The Funnelholic

More and more, marketers are trying to “qualify” leads through their Web registration form.   I don’t believe in this practice.  I am believer in “business card” information and geo and company targeting. Geography is a common question (thanks, though, for the thousands of leads from Kazakhstan, but I have no sales presence there), and I understand company size. I don’t believe this information causes pause for users.

What I don’t get is the “qualification” questions about budgets and projects. As Web users, we fill out plenty of forms. Do you really want to tell a company you have a project in the works? And that you have a budget? That’s basically chumming the water for the sharks, and users know that. So, essentially you are scaring prospects away, thus hurting conversion rates or in the case of the user actually filling out that form, creating fake data. Or catching the smallest fish in the organization who needs to be thrown back.

There is an easy rule here: Don’t ask anything you wouldn’t ask on a first date.

Here are the three most important questions:

1. How much money do you have (or, at least, the range)? Do you have budget? If so, how big is it?  Guys, get real. The budget question is inappropriate. It’s a judgment call whether it’s even appropriate on the first call.  You need to establish a relationship and common interests and ensure the person likes you before you can ask that. Jumping into the budget question right away makes you look desperate. It makes you look like you are worried about who’s going to pay for dinner.
2. I don’t know you, but I’m concerned about the following potential problems you might have. Please choose one so I know how to approach the rest of dinner. These questions are usually phrased empathetically in terms of “pain,” “what keeps you up at night” or  “what problem are you trying to solve”? And, presumptuously, your issues are pre-selected and served up a la carte in a drop-down menu.  Dude, this one is incredible. Don’t fake concern. They don’t know you yet, so why would they trot out their character flaws?
3. How long will it be till we sleep together? (In case you’re missing the connection here, these are the reg form timeframe questions.)  This one’s worth a shot because you really have nothing to lose if you’ve gotten this far. But no one really answers this question honestly and most want to avoid it altogether. They know you will call them, but they may not be ready to get serious so soon.

The bottom line is:  It’s noble to try, but don’t use reg forms to do the job of your lead qualification or sales team.  You are scaring great prospects off, and are hurting conversion too little benefit.  Use your reg forms to confirm interest, target your market, and get their info.  Gather more data on your second date or your third when you’ve both invested some time.

How many times these days has the trailer been better than the movie?  Movie marketing is more important than the actual movie production itself.  The job of the Hollywood marketer is to get people into the movie house on opening weekend. That’s it.

They don’t worry how much of the plot they have given away in so-called spoilers, whether they have away the best jokes or scenes in the entire movie in the previews, or whether they market the actor  that sell vs. the actual “star” of the movie. Forget the fact that  actor getting top billing may only be on “stage” for a brief stint in the movie. You could almost argue that the shooting of the film is where the marketing machine gets rolling. How many shots of movies midproduction have you seen in the pages of “People”? And don’t forget The old bait and swith. Dark dramas have been cast as comedies in TV ads just to lure you into the movie theater. Been there. Seen that.

Case in point: “The Dark Knight.”  It should have been called: “Joker Returns.”  As a matter of fact, did we even see the actual Batman in the previews?  Batman was played by the obscure Christian Bales, whereas the movie was all Heath Ledger, all the time.  He basically had an academy award nomination from the preview alone and the record shattering box office stemmed largely from the studio’s brilliant marketing campaign. Unfortunately, the untimely death contributed  to the posthumously released film, but the marketing cogs were moving full throttle before his tragic demise.

So, what can we as b2b marketers take from this?  Two things:

1.     Get ‘em in the seats. Sound crazy?  There is a difference between marketing to get buyers to register and commit vs. overwhelming them with your overall messaging platform goals. The b2b marketer often falls trap to two things: A new, fancy acronym or market they are trying to pioneer (insert acronym flavor of the month here) or a high falutin’ value proposition that doesn’t really say anything.  Yes, you want to get your point across, but you can’t do it if no one is listening. Don’t let your ego get in the way. Yes, you know the latest terms and technologies, but does your audience? How can you convince someone that they need something when they don’t know what it is?

When you are promoting your white paper or webinar, think about what actually sells. You can explain everything until the cows come home once you have captured the audience.   Focusing on the benefits and targeting is key to get interest, not big words and obscure acronyms.  “Seven Reasons your business needs…” will work better than: “The primer on Acronym X, the dynamic, robust, dada, dada…”.  Give them a call to action. Give them something they can print out and give to their boss to justify a new investment.

2.    Don’t be afraid to give away some of your best scenes to get buyers to bite:  Yes, there is a fine line between temptation and giving it away, but there are sooo many choices today and so little time.  This is especially true in the case of business targets. Remember, they have their day jobs.  I talked to one of my contacts at ON24, the webinar platform company.  He sees what works and doesn’t work in both producing and marketing webinars.  He said one of the better advertising vehicles is to preview the webinar itself when users click on the page. Nothing sells like the real thing.

See you at the movies.

I am writing this blog from one of my customer’s conference rooms.  They are demand generation marketers supporting a 19 person call center that follows up on their leads.  They brought up that a couple of their lead sources had developed acute “Negative-Call-Center-Reputation” and they can’t resuscitate  them.

What is “Negative-Call-Center-Reputation?”

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I am planning on putting together a major post for September in which I honor organizations and people that have influenced me in some way, shape or form regarding my B2B lead-generation or marketing ideology. The idea is to make this an annual post called “The Top of the Funnel” awards. Gosh, I love that name.

Anyway, I regularly cruise the Web searching for ideas on what to write so I committed myself this weekend to looking at new blogs and sites. In my searches, I found what I thought was a promising name: The Marketers’ Consortium, the blog associated with big-time marketing-automation company Unica Corp.

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