Marketing Interactions

Kitchen-Sink Content is a Recipe for Failure

We’re all on the receiving end of email marketing messages. The problem is that most of them appear to try and do too much. It often feels like marketers have a list of all the stuff their solutions do and they want to cram it all into one message to make sure they say something that interests you.

That kind of content makes my head hurt. It’s confusing. It takes too much effort and I can’t be bothered to listen to someone who’s so unsure what to say to me.

Talk about impersonal. That’s about as general as you can get. At a time when buyers can filter the content they choose to read, you can’t afford to use kitchen-sink content.

Besides that, it’s lazy. And one of the most obvious traits of kitchen-sink content is that the message becomes so convoluted that it doesn’t make sense.

Here’s an example of a marketing email I received from a PR firm the other day:

I hope you don’t mind the follow-up. [Company’s] platform offers a unique Website Reengagement tool (different from shopping cart abandonment) that lets companies track and recognize customers who visit their website. With [Product], companies can tailor an email to abandon customers based on the web page visited to reengage them. They also offer a social networking tool which lets companies enable their subscribers to create their own social networks where all centered on the company's branded community center. This is only a few of the many unique services they offer their clients. [Company] has a long extensive list of happy clients that have seen tremendous ROI and invaluable results.

Yes. It was all in this one paragraph.

What really irritated me was that the PR firm probably charged this company for creating this drivel. Not only is the grammar awful, but the intention is muddy. I still really don’t have a clear idea of what this company does or why I should care. Unless, of course, I want to “tailor an email to abandon customers.”

The elements of kitchen-sink marketing are:

• Trying to say too much without understanding what it is you want to convey.


• Tossing in terms because you think they’ll catch attention – not because they make your message better or more easily understood.


• Displaying a self-oriented focus that doesn’t serve anyone well.

The effects of kitchen-sink marketing on your audience include:

• Instant delete or abandonment


• Negative credibility for your company

Obviously, this kind of content doesn’t create engagement. Nor does it enable marketers to sustain interest across a complex buying process. Suffice it to say that this is a surefire way to lose people, immediately, who could become qualified leads over time.

Socialize B2B Customer Advocacy

I received a request to publicize a webinar this week from a company I'd not heard of before.  Their name is Zuberance. The email content interested me, so I went to check them out. Zuberance is in the business of helping companies mobilize customer advocacy programs.

That interested me. It sounded, at first, like something that was more suited to B2C, but the ideas started spinning. So I attended the webinar to find out more, and now I'm full of ideas about how B2B marketers can expand their reach through more effective engagement programs that inspire customers to include your company in their conversations.

But, before we get to that, here's a few things that might surprise you:

• 84% of buyers are influenced by word of mouth [WOM] - Forrester Research
  
• A study by Keller Fay found that executives have 118 WOM conversations a week [EVERY WEEK]
• That same study learned executives mention brands in conversation 102X per week.
• It's estimated that 40% of your customers are advocates - Zuberance research with B2B & B2C companies
  

So what's an advocate?

An advocate is a customer who goes out of their way to recommend your company's offerings.

The interesting thing to note is that advocates may not be your biggest spenders.

Another thing to note is that 1 in 5 of your customers are detractors. Even though they're still your customers. Seems like that's something companies should work on fixing, but that's another post.

How do you know who your advocates are?

According to Zuberance, you ask them this one question:
How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?

Those who score 9 - 10 are potential advocates.

You may be sitting there saying, yeah, well, we only have 100 customers, so how much can this be worth? Well, it's not the number of companies you have, it's the number of people within the companies. This can mean buyers, influencers, end users and other employees who's jobs have been positively impacted by your products or solutions.

You can see the multiplier implications on advocacy, right? And, out of that group, Zuberance says 25% of these advocates will become active. That means they'll recommend you to their network.

The trick is that once you identify your advocates, you need to mobilize them. That's what the Zuberance hosted platform enables. Plus, they track all the activity so you have visibility to the results of their influence. [think lead generation]

The platform enables advocates to post their content/recommendations to social networks and via direct emails and I'm sure lots of places they didn't cover in the webinar. Which is where the socialize part comes in. Think about the exposure and reach you'll gain within every active advocate's network.

Here's an example of a company's experience using Zuberance.

• They identified and activated 5,600 advocates.
• 59% of those advocates created content (recommendations).
• 48% sent offers (think "see this exclusive content" or "you should attend this webinar" type referrals for B2B)

And the results?

• 2,250 new leads generated
• 112 deals won
• $5.6M in additional revenue

Anyone not need that?

As a disclaimer, I have no further experience with this company, but I do have to say that this is compelling enough to start thinking about. Oh, and for those of you who say the B2B buyers aren't out socializing - consider that Forrester Research found 91% of tech buyers they interviewed were Spectators and 58% were Critics.

What's your take on this concept?

E-Book: It's Not About You Anymore

Given what buyers can learn about your company and products without ever speaking directly to you, B2B positioning is more important than ever. The problem is that many companies look around them at their competition and model themselves after the company they want to emulate. But that's "me too" stuff that doesn't differentiate your company.

Rebel Brown [my great friend and colleague] has written a terrific E-Book about positioning that will help you begin to spin your own story in ways that are uniquely yours. She says,

"Anyone who says there's a one-size-fits-all approach to strategy and positioning simply doesn't get it. Great positioning is as unique as each situation. Strategic positioning is as much an art as it is a science. And each and every situation offers a blank canvas."

In It's Not About You Anymore Rebel shares her positioning matrix to be used as a foundation. She discusses how you can evaluate your market, company and solutions in order to create a clear, relevant message for each one. And then she shows you how they can all work together to differentiate your company from any other.

When Rebel and I work together, her ability to create a compelling positioning platform sets me up perfectly to develop e-marketing strategies and nurturing programs that do what they're supposed to — generate demand and sales-ready buyers.

Why? Because everything works together in a consistent way based on the insights and nuances she's helped the company uncover and then woven into their go-to-market approach. She also ensures that the positioning platform is an organic foundation with plenty of room for flexibility as your markets evolve in real time.

Go download the E-Book and see for yourselves. Your company may look very different to you after you read it.

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.

Social Media should be like Smile & Move

There are countless guides on how to get a gazillion followers on Twitter, how to optimize your personal brand on LinkedIn, how to blog with the best of them, etc. But, I'm constantly amazed that many folks employing these social media tactics have truly forgotten the meaning and purpose of a conversation.

Somewhere along the line, it feels like we've forgotten how to just be present. We've lost touch with the idea of giving as a path to reaping rewards.

It's really not all that difficult to jolt yourself back into what a marketing or sales conversation should be all about. I've found the perfect way to show you.

If you haven't heard about Smile & Move, now's the time. If you want a guide for etiquette in the social media environment, here you go.

Watch the video and tell me that you're not inspired to approach social media with the idea of serving, sharing and a commitment to providing value.

Smile & Move works like this:

Smile =

• Wake up 
• Be thankful 
• Be approachable
• Complain Less
• Smile. Really.

Move =

• Start early & go long
• Exceed expectations
• Have a sense of urgency
• Be resourceful & resilient

Sounds like a recipe for social media engagement to me...

Oh, and there's a book, too!

Address B2B Buyers' Gut Instinct

When B2B marketers set out to develop marketing content, they often focus on the benefits or results their customers can achieve by using their solution. Hopefully more than they focus on the product, itself. With longer, complex buying cycles you need lots of different content to answer the wide variety of informational needs for both decision makers and influencers.

One type of content often overlooked is content focused on past experiences that have become "anchors" that color your buyers assumptions about solving their problem. Those "anchors" of past experience are often subconscious for the buyer and related to gut instinct.

Past experiences internalized to the extent of gut instinct are usually the bad ones. You know, the ones where you make deals with the devil if the project will just work out. In exchange, you promise to NEVER, EVER make that same choice again. Those are the kinds of things that stick with you.

What gets internalized as the "anchor" for a specific gut instinct can be either emotional or rational. In order to address past experience with your content you need to look to potential points of failure almost experienced by your customers.

Think about this as the flip side of customer success stories for just a minute and stick with me.

Complex sales have a variety of obstacles to overcome. Some of them include:

• Complexity (got you on that one, I know)
• Risk - both professionally and personally
• Change - usually pretty major

The result of these can stall the buying process in its tracks. And you can say over, and over, again how successful you are in implementing your solutions or tout your customers' successes until the cows come home, but these buyers' gut instincts will win.

To get beyond that gut instinct, you need to address it head on. In order to do this you'll need to do some research and learn about all the potential points of failure your customers were worried they'd experience during their projects.

• Start by looking closely at the objections your salespeople are hearing. Try to deduce what's behind them—emotional or rational concerns.


• Talk to your project/account managers and find out what kinds of fires they've had to put out during implementations.


• Ask your customers what concerns they had during their projects.


• Don't forget to include your customer service reps. They likely deal with problem resolution more than anyone else in your company.

Once you've gathered all your potential points-of-failure intelligence, take a good hard look at your buyer personas and create stories that address their concerns as personally as possible. Make sure you do this thoughtfully.

Pay appropriate attention to the concern and be humble about addressing how you help your customers' avoid it. But also let your expertise shine through. This can also serve to increase the buyers' perception of the value add choosing your company can bring.

The purpose of addressing your buyers' gut instinct is to restore their confidence in their ability to choose wisely. [Obviously with your company as that choice.]

Purchasing a complex product is risky. Despite best intentions, implementations can be time intensive and messy. Companies have high expectations about the outcomes they'll be able to achieve with that large capital outlay. Your buyer has to make sure their choice lives up to those expectations. If they've been burned before, making sure you quell their gut instinct  is critical to getting them to take the next step in the buying process.

This type of content is best used later in the buying process. Depending on your buyers, it could be best employed by salespeople in one-on-one situations. Work closely with your sales team to discover where in the buying process gut instinct content will help pull the buyer forward.

And do not overlook that the person with the gut instinct that can hold up a purchase decision could be an influencer. This is why it's important to know and engage as many members of the buying committee as possible.

By taking the time to address issues that could be anchors for your buyers' gut instincts, you have a better shot at enticing your buyer to move beyond them. And you'll garner a lot more respect than competitors who only present the rose-colored glasses view of solving the problem.

Accountability is not Effectiveness...Or is it?

The advances in accessible technology and metrics software has resulted in B2B marketers being challenged to demonstrate quantifiable results. Everyone is talking about the need for ROI. The biggest problem I see with this is that numbers can be created to measure a lot of stuff. Not necessarily the stuff that matters.

As our digital environments evolve, what gets measured has to evolve in parallel or we end up measuring apples against pomegranates. Unfortunately, evolving in parallel is not as simple as it should be.

Marketing Automation platforms, web analytics software, trackable link services (BudURL, for example) Blog comments, Twitter followers and ReTweets, etc. have all provided more things we can measure. Then you have your old standards of clicks, pageviews, website inquiries, download forms, blah, blah, blah.

But, to what end?

Who cares if your white paper got downloaded 5,000 times if nobody takes the next step in their buying process with you?

So you have 12K followers on Twitter but no one is actually "talking" to you. To which you say, but wait, we got 14 RTs from that last link we posted. And that produced...???

As marketers, we not only need to be accountable, but also effective. To be effective means we need to have goals and objectives and then achieve them. Those objectives need to play a role in creating customers. Tracking marketing's role in customer acquisition is a direct reflection on both the accountability and effectiveness of our marketing programs. (and potentially our alignment with sales)

Did you notice the dependencies?

This means we have to plant a stake in the ground about what we're trying to achieve.

The interesting thing is that, since we're no longer in control of how our messages spread, the means to achieving our objectives can veer from the expected. And we may not know how to measure those shifts. Or worse, be unaware that they're happening. Don't panic if you can't account for everything right away. By paying attention to triggers you can often back into this knowledge.

Determine a defined number of triggers that play an obvious role in identifying prospects who actually become customers. Determine what caused these transitions to sales readiness. The goal then becomes to create initiatives that get our prospects to pull those triggers.

Start from the sale and work backwards. (Involving salespeople is wise.)

• What was the last online metric they hit before they purchased? (this could be after the handoff to sales, so look closely)
• How many pre-sale touch points can you track to that buyer prior to purchase? Are those interactions related or all over the map?
• How did each of those pre-sales touches originate? (proactively or prompted and from what source?)
• Try to define shifts in recency and frequency that occur at various buying stages across the buying cycle. Pinpoint the cause. (Did they read a white paper and then click on a hyperlink in the PDF and then read another resource linked to that content?)
• Which content did they access and spend time with? (random clicks vs. demonstrated topical interest)

What you're looking for is repetitive behavioral patterns initiated and extended by your marketing initiatives that helped produce a sale.

If you're using social media, is there a higher ratio of social dialogue or content interactions? Is one driving the other?

It's important to consider the length of the buying cycle. A complex sale is usually too long to only measure closed deals. But by focusing on reinforcing the patterns you uncover that pull buyers toward purchase decisions, marketers can set milestone objectives to measure pipeline progression.

This isn't easy and it takes time. You don't have to focus on all the triggers you identify at once. Choose a few well defined transition points and work on getting more prospects to move past those. By ensuring that accountability reinforces effectiveness, your marketing metrics will work to build credibility for your initiatives within your organization.

E-Book: Sales Management 2.0 by CSO Insights

CSO Insights has graciously allowed me to offer their new E-Book, Sales Management 2.0, to all of you.

Sales Management 2.0 is an eBook that grew out of the answers sales executives gave when asked about their top 3 objectives for the next 12 months. What's interesting is that you'll see a lot of dependencies in their answers.

For example:

#1 is increase revenues - but that can also mean increasing market share, improving margins, shortening sales cycles, improving channel sales and decreasing discounts.

#2 is increase sales effectiveness - which can also mean optimize lead generation, improve customer loyalty/retention, improve team selling and decrease the cost of sales.

To me, #2 is a clear indication of where marketers need to step up to help sales achieve their objectives. Just think what might happen if marketers aligned their objectives with these...

Instead of leaving us with statistics and a chart, CSO Insights wondered,

"...what exactly does “better” look like? What changes do our field sales;telesales; sales support; sales operations; and sales management teams need to make in order to optimize their performance to help achieve key objectives? And what help should they be looking for from the rest of the enterprise?"

So they asked 6 seasoned sales executives' and visionaries to share their insights.

Here's an overview of what you'll find in this meaty 71 page eBook:

• How to use what you have in new ways to create "net new" value and tangible results for their clients.


• How to manage and leverage the sales intelligence that lives inside your companies—usually as unwritten tribal knowledge.


• The differences made by optimizing incentive management with a sales analytics system—instead of manual spreadsheets.


• Ideas about how to shift your sales process to the way customers buy.


• Getting the most out of supporting sales with web collaboration and virtual sales meetings.


• Some ideas straight from Harvard about how we're managing our major accounts and the future of pricing. [goes to internal status quo]

I have to tell you that this E-Book really made me stop and think. If you're a marketer wondering how you can proactively take action to better align marketing with sales, there's great information in here.

If you want to know how seasoned sales executives think and learn more about how they approach the challenges they're facing, you'll find that here, as well.

And, maybe some of you are actually grappling with the issues discussed in the eBook.

Well, now's your chance to learn more from some excellent, real world, insights.

Download the Sales Management 2.0 E-Book (right here - no registration)

Please come back and leave a comment for CSO Insights about what you found valuable and even what topics would really resonate for you in future eBooks they produce.

Get Back to Work Faster

My great friend, Jill Konrath, has created a new project to help people Get Back to Work Faster. She saw the impact this economy was having on friends, family and colleagues and took a big step up to the plate to develop a job creation book. But she didn't stop there. She's created a free expert webinar series this summer to help you get even savvier about your job creation efforts.

This is one of the best books I've read that's all about helping people differentiate themselves from the sea of resumes and traditional job search tactics that just don't work anymore. And, heck, she's a specialist at seeing things differently to get knock-out results. Perhaps a reason her book, Selling to Big Companies, has been a best seller for about 3 years running.

A few things you should know about Get Back to Work Faster:

• She enrolled Jeff Ogden to put her ideas into practice and shares his story in the book. So this isn't just advice, it's a book jammed full of ideas that really work.


• Digital tools and resources are used creatively to help you build a personal brand.


• Get over the idea of finding a job and start thinking about creating the job you want.


• If you've never thought about your personal value proposition, you will now. In fact, I'd say that's worthwhile for all of us—working or not.


• Worried about all the competition for the few jobs out there? Get Back to Work Faster shows you how to eliminate competition by being the most valuable person on the planet your target employer could ever choose to hire.


• Tons of resources and tools are included at the back so you can put all these terrific ideas into practice. Jill doesn't leave you thinking, "Yeah, sounds great, but I have no idea how to make it happen."

Do yourself a favor and go download Get Back to Work Faster while it's free.Then use the Tell a Friend feature to share it with others. They'll thank you!

**The book is only being offered for free until the published version comes hot off the presses. Jill knew people couldn't wait on the publishing time line to find a job, so she's graciously provided the book as a download for a very minor registration.

And one last thing. Even if you have a job, this book can be an invaluable resource for developing and expanding your personal brand. In this day and age, if you don't have one, you should.

Marketo Sales Insights - A 6th-Sense Advantage for Sales Effectiveness

Those of you who read my blog know that I'm passionate about marketing automation. Last week, I was privileged to see a preview of Marketo's 2nd product, Sales Insight, released today. I liked what I saw and think this extension to Marketo Lead Management software can help marketing and sales begin closing that alignment gap.

Why? Well, because Sales Insights eliminates a lot of the guesswork about lead value. And, it's a native Salesforce.com application they've really tried to make intuitive to remove the barrier to adoption companies would have if they threw yet another tool at the sales team.

But the reason I really like it is because it enables sales to work more collaboratively with marketing in a natural and real-time manner.

Here are a few examples:

Interesting Moments: Marketing and Sales can work together to define interesting moments that help sales stay focused on lead behavior that indicates higher levels of interest. Let's face it, not all lead activity merits sales intervention.

With interesting moments, escalating amounts of data are distilled down to key factors that makes a difference by helping sales know just when to reach out and who to reach out to. They won't be wasting their time on leads who aren't displaying buying intentions.

I think this is a key to sales effectiveness. The better companies can distill the interesting moments into actionable intelligence, the more on-target their sales team will be. This will take effort over time as patterns are noted and the importance of those "moments" meanings defined. Nuance will be the factor of the future that helps us better serve our buyers and customers.

Best Bets: Best Bets are those "owned" by a sales rep. The stars indicate lead score and the flames indicate the rate of change of that score. The whole point is that we're now able to gather so much information that it can be overwhelming.

The flames and stars work together to help salespeople focus on what's important. And, they helped you create your lead scoring process, right? Best Bets helps them use that outcome more effectively without requiring them to dig through reams of data.

Actions: Salespeople now have the ability to take actions in regards to leads to work in concert with marketing to generate timely pipeline progression. They can assign a lead to a specific nurturing campaign, view it from the marketing side, add it to their watch list (leads they're interested in following but aren't yet assigned to them) and send them a trackable Marketo email, perhaps to invite a lead to attend a webinar on a subject they've shown interest in. 

And all of this is instantly updated for both the marketing and sales sides. Sales can also suspend marketing for a couple of weeks to eliminate cross messaging while they determine the lead's buying horizon.

The other tool that I think can become extremely beneficial for both sales and marketing is the Anonymous Web Activity tracker. Considering that the leads companies know about, who've opted in, are only a fraction of your website's visitors, this can be killer. Now you can see which companies are visiting your website and how many pages they've viewed. But what makes this helpful is the integration with Jigsaw, DemandBase and LinkedIn. Click any of those buttons to learn more about the contacts within that company you may be able to engage.

What's fascinating to me as a marketer is the potential for uncovering new market opportunities that might not be on a company's radar, as well as expanding lead generation efforts toward companies who've at least shown some interest in what you've got to offer already.

Marketo Sales Insights is sold on a per-seat basis as an extension to Marketo Lead Management software. I'd say it's definitely worth checking out. There's quite a bit more than what I've covered here.