B2B marketing and sales is still about people.

Paul Mosenson, President of NuSpark Marketing, is a very handy colleague to have. As a content aficionado, he frequently forwards valuable B2B marketing info that I might miss seeing otherwise.

Recently he sent me a copy of a report from 2009 loaded with interesting insight into the behavior of business buyers. The 202 pages in the document are part of “The Buyershere Project” put together by Gord Hotchkiss of Mediative (formerly Enquiro).

As he explains, the Project started with wanting to know how business product and service buyers make their buying decisions. He began the research by just talking to over 100 B2B buyers and asking them how they buy within their organization. Then he added insight gathered from a panel he moderated at the SES San Jose that included representatives from Google, Covario, Business.com, Demandbase and Marketo.

Here are highlights of a few items the report covered that I found most interesting:

At their core, buying decisions are not rational. Regardless of the RFPs, RFQs and vendor approval processes in place to make sure that buying decisions are purely rational, the fact is that, after all the information is gathered, decision makers and influencers make gut decisions. I think this is why personal “relationships” are one of the most important elements in the decision.

• 50% of B2B budgets go to purchase common items that we buy frequently and repeatedly
• 46% of these repeat purchases are made from a single preferred vendor
• The opinion of an existing vendor was the most in?uential factor in business purchases

 “99% of B2B buying is about covering your butt.” Buyers typically reduce risk based on these channels:

• Personal experience with existing vendors
• Word of mouth from co-workers and peers
• Credibility and position of the vendor (Remember when buyers thought, “You can never be fired for buying IBM”?)
• Online research
• Price

After price/value, the second reason B2B buyers bought was the sales rep. This was true for influencers as well as decision makers.

Winning sales seems to be nearly as much about smart, likeable sales people as it is about the product being offered. It tells me that, maybe, B2B marketers should bring sales into the picture earlier.

As I reported in an earlier blog post, “How B2B marketers can help prevent lost sales,” Kathy Tito of Call Center Services, Inc. explained, “I have seen instances of companies that allow sales leads to become stale by not transitioning them to sales quickly enough to develop interest on the next level. If you have to err on one side or the other, keep in mind that the ‘premature’ hand-off can be managed to have little to no downside. If the lead is not ready, they can always be cycled back into nurture mode.”

The final answer to a big B2B marketing content question.

In business, I have grown up in a direct marketing world, where a response to an offer is the goal of every B2B marketing campaign. So the concept of giving any offer away free was a big leap for me to accept.

This new concept of giving some content away free vs. requiring contact info has become a big subject of discussion — and rightly so. How does one decide which educational content you’ve spent time and money creating should be given away with no strings attached?

Well, I personally judge that discussion closed thanks to Ardath Albee’s authoritative insight on the subject in her recent blog “The Art of The Ask in Content Marketing.”

On her Marketing Interactions blog, she takes B2B marketers through a very sound review of the prospect’s thinking and their actions based on the type of content. Here’s what she presents is going through their minds when faced with any registration form:

“How important is this going to be to me?

What are the chances that they’ll call me?

Is it worth the risk?

I always wanted to be Mickey Mouse…

Maybe I can just alter one digit in my phone number…

And I can use my throw-away email that I ignore…just in case they send a link to the PDF instead of letting me download it right away.”

These are so accurate. I know because it’s exactly what I think when I am faced with registration for content (only I want to be Minnie Mouse).

My response to clients asking whether they should “gate” their content or not is always, “Just ask for the very minimum of information,” that being a name and email address. Unfortunately, the marketing director I work with must then fight sales, which wants to get titles, phone numbers, decision-making authority and so many other pieces of information.

Now, however, thanks to Ardath, I am fully educated on the rules. They are loosely summarized here but I advise my readers to please read all she has to say on this subject because it’s valuable knowledge:

1. Don’t gate the old stuff. If it’s over two years old ungate it.
2. Judge what to put behind a form on its importance and substance. If it’s a quick, early buy-cycle offer, give it away free, then gate the more detailed and substantive white papers, etc.
3. If there is a form, let the prospect check a box if they want to be called by sales. This is a great way to make sure you don’t miss those who may already be in a product evaluation stage. You can also assure others that they won’t be called.
4. Limit any questions on the form to the least information you need — that is, no more than one or two questions.

Material that is not gated definitely positions your company as a resource of information on its area of expertise. It may delay your first contact a bit, but, as Ardath says, “The point is, the sooner prospects start using your ideas to think about solving problems, the better off you’ll be.”

Two B2B marketing rules that cross all forms of communication.

After back-and-forth email discussion with a client today about subject lines on a particular email, I got to thinking about how what I was saying applied to all types of B2B communications.

The fact is, we want to be effective communicators whether the platform is an email, letter, PowerPoint presentation, Website, post card, brochure or who knows what else. If B2B marketers forget all the other rules and best practices of communication, they must remember these two as the basics of getting their messages read. They are simple to remember — but can make a powerful difference.

1. Keep it short.
People are multitasking. They may be reviewing their emails while on a conference call. Schedules are often booked solid all day long. Often they don’t have time to do more than take a quick eye scan of the communication.

B2B marketers are not usually in the same room with the reader when the messaging is being read. They aren’t there to see the person yawning, looking at their watch or not giving the message any more than a glance. The trick to keeping it short is to write the communication. Then let it sit overnight. Then review it the next day and remove every word and sentence that is not critical to its purpose.

Don’t go on and on about product details in a communication inviting attendees to a Webinar demo. Don’t give away all the details of a case study you’re asking prospects to download.

2. Forget your big vocabulary.
B2B marketing communication is always more effective when it uses simple, direct language. The easier it is to read by anyone, the better. Some assert that one should use formal language when talking to, say, academics. However, everyone, regardless of education level, prefers simple, straightforward language. This is especially true when learning about products or services they might want to use. Clearer, more basic language also helps keep the communication short.

This isn’t new advice. In fact it’s been said over and over and over again by me and others. What’s disappointing is how often I still see these rules broken. B2B marketers have a better chance of standing out from their competition in this crowded marketplace by just following these two simple rules.

B2B marketing tip: Targeting prospects on your Web site

All smart marketers agree that reaching the right people with their B2B marketing message and content offer makes the biggest difference in the success of marketing efforts. Sending the wrong message to the right market, or the right message to the wrong market, is a complete waste of money.

That’s why automated lead nurturing is such a rapidly growing B2B marketing approach. By automatically emailing a new offer to a lead/prospect — based on the action that person has last taken — boosts the targeting and gives marketers a better chance of sending the right message and content offer to the right person.

Web sites are different. Although B2B marketers use multiple channel options (SEO, SEM, email, social media, direct mail, banners) to generate Web site visits, they do not have control over who gets their messages.

If a company’s targets come from multiple industries, multiple departments, or multiple titles, who should the messaging on their Web site speak to?

If the decision maker is the CFO, should the focus of the introductory message be on cost, ROI, and the bottom line? What if the product is actually a sales or CRM tool? It’s then recommended by the sales manager, but the CFO has to make the decision due to cost. Wait a minute. If IT has to install and manage the tool, IT needs to have a big say in the decision.

So now the B2B marketer is back to the Web site. Who the heck should it talk to?

Most companies serving multiple industries do a good job of providing navigation to information for each industry. But it’s surprising how few provide specific navigation by individual target or title.

In 2007 I wrote copy for the Web site of a company selling inventory management software to healthcare facilities. The home page navigation included navigation by department, which is, in essence, navigation by the needs of the titles in that department. Under “Advantages” it included:

• Compliance Benefits
• Financial Benefits
•  Inventory Benefits
• IT Benefits
• Process Benefits
• Quality Control Benefits
• Nurse/Patient Benefits

Each target has different goals and motivations. Each item can link to a page dedicated to the specific benefits the product or service brings to that title or department.

The more a Web site can reach out to the individual needs of decision makers and influencers, the better chance it has of engaging its prospective buyers. Navigation by title or department is a simple, but effective addition that makes Web site messaging more targeted and more effective.

One B2B social media expert who’s got it wrong.

I’m not a social marketing expert. I don’t pretend to be. My expertise and knowledge are in the outbound arena. I’ve written many times that I still believe in outbound marketing because I see it working cost-effectively for all my B2B clients. They use it to reliably fill their pipeline.

Yes, inbound marketing is cheaper. Yes, it works. But users of it cannot control the volume or the timing of the inbound inquiries it receives. Outbound marketers using proven B2B direct marketing practices can.

Here’s the reason for my rant. Perusing B2B Marketing Zone, I saw the reposting of the blog by Dragan Mestrovic on his inBlurbs site “How to save 62 percent of your budget with inbound marketing.”

He knows inbound marketing. His advice and the statistics he presents are all perfectly valid.

This rant concerns what he says about outbound marketing because, on that subject, he’s way off base.

Outbound marketing communication is one-way.
Initially, it is. A B2B marketer sends a message that reaches out to a targeted group. That message, however, is designed to generate a response. The minute there is a response, the communication instantly becomes two-way.

Outbound marketers’ customers are sought out.
Of course they are. But the customers being reached are not random. By accessing targeted databases of opt-in customers, members of groups, trade show attendees, carefully compiled databases and more, the B2B marketing firm is reaching out to those companies and individuals who match the profile of their customers.

Outbound direct marketing has been around for so many years that the level of database sophistication is staggering. Unlike what Mestrovic proposes — that marketers fill out a persona sheet to build a customer profile — an outbound B2B marketer uses data companies such as Acxiom, Accudata or one of many others to build a statistically sound customer CHAID or regression model. That model is then matched against rental lists to find prospects that match the customer profile. There’s no guesswork involved.

Outbound marketers provide little or no added value.
Do inbound marketers think they invented content? It’s been around as long as direct marketing has been around. It used to be called an “offer.” That’s how outbound marketers get a response — by offering educational information. The very subject of the content is designed to generate qualified leads. B2B marketers test various offers against each other to let the response from the market tell them which is the best.

Outbound marketers rarely seek to educate or entertain.
See above about education. Entertainment can be part of any marketing message — outbound or inbound. But it needs to be used carefully, as a poor use of “cleverness” or “humor” in marketing can backfire and negatively affect the brand.

Mestrovic says that outbound marketing is losing its efficacy. But in the real world, B2B companies calculate what they are willing to pay to get a qualified lead and, once they do, they’ll find that outbound marketing is still a bargain and that, unlike inbound marketing, it can predictably generate those leads.

Assorted B2B marketing tips, I know they’ll help.

The December 14 blog post from Seth Godin, marketing guru supreme, was full of good advice in “Assorted tips, hope they help.” Unfortunately, none of the tips are about marketing. My first thought was, only Seth Godin could get away with this and still attract millions of readers.

I have lots of good advice to give out, too. But I don’t have the luxury of millions of readers. Those who land here to get B2B marketing advice might not like being told how to eat better. Here, it’s just marketing advice.

You may not be eating better, or making better medical decisions, or remembering to backup your hard drive, but following my advice should help you get a pat on the back (and maybe a raise) for generating more qualified leads (and sales) for your company.

Here goes:

1. In your designs (online or off) never reverse body copy out of a dark or busy background. Doing that is like saying, “We have cool designers who don’t care if you read a word of our message.”
2. “Keep it simple, stupid” especially applies to marketing communications. Even highly educated C-level executives want to get their information in plain language without having to work at it.
3. Just because someone is the president of a big company doesn’t mean they don’t like t-shirts with funny sayings on them. People are people.
4. Always build your marketing budget based on what you’re willing to pay on a cost-per-lead and cost-per-sale basis.
5. Put your free educational content offer and how to get it right up front in ALL your outbound lead generation communications.
6. Forget the word “we” forever. Never use it again in B2B lead generation marketing. Prospects don’t care about you at that stage of the buy cycle. They care only about what you can do for them now.
7. Stop being boring. Make your marketing messages upbeat to reflect the genuine excitement you feel about the services and solutions your company offers.
8. Studies have proven that the more you promise about what your service or solution can deliver, the higher the level of satisfaction felt by your buyers. Don’t lie — but don’t hold back either.
9. Schedule conversations with different sales people often. Sales people talk to prospects and customers and can help you make sure your marketing messages resonate in the real world.
10. In B2B lead generation and nurturing, never waste the cost of any marketing by not including a strong, clear and compelling call to action. You can brand and generate leads at the same time.

These are not new, but they’re all worth remembering. And I have more where those came from.

B2B marketing lead generation dilemma: do it now or do it right.

One of my colleagues in the agency world was recently working with a B2B client who had requested help generating leads using targeted database marketing.

My colleague began to build a proposed outbound B2B marketing program for the client, which included testing various channels, audiences and offers to let the market determine which combination could provide the most cost-effective and qualified responses.

Midway through writing the proposal, the client shared the fact that he was under gun from the C-suite to produce X amount of incremental sales within six months or his marketing budget would be reallocated. That was disappointing to hear but not unexpected.

It’s one of a B2B marketing director’s biggest dilemmas — balancing the best practice of letting the market determine which are the best marketing approaches against demands from sales and C-level execs for instant performance.

Effective B2B direct marketing best practices require A/B split testing to determine which media, which content or other offers, and which approaches are the most effective ways to generate leads. Building a solid marketing database, measuring responses and conversions (or potential conversions) takes time. This avenue does produce leads and, in the long run, delivers the knowledge needed to maximize response rates and lower cost-per-lead and cost-per-sale.

There’s hardly much time to test a full scope of channels and offers when the bottom-line results need to show up in six months or less. When faced with this dilemma, here are the two options open to a B2B CMO:

1. Launch a quick lead generation program following industry best practices. B2B marketers with no track record of launching their own programs into their own market should follow the best practices determined by other marketers until they are able to discover their own metrics. One option is to tap the expertise of an agency or consultant with a long track record of solid lead generation. This lets the B2B company rely on the testing results the agency or consultant has accumulated over the years. The other option is to read the books and blogs of trusted, experienced B2B marketers to learn, then use, the practices they recommend.
2. Conduct two programs at the same time. Run a test program in parallel with a lead generation program. That is, run a best practices campaign, then a small test of email, mailing lists and/or lead generation offers.

The problem with the first choice is that this approach provides no learning. If the program is successful, the marketer has no way of knowing which element, or combination of elements, created the success. If the program is a failure the marketer won’t know what to throw out and what to keep in the next campaign.

Despite the pressure from above, B2B marketers should fight strongly to conduct A/B split testing, even in smaller amounts, while trying to generate leads in the short run. It’s the only way to turn the average response rates available now into spectacular ones in the future.

Matching B2B marketing channels to buyer preferences.

With so much information appearing daily on the Internet, it becomes impossible to know which information to trust and which is just random opinion.

That’s why I was so happy when a colleague sent me a copy of a study from Epsilon Targeting, “The Formula for Success: Preference and Trust.” A division of Epsilon, a provider of consulting, marketing data, and marketing technology, they compiled responses from 2,226 U.S. and 2,574 Canadian age 18+ consumers to an online survey in August of 2011. Their statistical significance of the results is calculated at a 95% confidence level. This is their third study on the topic of marketing channel choices.

Readers may question why I would report on a consumer survey when the focus of this blog is B2B marketing. But I feel that the results of this survey translate very nicely into the B2B world, because business decision-makers are also consumers and naturally bring their personal preferences into the workplace.

Direct mail is the trust and attention-getting winner:

• 26% of U.S. consumers and 30% of Canadians said direct mail is more trustworthy than email.
• 50% of U.S. consumers and 48% of Canadians said they pay more attention to postal mail than email.
• 60% of U.S. consumers and 64% of Canadians said they enjoy checking the mailbox for postal mail, highlighting an emotional connection.
• 30% of U.S. consumers said they’re receiving more mail that interests them compared to a year ago, and just 50% (down from 63% in 2010) said more information is sent to them in the mail — indicating marketers are improving targeting efforts.
• The perception that reading email is faster declined among U.S. email account holders to 45% in 2011 (from 47% in 2010), suggesting clogged inboxes are draining time.

Email still has many advantages:

• 42% of U.S. respondents like that they can choose to receive or not receive email.
• 41% like the fact that they can decide whether to print out the information or not.
• 34% of U.S. consumers (up from 21% in 2010) like the ability to be green and save on the use of paper.
• 23% like the easy ability to forward information (a very valuable tool in B2B marketing).

From the above portion of the study’s results, it’s clear that both direct mail and email still have a place in B2B marketing. It supports my long-held position that direct mail is still the best outbound marketing channel for generating leads, and email is still the best for nurturing those leads through the buy cycle.

A few early B2B marketing ideas from Santa.

Children writing lists to Santa aren’t the only ones making wishes this year. We B2B marketers are making many wishes for our marketing to be more effective, less costly, and less work. These are the same old wishes, but, in this volatile economy, the gifts are needed more than ever.

So I went searching for a few B2B marketing Santas that may have left a gift in a blog or magazine article here and there. Here’s what I unwrapped.

Be more effective

Deliver Magazine from the US Postal Service was celebrating its 40th issue with a recap of its greatest moments. One clip included this very sage advice from the “permission marketing” guru Seth Godin. He said, “Happy customers are a company’s worst enemy because they’re unlikely to push you to stay ahead of the competition. Talk with those who are dissatisfied with everything on the market.” Taking this approach is the best way to help B2B companies find out how to improve their products and the effectiveness of their marketing.

Save money

Doing more with less has always been important. These days it’s a survival necessity. Although there is danger in spending too little, the worst danger is not knowing how much you should be spending. Thank Santa for a recent post on the Inbound Sales Network. Their “How Much Should you Spend on Lead Generation?” takes B2B marketers through six calculations marketers can use to set the right spending limit for their organization.

Step 1: Set the Target
Say your company has the goal to do $1,000,000 in new sales during the next year. If you currently have a 10% growth rate in current accounts, this leaves $900,000 needed in new revenue generated in the next fiscal year.

Step 2: Pipeline Size
New Revenue Target / Closing Ratio

Step 3: Average Deal Size
Total Revenue / Number of Deals

Step 4: Total Number of New Opportunities Needed
Pipeline Size / Average Deal Size

Step 5: Lead to Opportunity Conversion Ratio
Number of Opportunities Won / Total Number of Opportunities

Step 6: Cost per Sales Qualified Lead
(Expected Revenue – Delivery Costs – Sales Costs – Acceptable Profit Margin) / Total Number of Leads Needed

Read their article to get all the details. This process helps ensure that every dollar spent on lead generation is justified based on the company’s sales goals. It’s the only way to go.

Lighten the workload

Follow the advice of Rachel Foster in the October 2011 Issue of Chief Content Officer (COO) Magazine. She suggests “Reimagining the Tried-and-True White Paper” by turning it into an interactive video. She says, “Unlike traditional videos, designed to play from start to finish, video white papers makes it easy to jump from section to section and focus in on high-interest topics.” Video white papers allow B2B marketers to track how long a viewer watched and what they watched. If some sections appear to be more popular than others, marketers can leverage that insight into a new piece of potentially effective content.

B2B Marketing needs the ducks and the bird dogs.

I’m sending out great thanks to Michael Rockefeller, Inside Sales Business Development Pro at SOI. The thanks are for the wonderful Chinese quote he found that describes my opinion of inbound marketing perfectly. It says, “Man must wait with his mouth open for a very long time before a roast duck will fly in.”

This quote was part of a terrific LinkedIn discussion on the B2B Lead Roundtable group started by Jeff Harsh, Performance Manager at Concept Services. Jeff asked, “At what time of the day are decision-makers most receptive to a cold call?”

This conversation generated non-stop input that has gone well beyond just answering Jeff’s question. It’s gotten into a full discussion about cold calling being dead, what to say on a sales call to make it more effective, how inbound marketing is replacing cold calling, and more.

The discussion, like many on LinkedIn and throughout the net, is a perfect example of the old saying, “When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” That is, every one of us in marketing sees the world through our own specialty or focus.

My background is in direct marketing. I’m still a strong believer in direct mail marketing for B2B lead generation. That’s because my experiences continue to confirm that it works, as does marketing by phone.

One of the other participants, Laura Jones of the Midland Group, has a different perspective. She says, “If cold calling is becoming harder and harder to generate leads for your company, think about why and ask yourself if a shift to a new paradigm — inbound marketing — is a better direction.” She is obviously deeply into the value of inbound marketing.

This discussion is a flashback to one of my early blog posts in 2009: “Getting over our own marketing bias.” I often need a reminder of what I have said and this LinkedIn discussion was perfect for that.

Inbound, outbound, social, mobile, online, offline, and even cold calling all have value in today’s B2B environment.

When Michael quotes Brian Tracey, saying, “The future belongs to the learners, not the knowers,” I say, “There’s no reason why we can’t all be knowers AND learners.”