Drumroll please … I present the 210 B2B marketing tips for 2010. Let me tell you, this was quite an adventure, one that I will certainly do differently in the future.
Basically, the sequence of events went like this:
- Decide on topic: 210 tips for 2010
- Start writing them off the top of my head
- Get to 65
- Still determined, decide to ask for help
- @scottalbro, @cjablonski, @tlotl, @mschmier and @damphoux come to the rescue
Much of what you see below is attributed. Some, however, like the input from @scottalbro, were fed to me conversationally through stream of consciousness, so I didn’t attribute them. He is a great writer and would not be crazy about my translation.
So, without further ado, here they are. I hope you enjoy them.
- Contribute to the conversation (@tlotl)
- Create remarkable content (lots of it) (@tlotl)
- Distribute remarkable content (@tlotl)
- Evolve beyond managing CPL (@tlotl)
- Bring data to Sales management (@tlotl)
- Talk to in-market prospects (@tlotl)
- Close the buyer loop (@tlotl)
- Talk to people who have bought/customers (@tlotl)
- Talk to people who chose a competitor (@tlotl)
- Sit in on a sales call once a week
- Sit in on a prospecting call
- Create a lead scoring system
- Implement a lead scoring system
- BTW, if you are just starting on scoring, don’t get too extreme. Scoring means deciding which leads are better than others.
- Implement a lead nurturing program
- Judge lead nurturing progress via the conversion rate after 1 month metrics
- Buy a marketing automation platform
- Implement a marketing automation platform (no shelf-ware)
- Create a unified lead definition
- Get the unified lead definition signed off by sales
- Don’t agree to restrictive BANT criteria without considering all the people you won’t have sales talk to (if you think about it, they probably do)
- And if you are in a hyper-targeted market (e.g., are focused on managed service providers only), your unified lead definition should be only: the right person with interest. Anything more restrictive means one lead a month, and your organization in trouble
- Meet with sales weekly/bi-weekly for anecdotal closed loop feedback
- Make a decision based on metrics
- Make lots of decisions based on metrics
- Over-rule a metrics-driven decision with a decision made from the gut
- Basically: Balance metrics with intuition
- Oh, and track everything you can
- Oh, and yes, the numbers will never be perfect, but they should be enough to help you make decisions
- Follow the top marketing mavens on twitter
- Read content from top marketing mavens on twitter
- Ask a question you want answered on Focus.com (OK, you can ask it on LinkedIn, too)
- Create a lead management plan that starts from the top (lead generation) to a passed lead (P.S., based on your unified lead definition)
- Read your competitors marketing materials
- Fill out a lead form on your competitors site and see how they qualify, convert and nurture you
- Do a at least one webinar a month
- Make the webinar focused on business pains and issues, NOT a demo for your product
- Leverage experts and thought leaders in your industry to speak
- P.S., have those same experts create white papers, blog posts, etc. for you
- Think of webinars for ALL aspects: quantifiable lead generation, lead nurturing, education, thought leadership
- Create a lead qualification organization (dedicated phone-based team focused on following up on leads)
- Optimize your lead qualification organization
- Read scripts, emails etc.
- Send an email to your clients that doesn’t sell them anything but instead helps them do their job
- Then send these helpful emails monthly
- Then use the marketing automation system you bought to track efficiency
- Don’t forget your current customers, or to put it another way, market and foster goodwill with your customers
- Update your social media profiles for completeness and marketability even if you aren’t looking for a job (LinkedIn, Focus.com, Facebook)
- Start a blog
- Update your blog weekly minimum
- Don’t write about yourself, your company, etc. on the blog, except once in awhile
- Put marketing, lead generation blogs into your Google reader
- Allot 22 minutes a day to reading industry-related content
- Respect every single lead (@cjablonski)
- “Systems design” your programs (@cjablonski)
- Make calculated risks routinely (@cjablonski)
- Delight the most loyal (@cjablonski)
- Surprise your customers (@cjablonski)
- Be your target audience (@cjablonski)
- Rip and replace your strategies (@cjablonski)
- Manage your brand symbols (@cjablonski)
- Nurture as if you meant it (@cjablonski)
- Cleanse your sales pipeline (@cjablonski)
- Be authoritative
- Track your metrics based on opportunities created and opportunities
- Get everyone on CRM (seriously — Its 2010)
- Get a sales 2.0 tool
- Increasing connects increases conversion
- Don’t complain about what sales is doing with your leads
- Don’t complain about sales in general
- Urgency. Just be urgent
- Call your lead generation vendors and optimize the program with real data
- Post your content on third-party Web sites to capture traffic not going to your Web site
- Get tweetdeck, hootsuite or something to manage your twitter content
- Re-evaluate your Web site. Chances are it sucks
- Clearly define what your product is and the use case it solves for in buyer language on your Web site, in materials, etc. — how many Web sites do you go do and you can’t figure out what the f*** the vendor does?) (@mschmier)
- Optimize your landing pages for conversion
- Considering pulling fields OFF your landing pages to get more people to download
- Go to one of the following trade shows: Marketing Sherpa or Sirius Decisions.
- Stop going to industry trade shows that don’t work
- However, don’t think about immediate conversion, judge the show by important meetings had (could be with customers) and the “right” people. If you are looking at short-term conversion rates, you will cancel them all.
- Test a new lead generation source whenever you can (or you’ll never know what works)
- Not sure what to do about Facebook — if you can get business there, write me back for next year
- Read the book: eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale by Ardath Albee
- Read the book: Digital Body Language by Steven Woods
- Buying a list is not a lead generation strategy
- Buying leads is not a lead generation strategy
- Instead, figure how to convert leads, then buy leads or lists — if you know how to convert, you can buy till the cows come home
- Remember: white paper leads are the start of a conversation, not the end of the conversation
- Try new things, always (I think I already said that)
- Channel partners are terrible at following up on leads; if you pass them leads, run them through a lead qual team first or buy appointments
- Replace “always be closing” with “always be helping”
- Map and understand how your buyers make decisions
- Re-evaluate your target buyer persona.
- Confirm the target buyer persona and tell everyone in your organization till they tell you to shut up (it’s that important that they know)
- Make your written content one page. Buyers are busy
- Consider simplifying your message — bring back “simple as 1-2-3” messaging
- Buyers love lists, they just do. Lists are easy to read and set an expectation with the reader that it will only be “X” number of points in the offer
- Create a diverse mix of content (webinars, white papers, podcasts)
- When following up on leads, combine phone and email
- Optimize everything about the phone and email process: scripts, emails, sequencing
- Meet with sales leadership and get them on board. Act like a sales person. They will barf on you at first, but don’t quit — get buyoff
- Spend some time and money, and you WILL make more money
- Metrics aren’t just cool, use them to make you better (and look better!)
- Warning on all this: Sales will always be from Mars, and marketing will always be from Venus
- Consider all the touch points in a campaign not just the messaging — message, landing page, follow-up, etc.
- When considering, draw a process map to represent the various touch points
- Create metrics for each touch point
- But pick three overall metrics you will look at every day
- Did I mention social media? Have a twitter strategy, use LinkedIn too
- Do things on social media, but if you move money away from pure demand generation for social media, that is bad, because …
- Social media is not a “down the funnel” lead generation strategy, measure social media buy link-backs and traffic, not people ready to buy tomorrow
- Oh yeah, and if you’re judged only by finding people ready to buy tomorrow, warm up the resume
- Run a VITO campaign. They still work if you combine phone follow-up with the marketing portion
- Throw your hands in the air and wave them like you just don’t care.
- Talk to your CEO more than the VP of Sales does
- Talk to your prospects using case studies
- Peers are the most trusted source of information for other buyers — leverage your customer network via webcasts and references to re-enforce your value proposition (@mschmier)
- Online vs. offline is very 2009 (@scottalbro)
- Online AND offline is very 2010 (@scottalbro)
- Create a list of 210 tips for your target buyer
- Do email campaigns — they still work.
- I know I mentioned podcasts earlier, but don’t do them. They don’t work
- Choose someone in your company who will be your voice online
- Stop advertising in trade magazines
- If you are fortunate to sponsor a big sporting event, make sure you get tickets as well because you should at least get personal ROI
- Make sure you provide a demo. The self-service buyer craves it (this falls under “down the funnel” content)
- Understand your competition and give sales real competitive language, not high-level outdated, irrelevant stuff (everyone considers more)
- Where are your users online? Figure out where your users are online and create a strategy as appropriate. Hint, most SMB buyers probably aren’t tweeting all day. (@mschmier)
- The phone is still the most important tool for conversion to opportunity.
- Go to sales training — if you can sell, you can market
- Read a sales book, see above
- Try emails using the exact opposite of best practices
- Oh, and send an email on Sunday morning. People will open it
- Social media is not a panacea (@cjablonski)
- Improve field-to-headquarters information flow (@cjablonski)
- Research your industry buying cycles (@cjablonski)
- Deliver on your intent, daily (@cjablonski)
- If you don’t believe in your value proposition, rewrite it (@cjablonski)
- If the average person can’t understand your value prop, rewrite it
- Social media is WOM on steroids (@cjablonski)
- Keep emerging submarkets on your radar (@cjablonski)
- If you pay for impressions, then you will get impressions(@cjablonski)
- Give away your best content for free (@cjablonski)
- Learn your company’s elevator pitch (@tlotl)
- Write your personal elevator pitch (@tlotl)
- Claim your area of unique expertise (@tlotl)
- Challenge any assumption more than 9 months old (@tlotl)
- Learn how to (effectively) explain social media to executive management (@tlotl)
- Don’t let the bastards drag you down (@tlotl)
- Don’t get defensive
- Append your house list. Why wouldn’t you?
- Be the first to develop a Google Wave marketing strategy (@cjablonski)
- Throw your hands in the air and Google Wave them like you just don’t care
- If you spend more money on promotional items like t-shirts and pens than you did on demand gen, then shame on you
- Facilitate conversations between experts (@tlotl)
- Create content for every buyer persona you create (business users want something different than technical)
- Consumer marketers are light years ahead of B2B marketers. If you want to know what’s cutting edge, it’s them.
- Don’t overvalue title filters with content syndication; identifying organizational interest is the goal.
- P.S., Directors and VPs don’t download white papers online.
- Keep voicemails under 30 seconds
- In voicemails, don’t sell the product, sell the next step (e.g., just ask them to read your email), because …
- You should send an email after you leave a voicemail. You will get an exponentially higher open rate.
- Speaking of which, in lead gen and marketing, you should sell the meeting, demo, or next step not the product
- If you throw a party , invite the neighborhood — don’t filter webinars
- Keep marketing and generating demand in December, or you’ll end up with no pipeline in January.
- Understand common prospect objections and help attack them in your collateral.
- Assess the ROI of your fixation on ROI (@cjablonski)
- Elevate your marketing database hygiene (@cjablonski)
- Shoot for viral when you have the talent (@cjablonski)
- Make a contingency plan for your guerilla marketing idea (@cjablonski)
- Don’t write off direct mail (@cjablonski)
- Work with “frenemies” to serve the community (@cjablonski)
- Don’t hire someone to write your blog (@cjablonski)
- Be interesting by being interested (@cjablonski)
- Help make sales people be trusted expert advisers(@cjablonski)
- Don’t begin a survey with demographic questions (@cjablonski)
- Have conversations not sales pitches (@cjablonski)
- Create versatile content: Can you use this content in a white paper, webinar, blog post, etc.?
- Marketing is either a critical advantage against your competitors or nothing at all (obsolete, ineffective, etc.). Think like sales when you build your marketing strategy — build it to compete
- When considering everything you can do in 2010, remember you will be judged by pipeline created for sales
- Knowing the above, when trying to figure out whether to put money into lead gen or branding and you can’t afford to do both, I think you know the answer now
- Repurpose old content (@damphoux)
- Measure CPO (Cost per Opportunity) (@damphoux)
- It’s not a sales process, it’s a buying process (@damphoux)
- Interview candidates from competition (@damphoux)
- Ask prospects which competitor you lost a deal to (@damphoux)
- Ask them why (@damphoux)
- Pounce on a Web lead if they abandoned their visit on the Contact Us page (@damphoux)
- Make the goal of the first sales call to get a second (@damphoux)
- Different sales reps at the same company can benefit by different leads (introductory appointments for one, qualified leads for others) (@damphoux)
- Not all sales people know what’s right for them — think of them as teens and give them what you think is right for them (@damphoux)
- Log into your webinar platform an hour early and get all presenters set up early (@damphoux)
- Do demand gen programs targeting your existing and past clients (@damphoux)
- Never pay a lead gen team by the hour, pay for results (@damphoux)
- Spend a day with your lead gen team or vendor (@damphoux)
- Teach your sales team the best practices of handling the leads you worked so hard to generate (@damphoux)
- Learn how to use a tweet scheduler, but still be personal most of the time (@damphoux)
- Your most important landing page is your home page (@damphoux)
- One of the highest converting forms is the Subscribe to Blog by Email form (@damphoux)
- Selling doesn’t start until sales is talking with a prospect. Set introductory appointments for them (@damphoux)
- Do AB testing with a simple 3 line email, instead of a formal email marketing piece (@damphoux)
- Read the Pounce, Pause, Nurture or Wait debate (@damphoux)
- You spend thousands, if not millions of dollars building your contact database, so invest a little bit to maintain it with dedupes and validation (@damphoux)
- Attend a tweetup (@damphoux)
- Create a simple slideshare presentation and make every marketing and sales member of your team loads it into their LinkedIn profiles. Stagger them so they continually go live (@damphoux)
- Favorite, Like, Retweet people promoting your offering (@damphoux)
- Build a twitter “List” (@damphoux)
- If you see business cards lying on a sales rep’s desk, get them entered into a spreadsheet/CSV for free (@damphoux)
- Never try to do a list over 10 by yourself (especially 210)
Thanks, @scottalbro, @cjablonski, @tlotl, @mschmier, @damphoux.
Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter
