If you are a regular reader of The B2B Lead, you have probably noticed us all talking more about events and tradeshows than usual. This subject has been on our minds because we are today announcing a new data service offering for events called ReachForce Capture.

Our mission at ReachForce is to reduce the amount of waste in B2B marketing. Current marketing tactics, including direct mail, email, trade shows and search engine marketing, have conversion rates of 10% or less. We introduced ReachForce Discover and ReachForce Refresh to increase response rates for direct mail and email from the industry average of less than 3%. ReachForce Capture will enable marketers to convert more trade show contacts and increase trade show ROI.

ReachForce Capture enables you to turn your trade show scans/attendees into actionable leads. At a targeted trade show, most of the companies will be a right fit but the attendees may not be the right decision makers. By identifying the right person or decision making unit by their role within an organization, not just their title, ReachForce’s approach to contact discovery is unlike any other data provider. Targeting prospects based on their role in an organization increases marketing results and sales conversions, ultimately driving revenue.

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Stock photos are generally a great resource for high quality images that don’t have the high cost of a custom photo shoot. The problem is that you are not the only one with access to them. At ReachForce, we recently changed our whole look and feel and no longer use any stock photos of people. Boy am I glad we did. I was recently driving down the freeway and saw a billboard using the same stock photo as our old homepage banner. The worst part was, it was for a church. Shame on them for not even using their own members for their ad. And last week I opened up my alumni newsletter only to see another one of our old stock photos but this time it was photoshopped so one woman was wearing my school colors. With as much money as my alma mater (The University of Texas) has, I would think they could at least get some real alumni for a picture.

My recommendation is to use real people. Take photos at your user group conference or use your own employees. It is obvious when a stock photo is being used (especially if the reader has used it themselves!) If the quality isn’t perfect, that’s ok. It adds to the realism. And if you can’t get photos you like, an abstract image can convey meaning better than two people shaking hands.

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As B2B Marketers, we are constantly looking for new tactics and methods to reach new prospects. You may think that we have come a long way in recent years. After all, you can cheaply send thousands of emails. Anyone can come to your website to find out more about you. And more and more targeted trade shows are available. But are our current methods really working?

• Email – Industry Response rates vary from 1 to 3%
• Direct mail – Industry Response rates vary from 1 to 3%
• Events – Only 10% of trade show leads are followed up on by sales (SiriusDecisions)
• Online Marketing – Only 3% of web visitors fill out forms

Based on these numbers, B2B marketers are wrong 90% of the time and still get to keep their jobs! Wow, imagine if Accounting was wrong 90% of the time or if sales only hit 10% of their number, where would we be as B2B marketers? We, at ReachForce, get up and come to work every day to figure out ways to help marketers turn more suspects into prospects and more prospects into customers. In an effort to find new ways to get better marketing results, we are experimenting on ourselves using targeted lead generation, focusing on the right person at the right company. I am proud to say 70% of ReachForce customers have come through marketing.

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Attention Conservation Notice: The following post provides a list of offers that B2B Marketers can use to improve campaign results.

OK, it’s a new year and you’ve got your freshly scrubbed ReachForce-built database full of highly-targeted prospects. Now what? If you found yourself busy reacting to end of year crises and didn’t greet the New Year with a properly planned, integrated lead generation campaign, you can still juice your Sales pipeline with a well written email and a strong call to action.

Unfortunately, for most B2B marketers, therein lies the challenge. What to offer? Where can I find a fresh and compelling white paper to serve up, because, well, every B2B marketer knows that a white paper is the number one offer in our arsenal. But if your product marketing group is as busy as mine, it’s not always easy to get your hands on new content to support your latest campaign.

Don’t be tempted to resort to a Sweepstakes offer like “enter to win an iPod.” Most will respond for the wrong reasons or avoid responding entirely because the offer is “too good to be true.” Aim for something that is relevant to the prospects’ daily job. Here are a few quick ideas:

1. Free Books: Identify a new business or technology book that is related to your prospects’ responsibilities and your product or service and give away 10 to the first respondents.
2. Webinar: Recruit a spokesperson and schedule an educational Web cast.
3. Newsletter: Offer a subscription to your newsletter with tips and case studies.
4. Video Tutorial: Grab your Flipcam, an expert, and a white board and shoot a mini-tutorial.
5. Podcast: Think video tutorial with a voice recorder instead.
6. Expert Guide: Ask an all-star group of experts to send you their best advice or anecdotes, package it up into a “guide” and publish.
7. Quick Assessment: Provide a list of questions that can be used to assess a problem.
8. Free Resources: Pull together a few free online tools, previously published white papers and articles, then offer access to the compendium.

Got any other creative ideas? Share them with us.

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If you are new to The B2B Lead or just want a refresher on what we have said in 2007, here is a list of our favorite posts this year. If you like what you see here, be sure to check out the archives for much more. Enjoy!

B2B Sales and Marketing Tip #1 - B2B Marketing Copy – Write it Right

B2B Sales and Marketing Tip #7 - Know Thy Customer aka The Principles of Deliberate Marketing

B2B Sales and Marketing Tip #8 - B2B Marketing Copy - Write it Right Part II

B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #12 - Six Principles of Subject Line Writing

B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #15 - Everything I Know About B2B Blogging I Learned from Perez

B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #18 - Avoid being called a SPAMer

Marketing WTF? - I See Dead People – In My Database

Marketing and Sales Tip #22 - Forget Everything You Know About B2B Web Site Design

B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #23 - Implement Lead Scoring for Better Marketing ROI

The B2B Lead Podcast #3 – Making a Viral Campaign Successful - Seeding

The B2B Lead Podcast #4 – Adapt or Die – Marketing and PR in the Blogosphere and New Media

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Checklist: Step 1 - Start with SEM (ala Google Adwords)?

B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #48 - Understand Your Google AdWords Spend and How to Boost ROI

B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #50 - Don’t Forget About Happy Customers

Blog Master…NOT – So You Want to Start a Corporate Blog

B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #51 - Put the Long Tail Work in B2B Marketing

B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #53 - Practice Metrics-Based Copywriting

B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #57 - Beat the Holiday Rush, Send Thanksgiving Cards

Marketing WTF? - Who Listens to Voicemails from Sales Guys?

The “Oh #%@$!” Day in Marketing

The B2B Lead Vidcast – A Case Study in Viral Video Marketing

B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #61 - The Survey Says…B2B Marketers Should Clean Up Their Customer Database

B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #62 - Put These 20 Ideas into Action for B2B Viral Marketing Success

B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #63 - Lessons from Eloqua’s Marketing Effectiveness Summit

Blog Master…NOT – Blog Basics

B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #64 - Take a Hard Look at Funnelnomics as You Move Into 2008

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I 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.

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Here 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.

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This 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.

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In a recent post on The B2B Lead (Manage You Company’s Reputation with Google Alerts), we wrote about how to use Google Alerts to manage your brand reputation. Now, MarketingProfs is listing a round up of paid services and a few free tools such as Blog Pulse (www.BlogPulse.com) which features conversation tracking, and visual trends. Marketing Profs advises readers to:

“Set up a Google Alert so that every day, or as it happens, you get an email that shows you who is talking about that keyword (which can be your product or brand name). The challenge with simply using a tool like Google or Technorati Watchlist is the sheer volume of information. You need to either task people with manual assessment or use better tools (many of which are paid services) or contract with an outside provider.

An alternative to Alerts, which hit your email inbox, is to setup an RSS Reader (Google, Bloglines, etc). Then you can check it as needed, versus filling your email inbox to the brim. The risk with an RSS Reader, though, is that you don’t look often enough. “

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Heard about a very interesting Vendor Relationship Management project (the counterpart to Customer Relationship Management or CRM) today. Apparently, ProjectVRM, headquartered at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, was chartered to “improve the relationship between Demand and Supply by providing new and better ways for the former to relate to the latter.”

What really captured my interest was this intriguing presentation on possible scenarios with some fun and interesting implications for micro-segmentation marketing (Minority Report) vs. social media (The Global Village).

Details on the Project VRM wiki - http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/projectvrm/Scenarios

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