B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #45 - Persona Marketing in a B-to-B Environment
Friday, November 30th, 2007I have been reading Mac McIntosh’s blog on B2B Marketing and agree with his view on Persona marketing. Some interesting nuggets on his views follow:
Persona marketing in a business-to-business environment can offer different challenges than in a business-to-consumer environment.
McIntosh offers this advice on getting started with personae in a b-to-b world:
- Convene a group of employees who interact with your customers and prospects. Bring in lunch and a white board and ask them to help you build personae for your target customers.
- Describe the target customer’s role in the company: Is he the CEO or a purchasing agent? An influencer or an end user?
- Describe the kind of company each type of customer works for. What industry is it in? How big is it? How up-to-date is it? Does it have a lot of competition?
- Give each persona a name, a title, and an age, and describe how he (or she) looks. How does he dress? What kind of car does she drive? What does he do in his free time? What kind of educational background does she have? Flesh out as many attributes as you need to give a full picture of who this person is.
- Think about each persona’s problems and goals. What does this person’s daily calendar look like? What are his most pressing concerns? What product or service attributes would be most helpful in solving this person’s problems?
- When formulating your marketing messages, think about what path this prospect or customer might pursue to solve this problem. Will he turn to white papers? Articles in trade publications? Websites? Would this persona seek input from a speaker at a networking group of their peers?
- Let the personae steer the route; you can then pave the route with information to help your prospects and customers move forward in their consideration and buying process.
The “Oh #%@$!” Day in Marketing
Thursday, November 29th, 2007Here at ReachForce we are declaring January 15th the “Oh #%@$!” Day in Marketing.
Let me ask you this: Are you prepared as a B2B Marketer to deliver sales-ready leads in January? December is typically a slower month for B2B Marketing and Sales teams, since most organizations slow down current marketing programs and instead spend their time preparing for the next year. They leave for the holidays happy to have completed the painful process of planning and budgeting for the next year’s activities. Once the holiday haze clears, it’s January and everyone is ready to kick off the New Year with new customer wins. Sales teams are asking, “Where are my leads? I’ve got a number to hit.”
This is the “Oh #%@$!” moment.
Instead of listing off the activities to come in the New Year, start the year off with a bang by getting things rolling earlier. B2B Marketers should be armed and ready with role-based leads to fuel the New Year’s marketing programs. Get started now to avoid the “Oh #%@$!” moment.
Marketing WTF? - Who Listens to Voicemails from Sales Guys?
Wednesday, November 28th, 2007So, I just heard about a marketing team that is making, in my opinion, a big mistake. To give you some background, these guys target HUGE companies. Their newest lead generation technique sends mass voicemails to contacts within companies like Nike, Sony, Reebok, Toshiba, Microsoft, etc….A few thoughts:
- Who checks voicemail?
- If it is checked, how many times have you deleted the VM as soon as you realize it is a salesperson who you have never spoken to?
- If you do catch the name of the company before you delete the VM, how many times have you thought, “what a terrible way to try and sell me something…what were they thinking”?
- This company is targeting marketers….don’t marketers take offense to being sold to by stupid marketing?
- Let’s say that the sales rep makes it past 1-4 above….WHO IS HE/SHE CALLING??? How do they know that the VM they are leaving is for the person responsible for purchasing their solution?
- B2C companies as large as these guys may have 500 people involved in marketing. Piggy back to point 5.
- How can you track this method of lead generation?
Meet a New B2B Lead Blogger - Justin Kirkland
Wednesday, November 28th, 2007Justin Kirkland, Market Development Manager at ReachForce
Let me start off by saying that I am a sales guy. I know, I get chill bumps too sometimes thinking about it. I guess the next step down would be an IRS auditor, but then I wouldn’t be able to look at anyone in the eye…so sales it is. I have no time for fluff, and no time for spitting into the wind….which is what I see marketers doing everyday, evidenced by some of the ridiculous methods of driving leads I am hearing about. Most of my blogs will be frustrated rants, so please forgive me if I offend you or anyone you know. And as much as I hate to say it, money is the bottom line in the business world. I just want marketers to stop wasting their time and budget….it just doesn’t make sense to not implement the most effective marketing techniques possible.
B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #44 - Twitter to Attract Readers to Your Blog
Tuesday, November 27th, 2007Blog Master…Not just shared the best way (If You Build It, They Will Come) to attract readers to your blog in a recent post to The B2B Lead.
Here’s another: Microblogging. Most people I know are absolutely perplexed by the value of microblogging sites like Twitter, Pownce, Seesmic or Jaiku. I’ll spare you the details of the conversation it spawned with my husband the engineer. Personally, I use Twitter and I love it. Don’t always have time to use it, but when I do, it’s amazing. It can also be very powerful. In fact, we presented a podcast on the subject by a real Twitter expert – William Hurley or whurley (listen here). Whurley was able to build a huge following for his Opensville Blog. So much so that his blog rose to a Technorati ranking of 196 in a few short months. Want to benchmark that stat? The B2B Lead is currently ranked 2,910,025. (come on guys, give us a little link love here.)
When you immerse yourself in the community and start sending “tweets”, as they are called, it’s easy to see how powerful these tools would be for building a following and driving readers to your blog. That is—if you have something interesting to say. After all, as the fine folks over at FiveRuns say “don’t wake up the dog to tell it it’s sleeping.” My advice: don’t register for Twitter with the idea that you’ll really share exactly what you’re doing at any giving moment. After all, most of us really don’t care what you had for lunch (bad for the diet), how long the line is at the bank, or who you were having lunch with today (that’s just name dropping).
What we do care about is: the neat idea you just had, your cool new project, a happy hour forming in your city, your latest brush with greatness, the exciting new product you just bought, a hot new company on your radar screen, or a new sale on shoes! OK, maybe that’s just me. Anyway, you get the picture. Think Word of Mouth. Or, Word of Mouth 2.0.
Twitter has become my way to become an “insider.” As an avid blogger and social media enthusiast, I follow Robert Scoble, the author of Naked Conversations—the definitive text on the culture of blogging. His tweets turn me on to the most amazing products and ideas. Toys like the WiFi detector t-shirt (http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/generic/991e/) . Cool multi-media tools like www.vuvox.com. He wrote an excellent article on microblogging for Fastcompany Magazine. In the piece, he speculates that the step from e-mail to microblogging may be as significant as from fax to e-mail in the 90’s.
Hans De Keulenaer also provided some excellent tips for microblogging on his Web Business Marketing Blog. He suggests:
- Daily tips and tricks: energy saving, use of a software package, … But consider, how quickly will you run out of steam?
- Quick reporting from a roadshow, tradeshow, … Microblogging can be easily done from mobile devices. It allows you to communicate broader about your event for the folks not there, while you are busy with the event.
- Information during a crisis, when aid workers have essential information, but no time.
- Animate events, such as a conference or trade fair, showing announcements of participants on a giant screen.
At NetQoS, we are integrating a “Follow NetQoS Symposium 08 on Twitter” feature in our customer symposium web site and considering working it into our corporate blog strategy. For the customer event, we will use it to share developments in the itinerary, speakers as they sign on, encourage feedback, etc. We think it will help us build a community of interest and encourage registrations for the event. As adoption grows, we will expand use to organize events at major trade shows, etc. The options are only limited by the imagination.
Like these ideas? Follow me on Twitter (http://twitter.com/poneal). Want to microblog with your voice – post a recording at Utterz (http://www.utterz.com). Not convinced? Read more about Microblogging: Microblogging:What Is It Good For?
B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #43 - Creating Forms for Content - How Much is too Much?
Monday, November 26th, 2007Marketing Sherpa says the average abandonment rate on forms is 95%. Is this because we as Marketers are asking too much of our visitors? Sherpa also tells us that only 40% of the forms that are filled out are accurate and complete. So what’s that…40% of 5% of your visitors are possible buyers? Are forms really helping create leads?
This begs the question – are the most qualified buyers going through the process so it’s worth losing a few?
What do you think? Chime in and let us know what’s working for you.
Meet a New B2B Lead Blogger - Amy Hawthorne
Monday, November 26th, 2007Amy Hawthorne, Director of Marketing at ReachForce
I get up every day trying to create activities that drive real, measurable revenue for ReachForce. I love this new world we’re living in. I’m obsessed with measuring everything. Maybe I’m just looking for the perfect formula that will make my life easier…who knows? What I do know is - gone are the days when we as marketers could just throw something out there with crafty messaging and a good look and hope the phone would start ringing. What happened to all that stuff anyway? We’ll never know because they never responded to tell us. As the world of B2B Marketing, specifically B2B lead generation, continues to evolve I’m interested in what’s working, what’s not working anymore and what new tactics are out there. I’ll be sure to share with you what I find.
B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #42 - Beat the Holiday Rush, Send Thanksgiving Cards
Wednesday, November 21st, 2007This year at ReachForce, we sent out Thanksgiving cards to our current customers rather than the usual generic holiday cards. Sending a card at Thanksgiving has a few advantages. First, you won’t get lost in the clutter of all the other holiday cards sent in December. Also, you don’t have to worry about offending anyone. Not everyone celebrates a holiday in December and even if you are as generic as possible, you will almost always still offend someone.
On the other hand, Thanksgiving makes perfect sense as the time to send cards to your customers. After all, you want to thank them for the good business they have given you over the past year. This is also the perfect time to put your name in their hands as they are probably doing next year’s budget planning. This could even help the usual slow sales month of December be a great month for up-selling and cross-selling to your current customers.
Of course if your client base is mostly international this strategy probably will not go over well. However, Canadians actually do celebrate Thanksgiving as well, but it is earlier (the second Monday in October).
Not to take all the glory, I got the idea as a tip from Marketing Profs. See what others had to say about the topic here.
Blog Master…NOT – If You Build It, They Will Come
Monday, November 19th, 2007While this may have been true for Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams, this is not true of blogs. With quite a lot of blog clutter out there all competing for attention it can be difficult to get traffic to a new blog. However, there are a few ways to get more traffic to your blog. The first is to start off commenting on other blogs relevant to your industry. The goal of commenting is to get other blogs to link to yours so that their traffic becomes your traffic. And be sure to return the favor by linking back to those blogs that link to you. (NOTE - this should be obvious, but don’t waste your time linking to or commenting on blogs that are not related to your own)
Another way to gain traffic is to leverage your current customer base. An advantage that companies have over people is that most people don’t already have a brand they can leverage, but you do. If you already communicate with your current customers (and you should), include a blog promotion. If you do not currently have a newsletter or some other communication with your current customers, you can pick and choose the best blog posts and serve them up to your customers’ inbox via a blog newsletter. Of course, none of this matters if you do not deliver relevant content. The only way to gain a long term blog following is to deliver up-to-date, compelling content that makes ‘em want to keep coming back for more.
B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #41 - Uncover New Revenue Opportunities By Taking a New Approach to Search Engine Marketing
Friday, November 16th, 2007CRM Mastery just reported the availability of a new report on B2B Search Marketing best practices. The guide is based on survey responses from 144 marketing agencies currently managing paid search and search engine optimization (SEO) efforts for business-to-business clients.
We wrote about this topic recently on The B2B Lead (Understand Your Google Adwords Spend and How to Boost ROI) where we advised readers to treat Google AdWords leads differently. We advised readers to think of them as “seeds” or early indicators of interest and conduct further contact discovery to build out a buyer profile.
The report underscores this advice: “According to respondents, certain B2B trade characteristics - including the length of the sales cycle, target audience attributes and search engine dynamics and features - lead to different goals, strategies and tactical priorities for B2B search marketing.”
Download the full report at www.business.com/info/b2bsearchstrategy08.asp. Or read more about this topic in the ReachForce white paper entitled, Making the Invisible Visible - Accelerate SEM Leads To Revenue.
