We used to control the information flow, messages, channels to our target customers – at Cisco, we got very good at inside out marketing…But the landscape is changing - Two major forces, 1, the increasingly empowered buyer with direct access to trusted information from sources besides ourselves – marketeers, (this is the demand side, the challenge), but we also have a supply side to this equation… marketing technology to help us meet this challenge. These are driving a real shift in what marketing is effective – towards customer-focused inbound marketing.Stats outbound marketing $400/lead; inbound $x/lead; 70% of all leads will be inbound by 2015
So starting with the customer in the center is a critical foundation; and coalescing your relevance to this customer via one core idea that integrates across your messages and channels – is a holy grail that we at Cisco have been working towards. Remember the 9 different key markets that we play in… I’ll come back to that later…This new era of B2B marketing is such a rich and exciting space – but today, I want to focus on 3 elements that take us from today to tomorrow… and the common foundation is improving the value exchange with customers/prospectsInbound digitalSocialInsight-based automation
So back to One Core Idea – for those who know Cisco, you will know that our culture is one of innovation and empowerment to the extreme… so with a broad portfolio, the one core idea remains a holy grail, but in the last 6-12 months, we have managed in Greater China to drive One Integrated Cloud Campaign – massive market transition, aligned to customer careabouts and very relevant to our portfolio and sales. I’ll come back to this campaign several times to illustrate the transition we’ve made, lessons learnt and the results we are seeing adopting this new approach to marketing.
As the ROI from traditional outbound tactics have declined, the first major area ripe for transformation was our owned Cisco.com website. We’ve been on a journey moving from a online information repository to a website that is designed to engage and entice customer interaction. In the last 12 months, we’ve really put a focus on this in China.
Many of the new activities on the left are about better delivering value to the customer/audience; matching the content and offer to our understanding of the audience even if somewhat limitedSince this was new to us, started with a slow ramp in investment – continually adjusted and learnt. Daily / weekly reviews and changes. Change management, people learning to inter-work with each other. Lead by example.360% increase in leads valuePaid search still an area we are trying to improve.Listen to understand trending / hot topics of interest – what topics related to Cloud?Promote relevant content on website / landing pagesOptimize inbound channels and landing experience
Marketing strategy – rooted in fundamental business strategy and key differentiators / capabilities; Social media often can be used as a disruptive marketing tool; but for Cisco, we understand that our long history as leaders in networking puts us at the center of key market transitions like Cloud, BYOD, etc – and we need to leverage our networking strength and expertise as a key differentiator – we built our Social Ambassador program to connect our experts to our customers directly. With no disrespect to our call center agents, it’s an entirely different experience. competitive differentiation.Enablement for ambassadors and everyone else.Customer intimacy is also one of Cisco’s key strategic strengths – social listening really adds a dimension and channel and aggregation/analysis that complements what sales face to face interactions can achieve.APJC: behind the model is a deep belief in the value of social engagement. Personally I started doing web 2.0 and social in 2005.
Listening to match content to market maturity, and ultimately individual customersSeekingLots of netizens doesn’t know about Cloud, they seek for someone as expert can give the definition or learning materials of this new concept: What’s the cloud? What the usage of Cloud in our life? How dose it work.Strategic developmentCloud will be the hard-fought market for many IT industry leaders, lots of media accounts paid attention to market trend and forward related news evoked hot discussion online. E.G.:At Microsoft Corp.’s BUILD conference, Microsoft showcased the developer opportunity with continuous services, including focus on back-end Cloud, such as Windows Azure cloud service, Windows Server 8 etc.Cloud ApplicationMore and more netizens did not only want to know about what the definition of Cloud, they began to pay attention to different Cloud application in various of area by IT enterprises, such as Cloud desktop, Cloud storage etc.Information securityCloud computing solution will be chosen by lots of enterprises in the future, many industry insiders joined in the discussion of how to provide the true and reliable solution especially on protecting the information security of enterprise was the most important point IT providers should know.
Integrated Campaign across traditional and new marketing tactics – customers still love face-to-face events with well designed agendas, and experts to interact with.
20K to 100K followers of official accountsTP story
Could marketing have achieved these results alone? Absolutely not… our role was in orchestrating the engagements between our best and brightest with our empowered buyers / target audience who are reaching out and hungry for information / knowledge / insight in the area of Cloud.
Did we reach nirvana or insight-based automation… sadly no… this is slideware only…Ingredients we’re still working on…PeopleCustomer data / analyticsRelevant content / offersRecapEmpowered Buyer – inbound; but also once they’ve leaned forward, sensing their interests, where they are in buying cycle, etc and responding in real-time is just as important. It makes our buyers feel like they are in the driver’s seat, gathering relevant trusted information for their buying decisions, while we marketers take back a bit of control as we respond in real-time with relevant and compelling communications and offers based on our progressively deeper understanding of the buyer.This journey is just beginning but things are moving fast. Let’s look to a B2C example for insight based automation.
So where are we going next? I’ll spend a few minutes on a rapid fire look forward at the mountain we’re climbing at Cisco marketing. Give credit to Scott Sorokin, Chief Digital Officer at Mindshare for these slides and future directions
Concerted effort to move from our prospects from “unknown” to “known” – from geo targeting, domain name lookups, behavioral targeting, cookie retargeting, etc – we plan to tailor and target our communications even if we don’t have identity. But always with objective of an exchange of value that will eventually get us from anonymous cookies and social ids, to profiled individuals connected the rich insights across channels.Moving from an unknown (MASS) to a known view of the consumer dramatically changing the relevance of brand Real time consumer interactions will pour petrol on the fire of “machine learning” AND leave an observerable, trackable exhaust trail of behavior and attitudes. Now we will observe, collect and curate these experiences and attitudes. Only syncing her across many channels, can we really know who this is person isYou need to know consumers at that level to start driving the conversation with them..it will be an exchange for values moving forward
From targeted outbound archery, to ping pong - a game where sometimes we serve and sometimes they (customers) serve. Engaging in social and other methods of peer-to-peer interaction will continue to increase in importance. A world of complex and every changing brand and consumer engagement.The impact of data of owned media is significant. The site side analytics available from Omniture and others provides rapid interpretation of site performance. How are people arriving? What actions are they taking when they arrive? What was the reason why they abandoned? What transactions occurred as the result of which stimuli on an individual event and lifetime basis? What do we need to do better?
Unknown to known – constant curiosity to know more and readiness to respondTechnology and analytics – this is a powerful force and those who master it will see orders of magnitude performance edge over their counterparts who don’t. CMOs will spend more on technology than CIOs in a few years…Finally back to where we started, we have to accept and embrace a world where customers are in control, and play an interactive game of value exchange.