Answer Me This: Two Questions For the B-to-B PR/Marketing Team

By design, marketing and PR teams are charged with increasing brand awareness and supporting business development efforts, while ultimately helping to ramp up sales of a company’s products or services.

These business-critical duties involve programs such as messaging, online marketing, media relations, direct marketing, creative collateral and content development, social media marketing, research and many other programs.

No matter the program, each B-to-B PR and marketing team member should have at least a basic understanding of two critical pieces of information:

• the company’s ideal prospect/ideal customer
• the unique value proposition the company delivers to the ideal customer

Question 1: Who is the Company’s Ideal Customer?

A basic understanding of a company’s ideal customer helps the PR and marketing team connect with the most optimal market segments.  The insight serves as the entire foundation of the PR, marketing and lead generation program. The exercise helps to identify the people and businesses that will benefit your organization the most. 

A range of methods help create a targeted customer profile. Techniques suggested by MarketingSherpa involve a deep dive into current customers to identify the five optimal customers, and the five “worst” customers for profiles of each to understand demographics and characteristics. Other market research efforts, from simple surveys to extremely in-depth market intelligence, provide a distinct picture of where the target market lies. Cultivating a customer mindset makes all the difference to each team member, from the team who develops and maintains the company’s website, to the staff in the booth at tradeshows.

The bottom line is that having some insight into an ideal customer profile helps the team be more effective in awareness building, lead generation and marketing.  After all, marketing programs should resonate with the prospect most likely to buy. 

Question 2: What’s the Company’s Unique Value Proposition?

The second, equally compelling question to ask each PR and marketing team member, is to clearly communicate what the company does, and the unique benefits the products/services deliver over the competition.  A value proposition speaks directly to your target audience and it tells them exactly why they should purchase your products and services.

This means every PR and marketing team member must be able to quickly articulate the concrete results a customer will get from the company’s products or services. Again, MarketingSherpa provides useful insight into the issue.  The point here is that every PR and marketing team member should have at least some insight into why the prospect should buy from the company, the specific value the product or service provides, via wording the ideal customer can easily understand.

Central to Success

It's been my experience that acquiring basic insight into these two areas proves central to the success of any organization, including nonprofits.   

Again, there are numerous resources out there, including MarketingProfs, that help discover the answers to these two questions.

For the B-to-B company, what other questions need to be explored to deliver positive business outcomes?

Are You a Marketing Pooh or a Marketing Eeyore?

This past week I attended a talk by Scott Stratten in support of his two-in-one “Book of Business Awesome/Book of Business UnAwesome.” The presentation was hosted by the Social Media Club of Detroit.   

Scott Stratten is the high-energy president of UnMarketing, a witty and passionate purveyor of spot-on advice to companies about what he terms “authentic marketing.” He is on a mission to help position brands as a trusted partner to target markets.

Marketing Yin and Yang

The book presents a clever “two in one” model. One side of the “Business Awesome” cover shows a cheery red ladybug and the subtitle “How Engaging Your Customers and Employees Can Make Your Business Thrive.”

Midway through, at page 122, you come to “the awesome end” and flip over to the other side… a parallel “unawesome” universe (think if it as Bizarro Marketing World) showcasing a bloody splattered ladybug on the cover and the subtitle “The Cost of Not Listening, Engaging or Being Great at What You Do.’

UnMarketing's Scott Stratten talks circles of influence at Social Media Club of Detroit event, Motor City Casino
(photo credit: Deborah Edwards-Onoro) 

Here's an insightful review of the book, which says it all really. Stratten provides useful information in the short chapters, each providing as much depth as a blog post with pithy examples of either marketing done right, or marketing done very badly. The section on the blatant misuse of QR codes in marketing is especially engaging.

Which Do You Choose?

What’s interesting to me is that the book serves as a “personality” indicator – with which side do you begin?  Do you delve into the “awesome” side  showcasing the best of today’s social media marketing? Or do you delight by starting with the “unawesome” side filled with cringe-worthy examples of marketing initiatives gone astray?

Is it indicative of a marketer’s level of optimism or pessimism as to which side they flip to, considering the Yin and Yang approach?

Pooh vs. Eeyore

The decision as to which side to first select is similar to a personality test about what Winnie the Pooh character you are most like in The Hundred Acre Wood. 

Will a positive marketing “Pooh” Bear start with the Business Awesome side, and the dreary Marketing Eeyore start at Business UnAwesome?

Even despite claims as being a “realistic optimist”,  I’m most definitely a Marketing Eeyore.  I was compelled to start with the Business Unawesome side, and delighted in each of the short marketing tales of woe.

Which are you most drawn to -- Pooh Bear Business Awesome or Eeyore Business Unawesome?

Bonus!  

Check out this online audio archive interview with Scott talking with WDET's Craig Fahle.  

The Not So Humble Press Release

I ran across an interesting white paper from PRSA (Public Relations Society of America) and the lead sentence hit home:

“The humble press release is working much harder these days….”

The paper does a wonderful job of making the case for the power of the once lowly press release. 

Multi-Purpose for Maximum Benefit

Press releases are now much more than a method to announce corporate news. 

In business to business communications, online press releases now serve as a powerful means to increase Web page traffic, event registrations, online inquiries, paper downloads, and other measurable activities which add business value. 

This PRSA paper is worth the read.   Many companies might shy away from issuing press releases, but that’s not a wise tactic.

Bottom Line Benefits

Press releases should now be crafted and measured to benefit the bottom line. 

The paper notes that it’s a best practice to target press release audiences and measure lead generation performance using internal CRM systems, social media monitoring analytics and tracking codes for insight into the number of people clicking on a link, downloading content or registering for an event.   

Notes the paper:  “Companies are creating their own branded, helpful content for their community of customers and prospects and using press releases (along with social and other media) to drive engagement with that content.”

PR Best Practices

Any sized business is wise to issue a regular cadence of news and releases, for all the reasons cited in this excellent paper, and many others.

A previous post talks about the power press releases play in Search Engine Optimization (PR).

Other posts talk about a more strategic approach to PR than just issuing press releases.

Yep, there’s power in PR!  Take a moment to read this informative white paper. 

Three (More) Marketing Red Flags

An Entrpreneur.com post from 2011 offered up “5 Signs You Need a Marketing Makeover” and the insight was quite valuable.

The author, marketing pro Susan Gunelius, suggested that if a business or organization identifies any of the five marketing red flags offered up in the post, then it's likely time to retool the company's marketing strategy.

The five red flags suggested by the author included (paraphrased here by your truly):

• There is a mismatch of “look/feel” in branding and collateral
• There is a distinct lack of goals and marketing strategic direction
• The marketing department only has a hazy guess as to how to connect with customers
• Marketing materials talk only about the product or business, not the customer or prospect
• The organization is consistently outperformed by competitors

Amen to that! There’s no doubt these five red flags offer up valuable information to business marketers.

Redder Flags

Funny, not sure how I missed this post from last year as Entrepreneur is a regular haunt.  

In my mind, the following three red flags are equally as important as the points summarized in the article.

You haven’t asked your prospects to review your marketing messaging and materials. I’ve said this before.  I get tired of hearing it myself.  What’s the point of marketing messaging (or a website; a brochure; a case study; etc.) if nobody ran it by key prospects or customers?  The keynote address from Kristin Zhivago at last year's Marketing Sherpa conference covered this same ground. It’s all well and good to come up with pithy and clever marketing language and slick looking design work, but does it resonate with the target audience?  Would your customers have any interest? There’s only one way of knowing:  ask them!  

You don’t pay attention to relevant marketing metrics. Here again, post after post in this blog talks about results, outcomes and metrics.  If the web team can’t quickly answer how many non-paid visitors found the website, or how much time they stay on the site, or the site's bounce rate, is the team effectively managing the website?  If the PR team can’t figure out how many folks read a media placement or press release, what’s the point?  If the direct marketing team can’t measure the amount of qualified leads turned over to sales, that’s a big red flag in my book.

You don’t engage with your company’s direct sales force.  I’m recently concluding a lengthy engagement with a bob client, and have learned a key lesson during my tenure:  the marketing department must act as a sales department service center.  It’s paramount to keep a direct line open with the key sales team and lead qualifiers.  What are prospects' top concerns?  What information is most valuable to those late in the sales cycle? What are the objections the sales team has experienced with missed sales opportunities?  If marketing exists in a vacuum, and doesn't receive this mission-critical feedback, and makes no effort to check in with the sales team, what’s the point anyway? Are we marketing for our own amusement?

Oh dear, this sounds a lot like a rant! Red flag! Red flag!