Best Practices in B2B Demand Generation - demandblog

Marketing Lesson Learned from a Fight with the Wife

by Jason Stewart

Maybe "fight" is a strong word. She was really annoyed with me though. I just wasn't understanding what she was saying, and it seemed like a really simple concept to her. The problem was, she kept explaining it the same way, with the same words, even though I clearly wasn't getting it. When I pointed it out to her, she took a step back and then explained it to me using different words, from a different angle, and it all clicked for me. And it was a really simple concept. And no, I don't remember what it was. But it was one of those "duh" moments when I realized how thick I was being.

As marketers we spend so much time crafting that "one" message that covers all that we are and hopefully all that we will be as a company. But don't ever forget that regardless of how simple the concept is (to you), you should have a backup. No matter how finely crafted your words are, some people are not going to get it - and it's not because they are not smart. It's just because their brains work differently than yours. It happens sometimes.

Side note....don't ever use the "well if they don't understand it then they are not in our target market" crutch, because that's a cop-out. Reliance on jargon to communicate your value is a red flag and will lead to interminable conversations with your cousin who will come up to you at Thanksgiving and ask "...so what does your company do again?" even though you've told him twelve times already. The holidays are practically here. Come up with an elevator pitch your cousin will understand.

Marketing Vinyl

I was listening to this podcast...it's called Sound Opinions from Chicago Public Radio and it airs on NPR. It's sort of like "At The Movies" but with the rock music critics from the Sun-Times and the Tribune, and is a really great podcast if you are interested in that sort of thing. This particular episode highlights the reunion tour of The Feelies which is, honestly, one of those bands that as a music geek I feel like I am really supposed to like but just have never been able to enjoy. But wait, I digress...

The reason I am bringing it up on this forum is an interview with Tom "Grover" Biery, VP of Marketing for Warner Brothers Records. He is also in charge of their vinyl album initiatives. Get this...vinyl album sales are up 77% over last year, while CD sales are down 16%. No doubt it still makes up only a small portion of their total revenue...but 77%? Holy cow! It got me thinking...

I love mp3s. But I also miss having that big, square piece of artwork. I miss the inside album sleeve with the liner notes and the lyrics printed on it. Some bands now release "digital booklets" that feature the same stuff...but sitting and listening to one of my favorite bands while flipping through their latest PDF? Ugh. Digital vs. paper. There are pros and cons to both, but honestly, in my world they co-exist. So what does this have to do with B2B marketing? Well...when is the last time you went old school and did a direct mail campaign?

Just thinking out loud here, but it seems to me that one of the biggest challenges for marketing campaigns in the electronic age, especially with email campaigns, is getting them to render the way that you want them to look. I can look at one email on my Outlook 2007 at work, via webmail through my browser, or on my BlackBerry. I can even look at it through a WiFi connection on my iPod. It looks different in every single medium. And here's the kicker...it may not even look the way the sender intended it to!

Think about how many emails you receive that get thrown out without even allowing your email client to render the images properly, and then think about your daily postal mail. Your creative may be incredible, a work of art! But if I am not seeing the images, then what does it matter? I may not read everything I get in the mail, but I at least look at it as a whole and decide whether it is worth reading.

A nice postcard or direct mail piece will look exactly the way you want it to look, with properly rendered images and the fonts you selected. And one of the biggest drawbacks to direct mail, that inability to track ROI as effectively as with digital marketing, is now much easier to overcome through best practices like customized landing pages.

Another good thing? Direct mail has a pretty low bounce rate...if your target is no longer at the company then your piece stands a pretty good shot of landing on the desk of the replacement. Throw in that "retro" appeal of getting a really clever piece of marketing in the mail and you could have a winner of a campaign. Maybe it's time to consider giving direct mail another shot. Now excuse me, I think I might stroll over to Amoeba and check out the latest vinyl.

Another Brilliant Entry...

...in John Moore's "Would You Miss..." series over at Brand Autopsy.

Would you miss Dunder Mifflin?

Read the comments. That's what she said.

Free Word of Mouth Marketing Goodness

It has been generating buzz in any number of places, so he must know what he is talking about...

BzzAgent John Balter has written an book called The Word of Mouth Manual, Volume II and it is available for free as an eBook from a few selected blogs. Wow, even that is a good idea..."you are one of only a dozen sources for this book online, should you want to brag/write about that fact..."

I've read the first ten pages and look forward to plowing through it. Download it free (!) from any of the blogs listed here, or look it up on Amazon if you want to pay $45 for the hard copy.

More Retro Marketing

If you liked my posts on How to Get Your Ideas Across (business communication circa 1970) you might like this....

Back in 1965, stores would allow people to take a record album home with them with a very unique advertisement for one of their products. In exchange for bringing the record back, they would get a discount on said product. BoingBoing saw this post and pointed to it, but here is the direct link to The Most Important Event of the Year.

Trade Show Logic

Two thoughts from the ad:tech show exposition floor:

1. Messaging Stinks
Easily 90% of the messaging on the booths told me nothing about what the companies actually do. Is this on purpose, to try and get me to walk up and say "what is it you do?" ... or are companies so afraid of being pigeonholed into a category people are familiar with that they do it on purpose?

I have sat in on many hours of the meetings that shape these messages. Typically, there are WAY too many people in the conference room for these meetings, and one of the side effects is that the output is so diluted by everyone's personal agenda that it often becomes useless.

Ask yourself how you describe your company to your friends. Is it significantly different than your canned corporate description? If so, you might be ready for an overhaul.

2. Make Sure Your Representatives Want to Be There
Well, okay, want to be there might be a stretch...but at least stop sending the third stringers to these events! More than once, I would pause in front of a booth and be baffled by the messaging. I would notice several company reps looking at me, often with their arms crossed, and then NOT APPROACH ME!

Trade shows are expensive, probably the largest single investment you make make over the course of the year. If you are sending unmotivated, uninterested, antisocial loners to man your booth and then wonder why you didn't generate a ton of leads, you need to have your budget revoked. That engineer who knows the product backwards and forwards but may not be the best in front of a crowd? There is no denying that she or he is brilliant, but leave them at home.

You need to treat your expensive investment like an expensive investment. If you are going to jump in, than jump in all the way with a decent booth, good collateral, some giveaways people will use every day and your "A" team of personnel who may not have the most product knowledge but at least know how to get in my face and say hello.

Isn't It Ironic

Thinking about the Salesforce.com and Google announcement yesterday, one of the hot buttons was collaborative work on documents or presentations...

The ironic thing about switching to a SaaS version of your office applications is that while it would force people to work more collaboratively from the latest versions of your most important documents (which is good), the very thing that drives this collaborative work (being forced to work online) will keep it from getting on to the laptops of the road warriors and field personnel who could benefit most from a system like this.

And then, once Google Apps releases the "desktop" version of the product as they have promised which could be what wins over more users, people will go back to their old bad habits of just using what is already on their machine rather than going online for a more recent version of that document or presentation. And then the "collaboration" benefit is gone.

Salesforce and Google Apps ... Is This Really a Big Deal?

The story has been broken already in a number of places, and as Mark Mangano says over at SalesforceWatch.com the web is "atwitter" with people putting in their two cents about Salesforce.com announcing tight integration with Google  Apps.

My feelings are mixed. On the one hand, I am extremely pleased that one of these announcements has to do with improvements or enhancements to the core product as opposed to "the platform." I use SFDC every day for my job, and I feel like the CRM product hasn't been getting the attention it deserves lately.

Also, it is nice to see that SFDC is doing something that will help small businesses and start-ups, which are the ones who are more likely to utilize Google Apps as opposed to Microsoft Office. The big names and big customers get all the press, but it is still the companies with fewer than 100 employees that make up the lion's share of the SFDC customer base.

But on the other hand...Google Apps? Am I alone in not really being moved here?

The last time I used Google Apps was when someone sent an Excel file to my Gmail address...it asked me if I wanted to open it using Google Apps, and when I did it didn't look right. I ended up having to save it to my desktop and open it with Excel anyway.

It sounds good on paper, sure -- and if the word Google is involved the press goes into a fit of collective apoplexy -- but I am just not feeling the love. Tighter integration with a set of applications that neither I nor anyone else I know uses on a regular basis just doesn't get me as excited as I feel like I am supposed to be.

I'm attending the "official" announcement today, and maybe I'll come around. What do you think?

This just in...Fake Steve Jobs has a very funny take on the announcement.  Check it out here. Too funny.

 

Unreasonable Expectations

I was talking with one of my colleagues the other day about this post from Seth Godin's blog, called Who answers the phone? Godin is talking, once again, about the importance of customer service and the role it plays in brand image. Godin has cited Zappos as the gold standard, and in fact did so just this morning, but in this case he was on the phone with Scharffen-Berger Chocolate (now owned by Hershey's) to complain about how the quality of the product has gone downhill over the past few months.

He relates the story of how the extremely polite representative on the phone offered her apologies and a coupon for a free replacement bar of chocolate, and he goes on to say:

"A replacement of what? More of the same mediocre product I was calling to complain about? ...Shouldn't every single inbound call be answered in one ring? Shouldn't there be as much spent on self-service customer support as is spent on the design of the selling part of your website? Shouldn't you be tracking in the finest detail what people have to say when they call in? Shouldn't you be rewarding call center operators by how long they keep people on the phone, not how many calls they can handle a minute? Shouldn't there be an easy, fast and happy way for an operator to instantly upgrade a call to management (not a supervisor, I hate supervisors) who can actually learn something from the caller, not just make them go away?"

Godin is right, of course, but my colleague brought up a very interesting point..."how do you help someone who has an unreasonable request? He wanted someone to change the chocolate back to the way it was....how can you help that?"

How do you help that? What would you have done?

Two side notes...the designer we use had sent out an email to her address book the other day because she was delighted by the outgoing message on Zappos customer support line.  What an amazing strategy...when someone calls you with an issue, get them smiling before you put them in touch with a rep!

Other note...my wife happened to buy some Scharffen-Berger dark chocolate the very day that Seth Godin wrote about it. I tried it. It was kind of waxy and boring.

Maybe I'll call their customer support to try and get a replacement bar...

The Difference Between Then and Now

Thinking about the "How To Get Your Ideas Across" posts that started here (and then went here and here)...

The two biggest ways marketing has changed since 1970 are how we deliver our message (or rather how people receive it...via email, RSS feed, blogs, etc.) and how these delivery methods have the ability to track the return on our marketing investment "baked right in."

Messaging, and best practices about understanding your audience and communicating effectively with them in terms that they understand, is timeless.