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Posts Tagged ‘Twitter’

Welcome to the Social Enterprise – It’s Not What You Think, B2B Skeptics!

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 11, 2011 | 4 Comments »

If The Marketing Id had any doubts that social media was still more pervasive as a marketing tool in the B2C world as opposed to the B2B world, those doubts have begun to seriously erode this year.  With the advent of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the like in the past few years, it’s the customers and employees of the enterprise, both B2C and B2B that have been quick to adopt social networking.  So it came as no surprise at the recent Dreamforce 2011 conference in San Francisco, when Marc Benioff (Chairman & CEO of Salesforce.com) pondered during his opening keynote address, “Customers and employees are social.  Are enterprises social?”  In fact, he went on suggest that they were not social and wondered if there was a way to bridge this social divide between the enterprise and its employees and customers.

While consulting for a digital content management company back in 2007, I had come up with this wonderful tagline, “Bridging the media divide” to encapsulate the essence of its existing managed services and forthcoming SaaS offerings.  So when Mr.  Benioff spoke of a three-step program that Salesforce.com had recently developed to “bridge this social media divide,” I felt a sense of déjà vu.  It also got me to appreciate a key differentiator–while we were ahead of the curve in trying to migrate digital  content management services to the cloud in 2007–social media offerings were pretty much born in the cloud! Thus, all that bridging Benioff’s social media divide required was the establishing of a value proposition that would be compelling to the enterprise.

And, Mr. Benioff did so quite convincingly in his Dreamforce 2011 keynote.  He asserted that for an enterprise, delighting customers is knowing who they are and what they like–Facebook tells us what they like, Twitter tells us what they are saying  and LinkedIn tells us who they are connected to?  So in order to become a “social enterprise,” a B2B needs to follow three steps–begin creating customer social profiles in its database, establish an employee social network and finally integrate these into customer and product social networks with the appropriate security and access provisions as required.

From The Marketing Id’s standpoint, Salesforce.com has done pioneering work in the employee social network domain with its 2010 launch of Chatter–a collaboration application for the enterprise to connect and share information securely with employees in real-time.  At the Dreamforce 2011 conference Mr. Benioff announced that Chatter’s functionality had been extended to include Chatter Now–a presence detection capability to let employees know who was “live” on Salesforce.com and thus allow them to chat and collaborate in real time.  In addition, the Chatter Connect API empowers employees of the enterprise to bring 3rd party streams into Chatter and enhance workflow efficiencies and employee productivity.  Chatter  Groups enables employees to include customers and partners in specific groups to collaborate on proposals, presentations and the like.  And, a telecommuter/road warrior imperative, Chatter Mobile extends these functions to popular mobile devices such as iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android.

As a B2B, if you thought Salesforce.com already rated “good to great” on the Jim Collins scale, their introduction of Data.com with its access to Dun & Bradstreet and Jigsaw data inside Salesforce makes them even better. More importantly, your B2B sales force can now access all their existing data and applications on the road on their mobile devices with the availability of touch.salesforce.com.  Finally, to aid the creation of the afore-mentioned customer and product social networks, Salesforce.com has introduced a multi-language, open, cloud platform for the enterprise that will enable a B2B to engage in social marketing activities such as crowd-sourcing for product feedback, social monitoring of customer conversations, etc.

The above is only a brief summary of the leading edge developments taking place on the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) side of what The Marketing Id has been referring to as a CRM-integrated Marketing Automation Platform (MAP).  The  Marketing Id had also recently blogged about how Siemens Enterprise Communications (Social Media-Integrated Enterprise Products Lead the Way for Social Media-Integrated B2B Marketing) had made rapid strides in the B2B communications domain by focusing on five megatrends that included cloud-based communications, seamless mobility,  social collaboration, consistent consumer-like experience across devices, and ubiquitous reliability and security.  Listening  to Mr. Benioff it seemed pretty obvious to The Marketing Id that Siemens, who is a Salesforce.com customer, is well-aligned with the vision of a social enterprise.  Based on the turnout at Dreamforce 2011 conference and the dominance of Salesforce.com in the B2B domain, The Marketing Id believes that the concept of a social enterprise will catch on quite rapidly in the broader B2B world.

From a marketing standpoint, the social enterprise could become the holy grail for B2B marketers when it comes to sales enablement, demand generation and a truly integrated sales and marketing funnel with one vision of the truth.   With a  CRM-integrated MAP, marketing to the social enterprise becomes a collaborative, real-time exercise that ought to make it a delightful experience to customers, employees, partners, et al. So welcome to the social enterprise, folks!

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All It Takes Is “A Few Good Men” Blogging & Tweeting to Generate Leads

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on September 1, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

As the economy seems to be going through a sluggish phase, SMBs are beginning to wonder if there is a paucity of demand out there.  Judging by how the stock markets have bounced back in the past couple of weeks after their early August volatility, it might  be fair to assume that a double dip recession is probably not in the cards.  In business terms, this implies that demand is not really drying up – all you have to do is tap into it in the right places, nurture it for as long as it takes and then capture it when the time is right.  To put it in my favorite Garden State lingo, “You want leads, I got your leads right here!”

But seriously, as an SMB, if you are not already immersed into social media and inbound marketing, you are quite likely losing out on a substantial portion of your leads–because they are out there but your current marketing setup is probably not allowing you to access them!  The Marketing Id culled what it perceives as pertinent facts from a 96-slide HubSpot (an Internet marketing company) presentation.  HubSpot’s complete presentation can be viewed at http://www.slideshare.net/HubSpot/marketing-fact-vs-marketing-fantasy), but from The Marketing Id’s perspective its Top 10 facts are as reproduced below:

  1. 57% of small businesses say social media is beneficial  to their business
  2. 39% of B2B companies using Twitter have acquired new  customers from it
  3. Companies that use Twitter average 2X more leads than  those that don’t
    • Companies with 1000+ Twitter followers get 6Xmore traffic
  4. 41% of B2B companies using Facebook have acquired new customers from it
  5. 54% of companies increased their investments in social  media and blogs in 2011
    • Leads generated via inbound marketing tactics like blogging & social media cost 62% less
  6. Companies that blog get 55% more web traffic than those  that don’t–they also get 70% more leads
  7. 57% of companies have acquired a customer through their blog
  8. Blogging can increase your Twitter reach by 75%
  9. Businesses who blog at least 20 times per month  generate 5X more traffic
    • They also generate 4X more leads
  10. 2/3rd of marketers say their company blog is “critical” or “important” to their  business

It should be noted that some of these facts apply to  companies in general and not only B2Bs – where they do, it has so been  indicated.  Nonetheless, all of these facts  are also relevant to the B2B domain.  A  simple way to sum up these Top 10 facts – if, as a B2B, your company is not  blogging and tweeting, it is leaving a lot of money on the table!

The Marketing Id has previously blogged about this new marketing paradigm that has evolved over  the past few years and changed the way business is conducted, including in the  B2B long sales cycle domain.  It is fair  to say that the B2C companies were first to cultivate this new marketing paradigm, but it is now increasingly dominating the B2B world as well.  So The  Marketing Id would like to conclude this post with a parody of a famous  dialog between actors Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise from that classic  movie, “A Few Good Men.”

The Marketing Id  (asking in Jack Nicholson’s agitated voice): “You want demand?”

A hapless B2B (replying  in Tom Cruise’s earnest pitch): “I want  the leads.”

The Marketing Id (growling in Jack Nicholson’s full-throated roar): “You can’t handle the leads!”

This is it, B2Bs, if you think you can “handle” the leads, you  must make some serious changes in the way your marketing is currently being run  on the demand side.  With a few good men,  it is money that you can take off the table!

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Social Media-Integrated Enterprise Products Lead the Way for Social Media-Integrated B2B Marketing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on July 10, 2011 | 1 Comment »

The Marketing Id came across an excellent keynote address, “Five Megatrends Shaping Enterprise Communications and Collaboration,” delivered on March 3rd this year at CeBIT 2011 in Hanover, Germany by Hamid Akhavan, CEO of Siemens Enterprise Communications.  Given its telecommunications pedigree, The Marketing Id believes there is much to learn–regarding the impact of the cloud on Unified Communications (UC), the integration of social media into enterprise communications, and about these five megatrends that are driving the enterprise segment towards renewed growth–by viewing this complete hour-long video online (see link above).  Nonetheless, The Marketing Id would like to summarize a few of the highlights from Mr. Akhavan’s address for the benefit of readers, who might then begin to wonder if the social media-integrated
enterprise product cart is ahead of the social media-integrated B2B marketing horse?

 

At the outset, Mr. Akhavan posits that the revolution in mobile broadband communications brought about by the iPhone, iPad and video streaming, has propelled a growing demand for a commensurate “cosumerization” of the enterprise, a demand which has been further accelerated by the rapid proliferation of social media.  So it should come as no surprise that three of his five megatrends that are “driving enterprise cloud communications” originate from end-user needs, which in turn are feeding a couple of IT trends that need to be met.  Mr. Akhavan defines these five megatrends as follows:

  1. Flexible deployment –Enterprise IT must be ready to support cloud-based communications solutions that are private (premise-based), hybrid (flexible) and public (pay-as-you-go) so as to meet customer-specific needs as required.
  2. Seamless mobility – Enterprise customers want a seamless transition of their ongoing communications from/to various fixed/mobile devices and regardless of their location.
  3. Integrated user experience – Enterprise customers want a consistent user experience across their various fixed/mobile devices incorporating requisite soft client interfaces.
  4. Social collaboration – Enterprise customers want various social media tools integrated into their communications solutions so as to enhance their overall collaborative experience
  5. Reliability and security – Enterprise IT must guarantee ubiquitous service availability beyond traditional firewalls with carrier class redundancy across geo-separated locations and ensure the survivability of remote office locations in case of network failure; and, more critically, safeguard governance and data privacy in this new mobile and expanded enterprise environment.

Mr. Akhavan goes on to establish the viability of these megatrends by demonstrating a few cloud-based UC features such as the on-demand provisioning of a new enterprise user in under a minute, the seamless drag-and-drop transfer of a voice call from a smartphone to a desk phone and back, the survivability of a fixed line call after a cable is cut, the drag-and-drop integration of  a UC widget into Google Applications and a consumer-like experience in setting up an enterprise conference call on a smartphone via touchscreen.

 

So has Mr. Akhavan’s demonstration put the proverbial product cart before the marketing horse?  From The Marketing Id standpoint, Siemens has made rapid strides integrating social media into its enterprise applications, such as customer relationship management (CRM).  Their contact centers have evolved almost in lockstep with these new communications channels and already provide “cost-effective support for multiple inbound channels including SMS text, voice, video, instant messaging and emerging social media such as Twitter and Facebook.”

 

Siemens’ state of the art integration of social media into its enterprise products, specifically cloud-based UC, should actually give the B2B marketing segment a boost.  The Marketing Id believes that a similar consumerization effort on inbound marketing channels, including relevant social media components, is required across the broader B2B world.  It is not that companies have not been trying to implement consumer marketing techniques on the B2B front.  But it appears that B2C social media efforts within a B2B environment have been focused more on developing brand equity and less on generating demand, especially where long B2B sales cycles are concerned.  More significantly, these inbound and outbound marketing efforts have been largely disjointed.  Now, however, with the advent of CRM-integrated marketing automation platforms, such as Eloqua and Marketo, the  consumerization of integrated marketing efforts in the B2B world has become easier, even over a lengthy sales cycle.

 

Suffice it to say that the B2B product marketing carriage will right itself.  But the deployment of social media across the traditional marketing mix bodes well for the B2B world.  It probably explains why those social media IPOs are doing well – a business model is taking hold that could actually monetize their use in a business setting!

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Top 5 Myths About B2B Inbound Marketing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 23, 2011 | 1 Comment »

  1. Build it and they will come.

    2. When The Marketing Id quoted the movie, “Field of Dreams,” in a previous post “Hello Sales, the Cold Call Just Got Warmer!” the reference was to the new marketing paradigm that has evolved over the past few years.  If a B2B company “builds” various digital sites and populates them with remarkable content, there is no guarantee that they will draw visitors, especially ones that might turn into prospects.

    There is a concurrent Search Engine Optimization (SEO) exercise that is required to be performed on these blogs and web sites, which will catapult them into the top of search engine rankings.  So when visitors, nay, future prospects, use their magic keywords to find what they are looking for, your digital sites should pointedly appear in the sweet spot of their organic search results.  It is also good to remember that the more inbound links to your digital sites from relevant and worthy sources, the better they will be ranked by search engines.

    The bottom line is that “If you build it, they will come,” but the building requires a more qualified effort, as outlined above, to truly reflect the “character of your content” – reversing terminology that Dr. Martin Luther King made famous, to emphasize the point.  When the character of a B2B company’s digital content is enhanced through the use of SEO/SEM techniques, they will come – relevant visitors, real prospects, et al!

  2. Inbound marketing eliminates the need for outbound marketing.

    3. Would that it were true!  A trade show association grunt guffawed recently, “The rumors of our demise have been greatly exaggerated.  As long as buyer and seller continue to want to get out of their respective comfort zones and display their wares, we will continue to have these events.  Even as technology has advanced, the good old fairground has survived.  Hey, outdoor billboards have gone digital–we adapt!”

    She could have been referring to trade shows in the B2C realm, but her point has some validity on the B2B side as well.  In any case, The Marketing Id’s inaugural post, “Integrated Marketing Value Chain,” made a case for “a clear value-add in an integrated campaign, in that, your company will generate qualified leads using this approach.”  Clearly outbound direct mail campaigns, which deliver “the right messages to the right people at the right time” based on an analysis of their inbound activity, are more effective in generating such qualified leads.  Digital signage has given a new lease of life to outbound marketing and, in fact, through SaaS-based offerings even made outdoor advertising more affordable to SMBs, including those serving B2B markets.

    So it’s time to put this myth to rest, marketing is most effective when inbound techniques are used to drive outbound efforts.  More importantly, an integrated marketing effort helps drive down the cost per lead and results in a better ROI for a B2B company’s marketing dollars.

  3. Inbound marketing’s raison d’être is lead generation.

    4. It might seem disingenuous to suggest that inbound marketing’s reason for being is not lead generation, since by definition these visitors choose to click on a link to “see what you got?”  If they were drawn in, they must want something that you have to offer, right?  It’s not that cut and dried in the B2B world, and especially ones that have long sales cycles.

    So in the B2B space, a lot of SMBs are not really using social media to generate leads per se, they are using these tools to inexpensively promote their brand, inform their followers, and establish a broader market presence in their market segment.  Twitter is often used as a trigger to drive followers to a specific link related to a company event, which could be as simple as a new press release that the SMB just put out on the wire.

    The end result of inbound marketing activities could very well be the generation of qualified leads.  However, most B2B social media sites, by definition, focus on networking with their followers.  As this networking activity blossoms, the SMB would need to deploy an automated marketing platform that integrates with its CRM system, to successfully nurture relevant followers with a view to convert them into actual leads.

  4. Hiring B2C social media experts will do the trick.

    5. Caveat emptor – buyer beware is as true in today’s highly networked social media world, as it was prior to the sanction provided by the “do not call” list against yesteryear’s aggressive B2C telemarketers.  One of the key mistakes that a B2B can make is expect a B2C social media expert to transform its marketing.  Also, if your B2B does not have an e-commerce component and this is the primary marketing expertise that a B2C social media expert brings to the table, then it’s headed towards a “Houston, we have a problem” situation – mercifully, sooner than later.

    B2B social media practices are in a different genre altogether from those that are prevalent in B2C circles.  The concept of long sales cycle nurturing probably does not exist to the same degree in B2C marketing, except in case of high-ticket items, as it does for B2B marketing.  More importantly, in the high-technology B2B world, the “product” increasingly incorporates a “value-added service” or a more complex “end-to-end solution.”  The social media model for such B2B offerings is still evolving, so hiring a B2C social media expert will not do the trick.  Additionally, your B2B will need a social media expert with the appropriate subject matter expertise to be really effective in this domain.

  5. Inbound marketing is the new sales.

    6. Nothing can be further from the truth – although this is a likely sentiment emanating from the B2C/e-commerce space.  In the B2B space, inbound marketing can be viewed as a new form of business development, in that, it can uncover stealth and non-obvious prospects; and can also be seen as the new pre-sales, in that, it generates, manages and qualifies leads before handing them off to sales – probably in a far more intelligent and sophisticated way than was possible prior to the advent of social media, inbound marketing and marketing automation platforms.

    Nonetheless, the old demarcation is still valid in the B2B world; marketing is still tasked with bringing in qualified leads, which still need to be converted into deals by sales.  The new methodology only ensures that marketing is stuffing the pipeline with more valid prospects, but without sales to capitalize on the corresponding opportunities, the funnel is still going to backup.  The big difference is with an automated marketing platform that integrates into the sales force automation system, it is easy to see where the bottlenecks lie and even determine what the marketing ROI actually is!

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5 Easy Ways to Promote your B2B Brand Using Inbound Marketing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 31, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

  1. Add the new Twitter Follow button to both, your company web site and blog. It is an easy way to generate new followers and increase the reach of your brand.
  2. Create relevant hashtags for use in your tweets about your value proposition and/or product/service/solution set or use one of Twitter’s top trending hashtags, if applicable, in these tweets to generate brand awareness for your company. By incorporating a top trending B2B-related hashtag in your tweet, it will be found more easily in search results and help promote brand awareness.
  3. Comment regularly on leading industry-related, technology-related, and other germane blogs and online publications; and on pertinent Facebook and LinkedIn company pages. Make sure to include your company’s brand identity in your comments or signature line. Provide insightful and thought-provoking comments as required. Avoid needless controversy through provocative remarks because these can backfire. Instead elicit “like” and “follow” clicks that help reinforce your company’s image and brand. Inbound marketing can cause some of the fastest known viral infections in the online world – your actions have to ensure that they are of the kind that promote your company brand not devalue it.
  4. Create meaningful on-demand podcasts and webinars of your company’s product/service/solution set for download from your company blog. These should be streamed only after capturing minimal visitor information on a simple form, thus enabling your company to “kill two birds in one download” as it were. First, the podcast/webinar can be used to subtly promote your company brand alongside the content being delivered. Second, all completed download forms automatically become leads into your SFA/CRM system for follow-up.
  5. Ride the coattails of the big kahunas in your industry, who are neither competitor nor foe, by occasionally re-tweeting some of their pertinent stuff. It’s branding by association and it can be helpful as long as it’s not overused.

The bottom line is when you are a small B2B trying to be noticed, using inbound marketing as a tool to build brand equity is a quick and simple way to get there.

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Top 10 Ways Inbound Marketing Can Drive Outbound Marketing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 23, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

  1. Build and cultivate a strong database of followers on all of your SMB social media sites by posting pertinent, timely and valuable content on a regular basis.
  2. Include the following “Inbound Marketing” information in e-mail signature blocks and company business cards for all your SMB employees:
  1. Tweet a succinct message with an embedded compressed link, where viable, to each one of your upcoming SMB outbound activities/events.
  2. Blog about a pertinent upcoming SMB outbound  activity/event, solicit feedback/comments and embed a link to it, where
    feasible.
  3. Capture minimal visitor information on  relevant SMB blog posts–by offering valuable content/tangible reward in return–especially  when these posts are about your trade shows/ seminars/ conferences.
  4. Host live/on-demand webinars that  are related to your SMB outbound activities/events.
  5. Manage and nurture webinar attendees  at your corresponding SMB outbound activities/events.
  6. Monitor repeat online visitors who  use keywords relevant to your SMB in their organic searches and then click through to spend adequate time on some of your SMB content.
  7. Offer valuable download opportunities  throughout your various SMB “Inbound Marketing” pages that will entice your repeat visitors to accept.
  8. Invite  repeat visitors, who share their e-mail information in exchange for your  valuable download, to also subscribe to your SMB monthly newsletter.

These are just some of the ways  that SMBs can integrate their marketing efforts through a judicious mix of  inbound and outbound techniques.  When Inbound Marketing drives Outbound Marketing, a SMB is more likely to gain qualified leads at corresponding outbound events resulting in a better ROI for its marketing dollars.

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Seven Highly Effective Ways to Shorten a Long B2B Sales Cycle

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 18, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

  1. Follow us on Twitter:  Get every employee in your company to start using the tagline “Follow us on Twitter” or better yet incorporate the icon shown below as part of a mandatory company-wide outbound e-mail signature line.

    The probability of success for any inbound marketing effort is directly proportional to the number of outsiders who follow your company, especially if they are people that interact with your company on a professional basis via e-mail.  So more the merrier–more prospects, more pertinent ones, and more likely to seek out your company online more often as your follower network expands–and, at least a few of them will come to the table sooner.
  2. Tweet about the PR: Every time your company is ready to issue a press release–which in the SMB environment should be at least once a month or more, if events demand it–put out a tweet linking to the full PR on your company web site.  This tweet should coincide with the PR going out on the wire and be re-tweeted at least 3 or 4 times over a 24-hr period following the PR.
    An attractive message in the tweet will get some interested followers to click on the link to the actual PR and thus they will be kept informed about your company’s activities in a more timely fashion.  Depending on the nature of the announcement, prospects are more likely to be spurred to follow-up action regarding their ongoing interest in your company’s product/service/solution.
  3. Blog or Bust: If your SMB does not maintain a corporate blog, stop reading this article and get started on it now!  Web sites are typically viewed as the sales/marketing face of a company.  Today’s social media savvy prospects are increasingly on the prowl to discover more about which company’s product/service/solution is best likely to fit their needs.  Thus, company web sites are seen more as a broadcast information source whereas blogs are regarded more as an interactive and current information source.
    Contemporary prospecting involves interacting with different types of functional content and at various levels by visiting company blogs for specific information from product, engineering, manufacturing, operations, customer service, and etc. departments.  These prospects comment on blog posts, they query its authors, they seek pertinent information that will guide them towards making an informed decision – they are thus qualified prospects and need to be treated as such.
    So it is critical for different functional authorities within the company to post relevant new articles on their corporate blog on average at least twice a week.  Authors must choose to be notified via e-mail about reader comments and be prepared to respond in a timely fashion – because each thoughtful response contributes to the shortening of the B2B sales cycle.
  4. Content On-Demand: Relevant content presented in an ongoing and timely fashion can make the difference in a prospect’s decision-making process.  A corporate blog is only the baseline for such an ongoing dialog with your company’s prospects.  This baseline needs to be supplemented with downloadable whitepapers and live/on-demand webinars.  This often becomes a departure point for marketing, when they capture more detailed prospect information prior to releasing a whitepaper to a prospect or registering a prospect for a webinar.  Once this information has been captured and vetted, marketing can hand-off a well-qualified lead to sales.
  5. Web Conferencing: Have WebEx or video conference, will not travel.  These mechanisms are becoming the preferred methods for conducting pre-sales qualification meetings with a prospect company.  They save time and money and require less calendar coordination all around, especially when multi-location attendees are involved on both sides.  They invariably contribute to a shortening of the B2B sales cycle.
  6. SEO is a Must:Even though company web sites are seen as a one-size-fits-all broadcast information source, B2B prospects usually begin by trolling the web for specific information using popular search engines. Also, B2B prospects, especially in  complex, high-technology environments, are not particularly enamored by paid search results.
    B2B prospects are still largely an organic search breed.  Thus, it is imperative for your company to have search engine optimization (SEO) performed on its web site or preferably have it redesigned from scratch using SEO techniques.  This means ensuring that your company’s search terms or keywords are very closely aligned with what prospects might be looking for.  This selection can be fine-tuned by polling your existing customer base for feedback on what keywords they would use to research a product/service/solution that your company offers.
    Nothing contributes to shortening a B2B sales cycle right at the starting gate for likely new prospects than an ongoing SEO process performed periodically on your company web site.  The right keyword is invariably an invitation to visit and your company has to be prepared to serve the pertinent information to the prospect so that they will quickly come back for more.
  7. Automated Integrated Demand Generation Marketing: Finally, the marketing paradigm has changed since the advent of the new digital multiverse that now includes a Web 2.0 world with sophisticated search engines and rapidly expanding social media applications.  To derive maximum benefit from this new paradigm, your company requires the use of an automated integrated demand generation marketing platform that will help it analyze, track, nurture and manage the comprehensive and cumulative digital footprints constantly being left behind by prospects that repeatedly visit your various digital properties.  While the use of these automated platforms might seem expensive to SMBs, they not only help shorten the B2B sales cycle,  but also provide a more accurate picture and a tighter control of what has indeed become a sharper, more integrated sales/marketing funnel.

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Integrated Marketing Value Chain

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on May 17, 2011 | 1 Comment »

A question that is often asked in marketing departments across the B2B world – so how do we integrate these new inbound marketing elements using various social media features with our existing outbound marketing efforts?

This can be very easily done by taking just a few inbound activities and combining them with a few traditional outbound activities for maximum effect.  In fact, in the example below, you will notice that value is added at each stage of a simple integrated marketing plan centered on a seminal company event – a new product launch.  So let’s begin by laying out the product launch plan scenario and its associated components below.

Scenario:

Your company is ready to release a new product in a few weeks and related to this launch, it is going to put out a PR on the wire early AM tomorrow.  The new product is also being demoed in a couple of weeks at your company booth during a very important industry trade show, which is referenced in the PR.  In addition, marketing collateral, including a product datasheet and a related white paper has also been developed.

INTEGRATED MARKETING VALUE CHAIN

Proposed Inbound Activities:

  1. Twitter
  2. LinkedIn
  3. Company Blog

Proposed Outbound Activities:

  1. Press Release
  2. E-mail
  3. Trade Show

Required Marketing Assets:

  1. Product-related white paper
  2. Product datasheet
  3. Product demo

Intended Timeline:

  1. PR scheduled for release early AM tomorrow
  2. Trade show starts two weeks from today

Integrated Marketing Plan:

  1. Using the company’s Twitter handle, send a tweet every six hours over the next 24-hour period with appropriate messaging/links to the actual PR on the company web site.  Dedicated company salesmen and other marketing representatives may each choose to disperse a similar message/link just once via their individual LinkedIn accounts.
  2. The PR landing page must display a complete text of the actual PR, which should offer a call to action early on within the text of the PR.  This call to action must provide the visitor an option to link to the company blog – where, after a summary product description, a company whitepaper (including datasheet) related to the new product should be offered for download to the visitor upon filling a brief form (name/company/e-mail address).  Visitors, who choose not to fill this form, should be directed to a product datasheet-only page after being politely reminded again of the upcoming product demo at the trade show two weeks out.
  3. Over the next ten days, all visitors who have completed the form for whitepaper download must be sent a personalized e-mail from within the company CRM system by an appropriate marketing staff member.  This e-mail should offer a personalized demo to each visitor who will be at the trade show.  If the visitor responds to the e-mail offer, they are now a prospect, so it is best to confirm a specific demo time slot for this prospect.  Requisite sales person will need to be present during each personalized demo at the trade show.
  4. Using the company’s Twitter handle, every day for a week prior to the trade show, re-tweet once daily a reminder of your company’s product release announcement and its demo at upcoming trade show.
  5. During trade show, additional non-scheduled visitors who sit through the demo should be presented a hard copy of the whitepaper with post-show follow-up action in the usual fashion.  Previously scheduled visitors who keep their demo appointments can be offered additional product-related incentives (such as a discount).

This simple marketing plan is a quick and easy way to integrate standard inbound marketing techniques at no significant additional cost to your existing outbound marketing campaigns.  There is a clear value-add in an integrated
campaign, in that, your company will generate qualified leads using this approach.  If your company relies on purely outbound activities–such as PR and trade show, even when they are linked together–do not produce the same quality of leads as an integrated campaign. More importantly, standard metrics can establish that these integrated marketing campaigns are also more cost-effective in generating qualified leads for your company.

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