In my previous blog post, I discussed the ongoing conversation in marketing circles about having a “seat” at the senior management table. To achieve that goal, my recommendation was to grab and “own” a seat at the company’s “revenue table.” Needless to say, that is where all the action really is.
The best way to establish a firm hold on that seat is to attack the entire revenue process through a Revenue Performance Management (RPM) strategy. I noted last week that by adopting RPM, marketers (together with their sales counterparts) would create a powerful new revenue engine that demonstrably is more agile, more social, more connected, and more intelligent.
Since I discussed agility in my previous post, this week I will highlight the importance of being “more social” in your revenue generating efforts. In fact, the social dimension to marketing – and to the entire revenue process – cannot be over-emphasized in the rapidly changing new world of B2B marketing.
As I have discussed previously on this blog, social media is a historic game changer in business. This is especially true for the marketing department. To truly own that revenue table seat, today’s agile CMO needs to integrate social strategies and tactics into virtually every initiative.
It’s a Content-Driven Business World
The business world is more content-driven than ever. As a marketer, you are constantly thinking about what is your message, what is the compelling content you’re going to produce, and how are you going to get in front of the right audiences. You also need to track those messages and understand exactly how they are reaching (or not) your intended audiences.
Being more social means having the right tools and processes to effectively and automatically share content in and across social channels. It also involves the ability to look inside what people are doing on major social sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, so you can understand what “brand advocates” are saying and doing. This greater visibility then enables you to establish a “scoring” system for those advocates as possible leads for the sales team.
To accomplish all of this, marketers are using sophisticated social analytics tools to help them understand in the social realm who’s talking, who’s influencing, and where the conversation is leading. Ultimately, who are the people in the social world that are going to make the biggest difference for your company and brand?
Marketing at the Speed of the Social Web
Marketo and others have developed powerful new tools that provide social response functionality that operates at the speed of the social web. Through these new solutions, marketers are able to listen to and monitor social behavior, which then triggers the next marketing event.
For example, if somebody interacts with your brand on Facebook, you might want to trigger an email or text message to them that follows up on that engagement in a relevant and appropriate way. Interactions like that can be automated, tracked, and measured by today’s advanced marketing automation tools.
Being more social – and more agile – helps marketers to stay on top of what their prospects are saying and asking across the broad range of social channels, from blogs and social networking sites, to communities of interest. The key is to be able to move quickly and decisively in responding to these social interactions, and provide information and support when, where, and how prospective customers want it.
The entire focus of Revenue Performance Management is to empower marketers, sales executives, and the entire senior management team (because who isn’t concerned with revenue at the corporation?) to create outsized revenue results. RPM helps companies get there more predictably, more consistently, and faster.
Next week, we’ll look at how another RPM by-product – being more connected – also plays a vital role in driving breakout revenue performance.
