Cost-Effective Targeted BtoB Marketing

Here in MN as we shed our heavy winter coats and we start to see our trees bud and our tulips burst from the ground, we celebrate the arrival of Spring.  If you have ever lived through a MN winter you understand the joy and energy that come with the arrival of Spring.

This year Spring is particularly energizing as we’re also seeing sign of new growth in our American economy.  Our team of Business Development Consultants talks to about 700 marketing decision-makers in our niche BtoB markets each week.  And I’m happy to report we hearing more and more frequently that cash flow traumas are easing, phones are beginning to ring again, and sales are on the rise.

Just as we clean up our lawns and clean out our gardens to prepare for Spring Growth and Summer Harvest, we need to clean out our marketing strategies and tactics for what isn’t effective anymore.  If you want to accelerate your sales, you need to generate leads for your sales force.  Don’t immediately jump back into expensive branding efforts.  Rather continue to plant the seeds that will actually grow your business.

Also, remember, many of your competitors continued to market their businesses through the downturn and haven cannibalized your market share.  We’re definitely seeing more and more businesses beginning to advertise again.  If you wait too long to start marketing again, it will be very expensive to compete and win back the market share and the customers that have gone to your competitors.

Use your limited marketing dollars right now to plant the seeds that will grow your company quickly.  Invest in those marketing efforts that create productive sales activity for your sales force.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading about SEO lately.  Clearly, we all have to have our websites developed for optimum Search Engine results.  A well designed website isn’t just an important piece of organic search optimization, it’s the whole pie!

There are a lot of SEO experts out there trying to sell expensive SEO packages.  Many are well worth the investment.  However, just as one marketing strategy doesn’t fit all companies, expensive SEO doesn’t deliver results for everyone either.

If your product or service truly needs to be sold versus something that is regularly purchased, SEO will only get you part of the way.  Excellent SEO results may deliver you 80% of the clicks for your keywords, but if your keywords are only searched 20 times per month then your 16 clicks have to be very valuable in order to get an ROI on your investment.

If you’re a novice at SEO, I recommend you play around with Google Analytics for your site before you pay anyone else.  Find out what key words are already driving traffic to your site.  Think about what key words SHOULD be driving traffic to your site.  Then make sure you have those keywords in the content of your site.

If you want to spend money on your SEO, I’d also recommend you do some paid searches with those keywords using a small budget.  Google drives the most traffic to our site, but it is also the most expensive.  I like it because it’s just so darn easy to use and to understand.  This process will even give you an idea of how many clicks are currently resulting from your keywords

This will make you an intelligent and informed consumer before investing a lot of money with an SEO consultant.   That being said, personally, I LOVE reading the Keyword Analysis these professionals do for my business.  You can learn a lot about your opportunity from this first step in the consulting process….but I wouldn’t pay more the $300 to $500 for this analysis!

I heard this line in a webinar by InfusionSoft I attended yesterday.  It was a great webinar by the way.  And a great marketing tool for small businesses.

It really resonated with me as our company is all about generating sales leads for our customers.  In the past few years, most of those leads occurs as hits to a website.   This works very well for companies that can sell their product right from their website without interaction with a live sales person.  However, only 1-2% of leads convert to a sale after one “touch”.  On average it takes 7 “touches” to convert a lead to a sale.

I highly recommend everyone think of a compelling offer to load on your website for your visitors to “register” for.  If you offer something they value, they will give you their contact information.  Especially if you promise to never share or sell that info.  Then you can start your “nurture marketing” processes and continue educating this lead on the value of your product/service all while you’re establishing a connection and building a relationship with them until the time is right and they buy from you.

And thus, your web traffic has converted to a sales lead and eventually a sale.

I spoke this morning with the Account Exec of our new key vendor relationship.  I wanted to let them know we were pleased with how things were going.  When I asked how things were going from their perspective she replied, “We think your team is AWESOME.”

I was thrilled by that response and must say, my satisfaction with the relationship increased immediately!  In this economy as we’re all trying to differentiate ourselves with our customers it’s important to remember that a sincere compliment to a customer costs us nothing, but can really enhance the relationship!  We all know to appreciate our customers, but there is tremendous value in praising them as well!

Sales leads are ALWAYS important, but in a recession economy they’re VITALLY important.  In this economy, they can make the difference between surviving and not.

There are two important elements of success when it comes to sales leads.  One, generating them cost-effectively.   And two, optimizing the lead when you get it to actually close a new customer.

We offer a variety of programs that strive to generate sales leads cost-effectively, so I’m not going to focus on that today.  Rather, I want offer some tips for optimizing your sales leads.

First, keep a database of all your leads with as much information as you can gather about each one.  Contact management systems are readily available now and can be quite inexpensive.  If you want to grow your business you absolutely need one.  Even if you don’t close a lead right away, it’s very valuable.  This is someone who has actually been interested in purchasing from you.  You want to nurture that interest until you can actually convert it to a customer relationship.  There are a variety of cost-effective nurture marketing techniques too, but those also will be discussed another day.

Second, respond IMMEDIATELY.  Whether your lead is an email, a phone call or a mailed request for more information, the faster you respond the more likely the responder will be open to your presentation.  You’d be amazed at how many customers send literature out many weeks after receiving a sales lead and then are surprized that they didn’t close any sales.

Third, don’t simply send out literature and then expect to be flooded with orders.  Make follow up calls to every lead that requested more information.  In this economy as your customers are hoarding cash, you need to communicate with them to help them understand how your product or service is going to help them make money or save money.  If you’re simply waiting for them to spend, you’re likely going to wait until the economy turns around.  Will you still be around then to take their order?

Fourth, make triple sure you understand the customer experience when you get an incoming call as a sales lead.  In my humble opinion, this is the most valuable sales lead you can get.  You NEED to make sure that your potential customer has a very positive experience throughout this first phone call.  Is your receptionist friendly, knowledgeable and competent?  If you have an automated attendant is the option to talk to a sales person one of the first option so they don’t have to listen to a long list?  Hopefully your lead doesn’t have to leave a message when they’re HOT to talk to someone right now, but if they do, how long before they get a response from you?

We often contact our advertising customers as potential customers in order to understand the customer experience.  You’d be amazed at how difficult it can be for someone to actually get to a salesperson.  If you’re a business owner, I encourage you to have someone call in to your own company as a potential customer and report their experience to you.

Fifth, if you’re getting a high volume of traffic to your website, but not converting that traffic to either new business or even sales leads then you need help with your website.  Your website should function as an inside sales person.  If it’s not meeting your expectations often some fairly simple enhancements can make a big difference.

If you’re getting a lot of sales leads but not converting very many, take a hard look at where you can improve your sales process.  Treat a lead like gold, and it will become so!

Recently we had the privilege of participating in a conversation with two customers in one of our market niches.   One scrupulously tracks each sales lead back to it’s source.  One has given up tracking.  Both are very successful companies.  And, in my opinion, both are very savvy marketers.

The one that tracks makes sure to question each incoming sales call to identify how they heard about them.  The other retorted, “while you’re questioning them where they came from, I’ve already qualified them and am starting on my sales presentation.”  Both valid points.

In my humble opinion, there are two big problems with tracking reponse in today’s world.

1.   Advertising messages are simply EVERYWHERE.  So, it’s not always a simple answer for your respondent to identify which advertisement prompted him/her to respond.  Realistically, it’s likely a combination of messages that compelled  the response.  The fancy term for this is called the Halo Effect.   As consumers, we rarely buy something the first time we become aware of it.  It takes multiple messages across multiple media to build credibility, and often, build desire/need. (My passionate belief in this is the genesis for our multi-channel marketing programs.)

Indeed, the specific customer that tracks leads in great detail is still finding today that his best source of new business is from leads from a magazine that has been out of print for the past three years.  He tracks the source of that lead into his database.  Clearly his marketing investments in the past three years had something to do with the conversion of that lead into a sale, but his tracking system doesn’t account for that

2.  The most common response to business to business advertising today is a visit to your website.  And we all know how very difficult it is to track that response.  Pay per click advertising has revolutionized marketing and raised the stakes for all advertising media to raise their game in terms of delivering value and performance.   However, most companies need to suggestive sell their products/services and not just harvest leads from buyers with a recognized need.

A big part of the value we deliver with our email blasts and our postcard decks is a visit to your website.  Whenever you type in a website address directely, it shows up a “null” referrer on your web tracking reports.  How then do you track that response?  There are lots of methods with varying levels of success and costs. (which I’ll discuss in future blogs…)

But here is a big complicating factor.  Recently, we’ve started to hear from both the recipients of our programs as well as advertisers that often the response behavior is increasingly more convoluted.  Your customer sees an ad in one of our postcard decks or email campaigns.  They’re interested but don’t respond right away.  Rather, a few days to weeks later as their buying need becomes a priority they “google” your product.  You’d track that lead as a “google” lead, and rightly so.  But you likely wouldn’t have had that lead if it weren’t for the suggestive selling of the other ad.

So, with all the problems inherent with endeavoring to track response is it really worth it?  In my opinion, YES!  If you don’t put unwarranted reliance on the statistics.  Your response tracking needs to be both art and science.

We frequently hear the phrase “Cash is King.”  And in this very troubling economy, I’ve heard it frequently!  We’re all nervous about our businesses and our jobs right now.  The news is frightening!

However, I believe our most powerful course of action is to stay focused on conducting business as effectively and efficiently as possible.  The macroeconomic situation will sort itself out — We need to focus on the strategies and tactics we can innovate and execute ourselves.

For me, that means staying focused on delivering value to you, our customers.  Cash is king for you too and that means that your marketing investments MUST deliver value!

We’ve built our brand with our buyers around helping them save money and make money.  This focus on value differentiates us from other marketing vehicles that are, frankly, better at building an image.  We’re about communicating the value of your product to your target market as cost-effectively as possible.  Then making it easy for them to communicate their interest to you.

In this economy, you need to focus your marketing message on your value proposition.  Consumers are not spending freely.  They need to understand and be confident in the value of each purchase before they invest their cash.

To use a corny analogy, in chess, as in business, the game is lost without the king.  But he can only move one position at any one time.   The queen can move in a variety of directions for as far as she wants.  Your cash must be protected to survive in business, but value must be leveraged in order to thrive!

As a provider of email marketing campaigns in our niche markets I’m always seeking metrics from other providers to understand the value of our program compared to our competitors.  I’ve found noone who would share their metrics with us, nor have I found any metrics posted online as to what the standards are for “good” versus “poor” results.

From our experience, I’ve come to the conclusion that this is because the results are all over the board.  And what is a statistically “good” result for one customer is perceived as “poor” by another.  Similarly, we find some markets are dramatically more responsive to email marketing than others.  Yet, we have the most customers and repeat customers in the market with the lowest view and click statistics of all the markets we target.

Also interestingly, we hear from many of our “happy” email campaign customers that they received a number of phone calls as a result of the campaign.  So even when the view and click statistics haven’t been impressive to me, the customer determined they received an excellent ROI with phone calls.

Some general observations (Most of them are obvious, but our experience proves the common sense!)

1.  Campaigns that have multiple click invitations for different pages on a website generally produce  at least 20% more clicks.  (example: for great offer click here; for free sample click here; for whitepaper on we save time click here; etc)

2.   Subject lines not only dramatically impact views, but clicks as well.  We recently ran an a/b split where the exact same campaign was sent with two different subject lines.  One subject line resulted in 24% more views, but 300% more clicks.  That was astounding to me.

3.  Strategic use of selectable text at the top of the email campaign that speaks to the unique value proposition of the product/service significantly increases the number of views.  Think of it like this:  your subject line and selectable text are your window for motivating someone to download the pictures and “view” your campaign.  Use the rest of the campaign to promote your offer.

4.  Use an offer or other compelling call to action.  The email campaign is an action-oriented medium.  Using it for image advertising not only won’t get the results you need, it will likely result in unsubscribes!  (Believe me, I know this from experience.)  You need a compelling call to action and to offer a compelling reason for your prospect to act!

Short answer:  Yes.

A number of our clients have promoted the same offer through our printed & mailed card deck program, our cooperative email program, a solo email campaign and online in our niche market web portal.  [We specialize in eight BtoB niche markets.]

Over and over again our customers have reported significant increases in their sales activity.  Of course, this activity varies from customer to customer depending on their offer and call to action.  And, they report that while they can’t pin down which element produces better for them, they acknowledge that the results are better when they promote a campaign across channels than when they focus on one.

Similarly, we have seen overall response from our postcard decks increase in the past couple years as we have started sending email campaigns.  Email campaigns have really increased response from the card-deck media.  And conversely,  email campaigns sent without card-deck support have not produced as many views/clicks as multi-channel campaigns.

Synergy has become an overused term.  However, based on this experience, I really believe that “synergy” occurs with multi-channel marketing.

Contrary to some opinions I’ve heard and read, Postcard Decks are still a very cost-effective way of reaching a target audience cost-effectively.  In fact, they’re a great way to broadcast a special offer, drive traffic to your website and generate calls to your inside sales force from pre-qualified, interested buyers.   What marketers don’t need those results?

In this turbulent economy we’re actually experiencing an upsurge in sales.  Many of our customers, both large and small businesses, are increasing their investment in our postcard deck programs for 2009.  They’ve determined we are their best source of sales leads.  And when cash is king and you can’t afford to invest in expensive image advertising, sales leads are even more important!

In their glory days, card decks were a very accountable form of advertising as readers filled out the back of the cards and mailed them back to the advertiser.  Certainly, very few buyers take the the time to send a card back in the mail these days.  However, they’ve become very effective at driving buyers to websites and 800#s.  As in most business cycles, the postcard decks that went out of business likely didn’t evolve to continue to deliver excellent value to their customers.  The decks still being published are focused on delivering value and accordingly will continue to be great buying resources for their readers and accordingly, cost-effective marketing for their advertisers.