How Surveys Can Be Your Secret Weapon in B2B Content Marketing, PR, Sales Enablement, and More

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How Surveys Can Be Your Secret Weapon in B2B Content Marketing, PR, Sales Enablement, and More

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  When asked about their top issues related to marketing content, technology buyers say that “too much marketing hype,” a “lack of truly independent, unbiased information,” and information that is “too general” rounds out their top three.

Yet, these same buyers rely on trusted content to make purchase decisions 5X more today than they did five years ago.

Why is it so difficult to create engaging content for our B2B buyers? What makes marketing trustworthy? How does it stand out from the sea of competing messages? What makes it earn the attention of our overwhelmed buyers, and what can compel them to take action?

One tactic to consider in this brave new world of marketing is the use of custom research surveys. I’ve leveraged them in positions of marketing leadership brand-side, as well as with clients agency-side to help them develop powerful content assets, increase brand awareness with media coverage, and enable sales effectiveness.

Great research and smart marketing is a surefire recipe for success. Here are a few ways to leverage surveys in your B2B marketing:

  1. Break Through the Noise

In today’s world, everyone is a publisher. 60% of marketers create content daily. The amount of web-based content is doubling every 9 to 24 months. Our modern consumerism inundates us with between 500-3,000 (potentially more) marketing messages each day.

To break through this clutter and earn the mindshare of your besieged buyers, we must develop messages that disrupt the status quo and differentiate our brands. Content must be useful, helpful, interesting, engaging, and persuasive.

If you’re struggling to come up with content ideas that resonate, consider a survey.

Original research studies afford you the opportunity to provide practical insight and an interesting perspective on the state of your industry. You can tell a story informed and backed by statistically sound data.

“Maybe stories are just data with a soul.”- Brene Brown

In world filled with content, research and statistics are an engaging format that captures the attention of overwhelmed readers. 

  1. Boost Content Credibility

Buyers don’t inherently trust brands, (who could blame them?) but they are open to allowing certain brands to become credible sources of content. Instead of content that talks all about you and your solution, consider offering the trends and results of a study.

“Never bring an opinion to a data fight.” - Andy Crestodina

Unlike product-related materials, research allows your buyer to collect persuasive proof points in their quest to build a case for your solution category. Survey results represent the perspective of a wide range of respondents, giving your reader the chance to benchmark their own experience against that of their peers.

What’s more, publishing the results of surveys in report format gives you the opportunity to provide your commentary and forward-thinking ideas on a given area, positioning your brand as one of authority. 

  1. Fuel Multiple Content Assets

Surveys are one of the best sources of content that can be repurposed across multiple formats. To maximize the output of your research study, and extend the impact of your findings, consider creating multiple content formats.

For example, from a report on Chinchilla Farming practices, you can craft:

  • A thought leadership report, “Chinchilla Farming 2016: Key Trends, Challenges, and Considerations” summarizing the findings and highlighting trends and key considerations.

  • Multiple blog posts

    • 15 Stats You Need To Know About Chinchilla Farming

    • The 3 Top Challenges for Chinchilla Farmers

    • What Leading Chinchilla Farmers Do About Fur Management

    • …you get the idea.

  • A press release or guest byline for target publication (more on media relations later)

  • Multiple social media posts featuring key stats

  • A live webinar event walking through the findings, maybe featuring an expert or customer alongside a company executive

  • Checklists that align to the successes in your research

  • Infographics highlighting key stats in visual format

  • Best practices eBook

  • A field guide for your topic area with research findings added throughout

  • Industry speaking session discussing the findings

  • Quiz (where do you stand compared to findings?)

  • Interactive assessment tool featuring in-depth analysis of the recipient’s standing against the benchmarking data and your recommended analysis (this is great for lead qualification)

  • Sales enablement materials (more on this later)

  • An expert Q&A video featuring your executive talking through the findings of the report (and their implications)

  • That same Q&A in Podcast format

  • Slideshare content

Phew….

  1. Reveal Unarticulated Needs

Your first competitor in any buying situation is the customer’s status quo. You’re most often competing against the way things are done today. Often, the first job we have as marketers is to help our prospects understand their unarticulated needs, and realize there is a problem for them to overcome.

Great research-based marketing can shine a light on the problems your audience may not even know they have. These unspoken pain points become more apparent, for example, through report findings that demonstrate a particular widespread issue with the way things are done today. Seek to surprise, seek to challenge the status quo.

Where are your non-customers wasting time and resources? Where can they be more efficient? Use surveys to demonstrate firstly, there is a problem in the industry, and secondly, your prospects are not alone.

(Implied: your solution can help.)

  1. Equip Sales with Authority + Objectivity

“Don’t take my word for it…”

Our salespeople are often trained on features of our products and services – their benefits, how they stack up against competition, and how they can drive value for customers.

But a relationship between sales and a buyer has to be about an equitable exchange of value far before they start talking about the specifics of our solutions. Our salespeople are only moderately effective when all they have to offer is information about our products. (Our websites do that.)

Sales needs customer-centric material. They need to be able to speak to the problems faced by buyers if they have any hope of forging a connection with them.

Today, only 27% of companies believe their sales enablement campaigns are focused on the prospect’s story rather than their own. And Corporate Visions found that only 13% of sellers believe product-or-company focused presentations are the most impactful.

We need to give our salespeople nuggets of insight that position both the brand, and the seller, as a helpful resource who understands the challenges facing our buyers. Package research findings into sales enablement content, and work with sales to speak to the findings, and their implications, when talking to prospects.

“If you don’t have anything interesting to say as a brand, you’re just a product.” - Spencer Baim

  1. Boost PR coverage and media relations

It can be impossible to grab the attention of a journalist. Every day they’re inundated with pitches. Tens, sometimes hundreds, of emails make their way into the inboxes of reporters daily.

They’re all sent by companies trying to edge their way into a news story. A new product announcement! An acquisition! A new executive hire!

Yawn.

Tom Brokaw says journalism is all about storytelling.

Think about this the next time you set out to earn press coverage. What is the story? Why does it matter? Is it timely? Who does it impact, and how?

Surveys give you a chance to elicit data that tells, from a statistically sound sample, what attitudes, successes, failures, outlooks, and challenges exist among your community of customers and prospects.

If the findings are timely, and in-line with what your media targets typically write about, it can give journalists the opportunity to write about something new and fresh.

When pitching to the media, you may offer an exclusive interview to top targets with your company’s CEO. In addition, consider submitting a guest post with your take on the findings and how it impacts the industry at-large.

  1. Improve SEO / traffic

I recommend sending the results of your surveys around to friendly bloggers, and industry partners. Their owned media properties (blogs, newsletters, social channels etc.) are likely hungry for more content. You’d be hard pressed to get them to share your product-related content, but research insights are useful to their audience as well.

Be sure to provide them with key summaries, highlighted findings, and the link to the full report, gated or not. Your goal here is two-fold:

  • Backlinks (for increased SEO and traffic)

  • Surveys and research findings allow you the rare opportunity for other people to quote your content.

You can also consider paid syndication options to increase the exposure of your piece.

  1. Capture Emails and Fill the Top Of the Funnel

The age-old question for marketers seems to be, “to gate or not to gate?”

Should you put a lead capture form in front of a research study?

The answer will differ for every company. If you’ve got very little un-gated content, gate your report. But, it’s time to start repurposing those research insights into smaller, un-gated pieces such as blog posts, infographics, Podcasts, or key summaries in PDF format. All of these need to drive traffic back to that gated piece.

Generally, I recommend gating content when it is highly unique, valuable, engaging content. If you’ve fielded a one-of-a-kind industry survey providing truly useful findings, in my opinion, it’s more than fair to ask for an email address in exchange for the download.

The benefits of un-gating your research (giving access to it without asking for an email, job title, or any information) is the potential that it will be accessed and seen by more people. For this to work, you need the ability to capture leads later, either in other assets, or by driving traffic from your report to a gated piece, such as a webinar or demo request. The tolerance is up to you.

Bonus tips:

DON’T create a survey for the sake of creating a survey. Find a new angle on a topic that has not been illuminated before. The best research reports take a fresh approach and reveal new insights, instead of regurgitating existing information.

DO your homework and learn if there is already an abundance of research available on a specific topic. If so, find your unique angle.

If your product is truly meeting an unmet need and you’ve got a unique way of solving a problem, you have something of value to add to your industry. Establish your authority and find your voice!

I hope this has encouraged you to give surveys a try in your marketing mix.

If you need help moving a project like this across the finish line, I recommend partnering with organizations like ResearchScape to design questionnaires, collect results, and help you analyze the data.

Every week(ish) I send out new ideas, writings, and interesting links on marketing, business, and life. It’s free & curated by me. Get on the list.

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1 Easy Way to Cut the Tension and Boost B2B Sales and Marketing Collaboration

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1 Easy Way to Cut the Tension and Boost B2B Sales and Marketing Collaboration

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My friend Samantha Stone, founder of the Marketing Advisory Network, recently published a compelling study on B2B sales and marketing collaboration (no registration to download.) From an industry survey, the study examined an unhealthy tension between these two groups, a concept Samantha describes as "so common we almost accept it as inevitable."

While there are myriad tools, processes, and trainings that can improve many of the problem areas outlined in the study, one in particular stands out to me as... shockingly... easy to implement.

It's cost-effective, doesn't require much time or an investment in technology, and really only requires us to change some basic behavior in order to execute:

Direct marketing interaction with buyers.

Revolutionary, I know. In the report, Samantha found that sharing the interaction with customers leads to real results.

Marketers at organizations that exceed revenue goals are 2X as likely to participate in customer and prospect meetings as those that miss revenue goals.

She writes "the most successful organizations have broken down the unspoken barrier between marketing and buyers. Often, the gap is caused by a combination of too busy marketers who feel no time exists to speak with buyers, and a resistant sales team who wants to "protect" their account. The result is a lack of engagement and insight."

What to listen for:

I was very glad at the opportunity to contribute to the report. Inside, I share a list of things to listen for when marketers join sales calls, including:

  • what topics, pain points, and pressures are top-of-mind (this is great fodder for new content topics).

  • what questions buyers have during their purchase process (and what your reps can and can not answer).

  • what sales methodologies and tools are working (and which are being ignored).

  • what sales enablement materials your team is missing.

  • if your marketing messaging is resonating as intended.

  • how targeted and qualified your leads really are.

Other key findings:

From a survey of 123 B2B organizations spanning business services, high tech, and other industries, Samantha learned:

  • 67% of respondents do NOT reward sales teams for supporting marketing objectives (although most report marketing objectives align to greater business goals)

  • 57% of organizations report that less than 85% of leads delivered by marketing are followed up by sales

  • Organizations that exceeded revenue goals in the last 12 months are 3X as likely than those who miss revenue goals to have marketing own pipeline acceleration, not just lead generation.

  • When asked to rate marketing’s value to sales in the past 12 months, nearly 50% of sales respondents reported significant improvement, while less than 20% of marketers agreed.

  • The biggest opportunity for common ground (lead followup) is a missed opportunity. Less than 20% of marketers indicated that sales followed up on 95%+ leads delivered by marketing. But sales thinks they are doing a much better job, 50% of respondents in sales reported that 95%+ of sales leads delivered are followed up with.

The full study is absolutely worth checking out.

The study was conducted by Samantha Stone of the Marketing Advisory Network and sponsored by QuotaFactory.

Every week(ish) I send out new ideas, writings, and interesting links on marketing, business, and life. It’s free & curated by me. Get on the list.

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The Illusion of Progress in Marketing to Women

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The Illusion of Progress in Marketing to Women

Every week(ish) I send out new ideas, writings, and interesting links on marketing, business, and life. It’s free & curated by me. Get on the list.

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Or: The Exploitation of Feminism by Advertising Here’s what we know: For years women have been objectified in advertising. Watch any of the many videos from Jean Kilbourne’s Killing us Softly series for a litany of examples over the past 40 years. (And these hilarious vintage examples.)

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“Ads sell more than products. They sell values, they sell images, they sell concepts of love and sexuality, of success and perhaps most important, of normalcy. To a great extend they tell us who we are and who we should be.” - Jean Kilbourne

It has led to widespread body image issues, eating disorders, a culture of violence against women, and a media standard in which body types that do not meet these unrealistic standards are marginalized and embedded into our collective psyche as “normal.”

There has been progress.

Since efforts from initiatives such as Killing Us Softly, more of the world has become generally aware of the impact of this unrealistic body image on women, girls, and the male-identifying members of their lives who interact with them.

We see semblances of progress in the recent decision from London to ban negative body image in ads, (thanks Sadiq Khan) or companies like Aerie removing retouching from ads, and with sites like Modcloth supporting the Truth in Advertising Act.

But wait, before you burn your bra and start claiming the end of the glass ceiling, or the long awaited demise of the sexist norms in capitalism and business, something still just isn’t sitting with me quite right.

Faux-Feminism

I’ve been noticing a new category of campaigns and ads that, on the surface, celebrate this sudden new narrative in our culture about the power of a woman (like that was ever really a new revelation.)

For example:

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Let’s not forget the liberation from sexist labels in business that will come from a good clean head of hair:

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And how much better I'll be at pay negotiation if I'm not sweating.

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This actually does nothing to close the wage gap, Secret. I’m sure it wins you some good press and your ad agency some awards. Secret’s parent company P&G has an executive team that is 75% male (a stat they win awards for.) And it continues to try and change the world (oh, and sell more laundry detergent) with its #sharetheload campaign in India:

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I watch these commercials… and though at first I’m encouraged, by second 27 there’s that shiny end package shot of deodorant or a razor blade or whatever else it’s meant for me to buy.

In the end, I’m just infuriated. We don’t need to be pandered to. Are we really fooled by faux-feminist marketing?

Marketers, stop trying to make a buck on the backs of women working to change the narrative of women in the workforce.

The struggle of pay inequality, workplace sexual harassment and other forms of gender discrimination is not just another trend to exploit in order to gain eyeballs. As much as I appreciate the intention, at the end of the day these companies are still trying to use this narrative to achieve one common goal: Sell more shit. They've lost sight of a very simple truth -

Women are not a commodity.

Every week(ish) I send out new ideas, writings, and interesting links on marketing, business, and life. It’s free & curated by me. Get on the list.

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Leaving a "Real Job" to Become a Consultant (AKA What the F Did I Just Do?!)

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Leaving a "Real Job" to Become a Consultant (AKA What the F Did I Just Do?!)

Every week(ish) I send out new ideas, writings, and interesting links on marketing, business, and life. It’s free & curated by me. Get on the list.

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You’re not really prepared for the decision when it hits you – you just know that the road you were traveling down had some unexpected curves and detours ahead that don’t lead to the place you had intended to go. You’ve arrived at a crossroads and the light is on the verge of turning green any minute now. You’re not panicked, rather cool and cautious about the next turn of the wheel. You remember someone calling you fearless recently and you’re bolstered by that endorsement.

You take some time (read: drink a lot of scotch), get introspective (read: call your mentors who luckily take late night phone calls) and consider your next move (read: don’t sleep.)

You remember the question that was asked of you months ago in a press interview, the one question you didn’t have a prepared set of talking points for. Sneaky journalists.

“If you could do any job in the world, what would it be?”

You remember your off-the-cuff but candid answer:

Honestly? Some kind of cross between the Barefoot Contessa and Anthony Bourdain.

You remember the face palm you did in your sunny office overlooking Atlantic Ave. So much for media preparedness. The journalist laughed and thankfully did not include this in the resulting piece about you being a millennial CMO and female entrepreneur. (You later read the piece and feel like a baller.)

Back in the safety of being off-the-record, you wonder if these two personalities could ever combine. Ina Garten and her fabulous, discerning, casually exceptional presence; Anthony Bourdain and his give-no-fucks, capricious gallantry. You park the thought and jump on your next call to give another demo to another potential customer. Back to the hustle. You love it.

What was plan B, again?

When I made the decision to leave my startup and strike out on my own to work, entirely for myself as a marketer-for-hire, my biggest fear was not finding work or making enough money. It was becoming a cliché. When you’re marketing to marketers, it comes with a lot of visibility in the process. When you leave, it needs to be well-thought, deliberate, and smart.

When the best-laid plans go awry, we often find ourselves in unexpected places, for which we did not have a backup plan. When one job is no longer viable, typically you find the next similar opportunity. You seek a salary boost, a short commute, a positive workplace, growth potential, and a title that matches your career trajectory.

But when you’ve spent years working with startups, the most recent 18 months as an entrepreneur and one-woman marketing band, there is truly no clear next step. That road you were on looks more like an island, one that is drifting slowly further from land. The best word I have found to describe the feeling is untethered.

You’ll go on a few real interviews, you’ll explore becoming the Director of this, or the VP of that. Everything feels too expected, too neat.

You feel inexplicably unfaithful to something else that’s now part of you.

You’ve been bitten.

This is that entrepreneurship bug they talk about. It’s the thrill of doing something your way, of being your own boss.

That untethered feeling? That’s not aimless drifting. That’s freedom.

During one of your scotch-or-champagne-fueled life planning dates with one of your very smart friends (good on you for surrounding yourself with brilliant people), you examine your career to-date. You realize it’s been filled by roles founded in risk, uncertainty, a lack of structure and predicated on self-direction.

Hell, you’ve been a downright anarchist (for good) at each of them.

Not one, not two, but several of your smart friends have the same suggestion. Go on your own for a bit. Do what you do, your way, with projects of your choosing and with people you want to work with. Consult.

You initially think they’re nuts.

You know some amazing consultants and they have been in this business far longer than you (I’m looking at you Samantha Stone, Denice Sakakeeny, Stephanie Tilton, Ardath Albee, Doug Fox, Kim Donlan, Carlos Hidalgo.) You rely on them often for guidance and advice. Beyond these exceptional professionals, the term “consultant” comes with a stigma. Let’s be honest, there’s no barrier to entry.

But you remember that bug – what is that thing that urged you away from jumping into a full time “real job” again? It could be gut. Intuition. Purpose. Fate?

(Question mark around the existence of fate and your reliance on it for practical career decisions. Blog post for another day.)

You make the decision one day when suddenly, unprovoked, two real projects come your way within an hour. As if the universe itself had conspired to push your cautious ass into this bold new direction by making a couple of stars align. Before, you had to say no to these side hustles (unless they were really fun, like producing that gay comedy show in Miami. Sometimes my life doesn’t feel real.) Now, they were what you needed to make the call.

You set up some ground rules:

  • Work on projects you can truly deliver exceptionally.

  • Help the people you trust and respect, for products you stand behind.

  • Take time to take care of yourself, your family, and plan a kickass upcoming wedding.

  • Read, learn, and invest in your professional development with a schedule that is truly yours to make.

  • Have more fun than a “real job” should ever be.

  • Be somewhere between the Barefoot Contessa and Anthony Bourdain.

You go for it, emboldened with a sense that this is not resigning. This is not the easy route. This is not giving up. This is your next business as an entrepreneur. You’re responsible for its success, or failure. You put out the notice, start a newsletter, and receive a wonderful amount of support and stimulating new projects.

Only once or twice do you ask “what the F--- did I just do?”

Untethered freedom feels a bit like flying.

Every week(ish) I send out new ideas, writings, and interesting links on marketing, business, and life. It’s free & curated by me. Get on the list.

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Why Personas Fail

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Why Personas Fail

Every week(ish) I send out new ideas, writings, and interesting links on marketing, business, and life. It’s free & curated by me. Get on the list.

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There’s plenty of fervor around the need for buyer personas; so why do some fail to deliver real value?

From where I sit, we have entered a new phase in the evolution of buyer persona maturity in marketing– or maybe this has been the phase we’ve been stuck in ever since the phrase “buyer persona” was first coined years ago, first in the design movements of the 90’s, and later into marketing and sales.

Today, you can find over 500,000 search results on the topic, most supporting the need for buyer personas as a foundational component of effective marketing. Ask an industry thought leader, and you will hear similar validation, “personas are more important than ever” and “know your buyer first.” In fact, 73% of companies currently use, or plan to use, buyer personas (ITSMA).

But there is a very sobering gap between the perceived value of buyer personas and the actual, realized value.

85% of companies aren’t using buyer personas correctly, according to the same survey. This gap is what the next phase of buyer persona maturity is all about. In reality, organizations are struggling to realize value from buyer personas as they relate to a complex sales and marketing process. Why is this the case?

Personas fail:

1. When they are little more than a demographic profile.

Our definition of a buyer persona may actually be the root cause for their failure.

There is a sharp difference between demographic segmentation (“CIOs and companies with over 5,000 employees in the manufacturing industry”) and in-depth buyer personas that represent a comprehensive view of the characteristics, attributes, motivations, and interests of these segments.

Buyer personas should seek to understand our targets as humans – how they make decisions, what drives their actions, how they behave.

“Personas fail when they turn out to be a rehash of previously established sales intelligence, and offer little guidance on how to humanize a brand, as well as content.” – Tony Zambito

2. When they are kept in the dark.

It’s 10am. Do you know where your personas are?

At the recent Content2Conversion conference, Erin Provey of SiriusDecisions described the current format of buyer personas, “I’ve literally seen binders on desks with pages of persona insights, qualitative and quantitative insights that cost thousands of dollars to produce.”

Buyer personas, in theory, are highly useful strategy documents. Why then are they so hard to find, trapped in PDFs and Powerpoints at the bottom of a desk drawer, or at best, maybe on the company intranet?

Personas should be made available throughout the business, referenced quickly and easily to guide the direction of marketing, sales, and product decisions.

3. When they are not updated.

The million-dollar question for many marketers is, “when was the last time you updated your buyer personas?”

Unfortunately the response often comes back in the form of years.

Personas are often not refreshed until a new regime change comes in. But if this is the case, you may miss the inevitable changes in that occur within fast-moving industries, whether regulatory (new compliance laws) economic (hard times in specific industries), or demographic (new or retiring buyers).

What’s worse, without refreshing personas on an ongoing basis, you may miss critical new influencers that emerge in the buying process. This information can be found in your CRM, happening in real-time in your marketing automation system, understood anecdotally in your sales pit, or revealed in primary persona interviews. 

4. When they’re created in a bubble.

The process of creating strong personas involves three things that may terrify you:

  1. Interviews with real buyers (gasp!)

  2. Collaboration with other departments (say it ain’t so!)

  3. Challenges to your beliefs or deep-rooted assumptions (Nooo!)

I know. Take a deep breath. It will be okay.

There is no silver bullet for buyer personas. To get it right involves time-consuming interviews with real people, and an examination of the results with an open mind. This takes up bandwidth, may shift and pivot strategy, and – yes – calls for collaboration with other teams in the company.

A surefire way to create personas that don’t work is to do so in a conference room, doors shut, without involving other departments or speaking with real buyers.

5. When there’s no buy-in.

I recently heard personas were “emotionally adopted” by marketers. This rings true as the majority of B2B marketers predict their #1 responsibility in 2016 will be understanding buyers.

But other functions of the business all have skin in this game, and should reach consensus on the format, composition and expected use of personas. After all, “the only way personas add value is if the people who use them internalize them.” – Erin Provey, SiriusDecisions

When seeking to achieve buy-in, even the phrase can turn people off. “I have had clients say that we have to call it a buying center or we won’t get buy-in from the rest of the teams. Or we have to call it a profile, or something else. They get stuck in the semantics of it.” – Ardath Albee in a CMI interview.

6. When they do not translate to tactics.

Buyer personas that can not guide real-world strategy are fundamentally useless. They may look nice on the wall of your cubicle, but what value do they really provide? Personas should not be approached as a checklist item and filed away once completed. Instead, consider personas as “active tools” – objects that inform marketing strategy.

In our new eBook with Ardath Albee, we define what makes personas active tools.

Personas should: 

  • Serve as a tool that can be referenced easily to help guide the development of relevant marketing programs

  • Point to specific topics of content as related to priorities defined as important to the persona

  • Reveal the circumstances of what could derail the detail (or the championing of the deal)

  • Be unique from all other personas to indicate a truly definable market segment

  • Identify a market segment that your marketing programs can reach and engage, as well as the means (channels, messages, formats) for doing so

  • Build a storyline across the continuum of the buying process that enables mapping content to needs and priorities at different points of decision making

  • Help marketers understand how emotions and empathy play in solving the specific problem or for reaching a key objective

Personas developed with this level of depth will serve as the foundation for content strategy developed to engage, create purposeful intent, and motivate them to buy. It’s pretty clear that a one-page profile with a few demographic details and descriptive adjectives won’t do the job.

7. When they don’t account for the buying committee.

B2B buying decisions are made by committee – multiple individuals working together to reach consensus. IDC found that an average of 7 buyers are involved in a B2B technology purchase decision.

Your persona development should reveal the dynamic among this committee, especially what information each member needs to share with each other as it relates to different perspectives. Targeting only the elusive “decision maker” disregards the way business people actually buy – collaboratively.

8. When they contain useless information.

In a B2B environment, the fact that a persona may drive a minivan and prefer The Bachelor over Shark Tank really doesn’t serve to inform a salesperson’s call strategy, a marketer’s email campaign, or a product manager’s roadmap.

Now, B2B personas that contain these details may have been done so in an attempt to humanize the persona, the spirit of which should be celebrated!

But this type of detail is extraneous. There are better ways to humanize a buyer in a way that is relevant to our day to day job responsibilities – and it starts with empathy. Read more about this in our post “5 Signs You Don’t Know Your B2B Customer

The excitement and fervor around buyer personas and the unfortunate execution gap are only amplified by the emergence of marketing technology designed to automate the lead management lifecycle, even predict future behaviors. These tools only make a lack of buyer understanding all the more obvious, by exposing poorly targeted efforts to a greater audience.

It’s more important now, more than ever, to get personas right. Our only chance of realizing true value from marketing automation and content marketing, and successfully selling to an ever-empowered buyer, is to fully understand their needs and preferences from the start.

 

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What Adrienne Rich Taught Me

What Adrienne Rich Taught Me

Every week(ish) I send out new ideas, writings, and interesting links on marketing, business, and life. It’s free & curated by me. Get on the list.

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There's not much to say when one of your heroes leaves this world. When someone who influenced your worldview so consciously with their poetry and essays departs.

So, I won't say much more about writer, intellectual, poet Adrienne Rich. I've instead collected my favorite of her words here to allow them space to stand on their own. I hope they bring you the same ferocious sense of cognizance they brought me.

Read more about Adrienne Rich in today's New York Times.

On a life of meaningful work...

"Responsibility to yourself means that you don't fall for shallow and easy solutions--predigested books and ideas...It means that you refuse to sell your talents and aspirations short...and this, in turn, means resisting the forces in society which say that women should be nice, play safe, have low professional expectations, drown in love and forget about work, live through others, and stay in the places assigned to us. It means that we insist on a life of meaningful work, insist that work be as meaningful as love and friendship in our lives. It means, therefore, the courage to be "different"...

On living passively...

The difference between a life lived actively, and a life of passive drifting and dispersal of energies, is an immense difference. Once we begin to feel committed to our lives, responsible to ourselves, we can never again be satisfied with the old, passive way."

On writing...

“You must write, and read, as if your life depended on it.”

On hard work...

"Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you; it means learning to respect and use your own brains and instincts; hence, grappling with hard work.”

On power...

"Today I was reading about Marie Curie: she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness her body bombarded for years by the element she had purified It seems she denied to the end the source of the cataracts on her eyes the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil

She died a famous woman denying her wounds denying her wounds came from the same source as her power. ”

On being female in a male-dominated world...

“Sexist grammar burns into the brains of little girls and young women a message that the male is the norm, the standard, the central figure beside which we are all deviants, the marginal, the dependent variables. It lays the foundation for androcentric thinking, and leaves men safe in their solipsistic tunnel-vision.”

“Women have been driven mad, "gaslighted," for centuries by the refutation of our experience and our instincts in a culture which validates only male experience. The truth of our bodies and our minds has been mystified to us. We therefore have a primary obligation to each other: not to undermine each others' sense of reality for the sake of expediency; not to gaslight each other.

Women have often felt insane when cleaving to the truth of our experience. Our future depends on the sanity of each of us, and we have a profound stake, beyond the personal, in the project of describing our reality as candidly and fully as we can to each other.”

On empowerment...

“If you are trying to transform a brutalized society into one where people can live in dignity and hope, you begin with the empowering of the most powerless. You build from the ground up.”

On identity...

“If you think you can grasp me, think again: my story flows in more than one direction a delta springing from the riverbed with its five fingers spread”

On truth...

“There is no 'the truth','a truth' - truth is not one thing, or even a system. It is an increasing complexity. the pattern of the carpet is a surface. When we look closely, or when we become weavers, we learn of the tiny multiple threads unseen in the overall pattern, the knots on the underside of the carpet”

On silence...

“In a world where language and naming are power, silence is oppression, is violence.”

Every week(ish) I send out new ideas, writings, and interesting links on marketing, business, and life. It’s free & curated by me. Get on the list.

 

14 Rules for Being a Woman in Business

14 Rules for Being a Woman in Business

Every week(ish) I send out new ideas, writings, and interesting links on marketing, business, and life. It’s free & curated by me. Get on the list.

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Today is International Women's Day - a day observed since the early 1900's when expansion and new ideas in the industrialized world led to a massive change in the conversation about the rights of women. Here we are in 2016 and the need for a day like this lives on:

"Almost four in ten businesses in G7 countries have no women in senior management positions. Globally, the proportion of senior business roles held by women stands at 24%, up slightly from 22% in 2015. However, this minor uplift has coincided with an increase in the percentage of firms with no women in senior management, at 33% in 2016 compared to 32% last year."

- Dina Medland in Forbes

I have written in the past about the surprising facts surrounding gender inequality in my own field of marketing. In the study, though women predominantly report more marketing related skills than men, they are paid less to do the same job and disproportionately rise up the corporate ladder to leadership at a slower place than men. According to Bloomberg, even within an "equal playing field" of MBA graduates, women make less than men though they are exactly as qualified.

Until these numbers change, the international media and I will publish article after article exposing the situation and calling for change as part of International Women's Day. When they numbers DO change, maybe we can change the tone of today to include parades and glitter and mimosas. (Heck, let's make that part of IWD protocol. Cheers!)

Hindsight is 20/20:

This time last year I tapped into my network of marketing leaders who have adeptly navigated success in a business environment not always encouraging to women.

I asked each of them, "If you could go back in time and give your younger self advice in the world of business, what would you say? What advice would you give to young women today, especially in a marketing role?" 

Here is their excellent advice. They form 14 powerful rules for being a woman in business - it's good advice for any gender:

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Amy Bills, Marketing Director at Blackbaud

I wish I could tell my younger self (or any young woman) not to wait until you're 100% ready to try something. Whether it's going for a promotion, running a half marathon, starting a part-time business: You will never be totally ready for anything that stretches your boundaries.

This is a big difference between how men and women think. Men, in general, will go for it if they can check maybe 60% of the 'are you ready?' boxes. While women wait...and wait...to check every box.

Do. Not. Wait. If something seems appealing to you; if you can imagine yourself doing it, that is your mind telling you to **go.**

That's why Nike's slogan has lasted so long. It's a recipe for moving forward.

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Stephanie Tilton, Principal/Marketing Writing Consultant, Ten Ton Marketing

Take the mandate to be a data-driven marketer a step further and apply it to your own career journey. Understand your company's strategic objectives inside and out and how marketing will contribute, and then map out your specific role in it all. Wherever possible, associate metrics with your own responsibilities and goals, and tout your successes in the framework of the bigger picture.

Raise your hand at every opportunity to soak up new knowledge and develop yourself into a well-rounded marketer who can handle anything thrown her way. Develop your personal brand by creating the story of you and crafting your own perspective on today's marketing landscape -- then share that at marketing events and in the online social sphere at every turn.

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Maribeth Ross, Chief Content Officer and Managing Director at Aberdeen Group

Ladies, the best advice I can give you to “make it happen” in marketing really has nothing to do with marketing at all. Rather, the advice that comes from my experience surviving and thriving in the business world amid all the media coverage around women's rights and issues such as pay equality is simple: your gender does not matter. Yep, I said it.

Here are my Five Rules for Making it Happen, listed in no particular order.

  1. You can be anything you want to be.

  2. There is no substitute for hard work.

  3. Don’t take crap.

  4. Take your integrity seriously.

  5. Be you.

(Read more about these five rules on Maribeth's blog.)

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Melanie Berger, Owner/Designer at Mariwear

As for International Women's Day, I have to say that I am one who lives for and around karma. I'm all about having a passion or vision and going for it. I fully believe that if you don't ask, you don't get.

The quote I used that night has been used before my time but this is truly my belief: "Believe in your idea, trust your instincts and don't be afraid to fail". This has been used by Sara Blakely of Spanx and many others.

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Kim Donlan, CEO of RedSwan5

Ignore the titles, job descriptions and requirements you see today -- especially the ones that try to define you as a particular kind of marketer. Focus instead on talking - to everyone - about what you are curious about. This will transcend the conversation from your current skill set directly to your passion.

A fascinated marketer will quickly acquire whatever skill she needs to pursue her passion and begin shape her career around who she is rather than what she does.

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Samantha Stone, Founder & Senior Analyst, The Marketing Advisory Network 

As a young professional I was naturally driven, tripped my way into finding fantastic mentors and was known for solving problems and multi-tasking. I'm proud of what I accomplished but disappointed I didn't savor the journey. Instead of enjoying a sense of satisfaction I was alway anxious to move forward to the next challenge. While I worked with talented peers I never fully trusted anyone but myself.

I attended EVERY meeting just to make sure my team didn't miss anything important. When a team mate missed a deadline I jumped in and did it for them. When their writing was less than perfect I fixed it for them rather than provide guidance for them to address. I was exhausted and never paused. Youthful energy made it look on the outside like it was easy, but inside I was burning myself out. It took me many years to internalize that success is not a solo sport. No one can scale their impact without trusting peers - imperfections and all.

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Courtney Kay, VP, Field & Product Marketing at TechTarget

As a woman in business I wish someone had sat me down early and said “stop thinking of yourself as a woman in business.”  No man would ever define himself as  “a man in Business.”  Defining who you are by the amazing thing you do is the first piece of advice I would give to any woman… me, I’m a marketer, and I love it.

The second piece of advice (which an amazing mentor taught me) would be to not worry about being right but about getting what you want.  Women so often feel the need to prove themselves and be right.  It’s exhausting and frankly, a waste of time.  The best leaders are the leaders who never lose site of the end game, and do what it takes to get there, giving credit where credit’s due and attributing that to the team members who make it happen… this is particularly important in marketing where what we do is half art half science- there’s rarely a “right” answer, elevate the great ideas.

Which leads me to my third piece of advice: support other women!  Somehow we are far harder on our female peers and often look at everything they do with criticism first and appreciation second… reverse that, and make it constructive.  “A rising tide lifts all boats…” or something like that … and finally, stop apologizing.  Make the decisions you’re proud of, support the causes you believe in, and don’t apologize for either.

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Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs 

Never underestimate the value of poking your nose out.  I used to think if I was bright enough or hard-working enough or talented enough… success would find me organically. Or magically.

That’s not quite right, though: You still have to be bright and hard-working and talented… but you have to put yourself out there, too. You have to create your own opportunities. No one is going to invite you. There’s some luck involved (that’s the second thing we shouldn’t underestimate), but there’s no magic.

Also, never underestimate the value of relationships – personal and professional. Everything I’ve accomplished has been as much because of a key relationship or two as it was because of me.

And finally, never underestimate the value of good night’s sleep.

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Jenviev Azzolin, Founding Partner at pplconnect

Often times the hardest critic you'll face is yourself. Try to harness that energy into building your drive and momentum. Ignore the rules and the guidelines of what "you're supposed to do" and define your own. Follow your instincts, ignore naysayers and always be true to yourself.

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Maura Fitzgerald, Owner of Version 2.0 Communications

The best advice I ever got was given to me at the very beginning of my career and it is what I pass along to colleagues who seek out my counsel.

Listen to your gut.

When you do, you won't go wrong.  Ever.  And the wonderful thing is that the more you listen, the louder it gets and the easier it is to "hear."  Your instinct is the combination of your intelligence, your experience and the ephemeral signals you're picking up from your environment and those that populate it.  It is your biggest asset.  Learn to cultivate it and use it.  You will never regret a decision that you make that is based on your gut feeling.

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Jean Serra, Founder and Partner, Version 2.0 Communications

When I think about my career, I feel very lucky and appreciative.  First, to the women who've come before me and paved the way in the workplace.  I entered the agency world well after the Mad Men era where women had to fight for a voice and a seat at the table.  And, given my professional focus in PR, I have been fortunate to be surrounded by smart, successful role models at every stage of my career.  These women, both colleagues and clients alike, have taught me so much about the craft of communications and business, management and mentorship.  I'm also enormously grateful to my parents who always encouraged and supported me academically and professionally.  They helped me put my education first and served as my cheering section when I considered new jobs or professional endeavors, including the scary proposition of starting my own business.

So, if I had to look back and give my younger marketing self some advice, I'd say -- think big, take risks and don't worry so much!  Surround yourself with great people that you can learn from and don't be afraid to seek out mentors to ask for advice and help.  Oh, and remember to celebrate the successes (big and small) and enjoy the ride.

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Ann McGuire, Senior Product Manager, BuyerZone 

Coworkers. Mentors. Inspiration. Often in the beginning, I found myself wondering what I was really going to do with my career, how I could shape it, and who would give me the chance to shape it. This struggle was mine, and so I thought, mine alone. My research, though critical, could only get me so far.

If only my younger self knew that [most] coworkers love sharing what they do, their struggles, their passion and their goals. I started asking questions, walking around the office and meeting people I’d never spoken to or overlapped with before. Learning different aspects of the business soon connected me with one of my “forever mentors” and my inspiration and creativity grew from there. Don’t be afraid to explore within your current company and role to help shape and build your own foundation.

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Heather Meza, Founder & Principal Consultant, The Marketing Evolutionist

Rarely will your career follow a simple and projected path straight up. It’s more like a roller coaster ride than a ladder. My advice? Buckle in, raise your hands high, and don’t let fear make any decisions for you. Don’t wait for opportunities, make them! Take calculated risks. You’ll regret what you DON’T do more than the things you do. Experiment until you find what really moves you. And remember: there is no losing, only winning and learning—so enjoy the ride!

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Ardath Albee, CEO & B2B Marketing Strategist, Marketing Interactions

You may be surprised. My younger self wasn’t a marketer. I was a general manager in the hospitality industry. Usually the only woman in the room at association meetings. It was unusual in the late 80s and early 90s for women to hold that position. I ran hotels and country clubs. Of course that included marketing, but that was only one role. I think it helped me immensely because I had the bigger view of the business and was responsible for the P&L, HR, F&B, etc. The whole thing. When I made the transition to GM of country clubs that included oversight of the golf course. I had to learn fast and be bold to keep my job. But that was probably the best training I could have had for becoming a marketer.

It wasn’t until I was running a startup marketing technology company in 2000 that I really dove head first into marketing while working with clients and discovering how bad things were with content. It’s likely that not coming up through the marketing ranks helped because I didn’t have many preconceived ideas or constraints about what was possible. Of course, having an English degree and being a die-hard writer also helped immensely.

My advice to younger marketers is to learn all you can and keep learning and to take risks. As they say, if you don’t try, you don’t get. It’s the chances I took that built my career. I still learn things every day. With change as the norm, it’s the only way forward.

And one other thing – customer first – always. The best skill you can have is to get out of your head and into your customer’s mindset. That was true in hospitality management and it’s true in marketing.

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Related reading:

This advice originally appeared on LinkedIn.

Thank you to all who participated in this project. To learn more about International Women's Day, please visit their website.

Every week(ish) I send out new ideas, writings, and interesting links on marketing, business, and life. It’s free & curated by me. Get on the list.

Marketing Was Never Supposed to Be This Way (My TEDx Talk)

Every week(ish) I send out new ideas, writings, and interesting links on marketing, business, and life. It’s free & curated by me. Get on the list.

 

TRANSCRIPT

On Easter Sunday in 1929, a group of rich female debutants joined the annual Parade in New York City, and shocked a nation.

In one beautifully orchestrated moment, they pulled out cigarettes they had hidden under their clothes, lit them up, and strolled down the street smoking for all to see – including the press.

You see women at the turn of the 20th century did NOT smoke in public. It was something only a man (and women paid to sleep with men) could do. So you can imagine the newspapers the next day…..

But it’s not what you expect. Headlines across the nation called these women “powerful and independent suffragettes.” And they weren’t just smoking cigarettes, they were “lighting up torches of freedom.”

You see there was a marketer behind this, of course. There’s always a marketer behind these things. His name was Edward Bernays, and he had issued a press release the day before telling them what was going to happen, and armed them with that phrase “torches of freedom”.  You may have never heard that name, but as a consumer in the 21st century, Edward Bernays has impacted your life and the way you live it.

He was an American propagandist in World War 1, and after the war, companies needed to do something with all of the goods they were mass-producing. So they hired Bernays to create new kinds of consumers. The president of the American tobacco corporation, in this case, had approached him to solve what he felt was a problem. Only half of his market were smoking – just men. To sell more cigarettes, Edward Bernays needed to create a new kind of female– one that wasn’t ashamed of smoking in public like many were at the time. And so he used mass manipulation to link the cigarette to a sense of of independence, power, things important to women at this time in history, having just earned the right to vote. He single handedly created a new market for cigarettes with a marketing stunt.

And it worked. Women’s adoption of cigarettes rose steadily, jumping to $32 million in the year that followed this act.

And Bernays went on to replicate this model for all kinds of clients, from clothing brands to banks.. and create a framework for marketing that we are stuck with today.

It’s because of Bernays that we see product placement in movies. That we see movie stars and celebrities wearing certain brands. That the clothing we see in a magazine can be purchased down the street at a convenient department store. He’s the reason bacon and bananas are part of an all-American diet, and why cars are symbols of male sexuality.

He orchestrated a world where we have to buy certain things in order to be a certain kind of person.

And the model set up by Bernays is this: Here’s the product. Let’s use marketing to create consumers that fit this product. Product-centric marketing.

See, Bernays was kind of an awkward guy, in fact he rarely looked people in the eye. He thought of people in groups, not as individuals, and saw them as easily manipulated masses. What I haven’t told you about was Bernays’s family tree. He was the nephew of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.

To Edward Bernays, this model for marketing was just propaganda. Mass consumer persuasion.

He felt that “if you could use propaganda for war, you can use it in times of peace.” But the irony here is that this model not only inspired what we know today as marketing… it inspired Hitler’s ministry of propaganda.

They saw people as faceless crowds, easily forged into a pre-defined way of thinking / feeling / acting.

And unfortunately we haven’t been able to shake this mindset as marketers. And that’s the problem.

Nearly 100 years later, we waste hundreds of billions of dollars every year trying to create the kind of consumers we want, mold those that fit our products. Marketing has become an all-encompassing force in our world. It’s everything. It’s everywhere. We see between 500 to 3,000 marketing messages a day.

And the response of marketers has been to create more noise across more channels in an effort to get their message out to more people! But this strategy doesn’t work.

Consumers don’t trust companies. They tune out the noise of irrelevant marketing, they skip the ads, ignore the commercials. You’re more likely to get into Harvard, survive a plane crash or win the lottery than click a banner ad.

We have failed you as marketers because we are the center of our own universe. We become experts on our products and think we know all there is to know about our buyers. The truth is we don’t.

When was the last time you interacted with a company and felt…. Man, they reallyget me. It’s rare. When it happens, it’s almost magical it’s like finding a unicorn. And you’re loyal to that brand, because they’ve taken the time to get to know you, and given you the type of experience you want.

And that’s the point.

A friend recently told me that the origin of the word company comes from the concept of breaking bread together. Isn’t that incredible?

Great marketing is personal. It’s humanized. You don’t need to be a marketer to know this. It treats you like an individual. It speaks to you on your terms. It respects you - it doesn’t make you feel like you’re not good enough. It uses your language, reflects your priorities, speaks to your hearts and minds… not your vanity, not your ego.

Nearly a decade in this industry has proven to me that this is the only way forward as marketers.  If we have any chance of earning, of deserving the attention of our overwhelmed customers, we cannot buy it. If we’re going to cut through the noise, we must demonstrate that we understand who they are.

This new model is simple… it’s customer-centric, not product-centric. And it would terrify Edward Bernays, because it requires a skill he did not have: empathy. Seeing the world through the eyes of another. We are hard-wired for empathy… unless you’re a sociopath in which case please don’t get into marketing.  And this is the most important skill for marketers in 2015. Empathy.

In this brave new world of technology and data, we are presented with the greatest opportunity to reinvent marketing since the advent of the billboard. To redeem ourselves for nearly a century of obnoxious marketing. It was never supposed to be this way.

So my question for you today is this: what if the next hundred years of marketing was customer-centric? Human-centric?

Thank you.

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Katie Martell

Katie Martell

Every week(ish) I send out new ideas, writings, and interesting links on marketing, business, and life. It’s free & curated by me. Get on the list.

5 Surprising Facts About Gender Inequality in Marketing

5 Surprising Facts About Gender Inequality in Marketing

Every week(ish) I send out new ideas, writings, and interesting links on marketing, business, and life. It’s free & curated by me. Get on the list.

My first conversation with Mary Firme was funny and erratic. Just like the two of us – full of energy and jumping around topic to topic. We had met at one of many B2B marketing trade shows on our calendars as we worked in marketing for competing organizations. By all standard expectations, it should have been a tense and curt meeting - she, the “enemy” by conventional perspective. But I couldn’t help but instantly like Mary. A kindred spirit, smart, and fearless – a trait I have found is increasingly necessary in our profession.

Mary and I continued to run into each other at events – and staying true to this first impression, we had a memorable interaction at each one.

(Case in point: during my very last trade show for the company, I threw a massive boat party. Mary approached the attendees I had invited and made sure they were equipped with motion-sickness pills, and an invitation to her own rooftop party that evening. Much to my coworkers' chagrin, I just loved it. Audacious and hilarious. Fearless.)

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Years later Mary and I are on to different adventures in our careers. And this week, true to style, Mary boldly put her POV into the world.

She analyzed salary data within the marketing industry, and uncovered some infuriating trends. Here are five that stuck with me, but please read her original post or Slideshare, for the full data set.

1. Women have more marketing skills than men.

Women in the study dominate with skill advantage, owning the majority of 9 of the 13 skills studied including corporate communications (73% of women vs. 27% of men), branding (61% of women vs. 39% of men), and others.

TakeawayThis post is NOT here to suggest that women are inherently better at marketing than men. This issue is about equality, not comparison. The profession simply attracts more female-identified individuals. Read on.

2. Men are paid more for the same marketing skills.

*Facepalm.* Every. Single. One. of the 13 skills examined earned men more salary than women. Men paid more to do the same job. Same story, different data.

Takeaway: Ladies, we must be willing and able to negotiate salary commensurate to what we deserve. It’s a skill that is learned. And this also means we must pass it on to those we mentor.

3. Women lack the perceived skills required to meet this gap.

Perhaps it’s a matter of how the data was aggregated and reported but look at the precise skills that men “have” more of in this study (chart above.) Leadership. Business strategy. 

My non-statistically-relevant sample size of women leaders I know and have the pleasure of working with do not lack any of these skills. My gut tells me we are falling short when it comes to talking about these skills on resumes and in interviews.

Conferences and events are the biggest culprits here. Take, for example, the recent Dreamforce debacle summarized beautifully here.

"The conversation — which was titled the “Women’s Innovation Panel” — had little to do with tech or innovation. Instead, it focused extensively on parental leave policies and included such comments as, “Susan, you know something about babies,” a question about whether Wojcicki had all five of her children with the same husband(!), and a compliment on how great Alba looks in a bikini."  

Takeaway: We need to get better about talking about women in business. That is, there is nothing different about a woman in business than a man in business. We do the same job, and we should be discussed the same way.

Also, ladies, this is a reminder to toot your own horn. Get used to positioning your skills as men do. Think of Sheryl Sandberg’s consistent refrain - you’re not a bitch, you’re not bossy, you’re a leader. You’re decisive. I loved this recent article“Famous quotes, the way a woman would have to say them during a meeting.”

4. Women fall short in upward mobility.

Mary found that although 80% of entry level marketing workers are women, men obtain 64% of future leadership positions. As Mary writes, “by the end of the career climb, it’s shifted down to 37% female.”

Takeaway: Why does this happen? Of course part of it is in gender bias in the hiring process. But it takes two to tango. Studies show women wait to apply for jobs until they are 100% qualified. We must stop asking for permission to be the boss.

5. Marketing is doing better than other professions.

With our 36% share of top marketing positions, female marketers do fare better than the overall corporate average of 18% according to a recent Payscale McKinsey study.

Takeaway: We have work to do. I have a brilliant twin sister who is a PhD candidate in the field of biochemistry, and in her world of science, women are paid less, less likely to be funded, and faced with myriad gender bias in peer reviews and work culture.

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Just this week I presented Cintell’s vision at Mass Innovation Night. Bobbie Carlton does an excellent job aggregating the latest and greatest in Boston’s startup community for a monthly event that has earned a massive following with a months-long waiting list to present.

This time it was 100% female founders and supported by what seemed like an endless array of organizations and initiatives to support women in business. Read my post here promoting some of these groups like Innovation Women and SheStarts. Events like that encourage me that there is fantastic energy being applied by smart people in the advancement of women's equality in the world of business.

But there's lots of work to do. Just recently a male colleague offered that he was growing sick of all the women-focused articles and studies. Where were the male-focused studies? Where was his movement? With every ounce of restraint I held myself back from bitch-slapping him and proclaiming "every DAY is your damn movement, every time you walk into an investor pitch or business meeting you are marching in a privilege parade!" 

Sick of hearing about it? Look, change happens when we talk about it. When we refuse to be invisible. I'll stop blogging when these numbers make sense. And honestly, I'll probably keep blogging then.

Thank you to Mary for putting your analysis into the world. And thank you for being fearless.

Stats about Gender Inequality in Marketing

Stats about Gender Inequality in Marketing

This post originally appeared on LinkedIn

Every week(ish) I send out new ideas, writings, and interesting links on marketing, business, and life. It’s free & curated by me. Get on the list.

Where Are All the Women (Speakers)?

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Where Are All the Women (Speakers)?

Every week(ish) I send out new ideas, writings, and interesting links on marketing, business, and life. It’s free & curated by me. Get on the list.

Something really cool happened today. 

Entirely coincidental, but still totally awesome.

I was invited to speak on a panel at IBM's Cloud event here in Boston.

Not only was it 100% female, it also happened to include three other blonde women (an accidental circumstance according to the event organizer, Chris!) They are the brilliant:

Our fearless moderator was Sangeeta Guatam, Senior Management Consultant at IBM, and albeit not blonde, she was just as fabulous as the rest of the panel. 

Usually when I attend a panel event, or speak on one, I am a minority. Even in the seemingly female-driven world of B2B marketing, most of the speakers invited to participate are male. Now, these are not scientific numbers, but I'm sure we can all agree that on the whole, there is a major deficit. Where are all the women? 

Giving Women a Voice - Literally

I wanted to promote a fantastic new resource for women with something to say and event organizers who want to diversify their speakers: Innovation Women. Created by Bobbie Carlton (of Mass Innovation Nights), this is a new speakers bureau dedicated to removing all the excuses around not having an equal representation of gender at events. 

If you're a woman who would like more opportunities to speak at professional events, you can create a profile for a nominal yearly fee of $100. (BONUS: Use code Katie2015 to get 25% off. I promise Bobbie didn't ask me to write this.) 

If you're planning an event, it's free to browse the site to find qualified, smart, brilliant women to deliver compelling content to your audience. No excuses. 

Why I Love This

On the panel today I had the opportunity to share a quote I had recently heard from Madeline Albright:

 

I just love this. We all play a part in an ecosystem of helping each other to bridge the gaps prevalent in the workplace - yes even in 2015. Bobbie's new venture does exactly that, and at scale. 

Another resource I want to bring attention to is SheStarts, from fellow panelist Nancy Cremins. SheStarts is dedicated to supporting female entrepreneurs with an ecosystem of events, networking, and other resources. This is so critical as women starting companies just don't get the breaks men do.

Nancy offered an excellent POV on the panel today as to why. It is a common behavior for investors (the majority of whom are male) to fund and support people who look like them. (Pattern recognition.) Those entrepreneurs, in turn, become investors and continue the cycle. 

The State of Women in Entreprenuership

The homepage for Innovation Women offers up some sobering statistics: 

  • 85 percent of the companies that get venture funding have no woman on their senior management team.

  • Only 16.7 percent of the Fortune 1000 have a woman on their board.

  • Over the last 15 years, the number of female VC partners has declined from 10 to 6 percent.

And this 2014 study from Babson on venture capital funding for female entrepreneurs highlights additional perspectives: 

  • Startups with women on their executive team are 3X more likely to get VC funding now than 15 years ago.

  • However only 2.7 of venture capital investments have a woman CEO.

Ugh. But here's my favorite stat from the same study: 

Businesses with a woman on the executive team are more likely to have higher valuations at both first and last funding (64 percent higher and 49 percent higher, respectively).

Booyah!

Thank you to Chris Avery from IBM for the invitation to participate in today's panel event, and to my co-panelists for a fantastic discussion. I invite you to check out both Innovation Women (code Katie2015) and SheStarts. 

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