I rarely pay attention to a TV ad. But, a new ad for a Toyota Corolla got my attention last night. I haven’t been looking for a Corolla, let alone a Toyota, but I watched the entire ad.

I paid attention because it told an interesting story about a woman who wants to buy a Toyota Corolla. In the story, the woman has a cake decorating business but no car in which to make deliveries. It shows her trying to deliver intricately-decorated and iced cakes on a bus, getting jostled by other passengers while trying to protect the cake. It was engagin. Moments later  at a family celebration, her new Corolla is driven into the yard. And they all lived happily ever after.

What can B2B marketers learn from this? Today pe0ple are not buying just products or services. They buy with their emotions; they are buying a story. When they narrow down their options to two or three sellers, they buy the story that best aligns with their beliefs and values.

What’s your B2B marketing story? What do you and your business stand for? Does your B2B story resonate with the type of buyer you would like to have? Do you know your buyers’ needs and wants – their buyer persona? Have you populated your stories online to attract the right buyers? Please comment below.

Photo by むぅ[Sakura Mutsuki] on Flickr. Creative Commons license, Attribution 2.0 Generic.

As a B2B marketing consultant, I am often asked to figure out the one marketing tactic that is going to break open a market for a client. They are looking for a magic bullet.

I have news for them.

There is no magic bullet in B2B marketing.

Sorry to disappoint.

What does work is a strategic marketing plan that maps out integrated marketing tactics and provides a systematic approach to reaching your target audience. Strategy? Planning? Integration? Systems? Not as glamorous as the magic bullet, but they work!

One-shot marketing tactics don’t work. It has been proven again and again that multiple touches, multiple, integrated brand impressions create response compression (multiple touches lead a prospect to remember you and respond) and build brand recognition.

In my opinion, the only way to design and implement an integrated campaign is to have a written marketing plan. It becomes your road map – no, your GPS system – for integrated marketing success. Without the written plan, it is too easy to stray and end up back doing seat-of-the-pants, onesy-twosy marketing. Forget magic bullet(s). Rather,

1. get strategic
2. think “system”
3. know what tactics work for  your target audience
4. write a plan
5. make it happen!

Have you found a magic bullet for your marketing? Please comment below.

I had lunch recently with CPA Lynne Leavitt of Brakensiek Leavitt Pleger LLP, The Eclectic Accountants & Business Consultants, and Maureen Bernstein of Kaercher Campbell & Associates Insurance Brokerage. We actually talked about – gasp! – ethics.

Lynne heads up programming for one of our networking groups and mentioned she has a speaker on ethics scheduled for later this year. She explained that as a CPA she is bound by the AICPA’s Code of Professional Conduct. Maureen added that, thanks to former Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, property and casualty insurance brokers are bound by a code of ethics. Many professionals service providers are required to follow a code of ethics. But marketing and consulting don’t have a requirement. The question becomes, how ethical is your marketing service provider? Your consultant?

Since 1998 when I joined the Institute of Management Consultants, I’ve followed their Code of Ethics. This includes (among many things) maintaining objectivity and integrity with my clients, not taking marketing engagements for which I’m not qualified, not taking kick-backs without disclosing them to the client. I can’t imagine telling a client, “I’m referring you a marketing tradeshow booth manufacturer, but I have to disclose that they will pay me 10% of their fee.”

Today’s business owner expects transparency – are there any fees that haven’t been disclosed? Is my marketing consultant being honest about what marketing tactics get results and how much they truly cost? Are they advising me to spend money that isn’t necessary? Have they done this kind of marketing work before?

Does your marketing service provider have a code of ethics? Please comment below.

Photo by aunniepete on Flickr. Creative Commons 2.0 License.

Let’s face it. Most buyers can smell a rat these days. If you’re not being honest and open about the products and services you are selling or how you manufacture or provide them, people aren’t going to buy. Last week I participated in a fantastic webinar  hosted by Sustainable Industries and featuring Brand Strategist Susan Bierzychudek of Green Ideals and Scott James of Fair Trade Sports.

In the webinar, titled “Beyond the Eco-Label: Strategies for Marketing Your Sustainable Brand,” Susan explained that brand storytelling is far better than any green seal or label a company can use. (There are over four hundred green seals alone – see the LOHAS Journal article, Proliferation of 400+ Green Seals Detracts from Message). Buyers are justifiably suspicious and cautious.

Susan pointed out that any facts you use today to market your products or services are less powerful today because they are so readily available, but stories bring facts to life. She said  that the middle market has eroded, and buyers are either looking for value with lowest price or values: alignment with their beliefs. Today’s buyers get emotionally engaged when they hear a story that tells them the seller’s values are in alignment with theirs. Studies have shown that people make decisions with their hearts. This is because decision-making takes place primarily in the limbic region of the brain, which is ruled by emotions.

Is your B2B marketing transparent? Are you still doing product-driven marketing, or have you graduated to story-driven marketing?

Photo by Gruntzooki on Flickr. CC License.

It’s amazing to me that very few B2B marketers track marketing ROI, let alone any other marketing performance stats. According  the Aberdeen Group, 78% of best practice companies track and measure their marketing results, compared to just 42% of companies that perform at industry average and 37% of companies defined as laggards.

When I analyze B2B marketing results, I look at several stats. One piece of data that some of you know is cost per lead. Easy to calculate (total cost of marketing activity divided by the number of leads generated). But it’s not enough on its own.  I look at cost per lead for one marketing activity, such as a trade show, along with marketing conversion (how many sales does a marketing activity produce?). This is important, because while maybe the cost per lead is high, if the conversions are high (or uber-high), I’m going to think differently about cost. I use Excel to plot both pieces of data so that we can compare performance across all activities.

In the example above, we showed one of our clients that their print ad running in a local newspaper (marketing cost per lead $138, sales conversion rate 11%) was not as effective as a trade show (marketing cost per lead $57, sales conversion rate over 50%), a direct mail piece (marketing cost per lead $32, sales conversion rate 56%), and (hello!) referrals which cost nothing but had a sales conversion rate of 46%.

What do you track to assess your marketing performance?

Competitive Analysis

We’ve been taught in business schools and business classes to analyze the competition! What products and services do they have that we do not? What markets do they serve that we do not? How are they positioned? What is their strategy? How do they perform and what is their price point?

For a long time I’ve told my B2B clients that if they focus too much on their competition, they will be looking at their business and marketing strategy laterally. If they look for new opportunities that their competition have not taken advantage of, they are forward-looking and have a better chance to succeed (at least until their competition looks laterally and then catches up to them).

Blue Ocean Strategy

Blue Ocean Strategy is a way to leap beyond the competition. Blue Ocean Strategy first emerged as a book written by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne and published by Harvard Business Press in 2005. It is now an entire, global institution offering consulting, training and presentations on the topic. The gist of Blue Ocean Strategy is that rather than competing in the bloody red ocean where your competitors are, you’re better off finding a blue ocean that no one is in.

I use the market analysis image above to illustrate Southwest’s blue ocean analysis of the airline industry. Most  airlines were duking it out in the mid- to high-price and performance (red ocean) quadrant. No one was in the low-price, high-performance (blue ocean) quadrant, giving Southwest a tremendous opportunity.

How do you find your blue ocean? Analysis of your industry and market is a start. Importantly, intelligence about what your customers need and want (that your competitors are not providing) can shed light on possible blue oceans. Staying close to your customers and serving their needs helps you hold onto your blue ocean – a great example now is Southwest not charging for checked bags when all other airlines are (and in doing so, other airlines are irritating their customers).

Blue Ocean Strategy is the kind of strategic thinking that can help B2B marketers change the playing field and gain advantage, at least until the competition catches on. Then it’s time to find the next blue ocean.

Do you have a blue ocean? Please comment below.

Original photo by MGShelton on Flickr. CC by 2.0

When I created B2B marketing buyer personas (”personae” for those of you who studied Latin) for one of my clients last year, it became crystal clear why they beat working from demographic and even psychographic profiles hands-down. Years ago it was considered a standard marketing practice to create marketing programs with demographics in mind. You had a profile based on age, gender, income, ethnicity, and other factual data and you marketing to that profile. Great!

Then, we marketers got a little smarter. We starting profiling not only on demographics but also on psychographics. Marketing wasn’t just about age and income but also about behaviors, feelings and beliefs. What made our target audience tick? What did they like or dislike? How do they spend their time? We appealed to our prospects’ emotions and made connections. Even better!

Now we have marketing buyer personas. What are these? In the blog entry, My Shoe Fetish & Why Personas Are Invaluable for Marketing, Marketing Sherpa describes the process of creating marketing personas:

“You create research-based characters each matching one of the very distinct groups of folks who visit your site or view your marcom. And then you make sure there’s distinct content on that site or marcom specifically created to please each of them.”

Here is a sample persona, modified for public use:

Buyer Persona: Scott the Go-Getter

Meet Scott. He’s 27 years old. He worked at four different jobs right out of school and then his father Joe, CEO of a manufacturing company, hired him. Scott is connected on social networking sites and is apt to multi-task by Tweeting or text messaging. He loves computer games. He is trying to convince his Dad that the company would benefit from going green and doing some cause marketing. He is a little shy about working with senior employees but also impatient with what he perceives as a slow pace and lack of sophistication.

Scott is a Millennial. He grew up with the Oklahoma City bombings, schoolyard violence, TV talk shows and I.T.  His attitude is, “Tell me something I don’t know.” He’s confident, flexible and civic-minded. He likes teamwork, social events and diversity. He’s very connected with his peers and follows the best thought industry leaders online. Even though he pushes his Dad for change, he’s very close to both his parents.

When you write stories about your customer types or marketing personas, you are so much more able to put yourself in your customers’ shoes. You are that much closer to really understanding them, because you have created a story that helps you live, breath and think like them. Instead of the intellectual exercise of working from demographics and psychographics, you can experience their stories on an emotional level. Every marketing decision is much easier since you are able to live your customers’ stories.

That’s why buyer personas rule for B2B marketing.

Photo by net-efekt on Flickr. CC BY 2.0

Having a presence at an industry trade show can be one of the most expensive B2B marketing tactics in your annual program. But it’s no longer enough to just show up, exhibit and leave. Here are six trade show tips to help you maximize return on your investment and, in some cases, even reduce your costs.

1. Be a speaker at the conference. A conference speaking gig positions you as an industry leader and creates instant credibility. At the end of the presentation, announce a special offer or event at your booth to drive attendees there.
2. Host a hospitality suite schmooze-fest with an industry guru, trade journal editor, or other leader at a nearby hotel and invite customers and prospects. This can cost less than an exhibit, and, if it’s well-executed, your customers and prospects will never forget it and you.
3. Send email or direct mail to attendees before the show, inviting them to the hospitality suite or your booth to receive a special gift, new industry whitepaper, product or service offering, etc. Send follow-up messages after the show. While this tactic can add 10-20% to your show expenses, it gives you more marketing touch points and can yield a 30-50% or more increase in response rate. Spend the money!
4. Create a one-on-one meeting space for private meetings with key people and customers. Schedule these in advance and make sure the right people are at the meeting. You can hold these in your booth or in a nearby hospitality suite. Studies show that many companies now primarily use trade shows to improve and maintain existing relationships.
5. Minimize the amount of promo items and brochures you hand out at your booth. Instead, scan the attendees’ contact information and send them a custom package after the show. They will thank you for lightening their load, you get another marketing touch point after the show, and you fulfill a promise when you follow-through.
6. Team up with alliance partners to create a “new” offering at a trade show. If you exhibit every year, this can help add value to your customers and your partners by showing them something new. You can also do a cost-split with the partners for your trade show expenses.

What’s your favorite trade show trick?

Photo by Michele Ficara Manganelli on Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0

When I first read Geoffery Moore’s  Crossing the Chasm in the early 1990s, I was amazed at how well the author, then a partner at Regis McKenna, Inc., nailed what worked and what didn’t work in technology marketing. What is even more amazing to me is that the book is still highly relevant for high tech marketing today; in fact, I believe it was a harbinger of today’s “new” buying paradigm that is made possible through social networking.

At the time I read the book, I was Director of Marketing at a B2B application software company, and the concepts of early technology adopters versus “majority” buyers, the importance of choosing the right set of customers upon whose testimonials you can “cross the chasm” to the mass market, the pain of attaching your technology to the wrong distribution channel to cross over, and the fact that technology buyers weighed peer recommendations most heavily in their decisions were all things I had been experiencing.

Back then, we didn’t have CTOs (Chief Technology Officers) – we had DP (Data Processing) Managers, then IS (Information System) Managers. When their company needed a mission-critical application, they turned to their IS buddy across town or in their industry, to find out what worked and what didn’t.

We made some mistakes, one of which was choosing to tie our coattails to Informix over ORACLE for our database technology, because we believed the technology was superior. Choosing the better technology would make our product superior, right? Wrong! When we hit the streets to cross the chasm/sell our software, IT Managers had one thing on their mind: ORACLE. The reasons? ORACLE’s superior marketing and positioning of its portability across platforms.

We also did some things right, including creating peer-review marketing campaigns with ads that included industry leader testimonials, and (gasp! – pre-YouTube!) videos of  customer testimonials. We were very successful with these campaigns, and Moore validated the reason in his book:

“Numerous studies have shown that in the high-tech buying process, word of mouth is the number one source of information buyers reference, both at the beginning of the sales cycle, to establish their ‘long lists,’ and at the end, when they are paring down their short ones.”

Page 69, “The D-Day Analogy,” Crossing the Chasm

Now that technology has permeated every business and almost every individual’s life, social networking allows us to quite easily follow, and take our buying cues from, our peers and industry thought leaders. I believe this is a sign of disruptive technology (Internet, Web 2.0) catching up with and allowing the high tech buying paradigm from over 20 years ago to be adopted by the mass market.

Image by cambodia4kidsorg on Flickr,  CC BY 2.0

People buy from people they know, like and trust. Using Twitter can help B2B marketers reduce “time-to-trust” with prospective customers.

When prospective customers follow you on Twitter, you are increasing your touch points with them. You may have met them face-to-face, talked on the phone, and exchanged email. Twitter extends your reach and puts you in front of prospects with value-add statements that support their buying cycle on a regular basis.

But, be careful as you use Twitter for B2B marketing. Your tweets should be strategic and represent your business marketing persona. Too many tweets and your prospects may get annoyed. Too few tweets and your prospects won’t be engaged. You want to appear human to build trust, but if you have too many diverse subjects in your tweets, you dilute your brand and marketing persona.

I’ve blogged before about David Maister et al’s book The Trusted Advisor, and his trust equation (see Trust: Get It, Measure It, Grow It Online or Offline). Let’s apply the elements of the equation to B2B marketing on Twitter.

Trust = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) / Selfishness

Credibility. According to Maister et al, credibility is increased if we can anticipate our prospect’s needs and articulate them. On Twitter, what increases credibility? Careful analysis of leading industry information, retweeting quality tweets by colleagues, communicating transparently with followers, offering original research and studies that are relevant to prospects.

Reliability. How can you be reliable on Twitter? Show up and post tweets regularly, respond directly to as many followers as possible, retweet your prospects’ tweets, engage with them! You can set up a private list of prospects using Twitter’s list feature to make it easier to spend more quality time with prospects.

Intimacy. On Twitter you can increase intimacy with your prospects  by responding to their tweets, sending direct messages, and, per Chris Brogan and Julien Smith in the excellent book Trust Agents, communicating with them as humans, not as sales prospects.

Selfishness. A while back Chris Brogan advocated a 12 to 1 ration of tweets to add value for others versus self-promoting tweets. Come up with your own ratio that allows you to be credible, reliable, intimate but still accomplish your B2B marketing and sales goals without alienating the B2B prospects you’ve worked so hard to get. Inbound marketer Beth Dunn calls this the Self-Serving Ratio.

Do you have examples of how you reduced “time-to-trust” on Twitter? Please comment below.