Now this has some really exciting possibilities. And, a low, low price tag. Check out Flogos, floating ads and messages generated by re-purposed artificial snow machines. The machines can pop one Flogo out every 15 seconds, flooding the air with foamy peace signs or whatever shape a client desires. Renting the machine for a day starts out at a cost of about $2,500.
Even better, it’s environmentally friendly as the material is derived from plants.
While I’ve been deep in debate about Twitter as an effective B2B marketing or community building tool, one Twitter user just used it to save his life. According to CNN:
“Buck, a graduate student from the University of California-Berkeley, was in Mahalla, Egypt, covering an anti-government protest when he and his translator Mohammed Maree were arrested April 10. On his way to the police station, Buck took out his cell phone and sent a message to his friends and contacts using the micro-blogging site Twitter. The message only had one word. “Arrested.”
Within seconds, colleagues in the United States and his blogger-friends in Egypt — the same ones who had taught him the tool only a week earlier — were alerted he was being held. “
Anyone who thinks Twitter is a waste of time, just doesn’t know how to use it properly. Take a look at how Mahalo is using the product to build a following of tens of thousands.
According to Mahalo CEO, Jason Calcanis
“People have told me I’m crazy for wanting to give one of my friends on Twitter a Macbook Air if I become the #1 user (i’m essentially tied for #2 behind Obama). Well, based on the amount of traffic Twitter is sending to Mahalo.com I don’t think so. It’s not huge traffic, but as you can see in March Twitter sent over 10,000 people to Mahalo and this month we’re on track to have–wait for it–20,000 folks visit Mahalo from Twitter. In the past six months ~45,000 people have visited Mahalo from Twitter. If the 20,000 number is sustainable 250,000 folks will visit Mahalo from Twitter over the next year. Most of these folks are coming from my personal account (I’m think half). 250,000 visitors at .01 each is $2,500 in value. At .05 each (what StumbleUpon charges) it would cost $12,500. MacBook Air = $1,700.”
Wow, and I’m really a huge StumbleUpon fan. Call me crazy but I agree with Calcanis, “Twitter is going to be huge. Folks have no idea how huge right now.”
Need a little entertainment with your SEO tutorial? Check out this little ditty by the Poetic Prophet (AKA The SEO Rapper). Poetic, or should I call him Prophet, raps about how web design affects the ranking and conversion of web pages. Yo MTV raps SEO and shares these bits of wisdom “use a clear call to action to cause da temptation.” “Design and code right man, can’t you get wid it?”
In a recent post to The B2B Lead, I wrote about trade shows and asked the question: are they best for branding or demand generation? Or are they simply a waste of time and money?
Those posts seemed to hit a hot button with B2B marketers as they generated more commentary than any other topic we cover on The B2B Lead. Get ready for another hot button: Online advertising. And, when I say online advertising, I don’t mean Google Adwords. I’m talking about content syndication services where you list your whitepaper or podcast and expect to get qualified leads back.
Maybe I’m missing something, but these types of campaigns don’t seem to generate the quantity or quality of leads that I would expect for the large price-tag associated with them. In fact, after years of throwing money at these types of campaigns, I’ve basically chalked them up to brand building with a few nuggets to add to my lead nurturing program.
Apparently, I’m not the only B2B Marketer who is frustrated with the poor quality of online advertising leads. According to an opinion posted by Dave Behn on the Adotas blog:
“Anyone who participates in online lead generation is left with one of two conclusions at the end of a campaign: there are either a disproportionate number of John Smiths at 123 Main Street (phone number 555-1212, email yomama@hotmail.com); or there’s no such thing as a set of “pure” leads. No matter the brand or offer, any lead generation campaign will include leads with false or incomplete information that ultimately leaves the lead un-actionable to the advertiser. It’s an accepted and at times expensive cost of doing business in lead generation.”
Well, OK, we all know this is true, but what are our options, really? I, for one, have redirected my online advertising spend to a targeted database build and Google AdWords. But I would still appreciate the brand awareness that goes along with these services. Sadly, though, demand gen goals win out over brand so I’ve resigned myself to the fact that you can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Behn, on the other hand, is far more idealistic. He advocates a sort of “lemon law for leads”:
“Moving forward, the lead generation community needs to adopt standard guidelines for developing actionable leads. As lead generation grows, and as it welcomes a greater number of mature, Fortune 1000 brands, we should embrace the lemon law concept within our industry. Let’s develop a singular definition of valid and billable leads that revolves around accuracy, completeness, timeliness and actionability. It’s a logical and long-overdue next step the industry needs to confront.
An interesting thought, but not likely to happen anytime soon since we B2B Marketers continue to line up to hand over our marketing budget for junk leads.
Another great story, well a sad one really but still a jaw dropper.
One of my previous employers who shall remain nameless ran one of the most costly and ineffective marketing campaigns I have ever heard of (this was before I worked there of course). They had decided to run a big direct mail campaign sending out branded scooters. You know the razor ones that were all the rage about 5 years ago. Somewhere along the line the zip code column got moved around and it didn’t line up with the correct addresses. No one realized the problem until the scooters started coming back. They ended up paying FedEx twice, once to ship it there and once to ship it back because the zip code was wrong. So no one got the scooters and the marketing team had spent their budget on the scooters and all the shipping. Too bad – no one got a scooter.
When I started working there over a year after the Oops, they were still trying to give those darn scooters away. In fact I think I might still have one in my garage….
These marketers were also of the mindset that if you could get 100 t-shirts for $6 a piece then getting 1000 shirts for $4 a piece is a better deal. Even though no more than 100 people ever worked at the company. Saving money by buying in bulk is good but only if you can consume the larger amount.
This week we, at ReachForce, are announcing a new data solution to help event marketers turn event booth visitors into real high-octane marketing data for lead generation. As we talk about events and the uncertainty around them being able to deliver real leads that actually convert into the sales pipeline, I’m reminded of a few of my past trade show nightmares, so I thought I’d share for a quick giggle. These will definitely be filed under Marketing WTF??
In my early days as a marketer, I was thrust into managing all trade show events for my company with absolutely no experience. My first trade show was made quite memorable by my product marketing guy. He said he knew a guy who did promo items. My first time CEO was convinced that branded coffee mugs were the hot giveaway. This being my first trade show, I didn’t know what to expect so I went with it. The only thing they asked me was how many attendees will be at the show – 6,000. This was the last of the mug talk until I got a call the day before I was to leave for the show in NYC.
Product marketing guy ordered the mugs and instead of having them sent to the show he had them sent to the hotel we were staying in. The day before I leave for the show the hotel clerk calls to tell me that the mugs have been delivered. My immediate response - Great! No, he says, “You don’t understand Miss. There is a semi outside blocking traffic trying to deliver 6,000 coffee mugs to you here at the hotel.” At that time I still don’t think I understood the magnitude of the problem. We agreed that I would just pay for that night at the hotel and they would move the mugs into my room. When I arrived the next day, it was like I was a celebrity. When I got there and announced my name at the check in counter, people started coming out of the woodwork. Everyone wanted to see the girl that stopped traffic in Manhattan over some coffee mugs. I just smiled and apologized, still not having a clue what I was in for. Finally, I was greeted with the floor to ceiling boxes covering my room. There was little to no room to walk around. This was going to be fun – NOT! The show was okay and we tried to give everyone we saw a mug but we didn’t get through even half of the boxes. Now what? I hate these mugs…Could I leave them in NYC (still in my hotel room)? I couldn’t possibly pay FedEx to ship them all back to Austin… so instead I decided to call a freight moving company to come pick them up and take them back to Austin, in no hurry I might add. Thinking I was all set, I scheduled the freightliner to come the next morning. You see what’s coming next – once again I shut down traffic in Manhattan for these silly mugs. Needless to say the hotel was glad to see me go.
Lessons learned –
Never let product marketing make decisions alone when it comes to event give aways.
You never need as many giveaways as there are people expected to attend.
Logistics, logistics, logistics.
Since there were so many mugs left they went to the next show as well. But this time we lucked out and the booth across from us had a keg and was giving away beer. It was like we had planned to be next to them with mugs in hand.
Maybe the more important takeaway I have learned from the giveaway fiasco is that obviously not everyone will want your cool giveaway but does the cooler the giveaway translate into even more “leads” that have NO interest in buying my product?
I attended a really impressive SiriusDecisions Summit about a year or so ago. At the time, I remember being baffled that the respected analysts advised B2B marketers to budget for trade shows in their Corporate brand awareness bucket instead of in Field demand generation because trade show leads just didn’t generate high ROI. I had always considered advertising and SEO to be key to brand awareness whereas trade shows were all about the leads.
Don’t get me wrong, I have become increasingly disillusioned with the quality of leads produced at most of the broad industry events. But, there are always very focused, high quality trade shows that produce very lucrative leads.
Late last year, Sirius posted the results of a survey of over 1,000 buyers and, once again, they rated trade show marketing as the least effective way of engaging with B2B buyers. Yet another Sirius report from last year indicated that trade show leads were among the costliest and least effective of all marketing tactics. Yet, new research shows that B2B Marketers are dividing their Field marketing budget as follows:
Tradeshows: 16%
Tele-prospecting: 13%
Email: 13%
Live events / seminars: 10%
Webinars: 9%
PPC Search Marketing: 5%
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): 4%
Other (direct mail, associations, online, etc.): 30%
What this says to me is that Trade Shows have become a “necessary evil” for B2B Marketers. While none of us look forward to being on our feet for 3 solid days of insanity, we feel like we must have a presence at these events to keep visibility high and be there for those buyers who are shopping. And, there is nothing like a trade show to generate geographically targeted leads for the squeaky wheels who feel their Sales territory is in need of an influx. It keeps Sales happy whether or not the leads ever turn into revenue.
Unfortunately, with research data that shows Sales ignores as much as 74% of all leads from B2B Marketing and only follows up on 10% of trade show leads, this is an enormous waste of time and money. So how can B2B Marketers make the most of good trade show leads, or confidently say “no” to an event that may or may not produce qualified leads?
Making trade shows work in the marketing mix requires a commitment to actively engaging trade show attendees, encouraging word of mouth, capturing contact information, and systematically processing each and every qualified lead generated at these events. And, that means tenacious phone follow-up to identify other members of the B2B buying cycle.
Most importantly, it requires B2B Marketers to track the ROI of each event over the course of time. Only with objective evidence of trade show KPI, can Marketers invest their budget wisely and defend their decisions to exhibit or not to exhibit.
I recently received an invite to a conference via email, quite common these days. The problem was, wait no, I should say the problems were:
It was addressed to someone who has not worked for my company for over a year
It was sent to sales@reachforce.com
It was addressed to the former CTO
This is an announcement to all sales people: if you want me to spend money with you, know that the person you are selling to still works there. A quick trip to our website would solve that. And do you really think that the CTO receives anything from sales@blank.com? Never send a marketing message to sales@blank.com or jobs@blank.com or contactus@blank.com, it will be deleted immediately.
Find the right decision maker to sell/market to and deliver you message directly to them. Sending your message to sales@blank.com just shows me you are lazy, and I will never buy from someone who is lazy.
Quick – how can understanding the science of vision and cognitive psychology help you boost B2B Marketing leads and revenue?
The Click Fu Masters at StomperNet just posted this intriguing video tutorial to help B2C and B2B Marketers boost their “Click Fu.” The team explains that understanding the function of the human eye and brain can help you improve marketing results and drive more revenue.
First, the eyes: StomperNet advises Marketers to understand the function of the eye and visitor blind spots to improve landing page design. Well, that’s a no-brainer. But, they go further explaining that primal man’s eyes were designed for two purposes: to eat and avoid being eaten. The FOVEA, designed for finding food to eat, is sensitive to fine details and color. The Periphery, designed to avoid being eaten, is tuned to motion and contrast. Understanding how to make appropriate use of color, organization, and design details while employing the right structure to the page can help Marketers boost conversions by more than 25 percent.
Now, the brain: StomperNet advises you to understand the link between vision and behavior so that you understand why a #10 result on Google will get you more clicks than a #6 or 7 position. Basically, their cognitive psychologist advises that: Easy wins out over Good or Better. Make user feel it will be easy to get what they want and they’ll stay longer and learn more. Understand your visitors’ goal and what they need to achieve the goal.
But that’s just the beginning. This is definitely a video that is worth watching.
