Marketing Interactions

eMarketing is Not a Formula

I've been asked a lot of questions lately about formulaic approaches to eMarketing. People want some kind of measuring stick to compare their results to those of others. Some kind of way to prove they're succeeding in comparison to the guy down the street.

I'd like to propose that that kind of perspective is a bunch of bull puckey.

Buyers are not the same. They don't think the same ways and they don't go through their buying process in the same order of activities. Their thought processes and their situations have different nuances that won't match up with a formula.

If the guy down the street says they've increased lead generation by 25% with their email outreach program this month and you've only increased yours by 10%, are you a laggard?

Well, that depends upon who opted in.

Are they viable prospects with a high propensity to become sales opportunities or are they just contacts added to your database because they wanted whatever that specific content offer promised?

If that 10% of additional leads are truly engaged with your company, showing interest beyond the content offer that enticed them to opt in, then it's more likely you're going to see some revenue coming down the pike as a result. That doesn't say "laggard" to me.

That's what eMarketing is all about. Activities that drive future revenues by building mutually valuable relationships with prospects and customers. 

The only way to employ eMarketing strategy successfully for your company is to focus on and respond appropriately to the behavior of your buyers. Having a plan is great, but you've got to continuously refine and adjust based on what your prospects show interest in.

Three touches and a sales offer is a formula. It's a halfway-in attitude. What it says is that you'll give them a taste, but then they have to ante up. It's self-serving and not highly effective in a lengthy complex sales process.

Instead, focus your eMarketing strategies on long term generosity. Measure against your past results and set your own benchmarks. Improvement is all about your relationships with your buyers, not your numbers against what the guy down the street is doing.

Refine and improve based on how your prospects are responding to your content and communications. Tweak and tune to increase relevance. That's what counts and that's what's going to produce sales opportunities that turn into customers.

A formula offers a false sense of security. It's a recipe that dictates you follow-it, regardless of what your prospects tell you. It promises if you take steps A + B + C that you'll get a specific outcome. It's like wearing blinders and believing you're in control.

If only your prospects were that predictable.

Instead, go All-in and provide continuous value. Focus your strategy on creating pipeline progression. A strategy is a process that requires continuous adjustments parallel to your prospect's changing needs and priorities. When you approach eMarketing in a holistic manner, you'll see impressive results. 

Every client project I work on requires a unique approach. That's because every company I work for has uniquely differentiating qualities. The relationships they build with their customers are influenced by those nuances. Your company is no different.

Trust me, formulas are not the answer for implementing eMarketing strategies.

Is Your Content Marketing the Conversation?

B2B marketers are focused on getting response to their content and outreach initiatives. They want click throughs and replies and inquiries to result from the calls to action they flow through their marketing programs.

But, what B2B marketers of complex sales need to focus on—in addition—is marketing the conversation.

There are a variety of conversations we need to influence and enable:

• Sales conversations - Yes, this is the big one that all marketers are focused on achieving. This is the one your sales team expects you to generate. A lot of them.


• Prospect conversations - As inside sales plays a bigger role, these are the conversations that help achieve the interest in participating in that big one above. They should be adding value to the content your prospects are exposed to during your nurturing programs.


• Influencer conversations - This is the one marketers overlook. An influencer conversation happens when our content floats ideas in prospects' minds that they feel compelled to go discuss with project stakeholders who have the capability to approve or derail a purchase decision with a two-letter word. "No."

Yes, that's all they have to say. They may not be able to make that final purchase decision on their own, but by saying "no" they can derail the possibility of any further conversation.

As marketers, we must develop content designed to enable the prospects we know about—and whose interest we've cultivated—to be motivated and prepared to take the discussion behind the walls to those we don't know about, or can't reach.

This means that the more you know about everyone involved in the purchase decision, the better able you'll be to design content that inspires a variety of conversations.

So let's talk about what that takes. Marketing the conversation means:

• Sharing information about how the problem impacts the decision maker and the company overall, but also providing them with insights about other impacts to stakeholders involved in or affected by the project.


• Creating content that helps your audience visualize the ideas and internalize them. When prospects can actually picture themselves in the scenarios your content provides, they can then grasp the ideas in a way that naturally inspires conversations. It's about context and storytelling.


• Designing resources for the express purpose of pass along and making them available to the audience you have. Pass along means that you help your prospects see the value in helping others involved in the project (and purchase decision) see the value of your expertise and solutions in relation to the impact from their vantage point.

It's ridiculous to think that your company will be involved in all the crucial conversations that take place during the course of a complex purchase. This means it's up to you to proactively create content designed to enable conversations that address the needs of all the other stakeholders.

Marketing Sherpa research shows that the number of people involved in a buying decision can reach up to 21. That's a lot of people to influence. It's also a really good reason why we need to step back and do the research that helps you get to know your buyers as Jerry, Sam and Debbie instead of the demographic qualifiers marketers seem to rely upon as indicators of interest.

Get To Know Your B2B Prospects

View more presentations from Ardath Albee.

We've got to work on expanding our depth of reach within our prospect companies. That only happens when we've got something relevant to say to each of them. The better we can do this, the more conversations—at different levels—our marketing content will help to inspire.

Is Your Marketing Content Ready for Step Backs?

As B2B marketers of complex sales gain traction in developing content across buying stages, they've got to remember that answering objections and correcting reversals is not just a sales activity. With sales conversations pushed farther back in the buying process, you can lose prospects before they ever speak with your sales reps if you don't remove any doubts that arise for them along the way.

Step Backs cause stalls to pipeline momentum. They tend to happen when your prospects have determined your company has a viable solution to their problem, but something pops up that causes hesitation. This can be a competitor's claim, a new ripple effect your prospect has uncovered that the solution will impact or something they've heard from a colleague or peer. There are a ton of things that can happen to cause hesitation.

Obviously, you can only address Step Backs if you learn what causes them to happen.

Some ways to do this include:

• win/loss reviews with your sales force
• customer interviews
• past customer surveys
• listening to and monitoring social networks

I've seen a number of questions asked on social networks lately about solutions. Someone posts a question asking for recommendations for a type of solution or what they should know about a specific solution before they choose to buy it or even why one solution might be better than another.

The amount of information being shared is extensive—some factual, but much that's based on opinion more than fact. Nevertheless, what's being said about your solutions on social networks needs to be listened to and, sometimes, responded to.

What marketers may struggle with is even admitting there are concerns about buying a type of product. They seem to have trouble talking about anything that's not evangelizing their products. Even though we all know that complex purchases are evaluated based on risk assessment as well as benefits. That's a part of the process. So, meet it head-on and be authentic while you're doing it.

I'm not talking about writing a piece about why buyers have chosen not to buy your solution. I'm talking about addressing concerns directly. For example; if your sales reps are reporting that you're losing deals because a certain type of influencer isn't buying in, find out why and develop content to address that concern to help eliminate that obstacle.

One of the best ways to identify Step Backs is with marketing automation. Here's one scenario made possible by the technology:

A prospect has been engaged by all your nurturing touches for the past five months and suddenly ceases to click through. Take a look at the prospect's individual profile and see if they've returned to some previously viewed content. If so, perhaps something in that content hasn't fully answered their needs and they've gone back to look for reassurance that their assumptions are correct. This is the perfect time to reach out to them personally and ask if they're looking for specific information you can provide. 

Most marketing automation solutions have a rules or work flow process that allows you to automatically send a message if your prospects do or don't do something. If you uncover certain patterns of behavior, you can develop content and distribution processes to address Step Backs as they occur, keeping prospects moving forward.

Or it could be that their priorities changed. You won't know until you ask. There's never a cut-and-dried rule for prospect behavior, but there are ways to try to address it helpfully.

Addressing Step Backs with content is a proactive way to show the depth of your understanding about your buyers' needs. By engaging with them about concerns that cause hesitation, you gain the ability to get them moving forward again, rather than losing them to a competitor or even to a decision to do nothing.

The Return on YES in Lead Nurturing

Lead nurturing has been proven to be instrumental in producing qualified sales opportunities for B2B organizations—when done well. The goal, of course, is for your content strategy to produce momentum during the buying process that consistently produces that outcome.

But I'd like to challenge you to go farther.

You've got to harness the returns on YES to help your prospects take each and every consecutive step with your company.

Every time a prospect responds to you is not a YES.

Here's what I mean. If YES is defined as not only getting your prospect to open the email, click through to the content and then click to read the next related piece of content in your storyline, they have to do all three to give you a YES.

If they only make it as far as open, that's a "maybe."

If they make it past open and follow the link to your content, that's an "okay."

But, until they click on that next link, you don't have YES.

You see, the email send is only an initial invitation. In a considered sale, your prospect has so much to learn that if he's only reading that one piece of content you send out attached to your nurturing email each month—well, it will take forever to get to YES.

Eventually, as you help your buyer traverse the steps of learning all they need to know to be willing to engage in a sales conversation, the definition of YES will become that sales conversation.

YES is progressive. YES is based on credibility and value perception by your prospects.

YES takes patience, consistency and relevance.

YES requires that you show your prospects the next steps.

YES means you're continually assessing your prospects' online behavior and increasing your personalized responsiveness. (think tighter segmentation based on behavior)

Without a continuous string of YES in response to your nurturing programs, how far do you think you'll get?

That's why you need a content strategy. It's not just about "what do we send next?" Nurturing is about knowing and planning for how we respond when we get a YES. Interactive marketing means your nurturing program is a two-way street.

If your response doesn't acknowledge their YES, you're not likely to keep getting that level of engagement.

How are you incorporating YES into your nurturing programs? Better yet, how are you leveraging the return when you get YES? Something to think about.

AllBusiness.com Podcast on Handicapping Target Markets

I was recently interviewed by AllBusiness.com about the idea of Handicapping Target Markets. Handicapping in this sense is about how to use personas to increase the relevance of your nurturing campaigns to cull more ideal customers from your pipeline—as well as shorten sales cycles.

In the podcast I talk about:

• How a handicapping approach works -
• • Circumstances - the trigger events that create need for what you sell
  • Characteristics - the traits like roles, responsibilities and influencers that dictate your buyers' behavior and what they need to build a business case to buy.
• Handicapping as a group process involving salespeople and customers.
• Defining personas
• What kinds of questions you need to answer from the buyers' perspective to create content with higher relevance.
• Examples of persona-driven outcomes
• And more...

I also delve into this subject extensively in my new book, eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale. I present the idea of extending the persona into the creation of buyer synopses, which is essentially the combination of personas with a targeted problem-to-solution scenario. The outcome of this work is producing the insights that help marketers develop highly relevant content for progressive nurturing programs.

You can also download two chapters of the book here.

23 Reasons Why Content Marketing Fails

I've seen some strange things happen to content. In an effort to help you get the most out of your B2B content marketing efforts, I thought I'd shed some light on the kind of stuff that can derail your attempts to gain the attention of your prospects.

In no particular order of importance, here's the top 23 that come to mind: (plus additions submitted by others)

1. Hiring an expert to develop content and then revising it to insert all those "me, me, me" terms and phrases that are noticeably absent.
2. Only use a content resource once and then archive it somewhere offline.
3. Sending out whatever content is at hand to your entire list every month.
4. Not creating a content strategy BEFORE you develop content.
5. Following up a great early-stage content offer with a pushy sales offer.
6. Creating great content but lousy email messaging that fails to get prospects to click.
7. Sending a great email message linked to lousy content.
8. Deluging your database with too many emails, too often.
9. Not measuring response beyond opens and clicks so you have no clue which content is working, or why.
10. When your website content is NOT in alignment with your nurturing content - hence confusing your prospects when they do click through.
11. Landing pages that bear no resemblance to the message in your email.
12. Promising a deep topic dive and delivering a surface skim.
13. Customer success stories that are all about your company, not your customers.
14. Changing focus with every nurturing touch so your prospects are totally confused about what's in it for them.
15. Covering too much because you aren't sure what's relevant to your audience and want to make sure something sticks.
16. Stopping prospects who want your content with lengthy forms that keep them from getting it - do you really need to know all that stuff right now?
17. Launching a blog to talk about your products.
18. Tweeting only about your content and company.
19. Using pre-sales marketing content for your customer base.
20. Giving salespeople early-stage content for use with sales-ready leads - even worse when it's stuff the leads have seen during nurturing.
21. Sending the same email with alarming frequency and repetition to train your prospects to ignore you because you obviously have nothing new to add to the conversation.
22. Disappointing your prospects with a great white paper offer because it's outdated. Just because it was good 3 years ago doesn't mean it shouldn't be updated before it's reused.
23. Only using 3rd party content so your prospects have no clue whether or not YOU know what you're talking about.
    
    Updates and additions to the list:
24. Burying your content in a complex web navigation scheme where visitors have to WORK to find it. (via Jonathan Kranz)
25. Favoring impressive-sounding, abstract jargon over precise, detail-rich stories. (via Jonathan Kranz)
26. Taking a "goody two-shoes" Pollyanna approach that never acknowledges the problems/challenges customers/prospects really face. (via Jonathan Kranz)
27. Failing to provide an easy way for readers to share your online content. (via Caroline)
28. Forgoing new media content--video, podcasts, webinars, etc. (via Caroline)
29. Thinking compelling content must be long and complex and forgetting that simple, interactive content can provide high value when executed well. (via Susan Fantle)
30. Only publishing content in one format. (via Sarah Mitchell)
31. Employing great content without well-planned follow-up. (via Sima Dahl)
32. Lack of unique content written with a conversational tone. (via Dennis)
33. Assuming you know what buyers want to know better than they do (via Melissa)
34. Following great content with company focused pablum (via Melissa)
35. Calling even when I've checked the box that said, just curious (via Melissa)
36. Thinking your content job is done with 4 or 5 pieces! (via Melissa)
    

Thanks to Jonathan, Caroline and Susan, Sarah, Sima, Dennis and Melissa for your contributions! Love it!

The list is growing...come on, what else?

What have I forgotten? Leave a comment and I'll add yours to the list.

Are Marketer's Priorities Skewed?

I just read an article on DemandGen Report that discusses the highlights of a recent survey done by Silverpop, Survey Shows Converting Leads Into Opportunities Tops B2B Priority List. From the title I thought, wow, they're really getting it. Marketing needs to prove contribution to downstream revenues. Yeah!

But, what I learned instead was that their intentions may be great, but their strategy for getting there leaves me wondering how they ever will.

One of the things that told me they won't overwhelmingly prove their value is this:

"When asked what metrics they report to senior management, 59% said email opens and clicks and 49% said number of inquiries."

Say what? And then I came to this:

"18% said filling the top of the sales pipeline with as many “inquiries” as possible would be their top goal going forward. More concerning, of those who plan to focus on the top of the pipeline, 53% don’t score leads and 69% don’t nurture them."

Oh, my. There's definitely lots of work to be done. How is it possible in this day and age that jamming as many contacts as possible into the top of the funnel is a valid goal? Then again, since they don't score or nurture, what else would they focus on achieving?

Okay, I'm being a bit tough here, but staying rooted in status quo tactics is only costing your company potential growth, goodwill and, yes, bigger—and more—deals.

Ambiguous B2B Content Won't Cut It

You hear it from all over, including from me. It's not cool to talk only about your products because your buyers don't care about them, they care about achieving their business objectives.The platform for accomplishing the objectives is secondary to the value add from the company providing them.

So you go out with the best of intentions and try to write about problem-to-solution scenarios and educate your prospects about outcomes they can get should they choose to buy from your company.

And this is often the result:

    "[generic term for solution] will help you increase efficiency, streamline cumbersome processes and boost your employee productivity so you can achieve shorter time to market."

Huh? Yep - that's your prospect shaking his or her head and thinking, "yeah, that's what they all say. Means nothing to me." Delete. Move on.

What's happened is that in trying to sound more impressive than our competitors, we've stacked vague phrase upon vague buzzwords and achieved mediocrity. Um, maybe worse. In trying to steer away from what we know best - our products - we've landed in this nowhere zone of ambiguous statements.

Let's just say that your prospect reads that statement above and tries to have a conversation with a stakeholder involved in a project where your solution could be a perfect fit.

Prospect: "Hey, did you know we can increase efficiency by implementing this kind of solution?

Stakeholder: What exactly becomes more efficient?

Prospect: "Um, I don't know, but whatever it is, it also boosts our employee productivity, so it must be good, right?"

Stakeholder: "How does it do that? In comparison to what?"

At your prospects shrug, the stakeholder eyes him with concern about mental instability and disappears down the hall muttering under his breath.

Okay - perhaps a bit dramatic, but go grab a piece of your marketing content and scour it for vague terms and see how many you find.

The reason for all this vagueness in content is because we forget about context that matches our prospect's worldview. We've forgotten how to tell a story of interest to our prospects, that engages them based on interest and needs, not product features.

Efficiency is fine and dandy. It means to get things done faster and with less effort.

Context might look like this: When you use this type of solution you can increase production on the line by up to 5X what you're achieving today.

A statement like that is not only easily understood, but it generates ideas for the prospect based on their unique situation. They may grab onto that 5X improvement and apply it to the possibility that they can eliminate the need for that costly expansion project to add another line to the plant. Is that appealing? Yep.

The point is that the more real you can make the value your solutions deliver, the easier it is for prospects to insert themselves into the story you're telling and relate that idea to a goal they need to achieve.

And here's the kicker - unless you can afford to create 1-to-1 content based on research into each prospect's reality, it's highly unlikely that your content could actually address that exact justification and remain relevant to everyone in that market segment.

For someone else, the 5X increase might mean they don't need to staff up to meet increasing demand, saving them additional overhead when compared to the solution's total cost of ownership.

Replacing vague terms with contextual examples gives your prospects:

• a way to equate value against their specific situation
• credible talking points to influence stakeholder conversations
• increased interest in learning more to validate their idea

And those points all help build higher levels of engagement that move prospects toward becoming qualified sales opportunities.

So where do you find the fodder for context?

You find it in the ways your customers use your products and in the business results they achieve. You can use customer insights in content articles without the need to identify the customer. In fact, by leaving the customer out of it, you give the prospect more freedom to imagine the possibilities than if you named the customer.

For example, if I'm working for a midsize IT company, I may perceive that an outcome achieved by IBM isn't possible for my situation. They have more resources and a heck of a lot more money to throw at the problem. But without that preconception in the way, I very well may see how to apply that context to my own situation.

So, remember that context is great, but also be aware of how perception can be affected based on the layers of context you choose to use. Make those decisions based on the market segment your content is designed to engage.

Applying context in place of vague terms and buzzwords can transform the results your marketing content generates.

Responding to B2B Prospect Behavior

In the webinar I did yesterday with Genius.com about B2B drip campaigns with content mapped to buying stages, a question was asked that deserves more response than I had time to give.

The attendee asked:

"...would you change your drip depending if someone responded? Do you  know if , eg, they opened Drip 2, THEN and only then would you send Drip 3?"

This question raises several points that can sway the answer, so I'm going to break this down based on some possible types of response.

• Open. To me, this response is the most iffy. Sometimes it's hard to tell if they opened the email intentionally or if their email program did so right before they deleted. I wouldn't rely a lot on this metric with the exception that you do want to see it increase over time.


• Click to content offer. This metric tells you that your email messaging worked well enough to get them to click. It's helpful to add your web metrics to this one and see how long they spent viewing the content, if that was the goal. If they click through and bounce (leave right away) you have a different insight than if they click and spend a minute or two reading. If the goal was a download with a form, then I want to know how many completed the form.


• Click to content offer plus views additional web content. This can be one of the most telling metrics that applies to the question above. If the prospect clicks through to the content offer, spends time reading and then views additional content on your website on the same topic, that tells you they're interested in that topic.
  
  If, however, they click on your content offer and then move on to web pages with a different theme, product or problem focus, that tells you the prospect's interest may lie elsewhere. In this case, I'd send a follow-up with more of whatever they showed the highest interest in and see if they bite. If they respond, this could be an indication that the lead would be better engaged by a different drip campaign.


• Reply with thanks. Yes, this does happen when you send relevant content. And it tells you that specific prospect has a higher interest than one who may click and then leave. If you receive a "thanks" reply, go check that prospect's individual activity history to see if their behavior matches that assumption. Sometimes, people are just nice.
  
  This said, what a grand opportunity. Reply with the offer of an "exclusive" article that extends the topic. Tell them you appreciate hearing from them and send them a link to more content they can't find elsewhere. Watch to see how they respond.


• Reply with question. I love these! This is a conversational opening that invites you to respond. With this one, you definitely need to take this opportunity to answer their question and ask one of your own. If you can establish a bit of two-way dialogue, and use the opportunity subtly, you can learn a lot that can help you fill in the blanks on their profile. You can also learn if the lead is not a good fit.

NOTE: Make sure you're monitoring the email address you're using for your sends. You'd be amazed how many companies use a "no-reply" email. Think about what that says about your company.

Now, let's tackle the second part of the question.

There are many reasons why a prospect might not respond to "Drip 2" (second touch in the nurturing program - for those who weren't at the webinar). They include:

• Their day was jampacked, so they deleted everything not critical.
• They were traveling when you sent it.
• The subject line just didn't catch their attention.
• They don't care and aren't interested.

Waiting to send the next touch in your campaign until they open the last send, means you may never get another chance to engage them.

Your leads are people and each of them will respond to your word choices in different ways. Somtimes it's the angle you take in addressing a topic and, sometimes, it's just a matter of how many hours they have in a day.

What's interesting about this is to use your analytics to see which titles, subject matter and messaging catch the most attention. Monitor patterns over time. You may see that the more provocative subject lines catch attention, or learn that your leads respond better to the more serious ones. Make sure you gather enough insight to establish a solid baseline before you start changing things.

This is yet another reason why segmentation is so important. The more aligned in needs and interests the recipients of your drip campaign are, the easier it is to create content that a higher percentage of them find meaningful.

Unless they tell you to stop contacting them, I suggest continuing with your campaign, as planned. Monitor behavior patterns and adjust when you see a trend developing that you want to mitigate or encourage. But make sure you have solid reasons to shift.

B2B Marketing is NOT a Speed Sport

Since it's Friday, I figure I'm entitled to a bit of a rant.
I keep reading things like:

Achieve marketing success in 20 minutes a week.

Manage all your marketing in an hour a month.

Stupid stuff like that.

Are you buying it?
Don't.

Instead of looking at ways to minimize the time you spend, why not look at what makes your marketing successful and figure out how to do more of that. Anyone who thinks marketing in this day and age will be successful with a "set it and forget it" strategy is in for a big surprise. Not the good kind.

I'm a huge proponent of marketing automation systems. I firmly believe that marketers will never be able to share highly relevant communications that engage the right buyers across lengthening sales cycles and get them to the sales team at just the right time without technology.

This said, what you put into your marketing automation systems is pretty much responsible for what you'll get out of it. The technology is a great enabler. It allows marketers to learn all kinds of things they never had solid access to before and look at that intelligence they gather in new ways. The systems enable refined distribution models that marketers probably couldn't create on their own. Scoring helps them to gauge when to pass leads to sales in a more effective way and it helps to reduce the wasting of leads by allowing sales to return the ones who need to mature back to you.

Great marketing takes time, thoughtful consideration and, well...strategy. And that's before you get to the execution requirements.

I'm not trying to make this harder than it needs to be, but 20 minutes a week or an hour a month is ridiculous. I'm a prolific writer and it takes me longer than 20 minutes to write a solid, valuable and relevant marketing article for a client. Often it takes hours to get it polished and tuned to give it the best chance at producing the highest levels of engagement.

Go ahead, try to write a white paper in an hour. I double dare you.

Try to analyze your lead scoring reports and determine exactly what's working and what's not in 20 minutes.

Does it take you more than 20 minutes to post a new content article to your website, write a blog post that links to it and then Tweet about it and share it with your LinkedIn groups? If you spend time thinking about how to make it relevant for each place you post it instead of posting the exact same thing everywhere, I'm guessing yes.

In an age where buyers are clamoring for relevant content (finding it less than 42% of the time), talking to others about your company and pushing sales interactions to the end of the buying process, it's just going to take longer than that to do marketing right.

Sorry. I'm just not buying the premise. What do you think?