Thoughts on branding for small B2B technology companies.

In 2001, while living in Austin, Texas, I had the pleasure of hearing a marketing director from Dell Computer speak at a Central Texas Direct Marketing Association meeting. Dell, of course, was built as a direct marketing company, selling to businesses and consumers through the mail. Their brand was established through the products they sold, the catalogs they sent out, and the referrals they got from one customer to another. In fact, our speaker made the statement that Dell didn’t spend a dime on branding until it was already a $50 million company.

Despite that, everyone knows that brand is important. Too many times have I heard the old mantra “no one ever got fired for buying IBM,” meaning, of course, that picking a known brand gets the decision-maker off the hook if the chosen solution doesn’t work out. Buying the leading brand is always the “safe” decision. This understanding explains the glory technology marketers revel in when their company is selected to appear on a Gartner Magic Quadrant. Then once the company makes the “leaders” quadrant, the brand has made it.

Unfortunately, branding is expensive. In slow economic times like these, it’s even harder to justify branding because every dollar needs to directly generate leads and sales. So how can you brand if you’re not yet the leader and times are slow? Here are three low-cost ways to support brand-building while you are filling your sales pipeline.

Maintain consistency in look and message — Establish and follow guidelines for your logo, Web site, emails, direct mails, brochures, and all material used for your company. Whenever a prospect sees anything about you, they get the same image and impression.

Develop a tag line and put it with your logo — If prospects see your logo and there is always a strong tag line with it, you will be building recognition of what your company does and/or how it differs from its competition. Between the company name and the tag or positioning line, you will be establishing your brand.

Here are some B2B tag lines that fit my criteria for telling people what a company does and/or why it’s better than the rest:

- AT&T — The world’s networking company.
- DuPont — Better living through chemistry.
- ZDNet — Where technology means business.
- Epicor — Global Software Solutions. Local Expertise
- Innotas — Powering the business of IT
- Salesforce.com — Success. Not Software.
- Webroot — The Best Security in an Unsecured World.

Watch this blog for a future discussion of what makes a great tag line and why I disagree with what many others have said are great.

Establish and support active PR through traditional means, social media, and partnerships — Issue press releases announcing product enhancements, new client acquisitions, and other company news to keep your name in front of your market and industry. Use social media for exposure and interaction with your industry and potential customers.  Participate in Webinars with partners on 3rd party venues.

These ideas by no means represent a full branding campaign. But they can help your company cost-effectively support and build brand while generating business.

Teaming with Sales to Get Case Studies DONE

by guest expert Casey Hibbard

Customer case studies and success stories are some of the most powerful tools that a company can leverage in its sales and marketing. Yet in most organizations, it’s a struggle between sales and marketing teams to get them cranked out.

Sales reps know they need customer stories, but are often too busy chasing new sales to bother with delivering names of current customers. At the same time, they want to protect their own customers from being bothered.

Marketing is left with targets and deliverables but not enough viable candidates.

How can marketing encourage sales to help out? Here are some tips for easing the process and getting your stories done.

Lay a Friendly Foundation
Build relationships with sales reps first and foremost. The key to getting a response is to reinforce what’s in it for them in recommending case study candidates.

To that end, stay up on what stories they need and plan case study initiatives accordingly (as best you can within your budget). You might even survey the sales force online or at sales meetings.

Depending on the size of your sales force, introduce yourself to new reps one-on-one and stay in touch about their needs.

Do your best not only to fill the gaps in the field, but also to help reps out with any other needs they have in order to build their trust in you. A little mutual “back-scratching” helps pave the way for the next step – asking for customer names.

Ask for Case Study Candidates
When you have your case study plan, communicate your wish list regularly to the field.

Give reps a formal – but simple – way to submit a candidate. A very short form (3-4 questions) might ask about the key contacts and highlights of the solution in the customer’s environment. Keep this form somewhere that’s easy for sales to find and submit.

Choose a Carrot or Stick?
Some companies require reps to submit names of customers for stories while others reward reps for them. Try a contest. The sales rep that submits the most viable customer candidates for a quarter or year wins a bonus or the latest hot electronics item.

In fact, one software company boosted its candidate submissions significantly this way.

Involve Reps
If a story idea fits your needs, enable sales reps to “make the ask” or be involved in the initial discussion with the customer about the opportunity. That allows them to stay tied to the process involving their beloved customer.

Reps usually do not want to join in the actual case study process – on interviews and draft reviews – but as a courtesy keep them informed about ongoing communications with the customer until the customer signs off on the story.

Deliver Sales-Ready Materials
At times, sales reps create their own sales collateral, or retool existing marketing materials, to fit their needs. To avoid that, provide customer-story content in a format that reps can readily use.

In addition to a full case study, give them presentation slides with the story summarized.

Do Your Own PR
Maybe reps don’t fully realize the impact of a compelling customer case study on their prospects, or when to use a case study in the sales cycle.

Educate them on how to use stories in the most effective way. One technology company I know actually created an internal case study on how one of its sales reps uses case studies to close sales. Very clever! Other companies include “how to use case studies” in their sales training.

Close the Loop
When a story is completed, send the final, pretty version – or a link to it – to the relevant sales rep. Your process might also include having the sales rep personally send the final story and a thank-you note or gift to the customer.

In short, always be building the relationship. Stay in communication and mutually respect each other’s needs. And make it as easy as possible for sales to submit candidates.

About the Author: Casey Hibbard is author of the book, “Stories That Sell: Turn Satisfied Customers into Your Most Powerful Sales & Marketing Asset” and principal of Compelling Cases Inc. She also writes the Stories That Sell blog.

Marketing — it starts with the name.

I’ll never forget the call I received in the 90s from a friend who had been working for Western Electric since the 70s. She informed me, among other things, that her employer had just changed the company’s name to Lucent Technologies. “Huh?” was my immediate reaction.

Until then, the names of the companies I knew either represented what they did — International Business Machines, Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing, and General Electric — or who started the company — Hewlett-Packard and Metro Goldwyn Mayer.

Of course, today everyone knows these companies as IBM, 3M, GE, HP and MGM. But as Al Ries and Jack Trout outlined in Chapter 9 of their great (and very relevant) marketing classic Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, decades passed before those companies were known by their initials.

But it’s obvious that — with the success of companies sporting names such as Amazon, Google, and Fandango — the naming game has changed. Or has it?

Seth Godin’s wonderful take on the subject in “The new rules of naming” provides excellent guidance for picking the right name in today’s electronic world. In spite of the new naming challenges, however, it doesn’t sound like that much has changed.

In B2B marketing — it’s not outbound vs. inbound.

Getting educated on marketing best practices is a lot easier than it used to be. Now, we don’t have to spend a minute driving to a local marketing event or flying to a national conference to hear the experts. Almost daily we can tune in to informative Webinars right from the office. In a single hour, we can get up to speed on any one of hundreds of critical marketing issues.

This brings me to a very inviting offer I received recently from MarketingProfs. It invited me to download a Kit of info from HubSpot entitled “Marketing in a Downturn.” It included the following:

1. Video: Marketing in a Recession (1 hour)
2. Video: How to Generate Leads on a Budget Using Inbound Marketing (1 hour)
3. Video: How to Demonstrate the Value of Social Media to Your Boss (1 hour)
4. Video: Marketing Detox: How to Get Off Google AdWords PPC Crack (1 hour)
5. e-Book: Getting Found Online – Learn how to get found online in the search engines, blogosphere, and social media sites (10 pages)

Item two, “How to Generate Leads on a Budget Using Inbound Marketing,” contained terrific guidance on blogging that I found to be very valuable. I listened intently for the full hour.

However, I made it through only the first few minutes of the “Marketing in a Recession” presentation. Not because it didn’t have good content in it, but because, early on, Mike Volpe, the presenter, made a statement implying that the response rates to “outbound channels” are diminishing.

In his section on “Rethinking Marketing” he made the argument that outbound marketing channels are losing their effectiveness and are being replaced by inbound marketing channels. Here are the channels he included:

Outbound Marketing
Telemarketing
Trade shows
Direct mail
Email blasts
Print ads
TV/Radio

Inbound Marketing
SEO/SEM
Blogging
Social Media
RSS
Free tools/trials
Public RelationsÂ

Because of the rising costs of most of these outbound channels, fewer businesses are using them. But most of these channels are still cost-effectively generating qualified leads for larger ticket B2B products and services. I can’t speak for TV/Radio, and it’s true that email lead generation response rates have fallen, but these channels are still a productive part of an integrated B2B marketing program.

• Trade shows may have smaller attendance, but those who do attend represent a highly targeted market in search of solutions.
• In direct mail and telemarketing there are lists available that provide significant selections on each record, so targeting by title, employee size, company size and many other criteria are available. They allow companies to match prospect lists to an exact profile of their best customers.
• Print ads have never been as directly productive as other channels. However, vertical industry publications are a perfect place to help build name recognition that supports the brand just like social media and public relations.

Inbound marketing is an important part of today’s marketing mix, but for businesses who still want to spend X dollars and know that the money they spend will generate Y qualified prospects, outbound is still the only way to go.

And by the way, Mike, you used MarketingProfs’ outbound marketing to generate downloads for your Kit, so I guess you haven’t given up on outbound channels, either.

Monday’s pop quiz on smart data practices.

Those who have been in direct marketing for eons, as I have, know that lists/data are the most critical elements in the success of any database marketing campaign. Yet my daily mail and email consistently illustrate how many companies are not conducting even the most basic list targeting practices.

Could your company be one of the culprits that are neglecting basic database practices? Take this little quiz, and see how your practices measure up.

1. Are you renting lists or appending data to your in-house list to make sure your prospects are qualified for your offer? I get business offers online and in the mail that are clearly selling products only large firms would need or could afford. By simply appending employee size to a list (available from data solution providers such as www.AccuData.com) companies would eliminate those records that are too small to qualify.
2. Does your company or organization run its house list through NCOA at least once a year? NCOA is a National Change of Address database provided by the U.S. Post Office. The economy has made it even more important to update mailing addresses as so many companies these days are moving, merging, or closing.
3. Do you purge your response or customer file from your marketing list before mailing or emailing to prospects? I get emails inviting me to Webinars and seminars for which I have already registered. This tells me that I’ll be getting information from a company that doesn’t even follow the most basic marketing principles.

How did you do? If you are trying to save money or time by skipping any of the above practices, you are costing your company financially and strategically as well as diminishing its image.

In this age of ubiquitous B2B marketing best practices — who do you trust?

A Google search of “marketing best practices” brings up 52,000,000 links. “B2B marketing best practices” delivers 347,000 hits. By adding a specific channel such as “B2B email marketing best practices” the result drops to 164,000. “BtoB email marketing copy best practices” gets it down to a mere 22,800, and “BtoB email marketing design best practices” is even less popular at 17,700.

The fact is, there’s more than one “expert” out there with products, services, opinions and advice. So if your goal is to follow best practices in your marketing, you’ll have an estimated 6,066 hours of research ahead of you if you spend a mere seven minutes checking out each site.

If you get paid overtime, I say go for it. If not, here’s a way to help judge the validity of the information. Trust the practices that come from resources whose knowledge and advice is based on valid in-market split testing of one practice against another.

Use best practices to develop your marketing programs; but remember, every product and market is different. Ultimately it’s important to test those practices to make sure they lift performance for your product in your market.

Another valuable Internet marketing tool.

Back in 1980 I entered the field of direct response marketing as an independent copywriter in Denver, Colorado. In those days all my clients were local businesses. Projects were assigned in person and documents were shared via fax or mail. Gaining the ability to transfer documents electronically opened up a whole new world of opportunity, and I picked up my first out-of-town client as far away as San Francisco. That was pretty exciting.

The Internet transformed my business and has done the same for all but the smallest local service companies. For B2B marketers it has added valuable new channels, enhanced CRM, and produced a medium that can deliver almost immediate data on the effectiveness of their marketing efforts.

In his excellent article “Online market research takes off,” in BtoB Magazine, Michael Fitzgerald makes a case for another important way the Internet has advanced a task critical to marketing — research.

With easy, cost-effective online tools such as SurveyMonkey, ConstantContact, Zoomerang, and many others, there’s no reason any marketer, in any size company, cannot learn about the pains, objectives, attitudes, considerations and all the other insight necessary for crafting marketing that is on target and effective.

I encourage you to read this informative article now, and learn how online surveys can be a valuable addition to your marketing success.

Getting over our own marketing bias.

This morning, as I reviewed the various opt-in marketing pubs I get daily, I realized that a good 85% of the topics relate to social and mobile media. These are today’s hot topics, but it remains to be seen how those media will ultimately fall into the overall market mix.

It started with instant messaging (IM) and has evolved into text messages, RSS feeds, Tweets, and so much more. As a marketing professional it’s important that I understand and learn how, when and why to use social and mobile media. But I can’t.

That’s because I personally HATE having information forced on me. I don’t want to be interrupted when I’m focused on a project or other task needing my concentration. When I’m out of the office, and not on business, I don’t want to be bothered with anything work related.

I’m not the only marketer out there with this problem. I often hear statements such as, “I don’t read direct mail, so I don’t want to use direct mail in my marketing.”

There are two ways we narrow-minded marketers can get over the “I don’t like it so how could anyone else” syndrome:

• Interview people who use the various media.
• Talk to colleagues and peers who use the media in their marketing.
• Look at published facts and figures on how the channel has been used and how it has worked.

Be careful when looking at reports, however. If the research driving the report was done by providers in the industry, you may get biased information. So make sure you look for user case studies, analyst reports, and independent voices to understand how the channel can bring value to your marketing.

Looking at things from our own point of view is a common marketing bias. Good marketers find ways to get over it.