Being a somewhat typical marketer, I pay attention to the look and feel of everything we do.  I believe that a cohesive look for our brand is essential because we run so many integrated marketing programs.  I came across a great post on Mashable, HOW TO: Create Custom Twitter Backgrounds by Ben Par.  The post goes into why you would want a custom background and examples of some great ones but to me the best part is  a list of tools to help you create your own:

• MyTweetSpace: MyTweetSpace is one of the simplest ways to create a Twitter background with minimal effort. It allows users to create badges, add graphics, play with text, and more to create elegant backgrounds and left-hand text columns. You can even log in with Twitter and MyTweetSpace will automatically update your background.
• TwitterBacks: This website provides a set of templates perfect for creating your ideal Twitter background. The templates come in PSD (Photoshop) form. In fact, my Twitter account utilizes a TwitterBack template as the basis for my design. Can you guess which one?
• TweetStyle: TweetStyle offers free background templates, custom Twitter backgrounds, and a few useful blog posts on the subject of the backdrop.
• Free Twitter Designer: This handle little app provides an easy-to-use image editor to help you create a professional-looking theme.
• TwitBacks: This is another tool for creating backgrounds. This one specializes in left-hand column-based backgrounds.
• TwitterGallery: TwitterGallery is a directory of themes based on color and category. You can even click the “install” button under any theme, log into Twitter, and poof!…your background is ready.
• Peekr: If you stumble across a great Twitter background and want to take a quick look at it in its pure form, the Peekr bookmarklet is the way to go. Click on the bookmarklet once to show only the background, and press it again to bring everything back to normal.

One tip I would add is to be sure to change your design colors to match your new background.  When you are in your Twitter account, click on settings and then change design colors. You can change your background, text, links, sidebar and sidebar border to match your new background.

We have already done this for the ReachForce twitter page but I can’t wait to get started on my own personal background.

Lose Control of Your Marketing is the latest eBook from David Meerman Scott.  It is mostly composed of excerpts from his new book World Wide Rave.  Readers of The B2B Lead already know I am a huge fan of Mr. Scott, especially his book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR.  However, the ideas presented in this eBook were a little hard for me to accept whole-heartedly.  As the name suggests, he encourages marketers to take down any barriers to their content and lose control to allow their ideas/content to spread.  As a bit of a control freak and one who lives by the mantra that everything marketing does must be measured, I had a bit of an internal struggle while reading this eBook.

According to David, You need to think in terms of spreading ideas, not generating leads. A World Wide Rave gets the word out to thousands or even millions of potential customers. But only if you make your information easy to find and consume.

One of the most difficult ideas for me to accept is the idea that sales leads are the wrong goal.  Isn’t my number one goal as a marketer to provide qualified leads to Sales?  David’s most compelling argument is that he has seen content downloads multiply by as much as a factor of 50 when a registration form was taken off.  I don’t know that I could ever take down every form on my website, but it is worth a shot on an eBook or two, just as a test.

The last part of the eBook focuses on how organizations should create a social media policy for its employees.  At ReachForce we are very open to allowing all employees to participate in social media, but if you are trying to create your own social media guidelines, David gives some great tips.

Helpful hint: if you are strapped for time you can probably skip pages 16-21.  And if you really don’t have time to read this eBook at all, let me leave you with David’s main point: The biggest requirement is that you change your behavior, so let me remind you of the most important strategies for successful marketing in a world of social media:

• Stop obsessing over the old measurements of sales leads and marketing ROI.
• Make your valuable online content free and registration-less.
• Give away lots of good information (videos, photos, data, graphs, audio, blogs, e-books, and the like) to enthusiastic or curious people interested in your products and services.
• Encourage an organizational culture of sharing.

Remember 1999?  The tech bubble had yet to burst, times were good and our biggest worry was Y2K.  Back then marketers had a positive attitude and spent time tailoring messages to their audience around how the benefits of their product would help the prospect.

We all know that times have been tough this year, we don’t need to be reminded in every email, direct mail, blog post and webinar invitation we get.  If I want to be reminded, I just look at my stock portfolio . This is a plea to all marketers out there, STOP talking about the recession.  Don’t remind your audience that their budgets have been cut or that they are now a man down.

If your prospects have had budget cuts and layoffs, there is no need to remind them of the current economic state; they live with the reminder every day.  Instead, now is the time to focus on the positives.

Here are some reasons why you should NOT highlight the recession in your next marketing message:

• Stand out from the crowd.  If you are sending out the same  ways to recession-proof your X, as everyone else, your message will be lost.  I automatically delete any email or webinar invite I get that has the word recession or economy in it.
• You are subtly reminding your prospects that their budgets are shrinking and that they should be spending less.  FYI- your goal is to sell them something meaning you want them to spend more.
• Now is the time to really highlight how you are going to save your prospects time and money.  Make them feel like your product is the one thing that cannot be cut from the budget.
• Perception is reality.  As long as the media and we as marketers continue to propagate the idea that we are in a recession, then we will be in one.  We can all do our part to be more positive.

My point is that we all know we are in a recession and although things are beginning to look up, we don’t need every marketing message to remind us of our budget cuts and staff losses.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear Sales,

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

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

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

Love,

Marketing

By now you know that there is more than one person involved in a B2B buying decision.  The DMU (decision making unit) typically consists of the end user, key influencers, management, a financial buyer and others that have their hands in the decision to buy or not to buy.

It’s pretty easy to find the management decision makers with just a little research, but what about the others?  Here’s a few tips to help you identify and build out lead generation programs for those other than the Cs and VPs.

1. Where have you been winning?  This is always a good place to start.  Hopefully your sales team helped you out a little here and included notes about everyone they talked to in the buying process.  If so, are you able to define their roles?  If not, don’t despair, you’re not alone and this is not the end of the road for you.
2. Profile your best customers – talk to your best customer implementation team, talk to the sales person that sold the deal and if possible interview a few customers to better understand who all was involved in the decision to buy.
3. Once you have your roles defined, do you have these people in your leads database?  Remember you are matching roles, not just titles.  If so, tag them with a role identity.  If you’re missing roles, call ReachForce, we can help you fill in the gaps.  (Sorry for the shameless promotion…sometimes it just happens…)
4. You’re finally ready to start marketing to these people.  You are now able to build out very targeted programs focusing on key influencer and end user issues.  Here’s an example –
   
5. Nurture – not all buyers are ready to buy at the same time so be sure you are nurturing all of your prospects as well as those involved in a sales cycle.  Here’s a few ideas for offers for your nurturing programs  -

• Email analyst reports supporting the pain and possible solutions
• Email customer case studies
• Invite to webcasts
• Be sure to share any new content you roll out (whitepapers, eBooks, etc.)

For best results, I recommend you engage with your sales team before launching your newly segmented programs and ensure they are onboard to provide guidance and feedback throughout the process.  To execute a healthy, ROI generating program it’s important to map out each step of the building process taking into consideration budget, timing and appropriate follow up.  Here’s a template if you need help.

I was catching up on some reading and came across a new article in BtoB from Rich Karpinski, B-to-b followers flock to Twitter.  It is a great article especially if you are new to Twitter or wanting to know more about how businesses are using Twitter to connect with prospects and customers.

Since we are all about tips on The B2B Lead, here is some practical advice from the article for marketers getting started on Twitter:

• In your Twitter bio, clearly spell out what business you are in, who is posting to the account and even what you hope to get out of it. That creates transparency and the underpinnings of trust.
• Find people to follow. They’ll likely follow you back, broadening and enriching your conversation.
• To start, sit back and watch conversations unfold. As your comfort level grows, be proactive by participating in and starting conversations related to your business.
• Be generous: Offer more than you get back and always try to be responsive to peers and customers.

Finding the right people to follow can be challenging.  Karpinski offers this advice:
Locating other b-to-b marketers and companies that “tweet” has become easier, too. Ad network Federated Media late last month launched (with Microsoft Corp. as sponsor) ExecTweets.com, an aggregation of executives using Twitter, and the Social Brand Index offers an index of Twitter accounts organized by category. One also can find lists of b-to-b marketing-focused Twitter users with a Google search.

I was happy to see one of the smartest B2B marketers I know, Jon Miller from Marketo, quoted in the article:
“B-to-b buyers are still people, and in the end, they buy from people and not companies,” said Jon Miller (@jonmiller2), VP-marketing at b-to-b software vendor Marketo (@marketo), who uses Twitter personally and as part of his company’s marketing strategy. “If you can build a relationship with a prospective buyer using Twitter before they are actively looking, you built your brand more effectively than you could with much more expensive options. The trick is to know who to follow and who to focus on for that relationship-building.”

But Miller doesn’t think Twitter is the be-all and end-all. “Tweets don’t yet show up in Google search results, and links can’t influence your SEO rankings,” he said, adding, “I think other tools like blogs still work better as the content publishing mechanism, versus [using Twitter more as] a content promotion tool.”

How are you engaging with customers and prospects on Twitter?  Want to connect with us on Twitter?  Check us out at:

@ReachForce
@suaadsait
@ahawthorne
@lawallace

We are starting a new series here on the B2B Lead to bring B2B marketers new and/or remarkable products/companies/ideas that could make your life easier or are just plain cool.

Our first entrant in a series of many to come on this theme is BatchBook CRM by BatchBlue Software.  Now I’m fully aware that there are more CRM systems out there than you can shake a stick at.  What sets BatchBook apart from the rest is this simple assessment (IMHO): if you were to start a company to provide a current, modern CRM system today, BatchBook is what it would look like.  It sports an extremely easy-to-use interface and provides all the features and functionality that the primary end-users of CRM systems (sales reps) actually use.  But what makes it cool is the unique social networking and tagging elements that, whereas all the other CRM vendors are scurrying to retrofit their systems with it, has been built in.   Tracking relationships between social network contacts and keeping tabs on the social chatterings thereof are just some of the interesting capabilities on this front.  Their tagging capability, SuperTags, enables users to capture and search on ad-hoc information, such as “talked to this guy at EventForce”.

It is probably best suited for companies fitting the “S” in “SMB” (which most of their customers are), but the pricing model is attractive and I think we will be seeing some interesting things from this company in the future.

Do you keep track of what is being said about your company online?   If you don’t, you should.  I am certain that the folks at Mzinga were shocked by what Jeremiah Owyang, Forrester Analyst, said about them in his post on Monday.  Thankfully they were monitoring and able to respond.  He chose one of the most public forums at his disposal to publicly bash the company.  He says, “Why this post? It’s my obligation to have my clients best interest in mind, and this is the fastest way for me to reach them, by using the tools where we’re already connected.”  I find that a little hard to believe.  My guess is that email is the fastest way to reach his clients, not a public blog post.

I have a real problem with anyone using a public forum to bash a company before actually speaking with someone at the company directly or at least reaching out to the company directly.  Why do we feel in this online world that we can post something to Twitter, LinkedIn, or our own blog about another company without ever having taken the time to find out if our accusation is true or to resolve conflict we may personally have.  Jeremiah obviously has connections to the folks at Mzinga. Why not pick up the phone and chat with them first to confirm or deny the rumors he has been hearing.  When they gave him the answer that they would be making a public announcement in a week (in response to his tweets, not his direct reaching out), why couldn’t he wait?  Or if he felt this was truly something his clients needed to know, why not inform them privately?  (Sorry if I have gone on a bit of a tangent, but I fell very strongly about this subject.)

Jeremiah did respond with an apology on his blog.  But like one commenter said, “After reading that “apology”, it wreaks of: ‘I have been asked by my employer to write something, but do not believe that I am in the wrong.’”  I have to agree.  Read the post and apology and decide for yourself.

Lessons learned:

• Track what others are saying about you online – Google alerts is not enough.  Make sure you are tracking what is being said on Twitter (set up an RSS feed of your company’s name on Twitter Search) and LinkedIn.
• Respond quickly and pleasantly to everyone, analyst/blogger/customer/prospect
  
• If you don’t have something nice to say you shouldn’t say anything at all – I think we could all use reminding of this wonderful phrase our mothers used to say to us.

For those of you conversing out in the Twittersphere on your company’s behalf, here’s a little tip to leverage your web site visitors to get the word out about you on Twitter.  Create a simple link on your home page that links to the following url:

http://twitter.com/home?status=[whatever+status+you+want]

Be sure to replace the [whatever+status+you+want] with, well, exactly that.  For example:

http://twitter.com/home?status=Checking+out+ReachForce

To be safe, you’ll want to use the “+” character in place of any spaces in your status text.  When someone clicks on your new Tweet This link, it will take them to their Twitter login page and then automatically populate the “What are you doing?” box with the text that you put after the “status=” part of the link.  Below is an example of what happens when clicking on the link above: