If you ask your colleagues and peers what MRM means, you are sure to find a complete lack of consistency in the definitions. For a software category that has been around for decades, it’s interesting how confusing it is to define it. 

That first step – it can make or break you. In sports, that first step can launch you into the lead of the race, or help you beat your defender down the field. A good first step often puts you in position for success. It’s no different in business, especially when it comes to technology.

That “uh-oh” moment…When you are looking to buy something – cell phone, smart TV, any piece of technology, really – what’s one of the first questions you ask the sales person? You want to know what the product can do; what it’s capable of. It’s often not until after we make the purchase that we step back and realize we have no clue how to make the product do what we bought it to do. It happens all the time in business, too; especially when it comes to marketing technology. The issue is usability and, according to a recent report by Gleanster on marketing resource management systems, “ease of use” is one of the most important criteria we should consider in the evaluation and buying process.

Gleanster, a leading voice in business technology research, insight and analysis, recently released their benchmark report on marketing resource management (MRM). Even living in a world that revolves around MRM every day, it’s always important to occasionally step back and view the industry through a fresh lens, and this report certainly provides that. More than anything, it does a good job of painting the challenges marketers face today as they look for MRM (and technology in general) to improve operations.

“A penny saved is a penny earned.” We’ve all heard the wise words of Ben Franklin at some point in our lives. And when it comes to your personal finances, it’s generally pretty good advice. Even when it comes to business, specifically your co-op / market development fund, there’s a tendency for leadership to be content with money going unspent – it helps the marketing and sales teams finish the quarter or year within their budget and the leftover money simply drops to the bottom line. But when you really look at the numbers, sorry Ben; a penny saved is revenue left on the table.

As we’ve discussed on this blog before, technological changes and economic variables are putting more and more pressure on marketing teams and businesses in general to justify strategies and quantify results with data. The problem with data is that data, in its simplest, just-collected form, is completely raw. Knowing that 10 of your leads this month came from Ohio doesn’t really tell anyone anything about how well you did or how you should run your business going forward. Is that number high or low when compared with how you’ve done in that state in the past? How does it compare to other states? The point is data needs a context before it can have meaning and be useful.

Here’s the problem with everything I just said, though: The person who manages the data collection often isn’t the person who is best qualified to place the data in a useful context. There’s a data integration process – from collection, to management and filtration, to analysis, to action – that relies on technology and systems, and someone has to maintain those systems (usually IT). But, IT isn’t the department actually needing/using the data (that would be marketing and/or sales). At some point, the data baton needs to be handed off, and figuring out how to do that is the real challenge for businesses.

While perusing the Internet for new ideas and to keep myself updated on the latest business happenings, I came across this excellent presentation on marketing localization and thought it had some very interesting statistics that make the case for why you need to localize your marketing efforts. The first number isn’t a huge shock, but does lay the foundation for nearly everything I’m about to say: 97% of consumers do online research before making a local purchase. Translation: If you can’t be found locally and aren’t targeting locally, you aren’t going to beat the competition.

So how are companies making their local presence felt? In short, many aren’t. We all know one of the laws of marketing is to be where your customers are. Yet somehow, the fundamental tenet has slipped many companies’ minds. According to ReachLocal, of marketing organizations surveyed:

We are in an age of "permission marketing." This was the topic I had the pleasure to hear Seth Godin speak about at the Integrated Marketing Week Conference last month. One of his main points: All media is optional. If people don’t want to talk to you or listen to you, they don't have to. We're past the time when marketers can just cram messages down people's throats. Everyone skips the commercials on DVR. In the subject line of an email, you essentially are asking them to open your email. In the opt-in form on your website, you have to ask them to sign up for your newsletter. You can’t just say attack the audience with your product; you have to build a connection first.

The Connection Economy
This significantly reduces the value of the mass market, according to Godin. The real value for your marketing dollar is on the edges – the places where specialized info will be most valued. The edge is more receptive to specific messaging. Think politics and religion if you want more vivid examples – the edge craves content on their subject and consumes it at much deeper and higher rates because there’s more passion there. That's where you’re making your connection, and that’s what drives Godin’s notion that we are living in a "Connection Economy."

We all have a pretty good idea of what traits we like to see in new employees. There’s a laundry list of cliché adjectives nearly every manager at some point is guilty of pulling from when putting together a job listing. We want our candidates and future employees to be dynamic, motivated self-starters with a passion for whatever their specific role will entail. The point is we know, almost to a fault, what we’re looking for in an employee.

Well, any human employee, that is.

Distributors can be a valuable asset to a corporation, if the organization uses them correctly. Let’s take a look at some of the challenges of driving sales through distributors and what the manufacturer/vendor can do to overcome those barriers.

Challenges
One of the primary roadblocks to improved distributor sales is motivation. This can be especially true with smaller distributors. Often times they are comfortable with their current sales levels and are not interested in really growing their business. The manufacturer also bears some responsibility for making the information needed to sell effectively accessible and convenient. For example, not having a single point of contact is a hassle that will cause many distributors to disengage.