MATT HEINZ

Everything you need to raise awareness, drive response and close more business in today's ever-changing customer landscape.

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Everything you need to raise awareness, drive response and close more business in today’s ever-changing customer landscape.

MATT HEINZ

THEMODERN MARKETER’S

FIELD GUIDE

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WANT MORE SALES AND MARKETING INSIGHTS?

Check out Matt’s blog at:www.MattonMarketingBlog.com

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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, disseminated or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the publisher

and the author. This includes photocopying, recording or scanning for conversion to electronic format. Exceptions can be made in the case of brief quotations embodied in

critical reviews and certain noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Permission may be obtained by emailing: matt@heinzmarketing.com This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information

in regard to the subject matter covered. Although the author and publisher have made every effort to ensure the accuracy and completeness of the information contained in

this book, we assume no responsibility for errors, inaccuracies, omissions or other inconsistency herein. Any slight of people, places or organizations is unintentional.

Neither the publisher, nor the author, shall be held liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to consequential, incidental, special or other damages. The advice and strategies contained in this book may not

be suitable to some situations.

This publication references various trademarked names. All trademarks are the property of their owners.

Copyright © 2013 Heinz Marketing Inc. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-615-48781-6

Art Direction and Design: Erin Alvarez

Published by Heinz Marketing Press 8201 164th Ave NE, Suite 200

Redmond, WA 98052

Printed in the United States of America

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This book is dedicated to my wife, Beth.

She knows why.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

MODERN MARKETING—ESSENTIALS FOR YOUR FIELD KIT The marketing of hope ......................................................................................................................5Product marketing must focus on the past, present and future ........................................................6Four new marketing skills you’d better learn quick ...........................................................................7

CONTENT STRATEGYSame content, three access strategies ............................................................................................11Compelling messaging isn’t enough ...............................................................................................12How to write for lazy readers ...........................................................................................................12Five stages of effective content strategy implementation ..............................................................13Six attributes of successful, lead generating content ......................................................................15Seven requirements of a higher performing white paper ...............................................................16Ten reasons why top 10 lists make great content............................................................................18Eleven reasons your content marketing isn’t working .....................................................................20Twelve keys to greater success and results .....................................................................................22How to (successfully) outsource content creation ...........................................................................24Five keys to choosing a better tagline ............................................................................................25How to write subject lines that don’t suck .......................................................................................26You wouldn’t read this, but do you send emails like it? ..................................................................27Ten common email marketing mistakes that kill your response rates .............................................30

How to get more people reading your blog ...................................................................................32

DEMAND GENERATION Marketing is about people and problems, not products ................................................................37The five jobs of an effective marketing campaign...........................................................................37How to choose the right database list source provider ...................................................................39Report: Analyzing 62 million web site visits for B2B marketing best practices ...............................41How to rank on Google without knowing anything about SEO ......................................................43Six secrets to A/B testing success ...................................................................................................45Layout best practices fo effective B2B web sites ............................................................................46Easy tactics to build brand, get referrals, and drive customer relations..........................................47Eight ways to make your webinar more compelling .......................................................................47Is your webinar vanilla or hot fudge? ..............................................................................................50Why bullet points on webinar slides are okay .................................................................................51

LEAD MANAGEMENT AND NURTURING Is marketing automation more important than sales CRM? ............................................................55Analyze the marketing automation data that impacts revenue .......................................................56How marketing automation enhances Google AdWords campaigns .............................................57Five keys to successful marketing automation content ...................................................................59Implement your marketing automation system with CRM integration ...........................................61How to build a lead scoring strategy that sales will support ...........................................................63Three keys to more effective customer profiles ..............................................................................65Eight habits of world-class B2B lead management programs .........................................................67The five stages of lead qualification ................................................................................................69

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Disqualified doesn’t mean dead—nurturing leads back to life .......................................................71Three quick examples that prove nurture marketing works ............................................................73Four reasons and ways to ask your contacts to unsubscribe ...........................................................74

SOCIAL MEDIAThree social media sites to keep you on your game .......................................................................79Four sales-centric social media metrics you should be tracking .....................................................80Five quick steps to accelerate your LinkedIn ROI ...........................................................................82Ten ways to organically grow your Twitter followers .......................................................................84Ten essential steps for a vibrant online community .........................................................................86Seven ways social media can save you time (instead of wasting It) ................................................88

EVENTS AND TRADE SHOWSWhy attending events in person is still so important ......................................................................93How to make the most of conferencing parties and networking events .........................................94Six factors to consider when choosing to attend a conference .......................................................96How to attend three conferences at once .......................................................................................97How to work a tradeshow floor .......................................................................................................98Proven essentials for a successful B2B marketing event ...............................................................100Eight requirements for a successful event strategy .......................................................................103Anatomy of a better pre-event email ............................................................................................105The most important part of event marketing ................................................................................107

SALES OPERATIONSMy definition of sales enablement ................................................................................................111It’s called a sales funnel (not a sales cylinder) for a reason ............................................................112Eight ways sales operations can double your team’s productivity ................................................113Three ways content marketing can make your sales team happy .................................................115Why too many inbound leads might hurt your sales .....................................................................117Eight ways to invigorate your sales training program ...................................................................118Why marketing should own inside sales (and why they shouldn’t) ................................................120Five reasons why inside sales is replacing field sales ....................................................................122

CUSTOMER LOYALTY AND RETENTIONMarketing is (and always will be) about trust and relationships ....................................................127Listen to your lead customers, not just your biggest customers ...................................................127Four keys to building solid client relationships .............................................................................128The sure-fire way to show clients and prospects that you’re listening ..........................................130Customer lifetime value—four phases to maximize success and profitability ...............................131Three examples of how and why the little things matter ..............................................................132Twenty-two ways to show your customers you love them .............................................................133Five fast, successful ways to learn about your customers .............................................................134Six keys to driving early customer success ....................................................................................135

CREDITS AND COPYRIGHTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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INTRODUCTION

The speed of innovation and change in B2B marketing has never been greater. And the need for clarity, for a blueprint, for a guide to what’s really working and how to apply it specifically to increase sales pipeline growth, velocity and conversion—that’s what we get asked for more than anything else.

Which is why we wrote this book. It covers a lot of ground, but quickly. We’ve addressed a comprehensive view of the sales and marketing pipeline, but done it in quick bursts with lots of specific, actionable ideas, strategies and tactics you can put to work right away.

We call this a Field Guide because it’s something you can use as a reference guide on a regular basis. Get familiar with the table of contents, and start first with the content most applicable to a problem you’re solving right now. Then come back when you need something else, later. If you’re using this book to guide your execution and success moving forward, we’ve done our job.

Speaking of “we”, I’m excited to include in this book content from not just myself but also every member of the Heinz Marketing team (at least as of this writing). Special thanks to Maria Geokezas, Brian Hansford, Erin Alvarez, Meghan Bardwell, Nichole McIntyre, Bailie Losleben and Jackie Jordahl for not only their direct contributions to this book, but also for “walking the talk” in their hard work for our clients every day.

Print copies of this book don’t encourage interactivity like a good blog does, but we still want to hear from you—what worked, what didn’t, and what you discovered new or next to build upon these best practices. Email us at acceleration@heinzmarketing.com and let us know!

Onward,Matt HeinzJuly 2013

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MODERN MARKETING— ESSENTIALS FOR YOUR FIELD KIT

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The marketing of hope

Hope may be one of the most powerful yet least utilized marketing drivers in the world today. Make no mistake, hope drives marketing and revenue performance already. When it’s spring training time in baseball, for example, and every team has a chance. Sure, some are more likely to be competitive than others. But every year dark horses emerge. Annual cellar-dwellers get on a hot streak.

I’m a lifelong Cubs fan. They haven’t won the World Series in more than one hundred years, and haven’t even been to the World Series since World War II. But every Spring, even with a “rebuilding” roster, there’s still hope.

In 2011, the St. Louis Cardinals lost one of their top pitchers for the year to injury. Experts immediately started to write them off. In 2012, they entered spring training as defending World Champions.

Hope tugs at our most primal emotions, instincts, needs, fears and desires. Its draw is incredibly strong, and drives the kind of irrational thinking that leads to emotional decisions, many of which we don’t even regret afterward.

We want to hope, we want to believe. These are difficult concepts to make concrete, to translate into something material. But what’s far more reachable for most marketers is to translate the idea of hope into selling the future. What happens tomorrow, six months from now, or next season is unwritten. Paint a picture of what that future might look like for your customer or prospect, and they can’t tell you you’re wrong. They can tell you you’re crazy, but if your story of the future aligns with something they hold great hope for, they’re far more likely to listen.

The marketing of hope is really the marketing of a future you, or your customers, desperately want. And that future can be packaged, written about and presented in a way that makes that hopeful future feel well within grasp. You’re not going to get many prospects to buy the present. What your prospects want, and will open their checkbooks for, is the hope of a better future.

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Product marketing must focus on the past, present, and future

The best product marketers I know balance their time between the past, present, and future. All three are critical to effective product management and long-term relevance with an ever-evolving market.

Most product marketers focus the vast majority of their time on the past and present. And by ignoring or short changing the future, they lose all ability to proactively drive the long-term direction, leadership and strength of their products.

By the “past”, I’m referring to fixing and improving what already exists. Products get launched with bugs, so you have to go and fix them. Features become irrelevant unless they’re updated. Legacy products and versions need to be supported.

Maintaining long-term client relationships often pivots on your ability to proactively manage the past.

By the “present”, I’m referring to new features that address real-time, current-market opportunities. Adding an iPad app as soon as that platform is launched. Creating mobile features that make it easier for clients to use your product on the road.

These are new products, new features and improvements/additions that are done relatively quickly without a lot of required foresight and planning.

Again, most product managers get sucked into spending most of their time on the past and present. And that’s time well spent if it’s supporting customer-driven priorities. But too often, focusing on the past and present means you’re mostly reactive, not planning ahead, not staying strategic, and mostly playing catch up or, at best, treading water.

By the “future”, of course, I’m referring to product planning. Having a long-term vision for where the market is going and how your overall product plan will adjust and evolve to take advantage.

This takes a lot of work, a lot of research, and a lot of time. Some organizations are big enough or resources well enough to separate this role out to a dedicated product planner. But for most organizations, the same people (or individuals) are tasked concurrently with managing the past, present and future.

Step one for overworked product marketers is to know they’ll ultimately be held responsible for all three of these. Step two is to discuss this framework with your manager and figure out how to ensure time is adequately spent on all three.

But I’m betting that identifying where your deficiencies and weaknesses are (especially the long-term risk to market position and product strength by neglecting focus on the future) will help get the alignment and support you need.

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Four new marketing skills you’d better learn quick

B2B marketing today has changed significantly. And whether you’ve been out of it for a while, or just want to make sure you’re keeping up with what’s required for success now and in the future, here are four skills I recommend you learn quickly.

1. Funnel math and revenue performance management

The mindset you want, even as a marketer, is that your job depends on finding and closing business. It’s not enough to manage the trade show, send direct mail, or even flood more leads to the sales team. You need to understand the economics of the full sales funnel—how many opportunities are required to generate a closed sale, and how many leads are required to find a qualified, short term opportunity (for starters).

Next, knowing that today’s sales process is completely nonlinear, you need to understand the fundamentals of lead nurturing and two-way lead and opportunity movement. This includes the metrics behind these dynamics for your unique market and industry.

Here’s a relatively simple mathematical model for understanding the lead-opportunity-sale math for your company. And for revenue performance management, I recommend reading up on best practices from Marketo and others whose business focuses on revenue-centric marketing.

2. Social lead generation and buying signal mining

If you’re worried about followers and likes, you’re doing it wrong. Focus instead on engagement, conversations, and driving an active, two-way discussion about the issues, needs and pain points your target customers care about most. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Your prospects are sharing their needs and buying signals on the social web every day. Your responsibility is to listen, look proactively for mentions of those keywords and buying signals, and become an information concierge to drive top-of-pipeline lead generation for your organization.

Technology and process drive value here, not media buying and budget. The social web is the greatest source of ongoing free leads ever seen. Are you taking advantage?

3. SEO and inbound marketing fundamentals

The rules change (literally) daily, but it’s important to understand the fundamentals of what drives natural traffic, and how to create content that drives perpetual inbound interest for your products and services. If you

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understand (and read) nothing else, understand that the most important drivers of successful SEO and inbound marketing are great content, and inbound links that demonstrate others are validating your great content.

It’s worth reading content from SEOMoz, Content Marketing Institute and others who keep up on the daily changes of the technical aspects of SEO, plus educate and enable “the rest of us” on how to cut through the clutter and drive value, traffic and conversions.

4. Lead management/nurture workflow development

Even if you aren’t using a marketing automation solution, your marketing strategy should reflect the reality that the majority of your prospects don’t convert (or move forward) right away, and that most of them need “nurturing” in advance of being ready to buy.

This isn’t about buying a marketing automation system. It’s about having a strategy that addresses how your customers buy and enabling processes and tactics throughout your organization that address and empower your prospects where they are.

No matter how tightly you manage your sales process your prospects will decide (independent of you) when they’re ready to buy. Your lead management and nurture strategy had better reflect that.

This isn’t to say that the old marketing focus areas and strategies aren’t relevant or don’t work. Because many are and do. But if you don’t have a working knowledge of the above four disciplines, it’ll be difficult to be a working marketer.

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CONTENT STRATEGY

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Same content, three access strategies

When we publish a new best practice guide, we typically put it up on Slideshare and make it available for free to anyone who finds it there or finds it on our blog. We also take that guide, put it behind a registration page, and promote it to all of our blog readers via a sidebar.

Same content, available for free, in one place with just a click and another with your name and email address required.

But it gets better. Our Productivity Manifesto is available for free with just a click, for free with registration, AND for $2.99 as a Kindle single.

Are we crazy? Maybe, but there’s a method to this madness too.

If someone is following us on Slideshare or reading our blog posts regularly, I don’t think I need to ask them for registration. They’re already a follower, probably getting our newsletter, so I don’t want to increase the number of gates between them and our content.

For new blog readers (folks who find us via a Google search for a topic we’ve written about, or a retweet, or similar), they’re probably new to Heinz Marketing and our content. In that case, I think it’s fine to ask for light information in exchange for access to the content.

And on Amazon.com, our strategy adjusts again to the environment. Kindle singles aren’t expensive to begin with, but we’ve had far more traction by charging $2.99 than when it was just a free download to the Kindle. Put a price tag on it, and there’s perceived value.

And of course, most of our best practice guides are aggregations of recent blog posts on a particular topic. So, if you use the search function and have a few minutes, you can get all of that content for free. Or you can get it in 15 seconds with a quick, free registration.

There are differences in value exchange that drive some of this, but also careful consideration of the context of the user, the relationship that likely already exists, and the benefit of adding or reducing barriers to access.

Lots of grey area here, of course, but it’s working (at least for us).

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Compelling messaging isn’t enough

It’s easy to get excited about how you’ve positioned your product, service or business. You’ve done your research, analyzed the target customer, and come up with a position that focuses on solving their problems. It gets right to the heart of what hurts, what they’re missing, and what they need. It’s compelling and you take it to market.

And it fails.

Why? Could be a number of reasons, but most “compelling” messages fail because they aren’t unique.

Your messaging can’t be developed in a vacuum. Chances are, your competitors (as well as other, even complimentary companies addressing the same customer) have come up with the same messages, the same customer pain points, the same problems to be solved.

So what makes you different? How do you approach the problem differently? How are you addressing a more specific or unique angle of the customer’s problem?

In some cases, the mere fact that your solution works could be what makes you unique. Others boast, but we deliver.

What makes your message both compelling and unique, the combination of those two, is what makes effective message development so difficult. It requires far more market insight, and ongoing vigilance as the market (and your customer) changes.

How to write for lazy readers

You may not consider yourself a lazy person. But, I’m willing to bet you’re a lazy reader. A scanner. You don’t read as many long-form, New Yorker-style articles as you used to.

You don’t have the time. Or don’t take the time. Or just prefer content in more digestible formats.

Despite the reason or root cause, our attention spans are shrinking and our consumption of content is following suit. How you write and present content—if you want today’s busy executives, decision makers and potential customers to read it—needs to reflect this as well.

Your customers, prospects and readers are moving fast, scanning for clues of interest and relevance. The most important elements of your content

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should play to that—headlines, the first couple sentences, bullets and subheads and bolded key points.

Think about the best used textbooks at the college bookstore. The ones where previous students have already gone through and highlighted the most important, salient points. Even if you write long, make it easy for readers to scan, get the main points, and get out.

After writing your first draft, go back through and edit. Ruthlessly. Set a goal of cutting word count by at least 33 percent, if not more.

Writing this way may not win you a literary award, but it will most certainly get your points across faster and more widespread.

Five stages of effective content strategy implementation

This installment outlines five key structural stages of effective content marketing implementation. Like most marketing programs, the vast majority of your time will be spent in execution mode. But without proper planning, your execution has far less of a chance of having the effect you desire. What’s more, ensuring that your plan covers each of the key elements or stages of the program is essential to maximizing success.

Below are five stages of successful content marketing set out by Sirius last year.

1. Objective

Seems basic and obvious, but the nuances of your specific objective or need for a particular piece of content (or content program) may change how you execute. For example, is your content intended to drive awareness and discovery, or something more specific and deeper within the sales process? Knowing what you need the content to do (i.e. what you want the audi-ence to think and act on after consuming your content) will drive clarity and precision through the rest of your program execution. Defining your objec-tive up front will also ensure all internal constituents (especially between sales and marketing) are on the same page and agree on what you’re trying to accomplish.

2. Asset architecture

Once you have the objective established (which also inherently directs who you are targeting and with what purpose), you can effectively choose the format and structure of the content itself. For example, what media should you use? If written, is it a blog post, a white paper, a transcript of a previous event, or something else? How and where should it be published and accessible? Will you require registration? How long will it be, and what

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will you request of (or offer) the recipient after consuming the content? How will you measure consumption, impact and conversion? Think through these and other structural questions before beginning to execute or even outline the key points to be made. Different formats and structures lend themselves to different angles and approaches to content. The better you’re able to match your objective and audience to the right format, the more productive the final product will be in delivering your desired outcome.

3. Execution

With the first two steps above in place, you’re ready to execute. Set a clear production schedule with stages of review for key parties. Depending on the nature of the content program and product, consider including a customer review of the content before it’s finished as well, to make sure it resonates and “works” not just with internal reviewers but a potential peer of your intended end audience. Just as in product development, it’s easy to make adjustments, cut corners or otherwise change the original plan to get a final product out the door. But as you execute, ensure that you aren’t compromising the objectives and original needs of the content and program overall.

4. Measurement

Because you included measurement in your inventory of asset architecture requirements, you won’t be scrambling during or after execution to figure out if your plan worked. With measurement structures in place, start reviewing the immediate and long-term impact of the content program. Does the output or result match your expectations and objectives? If you started with a limited test, have you seen enough to expand deeper into the market, to more of your opt-in list, or across the rest of your customer base?

5. Continuous improvement

As you measure consumption and impact trends, look for ways to make your results even better. What are consumers of your content telling you explicitly and implicitly about its value? What feedback are you getting about how to make it more impactful? What have you learned from this particular content program that can impact previously-launched programs, but also make future programs more successful right out of the gate? Plenty of content programs get launched and quickly forgotten about. And if they continue to drive inbound traffic and/or leads, that may be okay. But there are often best practices discovered in later programs that could be applied to previous, now-passive programs to make them perform even better for you in the background.

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Six attributes of successful, lead generating content

If you pull together some of the most successful, lead-generating examples of content across the B2B world, and looked for what they all had in common, I bet the following six attributes would be in place for most of them. It’s no guarantee that your content will go viral and generate buckets of qualified leads, but the more of these you nail the more likely your ongoing content development investments will pay off.

1. Brief

The SEO experts say that a blog post should be more than 500 words, but less than 1,000. But viral content doesn’t have to match that format. In fact, some of the most viral content you’ll find is little more than a picture with a caption, or a short but powerful idea written well. When you write, look through your first draft and find entire sentences you can delete, that don’t really add to your main point. If you’re thinking about creating a three-minute video, make it two minutes or less. The more efficiently you can communicate your story or message, the more likely people are to read it and share it with others. This isn’t an attention span thing. It’s a we-are-all-busy-so-get-to-the-point thing.

2. Valuable

Goes without saying, perhaps, but there’s a ton of content out there that is little more than an excuse to publish some keywords to get Google’s attention. Just because you achieve the magical five to eight percent keyword density doesn’t mean your content is compelling, or teaches your prospects something new, or compels them to want to share it with peers, colleagues and respective networks. Great content makes your audience think, then want to do something. Is your content that valuable?

3. Targeted

Who are you talking to? What do they care about? What are they thinking about or struggling with right now, and how can you help them? You aren’t likely going to create content that appeals to everyone, and if you try it might just be too diluted that it doesn’t catch fire at all. If you’re going to go viral, do so with a targeted audience. If you’re writing for sales executives, create content that they can’t wait to share with their peers. Or they’ll want to share with their managers and/or board to better understand what they do. Worried that your content is too targeted? That probably means you aren’t creating enough content. If you have more than one audience you care about, generate enough diversity and volume of content to impact them all (vs. trying to talk to them all at once).

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4. Broadly appealing

You’d think this conflicts with the idea that you want content to be targeted, but there’s a difference between speaking to a unique audience, and speaking to so narrow of a topic that others won’t relate. Great content doesn’t catch fire if it’s written for one. And your initial audience won’t pass it along if they don’t think others will also find it valuable. So, yes, there’s a fine line between staying targeted and keeping content broadly appealing.

5. Unique

Some of your best content ideas will come by consuming the content of others. But if you focus on writing or creating mostly reactions to what other people create, you’ll have already missed the boat based on someone else’s content that has already gone viral. What makes your content unique? Your voice? Your perspective? Can you take an opposing view on a popular topic? Sometimes content goes viral specifically with those who disagree with you.

6. Findable

How are you seeding your new, great content so that others can find it? Are you sharing it in your social networks? Seeding it directly to influencers and other bloggers who already have large networks and will get the fire going for you? If you create a great PowerPoint slide deck, for example, have you posted it on Slideshare and added the right keywords to the description to help it get discovered? Findability, though last on this list, is at least as important as the quality and value of the content itself.

There are far more attributes to great lead-generating content, of course. What criteria do you use when creating new content? What criteria do you notice present on the content you most often read, retweet and pass along.

Seven requirements of a higher performing white paper

Ten years ago, white papers were a minimum of ten pages, heavily footnoted, and quite formal documents. Today, they need not be so formal to be effective. You’ll find white papers in a variety of formats, lengths and styles. But most of them are intended to educate, nurture prospects, segment buyer from browsers, and drive a qualifying next step from those that are most interested in learning more.

No matter how you approach, write and format your white paper, here are seven proven requirements that consistently drive greater performance measured by views, downloads, registrations and conversions.

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1. Cover page

It may be superficial and not tied to the quality of the inside content, but it’s extremely important. Your prospects will absolutely judge your book by its cover. When that white paper is promoted on sites like SlideShare, for example, browsers will choose their views and downloads based on what best appeals to them visually. Don’t let the cover be an afterthought. Get your creative team working on it well in advance of your expected publication date, and make it shine.

2. Topic and title

I’m going to assume you’ve already chosen a topic that focuses less on your product, and more on the problems your customers face on a regular basis. White papers need to be educational to be effective. But a great topic with a boring title may still fall flat. Combine a compelling title with great cover art and you’re on your way to success. What makes for a good title? Numbers, for one. Titles that start with “Five tips to...” always perform better than “Best practices to...”. If you’re specific, the prospect or reader will assume you know what you’re talking about. Imply expertise, exclusivity, comprehensiveness, and unique insight.

3. Readability/scanability

When’s the last time you sat down and read an entire white paper front to back? Exactly. Your readers are scanners too. They are going to read your white paper the same way they read most newsletters and blog posts. They’ll scan, look for subheadlines and bullet lists, trying to get the gist of the piece without having to read every word. Make sure you write and format your white paper with this in mind.

4. Light (if any) product integration

This is not a brochure, and today’s white paper readers get skittish at the slightest scent of product promotion. Put a boilerplate and call to action at the end, in a shaded box so it’s clearly separate from the core content. Your readers will expect it, and will be more likely to appreciate and read it if you’ve delivered independent value through the rest of the paper. Ignoring your product message in the meat of the paper will often drive more readerships of your product message and summary at the end.

5. Call to action or next steps

Never let a marketing and education tool like a white paper appear as a dead end. Always offer something else—the next white paper, a subscription to get alerts when new papers are published, a personalized assessment of the reader’s ability to achieve the benefits described in the paper, etc. If your

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paper is educational in nature, don’t go right for the close (and oftentimes that includes a demo offer, which may be reaching too far, too fast). But think carefully about what the reader may want or need next and be explicit about that offer (and don’t forget to track it).

6. White space

This relates closely to readability, but is more about design than it is written format. Make sure your designers don’t try to cram as many words as possible into fewer pages. Space things out, liberally use images and visuals, use call-out quotes and statistics to call particular attention to your most important points. Separate a tightly-written executive summary up front, and consider some “brainstorming” questions at the end to get the prospect thinking about how the paper might particularly apply to their business. Liberal use of space in the design of white papers will increase its penetration and impact.

7. Repurposability

Is your white paper the beginning and the end? Could the topic easily and quickly be turned into a webinar? Or short series of blogs? Or white paper “sequel” with proof of concept case studies? If you start to think about the white paper not as an isolated event but the start of a series of events anchored in the same content, you’ll exponentially increase the value of your idea with minimal incremental cost.

What’s missing from this list? What elements of an effective white paper are requirements for your organization?

Ten reasons why top 10 lists make great content

They’ve been described as lazy. Cliché. An insult to good writing.

Like ‘em or not, top 10 lists aren’t going anywhere. And the “list” format as a favored blog post and white paper format is becoming more popular than ever. Detractors blame the writers, but list-related content is just as popular (if not more so) with readers. Here are 10 reasons why top 10 lists make great content for writer and reader alike.

1. They’re easy to read

Like it or not, low-attention-span readers like to read in chunks. We like our USA Today-style content, and top 10 lists fit into that format nicely.

2. They’re easy to skim

In most cases, you can pretty much read the headlines (skipping the other text) and get the gist. In and out quickly.

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3. Smart people use them regularly

Guy Kawasaki formats all of his speeches in top 10 list format. David Letterman has made millions with them. It’s a proven format, which only adds to its acceptance and popularity.

4. They’re easier to tweet

People like to retweet and share content that their followers will also read and enjoy. The shareability of top 10 lists is just higher, because the content is more consumable.

5. They’re faster to write

Not always the case, and this is where detractors have a point that some writers can get lazy with top 10 lists. Good content is still good content, even if it’s formatted with bullets or shared in fewer words. But in general, busy bloggers often feel they can knock out list-based content more quickly (while enjoying the other benefits listed here).

6. Numbers in headlines always drive higher response

It’s a proven fact in the direct-response world that numbers, specifics, drive greater response. Promising “10 reasons why...” will always drive better performance and clickthrough than “Top reasons why...” Many reasons for this, including the fact that a specific number (even if it’s a round number like 10) implies comprehensiveness and expertise.

7. Long-term traffic impact is higher

Beyond the initial traffic bump of new content, top ten lists tend to drive higher long-tail traffic over time. The reasons they’re attractive today make them attractive to readers next week, next month, and so on.

8. They drive higher email response rates

Many writers repurpose their content into newsletters, nurture marketing campaigns and more. Used in these and other formats, list-based content increases performance of the rest of your marketing. The list format, for example, plays just as well with webinars and white papers.

9. They imply breadth of insight and knowledge

I referenced this in number six above, but it was worth calling out separately. Non-numbered lists can be seen as nebulous, or incomplete. A round number like ten still might be seen occasionally as arbitrary, but at least it’s specific and complete. Make it a top nine or top eleven list and you’ll imply even more precision and comprehensiveness.

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10. They can easily be broken into multiple posts

Depending on the depth of content, a top ten list could be broken into ten posts. Or two sets of five. Or expanded into an e-book (with examples, visuals, etc. for each point). Lists are easy to repurpose and extend for greater value.

Eleven reasons your content marketing isn’t working

While many companies are jumping onto the content marketing bandwagon (and for good reason), plenty are putting in the work and not seeing results. And although content development isn’t an instant ROI kind of channel, if you’ve been doing it for a while and really aren’t seeing inbound leads or qualified sales pipeline production, you may be doing something wrong.

Here are eleven specific things we see most often in failing content marketing programs.

1. You write mostly about yourself

Your content marketing program is different from your PR. This isn’t a place to brag about your latest features, awards or hiring achievements. Focus on your customer—what they care about, the problems they need to solve. Even if it doesn’t have to do directly with what you’re doing or solving, customer-centric content is always where you want to start to attract attention, interest and repeat visits.

2. You’re entirely reactive

Creating opportunistic content—based on something that just happened in your industry—is always a good idea. But if that’s all you ever do, you’re missing an opportunity to drive specific themes and depth against topics your customers are particularly attracted to. What events are coming up in the next several months for your customers? What themes might be important to “own” in their minds over time? Build a strong content plan and editorial calendar to start with. You won’t always stick with it, but it’ll make more of your content more valuable and sticky.

3. You leave a bunch of dead ends

If your prospects gets to the end of the blog post or video and has nothing left to do, they’ll leave. You don’t always have to ask the prospect to sign up for a demo or show interest in your product, but there should be something else for them to engage in. The next article in a series? A video going further into a particular problem? A best practice guide offering more content on the same topic? No dead ends.

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4. Your copy is written entirely for SEO

The SEO experts will tell you to add a certain keyword density for your targeted search phrases in your copy. They’ll tell you to write a certain length, with headers, and lots of other specifics. And they’re right. But if your copy is written entirely with SEO in mind, what you might end up with is choppy, hard to read, and something that fails to create a bond between you and the prospect. It might attract search traffic, but your conversion will suffer as a result.

5. You create it but don’t promote it

Just because you create content doesn’t mean people will find it. Over time, the search engines may like what you’ve created and start pointing traffic to you. But until then you have to promote what you’ve created on your own. Use your social channels, your email lists, ask your team to add a link to their LinkedIn updates, etc. Feel free to get more aggressive with meatier pieces of content (white papers, for example).

6. You create but do not participate

Please tell me you have comments turned on. And when someone comments, do you respond? Within reason, you should be the most active commenter on your own blog. The more you engage with your readers, the more they’ll want to come back to you again and again. Show that you’re willing to be an active member of the community, not just a one-sided “teller”.

7. Your content is too hard (or too easy) to get to

Offering your prospects a ton of free content is a great way to attract more attention and visits. But you need to have premium, advanced content in parallel that requires a light registration. Conversely, you don’t want to gate all of your content just because you can. Prospects will happily register and give you their contact information if they already trust you. So find the right balance between free content and gated content.

8. Legal has to review and edit everything

Not every legal department neuters content to death. But that’s not even the real point here. If everything you want to publish needs to go through a legal review process, it’s difficult to stay fresh. Want to lend your voice to a hot industry issue that just came up this morning? If you’re waiting for legal review, you might miss the boat.

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9. Your content is boring

I’m not even sure brochures and formal sales collateral should be written in a stuffy way. But most of us, when we start writing business content, start talking in a way that’s entirely different than how we’d address someone face to face. To sound familiar, to build trust and rapport, write the way you talk. Create content that makes you feel and sound human, like someone your prospect might enjoy spending time with.

10. You’re too hard to follow

So I like what you’ve written. Your videos are awesome. Your perspective is always well represented. Do you make it easy to follow? Is it crystal clear how prospects can add your RSS feed to their reader, or follow you on one of your social channels? Amazing to me how many blogs make it really difficult to get notifications when new stuff is posted.

11. You don’t have objectives in the first place

Why are you doing this? Is it about brand awareness? Is it purely lead generation? How will you measure success? This is the first question you should ask, and answer it regularly to ensure you’re getting the results you expect.

Twelve keys to greater success and results

Modify these tips as necessary for your company, culture and industry, but they generally represent a solid foundation of best practices for ensuring your content marketing efforts drive more value in terms of inbound traffic, new followers and qualified leads.

Key Strategies:

1. Focus on customer needs and issues

Minimize references to your product specifically and even your product category in general, in lieu of topics at the core of what early adopter target customers are facing. Great content focuses on people and their problems, not products.

2. Build for repurposing

Create content that can be leveraged multiple ways, in multiple formats, to increase ROI from a core/smaller set of new content.

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3. Crowdsource as much as possible

Build a contribution team from inside and outside the company to develop both content ideas as well as final products, to minimize content creation costs.

4. Create and curate

Leverage original content as well as content created by others shared through your social channels to drive interest, engagement and conversion from target prospects.

5. Perfect is the enemy of good

Have a bias for action and publishing quality content quickly without worrying about extraneous polish.

Key Tactics:

6. Editorial calendar planning

Develop a detailed, week-to-week calendar of new and curated content across a set of common themes and target channels.

7. Resource identification

Secure roster of contributors inside and outside the organization to create content, including commitment of at least one contribution per month.

8. Multi-media, multi-channel formats

Diversify content across written, video, podcast, Slideshare and other formats to increase discoverability and engagement.

9. Contributed and curated content

Establish daily programs to curate content into the blog and other social channels to increase network effect and followers.

10. Repurpose strategy and schedule

Build repurposing of content into the editorial calendar (i.e. blog posts into white paper, webinar into blog series, etc.).

11. Blog and landing page conversion optimization

Continually refine all content hosting sites and channels to increase lead capture rate on registration-required offers.

12. Tracking and reporting structure

Build dashboard of key metrics to track growth of key measures of success (traffic, subscribers, lead conversions).

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How to (successfully) outsource content creation

Whether you’re writing for your own blog, managing one for your organization, or are responsible for other multi-media channels of content, you don’t have to be in it alone. There are countless external resources that can contribute content for you, many at no cost. Here are six best practices that the most successful publishers and aggregators use to fill their channels with quality, traffic-generating and converting content.

1. Start with a plan

Know explicitly what kind of content you need to successfully feed your target market with real value-added content. Base these content needs on your customer personas (you have these, right??) which enumerate the needs, problems and pains your customers currently face. Even if you have volunteer content contributors, don’t be afraid to ask them for specific content angles. They may appreciate the direction, and produce content for you faster than if they had to guess at something on their own.

2. Build an editorial calendar and start using a system

Just like you would for a qualified sales opportunity, agree on a “close date” with the external contributor. Make sure it’s a date that’s reasonable for the contributor and follow up a few days in advance. There are several content management systems available on the market today to help you keep track of external content requests and commitments but a solid spreadsheet can do the trick as well.

3. Find more content creators (inside and outside the org)

Expand how you think about who can contribute content for your program. Others in marketing may be your go-to, but what about those in product management, customer service or sales – who may have a unique and compelling perspective on the customer? What about partners, other industry bloggers, analysts or customers themselves? All of these groups could have a vested interest in investing time to create and share their content via your channels.

4. Expect slippage

Know up front that external contributors might not adhere to your deadlines. Have enough of a pipeline of these contributors so that you’re expecting more content than you need, but getting enough to fill your calendar. Play the yield management game like an airline.

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5. Invest time to edit and provide feedback.

Your contributors will want feedback on what you need from them next time, how to make it better, and how to get more of their contributions accepted and published. Ensure their content works well, but avoid over editing in a way that might discourage contributors from participating again in the future.

6. Review, measure, adjust

Over time, you’ll get a sense for which contributors are producing the best content, which draw the most attention, and what tends to drive not only the highest quality consumers of content but also the best conversions.

Five keys to choosing a better tagline By Meghan Bardwell

Choosing a tagline for your company or marketing campaign can be a beast of a project. It’s like taking an angry, fluffy cat and trying to shove it into a small box (I don’t know why you’d try, but I bet it’d be difficult). Or like choosing just one subject line to use for every single email you send out.

In one short line, you need to define who your company is, as well as communicate how a customer will benefit from your services or product. Plus, you need to create a line that’s memorable. The last thing you want to do is blend in with your competitors.

So, no pressure, right? Here are some simple steps to help you organize your thoughts and get the ideas flowing:

1. Clearly identify customer benefits

What do you want your customers to get out of your product/services? Will their workforce productivity go up? Will your program help them measure sales results more effectively? Find what makes your product/service a must have.

2. Determine why you’re different than the other guys

Do you have faster delivery? Are your products absolutely dependable? Do you always complete projects on time? Find the characteristics that make you shine.

3. Brainstorm, brainstorm, brainstorm

After you’ve defined customer benefits and how your company stands out from the rest, schedule time to brainstorm taglines. This is the time

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to find a quiet spot and write down any line that pops into your head. Seriously. Don’t judge your ideas yet—just try to get as many down as you can. Think of the craziest line that you’d never use in a million years; it just might spark another idea. Bouncing ideas off a partner can also be helpful.

4. Narrow down and refine

At this point, you should have a long list of awesome to terrible ideas. NOW it’s time to critique. Cross out the taglines you hate. Circle the ones you like. When you’re done, find the best of the best and refine them. Take two ideas and marry them together. Keep in mind that it should communicate your customer benefits and/or unique characteristics in some way. If you have a couple great lines that you can’t decide between, get your coworkers’ feedback. Have a vote, and may the best line win.

5. Sit back and enjoy a (insert beverage of your choice)

You’ve kept your brain hard at work trying to come up with a tagline, and finally have one that makes your company or campaign stand out from the pack. Now it’s time to reward your effort.

Scotch, anyone?

How to write subject lines that don’t suckBy Erin Alvarez

I’m on a lot of email lists. I’ve subscribed to newsletters, LinkedIn groups, and registered for a few webinars that have now resulted in a lot of daily email that I usually don’t have time to read.

The first thing I do every morning is delete most of these without even opening them to see what they contain. Maybe the message or offer was great.

But I didn’t read it because I couldn’t see any of the content in my reading pane because it was all html that needed to be downloaded. And I’m not going to do that unless the subject line made me want to click to open.

Sound familiar? Most of us do this, so why aren’t we working harder on our own subject lines?

Here’s a quick top five things to consider next time you hit “send.”

1. You talkin’ to me?

Who is your reader and why should they care? Make sure you understand

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your audience. What is their language? Before we hit delete, we quickly scan for a message that will benefit ourselves, right? Know what interests your audience and play to that. Do they care about money, figures, events? Will they respond to humor or something clever? Don’t be afraid to be original.

2. You lost me at “FREE WEBINAR”

Aren’t all webinars free? Another strategy that fails is “Reserve your seat!” webinars are not exclusive. We all know this. You’ve got about 50 characters to tell your reader what’s inside, so don’t waste it on information that doesn’t matter.

3. Who are you?

Make the most of your From line. Personalization is great if your readers already know you. If they don’t, just use your company name in the subject line and you’ll also free up some space for your teaser message.

4. But what about me?

Again, it’s not so much about you as it is about them. At least, if you want them to care about you, first make it about them. Asking a question forces the reader to briefly think about themselves and that might get you the few extra seconds you need before they hit delete. Want to learn how to crush your sales? Not Sales webinar on March 4th, Register now. Make the message about the reader. Sell your home for five percent above market. Not Our Real Estate Company is the best-find out why.

5. Protect your rep

Don’t exaggerate or make false promises that don’t hold up to the content of your email. Your subject line is supposed to tell the reader what’s inside, not necessarily sell what’s inside. Over the top subject lines are about as trusted as a midnight infomercial.

You wouldn’t read this, but do you send emails like it?

It was bad enough when I got the original email below. It’s long, is clearly from a badly-executed mail-merge, and offers very little value to me, the recipient. Then I get it forwarded to me again, by the same guy, still asking for a referral to his “buyer” inside a company I haven’t worked at for eight years.

Unfortunately, this approach (and similar flavors of it) are all too common. You probably get them regularly. But does your company send emails like this too? If so, and you’d also never respond to something like this, what makes you think it’ll be effective with your prospect list?

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Your buyers are incredibly busy. They hover over the “delete” button with a vengeance. You have to earn their attention (and this email example clearly isn’t doing the job well).

The offending email (with identifiable information edited to protect the guilty)

SUBJECT LINE: FWD: Follow up Request for Head of Field or Channel Sales @ COMPANY I WORKED FOR EIGHT YEARS AGO

Hi Matt,

I’m following up on my request for a referral to the Head of Field Sales, Business Development, and Channel Sales at COMPANY to discuss email below.

Please kindly advise.

Best,

Bill

—– Original Message —–

From:

to: Matt Heinz [matt@heinzmarketing.com]

Date: Thu, April 12, 2012 2:28 PM

Subject: RE: Referral Request to VP of Field Sales or Channel Sales @ COMPANY I WORKED FOR EIGHT YEARS AGO

Hi Matt,

I’m writing to request a referral to the VP of Field Sales, Business Development and Channel Sales and any other relevant stakeholders at COMPANY to discuss below email.

As you know, the biggest challenge of managing a Direct Sales Force or Channel Partners, Resellers and VARs is consistent and predictable revenue generation. We know that they will fall into the “80-20 rule” (i.e. 80 percent of revenue is generated by 20 percent of Players/Partners—best case). We know how to solve the problem–make it easier for them to generate new customers!

Here is how:

1. Provide a steady stream of Sales Ready Opportunities at the right target companies

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2. Supply a steady stream of Qualified Executive Appointments— in key accounts

3. Deliver a steady stream of RFI/RFA/RFPs (Request for Information, Appointment and Proposals)

4. Help get referrals and expand network

Sales Executives, VARs, Channel Partners and Resellers do not want to find new opportunities, they want to close deals. We can provide opportunities that they can close. In return, you get predictable and consistent revenue, new customers, more mind and wallet share from you Sales Team and Partners and you will eliminate the 80-20 paradigm.

After 12 years of selling and business development efforts into the Global 5000, MY COMPANY has perfected a revolutionary prospecting system that generates the first and only breed of “Sales-Ready Opportunities” that produces:

a) Opportunities 100 percent focused on predefined, high-profile, suitable companies

b) Access to the key Decision Makers and Influencers

c) 1000 percent more volume of sales-ready opportunities is produced than with traditional marketing business development campaigns

d) Absolutely the best price/performance—we GUARANTEE results

e) Increase average win rates and deal sizes by 120–155 percent;

f) Shrink their sales cycles by 10–45 percent;

g) Reduce cost of sales with our Cost-Per-Opportunity (CPO) Pricing Model while gaining over 500 percent ROI.

I welcome the opportunity to discuss how we may help your organization and your partners produce the same results.

I appreciate your referral to the most relevant executives in sales. A reply and cc: with their names would be best.

Kindly Requested,

Bill

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Ten common email marketing mistakes that kill your response rates

Sometimes I wonder if it weren’t for the mistakes, how would we learn what not to do, and where/how to get better?

Here are ten email marketing mistakes I see made most often. Some good lessons and reminders here!

1. Writing subject lines at the last minute

All too often, marketers go several drafts deep on the body copy of an email, and forget the subject line completely. Then, at the last minute, someone writes a subject line without a lot of forethought about the audience, objective, or strategy. Of course, the subject line is THE most important part of the email. It’s the portal to get the rest of the email read. If this was direct mail, the subject line is the envelope! If you don’t get past it, everything else inside is wasted.

2. Unreadable without loading the images

Most of us have a default setting in our inbox now that blocks images from loading until we say so. And images in email aren’t necessarily bad, unless they entirely block whatever message or call to action you’re offering. Have at least enough copy visible in your email without loading images so that the reader can get the gist of what you’re saying/offering, and opt to learn more by downloading images (if they’re necessary at all).

3. Call to action only at the very end

It’s a progression that makes sense. Introduction, explanation, pay-off, offer. But many email readers are skimming, and looking for the “payoff” earlier than the end of the email. Instead, look for ways to incorporate links or offers to your call to action early in the email, and at least two to three times including at the end of your overall, nicely structured message.

4. Sending from a building or alias (instead of a person)

Nothing lacks personality and intimacy than an email from “info@” or “sales@” or (worst of all) “donotreply@”. Nobody likes to get emails from an alias or building. It’s impersonal, and constrains your response rates. Gone are the days when you could also fabricate something on your direct mail piece. A quick Google search for whomever is in the “from” line will “out” you as a faker. Worst case, pick someone on your marketing or sales team to be the real person behind the sent emails. I often pick someone from the sales operations team, who likely will get responses and questions from a campaign anyway (from the recipients or from the sales team).

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5. Trickery to drive open or click rates

I’m not a big fan of the “fake forward”. Or subject lines that imply something urgent to get the open, then address something altogether different. Short-term trickery to drive top-of-funnel metrics will only constrain the conversion metrics you really care about, and damage your reputation and brand long-term.

6. Starting sentences with I and we (instead of you)

Prospects don’t care about you. They care about themselves. So, stands to reason that they also don’t want to read about what you think of yourself. Or your company. Address them directly instead. Use “you” more often throughout your copy. Bring them directly into the message and offer.

7. Writing for yourself without thinking about the audience

You know clearly what you (your sales team, and/or your company) want out of a particular campaign or email send. But what’s in it for the customer? What’s the context into which you’re sending the message? What circumstances are they likely to be working in when they get it? Understanding and addressing these situations head-on is a great way to create quicker rapport and response.

8. Using clear spam triggers in subject lines

Seriously, this should be obvious, but it’s not. There are a growing number of keywords that smart email marketers simply avoid, and have avoided for years now. Do a quick Google search for “Spam keywords” and you’ll have this information at your fingertips forevermore.

9. No A/B testing

What are you going to learn 48 hours after the send? You’ll have open and click rates, but compared to what? At minimum, test subject lines as often as possible. Several of the email service providers and marketing automation systems have embedded tools for A/B testing both in email and landing pages. Use them regularly.

10. No testing before the send

Build a rigorous process by which you completely test emails about to go out to customers and prospects. Test that the content is correct, that it renders correctly, that it looks fine across the major email systems (especially Outlook and Gmail). There’s a reason why software developers devote so much time and resources to testing their products before they ship. Marketers shouldn’t operate any differently.

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How to get more people reading your blog

Think you have great content and not enough readers? Beyond focusing on great content for your intended target audience, here are nine ways to get more people reading and following your blog.

1. Use your social networks

Just because they’re following you elsewhere doesn’t mean they subscribe to your RSS feed, or know when you’ve written something new. Use tools such as dlvr.it to automatically add new blog posts to your designated social channels, with unique tracking URLs so you know which social networks are most effective at driving traffic.

2. Invite comments and reaction

The most basic advice is to ask a question or two at the end of the post. Explicitly invite your readers to comment, let them know you want their opinion, and they’ll be more likely to come back again if they feel their own voices will be heard. In your social networks, be explicit that you’re looking for feedback on an idea or opinion. This may drive more traffic than simply sharing the headline and link.

3. Say something controversial

No surprise that controversial content gets read and shared more often. Take a side, back it up with research and/or reasoning, and consider sharing the post directly with those who both agree with you and likely disagree. Those who agree will more likely share it with their friends and followers, and those who disagree may very well send their own followers to argue with you in the comments. But that’s what you want, right?

4. Write about and link to others who are likely to talk about it

Don’t assume that others who care about the same topic are going to read your post or automatically find it in their Google Alerts and Alltop searches. Send them links, ask for their opinions, invite them to your comments. Target especially those who may have their own blogs, social networks with followers, or occasional aggregated news summaries of stories and opinions they particularly like.

5. Find others talking about the same topic and add a link back

There’s nothing wrong with finding other content similar to yours (or at least on the same topic), offering a summary opinion in the comments section, and linking back to your own longer perspective on your blog. There’s a difference between blatantly fishing for links with a quick sentence

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and link-back, and a thoughtful response specifically to the third-party post and a contextual reference to your own piece. The first is spam, the second is participation.

6. Make following you easier

Does your blog post template make it easy for readers to follow you? Is your RSS feed, social handles, and an invitation to subscribe via email prominent, ideally above the fold on the page? Make it easy and more likely that people will come back again.

7. Repurpose and cross sell

Take your really good content and publish it in multiple formats. Turn a great blog post (or series of related blog posts) into a webinar, video or best practices guide. These can be shared on a variety of additional channels— Vimeo, YouTube, SlideShare and more—to tap into a whole new audience for your blog.

8. Tell the aggregators you’re there

In every industry and niche, there are publishers who focus on curation of other great content from across the web. Find these curators and make sure they know about you. Register your site on Alltop, submit it to newsletter editors, and otherwise build relationships with the online curators who represent a significant channel of new readers on an ongoing basis.

9. Be patient

This stuff doesn’t all work all of the time, and it doesn’t happen all at once. The most important thing you can do is continue to produce great content. The rest will work itself out.

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DEMAND GENERATION

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Marketing is about people and problems, not products

I have a problem with the whole idea of “product marketing”. Not the function, but the title.

Nobody really markets the product and does it successfully, because your buyers don’t care about the product.

Successful marketing focuses on the people using the product - their needs, their priorities, and their pain. The more you understand the people and their problems, the more likely you’re going to build the right product in the first place.

And if you follow that chain (people, problems, then product) you’re in a far better position to create interest, preference and closed business.

Too many marketers today take the product or service in front of them and build their marketing by describing it. What it does, how it works. Features, and benefits of those features. But that’s not what your customers want to hear, nor what they want to buy.

Narrow your focus on an audience that has a need. Focus on people and problems, either before or (even better) at the expense of talking about the product.

If your prospect believes that you understand them, their problems and where they’re interested in going, you’ll earn the opportunity to talk about the product. And when you do, that conversation will already be in the right context to compel the sale.

The five jobs of an effective marketing campaign

We marketers have completely screwed up the definition of “campaign”.

Presidential politics? Now that’s a campaign! Barely a month after the election and pundits from both sides of the aisle were already talking about who might win in 2016. And the candidates who think they have a chance are already building their organizations, their strategies and their tactical plans.

That, my friends, is a campaign.

The email you’re sending next Tuesday? That is not a campaign.

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Effective marketing campaigns mobilize your target audience towards an end goal. It starts with reputation building and awareness, moves to demand generation and sales enablement, then finishes with conversion and actualization for the customer.

Yes, this is a lot more work than Tuesday’s email. Yes, this kind of campaign will take a lot of planning and months to execute. But that, in part, is the point.

The more thoughtful we are about the message we want the market to hear, about how we want them to react to that message, how it differentiates from competitors and drives preference for your business, product or services—that’s where the true value of campaign development and execution comes.

I really liked how SiriusDecisions framed the five jobs of an effective marketing campaign at their summit last year. In summary, they said a successful campaign must do the following:

1. Seed2. Create3. Nurture4. Enable5. Accelerate

Put together, effective marketing campaigns seed demand that is created and nurtured by a demand center and/or field marketing, with an end result that is enabled by sales and the customer onboarding program and accelerated by communicating that success with the remainder of the market and through existing customers to drive referrals, renewals and repeat business.

Shifting from tactical, siloed campaigns to this type of comprehensive campaign approach isn’t going to be easy for most marketing organizations, especially those working without a long-term marketing plan or product/market focus.

But look for ways to take your current email sends, paid search efforts and other marketing channels and incorporate more of the five jobs listed above. The more effectively you can incorporate them, the greater long-term success you’re likely to see from finite efforts in the first place.

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How to choose the right database list source providerBy Brian Hansford

Database intelligence and list source providers are everywhere. They play an important role in an overall data management strategy. Even with ongoing inbound contact capture efforts from websites, social media, and events like trade shows, it makes sense to occasionally add fresh contacts from a reputable source.

The problem is filtering through the plethora of list providers to find the right fit for your requirements. Each vendor comes with their own set of advantages and potential problems.

Here are some of the criteria points I recommend when selecting a list and a data source provider.

1. Define the data standard

Every list or set of data records you purchase should meet a data standard defined for your organization. (If you don’t have a data standard, you need one NOW!) For example, a minimum percentage of your marketing automation database should have record completeness with all of this information:

You can measure your marketing automation platform to determine the level of complete records. Incomplete and outdated records make your database ineffective.

2. Who is the company providing you with data and information list services?

Don’t buy a list or database from anyone that doesn’t have a list of reputable clients and does not have a major base of operations in North America. And absolutely don’t buy a list from an offshore list provider with sweatshop web scrapers. A vendor with a cheap list may give you three to ten times as many contacts as a name-brand shop. The initial savings will end up causing pain and costing you more in the long run.

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3. Quality information

Even the best data has a limited shelf life and needs continual maintenance and care. In 2011 the US Department of Labor reported that over 11 million people changed jobs. The best vendors actively maintain their data assets to keep up with the massive changes from people continually moving and shifting where they work and what they do. If the data sets you receive don’t meet quality expectations, those vendors will work to fix the situation by analyzing what happened and providing replacement contacts. Cheap vendors employ sweatshops and web scrapers to pull and identify basic company contact information. This information is ultimately worthless if you do not have reliable contact information including verified email and phone numbers. The best data solution providers can build a data set that meets your data standard and segmentation criteria.

4. Contact-ability

Does your vendor test and maintain the quality of the database contacts for accurate contact information? Do they verify email and phone numbers regularly? Do they filter out spam traps that can put your organization’s reputation and sender score at risk? If so, how do they manage their updates? If your vendor doesn’t have a QA program, or gives you a flaky answer, that’s a negative sign. Your preferred vendors will provide you with the best information services that avoid spam traps.

5. Vertical industry expertise

Some vendors specialize in certain industries like healthcare and B2B tech, and human resources. It pays to conduct research on vendors who specialize in the areas you are targeting.

6. Data enrichment services

Vendors who only provide contact lists will come and go but never really be viable data business partners. The best data and information vendors provide detailed contact information, and in some cases information about planned business initiatives. The best vendors can also test your existing database to ensure duplicates records are not purchased with a new data set. Quality vendors also assess the state of your current data health and provide recommendations and tools for how to maintain data health. Even better, these vendors will have tools that integrate with your existing marketing automation and CRM platforms.

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7. Service

I personally refuse to work with vendors who have poor service, regardless of how good they claim their data products are. I fully expect phone calls will be returned in a timely manner, as well as emails. If we have questions or problems with data services we receive, it’s critical for our clients that we have some investigation and resolution. We want data and information service providers that have the same focus on client success as we do. Companies that focus on transactions are merely commodities and easy to replace.

8. Diversification

Strong data services partners work the best when combined with organic inbound list building. Don’t rely on a vendor or a series of vendors to be your only source of contacts. Combine the effort with submission forms on your websites, event registrations, newsletter subscriptions, and even social media.

Report: Analyzing 62 million web site visits for B2B marketing best practices

62 million visits. 350,000 leads. More than 600 B2B sites.

That’s a lot of data. Pull together a report based on what it says about marketing best practices—what channels are working, which lead sources work best, which social channels are most important, etc.—and we’re talking some seriously valuable insights for B2B companies and marketers of all shapes and sizes.

Having access to that data, of course, is the hard part. Unless you happen to operate the web and marketing systems for those 600+ B2B companies.

That’s where Optify comes in. I highly recommend downloading a copy of their 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report. Lots of great best practices, some which you’d expect but plenty more that were surprising and counter-intuitive to me.

I asked Doug Wheeler, CMO for Optify, to help me dig into more detail on some of the report’s findings.

What are some best practices that led to some B2B companies seeing even higher conversion rates via email than the industry average in the report, which was itself far higher than other channels?

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These companies focused on executing digital marketing programs (e.g. search engine optimization, content marketing and social media) with highly targeted messaging and landing pages to generate ‘opt-in’ prospect responses. Then, used email to nurture their list with direct relevant offers until they received a conversion response.

Social media is still a surprisingly small contributor of leads and traffic to B2B sites. What percent of traffic do you think that could reach at “maturity”, and which channels do you believe will be most relevant to B2B marketers?

It’s true that in our study traffic from social media was five percent or less. Our surprise was that of that five percent the leads generated were heavily slanted towards Twitter over Facebook and LinkedIn. In fact, Twitter converted nine to one over the other two social media powerhouses.

As these digital channels mature for B2B purposes, it will greatly depend on the marketing mix of the company and its target audience. Despite the buzz and pressure to dive into social media marketing, marketers should fully develop their buyer persona(s) to discover the online behavior of their target audience. I would expect to see the LinkedIn platform deliver lower volume than Facebook, but considerably more focused and valuable leads.

Remember, the conversion percent is important, but in the end the actual sales price (ASP) of your product and your customer acquisition cost (CAC) determine which of these social media channels delivers the best return.

Not surprising to see paid search conversions below two percent, but it was somewhat surprising to see social media conversions less than one percent. How do B2B marketers improve this? Better content, better targeting, other?

Yes, the somewhat dismal performance of social media was a surprise. Clearly, focused high-value content combined with one-to-one communications helps make sure you are getting the most from your programs.

You’ve addressed the opportunity for marketers with “not provided” search traffic, can you quickly summarize that and give a couple tips for how marketers can increase traffic and conversions from this?

In summary, Google has decided that any customer logged into a Google product has the right to customer privacy. Therefore, any customer logged in to Gmail, browser or any other Google product will have their keyword search information blocked and Google returns ‘not provided’. This is now over 40 percent of the traffic to B2B customer sites. Take your cues from

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any paid search programs you may have—this does make the assumption that it’s equivalent traffic for paid vs. non paid. In addition, treat all branded traffic as ‘precious’. These are people that entered your company/product name—there’s a reason!

Bing traffic clearly still pales in comparison to Google, but conversion rates and time on site were materially higher for Bing. Why do you think that is?

Although there is clearly less traffic from Bing, the higher conversion rate may be due to the recent social features they are integrating into their search results. The Facebook data that’s integrated into Bing search shows more relevant results to the searcher due to social indicators from the searcher’s own social network. This provides more confidence since the results are from a referral rather than just the search algorithm. With more confidence in the results, once a searcher clicks through to a webpage there is a higher likelihood that the searcher will stay longer and convert more often.

How to rank on Google without knowing anything about SEO

I don’t consider myself a deep SEO expert and I know many marketers (let alone business owners) feel completely lost when they try to read about title tags, canonical links and more.

But you really don’t need to understand SEO to rank well on Google. Sure, you can employ the latest SEO strategies and hire a great consultant or firm to help you get and stay at the top of Google. But many of Google’s latest, most significant updates boil down to one thing—relevance. And that means by focusing on a few simple, common sense things, you can find your content ranking and staying high on Google (and driving you some great traffic) without knowing much if anything about SEO.

For example:

Focus on great content

Produce content regularly that your customers care about. Write, produce videos, get others to guest-create content for you. Make good content and watch what people react to. It’s more complicated than that, of course, but it’s also really that simple.

Don’t worry as much about all the tools

It definitely pays to use tools such as Wordtracker, Optify and others to scientifically choose the right keywords to use in your posts, as well as ensure your “keyword density” is at the right ratios. But if you don’t have

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time or don’t have access, keep one thing in mind. Focus on topics related to customer pain, problems, outcomes and objectives. Create less content about solutions directly. Most of your competitors are writing content about their solutions and those “most desirable” keywords. Fewer are creating content about the originating context your customers start with, and the outcomes they’re seeking. But these are the keywords your customers use most often.

Listen to your customers

What are they talking about? What topics are showing up more often on the discussion forums and conference agendas? These topics are more likely to be relevant right now. Create content for these topics before others get there, and as search volume increases you’re more likely to get a greater share of the traffic.

Look at your data

Notice any themes? Do you get more traffic or retweets when you write about one theme vs. another? Do certain posts generate a little less traffic but better quality visits and higher conversions via your lead forms? As you produce more and more content, your metrics will be a proxy of what’s working and what you should continue to create more of.

Look at your competitors

There are two ways to approach this. One, use their editorial calendar (implied based on what they’re creating themselves) to draft off of what’s working. Two, based on your insights from the above efforts, hit ‘em where they ain’t.

Focus on your social relationships

Social and SEO are becoming more and more intertwined. So it’s more important now than ever before to increase your social activity and following, but also increase interaction between your social networks and your content. Find those with high-influence followers and high Klout scores, and focus on driving more engagement with them.

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Six secrets to A/B testing successBy Bailie Losleben

Sending nurturing emails, running Google Adwords campaigns, and providing great content pieces are a great way to get new clients—but it’s only half the battle. In order to get your B2B marketing campaigns generating leads you have to test, and test, and test some more.

Luckily, with a little structure, optimizing all of your campaigns can be easy and eye opening. Here are six tips for testing success.

1. Keep it simple

Trying to test too many variables at once is like trying to figure out the source of your indigestion while chowing down at an all you can eat buffet. You have to take your time, test one variable at a time (or at least in isolation) to really know what your audience is responding to.

2. Organized testing

Keep an active record of everything you are currently testing and everything you plan to test in the future. This can easily be achieved through a simple spreadsheet: record the results of the tests, what exactly was tested, the winning version and what the next steps are. This will not only help you make sound decisions, but will help you more easily optimize future campaigns.

3. Use noticeable CTAs

The call to action in any marketing material should be obvious, and strategically placed where the eye naturally lands. Play around with the CTA: change the color, the language, the font. All of this can make a big difference in your test results.

4. Color and style make a difference

Believe it or not, some of the biggest changes in performance come from a simple color change. Try changing the colors of the CTA’s, headers, graphics etc. Try testing product images vs stock photos- a simple image change can have dramatically different results.

5. Test for your audience

What works for one target audience will not work for all. Even a new product will probably require different marketing efforts than older products.

6. Test everything

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Layout best practices for effective B2B web sites

There are some fantastic web site designers and developers out there, but few who really understand how to build a B2B web site. Effective design and look/feel is important, but there are several layout and back-end requirements that make a successful B2B web site perform well from day one.

Here are several front-end and back-end recommendations for B2B web sites.

Front End:

sub-menus.

Concur.com and Salesforce.com for good examples of this).

message box (rotating panels are okay if they’re easy to change and control/reverse/etc, plus as long as you can track click rates for each panel individually to see which message or offer performs best.

right side (see Eloqua.com and Salesforce.com for good examples of this)

(LexisNexis.com has a good example of this).

solutions, summary of blog post headlines, of primary benefit statements (DocuSign.com has a good example of this).

you—DocuSign.com has a good example of this).

making it easy for visitors to navigate quickly to remaining site features (box.com, IBM.com and Concur.com have good examples of this).

Back End:

from Optify or Hubspot so you can get better intelligence on what site visitors are doing, and where they’re from.

tools and generating alerts/lead assignments when prospects do certain activities that demonstrate near-term buying interest.

which company or individual is visiting the page (this might be a more advanced feature to add later).

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Easy tactics to build brand, get referrals, and drive customer relations

This is a relatively easy way to drive some viral marketing and get your customers (and employees) involved. Print some unique t-shirts that prominently feature your logo or brand. Give them to all employees, and ship them to customers.

Then, tell them to get out there and start taking pictures. Feature the best photos on your web site, your blog, and your social channels. Create contests for the most creative use of the t-shirt, the farthest away from your headquarters, the most unique location. Incorporate them into scavenger hunts (especially at your user conferences).

Make one day every week “YOUR BRAND HERE t-shirt day”. Encourage employees and customers to wear their t-shirts that day and send pictures.

Growing up in a suburb of San Francisco, a local Wilderness Supply shop did something very similar. They featured these distinctive green bags they would use to send you home with whatever you bought. And their back wall was covered in photos of their customers proudly holding up their green Wilderness Supply bags all over the world—on mountaintops, in remote areas, at the North and South poles, at the bottom of the ocean and more.

It’s fun, it’ll get people involved, it’ll spark new ideas and creativity, and I can measurably drive referrals and new business as well.

Eight ways to make your webinar more compelling

If you thought last year was the year of the webinar, wait till you see this year.

More and more companies are discovering the power of webinars as educational, thought leadership and lead generation tools. And that means you’re likely going to be inundated even more in 2014 with webinar offers.

As a marketer, this doesn’t mean you should pull webinars from your marketing mix. Far from it, as they can still be incredibly powerful, foundational tools. You just need to execute better.

Below are eight ways to make your webinars more compelling, help them stand out from the crowd, and increase their power to attract and convert prospects into followers, opportunities and closed business.

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1. Choose a narrower target audience

If you’re trying to get as many attendees as humanly possible, you might be shooting for too wide of an audience. Narrowing your focus to a more specific target audience will help you hone the message, value proposition and appeal of the event more specifically to a particular group of prospects, decision-makers and/or influencers. Focus on quality of content and audience, and not always the highest possible registration volume.

2. Solve problems vs. describing products

Unless you’ve promoted it specifically as a demo event, don’t waste time describing or promoting your product. Your company or product can be a sponsor of the event, but use the webinar to address and solve problems your customers have. Help them think differently about something they already struggle with. If you’re trying to introduce a solution, you might be doing so out of context or too early, when the prospect doesn’t yet understand or respect its ability to solve their problems.

3. Make your points more immediately actionable and tactical

We’re all busy people, and have tons to get done. So if your webinar can help me get those things done, I’m all ears. But that typically means they need to focus on content that’s very actionable and tactical, including best practices that can immediately—right now—help me do my job better. Leave the theoretical discussions for another event. The more actionable your webinar, the more attractive it will be for busy prospects.

4. Make it really clear what people will learn

Every good webinar description needs a clear, short “you will learn” section. Ideally, this is a bullet list at least three or four points long. It should enumerate some specific, actionable things people will take away by attending. This is tactical but critical. Scanners won’t read your two-paragraph warm-up copy. They want to know, quickly, what they’ll get out of it. If your bullet list passes the sniff test, they’ll register.

5. Tease the reader with quality, pre-event content

If your webinar will feature a prominent expert, author or speaker, why not publish a short Q&A with that presenter on your blog a week or so beforehand? If you’re going to feature a top ten list of tips to do X, why not feature the first couple on your blog as well? Think about how you can use your additional content, social and marketing channels to share snippets of content relative to the presentation, and drive additional demand, interest and registrations.

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6. Create an extra incentive or offer to attend live

Is there something you could make available only to those who attend live? Something like an extra white paper or free research report or e-copy of the speaker’s book? Something of value without a ton of incremental hard cost to you, but makes it that much more likely someone will 1) register, and 2) actually show up.

7. Build the presentation for skimmers

We all do it. Attend webinars while multi-tasking with something else. We listen, sort of, while checking email or flipping through RSS feeds. We aren’t going to change this behavior, so we might as well optimize our webinars to accommodate. So if you take too long to make a point, those multi-tasking might miss it. But if you format and present your content with skimmers in mind (think top ten lists, highlighted subsections, well-formatted and clear divisions between points), you’re more likely to get the point across to more people. And, bonus, skimmer-focused webinar content typically works much better for subsequent, on-demand viewers of the recording.

8. Have a plan for takeaways

Think beyond just a copy of the deck and recording. Could you summarize your main points in a one-page PDF? Create a checklist of to-dos and action items out of the event? For attendees and non-attendees alike, make it easy to distribute, pass along and digest the content in shorter, more efficient formats.

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Is your webinar vanilla or hot fudge? How to scale your online event ROIBy Brian Hansford

Webinars are the vanilla ice cream of B2B marketing tactics and that’s okay. But think about how much more interesting a scoop of vanilla is when it’s in a sundae! Webinars are a starting point that marketers can build multiple assets from for a rich content marketing program. Here is a great way to look at using webinars to build multiple content assets.

The scoops—record it

Webinar platforms and service providers offer ways to record the event for on demand playback. Don’t rely on a “one-time only” webinar event to engage your audience. By recording the webinar and making it available for on-demand playback, you can connect with more of an audience over a longer period of time.

Chocolate syrup—transcribe it

We almost always recommend having a webinar transcribed. The raw transcription is the basis for creating multiple assets that support the presentation. If you have limited resources look at using a freelancer from eLance to transcribe the event.

Carmel syrup—blog series

With some basic editing, the transcription can be turned in a blog, or better yet, an entire blog series. We recently worked with a company using this simple approach where we transcribed and edited the webinar into a seven part blog series that can be published over a period of time. That is hugely valuable.

Sprinkles—downloadable PDF asset

Webinars are organized into logical sections of content that share ideas the audience can relate to. Listening to a webinar isn’t always possible, or desired. Take the transcribed content and turn that into a webinar content summary, checklist, or report, formatted as a PDF.

Cherry on top—inside sales assets

Get the inside sales team involved and provide them with the assets they can use in webinar-related conversations with prospects and customers. Webinar attendee and no-show follow up emails can include links to the on-demand webinar recording or blog series. Voicemail talking points can include brief details on the webinar.

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Put it together

A webinar is just the beginning, not the destination. Using the ideas I’ve listed let’s arrange the components into an ice cream sundae of content marketing. If your organization delivers multiple webinars every quarter, you can rapidly build a library of highly valuable content assets. Make sure to record the webinar for on-demand playback. Once a webinar is delivered, find a resource to transcribe the presentation and edit the notes. This may be something you or someone on your team or a freelancer.

Post the pre-recorded webinar to your website or host as a gated asset with your marketing automation platform. In parallel, edit the content for a blog or blog series. At the end of each blog, promote the link to the full recorded webinar, or even a complementary webinar. Think about sharing quotes or facts from the blog and webinar on Twitter and LinkedIn. The webinar transcription can be crafted into a subsequent document asset that summarizes the overall topic. You can also cross the webinar from this asset and encourage visitors to view the webinar.

A webinar can turn from a single scoop of lonely vanilla ice cream to a richly decadent content marketing sundae. Your audience will be grateful for the choices.

Why bullet points on webinar slides are okay

If you’re presenting live, you want people watching you, not your slides. If you’re presenting live, you have a captive audience that’s there for you, focused on you. It’s important that they hear what you’re saying, and any visuals behind you should reinforce those points.

Not verbatim. If your live presentation slides are full of bullet points, your audience will frantically try to read everything. They’re no longer listening to you, and it’s that much harder to remember what they heard (or read) after you’re done.

Webinars, however, are a different story. They can hear you but not see you. It’s far more passive, even vs. something live and in person. And if it’s literally just a slide deck they’re watching, it’s Okay to have more words.

Why? Your audience probably isn’t listening that closely to you anyway. They’re multitasking. Checking email, cleaning up their desk. When they glance up, you want them to be able to quickly catch up.

Bullets or key points on webinar slides, therefore, are far more helpful. In this context, they’ll help your audience learn faster.

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LEAD MANAGEMENT AND NURTURING

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Is marketing automation more important than sales CRM?

It’s not a crazy idea. Here’s why.

In a nutshell, the only thing CRM systems do is organize your information. They don’t actually do anything. They keep track of your sales, but they don’t engage your prospects. That’s still up to you. They capture your sales process, but they don’t execute it.

A good marketing automation system, on the other hand, proactively helps you. If set up and managed well, you can sit back and do nothing and the system will drop interested prospects in your lap.

Even if your sales process was a mess and your sales pipeline didn’t really exist, a good marketing automation strategy and execution can make things happen.

Sales CRM is strategy

Even the sales process embodied within your CRM system is just strategy. Marketing automation embeds strategy but also drives execution. And the only way you’re going to sell something is to execute.

I don’t actually recommend someone choose one or the other. World-class sales and marketing organizations need both to succeed and scale. You need sales process, CRM and marketing operations.

If anything, I want companies who have resisted marketing automation as a part of their strategy to make sure their priorities are in the right place.

Sales CRM is table stakes, and sales strategy should be table stakes too. Eventually, marketing automation will be as well. But for now, and into 2014, companies that treat marketing automation as a core part of their execution have a competitive advantage over others.

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Analyze the marketing automation data that impacts revenueBy Brian Hansford

Marketing automation platforms help marketing professionals identify revenue opportunities based on interactions and behaviors with a prospective company. Using the right metrics in demand generation will show how a marketing automation strategy drives revenue and connects with customers.

With companies adopting web 1.0 technologies in the 1990s and the internet reaching the masses, marketers struggled to learn how to measure their impact to the business. Email marketing reached a fever pitch with the promise of promoting e-commerce web sites to consumers and businesses in the new economy. Marketing teams still measure bullet point items like click-thrus, impressions, open rates, number of site visitors, and more. Even senior-level marketing executives could not connect the path between these activity metrics and impact to revenue. Even today marketing managers and executives just look for higher activity numbers—more site visitors, more webinar attendees, more tradeshow leads and on. This type of analytical behavior places higher values on quantity over quality.

Now it’s more important to have higher quality leads that are ready for sales to engage versus a bucket of thousands of contact names with no identified or qualified interest. Marketing automation can help marketers identify the campaigns that produce the highest quality leads that generate the most revenue with the lowest cost. This information is powerful and empowering.

Here are some general examples of data to analyze and build the complete picture of how a marketing automation strategy impacts revenue.

1. Inquiry conversions

Measure conversion performance from initial contact through nurturing, opportunity, and win/loss.

2. Marketing qualified leads (MQL)

Leads that meet agreed on qualification criteria that move to sales for further qualification and prospecting.

3. Sales Qualified Leads

Track the percentage of MQLs that develop into sales qualified leads. Also track the percentage of leads that sales disqualifies.

4. Sales follow up

Track the percentage of MQLs that are contacted by sales.

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5. Fallout

Track the percentage of leads that drop out of each stage of the marketing funnel and sales cycle. Identify opportunities to minimize dropoff.

6. Conversion to revenue

What is the overall picture of revenue generation from demand generation. Revenue per month, quarter, year.

7. Revenue per campaign

Analysis that combines qualitative and quantitative analysis. Too often the old school method of direct marketing permeates marketing that more is better. Revenue per campaign may show the most effective campaigns produce the fewest number of leads. But, those leads may produce the highest revenue.

8. Cost per campaign

The lowest cost campaign may produce the highest revenue or highest volume of qualified leads.

How marketing automation enhances Google AdWords campaignsBy Brian Hansford

Directors of marketing and demand generation can greatly enhance Google AdWords campaigns using marketing automation. Quite often the missing piece for paid search campaigns are structured ways to capture and track conversion activity. Paid search campaigns aren’t right for every organization. But where AdWords is a valid and integral component of an overall demand generation strategy, marketing automation can provide the boost needed to enhance performance!

Without marketing automation, marketing is challenged or severely limited in their ability to track responses and map activity to existing contacts in the nurturing queue as well as those that are brand new.

Let’s look at two scenarios. One AdWords campaign without marketing automation, and one with. Remember, map the campaign workflow first.

Scenario 1—meat and potatoes AdWords campaign

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once a download is completed

IT involvement

CRM system and a marketing database and subjectively disregards bogus contacts (i.e. Mickey Mouse, etc.)

to track activity against previous conversions. No Google Analytics on landing page. Human data entry requirement. Risk of duplicate entries for individual contacts in the CRM system and marketing database.

Scenario 2—AdWords campaign with marketing automation

business rules

per field, email address formation, and minimum numbers for phone

existing leads in nurturing programs or sales prospecting

marketing automation system

page and form

Marketing automation script to provide forwarding to a friend option to gather viral contacts.

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review email deliverability, email and landing page rendering, data capture, content downloads, etc.

integrity of production data

In the second scenario, which is simplified (don’t be intimidated by the list of steps in scenario two) it is important to show how a marketing automation system can capture data for each contact which is then scored/tracked against a qualification threshold before passing to sales. Additionally, the risk of human error is practically eliminated since data entry is no longer required. Google Analytics codes will assist with analysis. Aligning keyword content for each ad and the landing pages will help position the ads higher on the page.

Five keys to successful marketing automation contentBy Brian Hansford

Content helps prospects find an organization, learn and engage. Content even helps customers and non-customers alike become advocates. With a marketing automation initiative, content drives engagement and conversions which ultimately accelerates revenue!

Content often presents the biggest challenge for organizations that pursue a marketing automation initiative. Unfortunately content is often treated like a ‘Marketing 1.0’ task that a solo marketing communications writer should produce. I adopted a saying a few years ago that is “content is the fuel that launches the marketing automation rocket.” Without content, a marketing automation initiative will simply sit in limbo on the launch pad.

A well run marketing organization must have an annual campaign strategy and calendar, regardless of whether or not a marketing automation system is employed. Without a strategy, lead flow will be inconsistent, the content requirements will be unknown, campaigns will falter and the investment in marketing automation will be wasted.

Consider the content required to run each stage of a campaign in the buying cycle. Additional content will be required to support nurturing campaigns that help prevent leakage in the marketing funnel. Depending on which industry in B2B marketing, there will be different individuals at a

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target company that will require content suited to their roles and influence. Develop the right content for the right audience to be delivered at the right time using a marketing automation platform.

Great content helps organizations build credibility, awareness, and sets the standard that competitors must react to in order to keep up. That’s a position of strength!

Here are five considerations for developing and implementing a successful content strategy to support a marketing automation initiative.

1. Audience

Who are the influencers and decision makers that will consume the content? Do you also have to reach partners, media, and analysts?

2. Content types to steps in a buyer’s journey

Map the stages buyers take from pre-funnel, top of funnel, mid-funnel, final decision and beyond as existing customers. The buyer and customer journey has requirements for each phase. Here are some ideas to consider for different types:

Educational: Information designed to help prospective customers better understand the segment and solution. Well-developed content that educates also establishes credibility. Industry reports, webinars, keynote event presentations, blogs, social media user groups, and white papers are excellent formats for educational content.Awareness: As prospective customers become more educated on the segment and solutions they will evaluate how vendors address their needs. In addition to the formats used with educational content, customer evidence through case studies is fantastic in this area. Also, content that focuses on “how-to” or “best-practices” is a perfect fit in this area.Affirmation: As leads are nurtured into opportunities for sales follow up, they need information that helps lead them to a confident purchase decision. This is the area where vendors can define the terms of an evaluation that competitors must follow. Develop an RFP model or template. Provide more case studies and best practices. ROI models are also valuable and help develop a business case. The goal here is to build confidence that YOU are the right one to work with.Advocate: The sale has been won but now is not the time for complacency. Develop the content and delivery channels that help your hard-earned customers squeeze every drop of value from your solution. The more value you provide with strong communications and content, the stronger the relationship and the less chance of a defection.

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3. Content sources and contributors

Don’t treat content development and curation as a task for a single marketing communications writer. Compelling, educational, informative, and entertaining content can be provided by multiple sources inside and outside of an organization. High value content can be developed for little or no cost! Executives in the C-suite, VPs and directors should all understand this by now and even provide content themselves. Customers, industry experts, channel partners, analysts, and independent bloggers are also great sources of content!

4. Nurture campaign requirements

Understand content requirements when building campaign strategies and themes.

5. Frequency and channels

Content delivery methods are incredibly varied and many can be managed with a marketing automation platform. Proper planning helps identify whether enough content, or too much is planned for an audience.

Don’t let a marketing automation falter because of a lack of a content development plan. Content helps drive revenue when delivered with marketing automation platforms. The better the plan and implementation, the greater the return on the investment!

Implement your marketing automation system with CRM integrationBy Brian Hansford

Generating high quality leads without a systematic way to hand them off to sales is pointless.

Cloud-based CRM systems like Salesforce.com and Microsoft Dynamics CRM are prolific and many marketing automation systems provide efficient technology integrations with most of the major CRM players. This is where organizations derive massive value from the advanced heavy lifting of developing a lead management process

To be clear, this step is not as easy as mapping fields. The process must be in place at least 80 percent of the way for this to work. Sales management and the sales representatives must buy into the process. Sales must follow

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up on the marketing qualified leads and provide data back to help measure whether the right leads are flowing, or not.

Marketing automation integrated with CRM supports the full cycle of developing and managing leads and measuring effectiveness. Marketing executives can directly measure their performance on revenue generation. Both marketing and sales are held accountable with this integration, and that is good! This critical information must be captured within a CRM system.

Systems that have the best integration with CRM allow for bi-directional information synchronization. A sales rep can add qualification or prospecting attributes to a lead in the CRM system and pass the lead back to marketing for further lead nurturing. Additionally, sales can add their own contacts into sales-led nurturing campaigns using a defined library of high value content that will help them progress the lead closer to a sale. Tight integration with bi-directional synchronization ensures these efforts are well coordinated.

A sales organization that has the training and methodology implemented with their teams to effectively utilize CRM has a competitive advantage. Without showing the interaction and behavior prior to sales engagement, a representative is essentially selling cold.

Establish communication channels and processes

Without communication any strategic initiative will fail. Marketing automation initiatives impact groups across an entire organization from sales to operations to service and even finance. The marketing executive and sponsor must rally inter- and intra-departmental support for a marketing automation initiative.

The operational team for the marketing automation platform must communicate the overall campaign strategy for a given period of time to ensure sales and partners are aware. Communication ensures long term requirements for content are understood and delivery is on time. Without the content, campaigns strategies will run out of gas.

Most importantly, strong organizational communication involves more of the organization in the marketing automation strategy which provides direct impact to revenue generation.

Ensure comprehensive systems and process training

When a company adopts a marketing automation solution, there is too much at stake with both revenue and politics for a weak start due to poor training.

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Too many marketing automation providers sell their product as a silver bullet marketing solution. But the simple fact is that demand generation and customer acquisition workflow is complex. Vendors and users alike have common interests in pursuing and encouraging a successful solution deployment.

Not only should the campaigns and lead flow processes be well developed by the company, the users of the marketing automation tool must be very well trained in how to implement them. Some vendors are incredibly conservative and guarded with who and how they provide training for fear of letting too much information into the market. This is self-defeating which ultimately negatively affects system usage.

The internal champions and power users for the chosen platforms should have comprehensive training. Without training, a marketing automation platform inevitably will be used merely as an email engine, limiting its value to less than 5 percent. Don’t go into production without comprehensive training.

How to build a lead scoring strategy that sales will supportBy Brian Hansford

Lead scoring strategies that succeed require coordinated alignment between marketing and sales. This alignment doesn’t have to be perfect. But unilaterally developed lead scoring programs are doomed to fail without active sales adoption.

When done poorly, lead scoring is just another data point that doesn’t drive action. Done well, lead scoring builds a bridge of collaboration between sales and marketing and leads to pipeline acceleration.

Marketing still needs to execute an effective campaign and nurture strategy to fill the funnel. Lead scores are the exclamation point that leads to effective lead follow up action.

Lead scoring isn’t just about using a marketing automation platform to capture and calculate A1s or C3s or B2s.

Lead scoring only succeeds with follow up action. These steps are the best ways to build a solid lead scoring program that sales will support!

1. Agreed upon personas

Love them or loathe them, different personas usually require different scoring models and/or ranks. Decision makers should be scored differently

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than an influencer or an end user. Some companies have multiple personas and scoring models uniquely suited for business units and product lines. Understanding WHO leads to building a better scoring strategy and follow up action.

2. What the heck is a qualified lead?

Marketing and sales need to agree on the stages of lead qualification. What is a qualified lead? Define the lead score parameters and thresholds BEFORE pulling levers and pushing buttons in your marketing automation platform.

3. Profile weighting

Only focus on what matters. Profile information is important in building a lead score profile. But it doesn’t tell the whole story. The traditional method of scoring on Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeframe (BANT) is difficult to capture in a reliable manner using marketing automation. Not everyone openly and honestly provides budget information in an online form. Job titles can be inflated and difficult to score.

Need and timeframe are easier to capture and score. Then, work with Sales to identify the right profile information. Sales must validate and qualify the BANT criteria when initially working with a lead. Marketing can only start building the profile.

4. Engagement weighting

Identify the patterns of interest. How someone interacts with your company and content is powerful information which fills the score profile. Where, how long and how often did they spend time with your content? What content did they consume? These scores are the secret sauce for a lead scoring program because they show levels of interest.

5. Don’t score what doesn’t matter

Job seekers and competitors can spend a ton of time on sites and consuming content. This behavior can lead to high engagement scores and pull Sales away from leads they should focus on. Use lead scoring programs to depreciate or suppress these scores altogether. Sales will appreciate it!

6. Define follow-up actions and a service level agreement

Follow up action is critical! Lead scoring will fail without Sales doing their part. Build follow up actions for each level of lead score. The follow up action can include the maximum time required for follow up and the recommended conversation. For example, a perfect lead with an A1 score may require follow up within four hours of reaching the CRM follow up queue. The A1 conversation can steer toward activating a product demo.

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On the other hand a C3 lead may require follow up within 48 hours and a personal email with links to an informational webinar. Sales must agree to the follow up action on each lead and enforce this with a service level agreement with Marketing.

7. Review lead scoring with sales

Success begins with reviewing the lead scoring model before it’s rolled out. Sales managers can provide critical input to fine tuning a lead score model. This input leads to buy-in and enforcement on follow up actions.

8. Roll-out, test, refine

When the lead scoring program is turned on, send leads to Sales with a bigger range of scores. During the initial stage, some organizations may prefer a pilot roll-out with a select Sales team to test scoring accuracy. Sales should provide feedback and disposition tracking in the CRM system that shows lead scoring effectiveness. Fine tuning the filter can help Marketing send better leads to Sales. The more consistent the follow up action, the better the lead scoring program!

Lead scoring takes work to build, refine and measure. Marketing can drive the process but it only works with a strong partnership with sales.

Three keys to more effective customer profilesBy Maria Geokezas

Every successful business person will tell you that understanding your customer is the key to a successful business. When you’ve developed a precise and unique customer profile it will carry through to your marketing and sales plan, customer acquisition and loyalty strategy as well as the campaigns you execute.

Even when putting together a one-off event, or crafting a simple email, you have to start with the customer in mind in order for those efforts to be effective.

Customer profiles help you and your marketing team focus on the person consuming your product or service. Depending on the type and size of your business, you may have one customer profile or several. Harley-Davidson, for example, identified 17 unique customer personas that guided their product development, marketing and sales efforts.

A good customer profile ensures that your list building strategy is on target, your messaging is relevant and your offer will elicit response. Here are three components of a solid customer profile:

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1. Go beyond the basic firmographics

Obviously, basic targeting characteristics are essential to understanding the ideal customer for your product or service. Your strategy, messaging, channels and budget will differ if you are targeting managers in Human Resource departments of multi-national enterprises versus Vice Presidents of HR of small professional service firms in the Pacific Northwest.

2. Get to know where they live

Paint a picture of your ideal customer by describing their work environment. Describe the pressures they face, their pain points and priorities. Understand the decision-making process they go through. How painful does it have to get before they go searching for a solution? Do they have approval authority or do they need to influence another decision maker? If you can figure out what keeps them up at night, and how they make decisions, you have a good start to your marketing plan.

3. Bring your profile to life

Give your profile a name and build a story about how this customer uses your product (or category of product) and how they interact with your brand. Capture their attitude about the offering. Use language that they would use if they were telling the story to a friend. Bringing in this level of customer insight will add feeling of familiarity to your communications.

Much of this information will be uncovered through customer surveys. However, in-person or phone interviews with internal stakeholders and customers will be incredibly valuable in creating a more robust description of the customer’s psyche and motivations.

The first step is to gain the perspective of stakeholders inside the company that have direct contact with customers and potential customers. Get input from those who sell to the customer as well as those who service the customer after the sale is made.

Combined, these two perspectives will help you develop a better customer interview, allowing you to dig deeper, uncover more specific insights and ensure that your customer profile is an active part of your marketing strategy.

After several customer interviews have been completed, review your list of questions and answers, to determine if you need to revise your interview script or delve deeper into a certain area. Once the interviews are completed, compile them into your profiles. Keep in mind; this is more of an art than a science.

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Eight habits of world-class B2B lead management programs

World-class marketing organizations—at companies big and small—can be intimidating to watch. Read their case studies and listen to their leaders on stage and you might assume there’s an impossible gap between where you are now, and what they’ve been able to achieve.

But if you look more closely and analyze what world-class marketing organizations consistently do well and focus on, you’ll find there’s a much smaller set of accessible best practices that almost any organization can focus on to quickly accelerate performance and sales output.

Recently, Trip Kucera from Aberdeen Group published a research brief titled Marketing Lead Management: From the Top of the Funnel to the Top Line. In it, and by surveying more than 160 marketing organizations across North America, Kucera identified a number of specific, actionable best practices and recommendations for “the rest of us.”

Here are some highlights:

1. World-class marketers require fewer marketing responses to generate a deal

In fact, 56 percent of best-in-class organizations develop end-to-end lead management processes that span marketing and sales, which improves story consistency with prospects and accelerates overall conversion rates. The difference in number of marketing responses required to generate one customer between classes of marketing organizations was significant. On average, overall survey respondents required 143 marketing leads to get one customer. Best-in-class organizations required just 68, less than half the industry average.

2. World-class marketers worry less about data quality for inbound leads

Thirty-two percent of respondents put a focus on improving marketing and customer data quality, while only 15 percent of best-in-class marketers make data quality a priority. This speaks to their confidence in the overall lead management process, capturing leads early in their buying journey and nurturing those prospects (while appending information and buying signals over time) to let the overall process determine sales readiness, instead of up-front data appending or longer registration forms that constrain response.

3. World-class marketers constantly refine lead qualification criteria over time

Few organizations set lead scoring models and set common definitions of qualified leads between sales and marketing. But of those that do, only half (50 percent, according to the survey) regularly evaluate and update lead qualification criteria. But among best-in-class marketers, 70 percent have a process for regularly improving lead qualification criteria, and they do so via a collaborative process that involves both sales and marketing representatives.

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4. World-class marketers know good leads aren’t always born that way

Best-in-class companies are more likely than others to use lead scoring and nurturing to overcome concerns about initial lead quality. Sixty-five percent of best-in-class companies define and execute multi-step lead nurturing processes, and 59 percent of these same organizations (vs. an industry average of 25 percent) utilize lead scoring to progress leads over time. Without these priorities in place, marketers are left to focus primarily on initial lead quality, which fails to allow for leads to either mature or “heat up” at a later date when their own buying conditions are riper.

5. World-class marketers dedicate resources to marketing operations

Best-in-class companies realize that a dedicated marketing operations resource (or team) can be the most important component of effective marketing execution and ongoing optimization. Sixty-nine percent of best-in-class organizations have dedicated resources responsible for optimizing lead management, vs. 33 percent of “average” organizations. A further 69 percent of best-in-class organizations have a resource responsible for implementation and management of marketing systems. Strategies are great, but unless you have the initial and ongoing resources to implement them, you’re losing significant opportunity to not only increase overall marketing investment yield, but decrease costs as a percentage of sales and revenue over time.

6. World-class marketers use outbound telemarketing

This was a highlight of the updated Demand Waterfall from a SiriusDecisions Summit. In fact, 63 percent of best-in-class companies use outbound telemarketing, compared with 38 percent of all other firms. Further research from Aberdeen showed that organizations with a telemarketing focus generate 48 percent higher marketing-qualified and sales-qualified lead conversion rates. Do the math on that difference for your organization and average selling price, and telemarketing can pencil out as a clear advantage very quickly.

7. World-class marketers know exactly which campaigns are most effective at driving profit (not just response)

Most marketers have tracking systems in place, but few have the level of tracking and ROI precision they need to determine—at a campaign, program and micro-channel level—what’s working and what’s not. Even fewer can establish ROI not just based on lead response, but based on closed business and revenue generation. Of best-in-class organizations, 81 percent have the ability to identify the most and least profitable campaigns. That’s almost twice the industry average. Further, 68 percent of best-in-class companies have the ability to determine attribution for marketing-generated leads (more than twice the industry average).

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8. World-class marketers make full use of their marketing automation systems

I’ve seen statistics that estimate 70 percent of marketing automation installs are used primarily for batch-and-send emails and landing pages. Aberdeen’s research breaks that down, highlighting the significant gaps between best-in-class companies vs. the industry average by marketing automation feature leverage, including reporting and analytics (95 percent for best-in-class vs. 69 percent for all others), lead scoring (75 percent vs. 55 percent) and cookie-based web tracking (63 percent vs. 44 percent). Or as Kucera put it, for most companies, “it’s a bit like using a supercar to drive Miss Daisy around town.”

The five stages of lead qualification

Everybody wants qualified leads. The right person, at the right company, ready to buy with money to spend.

Those may be the leads you want, and the leads that close, but you’ll go crazy (and possibly broke) trying to generate exclusively leads that look like this. A better way, that not only yields the most sales-ready leads now but also a growing pipeline of opportunities down the road, is to keep the funnel wide, wide open at the very top and narrow/filter through a series of qualification stages before the right leads get to a sales rep.

There are five basic stages of lead qualification. Some companies get far more sophisticated, but for most of us this framework could very quickly segment and operationalize your existing and new leads into the right buckets, make the best use of your sales team’s time, and significantly subsidize lead generation budgets in the months ahead.

Stage 1: Names

This is the most basic level, with virtually no filter. This might not even require lead capture through a registration form. It can include names captured via a trade show drawing, newsletter sign-ups, those who registered for a white paper with little more than a name and email address (even if it’s a personal address like Gmail or Hotmail).

It can also be a qualified list you purchase or aggregate, but for the purpose of this framework let’s assume each of these names have done something to proactively give you their contact information (no matter how sparse).

There’s no direct action with this list until another, simple layer of qualification.

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Stage 2: In-profile leads

These individuals still haven’t expressed any interest in your product or service. But you can start to narrow your list based on basic criteria to determine which of your compiled names even have a chance of becoming a customer.

This step assumes you already have defined what a qualified prospect looks like. On the surface, that means the right company and the right individual, based on title or role. This step can also include filtering by particularly important company characteristics that can be identified externally—things like whether the company has a particular public initiative (going carbon-neutral, for example) or whether they have customer login capabilities (if you’re selling online transaction or security capabilities, for example).

The vast majority of good leads at this stage are qualified but not ready to buy. That means they’re in-profile, the right company and/or individual, but they haven’t exhibited any specific interest or buying signals. Yet. Hence the next stage:

Stage 3: Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)

Now we start to get into the jargon and acronyms you may hear in a variety of lead scoring and marketing automation circles. At this stage, the right-profiled prospect has exhibited some level of interest or early buying behavior.

It can be site traffic patterns you’re watching via a service such as Optify or Hubspot. It can be a demo request following a couple months of webinar registrations. Tools from Optify and Marketo, for example, can also help you score leads based on site visit frequency, type of content they check out, duration of visits, and a variety of other weighted activities.

The more advanced marketing automation systems can automatically pass to sales the leads that pass a certain lead score threshold. But you can also do this manually.

Many companies pass these leads directly on to the sales team, but the leads haven’t necessarily indicated they’re ready to buy. They’ve only exhibited certain activities that tell us they could be close. Hence, some companies have instituted phone-based lead qualifiers to take MQLs and further qualify them for potential sales activity.

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Stage 4: Sales Accepted Leads (SALs)

Leads that pass the above stage with a high-enough lead score go to the phone-based lead qualifiers. Their job is to get the prospect on the phone and ask the questions that prospect behavior and tracking can’t easily capture. This includes company and/or individual priorities and pain points, specific prioritization and/or timing to solve the problem, and interest (based on those answers) in learning more about a possible solution.

Some of these leads will now be qualified and ready to buy. Some will be qualified and have a need, but the timing isn’t right (for a variety of reasons). Some may have been incorrectly scored and need to go back to marketing (i.e. back to stage three).

Stage 5: Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs)

These prospects are qualified and ready to buy. They have a timeline, they have identified or have access to a budget. They are the decision maker and/or have the decision-maker actively engaged and on the same page re: prioritization and timing. They also likely have a “compelling event” in the company or industry that’s driving urgency.

For many organizations, these leads are immediate opportunities. They’re active deals in the pipeline with an expected or estimated close date.

If you’re an organization that currently pushes all leads directly to sales, moving from a two-step process to a five-step process may be a bit intimidating. If so, start slow. Add just one additional stage first (only send sales the in-profile leads, for example). Then add another when you feel ready.

Disqualified doesn’t mean dead—nurturing leads back to life

By Brian Hansford

Many corporate marketing teams that distribute leads to a sales or channel organization, never to determine the final disposition. It’s like they go into a black hole and the opportunities lost are scary to imagine. Many times a “Marketing Qualified Lead” (MQL) may be disqualified by sales for various reasons—some legitimate or not so legitimate. Disqualified leads present fantastic nurturing opportunities that can develop into future revenue. Disqualified doesn’t mean ‘dead!’

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It’s alive!

A well developed and executed lead management process ensures leads disqualified by sales will move into a nurturing program or process. This begins with a well-defined matrix of a qualified lead. There are several models for this that revolve around budgets, timeframe, decision making authority, deal size, and need. (Critical point! Sales and marketing must agree on the qualification definition that fits customer personas and goals of the company.)

Check the pulse of a disqualified lead

Managing the lead process with marketing automation and CRM systems, leads can be distributed to sales based on pre-defined qualification criteria. In general these marketing qualified leads demonstrated a level of engagement by requesting information, visiting sites, completing web forms, downloading content, etc. while providing more information that builds their profile. With this profile, once an MQL threshold is reached, that lead is passed to sales.

Don’t bury the lead

When sales directly engages with an MQL they may learn more specific details that actually disqualify the lead. Maybe the budget for the fiscal year is already spent. Maybe a new decision maker is taking over the project. Possibly the business plan has lost some priority for a limited period of time. All of these are legitimate reasons to temporarily disqualify a lead in the short term. That doesn’t mean the lead is dead!

These leads should enter into a nurturing program where scheduled contact is administered with a marketing automation system. The contact and touch points should include high value content. The key objectives for nurturing are demonstrating credibility and validating the lead contact’s decision to evaluate and ultimately make a purchase.

In the old days of 1.2 percent response direct mail marketing and simplified sales contact management, these disqualified leads may have simply been tossed or neglected.

Do the math—a scenario

Lead nurturing can exponentially increase marketing effectiveness.

To demonstrate, let’s run a simplified process for a fictional company. On average each month 500 marketing qualified leads are distributed to

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sales, 50, or 10 percent are disqualified. Those 50 disqualified leads are then classified to enter into the nurturing program. Over the course of 12 months, that’s 600 leads nurtured and kept warm! In this scenario just 10 percent are RE-qualified and passed back to sales in a 12 month period, that gives sales 60 leads to work with! Just imagine the impact to revenue when you estimate average deal size and closure rates.

Another consideration: If you don’t nurture your leads, your competitor will.

Bottom line, every lead is precious. And disqualified does not mean dead!

Three quick examples that prove nurture marketing works

The idea that most of your prospects aren’t ready to buy, and that you can increase your sales conversion yield with that list by staying in touch with value over time, sounds good. But unless you’ve seen or experienced the effect of that theory, it’s often too easy to just push to close as many prospects, right now, as possible.

But if you can effectively separate out the qualified and ready-to-buy prospects to close now, while simultaneously building value and preference with the much-larger list of everyone else, you’ll close considerable business over time with minimal incremental work. Here are three very quick anecdotes that prove it works.

1. “These leads are dead” becomes a 2x sales result six months later

We started working with a company a few years ago, and to start they handed us a database of 60,000 leads “of dubious origin” (their words). The sales team hated this list, was tired of calling it, and said these leads were either unqualified or just plain dead.

Without a lot of fanfare or marketing automation tools, we started creating and delivering value-added content to this list – newsletters, webinars, white paper offers, lots of content that focused on addressing and answering questions the audience had, well beyond what we were selling.

Long story short, six months later, 45 percent of the company’s sales had come from that dead list. The list continued to deliver sales in subsequent months as well.

2. Right time, right place becomes biggest deal of the year

That same program and list generated the largest single deal of the year for the company. A prospect on the 60,000 dead lead list received an invitation to an upcoming webinar. He didn’t attend the webinar, nor did he register. He simply replied to the email invitation, telling the sales rep

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that he just got out of a meeting and “finally” got the green light to move forward with the project he’d been pitching for more than a year.

The prospect was qualified, educated and wasn’t shopping around. That deal, the biggest of the year for the sales organization, closed in less than half the typical sales cycle length.

3. Easiest deal I’ve ever closed took more than two years of hard work

I once got a call from the CEO of a fast-growing technology company on the East Coast. We had met at a conference two years prior. At the time, I did what I usually do with people I meet at events—followed up immediately after, invited her to join my newsletter list, put her into my nurture marketing systems, and pretty much moved on.

To hear from her two years later was great. Her business is exploding, and she wanted help organizing and accelerating her marketing efforts. Less than a week later, she was a recurring-revenue client for our business.

On one hand, that’s one of the fastest deals we’ve closed and the least amount of work I’ve put into a pitch. On the other hand, I worked that deal hard for two years. The CEO had been reading my newsletter, following my blog, and knew I could help her with exactly what she needed done.

Four reasons and ways to ask your contacts to unsubscribe

By Nichole McIntyre

Why would you ever send an email to a prospect prompting them to unsubscribe? Maybe to increase engagement? To show more accurate results? To increase sender score? To improve your database quality?

Yes to all!

Those contacts in your database that are not engaging and not unsubscribing are hurting your campaigns a lot more than you probably realize. Your analytics are skewed, the inactive contacts are not engaging, and this is making your open rates and clicks perhaps lower than the truth.

Having these inactive contacts in the segments you build for campaigns is also misleading; your down-the-funnel calculations will be incorrect if the top of the funnel is incorrect.

So how do you effectively engage inactive contacts while suppressing the truly inactive ones? Following these four steps, either annually or semi-annually, will minimize your inactive contacts.

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1. Determine your definition of “inactive contact”

By taking into account your buying cycle, and buying process, and average conversion time. For example, if your average buying process is three months, then contacts with no activity for four months could be considered inactive.

2. Build the segment of your inactive contacts in your marketing automation platform

These contacts will receive a series of email to re-engage or unsubscribe.

3. Build the campaign in your marketing automation platform and send the new segment through it

This campaign may be as small as two emails, maybe even one, or you can view it as a bigger “we want you back” campaign. The goal of this email or campaign is to acknowledge these contacts and prompt them to re-engage or unsubscribe. You can use this campaign to ask for feedback to improve your campaigns, which can highlight the cause of their inactivity.

If possible, a subscription center would be best because it allows the contact to choose what they want to receive and perhaps increase engagement.

4. Follow up to their actions

If after several email attempts a contact is still inactive, it is best to remove them from your reachable contacts and either suppress the contacts or set aside for a later re-engage campaign. It’s important to segment the inactive contacts out of future campaigns.

Hopefully the contacts unsubscribed themselves if they truly are not interested in your emails, or took the time to give honest feedback about your campaigns. Either way you have cleaned up your database!

This process ensures good data management. While it may lead to what appears to be fewer contacts in your database, at least the remaining people will be active contacts. Active contacts mean happier contacts and fewer spam complaints, which helps maintain a high sender score!

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Three social media sites to keep you on your gameBy Jackie Jordahl

If you have yet to board the social media express, you are already behind. Over the past decade it has evolved from an adolescent craze into a crucial marketing tool for most organizations. Not only is social media used as an instrument when working with clients, but it can serve as a valuable resource for the people behind the magic, the marketers themselves.

Of all the services and sites out there, here are three of my favorites to keep you organized and on top of your game.

1. Hootsuite

A social media dashboard, Hootsuite came onto the scene in 2009 as a tool to manage and measure your social networks. Four years later, Hootsuite has some of the world’s largest companies taking advantage of its site (NCAA, Sony Music and McDonalds just to name a few). The site allows you to send and schedule Tweet posts; schedule and cross-post content to multiple WordPress accounts; post directly to your LinkedIn pages, groups and profiles; and manage campaigns including profiles, pages, events and groups on Facebook.

To top it off Hootsuite provides analytical tools and customizable reports that can help users get a complete, easy to read view of the participation on various social media pages. It’s free to use and an excellent way to organize your “social” life.

2. Mashable

Considered the “one stop shop” for social media, Mashable is a leading source for news, information and resources for the connected generation. Posted by users, all topics have the same underlying theme: digital innovation. The site allows you to drill in, share or comment on interests across the board, i.e. social media, tech, business, entertainment, US and World news, lifestyle, etc. Stay informed by using and abusing Mashable; you never know when the next marketing tool will pop up.

3. Nutshell mail

This is tracking made easy. The social networking aggregation service tracks all the latest updates in your social media accounts and places them in an easy to read, snapshot email which is sent to your primary email address. Voila, instant results that will keep you informed of your brands social media presence.

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Although it can’t track every social networking site, it does support the big players: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Yelp, MySpace, YouTube, Foursquare, and Citysearch.

According to the site, the mission is to keep users connected yet productive at the same time. Why waste time visiting every site to regulate your activity when you can get it packaged and sent to you for free. In a nutshell (no pun intended), the site is designed to track your brand’s social media activity and deliver a summary straight to your email. It doesn’t get much easier than that.

Whether you’re in marketing at age twenty two or fifty two, social media (in some form or another) is an increasingly important part of your marketing mix. to ensure you won’t be left in the dust stay informed on the latest technology, social media and industry trends. With a new site popping up every day it’s important to be organized and in-touch with your social media accounts. Why not cash in on all the free resources that can help make your job a little easier!

Four sales-centric social media metrics you should be tracking

I’ve seen dozens of social media scorecards, and most of them are good but lacking. It’s not enough to track followers and traffic. There’s a deeper story you need to be telling and tracking.

Maybe I’m a hammer and everything looks like a nail, but I expect social media to play an active role at the top of the sales funnel. It’s not a direct response channel, and shouldn’t be managed as such. But, there are symptoms of an active and productive social media program that indicate its preliminary value to the sales funnel.

Here are four specific metrics I recommend you watch in particular. These can be tracked on your social media scorecard right alongside your volume and activity metrics.

1. People talking about you.

Followers don’t really tell you anything. There are dozens of companies you can pay to pad your follower count on Twitter, for instance, but I guarantee 90 percent of those followers will be crap. And even if you get relevant people to follow you, that’s no guarantee they’ll pay attention or actively engage. A real indication of social media strength and value to the sales process is engagement.

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How many people are retweeting your content? How many are mentioning you by name in their tweets and posts? How often, in other words, does your network recognize and consume your content, then point it out to others? This not only is a proxy for message penetration, but also indicates how effectively you’re driving pass-along for those messages to new audiences.

2. Number of pages driving traffic on your site

This may sound like an SEO metric, and it is, but you can directly impact this metric over time with a robust content publishing strategy. If you’re regularly publishing quality content on your blog (or curating third-party content that’s still published on your site via services like Scribit), you should see a steady acceleration of the number of pages across your site driving traffic from a variety of sources—SEO, social links, etc.

If you’re active in creating content, this represents a residual, ongoing source of traffic. Create a post that the social web likes and Google ranks, for example, and it’ll drive incremental traffic every day as you create new content that does the same.

And it goes on and on.

How does social media directly impact site traffic? In addition to your followers driving traffic via their own posts and retweets, Google is increasingly looking at social influence as a means of prioritizing publishers at the top of search results. So if your content is relevant AND your social followers are actively sharing it, your changes of ranking high in search increase significantly. Your social strategy, in other words, has a direct and significant impact on SEO. And that connection is only going to get stronger over time from this point forward.

3. Non-brand keyword traffic

Look within Google Analytics for most companies and the top performers will be branded terms—variations of the company name and/or product names, for example. But if you’re succeeding with great content and social sharing, you are over time increasing the non-branded, more buyer-centric keywords and phrases driving traffic to your site. You should be tracking overall volume as well as percent of overall traffic with non-branded keywords.

This is particularly important if you consider how your buyer thinks. If they’re farther along in the buying cycle, they may know your name and use it in their search. But chances are significantly more prospects are searching

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based on more generic buying signals—pain points, needs, obstacles, desired outcomes, etc.

These are the keywords and phrases you should be using in your content, and threaded throughout your social channels. Do this consistently and you’ll increase the consistent volume of qualified prospects coming your way who are earlier in the sales process, and less likely to be engaged with your competitors.

4. Number of keywords driving traffic

It would be much easier if all of your prospects used the same keyword to search for your solution. But this, of course, is not the case. In fact, the majority of searches on Google continue to be for “long tail” searches, or those that aren’t often used and are far more obscure than the high-traffic keywords that are more expensive via paid search and harder to rank for via natural means.

Good content, however, over time can help you unlock and rank for that long tail of keywords. And deeper you get into that list, the more likely a prospect searching for that string will see relevance in your content and engage. Again, this isn’t just about SEO. The keywords you want to rank for need to be threaded through your content, but also actively used in your tweets, LinkedIn updates, Facebook posts and more.

Five quick steps to accelerate your LinkedIn ROI

LinkedIn may be the single most important and underutilized sales and business development tool for B2B sales and marketing professionals. The opportunities to engage and grow your business are seemingly endless (and mostly untapped), but you can get started by focusing on just five things. Take an hour today and accelerate your ROI from LinkedIn with the following focus areas:

1. Your profile

The headline (underneath your name) doesn’t have to be your title. This is the first thing people will see, after your name, that describes what you do. Do you really want to be a “marketing manager” or should people consider you an “aerospace manufacturing expert”?

Treat your summary (the area before your résumé) as an elevator pitch. Why should people be interested in you? What keywords and phrases would prospective customers, partners and others use to find you?

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The more complete your profile, the more likely interested people will find you and engage.

2. Your network

Outlook is great for collecting contact, but it’s passive. It doesn’t do anything. It just sits there. Take your professional network and put it in LinkedIn, and all of a sudden you’re accessible, actionable and one-click away from countless more potential contacts. If your contact’s connections do a search for a particular topic, their search results are ordered based on proximity to their connections. That means the more people you’re connected to on LinkedIn, the easier you are to find by their network.

As an example of the reach you can achieve, I’m currently connected to approximately 3,000 people directly. Those 3,000 people have direct networks representing more than 950,000 more people. That’s powerful reach.

3. Your updates

When you change anything in your profile, it will show up in your updates. But what about interesting articles you come across? Company updates or press releases? Blog posts that you publish? Every time you post an “update” to your profile, it appears in the home page “newsfeed” of your connections, and appears in their daily or weekly “Daily Digest” emails. That’s like getting your content into an already opted-in newsletter on a regular basis. Why wouldn’t you take advantage of that opportunity?

4. Your prospects

Do a search for keywords your customers would talk about. You’ll find prospects. Do a search for keywords related to your customer’s primary pain points. You’ll find prospects. Search for mentions of your competitors. You’ll find prospects.

Invest in a subscription to LinkedIn Pro. Sending cold emails gets you a .5 response rate, at best. LinkedIn’s “In Mail” get about a 40 response rate, and it’s guaranteed. If the prospect doesn’t respond in a week, they give you another chance with another prospect.

Your emails may get caught in a spam filter, but LinkedIn emails get through.

5. Your daily digest

Get it daily, and make a point of reading it every day. Pay attention to when your customers, prospects and partners change titles, jobs, companies, or just update something in their profile. Each of these are opportunities to engage, even at a superficial level. Your job is to be in front of people more often with value.

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Be the first to congratulate them in a promotion, or comment on their own update or blog post. Show that you’re paying attention, and be one of the few (or the very first) to notice. It makes you stand out.

There’s more you can do with LinkedIn, of course. Engage in LinkedIn Answers, join and participate in LinkedIn Groups, and so forth. But like most things, making a small but strategic investment will give you a ton of value.

Ten ways to organically grow your Twitter followers

There are plenty of ways to artificially bump up your Twitter following. But for the rest of us—who want to attract actual followers who care about our content and become part of our networks and long-term sales pipelines —there are still plenty of ways to proactively accelerate Twitter follower growth. Here are ten ways to get you started.

1. Add your Twitter handle to all outward facing communication

They can’t follow you if they don’t know where you are! Start adding your Twitter handle to business cards, your web site, PowerPoint presentations, sales collateral and more. Anytime you reference your business, include your Twitter handle as another way for others to follow and engage.

2. Tease your recent tweets on your web site or blog

There are a variety of plug-ins to feature your last few tweets in a sidebar of your blog or web site. This not only features the fact that you have a Twitter account to follow, but gives prospects a sample of what you write about without having to click. You’ll increase your conversion to followers quickly this way.

3. Retweet others

If you find an article worth sharing, find someone else who has already tweeted it and retweet their original post. For example, most articles online have social sharing boxes that indicate how many times something has already been shared. Click the number next to the Twitter box and you’ll get a list of those who have already retweeted the article. Scan the list for someone you want in your network and retweet their post. At least one in three times, that person will follow you back because they noticed what you did and liked your content in return.

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4. Respond

Twitter is a two-way street, and one of the fastest ways to get others’ attention (and increase your Klout score at the same time) is to reply to what others have said. Give a brief comment, let them know you agree, offer a counter opinion and/or link to another related article, etc. People like to follow others who are more likely to engage them in an online conversation moving forward.

5. Write a better bio

Following another Twitter account is a relatively low bar—lower than, say, adding another RSS feed to your Google Reader or including a new acquaintance to your LinkedIn network. But potential followers will still likely give you cursory review before clicking the “follow” button, and that often centers on what you’ve written for your bio. Have you included keywords that make it clear what you care most about, and what you likely tweet most about as well? Do you sound like an interesting person, including and beyond what you do for a living?

6. Use hashtags (occasionally)

If you use hashtags in every post, you’ll scream “spammer” to potential followers. But if you’re attending a conference, for example, post related content in your Twitter account using the conference’s hashtag. That way, anybody else following conference-related tweets (both fellow attendees as well as those following from afar) will see you and can follow more quickly.

7. Participate in (or start) TweetChats

These are regularly-scheduled conversations between like-minded people on Twitter at a given day and time. These “Twitter Chats” often use a hashtag so that others can easily follow the conversation. Find a regular chat that’s relevant to your job or industry and check it out. Don’t be afraid to just watch and “listen” the first time to get the hang of how it works. You’ll likely find some very interesting people to follow who might just follow you back. And the next time they do it, start adding your voice and opinion to the mix. Great way to have others find you.

Much has been written about whether Klout is truly a good, independent measure of a Twitter account’s value and relevance. But despite arguments about algorithms, users with Klout scores of 50 or higher generally represent feeds that are held in high regard and are actively followed by others. The more these high-Klout users get to know you, the more they’ll engage with you and retweet your own content. And this, subsequently, increases the likelihood that their followers will follow you.

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9. Thank and congratulate people and companies on Twitter

The next time you want to send a quick email to someone congratulating them on a promotion, or notice something great a local company has done, send them a note of thanks or congratulations publicly on Twitter. They’ll love that you’ve given them kudos, and done so in a forum that others can see as well. And they’re more likely to thank you back with a follow.

10. Curate great content

At the end of the day, other Twitter users will follow you back if you consistently produce great content. Most of that content should come from others. You can use services such as Timely and Buffer to queue up great content to post on your behalf throughout the week, so that your account is constantly featuring hand-selected and filtered content in the areas you’re most passionate about. Great feeds attract the most followers. Take the time to create and curate great content, and the rest will take care of itself.

Ten essential steps for a vibrant online community

The widespread adoption of social media across corporate America today has sparked the idea of creating and engaging with one’s “community” of followers, friends, fans, customers, prospects, and anyone else who might drop in on the conversation. Companies are beginning to embrace this cultural shift by creating these roles of community managers, but lack a complete and thorough grasp of who comprises their community and how to keep them engaged.

One of the many challenges gripping community managers today is figuring out new and innovative ways of keeping their audience coming back week after week, and unfortunately there isn’t just one best practice to follow in order to meet that goal.

However, there are pro-active steps that community managers can take to keep users coming back. Based on my experience, here are the ten steps I would take to help grow a community.

1. Find your community

The most critical first step that any company must take is to figure out exactly who the community is and really understand what they care about. That knowledge paves the foundation for all strategies going forward.

2. Build a platform

Provide a platform that can sustain the community. The whole point of a community is to get people to interact, listen, and learn with and from one

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another. Thus the company needs to have a platform that is able to both handle and help facilitate those interactions.

3. Collect feedback

The platform must have a place where community members can go to give feedback, ask questions, and share ideas. Whether that takes form in a Contact Us page, or even going as far as having a “Feedback” tab on every page of the website, community members need to be able to easily provide feedback.

4. Build trust

Next, you need to build trust. It’s important for me as the community manager to personally reach out to any key customers, experts, analysts and/or thought leaders to introduce myself and provide a point of contact. This personal touch helps to build rapport with the key influencers in the community.

5. Develop your brand on social media platforms

This also translates into cultivating a personal brand in conjunction with the corporate brand on social media. In addition to the platform, I would reach out to the members of the community on popular social sites like Twitter and LinkedIn as another channel of communication. The more accessible you are the better.

Community managers should also be hanging out and participating on other community sites and blogs. This is just one more way for me to promote the company brand, gain recognition, and hopefully drive more people back to the site.

Twitter chats and LinkedIn groups are a great place for community managers to establish thought leadership and build new relationships.

6. Stay up to date

The next step is to keep up to date with relevant blogs, articles, webinars, and conferences. It’s imperative as a community manager to stay well versed so I can engage in intelligent conversations with my community members, which leads into the next step.

7. Dive into the conversation

Community managers need to constantly be stoking the fire of discussion. Spark engaging discussions that not only bring people to the site, but also make them want to participate in these conversations. The trick, however, is to ensure there is a constant flow of information without overwhelming people.

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8. Take the conversation offline

Set up networking events as a way of cultivating the community offline, even if it is as simple as throwing a small get-together after a conference. In this world of amazing technology and social networking sites, you should never underestimate the power of meeting someone face-to-face. The ability to shake someone’s hand and look them in the eye has a greater impact than any conversation had online.

9. Test, Test, and Test

Test everything. In order to figure out what works and what doesn’t, it’s important to test new strategies all the time. You just never know what strategies the community will respond to without testing and measuring them.

10. Utilize measurement tools

Which brings me to my last point: embrace metrics and measurement tools. Use metrics to create better social media, engagement, and overall marketing campaigns.

These ten steps can help to create a successful community. The ultimate goal of any community is to create a self-sustaining environment where people can come together to engage in conversation about any specific topic or product. Every community has its own niche; it’s just a matter of providing a platform and setting that make people want to keep coming back.

Seven ways social media can save you time (instead of wasting it)

Make no mistake, the proliferating social media channels out there can waste a whole lot of your time. It’s all too easy to get sucked into the updates and videos and retweets and more, a fun diversion perhaps but not always the best use of your time.

However, there are several ways social media can actually save you time. The trick is to know what you’re trying to accomplish, how you’re going to do it, and to then get in and out quickly. Here are seven specific uses of social media that can save you significant time in the process.

1. Research

Trying to find something? Ask your social network. It’s almost better than Google. Fast response, personalized feedback, automatically filtered based on what your network already has tried, used or preferred. Search in real-time by asking a question, or search the past by using keywords in the search fields of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and more.

2. Resources

Let’s say I need on-demand IT help for my business (seriously, I do need that). The social web, and my network specifically, can help me find

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that. What’s more, if you do a search or make a request with keywords or hashtags, service providers and others who can help with your request are increasingly trained to see your request and respond in kind. I’ve found that most providers who do this well also have their act together and can successfully help with your problem or opportunity.

3. Drip marketing

The passive but frequent nature of social media makes it a great drip marketing tool. Plus, if you’re sharing content that’s as good today as it will be one week from now, you can queue up your social media updates for days at a time. I do this with Twitter, using timely.is to post three articles on sales, marketing and productivity a day to my followers.

4. Remember birthdays

I have historically been awful at this, but thanks to both LinkedIn and Facebook, I don’t have to remember anymore. Easy to give a quick “happy birthday” post on someone’s wall, or look at upcoming birthdays once a week to decide who should get a card, or a gift, etc.

5. Stay in touch

By watching updates from your friends, you can more frequently share a quick congratulations, note of support, or just a “thumbs up” on a great photo or announcement or update. It’s shallow, yes, but it’s a much faster way of staying connected with more people you care about in a shorter amount of time.

6. Attend events from home

I can’t tell you how many events, conferences and more I’ve been unable to attend, but that I’ve been able to watch virtually through Twitter hashtag feeds. It’s like buying a used textbook from someone you trust, who’s already highlighted the most important passages. Don’t worry about following the feed in real time, either, you can always check in at the end of the event (or just at the end of the day or a particularly interesting session) and read quickly (and all at once) what people thought was most valuable and worth sharing.

7. Meet new people

Who else is writing about B2B sales and marketing? Or a topic you care passionately about? I find new people worth meeting and knowing almost every day by using the social web. I don’t believe social network-only relationships are nearly as valuable as when you get to finally meet someone and get to know them, but the social web enables a significantly higher number of relationship “starts” that can bloom over time. I’d never know half of the people I’ve gotten to know the past few years in the B2B sales and marketing world if I hadn’t been able to find, nurture and convert on relationships that started on Twitter, LinkedIn, Focus.com and more.

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EVENTS AND TRADE SHOWS

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Why attending events in person is still so importantI love the growing trend of online conferences, as well as the ever-present

availability of webinars to help me learn. But nothing will replace the value of being there live.

Here are five reasons why.

1. Get that “out of office” perspective

Away from the regular tugs at your time, the same four walls you stare at, you can have a different perspective. You’ll naturally think about things differently. You’ll have an entirely new set of stimuli (visual, auditory, written) to spark creativity and innovation. You can get this even by attending an event in your home town. No matter how you do it, getting outside of your regular environment is worth it more often. Why do you think teams go “offsite” for executive meetings and brainstorms? Same reason.

2. Focus on new opportunities (with your complete attention)

If you’re going to an event or conference in person, do yourself a favor and give it your full attention. Don’t travel across the country only to stay in your hotel room and on “regularly scheduled” conference calls you could have just done from your office. A couple of these are fine, but otherwise let yourself be immersed in the event itself with your full attention. This can mean sitting through keynotes and panels, focusing time on the trade show floor, scheduling blocks of time with important partners or customers or new faces, etc. You won’t have these opportunities anywhere or anytime else. Take advantage of them now.

3. Meet new people and deepen existing relationships

I love my social networks, my LinkedIn and my entire online system for meeting new people and maintaining relationships. But nothing can replace doing it with a handshake, a smile, and seeing the whites of their eyes. Whether you do it in the lobby of the conference hotel, on the trade show floor, at the evening parties or even while playing golf, these are the relationships that go deeper, that develop long-term preference and business value for you over time. It’s differentiating, in your favor, in a way that online networking can never be.

4. Talk to the vendors

Yes, they want to sell you something. And some will either be too aggressive or ignore you. But every vendor on the show floor knows something that you don’t. It’s your job to learn from them. Ask them questions about their slice of the industry, what they’re seeing from their

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customers, what they see moving forward. Try to find the product managers in the booth who spend most of their time listening to customers and translating those needs into new product features. They’ll often have the best insights into what’s now and what’s next.

5. Use the casual moments to your advantage

Set up quick coffee meetings with people you’ve just met, or haven’t seen in a while. If you need to catch up on email, do so in the hotel lobby or in an otherwise public place so you’re move likely to run into something you want to talk to. Invite new people to lunch or dinner or drinks to get to know them better, and learn from them. If you do eat alone, do so at a location close to the conference and eat at the bar. You’ll likely be sitting next to someone else from the conference you can talk to and learn from. Take a long, early-morning walk and take a notepad or digital recorder to record new ideas, priorities for the day, etc. There are countless ways to squeeze more value out of the more casual moments when you travel.

How to make the most of conferencing parties and networking events

Most conference agendas include one or more parties—usually sponsored by the conference host or their sponsors and exhibiting vendors. These events are a great opportunity to relax and enjoy the company of fellow attendees, but they’re also an important opportunity to meet new people, add to your network, and create new business opportunities.

Here are six tips for better engaging and leveraging these parties in your favor (while at the same time enjoying yourself and having fun!).

1. Take plenty of business cards (but don’t lead with them)

After-hours parties and networking events aren’t meant to be all business, but you also don’t want to be caught without the means of sharing your basic contact information with someone you meet. Don’t lead with your card, unless the event is explicitly a card-exchange or business networking event. But after sharing conversation, if you’re interested in following up afterward, make it easy for the other party to do so.

2. Dress down (a little) but remain professional

If the networking event is right after the formal meeting and in the same location, you can assume the same business or business casual attire is fine. But if the party is at a separate time or location, feel free to dress down a bit.

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If you were wearing slacks with jacket or suit, for example, jeans are probably okay. But don’t go crazy. Jeans with your shirt and jacket (no tie), for example, says dressed-down but still professional. And you can always lose the jacket if you need to look even more casual, depending on the event and surroundings.

3. Be polite but proactive

As you work the room, make eye contact and say hello to those you pass. Introduce yourself proactively and offer a handshake. If you approach a circle of folks already engaged in conversation, wait until a lull in the conversation or until you’ve been invited to introduce yourself. Respect the room and existing relationships and conversations, but be proactive about getting in there and meeting new people.

That’s why you’re there!

4. Remember and write down names, contexts and deliverables

Over the course of the night, you’ll likely meet a lot of interesting people. But it’s important to remember who they are, where they’re from, and any context about the conversation (or things you offered to share with or send them later) for your follow-up. If you get a business card, write the context or deliverable on the back. As a back-up, carry a piece of paper or notebook to write down their name, email and what you promised to send their way later (offering to send something also gives you the “cover” necessary to write this down without looking too geeky).

5. Focus on them, and ask good questions

The easiest way to get people talking is to ask questions. What they do, why they’re at the conference, what have they learned so far, etc. Have a few standards, starter questions ready and keep watch, in their answers, for things they’re particularly passionate about. The more they talk about themselves, the more memorable you will be for asking (and the most likely you’ll find something based on those interests you can follow up with afterward).

6. Don’t overdo it

Nobody makes a good impression at parties by getting drunk. It’s difficult to impossible to execute the above opportunities when you can’t think or speak straight. Have a drink. Or two. Enjoy yourself. Just know your limits, and don’t let yourself get in a position you might be regret the next day.

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Six factors to consider when choosing to attend a conference

No matter your industry or focus, there are likely conferences, seminars, and industry gatherings every single week you could justify attending. Some you may be required to attend, but others you must sort through and prioritize. Which are worth the time out of the office? Which will give you enough of an ROI to prioritize the time, expense and opportunity cost of not doing something else?

Here are the six factors I typically use when considering a conference or other out-of-town event.

1. Topic and/or approach

What’s the event about, what will it cover in general, and how/why is that unique? What does this approach offer that you can’t get elsewhere, or couldn’t get as well by just reading similar information from home? DemandCon, for example, covers the entire sales and marketing funnel, attracting both sales and marketing leaders by breaking down the sales funnel into top, middle and bottom. That’s a unique approach, and I know from experience at last year’s event that it works well.

2. Full, high quality agenda

Some conferences fail to deliver on the promise of the premise. About half the time, you won’t know that until you get there and see how good (or bad) the content really is. But the agenda for the conference, the topics covered and depth promised, can give you a good clue. If you see consistent sets of content offered that you can immediately translate value to your role, job or company, that’s a really good sign.

3. Great speakers

Who do you want to learn from? What individuals and what companies? Look for speakers who have a reputation for giving great presentations, or who already provide a ton of great insight via a blog or newsletter. Look for an agenda that isn’t filled entirely with the sponsor’s executives, but balances those spots with the people you really want to meet and learn from.

4. High quality attendees

Many conferences will publish a list of companies represented at an upcoming conference. Others may post the actual names and titles of those registered. Some conferences get a reputation for not only the quality of attendees, but also how open they are to sharing, networking, and learning from each other. My experience at DemandCon last year was significant

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in this regard. Great attendees, most in operational roles who are actively managing sales and marketing pipelines for their companies or their clients, look for those who are “in the trenches” who can offer real-time advice, perspective and feedback on what’s working and what’s not.

5. Location

Let’s face it, where a conference is being held makes a huge difference. How far you have to travel, how convenient it is to get there, how expensive the airfare and hotel are. That’s a starting point. But also take into account a little downtime or at least away-from-the-conference networking opportunities with people you meet. Good restaurants, night life, entertainment, outdoors activities, etc.

6. Business development opportunities

I put this at the end of the list not because it’s not important. Every event you attend should offer short-term and long-term business development and sales opportunities, either via attending prospects or channel partners. Good events aren’t always the best immediate sales channels or pipeline builders, so know enough about the conference and how it works to more accurately set your expectations.

How to attend three conferences at once

Any time you need to be in two places at once, especially during the busy conference season, there are a handful of best practices you can follow to maximize both your time and your learning. Here are four tips to make the most of your time.

1. Plan well ahead

This first means choosing which of the events you will be at live. Not an easy choice, but take a close look at the schedules, topics, speakers, networking opportunities and more. Do your best to pick the event with the greatest potential ROI.

Once you’ve made your choice, put together a tentative schedule. Put times and locations of sessions, networking parties and other meetings right on your schedule. I call this tentative because you’ll likely triage your time and opportunities once you’re on the ground, but having your up-front preferences just one or two clicks away will save you time.

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2. Make active use of the hashtag feeds

If you’re attending and following conferences that make heavy use of Twitter hashtags for attendees to highlight important points, links and more, it’s relatively easy to follow multiple events from one place (even if you couldn’t attend any of them in person). Hashtag feeds will also be available for you to review or filter once you get back home.

3. Use the buddy system

If you wanted to attend something but can’t, chances are you have someone in your network who will be there. And chances are, one of them would like to be where you are as well. Find one or two of these “buddies” a few weeks before the event and work together to ensure you’re capturing what you want from afar. Give them sessions, topics or vendor booths you want information on, and invite them to do the same.

Yes, it will likely take a bit away from some of your priorities at your conference of choice, but you’ll get deeper insight from where you couldn’t be, and your overall cross-conference ROI will be greater as a result.

4. Get copies of slides, video and recap blog posts afterward

Every year that goes by, more and more of the events we attend are recorded and available afterward either to attendees or anyone interested. This includes copies of slides presented, videos of speakers and recap blog posts from attendees who summarize the key points for others. It’s clearly not the same as being there, but in many cases it can save you a lot of time, help you get to the gist of what’s important, and help you capitalize on those new ideas and best practices in your business.

How to work a tradeshow floor

Have a strategy for working your next trade show floor as an attendee. You’ll make the most of your time, energy, and money.

Know your objectives going in

What are you there for? Knowing your objectives will help narrow where and how you spend your time. Are you looking for partnership opportunities? Trying to get better and smarter about a particular function or business application? Are you tasked with bringing back insights and best practices to others back at the office? Set some objectives up front, and customize your approach accordingly.

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Highlight booths or vendors you know you need to meet

Review the exhibitor list and prioritize vendors you know you need to spend time with. Consider setting appointments with them in advance to get more of their time and attention. If you’re attending as a representative of your organization, consider sending the list of exhibitors around to your team and asking them to also highlight vendors they’d like you to engage with on their behalf.

Consider printing business cards with a different email address to use on the show floor

This works for your event registration too, as many trade shows use “badge scanners” for exhibitors to capture your contact information for follow-up. There’s a ton of value in developing ongoing relationships with vendors and exhibitors relevant to your work, but you also don’t want your primary email address flooded with spam. If you create your registration and a short stack of business cards with a slightly different email address that redirects back to you (i.e. mattheinz@heinzmarketing.com instead of matt@heinzmarketing.com), you’ll still get the information but can redirect everything into a separate folder with Email

Do a quick first lap and take notes

When I first visit a new trade show floor, I like to do a quick lap around everything—scanning booths, getting a sense for who has something interesting, and taking notes of which booths I particularly want to come back to. At any show, there will be new vendors you didn’t know before, or “old” vendors who do a particularly good job at educating and engaging their audience. For example, perhaps an exhibitor you previously hadn’t highlighted is running a series of training events at their booth. Better to know their schedule and when you need to be back there early on, vs. missing something important because you hadn’t checked it out first.

Don’t be afraid to politely say no

Exhibitors often train their booth staff to actively engage those walking by. If you’re interested and ready, stop. But manage your time wisely, and don’t be afraid to say no and keep walking. Be polite and smile. The same goes for the middle of a conversation that may have turned into an unwanted (or too early) sales pitch.

Think twice about taking the giveaways

Do you really want it? Do you really need it? Will you really use it when you get back home? It is worth lugging around for the rest of the day or stuffing into your carry-on luggage in a couple days? If you’re just going to throw it away or leave it in your hotel room later, you’re wasting the vendor’s money too.

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Ask for soft copies of the sales collateral

Having a PDF to read later might be much easier (for both attendee and vendor) than lugging around a bunch of brochures.

But take copies of the value-added content

Many booths will have great, educational content that I believe is very much worth taking with you. Copies of white papers and research reports, books written by subject matter experts and more. Great materials to read on the flight back and share with the team when you get back to the office.

Visit your priority booths during a “lull” to get more attention

If you only spend time on the show floor during the “rush” times (between general sessions or during programmed breaks), the popular booths will be flooded and you won’t get the time you need from booth staffers. Instead, plan to come back when you can afford to miss something on the conference agenda. The booths will be far less busy, and staffers will have more time to dedicate specifically to your questions.

Look for the subject matter experts, and ask questions that will help you learn

Many booth staffers will be sales reps, and you can learn a ton from the really good ones. But if you’re done your homework, you can seek out the real thought leaders and subject matter experts from each vendor. Do your homework in advance and find out who at each company is writing their blog posts, who is featured in their white papers, and who is quoted most often in their press releases. Ask for those people when you visit the booth, or set up time with them in advance.

Proven essentials for a successful B2B marketing eventBy Brian Hansford

In March 2013, we held our first large scale event—the B2B Modern Marketing Roundup. It was a great success and we learned a lot through the entire process.

Seattle is a fantastic entrepreneurial community with tons of energy and fantastic business talent. However, high quality events for B2B Marketers are rare in the Emerald City. Sure, there are plenty of social media events and standard business networking programs and lots of great parties. But high value B2B marketing content is very limited

For our event we wanted to provide ideas that modern marketers could immediately put into action. Most importantly—NO VENDOR PITCHES. We wanted to share great ideas and encourage action and implementation!

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The mission we requested and accepted

Every event needs an objective and desired outcomes. Our number one mission was curating and delivering content that Seattle’s Modern Marketers could use that would immediately help them build customer engagement and drive revenue. to support the mission we wanted special companies that could deliver the desired content. The kicker? We wanted sessions that were only 15 minutes each. And we were going to deliver this great content in less than two hours and not the four, five or even eight boring hours of so many other events.

Here’s the takeaway—break the mold. Or at least change the shape of the mold. Just because everyone else does an event a certain way doesn’t mean it’s the right way. One simple tweak on the length of presentations was a critical success factor for our event.

The right team

We are incredibly fortunate to have a great team at Heinz Marketing and we are heavily focused on a core set of values. We all bring fantastic talent to any program or account unique experience strengths, passions, brainpower, and energy. No single person can build and execute a program like this alone. The entire team rallied around this event from the beginning.

Here’s the takeaway—get the team behind your effort. The program leader should set the right example. Give opportunities for ownership. Test ideas. Make it fun. Provide constructive feedback. Celebrate success.

Content and partners

Between Heinz Marketing and Eloqua we develop some of the most respected B2B sales and marketing content anywhere. But I wanted to build a deep bench talent beyond Heinz and Eloqua. I recruited NetProspex and Full Circle CRM to share their ideas and guidance on using quality data in B2B marketing, and how to effectively measure the results in Salesforce.com. With four vendors on board, I could have rested. But we wanted more! I recruited Ryan Schwartz from DocuSign to share some of his incredible ideas how he and his team use Eloqua every day. to top it off we were very fortunate to have Jessica Davis and Alexandra Evans from Avalara share their case study on using thought leadership to drive demand.

Here’s the takeaway—find the right partners and customers who can deliver high value content to support your event theme and audience. Set the parameters and the objectives so everyone is on the same page. Set deadlines for draft presentations. Provide a deck template that all presenters should follow. (Even though some won’t.) Make the content available on SlideShare after the event.

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Event format—just say NO to 60 minute sessions

Our presentations were going to be short and intense—only 15 minutes each. No exceptions. We designed content tracks for Modern Marketers, Marketing Leadership, and Sales Leadership. Attendees could mix and choose the sessions across the tracks as they wanted. The 15 minute format was incredibly popular! Every single attendee and speaker I spoke with afterwards said the 15 minutes was perfect because the messages were focused. I had one attendee in particular tell me she would not have attended if the sessions were the typical 45-60 minutes each.

Here’s the takeaway—you can deliver high value content in a short session. If you can’t, you are doing it wrong.

Promotion

We made the event “invitation only” by design. Of course we still had people register or just show up who weren’t on our invitation list and that wasn’t a problem. Eloqua, Full Circle CRM and NetProspex all helped promote the event in partnership with Heinz Marketing. Most importantly, we had clients and colleagues encourage their network to attend. We focused on selective email, blog, Eloqua Topliners, and a few social media channels for promotion.

Takeaways—find the right channels to promote attendance. Don’t rely on any single channel or partner to drive attendance. Target the right segment with the right message. Make events ‘exclusive’ to build interest.

Technology

We developed the segmentation and targeting strategy and targeted our outbound communications accordingly using Eloqua. We certainly weren’t perfect with the segmentation and execution. But we learned a lot and developed some fantastic ideas for the next event. We event test some new Eloqua ideas that were invisible to the invitees but incredibly important. Also, we made all event content available on SlideShare following the event.

Takeaways—find the right audience for your event and reach out using the right mix of technology. Technology is an event enabler.

Venue

We wanted a unique venue for this event. The content was ready, the format was in place. What we needed was the perfect venue. We chose the best venue for this program and that was the Columbia Tower Club. The one challenge we had was getting more people to attend than we expected and that made two rooms cozy. But the 15 minute format saved the day! The views, service, and catering made the event perfect for the 2013 B2B Modern Marketing Roundup.

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Logistics

There is ALWAYS something that can be done better, or details that fall through the cracks. AV equipment like microphones, projectors, and slide clickers are sneaky details. For the sessions we had Heinz team members assigned to sessions to help the presenters and to watch the 15 minute clock. We also had a team at the front desk for check-in.

Key takeaways—No detail is too small. Don’t assume anything. Use a white board to map every detail when designing the attendee experience. Make sure everyone has an assignment and they are empowered to solve problems.

Reflection and follow up

Events like these take a lot of planning and preparation. There are tons of moving parts and people involved. Get creative with new ideas for your field marketing event. With the right team, compelling content, unique format and logistics, you can build a meaningful connection with your intended audience.

Eight requirements for a successful event strategy

Those who have managed or executed any event—a seminar, a user conference, or an industry trade show—will know it involves a thousand details, lots of moving parts, and other thankless tactics that, together, lead to success. But if you focus on and have a strategy or plan for the following eight elements, you’re most of the way towards a successful event.

1. Objectives

What do you want out of the event? How (not what) will you measure? Why are you doing it or participating in it? These may seem like fundamental questions, but all too often companies engage in industry events because they feel like they have to, or (worse) because competitors are doing it or “we did it last year.” But if you can’t enumerate reasons and objectives for why you’re doing it now, you might be best served to move onto something else that will provide more direct value to the business and your sales/revenue objectives.

2. Short-term and long-term success measures

Depending on your sales cycle, you likely won’t be able to justify and measure final ROI from an event right away. So it’s important to define short-term and long-term success measures for your event. Short-term, for example, you might measure leads captured, meetings secured with

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prospects or influencers, etc. Long-term, you’re looking at opportunities generated and closed. Here’s a summary of three specific measurement points post-event.

3. Content strategy

Content is key to any event. This includes not only the approach and position at your booth (including your primary message and offer), but also evaluating opportunities to create and communicate content before, throughout and after the show. For example, what blog posts or other content can you create and deliver before the show starts to engage attendees, recommend certain sessions, even publish a restaurant guide to get their attention? What speaking opportunities are there, or if you’re not on stage, how well are you summarizing, blogging about or tweeting highlights from the event to your followers, customers and prospects? Some of my most popular blog posts summarize key points from a great event. Do the same, and consider publishing it right as the event ends so you’re included in round-ups.

4. Offer strategy

I’m not talking about pricing or product purchase offers, at least not exclusively. Sure, have a show special to get customers to take action, especially if you’re offering a transactional sale that you can close on the show floor. But more important are the offers that differentiate you from other booths, that drive more attention and traffic to your booth in the first place, and that increase conversion to registration and/or follow-up from those attendees. This can be a white paper, an audit or assessment of a prospect’s opportunity, a seat at an upcoming online event, or other offers and formats relevant to your audience. Make sure your offers are about the prospect, not you, to increase response and conversion.

5. Social strategy

Play an active role in the event’s social channels, hashtags and participants. Remember that there will always be prospects following activities and highlights via social channels that aren’t at the event but wish they were. These are prospects, too, and can be courted, registered and engaged just as well post-event. Consider engaging influencers who will have high-traffic social and blog feeds during the event, so they know you’re there, are retweeting some of your stuff, and potentially writing about you to their followers. These are just a few of many considerations to take advantage of social channels at any event (even if you aren’t there or aren’t formally exhibiting).

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6. Booth assignments

Product training is great, but your booth staff needs to be tightly coordinated to take best advantage of the traffic walking by. The downside of having an event booth is that you’re largely at the whim of whoever happens to walk by. Some will be good prospects, others won’t. So it’s important that you actively engage as many people as possible to increase the number of qualified prospect you drive deeper into the booth. At a high level, this means assigning some staff to the “perimeter” of the booth to engage browsers with a well-written, customer-centric question. For those that show interest or are deemed as qualified, invite them to a staffer inside the booth to continue the conversation, or rotate an “insider” back to the perimeter to prospect.

7. Networking strategy

I’ve been to events where the majority of my success was hanging out in the lobby and engaging the right people as they walked by. Whether its “planned serendipity” like this, or at the ever-present networking events and parties in the evenings, have a strategy for how you’re going to divide and conquer among the various networking opportunities. Ensure your staff isn’t hanging out together at evening events, but at minimum spreading themselves across separate tables to increase how many new people you’re meeting and engaging. And for those who will be attending these networking events, agree on a strategy for collecting and following up on business cards and contacts captured there.

8. Follow-up plan

Do yourself a favor and plan and write your show follow-up materials before you leave. Because when you get back, you’ll be buried in work and emails and new fire drills. And the next thing you know it, it’ll be a week later and those leads you captured will start to feel stale. So if you create your post-show follow-up plan up front, plus write the emails and schedule the post-event offers, all you have to do is load the list and press “go”.

There’s more to a successful event than these eight elements, of course. But they get you a long ways towards success.

That said, what’s missing? What’s on your requirements list for success?

Anatomy of a better pre-event email

Shortly before attending Dreamforce I received literally dozens of emails from companies targeting Dreamforce attendees. It’s been an interesting study in different strategies, objectives and perspectives in engaging an audience before you (potentially) see them live at an event.

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It’s also helped me hone some specific best practices that could help each of these companies (and yours as well) drive greater response and performance from pre-event emails. Done right, these emails can increase success at the event as well as drive additional revenue opportunities before, during and after.

Here are things I’ve specifically noticed and/or would recommend to drive greater performance.

Send email from a person, not a company

I’m much more likely to open an email from a person (whose name is in the “from” line, whose email address shows up there, and who signed the email too) than an email from a company with an “info@” email address. I’m also much more likely to respond directly to an email from a person vs. a company (and would expect a reply from that person too, which hasn’t happened consistently either).

Put some news in the subject line

I know you want me to meet with you. But that in the subject line isn’t going to get me to engage. I’ve even seen subject lines in the past week that literally give the dates and location of the event. How is that driving open rates? Instead, use something to entice me. Tease a giveaway, give me a benefit worth stopping by to learn more about. You can’t make a subject line communicate everything, and its main goal is to get the email opened, but start with something that gets my attention and piques my interest.

Get me to pre-register for something

I really like the pre-event emails that allow me to self-select greater interest. They either invite me to a private briefing or to schedule when I’ll stop by the booth. The majority of email recipients won’t respond to this, but that’s not the point. If you can get a handful of attendees committed to stopping by, your booth performance immediately is better than just hoping passers-by are the people you want to meet, and who want to meet you too.

But don’t force me to commit

As much as I prefer the pre-registration option above, I also don’t want to commit. I don’t necessarily want or need to schedule something when I can stop by anytime during open show floor hours. I may not want to commit, but that doesn’t mean I’m less interested or less qualified.

A different tactic to engage prospects like this could be to simply have them pre-register for a visit without a specific time. Tell prospects you’ll have a special gift reserved for them when they come, whenever that is. Then,

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have that list at the booth so you can fulfill that offer. This tactic gives you a registered list of more interested prospects, gives me (the attendee) more flexibility, but puts you at the top of my “need to visit” priority list for the show floor.

The most important part of event marketingWritten after attending Dreamforce in 2012

I’m writing this from my office, and occasionally staring across the room at the still-full messenger bag I brought back from Dreamforce in early December. It’s been more than two months since that conference, and yet there the bag sits. Unopened. Forgotten. Full of collateral, sales sheets, white papers, who knows what else.

The conference itself was fantastic. Great speakers, great networking, many interesting exhibitors. I followed up with a few I had particular interest in, but quickly forgot about the rest as I settled back into my regular routine.

Any of us who attend trade shows or events develop temporary Attention Deficit Disorder. It’s impossible to avoid. Hundreds of booths vying for your attention, in between meeting after meeting. Then you hit the party circuit, get a couple hours of sleep, and do it again.

There’s no way you can remember everybody, everything. All that money spent by sponsors and exhibitors to get your attention. And it worked. At least it worked two months ago.

I have a bag full of collateral from I don’t know how many vendors. A stack of business cards from vendors who told me they’d follow up.

All that time, energy and money to engage me at the show. And how many have followed up? Not many. Not enough.

The most important part of event marketing happens after the event. You’ve made your impression. Now, after the dust has settled, make sure you capitalize and convert.

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SALES ENABLEMENT

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My definition of sales enablement

Simple, really. Coming from marketing, it’s rooted in a discipline and culture of revenue responsibility.

We can get far more granular, of course, and talk about creating content for sales that maps to each stage of both the buyer’s journey and their documented sales process. We can talk about going beyond simply passing along sales qualified leads, to also providing sales with messaging, follow-up tools and other support to increase lead responsiveness and conversion.

But that’s getting tactical. It’s doing the fishing, vs. teaching the organization how to fish.

The fundamentals of fishing, and sales enablement specifically in this example, is rooted in revenue responsibility. Get that part right and the rest often falls into place.

So what does that mean? Depending on your company and culture, it might mean tying marketing’s bonus structure to pipeline contribution and/or closed business. It might mean making sales-qualified leads and/or pipeline contribution the number one measure of marketing effectiveness.

It might also mean taking a hard look at the distribution of responsibilities across marketing. What would happen if you took just one head focused on demand generation, and instead focused that person on sales enablement strategy and tactics? Would lead volume really go down? And if pipeline contribution actually went up, would you really care?

Fundamentally, you could easily argue that generating sales-qualified leads is itself sales enablement. Good leads are certainly more efficient than random cold-calling.

But we all know it goes well beyond that. And a tactical definition of sales enablement that fits all companies—sizes, industries, cultures—would be next to impossible.

So instead, I think the right definition of sales enablement is more accurately a guiding principle.

Revenue responsibility means a melding and blurring of the line between sales and marketing. It means new, seminal books such as The Challenger Sale are textbooks for not just sales, but marketing as well.

It means a focus not on internal execution but customer-centric alignment. The tactics of sales enablement are delivered internally, but the value is 100 percent realized in the field and with your prospects.

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This also doesn’t mean sales enablement needs to be a department, or even an individual role. Sales enablement is everyone’s responsibility. How does this effort impact our prospects? How will our sales team translate this to our prospects? How will prospects react, and how should our organization respond in kind?

These are the questions that, in part, will define how your organization executes successful sales enablement.

It’s called a sales funnel (not a sales cylinder) for a reason

Great salespeople are optimists and realists, at the same time. They have to be. New leads are gonna close, you say. Qualified opportunities? Gonna close too.

You’re looking for a way to help your prospects, and most of them need you! You’re in the business of “problem finding”, identifying the needs and pain points and unmet objectives with your prospects that you (and your product or service) can help rectify and achieve. Your optimism, passion for finding and solving customer problems, and belief in what you’re doing drives your optimism and pushes you forward.

Of course, not every lead and opportunity is going to close. Part of the reason why salespeople need to be such strong optimists is because their failure rate is so high. The best salespeople in the world hear “no” the majority of the time.

That’s where the realism comes in. When we at Heinz build demand generation and sales models from scratch (where no historical data exists), based on what we’ve seen at countless B2B companies, we expect 5 percent of leads to become opportunities, and 25 percent of opportunities to close.

Think about that for a minute. These numbers aren’t made up. They’re based on recent historical data across multiple comparable companies, and they imply that just 1.25 percent of your leads will become a closed deal.

They also imply that only one in four of the short-term opportunities you’ve already qualified will close.

One of the biggest problems with most sales pipelines is overly-aggressive and math. An assumption that more deals will close than is feasible or realistic. If your pipeline is so small than you need 40–50 percent (or more) of your opportunities to close, you’re working against reality.

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There’s a reason we call it a sales funnel and not a sales cylinder. The walls close in, steeply, as you get towards the closed deal. Most prospects and opportunities don’t make it. (Deals that don’t make it to the finish line aren’t dead, most are then ready for nurturing).

Look at the pipeline of deals you expect to close this month or quarter. How many do you need to close? If your math more resembles a cylinder vs. a funnel, you may have a problem.

Eight ways sales operations can double your team’s productivity

Sales operations may very well be THE most important and unsung hero for sales teams, big and small, inside and field, direct and channel. They often do thankless jobs with minimal resources, and when done well they can have a significant, more-than-material impact on your sales team’s efficiency and success.

Here are eight specific ways sales operations can impact sales productivity:

1. Active CRM ownership and optimization

Sales leadership should be actively involved in defining the sales process, including lead and opportunity stages, but sales ops should have active ownership of building, maintaining and improving how well that process is operated in the company’s CRM system. This includes ensuring that the right CRM system is chosen in the first place, customized to the way the company’s customer wants to buy, and optimized so that front-line sales personnel and their managers spend as little time in the system as possible (maximizing their time in front of customers and prospects).

2. Tools integration

This goes beyond choosing the right tools to support the sales process. For most sales teams, the value and benefit of a great sales tool can be negated (or worse) if the sales team has to take precious time to operate multiple tools at once without integration. Separate windows, double entry of data and incomplete data are just some of the problems inherent in buying tools without considering proper integration. Sales ops should own tool integration, and the resources to integrate new tools should be included in the cost of buying those tools in the first place.

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3. Better reporting and dashboards

For reporting, the front-line reps, managers and sales leadership are the customers of the sales operations staff. Accordingly, sales ops should own and actively manage different versions of reporting and dashboards for each group to improve their visibility to what’s working, what needs improvement, and where everyone’s time and attention should be spent to maximize sales pipeline output. Significant time can be put into creating reports to begin with (ideally so that they’re fast and easy to use ongoing), but sales ops should also assume time will be needed to maintain and improve dashboards over time. As the business changes (new products, new sales structures, etc.), reporting needs to keep up to stay relevant and useful.

4. Process improvement

This is more than tools. What does it take to process an order? What steps, what paperwork, what’s required of the customer, of the sales rep, of the manager? Where does the process typically break down, and could certain process stages be improved, sped up or eliminated? How much time does it take for a rep to get back on the phone with another customer (after recording the conversation and status, finding the next prospect to call, etc.)? Process may be boring, but it’s the foundation on which successful, streamlined sales organizations are built.

5. Best practice collection, inventory and sharing

This responsibility normally falls to the sales managers, but sales ops can quickly create systems and processes for proactively capturing, organizing and making available a variety of sales best practices —from prospecting to messaging, follow-up advice, presentations and more. Sales ops should work actively with management to create the optimal systems, storage options and communication frequency with the sales floor. But this is a focus area most sales organizations either lack or spend little time managing. Sales ops can be a hero and visible driver of improvement by putting a little extra time into this one.

6. Vendor filter, triage and selection

You get calls constantly from vendors who have the “perfect” solution to make your sales team more successful. Sales ops may be the most appropriate component of the team to map prospective vendors against the company’s current and future/intended sales process, identifying functional holes, obstacles or choke points in the process and funnel and both identifying and vetting prospective vendors against what will have the most impact on sales productivity and results.

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7. Comfortability with customers directly

Does your sales operations team speak with customers regularly? I’m constantly surprised at how many sales ops teams either don’t have regular contact with customers and prospects, or (worse) lack the skills to effectively communicate with customers when they do. Sales ops should understand the customer and their environment as well as the sales team, and should be proactive in addressing “operational” issues such as contracts, procurement, onboarding issues and more. Yes, the sales rep can do most or all of this. But, as a member of the rep and company’s team, sales ops can more proactively manage these operational issues and allow the rep to get back to selling.

8. Ownership of templates and collateral inventory, consistency, access

In most organizations, document management is a constant issue. There are too many sales support documents and customer-facing collateral pieces to choose from. Version control is a problem. And do you really want your reps spending 20 minutes looking for the New England Health Care case study? Sales ops can own management and organization of the collateral and template library, either in a shared-access drive or right within the CRM system. This means active management—pulling out old documents, working with sales reps and their managers to constantly improve accessibility and speed of use, etc.

Three ways content marketing can make your sales team happy

Too often, content marketing is driven by the marketing team with an eye towards traffic, SEO and social media value, without considering the direct role great content can have for the sales organization. And that value goes well beyond generating new leads.

If planned and executed effectively, successful content marketing delivers on three specific sales organization priorities:

1. Improve the quality of inbound responses.

If your content is tightly mapped to the buying process and the buyer’s journey, your content can more directly and strategically address buyer needs, pain points, and symptoms that provide immediate value to the prospect but also drive interest and activity specifically from those who have a problem your product or service can solve. This is more than just gathering more information about leads in a registration form, or increasing response rates. Great content marketing strategy and execution (no matter what information you collect in a registration process) can deliver to the sales

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team prospects who have a problem to solve, have an outcome the need to achieve, and have a compelling and/or immediate need to get there. These are good prospects.

2. Gathering more buyer information

Great content builds credibility and rapport with prospective customers. It doesn’t necessarily do this on the first touch, but prospects who have been reading and/or following your content over time will come to trust your organization, and trust what you might do with their information. If you’ve taken the time to create such rich content, the prospect is more likely to share additional information about themselves that helps your sales team customize and tailor their approach based on the prospect’s specific pain and needs. Most marketing organizations tightly manage their registration pages to maximize conversion upon first visit. And while that optimization process is still important, strong content marketing programs can allow you to learn from and capture more information from prospects when they’re truly ready to engage. This gives your sales organization warmer prospects with compelling context to move them through the buying process more effectively and efficiently.

3. Attract buyers earlier in the buying process

Contrary to the (occasional) popular belief, you really don’t want to engage B2B prospects for the first time right before they’re ready to buy. For complex B2B sales, it’s far better to work with prospects early in the process, when they’re still exploring solutions to a particular problem or need. Prospects who engage at the end of their buyer’s journey often have already translated what they want (rightly or wrongly), and are shopping for features and price. That’s a race to the bottom. Rather, effective content marketing programs engage buyers early in their journey, and deliver prospects to sales late enough that they’re qualified and motivated, but early enough to provide value in their buying decision, shape exactly what they need to solve a particular problem or need, and build value into the close and price.

To maximize your ROI from all three of these benefits, it’s also important to build your content strategy with the sales organization as a key stakeholder. Ensure up front that they understand what you’re doing, what formats you’ll use, how and where they directly apply to the sales process, plus exactly how the sales organization should use or leverage your content, proactively or reactively. The more pro-scripted you can make this, and the better sales leaders and reps understand your full strategy, the more likely you are to drive pipeline velocity and new closed business as a result.

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Why too many inbound leads might hurt your sales

Most companies have a sales sweet spot. A defined set of early adopters or a target market that they’re best suited for.

It’s not the whole market. That’s way too big. Instead, it’s a specific type of customer, a specific segment, a specific set of internal or external variables that mean sales are faster, easier, more efficient and more profitable.

Let’s say you’ve developed a new software application that’s ideal for mid-market companies. Enterprise organizations can use it too, but those deals take too long (at least right now). SMB organizations think it sounds great, but their purchase cycles aren’t any shorter and your value proposition and pricing structure is mostly over their heads anyway.

The narrower your market opportunity or focus, the more precise you need your sales & marketing to be. Paid search, for example, won’t differentiate or discriminate between inbound requests. Anybody can respond to your ad.

Your content marketing might be generating hundreds of inbound leads, but if your target market is narrow, the majority of those leads might not be in your sweet spot.

And yet, you might have your sales team scurrying to follow up with all of those leads. They’ll be spending the majority of their time chasing sub-optimal leads at the expense of proactively going after organizations directly in your sweet spot.

Inbound leads are great—if you execute well they can come in droves, at an extremely low cost, with predictable perpetuity month to month.

But most of those leads likely aren’t going to buy. It’s critical that you know precisely who you want as a customer, so that your sales & marketing efforts focus first and foremost in that direction

Be opportunistic when other opportunities come your way, but beware the slippery slope of pursuing volume at the expense of quality.

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Eight ways to invigorate your sales training program

World-class sales organizations don’t just train their reps during new-hire orientation, when the product changes, or during the annual sales kick-off.

The best sales organizations—those that consistently exceed expectations and retain their best reps—make sales training a regular, weekly discipline. It’s engrained in how they do business, prioritized as a required element with a direct tie to constant achievement of sales goals in an ever-changing external, competitive landscape.

It’s easy to let training slip, deprioritize it, slowly decrease frequency and quality of training opportunities. Here are eight ways to help ensure that doesn’t happen, to reinvigorate the sales training program for your organization to accelerate and sustain a higher level of results.

1. Make time for training within your regular business rhythm

Training will never be a priority, nor will it deliver the results you’re after, unless you make time for it. Dedicate time in your regular sales meetings for training. As you’ll see below, training doesn’t have to be long and extensive every time. There are teachable, trainable moments that can take just minutes but together, over time, can add up to something more than significant.

If you have daily huddles at the beginning of the sales day, include a 2–4 minute training reminder. Something that reinforces what they’ve already learned. A quick example or validation of someone succeeding based on something that was trained. A new best practice or tactic. It doesn’t have to be much.

2. Build a proactive plan of skills, then find or assign “owners” across the organization

Do you have a training plan? If not, start simply with an inventory of skills or lessons you want to impart across the floor. These can be cold-calling skills, negotiation skills, voicemail best practices, follow-up and nurture best practices, etc. As you build that inventory, think about how on the team currently is already doing a great job. Make them the owner of that skill.

As you build that skill and owner matrix, you’ll have the start of a training plan that can be executed over the coming days and weeks in your regular sales meetings and rhythms.

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3. Get non-sales executives involved

Not just the CEO, but other managers and leaders from across the organization. Could someone in marketing teach your reps about how to find and listen for buying signals across the social web in their territories? What could product management teach your reps about what they’ve learned about how customers use your products and services?

Encourage leaders from across the company to share what they know, and come teach your reps. I bet you’ll be surprised at what sales skills exist across the company, that can diversify the sources of great training content for your team.

4. Expect reps to share best practices with each other

Similarly, build a program where reps are sharing with each other. This can be in the form of a veteran-to-newbie mentorship program, but also encourage reps to get in front of the group and showcase the best practices they use or have identified/discovered that work.

This is a great way to encourage broader and deeper best practice sharing across the team, plus helps further develop presentation and communication skills from your reps.

5. Create a best practices library on your intranet

All too often, best practices are shared and forgotten. If you don’t document the best practice, and create a repository for them (to reinforce and retrain as well as introduce those skills to new reps), you’ll waste a lot of time creating the same content again and again.

How you organize and present this information is up to you. If you already have a company or sales team intranet, create a section to file and organize best practices. Or just get a wiki or other, similar tool to keep them in one place.

6. Ask marketing and customer service to participate and lead training as well

At minimum, marketing should be briefing your sales team on a regular basis about upcoming campaigns, what’s being offered, and how that ties back to what you can do to help customers achieve their objectives, goals and desired outcomes.

But in that briefing is also a significant training opportunity. Let’s say marketing is running a campaign offering prospects a white paper. Many sales teams complain that a white paper lead isn’t a qualified lead. And although requesting a white paper isn’t a signal that someone is ready to buy, it is a signal that the content of the white paper was interesting to the prospect for some reason.

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What is that reason? Is it an indicator of a need, or an early-stage buying signal? Marketing should connect those dots for sales, and both provide and train a set of consultative questions and messages to bridge the gap between offer and business/product need. That’s a clear training opportunity to help your reps increase conversion rates on their leads.

7. Learn from other sales teams

Sales leaders, work on building your network of peers—both in town and across the country. Join LinkedIn Groups such as Inside Sales Experts, and other active online communities such as SalesOpShop.

Subscribe to and read what other sales teams are doing—from SmartBrief, SellingPower, TopSalesWorld, and more. Share your training best practices with others, and pull their training ideas and materials into your organization as well.

8. Incorporate direct prospect feedback

How often does your sales team receive feedback (directly and indirectly) about their sales techniques that, themselves, are teachable moments? Which of your sales reps consistently get the best feedback and satisfaction scores from their new customers? And how could you translate that into training for the entire team?

Why not invite a few customers to come in and brief your sales team directly? Find local customers (and prospects) who can share with your reps what their primary needs and pain points are, and answer questions honestly about how they react to and work with sales reps.

Similarly, find places where your target customers are congregating and talking to each other. Record these sessions, or summarize the key topics to share back with your sales team. The more your team can hear directly from the customer and prospect, the better.

Why marketing should own inside sales (and why they shouldn’t)

The increasing trend of having marketing take over the MDR or lead qualification role of inside sales has been hotly debated and tested in recent months. I still think it’s a good idea, but needs certain expectations and circumstances across sales and marketing to work long term.

Here are four advantages of having marketing own the inside sales function, followed by four reasons why it might not work. At minimum, if you’re already trying or considering trying this shift, it’s important to have these in mind.

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The Pros

Revenue responsibility Simply put, marketing by definition puts itself closer to revenue by

owning inside sales. The more marketers take ownership of revenue in partnership with their sales counterparts, the better.

Sales focuses their time only on active, qualified opportunities Does this mean your sales team could be smaller and generate the same

or higher sales results? Perhaps. Will this make them more efficient and focused on deals that actually have life in them? Undoubtedly. If your inside sales team is focused on qualifying leads, make that a marketing function and allow your sales team to focus on selling.

A more efficient, lower cost revenue generation engine Marketing often complains that sales ignores good leads, thereby

decreasing what should be a higher conversion rate. So if marketing owns the MDR function, they can put their money where their mouth is. With marketing owning the lead generation and qualification, I would expect to see higher conversion rates and lower per-opportunity and per-sale costs with flat resources.

Higher lead to SQL conversion Similarly, marketing now owns the entire lead capture and follow-

up process. They control and can coordinate follow-up activities and messages across channels—online, via email, via phone, etc. I would expect this to generate higher conversion to sales qualified leads immediately, as well as in the short and long-term as those leads are nurtured and mature over time.

The Cons

Little/no sales management experience Managing individual contributors in marketing, and managing inside sale

reps, are completely different skill sets. Sales can be an emotional job, and some of your best reps may also be some of your most high-maintenance employees. Simply put, sales management is a skill that few marketers have. And that can make for a bumpy road.

Managing inside sales can be a full time job Unfortunately, most of the time I’ve seen inside sales handed over to

marketing, it becomes part of a manager or VP’s job to manage that team. They’re expected to spend 20–25 percent of their time managing inside sales, and the rest of their time on their “regular” marketing duties. In reality, managing the inside team can take the majority of your time. And if you don’t give it the time it needs, results will suffer. Few marketing organizations plan for or expect this kind of time commitment.

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The sales team might not give this up easily Despite the advantages of giving up inside sales to marketing, the VP of

Sales might not exactly like the idea of having someone else run part of “her” sales organization. Will they still use the same CRM systems? Share the same sales trainers? Who pays for resources that are needed or used jointly by sales organizations that now report into different executives? Not always easy questions to answer, and often these complexities are used to maintain the status quo.More staff and CMO bandwidth is needed

Several people in marketing will need to devote time and energy to making the inside sales team successful. It’s not just he who is directly managing the team, but also the creative and content needs to support their prospect follow-up, the CMO or VP who needs to tighten coordination across a broader swath of the demand generation waterfall, etc. Owning lead qualification sounds good in theory and on paper, but the reality of long-term resource and focus needs (and the lack of organizations to fund that) can lead to this little experiment failing for the wrong reasons.

Five reasons why inside sales is replacing field sales

One of the happiest, most satisfying times in most customer lifecycles is the moment they sign up, purchase and get started. It’s at this moment that anticipation and expectations are everything. It’s only natural, therefore, that actually getting started and experiencing the early stages of a product or service can create friction, intimidation, misunderstanding, misuse and, sometimes, frustration.

That’s why the early stages of a new customer relationship are by far the most important days and weeks you’ll have with them. They set the tone for the rest of your relationship, establish expectations and a baseline for the kind of company you’ll be and the partnership you’ll have with the customer. They also go a long way towards driving repeat purchases, renewals and referrals.

Across products, services and industries, here are six specific focus areas I’ve seen consistently work to drive greater early success and satisfaction from new customers.

1. Map the broader ecosystem of the customer, and customize content/training accordingly

Just like you map the buying ecosystem (to understand and drive messaging to different types of buyers at the same company), you need to map and operationalize a plan to train different levels of users. There may be

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a primary line-of-business user, for example, who is supported by someone in IT. The business user’s boss might not be in the product day-to-day, but needs to understand (and have reinforced) the capabilities and benefits/outcomes inherent in what the product does and can do.

Weight the depth and complexity of training and content tools for each user. The business user’s manager doesn’t need nearly the depth of training, for example. But if you understand the post-purchase primary and secondary users, you’re more likely to drive immediate and long-term support, engagement and results internally.

2. Train beyond the product

Of course, teach new customers how to use the product. But just as important, teach in context. Teach them why it’s important, and how to think about and do the jobs around your product better. The more your customer is able to do the rest of their job well, the more likely they’ll be able to customize and accelerate their use of your product or service to see success.

Many companies see this kind of training as a cost center. If it’s not related to the product, they say, it’s not our job to train it (at least not for free). But if you’re selling a marketing automation product and not teaching your customers how to be better marketers, you’re missing a huge opportunity to drive value, differentiate yourself from competitors, and increase your customers’ likelihood of success and renewals with your product in the first place.

3. Identify the two-three most important drivers of early success, and focus like crazy on them

New customers can easily get intimidated while ramping up on a new product. Most training programs exasperate the problem, pushing dozens of new tools, tasks and set-up functions at the customer all at the same time. But if you know your product well, or at least analyze the intersection between product usage and customer satisfaction/results, I bet you could identify a few things new customers should do first before anything else, that have the biggest impact on their understanding, satisfaction and results.

In the short term, it’s worth isolating these things and ignoring most everything else. Focus on something that sets other benefits in motion, or that will serve as tangible validation to the customer that what you sold them works and can scale. Regardless of what you choose, make taking the first few steps easy for your customers by cutting through the distractions and clutter of everything else, and walking them by hand towards the right path.

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4. Give lots of early love

This can be contextual or purely superficial. Hire the equivalent of a Walmart Greeter, someone with product and industry knowledge who calls every single new customer to welcome them to your product or service and ask if they have any questions. Send them a thank you note with a sticky featuring your customer service contact info for their monitor or cubicle wall. Or, have your top executives follow the new customer on Twitter and comment on some of their blog posts.

The best companies sustain their love of the customer over the length of their relationship, but it’s most important up front to demonstrate you’re not going to abandon the customer as soon as the contract ink is dry. This is a vulnerable time for most buyers. They’ve made a commitment, which has inherent risk, and they want signs to validate their decision. Related and superficial, make them feel good and back it up with products and services that deliver.

5. Leverage other customers as peer trainers and evangelists

Some of your existing, successful customers can serve as virtual members of your customer support and training staff. You could feature them on webinars and in videos describing their steps to early success. Peer-to-peer training, especially in visual/video formats, can be incredibly effective. Better yet, designate some of your interested customers as volunteer peer mentors, trainers and evangelists. Empower them to help customers via your discussion forums, and/or set up “office hours” for them to help other customers. This is a great way to make existing customers feel good, and to drive greater engagement and honesty among early customers who may be struggling.

6. Know and look for early warning signs

Your renewal push starts as soon as the contract is signed. Every step above is tacitly about that milestone as well. But there are explicit signs to watch for, and you probably already know what they are. No logins for a period of time. Few recorded campaigns or transactions or general activity. Fallen-off attendance at customer events and training programs. Whatever they are for your business, establish processes to actively watch for, highlight and respond to these trouble signs. Your response could start with some triggered emails, and eventually be followed up by a customer service or coaching call. And although some of these escalated steps might be operationally expensive, I bet if you do the math on the difference in churn (and increase in lifetime value) you’ll find that it’s worth the investment (or at least a test) and then some.

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CUSTOMER LOYALTY AND RETENTION

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Marketing is (and always will be) about trust and relationships

Think about it.

Next time you write a marketing plan, ignore channels for a moment. Suspend any thinking about tactical strategies and implementation (which is so easy to dive into quickly).

Figure out the dynamics first. Start with what it’s all based on.

How do you establish trust? Trust between your brand and your customers? Between your brand and the influencers who will endorse what you’re doing to prospective buyers?

The answer to these questions, at least up front, shouldn’t be about channels. It’s not even just messaging. It’s about actions. It’s about putting your money where your mouth is. How are you going to do it?

Relationships come next. With a foundation of trust, how will you foster and expand relationships—with customers, prospects, influencers and partners?

What are those relationships based on? Trust, yes, but what else? What tangibly would those constituents say is tying them to you? What makes them stake their own reputation and brand on an affiliation with yours?

Listen to your lead customers, not just your biggest customers

At a roundtable meeting during the Marketo User Summit, CMO Sanjay Dholakia shared a few insights from a customer roundtable earlier in the day. He described that event as an opportunity to learn from some of their larger customers—what they’re doing, what they’re struggling with, what they need, etc.

But at our roundtable, what followed was a discussion of exactly which customers are most important to listen to. It depends on what you’re trying to learn, of course, but focusing on your biggest customers may not give you the insights and future product roadmap direction you need.

Instead, perhaps it’s better to focus on your lead customers—those regardless of size that are innovating the most. That are hacking your product to make it do what they want it to do. They may not all be big, they may not even be paying you a lot of money. But they’re executing on the cutting edge of innovation, and could very likely give you much more of the product direction you need.

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Four keys to building solid client relationships

It’s not rocket science, but for some reason, solid account management is difficult to grasp for many service firms. One of our favorite books covering this subject is Getting Naked: A Business Fable About Shedding the Three Fears that Sabotage Client Loyalty by Patrick Lencioni. In his book, Lencioni encourages anyone in a business-adviser role to work at being candid, modest, and transparent with clients. He believes that when clients begin to realize the genuineness of these behaviors toward them, that’s when true trust thrives, a solid relationship forms and both you and your client get more out of it.

Here at Heinz Marketing, our cultural values very closely mimic the ones Lencioni encourages. But it’s not enough just to name your values, put them on your website and make a poster for your office. You have to bring the values to life with some very specific actions and a framework to ensure each client gets treated with the same high-impact, quality service and each agency representative you hire knows what’s expected and how to conduct themselves. Here’s how we live our values:

1. Set expectations up front

Create a plan for how you are going to approach the engagement; break it down by phases or projects. Let your client know when to expect each deliverable and when their time is needed to review or approve the work. As you are putting the plan together, make sure the end goal is clearly defined. Identify your success metrics—and the early indicators like response rates, website traffic, cost per lead, average order size and number of new customers that will get you to your goal.

It’s not unusual in today’s fast-paced world that your client will want you to act quickly. Doing a job fast is great, but if it lacks quality, you won’t be remembered for making your deadline. Instead, you’ll be remembered for doing shoddy work. That’s why the critical path and possible contingencies must be identified up front. The more time you take in the beginning to research, plan and develop clarity around the project’s objectives, the more likely you are to deliver a high-quality piece of work that delivers the results you expected.

2. Establish regular in-person meetings

Set a regular schedule for status meetings. Identify participants and stakeholders. Keep a project status log that tracks active projects, next steps and key due dates as well as projects that are on deck or in the parking lot.

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This handy tool will help to ensure both you and your clients are on the same page.

3. Establish a rhythm of regular communication

It’s absolutely necessary to make sure your client is informed every step of the way. Chances are they report to someone who will ask about your project and your work. Help your client look good and return, you’ll look good too.

Provide a draft agenda in advance of your in-person meeting. If your client needs to prepare something for the meeting, make sure you highlight this in the agenda.

After each meeting, quickly summarize the discussion; detail each decision as well as the rationale for that decision.

At the end of each week, provide your client with a summary of results and accomplishments as well as next steps he or she can expect for the following week.

Report results as soon as they are available and keep tracking to the end goal. Demonstrate your understanding of the dynamics at play: why an email performed the way it did, what can be changed to improve its performance, and how will any changes impact the other elements of the campaign. Don’t be afraid to report on less-than-stellar results. Show that you learn from a poor performance and make improvements for next time.

4. Practice client focus

Marketers advise clients to focus on the benefits their product or service delivers rather than focusing on product features. We need to practice what we preach. Understand your client’s business, their work environment, workplace culture and his or her stakeholders. Ask lots of questions and show them that you are listening. Above all, make everything you deliver consumable. Write specific subject lines in emails to help your client prioritize items in their inbox. Create emails that are scan-able, and highlight any action items at the top of the email. Offer a little background to each and every communication (written and verbal). Your client does a lot more than deal with you and your project, help them to answer your questions the first time.

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It doesn’t matter if you interact directly with customers on a daily basis or work behind the front lines with only indirect customer exposure; we all have the opportunity to create long-term, mutually beneficial client relationships.

The sure-fire way to show clients and prospects that you’re listening

I brought a vendor to a meeting with a client once, and never brought him back again.

It wasn’t that he didn’t know what he was doing. He did. And it wasn’t because he didn’t deliver what he promised. He did that too.

But throughout 40 minutes of valuable background information and direction on the project we were starting, the vendor didn’t take a single note. He didn’t even have a notepad with him.

I know the client well enough to interpret the look in his eye a couple times during that meeting:

“Dude, aren’t you going to write any of this down?”The fact that the vendor was able to retain that detail in his head and get

it all right afterward wasn’t the point. The customer wanted to ensure he was being heard. And the easiest way to show that is to take notes.

It may be somewhat superficial and maybe a bit irrational, but it matters. When you’re taking notes, it looks like you’re listening. It shows the speaker that what he or she is saying matters, and will be both retained and acted upon.

This goes for customers, prospects, even advisors. If someone is taking the time to provide feedback on something you’re working on, at least take notes while they’re speaking.

I myself am partial to note taking with pen and paper. Some prefer their tablet or laptop. I think this is fine, as long as you make it clear to the prospect or client that you’ll be taking notes (and not checking your email).

Notes help you remember key points. They help you capture primary action items (for yourself and others). They help you capture random, non-related ideas and tasks that pop into your head at the wrong time (don’t tell me you haven’t jotted down a partial grocery list while in an important meeting).

But perhaps more importantly, note-taking makes you look good to the client or prospect.

Dude, write it down.

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Customer lifetime value— four phases to maximize success and profitability

In any business, the customer experience and customer lifetime value can make or break your ability to drive and accelerate both growth and profitability. In a software as a service (SaaS) business, that impact is magnified further. The economics of SaaS tend to make acquisition costs fairly high as a function of early revenue, thus counting on longer customer lifetime value to drive efficiency and profitability for the business.

Unfortunately, our actions don’t always reflect this understanding. Look at most businesses, particularly those in early stages of development or growth, and you’ll find teams heavy on acquisition focus but light on retention. Marketing teams with 80 percent (or more) of their focus on acquisition but executing table stakes (maybe a newsletter, maybe a light customer portal) to make new and existing customers successful and loyal.

At the SiriusDecisions Summit earlier this year, Megan Heuer highlighted a four-part model for an optimal customer lifetime value framework. In her words:

1. Deliver (initiate)

“After someone buys, you need to reassure them that they’ve made a good choice, and prove there will be value in the relationship. These tactics include onboarding program offers, account plans to define relationship goals and thank you notes. Make sure you’ve rolled out the welcome mat and the customer has walked through the door.”

2. Develop (participate)

“From a sales and marketing perspective, if you drop the ball after that welcome phase—even if you’ve made a good second impression—if you blow it in this phase, the formula for calculating customer lifetime value won’t hold up. This stage can go on for years in some relationships, so you need to develop what it means to be a customer by helping them understand what they can get out of it.”

3. Retain (actualize)

“The better job you do at the beginning to set up value expectations, the better you’re able to describe it and review it in a quantitative way to measure the value you’ve brought to the customer. You may not get here to this phase and you might fail if you don’t understand the value of the first two steps. But if you’ve done a great job, then you’re going to have a lot easier time and can progress to stage four.”

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4. Growth (advocate)

“It’s not just about holding onto business; it’s about making the business become a partnership with you. Sales and marketing can predict the next steps to purchase and build a reference team empowered to reach out to clients, identified as happy, to engage them with other clients.”

Think of the pre and post-sales process, together, as a bow tie. Most companies build a model that ends at the sale. But in the framework above, and with companies that invest in customer success initiatives to lengthen customer lifetime value, that first sale is really the start of realizing the true potential of the customer relationship and revenue opportunity.

What’s more, market-leading companies don’t manage and execute the pre and post-sales processes separately. They’re part of a single, customer-centric strategy that tells, reinforces and delivers on a clear promise.

Three examples of how and why the little things matter1. A good friend of mine only uses UPS to ship packages. Why? His dog can hear the UPS driver from a couple blocks away and gets excited. The UPS driver brings doggie treats. The FedEx driver? Not so much.

That’s a loyal UPS driver not because of delivery, or price, or convenience. But because of doggie treats.

2. A former colleague was loyal to the point of bragging about a particular office supply shop. She rarely visited, and instead placed orders via phone and online. Why? Every time a box arrived, it had her order, plus an invoice, plus a little Ziploc bag of candy. Just a couple pieces. But it made her happy.

She could have bought those office supply commodities anywhere. But she bought forever from only that small office supply shop. Because of candy.

3. If you enter the Norton Building in downtown Seattle, you’ll be greeted enthusiastically by the man behind the reception desk. These desks exist in many office buildings in many downtowns across town and across the country, but most are staffed by gruff men and women who grudgingly speak only when spoken to.

At the Norton building, he remembers your name. He remembers what you said you were going to do over the weekend. I’ve heard of four companies who renewed their lease in this building and booked events at the top floor Harbor Club in part because of that attendant.

The little things matter. They are material. They will make you money.

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Twenty two ways to show your customers you love them

It often doesn’t take much to show your customers you love them. Some of the most successful, customer-centric businesses in the world—Zappos, Nordstrom, Zingerman’s Deli—focus on and execute the little things to differentiate themselves, and show that they authentically care for and love their customers.

Here are 22 things to consider in your business. Some more specific than others, but all with differentiating potential and customer love in mind (all year round, not just on Valentine’s Day).

1. Surprise them with free stuff2. Answer the phone with a live person3. Answer the phone on the first ring4. Over-deliver5. Teach them something they don’t already know6. Apologize (quickly) when you do something wrong7. Be human8. Badges9. Thank them often for their business10. Smile when you talk to them, even on the phone (they can hear it)11. Ask for their opinion about future products or ideas12. Retweet their tweets13. Like their Facebook updates14. Comment on their blog posts15. Recommend them on LinkedIn16. Don’t send them email with “do-not-reply” in the send address17. Obsess daily about delivering and increasing value18. No-hassle cancellation policies (you want them back, don’t you?)19. Treat past customers like current customers20. Treat prospective customers like current customers21. Easy-to-understand instructions22. Executives read and respond to customer emails

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Five fast, successful ways to learn about your customers

Here are five things you can do to quickly learn more about your customers, most without doing anything new and all without spending a thing:

1. Ask them

You can do focus groups and web surveys. Or you can pick up the phone and talk to your customers. Come up with some questions you want answered and dial through a handful of customers to get answers.

2. Listen to them

Where are they already chatting—with each other, to their own customers, etc? What are they saying in their own public forums? What are they saying amongst peers? The social web has opened up many of these communication channels that previously either didn’t exist or were hidden from us. Use them to more actively listen.

3. Watch them

Where can you observe customers in their natural environment? Learn how they act and react? This may require going to them, and getting permission to quietly observe. But I bet you learn quite a bit from doing this.

4. Ask your customer-facing teams

Your customer service reps, your account managers, even your sales reps —they’re talking to current and prospective customers every day. Get them together in a room and ask them what they’re hearing, and/or use their regular meetings to capture customer feedback more regularly.

5. Read what they read

Don’t just read what they’re writing or saying directly, but what they’re themselves reading. If online, look at the articles in their trade publications that get the most reads and comments. Follow their online communities and discussion forums. Immerse yourself in what and where they learn, and you’ll learn a ton yourself.

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Six keys to driving early customer success

One of the happiest, most satisfying times in most customer lifecycles is the moment they sign up, purchase and get started. It’s at this moment that anticipation and expectations are everything. It’s only natural, therefore, that actually getting started and experiencing the early stages of a product or service can create friction, intimidation, misunderstanding, misuse and, sometimes, frustration.

That’s why the early stages of a new customer relationship are by far the most important days and weeks you’ll have with them. They set the tone for the rest of your relationship, establish expectations and a baseline for the kind of company you’ll be and the partnership you’ll have with the customer. They also go a long way towards driving repeat purchases, renewals and referrals.

Across products, services and industries, here are six specific focus areas I’ve seen consistently work to drive greater early success and satisfaction from new customers.

1. Map the broader ecosystem of the customer, and customize content/training accordingly

Just like you map the buying ecosystem (to understand and drive messaging to different types of buyers at the same company), you need to map and operationalize a plan to train different levels of users. There may be a primary line-of-business user, for example, who is supported by someone in IT. The business user’s boss might not be in the product day-to-day, but needs to understand (and have reinforced) the capabilities and benefits/outcomes inherent in what the product does and can do.

Weight the depth and complexity of training and content tools for each user. The business user’s manager doesn’t need nearly the depth of training, for example. But if you understand the post-purchase primary and secondary users, you’re more likely to drive immediate and long-term support, engagement and results internally.

2. Train beyond the product

Of course, teach new customers how to use the product. But just as important, teach in context. Teach them why it’s important, and how to think about and do the jobs around your product better. The more your customer is able to do the rest of their job well, the more likely they’ll be able to customize and accelerate their use of your product or service to see success.

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Many companies see this kind of training as a cost center. If it’s not related to the product, they say, it’s not our job to train it (at least not for free). But if you’re selling a marketing automation product and not teaching your customers how to be better marketers, you’re missing a huge opportunity to drive value, differentiate yourself from competitors, and increase your customers’ likelihood of success and renewals with your product in the first place.

3. Identify the most important drivers of early success, and focus like crazy on them

New customers can easily get intimidated while ramping up on a new product. Most training programs exasperate the problem, pushing dozens of new tools, tasks and set-up functions at the customer all at the same time. But if you know your product well, or at least analyze the intersection between product usage and customer satisfaction/results, I bet you could identify just 2–3 things new customers should do first before anything else, that have the biggest impact on their understanding, satisfaction and results.

In the short term, it’s worth isolating these 2–3 things and ignoring most everything else. Focus on something that sets other benefits in motion, or that will serve as tangible validation to the customer that what you sold them works and can scale. Regardless of what you choose, make taking the first few steps easy for your customers by cutting through the distractions and clutter of everything else, and walking them by hand towards the right path.

4. Give lots of early love

This can be contextual or purely superficial. Hire the equivalent of a Walmart Greeter, someone with product and industry knowledge who calls every single new customer to welcome them to your product or service and ask if they have any questions. Send them a thank you note with a sticky featuring your customer service contact info for their monitor or cubicle wall. Or, have your top executives follow the new customer on Twitter and comment on some of their blog posts.

The best companies sustain their love of the customer over the length of their relationship, but it’s most important up front to demonstrate you’re not going to abandon the customer as soon as the contract ink is dry. This is a vulnerable time for most buyers. They’ve made a commitment, which has inherent risk, and they want signs to validate their decision. Related and superficial, make them feel good and back it up with products and services that deliver.

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5. Leverage other customers as peer trainers and evangelists

Some of your existing, successful customers can serve as virtual members of your customer support and training staff. You could feature them on webinars and in videos describing their steps to early success. Peer-to-peer training, especially in visual/video formats, can be incredibly effective. Better yet, designate some of your interested customers as volunteer peer mentors, trainers and evangelists. Empower them to help customers via your discussion forums, and/or set up “office hours” for them to help other customers. This is a great way to make existing customers feel good, and to drive greater engagement and honesty among early customers who may be struggling.

6. Know and look for early warning signsYour renewal push starts as soon as the contract is signed. Every step

above is tacitly about that milestone as well. But there are explicit signs to watch for, and you probably already know what they are. No logins for a period of time. Few recorded campaigns or transactions or general activity. Fallen-off attendance at customer events and training programs. Whatever they are for your business, establish processes to actively watch for, highlight and respond to these trouble signs. Your response could start with some triggered emails, and eventually be followed up by a customer service or coaching call. And although some of these escalated steps might be operationally expensive, I bet if you do the math on the difference in churn (and increase in lifetime value) you’ll find that it’s worth the investment (or at least a test) and then some.

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This book is copyrighted. You do, however, have permission to post this, email this, print this and pass it along for free to anyone you like, as long as you make no changes and attribute its content back to the author.

You do not have permission to turn this book into a play, a musical or a television mini-series. The author reserves those rights, just in case.

You can find more information on much of the contents of this book, as well as additional information and insights, at www.mattonmarketingblog.com.

We hope this book inspires you to keep thinking, innovating, and inspiring those around you. The author was particularly inspired by Don Gregory, Robert Pease, Craig Rosenberg, Anthony Iannarino, Jill Konrath, Tom Searcy, Claude Hopkins, Jeff Thull, Verne Harnish, David Brock, Dan Waldschmidt and many many others.

Special thanks to Erin Alvarez for bringing this book to life and for her fantastic cover work and editing skills, as well as Ellen Madian for her layout, and to our summer intern, Rebecca Smith for her proofreading.

CREDITS AND COPYRIGHTS

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Matt Heinz brings more than 12 years of marketing, business development and sales experience from a variety of organizations, vertical industries and company sizes. His career has focused on delivering measurable results for his employers and clients in the way of greater sales, revenue growth, product success and customer loyalty.

Matt has held various positions at companies such as Microsoft, Weber Shandwick, Boeing, The Seattle Mariners, Market Leader and Verdiem. In 2007, Matt began Heinz Marketing to help clients focus their business on market and customer opportunities, then execute a plan to scale revenue and customer growth. Matt lives in Kirkland, Washington with his wife, Beth, three children and a menagerie of animals (a dog, a cat, and six chickens).

Matt’s Blog www.mattonmarketingblog.com

Monthly Sales and Marketing Newsletter www.heinzmarketinginsights.com

LinkedIn Profile www.linkedin.com/in/mattheinz

Matt’s Business www.heinzmarketing.com

Matt on Twitter www.twitter.com/heinzmarketing

Brainstorm with Matt! www.10minutebrainstorm.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR