what are your needs? And
what are your behaviors? I'm
no longer trying to write copy
or come up with ideas like:
women, 35-54, are going to
love this!"
How does this affect the sales
side of things?
"So take a pay-per-click
campaign, for example, which
we can track to the word. We
can track if the word 'buy' is
getting more conversions than
the word 'shop.' A consumer
clicks the ad and goes to the
website. Now that they're on
the site, we still don't know
who they are. But based on
the time they've spent on
the site, the pages they're
interacting with, the content
they're interacting with, we
start to understand who they
might be. They may convert,
saying, 'I'd like to sign up for
an email. I'd like to download
a white paper. I'd like to get a
demo. I'd like to get a quote.'
"Based on some of those
activities, we can start to pull
them into a back-end system,
qualify leads. 'Hey, sales guy,
Customer A – they just want
content, more white papers or
more information. Customer B
has done a certain number of
tasks. You should probably get
in touch with them.' We're able
to give them a better profile.
"Before this model, marketing
would run campaigns, sales
would try to build relationships
and close deals. And there
was this enormous gap
between the two. Now, there
are so many more choices, it's
really up to marketing to lead
and to nurture prospects."