I came across this quote from David Ogilvy in a Copyblogger article 13 Timeless Lessons from the Father of Advertising:

“There isn’t any significant difference between the various brands of whiskey, or cigarettes or beer.  They are all about the same.  And so are the cake mixes and the detergents, and the margarines…The manufacturer who dedicates his advertising to building the most sharply defined personality for his brand will get the largest share of the market at the highest profit.”

While Ogilvy is talking about B2C business, what he says applies to B2B.  There isn’t any significant difference between accounting services, financial accounting software, customer relationship management software, IT services, or in my own corner, marketing services.

What Marketing Does

At its most basic, marketing is calling attention to ourselves:  our products, services, methodologies, and deliverables.  Good marketing gets attention.  Great marketing separates us from the pack and makes us a desired goal of our ideal prospect.  Great marketing causes a prospect to decide, “I want to do business with [your name here].”  Great marketing differentiates us in a way to make us more attractive than our competitors.

So what differentiates one from another?  I think there are four main ways to differentiate:

1. Spend
2. Frequency
3. Memorable
4. Personal

B2B Marketing Spend

It was true in the past and it’s true today: if you have a lot of money to spend, you can appear everywhere and reach a wider audience.  Money can buy the biggest exhibit at the conference or trade show.  A big budget can buy signs at the airport.  Lots of money can buy TV ads that run on Sunday during the football game.  Not to mention the impact direct mail (think 3D, high value) can have with hefty cash behind it.

 B2B Marketing Frequency

Every marketer knows the disappointment that comes when marketing budgets are slashed and you know that the cancelled 3^rd and 4^th campaigns will not be building on the momentum gained from your first two campaigns.  To gain mindshare and favorability with your target audience: frequency of communication matters.  To be sure, a strong message must be at the core, but even with a gripping compelling message (if you’re not able to send it out on a regular cadence) is going to have little chance of gaining a foothold with your target market.

Frequency does not mean spamming.  I was managing a successful monthly direct mail campaign.  The owners of the company, in an effort to save some money, asked me to execute every six weeks rather than every four weeks.  That meant three less mailings a year.  In addition to missing the leads generated from the three cancelled mailings, the remaining nine mailings pulled less response than the average response from mailings sent on a monthly mailing.

The idea is to find a cadence that works for your goals and your audience.  And stick with it!  It is better to pare down your list and ensure consistent communication than target larger numbers infrequently or sporadically.  You’ll see better results mailing 100 people ten times, than mailing to 1000 people once.

Memorable B2B Marketing

The challenge is that most businesses don’t have excess marketing dollars to spend, nor do they want to spend marketing dollars on non-prospects – they want a more targeted approach.

A more targeted approach, for example focusing on a niche or vertical industry, means you can speak more specifically the their pain points and more specifically to the benefits they’ll enjoy.  A more targeted approach means you can use the precise language used by your audience:  the terminology you would use speaking to a nonprofit organization is very different than the terminology you would use speaking to a construction company.

A more targeted approach usually means a smaller list of prospects (remember: better results with touching 100 contacts ten times than 1000 contacts once).  A smaller list means that you may have more budget dollars per contact and can afford to add in a lumpy or 3D mailing to your marketing calendar.

Personal B2B Marketing

A small list means you can get personal in your messaging.  Use the vast amount of intelligence you can glean from LinkedIn, Google Alerts, and other tools to find out more about your prospect.  In addition to your planned marketing messages, send a personalized message when it’s appropriate.  Send congratulations when you see a press release announcing positive financial results or the opening of a new location, for example.  There are other ideas for personalized messages in my presentation ‘100 Names, Ways, and Days to Grow Your Business’.

Obviously, this is not an exhaustive list of ways to stand out from the crowd.  There may be other tactics that you might employ.  But the important things is that you begin to think about how to distinguish yourself from your competition and put a plan in place to make an impression on your prospects.

What ways have you used to make your business stand out?  Please share them in the comments section.

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Lead generation tactics that don’t generate leads

Buy a list of strangers, pour them into a tool, flip a switch and wait for the conversions.  B2B business owners seem to want cheap, automated ways to market to strangers – but that doesn’t work.  Especially when you have high-priced solutions and services.  When I ask about what kind of lead generation results email blasts or automated communications are producing, the answer is negligible or none.

Before a prospect will spend tens of thousands of dollars on your products and services, they need to know, like, and trust you.  You cannot automate trust.

B2B marketing should foster trust

Trust requires high-touch, personalized, meaningful communication.  You’re actually thinking about the person receiving your communication – and you want to help them, you want them to succeed and their business to thrive.

Most of us who are knowledge workers – selling our expertise so that other may profits – began our businesses by interacting personally with prospective customers.  B2B marketing rarely involves impulse purchases.  B2B marketing acknowledges that it will be a longer and more involved sales cycle.

B2B marketing should cut through the clutter

We still need to start the conversations.  The best way to cut through the clutter of all the other businesses with products and services to sell sending their automated messages is to have completely different B2B marketing vehicles.  Rather than send yet another “look at this and let me know if you want to buy it” type of electronic communication, why not send a handwritten note or postcard that acknowledges them?

Set up Google Alerts to collect information on your contact and their company.  You’ll then receive alerts when they send out a press release or are quoted in an article. Follow their blog and explore their website.  Look them up on LinkedIn to see if you have any connections in common or if they participate in any groups or associations.  All of these activities, along with any face-to-face time that you have with them, will give you the information you need to jot of few lines of congratulations or acknowledgement.  At the end of my presentation 100 Names, Ways and Days to Transform Your Business there are 100 different types of messages you can use for your personalized marketing.

By focusing on them, and opting for hand-written rather the electronically generated, your B2B communication will stand out and be noticed while the competitions’ communication is deleted or opted out of.

Start small and grow your list.  Commit to one contact every day.  Within a few weeks, not only will you be noticed you’ll be engaging with prospects and moving those prospect through the Marketing Hourglass stages of Know, Like and Trust to the stages of Try and Buy.

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B2B Marketing – Heavy Lifting Equals Better Results

Here’s the naked truth for B2B marketers:

• Consistent results requires consistent action (heavy lifting)
• Better results requires more work (heavy lifting)

A story that Rob Johnson shares during his sales training classes is how he used to keep his list of prospects on him at all times. He’d print it out and carry it around so that whenever he had a down moment, he could make a call.

He tended his list. By having it with him all the time, he could make a call if he arrived early from a meeting. He could make a call waiting to board a plane. He could make a call driving to and from where he had to be. As a result, he made more calls during the course of a week than if he didn’t have the list with him at all times.

Making 150 calls rather than 40 calls is heavy lifting. Heavy lifting is the difference between slogging to survive and wild success.

I am always surprised to discover that most B2B business owners do not have a list that is being worked constantly. Rather, leads that came in years ago may have been contacted once and then forgotten. Later, when a decision is made to do some marketing, because there is no list, a list must be purchased and is full of strangers for whom your marketing message is cold.

A cold list means it will take time and multiples touches to move the people on that list through the Marketing Hourglass spectrum of Know>Like>Trust>Try>Buy>Repeat>Refer.

But if you’re constantly working the list, you’ll shake some business loose every month. If you’re constantly working the list, you’ll discover the information that prospects need to progress through the Marketing Hourglass and you can create white papers and blog articles that give qualified visitors to your website reason to pause and learn more about you.

Improve your B2B Marketing:  Make the commitment to develop a list of 100 names.

1. Create the list

This list should be comprised of organizations that on paper fit your ideal customer profile. They serve a particular industry. They are of a size that can afford your products and services. They are accounts that you would love to have as case study.

2. Keep tabs on the list

Set up Google Alerts for each of the companies and begin to learn more about them. Catch them in the act of doing something good (being named to the Top 25, opening a new office, participating in a community event, etc.) and congratulate them. Send them a post card or a hand written note.

3. Research the list

Research these 100 companies. In addition to Google Alerts, use LinkedIn to see their affiliations (school, associations, groups, companies they worked for in the past) and to see if you have any connections in common that might be able to facilitate an introduction.

4. Work the list

This will be a list that you carry around with you and look at every day. And in your down moments between calls, or first thing in the morning, just after lunch and before you leave for the day – tend the list. As you disqualify or convert contacts, be sure to add new contacts to your list.

5. Convert the list into customers

By tending to your list, increasing your intelligence on the contacts, making regular and meaningful contact with the people on the list, you will help them move through the Know>Like>Trust>Try>Buy>Repeat>Refer stages of the Marketing Hourglass and convert them into customers and raving fans.

6. Referral partners on the list

All of us have seen the value of business referred to us. Your list should include your referral partners. Staying in front of them increases the chances that they will mention you if a referral opportunity presents itself. And, it works the other way – keeping in touch with referral partners is a reminder for you to refer them if you discover someone who could benefit from your referral partner.

If you execute these six B2B marketing steps, you will see results in 90 days if not sooner. But you must tend the list. Why not begin now and position yourself for a strong start to the new year?

I highly recommend reading Robert Early Johnson’s book (affiliate link) Kick Your Own Ass: The Will, Skill, and Drill of Selling More Than You Ever Thought Possible

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Differentiate by preparing your employees for their next job.

If given a choice, I do not want employees.

The largest team I ever managed was 17 – and it was a great team.  But when you manage a team for a big company, you quickly learn that there is much that will impact them that you have no control over:  from percentage pay increases to lay offs, from personal time off to parking.

I realize that every company is different – admittedly my particular experience molds my outlook.

In spite of those limitations, as a manager, I tried to help them move towards their goals (in any little or large way I could) even if that meant I was mentoring them out of the company.

I think that’s why the vignette in John Jantsch’s book The Commitment Engine: Making Work Worth It
(affiliate link) on Jancoa’s Dream Manager program resonated with me.

Here’s the story:  Jancoa, based in Cincinnati, provides janitorial service.  They had more business than they could deliver.  Janitorial services require people.  However, the industry endures a turnover rate of over 400%.  Jancoa was hiring 50 people a month and yet couldn’t realize a dependable workforce.

The owners went audacious in their thinking.  First they invested in vans and began shuttling employees to and from work – they realized that one problem was many of their employees wanted to come to work but couldn’t afford reliable transportation.

They didn’t stop there.  They realized that vacuuming office carpet and office carpet is not particularly inspirational.  So they put together the Dream Manager program to assist under skilled employees in realizing their dreams.

Jantsch quotes Jancoa owner Mary Miller, “People don’t dream about entering the cleaning industry, but now they come to work for us and we tell them give us your best three to five years and we’ll help you work your way out of a job.”

And it’s working.  The employees are thriving. Customers are receiving better service. Jancoa is growing and profitable.

While the answer to taking my business or you taking your business to the next level will likely be along a different path than the one taken by Jancoa – it is their thinking that is so impressive and challenges me to look beyond the oft-suggested paths.  Because in grabbing the reigns and forging ahead on untried path, we may not only find an answer to the limiting problems of our business, we may just stumble onto a powerful and unique competitive differentiator.

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Online traffic factors into the number of comments your blog posts attract.

In a really good article on Boostblogtraffic.com, the post 14 Devious Tactics for Getting More Comments on Your Blog Posts provides a very succinct formula for ratcheting up the comments count:

Traffic + Engagement + Emotion = Bunches of Comment

This is very true.  But don’t get too excited.  The key to this formula is traffic.

Let me put it this way, let’s say you’ve knocked one out of the park:  you’ve produced a blog post with a great title, the content is valuable, witty and easily implemented – your readers, never mind being delightfully entertained in reading the thing, are going to benefit in spades.

And you don’t get a single comment.

To make matters worse, someone else has written what you consider to be an OK article on the same topic, and the comments to their post has just surpassed the 100 mark – a mere couple of hours after they’ve posted.

Here’s the difference between us and them (for lack of a better term, let’s call them A-Listers):

For A-Listers, Traffic = 100K followers + book or multiple books + multiple keynote gigs 

For most of us, Traffic = less than 1K followers + no book + no speaking gigs

Add to that the fact that in every How To Rule the Online World-type article, readers are being told to comment on other people’s blog in order to get noticed.  Given that most people read the blogs of the A-Listers, it’s easy to comment on those blogs.  Plus, the time constraints we all face tend to preclude us from searching out new sites to read.

So, you see what I mean?

My point in writing this is not to bum you out, or to shake a virtual fist at the A-Listers, but rather to help you manage your expectations.  And, to encourage you to really appreciate the comments you do get: someone took the time (and we all are in the midst of a time famine) to read your post and then, God love ‘em, they took the time to comment on your post.

So here are four parting thoughts:

1. Continue to write quality content and always be improving your chops.
2. Place more importance on analytics than comments.
3. Go out of your way to show appreciation for those who take the time to comment on your blog post (reply in a warm and genuine way, go over to their blog and return the favor, give them some RT, Like, and +1 love on their stuff).
4. Write that book and endeavor to deliver that keynote. 

Good Luck!

The End.

Oh…wait!  Wait!  Please leave a comment

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20 data points you should capture about your ideal prospects

The more intelligence and connections you can identify, the better your chances of connecting with your prospective ideal clients in a meaningful way.

1. Industry
2. Title of contact interested in buying your products and services
3. Size of the business (e.g. number of employees, annual revenue)
4. Name of the person
5. Name of the company
6. Address
7. Email

Then explore social platforms to see if they participate there

8. LinkedIn

9. Twitter

10. Google+

11. Facebook (note: many people reserve Facebook for family and friends.  It may not be the best place to try and connect with them at first, though you may want to explore Facebook Ads if people on your list are on Facebook)

I would use LinkedIn to explore if there is an opportunity to connect with them:

12. Are they connected to other people in your network

13. If they participate in LinkedIn groups, you may want to join those groups

Don’t forget about in person groups or individuals that you might have in common:

14. Professional associations

15. Local business groups

If you’ve discovered a connection through LinkedIn, look to get an introduction (versus a referral) from the person you know in common

Google them and mine information to give you get a better understanding of them:

16. Do a search on the business

17. Do a search on the individual

Determine the universe of ideal clients

18. What is the total number based on your definition?

19. Is there a sweet spot within that total number?

20. Can you afford to religiously market to the universe or do you need to pare it down to a smaller subset?

Realities

Chances are the kind of information you have on one contact will not be the same as another.  For instance, you may have emails for 20 out of 100, you may have addresses for 84 out of 100, you may have Twitter handles for 23 out of 100, etc.

You are likely going to have to use multiple media (direct mail, email, social platforms) to reach all of your list, so that will be a factor in your marketing plan.

The intelligence you gather from the 18 points above can be easily stored in a CRM system or a spreadsheet.  Using the information you gather, you can then put together an integrated marketing plan.

As you work the list, you will gather additional information.  Set aside time to maintain your list and it will soon become one of your most valuable assets.

Are there other elements that should be collected?  Please share your thoughts in the comments section.

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