Writers get a social boost with InboundWriter

We are proud to have contributed to the successful launch of yet another innovative product this week!  Our client Eightfold Logic just launched InboundWriter, the first cloud-based social writing application of its kind.   InboundWriter integrates real-time search data and the dynamics of social media directly into the writing process itself to help content creators of all walks – marketers, bloggers, journalists, etc. – to write more relevant online content.  Its mission: increasing audience reach, engagement and conversions.   Put simply, InboundWriter taps into social intelligence to drive productivity and results for its intended user – writers.  

There are a lot of things about this product that make it a poster-child for Schulman+Thorogood.  First, InboundWriter is born of the growing inbound marketing mandate, with the objective of empowering writers to easily draw on the “wisdom of the crowds” to attract the right audience to their content.   It is designed for content engineers™ and will undoubtedly contribute to the momentum of the content marketing movement by redefining how we create relevant content.  Joe Pulizzi, a content marketing evangelist and the founder of the Content Marketing Institute agrees:  “Today’s brands have no choice, to get attention, they must be interesting — that means creating consistent, compelling content.  InboundWriter helps increase relevance, and is one of those ‘of the moment’ products that turns content into a more powerful strategic asset.” Read the rest of this entry »

A lesson in Marketing at Cornell (But…I was the teacher!)

I am here at beautiful but frigid Cornell, at the invitation of Steven Gal of the Johnson Graduate School of Business, to guest lecture at his entrepreneurial marketing class.  The reason for the invite:  MBA students are starved for practical knowledge on how to leverage social media and online marketing for their entrepreneurial efforts.   When Dr. Gal announced my impending visit to his colleagues, other entrepreneurship professors jumped at the opportunity to engage me as well.  My jam-packed schedule for the three days on campus include several classroom lectures, a lecture at the Cornell Entrepreneurship and Innovation Institute, meeting with the aspiring entrepreneurs of Cornell eLab, dinners with the entrepreneurship professors and few of their hand-picked students, as well as meeting with the Cornell Enterprise team.  Add to this the numerous ad-hoc meetings with individual student-entrepreneurs who want to pick my brain on their go-to-market models. You get the picture…Whew! Read the rest of this entry »

What’s all the buzz about Inbound Marketing?

Rand and I just gave a very well-attended webinar to the Cornell Entrepreneur Network titled, “The Birth of Customer 2.0 and the Death of Marketing as we know it”. One of the primary trends we discussed is the emergence of Inbound Marketing – and given the tremendous interest, I wanted to talk a bit more about it here on our blog.

It is clear to all of us that online marketing and social media have dramatically changed the marketing practice over the past decade. They have certainly made it a lot more measurable and accountable – much more of a science. They have also made it a lot more interactive and collaborative with the target customer.

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Which came first: Sales 2.0 or Customer 2.0?

It sounds like one of those chicken or the egg questions…and given all the buzz about Sales 2.0 technologies and methodologies, you might be tempted to answer “Sales 2.0”.  But I think Sales 2.0 is really the sales organizations response to the “evolve or die” mandate they face, given the smarter and more informed buyer they have to sell to: Customer 2.0.   I do believe the customer has evolved faster than the sales guy…and I believe this is – at least in part – due to how B2B trends typically follow B2C.  Prospects who are looking to make B2B purchase decisions are also consumers, and have been making B2C decisions for a long time.  Access to online reviews, comparison shopping engines, Facebook or Twitter “conversations” on products and services they are evaluating has turned them into much wiser B2C buyers…So, why not transfer that same process, powered by “social intelligence”, to the B2B buying cycle?  Read the rest of this entry »

Moving from a Culture of Accountability to a Culture of Predictability

This past week I moderated the Forecasting, Analytics and Compensation Management Panel at the Sales 2.0 Conference in San Francisco (good event by the way – probably the best one yet!).  My diverse panel included sales execs from ArcSight, LaCrosse Footwear, and GuardianEdge who deployed Sales 2.0-powered sales management solutions from Xactly, Right 90 and Cloud 9 Analytics, respectively. 

Given my marketing analytics background (or DNA as some might say ), I’ve always been focused on making marketing more accountable to and aligned with sales. My personal edict is “You Cannot Improve What You Cannot Measure”, and I practice it religiously to ensure my clients drive the most revenue possible with their marketing dollars, great or small.  What was thrilling about my pre-conference conversations with the panelists was how the Sales 2.0 movement is enabling sales organizations to adopt a similar culture of measurement, bringing in much needed accountability.  Actually according to my panel, it is moving beyond accountability – and shifting sales into a culture of predictability.  Here is how: Sales management solutions, such as forecasting, business analytics and compensation management tools, improve visibility into sales performance with objective, dynamic data.  Better visibility in turn exposes volatility at the aggregate level as well as gives us the ability to drill down to pinpoint and act on the problem areas – whether product line, geo, sales rep, lead source – resulting in overall sales performance predictability.

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Bridging the Sales and Marketing Chasm with Smarketing

We market and sell in a brave new world where prospects are equipped with near x-ray vision into companies, products and people they are considering doing business with. Attention span crunch has become pandemic, and we now have the mandate of ensuring every customer engagement is targeted and relevant to synchronize buying and selling cycles – or risk being left behind to join the multitude of businesses that simply didn’t make the necessary transformations in time.

It wasn’t too long ago where the norm was for marketing and sales teams to shout insults and pass blame on for not reaching revenue goals: “The leads are worthless!”…”No, it’s the sales reps who just cannot close!!” Fast forward a decade and the rules have changed. Marketing is now measured and compensated more like sales reps on attainment of goals; and our friends in sales are having to think more marketing-like and segment and target prospects with the right messages at the right time to increase conversions. Welcome to the world of sales and marketing 2.0 or “Smarketing”!

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