B2B Marketing Blog

In these tough times we find that many businesses are paralyzed due to the economic situation and probably more so due to its uncertainty.  Bottom line, as SMB businesses ‘cash is king’ and we’re managing with a tighter-fisted approach then we were a year ago.  But, there in lies the rub, because so are our customers.  So what can we do to pry budget or discretionary monies away?

Back a few months I came across a great article in the Harvard Business Review by Philip Lay, Todd Hewlin and Geoffrey Moore (yes, the same Moore that wrote Crossing the Chasm);  “In a Downturn, Provoke Your Customers”.  The essence of the piece is that when times are tough, with tight fisted spending management, you’ve got to find the business owners perspective on a key ‘pain point’ and present it in a fashion that leaves the business owner with a view that they have to move, make the investment or face certain peril – “provocation based selling”.

Provocation-based selling helps customers see their competitive challenges in a new light that makes addressing specific painful problems unmistakably urgent.

I’m sure you’re thinking easier said than done as you read this, and as I did when I first read the article.  The conventional means of selling YOUR features and functions all too easily happens when on the phone with a prospect, or better yet if you can provide them a consultave or solution approach, again with YOUR solution.  The best and most successful salespeople always work to have a good understanding of the customer’s business and ensure the proposed offering or solution is presented from the customer’s perspective.  Provocation based selling really just takes this one step further in that it focuses in on a very specific pain point or requirement, but also looks to create a strong sense of urgency with the business owner leading them to conclude they have to move and investment is required.

The vendor identified a process that was critical for customers in the current business environment, developed a compelling point of view on how it was broken and what that meant in terms of cost, and then connected the problem to a solution that the vendor was offering.

Having read the article, I then stepped back and considered the essence of what was being conveyed and how we might incorporate a small aspect of provocation based selling in our messaging.  In today’s B2B business world the web dominates engagement with the buyer and is the store-front for your products and solutions.  It’s the first touch-point with the customer and the web-site continues to be a key point of engagement through the buy cycle for the customer.  Providing a marketing automation solution and a powerful means to manage that engagement for the seller, somehow we needed to convey the value of being able to ‘see’ the web visitor, manage the website interaction with their customer, and create a sense of urgency with the seller such that they would make the investment in our solution.  How about - 

Do you know who’s visiting your website?  Can you afford not to?

I encourage you to read the HBR article in its entirety as it goes through the tactics and requirements of how to be successful with “provocation based selling’ and presents the business case for Sybase. Then come back and comment with your thoughts  on what Philip Lay, Todd Hewlin and Geoffrey Moore are proposing based on your business or experience.

Look forward to your comments.

Inbound marketing is one of the hottest topics for marketers today. Whether it’s referral traffic from blogs, tweets or the king – search engine optimization, it’s obvious that visitors coming to your website on their own accord (or searching for what you do) are usually the best leads.  Search engine optimization (SEO) is key for inbound marketing as it’s how relevant content such as blogs, tweets, videos and websites get found – and how you can get qualified leads – for free!

One of the most important tasks for a marketer is to get the search engines to discover and index all page content of your website.  Search engines generally can find the pages on your website, but  unfortunately there are certain website elements commonly used by web designers that prevent search engine robots from doing their job — discovering the web pages.   I’m going to list some common ones so that you’ll be aware of them and take them into consideration when developing your websites.

1) Flash – I don’t mean not to use flash.  When Flash is used properly,  it can make a web page look very good and attractive.   However, when it’s used in the wrong place, it’ll prevent search engines from finding the content and positioning your website appropriately in the search results.  Generally, I’d advise not to use flash in creating your  navigation menus.

2) Image content – Do you know that even though you can read the text on the web page, the text content can be an image. Most search engines are not able to read the text on the images.  It’s also harder to perform content updates on the page when using image text.  To find out whether the text on the web page is an image or not, you can use your mouse to select and highlight the text. If the text cannot be selected,  it’s likely image text.

3) Javascript link – If  your website is using Javascript links, most search engine robots won’t be able to follow the links to find the other web pages.  Move your mouse over the link.  If you see that it says something that starts with “http:” in the status bar of your browser, you are OK.  If the test in the status bar starts with “javascript” in the status bar, the link is using javascript and is not search engine friendly.

4) Session ID – Websites that require a session ID to track visitors may have problems when ‘visited’ by search engines.  Session ID’s in URLs are the absolute kiss-of-death to search engine accessibility.  You can tell it’s a session ID in the URL adddress, as it will say ‘sessionid=xxxxxx’ where xxxxxx is a lot of numbers.

5) Frames – they don’t usually prevent search engine robots from discovering the web pages.  Content within a frame is not part of the same URL, it is actually another page inside the current page.  As a result, when searchers clicks through the search results, they might be landing on the ‘internal’ page which doesn’t contain the other parts of the original page.  This will also affect the web experience of your visitors.

6) Splash or intro pages – they usually contain a movie which search engines don’t understand and subsequently won’t index.  It’s also a fancy delay tactic that is disliked by most viewers. It also provides only one link for the robot to follow if it can find it.

There are solutions and workarounds to these problems. If you notice your website has the above search engine robot barriers, you will want to address the problem as soon as possible.  Allowing search engine robots to index the content of your web pages will dramatically increase your success on getting leads  from search engines!

Thought leadership marketing is a trendy concept in B2B marketing.  The term thought leadership was first used by Strategy & Business magazine as a quality attributed to interview subjects who had contributed new thoughts to business.  The term has come to mean people or companies who revitalize mature processes with new ideas.  More generally it refers to companies that are recognized as deeply understanding their business, the needs of its customers and the wider economic environment in which the company operates.
Thought leadership marketing has established a following with marketers of services, especially professional services since customers cannot directly examine the product and chose vendors based on real or perceived expertise.  In other words, reputation.

The five second prescription for thought leadership marketing success is to write a bestselling book, make speeches and have authoritative third parties review your ideas.  A more pragmatic plan would include submitting articles to trade journals, speaking at trade shows and conferences, participating on panels and engaging reviewers and others known to write on your industry.  Most trade journals (print or online) welcome article submissions that are on-topic.  Keep in mind that your mission is to establish yourself as a trusted expert not a hard sell.  An article that reads like a warmed over product brochure won’t cut it.

Those third party reviewers need to be cultivated.  Keep in mind that their currency is information and just like other media, “exclusives” are coveted.  Consider offering an exclusive on your next product launch.  You may not make it into print every time but each encounter will strengthen your share of mind with that reviewer.

Remember that Internet age customers research potential vendors long before buying.  Part of the process is reducing the field of potential vendors to a select few.  This makes the process more manageable and allows the customer to look at each short-listed offering in greater depth.  Your marketing plans should include content that speaks to your position as a thought leader.  Your marketing automation system will capture those leads.  They may be early in the cycle but you will be well-positioned to be present at the end.

For most small businesses, and a surprising number of medium sized businesses, marketing is a family secret kept in the attic.  Ask them about what they do marketing wise and eyes go downcast, a foot reaches out to kick a pebble, they look up a little ashamed and say; “we really don’t do any.”

Often I dig a little deeper and find out they are doing marketing, they’re paying $500 a month to the old search engine, the king that has recently died, the Yellow Pages (calling your company AAA-Plumbing was the old way to get Search Engine Optimized).

Here’s a piece of advice that I make no money on (so hopefully you can trust it more).  Take that $500 worth of spray and pray (you pay your $500 and you take what you gets, pray there’s ROI), and spend it with Google, the new king, for a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) adwords campaign.  With PPC you pay only if someone reads your ad and clicks on it to visit your site.  This is a first in the history of marketing and I’ll be so bold as to say that never in the history of capitalism has the bar been so low, so easy, and so cheap to do real and effective marketing.

And the best part? You can tell Google where you want the ads to run geographically, you can even tell Google when to run the ads, and you can tell Google where to direct visitors who have clicked on it (so you can have an extra special message or offer on hand to greet them).  Wait, there’s an even better part, research has shown that you’ll get about as many free click throughs from adwords as the ones you pay for; seems people like to cut and paste the web page address they find in ads into a new window.

Of course the ton of leads a properly set up adwords campaign produces can be a problem in itself for small companies with sales infrastructures developed for only a few new leads a week.   That being said, there are Marketing tools out there that can handle this wonderful problem and work with your existing process to manage the influx of new leads.

The focus of this blog is B2B, so why a post on ‘The consumer decision journey‘ from McKinsey Quarterly?

Bottom line – relevance! At the core of the research finding is the need to understand the  Trigger Events of your buyers,  and having an ability to initiate action on the event.   Trigger Events are a very familiar and key concept within Marketing Automation and we recently co-hosted a webinar on with Craig Elias, Creator of ShiftSelling on the subject and its importance to the online Marketer.

As much as the referenced McKinsey Quarterly article focuses on how the consumer buying process has changed the underlying premise of what’s driving the change is applicable in B2B as well.  After all, the process by which we buy as individuals is arguably carried into the workplace when we’re representing and buying for the companies we work for

[Businesses] are moving outside the [traditional] purchasing funnel – changing the way they research and buy your products.  If your marketing hasn’t changed in response, it should.

In summary, the web has changed the way we purchase – product information is readily available, search determines how we find it, and we buy globally – the Buyer is in the drivers seat.  Those that chose to recognize this change and adapt the way they market to their buyer are the ones that will ultimately win in the end.

A more sophisticated approach is required to help marketers navigate this environment, which is less linear and more complicated than the funnel suggests.

If you do nothing else, grab 5 minutes and watch the video from David Court, Director, Global Marketing Practice at McKinsey, which provides a great summary of their research and illustrates this change in buying behavior.

Interested to get your thoughts on the article/video.