Marketing Strategy Sample 02
Case in point: A fictitious IT services and product company offering enterprise-grade customer loyalty solutions.
Offering
Enterprise grade loyalty platform for retail companies enabling real-time, omnichannel and personalized rewards.
The firm also offers marketing automation software. Enables brands to execute automated, personalized, 1:1 and intelligent customer engagement campaigns.
Along with these product offerings, the firm offers marketing analytics services.
Revenue Targets
Current revenue of US $60M. Grow revenue to US $100M in 12 months. Target a list of 1400 accounts divided into 3 tiers - T1, T2, and T3 (segmented as per their annual revenue).
Please scroll through the below-embedded file to see all the details or visit the original file.
Marketing Budget
Marketing budget should be divided basis the objectives that it is deployed to achieve.
Target Customers
Industry Verticals > Accounts (companies) > Prospects (Individuals)
Marketing should plan this along with sales and executive leadership to arrive at target accounts.
Other approached could be:
Start with existing customer base >> Seek similar customers.
Start with ICP >> Apply some criteria to refine the list.
Target Industry Verticals
Retail Sector
Fashion and Apparel players.
Hypermarkets and Supermarkets.
Restaurants.
Jewellery.
Services Sector
Fuel Retailers.
Hospitality.
Entertainment.
Target Geographies for these Verticals
India.
SEA - Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines & Vietnam.
EMEA - UAE, KSA & Rest of GCC (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar).
Target Prospect Accounts
Within the selected vertical and geography, the firm can then segment and target prospects basis:
Company size
Revenue size and growth rate.
Marketing platforms/technology in use.
Estimated investment in marketing technologies.
Higher need to build connected consumer experiences.
Pain points.
A hypothetical example of a target prospect account could be:
A retail firm.
Annual revenue of US $500M to US $1B.
With more than 80+ branches
Focused on fashion and apparel.
Across SEA.
Frustrated with existing or fractured low end loyalty solutions.
Actively looking for enterprise solutions.
New CMO or Loyalty Leader joined.
Suggested segmentation on the basis of annual revenue:
T1 - Firms with annual revenue of US $1B and above.
T2 - Firms with annual revenue between US $500M to US $1B.
T3 - Firms with annual revenue between US $100M to US $500M.
Target Prospect Personas
The firm should think of 4 to 5 target prospect groups within the prospect's firm:
Marketing Function - CMO, Consumer Experience Leader.
CRM and Loyalty Function - Loyalty Leaders.
Digital Transformation Leaders.
CIO / CTO.
User Managers.
Competition
Tear-apart the competitors' websites and communication. Make a live document out of it. Include the following points in the marketing tear-downs:
What are their key solutions (value props) and benefits?
What are the headlines, sub-headings; what body copy do they use?
Where do you lag or where do you stand a good chance to win?
Possible competitors:
Value Proposition
Marekters and loyalty managers can achieve thier:
Customer Acquisition Rate.
Customer Attrition Rate.
Customer Retention Rate.
Customer Wallet Share.
Gain rewards via personalised loyalty programs.
Receive benefits that truly matter to them.
Redeem or 'Earn and Burn' the points while engaging in even more purchase.
Refer and earn more via loyalty programs.
Seamlessly benefit from multi-brand loyalty programs.
Receive persoalised messages on channel that they are on.
This is just one example of a value proposition. Similar such value propositions should be outlined clearly. These then form the basis for marketing campaigns.
Click on each tab below to read the content within.
Enterprise marketers are struggling to drive frictionless loyalty experiences for multiple brands for consumers engaging across multiple channels.
Messaging
1) Use campaign brief to fine-tune the core messaging.
Example:
Create connected loyalty experiences for new world consumers. | Use personalised rewards and cross-channel presence to drive sales and referrals.
2) Keep the messaging consistent across:
Blog
Website
Sales collateral
Existing key content assets
3) Align the campaigns with the core messaging and value propositions.
Content
Content Architecture
What are the change drivers? (Global > Industry > Company X > Team > Role)
Why this category of solution? (Why should company X solve their growth problem with digitization efforts and not sales training, adding salespeople, etc.?)
Why this subcategory of solution? (Why a web application and not something else in digitisation).
Why this vendor / why you?
Deal closing messaging (driven by Sales) :
What's next - from yes to signing the contract, risk mitigation, SLAs.
Communicate trust around category, sub-category, company, offering, people via:
reference cases
interviews with the team
showing performance compared with that of competitors.
Develop battle cards, training programs, webinars, articles, white papers, and in-depth learning sessions around each of these 4 stages of customer journey.
...
Once messaging is clear, along with keyword analysis, the following blocks of content can be developed.
Pillar-Cluster content
Pillar pages include content around several primary-topics.
Cluster pages include detailed content on those sub-topics.
Pillar and cluster pages are then linked together.
Landing pages with detailed content for large-scale campaigns.
...
Create thought leadership content in the form of
White papers
Books
Re-purpose this thought-leadership content in
thousand of other avatars (blog, social media posts, videos) and distributed.
...
Organize existing content systematically
Example: separate out industry thought leadership work from "work from home" blog posts.
Customer enablement content
to drive product adoption, e.g. internal emails.
Campaign Brief
Use competitor marketing tear-downs, and value proposition design, to arrive at the campaign brief.
>> Adoption of digital technologies by a very large 'new-to-digital' audience has increased due to pandemic.
>> Along with this, the economic blow is making consumers expect more value for money and a sense of certainty from the retail companies they shop with.
>> This has given retail companies an opportunity to launch sophisticated loyalty programs across the channels wherever the consumers are present.
>> Retail brands can build connected consumer experiences using the firm's enterprise grade loyalty platform.
With similar such themes, in alignment with the core value proposition, marketing campaigns can be formulated run to generate demand.
Sales Funnel
A lead enters the funnel due to efforts on two fronts:
Outbound sales.
Marketing programs.
Leads via Outbound Sales
SDR (sales development rep) runs outbound campaigns using targeted emails, LinkedIn messages, and telecalls.
to generate leads
and qualify generated leads [ "do they fit the ILP - ideal lead profile?"]
These qualified leads are passed on to Account Executives (AEs)
to convert leads into opportunities.
and to convert opportunities into customers.
SDR-AE Lead Flow:
An outbound campaign by SDR ---> Lead generated and qualified by SDR ---> Lead assigned to AE ---> converted to an Opportunity ---> converted to a Customer.
Leads via Marketing Programs
Marketing programs -
use two sources:
Earned attention - content marketing, word-of-mouth, etc.
Bought attention - paid ads, sponsorships, etc. to generate leads.
which are qualified by MRR (market response rep) to either pass on to
an Account Executive (AE) to convert (then it goes to 'SDR - AE Lead Flow' (see above)
or worked upon by Marketing to nurture via emails to warm up for sales.
Outbound leads or marketing leads which don't get converted into customers are nurtured via 'stay-in-touch' campaigns. And whenever they show signs of 'ready-to-purchase', then they are put back into the sales funnel for AEs to re-contact (enterprise leads).
Marketing Initiatives
Four Buckets
Demand Generation: Activities to drive sales in specified timelines.
Customer Equity: Activities to make the most of acquired customers.
Branding and Awareness: Activities to drive awareness further.
Shaping Markets: Activities to make new audience receptive to mar comm.
Flywheel
Generate demand, acquire customers >> Serve acquired customers well, build and make use of customer equity to >> Create further awareness to reach a new audience >> Make use of customer equity, and awareness to shape markets to further drive demand, acquire customers.
Three Owners
These marketing objective buckets are owned by three specialists - each in product marketing, demand generation, and brand marketing.
If the team size is small, then one individual may wear multiple hats. However, this distinction is important to maintain.
Without a good 'A' set-up i.e...
product marketing (customers, competitors, value proposition, messaging)
marketing technology stacks
the core thought leadership content
...it is difficult to start with the objectives in 'B' i.e.
demand generation
customer equity
branding and awareness
shaping markets .....in that order.
This structure should sustain and accommodate a growing marketing function without causing chaos.
Channels
Here is a comprehensive list of channels for each of the four marketing objectives.
Paid For
Direct mail.
Paid ads and Retargeting: Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Native content.
Via Product / Website
SEO [includes content marketing].
On-page optimization - technical and content.
Offline optimization - content marketing.
Manual link outreach.
Automated link outreach.
Broken link outreach.
HARO.
Guest posting.
Widgets, free tools, calculators, browser plugins.
Sales Focused (Marketing's intervention required)
Outbound Sales.
Partnerships / Platform integrations.
Working with re-sellers.
Referral programs for customers.
Events:
Lunch and learn events: product demos via customers.
Webinars, virtual events.
Email Marketing:
Emails to prospects (comes under Outbound and then ties back to nurture)
Emails to webinar and newsletter registrations > Nurture > Qualify > Pass on to sales.
One Year Plan
First, drive demand generation:
Address Bottom-of-the-funnel >> Middle-of-the-funnel >> and then Top-of-the- funnel prospects.
The idea is to reach out to prospects who are actively looking out to buy solutions (i.e. bottom of the funnel) and then move up using relevant channels to reach out to middle-of-the-funnel prospects and then top-of-the-funnel prospects.
And then, set the flywheel in motion.
Demand Generation >> Customer Equity >> Brand and Awareness >> Shaping Markets >> Leading to even more demand generation.
The progressive introduction of objectives and channels
The below table outlines the progressive introduction of channels and initiatives over a 0, 3, 6, and 9 months timeline to achieve the marketing objectives. If you see new, it means that initiative and channel are added newly during that timeline.
Click on each tab below to read the content within.
Basic requirements ('A' in image above) are first to be put in place which will determine the success or failure of various marketing programs ('B' in image above).
Product Marketing
Customers - industry verticals, target accounts, prospect personas.
Competitors - ongoing tracking, marketing rip-apart, identify vantage points.
Value propositions - Fine-tune and document
Messaging - Consistent messaging across the website, sales collaterals, social channels, LinkedIn, and build campaigns around those.
Marketing stack
Make changes only upon seeing the actual lead flow and talking to users.
CRM: Salesforce.
CMS: Wordpress / Hubspot.
ABM: Demandbase.
Marketing Automation: Hubspot.
Outbound Prospecting and Contact Builder: Seamless.ai.
Email tool: Mail Chimp / via marketing automation.
Analytics: Amplitude / Segment and GA integrated.
Demand Gen: Sales Funnel, Tracking, Analytics
Lead flow.
Conversion tracking.
Daily, weekly analytics reporting. Note down metrics at the beginning of a marketing program.
Clean-up and Enrich Marketing Database
Use a contact provider to acquire the entire set of relevant contacts at target accounts. Also, link the contact provider to the CRM for an always-updated database.
Import the list into the CRM database as leads; connect leads (individuals) to accounts.
Thus get a holistic view of relevant leads (individuals) at target accounts (companies).
This is perhaps the single most important aspect which is often ignored at many firms.
Basic Content Assets
Prepare sales collaterals.
Prepare all of the case studies - preferably in video format as well.
Pillar-Cluster content around key terms and the product.
Key pieces of thought leadership content.
Work on the website.
Outbound Sales
Set up or fine-tune outbound sales team.
Match outbound efforts and marketing programs.
Set up metrics and reporting.
Mistake to avoid: Few, ill-trained SDRs generate, qualify, and then pass on leads to many, well-paid AEs. Solution: SDRs are the first point of contact with customers. Reverse the team size. More well-trained, well-paid SDRs to generate, qualify, and then pass on leads to few AEs. 1 SDR to 1 AE doesn't work always.
Hiring / Re-alignment
[ see separate header ]
[ scroll up to view content in rest of the tabs ꜛ ]
...
Account Based Marketing [ Brand Awareness + Demand Generation]
Select target accounts.
Enrich the accounts data in the Sales CRM (see 'Basecamp' for details).
Develop content to match the four stages of customer journey.
Put forth this content in front of the stakeholders at target accounts via paid ads and social posts.
IP-targeted banner ads
IP-targeted retargeting ads
Social media account-targeted/sponsored posts
Depending on the engagement with the content, engage simultaneoulsy over social - Bee swarming - multiple people from vendor visits the profile of a single stakeholder at an account.
Make use of direct mail, email and InMail
Use PR around first three aspects of content artchitecture.
Make use of customer presentations (webinars) and customer interactions (lunch-and-learns).
Weekly Tracking
Use the following chart to track details on a weekly basis. Scroll around within the embedded file to view data and graphs. All are dummy numbers. [ link to the original file. ]
Tracking metrics for Account Based Marketing:
Increased win rate.
Increased deal and client size.
Shortened the sales cycles (deal velocity).
Lower cost of marketing and sales per earned dollar.
Hiring / Re-organising
The below format can be referred to build a marketing team. In practice, existing skills and budget to be taken into consideration.
1) Product Marketing [ 1 person ]
A1: Product marketing- Competition tracking, analysis, customer analysis.B4: Shaping markets- Analyst relations, expert/influencer relations.
2) Demand Generation [ 4 people ]
A2: Marketing stack
Coder, web-developer - MarTech, On-page SEO (tech), Sales funnel, CRM, Database, Growth loops.
B1: Demand Generation
Paid ads
Lead nurturing
SEO - Off-page + On-page (content)
3) Brand Marketing Content [ 5 people ]
A3: Content and Creative
Generic content writer - deep content.
Content re-purposing - writing skills + creative
Industry analyst (agency, retail, or MarTech background)
Creative - web and print creative, video editing.
B2: Brand and Awareness
PR, social, events, digital sponsorships.
B3: Customer Equity
Drive all activities related to customers:
Drive product adoption, ensure new case-studies are built, stakeholder engagement, customer council, customer events, customer testimonials, product newsletters. [ * can take the help of content team - overlap].
Customer deal analysis.
Customer reviews on third-party review sites # [ # overlap with 'Shaping Markets']
4) Outbound Sales [10 people]
Lead (1)
SDRs (6)
AEs. (3) (one for each customer segment).
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