Businesses spend millions of pounds each year generating opportunities they do not follow up.

In most cases organisations have efficient, effective marketing departments and well trained, skillful sales professionals. But the problem is co-ordination. Trade shows will produce leads and mail shots (physical and email) do result in enquiries. Even cold – call telemarketing can (in the right circumstances) be effective.

What Happens to Marketing Leads?

Co-ordinating marketing and sales effort is challenging for large and small organisations. The act of processing, qualifying and assigning leads to salespeople takes time. Further delays occur when the leads are passed to sales. People are busy and a salesperson may not get through to the prospect for several days.

‘Dropping the baton’ between marketing and sales is a waste of valuable marketing resource. Calling a once warm prospect weeks after the initial contact is the equivalent of a shop assistant turning up at your front door and asking if they can help you with a coat you were looking at three weeks ago. The call is likely to be inappropriate, unwelcome and slightly disorientating.

When to Pass the Baton?

As in athletics, passing the baton at the right time transfers responsibility with no loss of momentum. If your salespeople are responsible for making calls and booking appointments from ‘warm’ marketing leads you are probably passing the baton too early. Complaints about ‘poor quality leads’ certainly indicate premature handover.

Timing the transfer of responsibility is likely to vary between organisations however, there are a couple of principles that should be adhered to.

Who is Responsible?

If marketing are to attract, nurture and get the lead qualified ready for sales then responsibility for oppointment setting should be with your marketing or tele-qualification team. The principle is simple. If contact and relationship building has been done by the inside sales team then it makes sense for that relationship to be leveraged when asking for an appointment.

After all, it is marketing’s job to make sure salespeople have a good pipeline of well qualified opportunites and meetings. It also makes sense from the prospect’s perspective. A clear separation of responsibility: field sales for physical sales meetings and telesales for qualification and appointment setting.

Improving Performance

Getting your marketing department (or external agency) to set appointments delivers two valuable management tools: Quality and quantity management. An appointment is a clear and unambiguous deliverable. No-one can argue of the voracity of the ‘lead’ if they are willing to take an appointment. But the quality of appointments is also important: does the prospect have Authority, Need, Budget?

So, you can measure the quantity and quality (and therefore improve) marketing performance. And if your salespeople are being given good quality appointments, you can also measure their performance: how are they progressing the opportunity and how many appointments turn into business.

When it comes to lead generation too many organisations rely on third party lists (or poor quality ‘in-house’ lists).

The results are always disappointing and frequently appalling.

Well designed, updated and administered emailable databases will deliver results well above industry standards. If you are currently experiencing open rates below 15% and ‘click through’ rates lower than 10% then you may wish to read further.

What is an eMailable database?

Well it is more than a list of names and email addresses of ‘prospects’. A database consists of:

1. Individuals with whom you have an active or latent commercial relationship.

2. Individual, personal email addresses.

3. Individual permission to communicate via email.

4. Individual intelligence: you know exactly where the individual is in the buying cycle.

Note the use of individual: email marketing is not mass marketing. Organisations and colleagues who talk of ‘eshots’ and ‘email blasts’ just do not get it; they need education. An emailable database is a valuable resource that delivers regular revenue. A simple list will perform badly, damage your digital reputation and cost you money.

Jonathan Calver’s White Paper on ‘How to Build an eMailable Database‘ provides an insight into what it takes to start improving your campaign rates. If you would like it: Click Here

Building rather than buying your list.

When you build your own database you embed value:

1. It contains historical data: all the interactions you have had with the individuals in the database.

2. It is far more responsive than a ‘bought list’ or sending campaigns via third parties.

5 List Building Strategies:

1. Raid the Sales Team.

They might not like it at first but when you start to deliver real opportunities into their laps they will soon forgive you. Your sales team will have built up some serious intelligence on potential customers: it belongs to the company, not on a sales executives private spreadsheet, outlook file or notebook. Do not underestimate the level of authority you may need to extract this information. But the leads belong to the company, not the individual.

2. Purchase a list to get you started

Working in conjunction with telemarketing (either internally or externally) a bought list can provide you with enough information to start really building intelligence into your database. Remember, at this point you are not selling. You are simply getting enough information and permission to start email campaigns.

3. Telemarketing with a valuable offer

If you cold call someone, ask for their email address and permission to email, you will probably get a ‘No’. Hopefully it will be a polite, ‘not company policy’ rather than a short expletive! However, if you have a valuable offer of interest: a Sample, White Paper’, ‘Case Study’ etc. you are far more likely to get a positive response. And if the individual appreciates the offer, you will have started to build the commercial relationship.

4. Convert your Direct Mail list to an eMail list

Look at your most responsive, regular direct mail contacts. Working with them first to attain their email address should be relatively easy: they already have a relationship with you and should be willing to provide email addresses.

5. Use social media & website interactions to capture data

Many organisations have ‘subscribe to our newsletter’ options on their websites. But they don’t deliver that many quality leads. However, if you provide useful information through social networking sites (blogs, White papers etc). people will access that information and provide you with their email address as a quid pro quo. If you then match your communications to their stage of the buying cycle you will start to build a strong pipeline of potential business.

Take your time

Building a valuable resource like an emailable database takes time. Do not expect to have 30,000 individuals waiting to receive your next email in two weeks time. Rather, focus on quality. 200 good quality emailable records per month will deliver read rates above 40% and click throughs of around 30%. That will significantly improve your digital reputation. It will also improve the quality of the leads that are passed to your sales team.

If you would like to read the full White Paper Click here

Businesses lose thousands every day through ineffective telemarketing.

No matter how well trained or dedicated, telemarketing professionals without proper support and pre-planning will lose opportunities and marketing investment will be wasted. The damage will be significant: poor telemarketing execution damages reputations. There are brands and companies synonymous with ‘hard sell’: you do not want to be counted amongst them.

Where did those leads go?

Most companies have thought leadership campaigns and generate significant interest on their blogs and websites. Direct mail pieces are well thought through and targeted. Email campaigns are effective; white papers are downloaded and visitor numbers increase. But despite doing ‘everything right’ companies still fail to develop a reasonable number of opportunities for the investment made.

The problem is that poor co-ordination and a lack of timely information means that most leads generated by marketing are wasted.

Often, getting a complete record of an individual’s interactions with an organisation is difficult if not impossible. Leads get passed to telemarketing because they ‘downloaded a White Paper’ but the neither telemarketer nor the company know that the prospect accessed the company’s website on several separate occasions, read case studies and product information.

Put simply data collection is not sophisticated enough to spot opportunities. Jonathan Calver discusses how to address this issue in ‘Lead Profiling to Accelerate Sales’.

For a copy: Click here

The second problem is that telemarketing agencies (and even internal sales resources) respond too late.

There is only one thing that cools faster than a ‘warm lead’ and that is a ‘hot lead’.

When someone is pre-disposed to purchase; customer service rules. Take your time over recognising their interest and they are likely to find another vendor. The fact is your prospects are bombarded with information on a daily basis. Getting a spreadsheet with 200 ‘warm leads’ to your telemarketing agency within 48 hours is no longer good enough. You are effectively giving the agency a list to cold call. And the results will be poor.

Telemarketing can only be effective if leads are processed immediately.

Getting it right

With multiple agencies, different departments, products, divisions and campaigns, getting everyone onto the same page may appear to be an impossible task. But it is not. Infrastructure and systems exist that link each element of your campaigns, your team and your marketplace. And they do it securely: you do not have to let third parties into your databases.

The Paper: Marketing Operations, shows how companies can co-ordinate multiple campaigns with feeds from Web Analytics through to eMail and deliver a 360 degree picture of a prospect directly to a telemarketer who can act on it.

If you would like it: Click Here

Telemarketing can be effective when supported by good planning and co-ordinated execution. That way your agents will be calling the right person, at the right time and have the right conversation.

Last week we promised we would show you how digital marketing can help you compete for and win new business. The following article is the result of over ten years experience, thousands of successful client campaigns (and quite a few successful campaigns of our own). It should help you design and execute your own revenue generating activity.

Attraction is not enough

There are plenty of marketing agencies and ‘experts’ who will wax lyrical about search engine optimisation, pay per click campaigns, even social marketing. The hard fact is that no matter how attractive and ‘on brand’ your site is and no matter how much you spend getting noticed on line, it will not deliver a return on investment. In fact many executives see the company website as an ‘Internet Tax’: they know they have to pay for a website and invest in getting it prominant but they also know that (in most cases) the business generated does not equal the money invested.

The reason is that for major considered purchases people buy from people: not websites. Who amongst you would invest tens of thousands of pounds on a software system simply by searching the web, popping the product in your virtual shopping basket and proceeding to the checkout?

Most B2B products are complex a mixture of product, service and require a long term partnership if the purchase is going to provide a good return on investment.

Simply ‘hanging out a website’ will not do. Organisations have to be pro-active.

Getting Pro-Active (the wrong way)

Most companies use tried and tested methods to promote their business. If every other lemming is heading to the ‘Trade Show’ we should tag along; shouldn’t we? I have never heard an argument for trade show attendance that did not sound like an excuse:

• ‘We have to go to be seen’.
• ‘If we win just one piece of business it will pay for itself’.
• ‘It is a great networking opportunity’.

So companies spend upwards of £30,000 just to share their competitive positioning and sales materials with all their competitors!

Do not think that you’ll be entertaining lots of qualified buyers on your stand: most trade show attendees are the office staff on a day out (competing to see who can collect the most freebees). If there are any senior buyers, the day will have been planned and they are likely to be evaluating options or doing due diligence before making a major purchase. If you know about the opportunity and have had a chance to progress through the early stages of the sale, great, (you do not need to be at the show). If you don’t know about the opportunity, forget it: at this stage you are unlikely to influence the outcome.

Another popular waste of money is outbound cold calling/telemarketing. It simply does not work.

Telemarketers are targeted on identifying opportunities. So guess what? They identify some. No matter how poorly qualified, the telemarketer, desperate to make the mortgage payment that month, will grasp at any straw to hit the numbers: the result is a slew of poorly qualified names and telephone numbers that will leave your sales professionals exasperated.

And do not get me started on mailshots.

Next to cold calling, junk mail is the next most hated form of marketing. Poorly directed, often irrelevant, rarely read: if you want to annoy the marketplace, associate your company with the destruction of the rainforests and melting the polar ice cap. Then be my guest: plan a mailshot today!

To get a mail noticed you will have to spend thousands designing a new and ingenious piece of origami that delights and amuses. This creates two commercial risks: if the prospect hasn’t had their eye taken out by the mailshot springing out of the carton, they are more likely to be interested in the origami than your product. (Unless, of course, you are an origami producer).

Getting Pro-Active (the right way)

Digital marketing can and does deliver significant return on investment. The website does not have to be a cost centre: it can be the source of your success. Intelligent marketing blends outbound digital activity with networking and information sharing. It enables discourse with your company, allowing you to craft well thought through and robust business arguments with prospects and customers. But it requires infrastructure, co-ordination and sustained effort.

Doing ‘an email blast’ is neither intelligent nor blended. Organisations that view their website as a living, changing beast are starting to win new business and post good growth. Remarkable in a time of financial austerity and economic uncertainty.

But there have to be losers. Perhaps they can be seen flocking down a motorway to an exhibition near you?

An Invitation

APM Digital are inviting business leaders, sales and marketing directors from finance, technology, engineering and consultancy firms to discuss and debate business generation over lunch at a central London location. Attendance is by invitation only and will not exceed eight. The guest list will not include direct competitors.

If you would like to join the debate either leave a comment and register your interest in the ‘London Debate’.

Marley was dead: there was no doubt. He had been unceremoniously marched off the premises by security carrying the contents of his desk in a forlorn brown cardboard box. His departure had been witnessed by several colleagues including his old partner in crime Ebenezer Scrooge. Several months had passed since his dismissal but he had not been missed. Yet Scrooge had admired Marley’s professional skill; his e-shots were legendary. Scrooge particularly liked Marley’s snappy subject lines and copy that sliced through SPAM filters.

Scrooge had carried on business in much the same way as he had before Marley’s departure. If anyone needed an e-shot or email blast, Scrooge was your man. As far as the company was concerned it was pretty much business as usual: Scrooge could (and would) do all that Marley had been capable of.

A complaint had arrived earlier in the day. Not as serious as the flood of complaints and blacklisting that had been the demise of poor Marley. But it was a complaint none the less. Some fool had emailed complaining that the company was spamming them and threatened reporting them to the spamcops.  Scrooge looked at the email with disgust. He checked his records. Sure enough the aggrieved individual was wrong. They had opted-in via a competition over a year ago and had received emails every fortnight since. OK so they had never responded or, as far as Scrooge could deduce, ever opened or read the communications. But they had opted in, so they were fair game.

‘Can’t these idiots read’ Scrooge muttered under his breath, ‘there is an opt-out button at the end of the page and we got their details legally’.

Whenever these complaints arrived or managers spoke of ‘best practise’ Scrooge’s answer was always the same: ‘We are DMA compliant and that should be good enough for anyone!’  Over the years the old spammer’s attitude had hardened, he was now so indifferent that even the most legitimate protest elicited a ‘you could always unsubscribe’ retort.

He left the building that Christmas Eve after a hard day’s emailing offers to over a quarter of a million unsuspecting victims. At least he would not have to deal with the complaints until the New Year; he had a week’s leave before returning to blast people with the ‘January Sales’.

Scrooge took his normal route home, past the railway arches where the homeless sleeping rough gathered for warmth and company. As he passed he faintly recognised a figure walking towards him. ‘Not another scrounging Big Issue seller’, he thought. ‘Good Grief!’ Scrooge exclaimed out loud, unable to hide his shock. It was Jacob Marley.

‘What has happened to you’ said Scrooge, ‘and what do you want with me Jacob?’

Jacob gave Scrooge a pitying look. ‘It’s where all us spammers end up’ said Marley, ‘it is my fate to wander the world, trying to engage people in conversation only to be shunned for my past sins’.

‘Well that will never happen to me’ said Scrooge, ‘I always work within the letter of the law’.

‘But not the spirit of the law’ retorted Marley, ‘and I’m here to warn you before it‘s too late, there is still time for you’.

Scrooge eyed his ex-colleague suspiciously. Certainly sleeping rough was not a fate he wished to contemplate but surely it wouldn’t happen to him.

‘You will be visited by three spirits of Article 13 of the EU Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications’ explained Marley, ‘Take heed of what they have to teach you, in email the spirit of the law is more powerful than the letter’.

‘Rubbish.’ Scrooge spat the word with contempt and pushed past his old partner.

The First of the Spirits

The bottle of whiskey had barely slipped from Scrooge’s fingers and hit the floor when he awoke with a jolt. He sat bolt upright in his chair. It was dark save for the flickering glow from his PC Monitor. Scrooge felt uneasy. Was there someone with him in the darkened room? He looked around peering into the shadows. And then he saw it; large, sleek and confident in a well tailored business suit. The spirit spoke to him. ‘Here, Scrooge, touch these threads, great quality fabric, don’t you think?’

‘Who are you?’ Scrooge asked, rubbing his eyes.

‘Why I am the Spirit of email past’ said the Spectre, ‘touch my suit and I’ll show you shadows of things that have already been’.

As soon as Scrooge touched the Spirit’s suit the room around him dissolved and he found himself in a brightly coloured office full of busy, happy people. He recognised it immediately as the email agency he started work with almost ten years ago. Scrooge’s eyes fell onto a thin figure at the corner of the office, talking earnestly with an attractive young woman. He recognised himself immediately and the girl; they had been close once. He moved closer to hear the conversation.

‘You are wrong Scrooge’ said the girl, ‘email has to be completely permission based and companies that bend the rules will ruin the medium for themselves and for us all’.

‘I agree to a point’ said the young Scrooge, ‘that in an ideal world, all email would be permission based and I would be happy to run permission based campaigns only’.

Scrooge shifted uncomfortably as he heard his younger, more idealistic self speak.

‘But I have targets to hit’ continued his younger self, ‘and you just cannot get enough leads using permission based lists. Batch and blast is simply a practical solution’.

The scene dissolved and he found himself in an imposing office. The young girl was now clearly a powerful digital marketing director and sat behind an impressive looking desk. She was chatting on the telephone and laughing.

‘Old Scrooge’ she giggled, ‘no, he never moved on, he is still in the same dead-end job, blasting emails to everyone and anybody. I’m not sure if he is even making any money; e-shots are seen as a cheap alternative’.

Scrooge was visibly shaken to hear this girl laughing at his expense. She had resisted the temptation to abuse email and was now clearly very successful.

‘Take me away from here Spirit’ said Scrooge, ‘I have seen enough’.

The Second of the Spirits

Scrooge was back in his room. He shivered. The sight of his old girlfriend had unnerved him. Her contempt of his marketing methods had shaken him and Scrooge made a mental note to be a bit more careful with his New Year campaigns.

The old spammer had scarcely enough time to sit down before he heard the door creak. In one movement he stood and turned to face the door.

It stood there, smiling. Simply attired in ‘dress-down-Friday’ clothes, ‘Hey Scrooge’ said the Spectre, ‘I am the Spirit of email present!’

Scrooge looked into the smiling, kind face. ‘I was taught a lesson last night’ he said ‘if you have anything to teach me then lead on’.

‘Take my hand Scrooge’ we haven’t time to waste’, said the Spirit.

Again the room dissolved and he found himself in his boss’ office, looking over the old man’s shoulder.

Scrooge was nervous, ‘can the boss see or hear us?’ he asked.

‘No’ said the Spirit, ‘they do not know we are here’.

Emboldened, Scrooge moved closer to get a better look at what his boss was doing. It was Monday morning and the old man was working his way through a full email inbox. Scrooge watched as some of his best creative work was unceremoniously deleted. Then Scrooge’s eyes widened as he recognised his holiday request and another of his emails requesting a raise. Scrooge was unable to silence a yelp as he saw his emails deleted along with all the spam.

‘He just deleted my holiday request’. Scrooge complained to the Spirit.

‘Well that’s just one problem with SPAM’, explained the Spirit, ‘we get so much of it today that important messages are often missed’.

Scrooge stared wide eyed at the computer screen where his requests had just been deleted. ‘So that’s why I haven’t had a pay rise in five years’ said the old spammer, ‘Take me back Spirit’.

The Third of the Spirits

Ebenezer Scrooge found himself sitting in his chair. The room had not changed: it was still dark and the PC Monitor still flickered. He had no idea of time. Was it gone midnight? Would the light of morning never come? The old spammer was shaken, his mind raced. His job, his very profession was holding him back. Ebenezer’s old girlfriend had clearly moved on and was successful for it. All his email was being ignored; both the spam and the important stuff.

As he sat he felt an icy hand on his shoulder. Scrooge’s head spun and he did not like what he saw; a tall dark figure in a security guard’s uniform, eyes shadowed by a highly polished peaked hat.

‘Are… are you the Spirit of email future?’ Scrooge stammered.

The Spectre gave a slow single nod of its head.

‘Then take me where you will’, said the old spammer ‘although you frighten me I’m sure you have much to teach me.’

With that the room dissolved once more and Scrooge found himself in a bright airy corporate office. He was near a water cooler looking at a group of colleagues chatting happily. Scrooge moved closer to listen.

‘Haven’t received one for months,’ said a tall young man ‘life is so much easier and productive’.

‘Absolutely right,’ said a woman to his right, ‘I have not missed it at all since the rules were strengthened’.

‘I heard a lot of spammers have lost their jobs,’ said another.

‘Well they get no sympathy from me’ said the first young man, ‘They bent the rules and made the medium almost unusable, I’m glad they’ve gone.’

With that the scene dissolved and Scrooge found himself in a cold familiar place. It was the railway arches where he had met Marley not eight hours earlier. He turned to face the Spirit. The Spectre lifted up a gloved hand and pointed toward a row of cardboard boxes.  Fear like ice struck through Scrooge’s heart.

‘No Spirit, do not make me look’, said the old spammer.

But the Spirit simply pointed again, silently urging Scrooge forward. Ebenezer took short faltering steps towards the nearest box. Inside and shivering in rags, Scrooge immediately recognised his older self. His face pinched against the cold wind, eyes and cheeks sunken and sallow with lack of food.

‘Oh Spirit’, said Ebenezer, ‘Are these things fixed and will happen or is there hope?’

Scrooge could not discern movement or emotion in the Spectre. ‘Please Spirit, is there time to change this outcome?’ And the Spirit gave a single nod of the head.

‘Oh thank you Spirit’ said Ebenezer, ‘although you are the most frightening of all the Ghosts that visited tonight, your lesson is the most powerful. Now, take me away from here.’

The Spirit’s icy hand touched Scrooge’s shoulder and he was returned to his room.

The End of it

Scrooge woke with a start. He looked around the room. Light streamed through his window, clear bright and cold. The computer was still on, screensaver casting a weak glow on the desk. The old empty bottle of whisky lay on the floor.

It had happened, over there by the door; that is where the Ghost of Christmas present had entered the room.
Scrooge smiled to himself. ‘Yes’, he cried out loud, ‘Yes spirits, I understand, from now on I will live by the Spirit of Article 13. There will be no more spamming by me’.

And the old man was as good as his word; he never sent a piece of spam again and it was always said of him that he knew how to email well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. As the years passed so his relationships grew from strength to strength.

Acknowledgement

Adapted from the original work by Charles Dickens 1843. In the New Year we will explore how you can break the cycle of poor email performance and improve the quality and depth of your digital communications.

Have a Great Christmas.

Mark

Last Wednesday, I listened with increasing incredulity to a digital marketing presentation given by so-called professionals. Professionals who, within 20 short minutes, proved that (in their minds) nothing has changed since 1998. This damaging advice was being handed out to technology resellers by a major software house.

The venue auspicious, the PowerPoint slick but the content demonstrated a deep misunderstanding of digital marketing. These senior marketeers simply ‘do not get it’.

With great pomp and in hushed tones they unveiled an ‘emarketing’ tool, available to the assembled resellers, that would revolutionise lead generation.

A comprehensive critique would run to many chapters. Here are the five simplest errors:

What reputation?

An organisation’s most important digital asset is its  reputation. Companies with a good reputation get their emails delivered. Those without get them caught in spam filters, at MTAs, at the ISP level and finally by firewalls and internal software filters. A good reputation strengthens your web presence. A poor one relegates you to obscurity. Classically trained marketeers understand the first A of AIDA, without good reputation management you will never achieve it.

These presenters did not simply misunderstand the importance of reputation management: it had never crossed their minds. There were no checks on database health or provenance. Anyone could send an email blast (Ugh!) from the tool (under a shared IP and domain name). If you keep bad company your reputation will suffer.

Share an email service with a spammer and you will be seen as a spammer. There was no management on this offered service because those offering it did not recognise the importance of self policing.

Encouraging bad practise!

Language can expose a lack of training and knowledge. Use of the phrases E-Shot and email blast not only demonstrate a crass misunderstanding of the digital environment, they also accurately describe extremely poor practise. Just because you can email thousands of individuals in one mailing does not mean you should. Mass mailings from one IP & domain alert ISPs to possible (probable) UBE activity. And your reputation takes a hit. During our briefing eShots were encouraged. The more the better, because then we will get more leads.

This is just nonsense. It might have worked in 2002 but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time and decision makers are not fools. eMail blasts deliver very little in the way of tangible leads. They do deliver diminishing returns.

Graphic misunderstanding

Ever since the introduction of exchange 2003 (in 2003!) graphic emails have been nearly useless. Unless the recipient has added your email domain to their ‘safe senders’ list, graphics will not render. And whilst your clients may accept graphics from trusted suppliers, graphics will not be accepted for a third party email service. Especially if that service is not policing its reputation properly.

The size and position of the graphics on emails supplied by the ‘tool’ would have obscured any content, call to action or any other useful message resellers may wish to impart.

Get up close and personal

Digital marketing is great. It enables marketeers to deliver highly personalised communications. Relationships can be developed and leads nurtured. It can provide truly scalable relationship marketing. But like all relationships, work is needed to keep them fresh. Treat your warm prospects like numbers in a machine and you break the spell. Your hard work will be lost.

This tool had the option of ‘pre-selecting’ boilerplate copy. Yes, that is right. Stock phrases and paragraphs to be selected from a menu of helpful marketing spin. Lazy? Incompetent? Arrogant? I am not sure which term to apply: perhaps all three. Who conceived the idea of several resellers broadcasting re-hashed identical campaigns to the same prospects? It is laughable. The only saving grace is that even if the email did get delivered, the content would have been obscured by a non-rendered graphic!

Final insult

There is a common misconception amongst lay people that digital marketing is cheap. It is not. Certainly variable costs are low but  highly personalised experiences require planning, creativity, deep technical skill and a lot of hard work. Good, experienced professionals are rare and their expertise is not cheap. Our presenters’ finale was the revelation of a bargain price for the use of the tool.

As with most things. You get what you pay for.

Dangers for us all

The most alarming thing about this presentation (it was given last week), is its potential impact. The size of the organisation (global corporation) and seniority of the presenters means that these messages and these methods will be seen as ‘normal’ and ‘good practise’ by the untrained and inexperienced. It certainly explains average email open rates below 20% (they should be above 60%).

Whilst the uneducated (or classically trained marketers who have not kept up to date) are in positions of power we will risk punitive anti-spam regulation and spend millions on reputation management technology and services. Perhaps the digital revolution is more cultural than technical and involves the re-training or removal of marketers who damage our profession.

Winning mindshare is vitally important. Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) companies invest significant sums of money on promotion and advertising. They hope consumer recognition will result in more purchases, greater market share and more revenue. But ‘winning mindshare’ in a B2B environment is often regarded as of secondary importance to a strong sales team.

Is advertising important for B2B?

Industrial purchases typically involve more cash and are a more considered purchase. Often teams of professional buyers are involved. Many B2B suppliers argue that the use of personal networks, sales craft, recommendation and negotiation is far more important than mindshare when it comes to securing a deal. But this ignores an important point: unknown companies will not be invited to tender for business.

The simple fact is that name recognition provides opportunities. It is probably be easier for a Dell salesperson to secure a business meeting than a relatively unknown hardware manufacturer. And there is the old adage that ‘no-one ever got sacked for choosing IBM’. So how do smaller companies compete with the marketing might of Cisco, Dell and IBM?

Competition rules have changed.

In the recent past personal networks and great selling skills helped smaller companies thrive; a low risk strategy but one which possibly limited the potential for growth.

However, the competitive environment has changed. Particularly over the past two years and it is likely to change further. The cost of projecting presence has fallen dramatically and will continue to fall. Put simply: winning mindshare is now well within the SMB marketing budget. Now everyone can start to project their presence; even competitors you did not know existed!

Today, just to be in the game, all companies need a digital media strategy. It is at least as important to the health of your business as a good website. And for some organisations, more important.

Happily, many of your competitors will just be making noise: messages with little useful or original content tweeted ad nauseam.

To beat the competition and rise above the noise, companies need to invest in structured collateral. Materials that educate the market, provide solid case studies and useful material that help your prospects do their job better. Combine this collateral with a sustained and consistent marketing communications plan (over a six month period, minimum) you will not just get heard, you will win mindshare, get your company invited to tender and deliver a raft of new opportunities

Supporting Infrastructure

Simple company websites cannot support a comprehensive digital media strategy: they are too inflexible, have limited interactivity and are unlikely to be integrated with social media, the blogosphere and interest groups.

A more plural infrastructure is required; one which has company collateral shared on third party sites, promoted by acknowledged experts and shared amongst interest groups. Your content needs to be syndicated in such a way as to maximise its exposure to your target market. To be effective as a business generation tool interactivity has to be built into each white paper, every case study. All collateral should link back to a central resource; the hub where leads can be collected and managed.

To compete today companies need to invest in their collateral – keep it fresh, compelling and useful. They need to broadcast regularly, through email, tweets and posts and they need a syndicated infrastructure to manage it.

A traditional website just will not cope.

Blame. When targets are missed, sales and marketing professionals are expert in deflecting criticism. Sales managers and executives have great fun complaining about poor lead quality and spend hours telling stories of wild goose chases where there was no chance of a sale, no likelihood of budget or the ‘prospect’ had just had their retirement party.

Marketing have their own self preservation mantra: salespeople are slow to follow up the leads provided, marketing never get feedback from meetings and therefore are not able to pre-qualify leads because sales ‘just won’t let us know what they really want.’

This bun fight, played out in boardrooms the world over, would be amusing if it weren’t so serious. The fact is the company has missed its targets: a situation that simply cannot be allowed to continue; jobs depend upon a successful solution.

Where it all goes wrong.

It’s management’s fault.

Poor performance, missing targets and tension between sales and marketing teams is the result of uncoordinated objective setting by senior management. Often marketing will be incentivised to deliver a ‘volume’ of leads. The larger the pile of leads, the larger the bonus, so lead quality suffers. Salespeople on the other hand are focussed on revenue; they do not have time to ‘nurture’ an opportunity which may be years in development. To hit their target they need to grab the ‘low hanging fruit’.

Getting it right

Buying is a process.

Sales are closed when a buyer has gone through a logical ‘journey’; from becoming aware, through market search, evaluation and due diligence to purchase. Sales will not be won where a buying stage has been missed. Marketing and sales have a role to play at each stage and setting objectives which acknowledge that sales will only be secured through lead development and profiling.

The problem for management is not the theory, it’s the practise. A lead profiling process is all well and good but the ‘baton is often dropped’ as marketing hand the carefully nurtured leads over to sales. An answer to this issue may be emerging:

Experienced decision makers familiar with Salesforce.com, SalesLogix and other sales force automation tools may be interested in a system that integrates logical lead profiling with salesforce.com. It might provide the ‘glue’ that enables true ‘closed loop’ marketing and gets sales and marketing teams working as, teams.

Lead Profiling To Accelerate Sales is a paper by StrategyMix that helps senior management get insight into their marketplace, build intelligence on ‘target’ accounts and implement a lead profiling system that will help you win more business faster.

The paper is available Here

From the moment we wake to the moment our heads hit the pillow we are exposed to millions of messages encouraging us to spend our hard earned cash. So, it’s not surprising that we have become advert hardened.

This is not good news. Making your messages cut through the ‘noise’ and stand out is one of sales and marketing’s hardest tasks. We all know when the message is right: Alexander the Meerkat’s ‘Simples’ has got immediate recall and recognition. But can this marketing trick be used in a business to business environment? Unlikely.

Yet all is not lost for the B2B marketer. We can engage, be compelling and cut through the competition’s marketing ‘noise’ and here are four principles that we to apply when designing campaigns:

Provoke a fight.

Not literally!

Successful businesses challenge conventions, they push boundaries and in doing so find new and better ways of working. Your goods and services improve your customers’ operations. But getting that message across can be difficult especially where there is a ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ attitude.

Provoking a fight challenges potential customers to re-examine their processes.  It takes them away from their comfort zones and makes them look at their business through fresh eyes. To provoke a fight:

1. Take a commonly held belief in your marketplace and rubbish it.
            a. Does your challenge stand up to scrutiny?
            b. Have you exposed weaknesses in the ‘belief’
            c. Where there are identified weaknesses, what angles can be explored to really challenge convention.

Challenging conventions without rigorous processes to test your ‘anti-establishment’ arguments is risky; it can make you look foolish. However, to cut through the noise risks need to be taken and, provided your ‘fight provoking’ is thought through you should create debate and get your market to re-examine its processes – which is what you want to achieve.

Get into your customer’s shoes.

Truly getting into your customers’ thinking is difficult if not impossible. Most marketing and sales professionals put a personal filter when looking at situations from a customer’s perspective. It is difficult to see ‘holistically’, and too much attention is given to the area and processes that your products serve.

Understanding the needs of your customer provides perspective on the challenges they face. And guess what; your solutions may not be useful for the one thing they have to solve today. Industries have different challenges. The problems that keep your customers awake may not be directly related to the solutions you provide. But today business processes are rarely isolated. Getting into your customers shoes provides insights and intelligence. It enables you to focus attention on your customers’ headaches and develop scenarios where you can assist. To get into your customers shoes:

1. Visit them and talk.

2. It may be blindingly obvious, but talk generally, about the business as a whole: don’t get channelled into your area of expertise.

3. Use service opportunities for staff to chat to their opposite numbers; they can learn about the business, new hires, internal changes.

4. Why did the client first become a customer; what was it that you solved for them.

5. Learn where their business is going, its objectives, its marketplace.

Getting into your customers shoes helps you identify potential issues you can solve. And using the ‘provoke a fight’ method above, you can help them challenge the status quo.

Get the message right.

Provocative messages come with risk; there is a balance to be struck between offense and surprising revelation. Not too long ago an eMail campaign which ran the subject line ‘Product recall at (Company Name)’. Unsurprisingly the open rate was phenomenal, as was click through and interaction. However, there was much negative publicity and a number of angry replies. Did the campaign work? It certainly got the advertiser noticed and provided plenty of leads for follow up discussions. But these positives had to be weighed against alienating many potential customers.

Messages their tone and strength need to be adapted to audience and industry. The checklist we use is below:

1. Is the ‘headline’ message compelling enough:
        a. Does it touch on an area of pressing need?
        b. Is it provocative?
        c. Active voice?

2. Level of intended recipient.

3. Education/Background.

4. Industry.

5. Previous messages.

6. Customer or Prospect.

Timing and the medium.

In B2B timing is everything. Getting the timing right can be as simple as being prepared. Having campaigns ready to run as soon as a news story breaks can deliver phenomenal success. One eMail campaign for DHL Global Mail was launched the day after a BBC documentary on industrial mail services. Targeted to engage distribution executives we achieved open rates above 60% and engagement above 50%, a ‘lead fest’ for the client.

OK we are biased but B2B marketing is all about dialogue. And no medium is better at first initiating and then than enabling dialogue than digital. The flexibility enables campaigns to be developed and expedited efficiently. Split testing and amendments can be carried out automatically. Responses graded and routed to the most appropriate resource.

Most decision making executives use technology and the Internet on a daily basis and much business communication is electronic.

Conferences, telemarketing and networking have their place but to uncover new opportunities, digital delivers, by far, the best ROI.

Many marketers know the importance of social media but have yet to convince the business to support campaigning in this area. Here is how to secure funding for your next digital campaign:

Board Level Buy-In

Just as senior executives get used to one form of digital marketing they have to evaluate the next ‘silver bullet’. The problem for business leaders is that they are often asked to sanction spending before the full results of the last digital innovation have been properly evaluated. No wonder then that each new idea is met with varying degree of scepticism. But as the world becomes more connected and more business migrates online even a mild case of innovation fatigue can be a serious threat to your company’s competitive position.

If your organisation is to improve competitiveness over the coming months then director level buy-in to your online marketing initiatives is vital. Here are two ideas which may help you win support in the boardroom.

A New Definition

Hype can be the enemy of opportunity. The current furore over social networking (Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Delicious et al.) can obscure the very tangible benefits available to businesses that use the media effectively. To get board level buy-in we need to cut through the hype, focus on objectives and change some terminology.

Let’s face it there is nothing ‘social’ about identifying, nurturing and qualifying leads. The term; ‘Social Media Marketing’ is wholly inappropriate in a B2B environment. To be taken seriously at board level a new term and definition is required. Digital Media Marketing (in contrast to Mass Media Marketing) might be used to describe the activity. The distinctions are easy to spot. Traditional mass media (radio, television, newsprint and magazines) is used to broadcast product messages to a passive audience. Digital Media engages and encourages contribution. To really understand the power of this emerging discipline, try this definition:

Digital Media Marketing:

The use of advanced networking technologies to engage with audiences of billions.

Might get the attention of the board? Could even result in some budget being allocated from traditional mass media. The significance of ‘engagement’ and ‘billions’ cannot be understated. Effective use of these technologies changes the competitive landscape and business cannot afford to ignore the opportunities and threats digital media creates.
 

Get an Experienced Guide

Raising awareness without precipitating action can be frustrating. To secure budget for your initiatives the board will want to be convinced that:

1. The investment, objectives, implementation and return are clearly defined and planned: you know what success will look like.

2. The organisation and individuals you are partnering with are experienced professionals; a team that not only can provide support and guidance but also help you manage expectation and troubleshoot if things do not go exactly to plan.

Identifying an agency with a solid digital heritage, staffed by experienced digital marketers and with a raft of relevant case studies will do more than provide the board with the confidence they need to sanction investment. Agencies with a strong provenance and great client lists are often well placed to help you put together the business case that gets your initiative the backing it deserves.

In Summary

Digital marketing is evolving at pace and your board need to be engaged if your organisation is to maintain its competitive position. Using executive friendly language and engaging with organisations that can make the business case will help you secure investment and launch your first, successful social media campaigns.