What Does the Price of a Dog Have to Do With the Campaign Framework?

Purebred or mutt, one thing you will never be asked is how much you paid for your dog. As anyone who has ever owned a dog knows, the cost of a dog isn’t in its acquisition. The real costs are in the long-term relationship you have with your dog: food, toys, medicine, boarding and vet bills.

Running a campaign that only focuses on customer acquisition is like focusing on how much the dog costs. In today’s world – whether it’s software, services or tangible products – the long-term value of customers often dwarfs the value of the initial sale. 

When Tony Jaros and I introduced the SiriusDecisions Campaign Framework at our 2012 Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona, we were focusing on the Demand Waterfall^® and the bliss that happens when inquiries transform into marketing qualified leads, opportunities and then closed/won deals. What happened after that wasn’t central to our definition and structure of the program families. 

Well, that’s changed. In today’s b-to-b world, from software (where recurring licenses have transformed the industry) to services and the sale of tangible goods, the long-term relationship with a customer is more and more of the focus of marketers. Companies are introducing teams that manage the long-term customer lifecycle and who focus on adoption, loyalty and advocacy. Additionally, the responsibility of demand teams has expanded to include renewals, upsell and cross-sell.

This year, at our 2019 Summit in Austin, Jen Ross and I introduced the first major update to the SiriusDecisions Campaign Framework. We’ve added an engagement program family. This recognizes the role of marketing and of the marketing campaign to focus on what it means to drive customer adoption, retention, loyalty and ultimately advocacy. We also expanded our definition of the demand program family to include acceleration. That is intended to mean anything done to increase the velocity of transition through any and all stages of the Demand Waterfall. We revised the definition of the enablement program family to move the focus on late-stage pipeline acceleration to the demand program family.

We’re delighted with the revised campaign framework. In upcoming blog posts, I will describe other changes we have made to improve the way campaigns integrate audience insights, messaging and content into their design and operation, and I’ll share how the SiriusDecisions Campaign Implementation Process has expanded to include the many challenges we have helped our clients meet and overcome as they’ve build their own campaigns.