To make big B2B marketing strides in 2010 – go lateral.

Since September of 2008 every one of us in B2B marketing, or frankly, in every area of business, has been pressured to cut costs, do more with less, and generate and convert enough new customers to remain profitable and grow.

These days, however, companies are running out of ways to cut costs and have reached the bare bones of personnel. So what’s next? I suggest an exercise in lateral marketing.

Originally coined by Edward de Bono in his 1967 book “New Think: The Use of Lateral Thinking in the Generation of New Ideas,” lateral thinking takes planning and strategy beyond the realm of problem-solving and into new ways of looking at things.

What is lateral marketing? It’s simply applying lateral thinking to the marketing arena. It’s the exercise that has marketers looking at their business and seeing if they can discover a new product name, a new approach, a new positioning that will open up a fresh universe of prospects and buyers, or an innovative way to reach existing markets.

Most marketers think in a linear fashion. Ask a linear marketer to promote property management software for real estate agents, and that marketer will (hopefully) follow best practices. In most cases, that approach will be successful. It would include:

• Offering free valuable content to generate leads using email or direct mail.
• Running ads in publications read by realtors, and posting ads on sites visited by realtors.
• Researching keywords and enhancing site SEO so that realtors find the software site when searching for related solutions.
• Putting up a booth at a trade show or conference attended by realtors.
• Establishing the real estate software company as a real estate agent’s thought leader by starting a blog and actively sharing valuable ideas via social media.

Lateral marketers, on the other hand, look at challenges in less obvious ways. They try to see the product and market with fresh eyes. They brainstorm with the company’s staff and other associates. They bring in outsiders with no preconceived understanding of that particular product or market. They look at the marketing of products or services completely outside of the client’s industry and category to see what could be borrowed or adapted. In the case of the property management software, this might include the following:

• Thinking about all the other products and services that realtors use, such as appraisers, lenders, and CPAs, then asking those providers to become trading partners, i.e., “You mention my product to your customers and I’ll mention your services to mine.” If the real estate software company sells nationally and the providers sell locally, partnerships could be established in multiple cities.
• Creating an online contest that invites real estate agents to take a self-quiz to find out whether they could make more money by adding property management to the services they provide. All those who took the self-quiz would be entered into a drawing to receive a valuable prize. This self-quiz would generate a list of email addresses of real estate agents who have shown interest in property management and therefore should be considered prospective buyers.
• Spinning off the product with a new name that would appeal to real estate investors who might want to save money by managing their own properties. This move would open up a whole new market of prospects.

 B2B marketers should not abandon linear marketing, but to make big strides in 2010 and beyond, they should try going lateral.

Is your marketing barking up all the right trees?

Each night at bedtime, I work on a crossword puzzle. I’m not great at it, but crossword puzzles are a good way for me to take a mental break from the day before sleeping. One of my biggest problems when solving puzzles is not thinking about all the possible answers that a clue could be about. A clue like “Barker’s common phrase” for a 3-letter answer made me try to think of what a circus barker might say or what a manager would call out to his crew or what order an officer might yell to his soldiers. Yet I was stumped. The answer, of course, was “arf” from the one “barker” I hadn’t thought of.

The other day, when conversing with a new client, I realized that marketing can be a bit like crossword puzzles. Here’s what the client, a provider of business training materials, shared with me:

The company was successfully marketing to trainers and HR titles in corporations.

Then, recently, an independent trainer discovered them and not only made a purchase but also recommended the product to her colleagues who also made purchases.

Now this company is marketing to both corporations and independent trainers and has, in essence, significantly increased the size of its prospect universe.

SEO, social media, and other Internet exposure revealed a previously undiscovered group of prospects the company can now pursue with outbound marketing. Companies can just wait for other prospect groups to find them or take some action to find their own undiscovered markets. Here are a few ideas for marketers:

• Bring in a marketing consultant who can look at your product with fresh eyes and without any of the blinders of old habits.
• Scour your customer base for the one or two rare examples of a company that does not fit your typical profile.
• Look for ways your product or service could be renamed or repositioned to appeal to an entirely different group of customers.
• Gather your team together and hold brainstorming sessions without limits.

Imagine your product is a crossword puzzle clue and see if you can find any new trees for barking up new business.

Doing marketing math avoids painful experiences.

The wonderful gentleman who recently gave us a tour of the Seamen’s Bethel in New Bedford, Massachusetts gave us a look into some interesting history of the area. It was about the poor, often uneducated farm boys in the mid-1800s who were wooed into signing up for a whaling voyage with the promise of riches amounting to (what sounded like) a substantial share of the money that voyage produced.

Often 18 to 36 months in length, these voyages meant long hours of backbreaking work that ultimately wore out the seaman’s boots and clothes, which they had to replace with purchase from the on-board “slop shop.” These purchases used up the seaman’s entire take, leaving him with nothing upon his return.

If these poor boys had had the ability to do more than simple math, they could have realized how little they were being promised and could have avoided the painful experience altogether.

In marketing, doing the math also avoids painful experiences.

Marketing campaigns require a lot more than knowing your budget and how many sales that budget needs to generate. When planning a marketing program, it’s critical to run these numbers:

1. Is the universe large enough to deliver the numbers you need? Say, for example, you are marketing to Fortune 1000 companies and ultimately want the campaign to produce 30 sales or 3%. If, on average, your sales force closes one sale out of 10 meetings, then you need 300 meetings to close 30 sales. Is this reasonable? Or do you need to broaden your prospect universe?
2. Can your sales force handle the inquiries your program will generate? If you are inviting a prospect base of 10,000 to participate in a survey (which can generate 5% to 25% response rates) and you want your sales force to personally contact each participant, can they handle that kind of volume?
3. What do you have to spend to generate those leads? Reaching CEOs usually requires the use of a more costly delivery method such as FedEx® or a dimensional mailer that can get past the gatekeeper and grab attention.
4. Are you prepared to spend what it takes to reach this target group effectively?
   How many inquiries will you generate?
5. What is your cost per inquiry?
6. How many of those inquiries do your sales force typically close and what is your cost per sale?
7. What are the average response rates from the channels you plan to use?
8. What is your average profit per sale?
9. What is the average lifetime value of a customer?

No marketing plan is complete unless it addresses all of these critical numbers.

For the formulas and proper calculations, I recommend Direct Marketing: Strategy, Planning, Execution by Edward Nash. This classic direct marketing book does an excellent job of covering the math of direct marketing. Although it primarily addresses direct mail marketing, the concepts apply no matter what channels you use.

The cost and time of reviewing your numbers will be well worth your while and can avoid a long, painful voyage that ends in disappointment.

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Your marketing needs a GPS.

The phrase I hear too often from clients is, “Can you do it for me sooner?”

 

Yikes! Writers, designers, agencies, printers, list managers, lettershops — we all hear this from clients and prospective clients so many times it’s practically de rigueur on the part of today’s marketers. But every time it happens my reaction is the same — “Doesn’t anybody plan anything any more?”

 

The first and most essential step in successful marketing is just that — planning. Your GPS recalculates when a detour or a wrong turn sends you off your route. Well, just like your GPS, marketing plans can be adjusted and adapted as market conditions change. But if you don’t have a guide to where you want your company and marketing to be in the short and long term and how you plan to get there, then you might as well just sit in the driveway.

 

If you’re saying you don’t have time to plan, it’s like saying, “I don’t have time to do it right.”

 

My direct marketing bible (“Successful Direct Marketing Methods” Seventh Edition by Bob Stone and Ron Jacobs) outlines the ingredients and steps necessary for creating this plan. I highly recommend you read this book available from Amazon, paying close attention to Chapter 2 on Business, Strategic and Direct Marketing Planning.

 

Included in that chapter are the ingredients needed for a business strategy, marketing strategy and creative strategy. It’s not a complicated process, but putting together a plan forces you to think through all the elements that are essential to reaching your marketing and business goals. Then you can be sure that every campaign you create will support the strategic goals of your business. Like a GPS, it will guide you successfully to your destination.