365 Days, 9,435 Readers, 3 honors, 140 Tips and 28 Marketing WTF?s!
Thursday, August 21st, 2008
Happy Birthday to The B2B Lead! Last Friday, The B2B Lead turned 1. We celebrated with the entire ReachForce team and threw a little party as you can see in the pics. We launched The B2B Lead a year ago with hopes of delivering great content to our prospects, customers and other smart marketers but had no expectation on what it would deliver back to us. I think I can speak for all of us when I say that we have learned so much from our readers and hope that they are learning just as much from us. We are proud to have brought you now over 140 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips. I hope you will keep coming back for more.
Here are some of the best posts from the past year:
- Are You a Viral VIP? - The Definitive Guide to Viral Video Success
- Don’t Forget About Customer Marketing
- Lead Generation Using Email Marketing
- Using Surveys for Lead Scoring
- How to Get 3,190 People to Watch a Demo at a Tradeshow
- 10 Signs You Picked the Wrong Web Design Agency - Marketing WTF?
- Invest in the Right Tools to Track the Metrics That Matter
- Even Hitler Got Twitter - Marketing WTF?
- Trade Shows - Branding or Demand Gen or Waste of Time and Money?
You can also download 101 Sales and Marketing Tips from The B2B Lead. The first two volumes have been released with 3 more coming soon. The first two volumes cover the best tips on Online Marketing and Direct Marketing. I hope you will stay tuned to see what we will bring you next!
Audio Content Delivered Through Podcasts – ReachForce Book Club
Wednesday, August 20th, 2008Let’s start from the top here. Does everyone know what a podcast is? If you do, skip the next paragraph. If not, you need to know so keep reading.
“A podcast is simply audio content connected to an RSS feed. The medium does not specifically require iPods although that’s how the word was derived. You can listen to a podcast on an iPod (or any other MP3 player) or directly from your computer – no iPod required.”
Simply put, podcasts are another way to reach your audience. Some people prefer to read information (whitepaper downloaders), some prefer to participate in events and other prefer to have access to information they can consume on their own time at their own pace.
Podcasts have become a viable option in our marketing toolkit. David includes a few good ideas to help get you thinking about how you might use podcasts as a part of your marketing mix and I threw in a few ideas too.
- Customer service depts. can use podcasts to deliver “how to” information about the products a customer has bought
- Podcasts are great for marketing to a mobile/traveling audience.
- Podcasts can be lead generation offer options - “You’re 5 minutes away from learning…”
- Don’t forget to turn your webcasts into multiple podcasts for niche targeting
- Instead of writing another dreaded customer case study, consider interviewing them live and creating a podcast to post to your website.
Business Blogging Tips - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #141
Tuesday, August 19th, 2008Check out our rock star Leigh Anne on Hubspot’s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog! In her interview she highlights tips for business blogging and what has worked for us on The B2B Lead.
Some of her points/tips:
- Why the domain or URL of your blog is important, our domain is separate from ReachForce. We wanted to build a place for B2BMarketers to come and share tips and not have to worry about ReachForce corporate speak or promotion. Now don’t get me wrong, I try and slip it in every once in awhile but subtly, hopefully.
- Blogging is a great way to position yourself as a thought leader
- Blogging is a good tool for lead nurturing and can lead to speaking opportunities
- Don’t forget, you need to post frequently to keep readers engaged
- Be sure to re-purpose content for email campaigns and newsletters
- Most important – know your audience and produce valuable content
Even Hitler Got Twitter - Marketing WTF?
Monday, August 18th, 2008Please note there are a few four letter words in the following video.
This video posted on the Fallon Planning blog is one of the funnier Marketing WTFs we’ve had in a while. I never thought I would commiserate with Hitler, but there’s nothing like Twitter to bring out the passion in its users. My absolute favorite moment is when the General nervously informs Hitler that “Twitter has been down since last night. Apparently Robert Scoble overloaded the servers.” Hitler, then clears the room of those who “think they’re too cool to use Twitter.” LOL – hysterical! Even funnier than the Tropic Thunder viral website at www.rainofmadness.com.
Use Lead Scoring to Identify Sales-Ready Leads - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #140
Friday, August 15th, 2008Written by Jon Miller, author of the Modern B2B Marketing blog and VP of Marketing for lead management software company, Marketo
Most leads from B2B marketing campaigns are still researching. Prematurely passing these early leads to sales only annoys the buyer and makes sales even less likely to follow-up on marketing leads. This means the majority of inquiries require further lead nurturing before they become sales ready, so marketers also need the ability to know when to try to nudge the prospect to the next stage and when to pull back and give the prospect some space.
This is where lead scoring comes in. Lead scoring is the process of determining a prospect’s level of interest in your solution (engagement), as well as your interest in a prospect (demographics targeting). When used effectively, lead scoring means you will pass fewer, but higher quality, leads to sales. By not wasting sales time on low quality leads, reps can focus on just the high quality leads — meaning wins rates and sales productivity go up. In fact, as little as a 10% increase in lead quality can generate a 40% increase in sales productivity. In a world where the sales department costs equal 20 or 30% of total revenue, this kind of improvement means a dramatic impact on the bottom line.
How can you use lead scoring to achieve this kind of benefit for your organization?
First of all, too many companies use only basic demographic data (e.g. title, company size, etc.) in scoring. This is useful, but demographic data only tell how interested you are in the prospect—and nothing about how interested the prospect is in you. Even BANT criteria (budget, authority, timing, and need) have limited usefulness since buyers’ answers to those questions are notoriously inaccurate, and as we all know, people’s actions speak louder than their words. This means you should also track a lead’s behaviors so you can you measure their interest and engagement in your solution.
Begin by monitoring and tracking online behaviors, such as email responses, completed forms, and Web site visits. You can do this manually with web analytics, or automate the process using marketing automation software. Assign a point value to each, just as you would assign a value to each job title. Certain behaviors – such as using your company brand name in a search, visiting your pricing page, or returning frequently to your site – indicate higher readiness to buy, so assign even higher weights to those behaviors. Since B2B purchases typically involve 6 to 21 different people, add up the scores for each contact at a given company to measure the total level of engagement for that organization. Finally, be sure to lower the score over time if engagement goes down.
Review the point values with the sales team, and decide what score indicates sales-readiness. If the sales team determines a prospect is not yet ready, recycle the lead back to marketing for additional nurturing. Finally, be sure to close the loop and refine your scoring rules and point values over time for continuous improvement.
Want more details? Here’s a link to a free eBook from Marketo called Best Practices in Lead Scoring.
The New Rules of News Releases - ReachForce Book Club
Thursday, August 14th, 2008According to David Meerman Scott, Press Releases are virtually dead having been replaced by News Releases to reach buyers directly. Here are David’s “The New Rules of News Releases:
- Don’t just send news releases when “big news” is happening; find good reasons to send them all the time.
- Instead of just targeting a handful of journalists, create news releases that appeal directly to your buyers.
- Write releases that are replete with keyword-rich copy.
- Include offers that compel consumers to respond to your release in some way.
- Place links in releases to deliver potential customers to landing pages on your Web site.
- Optimize news release delivery for searching and browsing.
- Add social media tags for Technorati, DIGG, and del.icio.us so your release will be found.
- Drive people into the sales process with news releases.”
You can check out what we have already discussed about Keyword Optimization for News Releases. News Releases are really just another way to put fresh content out there to help buyers find you.
Do you feel like you have made this switch yet or are you still writing press releases in hopes of being picked up by the media? All marketers feel pressure from upper management to drive more leads and bring in more buyers. Well done news releases could be a great tool for this, however, upper management are also the ones that want to see their name in print. I think news releases are the future, but a few press releases are good to keep everyone happy.
Does anyone have good ideas or examples of reasons to send out news releases to fulfill David’s first rule?
Next week we will be covering Ch. 6 &7.
Dusting off some old direct mail ideas…wondering if they still work? - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip#139
Wednesday, August 13th, 2008I’m constantly trying to add new things to our marketing mix. I feel like I’ve talked a lot about direct mail on The B2B Lead but we still haven’t given it a shot here at ReachForce. Before email marketing, direct mail and events were our only options to directly reach a prospect. I’m wondering… is everything done online only now? Do people even pay attention to or read physical mail anymore? I’m not sure, anyone done a B2B direct mail program lately? Did you get the ROI you were hoping for?
We all know physical mail costs more than communicating online but is it possible to stand out in the crowd? As I went back to a box of old ideas, I ran across a few ideas I pulled out and thought about giving another try.
- Got an event invite? – Try sending your invite attached to a helium balloon and put the whole thing in a FedEx box. I haven’t tried it myself but I think this is a great idea. Helium balloons last a couple of days. This ensures your invite sticks around for awhile not to mention it will literally jump out of the box when they open it.
- Mailing to a small group or a very targeted high impact program? Try handwriting the address instead of printing it. There are services/people out there that will do this for you. You might also consider using stamps instead of metered mail.
- Send or use something useful – I got a wine bottle opener from an advertising agency with a tag attached that said ‘OPEN’ on one side and on the other side they reinforced the ‘OPEN’ theme by listing a series of things like –“We’re open to the most innovative and effective approaches to building companies and brands.”
- And there’s still always the hook of “I’m sending you half of something. To get the other half you have to contact me.” We actually just did a small test batch of these just recently. We sent ReachForce branded remote control cars and motorcycles to the VP of Sales and the VP of Marketing in a few target companies. We mixed up the remotes so they had to chat about them to switch the remotes back. We are now following up with these people with an “everyone benefits if you work together” message. We’ll see how it works out…..
Anyone got any other good direct mail ideas? Is direct mail part of your marketing mix or is it considered old school now? Jump in and share…
How to Write and Market Whitepapers - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #138
Tuesday, August 12th, 2008I saw a great presentation earlier this summer at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum by Michael Stelzner titled “Attracting Quality Leads with White Papers.” Michael has generated 60,000 qualified leads with his program, so I thought I would share some of his ideas.
Here are Michael’s 6 mistakes Marketers make in regards to whitepapers:
- Product Marketing Curse - Using a technical document for lead gen.
- Marketing the Wrong Content - used car salesman approach, highly focused on company and product.
- Post and Hope Syndrome - You need to drive prospects to the content, “If you build it, they will come” only works for Kevin Costner.
- Brief Landing Pages - long form with little content
- Immediate Access to Excellent Content - No registration, no follow-up emails
- Not Integrated with Other marketing Efforts - Not promoted through email or direct mail campaigns, left out of newsletters and blogs
Michael gave some compelling reasons why whitepapers should be a part of your marketing mix. To get to the point, they are a proven lead gen tool, help educate your buyers and position your company as a thought leader.
Here are Michael’s tips for writing and publishing whitepapers:
- When you sit down to write the whitepaper, you first need to determine which type of problem you are going to solve: People problems, Process problems, Quality problems or Absent problems. Then lead with the challenges faced by the ideal reader.
- Discuss the solution is generic terms. People need to think that they need a solution like yours before you can sell them your specific solution.
- Include a “what to look for” list - This is your silver bullet where you create a condition where only your product or service can succeed. Be sure to call out points where you deliver over your competition.
- Only at the end of the whitepaper do you mention your company and the product or service you are promoting. Do be sure to have your branding on every page as well as the landing page.
- Save the call to action for the very last sentence - make it compelling, actionable, and measurable
- Think of the first page of your whitepaper as a movie trailer - show them enough for them to be willing to pay (fill out a form) for the rest.
- Identify the ideal reader, summarize the challenge, summarize the solution, state the goal of the paper
- AVOID: detailed explanation of the solution and features, introduction of your company, humor
- When developing a title, keep in mind “what’s in it for me?” and the 3 U’s:
- Ultra-specific
- Unique
- useful to readers
- Test the title with current customers, they will be the best judges.
- Have long landing pages (this is against a lot of what we are hearing right now, but Michael has the results to prove that it works)
- Provide a significant amount of content at the top of the landing page with a very short form (Michael suggests just name and email) at the bottom. This way readers are already hooked by the time they get to the form and more likely to fill out the form to get the rest of the whitepaper.
- It is also great for SEO
- Don’t allow immediate access to the whitepaper. Wait 30 minutes to send the pdf directly to the email address given. This does two things. First, it provides a sense of anticipation. Secondly, this is a way for you to verify that they gave you a valid email address, not mickeymouse@mickeymouse.com.
I am working on implementing some of Michael’s ideas. He shares a lot more in his book, Writing White Papers. Do you have any suggestions for what works in writing and promoting whitepapers?
Blogs – Don’t Underestimate Their Reach - ReachForce Book Club
Tuesday, August 12th, 2008How many B2BLead readers are bloggers? Do you have a corporate or company sponsored blog? If so, do you have set goals for the blog?
Chapter 4 is all about blogging. David (I feel like we are virtual friends now, so I’m referring to him by his first name) talks about the history of blogs and outlines a few different ways to use them. In this chapter David tells a story of Alacra, a company that creates online technology and services for financial institutions. The CEO of Alacra said and I absolutely echo the thought, “We didn’t know what would happen, but we wanted to try it.”
This week The B2B Lead turns a year old. In fact, we’re having a birthday party to celebrate. We’ll be sure to share the pictures later this week. Anyway, back to the book…
When we were putting together our ideas for what the B2BLead would be we knew we wanted a place where we could interact with customers and prospects about their day to day jobs as Marketers. This was not going to be a place for ReachForce promotion (although I do try and slip it in every once in awhile). Our goal was to serve up bite size tips and tricks that could be used in our real jobs.
Still not sure how this was going to increase ReachForce awareness or drive more leads, we jumped in with both feet. And much to my surprise, The B2B Lead has taken off. Here’s a few exciting things that have happened to us since launching the blog –
- We have connected with key industry influencers that we’d been trying to reach for over a year.
- We are able to engage with and leverage our partners via joint thought leadership
- One of our tips was picked up for MarketingProfs newsletter (we didn’t pay for this)
- A post about us was ranked #1 on Sphinn
- Provided us an opportunity to be seen as thought leaders in our industry
- As bloggers, we’re building out a Twitter following
- The B2B Lead was added to Guy Kawasaki’s Marketing Alltop list
- Through this book club, David Meerman Scott now knows who we are
In addition to the external PR, we felt like we’re putting great content out on The B2B Lead and we wanted to be able to leverage it in different ways. We’ve now also developed programs around repurposing the stuff out there. Here’s a few examples of what we’re doing.
- We use The B2B Lead content for our lead generation programs.
- We use blog content in our newsletter.
- The blog is now also integrated with other programs, both lead generation and PR.
- We now get net new leads every week from the blog.
Since we tend to share Tips on The B2B Lead, here are a few tips that have contributed to our success.
- Don’t use your blog as another version of your website or a sales pitch.
- Don’t just post boring press releases.
- Humanize your authors, provide some color around them, their experience, what they are going to contribute, etc.
- Good content will take you a long way.
- We try to post at least 3 times a week (usually more like 5 or 6). We don’t want people to forget about us.
- Linking is REALLY important.
- Set goals for the blog and stick to them.
- Don’t be everything to everyone. Know your audience and speak to their needs. It is better to have the right readers rather then just a lot of readers.
If you’ve got a blog, how are you using it? Any big successes you’d like to share?
Keeping Customers Engaged Between Sales Cycles - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #137
Monday, August 11th, 2008When I first started at ReachForce, we were still in start-up mode and all marketing was focused on acquiring new customers. Because we run on a subscription model, I saw an opportunity for continued customer marketing to help increase our renewals. I developed a fully integrated program which you may have seen on the blog, the ReachForce Book Club. Throughout the year we are sending great Marketing books to our customers. For about 2 months after we send the book, we discuss it here on The B2B Lead.
Here are the steps we take:
- We hand write a short note in each book to help tell them why we chose this book and to make the exchange more personal.
- We also put a little notecard in the book to tell them a little more about the book and direct them to The B2B Lead to join in the conversation.
- I send an email to all of our customers about a week after mailing the books to tell them to expect the book to arrive shortly. This email also links to The B2B Lead where I have posted about the new book and which chapters we will be reading the next week.
- Every week two of us from the marketing department blog about the chapters we are reading.
- I email the author to let them know what we are doing and invite them to join the conversation. These are often busy people but they are usually happy to help promote their book.
A book club isn’t ideal for every customer base but you should have a current customer program in place, even if your sales model is not subscription based. You of course always want to keep your customers happy for referrals, case studies, as well as cross-selling and up-selling opportunities.
When you begin a current customer program, start small. We started with Thanksgiving cards. Be sure to clean up your database to make sure that all of your contacts are still there and that you have correct contact information. According to MarketingSherpa, in house databases go bad at a rate of 2% per month, but who knows which 2%.
So far, we have had a great response from our customers and we hope to continue to grow the program to really create a community for smart marketers.
