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Market to the Entire Decision-Making Unit

Filed under Marketing Tips
  • LinkedIn
By admin
on May 5th, 2011
 

In most if not all B2B sales processes, 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, and getting everyone on the same page can be challenging.

Each member is probably involved for different reasons and should therefore be marketed to differently. Your message to each of them should be tailored to respond to their specific pain. For example, an executive 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 systems already in use.

Here are some tips to remember when building a program for the entire decision-making unit:

  • Make the most of your first impression (think of something that would really get your attention if it came across your desk)
  • Tailor messages to each member of the decision-making unit
  • Don’t depend on someone else to champion you, create awareness with everyone and champion yourself within the decision-making unit
  • Everyone loves a good competition (this can create urgency within the decision-making unit and encourage action – think of radio stations, “the first X callers win concert tickets”)
  • If it doesn’t work for everyone, continue testing and tweaking (don’t be afraid to try, try, and try again)

For more tips on how to use the decision-making unit for account-based marketing, check out Tuesday’s post here



Thursday, May 5th, 2011

Posted in Marketing Tips | No Comments »

 

Data vs. Content in B2B Marketing

Filed under B2B Marketing Ideas
  • LinkedIn
By admin
on April 27th, 2011
 

What comprises the perfect marketing campaign? I suppose you’d get different answers depending on who you ask. These days, there seems to be two opposing schools of thought: those that are data, metrics, and analytics focused, and those that are more traditionally creative focused. One does their job with numbers and spreadsheets, and the other with clever ideas and creative design. The fact of the matter is: they’re doing the same job. Admittedly, being in the data services business, I even tend to focus more on the quantitative than the qualitative.

I stumbled upon a great article recently on B2B Marketing Online that makes a great case for the need for both data and content to build a successful marketing campaign. Here’s what really hit home for me (from James Trezona, Managing Director of agency Mason Zimbler): many people believe the equation for a successful marketing campaign looks something like this….

Data + Content = Campaign Success

But it really looks something like this….

Data x Content = Campaign Success

The point being: if either are complete misses, or zeroes, then the whole campaign fails.

So what are you focusing on in your marketing campaigns? Are you marketing to the right people? Are you delivering impactful messages? If you’re not doing both, then you probably have something to think about.



Wednesday, April 27th, 2011

Posted in B2B Marketing Ideas | No Comments »

 

Are You Marketing to Your Customers?

Filed under Sales and Marketing Tips
  • LinkedIn
By admin
on April 18th, 2011
 

B2B Marketers spend lots of time and money on trying to acquire new customers. After all, you have sales guys breathing down your backs for new leads all the time and quotas to meet for bookings and new customers acquired. But why is it that we only worry about keeping customers happy in a downturn and not in growth cycles? Have you and your executive team ever taken a step back to see how much of your revenue actually comes from current customers? Or how many customers use you for a year and then choose not to renew because they have been ignored all year? Adding a current customer program has the potential to dramatically increase revenue.

Implementing a current customer program involves much more than just a nice holiday card/gift once a year. You should have programs throughout the year to keep them engaged. Just as in lead generation, current customer programs should be segmented. This can be based on your own parameters: by products purchased, by size, by revenue contribution, by role within the company, etc. Once segmented you will be able to prioritize and focus on their needs with relevance. Also remember that cross-selling a current customer is more than blasting the new message to a current database – ask yourself, is the person (role) of the person in my database the right one for this value proposition/message? Do I need to find the right decision maker for that role? You could risk harming the relationship by getting too aggressive with your cross-selling.

Here are some ideas to building and maintaining an ongoing relationship with your customers:

  • Start a newsletter – be sure to tell them information that they care about not just the latest award you have won
  • Ask them for feedback and input; consider asking them “The Ultimate Question” www.theultimatequestion.com
  • Create a customer community – you can develop your own or start small with a Facebook or LinkedIn group; the social web has enabled us to keep the conversations going all of the time.
  • Send thought leadership – this could be whitepapers or books that are exclusively available to customers, do a survey and share the results, share best practices
  • Host a user group conference – this is the most expensive but it is a great opportunity for you to connect with your customers and for them to connect with each other

What percentage (%) of your marketing spend do you focus (or should) on current customer marketing? It’s never too late to get started driving more out of what you already have.



Monday, April 18th, 2011

Posted in Sales and Marketing Tips | No Comments »

 

Use Your Current Customers to Find New Ones – B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #318

Filed under Sales and Marketing Tips
  • LinkedIn
By admin
on April 13th, 2011
 

By laser targeting a narrow group of prospects, marketers are able to deliver a message that resonates with their target audience and creates better leads for sales. Spraying a large list of contacts with a generic message and praying that message will reach the right people has led to average response rates of less than 3%.

Instead of spraying and praying, consider building a database of targeted prospects based on where you are winning customers today. Identify these companies with customer wins analysis. Once you’ve identified this winning profile, start the search for other businesses that match that profile.

A good starting point is your in-house database of current customers and prospects. Find the companies that match your wining profile and start there.

Narrowing the focus allows marketers to deliver a targeted message that has a better chance of resonating with your audience. Instead of cleansing an out-of-date, in-house database, review your sales pipeline and customer win data and to identify your top market segments and determine key qualifying characteristics. Look at the size of the open and closed deals, as well as the velocity of those deals as they move through the pipeline to answer the following questions:

  • In which market segments am I closing the most deals?
  • In which market segments are deals closing the fastest?
  • What are the common characteristics of companies in those market segments?
  • What other market segments share those common characteristics?

Relevancy is key here. The more relevant the data used to feed marketing programs or automation systems (like Eloqua, Marketo, Aprimo, etc.) the better and more powerful the results will be.

With sales win analysis, you can also build a profile of your best customer accounts to develop qualifying criteria. Do you close more deals with Fortune 1000-size enterprises or are you moving more deals with Small and Medium-size businesses? Is the number of employees of an organization a critical success factor or is a global, distributed environment more important? Are there key trends you can identify in certain industries that are driving the need for your product?

Now that you’ve documented your top markets and qualifying criteria, you can use this information to discover other target accounts. While these companies have not yet purchased from you, they share many of the same characteristics of your best customers, and therefore will likely have a higher propensity to purchase your products or services.

Next, complete an enterprise buying profile to identify the people involved in the buying process. Just as you identified the profile for targeting new companies, you need to have an understanding of the profile of the buyer(s) within those companies. You’ll want to understand their role both in the buying cycle and within the organization. With this information, you will be able to refine your augmentation program and standardize data collection requirements for more targeted marketing programs.



Wednesday, April 13th, 2011

Posted in Sales and Marketing Tips | 1 Comment »

 

B2B Email Marketing – Mixing It Up and Getting Results

Filed under B2B Lead Generation, Email Marketing, Marketing Tips, ReachForce updates
  • LinkedIn
By admin
on March 29th, 2011
 

A couple of weeks ago HubSpot shared the slides from “The Science of Email Marketing” webinar.  Very interesting stuff.  So interesting, we decided to change up some of our email marketing.

After extensive research, here’s some of HubSpot’s interesting findings -

  • Email Click through rates are highest on the weekend
  • Unsubscribe rates are highest on Tuesday (the day most B2B marketing hit send) and lowest on Thursdays
  • 6am emails get the best click through rates and 4pm get the worst
  • Email reading (open rates) decline throughout the day
  • 80.8% of users read email on mobile – WOW! All the more reason to keep emails clean and simple.  If you’re sending unsolicited attachments, you just fell to the bottom of the list.
  • Posts, Jobs, Surveys – best performing subject lines
  • Headlines, Latests, Updates – worst performing sub lines

So here’s what we‘ve tried and here are the results so far:

  • We stopped emailing on Tuesdays and starting emailing on Thursdays with a Follow Up email over the weekend.  Open rates went up 22% and click throughs went up 50%
  • Unsubscribes went down 25%
  • Open rate for our Sunday follow-up emails was 55%!!!
  • Instead of emailing mid day, we’ve starting emailing first thing in the morning.  See email and click through rate above.
  • Since we know most of our readers are seeing our messages on mobile devices we have simplified our approach and are more clear and concise with our choice of words.  Quick, easy to read and understand and a clear call to action.  That’s it, nothing else.
  • We have a few emails teed up using some of the best performing subject lines.  REAL interested to see how this one plays out.

What do you think?  Are you testing and adjusting for the best results?  Got another trick or tip that ‘s getting you more email marketing action?  Please share!



Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

Posted in B2B Lead Generation, Email Marketing, Marketing Tips, ReachForce updates | No Comments »

 

B2B Marketing Execution Assessment: 10 Best Practices

Filed under B2B Lead Generation, Marketing Tips, Sales and Marketing Tips
  • LinkedIn
By admin
on March 23rd, 2011
 

We’re rolling out a new Marketing Execution Assessment this week.  As we were putting the final touches on it, I ran across a great list of 10 Best Practices for Campaign Planning and Execution from our friends and partner, The Pedowitz Group.

Before you hit GO on your next program, make sure you are following these 10 rules:

Rule #1: Plan from your target’s perspective. Start by segmenting your audience, then figure out the set of marketing activities that will move them through the funnel. Don’t plan around your product suite or business units.

Rule #3: Find a recipe that works. Don’t reinvent the wheel every time – figure out the right set of activities that drive action. Then just change up the messaging and content and keep reusing that flow.

Rule #5: All targets are not created equal. Buying behavior may change by industry, title, role, etc. Even if it doesn’t, you should still segment so you can personalize the messages.

Rule #6: I will always pay more attention when I hear my own name. The more personalization you can work into your messaging, the better.

These are 4 of my favorites and ones we live by here at ReachForce.  Be sure to check out the other 6 rules here.

Knowing who already lives in your database is a good place to start.  We’ll help clean up and augment (for segmentation) 1000 of those contacts for FREE.

There’s no risk, get started now.



Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011

Posted in B2B Lead Generation, Marketing Tips, Sales and Marketing Tips | No Comments »

 

Qualify B2B Marketing Leads with a Thank You! – B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #317

Filed under B2B Lead Generation, Email Marketing, Marketing Tips, Sales and Marketing Tips
  • LinkedIn
By admin
on March 21st, 2011
 

When building out integrated programs I like to map out every touch point, its call-to-action and other links included (information gathering opportunities) in that touch.

There’s been lots of buzz about forms.  Do they help or hurt your lead generation efforts?  I’m not sure, but here at ReachForce we use forms on some of our content.  My job is to generate leads.  The forms are simple and ask for basic information.  Once you hit submit, the PDF pops up for you to view.  So the process is easy.

Easy enough to add another touch point for further qualification or disqualification. I wonder how lead scores would change if a couple of hours or even a day later we followed up with a Thank You email that included the content they filled out the form for, additional content or resources and another call to action?

Things we might include in the follow up Thank You email:

Got free content with no forms AND a marketing automation system?  Be sure to ask your marketing automation partner how you can you set up this kind of program.  It’s possible.

We’re going to give this a try and we’ll let you know what happens.



Monday, March 21st, 2011

Posted in B2B Lead Generation, Email Marketing, Marketing Tips, Sales and Marketing Tips | No Comments »

 

Building a Targeted Audience – 13 Ideas for New Blog Content – B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #316

Filed under Marketing Tips, Online Marketing, Sales and Marketing Tips, Social Media
  • LinkedIn
By admin
on March 16th, 2011
 

We’re gearing up for a new quarter here at ReachForce.  With each new quarter comes bigger targets, higher revenues, new partner and channel opportunities and as marketers we must ensure our plan of action is aligned with these new high marks.

We really try and integrate every program we plan and launch and The B2B Lead is a big part of our demand generation strategy so we don’t take it lightly.  To ensure we are driving the right kinds of traffic we did a little brainstorming on blog post ideas for the coming quarter.  Here’s a list of 13 ideas we came up with:

  • Weekly Industry Wrap Up – here’s our most recent B2B marketing weekly wrap up
  • Share your event experience – if you are attending or sponsoring an industry event, share new information and highlights from the event
  • Ask a question on Twitter and write a post about the answers. We’re working on a new customer campaign, this is going to be part of it.  We’ll be sure to share our thoughts.
  • Do a short 3-5 question email interview with thought leaders in your industry and share their answers on your blog
  • Compile a list of “top” blog posts about an industry topic and share it
  • Think DATA, do you have any that others might be interested in? Nothing top secret of course but industry or product stats that may be of interest to your audience.
  • Share pictures.  Pictures of real people that you work with.  Profile them, tell a cool story about them (that relates to your audience of course).  Seeing a picture of a person just feels more real.
  • Seeing a trend?  Share it. Ask for feedback.  Ask to be proven wrong or for more supporting evidence.  The goal is to engage.
  • Be a thought leader. Share your opinions on an industry topic, trend or headline.  Short and sweet posts are best for today’s reader so don’t worry about writing a thesis to support your commentary.
  • Invite your readers to join other groups or organizations you get value from. It might be a Linkedin group that has lively conversation and good content being shared or it could be a local group of peers or other industry professionals.  Be sure to link up your recommendations.
  • Throw in a little 101 every once in awhile. Explain industry terms, new buzzwords, specific product specs or whatever else you assume the rest of the world knows and cares about.
  • HOW TO – these are great and get good traffic.  People want something they can act on immediately.  Tell them how to do something and make it look easy.  Pictures and screenshots are great here.
  • Create a LIST of anything. Your industries top Twitter icons, top 5 independent industry blogs, 5 things to consider before…  you get the idea.  We LOVE lists.  Here’s a few of our favorites: 16 FREE Ideas for Spreading Your News and 15 Ways to Segment Your Leads Database for Targeted B2B Marketing Programs

Have you tried any of these?  Are you seeing the traffic you hoped for?  If yes, please share your thoughts and results.  Be sure to stay in touch, we’ll follow up with another post at the end of the quarter and tell you which posts drove the most traffic and inbound leads….and hopefully new customers!

If you’re not getting the results you’ve hoped for, try a few of the ideas above and let us know how they work out.



Wednesday, March 16th, 2011

Posted in Marketing Tips, Online Marketing, Sales and Marketing Tips, Social Media | 1 Comment »

 

Webinar – B2B Lead Scoring Best Practices That Drive Marketing Qualified Leads

Filed under Lead Scoring, ReachForce updates, Sales and Marketing Tips
  • LinkedIn
By admin
on March 13th, 2011
 

We don’t typically promote ReachForce events here on The B2B Lead but this one is best practice/tip oriented so we thought you might be a little more accepting of our shameless promotion.

ReachForce and partner Televerde present B2B Lead Scoring Best Practices that Drive Marketing Qualified Leads, a 30 minute must-attend webinar for B2B Marketers trying to up their game.

Lead Scoring, implemented the right way for your business can dramatically change your current sales and marketing relationships.  Enabling an effective lead scoring system will allow you to get to the right buyers, in the right companies, with the right message, and see increased marketing results and sales conversions. Everyone likes that.

We’ll focus our 30 minutes on HOW TO achieve enablement.  ReachForce and Televerde believe enablement is achieved when your contact database is optimized through gap analysis, enrichment and segmentation and when marketing automation and telepresence strategies are working in tandem.

Join us for a few great tips for building out a world-class lead scoring system for your business.

Details:

WHEN: March 16th, 2pm CDT

WHAT: 30 minute webinar – we know you’re busy, so we’re keeping it short and to the point!

WHO:
Donna J. Kent, Senior Vice President of Global Sales, Marketing and Services for Televerde
Cody Young, Vice President of Channel Development and Product Strategy, ReachForce

WHY:  Unless you’re too busy having a love fest with your sales team, you can benefit from better lead scoring.

OTHER:  Can’t make it on Wednesday?  Sign up anyway and we’ll be sure to send you the onDemand version.

Sign up now and we look forward to chatting with you on the 16th.



Sunday, March 13th, 2011

Posted in Lead Scoring, ReachForce updates, Sales and Marketing Tips | No Comments »

 

6 Tips for Optimizing your B2B Lead Generation PDF Content – B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #315

Filed under Marketing Tips, Online Marketing, Sales and Marketing Tips
  • LinkedIn
By admin
on March 9th, 2011
 

Content is King, Queen, top of B2B marketers mind, an inbound strategy, an outbound requirement and so much more.  Our B2B marketing content is all those things and most often a PDF.

We know that PDFs are don’t have as much search power as an actual webpage.  But all is not lost with your PDF.  In fact Google says, “PDF formatted files are the most popular after HTML files. PostScript and Microsoft Word files are also fairly common.”

Here’s 6 best practices for optimizing your PDF content for the search engines AND I included a great HOW TO guide I found too.

  • Text over Images – while we all like to look at pictures, Google really doesn’t.  Make sure you aren’t creating PDFs from your design program and are instead posting text-based PDFs
  • Populate your Properties – properties are to a PDF what meta tags are to an HTML page
  • Keyword Optimization – just like you would for the web, be sure to optimize your PDFs too.
  • Consider document length.  Will anyone, even Google care to scan 450 pages?  I doubt it.  In this case, more is not always better.  Try to keep your PDFs to 200k.
  • Link it up!  Help Google and your audience find your new content.  Link it up to your main site as much as possible.
  • Don’t forget to add tags – make sure all images and headings are tagged

Now HOW TO do all of this.  Here’s a great SEO for PDFs guide (with screenshots).

Make these simple changes and be sure to track any changes!  Got any other tips for optimizing PDF content for SEO?  Please share!

Need more lead generation content?  Here’s 16 Ideas for building your B2B marketing Content Library.



Wednesday, March 9th, 2011

Posted in Marketing Tips, Online Marketing, Sales and Marketing Tips | No Comments »

 
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