, and it’s important to understand when it can or can’t help grow your business.

My biggest take-away from the infographic is that customer relationships should be based on REAL interactions aided by technology like marketing automation. In other words, don’t hide behind technology and hope you’re going to make that sale.

Have a look at the infographic and then determine your own conclusions. Let us know your thoughts.

Getting on the same page will increase revenue

According to marketing automation solution providers like Eloqua and Marketo, Revenue Performance Management (RPM) gets everyone on the same page so that sales and marketing work towards a common business objective, rather than pointing fingers when things don’t happen. The video above, care of Eloqua, illustrates key insights into getting sales and marketing working together.

Here are the top 5 highlights from this excellent video…

1. 87% of marketers say current marketing techniques are not hitting performance targets
2. companies can gain 10% in annual sales if they focus on better insight into sales and marketing activities
3. smart companies are turning to RPM to examine how marketing dollars are spent
4. companies that utilize RPM outpace the S&P Index by as much as 78%
5. RPM tacks five essential metrics in real time: Reach, Value, Conversion, Velocity, Return

Essentially, marketing is still an art form but we can now apply science to it as well, thanks to technology like RPM.

Sharing the benefits of RPM

In support of this post, I recently moderated a fantastic panel of marketing gurus for BCAIM’s B2B Marketing luncheon at The Four Seasons Hotel in Vancouver. The panel featured B2B marketing experts from SAP, Sage Software, and Absolute Software.

Each panelist presented relevant and current topics…

• Christine Mykota, SAP’s Director of Business Analytics Marketing, discussed the benefits of strategic content marketing.
• Nancy Harris, Sage Simply Accounting’s Vice President and General Manager, spoke about automating sales and marketing.
• Stephen Midgley, Absolute Software’s Vice President of Global Marketing, delivered a great talk on customer engagement.

The common thread between each presentation, however, was a subject that Nancy touched on: That revenues can increase when you automate your sales and marketing with Revenue Performance Management strategies that deliver engaging solution-based content – content that drives real business value.

Do you have any experience with Revenue Performance Management? If so, does RPM benefit your company? If not, would you consider it? Share your thoughts below.