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A client of mine, Randy Lieberman, owner of the B-to-B telemarketing firm Foundation Marketing Group, told me yesterday that his business grew during the "Great Recession" and continues to grow in its aftermath.
In our virtual world, where Tweeting, Facebooking, texting and emailing have become the primary means of communicating, the old-fashioned phone call has made a comeback.
And why not? Suddenly, a phone call stands out.
Tradeshow producers are among the heavy users of outbound B-to-B telemarketing.
According to new research by the Large Show Roundtable, a whopping 85% of large-show producers use telemarketing to attract attendees to their events.
It makes a lot of sense, if you consider the highly "perishable" quality of the show producer's product.
Like the operator of a cruise ship, a tradeshow producer can't sit still while she waits for sales to grow incrementally. At a certain point, the ship sails, full or not. That's all there is to it.
Have you tried telemarketing recently? Or are you sitting still?
Disclosure: The Large Show Roundtable is also a client of mine.
Ardath Albee's new book eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale (which I recently reviewed) has so many exceptional passages it's hard to single one out.
But at the expense of the others I'll point to a passage in Chapter 11 (titled "Create Content to Increase Attraction Value").
In that passage, Albee examines some of the chief reasons why so many B-to-B marketing programs, like the characters in Cool Hand Luke, result in "failure to communicate."
According to Albee, a prospect's willingness to expend effort to absorb your marketing message is a pretty firm measure of her intention to buy.
That readiness to expend effort represents your moment of truth: your golden opportunity to move the prospect toward—not away from—your organization.
In that split second, the prospect's ready to learn from you. As the Tao Te Ching says, "When the student is ready, the teacher appears."
Alas, it's an opportunity easily squandered.
You're toast, Albee contends, if the marketing communications that await the prospect are convoluted, or if you're unclear about the reason you want her to pay attention to you.
Fail to be clear and pointed and you'll be written off. Once and for all.
Albee writes, "People take the path of least resistance. Once they reach a conclusion, your opportunity to connect with them has been determined. If they perceive that paying attention to your communication is too costly in terms of effort, they will delete it, bury it under the paperwork on their desk, or otherwise ignore it. This is why setting expectations in your call to action is so important. Make sure that what they need to do to access and use your information is obvious. Eliminate barriers and hurdles that add to their effort. Make it easy for your prospects to take advantage of your expertise. Simplify their experience and the effort required to interact with your company."
Albee suggests removing all "effort barriers." She emphasizes four:
- Generic content (material not developed specifically for your prospect)
- Busy Web-page layouts
- Statistics cited without context and
- Copy-heavy pages that readers can't scan
You'll find more suggestions like these in my new report, Path of Persuasion. Take a peek. It's free.
"Outside the nuclear weapons communities, little notice was paid last week to the announcement that authorization had finally come through to begin dismantling the last of the minivan-size B-53s, the most powerful thermonuclear bombs ever deployed," Pincus writes.
In terms of payload, the B-53 packs a punch. It's 600 times more powerful than the bomb that leveled Hiroshima.
The US, at one point during the Cold War, had 300 B-53s in its arsenal.
Soon, they'll be no more.
As a child of the '60s, I recall with fond memories participating in air raid drills during school hours.
The whole elementary school would assemble in the gym and scrunch down under the vast wooden bleachers.
The principal stepped up the air rid drills around the time of Cuban Missle Crisis, which gave us fourth graders a lot of time to discuss what the last four seconds of our young lives would be like after "the bomb" fell on nearby New York City.
Although we were just kids, we thought—we knew—the principal was out of her gourd.
My pal Mookie, street wise and a fountain of knowledge, would always say the same thing. "No one can live through the A-bomb. We'll all melt in seconds."
Of course, he was right. (Mookie was reliably right about everything.)
Just learning that soon there will be no more B-53s gives me a reason to celebrate. How about you?
Note: Beginning today, I'm introducing a regular post called Monday Monday. Readers under age 50 may not all know my title is borrowed from a 1960s pop song. That's their good fortune.)
Many bloggers worry about venomous critics (aka, "trolls").
That holds true as well for anyone who thinks, speaks or acts with a modicum of imagination.
The Tao Te Ching teaches:
"Care about people's approval and you will be their prisoner. Do your work, then step back. The only path to serenity."
Forget the trolls. Forge on.
Nearly 90 percent of B-to-B marketers use content marketing to generate leads and sales, according to a new study by Junta42 and MarketingProfs.
But what separates great B-to-B social media marketers from the mediocre majority?
Three factors, according to the study's findings:
- The most effective marketers spend more. The most effective marketers devote 30 percent of their budgets to content marketing. The least effective marketers devote only 18 percent.
- The most effective marketers segment by buying cycle. The most effective marketers tend to segment their campaigns based on customers' buying cycles. Thirty-seven percent of the most effective marketers segment this way. Only 23 percent of the least effective marketers do.
- The most effective marketers have the CEO's buy-in. Twenty-three percent of the least effective marketers are challenged by the big cheese. Only seven percent of the most effective marketers are.
Ask yourself these questions. How much do you invest in content marketing? How do you segment your outreach effort? And who's "bought into" social media marketing—or not?
Is it your time to take a giant step forward?
