integrating content marketing into key account sales, presented at gssi 2013
DESCRIPTION
2013 GSSI (Global Sales Science Institute) annual meeting, in Aalen Presentation on content marketing and key accounts. Presentation focusses on the practical role out of content marketing into a key account sales strategy.TRANSCRIPT
www.huntingdon.com
Global Sales Science Institute (GSSI) Annual
Conference
Aalan, Germany 2013
Integrating Content Marketing
into Key Account Sales
Paul Overton
www.huntingdon.com
Overview
Background and scene setting
Key accounts
Drivers for change
Implementing content marketing …
Key account personae, themes, media, type of content
Getting the content out….social media
Case study
Biggest challenges and conclusions
www.huntingdon.com
Background & scene setting
We are a B2B Contract Research Organisation
(CRO)
Located in US, Europe and Japan
1500 staff
Providing diverse range of specialist services to
the Pharmaceutical, Biotechnology, Agrochemical
and Chemicals industries
Contracts range from a single studies to complex
multi-million £ sourcing deals with key accounts
Classical consultative sell
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Background & scene setting
Global sales team aligned to business sectors
Regional Sales (Biotech sector)
Account Sales (Mid-cap & Large Pharma)
Product line sales (Specialist service specialists)
Supported by
Business services group
Marketing group
Core sales training is built around Miller Heiman
Blue Sheets, Green Sheets, Gold Sheets
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Key Accounts
Key Accounts and Global Strategic Accounts
Key Account Selection Matrix (KASM)
Accounts developed or maintained according to
segmentation
New potential customer chosen for selective
investment
3 year business plans aligned to business strategy
Approach similar to those described by Malcolm
McDonald, Beth Rogers, Neil Rackham
It’s a business relationship not a sales relationship
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Key Accounts
We talk about creating customer value
“Educating our customers”
“Thought leadership”
“Being a trusted partner”
“Joint value creation”
Our strategy focused around
Cross category, multi-level engagement
Understand business goals and business
alignment
Creating novel solutions between organisations
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Drivers for change
However…….
Account sales team increasing finding it difficult to
engage beyond the usual relationships
Meetings were harder to set-up with new B-units
Mature accounts felt they “knew us and our of
services”
New potential customers…harder to penetrate
The rise of gate-keepers to limit account mapping
and penetration
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Drivers for change Traditional marketing approaches were becoming
increasingly costly and ROI difficult to measure
Materials sent to our CRM database names
3-5% opening of marketing emails
Our marketing was in some cases creating
customer frustration or annoyance…“clutter”
Some key accounts didn’t want marketing
literature
Limited high content utilised heavily…
We were marketing to our known customer world
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Market survey of our customers
Average number of CRO related emails received
per week
158 (range 100 – 390)
Average number of phone calls a week from
CROs
26 (range 15 – 40)
Number of mailings/literature/brochures received
8 (5 – 14)
Number of CROs meetings per week
4 (range 2 – 8)
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Traditional “interruptive” marketing
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OUR NEW APPROACH…..
INTEGRATING CONTENT MARKETING
INTO SALES
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Implementing content marketing
Content marketing is permission based and
inbound …..
Awareness, familiarity and trust
Searchable, sociable, sharable
The person selects to read your content
Four dimensions
The job function (persona)
The buyer cycle (funnel)
The media (LinkedIn, Web page etc.)
Vertical market (board level, operational)
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Tracking the content
Driving new customers to content on your web-
page
Landing pages created in
Interested party gives their permission….basic
details obtained
Intelligent questions…repeat visitors more
information, different question
Score card on downloads relative to funnel, role
and volume..
SEO optimisation to support content
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Scorecard of contacts
Hot
75-100
Warm
50-74
Luke warm
10-49
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Implementing content marketing
Implementation team was created to educate and
roll out through our company
Sales, Marketing and Operational thought leaders
Ensuring that the sales and marketing language
were aligned and consistent
Explain the need for content from all roles within
the company…
First stages
Identification of persona and themes aligned to
business goals
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Key Account Personae
Economic decision maker ( Peter Procurement)
Technical decision maker (Henry Head)
Operational user buyer (Tony the Tech)
Corporate management (Vanessa VP)
Challengers/disruptors (Strategic Steve)
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Peter Procurement
“Mapped out” procurement experts within our
current database
Focus on understanding their key interests and
buzz words…”what made them tick”
Identified organisations they utilised for education,
networking, communication and content
Social networks (LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter)
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Peter Procurement
Member of CIPS
Interest in category management & supply chains
Supplier relationship management
Customer segmentation
Efficiency, risk, sustainable profit, “value
innovation”
Doesn’t want technical information/brochures
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Vanessa VP
Member of Industry working parties, Executive
Committee's etc….uses LinkedIn
Likes articles and review papers around industry
perspectives, market trends, review papers,
executive summaries
Info-graphics
Doesn’t like traditional marketing…….PA filter
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Developing themes
Workshops were held to identify key themes
Content linked to divisional objectives
aligned to our sales account strategy
allow differentiation and would engage the
customer’s interest
The initial themes were then broken down to
working parties
mandate of developing content for the different
personas
Content creation developed against buyer cycle
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Developing our themes
Two core themes initially
Therapeutically driven development
Oncology, Respiratory and Inflammation
Integrated development…
Value enriched development
Utilising internal material, external content and
meetings
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GETTING THE CONTENT OUT…
SOCIAL MEDIA
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Power of networks:
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Case study
Two of our Key Accounts have a development
portfolio around Respiratory and Inflammatory drugs
5 other potential companies identified
Content created, re-cycled, re-imaged
Different personae
Content placed
Social media groups and profiles by staff
Web-pages (our and industry reviews)
Outbound emails to CRM list
Tracked by
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Creating re-imaging and re-cycling
content
Content
Seminars
Webinars
Case Studies
Reviews and
opinion pieces
White Papers
Articles
Posters
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Biggest on-going challenges
Educating the company to the nature of content
“Not selling but educating”
Getting away from the white paper content only
approach
Team approach to sharing content
Creating content to meet the differing personae
Creating content with an “opinion”
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Tracking, measurement and follow
up
42,000 interactions with potential leads
Nearly 6000 respiratory and inflammation landing
page views in past 90 days
On average 1000 form submissions per month
(content downloads)
49% conversion on viewing page to content
downloads
Over 1400 new contacts in past 90 days
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Conclusions
Early days….Rome wasn’t built in a day
Feeding the content monster
HUBSPOT is already giving us….names,
interests and patterns on Key accounts and new
prospective customers
Loads of positive customer feedback…
Sales team…have already received numerous
leads and are better prepared for customer
engagement
Mapping of accounts greatly improved..
