Why is it that within most companies “Marketing” and “Sales” are competing disciplines that seldom (if ever) work together? We don’t believe in it. We believe, and have proven, that when Marketing and Sales join forces they can move prospects through awareness to consideration and, ultimately to the purchase decision.

The first step is to recognize that the process is a continuum and not linear because prospects are constantly defining and redefining their own needs. They choose to embrace or discard the marketing or sales message on their own terms.  Consequently, Marketing must be increasingly relevant, preference-driven and channel-neutral and Sales must be adaptive to changing conditions.

This is accomplished through a complete understanding of the prospect’s purchase process, as well as the marketers’ own sales process. The target audience defines the purchase process, and the sales process is defined internally. Marketing must develop communication strategies that serve each master based on how people buy and how their own Sales team sells.

If, after an initial contact, it’s determined that the target is a prospect, but not yet ready to buy, then it’s important for Marketing to continue the nurturing process and allow Sales to focus on the next best opportunity.

This means that Marketing must appreciate the time and process involved by people and companies who make purchase decisions.  And Sales must appreciate that contacting the prospect once is not the end of the consideration cycle.

To learn more, contact me and I’ll be happy to show how this will work within your company.

I contributed to an article for last weeks’ DM News, titled “Adding Dimension to DM Success”. You can read the entire article here. For the right target, and the right product or service, nothing works like getting a “present” in the mail. We recommend a dimensional piece for a number of our clients, because the engagement level is so great. And most importantly, because they work. Here’s one we recently mailed for Weyerhaeuser. You can check it out in our portfolio

Consumers are in the driver’s seat today. And it is the Web that has put them there.

Today’s savvy consumers engage with brands on their own terms – when they want and the way they want. They also connect with brands through multiple channels – researching, comparing, and buying as they choose – on the Web, through the mail, over the phone, and in brick and mortar stores.

And they behave in many different ways. Some shop at 2:00 p.m., others shop at 2:00 a.m. Some do their “pre-shopping” on the Web and then buy in brick and mortar stores, while others pre-shop in brick and mortar stores and then buy on the Web.

The most successful marketers are the ones who recognize and adapt to this new reality that relationships with today’s consumers occur at the consumer’s discretion. The brand no longer calls the shots.

As marketers, we must be relevant and accessible in all channels – wherever the consumer wants to engage. Since more and more consumers are engaging with brands in several channels, our marketing efforts must be integrated.

And therein lies the challenge. Not only must the customer experience at all levels be consistent, but customer data must now be gathered, analyzed, and leveraged across channels. Customer databases need to provide a single view of customer behavior and relationships so we can deliver measureable marketing results.

The new realities of consumer marketing require a new kind of agency. Not a traditional media agency, not a direct marketing agency, and not an interactive agency, but an agency that can seamlessly link marketing in the traditional offline world to marketing in the online world. And it can deliver consistent, branded experiences and messages across all channels. The new kind of agency also takes a 360° degree view of consumers and their behavior across all channels. And the new kind of agency understands when media and channels complement each other and when they compete.

Catalyst Direct is that new kind of agency. Founded as a traditional direct marketing agency, Catalyst began preparing for the new realities in consumer marketing more than three years ago.

Today, our work is integrated across multiple channels. The databases that we develop for clients, our systems, and our tools provide a holistic view of customers and their behavior.

In 2006, we significantly increased our ability to analyze and work with customer data when we acquired the data and marketing analytics company, Equient. The company, which had been owned by General Dynamics, specialized in customer profiling, segmentation and modeling. The data analysts and statisticians who came with the acquisition greatly enhanced our ability to provide clients with insight and knowledge about how their customers behave.

Then, in 2007, we acquired Auragen Communications, a leader in strategic interactive services. The acquisition allows us to combine the targeting and one-to-one communications of traditional direct marketing with the engagement and interactivity of the Web.

And we recently reorganized Catalyst Direct, blowing away the traditional media vs. interactive silos so we can efficiently provide and measure integrated, multi-channel programs.

Donna DeClemente has a nice summary of a recent webinar: Forrester’s Five Year Interactive Marketing Forecast.

A taste:

• Search Marketing is expected to triple in 5 years to over $25 billion.
• Online Display ads will reach almost $14 billion. The ability to create rich media ads will help this growth.
• Email marketing spend will shift to integration which means that email will start to be more integrated with other mediums.
• Online video has the steepest growth curve of any of these channels because it has a very low adaption of around $450 million today. It’s an easy medium for marketers to understand and something that they’re familiar with. Interactive videos will also help see this medium grow.
• Emerging Media which Forrester defined as social media, mobile marketing and in-game advertising and states that social media is poised to have the most significant growth of these three elements. Social media is providing many marketers with a way to help get them interactive.

Time and again, general advertising and marketing communications agencies have invested, purchased, persuaded, cajoled their way into Web work – without ever really understanding it.

I remember one such example vividly: an agency director muscled his way into a meeting about a Web platform redesign and commandeered the first twenty minutes to highlight the many faults and problems with the client’s existing site. We sat patiently. At the end, the agency bigwig posed the killer question: “Who built this for you anyway? It’s horrible!” To which the client replied: “You did.”To be fair, that general agency exec was setup for a fall. After all, the birth of brands was in the late 1800s, and the birth of the agency came coincidentally with wider distribution of broadcast technologies such as print, radio, and television. It was a “setup” because the Internet is a narrowcast technology—not a broadcast one. While the birth of marketing came in broadcast form, the future clearly lies in new “narrow” ways of reaching customers.

Narrow markets demand narrow marketing

Concepts like the endless aisle, the long tail, the sudden and dramatic line extensions in even our oldest and most revered brands, and the general success of niche marketing on the Web, all tacitly suggest that a narrower approach to marketing will be more successful in this “more narrow” brand and product landscape.

Over the last 30 years or so, only one marketing discipline has been increasing focused on technologies that capture the power of narrowcasting: direct marketing. And while DM agencies have long focused on print/mail, telephone, and television, the rules they apply to their work are a strangely appropriate launching point for Internet success. They get it. They narrowcast. Auragen’s 12 years of experience confirm the best Web applications are built by …

• … matching customer information (e.g., Mary likes apples)
• … with the right content (…so we’ll show her apple recipes first…)
• … in the right display format (… in a format that fits her iPhone).

It’s the knowledge of Mary that helps us tune the offer appropriately and deliver the proper creative execution. You will immediately see how this approach echoes the most basic of rules in direct marketing:

1. focus first on the right list of prospects
2. ensure that you have the right offer for them and…
3. deliver it in a creative package that breaks through the clutter.

The approaches are the same, but for a long time we’ve worked on separate projects for separate objectives, with separate corporate clients.

No longer.

Direct marketing replaces general advertising

The promise of DM 2.0 is the promise of narrowcasting, for sure. But it’s also the promise of true and final integration of Internet initiatives into the marketing mix. But instead of waiting for general advertising to accept new media and direct into their fold, we realize now that the general advertising is an old approach with waning utility and reach. Instead, the promise of truly integrated direct marketing initiatives—spanning and leveraging all media types and formats—is the big opportunity for smart marketers.

Traditional direct marketing has finally merged with interactive services and the Internet. Expect to see integrated approaches and models that result in dramatically more targeted and more effective campaigns. Expect to see brands take on a far more personal and direct relationship with their prospects, members, and evangelists. Expect the brand experience to literally be delivered to customers on an individual basis. And expect this approach to define marketing communications for the next 50 years.