Yes, you read that right, I did actually use the words “Blog” and “ROI” in the same headline. But this isn’t a post about how to calculate the ROI of your blog. If that’s what you are looking for, reading further will be a frustrating exercise.

Whenever I speak about social media and blogging, the questions always follow the same path from cynical challenges to reluctant how-to questions. Sort of like the 5 stages of grief (disclaimer: I am not a clinical psychologist and really have no idea if these stages are even accurate):

Shock – “Is a blog right for my audience?”
Denial – “How can I justify the value of a blog, I can’t measure the ROI, can I?
Bargaining – “How can I justify investing in such a time-consuming exercise? Isn’t my time better spent elsewhere?”
Anger – “Where do I even start? Social media is out of control.”
Acceptance – “How often do I have to post?”

Just like death and taxes, blogging is inevitable. It helps you establish a closer relationship with your customers. It gives your company a face and a personality letting you share your evolving philosophies and lessons learned with your readership. And, it helps with search engine optimization so that buyers can find you. For all of these reasons and so many more, you will eventually be forced into embracing blogging. I mean, when was the last time a journalist or blogger wrote a wildly exciting post linking to your web page? Not happening? You’re not alone. People don’t get excited by web copy. But they do get inspired and passionate about blog posts—if they deliver value.

I recently read an extremely interesting post by Phil Baumann’s entitled Blog ROI: It’s About Value, Stupid!, in which Phil makes an excellent case for why hospitals should have a blog. His reason: “value.” According to Phil:

“Until someone establishes a standard measure of Blog ROI, I think it’s helpful to focus our lens on a fundamental question: What information is needed to decide whether a blog is worth its cost. There’s probably a complicated answer to that question, one which depends on the economics of your particular organization. In its place, I’d like to offer up three simple intuition pumps:

1. Value drives ROI
2. Price is a function of Value
3. Value-Multiplied is replacing Value-Added”

Now, here’s the real genius behind Phil’s post. He claims that: “Value-Multiplied is Replacing Value-Added” – And that’s where intelligent applications of social media come into play. Can you think of a better way to multiply the shared values of your going concern? Word-of-Mouth (WOM) was always king. But know the kingdom of WOM has come. Know thy king. He’s a little different this time around. He’s wearing new clothing: a crown of truth, a cape of respect and a staff of democracy. In fact: he’s you! If you lay down the tracks for your customers’ value-train then ROI will come chugging along.

Ready to get started delivering value? Check out Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop Blogging for tips and resources.

Guest blogger, Andrea Stout shared some great ideas Monday on Getting More Traffic to your Trade Show Booth. I want to add one more – leverage your current customers. Generally your current customers will be attending the same events as your prospects. If you can convince a few to be evangelists for you, they will be more impactful than your best sales reps.

A colleague of mine had great success at a tradeshow last year. The messaging at the booth was all about being power driven which is also their company tagline. Each one of her customer evangelists wore a button that said “I am Power-Driven” while all employees wore “Ask Me How You Can Be Power-Driven.” They tripled the amount of booth traffic from the year before.

Here are a few things you might want to keep in mind when planning to use current customers at a tradeshow:

1. Plan ahead - Ask your sales reps and account mangers to find out if any of your best customers will be at the show. Consider inviting a few to be your guest. A customer advisory board is a great resource, if you have one.
2. Ask in advance – Most people will be flattered that you asked. Do not wait til you see them on the show floor to ask.
3. Set expectations – Make sure that your customers know exactly what will be expected of them. Do you just want them to just sing your praises or will they need to be able to answer questions from prospects.
4. Integrate with your overall theme – If you have a theme or specific message for your booth be sure the customers enhance and add to your overall objectives.
5. Give them something to wear – Ask your customer to wear a button, hat or shirt so that attendees can find them. Like in the example above, this does not have to be your logo – being different is a conversation starter.
6. Thank your customers – Cocktail parties, dinner or a gift at the show are a few ideas. When you ask them to be an evangelist, let them know how they will be thanked

Another idea is to include your current customers at any parties you might be throwing during the show. This can be a more comfortable environment that on the show floor. We all have a few customers that just could never be satisfied. Check with Sales and Account Management to be sure that everyone you are inviting is a happy customer.

Experiencing new media fatigue? Lost in a sea of links on the Interweb? Unsure of which blog name to drop during your next conversation? Here’s all you really need to know about what’s what in the blogosphere. Vanity Fair has gone and published this nifty Gartner-esque quadrant view of the top blogs today. http://gawker.com/tag/blogs/?i=5015947&t=the-blog-matrix.

Sadly, my interests seem to fall closer to the Scurilous/Opinion corner.

Written by Andrea Stout, ReachForce Customer and Event Marketer at NetQoS

Pam recently blogged about how to use after hours events to drive booth traffic and buzz at your trade shows. Today, I want to share my tricks for getting the most traffic to your booth.

1. Know your audience – Study their likes and dislikes. This will help you select giveaways and presentation topics.
2. Offer good content – Attendees love getting tips and best practices so focus on creating interesting and educational theater presentations.
3. Market your presentations – Do you have a speaking slot at the show? Are you giving presentations in your booth? Design a business card that contains your presentation topic and timeslot and place it into the badge holder of the attendee you scan.
4. Build brand awareness – Have your logo printed on stickers and place them on the badge of the attendee. Everyone will see it. I have also seen exhibitors place temporary tattoos on booth visitors.
5. Don’t hand out junk – The best giveaways are those that can be kept on an office desk or given to children. Anything that has an LED light and flashes is popular right now.
6. Show them the way – I’ve found that buying advertising space in conference guide rarely works. About 5% of our traffic is driven from bag inserts. Don’t waste your money – place good signage throughout your booth instead.
7. Play music – Before you begin a theater presentation, play music. The sound will attract people from nearby booths.
8. Shoot video – Take a Flip camera to your booth. Add the video you capture in your booth to YouTube – this will help you in search engine rankings.
9. Location, Location, Location – Real estate is prime on the exhibit floor. Try to get a space close to the entrance as the attendees must walk by you to enter and exit the show floor. Stay away from your competitors and try to get a booth near your partners so you can get referrals. If you’re in a small 10×10 space, make sure to get a corner spot. Your booth will get lost if you are boxed in between other exhibitors.
10. Feed them – It sounds so simple, but it works. Any time you can place a bowl of candy, a bucket of bottled water, or any other snacks in your booth – do it!

I’ve been thinking a lot about direct mail lately, pondering whether it could possible work again, or if it has simply become an unforgivable sin against the environment. You see, using email for acquisition just seems awfully risky these days with increasingly stringent CAN-SPAM laws. And, I’m just not comfortable blasting out an email to an unscrubbed list.

Before I would ever feel comfortable sending out a direct mail or email campaign, I would have to come up with a killer creative idea and offer that would compel my target audience to take action. And, I would need a precision database to ensure high response rates and minimal waste. But that’s another post.

And, I confess, I’m at a loss for inspiration. The last creative direct mail campaign I saw was at least 4 months ago, and it wasn’t even addressed to me. I was in my boss’s office and I spotted an unusual relic sitting on top of a stack of papers. No, the relic wasn’t just a direct mail brochure, it was a floppy disk!!! Can you imagine? I had not seen one of these since I was, erh, merely an infant.

Anyway, the floppy disk was imprinted with a custom URL based on the primary domain of www.areyouobsolete.com. Wow! It was the perfect combination of incredibly creative, environmentally friendly (recycling old floppies), and it sparked a curiosity so strong that I was compelled to run back to my office to type in the URL. And, to blog about it.

When I reached my office and typed in the URL, I was greeted with a “We’re Sorry, we do not recognize the URL” message because I had not typed in the personalized URL. Sadly, the folks at Progress Software who designed this ingenious campaign, had neglected to consider that the campaign might just be so clever that it would stimulate strong Word of Mouth and intrigue other possible buyers to visit and learn. A simple catch-all page at www.areyouobsolete.com would have been very helpful.

As a potential prospect for Progress, I might also suggest that they build out a database with all of the buyers in the buying process and send the floppies to each of them. You see, my boss had no interest in following up and he didn’t have time to indulge his curiosity. By sending the mailer to each member of the team, they would increase their odds of success.

Got any great direct mail success stories to share with The B2B Lead? Use the comments field to brag about your recent successes. I’m in dire need of inspiration.

Here at The B2B Lead we want to congratulate our Lead Blogger, Pam O’Neal Mickelson, for her case study on Viral Marketing in the Marketing Sherpa B-to-B Lead Generation Handbook. The following is a two part post that details the planning, execution and results of the campaign. Congrats Pam!

The B2B Lead Vidcast – A Case Study in Viral Video Marketing

Attention Conservation Notice: The following post contains a long post on controversy in the field of viral marketing and a long (30 min) video case study on viral video marketing presented by Pam O’Neal Mickelson. It presents advice on what to do and what not to do when it comes to producing and distributing a viral marketing campaign.

Viral video marketing has become a hotbed of controversy these days! Who would have believed that videos like Netcosm, Mr. Happy Crack, Benny Lava, and Tay Zonday could be tainted by heated debates over the validity of viral marketing and the techniques used by some to promote their campaigns?

Still the debate rages: Many B2B Marketers think viral marketing is like “lightening in a bottle.” They advise there is no simple formula and you cannot possibly orchestrate such a campaign because both content and timing are so critical to viral success. Others, will argue that they can concoct a viral campaign for anyone and will go to just about any lengths to do so.

While most will agree that content and timing are both crucial, I do believe that almost every B2B Marketer has a successful viral or Word of Mouth campaign in them. And, I also believe that they don’t have to resort to trickery or deceit to attract tens of thousands of viewers for their YouTube video. In fact, I believe the more authentic you are, the stronger the Word of Mouth effect. Let me explain.

The B2B viral video campaign NetQoS ran earlier in 2007 is a case study in how to package relevant and compelling content and get the word out to the right audience using Social Media. We used entertaining content that was compelling to our target audience, played down production value and branding, and then got the word out to the people who cared – technology professionals. We didn’t trick viewers into YouTube with headlines like “Stolen NASCAR” just to boost our numbers. By taking this high road we were able to generate more than 66,000 views, and importantly almost 2,000 leads and a half a million dollars in pipeline.

Unfortunately, not all B2B Marketers are using a transparent or authentic approach. A recent widely criticized Tech Crunch post written by Dan Ackerman Greenberg advising marketers to pay for blog coverage and trick viewers into viewing videos has triggered a firestorm of controversy that threatens to ruin the discipline for the rest of us. Much like spammers ruined email marketing.

Greenberg kicks off his post with this inauspicious intro: “Over the past year, I have run clandestine marketing campaigns meant to ensure that promotional videos become truly viral, as these examples have become in the extreme.” He might as well have run an ad inviting people to bash him. Or was that his intent? This is almost as bad as the sales letter I received from a company offering to post “laudatory comments” on our video postings or blog articles in an effort to build a following. I felt like I needed to take a shower after reading that letter and this post! (As you’ll read later I was not the only one.)

Greenberg also advised “So how do we get the first 50,000 views we need to get our videos onto the Most Viewed list?

• Blogs: We reach out to individuals who run relevant blogs and actually pay them to post our embedded videos. Sounds a little bit like cheating/PayPerPost, but it’s effective and it’s not against any rules.
• Forums: We start new threads and embed our videos. Sometimes, this means kickstarting the conversations by setting up multiple accounts on each forum and posting back and forth between a few different users. Yes, it’s tedious and time-consuming, but if we get enough people working on it, it can have a tremendous effect.
• MySpace: Plenty of users allow you to embed YouTube videos right in the comments section of their MySpace pages. We take advantage of this.
• Facebook: Share, share, share. We’ve taken Dave McClure’s advice and built a sizeable presence on Facebook, so sharing a video with our entire friends list can have a real impact. Other ideas include creating an event that announces the video launch and inviting friends, writing a note and tagging friends, or posting the video on Facebook Video with a link back to the original YouTube video.
• Email lists: Send the video to an email list. Depending on the size of the list (and the recipients’ willingness to receive links to YouTube videos), this can be a very effective strategy.
• Friends: Make sure everyone we know watches the video and try to get them to email it out to their friends, or at least share it on Facebook.

As you can imagine, Greenberg’s post was slammed big time for advocating “techniques including writing fake sensational titles and creating controversy by having arguments in the comments of a video using multiple YouTube accounts.” I can’t help but notice, however, that while Greenberg may be unpopular with the readers of Tech Crunch, he is apparently very popular among advertisers. A look at both the quantity and the prominence of his clients shows that there is huge demand and high stakes around viral marketing.

Viral video, much like televised infotainment, remains one of the best ways to broadcast your brand and message to a very large audience. Combine it with a blog or other social media component, and it can be an ingenious way to build a large following. And, unlike televised infotainment, it doesn’t come with a multi-million dollar price tag. The NetQoS viral video project, for example, cost only $6,500 to produce and will likely generate a 6,000+% ROI. Importantly, viral campaigns come with the added bonus of Word of Mouth cache. Viewers are guaranteed to tune in when the content has been recommended by a friend or colleague, or when the buzz has reached a level that demands their attention.

It’s easy to see why companies such as Greenberg’s firm are in high demand. And, while what he does may feel unethical and deceptive, is it really so different from the infotainment that we call reality TV? I mean, wasn’t The Apprentice just one long commercial for Burger King and Yahoo? Isn’t Project Runway a great promotional vehicle for Banana Republic and Bitten by Sarah Jessica Parker? Aren’t these all examples of Marketing disguised as entertainment? Aren’t we, as viewers, tricked into tuning in to these hour-long commercials by slickly produced teasers of apprentices battling to the finish or snarky fashion designers back stabbing each other to get ahead?

In an increasingly marketing-averse world, tricking your audience into tuning in may seem the only way to get your message out. But this is extremely short sighted. If you’re not looking at viral marketing with a long term perspective, you are over looking one of the most valuable aspects of this approach – the ability to quickly and inexpensively build a community of interest. The Word of Mouth aspect of viral marketing gives Marketers a powerful way to attract a following of media, blogerati, influencers, and–most importantly–buyers.

As this video case study of the NetQoS network monitoring campaign illustrates, just about anyone can be successful with viral marketing if they take an authentic, transparent, relevant and entertaining approach. Look at the fantastic job Dr. Pepper did with the Cherry Chocolate Rain viral video or this clever Symantec video. It may not always guarantee a million views, but it will earn you respect and a loyal following over the long term.In the next B2B Lead post I’ll enumerate the 20 ideas that made the NetQoS campaign a success leading to a Marketing Sherpa Viral Marketing Hall of Fame inclusion. I’ll also present some of the visuals that might have been difficult to see on this video.

Put These 20 Ideas into Action for B2B Viral Marketing Success

Attention Conservation Notice: The following post contains 20 ideas for packaging, promoting and tracking the results of your viral video campaign. It also contains visuals from The B2B Lead Vidcast on viral video marketing.As I’ve written previously on The B2B Lead, many Marketers advise there is no simple formula for making your campaign go viral. Others argue that they can help anyone go viral and will use less than authentic and transparent techniques to do so. As you can see from this vidcast case study for a B2B viral video campaign NetQoS ran, it is possible to be successful without resorting to trickery. It just takes relevant content, clever packaging, a solid conversion strategy, and transparent outreach via Social Media.

However, even with a good idea and superb execution, there are no guarantees. Viral marketing is like walking a tight rope. There is a fine line between success and failure. There are no assurances. No opportunities for testing messages. And it could backfire or simply fizzle. But the great thing about walking a tight rope is that no one can pass you.

Want to improve your odds in the world of B2B viral marketing? Here is a roundup of the 20 ideas that made the NetQoS network monitoring campaign a success, and some of the charts and graphs that you might not have been able to see on the video.

Viral Video Idea #1: Set clear objectives for your campaign. For NetQoS, we wanted to use viral marketing to increase brand awareness, break into the blogosphere in a big way and increase web traffic and leads. We set specific objectives and measured our success.

Viral Video Idea #2: Be relevant. Make sure your message and content are relevant both to your company and to your target audience. Because without relevant content, you may hit a home run but effectively strike out. Kind of like that dancing baby concept from the 90’s. Can you name the company behind that one?

Viral Video Idea #3: Know your audience. And, I’m not talking about their pain points and job roles. I’m talking more about psychographics and behavioral characteristics. Understand what interests them, where they live and work, how they get their information. For NetQoS, we knew that our audience would be a great viral target—they were comfortable online, 80% read blogs or are active in blogging, 84% start their search on a search engine. Most are smart and cynical audience—marketing averse.

Viral Video Idea #4: Be opportunistic. – Have your FlipVideo on you at all times to capture a great idea or moment. I heard a story about one of the leading open source database providers recently. Apparently, a Marketer for that company had a great idea for a video. He Twittered his circle of contacts to round up a video camera and by the time he was ready to shoot, his competitor had already heard about the idea and beat him to the punch.

For us, we were lucky enough to have the right video material right under our nose. A senior researcher had developed a 3D video-game like data visualization of our product data. It converted live Network Performance data from our products into 3D images. It was unique and very, very relevant.

Viral Video Idea #5: Have fun. As I wrote in this blog post from The B2B Lead, you should make fun of yourself before someone else does. We were extremely kitschy because we knew the quality of the graphics was not up to the realistic standards of today’s CGI. It had a very 80’s Tron like feel so we made the most of that. We didn’t just post the clip. We named it, packaged it and added humor at every turn.

Viral Video Idea #6: Develop a seeding and conversion strategy prior to posting your video. In 30 days with less than $7,000, our in-house team along with our team at Porter Novelli developed the strategy and materials for a complete viral video experience including seeding the campaign, welcoming viewers and offering additional content as well as a program for building a following after the campaign.

Viral Video Idea #7: In the world of viral video, production value isn’t important. In fact I would discourage it. Ours looked like some techies had cooked it up in their spare time. In fact, that’s how it started. But we did put a great deal of thought into the packaging, promotion and conversion strategy for the campaign. It is important to always provide a thumbnail image of what the viewer is getting.

Viral Video Idea #8: Protect your brand. You can make fun of yourself but don’t do anything that will embarrass you or the company. Don’t take chances with controversial content or release anything of such poor quality that you create a negative brand image. Don’t use dubious tactics to get noticed or bait and switch techniques. We explained very clearly what Netcosm was (a data visualization) and was NOT (a product for sale). We also made it clear that the work was done through NetQoS Performance Labs and not beta tested.

Viral Video Idea #9: YouTube reports that the average viewing time for videos is 15 to 30 seconds. You have a very short runway to take off. Get to the point fast, entertain and leave them wanting more. We added captions based on the old “This is brain, this is your brain on drugs” campaign. We selected clips that showed the most action and had some fun with the content. Then we offered a longer video if people were interested in seeing more.

Viral Video Idea #10: Somewhere between 40,000 to 65,000 new videos are posted to YouTube every day. Help people find it by optimizing for search engines: Tag it, name it appropriately, describe it, add links and compelling copy and optimize using the right keywords. If it takes off in a big way, you want as many links to your content as possible using your top keywords.

Viral Video Idea #11: Use your corporate blog to trigger the viral distribution and keep the story alive. You’ve got to get the word out and a press release is simply not appropriate for viral marketing. What’s more, blogging with the full story behind the campaign helps to give your program and your company a face and a personality. Make sure that personality is one that will garner respect by being completely open and honest on your blog.

Viral Video Idea #12: Build a community of interest. This is the core message behind my prior B2B Lead post on the subject of viral video marketing. Don’t use trickery or bait and switch to get people to your video because you will be forgoing one of the most valuable benefits of the viral approach – the ability to quickly and inexpensively build a community of interest. The Word of Mouth aspect of viral marketing gives Marketers a powerful way to attract a following. Do this by explaining each step of the program using your blog. Tell your audience what you were thinking when you produced it. Report on the results. Give followers a way to track the momentum and keep it alive.

Viral Video Idea #13: Seed the story with the blogerati, your customers and friends, your social network. Post it to Digg and Reddit or whatever social media site is appropriate for the topic. Twitter your followers. Leverage Social media like Facebook, MySpace, and other groups to spread the word. Of course timing is everything. Here’s a high level snapshot of our timeline.

Viral Video Idea #14: Track and monitor the results and keep your followers and the blogging community posted on the momentum building behind your viral video. This helps build excitement and credibility around how your video is resonating with the audience. It might just convince an influential blogger that he/she should write a story about you. We not only tracked YouTube views and Most Viewed Honors, but we also monitored:

• Google Analytics for web traffic
• Google Alerts for media and blog coverage
• Salesforce.com for leads and evaluation requests as well as revenue opportunities
• Eloqua for clickstream analysis to determine if people were using the right path from the blog story to the video to the microsite and finally to product pages and offers

Viral Video Idea #15: Automate and expedite lead processing. When viral goes big, it really goes big. And, studies show that B2B Marketers and Sales reps need to follow-up on Web-generated leads within 30 minutes of a registration or the chances for conversion are poor. If you don’t have a great program for automatically scoring and qualifying leads so that you can route quality leads to your salesforce instantly, you could be asking for big trouble using viral. First of all your Inside Sales team is likely to be swamped with a larger percentage of irrelevant leads. Secondly, you will miss out on a number of great sales opportunities by taking weeks to respond. We were actually given the Marketer’s Choice award by Eloqua for our Lead Scoring and Automation program that enabled us to process the leads generated by our viral campaign within 24 hours. Eloqua’s Marketing Automation was critical to this process.

Viral Video Idea #16: Demonstrate that you met your objectives. YouTube will allow you to track some of your results, but it won’t show the whole story. Here are a few results that NetQoS tracked:

• YouTube Views: 66,000 and growing. (This did not include those who viewed it on Google video, Tech Crunch or other blogs.)
• Blog Coverage: 70+ blogs wrote about the video.
• NetQoS Blog Readership: Traffic more than tripled.
• NetQoS Corporate Web traffic: YoY 43% higher
• Organic SEO: As the chart below shows: weighted market exposure for NetQoS top keywords increased by 41% for all keywords plus 600% on the primary keyword.

Viral Video Idea #17: Show your campaign delivered value to the business. You most certainly will have to do a lot of convincing to get sponsorship for your viral campaign, so don’t miss your chance to prove to all of the skeptics that the idea was worth the investment. Show that the spike in traffic and coverage hit the right audience and generated brand awareness or demand. For us, the results show it was:

As the charts below show, there was a spike in web traffic for all product pages and a large 4X increase in Web-based leads. We also showed a 26% increase in product demo requests. Our cost per qualified lead was $16. Other techniques range from $60 per qualified lead for Google AdWords to $250 or more from a seminar or online advertising campaign.

Viral Video Idea #18: So, show me the money. Viral video, like any other Marketing campaign, should always demonstrate a positive return. While it is still too early for us to show revenue, we do have more than a half a million in pipeline from this campaign that cost $7,000.

Viral Video Idea #19: Don’t forget to subtly brand the video and microsite with your company name. Don’t be overly obvious or slick. The point is to entertain and encourage people to spread the word while subtly associating your company with the content.

Viral Video Idea #20: It’s not over when it’s over. Extend the life of your campaign. You’ve done the hard work to build a community of interest, so keep them interested and the lines of communication open. Evolve your story, and continue to post updates. For NetQoS, we turned the Netcosm experience into a live event and continued to post about it on our blog.

When we first embarked upon this viral video campaign, there was no playbook. The NetQoS Marketing Team, Dr. Mike Johns, and the Porter Novelli Austin team all worked together to figure it out. Now we are sharing our playbook with you. Let us know if you’ve had success using it or your own techniques.

In most, if not all B2B sales, there is more than one person involved in the buying decision. It could be any number of people that serve any number of roles within the organization. Getting everyone on the same page can be challenging.

Each member is involved for different reasons therefore they need to be marketed to differently. Your message to each of them should be tailored to respond to their specific pain. For example, an executive involved may care about how this new product is going to increase efficiencies while the actual end user may care more about ease of use and if it integrates well with other solutions already being used.

Here’s a direct mail campaign I did that delivered an 80% (marketing to sales) conversion rate.

BACKGROUND:
At the time I worked for a content management platform company. We were looking to partner with about a dozen strategic partners and needed a high impact program to get their attention. The goal was to get a meeting with the CEO, the CTO and the VP of Strategic Alliances, one meeting with all 3 people in attendance. These companies didn’t know us so I needed to do something to stand out among all other marketing attempts.

ACTION PLAN:
Mission Impossible 2 was about to come out on DVD and advertising had kicked up for the upcoming release date. I decided to leverage this hype and build a campaign around the movie.

I wanted to get the attention of the key executives and get them to accept a meeting with our executives. My copies of the MI2 DVD arrived on the release date, I then turned around and sent them to the potential partner executives in a metal briefcase with a message attached. The message read – “This package has also been sent to Jason Morio, CTO and Suaad Sait, CEO. Whichever one of you logs into this site (PURL), accepts a meeting with us and ensures all 3 of you are in attendance will get a portable DVD player. (I’m about to date myself here but oh well, portable DVD players had just come out and were running anywhere from $600 – $1200 each.) If I were doing something like this today I might offer the cool new iPhone.

Of the 12 companies that we targeted with this first piece, 6 companies took the meeting. We were very excited with the results. (DISCLAIMER: I feel like I need to say this before we go on any further. I’m sure most of them took the meeting just for the DVD player, but even so, we got our shot at the table with the decision making unit for a partnership.) My job as a Marketer was done. I opened the door and set up a meeting with the right decision makers.

There were still 6 more companies we wanted to talk to that didn’t respond. For those that didn’t respond to the DVD, we sent a follow up piece. This time, a rocket with sunglasses and message inside. (If you remember the movie, it begins with Tom Cruise climbing a mountain and a rocket is fired into the mountain with a message.) I mailed the rocket with a piece of rock attached to it with different messaging this time. Still trying to spark an internal competition but this time with different solution messaging. We thought maybe with a little tweaking of the value proposition we could land a few more meetings. It worked! Three more potential partners took meetings.

So of the 12 originally targeted prospects, we got the attention of 9 and were able to present our value proposition as well as a joint value proposition.

Tips to remember when building a program for the entire decision making unit:

• Leverage what is already happening around you
• Make the most of your first impression
• Tailor messages to the each member of the decision making unit
• Don’t depend on someone else to champion you, create awareness with the entire decision making unit
• Everyone loves a competition and especially one where there is a high percentage chance of winning
• If it doesn’t work for everyone, continue testing and tweaking

One of the greatest challenges for event marketers is standing out from other booths at a trade show. The obvious way is to have the biggest badest booth in the expo hall, but with tightening budgets, spending more may not be an option. A more low-cost approach is to have a theme.

Here at ReachForce, we have a history of getting attention (mostly good) at DreamForce, salesforce.com’s annual user group conference. Each year we have a different, fully integrated theme to help attract more booth visitors. Last year our theme was Let’s Make a Deal (you know the old game show hosted by Monty Hall).

If you don’t remember the game show, I’ll give you a quick rundown. Monty Hall, the host, bartered with contestants dressed in costume and would allow them to choose their prize from behind one of three curtains or from one of several envelopes. The contestants always had an opportunity to trade in their prize for another mystery prize.

We decided to play Let’s Make a Deal to drive more booth traffic and engage attendees. If you attended DreamForce last year, you may remember seeing Fred and Wilma Flintstone; that was us. Fred and Wilma walked the floor handing out envelopes with $1 bills and told attendees that they could trade in their envelope for a chance to win much more at the ReachForce booth. Those of us working the booth were in costume as well (yes, I was Little Bo Peep). Booth visitors could then play a game of Let’s Make a Deal. To do so they had to take a demo of our latest software offering.

In the end, we reached all of our goals for capturing leads and gave more demos than expected. And people still remember us. One lesson learned was to consider who you are putting in costume. Our sales guy had more than a few people tell him they just could not take him seriously while he was dressed as Fred Flintstone. Be sure to draw attention but not at the cost of distracting from your message.

Different areas where you might consider incorporating a theme:

• Pre-show promotion
• Post-show follow-up
• Giveaways
• Costumes
• Booth signage

Written by Cody Young, ReachForce Customer Success Manager

I count it as good fortune … a big part of my job involves talking to dozens of different marketers every week about lead generation. Lately, I have kept my ears open for signs of downward second half ’08 pressure on budgets due to the economy. And while my report is hardly scientific, I am happy to say the majority of companies I’m in touch with seem to be in tune with the fact that the best formula for sales and marketing success (in any economic situation) is:

Sustainability + Execution + Accountability = Marketing ROI

In real world terms, if you’re driving somewhere, you’ve got to keep your foot on the gas and your car on the road at the same time. Marketing accountability (direction and measurement) are equal to those white lines we all strive to stay between no matter how fast or slow the speedometer says we are going at any given time during the trip. So when companies do knee-jerk reactions to economic news and paralyze their sales and marketing efforts by raiding the marketing budget, I’ve always equated it to driving by those bad planners along side of the road who have run out of gas …you feel bad for them, but at the same time you can’t help but wonder how in the heck they let that happen. Did they really think they could get to where they wanted to go, without keeping enough fuel in the tank?

Taking the gas analogy one step further – in an economy where responsible marketers need to be doing more with less – I equate an over reliance on tradeshows for lead generation to rushing out and buying a Humvee. Sure, the “let’s have a parade” factor is there. The big tires, shiny grills and overhead lights look cool. You can paint logos on them and go like a bat-out-of-hell for two days. You’ll have plenty of conversations with lots of bleary-eyed people about how rugged, yet chic it all looks … but at the end of the day, poorly executed trade show campaigns are about the most wasteful thing I can think of from a lead generation perspective.

I’m keenly aware that trying to steer some folks away from over relying on trade shows for leads almost means talking them into a complete redo of their very persona on a professional level. The success of too many marketers are gauged by how tricked-out booths look, or how efficiently they can ship dozens of boxes from one city to the next. Most large companies have full time employees who do nothing but register for events, manage shipping and logistics vendors and fight – oops, I mean “coordinate”- with the sales team about who to send to this or that event with exhibit hall passes, matching $60 golf polos and thousands of dollars worth of bags and trinkets that everyone forgets in their hotel room on checkout day. Then finally, the two hour meeting with finance weeks later about whether sales or marketing is going to pay for the expense reports. Sound familiar? You know who you are.

For these people I’d like to I’d propose a few things that can be done as part of your trade show production to ratchet things up accountability-wise. The goal is to go beyond counting how many business cards are in your fishbowl, or the number of badges you’ve scanned with your $300 per event “rent-a-scan.”

1. As far in advance as possible, begin processing event attendee registration lists as if they were an operational database. That is, weed out irrelevant contact data, then research, segment and prioritize relevant targets. Add this data to your CRM and marketing automation systems. Then direct pre-show, at-show and post-show calls-to-action at them with embedded “key driver” messaging. It’s really about knowing who you want to speak with before your team goes to the event, instead of passively waiting for people to visit your booth after the show has started.Many events these days offer incomplete contact data for trade show registrants and/or have limitations about how it can be used. As this trend grows, a good approach is to use custom contact database builders like ReachForce to quickly research the companies who are sending attendees and provide you with names and contact information of those who are most relevant to your sales efforts. Very often these results track to same people who have registered. If not, it’s still nice to have the right names when you speak to their co-workers to arrange getting your sales people networked in.
2. Game-plan each event as if you were a basketball coach. Consider the entire exhibit floor as the field of play with the understanding that no basketball team ever won a game with all 5 players standing under the hoop (in this case, around the booth). Depending on how many people you have going, you at least need 1) a good Point Guard (someone working the entire court, driving activity toward the goal/booth 2) a good Defensive Forward (someone working the entire court, talking to competitors, their customers, media contacts, consultants and analyst) and 3) a solid Center (someone – not a booth babe – who can deliver value proposition, demos, etc. in an intelligent and memorable way. Think of this as someone who instills confidence, with whom the visitor would want to personally do business.)
3. Once you have these players in place, make sure they all have measurable objectives to shoot for. Give them a leader and mission and make known in a post show report to executive management whether or not objectives were achieved. In other words, have a solid event execution process that holds people accountable for their individual assignments. This is a good way to avoid the perception that trade shows are junkets.
4. Rather than doing free-form sales pitches at your booth, strive to quantify what visitors think of your product or offer (usually after a demo) by using an ‘asked and answered” approach. A kiosk-based survey system can be used to pose “key-value” and “key-driver” questions with multiple choice questions. Assign point values to each response choice and tabulate them in a way that can be mathematically analyzed after the event to “score” each visitor. If you’re going to give away trinkets make them good ones, and give them to survey-takers.
5. Set media coverage objectives for each event (by doing proper preparation work, setting interviews, etc. with attending media contacts upfront) and measure effectiveness in terms of ad value equivalency. I.e. measure what same coverage would have cost if you bought an ad from each outlet. This is not really a pure lead generation issue, but tradeshows are useful for creating thought-leadership buzz, if done correctly. It’s important to craft a compelling, newsworthy pitch such as a new product launch, or stories linking important key drivers with how your company is positioned to address them. And if you don’t have a couple of client/promoters who are willing to be a part of anything you pitch to the media, don’t even waste your time. I don’t know too many reporters willing to write a story unless there are solid use cases and customer testimonials to back your claims up.On this same note, try to coordinate the timing of your more meaningful press releases with your event schedule. A strong story released with a dateline from a major industry event is a good way to compel media contacts to meet with you there. It also helps give your presence at the event a theme to work with, which is also helpful in creating buzz.
6. As a final dig (I just can’t help myself) always bring a fire extinguisher to each event. That way you can put out the flames from all the budget dollars you are burning when it starts to get out of hand.

“…companies should always be looking to renovate the offering – in other words, don’t look to do new things, look to do more of what makes your products successful in the first place.”

I think this statement does a good job of summing up this chapter. Sergio Zyman gives some great reasons and examples to why we should focus on what we have and the reasons why our best customers buy from us before investing in innovation.

The one tip that really stood out for me was “Don’t Slash Prices”. As we are just wrapping up the end of the quarter, Sales teams are willing to go to the extremes to close business. Companies are willing to do everything they can to get those last couple of deals in and often slashing prices is at the top of the incentive list. Does the value of the offer change with the seasons? So why does the time of year determine how much a prospective customer pays?

Consider this – “Everything you do communicates something about your brand to your customers and prospective customers. Even your prices communicate something about your business”. So does that mean discounting the price is also discounting your value and brand? I think it might.

Zyman goes on to say, “Temporary price breaks tend to become permanent.” This is definitely true. Price breaks make it difficult for a customer to pay full price again and even more difficult for a Sales team to ask them to pay full price. So does this mean we have permanent discounted our value with this customer? Or does it just mean we have to work harder to prove our true value? I’m not sure on the answers to either of these questions but it makes me wonder…

I’ve gone off on a bit of tangent here, sorry. This chapter has lots of great ideas to consider if you are at the fork in the road trying to decide where to go next. Innovation seems to be the “in” thing but that doesn’t mean it’s the right decision for every business. I think the overall message here is, consider what you have and why your customers by from you before deciding to move on.

And that’s it. We have made it through our first ReachForce Book Club book. Thanks to everyone who joined in the conversation. Stay tuned to see what book we will be discussing next.