The Five Pillars of Lead Followup

Lead gen is only half the marketing battle. Marketers must enable salespeople to follow up.

But a lot of them don't know how, perhaps because business owners have conditioned them to turn all leads over to sales, as soon as they materialize.

Those marketers need to master the five pillars of lead followup:

Website. Your website needs to be lucid and mobile. Your About page must be clear, concise and compelling, because it's the only one most prospects will read. And you need to make it easy to contact your organization—in person.

Content. You need a world-class piece of "cornerstone content," such as a white paper, e-book, or cheat sheet you can share with prospects. It must be authoritative and educational, or prospects will conclude "they have nothing to teach me." Case studies also motivate prospects, because they provide "social proof."

Sales deck.Your sales deck arms your people with a structure for pitching prospects. It should be a scaffold, not an edifice. Avoid a lot of background and blue-sky baloney; lean on images to tell your story; and don't cram the deck with copy, or treat is like a script or book: it's an aid for online and face-to-face presentations, not an encyclopedia.

Playbook. Your in-house how-to sales manual should give salespeople enough guidance that they can close any deal that comes down the pike. Include talking points, target persona cheat sheets, industry data sheets, product data sheets, competitive analyses, a glossary of terms, and an inventory of current collateral.

Email. You need an outbound email drip-campaign that runs at a cadence that makes sense both to you and to prospects. Newsletters are a good place to start. Direct-marketing appeals can be sent in between your monthly newsletters. Each email should offer value and foster interest in talking to your salespeople.

Know the Best Sources of Product Info?

IBM asked 700 B2B buyers wielding $10,000 or more to name their preferred sources of product information, and sorted the answers by buyers' ages. The results are astonishing—or maybe not:

• Boomers named tradeshows 
• Gen Xers named online, third-party reviews 
• Millennials named vendors' sales reps

What's up with that?

 
Boomers will never give up on shows. They haven't forgotten "the good old days," when companies timed their product launches around the industry-leading shows. Big events were vibrant and newsworthy and "must attend." Shows were the worldwide web.

Gen Xers are inexorable skeptics. Forget about face-to-face, content, direct, social media, or other forms of marketing with this cohort. All marketing is BS. Gen Xers only trust disinterested parties' informed evaluations.

Millennials prize speed and ease. "I want to know and I want to know now." What's the easiest route? A sales spiel. As IBM puts it, Millennials want a "hassle-free, personalized channel." Enter the sales rep.

Sure, generalizations about the generations have grown tiresome; but they explain IBM's findings.

Source of chart: Better Business Bureau

6 Last-Ditch Ways to Sell Out Your Event

If you're not gonna go all the way, why go at all?

― Joe Namath

When events fail to sell out, resourceful producers pull out all the stops.

EventMB recommends these six last-ditch efforts:

Social media buy. Take out ads on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook that target locals (drive-ins) with an interest in your topics. Cull your database for locals to help you target the buy, and be sure to keep using free social media to chat up your event. Take advantage of past attendees' testimonials. You'll motivate fence-sitters.

Personalized email. Cull from your database locals who haven’t registered and conduct a drip-marketing campaign. Focus on locals who click through and send them additional emails that concentrate on justifying the cost of the event.

Special offer. Email registrants an offer of a referral incentive, such as "Buy two, get one free." Registrants will feel appreciated and help you. Send sponsors and exhibitors the same offer, to pass along to their customers. Sister organizations may also help you spread the word. You can also promote a contest on social media with free tickets as the prizes. Create a hashtag and ask people to vote on line. Contests, well done, are buzz-worthy.

Streamlined registration. Identify any causes of friction in your registration process and eliminate them―even if it means slaying sacred cows. Last-minute registrations are impulsive, and you don't want to deter prospects in any way. And add prominent copy like "Last chance to pre-register and save" or "Only a few seats left."

Telemarketing. The best way to spur last-minute registrations is to call locals, particularly alumni of past events who haven't registered. They know the value you deliver. (If yours is a first-time event, concentrate on locals who have some relationship with you.)

Retargeting. Retargeted ads can influence sales-resistant locals by making your event top of mind. By becoming ubiquitous, you'll sell out.

Last-ditch don'ts. EventMB warns:

• Don't offer last-minute discounts rashly; you only signal panic, cheapen your event, and train registrants to wait for deep discounts the next time round. ("Loyal attendee" discounts are okay.)
  
  
• Don't go all-serious. Play up the entertainment value of your event (remember, last-minute registrations are impulse buys).
  
  
• Don't go into hard-sell mode across all marketing channels. Concentrate on the ones above.
   
• Don't bury your calls to action in your last-ditch promotions. Big, colorful buttons work.
  
  
• Don't refrain from giving free registrations away, if the recipients are influencers who'll add to the prestige of your event.

Gamification Supercharges Tradeshow Exhibits

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon.

— E.M. Forster

Seven of 10 Americans believe attending events connects them to others, according to a recent survey by Eventbrite.

Among Millennials, that proportion's even higher—8 of 10.

Seven of 10 Millennials also believe events expand knowledge better than online content does, the survey reveals. And 1 of 2 attend events to have experiences they can share on social media.

For Millennials, attending events "is all about projecting to your social media network, and painting a picture of a phenomenal lifestyle," event planner Aubri Nowowiejski told Skift. "They chase experiences over things to get those likes and comments and interactions, and that dopamine fix."

If you accept Eventbrite's findings, exhibit marketers who help Millennials polish their personal brands will come out winners at tomorrow's B2B events.

Gamification is the secret sauce.

By offering them high-yield opportunities to enrich their personal brands, gamification counteracts Millennials’ unfortunate reluctance to engage in the "real world" of sales conversation.

Gamification makes networking fun and unintimidating—and delivers the all-important dopamine fix that comes when a Millennial wallflower can update his social media feeds.

One ready solution for exhibitors is PLAYBOOK, a lead-gen system that marries pre-show marketing with gamification.

With PLAYBOOK, exhibitors can not only attract large crowds of fun-seeking prospects to their booths, but get them to look up from their phones long enough to engage in conversation.

DISCLAIMER: I'm a bit biased in favor of PLAYBOOK, because it's the creation of Bob & David James. Learn more here.

You Can Thank Associations for National Days

July 6 is National Fried Chicken Day.

Marked merely to drive product sales—in this case, sales of chicken parts by fast-food restaurants—the hennish little holiday typifies most so-called "National Days."

National Days are PR stunts—or the vehicles thereof—that date back to the Roman Empire, when emperors declared micro holidays constantly, in order to keep the bread-and-circus-loving citizens of Rome satisfied.

Lupercalia, for example, was a micro holiday marked every February 15th. The Romans would celebrate the day by sacrificing goats, drinking lots of wine, and parading around in the nude, in hopes of banishing evil spirits.

We moderns prefer National Days that honor stuff we can buy: consumer goods like almonds, bourbon, cupcakes, eggs, hot dogs, pancakes, spreadsheets, towels, tubas, and underpants.

As of 2017, association marketers have spawned over 1,200 of this sell-ebrations, according to the National Days Calendar.

To apply for your own National Day, all you need do is submit it to the keepers of the Calendar.

"The buildup annually to a National Day is great," the application states. "News stories, increase in product sales, top of mind awareness and much more can be generated annually."

Great, that is, provided you're not a chicken.

Corporate Wedding Planners Strike Back

An "aspirational" ad campaign of the late 1960s proclaimed, "You've come a long way, baby."

It took event planners a while to catch up.

But they assuredly have, as made clear by Kerry Smith and Dan Hanover's 200-page Experiential Marketing: Secrets, Strategies, and Success Stories from the World's Greatest Brands.

No longer "corporate wedding planners," experiential marketers in the 2010s have become marketing kingpins—the drivers and integrators of all the marketing "silos."

"Live experiences have ignited a marketing revolution in which brands around the world have committed to upgrading their marketing strategies, budgets, and platforms," Smith and Hanover write. "And that revolution has driven a much-needed evolution of the marketing channels and silos used by brands for 50 years."

The heart of the book lies in Chapter Four, "Anatomy of an Experiential Marketing Campaign," where the authors describe the 11 "Experiential Pillars" underpinning the channel.

"As with a great recipe in which the ingredients are blended together to create a unique flavor, these pillars work together to optimize engagement and will allow you to achieve the brand-building, value-creating, clutter-braking power of experiential marketing," they write.

They base the chapter not on hard knocks or gut feelings, but an analysis of the 1,000+ winners of the Ex Awards, the annual awards competition for live events they've produced since 2002. And the events they consider take not one form, but many, from PR stunts, in-store events and road shows, to trade shows, user conferences and sales meetings.

Reading Experiential Marketing tempted me to update my recent post, "My 5 All-Time Favorite Books on Marketing," because the book has the same quality as the "mind-blowing game-changers" I listed there.

No matter how much you've dabbled in event production, the authors give you a palpable sense while you're reading the book that you're on a path of discovery; that you're like one of those "Pioneers of Television" who's in at the inception of a powerful new medium with a yet-understood capacity to build large audiences and fundamentally reshape worldviews.

Buy it. Read it.


You've come a long way baby! by JustAnotherJester

Buckshot's Back: P&G Bails on Ad Targeting

The real fact of the matter is that nobody reads ads. People read what interests them, and sometimes it’s an ad.

Howard Luck Gossage

In his blog {grow}, marketing maestro Mark Schaefer asks, "Has there ever been a question that targeted ads are going to perform better than shooting a bunch of buckshot ads out there?"

Schaefer asks the question in light of P&G's announcement that it will abandon Facebook ad targeting, due to the strategy's failure.

“We targeted too much, and we went too narrow,” P&G's CMO told The Wall Street Journal, “and now we’re looking at: What is the best way to get the most reach but also the right precision?”

Schaefer wonders aloud whether every advertiser might close more sales with buckshot ads, for no increase in spend (targeted ads cost more than buckshot ones).

He's firmly undecided.

"On the one hand, the P&G revelation shakes long-held assumptions, but on the other hand, I don’t think we necessarily need to make wholesale changes to strategy," Schaefer says. 

"If you’re a wedding photographer, targeting couples who have changed their status to 'engaged' probably still makes sense, right?"

My direct marketing experience has taught me buckshot advertising's okay; and that frequency's the real key to closing more sales.

From what I've seen, precision-targeting works when a product-related life-event takes place in proximity to the arrival of your offer in the prospect's mailbox. Absent that life-event, your offer is simply more noise ("mailbox clutter").

Targeting based on demographics cuts waste; but it doesn't capture sales. Frequency does that.

A case in point. My client, an insurance company, noticed each time it mailed an offer for term life the bulk of policies were bought by 33-year-old men. Curious about the trend, I called a sample of the men to find out why they'd acted. The resounding answer: a newborn had recently arrived, and dad was interested in baby's wellbeing. So we took two steps: We narrowed the list from a wide range of men and women to men ages 33-35; and, with the money saved, increased the frequency of mailings. Policy purchases skyrocketed.

Frequency rules because you just never know when a prospect is interested. For all its fancy algorithms, even Facebook doesn't know that.

If you can believe sales growth strategist Chet Holmes' research, at any moment only 3% of any population represents interested buyers of your product. If your offer reaches that 3% with enough frequency, you increase your chances to close.

Wait, you shout, I'm wasting big bucks on the other 97%! Not so, Holmes claims:

• 7% of the population at any moment is at least open to your offer
• 30% at any moment isn't thinking about your offer
• 30% at any moment would say it's uninterested
• Only 30% is really, truly uninterested

The upshot of all this?

A little buckshot never hurt anyone.

Unless you hunt with Dick Cheney.

Email: The Postman Never Rings Twice

Sorry, email marketer.

No do-over for you.

If your emails don't deliver on these four basic needs, you're dead, says e-mail marketing guru Chad White:

1. Respect
2. Function
3. Value
4. Experience

Foremost, customers crave respect. Customers should be notified they're opting in to receive your emails, and find it easy to opt out. "Disregarding permission puts your brand at an immediate disadvantage in the inbox," White says.

Customers also crave function. Your copy should be accurate; your text, legible; your graphics, discernible; your links, clickable; and your design, responsive. "If your emails have broken links and images or have text that’s too small to read on mobile devices, for example, your clicks will suffer."

Customers crave value. Your emails should be useful. They should deliver news, alerts and special offers. Better still, they should be personalized, so they deliver content that's targeted and timely.

Finally, customers crave experience. If your email isn't an experience, it's a waste of time. Customers share treasures, not trash. Experiences, White says, are produced by:

• Targeting niche audiences with triggered messages
• Taking advantage of events and charity work, "which are innately more share-worthy"
• Delivering extra-special content on occasion
• Using design and layout to differentiate your emails; and
• Featuring “share with your network” buttons in share-worthy emails

It's easy to learn if your emails deliver, White says. Just count your opens, clicks, conversions, and forwards.

Ding-dong.

Childish Tchotchkes

Want to win over a jaded audience at your next trade show?

"Appeal to the inner child," says marketing consultant Jill Amerie.

Amerie recounts a midnight film screening at this year's SXSW.

A house full of film journalists sat waiting for Keanu, an action-comedy about a kitten, to finally begin. The mood was sullen and bitter.

"Then something interesting happened," Amerie says. 

"The comedic team of Key and Peele came on stage with a basket of toy kittens. They started throwing the stuffed animals into the audience, and suddenly, those tired, grouchy journalists were jumping to catch them like a bunch of bridesmaids going after the wedding bouquet. 

"A lot of those kittens will end up going to the children of those attendees, but it’s a safe bet that a significant number of them will end up in their offices, too."

5 Big Tips for Better Mobile Marketing

Sophorn Chhay contributed today's post. He is the inbound marketer at Trumpia, a mobile content delivery service that lets users customize their one-to-one marketing.

Sure, you might have a mobile marketing plan. But is it innovative?

In 2016, run-of-the-mill approaches won't take you very far; and, although most mobile marketers follow year-long plans, the fact is effective mobile marketing requires constant innovation.

If you want to stay ahead, check out the following tips, guaranteed to boost your results.

Tip One: Get Tight with Video Ads

Today, 80 percent of Internet users carry smartphones, and buyers are responding to video ads at alarming rates. You can benefit massively from video advertising.

Tip Two: Get Automated with SMS

Did you know you can automate your own SMS campaigns? Better yet, you can segment your audience and shoot out customized text messages. To get automated with SMS, contact a trustworthy provider. Textpedite, among others, streamlines the process.

Tip Three: Distribute an App

Americans currently spend more time using mobile apps than they do watching television. By incorporating an app into your plans, you'll give your brand greater meaning. Marketers are already reworking their entire strategies around apps (airlines, for example, are offering “nearby eatery” apps to frequent flyers). But make your app count, if you want to see it used.

Tip Four: Gain Data from SMS Surveys

Feedback means a lot to customers, and it's easy to conduct business when you know your customers' wants, needs and buying habits. SMS surveys procure a wealth of data and can garner otherwise unobtainable feedback.

Tip Five: Create a Social Campaign

In today’s mobile world, antisocial companies drop like flies, while companies like Starbucks win big. The brand’s “Race Together” and “Create Jobs for the USA” campaigns proved that promoting altruistic causes works. Sure, goodwill is a byproduct of powerful business practices; but it’s also a byproduct of social outreach.

Kathy, I'm Lost, I Said

Anheuser-Busch InBev has asked federal regulators for approval to replace the name "Budweiser" on cans and bottles this summer with the name "America," AdAge reports.

"You have this wave of patriotism that is going to go up and down throughout the summertime," Marketing VP Jorn Socquet said. "And we found with Budweiser such a beautiful angle to play on that sentiment."

If approved, the brand's labels would also include song lyrics like "from the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters this land was made for you and me."

Purple Prose

It's been raining solemn tributes since Thursday.

We've also had to weather a torrent of opportunistic self-promotion.

While there's still a few days to enter, right now it looks like the grand prize in Prove You're Totally Tactless goes to Cheerios for its Tweet.

A spokesman defended the effort by saying both Cheerios and Prince are Minnesotan.

Exploiting headlines works, as David Meerman Scott says.

Boorishness doesn't.

View-Master Revisited

This week, I was treated to a rough-cut of a DMO's forthcoming virtual reality promotion.

The glories of the city's convention center and hotels were revealed in full and fabulous 3D.

Writing for Associations Now, Samatha Whitehorn claims VR is destined to become "a mainstream feature of association meetings and destination marketing."

Little wonder, Whitehorn says. "The power of VR is that it gives the viewer a unique sense of empathic connection to people and events."

DMOs will tap VR to give their cities an edge in event planners' eyes, and even offer it as an alternative to live streaming, so folks unable to attend an event can join in from afar.

But wait a cotton-pickin' minute!

"VR's going to kill my event," every planner's shouting.

Not in my book.

I may be a curmudgeon, but VR is only higher octane View-Master.

Don't get me wrong: I loved View-Master as a kid. But it didn't keep me from exploring the world beyond my bedroom.

I predict VR will indeed find its niche—alongside the Pet Rock and the Cabbage Patch Kid.

What do you think?

The Past isn't Dead. It isn't Even Past.

Ideas that Germans call Schnapsideen are those so stupid, you must have been drunk when you conceived them.

What kind of schnapps-idea is this? a German might ask. 

Urban Outfitters' Vintage Kent State University Sweatshirt is an example.

Whether a real offering or a PR ploy, the product was a Schnapsidee.

In 1970, the Ohio National Guard fired on anti-war student protesters at Kent State, killing four and wounding nine.

When Urban Outfitters released its product, the members of the Twitterverse into Vergangenheitsbewältigung—the struggle to overcome the past—went ballistic.

The company quickly fired off a retraction:

Urban Outfitters sincerely apologizes for any offense our Vintage Kent State Sweatshirt may have caused. It was never our intention to allude to the tragic events that took place at Kent State in 1970 and we are extremely saddened that this item was perceived as such. The one-of-a-kind item was purchased as part of our sun-faded vintage collection. There is no blood on this shirt nor has this item been altered in any way. The red stains are discoloration from the original shade of the shirt and the holes are from natural wear and fray. Again, we deeply regret that this item was perceived negatively and we have removed it immediately from our website to avoid further upset.

The lesson for marketers? 

Those who forget the past are condemned to recall.

The Clarity Commandment

The B2B marketing-scape is littered with statements like this one:

SpineMap 3.0 Navigation Software is designed to optimize the surgical experience through an intuitive solution which includes a personalized surgical workflow to help support OR efficiency.

Much of B2B copy not only bores, but breaks a rule Herschell Gordon Lewis calls "The Clarity Commandment:"

When you choose words and phrases, clarity is paramount. Don’t let any other component of your communication interfere with it. 

Like other commandants handed down, easier said than done.

Clarity comes from more than short words and phrases.

It comes from avoiding jargon and any terms with less than laser-precision.

"In our enthusiasm for creating uniqueness, sometimes we lapse into poetry or in-talk, or we pick up phraseology that may make sense within the office but is gobbledygook to outsiders," Lewis says. 

"Or we go just one step beyond clarity—not a cardinal sin, but not a message that’s quickly and clearly understood."

Clarity's at risk whenever ambiguity rears its head.

Think about the example above:

Really, what's an optimized surgical experience?

A personalized surgical workflow?

What is OR efficiency?

And clarity's at risk whenever we add the unnecessary.

Why an intuitive solution? 

Why to help support?

"Clarity is hog-tied to simplicity," Lewis says.

And simplicity's, well, simple.

Copy that doesn’t demand analysis is more likely to hit its goal—command of the reader’s attention—than complex copy.

PS. An inquiring reader asks, How would you handle the statement above? Here goes:

SpineMap 3.0 Navigation Software gives you a second pair of eyes and hands during back surgery. Less time in the OR means more time on the green.

Now, I think I'll go watch This is Spinal Tap.

The Future of B2B Content Marketing

Videos are the future of B2B content marketing.

Seven in 10 B2B marketers already use them, according to Demand Metric.

That's little wonder, when one in two people watch marketing videos on line every day, as Liz Alton reports in Sales and Marketing Daily Advisor.

Videos' matchless power comes from their "immediacy and intimacy," Alton says.

She describes five kinds of videos B2B marketers use:

Explainer. Explainer videos are "short, focused videos that give an elevator pitch of what products and services you offer." They're often produced in whiteboard style.

Case studies. Case studies give customers "an inside look at your work," Alton says. They can be testimonials or project reviews that prove you deliver results.

How-to. How-to videos address FAQs you receive. Depending on the complexity of the topic, they can provide quick tips or in-depth guidance.

Real-time. Meerkat and Periscope let you connect with customers in the moment. "Companies are using the tools for live Q&As, to report in from events and trade shows, and to respond to industry news," Alton says.

Culture. Culture videos let you showcase staff, illustrate workflows, or give a glimpse of your systems in action. Many customers crave this “behind the scenes” look, Alton says.

But wait, there's more...

Besides boosting your brand, marketing videos attract more customers to your website, thanks to Google, says Swati Joshi in The Huffington Post.

"The fact that Google owns YouTube plays a role in video’s increased popularity," she says.

"Google has been constantly adjusting its algorithm to give its users a meaningful experience while searching. To satisfy user intent, they show a variety of results, and not just exact keyword matches. As a result, search results now prominently feature videos among top results."

Love Story

I remember little of my first formal date, except that I took the girl to see the schmaltzy blockbuster, Love Story.

The film's tagline perfectly states what every B2B marketer wants skeptical buyers to believe.

Love means never having to say you're sorry… you bought from us.

That's why B2B marketers adore case studies.

They're the ideal way to spread customers' love.

You're nuts if you're not dishing them out repeatedly.

Case studies are like movie reviews, except your customers are the stars and every movie's a love story.

And buyers can't get enough of them, because people love to compare themselves to others.

Here are seven case-study do's and don'ts. Keep them near and dear:

• Case studies adhere to a classic construct—a three-point story arc: problem, solution, results. Don't stray from that. 

• Make your customer the headliner. Keep you company off the marquee.

• Interview your customer in a knowledgable, but laid-back manner. Don't put her on edge with tough questions, or prompt her to say things she wouldn't say naturally.

• Use a lot of customer quotes for color and credibility.

• Illustrate your case studies with photographs and charts.

• Ask your customer to sign a release.

• Besides publishing the case study on your website, create a PDF version customers (and your salespeople) can download and share.

Junk Content Pushing Europeans to Rebel

Impersonal, junk content is pushing Europeans to rebel against brands, according to new research by Coleman Parkes.

84% of Europeans say their patience with junk has reached its limit; and 18% have taken their business elsewhere, as a result.

Other consequences:

• 65% of Europeans feel less loyal to spammy brands
• 64% think brands aren't doing enough personalization
• 63%  would spend less money with spammy brands
• 57% would stop buying those brands altogether

Compared to Americans' junk-tolerance, Europeans' seems low: they consider just 25% of the content they receive to be junk.

Will Americans soon grow as discerning?

It's 2016. How Do You Make Customers Click?

Powerful headlines grab customers' attention, as David Ogilvy insisted.

But that was in 1963. Only basements, barns and cartoons had mice.

What makes customers click in 2016?

Subheads.

Eye-tracking studies show customers dwell longer on headlines than any other part of a web page. (Ogilvy nailed it.)

But, even when you care to say the very best, headlines can't say it all.

Their smaller, wordier siblings, subheads can. 

Subheads expand and inspire. They let you telegraph additional benefits and urge customers to act.

Headlines hook customers. 

Subheads reel them in.

Want examples of effective subheads?

Here's a baker's dozen, courtesy of Hubspot.

Tomorrow's B2B Sales Professional Needs a Blue Ocean

One million B2B salespeople will lose their jobs by 2020, replaced by e-commerce systems, according to a study by Forrester.

The job-loss can be blamed on Millennials, who prefer what I call M2M (Millennial to Machine) over F2F (Face-to-Face).

First on the chopping block are entry-level "order taker" jobs.

For over a century, order-taker jobs have allowed high-school and college grads to readily enter the workforce as salespeople.

But the tightening market means tomorrow's wannabe sales pro must find a fresh opening gambit.

Inventiveness will be key.

You might have to think like comedian W.C. Fields.

To drum up business for Atlantic City hot-dog vendors, Fields worked one summer in his youth as a professional drowner. 

Twelve times a day, he would wade into the surf and begin to scream and flounder.

Mammoth crowds would rush to the scene to witness Field's "rescue"—and buy lots of hot dogs from the nearby vendors' carts.

Here's a great source for more innovations: The Sales Blog.