Training Marketer

I came across a great post today from Paul Dunay at Buzz Marketing for Technology about how business to business marketers can use social media to spark lead consideration.

“A prospect reading a blog entry doesn’t mean they want to buy anything, but it does mean they have engaged with your brand.”

Engagement is the first step, and many times the hardest, when developing leads. Tools like blogs and podcasts can initially engage customers with ongoing and relevant conversation.

Social media helps business to business marketers, who are faced with selling complex products and services, by asking the customer to simply consider their brand. Once a visitor considers your business as a possible source to buy from, you can then start the lead nurturing process.

Dunay also has some good advice on how to measure social media success -

“Don’t measure your teams on page views generated from a campaign. Measure them on how engaged they can get your leads with your content and turn them into sales.”

Purchase anxiety – that feeling you get when you’re thinking about buying something, but not completely sure you want to spend the money on it. The feeling is usually attributed to a large purchase or buying something on the internet.

Online shoppers tend to feel more purchase anxiety than offline customers, according to Derek Gehl at Entrepreneur.com. Spending a lot of money on something you can’t hold in your hand, by a person they’ve never seen before may cause serious purchase anxiety for online customers.

The goal of your website is to help customers overcome anxiety and feel comfortable enough to make a purchase. Gehl outlines a few elements you can add to your site to reassure visitors that you are a reputable seller with a quality product.

Here are a few of his tips to make customers comfortable enough to click the checkout button:

Show proof that you value and will protect customer privacy. Include a privacy policy, clearly displayed on your site to reassure customers that you will not share their personal information. Process purchases through a secure server and include “security seals” on your site to let customers know you have done everything to keep your site safe from hackers. Popular security seals are VeriSign, TRUSTe and Hacker Safe.

Use testimonials. We know you think you’re the best company out there, but we want to know what everyone else has to say. Post a few testimonials from valued customers who can vouch for the quality of your product or service. Try to include as much information on the testimonial provider as possible.

Include contact information. Show that you are open to customer calls by providing as much contact information as you can on your site. Create a contact information page and link to it on every page on your site.

Don’t forget to follow up. Even after the purchase, customer anxiety may develop into “post-purchase anxiety.” Be sure to thank the customer for their purchase and keep them updated on their shipment status. It is your responsibility to keep the customer informed until it has made it into their hands.

For the full list of tips, please see Gehl’s article on Entrepreneur.com.

Forget the chickens and listen to a little marketing advice from a real expert …

When customers and you sales team are telling you to lower your prices, remember what Seth Godin says - there’s “no such thing as price pressure.”

“You need to increase your value. If people don’t want to pay, it’s because you’re not delivering enough value for the money you’re charging.”

More important than price, companies should feel pressure to increase value for the customer. Lowering your prices may also mean lowering perceived value and could turn customers away.

HubSpot’s new Press Release Grader is an online application that evaluates and scores your press releases for free. (Special thanks to David Meerman Scott for sharing the good news with the marketing world.)

Just cut and paste the press release content into the tool, along with company information including your name, website and email. In a few seconds the site will come back with a “marketing effectiveness score” and specific suggestions on improvements.

Press releases are graded on basic factors most public relations experts stick to, along with factors from Internet marketing experts such as links and search engine optimization characteristics.

If you regularly create and distribute marketing press releases, check out the Press Release Grader and see how well you score.

What do you get when you survey too often? Survey fatigue.

Those at Common Sense PR realize that “there’s a temptation to include custom measurement in every communication activity,” but marketers and public relations professionals should hold back from time to time.

In a recent Quick Tip, they advise to keep your measurement tools less noticeable than the information than you’re trying to communicate. While many customers are happy to fill out a quick survey, asking for too much can cause “survey fatigue” among those who you most want to hear from.

Lesson learned: Ask for customer feedback in the least intrusive way possible.

Example - Before sending post-purchase surveys immediately after a customer checks out, try imbedding a link in the “thank you” email. First thank the customer for their purchase and then ask politely if they would click trough to take a quick survey. It’s not intrusive and gets the job done.

Velocity had an interesting post a few weeks ago about how spending less time and money on company videos can work for B2B companies.

In the past, Velocity would spend more than $50K on short films that took weeks to shoot and edit. They’ve recently been experimenting with “guerrilla” videos that only require a camcorder to shoot and only days to edit and upload to the web.

“The point of guerrilla video is to shoot first and ask questions later. If the footage is disappointing or the experiment is a failure, you’ve lost very little. If you get good footage you’re ready to edit.”

Video content on B2B sites can help tell your story, demonstrate a product and share your ideas.

Instead of wasting money on costly, large scale videos, why not make it simple? Grab your video camera, shoot a quick video and get it out there. Get past the “pretty” and focus on delivering true customer value.

Especially if you have a limited budget, low cost videos can be the solution to a problem you never thought you had the time or money to produce.

Take a chance, test it out and start shooting.

Twitpitch - your company’s story in 140 characters (roughly 20 words) or less.

The term was created earlier this year, when social media pioneer Stowe Boyd, decided to only accept his Web 2.0 Expo appointments via Twitter. Companies were forced to fit their company’s story into a short “Twitpitch.”

In order to make things simple for me, I am hereby posting a schedule of the times that I will make available for meetings with companies at the Web 2.0 Expo, and I am not going to accept email-based proposals to meet, only Twitpitches.

Note also, in a twitterized style of business, I am only allotting 30 or 40 minutes for meetings. Let’s get down to it people. Cut to the chase. If I fall in love with it, I will be the first to ask for a follow up.

Small companies everywhere can learn a lesson from this interesting social media experiment - get to the point. In this age of information overload, less is more. People don’t have the time to sit and wait for your main point to come around, they want you to tell them now, and it better be quick, or they’re outta here.

Marketo recently posted their “9 Commandments” for marketing high-tech companies, beliefs that can be followed across the business to business marketing world. Especially with training marketers, who just like high-tech marketers, sell their brands to niche markets and face similar challenges.

Most marketers face the same challenges: limited budgets and limited resources. Through it all, they’ve been able to establish a strong brand and “powerful marketing machine.” The following are some of the lessons they’ve learned that are most relevant to training marketers:

1. Be omnipresent. Training product buyers are using the Web to shop for products the same way they shop for products themselves. Marketo “spread out as many online tentacles as possible” to reach their customer in multiple areas on the Web. If your budget is spread thin, focus on high ROI tactics like a blog and search engine optimization.
2. Test, but don’t over test. Testing helps you decide what is truly working and what you should throw out. Over testing, by combining too many variables may lead to insignificant results and wasted time.
3. Train your sales team. While focusing on the marketing is important, it’s also important not to forget about the sales team that is in charge of selling your product. Make sure your marketing message is delivered evenly across all aspects of your business. Your sales team is the voice of your company. Train them to deliver the value of what your selling and explain why you’re different than the rest.
4. Find balance. Being everywhere at the same time, like we said above, is tough. Don’t let it get you stressed out trying to cover all the bases. Instead, focus on what is working and let go of what’s not.
5. Build in stages. Don’t try to do it all at once. You may think that you need the best website, with the latest and greatest bells and whistles programmers have to offer, but you can’t do it all today. Build your marketing in pieces.

“Direct marketing e-mail is a powerful marketing tool and still one of the best ways to reach HR buyers,” according to Kevin Grossman at HRmarketer.

With extensive experience marketing directly to HR decision makers across the U.S., those at HRmarketer are some of the best in the business when it comes to e-mail marketing. Luckily for us, they’re happy to share some of their best practices for direct e-mail campaigns.

Fact: The open rate for “flat” print direct mail is on average 2.73%, and for e-mail it is 1.12%. Direct e-mails that offer a compelling content “offer” in the form of a free downloadable white paper or research report are significantly more likely to generate a response than promotional offers. Save the promotion offers for your print campaigns and for current customers.

The HRmarketers recommend seven key components to remember in your direct e-mail marketing campaigns:

1. List size. Send to a list of at least 5,000 people once each quarter and expect to spend between $0.25 and $0.50 per e-mail.
2. Compelling offer. You’ll have better response rates with direct e-mail when offering compelling content (i.e. free white paper or research report). “Save the promotional offers for your print campaigns and current customers.”
3. Straightforward subject line. Keep it short, simple and straightforward. “Tell what’s inside, don’t sell what’s inside.” Do a few tests to see what works best for you.
4. HTML content. The look of your e-mails should match the look and feel of your website. Offer a single call-to-action. Avoid “spammy” words like free, guarantee, opportunity, and order now. Don’t hide your text in an image, rather use rich text in the body of your e-mail. Attach tracking codes to links to track where visitors are coming from.
5. Landing page. Create a landing page that matches the look of the e-mail and your website. Reinforce your call-to-action from the email and the value of the original offer. Take yourself through the customer experience to make sure everything is flowing correctly.
6. Lead acquisition form. Collect at least the visitor’s name and email address. Asking for too much may have visitors abandoning your site.
7. Lead follow-up. “The best time to follow-up on a Web lead is within 24 hours.” Be aware of the limited opportunity window and have your sales team prepared to capitalize on new prospects.

An addition to the list: Remember that the people you’re sending to are people. Talk to them like people and in words they understand. Listen to what your customers want and do your best to give it to them.

It is believed by some in the marketing world that consumer marketing tactics should not be mixed with business to business marketing. However, with a strategic campaign combined with the right product line, B-to-B marketing can reap exceptional results by adopting a few consumer marketing techniques and having some fun.

In a case study released this week, MarketingSherpa overturns that marketing myth and studies how B-to-C marketing can work for B-to-B marketers.

Agilent Technologies markets measurement instruments and lab supplies to scientists, with most communication focused heavily on data and detail. The company designed an online game to supplement their data-heavy marketing and saw a 13.79% conversion rate and beat revenue goals by 278%.

The company focused on these 5 steps:

Decide on a theme focused on key products

Agilent’s marketing team created a “Summer of Fun Giveaway,” featuring bright and tropical Flash animation and focused on a select group of products (syringes, vials and lamps for liquid chromatographs). The game was a simple

Visitors had to register on the site before playing the game, providing their name, company name, email address and mailing address.

Customize user experience and prize giveaway

Agilent looked at their customer database looking at product need and purchase behavior. Depending on purchase history, customers would see a certain set of products during the game.

Everyone who played the game received something. Non frequent buyers received a 15% discount code good toward a future purchase. Frequent and loyal customers received a branded beach towel or small cooler.

Set up limits

In order to not go over budget by providing too many giveaways the company set up prize limits. Only 500 prizes would be awarded and the game would only last for two months.

Use a multi-stage email promotion

The marketing team set up a strategic email campaign, hitting customers with three emails in the weeks prior and during the campaign. After the two month game period, sales representatives called customers who had won the 15% discount.

Track customer response

Tracking customers who played the game and their purchase activity with their prize discount gave the marketing team information on how to set up future campaigns.

Even scientists and researchers like to have a little fun here and there. The marketers in this case learned that mixing in some consumer marketing tactics can boost business to  business marketing efforts.