Lessons from the ski slopes that can help your Marketing Cloud journey
By Kate Hertler and Abe Rafle
Too often, organizations have Double Black Diamond expectations for their Marketing Cloud but only plan for Green Circle use-cases. The solution? Preparation — and practice.
If you are unfamiliar with the sport of skiing, mountain resorts in North America use a system of shapes and colors to indicate the relative level of difficulty for each marked trail. Trails range from Green Circle trails, which are designed for beginners, to Double Black Diamond trails, whose terrain would be steep and even dangerous for all but the most expert riders.
The system not only warns of the dangers a rider can expect after starting down the trail. It serves as a guide for the progression of abilities a rider will gain over time through practice and instruction.
Beginning skiers shouldn’t expect to be successful if they jump ahead to a Double Black Diamond, experts-only slope; they must learn the basics first and take time to practice, develop, and fine-tune their abilities.
Now, you’re probably wondering why we’re talking about skiing on a customer-focused blog. The answer is that skiing is a great metaphor for something that frequently happens with marketing efforts: Too often, organizations have Double Black Diamond expectations but only plan and prepare for Green Circle use-cases.
Let’s back up a little bit and explain. Recently, we returned from Dreamforce, which was packed with exciting updates that would attract any marketer — from the new Einstein Voice capabilities, to the latest account-based marketing (“ABM”) best practices, to Salesforce’s new customer data platform (“CDP”) solution, Customer 360, a highly anticipated product to help companies better manage and unify the information of their customers.
Spending so much time thinking about what is “best-in-class” prompted us to think about the organizations who are not yet experiencing the same level of success — companies that have made an investment with aspirations of being best-in-class, but never made it past the basic use-cases. We started to ask, “Why?”
How does this all apply to why some Salesforce customers are not having the success they initially set out to achieve? Most organizations that make the investment in Salesforce Marketing Cloud or Pardot do so with the intention to create measurable results. More specifically, they seek to drive organic revenue growth by better understanding their customers and delivering valuable engagement to meet known and unknown needs, capture additional share of wallet, maximize lifetime value, and, in the case of B2B, grow the top of the sales pipeline with new, qualified leads.
To fully achieve these objectives, however, organizations often need to execute the best-in-class use-cases. Unfortunately, this leads to those Double Black Diamond expectations when you’ve only planned and prepared for Green Circle use-cases.
How does this happen? When an organization is getting started on their Marketing Cloud journey, they will typically start out on the right path. They purchase their lift ticket and rent equipment (the Marketing Cloud licenses) and hire an instructor (implementation partner) for their first day on the mountain and they have a great time. At the end of the first day, they can confidently ride the lift and make it down a Green Circle trail without falling. They have set up Marketing Cloud, established a few integrations, are sending emails from Email Studio, and have a few forms to capture new leads for a basic nurture campaign.
These organizations might capture some value with these “getting started” use-cases, just as a person new to skiing might have fun as they get comfortable on beginner trails. They might even have some limited success in advancing to a few Blue Square trails without further instruction. However, eventually, progression may plateau without investing in additional lessons and time on the mountain. Getting past those beginner stages requires time, practice, and resources to support growth.
Keep in mind that Salesforce represents a significant investment for most organizations. So, unlike private individuals testing out a new would-be hobby, leaders can’t afford to look at their investment as “having fun while trying something new.” It’s easy to understand why marketers and organizations can be hesitant to ask for additional investments upfront to develop skills and enable more advanced use-cases.
If your organization wants to achieve the end result of top-line growth, you need to plan for investment beyond the first day on the mountain — you need to plan for that entire “season” of resources, support, and practice. Licenses, services, and partners for the Green Circle use-cases alone can be expensive, but the entire investment may be wasted if you aren’t planning for other factors beyond the licenses and initial implementation.
Before you head on to the metaphoric mountain (or step foot in the ski lodge), marketers should plan for a longer-term investment by considering the following three objectives around your customers, your content, and your teams:
1. Invest in resources and planning focused on reaching new audiences and incentivizing them to share their contact and other information
You need to understand where your target audiences are coming from — whether through digital marketing tactics, organic or paid search, or from other sources to drive them to your website or other digital assets. Once they’re on your website, how are you incentivizing them to share their information? If you aren’t capturing new contact information, you will at best only achieve growth through cross-sell, up-sell, and retention. And, buying lists of contact information should not be the answer.
- First, understand what your target audience looks like, then make investments to reach populations of people that look like this target audience with something compelling enough to direct them to your digital assets (i.e., website). We recommend looking at your current customers and contacts as a great place to start when trying to understand your target audience.
- After you’ve started to drive traffic to your website, you need to then incentivize the individuals to share information. For most B2B use-cases, the incentive manifests as a form you fill out to gain access to a whitepaper or register for a webinar.
- Simply using “Interested? Contact us!” is no longer a compelling enough reason for people to provide their information. Organizations must exchange perspectives, research, and unique insights that customers want in order to get their data in return.
2. Decide which measurements matter the most for your digital marketing and content efforts — and lean in
There are many measures you can use to evaluate the effectiveness of your campaigns, such as views, time on site, webinar attendance, and actions taken. Determine which are the most important for your organization and, once you have them in place, measure them and continue to refine and learn from the results.
This sounds simple, but can be extremely difficult if you don’t prioritize what’s most important to measure. Here are some additional questions to help narrow your focus:
- Look at the solutions or products you’re trying to bring to market. How are your audiences interacting with the content around them? Are they engaging with some tactics more than others?
- Which companies are visiting your website the most? How are you integrating these insights into your ABM strategy?
- Are individuals within the same organization looking at and engaging with similar topics on your site? The majority of B2B buyers make purchasing decisions in groups.
3. Make sure the right partnerships with other teams like sales, product, and R&D are set up for success
Building an efficient marketing function is not solely the responsibility of marketers. Research and Development teams can be valuable contributors to your content strategy as they often have a wealth of product collateral and sharable insights that can be integrated into your campaigns and messages. Your Product teams need to remain aligned on the marketable features of your offerings. And your sales teams should be aligned on accounts and segments they are prioritizing as well as being a valuable contributor to the feedback loop of what resonates with the changing demands of your customers.
You’ll need input from all these teams, but in return you will need to be proactive and transparent with the insights you’re learning:
- Share your KPIs with teams you’re partnering with to create shared ownership and support — for example, if one of your KPIs is increasing meetings with net new customers, what is a realistic number that will support your sales team? Agree upon shared, appropriate goals between each team.
- Arm your sales team with insights around where they have the greatest chance to pursue a lead and what messaging might be the most compelling door-opener based on the KPIs you’ve established. For example, is a certain whitepaper resonating well with a specific industry? Share that with your teams and give them the insight to use in their pursuits.
Remember that marketers are not intended to sell for other groups or teams but rather create compelling campaigns and content to attract audiences, nurture relationships at scale, and generate insights that can be handed off to their sales teams for direct engagement with customers at the right time.
The exact path of your marketing journey will shift as you drive towards your desired outcomes. Remember what needs to be planned for at the start — before you get to the “ski lodge,” rent your equipment, and buy your lift ticket for the first time. Consider the totality of what’s needed for the season ahead of you and commit up front. Otherwise, you’ll miss the measurable outcomes that you’re aiming for — your Double Black Diamond goals — with Green Circle preparation.
Slalom Customer Insight is created by industry leaders and practitioners from Slalom, a modern consulting firm focused on strategy, technology, and business transformation.
