Marketing Interactions

How to Waste Opportunities

I very rarely do this, but I have to say this email communication really irritated me. So I thought I'd share it with you as a helpful example of what to do if you DON'T want to build relationships with your prospects.

Setup: I downloaded a whitepaper sponsored by Company A. Their sales rep called to follow up and asked if they could send me some more information. I said yes, ever curious to how company's communicate and hoping they'd help me learn more.

Here's what I received two minutes later in my Inbox (names changed for obvious reasons):

Dear Ardath,

Thank you for your interest in Company A.  Please feel free to explore www.CompanyA.com, www.CompanyB.com and www.CompanyC.com to review information about our comprehensive ACRONYM solutions.

Company B provides solutions to centralize and automate key processes that are critical to an enterprise; from customer service, through operations.  This offers a company's leadership team with a true, 360 degree view of their customer and partner relationships.

Our recent acquisition of Company C allows us to provide an award winning suite of Intelligent Customer Experience applications.  Company C will reduce costs, increase revenues and improve customer satisfaction.

These products offer robust capabilities that fill a need in mid-market to global 2000-sized service industry enterprises. We represent the best value for customers with high-touch, ongoing relationships characterized by specialized processes. If quality customer service is what sets you apart from your competitors, Company A should be your preferred solutions provider.

Please visit our websites and call me with any questions you have. 

Best regards,
Sales Rep

Can you tell me what in that message would interest me in looking further? I have no idea why I should spend any of my time looking at any of these companies. She called me because I responded to a white paper on a particular topic.

The subject line of the email is Company A, but the email only mentions that company at the beginning and at the end. The message promotes two other companies within the group, but the wording is so vague that they could be selling anything from business process re-engineering to ERP or consulting services. I have no idea if my company is the kind of company they sell to because they sell to almost everyone.

The message uses a bunch of meaningless buzzwords. Here are some of them:

• comprehensive - who's solution isn't?
• centralize and automate key processes - which ones? how? why?
• a true 360 degree view - uh huh, been said a lot, no one does this well that I've seen so why should I believe them? They certainly aren't using it to get to know me.
• intelligent customer experience applications - they obviously don't write email
• robust capabilities that fill a need - "a" need?? don't get me started...
• the best value - which might be what?
• please visit our website and call me - how lazy of them to expect me to do the work

Had this email come out of the blue, it would have still been wasted time, but I wouldn't be nearly as irritated as I am now to receive this communication after the rep spoke with me. The rep knew what I was interested in - I downloaded a white paper on a subject she now knows I'm researching for a client, because I just told her that. I could be an influencer with my client. I could be a valuable opportunity for that company.

Yet nothing, not one single solitary thing, besides my first name, was personalized for me. They could have extrapolated from my interest in their white paper and sent me something related that might have tagged onto that interest, drawn me in and gotten me to pay attention.

Bottom line: This company doesn't care about me. They don't want a relationship with me, they only want to get in my wallet. But, they have no compelling offer or call to action and there's nothing in this message to engage me with their company or their products.

They have not only wasted my time, but disappointed me. And, if I ever see another email in my Inbox from them, I'm more than likely to delete it without reading.

What a wasted opportunity.

Mass Customization for Channel Sales

We usually think of customization as a personalized, individual endeavor. A solution is customized for a specific company's business model. A process is customized for a particular department's objectives. A marketing message is customized based on a prospect's expressed interests.

But, how do you help the channel customize their marketing programs? Selling in today's market is not about the product as much as it's about solving problems and helping customers achieve success.

It's not feasible to regenerate each message for each VAR. Not and have the messages be truly meaningful and pertinent to that partner's customers. So, what do you do when putting together a channel marketing best practices program? You design for flexibility, re-usability and consistency.

Instead of giving the channel fully realized, rigid programs, why not give them a channel buffet?

Present them with interactive "parts" and assist them by creating the combinations that work for their prospects and customers by situation. Depending on how the business is structured, this may mean creating industry-specific or product specific buffets.

A Short List of Buffet Options:

• Value propositions
• Buying stage messaging
• Case study excerpts (focus on stories)
• Problem/solution white papers
• Product Information
• Powerpoint decks - individual slide selections
• Best practices - compiled from your best salespeople
• Conversation generators

The key is to hook "like" things together. For example, if the partner goes to your extranet and selects a value proposition in their query, they should be shown all the components that support it. Same if they select a product, a problem or an industry - or a combination of these.

Instead of giving your partners a pile of sales materials and marketing collateral they need to dig through and organize themselves, help them utilize what they need by returning a select grouping of materials that builds a customized arsenal of tools and messaging.

If a partner goes out to your extranet and selects:

Product: WizBang 5000
Industry: Financial Services
Problem: Improving Productivity

They click submit and are shown a page that displays:

• a value proposition about how the WizBang 5000 improves productivity for the financial services industry.
• they see several story-oriented excerpts from case studies that help them frame a conversation and understand immediately the impact of the product on the problem.
• best practices for how your top salespeople have sold the WizBang 5000 to increase productivity, with links to "ask the expert" questions. Make sure they get answers. [This will also build a knowledge base of useful information for future use]
• an interactive email messaging series with suggested links to educational information (for the customer).
• Suggestions for conversational generators that will help the channel uncover needs and display expertise around using the WizBang 5000 to increase productivity. They need to be able to help their prospects envision getting the results they want and how that will improve their situation.

Yes, this requires technology for the most streamlined presentation, but the important thing to consider is the content. Utilizing themes and stories to build out content means that the pieces will interact more easily for the partner. They won't have to struggle to figure out how the pieces go together. There will be a flow to them that allows the partner to use them almost intuitively.

The thing lacking in a lot of channel relationships isn't the technology to facilitate them, but attention to the contextual presentation of the content. Don't expect your channel partners to be able to talk about your products as well as you can. Instead, streamline how they interact with the marketing and sales tools you give them so they can deliver expertise consistently.

The harder your channel partners have to struggle to sell your products, the less of your products they will sell. Creating a mass customization system can ease the strain on your channel support team and on the partners who are now empowered to sell for you.

Don't forget to monitor content effectiveness and continually update and make adjustments based on feedback, sales outcomes and industry changes.

As a side note, this process also works for your salespeople and can be facilitated through a sales portal. With in-house sales teams, adding interactivity to the portal for improving sales efficiency and effectiveness.

Marketing Automation and Interactive Email Campaigns

Last month, I wrote posts about marketing automation and interactive email campaigns.

I was asked to expand both of those posts into articles for the Business Marketing Institute's weekly newsletter. In the expanded versions, you'll find more information about why marketing automation is not at its most beneficial as a "set it and forget it" system. In the Are You a Mosquito Marketer? article you can see sample ideas for generating an interactive email campaign and the processes that support the interactions.

There's also a link at the top to sign up for the Business Marketing Institute's newsletter and you're invited to subscribe.

Don't Stifle Your Conversations

If you really mean it when you take on relationship marketing, toss that long-term plan out the window. For relationship marketing to transform into conversations, you have to be agile enough to flex when your prospects' reactions differ. Canned responses are obvious. They scream, "I don't really care, I'm just going through the motions."

The problem with scripting conversations is that you're the only one who's seen the script. The loosening of control scares companies silly, but today's bold customers demand you do just that. You may be able to predict a semblance of anticipated responses to your marketing communications, but it can be drastic not to be prepared for conversations to be fluid and dynamic.

Consider launching iterative programs that allow marketing to shift along with the conversations. If you are promoting interactions through knowledge sharing, people will engage in a way that tells you where they are in their thinking on the issue. Your response needs to be personalized to answer their individual needs and invite them to continue communication with your company.

Contextual communications build a platform for conversation. There is a thread connecting them that leads the conversation. Which you can do well, if you're paying attention and not just reacting to a response with the prescribed next step.

Marketing is not at its most effective if your company is sending out a multitude of one-off messages. What I mean by this is; a come to my webinar on this subject, then a download my white paper on this other subject, followed by a new product release notice unrelated to the other two communications. There's no story here.

If you take a look at what your prospects are interested in and then continually provide content that builds to a conclusion, you have a better shot at generating a conversation. Especially in B2B marketing where the issues are complex and the status quo is really dug in.

Your goal is to provide compelling insights for why the prospect should embrace change. Change is scary. Often times it's the "devil you know" rule.

Think about what expertise you can share to engage your prospects because, after knowing about it, they will understand why change might be a really good idea. The conversation will grow as you show them why they should trust that your company can deliver this change. And, as the exchange progresses, your ability to get them to envision themselves using your product and enjoying the results from embracing that change will help you acquire customers.

It's all in how you choose to enter the conversation. Content is important, but so is your reaction to their response. The combination of the two makes up the marketing conversation. Knowing you can't script your prospects and becoming more dynamic in your interactions can be extremely effective in moving prospects further downstream through the sales process.

How are you embracing the unexpected in your marketing conversations?

Bring the Love Back

Marketers are having a heck of a time trying to transition from push to pull. A lot of attempts at relationship marketing consist of changing the headline for who/what role they think I am. The body of the message is the same for everyone. In what sense is that personalized and targeted to enroll me in a conversation? I'm not feeling the love.

[In case you're wondering how I know this, if you sign up for lists or offers--under different circumstances--quite often you'll get shoved into multiple email campaigns.]

For a conversation to happen, the content needs to be about something the recipient is interested in discussing or learning more about. One of the triggers for engagement is an emotional component, often subconscious for them, and which is missing from company-focused communications.

The problem is that companies know about themselves, their products, and are enrolled in what they're doing. Often, they can't understand why everyone else isn't as fascinated by what they're doing as they are. It shows in their messaging. They get tied up in their industry's jargon, their competitor's phrasing or, even worse, their own lingo.

It's gotten to the point where one company's message is often indistinguishable from another's within the same industry. What your content says has to differentiate your company.

This isn't to say that a company passionate about what they're doing is a bad thing. Quite the contrary. But it does mean they need to figure out why what they're doing is important to their market and help their prospects envision themselves enjoying the outcomes of using the product over what's possible with other choices. Content with context drives that differentiation.

Developing relationships is about more than data. It's about how creatively you can use the data to gain insights about how to establish a viable connection that will lead to progressive interactions and a conversation with investment from both sides.

This movie is one of the best presentations of the disconnect between marketing/advertising and customers that I've seen. Bring the Love Back is a short movie produced by a marketing manager at Microsoft. Yep, you read that right.

Go watch the movie and see what you think. One-way dialogue is frustrating. Coupled with assumptions made in a vacuum, it can be downright irritating for the person who's not allowed to, or invited to, participate in the conversation.

I'll leave you with this Forrester statistic referenced by Chris, over at Customer World, about email messaging:

"....Although email marketing is embraced by 93% of marketers, emails are still not up to standards. In Forrester's annual review of email programs only one of the 63 reviewed passed our test, mostly due to lack of customer centricity."

New Rules of Marketing & PR

For those of you who read Cashing In With Content, David Meerman Scott has a new book coming out June 29th that extends those ideas to how businesses can effectively use news releases, blogs, podcasting, viral marketing & online media to reach buyers directly. If you haven't read Cashing In, now's your chance.

I am honored to be acknowledged in the book, The New Rules of Marketing & PR, among a bunch of other really insightful people. You can see who they are here. I received an advance copy yesterday and immediately read half of it in one sitting. David's written it in his "blog" voice, which makes the pages fly by, or maybe it's because they're filled with meaty insights.

The thing I like about this book is that David doesn't just tell us what he thinks. He has loads of examples, input and case studies that demonstrate how the things he tells us about using content can impact our own marketing efforts. Plus, he gives us the URLs from these examples so we can go see for ourselves. Then he has a section on how you can do it. The New Rules of Marketing & PR is about as interactive as a paper book can get.

What inspires me the most about David's book is that it brings into focus how important content is for companies. Design is nice, but content is mandatory. And, not just any content, but content that's meaningful to your buyers.  "In a cohesive and interesting way, the content-rich Web site organizes the online personality of your organization to delight, entertain, and--most important--inform each of your buyers."

In a time where marketing automation is a big focus, it's important not to forget that your website is, "...the place that brings everything together in a unified place..." This is a very important point. Think about the times you've received marketing communications from a company, gone to their website, and been confused because what you encountered there was nothing related to their marketing communication. Consistency of story is hugely important to having your content drive action.

I don't want to ruin the read for any of you. And, I'm truly sorry you have to wait to read it. Mark your calendars for June 29, 2007 or, better yet, go pre-order it so you won't forget.

Update: David has told me the book will actually begin shipping the first week in June!

Less Leads Can Be Excellent

It's all a matter of perspective. Well, that and outcomes.

One of the things I wonder about is the insistence by a lot of marketers that they need to generate lots of leads. In some companies, how many leads the marketing department collects is still a criterion for evaluation of effectiveness. How do they figure that?

If your marketing is truly targeted and your communications are building actionable relationships with contextual communications, less leads can produce very good outcomes.

Here's why:

• These leads are truly interested
• They interact with you, giving you more information and insights about how to generate valuable outcomes for them.
• Effectiveness is a two-way street - you help them gain knowledge about why and how to solve problems, they'll help you by choosing your company's expertise and products.
• Sales can actually have a conversation with them that goes somewhere good.
• The more you learn from their engagement with you, the better experience you can deliver for them.
• Engaged and qualified leads are less likely to make decisions based on price

Or, you can focus on collecting leads like guppies and then scatter shoot your marketing communications into the fish barrel. Hmm. Which do you think will deliver better results for your company's strategic goals for revenue and customer acquisition growth?

The days of volume-oriented mass communications are gone, or they should be. Wasting resources by pursuing leads who aren't interested is not productive. In today's market it's all about relevance. And, let's face it. You may have to just say NO to those leads who aren't for you. "Everyone" is not your target market in a B2B complex sale.

By leveraging marketing automation systems to focus on the leads who engage, you increase the probability that the prospect relationships you are working so hard to build will transition into customers.

Personalization is critical in today's marketing interactions. But, it's an intensive commitment. By streamlining attention to highly engaged leads, you can reduce the overwhelming task of one-to-one communication to a manageable feat.

Your resources are now better invested with a higher propensity to produce measurable business results through better hand offs to sales. Being able to transition marketing from lead volume statistics to revenue and increased close ratio metrics will gain a lot more traction at the executive level.

Move Over & Let ME Drive!

Despite the top billing that improving the sales process is getting from Chief Sales Officers, CSO Insights reports that sales performance is not improving. Jim Dickie, Managing Partner of CSO Insights, stipulates that it's because buyers have access to more and more information from online resources, which puts them in the driver's seat of the buying process.

With increasing knowledge and understanding under their hats, the prospect no longer has to depend on sales reps to educate them about their products. This transforms their expectations about interactions with the sales process.

To put it plainly, the customer/prospect's expectations have grown. They want more. More expertise, more insights into how the product will impact their company and they don't want generalities. Salespeople are now tasked with displaying expertise in a way specific to each prospect's needs.

What a fantastic opportunity for marketing!

No, I'm not being catty. I'm simply pointing out that marketing knows your prospects. They know the market and they should know what information the company's leads are seeing prior to sales activities. Okay, that's only if your company is employing a structured lead nurturing process and are using marketing automation tools to build interest profiles and activity histories.

Let's say it's a perfect world and marketing has the tools and the insights. If they've built your company's story in an engaging way, then they've enabled the prospect to envision themselves enjoying the outcomes of using your products. A perfect extension for marketing is to leverage that collected intelligence to craft sales stories that salespeople can use to showcase your company's expertise and seal the deal.

Closing the deal is dependent upon having an actionable relationship. The one that's already been established. Not by having sales show up and try to build a new one. Focus on connecting sales and marketing to ensure your sales activities are seamless extensions of the relationship marketing built.

To read the article with more of Jim Dickie's insights about CRM and sales productivity, go here.

How many lives does your content have?

Content is often mistreated. It's used once, then either discarded or even worse, it lays around on a web page for ever and ever and ever...

The problem is that the content, in either scenario, is providing little value to your company. Many companies work very hard to produce good, solid content. With limited resources to focus on content creation, they end up using the same piece repeatedly. Or they change focus with the creation of each content resource so every message is unrelated to the others. Many companies have not considered how diversifying selected content can produce dramatic results.

All content is not created equal. Some content is rightfully used once and not again. But, most content has a glimmer of opportunity for reuse. Those companies that utilize marketing automation and can track what their prospects and customers are reading have the ability to discover gems that grab attention. Those are the content resources you consider re-purposing.

Once you know which content resonates for your prospects/customers, you have solid information that can reveal some or all of the following:

• what topic is of interest
• which headlines drive engagement
• the type of problem that needs solving
• values that make the difference

The key is in collecting and then analyzing how interactions occur with your content. What drove the interaction? Was it a link in an email? A website download? Perhaps it was the lead-in piece that generated a webinar registration?

It's possible that segments react to different things, so make sure you are also looking at who responded while you're analyzing interactions.

Think about this for a minute. With marketing sutomation you actually have the opportunity to KNOW what type of content will get your prospect's attention. It's not just about generating demand. It's about WHAT generates the demand. Why in the world wouldn't you leverage those insights?

Okay, back on track. Once you've narrowed the possibilities down to who, take a hard look at the content piece(s) that generated the best response. What's different about that article (whitepaper, blog post, eBook, etc) than the other content you've been using? If you have the data to stretch your insights a bit farther, take a look at which content was viewed before or after they read the content you've determined had the best response rate?

With these factors in mind, you have several choices about how to extend that interest and work on building an actionable relationship:

• expand the topic into an eBook or whitepaper
• submit the article to an industry community site for publication
• produce related-topic articles
• write a blog post
• create a webinar around whatever it was you determined had the "grab"
• develop related subject lines for similar content

What's important is that the content not be the same piece, repeated. Make sure you add to it and expand the "difference" you determined drove the engagement. Present it in a different format, as shown in the list above.  However you re-present the content should provide additional value to the recipient. It should build the story.

Knowing what your prospects and customers are actively interested in is important. Delivering on that interest in unique and compelling ways is critical for building mindshare.

Repurposing content can be an effective part of your marketing strategy, but it won't be effective without some thought and effort applied to extend the value received by your prospects and customers with that original content resource.