Repurposing Lead Generation Content You Already Have – Sales, This is a TIP for you too! - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #242
Monday, June 1st, 2009Creating new content on a regular basis is tough and very time consuming. Here at ReachForce with almost everything we create we create a plan on how we are going to make use of the content in as many places as possible. Things like converting eBooks or whitepapers into blog posts and vice versa or using surveys for lead information gathering as well as trend mapping.
Well, nurture marketers and sales teams out there here’s a GREAT idea! I got an email from an Account Executive at MarketBright (see his picture below) that simply invited me to visit the MarketBright blog. Then he went on to list a few of the most popular posts. I thought this was brilliant. He wasn’t trying to sell me anything, well maybe he was in the last paragraph but it was subtle. He was just letting me know they had a resource I may be interested in. No customization was needed, just a simple introduction and a list of the resources. Easy as pie.
Here’s what the email looked like –
Ok, I must admit I think the picture is a little cheesy. But it did make me giggle so I guess it worked, it caught my attention. But otherwise, his hook worked. Now I’m sure with the MarketBright email tracking, Jon was able to tell what I was interested in and now he knows what to follow up with next.
If you have a blog, steal some content from there. Big change your prospects missed it the first time it went out. If you don’t have a blog, pull out highlights from eBooks, whitepapers, webcasts, basically anything else you have and put together an email that links back to each of these.
I’m stealing this idea and going to do something like this for our pipeline nurturing program. No selling from me, just trying to be resourceful for our decision makers and help encourage further interaction. Jon, your email worked. You caught my attention and I acted. Thank you for the great idea.
The Right Collateral Mix to Really Support Sales – B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #235
Tuesday, May 12th, 2009Your 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.
A New Gobbledygook Phrase? - Marketing WTF?
Thursday, April 16th, 2009Because “platforms” just don’t cut it anymore…
Quake in slack-jawed awe at the bombastic extremism that is….
Superplatform On-Demand
From the press release…
The term “Marketing SuperPlatform” was created by Upshot Institute and has gained fast industry acceptance. The term is applied to solutions offering multiple core marketing technologies, accessed as a single application suite.
Wow. So where do we go from here? How can anyone possibly top that? I guess we’ll have to stay tuned for the next level of one-uppedness, which can only spring forth titles such as:
- Colossal Solutions Hyperplexus
- Marketing Methods of Gaussian Proportions
- Orwellian-Scale Mass Marketing
(any resemblance to companies or products, both real or hallucinated, is purely coincidental)
Want to make sure you aren’t filling your news releases with Gobbledygook? Be sure to use Gobbledygook Grader.
Gobbledygook Grader - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #222
Friday, April 10th, 2009Are you really writing for your buyers? Do you know how many gobbledygook words/phrases you used in your last press release, your “About Us” page, your newsletter or your collateral? Ok, first things first, what is gobbledygook? Gobbledygook is a word used by David Meerman Scott to describe the over used marketing words that lack substantial meaning. These words typically do nothing to actually add value to the content. Does it really mean anything to your buyers that your product is a scalable, world-class solution? To learn more, check out the Gobbledygook Manifesto.
Here are the top 25 gobbledygook phrases used in press releases sent in North America 2008:
Are some of these words looking a little all too familiar, in a bad way? Gobbledygook Grader is here to the rescue! Gobbledygook Grader is brought to you from the fine folks at HubSpot, creators of other great graders: Website Grader, Press Release Grader, Twitter Grader and Facebook Grader. Gobbledygook Grader lets you enter any content and grades that content based on number of gobbledygook words, links, readability, etc. It is also identifies all gobbledygook words in the content. I recommend copying and pasting every page of your website into this to see how you rate. Don’t worry if you have a few words here and there that are gobbledygook. Sometimes those words are necessary. Just ask yourself, is this really telling my buyer something about my company/product that would make them want to buy? Market-leading, flexible, robust solution probably does not mean much to a prospect nor is it particularly compelling.
Thank you to HubSpot and David Meerman Scott for this very useful tool to keep our writing in check.
Book Club Wrap-Up - ReachForce Book Club
Tuesday, December 30th, 2008Hope you enjoyed this quarter’s Book Club series. Just in case you missed an eBook or whitepaper we read and discussed, below are the links to them and what we had to say about each of them.
- HubSpots’s Get Found Online
- What we had to say…
- David Meerman Scott’s The New Rules of Viral Marketing
- What we had to say…
- ConnectDirect’s How to Choose your Carrot: Effective Lead Generation Offers for High-Technology Marketers
- What we had to say…
Happy Reading. We look forward to sharing even more B2B Marketing and Sales tips with you in 2009.
Publish your Content for Free – B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #182
Friday, December 19th, 2008So…you have written white papers and eBooks and they are up on your website. They are probably on the resources page and get their fair share of downloads. That’s good, but with some of the free publishing sites out there you can get more exposure.
I have started to put ReachForce content on some of the sites and wanted to share the results, compare with you or ask if you had suggestions.
Content placement sites:
Scribd – the best content placement site I think. You can publish, discover and discuss original writings and documents. It’s easy to set up…sign up and make an account for free, then just upload your documents. I have uploaded all of ReachForce’s eBooks and have gotten 5476 views as of today. People can add your works to their favorites and rate them. You can join groups an add friends.
Docstoc – provides the platform for users and businesses to upload and share their documents with all the world, and serves as a vast repository of documents in variety of categories including legal, business, financial, technology, educational, and creative. I uploaded all our eBooks and have 300 views and 30 downloads as of today.
edocr – upload your documents for sharing by the professional and business community. I uploaded our eBooks, again, and we have 618 views so far. One of our eBooks was featured on the front page when first uploaded.
whitepapers.org – is “all the world’s whitepapers in one place.” I really haven’t figured out how to see how many views or downloads our whitepapers have had.
The pros of publishing your content on sites like this is that it is free to do and can bring unexpected visitors an exposure. The biggest con I can find is that there is really no way to find out who downloaded our content (with information like an email address). To help with this, we added links to all our whitepapers and eBooks to hopefully drive traffic back to our website.
Suggestions?
The New Rules of VIRAL Marketing - ReachForce Book Club
Thursday, December 11th, 2008We are big fans of Mr. Scott and his eBook, The New Rules of Viral Marketing, which gives tips on how to spread your ideas for free using word-of-mouse. Or in other words, “one person sends it to another, then that person sends it to yet another, and on and on.” With the internet, it is now easier than ever to start a viral campaign, but “marketers need to learn how to harness the amazing power of word-of-mouse.”
This eBook is full of case studies and other “people’s success so you can apply some of their ideas and lessons in your own word-of-mouse efforts.” Most of this is at the beginning, so if you are short on time I would start on page 14 for the real meat.
David’s formula for success:
“A combination of some great-and free-Web content (a video, blog entry, interactive tool, or e-book) that provides valuable information (or is groundbreaking or amazing or hilarious or involves a celebrity), plus a network of people to light the fire and links that make your content very easy to share.”
To help achieve this success, David provides specific advice on how to launch a viral campaign using YouTube videos, e-books and other techniques. I’ll pick out some points I thought interesting (or that I haven’t thought about before) and list them here, but make sure you go back and read the eBook for all the tips.
How to help your eBook get shared:
- Present you eBook in a landscape format, rather than the white paper’s typical portrait format. This makes it easier to read and signals to the reader that the content is interesting.
- Consider writing in a lighter, more conversational style than you would in a whitepaper, marketing brochure, or Web page. Think of the writing in an eBook as you would write for a blog.
- eBooks should always be free and should never have a registration requirement. (This has been hotly debated for a while now on how to balance capturing leads and distributing content. What do you think?)
- Put a Creative Commons license on the content so people know they can freely share your copyrighted material.
- Create a landing page from which people can download your eBook. (All of our eBooks and whitepapers have landing pages set up on the ReachForce Resources page on the website.)
- To drive viral marketing, (you have to read the eBook for the rest of this great tip)!
9 tips for using YouTube (here are a few)
- Your video should be no longer than three minutes. (Come on, who has time to just sit and watch a 10 minute video…unless it is really funny or something). If you have a lot to say, consider creating a series of posts.
- Don’t attempt “stealth” fake customer insertions. Be authentic and don’t try to sneak in company promotion where you can. (YouTube itself can catch unauthenic video and that might cause harm to a brand).
- Make sure bloggers know about the video. The best way to do this is when you are reading and commenting on blogs in your space, next time you comment link to your video (if it makes sense to).
Other tips he mentioned:
- Use interactive tools (like Hubspot’s Website Grader)
- Don’t break the bank with expensive advertising
- Don’t beg mainstream media to write about you
I have left some really great tips and specific advice out, so go back and read what all David has to say about viral campaigns. Have you had success with viral campaigns? What did you do?
David Meerman Scott is an online thought leadership and viral marketing strategist. The programs he has developed have won numerous awards and are responsible for selling over $1 billion in products and services worldwide.
The “Oh $#%@!” Day in Marketing is coming…
Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008Last year, we at ReachForce declared January 15th the “Oh $#%@!” Day in Marketing.
Here’s why:
Are you prepared to deliver sales-ready leads in January? December is typically a slower month for B2B Marketing teams, since most organizations slow down current marketing programs and instead spend their time preparing for the next year. Then, you leave for the holidays happy to have completed the painful process of planning and budgeting for the next year’s activities. But once the holiday haze clears, it’s January and everyone is ready to kick off the New Year with new customer wins. Your sales team wants to know, “Where are my leads? I’ve got a number to hit.”
The “Oh $#%@!” moment…
If you wait until you get back from the holidays to begin developing your marketing programs, when are you going to have leads to pass to sales? End of January? Beginning of February? Can your sales team land those deals by the end of Q1?
Instead, start developing your 2009 programs now and be ready to execute your first week back. Remember to go back and look at where you’ve been before getting started. With the economy on a roller coaster, we’re all being forced to do more with less. It’s more important than ever to analyze and target your lead generation initiatives at the right buyers in YOUR target market. I promise your sales team will thank you.
A Client’s Bill of Rights - Three Key Points to Consider When Selecting a Marketing Partner - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #176
Monday, December 1st, 2008This tip comes from one of our favorite marketing partners, Christa Kleinhans Tuttle. Christa is the Founder and President of Launch Marketing here in Austin.
Typically, a company engages a firm when it lacks time or internal resources to accomplish certain tasks. While this reasoning is effective and can deliver results, the most significant value of working with a third party is the opportunity to gain an unbiased perspective and deep subject matter expertise.
As the owner of a marketing firm, it is my goal to provide the best service and deliver the best results possible to every client. So, I recently went out and spoke with multiple marketing executives to better understand what’s important to them when hiring an outside firm. Questions ranged from discovering common pain points to successes experienced when working with a third party. I also asked about the selection process, priorities, communication styles and much more. After analyzing the results, the following are three of the top points from a client perspective:
- The Right to be Understood. It is often seen that some firms ramp up for a client pitch by preparing their resume of accomplishments instead of taking the time to do the homework necessary to gain an understanding of your company, products or solutions. The best pitches ‘feel’ like the firm is part of the company, so much so that it should be seen as extensions of your company’s internal team. The further the firm is along on that path of alignment in early stages, the better your odds are that it will add value to your team.
- The Right to Accountability. As a client, you have the right to receive work from a firm or consultant that is of absolute value to your company. If a firm is running up against obstacles on a project for a client, it is the responsibility of the firm or consultant to notify the client of the situation, and proactively provide an outline of alternative solutions to implement to help achieve projected goals.
- The Right to be Number One. Most importantly, you have the right to feel like you are the only client; the top priority. Regardless of how busy your point of contact is, he or she should always be responsive and accountable to your needs. If your point of contact can’t immediately start working on your request, he or she should at least respond with a phrase such as, “I can’t get to this today, but I can do so tomorrow.” A quick response to let you know they received the message and will work on it as soon as possible is priceless.
Know Your Rights
Make sure whichever firm or consultant you choose can meet these and any other needs specific to you, your internal team and your company. The expectations you outline up front can help you build a successful and long-lasting relationship with the third party you engage. To read the expanded version of this article with all ten “rights”, click here.
I’d love to hear your feedback and any points you think should be added.
About the Author
Christa Kleinhans Tuttle, is founder and president of Launch Marketing, which acts as a virtual marketing organization primarily for technology companies, and offers a range of services from developing and implementing integrated marketing plans to completing one time projects including launches, conferences, tradeshows, Web sites, print materials, online campaigns, direct marketing and more.
Get Found Online – ReachForce Book Club
Thursday, November 20th, 2008HubSpot’s ebook, Get Found Online, is right on the money. Today’s marketing is changing from outbound to inbound, and “consumers are going to the Internet to start their purchasing process.” For businesses to remain competitive, their websites need to be found online through search engines, the blogosphere and social media sites.
Luckily, this eBook gives detailed steps on how to be found on each of these inbound marketing techniques. Here is a short outline which should entice you to read the eBook for all the great how to tips (pages 5-9) to get found online.
How to get found on search engines:
- Find Keywords - choose keywords that your target market is using
- On-Page SEO - place keywords in the page title, URL, headings and page text
- Off-Page SEO - build more links
- Measure & Analyze
How to get found on blogs:
- Read - other industry blogs
- Comment - join in on the conversation (even link back to your own blog)
- Write - find the right blog software, blog weekly and promote your blog
- Measure & Analyze
How to get found on social media:
- Guidelines for Engagement - join communities and provide useful information, don’t just sell your company
- Publish, Share, and Network - everyone can publish and share anything, everyone can network with anyone (through content placement sites, linking to others an online communities)
- Measure & Analysis
I manage all the online media for ReachForce, and found these tips extremely useful. It is really cool to see how many people go to our website from our blog and social media sites. Think of any other useful tips while reading Get Found Online? Please share!
HubSpot is an inbound marketing system that helps your small or medium sized business get found on the Internet by the right prospects and convert more of them into leads and customers.
No book club next week for Thanksgiving (you have an extra week to read)! Look for us on Thursday, December 4th talking about Marketo’s Best Practices in Lead Nurturing…enjoy!
