An interesting post over at B2B Read. Kathryn Roy, marketing consultant, wrote:
Mark Twain said it best: “It ain’t what you don’t know that will hurt you. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
Sales trainers use a research study conducted years ago by Xerox to remind salespeople that their effectiveness declines after roughly 18 months. The reason is that as salespeople become more confident of their assessment of the prospects’ needs they spend much less time questioning and listening to their prospects.
The corollary for marketing professionals is this: The effectiveness of marketing professionals declines as their confidence increases if they don’t take the time to properly test their gut instincts.
I think she’s right-on in her analysis, although the word I would have used is “overconfidence”. Confidence in and of itself is a Good Thing. Too much of it does lead to mistakes, or as Kathy says, a decline in effectiveness. So how does Inbound Marketing Automation solve this?
With real-time market insight from real prospects to back up your performance. With real ROMI, for example, on every campaign. With ongoing stats on your prospects’ interests and preferences as they interact with the information on your site. Where do they spend time, where do they convert, and where do they drop off? Multivariate tests to see which headlines, which visuals, and which messages convert best. Both macro insights on your market as a whole, and micro insights on each targeted segment.
So if you are feeling Confident – great. But put your confidence to the test. Use Inbound Marketing Automation to tell you if you are really doing better, or to convince you it’s a case of what you know for sure just ain’t so.
Bit-by-Bit # 13, from Eric
Tags: b2b marketing, marketing analytics, Marketing Automation, marketing insight
