Velocity Marketing Evolution - How to Achieve Extreme Marketing Breakthrough, Pipeline Velocity and ROI

Today's buyer is information overloaded, bandwidth constrained and fiercely independent.  A recent survey by the Corporate Executive Board reported that 57% of the new B2B sales cycle is DONE before the buyer's first formal contact to the selected vendor.  Understanding that simple fact requires a radical rethink of go to market strategies and tactics across sales and marketing.  I call this new approach, "Velocity Marketing".   Those who adopt Velocity Marketing approaches can see dramatic increases in Marketing ROI and significant compression of sales pipelines.  This drops real dollars into the bottom line.

Figure 1, The Three Stages of Velocity Marketing Achievement

There are 3 stages to moving to Velocity Marketing, depicted in Figure 1. In my experience, 90% of organizations are mucked and mired in the Status Quo stage, slugging out a content marketing battle based on features and benefits.   This is shown in Figure 2.  Viewpoint is diverged from the customer, Value is the usual and Velocity is low.

Figure 2: Stagnant, Content and Benefit Centric Marketing

In order to get to the next level of Impact, we must get our Viewpoint and Value aligned with our buyer's view of the world.  We must create a Viewpoint that converges on the biggest business changes impacting our customer and the most disruptive response that our solution delivers in response to those changes.  (Read more about Viewpoint here) Once we do that, we can then go on to articulating unique Value that is differentiated, meaningful and aligned with our Viewpoint.    This state of Viewpoint and Value alignment get us to the Impact stage, driving significant effectiveness and efficiency in our in market communications, creating ROI and reducing sales cycles.  (Read about Value and tilting the playing field with Viewpoint here) This is seen graphically in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Converged Viewpoint and Unique Value Creates Impact, The First Step to Breakthrough

However, if we can then drive to higher levels of Engagement and Experience as discussed here, we can move our marketing execution from low to high Velocity, we create Breakthrough as shown in Figure 4.  (Read more about Engagement, Experience and Velocity here.) Breakthrough Marketing can be seen when we have high levels of unique and compelling value communicated in high velocity, engaging and experiential ways. 

Figure 4: Increasing Velocity with Engagement and Experience Creates Breakthrough

Where are you on the Velocity Marketing Evolution?  

Delivering Breakthrough Marketing: Viewpoint, Value and Velocity

Most CEOs I talk to have a jaded, if not skeptical view of marketing.  While they recognize the importance of marketing to their long term success, they have a hard time understanding and measuring how well marketing is doing.  And while more mature organizations have a good handle on very well tuned marketing metrics and measurement, the question is still always out there.  With the advance in marketing automation, new channels of communication, and the avalanche of marketing data now available, marketing has evolved, in many CEOs view, from a black art, to a black science.


Hidden behind the dashboards and metrics lies a more fundamental problem.  In today's hyper competitive, global, instantaneous market, where buyers and consumers have nearly unlimited access to information and each other, the fight for attention and share has become a treadmill of constantly faster speed.  With the proliferation of social media, and competivite solutions in even the most specialized market segment, we need a new Breakthrough marketing formula to feed the machine.


Simply put, we need a new model for getting noticed and getting bought.  To achieve the highest breakthrough possible, we need to get great at Viewpoint, Value and Velocity. We need to move to Converged Viewpoint, Unique Value and High Velocity.

Viewpoint, Value and Velocity Converge to deliver breakthrough

Let's look briefly at each of these elements, what they are, and why they are needed.


Viewpoint
Viewpoint is a framing of the market in the context of your uniqueness.  The uniqueness of your team, your capabilities, and your vision.  Some call viewpoint thought leadership, some vision with a capital V, and some brand. 


Why is Viewpoint critical? Without a doubt, we live in a world of data and information overload. But often overlooked is the aspect of information over-availability.  As anyone who use Google knows, the challenge is not in finding an answer or result, but it is in finding the right or most helpful one.   What does this mean for marketers?  Let's take a look at one small experiment.  In November of 2011, KJR Associates examined a sampling of companies from the Andreeson Horowitz venture portfolio; Here's a screen grab of that set:

We then examined the websites of each company and determined its "market category":
Finally, we did a Google search using the a quoted market category name and looked at the quantity of search results returned.  This is displayed here:

Market Categories

Google Search Result for Specific Results

So, as is clear from above, and totally consistent with our intuition, it's a CROWDED marketplace for products and ideas.  Even in very niches market segments, we have hundreds of thousands of results returned.  The ONLY way to be noticed in this market is to provide something different, a UNIQUE and RELEVANT viewpoint. 

In order to define Viewpoint providers must tap into the macro trends that impact their customers, as well as the discontinuity they offer to meet these trends.  In my related post on Viewpoint, I walk through an example of this process.


Value
So while Viewpoint is critical to getting noticed, Value is critical to getting into the buyers shortlist.  Simply put, Value is defined as the intersection between your unique capabilities express as business benefits,  your customer needs, and the missing capabilities of your key competitors.   This is shown with a simple sketch:

This unique Value is then articulated in forms such as competitive positioning statements, messaging, market segmentations and product feature benefit charts.    Then when combined with Viewpoint, I can tilt the market in my favor.  This process is further discussed here.

Velocity
With ViewPoint articulated and Value defined, the last piece of the puzzle is to deliver high velocity programs, those that deliver high quality leads across the buying lifecycle.  Marketing Velocity = DE**2, or simply put:  

Velocity = Delivery X Engagement X Experience

High velocity marketing is strong on message, meaning it effectively and creatively communicates Value within a powerful market Viewpoint.  High velocity marketing uses appropriate Delivery channels and investments that meet buyers whereever and whenever they are in the buying lifecycle. More and more so, this is about delivering compelling experiences, as I have blogged about extensively.  Lastly, high velocity marketing is fueled by high levels of interactivity and engagement.  Gone are the days of depending solely on complex whitepapers to explain solutions.   Vehicles like live demos, interactive assessments, and engaging video case studies are now a must. Velocity is further explored in this post.