How B2B marketers can help overcome the “no budget” excuse

I just came across a great question posed by Elizabeth Zennadi of Direct Marketing Partners on LinkedIn‘s B2B Lead Generation Roundtable (which group members can access).

She asked, “How are you responding to the ‘budget excuse’?” The responses from other business development professionals come straight out of the real world where sales people live. They range from “Just kiss more frogs” to “No budget usually means ‘I do not see the value.’”

The answer by Keith Finger of Keith Finger Marketing is the one that prompted this post. His comment was, “I believe companies look to vendors to help them make money or save money. Given that, I discuss ROI up front so people understand there’s a benefit.”

Benefits, after all, are what B2B, or any, marketing is all about.

Now I ask — why wait until the lead is passed on to sales before establishing this benefit? Many B2B marketers may have been told, “Don’t talk about cost except in generic statements such as ‘great ROI’ or ‘competitive pricing’ or ‘affordable’ or even ‘low cost.’  But there is a way B2B content marketers can present the ROI story during the nurturing process and that could help move leads closer to being sales-ready.

It’s with an online, interactive ROI calculator. Not all business types can take advantage of this because of their pricing structures, but for those who can it’s a great tool. The online calculator lets the prospect fill in the parameters that fit his or her own company. These might be the number of users, staff involved in completing a task, number of projects or other costs. Once filled in, the calculator automatically reveals an ROI customized to the prospect’s business.

The more personalized a marketing message is, the more productive. By providing an ROI calculator that shows specific numbers to the prospect, marketers deliver much more than a passive message.

Prospects who have calculated their ROI won’t be as likely to use the “no budget” excuse once the lead is turned over to sales.

Are B2B marketers offering too much stuff and not enough information?

In his latest blog, “Getting meta,” Seth Godin shares his usual instant insight into the world of sales and marketing. This little gem describes the state of the Internet and how services that appear to be the information are really just tools to find the information.

His conclusion: “Right now, there’s way too much stuff and far too little information about that stuff. Sounds like an opportunity.”

That’s what I think about a lot of the B2B marketing content I see — “too much stuff and far too little information.”

It’s important that marketers make sure the content they are offering has real value to the prospect asking for it. To have value to the reader, content should include one or more of this type of useful information:

• A better understanding of the causes of a specific business problem.
• Some best practices for solving a specific business problem.
• What peers or experts are saying about the problem.
• Some kind of self-assessment of how the prospect’s company is handling a specific problem.
• Industry advances being made to make solving the problem easier.

Informational content should not sell the company’s product or service directly (there can be a sales story and secondary offer at the end of the content), but it should educate the reader and position the company offering it as a trusted resource.

So how does a marketer make sure the content they are offering has value? Here are four tips on how to do it:

1. Provide content information that matches the specific needs of each pipeline lead.
   Send a short survey to your pipeline asking them to identify their three biggest challenges. Then target the content you are offering them (white paper, checklist, guide, Webinar, self-assessment) to the issues they have identified.
2. Create content that has how-to take-aways that can be implemented without buying your product or service.
   For example, if your solution is collaboration software, include usable advice on how to improve collaboration without buying your product. That approach positions your company as a trusted “thought leader,” and shows that you truly care about helping them solve their problem — not just selling them software.
3. Offer a mix of some content that is available without registration and some that is not.
   By not requiring registration for content, your company instantly positions itself as a valuable resource. With no registration, B2B marketers can boost the number of downloads of their content to expose their brand to a larger audience of potentially qualified leads. However, a B2B marketer’s ultimate goal is generating qualified leads that can be nurtured and turned into sales. To do this, one must require registration for access to the more in-depth content or informational offers being made.
4. Provide content that satisfies the focus of each decision-maker and influencer in prospect companies.
   Need the approval of the CFO? Provide content that positions the financial benefits of the company’s product or service. Do the same for the CEO, user, department manager, HR manager or whatever titles have influence on — or decision-making power over — the purchase.

Content is not designed to directly sell products or services. It is designed to educate prospects on how their peers are handling similar challenges and subtly edge them along toward choosing the marketing company’s product or service.

Seth Godin got it right; we all have an opportunity. Let’s use it.

Content by any other name would smell as sweet.

A new LinkedIn group I joined, “DemandGen Specialists,” featured an article by Jon Miller that appeared on Marketo talking about the value of using content to position a company as a thought leader. “Why Thought Leadership Is Your Most Valuable Asset” covers how providing content is the key to achieving thought leadership and provides excellent tips for how to make sure content delivers real value. Then a BtoB online post by Christopher Hosford reports that, when providing collateral, “White papers remain most influential for tech buyers.”

The conclusion from both of these posts is that getting the edge in B2B marketing today is all about content.

As a direct response marketer, I’m pleased to see that the rest of the world has finally discovered what the direct response marketing community has known for about 100 years. That is that giving someone something of value to their business in exchange for making contact with you is the most effective way to generate qualified leads – or, as it is now called, “generate demand.”

In direct response, what is now called “content” was once called an “offer.” Although the percentages will differ, depending on who is presenting them, here are the influencers that determine the potential success of any direct marketing program — and as you can see the quality of the offer is right up there:

The accuracy of reaching the target market can affect response by 200%.
The success of a direct marketing program can increase by as much as 200% by accurately targeting the email or mailing list chosen, the Web site on which the banner appears, the ad words used in SEM, the trade show attended, the print advertising placed and much more.

 The strength of the offer (content) can affect response by 100%.
The offer, or the content, is the second most important element in successful lead generation, whether it is a free white paper, Webinar, checklist, case study, demo or all the other options that are so nicely outlined by Michele Linn of Savvy B2B Marketing in “Need Content? 20 Formats to Consider.”

The quality of the messaging can affect response by 50%.
My specialty is writing content offers and the messaging (regardless of channel) used to get prospects to request the content. However, I am constantly humbled to know that unless the market is well targeted and the offer has value, the marketing messaging will not have the impact it could have.

 The design of the marketing communication can affect response by 50%.
Just like the marketing copy, effective, eye-catching design has no impact unless the channel targets the right market and the offer has value to that market.

So whether you call it content, or an offer or collateral material, after 100 years, it’s still the sweetest tool for successful demand generation marketing.

Two ideas in 20 seconds.

The days of “all I know is what I read in the paper” are long gone. I still read the newspaper, but it’s so small these days that it provides just a fragment of what’s going on in the world. Since much of my world is about B2B marketing, the newspaper is virtually worthless.

So to keep up with what’s being said and done in B2B and direct marketing practices, I take a quick daily visit to LinkedIn, then review the blogs that I’ve marked as having frequently valuable insight and information. Reviewing these favorites yesterday, I said, “This must be sweeps week — everyone seems to be putting out their best.” It was so good, in fact, that I thought I’d share two of them today:

Casey Hibbard of Stories that Sell announces the new SocialMediaExaminer.com online pub started by Michael Stelzner and colleagues. It’s the perfect resource for folks like me who need to get up to speed on the best use of today’s social media tools. Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Casey.

Ardath Albee on her Marketing Interactions blog talks about an often-overlooked option for creating lead nurturing content in “Articles are Food for Lead Nurturing Programs.” I’ve always liked using articles because they are quick and easy to create. She provides many other reasons why and how businesses can leverage articles as effective marketing content.

So I am a bit wiser today thanks to the bloggers in the word — hope you are, too.

The B2B lead offer “name game” is all about the numbers.

Providing valuable, targeted, FREE information to your prospects is still one of the most powerful ways to generate qualified leads. White papers, checklists, booklets, guides, self-assessments, how-tos — they all work. The content of what you send is important for several reasons:

1. Your prospect must find some value in the information even if it is to just confirm what they think they already know.
2. The quality of what they receive is a positive reflection on your company image.
3. You can position your company as a reliable resource of information that can help them.

But, in addition to the content, the most important element is the title. Without a compelling title, response to your lead generation offer won’t be a strong as it could be. And in spite of how “old-fashioned” they sound, the use of numbers in the title still provides a strong image for what the prospect is going to get.

Here is how a few companies successfully used numbers in their lead offer titles:

DICE…………… “Accounting and Finance Recruiting: 2-Minute Checklist”

eFUNDS………. “10 Payment Processing Best Practices”

GEAC………….. “How Five Global Companies Turned a T&E Challenge into a Financial Win”

VeriSign……….. “Find out your Web Site’s 5 top security issues”

Golden Rule….. “3 Easy Steps to Finding Health Insurance That Fits Your Budget”

Proxima……….. “15-Minute Guide to Winning Presentations”

Numbers aren’t the only way to go, but they are a smart way to strengthen the titles of your informational offers and improve the response to your lead generation programs.

Click here if you’d like to see some of these informational offers.