B2B Marketing Ideas

Friday Wrap-up: This Week in B2B Marketing Tips

Filed under B2B Marketing Ideas, Weekly Wrap-up

By ReachForce

on May 11th, 2012

Each week we present a collection of some of the best marketing tips, guides, and best practices from thought leaders around the blogosphere to help you stay informed, hone your craft, and improve your marketing efforts. Enjoy!

1. 6 Steps to Inbound Marketing Success [Infographic]

Created by Impact Brand and Design and posted on the B2B Marketer Insider blog, this Infographic provides a nice snapshot of activities, and more than a few details, to help you define and execute your inbound marketing strategy, drive leads, and turn those visitors into revenue. 6 Steps to Inbound Marketing Success [Infographic]

2. 64 Pinterest Marketing Tips and Tactics – Infographic

Another Infographic, but they seem to be all over this week. Pinterest might be wildly popular and a phenomenal source of traffic, but most B2B marketers are still learning how to really leverage it. This post, via Jeff Bullas, delivers a whopping 64 ideas to get you started. For another point of view (with a bit more focus on B2B marketing) check out Marketo’s post, B2B Marketing & Pinterest: 5 Tips for Becoming the Ultimate Pinner. Enjoy. 64 Pinterest Marketing Tips and Tactics – Infographic

3. Why You Should Benchmark Internal Metrics

This is post is actually a clarification to a previous one, both by the Wilson and Ellis Consulting Blog, and you’d do well to read both. The core idea is this – while comparing your business to your competitors can be helpful, measurements that analyze what’s going on inside your organization usually provide more meaningful, and more accurate, information. Why You Should Benchmark Internal Metrics

4. Does Automation Impact Lead Conversion Rates? [CHART]

It seems the answer to that question is far, far more than you or I would have guessed. To see just how much, read on. We’ll dig into what this means and ideas to do it better in a forthcoming post. Does Automation Impact lead Conversion Rates? [CHART]

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Friday, May 11th, 2012

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Six Segmentation Best Practices for Your Marketing Lists

Filed under B2B Marketing Ideas, Email Marketing

By ReachForce

on May 10th, 2012

Although a better targeted marketing list will almost always deliver better response rates and higher conversions, getting that list dialed-out isn’t something you can do overnight. And while developing a truly targeted list does require a bit of effort and careful planning, it doesn’t have to be quite as daunting as it seems.

Here are six targeting and segmentation ideas that might help you get started.

Segment your lists based on how subscribers have reacted previously. One of the best tools for segmenting your communications, behavior is often under-utilized or simply ignored. If a recipient clicked on links related to a specific product or solution you offer, but ignored other emails, why wouldn’t you double down and only send her those messages that provide similar content or offers?

Ask for more information. Offer past customers or subscribers polls in order to gain more information on what they’re looking for in a service provider and have them update their information from time to time. The more information you have about your customers, the more targeted your messages can be.

Build specific lists using vendors. While your own opt-in lists are ideal, list purchases can certainly deliver a large amount of contacts that include the specific elements you require for distinct campaigns. Just be sure to work with reputable organizations that guarantee the quality of said lists. (As it happens, I just might know a company that can help you with that)

Don’t limit segmentation to the basics. Most businesses begin segmenting lists using general data such as industry, size, or location. While this is a good start, there are worlds of other, and sometimes more helpful, options for carving up your lists. Install base, social interaction, groups, and more should be considered.

Segment current customers based on how much they’ve already spent with your business or organization. It’s well documented that keeping current customers is far less expensive than finding new ones, but how often do you really dive into your customer list and segment? Past buying behavior is a great place to start.

Speak your prospcts’ language. While most marketers tend to rely on a more vanilla description of features and benefits, providing messaging that use both specific examples and language that are specific to your prospects’ industry or pain points creates a more targeted voice and, ultimately, better response rates.

What are your thoughts? How do you segment your lists?

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Thursday, May 10th, 2012

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3 Steps to a Vince Lombardi Marketing Program

Filed under B2B Marketing Ideas, Database Marketing, Marketing Tips

By ReachForce

on February 13th, 2012

As you can probably imagine, we’re rather passionate about data quality here at ReachForce. When helping our clients we’ve seen firsthand just how much of a difference a high quality database makes when designing, executing, and even converting prospects from marketing campaigns.

And yet many organizations have ignored the problem of poor data quality, citing lack of time and resources and the need to wrestle with ongoing production and implementation problems as barriers to their efforts to improve the quality of their data resources. Marketing strategist, Paul Teshema, however, believes that cleaning up your database is well worth the effort. He claims that most organizations can increase their lead generation by more than 250% simply by implementing an effective data quality program.

250%. Is there an organization that wouldn’t benefit from that kind of spike? Is there a marketing team out there that wouldn’t be popping champagne with that kind of improvement? And while we have a host of tools and services to help get you there (visit our site to find out more) there are a few housekeeping items you can implement fairly quickly to get started.

A study by Omar Khalil and Talha D. Harcar recommended three key elements be put into play in creating a successful company-wide data quality improvement program:

Prioritization of the sources from which you gather data, emphasizing the highest quality data sources and implementing organization-wide data quality policies.
Standardization of data fields across all departments. Marketing, sales, product development and data management team members should all be collecting the same types of data from whatever sources they data-mine. It is particularly important to identify your organization’s critical data quality requirements.
Put quality data production systems on line that include any new data sources you develop. This means creating practices and policies that insure a high level of accuracy in all data collected.

Vince Lomardi once said, “Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.” In the same way it could be said that data does not make for successful marketing – only high quality data makes for successful marketing. Is your database ready to help you?

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Monday, February 13th, 2012

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Friday Wrap-Up: This Week in B2B Marketing Tips

Filed under B2B Marketing Ideas, Marketing Tips, Weekly Wrap-up

By ReachForce

on October 14th, 2011

1. 7 Tips for Developing Your Webinar Strategy

Personally, I’m a big fan of webinars. What’s not to love? Webinars are typically fairly simple to execute, available with low-cost production options for tight budgets, and deliver a wealth of repurposing opportunities. More on the last in another post. This post from Engage’s Allison King addresses one of the fundamental issues marketers face when getting started – content ideas. Enjoy. 7 Tips for Developing Your Webinar Strategy

2. 5 Tips for Running a Successful Retargeting Campaign – Whiteboard Friday

Looking to boost your retargeting campaigns? Or, perhaps, just get one started? This short video from SEOmoz breaks down tips, strategies, and best practices to help you deliver your message to segmented, targeted audiences – on your site or somewhere else. 5 Tips for Running a Successful Retargeting Campaign – Whiteboard Friday

3. Why Humor Belongs in Marketing (No Kidding!)

Marketing Profs’ Matthew Grant drops down a bit of video wisdom far too many organizations seem to struggle with: “If you really want to emotionally connect with your audience, you really have to want to emotionally connect with your audience.” Get the rest with this great post (and a few really funny examples) of how to connect with your audience using a video approach: Why Humor Belongs in Marketing (No Kidding!)

4. 3 Tested Email Marketing Templates You Can Use Right Now

Interesting post here from Ben Settle at Copyblogger that provides exactly what the title promises – three distinct templates (of the fill-in-the-blank variety) that you can tweak to reflect your business and/or service and deploy right away. Having spent a large portion of my career writing copy for everything from data services to funeral homes (and truly believe that long-copy messaging can work really, really well), I love the idea here to create a meaningful story that both engages the audience and drive action. However, I think I’m in agreement with one of the post’s comments that said, essentially, these templates read more like the emails you find creeping into your inbox to let you know you’ve been named the beneficiary of a large sum of money if you’ll simply provide your bank’s routing number. Recycle bin or spam folder, in other words. What do you think? 3 Tested Email Marketing Templates You Can Use Right Now

5. 3 Ways to Win at Online Marketing By Becoming a Better Writer

Another post from Copyblogger, although this time via Eloqua. Brian Clark breaks down the three essential factors needed to improve writing (and your marketing message) for more visitors, better engagement, and increased conversions. 3 Ways to Win at Online Marketing By Becoming a Better Writer

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Friday, October 14th, 2011

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Friday Wrap-Up: This Week in B2B Marketing Tips

Filed under B2B Marketing Ideas, Lead Nurturing, Weekly Wrap-up

By ReachForce

on September 23rd, 2011

1. Geoff’s Market Research Bulletin – 1^st Edition

This post from Geoff Livingston is a quick summary of his monthly newsletter that rounds up noteworthy marketing research studies from the past month with miles of links, statistics, and data. The post is nice, but the newsletter is excellent. Do yourself a favor and subscribe: Geoff’s Market Research Bulletin – 1^st Edition

2. Four Stories Every Business Must Build

True story – I started playing golf only after watching the film, “The Legend of Bagger Vance.” Years of prodding and appeals by friends and colleagues had failed to interest or motivate me the way roughly two hours of Will Smith and Matt Damon (to say nothing of Charlize Theron) exploring the universal truths found between the rough and the green had managed to do. It was the story, you see. John Jantsch explains why “the power of story as a business building and marketing tool is undeniable” and provides four examples of the themes marketers (and everyone else at the organization, for that matter) need to know: Four Stories Every Business Must Build

3. Two Ways To Quickly Improve Your Communications Plans

A nice refresher on some fundamental thinking, marketing and communications veteran, Dave Fleet, offers a brief summary of the two critical elements that explain why “most communications programs fail to live up to their true purpose.” Good stuff: Two Ways To Quickly Improve Your Communications Plans

4. Ditch B2B and Think B2P (Business to People)

Perhaps interesting to include in a B2B blog, but this post by MarketingProfs delivers a ton of great data (via our friends at Televerde) illustrating common challenges organizations face with lead nurturing efforts, as well as a few tips to help you adjust your marketing approach to better connect, and influence, decision makers and those who make buying decisions. Enjoy. Ditch B2B and Think B2P (Business to People)

5. The Trouble With Marketing Automation

In a nutshell, one size simply cannot fit all. Yet we marketers, in an effort to squeeze every bit of traction we can from campaigns, often ignore this fact and develop communications and assets with broad themes that focus far more on our story than how it’s actually relevant to the audience. This post from HubSpot serves up a number of ideas to help combat that position and help turn leads into closed business: The Trouble With Marketing Automation

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Friday, September 23rd, 2011

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Friday Wrap-Up: This Week in B2B Marketing Tips

Filed under B2B Marketing Ideas, Marketing Tips, Weekly Wrap-up

By ReachForce

on September 9th, 2011

1. More Cheese, Less Whiskers

No pressure to click, but John Jantsch writes that this just might be the essence of “one of the most profound marketing lessons you’ll ever get.” In this post he touches on a few highlights of his interview with veteran copywriter, Dean Jackson, and illustrates the importance of a marketing strategy that creates the ultimate customer experience – and why you should keep it whisker-free. More Cheese, Less Whiskers.

2. The Bard & Marketing: 4 Lessons From the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

One of the great joys of growing up in Houston could be found not far from where Interstates 45 and 10 briefly touch: the Alley Theatre. Do yourself a favor and make sure you catch a performance (any performance, really) at the Alley should you visit the city. You won’t regret it. In this post from B2C (Business 2 Community), we’re reminded that solid marketing lessons can be found in the strangest places – even within the lines of a 16^th century playwright. The Bard & Marketing: 4 Lessons From the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. For a few lessons about social media gleaned from the same pen, visit here.

3. Optimizing Content & Visibility with SlideShare

Nice post here (originally posted on Edelman Digital) covering five tips and best practices for creating worthwhile, memorable content on SlideShare. From creating highly visual presentations to articulating a distinct point of view, presentations on SlideShare are an opportunity for marketers to tell your story and engage with a growing community. This will help you do it right. Optimizing Content & Visibility with SlideShare

4. Your Conversions are Falling. What Now?

Do you have a disaster plan in place if your site’s conversion rates start to nosedive? It happens to everyone at some point – chances are it’ll happen to you, too. This post from SEJ breaks down the first areas you should examine to identify the issue and speed up recovery. Your Conversions are Falling. What Now?

5. How to Fix a Fragmented Customer Experience

Is your marketing department involved with customer experience? They should be. Along with customer support/customer relations and sales, marketing is in one of the best places to ensure your prospects and customers have a consistent, positive experience when interacting with your company. HubSpot’s Meghan Keaney Anderson offers specific pointers to help each of the groups mentioned above do just that. How to Fix a Fragmented Customer Experience

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Friday, September 9th, 2011

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The CMO Corner – Data Quality 2.0

Filed under B2B Lead Generation, B2B Marketing Ideas, CMO Corner, Database Marketing

By ReachForce

on August 24th, 2011

Guest post by David Raab

Marketing data quality used to be simple: the more comprehensive and accurate a data set, the higher its quality rating. That made sense when most marketing programs were targeted at known individuals. Knowing exactly who you were reaching (accuracy) and reaching as many qualified people as possible (coverage) were the keys to success.

But today, many marketing programs reach people you don’t know. They’re targeted through locations, Web behaviors, search terms, social networks, and by other methods that isolate useful groups whose members remain otherwise anonymous. The quality of those data sources is measured in new metrics that vary considerably depending on the particular marketing program.

Consider speed. Identifying changes quickly was always a part of the traditional accuracy measures, but elements like name and address don’t change very often. By comparison, a marketing program based on location may need to react instantly to someone walking past your physical or virtual storefront. So it’s critical to measure how quickly a data source acquires location information, transmits it, and lets you respond with a relevant message.

Other new measures include:

Reliability: many of the new data sources involve real-time or near-real-time data connections. A source that is frequently unavailable or suffers unpredictable lags in transmission time may be significantly less valuable than another that is more dependable. Reliability often interacts with speed: data that is sometimes current but other times late may cause expensive gaffes – like paging Elvis after he has left the building – that are worse than not delivering the message at all.
Consistency: this is a close cousin to the traditional measure of accuracy. The difference is that many new data feeds are themselves aggregated from multiple sources of varying quality, so you need to watch carefully to see how the average accuracy changes over time and for different sub-segments. For example, information that infers consumer interests from the Web sites they visit may be very good at identifying people in the market for a new car but less effective at isolating heavy users of packaged consumer goods.
Specificity: how precisely does the source allow you to target? It’s one thing to identify book readers and another to find people who are interested in Civil War history. Similarly, location-based targeting might be as broad as a metropolitan area or as narrow as a specific street corner. As with all quality measures, the level you require will depend on how you’ll use the data.
Clarity: you can’t always tell what a particular attribute actually measures. Proprietary scores for “social media influence” are one example – even if the vendor explains how they’re calculated, it’s often not obvious what to make of them. Seemingly concrete classifications can also be fuzzy: what, exactly, makes a sewing machine “portable” or a company “small”? The answer matters because decision rules may be based on assumptions that are incorrect.

These new measures are more closely tied to specific marketing programs than the traditional, general measures of accuracy and coverage. Indeed, many new marketing programs are only viable if their data sources meet specific standards. This program-driven approach expands the challenge of picking the right quality measures. But it also simplifies the calculations needed to identify the financial impact of quality improvements. The resulting clarify may lead to a new golden age of data quality – if we can develop the tools to measure it.

David M. Raab is a consultant specializing in marketing technology and analytics. He is author of The Marketing Performance Measurement Toolkit and B2B Marketing Automation Vendor Selection Tool. See www.raabguide.com for more information.

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Wednesday, August 24th, 2011

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Friday Wrap-Up: This Week in B2B Marketing Tips

Filed under B2B Lead Generation, B2B Marketing Ideas, Marketing Tips, Weekly Wrap-up

By ReachForce

on July 29th, 2011

1. B2B Marketing Infographic: How are B2B marketers optimizing their funnel?

Love this. Love it. From the top five most effective demand gen tactics to the frequency of lead nurturing touches, MarketingSherpa provides a great infographic to help marketers identify “…the most effective strategies and tactics for attracting and converting the modern B2B buyer.”How are B2B marketers optimizing their funnel?

2. What Wins In Google Universal Search? Videos, Images & Google!

Not long ago I read a study that reported a large percentage of executives are now making purchasing decisions based on videos – from product descriptions to customer testimonials – and relying less on traditional forms of research like site descriptions or collateral. Not sure if the data below from Search Engine Land underscores that finding or is helping to create it, but it’s information you should know: What Wins In Google Universal Search? Videos, Images, & Google!

3. Prediction Power: Asking Gets Results

Some interesting behavioral research here that reports “the more visible or tangible a commitment is, the more likely it is to be acted on.” Neuromarketing digs into the data and provides a few ideas your marketing and sales teams can use to make the most out of the revealed probabilities: Prediction Power: Asking Gets Results

4. Promoted Tweets Gets More Targeted, Promoted Trends, More Expensive

One thing that stood out for me in this Marketing Vox post is a stat that actually comes from Twitter about their Promoted Trends offering. Specifically, “…Twitter has worked with some 600 advertisers on 6,000 advertising campaigns, 80% of which came back and bought more placement.” 80 percent. In a time when ad spend is about as popular as the plague for most organizations, 80% is huge. If you’re one of them, I’d love to hear about your experience. For everyone else, check it out: Promoted Tweets Gets More Targeted, Promoted Trends, More Expensive

5. Marketing Must Change: A Q&A with Michael Stelzner

I’ve had the good fortune of talking with Marketing Profs’ Chief Content Officer, Ann Handley, a handful of times over the last few years and she is, without a doubt, the cat’s pajamas. In addition to having an absolutely hysterical story about freeing a lobster in Boston (no kidding), Ann is always a great resource for insight and information about what’s happening in marketing right now.

The following post is an interview with Michael Stelzner, and covers the importance of a solid content strategy, how social has changed the game, and quite a bit more. Read more here: Marketing Must Change: A Q&A with Michael Stelzner

6. A Little Extra

The following posts (and example) are really intriguing to me not for the tips or best practices they provide, but rather, the questions they ask. Will we like AI when it does; as it seems it must, eventually awake? Read Thought Gadgets’ TomTom vs. Frankenstein and let me know.

Within an hour of reading Toyota Venza Reminds us Of The Dangers Of Evangelism I discovered this lovely nugget from Google suggesting an “Email Intervention” for my friends that haven’t made the switch. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. So, I’m curious – should there be a balance between seeking and nurturing advocates for your organization vs. evangelists? Does it matter? Love to hear what you think.

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Friday, July 29th, 2011

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The CMO Corner—Establishing Thought Leadership

Filed under B2B Marketing Ideas

By Mike Emerson

on July 14th, 2011

Every company wants to claim ownership of that mystical quality called thought leadership. It’s hard to come by, hard to quantify, and hard to get along without. For small and early stage companies, it is one thing that gives that stamp of credibility when you have great products and services, but lack the scale of a big company.

ReachForce has established strong leadership in the broad field of B2B marketing lead data management. I am looking to leverage six pools of resources to build thought leadership within our product category:

Marketing staff. Everyone in marketing needs to make contributions to our thought leadership.
Broader staff. Don’t try and recruit an army. Find two or three individuals in your consulting or product development group who can make an occasional contribution.
Partners. Many partners have consultants who are looking for opportunities to contribute. They have direct contact with customers and can bring great stories to your mix.
Third party experts. While expensive, working with a couple of industry pundits or analyst organizations can highlight your other content.
Customers. Customers can tell stories about their success. I will devote a future blog post just to this topic.
The C-Suite. Having your C level executives speak on industry topics contributes to thought leadership and builds their brand as well.

In the same way that we now manage a revenue funnel, we manage a supply chain funnel for our thought leadership and content. Having a specific schedule of when you will need content and who is lined up to deliver is a great way to ensure that you will have a flow of ideas to deliver to the marketplace.

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Thursday, July 14th, 2011

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Data vs. Content in B2B Marketing

Filed under B2B Marketing Ideas

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.

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Wednesday, April 27th, 2011

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