Marketing Interactions

Handicapping Your B2B Target Market

Who wouldn’t love to have the Superfecta ticket when four long shots finish in the money at the racetrack?  Luck is a good thing, we all need it, but I wouldn’t want to wager business results on the concept.

Avid horse racing fans spend hours handicapping their bets. They subscribe to publications like The Daily Racing Form, belong to online forums like TVG.com and study what the celebrated handicappers pick. They look at bloodlines, work times and previous finish times. Occasionally they go with name or jockey or trainer, but not unless all the other things line up.

Creating personas for a target market is a lot like handicapping race horses. You want to know everything you can about them. Especially anything that will help you win. Some handicappers love a bloodline. They’ll bet anything with a "Bold" heredity or a "River" bloodline, for example. This is closer to what you’re trying to accomplish with a persona.

A persona pulls the traits of a group of people together so you can make certain assumptions about them and determine the best way to engage them—and this is very important—before they get locked onto a preference for some other vendor. The best way to get close enough to your target is to know enough about them to craft messaging so relevant that putting your organization on their list of vendors under consideration is a given.

Building layers of knowledge about your prospects will come as time goes by and you have the opportunity to learn more and more. As you do, flesh out your persona with more details and give your company the opportunity to continuously up the odds of creating actionable relationships.

As an example, I’m borrowing Adele Revella’s example of Chris.
(You can see her blog post here. The comments are interesting as well.)

Chris is 29 years old and recently married. He and Karen want children some day, but she’s also got a good job, and with the pressures of a big mortgage, they think they’ll wait a few years to start their family.  For now their baby is Logan, a two-year-old springer spaniel that they rescued from a shelter.

Chris has been in the tech industry for five years. He was a product manager until the most recent reorganization created a separate product marketing group. He willingly made the move to the new department, but that was more than a year ago and he is still trying to understand just how his job fits with those in product management, marketing communications, and sales.

Chris is responsible for the go-to-market planning for several products, but he spends most of his time; attending meetings, answering emails, writing content for sales collateral,  helping sales people with customer accounts, and driving to and from work – the new house has resulted in a longer commute and the traffic is horrible.

These pressures, plus a tight travel budget, have limited Chris's customer interactions to times when he helps sales people with demos or prospect presentations – definitely not what he had in mind when he took this job. He knows he’s not spending enough time listening to the market or working on strategic activities, but he doesn’t have time to get focused amid the daily frenzy of requests and emails. He keeps thinking that there is a more effective way to do his real job, but can’t figure out how to get there from here.

Given Adele’s example above, what conclusions can you draw?
What messaging focuses are likely to engage Chris?

What’s interesting is the mix of personal and work environment information. People asked Adele a lot of questions to extend their insights to his personal life, but that’s a lot more to do with enjoying the story than approaching him as a prospect for work purchases in a B2B environment.

There comes a point at which you must guard against getting too involved in individual personal characteristics when developing B2B personas for marketing programs. You need to remain conscious of the fact that a persona is representative of a group of people. Not just one. So make sure that the factors you choose to use are common across the specific segment.

Save any specific details for salespeople to use when the time comes for personal conversations. In fact, if you can add them to the prospect profile to memorialize them for later, all the better.

A persona should give you an idea about selling to a select target market. With that in mind, here are some things to think about if you have prospects and customers in Chris’ situation.

• Chris needs to maximize his time. Because he knows he doesn't spend enough time keeping up-to-date with market information, can you help him do so while making your point? What can you tell him that he may have missed?


• Better collaboration tools might help him work better with the departments he interfaces with and may even cut back on all that email. If you're thinking of contacting him via email, your message has to be spot on to get his attention amidst all those requests and other emails he receives.


• If you're considering using white papers, time-pressed people like Chris will appreciate an executive summary so they can quickly learn if the paper will be of value. He's unlikely to make  time to read something he's unsure has a payoff he needs.


• Podcasts with market insights and strategic thinking ideas he can listen to during his commute might help him get some of his focus back. Someone like Chris doesn’t have extra time to read more stuff, so if you can help him leverage audio during his drive, that may help you get closer to him.


• What insights can you provide that help him improve how he takes his product lines to market? What customer stories can you share that shine a light on your expertise in action? How do people like him increase their effectiveness?

Given the information you know about Chris, what else would you like to know that can help you craft more relevant content and communications that engage him?

Would knowing if he bought an immaculate house in good repair vs. a fixer upper tell you if he’s willing to roll his sleeves up for a project or if he’d be a better candidate for a one-stop solution that the vendor maintains for him?

The point is that we need to get creative and thoughtful about what we can glean from the intelligence we gather. Especially with social media encouraging people to share more insights about themselves that you've never had access to before.

Handicapping your targets is an ongoing process. This only scratches the surface of what’s possible. You’ll have to stretch your thinking to discover which details can be used to generate that extra relevancy which could mark the difference between getting your foot in the door or being left at the gate.

Many B2B Websites Still Suck Wind

Why is it that B2B websites are so terrible at engaging the people they're designed to serve?

The simple answer is because companies tend to design websites based on what they think is important, rather than what their prospects and customers value. This has been said again, and again...and again. In fact, one of my most highly read posts, even today, is B2B Websites Not Effective—a post I wrote June 5, 2006.

The other issue is that websites are political hot potatoes. For some reason, there seem to be a lot of territorial turf wars. Not sure why, when the goal is to engage prospects and customers to build new and ongoing relationships that result in your selling more stuff.

But, that's a conundrum for another post.

What I'd like to know is who wrote the rule that says all corporate websites must follow a standard navigation format?

You know what I mean. That siloed, uninteresting and uninformative menu that includes stuff like:

• Products
• Solutions
• Resources
• Case Studies
• News/Press
• About Us

Does this navigation say "All About You" or "All About Us?"

Confronted by this navigation, visitors look at your homepage to try to find a clue about what to do next based on their purpose for the visit. [Read try to find something valuable to them.]

Unfortunately, the top half of most websites is now consumed by a big banner graphic or flash widget that immediately requires us to scroll down if whatever it features is not why we came.

Then, perhaps there are a span of boxes across the bottom that offer choices like:

• Latest News/Press - see more about why we're so terrific.
• Solution Focus - click to learn more about our product feeds and speeds.
• Customer story - gosh, I hope that's about a customer like me...oh, only the first paragraph. The rest of it talks about your products with a couple of obnoxiously Rah! Rah! testimonial quotes called out in the sidebars.

Or maybe you're featuring a new white paper with a snazzy cover on a topic I'm actually interested in learning more about.

Now we're getting somewhere. Oh...you want me to give you 20 fields of my personal information? Hmm. Let me go do a search and see if I can find out the same stuff somewhere else...

Hmm. The only other text on the page says, "We're the leading provider of..."

Oh, wait. There's a tiny link to your corporate blog up in the little navigation at the very top of the page. Maybe I can find something interesting there...click. Hmm. More stuff all about you. No wonder independent blogs are more highly thought of than corporate ones.

Doesn't this scenario make you wonder what you can do to improve user experience at your website? Your company's website may not be this bad, but I'm pretty sure that it can use some improvement to meet your prospects' ideas about value delivery. [Read immediate gratification for dropping by.]

Here are a couple of tips:

• Figure out the top 3 reasons people who need what you sell visit your website. If it's a complex sale, I can guarantee you that they're not looking for the "contact a sales rep" button on their first visit. Then make sure your homepage addresses those three things in a noticeable manner.


• Create navigation that actually makes sense to your website visitors based on the problems your offerings help them solve. [Even if you must keep the standard format, you need to figure out how to immediately engage your visitor traffic. Hyper links, call outs in your sidebars, something.]


• Eliminate dead ends. When your visitors have enough gumption to click on a link, make sure you deliver on the promise for that click and that you've got a pathway to pull them more deeply into the topic they've just told you they find valuable.


• Make engaging with you simple. Allow them to dole out their information a bit at a time in exchange for content they value. Choose when you do that carefully. For example, you might provide an excerpt or executive summary of a white paper to prove it's worth it for them to part with information. Be sure you're only asking for information you need right now based on our relationship.
  
  For example, do you really need my street address when I download a white paper? Short forms will deliver a much higher opt-in rate. Just saying.

Addressing your website engagement is not about structural redesign so much as it's about the words used and the options provided. Nothing a little website content renovation can't fix, in most cases. It's all about perspective. Theirs—not yours.

I'll leave you with the same quote I used to end the 2006 post. For many b2b companies, this quote is—unfortunately—still true:

"Companies are still designing for themselves rather than for their customers. They place serious barriers in the way of prospects who use the Web to discover companies to put on their shortlists."

 

Tech Buyers Use Collateral for Purchase Decisions

Eccolo Media conducted a study to learn which collateral tech buyers use to make purchase decisions. Their premise was to prove that content development is more than a cost sink or requirement for doing business. The survey report, Eccolo Media 2008 B2B Technology Collateral Survey, definitely provides validation for their premise.

The survey results will also be helpful to B2B marketers who're planning for nurturing content development. It also validates the need for content that provides information buyers need, not just what you want to tell them.

Eccolo Media set out to learn:

"We asked them about their preferred collateral types, how they used content, if they shared it, and just how influential it was on their final technology purchase."

Worth noting, 67% of participants were decision makers, 33% influencers - all from U.S. companies. They were asked if "the collateral was viewed, listened to or read in the six months prior to a technology purchase."

5 types of content were included in the survey:

1. white papers
2. case studies / success stories
3. podcasts / audio files
4. video
5. product brochures / data sheets

Here are some of the survey findings:

• white papers were thought extremely or very influential by 44%
• brochures were the least influential at 33%
• 48% responded that case studies were very or extremely influential
• videos only hit 39%, but it's interesting to note that studio quality was considered important by 93% - casting doubt on that do-it-yourself idea being touted by social media folks. Well, at least for tech purchases.

Some interesting things to note:

Although product brochures weren't considered all that influential, they had high consumption rates, which makes sense at some point in the buying cycle, so you still need them. You just need to pay attention to when they're needed.

The younger the respondent, the more likely that they've listened to a podcast or viewed a video, so knowing who your buyers and influencers are can dictate content formats to some extent. And, even though many decision makers are older, the shift to the digital generation will happen.

Over 70% of white papers, case studies and product brochures were viewed on the computer screen, not downloaded. This means it's critical to think about format and design your content for consumption on computer screens. For example, do you really think people like to scroll up and down to read content in columns laid out in portrait format?

Pass along is alive and well. Over 60% shared collateral with other decision makers and influencers within their organization. So, think about how you can be even more helpful by offering versions that answer the specific needs of the decision makers and various influencers on the buying committee for your customers.

And, it's important to note that they don't just forward content to one person. Forty-four percent pass along white papers to 4 or more people.

For those of you only targeting decision makers with your content, consider this:

"White papers are very viral for influencers. While 66% of decision makers said that they share white papers with others, influencers shared them more often by a wide margin (83%). This may relate to respondents’ role in the purchase, with influencers passing on relevant information and decision makers considering the content more often than sharing it."

Your buyers want information focused on objective discussions of technology, not products. Gee, go figure! The length decision makers prefer is 4-6 pages, while influencers will go for 8 pages. Consider that influencers need to formulate discussions and learn how to speak to the issues to sway decision makers' perspectives. So, keep that in mind when targeting your white papers and help them out. Yet another validation for content designed for specific audiences.

This report is chock full of useful information that can help you not only prove the value content can provide during the buying process, but also to position it for higher consumption.

You can download the report with a fairly painless registration.

Use an "Exclusive" Mindset for B2B Nurturing

The biggest consideration for B2B Lead Nurturing is often the continuous need for fresh content. If your prospects' buying cycle has lengthened, you need even more content to keep your B2B lead nurturing program rolling forward. But even more than that, you need content that pulls people forward in their consideration to buy from your company.

Just staying in touch isn't enough to generate movement. I wrote about this concept in my post, Strategy Beyond the Send.

I'd like to present an extension idea to that post. I'd like to see you take that problem-to-solution scenario for content development and really pump some muscle into it.

Let's talk about privilege. Everyone loves to feel privileged. Don't you love it when you get the best table in a restaurant, front-row seats at the theatre, a customer service rep who solves your problem with a smile in their voice or the offer of a special preview to something your friends (or colleagues) would kill for?

You can create that same "exclusive" feeling with your nurturing content.

This actually isn't rocket science, although it is often overlooked in B2B marketing programs.

Provide something that's not otherwise available.

If you've provided an article about a topic a prospect shows interest in, augment that with a related, behind-the-scenes customer story that tells more than that company-oriented case study you likely have posted on your website.

Help your prospects step into your customers' shoes and visualize solving the problem, themselves. Give them extra insights they can't find somewhere else - like a side issue that arose mid-project and almost derailed the implementation, and how it was overcome.

There's likely a lot left on the cutting room floor that your prospects would love to know about. Even if you need to throw a veil over the customer to tell the story.

What about a video of your CEO talking about the business impact of industry trends with an analyst that can't be found on your corporate website...or on YouTube?

Perhaps a how-to tip they can use right away to alleviate an aspect of their pain while they work toward choosing a solution to their problem.

Can you say trusted advisor?

You get the point.

Exclusives go back a long way. Every journalist always wants to break a story - be the first one to let us in on the details. The trick to making your prospects feel privileged is to also make sure that the exclusive is highly relevant. That should go without saying, but I thought I'd mention it. Exclusives that produce pipeline momentum are definitely not one-size-fits-all.

The other thing to consider is that an exclusive is no longer exclusive once it's gotten distribution, so you need to plan for this type of content development in your content strategy. If your nurturing programs are already providing content your prospects value, an exclusive focused on a topic of high interest can be an effective way to nudge your prospects forward in their buying process.

Just make sure to make it meatier than your other content. Give it an "insider" feel. Expose your expertise in ways you've not done before. Think deep dive, not surface stuff.

Don't get me wrong, setting your content free is a good strategy for creating inbound interest. But it's not the only one. Holding some content close to the vest, so to speak, can provide an advantage in nurturing. Giving your prospects a feeling of privilege makes a lasting impression. Not to mention helping to raise your trust perception with the people you'd like to do business with.

Forgettable Follow-up on B2B Content Offers

I don't know about you, but I see a lot of B2B companies losing out on a huge opportunity when they follow up with people who download their marketing content offers.

Just in case you never answer your phone, or delete all your email unread, here's the norm:

You fill out a form to download a content offer that sounds appealing.

You get a call or an email from the related company that makes it so easy to say the equivalent of "Not interested" that the caller/emailer leaves your mind instantly.

Here are some examples of how B2B follow-up becomes forgettable:

Example 1:

[Company] Hello, I'm calling to follow-up on the white paper you downloaded from our company.

[Prospect] Um, which white paper would that be?

[Company] Well, I don't know, but our system shows you downloaded it a couple of weeks ago.

[Prospect] I don't remember. I download a lot of stuff.

[Company] Okay, well the reason I'm calling today is to see if you need any more information.

[Prospect: If I have no frickin clue what I downloaded, what information would I want?] No, thanks. I think I'm good.

[Company] Okay, I'm going to email you my contact information in case you think of something I can help you with.

[Prospect] Oh, yes. I'll certainly keep you in mind. [click, buzz, delete]

Example 2:

[Company] Hello, This is Sam from [Company]. I noticed you downloaded our paper on whiz bang issue 57 and I'm interested in helping learn more about how we can help solve your problem.

[Prospect] I'm just researching.

[Company] Well, do you have a project planned that we can discuss?

[Prospect] No, I'm just doing some research. [I knew I shouldn't have answered the phone.]

[Company] Okay, I'm going to send you some product information so you'll have it on file for when you need it.

[Prospect] Thanks. You have a nice day. [click, buzz, delete]

Example 3: 

Email follow-up message -

Thank you for requesting the [Recognizable Name] white paper. As you may know, [Our Company] is a leader in [whiz bang whatever] and we sponsored the white paper.

I'd look forward to learning what initiatives you're working on to see if [Our Solution] is a fit. I'd like to schedule a fifteen minute call to discuss your goals in [whiz bang whatever]. Please let me know when is a convenient time to talk.

Do you see anything in those examples that sounds familiar?

Did you see anything that was valuable to you? Or only stuff oriented around the company's goal of asking you to expend more effort on their behalf?

This is such a waste of time. Approaches like these do absolutely nothing to elevate your company's trust level or credibility. Instead, you're seen as self-serving and, ultimately, forgettable.

In order to get positive results from your B2B content offer follow-up, you need to think about why you're doing it.

The goal for follow-up is to extend a dialogue based on the interests expressed by the prospect's behavior.

With that in mind, your follow-up needs to deliver value that extends the interest captured by the original content download. In order to do so your communication needs to be relevant and valuable to the recipient. [And, by extension, to you.]

Your prospect has already paid you with the time and effort they expended downloading the original offer. Now you need to give them a reason for continued involvement.

Here are some ideas on how to improve the response to your follow-up:

• Have a business reason for the follow-up. Just touching base isn't good enough.


• Have an additional offer ready that builds on their expressed interest. An exclusive report, an article not publicly available, an invitation to a webinar on a related topic, etc.


• Know exactly what they downloaded and be specific to help them make the connection. People are busy. They download a lot of things. Expecting them to remember yours when you call/email out of the blue is just silly.


• If your follow-up is in relation to content you sponsored, they likely downloaded it because of the source, not you. So have something compelling to say if you want their interest to transfer to you.


• Follow-up promptly. Waiting a month means you're likely forgotten and someone else now has their attention.

DO NOT:

• Ask them to educate you.
• Put them on the spot.
• Be ignorant of the interaction that prompted the follow-up.
• Push product information on them.
• Lead with "blah, blah, blah" about your company
• Use buzz words and jargon in the description of your company.
• Forget to use a value proposition for the communication that's all about them, not you.

The key is to get the prospect to take another step with you because you've got something valuable to say or share that they need to know. If you don't have that, then you need to develop a follow-up strategy before you dial the phone or hit send.

Follow-up is just as important, if not more so, than the touch point that leads to it. Do not treat it as a smile-and-dial experience. That approach won't create movement through your pipeline. In fact, it can do more to lose prospects than to help them choose to do business with your company.

Create More Client Loyalty - Special Report

One of the top two objectives for marketers this year is to improve their ability to retain customers. We often get so caught up in generating new demand that we forget that we've got customers who can continue to benefit from the relationship they have with us.

But for that to happen productively [for both sides] we need to focus on making sure they have a good reason to stick around.

To help you out, Rain Today asked 9 experts to contribute answers to this question:

If you could only give one piece of advice regarding how to develop client loyalty: what would that be?

They've taken those answers and compiled a Special Report to provide insights steps businesses can take to ensure that their customers stay loyal. And, let us not forget, loyalty swings both ways. It's up to marketing to treat customers like they want their customers to treat the company in return.

The report includes the following advice and authors. I'm honored to be included.

Achieving the Highest Level of Loyalty
Andrew Sobel, Author of All for One: 10 Strategies for Building Trusted Client Partnerships

How to Be Invaluable
Jill Konrath, Author of Selling to Big Companies

Your Highest Priority: Building Client Loyalty by Delivering Superior Service
Michael W. McLaughlin, Principal of MindShare Consulting and Author of Winning the Professional Services Sale

Client Loyalty: How to Keep Happy Clients Who are Delighted to Pay Their Bills
Larry Bodine, Esq., Founder of Apollo Business Development

Taming the Search-and-Switch Client: 3 Keys to Keeping Your Client Loyal
Jill Griffin, Author of Taming the Search-and-Switch Customer: Earning Customer Loyalty in a Compulsion-to-Compare World

Your Clients Need Cultivation - Now, More Than Ever!
Ardath Albee, CEO and B2B Strategist of Marketing Interactions, Inc.

How to Retain Clients: Teach Them How to Be Loyal
Sharon Drew Morgen, Author of Selling with Integrity

Client Loyalty as a By-Product of Firm Leadership
Patrick J. Lamb and Nicole N. Auerbach, Two of the Founding Members of Valorem Law Group, LLC.

Go Download your complementary report - only an email is requested.

How much revenue is sitting idle in your pipeline?

In times like these, there's just no excuse for letting revenue opportunities idle in your pipeline. This is a huge reason why marketing needs visibility across the buying process—from start to finish.

Once leads are handed off to sales, they need follow-up and continued engagement to encourage that final burst of momentum that convinces them to become your customers. For some reason there's an irritating hard stop at the point when marketing hands leads off to sales.

This is probably because:

• Marketing thinks their job is done.
• Sales doesn't want marketing stepping on their toes.

This results in marketing ceasing to nurture leads passed to sales.

But, if sales doesn't take action—and research shows sales only works about 30% of the leads marketing gives them—then your leads go cold. That's a big waste of investment already sunk into generating and nurturing those leads.

So what do you do?

Here are several ideas about how to increase the revenue flow from your pipeline:

1. Develop a reciprocal SLA between sales and marketing.
   
   • Get agreement on requirements for a qualified lead.
   • Establish and agree to a timeline for sales to formally accept them.
   • Have sales agree to contact accepted leads within a specific time period.
   • If sales passes on a lead, make sure they can hand them back to marketing with an explanation for the rejection. That way marketing knows what needs to happen to get the lead accepted in the future.
2. Create a Sales Enablement Handoff Brief
   
   • Help salespeople get up to speed fast and take action in line with the lead's expectations.
   • Provide the lead's activity history during nurturing.
   • Include an overview of the related nurturing program.
   • Given the lead's last interaction, provide conversational snippets, messaging and collateral suggestions to help sales initiate a conversation.
3. Integrate extended Nurturing into the Sales Process
   
   • Marketing can create nurturing touches on behalf of the assigned sales rep and execute for them until the salesperson indicates it's no longer necessary.
   • Make sure the sales rep knows what marketing is doing.
   • Shift the messaging for late-stage buyers.
4. Facilitate the Introduction of the Sales Rep to the Lead
   
   • Humanize the process. When you want to introduce one person to another, you don't just hand off their contact info and walk away. You introduce them. Why shouldn't the same respect be paid to people you hope to do business with? It really is about the relationship. People buy from people.

The whole point is that marketing and sales need to work together to keep the momentum going. The more personal you can make the lead's transition to sales, the more credibility the relationship will have.

By putting processes in place to ensure lead progression continues at the transition, you've got much better odds that your leads will actually become customers. Arming salespeople to step seamlessly into the relationship is something marketing can help accomplish.

And, it doesn't have to be difficult. Marketing automation systems can give you a lot of this information on request. When you do your research and content development, create those last two pieces of the sales enablement handoff brief. Likewise, design your introduction email message.

By integrating these bridging activities into your marketing strategy they easily flow from the other work you're already doing to build your nurturing programs. And, by increasing marketing's visibility into the sales side, they can take action when sales reps are too busy closing other deals to pay attention to each new lead that comes their way.

Without that insight, a lot of your leads may be just sitting in your pipeline. But, while they may look idle to you, your competitors are out there catching their attention. And, don't you just hate it when that happens?

CMOs lack credibility with CEOs

The CMO Club recently polled its members about who has the most credibility with the CEO. Results show:

• 31% CFO
• 24% Head of Sales
• 13.8% CMO

While I'm not surprised to see CFO or Head of Sales ahead of the CMO, I am disappointed in the low percentage equated to CMOs—by CMOs. That said, I think CMOs are in a tough position where they've got to make the transition from vague marketing reports to hard-hitting proof points reflecting their contribution to business objectives on the CEO's agenda.

In response to the poll, The CMO Club asked respondents to provide some insight to their ratings. Their reasoning includes:

• CEO interest in the reports provided.
• Speaking the same language.

CEOs spend more time with CFOs and heads of sales because their priorities include managing the company's coffers and filling the company's coffers—ultimately increasing shareholder value.

If marketing wants to be considered a core pillar of their company's success, they need to pay some attention to perception. One of the best ways to do this is to build better relationships with those who do have the CEO's ear—the CFO and the head of sales.

Sort of like influencing the influencers.

Reports need to focus on things like:

• increase in sales-qualified leads
• increase in pipeline progression
• contribution to reduction of sales cycle 
• reduction in customer defections
• efficiency of budget spend related to outcomes produced

Focusing reports on lead generation numbers and growth in presumptive customer affinity doesn't mean anything unless it results in deals closed or customer contract renewals. For reports to merit attention, they must prove marketing initiatives are helping to produce business results.

This is why it's imperative for CMOs to work hand-in-glove with heads of sales. In order to gain insights that reflect high-impact contributions in reporting, marketing needs visibility across the sales process after the handoff. The farther into the pipeline marketing can provide assistance that enables sales to win more deals, faster, the more ammunition they have for hard-hitting reports CFOs will want to see.

When the CFO sees value in the efficiency of the budget spend in regards to the results produced, you've given them something to talk to the CEO about. And, you've safeguarded your budgets. When heads of sales can report higher sales, their professional status soars.

Think about this for a minute. Marketing spends a lot of time (or should) helping prospects and customers learn how to solve problems. In order to do that they learn the language thier buyers speak and they use it to increase relevance. They focus on high priority issues from the buyer's perspective.

Any of this ring a bell?

Well, why can't CMOs apply the same strategy to elevate their status with those who have the CEO's attention?

The more you help someone, the more they're inclined to repay the favor. That's human nature. Plus, they won't want you to stop.

If CMOs can get CFOs and heads of sales to sing their praises, CEOs will start taking notice of marketing as more than just a department that exists because, well, they're supposed to have one.

Update 5/12/09: suggested addition to report bullets up above by @treehousei via Twitter - hard dollar campaign ROI - Thanks Chris! Although often hard to do based on specific campaigns depending on sales cycle time if you're measuring throughput.

Are Your Prospects Getting Whiplash?

The ways marketers can interact with customers, connect with prospects and build awareness are growing every day. But, I'm concerned that the new stuff is pushing out the "old" stuff at a rate that's causing prospects to get whiplash.

In B2B marketing, lead nurturing takes time. Building relationships with your prospects is not just dependent upon relevance, but consistency. And, you have to be in it for as long as it takes your buyers to buy.

What I'm seeing is that marketers aren't sticking with their strategies long enough. They're jumping ship for the next new thing, leaving their "old" programs — and the leads generated from them — swinging in the breeze. One day the leads receive an email with a link to a thoughtful, compelling article. The next thing they know, your company communications have either disappeared, reverted to standard company-focused emails or you've launched a whole other story they don't care about and didn't opt in to receive.

How do I know this? Because research shows that marketers are sticking with marketing campaigns for less time than buyers spend buying. They quit too soon. [I've also seen it. And let me tell you the company lost more than their investment in nurturiing.]

Here's the real problem. Marketers are marketing from a tactical campaign mindset instead of an overarching strategic mindset. If some new idea comes along, they're willing to switch to the more exciting idea of something new. And, they do it without thinking about impact from the prospect's side of the exchange.

Or, they don't look far enough downstream. I've seen campaigns planned for three touches. Then there'll be some new effort coming down the pike with different creative, a new focus and a new story.

I've seen companies that have so many separate marketing campaigns going on in different areas of their companies that their prospects can't help but get whiplash from the conflicting messages coming at them due to the lack of visibility the company has across the programs that would enable any reasonable coordination.

B2B Marketing deserves to be executed as a long-term, customer-focused strategy tied to business objectives.

B2B marketing is NOT a series of campaigns with a "theme of the moment" approach. It's more of an intensive strategic marathon with a lot of parts that should all be related to the company's core storyline.

But here's the real disappointment. When prospects buy in to the story you're telling, you've got their attention and their permission to continue to communicate with them. Switching your story like you change your socks violates that agreement.

For example, if you opted in to a content series that promised thought leadership articles and after the 3rd one you start getting links to videos meant to entertain, instead of inform, are you still interested?

One thing you can do (although I still say your story has to be in alignment) is ask your prospects if they're interested in whatever your new focus is before you commit them to it. Don't promise one thing, deliver it for a while and then change on them without warning.

Instead of rinse and repeat, marketers are letting any momentum they've generated from past efforts go down the drain every time they flip their focus toward something new. Even worse, your prospects wonder what's up with you? Then they start wondering if your company will be like that in a working relationship...you know, when they're counting on your company to deliver as promised.

Ask yourself these basic questions:

How long is the buying cycle for your average prospect?

Then ask yourself how long your average nurturing campaign lasts.

Is there a disparity?

And, if so, when you string your campaigns together, do they tell a compelling story from start to finish?

Or do they give your prospects whiplash?

Customer Nurturing for Up and Cross Sell

Nurturing isn't just for leads. It's also for customers. It's time marketing started reaching beyond lead generation and customer acquisition to play an active role in strengthening and extending customer relationships.

Often, once a company has acquired a customer, the only communication the customer receives is the company-focused newsletter, support exchanges and new product launch and update notices.

If your customers are only hearing from you when it's time to renew a license, upgrade the solution they just finished implementing or for problem resolution, you're letting them down.

Today's customers are selecting vendors for complex solutions based on their interpretation that the vendor will be a trusted advisor and partner—for the long term. Just because you've got them now, doesn't mean they're yours for the duration of however you defined a customer life cycle.

One of the things that bugs me about the whole life cycle discussion is that many of them fully expect their customers to leave after a certain period of time. The life cycle for solutions seems to run about 3 years. Probably less now given the rate of innovation.

I can't help but think this "life cycle" mindset is often caused by the idea itself, as well as the forecasts that lock this thinking in place. If the trend shows that customers leave after 3 years, on average, then companies project that thinking into their plans and forecasts.

I say this is a bunch of...well, bull pucky.

It's been proven time, and time again, that existing customers are more valuable to companies—and easier to re-sell—than acquiring new customers. So, why the resignation? Why are companies letting their customer relationships languish?

I think it's because that's the norm. A grass is greener kind of thing that points attention to new customer acquisition as more important. The prevalent idea that a customer is a foregone conclusion. [we know we have them for a year - they just signed a contract]

Accepting the norm is lazy and short sighted.

First of all, it's hard to change vendors. Change is hard, regardless of the reason. You get reminded of that every time you try to break in to a new account and wrangle with the status quo.

Well, when you're the status quo, what are you doing to keep it that way?

One of the best things you can do is get a strategy in place for customer nurturing. And, it should be easier because you "know" these people. Produce custom content for them that helps them proactively evolve the relationship they have with your company.

They likely chose you for the ideas you shared in the beginning. Don't you think they'd keep choosing to do business with you if the ideas keep flowing? Who the heck is going to switch vendors when that vendor is a valuable asset to growing and improving their business?

Flip the way you focus your customer content:

• Got a product launch coming up? Start telling the story to your customers now about how this new product will help them get even better outcomes in conjunction with your products and services they're already using. Stop thinking about it as a product launch and start thinking about it in terms of a customer priority resolution opportunity—from their perspective.


• See an industry trend coming? Get some thought leadership about it out the door to help position how your customers think about managing that change when it gets here. Regardless of whether or not your products actually address it. Become the anchor they turn to when they need advice and insight. Become indispensable.


• Discover new ways customers are using your products to get outcomes different than what you thought? Educate your other customers about how to use your products to get different and more benefit than they originally thought possible. Doe this new use reveal new ways to combine products to extend that value farther?

These are only a few ideas to get you started. Regardless of what else you do, start nurturing your customers. For all the marketers who need to prove measurable value delivery to the business—this is one sure way to show payoffs in higher up and cross sells. Not to mention the impact you can have on lengthening the customer life cycle.