Marketing Interactions

Lose the B2B Website Laundry Lists!

B2B websites still flounder in trying to connect with prospects. There are many issues that we can shine a light on, but for today, let's talk about those dreaded laundry lists. You know what I mean. Those endless, scrolling lists of links to stuff that make your website visitors' eyes glaze over.

Even worse, is when those lists have no context. They may have headers separating the lists of links, such as white papers, articles, Webinar archives, solution briefs, etc. The norm is listing the titles to web pages and collateral and making them hyperlinks. 

The problem is that it's hard to discern why to click or what's at the end of the click. This creates uncertainty and friction. Without context, your website visitor sits there thinking:

"Should I chance it?"  

"Can I get back if I click?"

"Will it be what I think it might be?"

"Will I be wasting my time?"

Faced with all of those internal thoughts, it's often easier to click the back button and move on.

We've all been confronted by the wall of text. Faced with the daunting task of trying to read that dense copy, we abandon ship. The effort just isn't worth it. Well, the same is true with link lists.

Link lists are simply overwhelming to busy prospects.

B2B Marketers are taking the easy way out when they toss collateral up on pages as lists of links. Even with descriptions accompanying them, often these lists are all over the board in terms of addressing the buying stage.

How link lists miss connecting with website visitors:

• Early, mid and late-stage content are all jumbled together.


• No promising pathways are created to lead your prospects to the content they need. (Remember that prospects may not know what they need until you show them.)


• There's no promise or expectation set for why they should click.


• Too many choices create confusion, making it easier to just say no and leave in search of context that matches their needs.

There are a few reasons that this link madness happens:

• Websites with inflexible designs where templates dictate display based on siloed designs. For example, solutions in one area, customer stories in one area and resources in yet another - all disconnected from each other.


• Lack of content strategy based on the buying process that puts the focus on filling the slots in the web page templates, not on telling a story designed to help buyers take next steps.


• Not considering how website visitors arrive on the site via search and what else they may need when they get to that destination.

I'm not saying a website cannot have link lists. What I am saying is that we need to make them useful. Most of them are not.

Go look at the link lists on your company's website and ask these questions:

• How can you improve the user experience?
• Can you arrange them in a way that builds a story?
• Are your descriptions clear and compelling? Do you even have descriptions?
• Do you deliver what you promise when they click?
• Is everything gated?
• Where else is the content used, or where could it be used to create a more satisfying experience?
• How old is the collateral? Have you just kept on adding links without regard to freshness? What do you think your prospects think when they download a white paper from 2007—or older?

How Catchy is Your Content?

Information overwhelm. We all suffer from it. Our job as B2B marketers is to create contagious content that catches—and keeps—the attention of our prospects across the entirety of a long-term complex purchase. That means your marketing content has to work even harder than you may have thought to rise above the noise.

Seem daunting? Doesn't have to be. Not when you use Catch Factors.

How many times have you heard that your content has to be relevant? Probably a lot. The word relevance is used so much that it's a bucket term. It's simply too bottomless to be helpful in guiding the way to ensuring that your content is worthwhile to your prospects.

Catch Factors break down relevance into digestible bites so you can systematically improve your content—from concept to finished piece.

Catch Factors are the preferences and aversions that form a prospect's gut reaction to your content and communications.

Take a look at what your content must convey to be catchy:

• Urgency - does it apply to a real business problem they have right now?
  People are busy. Content that's nice to have, but not immediately applicable will be ignored until the time is right. You need to learn what your prospect's top priorities are and address them.


• Impact - is your information on a topic critical to their professional success?
  When your prospect engages with your content, do they perceive it to be valuable enough to help them take next steps toward addressing their priority issue?


• Effort - how much energy do they have to expend to access and understand it?
  Is there a form? Is it too technical for a business audience (or the other way around). Is it scannable so they can determine value, or do they have to hunker down and dig in to figure it out? How many clicks does it take to get to it?


• Reputation - what's their immediate perception of your company?
  Have they ever heard of you? If they Google your company, what will they see? Is your content written in a way they will perceive credible? (About them more than you.)


• Intent - what will they think you want from them?
  Will they think you're selling or helping?

Now, a few things you need to know. No one goes through a check list in their heads when a message arrives in their inbox or they follow a link from a search result. Catch Factors are split-second assessments that happen naturally when a person is confronted with information.

Depending on their immediate situation, prospects can rank some factors higher than others. You don't have to have all the Catch Factors in play at once, but the more of them you do have, the "catchier" your content will be.

According to Deidre Wilson and Dan Sperber’s Relevance Theory, an individual draws a conclusion based on the first relevant meaning recognized, and the one that requires the least effort. This is where our millisecond attention spans come into play and why your marketing content needs to be compelling—at first glance.

Leveraging Catch Factors helps marketing content catch attention and accelerate your prospects’ buying behavior. Put yourself in your prospect's shoes and go evaluate your content against the 5 Catch Factors. How many do you find? Can you refresh your content to include more of them?

Staying Top of Mind is Not the Goal for Email Marketing

When B2B marketers first embraced email marketing, the idea was to populate a database and continuously send one-size-fits-all messages to supposed prospects. The idea being that by keeping these folks exposed to your company's name and logo, you'd stay "top of mind." That process is now referred to as "spray and pray" marketing. In a longer-term, B2B complex sales process, just knowing your company's name or recognizing your logo is not enough.

The one-size-fits-all email blast is a tactic, not a strategic marketing process. And, a lousy tactic at that when relevance and value are the admission fee for catching and keeping prospect attention.

Consider this from a personal perspective for a moment. You're aware of a lot of brands. Many of them probably send you stuff. How many of them do you pay attention to? When it comes time to buy a product, how do you decide which one?

Awareness doesn't require action.

I'm aware of Anheuser Busch. I love their Clydesdale ads. But I don't drink beer. I'm also aware of many other beers. If I had to pick one, it would probably boil down to a "close my eyes and point" exercise because I have no expertise in selecting beer. Or, I'd ask a friend I know who loves beer.

Moving back to the B2B side, consider selecting an email service provider (ESP). There are lots of options. In fact, there are so many options people don't know where to start. That's because they have limited expertise in selecting an ESP. 

So let's say that one buyer has been receiving emails from two vendors. Vendor A sends offers of special deals and incentives. They rave about how well their customers are doing by using their superior system.

Vendor B consistently sends educational content that helps the buyer learn about best practices for increasing the effectiveness of email campaigns. They share stories about their customers' ingenuity in deploying email campaigns that produce results, despite the down economy.

When it comes time for the buyer to select a new ESP, the buyer goes online to look at both options. Hey, they were both Top of Mind.

The services are comparable, although Vendor B is bit more expensive. But the buyer feels an affinity toward Vendor B. The buyer has more confidence that Vendor B will be able to provide him with the additional expertise and support he needs to get the best results from the email system. Vendor B just seems to care more. The buyer contacts Vendor B to take next steps in his purchasing process.

This doesn't mean Vendor A isn't all of those things. But staying Top of Mind wasn't enough to win them a customer when compared with all that Vendor B did to go beyond just staying Top of Mind. It won't be enough for your company either, given the likelihood that your competitors are also emailing your prospects.

The goal for B2B marketing has to move beyond the idea of staying Top of Mind to building relationships that accelerate pipeline momentum. Achieving that goal requires the establishment of a marketing content discipline based on relevance and value applied specifically to address target audience needs.

In essence, email marketing must become lead nurturing. Email marketing is tactical. Lead nurturing is strategic. It's a different mindset. The process of lead nurturing helps companies focus on prospects, instead of on themselves. And that's what matters to your buyers.

The Truth About Marketing Demographics

As more and more marketers and salespeople grapple with how to segment their leads and personalize their messaging, the question of demographics is asked. If you've created an emarketing campaign lately, you've likely been asked, what's the customer profile you're targeting?

For some reason, the idea of a customer profile has become kind of like the POW concept of name, rank and serial number. Only marketers do it by prospect title, company size, revenues and employee counts. Depending on what you sell, some of these may have merit, but consider this:

Those definitions are what companies use to decide whether or not they want a prospect.

The problem with this approach is that it has nothing to do with the prospect deciding they want you, your products or solutions. Nothing.

It's interesting to note that even with all the customer-focused strategy discussions, companies still behave as if this process of selection was all about them. And, sometimes it may indeed work out that way.

But, before you start thinking "see, I'm okay, no need to change my thinking about this," chances are those customers tend to be the ones you talked into buying instead of the ones who were actually interested in buying from you in the first place. These are the ones who can turn into demanding, unfriendly customers—so far from your favorite, ideal customers that, after a while, you pray they'll defect. They also tend to be the ones who have the lowest net margins for profitability.

When you think about customer profiles from now on, think about them in relation to Catch Factors.

Catch Factors are the preferences and aversions that form a prospect's gut reaction about your company, products, messages, brand and communications.

Take a look at the 5 Catch Factors in relation to generating customer profiles that help you make better connections with your prospects:

1. Urgency. Define why a prospect will need your product, solution or service now.
   
   • Why is paying you their attention critical for them today?
   • What factors about their situation make it worthwhile to change their status quo sooner, rather than later?
   • What are the business problems they're facing that must be dealt with immediately to reach strategic objectives and gain critical business outcomes?


2. Impact. Assess the value your prospects will both receive by choosing to work with you and gain for themselves because of that choice.
   
   • What overall business value will your prospect achieve if they act on their urgent priorities by choosing your company as a trusted advisor?
   • What expertise will you bring to the project that will have a lasting impact on the way they accomplish their business goals?
   • How will their professional status be changed by this choice?
   • What values will be delivered that reach farther into the enterprise than the immediate project?


3. Effort. Evaluate the difficulty of taking action from the prospect's perspective.
   
   • How hard will they think it is to pursue solving their urgent problem or take advantage of the strategic opportunity under consideration?
   • What will they perceive as obstacles that require too much energy to overcome?
   • How can you make it easy for them to choose to engage with you?


4. Reputation. Your prospect's existing and developing impression of you and your company. [HINT: This does not mean saying "Our company is the leading provider of..."]
   
   • What do your prospects currently think about or know about your company?
   • In what ways can you make lasting impressions that build a solid presence with your prospects?
   • What will they likely hear from their peers and colleagues if they mention your company and how can you impact that?


5. Intent. Transparent actions you can take to elevate your credibility with your prospect.
   
   • What can you do to demonstrate you walk your talk in a way that provides value to your prospects?
   • How can you expose your expertise to become a trusted advisor?
   • Why would your prospects turn to you to help them solve an urgent, priority problem with high impact to their company's business outcomes?
   • What will your prospects think you want from them?

Every campaign has a foundational goal. By starting with that goal and asking and answering the questions for each Catch Factor from the prospect's perspective, you'll begin to see a pattern emerge that will help you formulate a customer profile that enables you to determine just who has the highest potential to be interested in your information and interaction invitations.

By creating your emarketing strategies around the scenarios you develop during this customer profile process, you'll gain great insights to what truly interests, concerns and motivates the prospects most likely to become your ideal customers. And isn't that just what you need to know.

There is just one caveat. This isn't easy. It'll take research, conversations, listening and exploration to discover the best answers. It's not as simple as going to Hoovers and pulling a demographics-based list. Or just blasting everyone in your database.

So, why should you do it? Because by undertaking this type of exercise as part of your overall emarketing strategy you'll get to know your customers.

• You'll start seeing your prospects' situations from their perspectives.
  


• You'll be in a prime position to add needed value.


• You'll know who they are, what their priorities are, and how to serve them in a way that makes a lasting, positive impression.


• You'll get their attention--and you'll be able to keep it--all the way through their buying journey.

Adding value is what generates relationships. And, it's very hard to add value if all you have to go by is statistical demographic information that does nothing to help you get to know who you're selling to.

The truth about demographics is that they're an internal assessment tool for statisticians. Demographics have their place, but not in defining who your customers are or how to structure the effective components of a successful, interactive emarketing strategy.

eBook Download: Amplify Buyer Attention

Hot off the presses, get the 3rd eBook in the Series.

Design relevant content that invites prospect interactions.

In this eBook, you'll learn how to tackle the challenge of relevance by applying 7 Amplifiers to your content development process. By connecting more closely with your prospect's perspective on problems, challenges and opportunities, you'll find yourself engaging your prospects in active dialog, instead of being easily ignored.

Amplifiers help you define content strategically to ensure the focus is kept squarely on creating prospect engagement.

Download the complimentary eBook

According to Forrester Research, 62% of companies don't view the customer experience as critical to the future. Say what? That's about the only thing that will drive business growth as our world continues to embrace the digital environment, putting more distance between you and them.

Your website, email communications and other online content is what will be found first - way before you ever get face-to-face with your buyers. If it doesn't catch their attention, expand their interest and build engagement, your chances of ever developing that buyer into a sales opportunity are very limited.

However, by embracing online content and learning how to generate content that tells a story your prospects find instantly relevant and high value, you can put the digital experience to work and continue to create new customer relationships with shorter cycle times.

Amplifiers structure your content to confirm, correct or expand information and knowledge buyers need to actively engage with your company to solve their high-priority issues.

By using Amplifiers, you'll be able to better tap into the natural ways in which buyers think. There are 7 Amplifiers that provide templates for creating relevant high-value content based on customer thought processes and, employed correctly, will elevate you from a vendor to a trusted advisor.

Download the Amplify Buyer Attention eBook.

If you don't have them already, download the first two eBooks in the series. By combining Catch Factors, Marketing Stories and Amplifiers, you'll have a combination of tools that work together to help ensure your marketing content is focused on matching relevance to your prospects' and customers' perspectives.

Why Marketing Stories Have Catch

Catch Me, If You Can

Plug Your Marketing Leaks

Marketing is making strides in lead generation, but how kinetic is their nurturing?

Lead nurturing is often thought about as being found with a flag waving when your leads decide to take action about resolving a problem your products or services address. But it leaves a lot to chance just hanging around waiting to be found.

Maybe for some of your longer-horizon leads this is fine, but it's not going to help you speed up getting quality opportunities to opt into sales conversations.

You've all seen those funnel diagrams that show spouts of leads leaking out of them at different points during the buying process. In order to stop the leaks and add momentum to your nurturing, you've got to get commitment.

The higher a sense of commitment you can create, the farther and faster your leads will move toward becoming sales opportunities. So, how do you create commitment when you likely can't get a lead to talk to you — even at mid-stage in their buying process?

You do it by being clever about how you create and use your content. And you apply your content to a process that asks for incremental increases in commitment with each step. With each and every communication, your content needs to provide increasingly relevant information. Each time your information is closer to the mark, your lead transitions a to a higher level of commitment with you because the perceived value they get from you goes up.

As you help them get smarter and more competent about solving their problems, they come to rely on your expertise and education. They feel confident. Their commitment will go up according to how much you impact those things.

To get that level of commitment, you need to be smart about what you learn about your leads.

• Ask about preferences
• Interpret behavior to diagnose interests
• Look for changes in attention that indicate priority shifts

Then you act on that information intelligently.

• Provide information that focuses on expressed interests
• Address urgency, limit their effort and respect their intentions
• Increase the perceived value of information exchanged at each interaction

The level of attention your leads commit to your content and communications is a great indicator of commitment. By planning your content strategy with a focus to increasing value and relevance with each communication, you'll grow their commitment.

I've seen a trend lately that companies offer something of high value - a white paper or ebook - and, once you opt in, then they send out a bunch of "so what" communications that give less than that first effort. Which quickly reverses your potential buyers' level of commitment to that company as a viable solution.

Because, they wonder, what if working with the company is just like that? As soon as your relevance diminishes, you have leaks.

You can keep leaks from happening by focusing on increasing their level of commitment with every interaction. With solid commitment, the next step of choosing to take action with you is easy, and more and more predictable—if you're smart about it.

And you'll have higher velocity nurturing that produces more qualified sales opportunities.

eBook: Why Marketing Stories Have Catch

Use stories with Catch Factors to transform buyer attention into engagement and consistently tip purchase decisions in your favor. Learn what a marketing "story" is, why stories

have more impact than other marketing content, how they escalate buyer momentum and why stories build trust that speeds customer conversions. Use the quick guide to create your own stories.

Download the eBook

New eBook: Why Marketing Stories Have Catch

Use stories with Catch Factors to transform buyer attention into engagement and consistently tip purchase decisions in your favor. Learn what a marketing "story" is, why stories

have more impact than other marketing content, how they escalate buyer momentum and why stories build trust that speeds customer conversions.

Download the eBook

Stories are what we tell ourselves to make sense of the world around us.

Marketing is charged with producing quantifiable results in the quality of lead generation and activity management. In order to give sales qualified opportunities, instead of leads, marketing has got to get more effective. And they need to do it fast. Stories are a key to not only creating and extending engagement, but to building trust.

Weave in Catch Factors with your stories and you've entered a whole new realm of effectiveness. The reason stories work is because they force us to focus on the person we're telling the story to, or they don't make sense. Lots of buzz is happening around the idea of personalized and targeted marketing which means embracing the niche. Stories, used wisely, can take you to a whole new level of marketing competence.

Since you can't control the conversation any more, it's time to leverage the options that empower you to guide the subjective experience of your buyers. Marketing stories do that by increasing the personal impact they have on your audience, creating a pull response from your buyers that escalates their purchase momentum and by solidifying your credibilty as someone they want to do business with.

Marketing is like a trial run. It’s the ultimate free demo of what it will be like to become a customer of your company. 

Why Marketing Stories Have Catch, the second ebook in the Catch Factors series, explores all of these ideas and includes a quick guide at the end to help you get started in leveraging marketing stories of your own. If you missed the first eBook: Catch Me, If You Can, you can download it here.

I'm also giving a series of workshops for Business Experts Webinars that expand on the use of marketing stories within content strategies and sales transitional tools. I hope you'll register today to learn more about how to transform your content strategy into a downstream revenue catalyst.

Create a Content Strategy for Lead Momentum

I've got an upcoming webinar for ON24 that you may be interested in attending:

Getting your prospect’s attention is harder than ever. Time is becoming a more scarce resource every day. One-off, one-way marketing doesn’t give you the depth of relevance you need to catch their attention, or to keep it. When you need to engage them in interactions and dialog that move them to sales readiness, this approach doesn’t work.

What will? Transforming your content into customer-focused stories that satisfy as payment for your lead’s attention will dramatically increase your marketing momentum. Stories create pull. By their very nature, stories are about people, which is infinitely more interesting and compelling than product-based messaging.

But stories alone aren’t enough to shift your content strategy into high gear. Appealing to 5 Catch Factors will help you deliver the value that commands your prospect’s attention, increases mindshare, and accelerates their buying behavior. Plus, their decisions to buy are stronger because they have a bigger investment in choosing to act.

During this webcast, you’ll learn:

• What marketing tales are and how to tell      them.
• The value of “essence” and how to use it to increase perceived value.
• How to apply the 5 Catch Factors for      best outcomes.
• How to structure a connected content strategy.

Don't miss this opportunity to learn from a marketing strategy specialist the impact on momentum that stories can have in moving your prospects to sales readiness.

Date: Tuesday, March 26th 2007

Time: 11 am PDT| 2 pm EDT | 7 pm GMT

Register Here

Simplicity - What a concept!

One of the Catch Factors I talk about in my eBook: Catch Me, If You Can, is Effort. Effort from the buyer's perspective. As in their consideration of whether or not their expenditure of time and energy will be paid for by what's at the end of engagement with you.

Whether your campaign is focused on generating initial attention or your buyers' choice to expand their attention paid to your company. You're only as relevant as the last impression you made with them.

Last week (I know, I'm so behind) Jon Burg posted design patterns of the big players. Which one are your interactions most like?

Ease of interactions and simplicity with payment for attention are key. Go look at Jon's post. This graphic representation should give you a contextual frame for thinking about what it'll take to get your interactions prepped for active buyer and customer engagement.