Marketing Interactions

Don't speak AT me, speak WITH me

As e-marketing has made inroads with B2B marketers a lot has been said about the idea of online conversation. But, what does that mean from a marketing content perspective?

If you think of a conversation in the offline world it can be in the context of a chat with a friend — 1-on-1, an exchange in a meeting with a group of people, a discussion with your peers over lunch or witty repartee with your spouse during TV commercials in the evening.

When you transfer that idea online, how often do you "feel" any similarity to those above examples? How often do you make a connection with the content you see?

Part of this is because you're not really there. The people you're "conversing" with can't see you, your facial expressions or hear the tone of your voice as if you'd spoken aloud. Nor can you see them.

That means you have to think about the words you use and how they work together to convey your idea. Even more importantly, you need to think about how your idea will be perceived through those word choices.

Consider what you'd see if you lined up a bunch of B2B websites from companies that sell similar products and removed all the graphics, logos and design elements from them so you were only left with the text. Then eliminate product names from the text. Would you be able to tell them apart?

No, I didn't think so.

Do you know why?

Because B2B companies have a tendency to create content that's all about what they want to say—which is usually about how great their products are. Even most case studies talk more about the products than the customers. Not what the people who may be interested in figuring out how and why to solve a problem want to hear. At the risk of being repetitive, people want results, not widgets.

That's the speaking AT me part.

Here's the problem with speaking AT people. You've not given them an entry point.

Consider if a website visitor you're tracking starts clicking on a bunch of links and pages around your website. He tops out the scoring metric that says he's ready for sales. Yet, once you pass him to sales, he's a go-nowhere contact, not really a viable lead.

Could it be that he was clicking desperately in search of content that actually spoke with him? Content that answers questions he has or provides a way to learn about a problem he needs to solve. Something beyond the list of features, feeds and speeds that your company loves — but mean nothing to an early-stage buyer.

If your scoring process isn't delivering a lift to qualified leads that sales accepts as worthy of their attention, you might want to look at the impression your content is making. Of course, most people wouldn't work that hard to find engaging content, so this might not be the best test.

The thing I see happening is that everyone is fired up about technology. Don't get me wrong, I love technology. But technology is tactical. It enables us to create content quickly and launch it online even faster in a variety of formats. The problem is that B2B companies aren't making the development of content that buyers want, need and value their priority.

They're still stuck in tell, push and sell mode.

Where they ought to be is in helpful, inviting and generosity mode.

Which mode is poised for conversation?
Which mode inspires trust and empathy?

One "touch" does not make a conversation. You need to aim for more than one. And you need to have at least some of them be initiated by your leads because they see a reason to do so. This is also known as progressive lead nurturing.

The thing about most offline conversations is that they follow a theme, if you will. For example; I call and ask you a question about a project you're working on. We talk back and forth about that. Then, maybe the topic changes to something you want to know, or that conversation is over...until next time.

In a B2B world, often it's more like this:

• I send you an email to tell you about my latest white paper.
• You download the white paper.
• I follow up with a sales pitch.
• You ignore me.
• Next month I send an email to inform you of a product launch.
• You don't open it.
• Then I send you an invitation to a webinar about some benefit that new product we launched can deliver. You know, the product launch you didn't show any interest in.
• You ignore that too.
• So, I send you our company newsletter about our new office building and a customer success story about a company you can't even relate to.
• Say what? You're still not speaking with me?

Boggles the mind, doesn't it?

Would you expect that type of an exchange to work in person? You wouldn't dream of talking to someone that way, would you? It doesn't work online, either.

The thing is you need to think strategically about your content, the context it's designed for and the invitation for interaction it extends. Ongoing interaction won't happen, at least not consistently, without paying attention to how you design the content you put into your technology.

The more interactions your content generates, the higher likelihood that a true conversation will develop. And, if you pay attention to how the dialogue takes form, I'll bet you'll begin to see a connection from one interaction to another. Similar to how an offline conversation happens.

A Marketing Conversation with the CFO

Everywhere I look I see the mantra "Do More With Less." Budgets are being cut or re-purposed requiring CMOs to substantiate the effectiveness of marketing programs to make a valid case for continued funding for their marketing initiatives.

Last week, I wrote about Scott Santucci's new report, Uncovering the Hidden Costs of Sales Support. A conversation with the CFO was a component of that report and it got a lot of coverage during the webinar on the same subject. Forrester's CFO, Mike Doyle, was on the panel and provided some great insights to how CMOs can have effective conversations with their CFO.

Here are a few of the key points CMOs need to clarify for their CFOs:

• Show linkage between spending and outcomes.
  • Explain why and how.


• Discuss how each marketing program drives top line sales results.


• Highlight changes and refinements that create improved results over time.
  • Show movement and progress against goals.


• When a program is on the chopping block, be prepared to discuss both the short and long-term ramifications of losing it.
  • Delineate cause and effect.


• Tie all your marketing initiatives to strategic priorities defined by the CEO.

Essentially, the conversations that CMOs have with their CFOs need to focus on business priorities with proof points that marketing programs are helping to produce beneficial strategic outcomes.

Marketing needs to focus on measurement as it relates to business progression. It's not enough to say that your new marketing program generated 75% more clicks than your last one. You've got to reach farther than that to demonstrate cause and effect that moves the business closer to defined goals.

This is why every marketing program you create needs to have defined KPIs (key performance indicators) prior to launch. If one goal is to increase reach into prospect companies to create additional access points, then you should be able to show how much depth your campaign produced in the short term and follow that up with the longer-term business impact.

If you began with an average of one contact per prospect account and now have an average of three contacts per prospect account after the initiative, you've increased your reach to purchase influencers. The next step may be to show that marketing can motivate those influencers to help increase the momentum of overall prospect account conversion.

Think creatively about how you can evidence marketing outcomes and tie them to business priorities. Look at sales goals and demonstrate how marketing initiatives support them. An example may be that since marketing has now increased contact depth at prospect companies, salespeople are setting more meetings and demo requests are increasing.

Then tie resulting sales (longer-term goal) back into the short-term incremental results of the marketing program.

Learn from sales what changed / improved from that added depth.

• Shorter time to sale?
• Less objections for sales to overcome?
• Less education needed from sales reps?
• More conversational kudos across social networks producing higher credibility in your market?

For the CFO conversation, show the tie-in to achieving business priorities. And, as you'd expect me to say, marketing automation is a must-have to give marketers the information to generate the insights CFOs need to back up their CMOs.

How to Find New Customers - Combo Pack

If only 25% of inquiries are sales ready when they come through the door, what do you do with the other 75%?

You nurture them, of course. According to Jon Miller at Marketo:

If you don't nurture, you'll probably lose up to 90% of those inquiries who aren't ready to buy. But, if you manage them correctly, you'll convert up to 50% of them into opportunities.

Now that's a healthy incentive for better lead management!

There's a new white paper out from Jeff Ogden that talks about demand generation and lead nurturing. How to Find New Customers, helps you learn more about how to:

• Find new customers by driving demand for your products and services.
• Align your educational content to the way your customers actually buy.
• Turn your website into an educational hub.
• Leverage marketing automation to become a trusted advisor.
• Fill the sales pipeline by nuturing decision makers until they are ready.

But that's not all.

Jeff has also released a 25 minute companion podcast with Jon Miller to share the skinny on what works and what doesn't in lead nurturing. Considering that Marketo now serves over 200 customers since they launched their product about a year ago, he knows quite a bit about this subject.

In the podcast, Jon talks about -

• the disastrous outcome of tossing inquiries (not qualified leads) to sales,
• 5 keys to lead nurturing,
• the stages of the nurturing process,
• how the Internet has changed relationships between buyers and sellers,
• and much more.

Jeff is also interviewing a number of experts about related topics to help you see the big picture. So far, the schedule for May includes:

May 1 - Kent Huffman from BearCom with a demand generation case study

May 13 - Jill Konrath on How to Get Into Big Companies

May 28 - Alen Majer on Triggering Events

Jeff is generating some great FREE resources to help B2B marketers learn more about best practices for demand generation and lead management. Make sure to check them out.

Download the Ebook

See the Podcast Line-up and download Jeff's interview with Jon Miller.

Periodic Table of Inside Sales

Trish Bertuzzi and The Bridge Group have been doing some great research on what makes inside sales tick. But they've taken it a step farther and produced a really useful tool for comparing your company's metrics against benchmark metrics.

Because this is such a cool tool, I asked Trish to share a few insights salespeople can extract from the information in the table and apply to their company's inside sales efforts.

Ardath: Can you tell us the basis for the Periodic Table of Inside Sales?

Trish: The Periodic table is a summary sheet based on the data we collected from our Inside Sales and LeadGen Metrics and Compensation reports.  They are the result of surveys with 125 technology companies in North America.  The reports are 30 some odd pages long and executives often prefer the short version and that is what this is – a cheat sheet so to speak.

[You'll find both the reports available for download on the same page as the table.]

Ardath: There's a lot of meaty information in this table. Can you highlight what you see as the top 5 challenges facing inside sales teams today?

Trish: Here's where I see companies struggling in today's selling environment.

1. Productivity – Companies are being forced to do more with less. Reps are caught in the trap of trying to be everything to everyone.  Farmers are forced to hunt and hunters are forced to prospect more than they ever have before. 
   
   We no longer have the luxury of specialized sales teams and are forced to have our teams become “jack of all trades”.  This is impacting productivity dramatically as the reps fumble to acquire skills they either don’t have or have not used in a while.


2. Performance – 64% of all inside sales teams and 72% of all leadgen teams achieve quota.  Doesn’t sound bad BUT you have to remember…these are averages and there are quite a number of reps that perform below acceptable rates. 
   
   The real question is why and there are two possible explanations – either the goal was wrong to begin with or the reps are not being provided with the tools and training they need to adapt in this selling climate.  Each company has to figure out which it is and make changes and investments accordingly.


3. Motivation – Selling is not for sissy’s – now more than ever.  How do you keep your team motivated when they not only suffer massive rejection every day but also lose deals because of layoffs and budget cuts?  It is not an easy task especially with limited funds for traditional spifs and contests. 
   
   What you can do is get creative.  All reps want to learn – invest time in mentoring and coaching.  You have the skills to share so take the time to do so and it will pay off in spades.


4. Training – What is the one thing that gets cut when times are tough – training.  What is the one thing that shouldn’t get cut when times are tough – training.  Need I say more?


5. Systems – Implementing your CRM used to be a daunting task but with the advent of SAAS, it has become a non-issue, well almost anyway.  But what has emerged as a problem is integrating your CRM with all the great Sales 2.0 technologies that are out there. 
   
   The tools that are meant to increase productivity are starting to impact productivity because of lack of integration.  On a daily basis, our team uses: salesforce.com, InsideView, Zoominfo, Jjigsaw and LinkedIn just for pre-call planning! 
   
   Each and every one of these tools is amazing, but how do you seamlessly link them and develop a process so that your reps are efficiently selling and not spending too much time in research mode? That is the challenge.  Add to it all the back office systems that need to be integrated and you can see the problem.

Ardath: I can see how each of these challenges plays off another. If you had to choose, what would you say are the top metrics that inside sales should start focusing on to improve their outcomes?

Trish: I'd suggest starting with these three metrics to increase productivity:

1. Make sure your reps are using live conversations with your prospects to drive the sales process.  Email is not a substitute and does not allow for effective qualification or closing to take place. 


2. It takes multiple touches to move a suspect to a prospect and a prospect to a win.  Not all of these have to be “human” touches so make sure sales and marketing have developed an integrated strategy for getting it done.


3. Pay attention to your conversion ratios.  If you don’t have a grasp on the numbers detailed in the Periodic Table then you can’t control your results.

Ardath: That's some great information for us to use in conjunction with your Periodic Table for Inside Sales. Any final words for my readers?

Trish: Inside Sales is not magic...it’s not art…it is science.  You need to create the formula that works for your organization and then execute flawlessly!

***
Go get your copy of the Periodic Table for Inside Sales. And, while you're there, get copies of the research reports that go with the tool.

After you review it, let me know your thoughts.
Did you find metrics that surprised you?
Are there any your company is beating?
Which ones do you find the most challenging to address?

Thanks to Trish for the great information!

Match Marketing Content to Executive's Media Preferences

I was asked recently, via Twitter, what type of content I recommend my clients use. My reply was that it depended upon what the client's buyers needed and wanted. Even more important, in my opinion, is to get the focus right. If your content is addressing your buyers' concerns, interests and priorities, it's going to be considered valuable.

However, different strokes for different folks is a good rule of thumb. People have preferences for how they consume information and the best way to ensure you reach the stakeholders you target means you should provide content in a variety of formats they embrace. In this case, we're talking about senior executives.

A recent issue of BtoB Magazine included the article, Study examines global executive's media consumption (unfortunately I couldn't find a link to an online version). The study was conducted by Financial Times and b-to-b agency Doremus New York via an online survey of 338 global senior executives in Q4 2008.

Here are some of the media preference findings:

• 55% consume 75% of work-related media electronically.
• Offline media consumption during the work day includes industry trade journals (43%) and general business publications (25%).
• 34% go online after work hours.
• 65% of the most savvy users of technology use professional networking sites (technophiles are only 15% of the group overall).

As for specific types of content consumption:

• 77% listen to webinars
• 58% read blogs
• 56% watch streaming video
• 41% listen to podcasts
• 25% contribute to blogs
• 20% belong to social networking sites

As for mobile, well they mostly do banking and manage investments. In fact, when asked about their receptivity to ads on their mobile phones, 70% said NO, but 18% said they'd take ads if they got service discounts in exchange. So, it's going to cost you if you want to target execs with ads via their mobile devices—either through deletes or discounts.

As you can see, executives embrace a variety of media which means you need to accommodate them with your content delivery. What I found interesting about this study is that it didn't address white papers, enewsletters, articles or websites - all of which other research firms (like IDC, Forrester and KnowledgeStorm) have learned executives find valuable.

Although a qualifier could be the reason they're looking for access to information in the first place. General business information vs. buying knowledge could be considered differently.

What's important to note in this study is that it appears executives are indeed engaging in online media, even participating. In fact, 9% of them own a blog. It's definitely worth considering combining custom media with a variety of presentation formats to catch the attention and extend the engagement of executive stakeholders.

Another question I'd like answered is: Since execs are contributing to blogs, as well as writing them, does this mean the value consideration for blogs is growing? Blogs have reported low on the value scale in many reports, which seems askew to what I'm hearing and seeing.

Just one little caveat. Before you run out and commission videos and podcasts and other formats, or launch a blog, take a listen to your customers and buyers and learn what kind of media they prefer. After all, your buyers are not all buyers. 

A beautifully shot, entertaining and informative video is just a waste of money unless the people you need to reach will watch it. Remember to focus on getting the right kind of attention—from those who could buy from you—instead of just anyone. All clicks are not of equal value.

Be sure to ask, listen and learn before you leap into the production of new formats. Adding to the variety of formats for content delivery is definitely worthy of your attention.

Stop Random Acts of Sales Support

I just finished reading Scott Santucci's (Forrester) new report, Uncovering the Hidden Costs of Sales Support, and want to share some insights to the amazing amount of money spent on enabling quota-carrying sales reps that you may not realize.

During a time when cost cutting is imperative, not knowing about the extent of these costs or the cause/effect relationship they have to achieving top-line sales outcomes can wreak havoc on your company's ability to grow strategically.

Here's the startling discovery made when doing research across 57 public technology companies for this report:

"Technology vendors are spending, on average, 19% of their selling, general and administrative (SG&A) costs or $135,262 per quota-carrying salesperson in support-related activities."

That's a lot of dough. And it doesn't include base or variable costs like salaries, benefits, commissions and incentives.

The basic problem Scott points out is that all this spend is likely hidden across varying departments and projects (and likely termed differently) — thus hard to identify as sales support spending. Not to mention the difficulty in assessing overlaps or disjointed efforts that don't help your company accelerate sales objectives or are just plain redundant.

Forrester points to 4 Core Sales Activities that all sales enablement spending should impact:

• Gaining access to the appropriate stakeholders.


• Conducting successful sales meetings with conversations that progress buying intent.


• Helping buyers envision your solution as a valuable way to solve their problems and seeing the path to getting their desired outcomes.


• Communicating the reasons and value that enables a buyer to build a business case, whether objectively and/or emotionally justified, that leads to buying.

The way to stop random acts of sales support begins by mapping all sales enablement initiatives to the four core sales activities.

• Look across all departments - for example, a Human Resources expenditure for sales training certification probably isn't on the radar as a direct sales support expense.


• Include spending on collateral, sales tools, demand generation, sales training & coaching, best practice aids and support services.


• Assess the overlap in initiatives undertaken in support of each core activity. Eliminate redundancies.


• Correlate the flow across marketing-to-sales efforts. For example, if salespeople are being trained to sell with a methodology, do marketing materials support and reinforce that style of selling?


• Evaluate the relationship to all sales support initiatives to the company's strategic priorities—as defined by the CEO. If a cause/effect relationship to those priorities can't be established, sustaining that program should come into question.

I've written a lot about sales enablement. In fact, empowering sales support effectively was the subject of one of my vision posts for 2009. This Forrester report shines the light more brightly into this chasm between marketing and sales, calling into question the escalating costs that result from a lack of cross-departmental alignment to business priorities as related to selling expenditures.

In a time when companies are being challenged to do more with less, do you know both the short and long-term effects of each of your sales support programs? Do you really know which ones you can consolidate, or even eliminate — without causing damage to the top-line achievements your company is counting on?

Scott issues a great challenge to company executives that could open their eyes to  support spending their salespeople may not find relevant (read wasteful).

Here you go:

If you asked your salespeople how they'd spend $135K to improve their sales outcomes, how likely would they be to choose the initiatives you've already chosen for them?

What do you think?

Roper Study Shows People Engage with Custom Content

Thought leadership, branded content is driving engagement on the Web. Whether that brand is "personal" or corporate, people are reading. And, when it's contained within a custom publication, their response is increasingly favorable.

Roper Public Affairs conducted a national poll on behalf of the Custom Publishing Council and found an increase of 6 points from 2005 to 68% of responders today who acknowledged that custom content has helped them make purchasing decisions.

Say HELLO to ROI!

For companies who are on the fence about creating customer-focused content, consider this finding:

"Overall, custom media is a preferred source of information with nearly three-quarters of respondents agreeing that getting information about companies from an interesting collection of articles is more appealing than getting information from advertisements."

While preference for print was higher than for electronic (56% to 37% respectively) the key factor is that content related to their work won out overall. In fact, 66% buy from the companies who provide them with useful information.

They like articles and information targeted to their specific interests. And, they remember you. So, if you're intent on building awareness, it's time to embrace custom publishing for your marketing content.

While the study indicates the respondents are Americans - not classified by B2B or B2C, your prospects are people. And people don't shed their stripes when they walk into their offices.

The study is important for a couple of reasons. People are telling you they want information and not ads. They want value, not sales pitches. This means you need to focus on your customers.

Really, really focus! Get to know them. Find out what they're interested in. Create an editorial calendar that addresses those issues and interests from their perspective.

Incidentally, these findings may also be indicative as to why marketers think newsletters are one of their most effective marketing tools. Then again, it depends on the custom content they deliver.

To learn more about the study, here's the press release from Custom Publishing Council

Strategy Beyond the Send

Strategy for B2B lead nurturing is often treated as more of an after thought—if it's thought of at all. I'm not sure exactly why, as the whole point of lead nurturing is to extend the initial attention you've caught across the buying process until the prospect is in a sales-ready state.

People talk about the components of nurturing, email campaigns, messaging, content, even touch frequency and reaching deeper across potential customer companies, and more. But when I ask them what their overall plan for prospect progression is, they seem stymied.

Like it'll just happen if they keep sending some message or newsletter every month without regard for where prospects are in their buying process, what they know or what they have yet to learn.

That's leaving a lot to chance. One-off sends aren't really the essence of building a relationship. That type of program is just putting information in front of someone multiple times and hoping you hit them when they're focused on whatever message you send that day.

For example:

Send 1: A newsletter with new product launch info, a customer spotlight using the beta version and an invitation to download a 3rd party expertise white paper.

Send 2: Email with link to a thought leadership article about the benefits of using one of your legacy products.

Send 3: Invitation to a webinar about how bundling your products together provides increasing scales of efficiency.

Do you see any storyline building? [other than focused on what the company wants to promote] Well, according to research, much of marketing communication is based on the company's product strategy, not prospect needs. Most websites are updated only when new products are launched, or when company positioning changes - excepting press and event areas.

That said, marketers seem to have enough success with this "chance" approach that the outcomes they're getting seem good enough.

But, are they? Really?

I think we can do better. I think that for sales to actually trust marketing that the prospects they hand over to sales need to be sales-ready. And marketing must have established higher levels of credibility for their companies than ever before during the pre-sales process.

Let's face it, content marketing is a big deal. Sourcing information online is how buyers in complex sales decide how to choose through learning about the options and ideas available to solve their problems. Based on the quality of those interactions, they decide who to partner with to get the outcomes they want. As more and more companies embrace the power of content marketing and create better, more customer-focused content, it's going to become more challenging to stand out.

By integrating the components of customer focus, content development, and technology with a strategic approach, you'll find it easier to differentiate your company based on your strengths and expertise.

Instead of talking, thinking and planning around the components of interactive marketing, you need to think about the whole of it—the strategy beyond the send. You need to think progressively, like your prospects do when they set out to solve a problem. One step leads to another...and another...

Here's an exercise to help you start planning a progressive nurturing approach:

1. Think about one problem your products solve that's key to your prospects.
2. Define that problem from your customer's perspective.
3. List the questions they'll have and what they need to know in order to make a decision. (If you can address this to segments, all the better.)
4. Review your options for content that addresses these concerns.
5. Rate the Q&A for priority (take a stab and refine as you go)
6. Create an editorial calendar based on the priority list you just created.

Do not aim for perfection. It won't happen, so give it up now.

Just get started. Monitor prospect response and behavior and make adjustments. You'll likely find gaps over time where you missed a thought leap. Create content to fill them and keep going.

Create an overview for your salespeople so they know the story you're telling. What questions and answers did you brainstorm that fall into the sales activity realm? Create content for your salespeople to use that keeps your storyline going. In fact, involve sales in the brainstorming and your chances of more closely matching the storyline to your prospect's experience of solving the problem will get better.

The key point is that marketing has to think beyond one send at a time to nurture effectively. Marketing is not an exercise in utilizing components, it's a pro-active effort to coordinate the effectiveness of their use across the prospect's experience of solving a problem.

Sales Stimulus Package for B2B Marketers too!

My good friend, Jill Konrath, is expending a lot of effort this year to encourage salespeople to pound this recession into the ground with new ideas and strategies that will help them fill their pipeline with active, better qualified leads.

With that in mind, she's gathered together 13 of North America's proven sales experts to share strategies and ideas in an intensive 2-week teleseminar program that only requires an hour a day. In fact, with the timing, you can sit at your desk eating lunch while you listen. And then get your questions answered, live, for dessert.

How's that for effective use of your time? You have to eat, right?

During these twelve teleseminars, you will discover:

• Exactly what you need to create a full pipeline - quickly, despite the longer sales cycles and fewer buyers.

• How to reach decision-makers on the phone and via email to get your foot in the door, even when their barricades are up.

• Tools that sales experts use to make big-time impressions & rich connections with prospective customers. Get great advice on using LinkedIn, social networking sites, Sales 2.0 resources and online intelligence sources.

• What it takes to capture the attention of busy decision makers and get on their calendar.

• How to ferret out the decision makers with power, so you don't spend your valuable time with the wrong people.

• Strategies you can use to speed up your sales, even when your prospects are slowing down their decision process.

• How to quickly build relationships where you're positioned as a trusted, high integrity advisor who's committed to your customers' success.

• What it takes to eliminate the deadly mistakes that are causing you to lose sales or slow them down.

• How to overcome sales objections and (even better) prevent them from happening in the first place.

• And many more strategies to help you outsell the recession.

If you sign up by April 27th, you'll save 40% off the pricing. That means you get an hour with 12 proven experts for about $25 each. And these topics are killer.

In fact, the reason I'm promoting this teleseminar series is because I believe marketers can benefit in huge ways from the ideas these sales experts are sharing. I've talked excessively about the need for marketing to enable sales. Participating in these tele-classes will help marketers find more and new ways to support the sales process.

In fact, I'd wager that you'll find ideas to improve your marketing, as well.

On the fence?

Well, you're in luck.

Jill is holding FREE preview calls on April 21st and 24th so you can get some insights in advance without paying a nickel. I'm sure you'll see that the program is very worthwhile.

With reduced budgets, I doubt you'll find a better program for professional development this year. Plus, you'll get recordings so you can access them whenever you want to refresh your thinking. I've heard most of these experts speak before...they're GOOD.

Go Register and get set to better enable your company's sales outcomes.

SMBs get C- grade for marketing and innovation

That's the skinny from The State of Small Business Report from Network Solutions and the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland.

I bet you didn't know that there are over 27 million small businesses (less than 100 employees) in the USA. I bet you also didn't realize that these businesses account for 98% of all businesses with payrolls, 27% of business receipts and 36% of jobs.

SMBs have the potential to heavily impact how business gets done. But, that potential is limited when you consider that only about 50% of them have websites. I had to back up when I read that. It just seems so, well, yesterday.

What many SMBs have realized—and taken advantage of—is the fact that the Internet can be the BIG equalizer. With a good online strategy, your company can compete with the big guys. In fact, SMBs have the capability to be more nimble, caring and personable than larger companies with a lot of red tape.

Want proof? The top grade in the index for SMBs was an A- for Customer Service. With Internet technology becoming more affordable and accessible every day, there's just no reason for small companies not to grab onto these tools to increase their market competitiveness.

Here are the ratings for the Marketing and Innovation Sub-Index:

[Top Score is 100 - Overall SMB score is 71]

• Getting your customers to refer new customers: 78
• Coming up with new ideas before competitors: 71
• Coming up with new ideas that increase revenues: 71
• Identifying new prospective customers: 71
• Positioning your company like the big guys: 71
• Converting marketing leads to buyers: 68
• Finding efficient ways to advertise and promote your biz: 67

Referrals are a small company's best source of new business - probably predicated on their ability to serve their customers extremely well.

Efficiency and effectiveness in marketing efforts and customer acquisition are the weakest links.

The report further gauged competitiveness based on the number of Internet technologies used and found that SMBs using more applications reaped better results. Supporting this finding is an eMarketer article, Small Businesses Seek Solutions Online, which shows that SMBs are shifting their strategies to online acitvities for greater impact with less budget risk.

And this article from B2B Magazine that discusses SMBs rushing to embrace marketing automation technology.

Although SMBs have largely been underserved by marketing technology companies, that's changing, including price points that small businesses can afford.

Some examples are:

Constant Contact for email marketing.

SquareSpace for websites.

ZoomInfo for database research and prospecting.

HubSpot for inbound marketing.

Genius for automating both marketing and sales processes.

Typepad or Word Press for blogging.

LinkedIn for professional networking.

Twitter for micro-conversations and netoworking.

This is only a short list to give you an idea of where to start looking to embrace Internet-based technologies that can help you get that marketing and innovation grade on an upward trend.

Don't overwhelm yourself. Start with one thing at a time and add more as you can. If you don't have a website, start there. After all, SMBs did pretty well with idea generation in the index results. Start sharing some of them with your prospects and customers.

Oh, in case you haven't noticed while you're out there providing all that great customer service, ideas are huge. Helping customers solve problems is where it's at. Get moving, there's lots to do!