While marketers stress about the exact wording and the presentation of numerous brand benefits, the reality is that consumers are likely to only glance at your ad or skim your message. Details are likely to be lost.

In order to have an impact, you need to be crystal clear with your offering and its benefits because first impressions are fast. I have learned this recently working on a startup where customers have no awareness whatsoever of our brand, but it is equally true for the biggest and best known brands in the world.

Sorry if this post was a bit short, I was trying to be succinct.

Ben Wise

In fact, a recent study found that only 44 per cent of B2B marketers have implemented some form of automation platform to help manage the complexities of today’s multi-channel campaigns. Slightly more (50 per cent) have adopted internal operations software for measuring initiatives, managing costs, etc.

While results like these aren’t necessarily surprising, they are rather unfortunate. After all, marketers are in the midst of a revolution, and they’re feeling squeezed like never before.  Where’s all the pressure coming from? An unpredictable global economy, plummeting consumer confidence and shrinking corporate budgets tell only part of the story. Today’s marketers also must cope with “big data”, the enormous trails of data generated by our digitized world, and the need to manage intricate, multi-channel campaigns both efficiently and effectively. What’s more, even though it’s getting increasingly difficult to feel confident about marketing efforts, marketers now must be accountable to the bottom line and prove ROI where it counts - in the boardroom.

While automation alone won’t solve all these challenges, it is required to handle the scale and complexity of today’s new marketing environment. Given the particular complexities of an extended buying cycle, B2B marketers have had it especially rough, and for years, many in B2B have envisioned a better way, a hi-tech digital marketing approach that will enable better tracking and allow activity to be linked to revenue over time. But, can this promise actually be delivered? If so, how?

The Near Future

Modern B2B campaigns have evolved into complicated, multi-faceted initiatives, with protracted buying cycles stretched across a variety of both traditional and newer digital channels. Despite this expanding array of touchpoints, however, most B2B marketers still determine attribution by assigning first and last touch. That’s good, of course. But, it’s not good enough.

In order to truly understand what’s working and what isn’t, B2B marketers need a view that includes all, or nearly all, touches. They must implement technology and incorporate analytics so that they can assign attribution, gauge campaign influence and monitor ongoing cost/spend across a wide range of touchpoints, from early interest to conversion.

A small handful of B2C companies already are doing this well, but in the near future, we’ll see more and more B2B marketers using software to analyze and identify common touches across customers by specific segments.

 The Further Future

Once B2B marketers start analyzing the behavior of prospects across multiple channels and touchpoints, common threads will emerge. This data will help answer questions such as:

• What nudged buyers through the funnel?
• Did certain segments respond differently than others?
• Where/how should messages be tweaked to get more traction?

Soon, sophisticated software will interpret this data and then suggest specific campaigns or tactics to drive higher revenue and better ROI. Technology will empower marketers with a deep level of intelligence to drive marketing activity based on predictions of behavior.

Although only a few companies are using this level of advanced modeling and predictive analytics, penetration of the technology is evolving quickly.  Of course, for many, it can’t come soon enough. That’s understandable. Already, the fire hose of digital data exceeds what individuals alone can handle, and what’s more it that the complexity continually escalates. In some ways, marketing today is a moving target. As soon as one predicament is solved, another channel opens up, more big data streams in, and the challenges have multiplied once again.

The key to success is to start being smarter and more strategic. Rather than feeling overwhelmed with the pressure to do more, decide to be more effective. Realize that taking even just one stride forward is infinitely better than standing still. Start using data to help you find what is working and what is not. Make proving ROI a priority and then, step into the process with one campaign.

As your B2B organization prepares for the future, one of the most important things you can do is to support and build a culture receptive to technology and the sophisticated analytics it will bring. Forward-thinking marketers know that ultimately, data-driven marketing decisions will yield enormous competitive advantage.

Rick Makos, President, Teradata Canada ULC
Jeff Chamberlain, Vice President, B2B Solutions, Marketing, Aprimo

Driven by a perceived customer need, both organizations implemented a chat program 'on spec' so to speak - they leapt in with both feet based on a gut feeling that, in the words of Wade Clark, Director of Contact Centres at Permanent General Companies, "it was the right thing to do for our customers".

While ROI was not an upfront requirement for PGC, or "The General" as it's known across the US, they have seen an increase in customer satisfaction metrics from the chat channel, which has stayed consistently higher than the phone or email channels they use.

PGC is still in its infancy with chat - the program was rolled out about 18 months ago using hosted technology from Live Person. "Our volumes are still pretty low", says Clark, "with about 200 chats a day requested, and another 3 to 400 done through fishing". Fishing is the 'proactive chat' model that we’ve discussed previously in our blog series - PGC has specific web pages that they consider to be decision points - customers sitting too long on a payments page, or on coverage information will be asked if they would like some help.

To meet the demand, PGC staffs chat-only agents - or 'chatters' - through the business day of the contact centre. With only three dedicated staff members, each agent will handle up to five simultaneous chats - or occasionally up to ten depending on the volume, experience, and the type of chats that are ongoing. But it is a contact centre function, so at night when the lights go out at the PGC call centre, so does the chat. To keep a consistent customer experience, PGC automatically offers an email when offline and chatters can respond first thing in the morning.

I asked about supporting at home agents for chat to extend the hours, as the technology would easily support it. But Clark told me that PGC agents require an available supervisor to be working at all times in case of escalations, and that wouldn't fly for supporting longer chat hours, even though they felt that due to the nature of the web, there was an implied need to provide extended chat hours.

It was an interesting discussion, but I think the most surprising bit of information I heard from Clark during our conversation was related to the skills that they look for in their chatters. Clark said they initially thought chat would require a similar set of skills to email. And while industry dogma tells us that phone agents and email agents will often require a different set of skills for a call centre, PGC found very quickly that this wasn't true for chat. They found, in fact, that although still written and not verbal - chat skills were much more aligned with the skills found in great phone agents.

This same finding was borne out - not by any statements made - but by the way chat is used by another company I spoke with in Utah. But that's next time!

Rob McDougall, President, Upstream Works Software Ltd.