CMOs: Are you getting Return on Messaging (ROM)?
I saw my friend Mike Lees, CMO of Metalogix, when he visited the ExecVision office. Mike went on an epic rant on the futility of marketing messaging that he allowed me to publish here. The rest of this article is paraphrased in Mike’s voice.
“Product marketing teams spend a lot of time and money developing messaging that is then used by the BDRs/SDRs. Marketing suffers more from the conversation-as-a-black-box syndrome than any other functional area.”
To my fellow CMOs: when is the last time you listened to how sales executes the messaging you put in place?
Marketers ask themselves these questions about their messaging:
- Are my BDRs/SDRs using the messaging I gave them with prospects?
- How is the messaging standing up to battle testing? How can I measure messaging effectiveness?
- How does feedback from the BDR/SDR team reach me so that I can iterate the messaging?
Compared with the black box that messaging is now, there needs to be a marketing messaging loop that looks like this:
- Develop messaging
- Listen to determine if the sales reps are using it the right way and what’s working/not working
- Use the unfiltered voice of the customer to iterate the messaging
- Sales development uses the newer, better messaging to convert more Leads into Opportunities.
This is not ROI, it’s Return on Messaging. Marketers are not getting Return on Messaging. Most of the time their product marketing messaging just goes into a black hole.
In order for all of this to work marketers need easy access to call recordings preferably right in SFDC. Visibility is the key to Return on Messaging. Sales tends to not put the best notes in salesforce.com. And memories are fuzzy. But game film leaves no room for interpretation.”
Now I pose to you, how does your marketing team get Return on Messaging? Are they using the marketing messaging loop? How’s it working?
