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Optimum Mix – Achieving the Demand Generation Mojo
My first task at the start of Quarter 2 soon as my webinars have ended & I have the analyst endorsed content piece would be to create a ‘content map’. This map would comprise pieces of audio, video & static content taken from the webinars & analyst pieces.
While my team was handling the logistics of Q1 activity, I was researching & thanking John Kotter for ‘A Sense of Urgency’ & basically getting on with it. And what was I researching - how should I distribute my content?
This is key to the magic unfolding over the next 6 months wherein I intend to bombard my Sales folks with leads enough to last forever. Content distribution planning also enables me to show to my bosses up there that I have been able to achieve the stars without denting the dollars & gives me the leverage to demand for & get these dollars when I would need those most – at the start of Q4. Here’s how a part of my content distribution plan could look like:
First:
- Content: Webinar-1- 4 minute video extract
- Target: Mid rung decision enablers
- Objective: Lead Generation to engage for reaching higher rung
- Channel: Website, Paid Search, SEO with specific landing page optimization
- Geography: As applicable
- Time: 3 Months
Second:
- Content: Webinar-2-5 minute audio & video extracts
- Target: C, V level decision makers
- Objective: Lead Generation, thought leadership branding
- Channel: Website, Social Media for audio, video & 3rd party blogs with specific search optimization & linking
- Geography: As applicable
- Time: 3 Months
Third:
- Content: Analyst White Paper
- Target: Mid rung decision enablers
- Objective: Lead Generation to engage for reaching higher rung
- Channel: Website, Paid Search
- Geography: As applicable
- Time: 1 month for paid, 3 months for organic
Fourth:
- Content: Press Releases
- Target: All rungs
- Objective: Lead Generation, spreading awareness & branding
- Channel: Online premium wires
- Geography: As applicable
- Time: 15 days
If you are reading this piece, then I shall talk about why this kind of a content map will give
me what I need. But, that’s for next time!
by Abhiraj Banerjee (abhiraj.banerjee@edynamic.net)
A must see brief presentation for Marketers on how to select a Content Management System (CMS) for their websites...
Why SMBs should go for Business Intelligence (BI)?
SMBs always perceived BI as behemoth systems involving huge amounts money, time and labor. Trying to assemble a working system from shrink-wrapped software is often considered daunting. Or pulling together products from multiple vendors could prove a challenge; pieces and parts may have worked individually, but integrating them together could prove a monumental task. And fully custom-built solutions can represent an astronomical expense, putting them out of range for many small- and mid-sized companies.
Not anymore. While the Microsoft BI platform is not magic—some work is required to achieve results—Microsoft’s SQL Server platform and integrated BI tools overcome these past challenges.
The delivery of BI information to decision makers in a company can be accomplished in a number of ways. This is where Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services is an excellent vehicle for the basic display and dissemination of BI information.
SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) combines the benefits of a centrally-managed reporting system with the flexibility and on-demand nature of desktop and web-based applications. A complete reporting platform, Reporting Services supports the entire report lifecycle, from authoring through deployment.
What makes SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) an ideal BI Reporting tool for mid-market?
1. Support for Five Styles of BI
As a company forays in Business Intelligence, it must have a technology that can seamlessly deliver all five styles of BI with a single unified architecture and metadata. The five styles of BI are:
i. Reporting
ii. Scorecards and Dashboards
iii. OLAP analysis
iv. Ad-hoc query and analysis
v. Alerting and Report Delivery
Equally important is the need for a single technology to provide all five styles as plug-and-play components on a single unified backplane and through a unified user interface. The unified backplane ensures that all styles of BI share common services and automatically build upon one another. The unified user interface ensures a common experience for all users, allowing them to seamlessly move between styles of BI without cumbersome application switching.
Companies can post reports to a portal, email them to users, or allow users to use the web-based report server to access reports from a folder hierarchy. Navigation, search, and subscription features help users locate and run the reports they need. Personalized subscriptions let them select the rendering format they prefer.
2. High Data and User Scalability
Over years, companies are faced with an explosion in the volume and scope of data they collect and generate. The myriad of systems, including ERP, CRM, Web sites, sales force automation, SEC compliance, and supply chain management, contributes to this massive data influx. BI must be able to access all these databases to be truly effective.
A ROLAP (relational OLAP) architecture is necessary to access all data to the full depth and breadth of the largest databases. Relational OLAP architecture provides access to the largest databases with the highest interactive performance. SSRS, in conjunction with SQL Server Analysis Services, can access very large databases, yet maintaining considerable user interactivity. The product's modular, web-based design scales easily to support high volume environments. One could create a reporting server farm with multiple report servers accessing the same core reports, serving thousands of web-based clients.
To achieve the highest user scale, companies need a BI technology like that of SSRS, capable of reaching all business users through the interface of their choice; a zero-footprint Web interface that is instantly deployable to geographically distributed users; and a dynamic caching architecture. A dynamic, multi-level caching architecture provides increased performance as more people use the system, making each user’s experience faster and more interactive, while imposing the absolute minimum load on database resources.
3. User Self-Service – Ad hoc reporting
As the population of users and amount of data in the enterprise grows, user self-service becomes absolutely critical. To achieve broad-based self-service, companies need the SSRS technology that offers “what you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG) design, eliminating tedious user training in report design.
SSRS has an ad hoc reporting tool that enables business users to create their own reports and explore corporate data. Report Builder incorporates a user-friendly business query model that enables users to build reports without deep technical understanding of the underlying data sources.
4. Automated Maintainability
Cost-effective enterprise BI requires the ability to update all reports automatically, reflecting continual changes to underlying business definitions, business structure, and database structures. SSRS provides for centrally defined and administered business rules which ensure that all users have a single version of truth to look at.
5. Cost Effective
If your company has an Enterprise or Standard edition of Microsoft SQL Server running, you already have SSRS available with you. You don’t need to shell out extra money for purchasing SSRS. That’s the advantage that companies can draw from Microsoft Business Intelligence stack which provide a complete set of tools for end-to-end BI solutions.
Even if your company does not have an existing implementation of SQL Server, SSRS has the lowest licensing cost among the important vendors in the BI space. It does not require an ‘army of consultants’ to implement. In addition, the server-based license model of SQL Server is definitely more cost effective as against user-based licenses.
In the long run, report maintenance becomes the dominant issue in total cost of ownership. Automated instantaneous updating provided by SSRS becomes a critical requirement and ensure the cost per report is minimized.
6. Granular analytic capability - Drill through and parameterized reports
Even more effective for user self-service is a BI technology that can drill anywhere, allowing users to seamlessly drill through any combination of data in the database. SSRS provides the users with such functionalities that have become standard in today’s BI market. They arm the end users with key insights into their KPIs.
As they say, facts never lie. SSRS, with its advanced functionalities, has to capability to provide a measure of your company’s past and current performance with intuitive analysis. If blended with planning and trending data, it can also give an insight to the future performance.
7. Microsoft Office integration
It’s no surprise that SSRS provides seamless integration with Microsoft Office products. The integration does not require any customization or programming. End-users can use the familiar desktop environment to enable them to be more productive without learning new software.
Integration with SharePoint Server enables an end-user to view and manage reports completely from within a SharePoint document library. In addition, SSRS can also export reports into PDF for pixel perfect reporting.
8. Open APIs
Reporting Services offers a complete, server-based platform for creating, managing, and delivering traditional and interactive reports. At the same time, the modular design and the extensive application programming interfaces (APIs) of Reporting Services enable software developers, data providers, and enterprises to integrate reporting with legacy systems or third party applications.
Because of the complexity and time required to embed reports into applications, reports are often created outside of the application using third-party tools and distributed manually or through batch jobs. By using SSRS, these applications can easily be extended to include a complete reporting solution, embedded within the application.
SSRS also provides a tight integration with the Visual Studio .Net development environment.
9. Presentation formatting with company branding
SSRS offers picture perfect formatting with company branding. No longer is a manual process required to juxtapose company logo and client information with the invoices. SSRS integration with Microsoft office and Adobe PDF provides for a one-step process to come out with a reporting document with company branding.
10. Security and administration
SSRS implements a flexible and a role-based security model to protect reporting resources. This ensures that every employee is allowed access to data which the user role is entitled to. In today’s world, security of data has assumed paramount importance. SSRS provides enough security measures to ensure the safety’s of company data. SSRS also includes extensible interfaces for integrating other security models if desired.
by Ankit Katariyar (ankit.katariyar@edynamic.net)
As the Insurance Industry becomes more competitive and product offerings more complex there is a growing need for customers to do more research before they decide on what product they need to buy.
While Customers today are willing to buy certain categories of Insurance online such as Travel or Automotive insurance the Internet is yet primarily a channel for Research. However, researching on the Web often doesn’t translate into a policy application through any channel. Low conversion rates are the result of a complex product and a low-commitment research channel.
Life insurance as an example won’t see the same online sales success that auto insurers will enjoy. However the web can prove a useful channel to promote the prospect to the next level and lead to applications through other channels.
In a survey done in the US by Forrester Research in 2007 it was seen that of the 3 million Americans who have researched life insurance during the past year, more than one in three used the Internet to do so, making it the second most popular research channel after researching in person.
Insurance companies need to clearly identify & understand the objectives and purpose their websites serve.Assuming that the website can become a huge Point of Sale is not only a false expectation but it can also ignore the need for providing information that will enable prospects to conduct research and maybe even fill out an enquiry form
So the question really is – What should Insurance Websites focus on that would make them “successful”? “Successful”being the loaded and operative word here! So let’s start
Step 1: Identify the Goals for the website
Step 2: Understand your Target Audience
Step 3: Identify Strategies that will lead to achieving these Goals
Step 4: Define “Measures of Success” against each Goal
Let’s start with Step 1– Identifying the Goals for the website
For most insurance companies the goals could be summed up into the following
1. Customer Acquisition - Both lead generation and sales in some cases
2. Customer Retention – Servicing existing customers
3. Agent Recruitment – The agent network is the primary sales channel and hence there is strong focus on this area
4. Employee Acquisition – the website could be a large source of resumes
5. Brand Promotion – last but not least this is every Marketers objective. To not only promote the brand online but also create recall and align with offline promotion activities
Along with defining your goals it is also critical to prioritize them. This is very useful when it comes to allocating real estate and defining content focus on the website
Stay Tuned for – Step 2 – Understand your Target Audience
by Subir Singh (subir.singh@edynamic.net)
