Seth’s recent post titled “Senior Management” got me thinking about how experience can backfire when it gets us in a rut. As a “free agent,” I find myself on either side of the experience paradox, depending on the gig.

Some of my consulting work puts me in new and unpredictable situations where I am learning everything. Although I am not bringing as much experience to the table, I am bringing enough smarts to provide a fresh perspective, and to ask, “Why do we do it that way?”

In my marketing work, however, it can be more challenging to stay open-minded, because experience guides me by default—and my old experience can close me off to new concepts.

Contemplating this paradox reminded me of a chat Paul and I had recently about the promise and the curse of B2B marketing technology. We are inundated with amazing new tools and processes to master, with increasingly sophisticated marketing automation, CRM, web content management, email management, social media management, and analytics. It’s tempting to become a competent B2B marketing technician, while becoming distracted from the practice and objectives of marketing. (As a techie myself, I speak from experience.)

And as we all learn the same tools, we all end up doing the same things—cool things, mind you—but on a playing field leveled by the technology.

We need to step away from our computers, and start thinking like our prospects.

We need to get out into the field with Sales and meet prospects and customers. We need to know the objections Sales encounters, so we can address them in our content. We need to create content strategies around what our prospects want throughout their buying process. We need to understand our competition and our position. In other words, we need to get creative like B2C marketers do. But all this has been said before.

To get this strategic perspective and still cover all the bases, we need the technicians and the creative thinkers. Performing B2B marketing effectively requires a range of skills broader than we could have imagined decade over decade, and now year over year. The “Renaissance” marketing manager is a thing of the past; we avoid specializing—and delegating to specialists—at our peril. 

A simple but important principle of email marketing has emerged from recommendations we are developing with a client. This principle is one of those fundamental techniques that everybody knows but few put into practice. That principle is: Don’t boil the ocean. Allow each element to have one, and only one, purpose.

The purpose of the subject line of the email is not to explain all the benefits of your offer, not to describe your company’s competitive advantage, and not to cement your new tag line into the readers’ memories. The subject line does one thing: it compels recipients to open the email.

The purpose of the headline is to get readers to read the copy below it. The purpose of the copy is to compel readers to follow your call to action. The purpose of the landing page is to give readers a clear understanding of what they can expect from your offer. And so forth.

Moreover, each email should have one, and only one, call to action. Prospects will appreciate the clarity and directness of a singular idea that’s easy to understand, decide upon, and act upon.

There are dozens, maybe hundreds of articles and blog posts counting the rules of email marketing. But I think of the “One Purpose per Element” rule to be the Golden Rule, from which all the other rules follow.

In the corporate marketing departments where I've worked, a bone of contention has been, "What's the Lead Source?" For any given suspect/prospect/lead/opportunity in the funnel, what or who gets credit for bringing it in?

In the blog post, "Social CRM - "Many to One" Marketing...or is it Sales?" Scott Gillum suggests that the days of tracking the Lead Source may be coming to an end, and the roles and incentives of B2B marketers are due for a refresh. Searching for additional blog wisdom on the topic, I found Jim Lenskold's article on MarketingProfs and related report on Lead Generation ROI.

Lenskold's report contains two interesting findings that beg to be considered together. 

1. 44% of marketers surveyed simply give credit to the last marketing campaign that touches a lead before it gets passed to Sales.
2. Overwhelmingly, the most highly attributed lead sources were educational in nature: webinars, white papers. (The bar graph on this page tells the story.)

Taken together, these findings tell me that we haven't come very far. Educational campaigns target the tentative buyer, who is ready, or getting ready, to buy. Naturally, educational campaigns are highly likely to be the last campaigns to touch a lead before the buyer becomes engaged and gets passed to Sales. And, since many marketers only give credit to the final campaign, these educational campaigns get the credit, while ROI isn't measured for social media (usually an early touch) or interruptive campaigns that bring the lead into the funnel.

Another of Lenskold's conclusions is that lead nurturing is under-funded in many companies. But my hunch is that educational campaigns are lead-nurturing more often than they are lead-generative; most buyers learn about the webinars and white papers through tweets and blog posts. (Is this supposed neglect of nurturing really a matter of semantics?)

My takeaway: while marketing automation, and now Social CRM, tries to make it easier to attribute revenue to marketing campaigns, the explosion of channels for promoting the brand, i.e., social media, is making it harder.So, except for the names on purchased lists, it is not much easier to select a Lead Source for a lead than it was the first time I used Salesforce.com.

But I'm hopeful that B2B marketers will continue to get better and better tools to prove the value of their efforts. Too many great minds are working on this problem. Social CRM could provide more data on the earliest stages of the funnel. The leaders in marketing automation are adding social media functionality. As Gillum suggests, though, it probably isn't practical, especially in smaller companies, to count every social media interaction. We have to make this easy.

Want to increase your email open rate, white paper download rate, or registrations at your next speaking gig? Create a catchy title by turning the problem you solve on its head.

The contrarian approach gives readers an ironic break from the direct approach they are used to. It’s a very effective technique in marketing content strategy, and especially effective in B2B, where we’re all expected to be serious and straightforward.

I enjoyed this post by Chas Cooper, guest blogging on the Savvy B2B Marketing blog: “What Marketers Can Learn from Storytellers.” He recommends using the good guy/bad guy approach, and the cliffhanger, to surprise the reader and catch attention. The technique is great for case studies, which can get into a rut with the standby Problem-Action-Result formula.

We titled a white paper for demand generator PointClear: “Why Your Salesforce Needs Fewer Leads.” This title turned heads, and increased the open rate on the email campaign. And today, I received an email leading to HubSpot’s blog post, “7 Reasons Social Media is Bad for Marketing.” The post really is about seven bad practices. There is something compelling about the dark side.

The largest pool of a B2B’s prospects is made up of people who are unaware of the solution to their problem. Surprising, storytelling content grabs their attention, and raises questions that the unaware buyers need to be asking.

Last week I met a B2B solopreneur who performs visual facilitation. She leads meetings and synthesizes group-think by illustrating discussions on a large mural, in real time. Julie's recent blog post is a perfect case study for B2B personas.

Julie describes the conundrum we all face, as marketers, to write with clarity and purpose while appealing to a diverse audience with multiple interests. But there's the wrinkle: that compelling temptation to satisfy as many people as possible in one stroke of the pen. That temptation makes writing weak.

A colleague asked me yesterday, "If we don't put all the business offerings on the home page of the web site, what about the people who might want any one of those services? Won't they pass us by?"

The answer is "yes." And that's what we want.

As Julie discovered, despite our temptations to appeal to the masses, we really only want one client--the client who gets our business, who sees the value in it (or has the aptitude to see it), and who will be a pleasure to do business with.

Julie doesn't want 10 clients asking for 10 offerings. She wants to clone the one client--her favorite client--with whom she really shines. That client is her persona. And now, Julie is writing to her, for her, as if that client were her only reader. (And the number of comments on her blog spiked on that post, incidentally.)

Are you listening, my reader?

Bonus track: this classic scene from the movie "City Slickers." One thing, just one thing.

The title of this blog post by Dianna Huff caught my attention: "DIY Marketing No Longer Cuts the Mustard." (DIY=do it yourself.) She makes a convincing case that the tools and techniques of marketing, like the computer-enhanced motors of cars, are no longer the domain of the shade tree mechanic. Marketing, done right, requires specialized skills.

Huff's article is aimed at "B2B mom and pop manufacturers;" small companies where owners and employees wear many hats, including marketing. Of course, larger B2B companies hire professionals who have the specialized skills that today's marketing tactics require. (Paul describes just a subset of those skills in this post.)

Or do they? I think the DIY temptation persists, even in larger companies.

Even when amazing skills are in-house, there's a fine line between doing it right and DIY. That's the line where outsourcing a task would have positive ROI. And finding that line can be tricky, for two reasons.

First, the tools for marketing are so easy to use--but so difficult to use well. Such is the blessing and the curse of web user interface. Google Analytics is a prime example. Even I can log in and see fascinating statistics and graphs. Even I could compose an impressive looking report of current usage. But do I know how to spot negative trends, or make recommendations on complex sites? Would I want to be in charge of analytics for a $100K campaign? No way--that's clear. Somewhere in the middle of these extremes, I'd be tempted to DIY when I shouldn't. And most executives supervising me would be happy to save the budget dollars by stretching my skills perhaps a bit too far.

Second, there's the objective point of view. Whether the effort is as strategic as a new brand design, or as tactical as developing SEO keywords, it is crucial to take the perspective of an outsider looking in. Even the most tenured marketing employees--in fact, especially the most tenured marketing employees--can only have an insider's perspective. They need outside guidance to do this work right. DIY does not cut the mustard.

I tell clients that marketing is a little bit like law and brain surgery: it's really difficult to do it well for yourself. Only an outsider can offer the most difficult, but valuable truths. Is the web site reaching the right audience? Is the content compelling? When you are the seller, it's difficult, sometimes impossible to think like the buyer--and this is what the marketing professional must do.
 

Every B2B marketer I talk to is on board with the concept of user personas to guide their web content strategy. Now our team is working with several clients to really drive this concept home, and apply personas more aggressively to the content they are creating. The results are paying off in content that truly speaks to the buyer.

What are personas, exactly? Personas are detailed profiles of your target buyers as human beings. Personas go much, much deeper than the usual B2B rundown of the target market--beyond industry, company size, and job title, to a personal profile like this:

"Richard is in his early forties and married.  He arrives at the office at 8:25 every morning after dropping the kids off at middle school. He drives a silver 2008 BMW 535d. He has been with the bank for thirteen years, starting in branch technology support. Richard is a stickler about details and accuracy. He counts his change from Starbucks. He frequently corrects other people's facts. His desk is clear every night before he goes home. He's the guy you want working on network security." That's just a start.

Web copy that generates leads starts with understanding the psychographics of the buyer: lifestyle, interests, and personality. With a psychographic persona like this one, we can set a tone for Richard by leading with statistics, citing sources, demonstrating attention to detail, and appealing to his risk-averse nature. The copy we write to reach Richard will be very different from the copy for Amanda, in her late twenties, in a relationship, bikes to work, and blogs about local theater--even though Richard and Amanda are part of the same biuying cycle.

Specificity like this is the key to a useful persona, because it allows us to write with emotion. Ardath Albee recently blogged, "Is Your B2B Marketing Content a Filter or a Vortex?" making a great case for specificity, stating: "If we get better at designing content to attract leads who are both a cultural and a buyer fit, then we save time sifting through the shale to find the gold." By selling that cultural fit, our content helps a tentative buyer to relate comfortably to the message, and an engaged buyer validate their decision. Then buyers can interact, self-select, and feel comfortable doing business with a company that understands their perspective.

Companies don't buy, people do, even in B2B. B2B buying decisions are based just as much on emotion as B2C. So while your competitors are reticent to waver from a business-like tone, gain an edge by digging a level deeper, getting specific, and aiming for that cultural fit.

Whether your copy grabs your buyer by the heart, by the throat, or by the wallet, they will feel connected--and one step closer to being your customer.

I'm enjoying Steve Woods's post today on Digital Body Language, on the ways Marketing departments can and should be "doing" social media. I want to take a deeper dive on a few of Steve's points, because they speak to my own experience as a Marketing Manager, and they conveniently tie in with our recent new white paper, How to Create a Content Strategy for B2B Nurturing Campaigns.

Steve describes the reasons that the Marketing people and the Social Media people are, well, separate people in most organizations: in short, because Marketing thinks in terms of lightning-strike campaigns, and Social Media requires a slow steady drip of content originated from subject-matter experts. My own experience, because of the very things Steve describes, is that Marketing as we know it and Social Media require two entirely different personalities.

• Crusaders: The term "marketing campaign," not coincidentally, ties it to major efforts of politics and war. The most successful marketing campaigns I've been involved with were led by charismatic project leaders. They were kicked-off at the beginning, and celebrated with champagne at the end. At their best, they were more than campaigns, they were crusades. They even had names.
• Shepherds: Managing social media requires constant watchfulness, vigilance, and even the herding of subject-matter experts and the content they produce. If I may mix metaphors, the notions of "herding cats" and "time to make the doughnuts" apply here. There might be a kick-off to a social media campaign, but there is no cause for champagne if they end (die).

Despite this stark difference in personalities, the Crusaders and the Shepherds can get more done when they come together, as Steve's recommendations suggest:

• Crusaders like to launch ads. Advertise the content the Shepherds are rolling out.
• Shepherds create a steady stream of content. Launch Crusades for that content, too.
• Engage the subject-matter experts that the Shephers have herded; bring them into the Crusades, too.
• Use the search budget not just to herd traffic to the blog, but to crusade for the marketing campaigns as well. (This one might seem obvious, but I suspect that the divide between Shepherds and Crusaders prevents it from happening as much as it should.)

At the end of the day, the Crusaders (for all their swagger) can take an important lesson from the Shepherds, and this lesson is discussed in the white paper: it's really all about the buyer, not the Crusade itself. Buyers don't care about the project, the kick-off, and all the hoopla around a marketing campaign. They have their own problems to solve--and they are solving them by having an ongoing conversation with the Shepherds.

So if Crusaders want to reach buyers (and aren't Crusaders the ones counting leads?) don't they need the Shepherds? I'm interested to hear stories of successful ways the two personalities come together.

I'm frequently approached by writers looking for work, and the first thing they want me to see is a sample of their writing. In ten seconds, I can tell whether a writer can put a decent paragraph together. But writing is only the first of many skills needed to produce content for an enterprise.

Some of these additional skills sound "soft," but there would be hard consequences to building a large body of content without them.

• Research and interviewing: Web content writers are usually responsible for gathering the raw information from which they write, from interviews with subject-matter experts (each of whom has their own style of communicating), previously written material, and the web.
   
• Project management and workflow: Content writers require an understanding, and respect for, the approval and review process. In one large project, we have 5 writers on our team, who are working with 25 people on the client side: subject-matter experts, reviewers, marketing managers and other stakeholders. Our writers are managing a project plan of interviews, reviews, and intermediate milestones.
   
• Version control and reviews: The number of documents in a large project, multiplied by the number of versions that go back and forth, is daunting. We use Basecamp to manage the review process and version control; Basecamp also provides a portal for our clients.
• Content management systems: The tools of the writer have evolved--not just from pen to typewriter to computer, but to Word, WordPress, Drupal, and a variety of other content management systems. Writers must be adept with these tools--and be ready to lear new ones, since there are so many.
   
• Brand management: Although a project requires multiple writers to complete on schedule, the body of work represents our client's single voice.Our writers must understand how brand extends into the copy they write. They use and contribute to style sheets when the project requires it. And they collaborate with each other to achieve a common voice.
   
• Search engine optimization: This topic is already exhausted, but suffice it to say that although content management systems automate many SEO basics, real SEO skills are required to optimize web content.

All these skills require an attention to detail that we do not take for granted on our team.  We're fortunate to have process-oriented writers with broad experience who understand enterprise content management: how these projects work, and how to work them.

Last week’s AdAge poll posed a fascinating question:

As someone employed in marketing, advertising or public relations, would you work on the BP account in a professional capacity at this point?

The consensus leaned slightly toward “Yes,” 46% to 42%, with 13% responding, “It depends on how much I’d be paid.” But many of those who left comments on the poll’s web page would take on the challenge gladly. Here’s a sample:

The question is not whether an ad agency can turn public opinion in BP's favor, it's whether you can ever tell a compelling enough story about the response to make it OK in enough consumers' minds to fill their tanks at a BP station. If BP allowed me to do an HONEST campaign? Yes, I'd take it on in a heartbeat. It'd be one helluva ride. [PowerFliteGuy]

The commenters who say they would take on the challenge would do so if they have access to management—and management was ready to take their advice. Armed with that, the creative possibilities for transforming the brand are enticing to these professionals.

Last week, Paul tweeted a MarketingProfs article about a study saying that PR, not marketing, is gaining control of social media, because PR is accustomed to communicating through dialogue, not monologue—dialogue being more suited to social media.

Sounds like the dialogue must not only be between the company and its public, but also be between the communications professionals and their management—especially when the brand needs rescuing, and the message is the hardest to communicate.