Kathryn Roy, marketing consultant and friend of The B2B Lead, has a great eBook, Seven Infectious Diseases of B2B Marketing — And Their Cures, that we want to share with all of our readers.  We will post excerpts that cover the diseases one by one but feel free to download the entire eBook here.

There are seven problems I find so rampant in B2B companies that I suspect they are infectious – passed along as marketing people switch companies or work with contagious agencies. In each blog post I will cover a diseases, its symptoms, probable causes, and suggested treatment.

Analyst Mentalpause occurs in industries where analysts are important influencers. Marketers confuse the language of analysts – who seize upon new category names that make concepts look fresh and exciting and help to sell research – with the language that actual prospects use. In ”Crossing the Chasm”, Geoffrey Moore recommends using a “new category” as a short hand that helps differentiate your product or service from the prior generation of (inferior) offerings.

Some examples would be 3D Computer Aided Design (CAD) vs. 2D CAD or Web 2.0 recruiting applications vs. old recruiting applications without social-networking.

When the new category labels are intuitive to prospects, they have the desired effects. They seduce innovators into exploring how they can push the productivity curve for their company.

They make it easy for prospective buyers to determine if this solution is likely to help them.

The problem arises when new category names are not intuitive. One well-known example is

Lotus’s labeling Notes “Groupware” to distinguish it from combined email and calendar applications. As a label for a new category, Groupware provided analysts with fodder for columns and events. It attracted innovators who like to explore new concepts. But it was not intuitive to the less intrepid majority of buyers.

More recent examples include Talent Management and Human Capital Management (HCM) to describe the maturing suite of applications that automate HR functions like recruiting and performance reviews. In focus groups, it turned out that HR executives not only did not find HCM intuitive, they found it insulting. Talent Management, at the time of the focus groups, was a confusing concept: the test subjects each defined or described it differently. After extensive use by the press and analysts, Talent Management is starting to have a more consistent meaning to prospects.

Before leaning heavily on a new category name, determine first whether the term is acceptable and clear to your target audience. If it is not yet well recognized or understood, it is fine to use it in the body of marketing materials to label a concept you’ve just explained. But avoid using it in headlines intended to draw a reader in to read further. If they don’t intuitively know what it means, it won’t attract their attention.

SYMPTOMS

Heavy use of category names that don’t even register in the list of popular Internet search terms for your target audience.

SUSPECTED C AUSES

Analyst-blindness: the inability to distinguish between prospects and analysts.

TREATMENT

Use industry analyst terminology in presentations to analysts and at analyst events.

Test proposed terminology anonymously with prospective buyers.

Stay abreast of keywords popular with your prospects.

About the Author
Kathryn Roy is a marketing and strategy consultant with over 20 years of experience helping some of the most successful and fastest growing B2B companies including IBM, Avid, CA, Lotus, AT&T and dozens of other technology companies.  She has helped companies:

• hone strategy, positioning, and messaging via primary research
• boost sales productivity through sales enablement training and tools
• evaluate and prioritize market opportunities

If you aren’t already subscribing to the B2B Marketing Zone, you should be.  Earlier this week they compiled the Top 80 B2B Marketing Posts for 2009.  Be sure to check out the list to find great posts you might have missed this year.  Shout out to Amy and Suaad who both has posts to make the list (#77 and #22)!

B2B Marketing Zone is a collection of blog posts and articles all around B2B Marketing.  B2B Marketing Zone is a collaborative effort that was by Tom Pick and Tony Karrer.  Galen De Young has joined Tom and Tony to become a key driver of the site.

In a recent post on Al Iverson’s Spam Resource Blog Al answered a question that I think is extremely interesting (more so is the answer) so I wanted to push some of his post back for The B2B Lead Readers.

“What, exactly, are spam [content] filters picking up from a generic template that could reduce delivery? Thanks in advance for your reply.”

The thing that these filters catch is commonality. If your content has different variables in common with other messages tagged as bad (for whatever reason), then your messages get tagged as bad, too. What does commonality mean? It can mean a whole bunch of things, and nobody publishes a list of the exact variables that are checked. It probably is all of the following things, and more:

• Your from domain.
• What domains you link to.
• The domain where images are hosted.
• What images you use.
• What HTML template you use.
• What unsubscribe footer you use

Take home message – spam evolves and thus do spam filters, they do not look for some stagnant list of triggers that you can avoid.  Take a look at the things being caught in your own spam filters, it might be a good reference point on things to avoid in terms of keeping your emails out of the junk mail folder.

Kathryn Roy, marketing consultant and friend of The B2B Lead, has a great eBook, Seven Infectious Diseases of B2B Marketing — And Their Cures, that we want to share with all of our readers.  We will post excerpts that cover the diseases one by one but feel free to download the entire eBook here.

There are seven problems I find so rampant in B2B companies that I suspect they are infectious – passed along as marketing people switch companies or work with contagious agencies. In each blog post I will cover a diseases, its symptoms, probable causes, and suggested treatment.

Branderhea is a delusional psychological condition in companies that believe prospects will invest time to memorize vendors’ cute names for products and services that aren’t related to blockbuster consumer categories.

When Lotus conducted brand market research in the ‘90s, they learned to their surprise that many end users did not associate their spreadsheet, 1-2-3, with Lotus. These users thought 1-2-3 was the product and the company name.

Many startups, ambitiously anticipating the launch of multiple product lines, invest in both company and product names. Given the prevalence of URL claim-stakers who have locked up almost all valuable URLs in hopes of selling them at a future date for exorbitant prices, most of these new names are anything but descriptive.

To get prospects to begin to remember one of these names takes repeated exposure in relevantcontexts.

If you double the number of names a prospect needs to remember in any interaction with your company, you halve the probability that they will remember either.

B2C companies can use trademarked names for ingredients to impress consumers: “Try our facial cream with Rejuvens^TM microcapsules.” This technique doesn’t translate well to B2B companies unless you simply use the ^TM sign simply to stress some attribute such as

“One-minute-install^TM.” In this case, you don’t really expect anyone to remember the name but simply hope that the TM helps people notice your differentiator in speedy installs. It is not recommended with newly minted words. Limit ^TM use to recognizable phrases.

SYMPTOMS

More than one ^TM symbol per marketing deliverable.

SUSPECTED C AUSES

Insufficient interaction with prospects.

Asking friendly customers if they like your brainchild.

TREATMENT

Limit the number of “brands” to one for every $100m in revenue.

About the Author
Kathryn Roy is a marketing and strategy consultant with over 20 years of experience helping some of the most successful and fastest growing B2B companies including IBM, Avid, CA, Lotus, AT&T and dozens of other technology companies.  She has helped companies:

• hone strategy, positioning, and messaging via primary research
• boost sales productivity through sales enablement training and tools
• evaluate and prioritize market opportunities

Kathryn Roy, marketing consultant and friend of The B2B Lead, has a great eBook, Seven Infectious Diseases of B2B Marketing — And Their Cures, that we want to share with all of our readers.  We will post excerpts that cover the diseases one by one but feel free to download the entire eBook here.

There are seven problems I find so rampant in B2B companies that I suspect they are infectious – passed along as marketing people switch companies or work with contagious agencies. In each blog post I will cover a diseases, its symptoms, probable causes, and suggested treatment.

Ad Offerphobia

Ad Offerphobia is seen in companies that invest in advertising but do not include an interesting offer that will help track the ad’s performance and capture prospect contact information. Since business customers take months to make purchase decisions and are devilishly hard to locate, B2B ads need to pull double duty. In addition to building awareness/generating interest B2B ads must also try to capture contact information so you can interact with them during their purchase process.

Calls to action that motivate the prospect to share information, say by offering a topical whitepaper or analyst report, are much more useful. They allow the vendor to capture additional contact information, provide a reason to call and ask a few questions to assess the level of interest, and nurture the lead during their purchase process.

SYMPTOMS

In strain A of Ad Offerphobia, the only URL on the ad is for the homepage. Strain B is becoming dominant, however, with a URL to a page with an unappealing offer like “advice”.

SUSPECTED CAUSE

Lack of interesting fulfillment pieces.

TREATMENT

Identify an area your target prospect seeks education and create a great fulfillment piece.

Venereal Offeremia

A near opposite to Ad Offerphobia, Venereal Offeremia is seen in marketing campaigns that kill any desire of the recipient to ever talk to your company. Related to Venereal Linerea exhibited at bars with pickup lines like: “What’s your name? Wanna go to my place?”

It makes perfect sense with lower-priced consumer purchases to have calls to action like “Call now to get free Ginsu knives with your purchase!” More expensive B2B purchases have longer buying cycles and more cautious buyers. Asking prospects to call for an appointment with a salesperson assumes both that they are ready to buy and that you’ve persuaded them in very few words that you’re likely to be the ideal vendor.

Outreach vehicles like advertising and direct mail have very limited space to communicate with prospective customers. Typically, there is just enough space to relate to the underlying need, convey one reason that the vendor should be considered credible or merit further investigation, and make an offer in exchange for small pieces of information about their situation. But there’s not enough space to persuade them to confidently engage with a salesperson yet.

SYMPTOMS

Marketing campaigns with a call-to-action that asks for an appointment with a salesperson.

SUSPECTED CAUSES

A desperate scarcity of leads.

A paucity of interesting fulfillment pieces.

Sales driving Marketing plans.

TREATMENT

In general, the treatment for Checklistosis is also very helpful here.

Identify the recipients by stage of buying process and develop a fulfillment piece to help them move a step further.

About the Author
Kathryn Roy is a marketing and strategy consultant with over 20 years of experience helping some of the most successful and fastest growing B2B companies including IBM, Avid, CA, Lotus, AT&T and dozens of other technology companies.  She has helped companies:

• hone strategy, positioning, and messaging via primary research
• boost sales productivity through sales enablement training and tools
• evaluate and prioritize market opportunities

A lot of people build a website as if it was just an online brochure.  While that may work for some, for most b2b marketers that just is not enough.  The question you should ask yourself is, “what are my website’s goals?”  Here are a few possibilities and what needs to be included on your website as a result:

Educate my buyers about my products and my industry.

• Your resources section should be overflowing with content varying from whitepapers and eBooks to podcasts of interviews with industry experts.
• Every product page should have links to relevant corresponding resources.
• There is no faster way to create loads of content than to have a regularly updated blog.

Get prospects to contact us.

• Include a link to your contact us page on every page of your website (Don’t get creative here, follow standard format for the location of the contact us link.  This is typically in the upper right corner.)
• Consider a 1-800 number – again this could be at the top of every page

Generate New Leads

• To capture new leads on your website, you have to offer compelling content.  There is a lot of debate around whether or not to put whitepaper, eBooks, etc. behind forms.  This is again a time to ask yourself is the goal to capture contact info or to spread your content (forms will deter some from downloading)
• Another option to forms is to use a service that identifies unknown web visitors.  This will only tell you the company visiting but it is better than nothing.

To interact with current customers

I know of a marketer that has no control of their website.  It is solely used for current customers and is not a marketing tool.  If this is a problem you are dealing with as a marketer, suggest creating a customer portal.  Then the public pages of your website can be used for marketing.

• Keep in mind that your current customers should still be marketed to.  They are ripe for upsell and crosssell opportunities.
• You can offer them early access to a new whitepaper or eBook.

Whatever the goal, keep a focus.  You can’t do it all, but you can take elements from each to enrich your site.

Kathryn Roy, marketing consultant and friend of The B2B Lead, has a great eBook, Seven Infectious Diseases of B2B Marketing — And Their Cures, that we want to share with all of our readers.  We will post excerpts that cover the diseases one by one but feel free to download the entire eBook here.

There are seven problems I find so rampant in B2B companies that I suspect they are infectious – passed along as marketing people switch companies or work with contagious agencies. In each blog post I will cover a diseases, its symptoms, probable causes, and suggested treatment.

Commonly found in companies staffed with passionate sales and marketing professionals, Sleep Apendea is a disease whereby every conceivable reason customers should buy is stuffed into collateral, Web sites, and presentations. Coincides with the belief that prospects are patient enough to troll through your materials until they stumble across items relevant to them.

Mark Twain once wrote a friend: “I wanted to write you a short note, but I didn’t have the time.” There’s a corollary for marketing: the briefer the marketing piece, the more agonizing the process.

It’s hard to sift through the possible things you could say and choose the few that will have the greatest effect.

Studies show that, if anything, prospects are more impatient now than ever before. Eye-tracking studies of Web pages show that prospects laser in on headlines, tables, charts, and bullets, often ignoring much of the body.

There are phases in the buying process when prospects might take time to read information in depth – e.g., educating themselves about a new topic. However, for most phases, especially early phases of the buying process, expect an impatient prospect and choose carefully the few points you want them to retain – points that stress your differentiation.

Sleep Apendea is especially a problem with marketing staff who don’t have deep experience with the target audience. They can be creative in suggesting motivations for prospects to become interested. Not all of these suggestions will resonate with actual prospects, however.

SYMPTOMS

30- to 60-slide presentations forced on all prospects in first visit.

A high number of densely packed Web pages relative to number of products.

Multi-chapter collateral pieces.

SUSPECTED CAUSES

Not distinguishing between different buyer roles and stages of the buying process.

Passion for your product or service that is untamed by pity for the reader.

Inexperience with target audience.

TREATMENT

Identify and eliminate redundant messages with different wording.

Test messages to confirm relevance.

Map key messages to buyer role, buying-process stage, and market segment. Determine where to deliver which messages.

About the Author
Kathryn Roy is a marketing and strategy consultant with over 20 years of experience helping some of the most successful and fastest growing B2B companies including IBM, Avid, CA, Lotus, AT&T and dozens of other technology companies.  She has helped companies:

• hone strategy, positioning, and messaging via primary research
• boost sales productivity through sales enablement training and tools
• evaluate and prioritize market opportunities

Inbound Marketing seems to be all the hype these days.  B2B marketers are getting their feet wet with new social media tactics, online marketing is bigger than it’s ever been and word-of-mouth strategies are being built into most marketing plans today.  But what are you doing with all of this inbound activity on your web site and leads from registrations?

Are you adding them to your next email program?  Are you including them in your newsletter list?  Are you inviting them to your next webinar or live event?  Is your sales or tele-sales team following up with them via phone or email?  Chances are pretty high you’re using these inbound leads to fuel your outbound marketing programs.

What about all those web site visits?  Do you know what companies are visiting your web site?   What pages are they on? How long are they there?  Should you develop a Outbound Marketing program to reach and target the right person in those companies?

With the explosion of marketing automation, B2B Marketers now have the tools they need to better segment, target and reach these inbound leads with tailored messaging via Outbound Marketing.  But it’s not as simple as just loading these inbound leads up and hitting the send button.  To get the results you’re looking for you have to be more deliberate about your outreach.

We all know that in any typical B2B sale there is more than one person involved in a buying decision.  An inbound lead is a good sign someone is interested but chances are high they are collecting information for a team to evaluate.

Instead of waiting on the entire decision making unit to announce themselves, identify the roles you know to typically be involved in the decision and kick up your Outbound Marketing with messages tailored to each of their pain points.  This can only help your marketing results and conversions and getting everyone to the table at the same time also speeds up typical sales cycles.

While Inbound Marketing may be all the rage, you need a targeted Outbound Marketing program to reach all of the decision makers.  So as you are getting ready for 2010, make sure you have set up your Inbound Marketing to fuel your Outbound Marketing programs.

Kathryn Roy, marketing consultant and friend of The B2B Lead, has a great eBook, Seven Infectious Diseases of B2B Marketing — And Their Cures, that we want to share with all of our readers.  We will post excerpts that cover the diseases one by one but feel free to download the entire eBook here.

There are seven problems I find so rampant in B2B companies that I suspect they are infectious – passed along as marketing people switch companies or work with contagious agencies. In each blog post I will cover a diseases, its symptoms, probable causes, and suggested treatment.

Checklistosis is a disease of marketing departments whereby marketing professionals are so focused on execution, they skip the planning stage – and pay the price.

All too often, a glimpse into a B2B marketing department shows a hive of activity focused on meeting deadlines for updating collateral, producing an event, or sending out the next email campaign. In these environments, it is not unusual to find marketers completing projects without having done the analysis that can determine which activities are valuable and which activities not on their list would make a larger contribution.

In some cases, it’s due to a natural tendency to replicate the process and activities from a prior company. Clearly, there is a set of deliverables, like Web sites, that are common to most companies.

However, the relative priority of activities and how they are executed should be based on the dynamics of the target market segment, including the competitive environment.

“Juicing the Orange”, a book by the advertising team that came up with United Airlines’ wildly successful advertising campaign, has a free 15-page workbook (pdf ) with 127 questions to help marketing professionals deeply understand a company’s market and challenge. This analysis is its prerequisite to prescribing messages and mediums for delivery. (Not all 127 questions will necessarily pertain to your situation.)

SYMPTOMS

Inability of marketing professionals to quickly and confidently answer questions such as these:

• What is the biggest impediment to sales growth today?
• What are the different market segments you are pursuing and how do they weigh the relative importance of different product/service capabilities?
• How does your offering compare with competitive alternatives on the key product/service characteristics listed above?
• Can you describe the buying process and buyer roles and specific concerns by role for your top segment?
• What is the target segment’s current perception of your company and your competition?

SUSPECTED CAUSES

Measuring output instead of results.

Mismatch between marketing resources and expected deliverables.

TREATMENT

Carve out time and resources to do a thorough analysis. If staff is not experienced, bring in outside help for the initial round.

Build new marketing plan based on the analysis.

About the Author
Kathryn Roy is a marketing and strategy consultant with over 20 years of experience helping some of the most successful and fastest growing B2B companies including IBM, Avid, CA, Lotus, AT&T and dozens of other technology companies.  She has helped companies:

• hone strategy, positioning, and messaging via primary research
• boost sales productivity through sales enablement training and tools
• evaluate and prioritize market opportunities

If you read our post about metrics Marketing should care about and you use Salesforce here are some easy to follow instructions for putting lead source tracking into place.

Lead Source (the field with the big red arrow next to it), is a standard field in Salesforce, so it’s easy enough to locate and use, the important thing is to put your own custom sources into the pick-list and to use them.

1. To add custom values to the pick-list, you’ll need administrative privileges.
2. Click on ‘Setup,’ then under ‘App Setup’ you’ll want to click on Leads.
3. Next select ‘Fields’ and you’ll get a listing of all of the fields in your CRM.  Click next to ‘Lead Source’ on the ‘Edit’ link.
   
4. Once you are in the edit interface, you’ll be able to add items to the pick-list by selecting ‘New.’
   
5. From there you’ll be given an easy, step-by-step way to insert a new value into the list.

As you can see, we have a variety of different lead sources, you’ll want to make sure your list matches the places that you gather leads from.   Now when you import leads you can select to attribute them to one of these values, thus helping you better track where things come from.

Now you’ll be able to run  reports on these fields, luckily, lead source is a standard field on the Contact record in Salesforce as well and it’s mapped so that the lead source transfers over to the Contact record when you convert Leads.