October 2011 Archives

While I completely agree with Jeremy that the heyday of direct mail marketing has ended, there is one type of postal mail I do look forward to receiving - thank you notes. OK I'll be honest, those holiday cards with the family photos are pretty great too (not to mention the ones that include a long letter with updates on Aunt Sue's knitting class, cousin Ben's pop warner team and Fido's favorite chew toy - love those!), but let's focus on thank you notes.

Like most people, I am constantly interrupted throughout the day - emails, phone calls, instant messages, and meetings - and I move from task to task without a lot of time to stop and reflect.  However, when I receive mail that's not an ad or a bill, I slow down for a minute to open it and actually read (not just skim) the message. I truly appreciate it when someone takes the time to write a personal, handwritten thank you note. And I'm not the only one - in a recent interview The Office's Steve Carell shared his thoughts about handwritten notes:

 "Sending a handwritten letter is becoming such an anomaly....Getting an e-mail is fine, and it's thoughtful and nice, but receiving something that took that amount of care - it's an art, I think, and a lost art."
Source: Boston Magazine

So next time you're introduced to someone new or meet with a prospect or client, take five minutes to write a thank you note. Keeping it brief is perfectly fine - just be sure to personalize it with 1-2 specifics to make it meaningful, then slap on a stamp and stick it in the mailbox. It may be just what you need to set yourself apart from the competition!

A good tip I received from an experienced sales rep: If you're often on the road, it might be worth keeping some note cards, pre-stamped envelopes and a pen in your car so you can mail them while you're on the go.

Do you take the time to mail thank you notes to your clients and prospects?  Is it an effective way to leave a good an impression?

Recently I've been thinking about lead generation from a sales perspective. As a marketer, my instinct is to generate as many leads as possible for the sales team so they have a lot to work with. It's a quantitative approach - partially due to my marketing background, but also because I don't have a working definition for what 'qualifies' a lead.  Everyone uses different definitions for sales-ready leads and what qualifies them: do you just need a name and a phone number? Or do you need to warm the lead with prospecting or nurturing emails? Or is the lead only ready if they interact with your email or website?

Of course the sales team doesn't want to make 500 dial-for-dollars calls per day - they prefer to get a more targeted subset that will be less of a cold call. So the more information, the better. I can agree to that. But how do you define a sales-ready lead? 

These are all tough questions, so I reached out to the Twitterverse, Facebook, and Quora for some answers. After all, social media gives me the ability to interact with other people in the B2B space - in real time. I was ready to get some answers.

We love talking about new ways to connect with prospects and clients: through email, search marketing, and social networking. We're also willing to accept that the phone remains the primary communication method for many business people. But are there any B2B marketers out there who still put significant effort into direct mail marketing?

These extremely defensive USPS ads made me realize: when you're forced to take out ads on TV defending your entire business model, something is wrong.





The refrigerator has never been hacked? Sure - but no one ever picked up my credit card bill from from email trash bin and stole my identity, either.

I get about 3 pieces of mail a month at work, and they all go straight into the trash. Anything important will come to me via email or a phone call -- and if I need a new vendor, I'll start my search online when the need arises. A postcard isn't going to change my purchasing needs.

Now I understand that retailers wouldn't continue to send direct mail catalogs if they didn't see the ROI, so postal mail isn't a complete waste of time. But outside of retail, can you imagine the reaction from the boss if you proposed a big B2B direct mail blitz as the cornerstone of 2012's marketing activities? Here's a hint: you wouldn't get the chance to plan 2013.

I'd love to hear it if anyone finds direct mail a useful tool in B2B marketing.

We just wanted to check in your lead nurturing activities:are you a lead nurturing expert, or not even sure what it is? Somewhere in between, perhaps?

Let us know -- answer the quick poll in the sidebar to the right and we'll report back on what you say.

Here at BuyerZone, we've made it a core component of what we do, but it wasn't always that way. Just a couple of years ago, we would have answered "It's on our to-do list." It's been great for us and we hope to help you improve your results as well.

Happy Friday everyone!

As the work week winds to a close (does it ever stop though?), we want to share some relevant news across the web that caught our eye.

• Liz got you caught up on what this whole marketing automating thing is about. If you're considering making the investment - and trust us, it's a worthy one - there are a lot of choices out there. Our friends at Marketo made news this week with their launch of Spark - a lite version of their slick marketing automation platform, designed for small businesses. 

• As marketers continues to rely on search engine marketing and experiment with social and mobile, email marketing continues to chug along - as instrumental as ever. The folks at Hubspot have put together a solid cheat sheet for creating successful email campaigns. We covered email tips in-depth last year - and they still holds true. Check out our Foundations series on everything you need to know about email marketing for lead generation.
  

• Google has made a number of changes to their search algorithm starting earlier this year with the goal to eradicate 'content farms' - sites designed to beat the system by offering little in terms of value to users - from their organic search results. While well intentioned, the update has impacted many legitimate sites, especially manufacturing-focused sites. Has your site been impacted? 
  

Marketing automation is the use of technology to manage and automate processes such as lead nurturing, lead generation, email marketing, and lead management, and improve the measurement and analysis of results.  With marketing automation technology, marketers are able to execute campaigns with less manual effort, allowing more time to focus on the strategic and creative activities that improve marketing ROI.

With marketing automation, your marketing team can:

• Track and measure all online marketing channels in one system
• Test and optimize landing pages to increase conversion
• Nurture leads through the buying cycle with drip marketing campaigns and ultimately close more leads
• Manage and segment leads to create targeted email campaigns based on a contact's behavior, profile or interest level rather than mass marketing with generic promotions      
• Create triggered email campaigns based on how a lead interacts with your emails or website
• Use lead scoring to enable your sales and marketing teams to focus on the leads most ready to buy

Is marketing automation right for your company?
Marketing automation is already a $325 million industry, and experts predict that it will continue to grow - but is it right for your company?

In this video, lead gen expert Brian Carroll describes why you should avoid the temptation to use cheap data.




We couldn't agree more. We've seen clients who calculate ROI on a lead channel purely by comparing the cost of acquisition with the resulting revenue -- with no consideration for the time involved in pursuing the leads.

There is absolutely a place for cheap data -- in low-level prospecting, for low-impact activities like email or print collateral blasts -- but make sure you understand the burden you're putting on a sales team if you're getting data on the cheap.

What's the alternative?
There are three broad categories of lead data: cheap leads you buy, expensive leads you buy, and leads you develop yourself, which can be cheap or expensive depending on how you go about it.

It's clear that low-end purchased leads aren't a great fit for organizations that require "the human touch" Carroll refers to in the video. So what makes high-end leads better?

• Screening. High-end lead providers contact prospects to verify the accuracy of contact information and qualify the buyers before passing them on. BuyerZone has always verified contact information - and recently we've started doing more in-depth screening. We're finding that both buyers and sellers appreciate the extra effort.
  
• Recency. How quickly a lead gets to you is essential - look for lead sources with average turnaround times measured in hours, not days.
  
• Targeted interest. Leads that come from general interest white papers or newsletter signups will never be as valuable as those coming from buyers who are actively shopping for a product.
  

Leads from high-end sources should score highly in all three areas. Of course there's always variability - there will always be people filling out forms just to get an incentive, check a price, or test the waters, without a real interest in buying.

The third category -- leads generated on your own web site -- is the gold standard: they've already expressed an interest in connecting with your brand. These winners should always get high priority - whether they flow straight to sales or get scored by a marketing team for distribution. The main problem with this channel is volume: of course you want more leads coming in through your own direct efforts, but it's not always easy to get them. More on that later.

In the wake of Google Panda update, there has been a lot of buzz around content marketing and the benefits that it can bring your website. Not only can it potentially help your page rank on Google and other search engines, but it can also improve the overall quality of your site -that is, if it is implemented correctly. In years past, sites would squeeze as many keywords into their content as possible to improve rankings, but now we are learning that might hurt you. But where do you get started?

Read our simple tips below.

Keep it fresh. Depending on the size and depth of your website, this may be more of a challenge than you might initially think. Keep track of when you write articles or blurbs on your site so you can assess when it becomes outdated. Then you can rotate your efforts rather than updating your entire site in one sitting. Set goals for yourself by creating a reasonable timeline, keeping in mind that not only do you have to update old content, but you also have to add new copy regularly -whether it's articles, blog posts, or changing out homepage content. Just assume that you want to give people a reason to return to your website. And when search engines crawl your site, you want them to see that you are constantly updating your site - providing users with the most relevant experience.

Make it easy to share. So you are trying to get people to download your whitepaper and fill out your form, but aren't getting much traffic? Think about how social media friendly your website is. Can someone read an article on your site and share it on Facebook or Twitter at the click of a button? In this day and age, you can let your fans and customers do the work for you by letting them publicize your content.