Getting edible grasshoppers in the mail will either gross you out or pique your curiosity. For one company, it meant big results. But the package didn’t do it alone. It had help, social media help. Learn how one enterprising company uses a mix of social media tools to generate qualified leads and land new clients
Email newsletters for B2Bs has lost its luster. Does that mean we should give up on it? Actually, no. Too many newsletters tend to stop targeting and send more. That’s not the way to go. The route to take is to share valuable content that’s relevant, timeline and helpful.
As a subscriber, what do you like and dislike about email newsletters?
When Meryl started researching this article, she reported that she couldn’t believe that Cisco was just 25 years old and didn’t exist in 1984 — when the Mac made a splash. You know Cisco is a big company and it’s hard for big companies to connect. Yet, Cisco is successful at interacting with folks through social media.
What do you think worked for Cisco?
Are you dependent on one customer for the majority (or all) of your business? If the customer closes business due to retiring, quitting, health issues or bankruptcy, what does it mean for your business? A good rule of thumb is that no customer should make up over 25 percent of your business.
How do you diversify your business?
Sales and marketing have new rules thanks to social networking. The two mains ones to remember are to listen and to target. No more shouting and no more spraying and praying. Louis Columbus gives you things to think about when changing your strategy to reinforce listening and targeting.
How has social media changed the way you manage sales and marketing?
A bad economy isn’t an excuse for dropping your rates or avoiding a rate increase. Frank Cespedes, a Harvard Business School senior lecturer, has researched the topic of prices in tougher economic times, which he refers to as “performance pricing.” He says, “Pricing builds or destroys value faster than almost any business action, especially in tough and uncertain economic conditions when price is a key and visible strategic choice.”
What do you think of “performance pricing”?
A bad economy isn’t an excuse for dropping your rates or avoiding a rate increase. Frank Cespedes, a Harvard Business School senior lecturer, has researched the topic of prices in tougher economic times, which he refers to as “performance pricing.” He says, “Pricing builds or destroys value faster than almost any business action, especially in tough and uncertain economic conditions when price is a key and visible strategic choice.”
What do you think of “performance pricing”?
Adding personality to a company’s brand can help a company connect with clients and prospects, even a B2B company. One B2B pulls this off with its professional videos, blogs and overall social media program.
Does your company use social media? If yes, how? If no, why not?
Target Marketing reports on its recent online survey of its readers to find out today’s B2B marketing best practices. 94 percent of the survey’s respondents work in B2B. The report covers everything including print, blogs, social media and more.
How has your marketing practices changed in the past three or five years?
Email newsletters still have value, but you need to look beyond branding and keeping your company’s name out there. The key is to include content that your prospects and clients will value. So don’t just shower readers with deals. Share content that focuses on your readers, not your company.
“Email marketing is tactical. Lead nurturing is strategic. It’s a different mindset. The process of lead nurturing helps companies focus on prospects, instead of on themselves,” writes Ardath Albee.
What do you think is the difference between “email marketing” and “lead nuturing”?
With more B2Bs entering the social media realm, it’s a great time to review the common mistakes with online lead generation. After all, engaging people in social media can lead them to visit your site. Remember that engaging and building relationships takes time. Plus, checking for these 10 mistakes will also help improve your chances of converting those leads.
What’s one thing you can do to improve your lead generation efforts?
You’d be surprise how many successful landing pages look boring in terms of design. Landing pages aren’t the place to let graphic designers run wild. People don’t care about flashy when making a decision.
Tim Ash provides tips for colors, text, visuals, animation and video. Don’t commit these errors unless you don’t care to make a lot of sales.
What have you seen on bad landing pages that turned you off? Why?
Filling up the pipeline takes work. The article shares a good analogy using athletes. Short distance track runners train for hours, months and years just for an event that lasts under five minutes.
Prospecting takes lots of preparation and research to reach the goal of adding another customer in the pipeline. The article provides four questions to jump start your prospecting training.
What other questions or drills should sales add to its training regimen?
One new study shows social media is growing rapidly leading small businesses to double social media adoption. Beware, though, “Different industries are adopting social media marketing at different rates.” Another study reports that in the next five years, almost 20 percent of marketing dollars will be invested in social marketing. Then a third study reports many marketing executives are paying attention to social media.
How about you and your company? How has social media affected your business? Or are you still deciding?
Before you make the next call, review these quick and easy tips so you can improve your chances of winning the deal. The tips show you how to build on the prospect’s answers, dealing with questions about your competitor and handling the closing. Be sure to read the comments as they offer more ideas such as asking implication questions.
What is your best sales tip?
Mac McIntosh describes three approaches to budgeting for B2B lead generation. Then he suggests giving management three lead generation budget options: minimum, target and stretch. Also, add more support to your budget proposal by telling management what you plan to do with the budget and how it affects the company’s sales goals.
What do you think of this lead generation budget approach?
Hubspot, an internet marketing technology provider, has released a study called “The 2010 State of Inbound Marketing.” The study included 231 marketing professionals where 69 percent work in B2B companies. The study shows that inbound marketing had an average per lead cost of $134, almost $200 less than those using outbound marketing channels.
How does the study’s result affect your marketing efforts or beliefs?
There can’t be a person on the planet who remains untouched by the economic stress that unfolded in the past year. This new normal continues to re-create itself daily, and just about the time we think we’ve got it figured out, something new emerges.
When messaging is ignored in the lead generation program building process, the most common cause is an impatient executive with a “no one cares about the message” attitude, and of course the program administrator/leader who accepts that attitude and proceeds to ignore the messaging component.
No matter your feelings about social media (SM), it’s big and proving it’s not a fad. Many B2B companies want to learn how to engage their clients and prospects. However, many businesses — including large organizations — can’t find their way, feeling wary about proceeding or taking shots in the dark.
Most realize that the more validation and verification of each lead or database, the better the quality of the lead. So, what’s the best way for B-to-B marketers to efficiently verify the accuracy of their lead data captured online before turning said inquiries over to the sales force?
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Services and the Big Picture: You Will Lose Product Sales if you Don't Get Serious About Selling Services Join us for an energetic hour with services industry pundit James "Alex" Alexander as he shares his experiences, insights, and recommendations on this critical aspect of selling services. |
