A B2B marketing message angle that could close sales.

In an earlier post, I talked about what motivates business buyers to buy. I listed the typical human wants and needs that drive all decisions, including those in the B2B world.

The problem is, whether I’m writing copy for collaboration software or safety gear or outsourced IT or leadership training, the benefits I present are all in the same categories. Here are the top 10 marketing motivators in the B2B world:

1. To make money
2. To save money
3. To save time
4. To avoid effort
5.  To be praised
6. To be in style
7. To emulate others
8. To take advantage of  opportunities
9. To avoid criticism
10. To avoid loss

I get excited about the products and services I’m asked to help market, but underneath it all, I’m making similar buying arguments for every one of them.

Then yesterday I was reminded of new angle on an old benefit. It came from Christine Durkin of MockVideo when she commented on a LinkedIn discussion asking “Is there a silver bullet answer to shortening the technology B2B sales cycle?”

Her comment was “One of the main reasons a B2B sale is lost is that the prospect isn’t truly aware of the cost of doing nothing.”

Her comment gave me a fresh marketing message angle.

Rather than inviting late buy-cycle prospects to attend a Webinar or download another white paper, my clients can give them a bottom-line incentive to make a decision. Providing a calculator or quantitative numbers on what it’s costing a prospect to NOT make a decision tells a powerful story that could close a sale.

Boost B2B sales with an “in your face” approach.

I love Webinars. It’s so convenient for me to sit at my desk and get educated. And if the presentation isn’t applicable to my business, I can just log out and move on. I love LinkedIn, as well. It’s remarkable to be able to share ideas, get advice and network with other business people who might be anywhere in the world.

Then yesterday I attended the San Diego Direct Marketing Association breakfast and had a serious flashback. Had I actually forgotten the value and rich dynamics of learning and sharing ideas with others face-to-face?

I guess I’m not the only one who has forgotten the value of getting information live. John Hollon writing for Workforce Management tells the sad story about how conference and seminar attendance has fallen in his post entitled “2009 Conference Update: It’s Ugly, and Getting Uglier.” In this down economy, no one likes to incur the cost or time of travel to attend seminars and conferences.

Yet, connecting with people face-to-face makes so much more impact than connecting with people online. Not to say that I don’t have many online connections that are very valuable and rewarding. But there’s nothing like a real live connection.

I have several technology clients who recently attended conferences that were very targeted to their product lines. They found that, although the attendance was down, the attendees were far more serious shoppers. This is probably because the attendees were from companies that needed solutions and guidance badly enough to be able to justify the expense.

So if you’re looking for a “channel” that could be a strong resource for business, attend a conference and gain the advantages of being there live.

How to bring your B2B marketing into the real world.

Far be it from me to refer my readers to articles about consumer marketing, but David Baker’s post “Funnel Experiences” in Media Post‘s  Email Insider got my attention. He talks about how we marketers put our customers and prospective customers in a linear funnel, moving them from awareness through to lead acquisition, lead cultivation, then potential activation, followed by conversion, retention, loyalty and win-back.

He points out that we direct marketers typically use email marketing and eCRM efforts at the “end of the funnel” only, and explains that this is not a reflection of the true customer lifecycle. The challenge, he says, is that – with this linear view – “it is hard to organize around pieces of a customer experience without losing sight of the complete experience.” This approach often misses the point at which a change in a customer’s life will change his or her buying preferences.

He proposes a switch to “lifestyle” marketing.

Even though his discussion is illustrated by points from consumer marketing, what he says applies to B2B marketing as well. In B2C, you can often identify lifestyle changes (new births, birthdays, homeownership) and adjust your marketing accordingly. In B2B, there are lifestyle changes, as well, that could trigger interest in moving to or away from your “brand.” These indicators, which are often available on selected direct mail lists, include such items as new locations, expansions, acquisitions, technology purchases, and more.

By building your B2B demand generation and retention efforts on lifestyle marketing indicators, you can move your marketing out of the funnel and into the real world.

Some B2B marketers need to come out of the dark.

Early in my career I worked in the dark. Not literally, of course, but the analogy is appropriate.

I was a copywriter for an advertising agency. It was the biggest in the city and had a very impressive client list. But if you envision me as one of those flamboyant ad folks who sit around and spew out ideas during intense creative sessions, you’re wrong. Here was the process this agency followed:

1. A traffic person would bring a large manila envelope into my office with the project creative brief and work outline in it.
2. I’d read it all, write the copy and put it in the envelope for a traffic person to come remove it from my office.
3. That same envelope was then delivered to the designer who did the design work and put it back into the envelope to be taken away to the Netherland of pre-Internet advertising.
4. At the end of two weeks I’d get my paycheck and never hear another word about what happened to the copy I wrote.

Then lo and behold, I was introduced to direct marketing. Now I conference with the client about the project strategy, goals, channels, target market, offer being made and call to action. Then I write the copy. The message gets designed. The message is distributed online or off. I find out how many people got it, how many responded and, over time, how many of those respondents end up making a purchase. My clients know the ROI of every project I write for them and, ultimately, the lifetime value of every customer the campaign generated.

Unfortunately, too many of my B2B clients (who shall remain nameless) are still marketing in the dark. That means they do not have any processes in place to track what is and is not working and what it all costs. Here’s a short list of the critical items B2B marketers should have a system in place to track:

• Source of every lead — Because of cross-channel leakage, it’s pretty difficult to identify the channel that generated the lead unless the channel itself has a built-in tracking mechanism such as registrations, click thrus, reply devices, downloads, etc. To maximize the accuracy of this tracking, it’s essential that marketers apply the majority of their spending to trackable channels. Unfortunately, marketers who sell through resellers have an entirely different set of problems when trying to track leads to marketing efforts — a subject I hope to address in the future.
• Cost-per-lead of every campaign by channel — Looking only at the number of leads generated is misleading. Looking only at the cost of the channel is misleading. The cost-per-lead is essential to know, as generating qualified leads at a lower cost is the best way to get more results out of a marketing budget.
• Cost-per-sale and lifetime value — Leads must be tracked through the buying cycle all the way to the initial sale, then tracked for the lifetime of the customer. Then, and only then, can marketers measure the true success of their efforts.

Not only will this tracking information allow marketing to identify where to spend its time and money, but it also will ensure that marketing can properly justify its budget to business management and prevent losing it.

Whether you record critical tracking information using one of the hundreds of marketing automation programs available or with something as simple as a spreadsheet, what you know about how your marketing is working is the key to making your marketing work better.

Tracking social media traffic has value, of course, and can be done a number of ways, according to Richard Calentine on his Web Analytics Guy’s Blog. This approach tracks visitors and the sources of that traffic but does not follow an individual lead from acquisition to close. Which is why the above musts are the only direct route to improving marketing costs and effectiveness — and it can’t be done in the dark.

Is planning the key to success in a slow economy?

It was my pleasure to provide a few hours of volunteer time for the annual Make-A-Wish Tuna Challenge in San Diego last Sunday. This big fishing tournament included prizes, a silent auction with hundreds of gifts, a high-priced live auction, a raffle, a captain’s dinner, a Sunday meal of fresh cooked fish, and fun for all who attended. The grand raffle prize was a $65,000 Defiance 220 NT fishing boat.

I do not yet know how much money was raised this past weekend, but in 2008 the event contributed $310,000 to the San Diego Make-A-Wish Foundation.

The incredible volunteers who put this fundraiser together every year will start working on next year’s event immediately. That’s how much planning and effort goes into this huge, well-coordinated weekend.

What works for a charity event works in the B2B marketing world as well. A comprehensive short- and long-term marketing plan delivers many valuable advantages:

• Ensures that everything that marketing does fully supports business strategy and goals
• Controls costs by preventing spur-of-the-moment spending
• Adds efficiency and focus to marketing efforts
• Prevents the mistakes and cost overruns of rushed projects
• Sets goals and metrics that contribute to better marketing intelligence

In the B2B world, budgets and jobs have been cut, and those remaining in the marketing department are so overworked they don’t have a moment to take on another task. The idea of spending any time planning may seem impossible, yet these are the times when planning is even more critical. And like the Tuna Challenge, the big payoff at the end will be worth it.

Being a B2B marketing clod leads to a better bottom line.

A friend on Facebook recently posted this wonderful quote by Charles McCabe:

“Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art.”

If we’re talking about religion or politics, I’m all for opinions. I have a few of my own. But if we’re talking about direct marketing, I’d rather be the clod with the facts.

Direct marketing (an approach that should be commanding the majority of B2B marketing budgets) is not an art. It is a discipline built on tested and proven tactics that, if followed properly, will increase the effectiveness and measurability of all marketing efforts — including email, Web sites, SEM, direct mail, content syndication, and telemarketing.

Believe it or not, I still come across marketing directors who do not understand what direct marketing is all about. Wikipedia gives a pretty accurate description; however, my standard explanation is as follows:

Advertising is designed to change attitude.

Direct Marketing is designed to change behavior. Getting people to respond to an offer, to call, to click through, to register — it’s all behavior-based marketing.

You creative folks out there are welcome to design breakthrough ads, branding messages, memorable imaging, and award-winning campaigns. The ONLY focus of direct marketers should be to use the techniques that have been proven to put more revenue on the bottom line.

I’m not saying that direct marketing can’t support the brand. But if the marketing approach puts the brand before the strategy, it’s not direct marketing, and it won’t maximize performance.

That’s why I’d rather be the clod. Because, in direct marketing, “having the facts” is everything.

Boost B2B lead gen. performance by resurrecting the dead.

Mark Twain’s response when learning that his obituary had been published in the New York Journal is the now-famous quote “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” According to The Phrase Finder, “Mistaken publications of obituaries aren’t as rare as you might expect.” So it is for direct mail marketing.

Conducting a search on Google using the phrase “direct mail is dead” turns up 2,970,000 hits. Of course, not all of the articles agree that direct mail is dead, but many of them clearly make this claim.

Thank heaven for Hallie Mummert, editor in chief of Target Marketing. Her Editor’s Note in the September 2009 issue says exactly what I’ve wanted to say for a long time. Not only does she share details on the current and projected use of direct mail, but she puts a little reality into the discussion by recalling that “Television did not kill radio. Direct mail did not kill newspapers. TiVo did not kill television ads. Paid search did not kill e-mail. And e-mail will not kill direct mail. New marketing avenues might fragment marketing budgets, but so far only regulation and obsolete technology like the Federal Communications Commission’s Do Not Fax law and the fax machine itself have had the power to essentially shut down a medium.”

Why should we B2B marketers care about a medium largely perceived as a consumer marketing channel? Because direct mail works very well in the B2B world for many reasons. Here are just a few:

1. The best e-mail lists reach only 20% to 30% of the business marketplace. With direct mail you can reach more than 90%.
2. Direct mail lists allow you to target your prospects more accurately by industry, business size and title.
3. Not only do direct mail lists provide more data, but the data is often more accurate. For instance, lists of subscribers to specific vertical publications are more accurate and up-to-date.
4. Known B2B marketers still use direct mail in their marketing mix because it is a cost-effective lead generation tool. In fact, the Who’s Mailing What service, compiled by Inside Direct Mail, shows thousands of B2B marketers using the mail. Here is a small sampling of names you might recognize: SAP, Citrix, VeriSign, Novell, Sage, Epicor, Cisco Systems, Adobe, PeopleSoft, Avaya, Proxima, McAfee, Corel, Broderbund, BEA, Symantec and hundreds of others.
5. With everyone thinking the medium is dead and not using the channel, your message will truly stand out.
6. Because the monetary value of each new B2B customer is typically in the five- to six-figure range, the initial cost necessary to generate that lead is well worth it.

Once a lead is generated, it is effective to use e-mail for nurturing. But for profitable, productive lead generation, it may be time to resurrect the dead.

Addition on January 29, 2010

More stories about the importance and value of B2B direct mail appear daily. Here’s a link to the Multichannel Marketing for B2B Marketers blog and their article Direct Mail: The Comeback Kid. Read it now and learn how “Per Annum, a small firm specializing in corporate gifts, eliminated its annual direct mailing last year, and suffered a 25% drop in orders.”

How to boost B2B content downloads.

Like most marketers these days, I have opted into sites that provide regular access to articles, white papers, reports, surveys and Webcasts that, hopefully, will make me better at my job.

Many of these are marketing sites (Target Marketing, MarketingProfs, Marketing Sherpa, Ziff Davis eSeminars, DM News, BtoB, eMarketer and more). Then, because most of the clients I serve are technology companies, I try to keep up with that world as well (Information Week, Web Buyers Guide, IThound, CIO and IDG Connect, to name a few).

With all these emails swirling into my inbox every day, I’m exposed to invites to review hundreds of pieces of content every day — and so are your prospects. Will they take the time to read your marketing intro or abstract and download your content? Only if the headline catches their eye and their imagination.

To be effective, content headlines need to instantly communicate what the piece contains. If your headlines read more like these real-life examples, then you may be diminishing interest in what you have to offer:

• “Unified Communications and Process Automation Combine to Maximize ROI”
• “Managed data centre operating IT infrastructures successfully using innovative services”
• “Cover Your Assets with Desktop Managed Services”
• “Transforming Data Into Relevance and ROI”
• “How Virtualization Changes IT Costs”
• “Don’t let CRM push you over the edge: how to build your business case”

I’m sure the people who wrote these felt that they represented the content very nicely. And they may have. But these headlines are mushy. They provide no intrigue, no big promise, no revelations, no specifics. For example, “How Virtualization Changes IT Costs” doesn’t tell me if the change is positive or negative. Heck, for all I know “Virtualization” could be really expensive. Something like “5 Ways Virtualization Cuts IT Costs” is a clear, strong and instantly understood title.

As I stated in an earlier post — “Great B2B marketing demands you do your prospects’ thinking for them”– you don’t want your prospects to have to think, you want them to react to your message, or in this case, your content title.

Strong titles should instantly communicate a clear picture of what the content contains, as these examples do:

• “Enterprise VoIP PBX: What to Know Before You Buy”
• “4 Things Your Anti-Virus Should Do, but Doesn’t”
• “20 Questions for Smart Business Decisions”
• “How to Defend Your Network Against New Hacker Tactics”
• “Top 5 IT Budget Killers: What You Need to Know”

With just a few active words, your content can move past sounding like another ho-hum white paper and become information your prospective customer sees as a “must read.” So I recommend you pay as much attention to your title as you do your content. It will make a difference.

Is there a “Tweet smell of success” in the real B2B world?

Back in the days of the now-notorious dot.com boom and crash, I came across a phenomenon that baffled me. I was called in to help market a start-up company (weren’t they all start-ups in those days?) offering online backup services — free. In the course of our first strategy session I asked about their business plan for making money.

The answer? They didn’t have one. Like a few companies had done before them, they would use the free service to generate millions of users, then have the company bought and make lots of money in the process. That’s not a plan, that’s a hope and a prayer.

This is one of the reasons I am hesitant to jump into the world of social media. OK, I admit to being a control freak — and social media is hard to control — but it seems a little too much like branding to me and not enough like marketing. Where is the offer? Where is the call to action?

I recognize that services like LinkedIn and Twitter do provide excellent platforms for exchanging ideas. And in the long run, the contacts made through those services may lead to paid business. But in the real world, a business needs to make money and make it now.

Jim Sterne explains the reality beautifully in “Five Ways to Measure Social Media” which appeared in MediaPost’s Online Metrics Insider. His elaboration on these points is well worth reading, as it is a powerful picture into how people do or do not interact with the social media (or any medium, for that matter).

Here is an overview of his five points:
1. Did they get the chance? (to read it, that is)
2. Did they get the message?
3. Did they get the urge to repeat it?
4. Did they get a good feeling about it?
5. Did they get out their wallets?

His point? Social media may be a good place to spread the word about a company, but, as Jim says, “Let’s not forget that it’s about doing business in the end.”