Comments on: Doing More with Less - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #127 http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/doing-more-with-less-b2b-marketing-and-sales-tip-127/ B2B Marketing and Sales Tips Fri, 09 Jan 2009 15:10:41 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 By: Victor Cheng http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/doing-more-with-less-b2b-marketing-and-sales-tip-127/#comment-2098 Victor Cheng Fri, 25 Jul 2008 17:09:12 +0000 http://www.theb2blead.com/b2b-lead-generation/doing-more-with-less-b2b-marketing-and-sales-tip-127/#comment-2098 List segmentation is so massively under utilized in b2b marketing. It's the norm in any high media cost b2c company that's doing more than a few hundred million a year because it significantly improves ROI. This is for the simple reason that a more specific message always, always, always out generates a more generic message. There is extensive split test data on this going back 95 years to the time of Claude Hopkins and his seminal book on direct response marketing Scientific Advertising. The main reason it's underutilized is that b2b marketers either don't know this (although they should) or they're lazy. It does take extra work to segment your list in to segments and to tailor your marketing to make it a little different, a little more relevant to each specific audience. Sometimes all it takes is changing the headline and first paragraph of an email, fax, letter, or telemarketing script... but if you have even modest levels of revenue it's almost always worth the effort. The other way to segment that was not mentioned above and is also quite effective is to segment by psychographic question. An example of this would be to offer some kind of freebie: white paper, webinar, bookmercial, and ask a survey question on the request form (paper or web). What's more important to you: (a) Speed, (b) Cost, (c) Vendor track record You can segment your list based on user provided data and I've found in telephone fall up calls it really works. You sound like you have something that's exactly for them. (This is in a high ticket b2b setting) I've done extensive split testing b2c online and found this type of segmentation increased sales by 40%. List segmentation is so massively under utilized in b2b marketing. It’s the norm in any high media cost b2c company that’s doing more than a few hundred million a year because it significantly improves ROI.

This is for the simple reason that a more specific message always, always, always out generates a more generic message.

There is extensive split test data on this going back 95 years to the time of Claude Hopkins and his seminal book on direct response marketing Scientific Advertising.

The main reason it’s underutilized is that b2b marketers either don’t know this (although they should) or they’re lazy.

It does take extra work to segment your list in to segments and to tailor your marketing to make it a little different, a little more relevant to each specific audience.

Sometimes all it takes is changing the headline and first paragraph of an email, fax, letter, or telemarketing script… but if you have even modest levels of revenue it’s almost always worth the effort.

The other way to segment that was not mentioned above and is also quite effective is to segment by psychographic question.

An example of this would be to offer some kind of freebie: white paper, webinar, bookmercial, and ask a survey question on the request form (paper or web).

What’s more important to you:
(a) Speed, (b) Cost, (c) Vendor track record

You can segment your list based on user provided data and I’ve found in telephone fall up calls it really works. You sound like you have something that’s exactly for them. (This is in a high ticket b2b setting)

I’ve done extensive split testing b2c online and found this type of segmentation increased sales by 40%.

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