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.

To increase B2B marketing response, increase response options.

Many of the best practices I promote for use in email nurturing campaigns, on Web sites, and in offer content come from my direct mail marketing experience. One such practice has been proven effective over and over and over — including a mail-back reply device.

In a direct mail marketing communication, 20% of the replies ALWAYS come from the reply device if there is one. This is true even if the mailing is going to titles that spend their lives online such as CIOs and other top IT management.

Why does this work? Because every person likes to do things their own way. By giving prospects more ways to respond, marketers increase the chances that people will find the response avenue that meets their personal style.

What does this mean to B2B marketers?

Marketers conducting lead generation or nurturing campaigns by offering free informational content should include their phone number and an email address to give the prospect the option to interact with the company making the offer. This is important because prospects that are already researching solutions and are further along in the buying cycle may have other questions and may want to engage with someone at the same time the offer is accepted. That’s why phone numbers and email addresses must be prominent on Web sites, in Webinar invites, on trade show booth invites and all other marketing communications.

Many marketers may respond that the prospect can just go to the Web site to find the contact info. But why make it MORE difficult for a prospective customer to respond?

Putting phone numbers and email addresses on sites that mass market — or on many types of e-commerce sites — may not make sense. But for businesses selling complex, high-ticket items with a long buying cycle, it is a necessity if those businesses want to increase response to their marketing.

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.

Does your Website fail to deliver these 3 basics?

Helping a newly formed B2B company create their first Website spurred me to visit dozens of sites in search of examples I could show them from their industry that follow best practices.

In the process, I made a sad discovery. Not one followed what I know are the most basic rules of good Web design.

The rules (that is — what should be on the page and where) are the ones I learned from Amy Africa of EightbyEight. Her firm specializes in helping e-commerce companies maximize online sales. They have conducted hundreds of hours of research that monitors how people’s eyes move through a Web page, how they navigate, and even how their pulse reacts to what they see. The rules are built on the results of this research.

The way people interact with Websites does not change even if the site is a B2B company with no e-commerce involved (although Amy has reported that experienced visitors interact somewhat differently from novices).

A Website is important. It should be a strong part of every company’s integrated marketing program. It is often the first place prospective customers go to find out if the company that has contacted them or that they’ve heard about is real and legitimate. Companies conduct Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Search Engine Marketing (SEM) for the sole purpose of driving prospects to their site.

But what does the viewer experience at most sites? Hard work and confusion. What visitors want is information that they can gain without effort. So here are just the very basic rules for a B2B company to make its Website a strong player in its integrated marketing programs:

Rule #1:
The first 50 words of copy on the landing page must convey what the company, service, or product is about and hopefully its unique selling advantage. The page must instantly answer the question “Where am I?” Pages with no written message but only links to other pages force visitors to work to find answers to this question. Visitors should never be made to work.

Rule #2:
Navigation must be clear and instantly imply what kind of information will be found on the linked pages. If the navigation says “Services,” the page had better list the services available from the company. Marketers should look at their navigation and make sure it is clear and correct.

Rule #3:
Every page must have at least one call-to-action. Just like a meeting with a sales person, after prospects learn something, you must ask them to do something. The call-to-action can be “Learn more,” “Contact us now,” “Download FREE content,” “Request a bid” or many other options. A Website is no different from any other B2B marketing effort. It needs to respond to the prospect’s inquiry of “What’s in it for me,” then get the prospect to act.

There are, of course, dozens of other Website best practices. However, if B2B marketers can achieve just these three, they’ll be putting their site way ahead of most others.

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.

Smart B2B marketing calls to action for 2010.

This morning, reviewing dozens of marketing blogs, I was overwhelmed with post after post about social media. I became worried that marketers were forgetting the channels that got us where we are today.

That’s why I was delighted to see Bill Gadless of B2B Web Strategy pass along advice from Jim Logan in “Try adding a call to action to the end of your white papers.”

Business buyers who are purchasing products and services do not want to be “sold” by high-pressure messages. That’s why social media is working. It’s also why today’s most consistently effective lead generation messaging identifies a challenge that prospects may be facing and offers a free white paper, checklist, guide, case study or other content that allows them to learn about ways to meet their challenge. But as soft as this approach may appear, once a lead is generated, every additional contact made should be followed by a new offer and a new call to action.

The suggestion in Bill’s blog is that the call to action could involve inviting leads to pass the content along to an associate or colleague, asking them to register for a newsletter or other subscription or inviting the reader to contact the business for a discussion.

These are all good suggestions. But to apply these calls to action randomly is not a good strategy. The fact is, there are specific stages in the buying cycle of a complex sale and the call to action or offer made should match the prospect’s place in the cycle.

As covered in Russell Kern’s guide “Direct Marketing’s Five Biggest Hurdles (And How to Get Over Them),” there are four stages in the buying cycle: Interest, Consideration, Evaluation, and Purchase.

As you can see, Mr. Kern’s examples — taken straight from his guide — involve matching the correct content offer to the prospect’s stage in the buying cycle. This approach is critical to enhancing the relationship with prospects and moving them forward to a purchase. Making mismatched call-to-action offers leads to email opt-outs.

There’s one thing that social media cannot do well and that is to “predictably” fill the sales pipeline and then — in a controlled manner — nurture leads until they are ready to be handed off to sales. Adding a call to action to every contact is a proven and effective marketing nurturing approach and businesses selling complex products can rarely succeed without it.

Just like mom told you… “Say the magic words.”

How many truly great television commercials have you seen in your life? I can probably count on one hand the ones I judge as great. Most television commercials give credence to a favorite – but slightly altered – quote by P.T. Barnum: “You will never go broke underestimating the taste of the American public.” Originally he used the word “intelligence.”

The most dismal television commercials are those that show a person doing something really stupid, making the person appear stupid. Then the ad shows that person buying the product being advertised. My take-away from the commercial is that only stupid people buy this product. I’m not stupid, so I won’t be buying this product.

Maybe they feel they can get away with that approach because most commercials, after all, are just advertising. TV advertising, in particular, is designed to change attitude while attempting to entertain. Direct marketing, on the other hand, is designed to change behavior. The big difference is that most brand advertising has no call to action. The sad fact is, however, that a frightening amount of direct marketing I see has no clear call to action either.

Your prospects are not stupid, but that doesn’t mean they are able to instantly guess what you want them to do.

• Do you want them to download your white paper? Say it.

Download your copy of “5 Ways to Survive and Thrive in Today’s Economy” now.

• Do you want them to opt in for your eNewsletter? Say it.

Sign up now for critical alerts via email.

• Do you want them to call for a personal assessment? Say it.

Call now for your personal assessment of your disaster readiness.

• Do you want them to sign up for your upcoming Webinar? Say it.

Register now to hear industry analyst Robert Smith reveal this new technology.

Not only do you have to tell them what you want them to do, but you have to tell them when you want them to do it. “Now” or “Today” are magic words in marketing. Do they make a difference? Companies in the direct marketing business have tested this and found that the addition of the words “Now” and “Today” do make a difference in response.

So just like you were told as a child to say “please” and “thank you,” the words “Now” and “Today” are a marketer’s magic words.