B2B Marketing Blog

We at ActiveConversion make use of various social media channels – with our presence in Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn groups, Slideshare, YouTube, Digg, StumbleUpon, Flickr and many more. Keeping track of all these social media channels and updating them on a regular basis is difficult and time demanding, but if we use them smartly they work very well to our advantage. With the advent of Internet and as the web 2.0 matures, the online community is an ever growing powerhouse, and it is quintessential to engage with our audience.

Broadcasting

Traditionally websites were developed as a brochure, with static content, one way communication. But as Web 2.0 matured, websites became more than just a brochure. It was necessary for companies to adapt to this ever changing World Wide Web where two- way communications was more than a necessity for any B2B type company. This communication can be in any form; blogs, forums, and online community etc. Similarly, social media channels started as a means of personal use. Twitter & Facebook mainly started as people to connect with their family and friends to let them know where they were or what they were doing or simply share activities and photos. Now B2B companies can also use Facebook and Twitter, but it is important to know the difference between using these channels to broadcast your message versus using them to engage with your targeted audience.

I recently attended “The Art of Marketing” event and found a very close connection in all the speeches that had a common theme of “Engaging”. It is important to understand that our users or customers, and our audiences are the most powerful and the biggest advocate for our products. For B2B companies, the new way of creating customer relationship is by engaging and knowing who their audience is and what are they talking about. Here are some of the speakers who talked about engaging with the audience:

Mitch Joel, the author of “Six degrees of separation” said the Internet is almost going to be as important and pervasive as the electricity”. In the social media world where B2B marketers are trying to connect with as many people as they can and create a solid followers base, it is important to understand that it is the basis of who is following you more important than how many followers you have.

Engaging

Gary Vaynerchuck, author of “Crush It!” cleverly stated that “Internet is just a baby and it still has to grow up and unleash its power”. Whether you are in B2C or B2B, Twitter, Facebook’s and similar social media accounts are a must have. If you don’t have either of these, it is not too late to jump on the bandwagon. Facebook credits are soon going to be precious currency and if we don’t use Facebook, and there is a big chance that companies might miss out on large opportunities in the future.  Social Media should be used intelligently in a way that we not only broadcast our messages and offers but to engage and be involved with our audience. Having a conversation with our audience, providing opinion, resolving issues on the go and engaging with our audience is a key.

Sally Hogshead, the author of “Fascinate” said, “Create messages for our network’s network”. Don’t ignore the larger network which is linked to our immediate network. Social media lets you connect to this web of networks that you simply can’t ignore.

So go ahead and start engaging in conversations!

If trade shows are an important part of your marketing strategy then you understand that they are one of the best ways to do both lead generation and face-to-face networking with a large group of qualified prospects. After a trade show, companies struggle with following up on a long list of inquiries with attendees, most of whom are not sales ready, and get neglected by the sales team who focus on ‘hotter’ leads.

Yves Matson, Senior Account Executive at ActiveConversion, & Nancy Nardin, President at Smart Selling Tools shared some strategies and tactics around increasing trade show ROI.

Attendees learned how equipping their company with simple and easy to use marketing automation software drives several benefits that increase trade show ROI:

Other topics covered were:

• Who is visiting your website right after a trade show
  - if you are “top of mind” enough for them to investigate you after a trade show, they are your best prospects!
• How to automate an email nurture campaign after a trade show
  - instead of having sales follow up with the entire list, have them focus on those that show engagement, even if that engagement is months later
• Track the effectiveness of various trade shows and compare the return on investment against each other

Download the recorded webinar from: http://www.activeconversion.com/webinar/webinar-june-2010-access.html

Download the presentation from: http://www.slideshare.net/activeconv/activeconversion-increasing-trade-show-roi

We all know that happy customers are advocates for your product or service. But how do you get fanatical customers? These are customers that really move the marketing and sales yardsticks. They promote you, they review every feature, and can’t imagine their work life without your product being part of it. One of the ways is to engage your customers in a way that makes them part of the team. The best way to do that is to make sure they have a voice, and that their voice is heard. This can best be accomplished by building an online community.

There are many, (many!) online community tools in the marketplace. They range from message forums to social media networks to chat oriented products.  In order to enhance service and make users heard, business to business companies can make use of these tools which are basically feedback channels where customers can provide any and all thoughts they have about your product. This helps companies listen, really listen, to what their customers want. An online community not only allows the customer to see how their feedback has been handled, but it also allows them to see the interest on those ideas from other professionals using the service. They may even stumble upon ideas that would enhance their own use of the product.  This creates engagement, and engagement generates fanatical customers.

How are you building your fanatical customers?

Both before and after the Global Petroleum Show, companies seriously interested in you will likely visit your website. Knowing who is interested in your product and services (and especially when), is something that you can use to increase your trade show return of investment substantially.

Finding The Needles in the Haystack
Research on trade shows have shown that serious buyers will gravitate to doing their research online and arrive at your website both before and after the trade show. But trade shows like the Global Petroleum Show can have two huge wins for exhibitors; Opt ins, and after show website visits.

Opt Ins
By virtue of the fact they are going to the GPS show, anyone visiting your booth is qualified in so far as they are in the energy industry. When one of them asks to be scanned for more information they are doing what is the holy grail of  marketing; they are “opting in”.

When someone asks for their badge to be scanned for more info, you can email nurture them  while always leading off with “you are receiving this because you visited our booth”. Then use a new breed of software to notify you as to who keeps coming back to your website, or visited the right pages on your website; it will tell you who to call, who you stand the best chance of building a relationship with.

The Bigger They Are, The Less They Call
Every exhibitor at the GPS hopes for booth visits from big, sought after accounts. But ironically the bigger the account, the less likely they are to call you after a trade show for fear of salespeople chasing them months on end. Regardless though, if these big accounts are interested in your company they will likely visit your website after the show to investigate your company further. Again, knowing who is visiting, who is interested in your company, who you should target over the weeks and months following the GPS show can be a significant competitive advantage.

eHow To Guide
Here’s a quick eHow To Guide from ActiveConversion that further explains what I’ve mentioned above. Good luck at the Global Petroleum Show 2010!

Companies know the value of their assets, things like a building they own, or intellectual property they have developed.   But assets can also include things less tangible, like the business processes they have painfully put in place, and professional sales and marketing collateral they have developed.  You really understand the value of these less tangible assets when you change jobs and go to a company that has inadequate or non-existent processes, or that has no sales and marketing collateral you’d be willing to hand out.

In this list of less tangible assets is the company’s website, usually in the same category as the brochure that it closely resembles.  But what is increasingly expected of websites is that, instead of being a static brochure, that they convey insight; captivating reasons to stay engaged with a website, maybe even follow it on social media.  The standard way a B2B website accomplishes this is with what I will call “website assets”; whitepapers or case studies (and the promise of new ones in a timely fashion), sometimes a nice video, or most effectively, a blog that is updated on a regular basis.  The problem is that developing website assets at all, let alone a consistent cyclical production, requires some not-insignificant commitment and resources to see through.  Most companies, even if they agree that website assets are good ideas, will say that they have little time or money to get these accomplished.

The Easy Path to High-Value Website Assets
So I have an alternative, something easier, something anyone who is even somewhat passionate about what they do for a living can do without breaking a sweat; a webinar.  If you can talk for 30 minutes to a customer or prospect about how you can solve one of their more pressing business problems, then you can do a webinar.  Now many people respond that they are not comfortable doing public speaking, even if you’re presenting to your computer, to them I council “then don’t host it live with an audience, host without an audience and record it”.

Instead of inviting everyone to the live webinar you’re afraid of doing, invite everyone to the recorded webinar they ‘missed’.  Put in the invite that if while watching the webinar they have any questions (answering these live is one key value of live webinars, certainly during the webinar you will answer a few canned ones) they can email them in, and you promise to answer each and everyone one of them.  And the best part is this recorded webinar is now a website asset, you can put a button on your website that engages visitors, maybe even convinces them to give you their contact info:

(this is a webinar I hosted in early May), here’s a link to our full list of recorded webinars.

So here they are, the

10 Reasons Your Company Should Do Webinars, because everyone likes lists, heck maybe you just jumped right to the list, so here it is:

1. Webinars are the easiest to achieve high-value content your company can generate; it is the easiest way to capture the expertise and experience of your senior people in a way that can be accessed over and over again by prospects visiting your website.
2. People like to hear things from people, not faceless corporations.  Webinars give you the opportunity for visitors to your website to hear your expertise and experience on specific topics that matter to them, much more so than the generic statements on the website.
3. The invitation to a webinar, and the follow up invitation to download the recorded webinar, are a valid reason to email your entire “in-house” list of contacts at least twice
4. Announcing you are having a webinar increases your credibility on the subject the webinar will focus on.  If you stick to a subject that you know well because of both successful experience and passion, you will likely build credibility.
5. This high-value content is ideal for pushing out to your social media network; the companies winning at social media are the ones contributing content that speaks to their credibility.
6. High-value content like this is very useful to your sales team; when they encounter this business problem they can refer prospects to a webinar recording on the respective subject from your guru.
7. Webinars are easier to sell to the gurus that need to host them; getting them to speak for 30-45 minutes on a subject they are an expert on and passionate about is something they do all the time, and is much more “natural act” than asking for a whitepaper.
8. You can use recorded webinars as “conversion elements” to build your list; gate them behind a form on your website and require a name and email address to access them (have a very good privacy policy very visible, and do an opt in campaign afterwards).
9. You can very effectively increase your brand credibility by co-hosting a webinar with one of your more recognized suppliers or vendors.
10. Webinars can be very nimble; if you recognize a shift in your industry, or an event that is of significance, you can quickly reach out to your audience with your insight on the topic.