I know that my clients (SMB B2B IT providers), amongst many others, need a better way to communicate to their prospects. acSellerant’s tag line is “Relevant and useful information builds trust. Trust sells.” While that still holds true, it’s not enough. Not when it’s delivered primarily via text. The vast majority of B2B marketing messages are delivered online. People have a short attention span online

Relevant, useful, interesting… even entertaining copy is no longer enough to hold the interest of harried, starved for time, inundated with information business prospects. I’ve spent a lot of time and effort researching and building a process to develop multimedia storyboards that can deliver a significant amount of information in a short amount of time. The idea is to use sight and sound simultaneously to compress the amount of time, and increase the ease, in which information is communicated.

You’re thinking, “Wow, Bob. Alert the media. Ever hear of television or the movies?”

This process might include video, but it doesn’t have to, and it’s designed to be deliverable at less cost, with less equipment, and less prep time than video. It’s designed to fit the budgets of my clients. It’s untried, though.

So, I’ve been thinking about how to launch it. I first vetted the idea with friends, colleagues and clients over the holidays. Then I submitted discussions to a half dozen groups on LinkedIn. I was surprised at the response. Many smart, talented, creative professionals joined in the discussions. The consensus was, if I can pull it off, it’s a winner.

Then I went to three online custom publishers I have a relationship with. They were positive. They all said the same thing, they can sell it, IF I can pull it off. So now it’s time to develop a proof of concept and get feedback.

I’ve built a prototype with a voice over script, some on screen text, and a story told in cartoon format (with my crude stick figure drawings). I realized I needed a professional cartoonist to do the eight or nine frames necessary to tell the visual part of the story. So I’m using iFreelance and contacting other cartoonists I found on LinkedIn and through graphic designers I know.

So stay tuned. I’m going to blog about the process as I reveal the proof of concept online, try to build buzz via social media, and crowdsource tweaks to the process/product to improve it. By the way, one of the outcomes of the discussions on LinkedIn is a name for the product: acStream.

Should be interesting.

Tags: acStream, b2b, Bob Leonard, business to business marketing, content strategy, custom publishers, LinkedIn, multimedia graphics, proof of concept

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 at 5:49 pm and is filed under acSellerant, acStream, business to business, content marketing, digital relationships, execution, information technology providers, marketing strategy, new product launch, sales enablement, trust. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.