Marketing Interactions

Create Content to Engage Early-stage Leads

Most B2B companies have lots of content for late-stage buyers. This includes data sheets, solution briefs, technical white papers, online demos, etc. If you evaluate your website content, you’ll likely see most of your content oriented around your product offerings and solutions.

The gap I see most often is a lack of early stage content that develops a relationship from the start of the buying process and primes your prospects for that later-stage interest. B2B buyers of complex solutions need a lot of education before product-oriented content is useful to them.

Early stage content is not about your product. Your company is the only entity that truly cares about your product. What people care about is what your product enables them to achieve. But, at the early stage, prospects don’t even care about that. Whatever their situation, they’re dealing with it. It may not be ideal, but it hasn’t stopped them in their tracks, so it’s sufficient.

This means that we need to reach farther back from what our product enables people to achieve in order to create content relevant enough to gain the attention of early stage leads. Before you can talk to them about change, you’ve got to show them you understand their current circumstances.

Start by answering the following questions:

• What situation(s) cause people to want to achieve the outcome your products deliver?


• What caused that situation to exist in the first place?


• What circumstances made the situation so untenable that it motivated your customers to take action to change it?

The answers to those questions should point you toward the subject matter for content development. Think of it as meeting on common ground.

When you address the situation your prospects are living with everyday, they can instantly relate. They’ll look farther to see what else they may not know about their situation. They’ll engage with your content because they can see themselves in the storyline.

Beyond that, by creating early stage content, you gain credibility. You show your prospects that you understand their business, roles and responsibilities, as well as how difficult it can be to figure out how to go about changing their situation—or even why they should.

Considering that prospects are demanding that companies they choose to partner with come to the table prepared, you’re already showing them the depth of knowledge and consideration your company extends to customers.

With longer buying cycles, it’s critical that marketers position their companies to become the anchor prospects seek out to help form their thinking about their situations—and the possibilities for change—by starting from common ground.

When you can engage at this level, prospects will take next steps with you to move forward. This means you need a progressive content strategy for how you’ll motivate them to take action. By starting with a focus on status quo, you’ll have a solid foundation on which to build it.

Just remember that early-stage content needs to help prospects move from “So what?” to “Now what?”

Dirty Little Secrets by Sharon Drew Morgen

There's a terrific, provocative and challenging book on the stands today — Dirty Little Secrets: Why buyers can't buy and sellers can't sell and what you can do about it. Sharon Drew Morgen's book unveils what lies beneath the buying decision process, layer by layer, until you finally get that Eureka moment that it's got nothing to do with the product.

We, as marketers and sellers, focus on identifying triggering events, needs or problems and begin addressing those as a way to build relationships and get our prospects to buy from us. As I was reading her book, I realized that we're actually a bit late to the party and trying to sneak in through a side door.

In Dirty Little Secrets, Sharon Drew shares a wealth of examples to help us understand what goes on behind the scenes. She puts clarity around status quo by showing that all "systems" have workarounds in place that keep things functioning, even if not optimally. Untangling those workarounds is often the barrier to making a sale.

“Any Identified Problem shows up as a functioning part of the system, since it is indeed functioning in some capacity. At the point that the system determines that it needs to be functioning better is the point at which buyers are ready to buy. And the systemic elements that have kept the Identified Problem in place will fight for their lives to continue doing what they are doing.” [emphasis mine]

"No decision to purchase will take place unless the people and policies included in the workarounds buy in to change and the elements are redistributed in a way the system approves."

The key is to help buyers manage their offline change issues prior to our attempts to focus them on solving the problem. When we don't do this, or our buyers can't do it on their own, the decision made is to do nothing at all. The system wins the battle to maintain status quo.

Sharon Drew points out that the issue is often that buyers have tunnel vision when it comes to dealing with issues. They're simply too close to them to see the entire spectrum they must address to get true resolution. Our job as marketers and sellers is to help them step back and take an objective stance that enables them to see the entirety of everything involved in solving the problem.

Dirty Little Secrets is all about showing you how to "facilitate the route through to the buy in process." Sharon Drew does a magnificent job of making this easy to understand. In fact, when I read it myself, I had a V-8, head-slapping moment. I believe a lot of us know this subject matter subconsciously, but I've never had a better way to articulate it and get to the root before I read Sharon Drew's book.

And, in case you think this is just a sales book, I warn you - the insights can help marketers who are earnestly trying to map content to buying stages reach even farther back to engage prospects earlier in the process in a more productive way.

Go Buy the Book!

If you do so by October 29th, you'll also get a slew of great gifts.

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.

B2B Content Marketing to Impact Status Quo

Earlier this week I talked about the payoff for B2B content marketing to focus on producing movement. Now, I'd like to back up just a tad and share some thoughts about what it takes to shift status quo. Because until or unless you can get people to shift from status quo, the movement you'll get from your B2B marketing content will be, well, zip.

So back up to the situations your prospects are facing and look at the severity of the pain they're dealing with. Ask the question, what would it take to make embracing change worthwhile FOR THEM?

If the answer isn't around a pretty impressive "shift" from where they are now, they won't change. It's not worth the effort, risk and stress. It's easier to stick with the devil we know, right? That's human nature.

Before you can develop a content strategy for complex sale nurturing, you've got to define the reasons why your prospect's would rather be inert than active about solving the problem.

Resistance to change can be about:

• aversion to making a mistake
• uncertain about what to do
• concern about what they don't know
• lack of justification and/or validation for the change
• overwhelming complexity
• losing face and professional standing
• influence of bad past experiences
• and more...

Many of these ripple beneath the surface and are not obvious from an outside view, but that doesn't mean they don't count. The point is that when all these thoughts are going on inside your prospect's head, your content has to produce a pretty big shift in thinking—and potential opportunity—to outweigh all that internal chatter.

In order to sway tolerance for status quo you've got to build a story that helps portray the movement toward outcomes your prospects consider important, while addressing resistance factors at the same time.

Talk about a result you know your prospects are challenged to achieve and the problem that's causing it to persist.

• Faster time to market impacted by supply chain issues
• Better decisions for action ahead of your competitor's advances.

Let them know that they're not the only ones facing the problem and that they don't have to take it anymore.

• Related industry trends and research data used in support of urgency.
• Customers like them who've successfully dealt with the issue at hand.

Showcase the impact in a context they understand.

• A CFO will get the impact of percentages of improvement against margins.
• An LOB manager strapped for human resources will get the impact of more hours to apply to priority projects.

Using active words to simulate the impact of your ideas can help. Business impact is evaluated based on whether it makes something go up (e.g. revenues) or brings something down (e.g. expenses):

Up words: increase, accelerate, escalate, raise, grow, gain, add, boost, ramp, scale, extend, expand, improve, attain, acquire, amplify, win

Down words: decrease, minimize, reduce, diminish, lessen, shorten

Do not mistake active words for buzz words and product features. If you do this then you end up with a bunch of gobbledygook that has no meaning for your prospects.

Focus on helping your prospects visualize the impact of how your ideas and expertise (not your product alone) will position them for success. People buy outcomes, not widgets.

But the real trick in moving people from status quo is also in the size of the shift they'll experience if they listen to you and take action. You've got to do some research and discover what that means for them. Then quantify it through expanding the idea to get them to reach farther than just solving the current problem.

For example: It may be appealing for an LOB manager to gain 40 hours back each month in man hours, but to push them to actively explore change, consider addressing what that means in real terms. What could they do with that 40 hours that makes not taking action to get those hours back unthinkable?

To shift status quo, it's also helpful to focus on short term gains. Long-term goals are important, but if getting to the good stuff is too far out, it's harder to vote for change. They won't see the pain diminishing fast enough to take action. We live in an instant gratification world. It's wise not to forget that in your B2B marketing communications.

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.

Just Do IT! Use the marketing data you have now

When I first talk with clients about emarketing strategy I often hear that they don't have access to the data they need to implement a targeted nurturing program. Their eyes get big and glazed and they look like Bambi in the cross hairs.

One of the things we forget as marketers is that our own status quo gets in our way as much as the status quo stance of our prospects. It's time for marketers to turn the focus to themselves for a moment and consider how they can free themselves to "just do it."

Information overload is pervasive. Not just for prospects and customers, but for marketers. Our customer data may be in silos we can't access—spread across the enterprise. But, unless you've been marketing in a vacuum, you've got access to enough data to stick your toe into producing a targeted campaign.

In a white paper written by Elana Anderson and Scott Olrich of Responsys, Marketing Beyond Status Quo, they measured a range of marketing campaigns and found a huge difference in the results of targeted email communications vs. broadcast.

"Based on this data, targeting resulted in 15% lift in unique open rate, 64% lift in unique click through rate, and 43% lift in clicks per open."

But what's also clear is that waiting to get all your data perfect means you're missing opportunities. The problem with working for perfection in today's fast-paced environment is that it isn't likely to happen. By the time your idea of perfection is created, the measuring stick will have shifted.

Instead, take a look at what you have available now. If you've been using email campaigns and tracking clicks and opens for a while, chances are you have enough to get started.

Evaluate your data and see if you can segment your database by any of these factors:

• Topic: If you've sent a number of emails on a variety of topics, can you cull a list of the prospects who clicked through on a specific topic and generate several campaigns focused on giving each group more information about the subject that interested them enough to respond?


• Industry: Just targeting by industry and focusing content on issues related to the industry they work in can gain higher response rates.


• Roles and Titles: The types of issues that concern an executive level prospect differ greatly from those that interest a line of business manager. Even if you target that executive as a decision maker, don't overlook creating campaigns that address the needs of those who influence the way that decision is made.

If you don't have even this rudimentary level of insight at hand, don't panic. Here's one way to get started:

1. Take a look at your most recent customers and learn what problems they were solving when they selected your product. Make sure it's from their perspective.


2. Pick two or three issues and create an email newsletter with a link to an article about each problem-to-solution scenario. Assign the click throughs based on topic selection into groups and send each group 3 - 5 communications targeted to that subject and monitor the results.


3. Continue to expand your groups and interest segments as you can develop the content to address them. Continually evaluate results, discarding topics that don't work and trying new ones. Keep asking sales for insights about what issues they're hearing about on the street. Don't give up too soon.

When you have to choose a minimum to get started, always lean toward choosing what you think has the best chance of providing insights that will help you determine topical interest around problem-to-solution scenarios. A VP is a VP. A guy interested in how to solve an issue your product addresses has a higher propensity to respond—VP or not. And, you have a higher chance of being relevant if you know what that interest is.

There are a lot of other things you can do, but the point is to pick something you can get started with today. Add more elements as you move forward. Refine and tweak continuously. Think iteratively. You'll make measurable progress.

Based on the lift data for targeted campaigns, can you afford not to figure out how to Just Do It?

Status Quo is a Buying Stage

I just read and commented on a great post by Todd Cabral over at the Science of Marketing blog, Market Conditioning: A Tap on the Shoulder. Todd talks about how important it is to get on your prospect's radar by conditioning them to pay attention. He says:

"Market conditioning is more important in some markets than others.  If the problem your company solves is well known and extremely painful, there is less conditioning to do.  However, when a problem is lurking beneath the surface or not well understood, this marketing technique is critical."

This is where I started thinking about status quo. Status quo is essentially the way things are - what your prospects' business environment is today. This can include an abundance of frustrations and obstacles they must overcome to successfully complete their business objectives, or it may mean they never achieve the levels of success they aspire to.

But, until they understand that the problem is actually a costly one that need not persist, they will tend to proceed as usual. Hey, it's easier, it's non threatening and knowing the obstacles of today is far more reassuring than risking the unforseen consequences of undertaking change.

This is why thought leadership and knowledge marketing are so important. But, the only way these methods work is if you know your prospects really well. You need to not only know they have a particular problem, but you need to know what it costs them, why it exists and be able to clearly demonstrate the upside [business value] for embracing change.

Todd also points out that objections can bias your target market against your marketing if you don't address them from the start. A great observation, and one many marketers miss. We all think that our products rock and that as soon as we expose our prospects to them they'll be suitably impressed. But that's not necessarily true.

Once your prospects have taken a strong position about something, you will not get them to shift their thinking without taking the effort to prove why they should and present alternatives with validation. The "what's in it for them" principle in full swing. If you just jump in downstream from their objections and expect them to see the error of their ways, you're message is likely not even on their radar.

So, when you create your personas, profiles or however you get a clear view of who your target market is, pay attention to status quo. Learn enough about your prospects to ensure you can address their current mindset before you go about trying to convince them to change.

People don't like to be pushed. Pull them over to your side with a well thought out content marketing stream that begins at status quo and delivers what they need to know at every stage throughout their buying process.

Put that STAKE in the ground

Why is this so dang difficult?

The time for companies to try and be all things to all customers is past. Not that it was ever a good idea, but with the power shift to customers going on today, being ambiguous and wishy washy doesn't leave you open for more opportunities, it reduces those willing to give you a shot in the first place.

I was looking at a B2B website the other day and spent a lot of time trying to figure out what that company does. Yes, I kept thinking that if I clicked enough times, it would become apparent. I was waiting for that "aha" moment. After 15 minutes I still cannot figure out exactly what they do. My conclusion is that they want to make sure they don't box themselves in by stating something that might limit them.

[As a note - I do this type of thing because I'm insanely nuts about analyzing marketing content. Other people won't try this hard—they'll just leave...quickly.]

Here's the problem with being a generalist. It's really hard to determine expertise or specialty when there's no concise statement about the value a company brings to their customers.

Here are a couple of examples of what I mean:

We streamline business processes, increasing your employee productivity.

• Which employees?
• Which processes?
• What do you mean by streamline?
• What kind of productivity increases?
• For what type of companies?

We help you improve business intelligence for better insights.

• Better insights into what?
• What's wrong with my business intelligence?
• Business intelligence in relation to...??

These type of statements make me think the company has no idea about whatever it is they think they're talking about. Companies need to be specific. Your prospects are simply too busy to try and figure out how you might have something they need.

Either tell them...or lose them forever.

Here are a few tips to consider:

• Focus your content on business problem and solution scenarios.
• Define your customers so prospects know if they're in the right place.
• Show them what types of projects you excel at by including stories in your marketing content.
• Highlight value you bring which they don't (likely) have access to today.
• Make sure they know why they should believe you.

Remember that status quo is a "known" place to be. To change it is considered risky. For a prospect to agree to evaluate options means there has to be a big payoff for them. Generalists don't deliver big payoffs. They deliver general, run-of-the-mill solutions.

Who wants that?

When you hire a vendor, I'm guessing that you think you've picked the very best person, or company, for the project. Chances are, that vendor has a well-defined expertise that you don't.

So, let's circle back and rewrite those two vague statements into something that defines an expert:

Vague: We streamline business processes, increasing your employee productivity.

Specific: We help you finely tune your hiring processes to ensure your company engages qualified, highly-motivated salespeople that hit the ground running with minimal ramp time.

Would you have gotten that interpretation from the vague statement?

Vague: We help you improve business intelligence for better insights.

Specific: We help you design evaluation tools to ensure you've got the best insights and coaching options to keep your salespeople on track with your company's selling objectives.

Those may not be perfect, as I created them from the ether, but you should get the point. My interpretation could have gone in any direction with the vague statements. But with the specific statements I know for sure if I'm in the right place...or not.

But specificity goes farther than that. I'm able to extrapolate additional insights by reading between the lines. The more specific you are, the better able I am to visualize what your company will bring to the project. And, that's a heck of a lot more engaging than leaving me to wonder what your content means for me.

Quite frankly, I haven't got the time. A specific answer is right after the next click of my mouse.

Triggering Event Assumptions - Risky or Relevant?

Triggering events are shifts in your prospects' business environment that necessitate change in the status quo. We all know that change is hard, so knowing what's driving specific needs for change is a boon for marketers and salespeople.

Or, it should be.

How well you integrate triggering events into your communication strategy will depend a lot on how on-target your assumptions are about your prospects' concerns. Mistaken assumptions can cause your prospects to utilize that delete button and ignore you if they think you just don't get it.

For example, let's "assume" that a regulatory change has occurred that says your prospects have to change the way they process information. You decide that their biggest concern will be the level of difficulty in redefining their information handling processes. All your communications are focused on "information processing made easy."

But, you're not seeing your prospects rush to engage with you. Why not?

Maybe it's because the processing isn't the BIG issue. The hot button for them is the retraining issue. You missed the boat and your prospects have gone down the street to your competitor who's addressing the more relevant concern.

So what do you do? Before you create communications to leverage a triggering event:

• Talk to existing customers and find out what they're thinking about this new change.


• Ask them both what worries them and what they see as a beneficial outcome once they've shifted to address that triggering event.


• Create a feedback (Q&A) guide for salespeople involved in new conversations and get a "facetime" read on related concerns.


• Look carefully at your personas and make some adjustments based on what you learn, if necessary.


• Make sure you're not using messaging for one industry segment across your entire database. Not unless you've verified the perspective is similar.


• Be careful that the vocabulary you're using is the same as how your prospects talk about the issue.


• Determine how influencers will be involved in evaluating how the trigger is addressed - and then match up your communications to influence everyone involved in the decision.

You've worked hard to ensure your communications are relevant. Triggering events often mean you need to re-assess and not jump to assumption too fast, just because it seems logical. Since when has addressing problems (buying) been logical?

It's a good rule of thumb to consider all the angles, not just the ones that make sense to you. Almost always, solving one problem will overlap another situation that then must be handled. Determining which issue has the highest "concern factor" will keep your communications focused and relevant.

On top of that, once you've done this successfully, you'll have a template for how to effectively assimilate triggering events into your communications strategy in the future. Repeatable consistency is a good thing.

That Gaping Void between Marketing and Sales

The CMO Council has taken on the seemingly unbridgeable divide between sales and marketing with a new research report, Closing the Gap: The Sales and Marketing Alignment Imperative.

This report carries on the theme of the continuous lack of consistency in perspective between companies and customers. Companies think they found their customers, but customers insist the opposite. Companies think customers defect over price, but twice as many customers say they leave because service is lacking.

There seems to be a lot of difference in belief going on these days. Let's take a look at the dichotomy between sales and marketing in the CMO Council report:

Salespeople think:

• marketers don't understand the customer & market environment
• marketers don't effectively support sales efforts
• most marketing collateral is useless
• they are indispensable [yes it's really in there]

Marketers think:

• salespeople undermine their efforts at consistent messaging
• salespeople's lack of consistency undermines brand
• salespeople fail to leverage the qualified leads they generate

The reality the report found is that "neither sales or marketing is effectively leveraging customer data to form deeper, more connected relationships with the customer." In fact, 60% of customers said that if a vendor failed to win their trust, they'd either scale back the relationship or leave the vendor.

What's really surprising is that executives like to believe that a collaborative partnership exists between sales and marketing when what they have is not even close. Even though a majority of respondents to the study agreed that customer acquisition and retention was critical to their continued success, they admitted that effectiveness in accomplishing that goal was lacking. [We could talk about why only a majority of respondents think customer acquisition and retention is important, but that's another conundrum for another post.]

Despite continuing evidence that collaboration between sales and marketing can produce shorter sales cycles, more valuable deals and greater sell-through, companies still cannot manage to get the two disciplines to play well together.

I'd suggest that this misalignment of goal and reality is due in a large part to how each of them is evaluated in terms of the effectiveness that can make all the difference to your customers—not to mention your company's success.

Marketing is focused on lead generation - not necessarily the rest of the process or how the end result of customer acquisition is achieved.

Sales is focused on closing deals.

But the most interesting bit of information I found in the Closing the Gap report is that "85% of the purchase decision is impacted by the direct interaction between the sales force and customers."

Stop. Breathe. Go read that statement above again.

Considering that only about half of all salespeople make quota, the idea that the relationship sales has with potential customers carries that much weight is alarming. Even more so when you discover that salespeople spend 40% of their time reinventing marketing collateral, less than 20% of which is compelling to customers or consistent with corporate messaging.

The ray of light is that marketing has the opportunity to impact this situation. They can have tremendous impact on engagement up to the purchase decision. They can also collaboratively work with sales to produce collateral to improve the effectiveness of sales to get that purchase decision to swing in their company's favor.

But, until sales and marketing can unify their approach to customers and share the responsibility for generating revenue results, this lack of alignment will continue to frustrate all concerned. However, once the two of them align, watch out, because their companies stand to be hell on wheels in running over their competitors who can't get there.