I was just reading on Seth Godin’s blog this short post on ‘Degrees of freedom‘. The line that caught me was this idea that marketing has more freedom than any other function within an organization. We are successful only when we understand and embrace this to have an impact. The ‘options’ for marketers, as Seth states, should never be constricted to just A and B. But that is so often what we do. A/B test anyone?

What Comes After B?

You are building a campaign and integrate an A/B testing component. You hit ‘go’, look at the results and pick the frontrunner. Is that what you go with or do you decide to test B against C. Seth’s right – the options for marketers are endless. Yet, we don’t consider it that way. We test one something against another and pick the best option so we can ship it. We dont see an option C since that is not what we are trained to do. It’s A or it’s B.

Set aside the testing piece for a moment and take into context the different ways this may be applied. You could send an email or send direct mail. There’s your A/B. But you could also send InMail or targeted display ads or run a call campaign. Again, it’s A or it’s B. When we go beyond that, it gets complex, the conversation is harder to understand and the strategy is wavy at times.

Embrace the Freedom

I currently employ an 80:20 rule when it comes to budget spend. 80% is spent on tried and true campaigns and 20% is free to be used on whatever we want to test out in that time period. As a marketer, you are never going to be limited by your options, your freedom to think of things differently and go out on a limb. You are going to be limited by the restrictions you place on yourself to stick to A/B methodology. Dare to ask what the impact of C may be or D or E or even Y?

I have to admit I’m a bit nervous. Over the last couple months I have been interviewing with companies to pursue opportunities (am sure you heard by now my company was acquired by Oracle and I am just not a fan of large corporate environments) and had the great pleasure of meeting all types of really smart people creating awesome technologies. But I started to notice something. A common denominator, if you will, that made me wonder if I would even find something that would be a good fit for me. Why? Because of this misnomer about ‘inbound marketing’.

What is Inbound Marketing?

The answer depends on who you ask. Some may claim that inbound marketing has to do with creating content, SEO and social media. May otherwise be referred to as organic or ‘free’ lead generation. Companies seriously think they can build a strategy around these things and nothing else. I know, I know, it’s been proven. Marcus Sheridan has a great case study on this one but I would hesitate to suggest it works for anyone and every company.

If you were to ask me to define inbound marketing, I would answer with something along the lines of this: marketing efforts that result in inbound traffic and leads to your company to reach corporate objectives. Im trying not to sound too gobbledygooky here with that one so let me try and sum it up better. It’s everything you need to do to build your database and expand your reach. This absolutely includes PR, social media, SEO but it also includes paid search, paid media, sponsored webinars and even events.

‘Free’ Marketing is Not a Strategy

If you have no budget and struggle to gain buy-in for paid media, you often resort to the free stuff. I’ve been there and done that and yes, I even got results. But..I got even better results and more volume and more pipeline revenues when I combined those organic inbound leads with paid media. For one thing, a major difference is the quality and the control. With paid media, you can decide what types of audience interact with your brand. You can match your target audience to better align your content and pull in better leads. And that means they score higher and faster and get to your sales team quicker. Sounds good to me.

Let’s not coin the term ‘inbound marketing’ as the free stuff marketers! Let’s decide this is all programs related to inbound activities – paid or not.

What do you think? Am I right or completely off on this one?

I just finished reading ‘Marketing in the Round’ by Gini Dietrich & Geoff Livingston and I just want to say first and foremost that this book was really a pleasure to read. It flowed seamlessly and I didn’t feel like I was reading a ‘business book’. The last time that happened for me was when I read ‘Content Rules’ on my vacation in Mexico (call me a dork, I don’t care ha!).

The idea of integration and truly creating and working within an organization in which each role is integral to the success of the next one is an idea in which we should all embrace.

What is marketing in the round?

Silos really are for farmers. The silo has a purpose on the farm and it’s an essential piece of success. Now silos in business are never good. What comes to mind when you think of a silo in the business sense? Maybe individual players instead of teams? Or even disjointed communications and mixed messages for consumers.

The concepts discussed in this book are not rocket science – you can adopt them and start practicing this methodology today! (there are even these awesome sections at the end of each chapter called ‘Exercises’ which give you everything you need to get started). The reason we are talking about integrated marketing and why this book is available is because it’s something we know needs to happen in order for us to reach success, we just don’t quite know how to get there.

New channels are emerging rapidly. Not that long ago we focused on fewer marketing strategies or tactics. We had fewer tools to navigate and track success. Not all the functions of the organization focused directly on lead generation and revenue contribution (I feel like public relations has evolved in this area the most). Now, we have to integrate. We have to speak the same language across all functions and work towards a common goal. We need to play the position that accentuates our greatest skills and we must all work together in the ’round’ to support and provide tangible benefits to the business.

This book will tell you why, show you how and give you the foundation to track your success.

Applying the concept to your role

You all know I have worked on marketing teams of all sizes so I found myself considering the framework for this book in each of these situations.

For someone who is the ‘marketing department’, you handle press relations, analyst relations, event management, email marketing, direct mail, CRM, lead generation, content marketing, social media, etc. etc. The idea of integrating, I would imagine, is harder to grasp because you are thinking ‘do I integrate with myself?’

Make it work: Think of the bigger picture even outside of marketing. How are you integrating with the product team and where the roadmap is going? How do you integrate with the finance team – are you providing them with the dashboards and information they require? If you are the ‘marketing department’, apply the concepts in this book across your entire organization.

For someone who is part of a small marketing department, you may handle lead generation which encompasses event management, email marketing, social media and vendor management. You don’t have quite as many balls to juggle as the ‘marketing department’ we just discussed, but your role is integral to others.

Make it work: You need to develop integrated campaigns with the product marketing group, marketing operations, PR and AR, website design and customer experience. How does what you are doing and focusing on play into what these groups are working on? Does it all dovetail together or is it disjointed?

For someone who works on a huge marketing team, you are extremely focused on one facet of marketing. I see this concepts in this book harder to apply here but the most essential. You may not even know who within the organization is responsible for what, let alone what they are currently working on.

Make it work: There needs to be support at the executive level here to make the ’round’ work. The executive responsible for each core aspect of the marketing organization and the company overall needs to be on the same page. Consider how information gets rolled up to these executives and how information is then rolled back down. Develop a common dashboard for activities and map out 6 or even 12 months of planning in advance. Try color coding different campaigns to see has disparate the groups are or how inline they are.