B2B Marketing Blog

With more companies likely to tighten their financial budgets going into 2012, ask yourself if your business has the financial stomach to spend more on marketing, about the same as this year, or even possibly reduce what you spent these last 12 months.

That thought especially holds true with online marketing, given that your company has a real-time impact with both current and potential customers in a matter of minutes, something that cannot be achieved through more traditional ways like newspapers, radio ads, flyers, newsletters etc.

According to a recent The CMO Survey, even with an up-and-down economy forecast to continue into 2012, chief marketing officers are looking to add to spending on all aspects of marketing in 2012.

This will especially be true when it comes to funds for social media marketing (see more on importance of social media in marketing below). The survey also goes on to note that companies will likely grow spending for marketing hires, likely around 7.2 percent on average in the next year.

That being said, those companies looking to reduce their marketing expenditures in 2012 have ways to cut back and still get some bang for their dollar, however they need to be creative to say the least.

The last thing companies will want to do is turn down or even off their marketing engines to the point that the competition takes advantage of the downswing.

In the event your company is thinking about trimming the marketing budget for the New Year, keep several factors in mind:

• Stay the course – Keeping your marketing awareness and staying engaged is less expensive than having to try and get it back down the road when the economy improves;
• Exude confidence – When you slash your marketing expenses out of what appears to be fear, current and potential customers may lose faith in your abilities. The common perception when you make such a move is that your company may be lacking some stability, therefore leading customers to question you;
• The competition likes you – When a company slashes its marketing budget, a competitor sees an opening. The competitor, who may in fact have cut back some too, could seize the opportunity to pitch their message to some of your current customers or leads you were pursuing. If that happens, you could find yourself on the outside looking in when it comes to getting that business at some point;
• Vendors may be willing to work with you – Businesses have to remember that not only are they looking to save dollars here and there, but many they work with are too. The companies you work with for your promotional items, printing, display, etc. are more apt to want to work with you than lose you altogether as a client. Just because financial times are tough does not mean there may not be some deals to be had;
• Re-evaluate your marketing techniques – Whether you are cutting back or not in 2012 on your marketing operations, take the time now to review 2011. What has worked with your marketing plans? What did not work? What are some techniques you would like to try but have hesitated in doing so up to this point? Use the last 12 months as a guiding tool for the next 12;
• Are you properly using social media? – Even though social media is there for the taking, too many businesses still do not take advantage of all it has to offer. With sites like Facebook and Twitter just to name two, companies should be sure to have fan pages set up and maximized to the hilt. Be sure that your marketing team is taking the time and effort to share and tweet pertinent information about the company, its products and services. Given the fact that more businesses will be transitioning from initial adoption of SM marketing to a more reflective and refined campaign, they are apt to want data that clearly defines the cost-effectiveness of such campaigns. Having another year of experience with social media techniques, more companies will likely show more sophistication when it comes to properly surfing the social media channel. As a result, they will seek more tools that properly enable tracking, measuring and bettering their returns on investment.

Take a look at your marketing techniques, go into 2012 with a plan in place, and market your company to success.

Dave Thomas, who covers among other subjects’ document management and HR software, writes extensively for Business.com, an online resource destination for businesses of all sizes to research, find, and compare the products and services they need to run their businesses.

Every year, the Top Sales Organization conducts an award ceremony recognizing the best in sales and marketing. Since its inception in 2010, ActiveConversion has been nominated twice, this time for the “Top Sales Productivity Tool”.  Having won the silver medal last December for the “Top Sales Tool”, ActiveConversion is thankful and grateful for the support that the online sales and marketing community has shown towards the company. This year in a new category, we here at ActiveConversion seek the same support.

Voting is easy. Click on the following link: http://www.topsalesawards.com/. Look for the category:  Top Sales Productivity Tool. Login or create a new account and then vote for your favourite sales productivity tool.

Voting will close on Dec 9^th. The award ceremony will take place on Dec 15^th, 2011 and will be hosted by Gerhard Gschwandtner of SellingPower.com and Jonathan Farrington of the JF Corporation. Public voting will account for half of the total marks with the other 50% being determined by the judging panel of industry experts.

We here at ActiveConversion hope to get your full support this second time around. We also wish you all happy holidays and a merry Christmas!

Following the ActiveConversion webinar on sales lead management, Brad Kamphuis, Director Business Development, spoke on the SLMA radio show on Oct 13, 2011 at 5:00PST.

With the holiday season right around the corner, does your small business have its e-mail marketing campaign in place and ready to go? If not, you could be left scrambling at the last minute.

The holiday season for many small businesses can be a make or break time.

For those in the retail business, for example, the holiday rush can be an opportunity to make up for lackluster sales earlier in the year. For small businesses that have a tough time selling over the holidays, it can place them in a very precarious position heading into the next year.

In the event your company’s got questions regarding its e-mail marketing opportunities with the coming holidays, here are some thoughts to consider:

• Make sure your distribution frequency is good – Another important item to keep in mind is that your distribution frequency is solid. Be sure to check the activity from your mailing list a year ago at this time, making necessary adjustments along the way. Prior to the holiday email cycle starting, push out a re-engagement campaign to get less active members engaged. That can include a special email to folks who haven’t opened or clicked in the last several months or a holiday survey to determine what subscribers want from you this season. Also look into having an added opt-in with a holiday campaign to grow the distribution frequency just for those customers seeking it;

• Stand out from the crowd – It is important to remember that your subscribers’ get inundated with email promotional content leading up to the holidays. That being the case, you need your online marketing message to stand head and shoulders above the rest. Make sure you give the subscriber incentive to want to read your message and not hit the delete button;

• Get your message out early – Start the message campaign early and inform your subscribers the importance of doing their business sooner rather than later with the holiday rush coming up. Make sure that your promo emails are done in plenty of time so that they get to the consumer sooner than your competition’s does;

• Engage your social media channels – Given the importance of social media in today’s marketing efforts, make sure you engage the different social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.) to target additional audience members. The great thing with social networking sites is it is a free other than a little time and effort. Be sure, however, you don’t use SM just to promote endlessly. Take the time to engage with both present and potential customers regarding your products and services. Bottom line…. be engaged;

• Be relevant after the holiday rush – It is a given that many shoppers look for bargains right after the holidays, so give them a reason to want to come back to you in 2012. Offering incentives to stick with you after the holidays is a great way to go about that;

• Be a mobile player – With more and more individuals using mobile devices to stay in touch with the world, be sure your campaign can accommodate such needs. When designing copy and images, make sure they will work smoothly with mobile devices. This brings on added importance given that many individuals will have their mobile devices with them while shopping etc. You can provide them with valuable deals and offers right at that time.

The bottom line is that the holiday season demands much attention from consumers; make it so that you’re at the top of their shopping wish list.

Dave Thomas, who covers among other subjects vehicle insurance writes extensively for www.business.com an online resource destination for businesses of all sizes to research, find, and compare the products and services they need to run their businesses.

Online advertising like Google Adwords, MSN Adcenter and Facebook Ads all have similar ways of showing ads to targeted audiences and getting your website clicks. The problem with almost all types of advertising (online is not immune to this), is that it is hard to gauge if those clicks are becoming sales. Coupons used to be the main way companies could track print advertising return on investment while adding further incentives. If a customer comes in with a coupon in their hand, you know your campaign has worked.

Pay per click campaigns can act like a man in a gorilla costume with a sign reading “Sale!” We can assume that many people are seeing this ad, but there is little way to discern between visitors who did, and didn’t see the ad. Making things more complex, who is buying from you that saw the gorilla, who is buying from you who did not see the gorilla? This same problem can affect online campaigns if they are not setup correctly or if the administrator of the campaign is not experienced.

A few tools you can use to better track your online campaigns:

Landing pages – A landing page is a specialized page made to do one thing: to turn a “click” into a SALE. Design a landing page like a flyer or a catalogue page that the user can buy from immediately. Embed graphics and video to emphasize the value of your product, and make sure it is EXTEREMELY easy to purchase your product from that same page. Every click a user has to make will make it less likely they will finalize the transaction. The result? All sales from that page have come in from advertising campaigns and you can measure that in real numbers.

Coupon codes – “Free Shipping with the coupon BoxingDay2011” or something similar is not an uncommon offer to see on eCommerce sites. Just like in the old days of print advertising, these coupon codes can be tracked (as long as your eCommerce system supports it) and work as an additional incentive to make a purchase.

Software – A number of free and paid services/software will track your various campaigns. Integrating Google Analytics is a good first step, as it can integrate with Google Adwords and give you more intelligence on where visitors are coming from, and what they are doing once they get there.

Once you are able to tack your ROI, you can tailor your campaigns to make the most sales, while spending the least amount of money.

If your company’s marketing strategy appears to be taking on some water, perhaps it is time to set sail on a new course?

Since marketing plays such a key role in the direction of many companies, take the time to review your company’s efforts and if they are being directed squarely where they should be.

Reviewing Your Marketing Needs

As you review your company’s marketing needs, analyze where your return on investment (ROI) could be improved, where money may be disappearing to and where you see your company’s finances down the road.

Among the specific areas to zero in on are:

• Numbers review – It is important to review the company financials to determine if change is necessary.
• Marketing efforts – Where are your marketing dollars going? Have you changed anything significantly in the last six months or years? If so, what were the end results?
• Get an outsider’s opinion – While it is easy to judge things from your end, have an outsider look at your marketing efforts. They can give an unbiased viewpoint as to what may be working, what isn’t likely to work and where the dollars should be going;
• Do an industry review – See what others are doing with their marketing efforts. Are they putting the pedal to the metal or are they pulling back? While you don’t necessarily want to emulate what the competition is doing, it doesn’t hurt to review their efforts.
• Customer feedback – Most importantly, get feedback from the clients you are marketing to. Find out what they like and don’t like. If they feel something isn’t working but you aren’t aware of that, how will you fix it?

While you don’t want to be changing your marketing efforts every month, tweaking here and there is by all means a good thing to consider.

If you decide that a change to your marketing game plan is in order, be sure you can answer the question as to why this is in the first place.  At the end of the day, companies need to determine and understand the ongoing cost of promoting and advertising their brand to their customer base and the potential prospects.

Dave Thomas is an expert writer on items like copier machines and is based in San Diego, California. He writes extensively for an online resource, providing expert advice on digital copiers for small business owners and entrepreneurs at Resource Nation.

When the money is tight, the general rule of thumb is that small businesses need to tighten their purse strings and draw back from efforts like marketing and advertising.

But what if companies actually spent more on their marketing when things were tough? Could marketing department managers just this to their bosses?

It is not a big secret that many small businesses falter not long out of the gates; with some reports stating more than three-fourths of businesses go under in their first year.

While the reasons can vary, one of the main reasons companies bite the dust early on is they do not understand what their special niche or true market really are. Without understanding these areas, many companies are doomed for failure.

Before you blow up the marketing budget in this troubled economy, consider the following:

• How will you attract new business if you decimate the marketing budget?
• What is the competition doing? Assuming a number of them are not applying major blows to their marketing budgets, will they reap the rewards when you slit your budget?
• What will your current customers think? Another danger here is that you will stop marketing to the very people who helped establish you in the first place;
• Once the economy does improve, is it already too late? You run the risk of having to recover from a point where there is no recovery.

Marketing your business when times are tough doesn’t require a Master’s degree in finances, just some good old common sense. Most importantly, have a well thought out plan in place so that your business can handle just about any situation.

Among the things to include would be:

• Objectives – What are our company’s objectives during this rough financial time? If we’re not slashing the marketing budget, do we in fact add to it? If so, what areas do we target?

• Audience – Given that money is not only tighter for us but also consumers, who exactly should we be marketing to? Are our customers only going to be interested in deals and rewards programs or will they buy like they did in the past?
• Competition – What is my competition doing? Since it is safe to assume that they are also feeling the pinch of this economy, have they increased or scaled back their marketing efforts?
• Timetables – What are the financial experts saying regarding how long this bad economy will be in place? I can’t just start up a marketing campaign today for tomorrow, so what do the experts believe will happen financially in the next 3 to 6 months?

Even though you may think it is a done deal that your boss or bosses will want to slash the marketing budget in this struggling economy, do not assume that.

Take the time at office meetings to point out that the marketing approach needs to be consistent and cannot be severely reduced or even dismissed in a bad financial climate.

Your competition is having the same meetings your business is in terms of how much and when to market when the economy is bad. Be sure not to pass along customers to them because you were too afraid to market yourself when the economy went south.

Dave Thomas is an expert writer on items like appointment setters and is based in San Diego, California. He writes extensively for an online resource that provides expert advice on answering service purchasing decisions for small business owners and entrepreneurs at Resource Nation.

Relationship building is a critical process in certain types of sales cycle involving personal interactions and rapport before the prospect is near the buying phase. The high cost and infrequency of purchases requires a level of trust and friendship to be established between seller and buyer. Note I did not say “between sales and the buyer”.

Traditionally, the sales department was responsible for developing relationships with prospects as they moved through the stages of the buying process. Marketing was traditionally only responsible for identifying which prospects sales should build relationships with. However, the time and dollar cost for sales to build and strengthen relationships was often too much to be able to see every lead to the end. The solution for this involves marketing accepting the responsibility for developing relationships.

Using marketing automation tools, such as ActiveConversion, marketing not only identifies prospects and leads, but also nurtures those prospects until they are sales ready. Automated drip campaigns, periodic offers, and resources such as videos or case studies build a stronger buy in. As the company begins to build their credibility as experts in their field, prospects authenticate them more, and finally move closer towards a sales ready state. Using marketing automation, marketing passes only leads that are close to sales ready state and are open to a purchase negotiation.

If marketing assumes the task of building relationships, there can be many benefits. Immediately, sales would have more time and resources to close sales with prospects that are sales-ready. The reduction in energy used to nurture leads who are not sales ready saves the parent company a large amount of overhead. As well, marketing has the resources and expertise to execute cohesive long term campaigns to deliver a message over multiple communications.

Establishing a relationship between marketing and the buyer is more effective and cost efficient than a sales representative chasing after a lead too early in the sales cycle when in fact the lead is still RESEARCHING!

Author: Mike Hwang

Service businesses, especially companies in the Energy Sector, Are looking outside their usual stomping grounds for new customers…

Perhaps the volatility of the energy markets is driving them to seek new lands offering better stability and security. Perhaps the possibility of positioning their businesses in markets with little, or no, competition has many companies looking at around for bigger and better opportunities. Whatever the reason, there is a growing trend among energy service providers to seek opportunities globally.

But, How Do You Grow Globally…

Bringing your business to market is all about putting the right message in front of the right audience at the right time. The trouble with marketing somewhere other than where you live is precisely that: You do not live there. How do you gain exposure? How do you know what messages will be well received? How do you know when those you want to deal with are ready to buy—if you even know who your real prospects are in the first place?

There are 2 options: get a consultant, or get a marketing automation system. Having been a consultant I have no desire to heap too large a pile of coals on my head. However, there is one truth I will confess: as a consultant, I was NOT cheap. I knew what the best options were, how to engage and how to get results. I also knew that my knowledge was well outside the scope of my clients—that is, they NEEDED me. And I charged for it.

A marketing automation system, like that of ActiveConversion, does much of the work of a consultant. The system literally educates those marketing into new territories by providing answers to key questions, such as:

• Which marketing campaigns are driving visitors to my website?
• Of those visiting my website, how often do they come and which products or services are they most interested in?
• Which of my competitors are checking me out, and what are they looking at?
• Who are the most relevant contacts at my prospects’ business?
• Whether prospects are at the right point in their buying cycle or not, how can my business stay top-of-mind (professionally and ethically) with my prospects from afar?
• When is the best time to commit sales resources to maximize my chances of converting my best prospects?

And one of the most interesting aspects of this information: it is gathered anonymously. No one has to fill out a form for you to know who they are, what they’re looking at, or how interested they might be.

Whether you plan to take your business to places where angels fear to tread, or if you’re staying close to home, a marketing automation system will keep you on top of your prospects, competitors ,and your advertising effectiveness—all for a lot less than I ever charged.

Being top of mind in the energy sector takes time and effort, but it’s eminently doable, even for firms with a limited marketing budget.  We all know about the basics like branding and advertising, or tactical events such as trade shows, so let’s talk about a few of the lesser known ways to market.

First off, how about networking?  Most people view this as an individual career move but in fact it’s fantastic marketing for your business.  Get creative about ways to network.  Volunteer at events with industry participation such as the Calgary Corporate Challenge, or even sponsor/start one.  Networking at business and industry events is a guaranteed way to get recognition.  If you aggressively network, people will see your company’s name over and over again and it will instantly come to mind when looking to buy into your sector or when recommending a service/product to a colleague.

Secondly, industry sponsored speaking engagements for yourself or a thought leader on your team can generate excellent exposure with many side benefits.  Usually such presentations are not about being an infomercial for your business, but about educating the audience about a specific aspect of your business.  Presentations, such as ones hosted by APEGGA, are the perfect opportunity to generate great brand awareness by sharing knowledge in your company’s field of expertise.

Demonstrating the passion for your business and what you do creates foundations for future business relationships.  Make sure you are able to stay around and network afterwards so that you build on your new found credibility.  You’ll also find future network events that much easier as you will have gained substantial experience and confidence by getting up in front of an audience.

Bottom line, there are many ways to market, and these are a few more tools for your toolkit. Get out there and don’t be afraid to fail! Aim to be that company that everyone has heard of!

Author: Jeff Rouse

VP of Technology

FP iMarketing