Magnus Marketing Blog

When anyone asks what is broken in marketing, read the dialouge on the American Marketing Association marketing boards. While it is a super forum, it also highlights issues that are prevalent in marketing. Today, for example, a Marketing Executive wrote in about his CEO demanding 2000 warm leads in a month. The Executive was asking "what do I do", but not without first highlighting: 1) He has 20 years experience, 2) whose responsibility is it for leads anyway? Instead of asking the group "what do I do" or "what is wrong with what I am currently doing", he instantly asked "whose responsibility is it for leads". I responded with two thoughts: 1) analyze what you are doing and focus on the message (because he has exhausted his channels of reach) and 2) it is both sales & marketing and even the receptionist's job to supply leads. Having 20 years experience means nothing, it could even mean that you are irrelevant today and living in the past. Results are what matters, not experience!

Because the person did not supply his industry, customer situation, brochures, research, etc. it is impossible for the group to give him any real advice. Yet, people responded with the following : 1) do more telemarketing, 2) I leverage customer pains across customers so should you, 2) talk to customers, etc. Great tactical advice without any context. Not one person asked what industry are you in, how many leads do you usually generate, what is the industry standard, buying cycles, salesforce size, success of channel tactics, etc. Nope, they just supplied do more tactical. And these people are marketing managers and executives? One or two were like - I generate the leads for the company - well, what a burden! I guess the salespeople have no prospecting skills to speak of and don't bring any clients to the table. Very few companies operate like that. And lets not finger point and divide sales and marketing further!

One lady responded with in addition to my duties, I profile customers and use their pain points with other customers, they respond to that. I am glad to see someone doing something I did 10 years ago. I hope she doesn't tell the companies about what their competition is doing, because she could violate NDA's. You can only talk in general terms usually to be legally safe.

Another consultant, "with a market research background", was inquiring about creative CRM systems to track leads. As I said, market research people are clueless usually about business development. I used Excel, Goldmine, ACT, Salesforce, Telemagic, and host of other programs and did a fine job of developing a lead management and process system - which is because I had a great lead profile, process, and system in place. And I consider myself a market research person as well as business development expert. I am not good with sales or marcom - can't write the flowery stuff well.

I get so discouraged with the seemingly commonsense and obvious answers to questions on the boards. Even a semi-competitor of mine was asking about how one could justify the ROI of account research, sales training, and telemarketing or something. If he couldn't answer those questions, he shouldn't be in business. I can, by the way, answer those questions. No one on the boards bothered to supply info, I sure would have liked to see that!

Until many marketers (not all) can learn to solve problems and ask the right questions, it will always be broken. I hope there are more people out there who get it.