As marketers, data is our friend. We use it as a tool to better understand our target audiences, we leverage it to build strong business cases and we rely on it to help guide where our marketing spend should go, and why.
Many times we pore through the Web to find free studies and statistics. Other times we need to pay for reports. Or, when we can’t find relevant data that suits our needs, we retain researchers to conduct a custom survey. But we can’t always afford to do so– especially at a time when budgets are on the chopping block.
Wouldn’t it be grand if we could tap our collective intelligence and create our own marketing survey with someone else taking care of the expense and legwork? A research project that that was truly “for marketers, by marketers”? Now we can.
Yep, right here, right now. Hey, there’s no time like the present.
Put on your thinking caps folks, because we’re going to develop 10 of the questions that will be part of a comprehensive survey distributed to over 50,000 marketers–ranging B2B and B2C marketing professionals in large and medium-sized companies and agencies. And Equation Research is going to take care of all the rest. Once the findings are compiled, we’ll have first access to the findings as I’ll publish the report here, before it’s available anywhere else.
To my knowledge (please pardon if I’m incorrect), this is the first marketing survey that’s directed by the community, yet facilitated by a third-party research company.
The report will include a summary of findings, results for each question and relevant charts and graphs illustrating key points. And if you want to really wonk out with the research, we’ll also be given access to an online tool that lets us filter and cross-analyze the data to our heart’s content. After all, it’s your data!
*Please note: I’m not affiliated with Equation Research (though I will say they’ve been tremendous to collaborate with on this community project). They are not my client nor am I being compensated by them in any fashion—not through cash, cars, cookies or otherwise. This was a unique opportunity extended to me that I could extend to the marketing community, and I jumped at the chance. Why? Well, for several reasons.
I’m a proponent of projects where everyone benefits. And this “survey-development-by-community” idea intrigues me as I’m fond of crowdsourcing initiatives, especially ones that tap the smarts of professionals–as B2C programs seem to get all the play, yet B2B holds so much potential. But mostly, with companies waking up to the wonders of Web 2.0, I advocate that businesses leverage these tools in ways that engage their audiences through value creation– rather than as another vehicle for broadcasting their marketing messages. So this program is an example of that practice, and I hope to see plenty more.
If you want to submit a question (or two) for the survey then please:
Please submit your questions and voice-in on which ideas you liked from others in the comments by Monday, May 11, 2009 as the survey will be compiled shortly thereafter with the full report published here by the end of June.
If we get more than 10 questions submitted–and I hope we’ll get a bunch to choose from!–Equation will review all our comments to see which questions most resonated with the community. So, don’t be afraid, ask away–
Update: To get the final results and full 2009 research study, please go here.
CK,
This is a wonderful opportunity for all of us. I have a question directed primarily at B2B:
1. If you could use only one marketing tactic, what would it be?
If you’re doing any social media marketing, how are you measuring its effectiveness? (Sales, leads, engagement/interactions, branding, buzz size/direction, etc – or not measuring it)
Another one: where does mobile marketing fit in with your current marketing plans?
- Line item in our marketing budget
- Dabbling/experimenting and plan to do much more this year
- Dabbling/experimenting but won’t do too much more
- Tried it, that was enough
- Haven’t done it, plan to
- Haven’t done it, don’t plan to this year but hope to after
- Not a part of our plans at all
Thanks for facilitating this, CK.
Questions, questions. Hmmm.
How about…
1) What is the most effective way to communicate with the users/consumers/enjoyers of your product or service?
2) What is your greatest professional challenge at the moment?
Do you include an experimentation project within your marketing program?
What is the greatest barrier to social media in your company?
1. Are you integrating social media marketing into your master marketing plan? If yes – how.
2. Are funds from other marketing initiatives being transferred to social media strategies? Which “traditional” marketing strategies are your cutting back on to fund social media marketing?
a) Do you use strategic monitoring as a tool to analyze competitors?
b) What is the output you watch the most out of a monitoring service?
Brilliant idea.
1) What percentage of your marketing dollars are you allocating to different tactics, ie (traditional, interactive, social media, etc)?
Great idea!
1 – If you have an existing social media marketing budget, do you see the funds allocated to that budget increasing, decreasing, or staying the same next year?
What are some current best practices for B2B companies to build up their email list for a newsletter?
Hi, this is Chris Burke from Equation. Great questions so far…please keep them coming.
We’re really excited about this idea and helping to answer your questions!
CK, a great idea! Thanks for letting us all provide questions.
Is your company investigating Social Media? If so, how long before implementation?
0-3 months
3-6 months
6-12 months
Over 12 months
Is social media affecting how you communicate with customers via email marketing, PR, mobile marketing, etc.? If so, how?
Would you recommend social media to other marketing colleagues? If so, why? If not, why?
This is great. Thanks for facilitating. I have two questions:
Is Direct Mail dead? Why or why not?
While email currently provides us with the best ROI than any other marketing channel, results are starting to wane. What are the top three tactics b2b and b2c companies are using to increase (or lessen the decrease) of email ROI?
Hey all: just wanted to thank you for the good questions thus far… keep ‘em coming! Also, please feel free to drop a comment letting us know which questions most resonate with you (in a couple days I’ll be doing that too).
How have you been most effective in leveraging your own community/user base to market for you?
Fantastic idea. I have a couple questions:
These questions are based on my experiences with co-workers and clients.
-How do you define social media?
-What does a social media strategy look like to you?
-What are your expectations from social media?
Lots of articles have been written about this, and the term social media has been used as a catch all. I’m finding that my co-workers and clients are all in different places and it’s difficult to reach consensus. It would be helpful to see where people are on a larger scale.
Thanks for facilitating, CK!
Question: Does your business have any customer loyalty programs in place? If yes, how do you measure customer loyalty?
I believe there should be a stronger focus on building customer relationships to help companies get through this economic downturn. Understanding answers to the above question will help others learn how to track loyalty.
Can you provide specific separate KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) you are using to benchmark increases or declines in Organic Search, PPC (pay per click) advertising, Local Search Listings and Social Media efforts in a form that others can implement them?
I’ll expand on David B’s questions about mobile marketing.
*Is this an extension of your existing marketing programs?
*Are you truly engaging customers or broadcasting over a new technology?
*Do you envision having separate staff to address this channel?
*Are you doing this in-house or working with an agency or other vendor to enable this?
Great idea! Can’t wait to see what comes out of this.
1) In tough times with cuts to the marketing budget, what programs/strategies are at the top of your list to save?
2) To what extent is customer feedback/input incorporated into product development?
Excellent CK! I’m excited to get the results.
My question is:
What should marketing classes at business school teach?
Love this idea. Here’s a question to add to the mix to assist the Non-profit sector: in this recessionary environment where social need is increasing, how are your corporate social responsibility / giving programs being affected? Are you increasing/decreasing/ not changing your strategy? Do you believe it can be used as an important differentiator to appeal to your target audience?
1) in these tough times, is exchanging data with competitors in a clear way an opportunity, and how to open such channel?
What internet websites do you regularly use to stay up-to-date on marketing trends, network and exchange ideas, or learn helpful tactics?
1. In your experience, how many companies know how to integrate all of their efforts?
2. What is your biggest stumbling block when looking for new clients?
Thanks to everyone for the great questions and ideas. Now that it’s May 12th, we’re in the process of reviewing all of the questions, selecting those that best represent the community’s feedback and formulating the survey questions.
You covered some really interesting and diverse topics and we can’t wait to see the results. We’ll be fielding the survey in the coming weeks and you’ll be able to get the results right here by the end of June.
Huge thanks again to CK, Marketing Profs and all of you who contributed. If this works well for everyone, we’d love to make it an annual tradition!
Quick update from Equation – earlier this week we were able to partner with the AdWeekMedia group and they are allowing us to use their email list for the study.
The good news is that this will allow us to reach even more respondents who are exactly the kind of person we want taking the survey.
This will however push timing back slightly. Results will be ready in July (instead of late June as we said originally) and CK’s readers will still be the first to see the results.
Apologies for the small delay, but in this case the trade off for more quality responses will be well worth it.
Feel free to reach out if anyone has questions.
Chris