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.

My 5 favorite B2B marketing numbers.

Everyone, except perhaps the creative folks in advertising agencies, knows that marketing is a numbers game. Numbers such as click-thrus, cost-per-lead, cost-per-sale and ROI dominate the landscape of marketing discussions.

I like numbers. They measure the real market success (or failure) of B2B marketing campaigns, they support the argument for following best marketing practices, and they give marketers real insight into the cost and potential value of various marketing approaches.

So, it makes sense to share my 5 favorite numbers to help other marketers experience the confidence and the joy that numbers bring to the strategic process. I didn’t devise these numbers. But after years of knowing them, I cannot honestly remember whose testing and research discovered them in the first place. They are:

1. The value of following up with leads immediately: 88% of people are happy to hear from the B2B vendor within 24 hours of downloading informational content. Waiting 96 hours drops that percentage to the 40s.
2. The reason nurturing leads is critical in maximizing sales: 45% of new leads generated will buy from someone in the industry category within 12 months.
3. One big argument for integrated outbound marketing: Qualified B2B direct mail lists consistently provide 60% more records, business profiles and demographics than email marketing lists.
4. Making sure the results of marketing tests are statistically valid: When testing one list or channel against another, the results of the test can be considered minimally statistically valid only if the response to each individual test cell is 85 responses or higher.
5. Where to focus efforts in B2B marketing campaigns: Out of 100%, the elements that affect the outcome of a B2B marketing campaign carry the following weights List/Media/Data = 40%, Offer = 30%, Design = 15% and Copy = 15%.

Marketers building strategies and plans for the remainder of the year and beyond should let the numbers be their guide.

3 things B2B marketers can learn from retailers.

It has been said that for a retail business to be successful, it must focus on three things: location, location, and location. B2B marketers also have three important areas of focus to achieve success: target, target, and target.

Reaching the most qualified companies and titles is still the most important element in every outbound B2B marketing campaign. The best way to identify that target is to build a profile of best customers and apply that profile against the marketing lists (email or mail) selected for outbound campaigns.

Best customers are those who meet most of the following criteria:

1. Lifetime Value: Generated the greatest revenue.
2. Number of Products and Services Purchased: Purchased the most products and the most profitable products.
3. Loyalty: Remained customers the longest.
4. Service Effort: Do not require excessive levels of service or support.

Once the above customers are identified, the next step is to profile them by the following identifiable demographics, which can be applied to available mail and some email marketing lists:

• Industry
• Size by number of employees and/or annual sales
• Number of locations
• Title of decision-maker or main contact
• SIC (Standard Industrial Code) Current systems in place (if applicable to the product being sold)

If marketers do not have that kind of detail on their customers, firms such as Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) can append that data to the customer file for a fee.

Using a profile to define what markets, companies, titles and other criteria to pursue should result in attracting more qualified leads that might close faster and ultimately be more profitable customers. It’s an important step in building strategic B2B marketing plans.

One caveat, however: Marketers should remember that their profile of best customers could be a “self-fulfilling prophecy.” That is, the profile may show only those industries, titles, company sizes and other criteria that they have targeted in the past. It may or may not reflect the universe of opportunities.

If the marketing of a wheelchair lift has always been directed at schools, the profile will show a certain size or type of school as its best customer. In this case, marketing has no way of knowing if office building developers would not be a better “best customer,” since that market is not in the database from which the profile is built.

So, profiling a company’s best customers is a smart practice. But do it knowing that current best customers may or may not reflect the possible best customers.

If B2B marketers do nothing else, they should follow these 9 rules.

The Sales Lead Management Association recently invited its members to vote for the 50 Most Influential Sales Lead Management Professionals. Jim Obermayer, host and author on the Association’s blog, has been conducting a series of interviews, each featuring one of the “winners.”

As a member of the Association and subscriber to its blog, I have been reading and learning from each interview. Recent interviewee Joe Lethert of Perfomark gave two answers that were so on-target for B2B marketing best practices that I feel they are worth sharing.

In the area of lead generation, when asked, “Which 4 basic skills or process steps do you recommend,” he answered . . .

1. “Start with a great database – it will reduce your costs by as much as 50%. If you don’t have one, build it.
2. Shoot for depth in your profiles. People buy from us not for what they know about us, but for what we know about them.
3. Build a comprehensive nurturing program based on delivering only relevant data, at the right time in the buying process, in the prospects’ preferred media, and all based on the prospects’ profile data.
4. Measure everything. Testing and refining should grow your ROI by 10%+ per year even if you’re already an industry leader.”

In the area of lead nurturing, when asked, “If someone wants to nurture sales inquiries, what process would you recommend?” he answered . . .

1. “Become a trusted source of reliable data. Most buyers will not want to engage with sales until they have done their due diligence.
2. All content must be relative to the prospect’s needs, which should be specifically defined in your database.
3. All interaction should be appropriate to the stage in the buying cycle for that individual prospect.
4. Measure the effectiveness of timing, message, offer and media for each type of prospect.
5. Do not buy into the perfect process. Keep continually improving it.”

This isn’t new advice. I and other B2B marketing bloggers have shared this information many times in many forms. But his advice is so direct, so concise and so well-said that I would advise B2B marketers to print it out and use it as a daily reminder to focus on these processes, which have proven to make lead generation and nurturing efforts successful and profitable.

My “duh” moment on the vital need for both inbound AND outbound B2B marketing.

A colleague of mine who is a commission salesperson flew back East yesterday after an invitation from a prospective customer to make a presentation to his company. The prospect has a problem that my colleague’s company can solve.

This invitation didn’t follow a referral. There wasn’t a formal request for proposal (RFP). The prospect didn’t find my colleague’s company through social media. It wasn’t a B2B lead generated by SEO, SEM or a banner. In fact, it wasn’t even a lead generated by B2B email marketing, direct mail marketing, a trade show booth visit or an ad.

It was generated by a cold call that my colleague made to the company.

I’m not pooh-poohing the value of any of the above marketing channels. But this cold call — that led to an in-person presentation — was my “duh” moment on the difference between inbound and outbound B2B lead generation.

Companies have problems. There are so many aspects in the operation of a successful business, or even in a given department of that business, that the most painful problems are addressed first. Inbound marketing benefits when a company is pursuing a solution for its most painful problem. It is then that prospects actively research solutions on the Web, follow experts on social media, visit Web sites, read paid search ads, ask colleagues for referrals and send out RFPs.

But those companies that have problems they’ve pushed to the back burner because of more urgent ones are not actively pursuing a solution. Then, voila , an email or direct mail letter appears. Some are likely to think “here’s a white paper addressing that other problem we have. I think I’ll ask for it and see what it says.”

The company making the white paper offer will have then generated a lead that can be nurtured until that company says “this pain is big enough that we have to fix it now.” Low and behold, the company that sent the outbound marketing is already engaging with that prospect and has a huge edge.

In fact, the company my colleague is seeing was not seeking a solution. But his call alerted them to a smart way to solve a problem they knew they had. When a solution appeared, they jumped on it.

In rare occasions, perhaps, a B2B marketer knows about the pain a particular company is suffering from at that moment. Most of us in B2B marketing won’t. That’s why we have to reach out via outbound marketing AND make sure we’re reachable when the time is right.

All channels are vital. Cold calling works, too.

Want to be a B2B business-development pro? Start here.

This morning I read an excellent question in a B2B marketing group on LinkedIn. “If you had 30, 60 and 90 days to prove yourself as an effective business development professional…which of the following lead generation techniques would you implement and what percentage of your time would be dedicated towards each?”

• Phone Outreach
• Email Outreach
• Social Media
• Referrals
• Direct Marketing
• Events (Webinars, conferences, etc.)
• Other

If you’re a member of the B2B Lead Generation Roundtable on LinkedIn you can read the answers that follow. Of course I didn’t directly answer the question because I was so disappointed to see “Direct Marketing” on the list as if it were a channel.

As a B2B direct marketing advocate (read fanatic), I guess it’s pretty easy to set me off. But I suspect the person asking the question, Philip Reid of Winning Business Inc., meant to say Direct Mail Marketing, which is indeed a channel.

His oversight, however, got me thinking about how important it is for marketers to understand and use direct marketing if they intend to be effective B2B business-development professionals. I’m not Merriam-Webster, but here’s my definition of direct marketing:

Direct marketing is the marketing approach that is designed to change behavior. Unlike advertising, which is designed to change attitude, direct marketing must be created with the full intention of having the prospect “do something.”

If the primary intent of the communication is not to get a prospect to take a specified action, then the communication is not direct marketing, or as it’s also called — direct response marketing.

I can already hear protests such as “but what about PR and branding?” Those approaches are essential in providing the exposure, positioning and buzz necessary to bring attention and credibility to the company doing the marketing. But they do not directly generate leads in a planned, controlled manner. Social media can do both, but it qualifies as direct marketing only when it’s used to ask recipients to take a specific action.

So I recommend that marketers take a quick review of all their marketing efforts and see which ones fit the description and which ones do not. It’s the fastest path to being a successful business-development pro.

A sure recipe for B2B marketing success.

It’s 4:00, time to start thinking about what to fix for dinner. I have a closetful of recipe books to assure me that, if I follow them faithfully, I can create dishes that do what they are supposed to do — taste delicious and satisfy those at my dining table. Unlike gourmet cooks or professional chefs, I don’t have time to experiment with recipes and risk failure.

B2B marketing is a lot like cooking. Most B2B marketers don’t have the time, the budget or a large enough universe of prospects to test new marketing ideas.

Testing is, of course, the most essential element in direct marketing — that is, marketing that’s designed to generate a response.

Offline marketers can test such things as offers, packages, mailing lists or print media. However, the typical B2B prospect universe is small, often under 10,000 companies. This small universe makes it difficult to get the response quantities large enough for statistically valid response rates.

Online testing is much easier to do. As Bob Frady of DM Central nicely explains in “Why Aren’t You Testing?” it’s critical and easier in today’s digital marketing to test such things as subject lines, landing pages, SEM ad messages and more.

Big companies with large budgets can test fresh, new marketing approaches for the opportunity to achieve breakthrough results. That’s where marketing innovation comes from. Most B2B marketers, however, are not big. They don’t have huge budgets or the time to test everything they do.

What should they do? Follow the recipe. All B2B marketers have to do is to learn what’s working by reading case studies, white papers, industry surveys, even blogs like this one. Best practices are based on measured results from marketing approaches that have been tested by the big guys and proven to work time and time again.

Following B2B marketing best practices is the most assured and least risky path to success. After all, people care only how the food tastes, not whether it was cooked by following a recipe.

B2B Marketing Smarts now part of B2B Marketing Zone

Last July Tony Karrer at Browse My Stuff and Tom Pick at WebMarketCentral created and launched the B2B Marketing Zone, a community collecting and organizing the best information on the web about B2B marketing.

B2B Marketing Smarts is now please to be included in a long list of B2B marketing experts covering such focused topics as Content from Michele Linn and others at Savvy B2B Marketing, Sales from Mac McIntosh of Sales Lead Insights, Lead Generation from Brian Carroll of B2B Lead Generation, eMarketing Strategies from Ardath Albee at Marketing Interactions and many others.

Visitors can access specific info by keyword or by topic, so finding guidance on a specific B2B marketing subject is fast and easy.

Marketers who are looking for B2B marketing and sales insight can skip Google and go right to B2B Marketing Zone for all the guidance they’ll ever need.

Want more qualified B2B leads? Say “show me the money.”

In the short post last week “Some people are better than others,” Seth Godin talked about the value of certain prospective customers over others. He makes a great argument, for instance, that book buyers are more likely to be good prospects for buying a Kindle, not because they read more but because the have “bought” books. What makes these prospects better is the commitment of money to a particular interest.

His example is a consumer one. But his point applies in B2B marketing just as well. Prospects willing to “pay money” or “invest time” to learn something are better than those who just opt in or register to gain free information. Here are three examples of prospects who show the money.

 Subscribers: Prospects who fall into this category are far easier to find as there a number of rental lists available based on buying behavior. A list of subscribers paying to receive an industry publication, for example, is far more valuable than names rented from a controlled circulation publication that is free to readers offline or online.

 Trade Shows: In good times, companies freely pay to send employees to trade shows for learning. In this slowed economy, not as many businesses are participating in or attending industry trade shows because of the cost. Those who do send attendees are seriously in the market for solutions.

 Live Seminars: B2B marketers have long known that offering targeted content generates qualified leads of individuals who have an interest in a subject related to their product or service. Offering a live seminar, however, requires an investment of time on the part of the attendee. Time is money after all. This approach will significantly reduce response over an online Webinar, but those attending should be far more qualified.

 Prospects who are actively researching and evaluating something are closer to making a buying decision. Attracting this type of lead should not be a substitute for filling the pipeline, but businesses that want qualified leads who could close faster, should look for the money.

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.