B2B Marketing to Men vs. Women

Is it politically correct to talk about the differences in B2B marketing to men vs. women? Maybe not, but working with a new client this past week revealed a bit of the reality related to that issue.

It all started with the client implementing the proven, accepted best practice in direct marketing that involves including an offer tied to an expiration date or deadline.

The purpose of employing this tactic is to overcome natural human inertia. Here’s how it works.

A prospect, customer or member receives a direct marketing email, direct mail piece, or even sees an eye-catching Google™ Search Engine Marketing Ad. But because of today’s over-the-top workloads and time demands, these folks put off responding to the message by thinking, “This looks interesting. I’ll do it later.”

The offer is the device that stops that thought and says, “You must respond now or this inviting ‘extra bonus’ will go away.”

Making an offer to generate quick action is effective with both businessmen and businesswomen. The difference lies in which offers work with men and which are attractive to women.

Trying to get a selected target to participate in an Industry Trend survey, marketers are safe with something like, “The first 200 to complete the survey receive an Amazon.com gift card.” This allows respondents to choose the gift that appeals to each one personally — regardless of gender.

My client, a business products company whose market is 75% female, was using an offer to try to increase the size of each purchase. They tested two offers:

• Order $200 or more and get free shipping

vs.

• Order $200 or more and receive a certificate for a Free Box of Name-Brand Chocolates

The men responded to the free shipping. The women chose the reverse — in overwhelming numbers.

What this tells B2B marketers is that, when building in-house prospecting lists or even populating a CRM program, it’s important to include a field for gender. That’s because there may be times in the marketing process when knowing the gender of your prospects could make a huge difference in the response to your campaigns.

What B2B marketers can learn from TV ads.

There are actually a few people out there who do not have a single television set in their home. I have a lot of admiration for these people. Unfortunately, I’m not one of them. I do my part as a viewer of American television.

These days, with the advent of personal video recorders (PVRs), a growing number of TV viewers like me are fast forwarding through the commercials in the shows we’ve taped. But, once in a while, I do catch a live broadcast and get a bit caught up on what Madison Avenue has been up to.

I am actually very critical of 90% of the ads I see on television, but last night I saw a truly great ad.

The live-action story portrays a father leaning into the passenger side window of an automobile. He is giving last-minute good-driving reminders to his daughter who is in the driver’s seat. The daughter is a small child. In spite of not being tall enough to see out the window, she seems anxious to get the conversation over with so she can get going. After assuring her father that she will follow his instructions, he hands her the car keys. At that point, of course, the camera moves again to the daughter and you see that she’s a teenager of driving age. It’s then you learn that the car is a Subaru.

What does this beautifully done ad communicate? It says that fathers always see their daughters as little girls and that Subaru is a car fathers can trust to be safe enough for their daughters.

It’s what advertising should be, and it illustrates a good lesson for B2B marketers. That is, it illustrates the most important factor in B2B marketing programs, strategies and messaging:

Always see the environment and the product being sold through the customer’s eyes. It’s the only point of view that makes it possible to truly connect with them.

Four Rules for Communicating with the “Crazy-Busy Prospect”

The title of a recent blog post by Brian Carroll, “Learn the New Rules for Selling to Crazy-Busy Prospects,” got my attention.

In this post he invites his readers to a complimentary Webinar on Thursday, June 24 at 2:00 PM CST (that’s tomorrow) featuring Jill Konrath, author of “SNAP Selling: Speed Up Sales and Win More Business with Today’s Frazzled Customers (May 2010).” I’m sure it will be a valuable and informative event.

The focus of Brian’s blog and expertise which he shares on B2B Lead Generation is B2B selling and the complex sale. It’s an important topic.

But the title of his post hit me for a different area of marketing.

For marketing to generate a lead — or nurture one — we need to “communicate” with prospects in writing. Whether it’s an email, a direct mail letter, a product brochure, Web site, data sheet or any other communication, we must remember that the folks reading our B2B communication are crazy-busy.

How do we communicate in writing with these folks? I follow these four tried-and-true rules:

1. Make sure the reader/prospect gets the entire message by reading only the headlines and subheads, without having to read a word of body copy. A quick scan of the message should communicate the topic, big benefit(s) and the call to action.

2. Never write any paragraph, anywhere, that is longer than four lines.

3. Communicate the message as quickly as possible. The crazy-busy don’t have time to read, and if the message looks long and wordy, they’ll stop reading it and move on. Email marketing messages should be 250 words or shorter. Direct mail letters should fit on one page.

4. Always include a strong, clear prominent call to action. All communication, including Web pages, must tell the reader/prospect exactly what they are to do and when they are to do it. Yes, adding the words “now” or “today” makes a difference.

The crazy-busy don’t have time to wade through complex messaging. To reach this group, marketers should always keep B2B communications short, clear and direct.

20 years of marketing know-how summarized in 3 words

Some of us in marketing still attend live ” yes, live” presentations in spite of the glut of informational Webinars we can watch from our offices with no expense and no travel time. But my outing last week to the San Diego Direct Marketing Association’s luncheon was well worth both.

The presenter was Douglas Walker, author of “A-ha! PERFORMANCE: Building & Managing A Self-Motivated Workforce.” He is a speaker, trainer, executive coach and human capital management consultant, so his focus is human nature and workforce motivation, not marketing.

Yet, he was able to put the elements necessary for successful B2B marketing (and sales) into just 3 simple words “clarity, attainability and payoff.”

Here’s what these words mean to B2B marketers:

Clarity: Quickly and clearly communicate what you are offering and how to get it.
Example: Click here to register for the 3-hour Executive Briefing on March 3, 2010

Attainability: Communicate what is needed to get it “time, money, effort, etc.
Example: Complimentary, just 3 hours of your time.

Payoff: Communicate what attendees will get by asking for it.
Example: Learn how to make your operation more flexible, agile and competitive.

These 3 points are also what is involved in converting leads to sales. Buyers must know what they are getting, that they can afford it, that it can be implemented in their operation, and what they will gain by using the product or service.

The information is not new, but it’s always a bit startling to have the essence of one’s field described so accurately, yet so simply.

Marketers, whether new to the field or old-timers, should make sure that if we do nothing else, we remember these 3 words: clarity, attainability and payoff.

Three Questions All B2B Marketing Should Answer in Eight Seconds or Less

B2B marketers who are interested in how to improve the performance of their email lead generation and nurturing will find no dearth of posts, white papers, studies, and reports on the subject. Many are excellent and informative.

But this morning Alex Madison and Lisa Harmon, posting for Media Post’s Email Insider, pared the insight and best practices down to three simple steps: “Three Questions Your Email Should Answer In Eight Seconds Or Less.”

Their focus is on emailing subscribers, but their advice applies to all B2B email marketing.

1. What is this email about?
2. Why should the prospect, customer, subscriber care about it?
3. What should they do about it?

The post then goes on to give examples of each of these important points in different types of email marketing messages.

Madison and Harmon state that “subscribers spend just eight seconds on most messages before clicking through or navigating away.” That’s why it’s so critical that prospects and customers quickly understand what is being offered and what they can do to get it.

What Madison and Harmon have presented, however, goes way beyond email marketing. It’s advice that should be applied universally to B2B marketing messages in all channels — direct mail marketing, banners and search engine advertising, print advertising, and yes, even social media.

Business buyers are busy. They don’t want to be wooed or romanced. They want information and they want it fast. By following Madison and Harmon’s advice, B2B marketers can improve the performance of ALL their marketing efforts.

Why some B2B companies look lazy or careless.

Being a wordsmith, I am especially attracted to creative uses of words (puns, for example), books about proper grammar and punctuation (Eats Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss is a favorite), histories of language, and more. That’s why you’ll find me recording and watching every Monday-night Jay Leno Tonight Show.

Monday is the night that includes the weekly feature “Headlines.” It shows endless examples, sent in by viewers, of amusing, but unplanned, language and spelling errors in newspapers, advertising, menus, and other printed materials.

On the Tonight Show, these errors are humorous. On a B2B Web site or in professional marketing materials, they are not funny at all. Spelling errors, punctuation errors, verb-usage errors, and others make the company being marketed look lazy or careless.

Who would want to do business with a company like that?

Professional B2B marketers who care about the image their company projects will make sure that every word that goes out from their company gets proofed before the material is posted or distributed.

If companies have an internal resource who is good at proofreading and has the time, that’s great. If not, proofreading how-tos and resources are everywhere online. For example, Virginia Tech and Purdue offer quick online guides to better proofreading. You can search and find dozens of professional services such as The Proofreaders. Marketers can ask for referrals to proofreaders. A colleague referred a freelance proofreader to me who reviews and corrects everything I write before it goes to my clients.

Proofreading is a very important step in the marketing process. Companies who care about their brand, their positioning, and their image will make sure all their company communications use proper grammar and correct spelling. They are as important as the message itself.

“We” may be sabotaging your B2B marketing.

Everyone can write, or so states Yonatan Maisel in his Monday blog “Release Your Innate Business-Shakespeare: How and Why Writing is the Most Indispensable Tool in the Business Arsenal.” He aptly points out that this is not true of any profession other than writing — airline pilot, attorney, brain surgeon, plumber.

Not all writing, however, is the same.

Business people who are very good at communicating on paper often do not write direct, compelling, result-generating B2B marketing messages. This is plainly evident on many B2B Web sites, marketing emails, direct mail letters, product brochures, and other B2B marketing messages. The copy reads well. It uses good grammar and it is understandable.

What the copy does not do is employ all the tactics that have proven to generate a response, a click thru, a phone call, or a download.

If B2B marketers want to quickly determine if their messaging is not living up to best practices, all they need do is scan their copy for the word “we.” The appearance of the word “we” instantly says, “This company cares more about its name and reputation than it does about serving its customers.”

Marketers may not think that about the company they work for at all. But the moment they use the word “we” in the marketing copy, they project that self-focused image.

It is important to include a credibility statement in marketing messages — number of years in business, customers served, testimonials, etc. — but not until after the prospect has presumably been convinced that the product being sold or the offer being made has value, and never in the opening sentence.

So, I advise marketers to look for the word “we” on their Web sites, in their emails, direct mail, brochures, etc. If they see it, it’s time for a rewrite.

The best place to start all B2B marketing efforts.

There’s a very important place marketers have to be when conducting B2B marketing or selling B2B products or services. It’s not in the office. It’s not at a trade show. It’s not at a networking event, and it’s not even on the golf course. It’s inside a prospect’s mind.

Whenever I write marketing copy I imagine the prospective buyer and try to understand where he or she might be sitting when reading what I am writing. I envision the person on the job, interacting with others, agonizing over problems or barriers that my client’s product or service can solve. With this in mind, I can formulate copy that, I hope, will capture their attention and make them feel the message is personal to them.

It’s not enough to know which benefits and features will solve the challenges faced by prospective customers. B2B marketers must also know how and why human beings make buying decisions.

Amy Africa of Eight-by-Eight, in her recent QLOG “Do You Remember Your First Kiss?” begins a series addressing just that. Her focus is ecommerce Web sites, but her insight also has value for B2B marketers selling high-end, complex products or services.

Then last week a marketing organization of which I am a member gave a presentation covering this same point. It explained how the context of what you say about your product or service must fit with the way the human brain needs to receive the information.

It’s all about getting into the minds of your prospects by understanding not only what they need but also how their minds work. So here are 4 basic human-thinking practices I’ve learned over the years that marketers might want to keep in mind before communicating with prospects about their products or services:

1. Minds resist change and like the familiar – B2B marketing conversations should begin from where the prospect’s mind is now, not where you want it to be. A very obvious example is matching the case studies you provide to the prospect company’s industry and size. Another area in which this point works well is in formulating SEM ads. Those ads should speak to the solution the prospect is using now and not the solution you’re trying to sell them.
2. Minds need clear-cut distinctions — The best way to show the size of a very small product is to show a picture of the item next to something everyone knows and uses. Product competitive advantages should be instantly understood.
3. Minds need to be told what to do –”Click Here Now,” “Call Now,” “Start Your FREE Trial Now,” “Download Now” may seem boring and obvious. But B2B marketers cannot expect prospects to think or to guess. A clear, strong call-to-action in marketing materials always produces a higher response.
4. Minds selectively retain information — Following up a B2B lead-generation email, direct mail or other communication with a phone call is a strong interactive-marketing approach. But the call must be made in 5 days or less. After that, most of today’s overworked prospects will have no recollection of the previous communication.

Focusing your marketing approaches and sales pitches on how the human mind works and how it responds to new information is the key to gaining attention, being heard and closing sales. So before marketers start, they need to take a little trip inside their prospect’s minds.

Are your B2B marketing messages boring?

The key article in the December issue of Target Marketing Magazine, entitled “Big Ideas,” features experts predicting marketing trends for 2010. The information highlights many important issues, including integrated customer marketing, privacy issues, research, the continued rise of data and more.

But the trend I’d like to comment on is the one discussed by Nick Moore, Executive Vice President and Chief Creative Officer at Wunderman. Founded in 1958, Wunderman is one of today’s most respected direct marketing agencies. Mr. Moore perfectly defines today’s advertising ‘sensory overload’ with the dramatic image of “standing in Times Square surrounded by flashing lights and advertisements, bombarded by shouts from street vendors and buskers, watching traffic and readying to cross the street, all while trying to make a cell phone call.”

This is the environment in which today’s marketers must get attention. His advice is even more profound. “We are in a creative business. Data alone merely gets you to the right place at the right time. But if you say something boring, nobody is going to listen to you.”

His focus, of course, is consumers. Yet his point affects B2B marketers as well.

Back in April of 2009 I wrote a post titled “Not a creative bone in your body? That’s good news,” that advised B2B marketers not to try for creativity in their communications. But Nick Moore is right — in this crowded environment, messages can’t be boring.

So here are two tips on how B2B marketers can take the ‘boring’ out of their marketing communications:

1. Add energy: Marketing messages can come off as matter-of-fact or they can exude excitement, enthusiasm and energy. For example: An upcoming Webinar can ‘deliver the most valuable information you’ll learn this year.’ A white paper that talks about network security could be presented as dramatic and intriguing: ‘This white paper reveals the secret steps leading CIOs take to maximize network security.’ By being excited about what is being offered, prospects will get excited about it, too.
2. Make it about them: No matter how much a company thinks about itself or its product, marketing copy that focuses on those subjects is boring. Messages that focus on the challenges an individual prospect title faces — and how quickly, easily or cost-effectively that challenge can be met — is exciting. Why? Because it’s about them and the information has value. If B2B marketing targets the right person and focuses the message on the issues that person faces every day, the message will not be boring.

Before starting a B2B marketing program, it’s vital to conduct thorough and accurate data analysis and build an accurate profile of best prospective customers, then to choose the channels that best reach those prospects. Once you do, however, it’s just as important to follow Nick Moore’s advice and not be boring.

B2B marketers should be scared about doing the wrong things.

The neighborhood I live in does not have any young children in it. Although a few houses have put up a ghost or pumpkin here and there, I am not immersed in the celebration of Halloween, nor do I have a house full of candy (which is a good thing).

Unlike my colleague Casey Hibbard, of “Stories That Sell,” an expert on the creation and use of case studies, I didn’t think about writing a blog post related to this ancient holiday. Her article, “5 Ways Case Studies Can SCARE off Prospects” not only presents the major “no-nos” of case studies but her advice perfectly parallels what could scare off prospects in ANY lead generation message. Here are her points that I have translated into how a marketing approach can scare prospects off before they even get to the case study.

DO NOT:

1. Make it all about you.
   Prospects don’t care about the company offering the product until they are ready to evaluate it and make a buying decision. Until then what prospects want to know is “what’s in it for me.”
2. Be ugly.
   Ugly is in the eye of the beholder, but in marketing the message should be presented (online or offline) with a look that reflects the company’s quality and positioning. If the company’s unique selling proposition (USP) is low cost, then the design should be clean and basic. Copy should not say “low cost” and appear high-end.
3. Target the wrong audience.
   As my other blog entry — entitled “Content by any other name would smell as sweet” — explains, the accuracy of reaching the target market can affect marketing results by 200%. Targeting is everything. Marketers should actually focus the majority of their efforts on this critical element.
4. Ramble.
   This is true in all communication. If prospects can’t quickly and easily fly through the message, most of them won’t take the time to struggle through it.
5. Make it impossible to skim.
   One of the most important rules in presenting marketing messages is to assume that your prospect will not read one word of body copy. If the core of the message cannot be gleaned from reading the headlines and subheads, it will affect response no matter what the content says.

Marketers should read Casey’s article to see how these important points apply to case studies. Then put these rules to work in EVERYTHING they do.