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?

There’s Power in Our (BtoB Marketing) Habits

I have been thinking lately about the power of our habits – those habits that contribute to “negative” outcomes, and those that help us to meet positive goals.

A Shared Definition

After checking a variety of sources, here’s a working definition of the word “habit.”  It is something:

·      we do automatically without thinking

·      we repeat often as a routine

Good, Bad, the Ugly

Good habits in our personal life include brushing our teeth upon waking; clicking our seat-belt when we get in a car, or saying "please and thank you.”

Good habits in business to business marketing might include taking time each week to review relevant metrics related to marketing programs, monitoring key industry blogs and publications for trends, or a weekly update meeting with the customer service team to pull compelling customer testimonials.

Bad habits include biting our fingernails, late night snacking in front of the TV, those afternoon candy breaks at work, and more.

Bad habits in business to business marketing might include forgetting to keep a customer mindset in programs, ignoring key metrics like web visitor behavior, not regularly scheduling sales team project updates.

The Power of Habits

The bottom line is that habits have a lot of power in both our personal and work lives:  power for good, or power for bad. 

As marketers, we are wise to build a set of routine behaviors that deliver the best business outcome for our clients.

• Routinely checking customer service for mini success stories is a powerful habit that fuels content marketing programs.
• Regularly posting comments on thought leadership blogs and articles helps your client “get in the conversation.”

Intrigued?  See one of the best posts out there about “habits of highly effective marketers” here…

7 Things it Took Me Over a Decade (or so) to Learn about B-to-B Marketing Communications

It’s funny how the same truths reveal themselves over and over again.  Before this wisdom escapes me, noted here for posterity are seven things it has taken over a decade to learn about business-to-business marketing communications. You likely know about them already.  I'm a slow learner.... 

1) Hit the books   Heading into a website relaunch or redesign?  Encourage everybody on the team to read Steven Krug’s “Don’t Make Me Think” (first edition written in 2000; most recent from 2006).  At the very minimum, by reading this seminal book, the team gains an introduction to usability basics like considering the main purpose of the site (lead generation?  information sharing?); types of visitors that will use the site (target audience); and what those visitors hope to accomplish when they visit the website (product orientation? downloading resources? setting up a product trial?).

  

2) There’s Power in PR.    Remember that PR doesn’t stand for Press Release.  Team with a reputable, results-oriented Public Relations agency to get the most benefit out of a PR program, like expanded awareness and engagement with key publics.  Or, do some reading about PR and take the time to be strategic in a public relations effort.

3) Go Outside the Organization. Redoing a website, a brochure, or direct mail template design?  Organizing an event? Take the time to run the concept by 3 to 5 relevant folks outside the organization.   As Krug says in the book mentioned in point 1 “testing always works, and even the worst test with the wrong user will show you important things you can do to improve your site." (or event, or newsletter, or brochure, etc .)

As an example, tap into free tools like http://fivesecondtest.com/  to help optimize things like landing pages. This tool, and many others out there, help fine tune landing pages and calls to action.

4) There’s Wonder in Wordpress. Setting up a blogging program or a new website? Take the time to familiarize yourself with Word Press and basic WordPress plug ins for SEO.  The platform is much more than a Content Management Systems.  Nobody expects you to be an expert developer, but know your way around this powerful and industry-leading web tool.

5) Set Meaningful Measurements. As possible, make marketing programs about metrics and results.  Meaningful metrics put the focus on business outcomes and help drive improvements.  All communications should be measured by their effectiveness in meeting business goals. For instance, track the success of a Social Media program with metrics like increased inbound web traffic or increased “mentions” of the company.  More about metrics here.

6)  Nail Down SEO Basics  Online marketing is all about being discovered by likely prospects and target audiences.  Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is critical.  Team with a reputable SEO expert because this stuff is both an art and a science.  SEO experts like those smarty pants at WebSavvyMarketing will steer you right. 

There’s value in self-education. As an example, here’s a simple SEO tip:  look at your competitors and see how keywords are used in their online content in the following areas – this is powerful stuff people!

•                Page title

•                URL architecture

•                Title

•                H1 tags

•                Copy's keyword density

•                Image alt text

•                Use of internal linking

7) Have fun  Seek out positive (fun) work experiences.  As somebody once said: fun at work enables one to bring skills, grace, & enthusiasm to opportunity.

If you aren’t having fun, or you want more fun out of your work life, see what you can do to arrange conditions so you are!  

Getting to ROI on Your Next Web Redesign Project

A marketing colleague and I recently had an interesting dialogue.  How can we calculate a Return on Investment (ROI) of a business-to-business website redesign project?

The Key to ROI

A clear ROI involves setting the goals of the website redesign project well before the redesign takes place.  ROI involves setting and calculating key web performance measurements, usually reported from Google Analytics.

Many Factors

Note that many elements factor into web redesign ROI.  


Search Engine Optimization (making it easier for prospects to find you); an intuitive user experience (making it easier for prospects to navigate your site); improved content (making your site ”sticky” so that people will want to return or value your thought leadership); and “call to action” on the site (making it easier for prospects to download a form or fill out a form) all work to generate performance improvements. 

Critical Measurements

Each web performance measurement must support the overall objective of the redesign project. A typical business sets a goal of an increase in website lead generation performance.

• Number of non-paid web visitors (those visitors not driven by pay-per-click (PPC) programs such as Google adwords or MSN)
• Conversion rates for lead generation of non-PPC visitors filling out “contact us” or forms for papers, offers.
• User performance such as number of inbound sales-related phone calls.
• Average page views per visitor.
• Bounce Rate or percentage of initial visitors who "bounce" away to a different site, rather than continue on to other pages within the b-to-b site.
• Time on site
• Overall sales growth including increased revenues and business expansion.

Sample Success Story

Here’s an example of a web redesign success story, coordinated with my colleagues at Markit Strategies and PR a few years back.

·     Conversions: Since launching a b-to-b client’s new web design and content, conversions in a typical 60 day period (the amount of non-PPC visitors who visit the website and take an action like filling out a form to obtain a white paper or contact us) increased by 33%

·     That means the amount of leads generated by the website increased due to the ease of downloading a paper, or requesting the company contacts them.   Optimized contact form and landing pages played a role in this increase in conversions.

·     Inbound Calls: The percentage of site visitors who contact via the 1-800 phone dedicated to sales doubled since the redesigned site launch

·      Average Page Views:  In a 60 day period, the Non-PPC Average Page Views per Visitor grew by 41% since redesign, which is a good indicator of the value of the content. 

·      Visitor Bounce Rate: The rate of visitors who land on the site and immediately leave, dropped by 50%.

·     Average time on site: In the same 60 day period, average time on site rose by 45%.  This means the site is easier for users find info pertinent to their own industry.

Not There Yet….

The metrics above are not the complete story when it comes to ROI.  It's important to track the following pre- and post-website design benchmarks.

Pre-Redesign metrics

•                Average monthly visits

•                Average conversion rate (leads)

•                Close rate (leads to sales)

•                Average order price

Post-Redesign metrics

•                Average monthly visits

•                Average conversion rate (leads)

•                Total cost of web redesign project

Finally!

Assuming ongoing maintenance and marketing costs of the new website don’t change, and assuming close rate and average order price remain the same, the Return on Investment of the redesign is found as follows:

Step 1:  Calculate the improved Sales Revenue as a result of Improved Conversions, using the percentage of conversions of new monthly visits multiplied by the average order price of closed sales.

Step 2: Subtract the result of Step 1 (Improved Sales Revenue as a result of Improved Conversions) from the fixed cost of redesign in dollars.

Step 3: Divide the result from step 2 by the fixed cost of the redesign in dollars.

Step 4: Multiply the result of step 3 by 100%.

There you have it – a percentage ROI of your web redesign project!  

Reckoning with Last Year's Resolutions

Last year at about this time, a BtoB Blog post outlined five resolutions as a way to give focus to marketing program efforts. 

The list set priorities against the never-ending to-do list of marketing campaigns, eNewsletters, PR programs and other daily tasks.

So how did it turn out?  

Let's look back to the 5 resolutions set for 2011, with an assessment of efforts.

1) Test your marketing programs, when you can.  2011 efforts were solid but we can do better!  One 2011 client project did use a CRM solution to split direct email marketing messages into A/B groups to test email subject lines. However, our team resolves to continue to test one element at a time.  This year, we intend to test the audiences by being more strategic in segmentation; test the “call to action” or offers to see which gets the best result; test design elements like photos; test headlines and subheads in the copy.  I did not have a chance to use Google Optimizer tools to A/B test two pages of a website. Great idea to pursue in 2012.

2) Ask somebody else outside of the organization to review your content.  Again, 2011 efforts were good but there’s room for improvement here.  For several Rogier Communications projects, a person outside the client organization, who was in the same general industry, read marketing content (website, an article and press releases) and provided valuable feedback. Other client work did not take time to seek an outside perspective. Here again, need to do more of this in 2012!

3) Make campaigns as relevant and timely as possible.  Teaming with Markit Strategies, our efforts definitely hit the mark.  Our team quickly sent out over a dozen direct marketing messages through the year, emphasizing timely regulations, articles and news in the industry press relevant on behalf of our main Markit Strategies client. These messages result in high conversions responding to the offer.  The timely nature of the message is a big part of the success.  Let’s keep it up in 2012!

4) Make measurements meaningful.  A recent post stressed the value of measuring marketing program outcomes, not outputs. 2011 efforts moved in this direction, but there is room for improvement.  Several 2011 Rogier Communications programs did focus on outcomes in terms of measuring social media engagement, open rates of messages, web traffic and other key metrics.  We can do better about being consistent in measurement, reporting, and monitoring trends.

5) Keep learning! Try something new!  This one hit the mark in 2011. There was tremendous value from attending the MarketingSherpa BtoB Summit in Boston, summarized in blog post recap part I and Summit recap part II.    The one-on-one content strategy and direct marketing coaching provided by MecLabs was especially useful. Other 2011 training included attending several  MarketingProf webinars related to using LinkedIn business-to-business marketing, eBook marketing, content strategy, and direct mail messaging.  I taught myself the basics of salesforce.com for a professional services client, and successfully navigated the world of social media marketing.  It’s critical to keep skills fresh. A learning mind is everything. This approach will continue in 2012.

So instead of laying out another set of resolutions, let’s keep these five and shoulder on!  Happy New Year, all! 

Here Comes 2012: Survey Reveals Top B-to-B Marketing Priorities

It’s that time of year for the pundits to weigh in on 2012 marketing programs, goals, and resolutions.

This makes for worthwhile reading.  In fact, the B2B Blog joined in the fray with “2011 marketing resolutions” posted about a year ago.  (Look for a follow up “year in review” post in early 2012.)

Revealing Findings

The topic this time, though, is insight gained from a recent StrongMail survey.

Last month, StrongMail posted the results of its 2012 Marketing Trends Survey [PDF] -- revealing how businesses plan to spend their marketing dollars in the upcoming year.

The timely survey of 939 b-to-b marketing professionals showcases planned marketing budgets, priorities & challenges for 2012. Key findings include:

• 60 percent of respondents will raise email-marketing budgets
• 54 percent will invest more in social media
• 37 percent will increase mobile and search budgets 

The Power of Email Marketing

(One caveat:  it is worth noting that an email-marketing vendor sponsored the survey.) 

That said, continued investment in b-to-b email marketing is no surprise.  Print direct mail programs are expensive and results are hard to measure, so of course respondents are backing off print programs.  The companies surveyed are likely already doing some form of email marketing, and it is always easier to continue an on-going program than to launch a completely new effort. Email marketing is easy to understand, and can be implemented with a wealth of affordable tools. (MailChimp my current new favorite!)  

Ease of measurement is also likely a big factor here. Metrics like open rates, click through rates, and completed forms are fairly easy to assemble, and intuitive to understand.

What do marketers hope to achieve with email marketing in 2012? According to the survey, goals include:

• 48 percent: increasing subscriber engagement
• 44 percent: increasing segmentation and targeting
• 32 percent: increasing email opt-ins (subscribers)

More Social Media

Email marketing is not the only game in town for 2012.

39 percent of respondents will strengthen their Facebook campaigns, 25 percent will focus on social media management technology, and 24 percent will increase Twitter activity.  I don’t see any mention of LinkedIn on this survey, which is surprising.

Integration will be a key factor in 2012. An impressive 68 percent of respondents look to further integrate their social media marketing directly into their email programs.

Not so Mobile?

It was a surprise to read that only 29 percent of those surveyed plan to move to investing in mobile applications, especially considering the increased use of mobile data access.  But again, this is a survey sponsored by an email-marketing vendor, so this is just one data point.

The 2012 Bottom Line

The take-away here is that 92 percent of businesses surveyed plan to increase or maintain their marketing spend in 2012.

Let’s wish them a fast ROMI, meaningful metrics, and business development success!  Happy Holidays!

The B2B Summit Recap Part I: It All Starts with a Unique Value Proposition

It’s been a few weeks since I returned from the MarketingSherpa BtoB Summit in Boston. 

What a worthwhile event – a great way to be in the company of experts from MECLabs, Marketing Sherpa, MarketingExperiments and of course all the interesting and marketing-focused attendees, many facing similar b-to-b marketing challenges.  I left charged up and equipped with actionable ideas to put into place at a variety of clients.

The Kick Off

One of the more interesting presentations was from MECLab’s leader Dr. Flint McLaughlin who kicked off the two-day event with a fundamental, central question… in business to business marketing, has the team taken the time to develop the company’s value proposition?

How telling that before the conference even delved into specific tactics such as social media marketing, web optimization, email marketing, campaign management, content management or other programs, the kick-off presentation focused on the issue of finding a compelling value proposition.

Here’s how Dr. Flint put it to those gathered that morning:  “As a marketer, if your value proposition isn’t rolling off your lips, you already have a problem.”  

WIIFM?

This reflects back on the old “What’s In It For Me” perspective I’ve written about many times here in this blog.  As Dr. Flint noted, the overarching question is:

If I am the “Ideal customer” why should I purchase XXX product/service rather than a product from your competitors?”

The question involves a deep dive into a company’s “ideal customer profile” and a customer-mindset. It involves taking a close look at the competition, and importantly, how messages are created, to see if they answer the most compelling force inherent in a product/service, a unique appeal to each segment.

There must be a compelling value communicated in each piece of content (web, email campaign, postcard, etc) and a way to differentiate a product/service from the competitor.

Don’t Start with a Logo

This approach takes work.  And frankly, sometimes it isn’t fun.  It can be easier to get caught up in tactical pursuits when kicking off a marketing program, like designing a new logo, brochure or website.

Dr. Flint provides us with a great reminder. It isn’t enough to be a tactical expert. It isn’t enough to focus on a new brochure, the number of form fields in a landing page, or the length of a direct email subject line.

It all begins with a customer mindset, and what would bring true value to that customer.  Then, using various tactics and messaging, finding a way to identify what motivates the ideal customer to make a purchase choice over all those other options out there.

Learn More

Fortunately, the team at MarketingExperiments has made this content available to those willing to take the time to review.  

Check out their resource for more wisdom from these great marketing thought leaders at MECLabs, MarketingSherpa and Marketing Experiments.

Next time, a review of Kristin Zhivago’s day two kick off: cultivating a customer mindset, and her book Roadmap to Revenue:  How to Sell the Way Your Customers Want to Buy.

The Upside to Group Juggling

It's a fast pace in the typical business-to-business marketing department.

New projects and fresh ideas for innovative programs can often fall between the cracks especially when the team is going a million miles a minute juggling regular, monthly marketing programs.

A complicating factor is when the team is large (8 plus people), with some team members working remotely or part time.

A recent HBR blog post entitled “The Secret to Ensuring Follow Through” offers a helpful look at how to help ensure follow-through in this kind of setting.

When a marketing team is juggling a million ideas, as noted in the post, “there is a higher risk of someone, somewhere, dropping a ball."

The post goes onto say:

“… there's another, more positive, side to group juggling: the more people juggling, the more likely someone, somewhere will be able to catch a ball that an otherwise busy, overwhelmed individual would have dropped.”

A New Mindset

The HBR blog author proposes a new tool and "culture" to help a big marketing team manage tasks -- nothing overly formal, but a new mindset and vocabulary as a style of communicating.   

The tool is essentially a list of 7 questions to work through as new projects are delegated.  It stems from a work known as “The Checklist Manifesto” by Dr. Atoll Gawande.

This approach is incredibly valuable for the projects so many of us in marketing manage as a team – keeping websites updated; special event management; direct marketing campaigns; online advertising; sales support; etc.

Here’s the list from HBR, modified here for a business-to-business marketing team.

The (Marketing) Handoff Checklist

1. What do you understand the overall marketing goals of this project to be? (Lead generation?  Generating attendance at a sales event?  Gathering a certain number of attendees at an online webinar?)
2. Do you have any issues or concerns with this idea that have not already been mentioned?
3. What are the key next steps – creative, content development, project management, etc. -  and by when do you plan to accomplish them?
4. What do you need from the team in order to be successful?
5. Are there any key contingencies we should plan for now?
6. When will we next check-in on progress/issues?
7. Who else in the organization (Creative Team, Sales, HR, Admin?) needs to know our plans, and how will we communicate them?

Coordination Wanted

There is definitely an upside to group juggling. 

Indeed there’s a better chance of success when the team can work together to catch the ball that an overwhelmed individual might drop – but that effort takes coordination.  

Next time your marketing team juggles a new program or project, give the Handoff Checklist a try and let us know how it went.

5 Lessons Learned from Blogging

The more I read about social media marketing from those many pundits out there, the more I see the following types of content:

• blog posts that cover blogging
• tweets that talk about using twitter
• blog posts that share tips for using twitter
• tweets with pointers about blogging

Goodness knows this B-to-B blog you are reading right now takes this well-worn approach with several recent posts about managing Twitter for business-to-business marketing.   It’s clear to see that Twitter has captured my attention over the last year, in fact I’ve several more Twitter related posts in the hopper.

And in much the same spirit, let’s turn our attention to blogging.

Yes it’s a blog post that covers blogging!

Through work with my own blog, and client work for other corporate blogs, presented here are….

 5 Lessons Learned from Blogging

Lesson 1: It Pays to Be Consistent

The beast needs to be fed.  That means starting a blog is the easy part, keeping current by creating updated posts is much more difficult.  Case in point:  this blog has the goal of 4 new posts per month.  Take a look on the left side index and you’ll see I’m averaging less than 4 posts per month.  It’s effective to “post when you have something to say” so be sure that the main thrust, focus of the blog sufficiently engages and inspires you to “keep on talking” and posting.

Stuck for ideas?  Those smarty pants at Hubspot give some great pointers on keeping business-related content fresh and “feeding the beast”. (warning, lots of food analogies so best to read on a full stomach)

Lesson 2: Take Time to Engage

No matter what the blog post topic, asking pointed questions, soliciting feedback and engaging readers is powerful.  A recent client project involved inserting an online survey into a blog post, which was an effective way to turn a passive reader into a participator.   There are many great tools out there but Zoomerang is an especially easy and powerful one.

Lesson 3: Consider SEO

Folks write about this topic in much more detail so it’s worth a look at their insight.  For our purposes, be sure to make yourself familiar with SEO best practices like using keywords.  Within a post, be sure to embed links to your website, other blog posts, or other key websites. In the world of b-to-b marketing, a blog is a powerful way to improve search results. Post titles and content should contain the keywords that your customers and prospects search. For instance, this is a blog about marketing, business-to-business marketing communications, and marketing strategy.  Those are words that should be tagged and used as much as possible.  It is worth it to take the time to know which keywords are more relevant to you or your clients.

 SearchEngineLand.com is the premiere source to check for other tips.

 Lesson 4: Remember Nobody Reads

Web users are overloaded with content – and social media posts are getting shorter and shorter.  The Twitter 140 character limit has trained web users to scan, and take short “information snacks” instead of digesting lengthy, complex content.

Keep this in mind when creating blog content.  Chunk out information in easily digestible segments.   Develop information-carrying subheads.   Break out titles into lists, top lessons learned, etc. to make it easy for your blog readers to digest your information.

Lesson 5:  Share  and Share Alike

Blogging is a powerful way to elevate you or your client’s brand, showcase industry leadership, and raise overall visibility of products and services.  Don’t just post, though.  Share!  

Use Twitter to link back to the post.  Showcase the blog post content on the home page of your website.  LinkedIn offers several ways to share links to blog posts by topic, either on your profile or within LinkedIn groups. Add your blog post to directories like technorati for maximum exposure.

What are the lessons you've learned from blogging?