Written by Cody Young, ReachForce Customer Success Manager
I count it as good fortune … a big part of my job involves talking to dozens of different marketers every week about lead generation. Lately, I have kept my ears open for signs of downward second half ’08 pressure on budgets due to the economy. And while my report is hardly scientific, I am happy to say the majority of companies I’m in touch with seem to be in tune with the fact that the best formula for sales and marketing success (in any economic situation) is:
Sustainability + Execution + Accountability = Marketing ROI
In real world terms, if you’re driving somewhere, you’ve got to keep your foot on the gas and your car on the road at the same time. Marketing accountability (direction and measurement) are equal to those white lines we all strive to stay between no matter how fast or slow the speedometer says we are going at any given time during the trip. So when companies do knee-jerk reactions to economic news and paralyze their sales and marketing efforts by raiding the marketing budget, I’ve always equated it to driving by those bad planners along side of the road who have run out of gas …you feel bad for them, but at the same time you can’t help but wonder how in the heck they let that happen. Did they really think they could get to where they wanted to go, without keeping enough fuel in the tank?
Taking the gas analogy one step further – in an economy where responsible marketers need to be doing more with less – I equate an over reliance on tradeshows for lead generation to rushing out and buying a Humvee. Sure, the “let’s have a parade” factor is there. The big tires, shiny grills and overhead lights look cool. You can paint logos on them and go like a bat-out-of-hell for two days. You’ll have plenty of conversations with lots of bleary-eyed people about how rugged, yet chic it all looks … but at the end of the day, poorly executed trade show campaigns are about the most wasteful thing I can think of from a lead generation perspective.
I’m keenly aware that trying to steer some folks away from over relying on trade shows for leads almost means talking them into a complete redo of their very persona on a professional level. The success of too many marketers are gauged by how tricked-out booths look, or how efficiently they can ship dozens of boxes from one city to the next. Most large companies have full time employees who do nothing but register for events, manage shipping and logistics vendors and fight - oops, I mean “coordinate”- with the sales team about who to send to this or that event with exhibit hall passes, matching $60 golf polos and thousands of dollars worth of bags and trinkets that everyone forgets in their hotel room on checkout day. Then finally, the two hour meeting with finance weeks later about whether sales or marketing is going to pay for the expense reports. Sound familiar? You know who you are.
For these people I’d like to I’d propose a few things that can be done as part of your trade show production to ratchet things up accountability-wise. The goal is to go beyond counting how many business cards are in your fishbowl, or the number of badges you’ve scanned with your $300 per event “rent-a-scan.”
As far in advance as possible, begin processing event attendee registration lists as if they were an operational database. That is, weed out irrelevant contact data, then research, segment and prioritize relevant targets. Add this data to your CRM and marketing automation systems. Then direct pre-show, at-show and post-show calls-to-action at them with embedded “key driver” messaging. It’s really about knowing who you want to speak with before your team goes to the event, instead of passively waiting for people to visit your booth after the show has started.Many events these days offer incomplete contact data for trade show registrants and/or have limitations about how it can be used. As this trend grows, a good approach is to use custom contact database builders like ReachForce to quickly research the companies who are sending attendees and provide you with names and contact information of those who are most relevant to your sales efforts. Very often these results track to same people who have registered. If not, it’s still nice to have the right names when you speak to their co-workers to arrange getting your sales people networked in.
Game-plan each event as if you were a basketball coach. Consider the entire exhibit floor as the field of play with the understanding that no basketball team ever won a game with all 5 players standing under the hoop (in this case, around the booth). Depending on how many people you have going, you at least need 1) a good Point Guard (someone working the entire court, driving activity toward the goal/booth 2) a good Defensive Forward (someone working the entire court, talking to competitors, their customers, media contacts, consultants and analyst) and 3) a solid Center (someone – not a booth babe – who can deliver value proposition, demos, etc. in an intelligent and memorable way. Think of this as someone who instills confidence, with whom the visitor would want to personally do business.)
Once you have these players in place, make sure they all have measurable objectives to shoot for. Give them a leader and mission and make known in a post show report to executive management whether or not objectives were achieved. In other words, have a solid event execution process that holds people accountable for their individual assignments. This is a good way to avoid the perception that trade shows are junkets.
Rather than doing free-form sales pitches at your booth, strive to quantify what visitors think of your product or offer (usually after a demo) by using an ‘asked and answered” approach. A kiosk-based survey system can be used to pose “key-value” and “key-driver” questions with multiple choice questions. Assign point values to each response choice and tabulate them in a way that can be mathematically analyzed after the event to “score” each visitor. If you’re going to give away trinkets make them good ones, and give them to survey-takers.
Set media coverage objectives for each event (by doing proper preparation work, setting interviews, etc. with attending media contacts upfront) and measure effectiveness in terms of ad value equivalency. I.e. measure what same coverage would have cost if you bought an ad from each outlet. This is not really a pure lead generation issue, but tradeshows are useful for creating thought-leadership buzz, if done correctly. It’s important to craft a compelling, newsworthy pitch such as a new product launch, or stories linking important key drivers with how your company is positioned to address them. And if you don’t have a couple of client/promoters who are willing to be a part of anything you pitch to the media, don’t even waste your time. I don’t know too many reporters willing to write a story unless there are solid use cases and customer testimonials to back your claims up.On this same note, try to coordinate the timing of your more meaningful press releases with your event schedule. A strong story released with a dateline from a major industry event is a good way to compel media contacts to meet with you there. It also helps give your presence at the event a theme to work with, which is also helpful in creating buzz.
As a final dig (I just can’t help myself) always bring a fire extinguisher to each event. That way you can put out the flames from all the budget dollars you are burning when it starts to get out of hand.
Keyword optimization on your website has become standard operating procedure for most marketers. But are you optimizing your press releases with keywords? Here are a few reasons why you should:
If you are posting your press releases to your website (and you should be), it is probably the freshest content. Google gives precedence to new content (that is why blogs rank so highly in search engine results).
Press releases and news articles rank very highly on Google. The more keyword rich your press releases are, the better they will rank in Google.
Press releases are not just for the press. Make it easy for prospects/bloggers/analysts/media to find you wherever they are searching.
Find out what keywords successful competitors are using
Read articles written by target journalists
Survey your PR and Marketing department personnel
Survey your Web site development team
Survey product development personnel and executive management,
Many press release distribution services (PRNewswire, MarketWire, etc.) have SEO features. Use them a few times (the companies usually permit you to do a free trial) and track results to get an idea of which keywords are most popular.
Also, be sure to avoid gobbledygook, those over-used industry words like “flexible,” “scalable” and “market-leading” so aptly named gobbledygook by David Meerman Scott.
After you have written your press release and think you have optimized all necessary keywords, put it to the test. HubSpot recently announced Press Release Grader, a free online tool to rate your press release. “Press Release Grader rates a press release based on a checklist of criteria – from content and structure, to search optimization and link analysis. The free tool is designed to optimize a press release so it can be found more easily by media, bloggers, customers and prospects. Press Release Grader provides an analysis and recommendations that will help you improve the way your press release is structured.”
As it is for most marketing tactics, in the end it is all about testing and re-testing to find what works best for your audience. I am sure I am missing a lot here. Anyone have any more tips?
We have discussed event marketing quite a bit on The B2b Lead. With tightening budgets I was curious what other marketers are doing to draw attention and make the most out of those leads gathered. I interviewed a variety of marketers at MarketingProfs B2B Forum in June. Check out this video to see what marketers from Marketo, HubSpot, Manticore, Enspire Learning and IDC have to say. See how they answered the following questions:
What is the craziest thing you have seen at a trade show?
What is your lead management process for leads gathered at trade shows?
Ever notice how people will go way out of their way and wait in the longest lines to be part of an exclusive group or the first to experience something new, then word spreads and a frenzy ensues? Witness the iPhone phenomenon. Here are a few techniques for stimulating your own frenzy of trade show traffic.
In my last position, I wanted to call out all of the stops at one major industry event to take our booth traffic to new levels and stimulate huge buzz to raise brand awareness. I decided to leverage word of mouth techniques to accomplish this goal. So, my team produced an exclusive, invitation-only after hours party at a swank club in Las Vegas immediately following the close of the show floor.
We gave a small number of invitations to our customers and partners who were attending the event and they helped us generate so much buzz for the event that we had attendees lining up at the booth for a chance to get an invite to the party. Once inside the party, we lavished our guests with food, drinks, attention and gifts—one of which was a killer t-shirt that many wore to the show the next day which led others to visit the booth.
The event has now become an annual affair for NetQoS which more than 500 attending the last party in Anaheim. The event is no longer exclusive, but it does have a widespread reputation as the must-attend event at Networkers.
So, take a tip from New York club promoters and offer exclusives to get people excited about you and stimulate WOM. Invite your customers and partners and encourage them to spread the word for you.
Oh, and here’s another related tip for driving booth traffic: sponsor a keynote drop. What’s a keynote drop? Some trade shows enable marketers to produce cards or flyers that are placed on the seats at the Keynote presentation. It’s more targeted than a hotel drop and instantly actionable. If the trade show does not offering a keynote drop, that’s even better. Contact the show organizers and offer to sponsor it exclusively! They will be happy to have the additional dollars and you’ll be the only game in town.
In this chapter, authors Treacy and Wiersema discuss the different kinds of value customers want, offer guidance for companies trying to find the one they should excel in and provide lots of examples of market leading companies that have found success through knowing what their customers want and providing that value. In the beginning of the chapter, three kinds of value customers want are defined.
“For one category of customers, the most important value of a product is its performance. There’s a limit to how much they will pay, of course, but price is not the most important consideration.
For a second category of customers, the most important value is personalized service and advice. Once again, price is a consideration (no one wants to overpay), but it’s not the driving force behind their choice of product or service. They prefer to pay a little more to receive better attention.
For a third category of customers, the cost of a product is the primary consideration. Total cost begins with price but doesn’t end there. Customers don’t want to pay a very low price initially only to have the product cost them in the long run because of constant repairs. the total cost refers to how much the customers will pay for the entire time that they own the product. Thus, dependability is as much a component of low cost as is initial price.”
The authors go on to say that for a company to be successful, they cannot solely focus on one value and ignore the others. Also, companies that try to excel in all areas and be everything to everyone are rarely successful. So that got me thinking. I think there are lots of successful companies that do more than one of these well, they just know the right value to advertise. Knowing what your customers/prospects value and then letting them know that you fulfill that value is key. I think I might do some testing to see what value really resonates with my prospects.
How do you communicate to your prospects that your product or service fulfills the value they are looking for?
I have recently attended a few webinars on creating webinars. Both were sponsored by GoToMeeting. I don’t have a lot of experience with webinars but I am planning one for next quarter and I hope to implement all that I learned. Here are a few good tips I picked up:
Always stick to the time frame
Promote through partners – make it very easy for them to add a link to a landing page. Consider co-sponsoring a webinar for increased visibility.
Know what your goal is and don’t misrepresent it to your attendees – Don’t make it a sales pitch if it has been promoted as educational.
2 Speakers can be better – different speaking styles and presentation skills will engage different listeners
Give an incentive – publicize it in all communications, make it valuable (a compelling whitepaper is always good), Reward people who listened to the entire presentation by giving the incentive at the end
Be sure to prepare ahead of time - check all audio and technology ahead of time
Engage your audience with polls and Q&A
Experiment to see what dates, times and length will work best for your audience
Maybe we have just been conditioned but both webinars said hour long webinars Tuesday-Thursday at 1 or 2PM EST work best.
Profile your audience when they register so that the speaker can be more relevant to the audience
Promote that the audience will get a chance to engage with the speaker(s) – “This is your chance to ask Seth Godin anything you want” (If this is a big part of the draw be sure to allow plenty of time for Q&A, possible ask for questions ahead of time. People will tune in to see if their question is answered)
Driving booth traffic at a trade show can always be challenging. With so many other booths vying for attention, how do you make sure that attendees stop by your booth? Sometimes you have to get creative to use a smaller budget than your competition, and have equal or better results.
Two years ago at DreamForce, salesforce.com’s user group conference, we utilized several strategies to drive more booth visitors. We created a theme to make sure all elements of our strategy tied together. Our theme was “No More Lists.” Being a provider of role-based contact databases, we wanted to end the use of traditional title-based list use.
Attendees knew about us before they even walked through the doors of the Moscone center. We hired temporary staff to be picketers on the sidewalk holding various signs with the No More Lists theme and chanting, “ No More Lists!” As attendees walked past, the picketers would hand them “No More Lists” buttons and direct the attendees to the ReachForce Booth to get cash.
I will note that in some ways this is a cautionary tale; we did have the cops called on us by the organizers of the event. The police actually sided in our favor, but we decided to drop the picketers for the second day of the conference to keep from ruffling too many feathers.
One of us also walked the floor to hand out more buttons and direct traffic to our booth. If an attendee came to the booth, we let them pick an envelope. Each envelope was filled with cash ranging from $1 to $50. If you are trying to figure out the most compelling giveaway keep in mind that everyone loves cold hard cash.
Our booth strategy was a success. We created lots of buzz with the picketers outside and exceeded our goals for booth traffic. We also generated enough revenue to pay for the cost of the show.
As you are developing a strategy to drive more booth traffic, keep these ideas in mind:
Create buzz before attendees reach the show floor – this does not have to be outside the exhibit hall like our picketers. You can start the buzz on your blog, through Twitter, in a press release, a pre-show party, pre-show mailer or email.
Have giveaways that people will tell their friends about – either have the latest must have gadget or a desirable giveaway for every visitor like cash.
Make as many people at the show your brand ambassadors – we did this with buttons but you could also give away t-shirts or hats, anything people will wear – then reward them for wearing it.
Lots of good stuff in this chapter. Examples and case studies are mostly B2C, but the concepts work well for B2B Marketing as well.
Emanuel Rosen defines BUZZ as “the sum of all comments about a certain product that are exchanged among people at any given time.” He goes on to list why buzz is powerful today – noise, skepticism, and connectivity.
Noise – “Customers can hardly hear you.” Marketing and Advertising are everywhere. There’s no escaping it. We get it in the mail, we see banner ads online, when was the last time you searched Google and didn’t see a paid ad pop up? And let’s not forget all of the email spam we dread every day. As Marketers, we must figure out a way to stand out in the crowd if we want to be heard (or seen). This creates buzz.
Skepticism – “Customers are skeptical.” This isn’t surprising. They have been bombarded by marketing and advertising everywhere they go, all promising to the best results. Who should they believe or trust? Rosen mentions a survey that illustrates this point - “37% of the public considers information from a software company ‘very or somewhat believable’.” Wow!
Connectivity – Today people are easily connected. We all have access to new tools that enable us to better share information. As Marketers, wouldn’t we rather them talk about us to our face instead of behind our back? Create places and opportunities for people to speak out about your products or services. Be involved.
Rosen goes on to say “If you want to create buzz, you have to know who your customers are and how you are reaching them. Start by answering these questions:
From whom do your customers typically learn about your product?
What do people say when they recommend your product?
How fast does information about your product spread as compared with competitors’ products?
Who are the network hubs?
Where does the information hit a roadblock?
How many sources of information does a customer rely on and which ones are most important?
What other kinds of information spread through the same networks?”
Not only will these questions help us create buzz, they’ll also be helpful as we are launching new products or services, introducing new features, and thinking about other social marketing strategies.
Generating buzz doesn’t just happen overnight. It takes planning, seeding and well thought out execution. A good seeding program can be the launching pad to huge success. Rosen listed four rules for building a successful seeding program, these are definitely worth sharing and talking about.
“Look beyond the usual suspects. Identify social circles, industry segments, or academic disciplines in which people don’t talk about your product or service, and seed them.”
“Put products in their hands.” Let your audience touch or experience firsthand what you are offering. If your solution isn’t one you can easily experience, offer a free demo or show real results via a proven customer success story.
“Reduce the price barrier. Make the product free for seed recipients if you can, or at least offer a significant discount.”
“Listen for silence. When you hear silence, the network is dead. Pay attention to dead networks and do further seeding to wake them up.”
Remember, the goal of seeding is to “plant the seed to stimulate discussion in multiple networks simultaneously.”
At ReachForce we are rolling out new SaaS tools that enable Sales and Marketing teams to better identify and target their market “sweet spots”. Here’s how we are trying to create some buzz around these new product offerings –
We typically sell to Marketers but with these new SaaS tools Sales teams might be a better target audience so we are doing some test messaging via email programs to a custom role-based list of Sales decision makers.
We are offering these people free trials of the real time analytics software. We started out offering the new tools bundled with ReachForce data services and decided that stand alone, the analytics tools added value and created a sense of wanting more (data services). So we now are offering the new tools free for a limited time. We are hoping this is going to create buzz for both the software and data services.
We are also experimenting with some very targeted advertising programs. Hoping these are going to drive some awareness as well as generate some prospect engagement.
We are tracking our buzz program by measuring how many people actually log in and try out the free software tools. So far so good and we’re just getting started!
With all of these things we are trying to create buzz that ultimately turns into measurable revenue.
Anyone else actively working on a B2B word-of-month campaign? If so, I’d love to hear all about it.
One of the best ways to increase your SEO rankings is to attract inbound links to your blog or website.
Traditional link building efforts involve asking for links, link swapping, or link buying. This process is extremely time consuming and can get expensive if you are buying high quality links. Really, in this instance, is there any such thing as a quality link? After all, Google has made no secret that it is actively seeking ways to weed out this practice.
In contrast, you can save yourself a lot of time and money by leveraging social media to convince others to link to your content. The challenge is coming up with link-worthy material and then spreading the word via Twitter and other social media tools. Fortunately for those of us with little time and fewer resources, the process of building this content just got a lot easier. You no longer need to embark upon a lengthy research project or write a 10 page white paper. These days, successful link bait is taking the form of widgets or mashups or other forms of rich media content. The prerequisite is that the content should be helpful, clever, funny, or remarkable enough that others want to write about it or include it in their roundup of free tools.
The process of building a widget or mashup used to require Web development skills or enough budget to farm out the work. I’ve been reading about a number of free tools that allow just about anyone to create their own widgets but have not found the confidence to try them. Prodded by a “tweet” from one of the more influential Twitterati (did I really just write that?), I decided to check out, Sprout, an extremely cool and easy to use site to help you build widgets or other informational tools that can be embedded in your blog or web site. http://sproutbuilder.com/whataresprouts.
Sprout looks easy enough to use and I’m ready to check it out. Now, I just have to come up with the “killer app” for our blog readers. To get ideas, the first step will be to reach out to the community reading the BreakingPoint blog at www.breakingpointlabs.com and then do a bit of brainstorming.
As we are fast approaching mid-year, it is a good time to look back at the investments you have already made this year and look for new ways to leverage these investments.
This is a time to make the invisible visible.
Most B2B Marketers have invested in either search engine optimization, paid search advertising or both this year. My guess is you were probably hoping for more quality leads from these investments. Have you considered these ideas to get more bang for your buck?
Identify visitors that didn’t announce themselves (the companies they originated from). Your web analytics tools can help with this or check out ReachForce Convert for more segmentation level data and visitor patterns.
Now that you’ve got the companies identified, do you have the right contacts to reach out to and play offense? Consider reaching out with an offer call to action relevant to the pages they viewed.
How about your current customer marketing? Are you doing everything you can to get more from what you already have?
Is your customer database up to date and complete? 2% of data goes bad every month. Which 2%? Who knows. Your customer database is a great place to start a data refresh project.
While you’re refreshing, do you have the right buying contacts for additional products or services? If not consider adding these to the customer records so you are ready when you have new or updated product offers.
Many of you invested in events in the first half of ’08. Have those leads been followed up on? According to SiriusDecisions, only 10% of trade show leads are followed-up by Sales. Are you, as a Marketer, nurturing the other 90%?
For those leads that are non-responsive, make sure that you have the right contacts in those companies. Think about the role of the person you are targeting? Think about the multiple folks involved in a purchase process at your target and their role. You might need different offers or calls-to-action for each member of the decision making unit.
Continue to nurture leads not ready for sales – dialog is important, it takes 5 to 7 touches to turn a lead into a prospect.
Webinars seemed to have only increased in popularity in 2008. Although the event happens live, the recorded content can be repurposed.
Did you record the webinar and post on your website? Are you campaigning around the event even though the live version has already happened?
Have you considered using services like Insight24 to syndicate your webcast to over 13 million viewers?
Don’t forget about the podcasters. You can easily turn a webinar into multiple podcasts. Make sure short, bite sized content is available for those always short on time.
Summer is often “down-time” for marketing and a time to plan for the blitz of lead generation post Labor Day. This summer instead of “getting ready for what’s to come”, consider spending a little time repurposing what you’ve already done, in between the down time of course.
