Marketing Interactions

Is Opt In the Leading Factor for Your Demand Generation?

The definition of spam is any unrequested communication.

Buying lists no longer produces the results it used to because of the shift in control to buyers. Permission is becoming increasingly important, and the only way to develop it is to give people a reason to declare their interest and opt in to your content programs based on perceived value.

In Meatball Sundae, Seth Godin defines a permission asset as, "the privilege of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant ads [information] to the people who want to get [it]." He's right. Prospects who have opted in are an asset, no question.

Now, whether you choose to invest in developing your asset or waste it is something you have control over based on how you decide to use it. If you consider your prospect database to be your investment portfolio, you can either see your stocks [buyers] go up [transition to sales readiness] or you can see the value of your investment decline [inertia or opt out].

Content and communications designed to attract opt in grant companies a momentary opportunity to prove that it’s worth the prospect’s effort to pay for your content with their attention. The key about measuring opt in levels is to separate the one-timers from the truly interested. This is why it’s ridiculous to send every prospect your company acquires to the sales team.

What is possible is to create a stream of attraction that causes prospects to opt in and gives you enough information to discern whether or not they’re valid. Let’s face it, some people just want the information. And, that’s good. You never know when they’ll need more and engage fully. But, for the purpose of generating sales-ready opportunities, you need to think creatively about how to determine the degrees of separation from your goals and theirs.

One way to develop an opt in program that engages more than one-time, initial attention is to create a series of related articles that, combined, take a deep dive into a subject of high interest to potential customers. Give them the first article for free (no registration), provide enticing details about the rest of the series and ask them to opt in just for that group of content.

Deliver each successive article every third day, or once a week, and monitor responses. With the final send, promote the next series telling them they can unsubscribe at any time. An editorial calendar comes in handy when pursuing this type of e-marketing program.

Begin to think of yourself as a publisher, instead of a product promoter. Your prospects need to know why they should continue to give you their permission and even anticipate your future communications. Give them a lot of reasons to stay engaged.

A good way to measure the attraction strength of your marketing content is to demonstrate your influence over opt-in volume [your ability to acquire permission] and the percentage of prospects with ongoing activity in your prospect investment portfolio.

Take a look at the percentage of your prospects who appear to be immune to your communications. Then create a campaign to re-engage them. The value of your prospect investment is only worth the activity levels it can generate.

This doesn’t mean to discard longer-term leads, but it does mean to try and discover where their current priorities lie or if there’s another problem your company’s solutions solve that they may be unaware you can help them handle.

What are you doing to improve your ability to attract opt ins?

Does Your Marketing Content Provide an Experience?

Yesterday, @micah posted this Tweet that caught my attention:

"But isnt experience just a subset of knowledge? (I gain knowledge through experience, but not the other way around?)"

When marketing for the B2B complex sale we know we have to share knowledge. We know our prospects need educational content to help them think strategically about how to solve their problems in a way that delivers business value. Ideally by using our products. So, we create content to help them do just that. Or, at least we think we do.

But, for the most part, B2B marketing content isn't attuned to the prospect's perspective. It's feeds and speeds about products and statistical outcomes presented without context for the prospect.

The 97 features of your product may be impressive to you, but to your prospect they're likely overwhelming. If your prospect is trying to solve a problem that only requires 3 of those 97 features, the rest of the information just gets in his way. Plus, he probably can't visualize how those 3 features will work together to produce the change he needs.

I've long been a proponent for using storytelling in marketing content. Storytelling can add that visual component by pulling your prospects into the content. When they can visualize how solving their problem might "look" the content has legs. Because they can interact with the story - see it applied to their specific situation - they generate additional ideas of their own. Possibilities emerge for how they might work successfully with your company.

Now, content isn't a substitute for actual experience, but the more involved with the story your prospect becomes, the more likely it will feel like one. Exposure to facts without the ability to apply them to their specific situations won't simulate the experience your prospect needs to move forward in their buying journey with your company.

How experiential is your content?
What can you do to make their experience even better?

Do prospects respond to the bucket approach?

I received this sales email the other day after downloading a white paper from a website that required registration.

The copy went like this:

Ardath,

Thanks for downloading the [document]. 

Generally, folks fall into one of three buckets.

1) Thank you for the follow-up and material; however, at this point I am only educating myself on [topic] best practices.

2) While I am educating myself on [topic], I am also interested in learning more about [company's] [topic] solutions.

3) Please call me as soon as possible. I am looking to evaluate [topic] programs and take a look at what [company] has too offer.

I’m a firm believer that any one of these answers could be right answer as long as it is what’s best for your business.

Your response will allow me to better gauge your interests without bothering you during this busy time. Thanks again for your consideration and I hope to talk with you soon.

Warm regards,
Name
Sales Development Specialist

I'm not quite sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, I like being able to hit reply and say, hey, I'm a #1. On the other hand, I resent the implication that I'm just like everyone else and can be so easily categorized. Seems a bit "cheeky," if you will.

Plus, this email is all about him finding out something that helps him. Although I guess if he honors the "don't bug me" part that I get a benefit too. But I think that's cheating.

I never asked him to communicate with me. I gave my information to get something I thought would be useful. First download ever from that company. The second is this email.

Why is it that company's still want to market on their terms? To toss a new prospect into the sales cycle at the drop of a pin? I mean, this email is at least asking me, but it's still on their terms. And for heaven's sake, I downloaded a document - ONE document - and now I'm in their sales process. And I'm either going to be known as a 1, 2 or 3 or a nobody.

I haven't responded. Wonder what happens to non-responders...

So, tell me - How would you feel about being bucketed? Is it just me or is this tactic off-putting to anyone else?

Marketing Priorities - Easy vs. Tough

Marketing Sherpa's chart of the week shows the 2009 priorities for B2B organizations with more than $250M in revenues.

My commentary on the chart is below. A few thoughts to help marketers make some of these priorities easier...

Traditional vs. Web 2.0 Content Development:
I'm not quite sure how they're making this distinction, but I'm guessing that it's akin to company-focused content vs. customer-focused content. I agree that this is a big challenge for many companies. The problem is that they're so steeped in their own products that it's hard to look at them from the outside in and forget what they already know and believe.

The other problem is that, for some reason, B2B companies find it difficult to converse in a meaningful way. The recession is a perfect time to get that one right. Shifting your prospect's perception of your company from impersonal to human status can only help. If you're not getting into dialogues with prospects, you're out of the game.

But beside the conversational aspects, marketers need to increase content relevance. They need to learn that interest isn't driven because they sell product X, but rather by what product X helps their customers achieve. Just start talking about that in a context that matches your prospect's situations and you'll see a difference in response.

Identifying New Audiences and Quality Lists:
The farther you can spread your content around online where your prospects and customers spend their time, the more attention you can attract - well, if your content is relevant and valuable to the audience. The point here is that quality lists come from opt-ins not buying them or sourcing them and going for the opt-out route.

If you want new audiences, think about the problems your products solve and then learn who else has those problems. In this economic climate it's helpful to think about an iterative process where you can help a customer gain small, but important, wins and then expand their business with you. Lower the risk.

Syndicate content designed for these new segments and attract them back to you by talking about things that interest them--not you.

Retention Marketing Plan/Tactics:
Help your customers get increased business value from your products. Talk to them. If you don't know, find out where they are and where they want to be and help them keep moving forward. You need to think about what retention is worth to you.

Marketers get so focused on generating new prospects that their existing customers get shorted. Your demand generation content probably won't bring the results you want from your customers. But a souped up version that includes insights customers can benefit from because they already have your products likely will.

Marketing Analytics:
Analytics have gone wild. Technology has almost made it possible to measure how many breaths your website visitors take while viewing your content. But, unless those numbers help you take action to increase engagement levels through added relevance, they're not that useful.

The exception is knowing how many prospect opportunities marketing generates that sales accepts and then how many of them become customers. The rest of your analytics need to help you improve effectiveness. If you try to look at too many statistics, you'll lose your mind.

Analytics make it possible to monitor prospect and customer activities in near real time. If you're only looking at them monthly or quarterly a lot is happening in between. Benchmark the things you choose to measure and then measure those things often to gauge improvements or catch something that's slipping before it's hard to recover from.

Analytics should be pivotal in helping you optimize your marketing processes for best outcomes. Consistency is important. It doesn't help to measure apples against oranges. Set goals and then measure the things that help prove you reached them or show you how to make improvements that get you there.

Focus on the numbers that can show you increasing interest. So they clicked on the link in an email. Did they spend enough time with the content to read it? Scan it? Did they click on another related resource, leave or look at a totally different topic?

Which topics are getting the best response? From who? Can that direct your content development to keep those people's attention?

How many touches does it take to move a prospect from opt in to sales ready? What type of content did the prospects access who converted faster than the others? By looking at how each of them accessed the content can you determine buying stages?

Mapping Content to the Sales Funnel:
See that last paragraph above, but also consider that your buyers have a buying journey of their own which may not map to your sales funnel/cycle. Interface with your salespeople to learn which information they're providing during sales activities that could be provided during the nurturing process.

Close the loop after each customer acquisition. Look at which marketing resources and interactions the new customer participated in prior to sales hand off and what was used during sales activities. Map what you learn. Keep refining as you learn more. Map by segment instead of trying to fit everyone into one map. 

Hopefully these tips will give you some food for thought. What would you add?

The Marketing Content Factory

Britton Manasco posted a great interview with Paul Dunay over on his Illuminating the Future blog last week. Okay, so it took me a while to catch up...book revisions are keeping me busy!

Paul was asked what he thinks are the three most interesting trends or issues for marketers to follow. He selected these:

• ROI, metrics and measurement
• Social Media
• The Content Factory

You can go read the interview for the first two trends - Paul makes some terrific points - but the one that trumps all of them in my opinion is the Content Factory.

"We do interviews like this. We do transcriptions. We make white papers.  There are things that hit the floor there. We need a better way of being able to take a Q&A that’s happening like this live, a Q&A that gets transcribed, a white paper that gets fashioned, landing page content that needs to be fashioned in order to post all of the above. Then there’s a blog post about it, the list of key words that go on the landing page as meta tags, an email, a 150-word email version that can be emailed out."

What's really important about all of this is that companies are starting to see and work on the integration of those content pieces in a way that shapes the story they're telling online across a variety of channels and formats.

They're learning to spread their content far and wide and use it to attract prospects back to their websites for additional information they want. And, they're recasting the ideas they're developing to fit different industries, geographies and media.

It's not just posting the same content all over the place, but taking what you're creating and tuning the focus for specific audiences. Additionally, a blog post is better received in a more conversational style where a technical white paper may be more academic in tone.

All of these considerations are important, but what's key in Paul's interview is the way the content pieces work together with a common goal by pulling the same threads of the story and distributing them in places where the people they want to connect with hang out.

What it boils down to is thought leadership. And Paul puts it very succinctly when he says, "...the day of thought leadership being just the white paper is over."

Boy, isn't that the truth! Go read the interview. There are some really meaty insights that you shouldn't miss.

Then tell me what your company is doing to create your Content Factory.

The Marketer's Won't Do List

Now that we've all armed ourselves with lists of New Year's marketing resolutions, I thought perhaps we could use some tempering to our enthusiasm. Before you get carried away with trying to execute a bunch of new stuff, keep in mind the things that could compromise your outcomes.

As you evaluate your content development and messaging strategy, be sure to stay focused on what's important. Just remember to check yourself against this Won't Do List. Or make up your own. Checks and balances are a good thing to keep us from back-sliding. Especially when we're running fast.

I won't:

1. Talk AT my prospects and customers.


2. Bombard them with stuff focused on pushing my company's agenda.


3. Spam anyone who hasn't given me permission to contact them in the related context.


4. Try to control the conversation.


5. Pitch anyone under the guise of education.


6. Jump into social communities without listening.


7. Bore people to death with my content.


8. Throw obstacles in front of prospects during their buying journey.


9. Ask for information I haven't earned the right to gather.


10. Use one-off messaging without a dang good reason.


11. Toss unqualified prospects to my sales team.


12. Ignore the feedback I get from sales people.


13. Forget my existing customers need love, too.


14. Obsess about eyeballs instead of interest levels and buying stages.


15. Ignore virtual behavior that doesn't tell me stuff I want to hear.

Checking yourself against your Won't Do List can help you stay on track with your intention to make 2009 the year you deliver value because you're so focused on being relevant it makes you giddy!

What would you add?

How effectively are you using B2B data?

Last week, I wrote a post, Lift Revenues 70% By Cleaning Up Dirty B2B Data. Vaibhav Domkundwar from Ready Contacts posted a comment which included this statement:

"Every SFDC customer who adopted web-based CRM over the last 1-5 years is at a point where they are realizing how out-of-control their data is and how critical it is for them to get it in order."

His comment inspired me to think about not just the cleanliness of data, but how effectively we're using what we collect in our sales and marketing efforts. 

Given the growth in the amount of data we can collect—and how "out of control" it's getting—we need to start thinking about which of it is most important to the outcomes it can help us achieve. We only have so much time and we're being charged to do more than ever with our marketing and sales efforts.

Data is pretty much the holy grail for e-marketing where how well you're able to  monitor behavior and read between the clicks and dialogue of online interactions plays an increasingly important role in the success of your marketing efforts. How we pass those insights on to sales and circle back to learn what they've done impacts what marketing actually contributes to company objectives.

Funnily, this process has become how we get to "know" our prospects. So it makes sense that it's kept up-to-date and that we use the information wisely.

Based on our goals of offering better experiences because we actually "know" our prospects well enough to offer relevant and valuable content they need, we need to focus on paying attention to the information that helps us meet that goal, as well as sets us up for the next one.

Different goals require specific insights. In order to reduce information overload to an actionable data set, we need to start thinking strategically about which information will help us achieve each goal. Otherwise we can lose the trees in the forest.

And, it goes without saying that if it's information you have to ask for, your prospects' willingness to fill you in has limits. Remember that actions often speak louder than words. Plus actions may be all you have to go on until the prospect decides to engage in dialogue.

There's an abundance of data that can be collected and behaviors that can be monitored. What's important is the contribution the data makes to the effectiveness of your initiative.

For each campaign you plan, you need to determine which data will help you achieve your stated goal. You may think you know a whole lot about your prospects, but demographic information isn't necessarily the most actionable.

Consider these data observation points:

Recency - When was the last time the prospect accessed your information? If you haven't seen them in 5-6 months, it's likely your short-term value has diminished for them.

Frequency - Does their behavior indicate they find continuous value in your content, or was it just that one white paper download?

Depth - Do they read just the content at the end of the link you send them or do they reach farther into your expertise on related topics?

Participation - Do they comment on your blog, reply to your emails or submit inquiries on your website? Do they fill in the "optional" fields on your webinar registration forms? And, do they actually attend the events?

Breadth - Do you have more than one contact at that company who's given permission for you to send them email? How do the behaviors between all of these contacts match up?

That lift of 70% in revenues based on clean data isn't just because it's clean. It's based on how well you can take action that validates what you think you know by creating valuable interactions embraced by the prospect on the other end.

Lift Revenues 70% By Cleaning Up Dirty B2B Data

Yep. It's true. Based on data quality improvements alone, an organization that pays constant vigilance to the accuracy and quality of their database information can gain a huge upside. And, in this market, you need every advantage you can get...right?

Sirius Decisions released the results of a recent study where they "found that from 10 to 25 percent of b-to-b marketing database contacts contain critical errors—ranging from incorrect demographic data to lack of information concerning current status in the buying cycle."

The problem seems to be that dirty data is easier to sweep under the rug than to clean up. It's not sexy, it's not social and—most of all—it's not cheap. But it's one of those tasks companies need to roll up their sleeves and address. Especially if one of this year's goals is to get conversational and increase relevance to aid in shortening sales cycles.

Read this again, just to stay focused:

"...a strong organization will realize nearly 70 percent more revenue than an average organization purely based on data quality."

And, just in case you want to start pointing fingers and slough this task off to another department, consider that impacts were found across the buying journey. This means that the organization as a whole needs to take this on, but at a minimum, it makes the case for better alignment and feedback loops between marketing and sales.

An example of the breadth of impact across the sales cycle from data quality improvements includes:

• 25% increase in conversions from inquiry to qualified marketing leads
• 12.5% increase in transitioning qualified leads to sales opportunity when you unify data from disparate sources
• 5% reduction in selling time

But reaping these rewards doesn't come easily. It's not a once-and-done kind of thing.

B2B databases double in size every year or so, increasing the probability of data errors. People change jobs and roles. Their buying behavior speeds up and slows down due to constant shifts in priorities based on trigger events. Conversations that aren't recorded can impact your credibility based on foot-in-mouth syndrome if you're not up to date on previous dialogue and interactions.

Data is about the most important thing you've got to work with in a digital business environment. Being out of tune with your prospects and customers hinders your ability to create the consistency and competence that buyers require from their vendors.

Buyers are taking control of their buying process. The closer you can get to them, the more accurately you know their situations, the higher the opportunity for you to be consistently relevant and valuable.

Better quality data means you'll have better:

• persona and profile information
• segmentation capabilities for personalization
• higher engagement due to content relevance (based on insights)
• more accurate sales forecasts
• better delivery for email campaigns
• a more accurate gauge of interest levels
• higher credibility
• valuable conversations
• and so much more...

It may not be glamorous, but data cleanliness is critical to creating sustainable growth. If knowledge is power, you're only as powerful as the quality of that knowledge. When your data is dirty, chances are that it'll be hard to build the credibility you need to generate relationships that produce mutual value.

Why in the world would you leave that to chance?