Lookin’ for B2B buyers in all the wrong places?

Sometimes B2B marketing is conducted like the country song “Lookin’ for Love” made popular by Johnny Lee in the 1980 film Urban Cowboy.

I was reminded of how common this problem is when working on a recent copywriting project. The work was for a B2B marketing agency whose client was selling products and services to small business.

Small businesses come in many types, of course, including such categories as:

• Personal services, such as hair and nail salons
• Home services, including contractors, landscapers, plumbers, electricians, etc.
• Restaurants
• Gift stores
• Financial services, including CPAs and financial advisors
• Lawyers and physicians
• Dry cleaners and tailors
• Shoe repairs
• Phone stores
• Framing shops
• Drug stores
• Nail and hair salons
• and many more.

All of the direct mail, email and digital B2B marketing elements (media, channels, messaging) that were part of the client’s B2B marketing programs were chosen to reach and appeal to the generic small business.

However, like the song lyric “Lookin’ for love in all the wrong places,” this company was spreading its marketing budget over such a broad sweep of channels and businesses that the impact of each dollar spent was significantly diminished.

Then, its agency conducted a detailed analysis of the client’s customer database and the revelation was dramatic. Out of the dozens of small business categories, a handful of very specific types of small businesses stood far above the rest in terms of the number of orders and amount of revenue they generated.

Now, with this research in hand, all the client’s B2B marketing efforts are focused on channels that directly reach these small business categories. All the visuals and copy used in the marketing are designed to build a connection with these specific business types.

The lesson is clear. It’s essential that B2B marketers periodically conduct this kind of analysis of their own customer data. It’s the only way to ensure that they are not spreading their dollars too thinly, but that their targeting and messaging lead to the most sales, the greatest income and the best lifetime value.

B2B marketing that talks “Outside-In” not “Inside-Out”

A few weeks ago, a colleague forwarded a post — “Better SEO through Integrated Content Marketing,” by Scott Fasser — that was on the Optify blog in 2012.

In the post, Scott recognizes that SEO is no longer a separate tactic but an integral part of B2B marketing strategy. He discusses four essentials to maximizing SEO. These include effectively using personas, which I discussed recently in “Personas: They’re not just for B2B marketing anymore.” He covers the importance of addressing all B2B marketing buy cycles, as well as the long list of the social media elements that are now part of any successful SEO initiative.

One point, however, was something I knew but had never seen presented in such a clear and definable way. That was his advice to “Talk Outside-In vs. Inside-Out.”

Here are the highlights of his important point:

“How you talk about yourself and market yourself dramatically impacts how well you are found via organic channels — especially SEO. If your website is driven by a brand perspective that creates new phrases to describe what you do that is unique to your communication, you are not creating a true differentiation in your product, but new words to describe something that prospects don’t understand.

A major marketing automation company has positioned themselves as a provider of ‘Revenue Performance Management’ software. This term could mean many different things to different functional perspectives, but the core term for this category of service is marketing automation. ‘Revenue performance management’ has about 590 searches in Google in North America per month while ‘marketing automation’ has 14,800. This tells us that marketing automation is a better known term and more people are looking for this type of solution than ‘revenue performance management.’

The lesson here is to review your current and future messaging from the point of view of a persona that does not know about your brand, focus on true differentiation/value proposition and create content that they will understand without needing an explanation. Finding that balance between pushing new concepts and terms vs. serving the market where it exists today is an important input into your content marketing planning.”

This point was strongly supported in an SEO copywriting training session I attended. It presented the background on Google’s SEO algorithms and why it’s important for top positions in Google to use the terms that customers are using. This is the same in all B2B marketing copy and messaging.

To truly connect with customers, it’s essential to use the words and phrases that they know and to always speak from their point of view.

Why B2B marketers must read this book on lead generation.

The title of David Scott’s new book “The New Rules of Lead Generation: Proven Strategies to Maximize Marketing ROI” is a bit misleading. It doesn’t just cover the new rules of lead generation marketing that involve LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. It covers all the channels and all the practices necessary to achieve successful B2B marketing lead generation.

As the CEO and founder of Marketfish, David Scott knows his stuff. When he took marketing courses at the Wharton School, all he learned about was brand marketing. Thrown into a B2B marketing position when the CMO left the $3.5 billion publicly traded software company where he worked, he had to learn fast. Over the years he has discovered the value of data, testing and measurement for all channels. He now shares his knowledge and experience in this comprehensive lead generation marketing handbook.

B2B marketers must read and share this book if they:

• Have been so focused on entering social media — or any other single media or tactic — that other necessary lead generation channels have been neglected.
• Want a comprehensive refresher course on B2B marketing best practices to ensure that nothing valuable has been missed.
• Have beginners on their team who need to learn what effective lead generation is all about.
• Need to better understand the importance of data, brand, B2B marketing math and all the other elements that turn million-dollar companies into multi-billion-dollar companies.
• Are worried that they’re missing one of the seven most successful lead-generation approaches that companies are using today.
• Have budget limitations and want to focus lead gen dollars on tactics that can maximize the return.
• Want a handy list of how-tos on any aspect of lead generation marketing.

Highly readable and very informative, this book doesn’t miss a beat. I recommend it for every member of every B2B marketing team — beginner or expert — wanting to maximize the success and the ROI of their company’s lead generation.

5 must-dos in B2B marketing measurement and metrics.

I just attended another fabulous live presentation by the San Diego Direct Marketing Association. The speakers, Randy Gerson of Gerson & Associates and Chris d’Eon of Deon Direct, knocked one out of the park — again.

Last time I saw Chris speak was when he was at ProFlowers. It was at that talk that I first realized he was a real direct marketing pro. This last presentation on “Collecting Marketing Metrics that Matter” didn’t change my mind about that. Randy, too, spilled out an impressive core of knowledge and advice.

Out of my pages of endless notes came a number of bits that every B2B marketer should brand on his or her brain. Here are five of those bits — from the experts’ mouths to my keyboard:

1. Keep your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) on a single page. Any more than that will lead only to a muddied understanding of the metrics. Remember, KPIs are NOT analysis. They are top-level trends only.

2. In B2B, never figure cost per sale on immediate sales revenue. Always calculate it using the average life-time value of a customer.

3. Always start with simple A/B split testing. If the company is new or starting testing for the first time, keep the test simple. There is an approach to testing (multi-variate) that allows for testing dozens of elements at one time. But getting the results from complex testing takes too long. When just starting out, keep it simple and always run a direct test of one time against the other. Test one online site against another, one piece of content against another, one mailing list against another, etc.

4. Test the call-to-action button on every landing page. Having discovered the dramatic difference this single item can make in conversion on a landing page, Chris and Randy advise testing the color and the copy on the call-to-action button every time a new landing page is run.

5. Don’t waste time measuring things based on pure vanity. Impressions, clicks, leads, and likes are numbers that make us feel good, but they have no value as metrics on which B2B marketing decisions should be based.

Personas: They’re not just for B2B marketing anymore.

Thanks to Software San Diego, I finally got the opportunity to learn about why there is such a widespread interest in personas these days. I always thought of them in terms of B2B marketing. Although creating personas is more formalized than it used to be, we B2B direct marketers have been targeting messaging to customer profiles for decades. So they didn’t seem like anything new.

What I didn’t understand, I learned from a knock-out presentation I just attended by Mitchell. Mitchell is a company started in 1947 that is now the leading provider of technology for claims management and repair shop solutions. They’ve adopted personas big time and not just in the marketing department.

Mitchell is in the process of joining a literal handful (5%) of companies that are putting the customer experience above all else in every aspect of their operations. That means people in every department are discussing customers, by persona, as part of everything they do.

InformationWeek recently recognized this growing shift in their cover story “Goodbye IT, Hello Digital Business: Delighting customers is job No. 1. Everything else is secondary.” In this story, Chris Murphy tells how IT no longer has a “support-the-business” role but is now at the forefront of creating products and applications that enhance the customer experience. At Mitchell, when the development team talks about products and features, those talks focus on the personas identified as users of that product.

The Mitchell presentation covered their journey and their learning process on how to create their personas, how many to create, what info should be included in them and how to make them easy to use and understand. Here are the basics I learned that may be helpful to other B2B marketing companies:

1. The 5% of companies currently heavily focused on incorporating personas into their entire operation are, without exception, leaders in their industries.
2. Depending on the budget available, these profiles can be created through a combination of customer interviews and surveys, plus interviews with sales and other personnel who directly interact with customers.
3. Less is more.  To incorporate too many data points or too much information on each make using personas too complex and difficult to use.
4. Rather than just data, the descriptions should be somewhat emotional.
5. Each persona should be based on an individual’s role within their company.
6. After much trial and error, here are the ingredients of each description that they found worked best at Mitchell:

• Name: Using names with the same initials as the individual’s title were found to be much more memorable. For example: the parts managers might be Pete Murphy, the shop estimator might be Sean Edwards, and Carl Atkins might be the claims adjustor, etc.
• Age
• Education
• Job Title and Description
• Activities: What their job involves, specifically
• Experience and Skills
• Goals: In relation to their job
• Tools and Technology: What they currently use, not just for the solution being sold but all the technology and tools used
• Quote: These are usually gathered from interviews
• Environment: A description of their surroundings when working
• Picture: These are essential to help employees identify with each persona

At the heart of what I learned is that personas aren’t just for B2B marketing anymore. They can help the company succeed at every level and should be incorporated into decisions regarding products, messaging, personnel, processes and services. Every one contributes to the customer experience.

Three B2B marketing practices driving me crazy this week

Some B2B marketing best practices are costly or complex. For example, B2B lead generation that uses direct mail is a best practice as it’s always proven to work better than email marketing. But it is much more complex and costly than email. I understand it when B2B marketers do not follow best practices because of budget or time constraints.

However, there are many instances when B2B marketing best practices are not followed — but could easily be without additional cost or effort. Frankly, that drives me crazy. Here are just three of those practices.

Practice #1
A colleague forwarded me a link to a 17-page white paper on the topic of email marketing. The copy consists of long, heavy paragraphs of information all printed in a soft gray color. I need a magnifying glass to read it. Even then, the experience won’t be pleasant. To be effective, content should be not only informative, but readable. That means dark type on a light background.

Practice #2
A B2B marketing contact of mine wanted his company’s sales phones to ring and decided to offer a “free assessment” to help make that happen. He added a gift incentive for a qualified call to make the offer even more powerful. This offer stands very nicely on its own and can be communicated quickly and easily. However, the powers that be at his company insist that there be product sales material in the package and in the message. This addition makes the mailing package come off as a product pitch and not a “no-strings-attached” offer, which does not follow best practices and is likely to reduce response.

Practice #3
I lost an argument this week over putting more than one call to action in a lead generation email. Offering case studies is great. Also offering a Webinar in the same email effort is sure to diminish response to both the content and the Webinar. Everyone who has tested one call to action versus two has seen this result; thus, one call to action is always the best practice.

True B2B marketing best practices have been tested and proven to maximize response and/or achieve an acceptable cost per response based on the potential sales revenue. When these practices are not followed, but could be, B2B marketers do more than just drive me crazy, they reduce their company’s bottom line.

Last-ditch B2B marketing metric.

Recently I responded to an offer for a paper, “Getting Started with Marketing Measurement,” from Act-On Software. The paper opens with:

“The B2B marketing world has changed a lot over the past decade. One especially important new trend is the growing emphasis on measurement and analysis.”

Coming from a direct marketing background in which measurement is everything, I say, “It’s about time.” Then the paper quotes, “Today, almost 70% of B2B marketers are turning to metrics to help them justify their budgets.” This spurs me to ask, “Why would anyone in demand generation marketing want to spend one dime in marketing (not branding) if they weren’t willing and able to measure what that marketing produced?”

The reason 100% of the B2B marketers in the study aren’t tracking metrics is because it’s hard. Marketers doing true integrated B2B marketing have a lot to keep track of.

Marketing automation helps, as most of those vendor systems include features for tracking response. However, not all responses to outbound campaigns end up on a landing page. Some generate incoming phone calls or emails and many end up as visits to the company Web site. Some traditional B2B direct mail efforts come back in reply devices.

Tracking that builds accurate B2B marketing metrics and measurement takes planning, processes and personnel. In many companies, those are all in short supply.

If limited or no tracking or measurement has been done, a last-ditch analysis can still provide the most important metric. This last-ditch option is to periodically run a match back data analysis by bumping the list of prospects or the customer file against the list of sales and identify matches.

Relevate Group briefly covers how this is done in “Driving Campaign Profitability Using Match Back Response Analysis in B to B Marketing.”

The Act-On Software paper includes a long list of revenue-related metrics a company should track. However, in the end, a match back can identify the most important metric of all. That is, “How many sales and how much revenue did the marketing generate?”

Steps #2-6 in creating ideal B2B lead generation copy.

My previous post covered the first and most important step in any B2B marketing copy for successful outbound B2B lead generation. That first step is the most important as it must contain the information necessary to make a connection with the prospect.

Once the B2B lead generation opening statement “gets the prospect” or “hooks them in,” there are six more copy steps necessary for moving that prospect to action — that is, generating a response.

Here are the remaining steps in order:

Step #2 — Make the B2B marketing offer, then immediately make the first call to action.
The reader is busy and needs to absorb the message in seconds. If the opening line says, “This message is for you,” then the next should present the content offer and the call to action. If the prospect does not read another line, the entire message has been communicated.

Step #3 — Expand on the benefit of responding to the content offer.
The next section is necessary for the prospects who want to know more before responding. This is the place to put a very brief or bulleted list of what they will learn from reading this valuable FREE information, attending this Webinar, accepting this private demo, etc.

The content of this section is often exactly what the product being sold can deliver. But, by not mentioning the product by name, the message does not come off as a sales pitch. If people think they are being “sold” and not “informed,” response rates will drop.

Step #4 — Repeat the call to action and then add a plug, if applicable.
If the information being offered is a published book or a report by an independent third party, that should be mentioned the first time the offer is made. However, if the information is compiled by the B2B marketing company, this is where that company can take a very brief bow. This might be, “This infographic has been compiled by XYZ Company, a leader in ….”

Step #5 — Close the communication.
Traditionally, in direct mail, the close would include a statement of what the prospect would lose by not responding. In the case of offering free information, what is lost is the opportunity to learn what the information covers. The purpose of the campaign is to get the prospect to request the offer. So the close should repeat the call to action and the main benefit.

Step #6 — Always add a P.S.
Since the opening line and the P.S. remain the most-read sections of personal communications, a P.S. should contain the offer or a secondary incentive to respond. Busy B2B prospects need to get the entire message as quickly as possible. Using this tactic in the P.S. helps accomplish that.

Keep B2B marketing copy simple; keep it short
Whatever is written, the message should eliminate any need for the prospect to have to think. Outbound B2B marketing should never make the prospect think — just react and act on what is being offered.

Step #1 in creating ideal B2B lead generation copy.

After a short stint writing copy at an ad agency, I discovered the world of B2B direct marketing. The difference that made me love it is that B2B direct marketing requires an action on the part of the prospect or customer — so every dollar that’s spent is trackable.

Early on in my B2B marketing copywriting career, a colleague recommended that I read Successful Direct Marketing Methods by Bob Stone (later Bob Stone and Ron Jacobs). It was from that book that I learned the foundation of B2B marketing lead generation best practices that I still use today. It still works and it’s a perfect formula generating outbound B2B marketing lead generation sent by email or snail mail.

There are six important steps in the perfect B2B marketing lead generation copy. Here is the first.

Step #1 — Open B2B lead generation messages with copy that addresses the prospect’s biggest pain.

In the B2B marketing lead generation world, testing continues to show that HTML-designed emails and direct marketing mailers that are heavily designed do not perform as well as text emails or traditional letters in #10 envelopes.

When using text emails or traditional letters, the opening line is the most-read part of any B2B lead generation copy. This opening sentence needs to focus on the most significant pain suffered by the prospect group in relation to the product or service being marketed. Basically, this is the approach that gets the prospects’ attention and lets them know that the message is for them.

As long as their #1 pain is being addressed, the context of the opening can take many forms, as Joan Throckmorton outlined in her book Winning Direct Response Advertising.

1. Directly address the pain in a generic form: “Tracking labor hours for employees across the globe is a huge challenge.”
2. Start with an invitation: “You are invited to discover how you can simplify the tracking of labor hours for your employees across the globe.”
3. Use a quotation: “According to a recent Business Week survey of CFOs, ’68% of global companies identify employee labor hour tracking as their biggest challenge.’”
4. Identify your prospect: “As CFO of ABC Company, you know that tracking labor hours for employees across the globe is a huge challenge.”
5. Take an if/then approach: If you’re looking to simplify the tracking of labor hours for employees across the globe, then . . . .
6. Ask a question: “Are you feeling overwhelmed by the time and cost involved in tracking employee labor hours for employees across the globe?” I personally do not like this approach because questions force readers to think. As I’ve covered in earlier posts, B2B marketers don’t want prospects thinking. We want them to intuitively react to the message.
7. Be negative and instill fear: The inability to accurately track labor hours for employees across the globe can have a huge negative impact on your bottom line.”
8. Build a fantasy: Imagine gaining a 20% increase in revenue by being able to accurately track labor hours of employees across the globe.
9. Open with an analogy: Find out how today’s financial executives are handling labor hour tracking more easily than putting on their shoes in the morning.
10. Tell a story: “In November of 2012, John Smith, CFO of XYZ Company, discovered a painless way to handle the tracking of labor hours of employees across the globe.”

Which of these approaches to choose will depend on what type of content or information is being offered. Next week, I’ll cover Step #2 on how this opening can lead instantly into the offer of content with information to help the prospect see how they can overcome their pain.

B2B marketing that uncovers hot leads & builds involvement.

LinkedIn may have flaws and spam problems at times, but the ability it gives us to meet and share ideas with colleagues all over the world is wonderful.

One of my new LinkedIn acquaintances, Tracy Johnson, President of Spotted Dog Promotions, recently sent me an article he wrote about “Contests and your Marketing Strategy.”

What he has to say fits right into a tactic that I strongly believe is necessary in today’s B2B marketing. That is the importance of getting attention and standing apart from the competition by getting prospects “involved.”

Tracy’s presentation talks mostly about using contests to get attention in social media and for branding. He makes a strong case. But since my focus and expertise is in outbound B2B marketing and direct response marketing, I see contests also as an inviting way to generate a response.

Content is the primary device used in B2B marketing these days. It’s smart and it works. But just reading white papers, guides, blogs and attending Webinars — even watching videos — can get pretty tedious after a while. Contests add excitement and interest to making contact with a prospective new customer. They even allow B2B marketers to add a bit of fun and personality to their communications.

There’s no reason to think B2B buyers won’t take the time to participate in contests. They are humans, after all, who love to measure or test their expertise. The prizes can be related to the product or service being sold — or be simple gifts that could be tied to a benefit-related theme.

As Tracy explains in his article, contests are also great devices for gathering valuable sales data:

“You can increase sales and learn more about your customers, their perceptions and behaviors, along with their intent to purchase products in your industry category via embedded surveys in your contest entry form. These surveys can identify prospects, generate hot leads or provide insight into your audience. One of our affiliates in the travel industry recently attracted over 20,000 leads to a contest, 97% of whom answered three multiple-choice questions that identified their interests in travel. This is a valuable list of qualified leads that turns into new revenue.”

Even though he uses a B2C example here, B2B marketers can easily imagine how a short survey can be used to find out if a prospect has a need for their product or service.

I’ll bet that many B2B marketers would never think of doing a contest. The reason being that contests don’t appear to be serious and might reflect poorly on the company. I disagree. If the contest is well planned and ties into the company’s brand and product focus, it’s a fresh and effective way to draw attention to its solutions and to get its prospects involved.