Your collateral mix – do you have everything you need?  Does your sales team think what you’ve created useful pieces that help drive the sales cycle?  How do you know or decide when to add something new to the mix?

Wikipedia defines marketing collateral as the collection of media used to support the sales of a product or service. These sales aids are intended to make the sales effort easier and more effective.

As Marketers we should be doing regular reviews of our sales support collateral.  Here at ReachForce our marketing team is responsible for not only driving new leads into the top of the sales funnel but also marketing to those who have made it into and are moving through the funnel.   Each quarter as we are building out our programs we spend a good deal of time making sure we have the supporting pieces (collateral) we need to get the results our sales team is counting on.  This means we have to really think through our buying cycles and what is needed to generate interest as well as keep people moving once we’ve determined they are a viable prospect.

Here’s some interesting stats from a BtoB article, Finding the Best Collateral Mix,  back in January.  It highlights content strategy services company Eccolo Media’s survey of 155 technology buyers, all of whom said they’d made or influenced a b-to-b technology decision in the last six months. Each was asked specifically about how they consume marketing collateral.

• White papers remain the most effective piece of marketing collateral, with 86% of respondents finding them moderately to highly influential in the purchasing decision.

Interesting – I’d love to know more about these whitepapers.  How long are they?  Are they grouping eBooks here? And what stage of the buying cycle are these being used?  I’m guessing in the “gathering information phase?”

• Product brochures and data sheets were the most frequently consumed collateral type, yet they were also most frequently ranked as the least influential.

I consider these must haves and I agree that most people probably don’t read them but people seem to ask for them so you have to have them.

• Somewhat surprisingly, the majority of respondents viewed digital content on the desktop rather than printing out the content.

Not really surprising to me.  We seem to be more conditioned and comfortable getting all information online.  Printing it doesn’t give it more credibility. And hey Al Gore, your message is getting out there….

• The majority of respondents (54%) used collateral for the first time in the presales cycle, before they’d spoken with a sales rep or had had any contact with the company.

Interesting, not surprising but interesting.  This means we have to make sure we have everything online.  This doesn’t mean you need new content just make sure what you have is out there.

So all of your marketing communication marketers out there – your sales team needs you.  Before you start your long list of things to write, ask your sales team if each piece on your list will help them win a new customer.  If not, scatch it and ask them what they need instead.

The Marketing Profs B2B Forum kicks off June 8th in Boston.  If you haven’t already registered, today’s your lucky day!  Use code ESPN7 and get $200 off your registration price.  Join some of the smartest B2B Marketers getting definitive solutions to the 3 biggest challenges today:

• Integrating your marketing programs
• Engaging your customers and prospects
• Measuring and analyzing to prove ROI

If you already have your tickets, we’ll see you there!

Ever wonder what your prospects or customers are talking about on Twitter?  Or are you looking for a way to build your Twitter following with people that have similar interests?  Well, here’s a few places to get out there and ask some questions.

First, a shout out – Thanks again to Mashable for finding and compiling these kinds of lists, 5 Ways to Get Your Questions Answered on Twitter by Stan Schroeder.  Its great information and we want to be sure our B2B Lead readers know this stuff is out there.

• IKnowTweet.com - This simple site searches Twitter for phrases such as “does anyone know?” and “why does?” and collects them all at one place.

• ToAnswer – By far the most elegant of the sites listed here, ToAnswer lets you ask questions on Twitter by simply prefixing them with @toask. The answers are displayed in a nice Twitter-like interface, and questions are asked through a lightbox-style window that opens with your Twitter account. Looks like this site is down right now but they’ve put up a funny video until they get more server space.
  

• TwttrStrm – TwttrStrm is an interesting and slightly more complex service that combines Twitter with Squidoo and its “lens” approach to answering questions. Basically, you ask a question on Twitter, but instead of merely getting short answers, Squidoo will create a brand new Lens with a bunch of information on the topic you’ve asked about.

• Twtpoll - There are many ways to ask a question; a poll is one of them, and twtpoll lets you create polls on Twitter. You ask a poll question, add some answer options (you can choose if it’s a one answer or multiple answers type of poll) and you’re done. You can share the poll via Twitter, email or Facebook.

• twitQA - twitQA is a very new site that lets you ask questions in different categories such as sports, travel, health, business & finance, cars and the like. Instead of using hashtags, twitQA recognizes questions and fetches them directly from the Twitter feed, which makes populating the question database easier.

You’ll definitely want to check out Stan’s thoughts on each of these.  Once you try them out, come back and let us know what you think.

P.S.  B2B Lead readers – if you don’t have Mashable in your Google Reader, add it today.

Ready, Set, Go! It’s a short year, 8 months to go and 12 months of results to deliver.

Planning since last Fall has been a challenge, chances are you’ve been holding off (or have ratcheted down) on your spending hoping the bad news would stop and you would be able to get to work as normal. Well it looks like that time has come. The economy seems to be coming back and now you’ve got to make up for lost time. Here’s a few ideas to jumpstart your lead generation initiatives:

• Check out those web logs or unknown visitor reports, this is a great opportunity for you to start reaching out to companies who have already been checking you out. Once you’ve identified the companies, make sure you have the right targeted leads to market to. This is key to your program success.
• Think and be positive/upbeat — get new content (that’s not talking about the recession). Make sure it’s everywhere – your social networks, your website, as a possible link in your email signatures, offered on your blog, your email programs and don’t forget to share it with your customers, this could be used in the introduction you need help with.
• Dust off your old whitepapers, add some images and turn them into a new eBook. Use this refreshed content for your nurture marketing and email programs.
• Put together a news release schedule, remember to include your keywords. Press drives website visitors. Make sure you have your Google Alerts set up so you know when someone picks up your news and don’t forget to check those weblogs and unknown visitor reports so you can market back to those checking you out.
• Don’t forget your customers, they are your greatest asset. Talk to them. Ask them what they need from you. Ask them how you can better deliver your product or service and don’t forget to ask them for a referral or two. There’s no time better than the present to kick off a customer referral program.

The point is to get the most out of what you already have, be everywhere your prospects and customers are, and stay positive.

Newsletters have come a long way. They have evolved from printed pieces that were once mailed to e-Newsletters of many different flavors.  Some use newsletters to communicate with their customer base, some use them to grow their in-house database and some use them as a promotion vehicle for upcoming events, content or announcements.  If you’re considering putting together a newsletter, here’s a few tips to keep in mind as you putting together your program plans and goals.

• Repurpose content you already have – Here at ReachForce we send out a monthly newsletter of the best B2B Lead tips from the last month.  We live in a busy world and we realize that people can’t stop by everyday and some people just prefer to have the content delivered to their inbox so we give them highlights once a month.  It seems to work, our newsletter list grows by 10% every month.

• Event invitations and news announcements – Let them know what are you up to – whether it be a webinar you’re hosting or a live event your sponsoring and exhibiting at.  Newsletters are a great way to get the word out about where you’ll be.

• News – make sure everyone knows when you’ve released a new version of your product.  Remember to highlight benefits not product features.  Also be sure to include a call to action to drive interest for cross selling and upselling opportunities as well as new customer interest.

• Customer case studies – pick 1 and highlight your results. Be sure to include a link to the full case study on your website.

• Want to know what your prospects or customers are thinking?  Ask them in a quick poll or survey.  People like giving their opinion and this says you’re interested in it.  You can post the result in the next newsletter.

• Social networks or a blog?  Are you out there?  Do they know where to find you?  Here’s a great place to spread the word.

• Don’t make it all about you.  The majority of the content should be useful and compelling to the reader and not a company promo.  Otherwise, you risk an increase in unsubscribes.

• Don’t forget the newsletter sign up on your website, put it in as many places as it makes sense.  Remember this is helping grow your inhouse list for lead generation.

Bottom line is whatever you decide to do with your newsletter, the goal is to keep communicating!

Dear Sales,

Now that we’re on the same page about the data, let’s talk specifics on how to make this happen.

• You know that we work hard to segment the data before it goes into campaigns, so first, get to know how we segment things.  Talk to us, find out why we do things the way we do and who gets batched together.   Seeing the world the way we do will help you better understand why certain types of contacts are getting certain messages and will help you better reach out to and tailor your messages to those contacts. We are open to your ideas too.  You know your prospects better than we do.  Help us to help you.
• Get to know the companies in your database, ask for help from Sales Operations or export a report of your prospects.  Spend time learning about each company on your list, what do they do, who do they sell to, what events do they attend, make yourself an expert on them so that when you talk to them they feel like you really do know them and their pain points.   Make notes in the record so that you don’t lose track of this valuable information.
• Do you use mail merge fields in your emails or letters?  If so, then really spend some time cleaning up the names of prospects and their companies.  Make sure people aren’t listed like this: “John NO LONGER THERE Smith” or “Jane SHE IS A REAL JERK Doe” – there is a notes section in your CRM, use it!
• If you’re using salesforce.com, set up views that capture activity, for instance, if your marketing automation tool integrates and marks activity on prospect records, set up a view where you can see that kind of activity.  Keep tabs on what people are doing so that you can reach out to those active prospects.

These are just ideas, but the idea is that if you are truly in the ‘weeds’ of the data, you’ll get a good handle on what you own, who you’re calling and hopefully begin seeing some great results!

Love,

Marketing

Dear Sales,

We’ve had a long and storied relationship.   When we work well together, we’re pretty amazing, when we fight, it’s ugly but overall we make a great team. I feel like we’ve worked through our differences well and that we see eye to eye more often than not, but we really need to talk about one thing…the one thing that bonds us for life but keeps pulling us apart…our data.

I know, I know, it’s no one’s fault.  But that’s the problem.  I supply the data, I nurture the data and then I send it to you so you can make it flourish.  What happens to the data once I send it to you though?  Some of it gets the proper care, it blossoms into an opportunity and then low and behold we win!  Some of it isn’t really ready and gets nurtured some more, some wither and die on the vine, and some of it, well, it sits and it gets lost in the oblivion of it’s home, our CRM system.

So Sales, here is my proposition to you, let’s work together to cultivate our leads, I will continue to feed you nurtured sales ready leads that suit your need and I ask that in return, you help me keep everything straight.  We must communicate, it’s required for our relationship to work.  Get to know the data (your leads), really learn about your companies and our targets and then, tell me what’s not working (and better yet, what is!).

How do you do this you ask, well we’ll work together and make it happen!

Love,

Marketing