Archive for the ‘business to business’ Category

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Message Maps Result in Quicker and Easier Content Creation

Friday, March 4th, 2011

This is the fifth blog post in our series designed to make content creation easier for SMB B2Bs. Consistent execution of content marketing and social media campaigns is the critical success factor for SMB B2Bs. These posts, when taken together, will vastly improve your execution and drastically reduce the amount of effort and resources required.

A message map should be created for each solution that a B2B marketer promotes. The maps identify the key messages that must be successfully communicated to target prospects.Man Messaging World 300x199 Message Maps Result in Quicker and Easier Content Creation

Here’s how it’s done:

A brainstorming session is held among sales people, marketers, product managers and external agency people. Once everyone has shared their thoughts, key messages that truly differentiate the solution from the competition are generated. Validation of the messages occurs when supporting facts are delineated. Finally, and most importantly, the benefits to the customer are defined. The benefits should align with the needs of your target prospects. If they don’t, you have a product problem.

When there’s agreement on key messaging, the marketing team doesn’t have to define the message every time it creates new content. A message map provides the basic messaging for everything from articles to blog posts, podcasts to press releases, white papers to webinars.

Message maps make it easier and more cost effective to work with outsiders. If you outsource content creation, message maps give external resources the guidance they need to create material that supports and elaborates on your essential positioning.

Message maps can help keep the sales team on message. Some enterprising sales people may create materials for specific sales situations. By giving them the essential guidance they need in a useful, accessible and approved messaging document, you’ll make it easier for the sales team to create one-off presentations, individual letters and emails that are accurate and effective.

You’ll find that some of the sales team’s improvisations are entertaining and persuasive. The sales team interacts with your target audience on an ongoing basis. They understand the buyer. They know which questions must be answered and objections overcome to close the sale. They may discover information about target prospects’ pains and buying factors that you didn’t have before. By maintaining a common message map and soliciting sales input up front, you can integrate their market knowledge into your messaging.

A message map accelerates content marketing. Time spent up-front in developing the message map will be repaid in full during the content creation cycle.  Fewer iterations and faster content development cycles will support a timely and successful content marketing initiative.

How about you? Have you deployed message maps? Have you experienced increased efficiency when using them?

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Posted in acSellerant, Bob Leonard, business to business, content marketing, execution, new product launch, product marketing, Sales and Marketing alliance, sales enablement, social media | 6 Comments »

Helping B2Bs Execute Social Media

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

Content Strategy Provides a Social Media Roadmap

Successful execution of social media programs is an issue for SMB B2Bs, but it can be done. Post Four in our series is Content Strategy. This is timely in that I’m doing just that – developing a Information Structure 300x225 Helping B2Bs Execute Social Mediacontent strategy and a blog post (editorial) calendar for a client this week. They didn’t understand the need for this step. I convinced them that what seems like an additional task will actually save significant time and effort over the long run. It is SO MUCH easier to come up with useful and relevant content each week when you’ve taken the time to map it out up front.

Development of a content strategy plays a key role in successful execution of a social media program. Whether you communicate to your audience via a blog, Twitter or social networking sites like LinkedIn, the only true way to build relationships with a growing network is to listen, engage and provide content they find valuable.

Capturing insight about your audience in a social media context can be accomplished through:

  • Participation in appropriate online discussion groups,
  • Social media monitoring tools, and
  • Surveys and polls.

If the objective for your social media efforts is to sell more products and services, become a resource to help your audience make smart buying choices regarding configuration and integration. Give them information re how to leverage your products and services in ways that will make them heroes in their companies. Give them information that’s relevant and useful to them in their business. Over time your knowledge and tools will help them accomplish their goals and, in turn, they’ll see your company as a valuable resource.

In this age of Web 2.0, those who are active in social media are essentially publishers. Content creation plays a key role in your social media strategy. One way to ensure you publish consistent, unique content that:

  1. speaks compellingly to your target audience,
  2. extends and amplifies your marketing messaging, and
  3. aligns with your target keyword concepts;

is to create an editorial calendar. Social media publishing platforms like blogs can use content schedules (aka editorial calendars) to serve as a guide and keep messaging aligned with your overall content strategy.

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Posted in acSellerant, Bob Leonard, business to business, content marketing, digital relationships, execution, social media | 1 Comment »

Make Social Media Easier with Target Personas

Thursday, February 3rd, 2011
Diverse Group of Business People 300x149 Make Social Media Easier with Target Personas

Different Content for Different People

This is the third in a series of blog posts where I deconstruct the social media marketing process in order to solve the content development problem. The number one cause of social media marketing failure is poor and/or inconsistent content development. This is especially acute for small to mid-sized B2B companies. Why? Because…

  1. SMB B2Bs don’t have the resources that large companies have to do the requisite content development.
  2. B2Bs sell complex products and services to professional business people; so their content must be concise, compelling, relevant, useful and (hopefully) entertaining – not an easy task.

You can’t create compelling content if you don’t have a clear idea of who you’re communicating with. What’s relevant and useful to one person is irrelevant and useless to the next. Target personas should include current customers, as well as prospects. I develop one persona for both customers and prospects. If you have more than one type of product or service, you should create a persona for each product line (and probably a different corporate voice and SM profile for each too).

You Want More of Your Best

If you haven’t created a clear profile of your most desirable prospects, this process can help you do that:

Take a look at your list of current customers. Which are your most profitable? Which are the most fun to do business with? (It’s always interesting to see the overlap between these.) Put this subset of customers into a spreadsheet and score them on a list of demographics (age, location, industry, role/title, size of business, etc.) and psychographics (attitudes, beliefs, values, personality type, buying motives, etc.).

Let’s say, for example, you determine that your prime prospect has the following attributes:

  • lives in the Midwest
  • is between 35 and 55 years old
  • works in a small (10 to 50 employee) credit union or community bank
  • is the COO, VP, (person in charge) of Operations
  • is male
  • is married and has school age children
  • is active in his community
  • and makes buying decisions based on how they might affect his career.

You now have a good idea of who your best target is, what his interests and concerns are, and how you can motivate him. Some people even name their primary persona (I named mine ‘Erica’). Print out this list of attributes and tack it up where you can read it from your desk chair. Before writing a blog post, or tweeting, or contributing to a LinkedIn discussion, review that list to remind yourself who you’re conversing with. It makes the process much easier. Try it and see.

Please let me know if you have any other targeting tips that help you in developing content, or if you decide to try this process, let me know how it works for you.

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Posted in acSellerant, Bob Leonard, business to business, content marketing, digital relationships, execution, social media, trust | 6 Comments »

Leveraging Internal Company Resources for Content Development

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

This is our second week of diving down into specific facets of social media to see how we can leverage each to make the content development process more successful. We’ve been blogging about the difficulties that small to mid-sized B2B companies have in executing their social media strategies. This week’s focus area is:

Leveraging Internal Resources

Diverse Emplyees in Office 300x199 Leveraging Internal Company Resources for Content Development

Maximizing Internal Resources for Content Development

Almost all employees at SMBs are stretched to the limit. They have very little time or energy to spare. Yet, they are essential to the success of social media programs. So, how do we maximize their contributions while minimizing their exertion?

Start at the Top

Whether you’re an internal marketing professional, or an external marketing consultant, no social media campaign has a chance of success without the support of the CEO/Owner. Make it clear to that person that there’s no sense in embarking on the campaign unless s/he’s on board and publicly pledges support to the project. Employees need to know that this is important to the boss. Other input needed from the C suite includes the goals and objectives for the campaign. Everyone has to be clear on what constitutes success, so you know:

  1. what you’re all working toward, and
  2. when you’ve arrived.

The nature of social media is that it’s an ongoing process, so you want to develop an over arching long term goal; something like, “An average year over year growth rate of 40% for the next 10 years.” Then develop smaller, shorter term goals (e.g. “One conversion per week from a prospect pulled in via social media.”).

Depending on the executives and their personalities, they may also become contributors of blog posts, tweets, LinkedIn discussion group Q&As, etc. If you can position one or more of these executives as a thought leader in your niche, it could result in a significant increase in the ROI of your campaign.

Sales Leaders

Successful sales people are an extremely valuable resource. They are also typically the most difficult to track down and get information from. In addition to the direction from the CEO mentioned above, you must communicate to the sales people why they should spend their precious time with you, rather than with a prospect or customer. Here’s how:

  • be overt in communicating that you’ll respect their time, you value their contribution, and that the result will help them be even more successful,
  • tell them exactly what type of information you’re looking for (typical questions prospects have, objections that need to be overcome, competitive land mines that need to be defused), and
  • offer to make it as painless as possible – tell them you’ll spend a day with them to observe and learn from their interactions with customers, and to conduct your interviews in the car, as you travel from appointment to appointment.

Subject Matter Experts

These are the engineers and product managers that can give you nuts and bolts information about product/service features, new versions to be released, etc. You want to establish ongoing, symbiotic relationships with these people. The best way to do that (plus give them an understanding of the value of social media) is to do research for them. Use social media to answer questions they have about the competition and the market.

Going forward, maintain an ongoing conversation with them based on the two-way transmission of relevant and useful information concerning your industry, new breakthroughs, what’s on the drawing board (and the likely market reaction), etc.

If you have any other tips re leveraging internal resources in an effective manner to help develop SM content, please share in a comment to this post.

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Posted in acSellerant, Bob Leonard, business to business, content marketing, digital relationships, execution, market research, marketing strategy, new product launch, Sales and Marketing alliance, sales enablement, social media, trust | 8 Comments »

User-Generated Content via Market Research

Tuesday, January 18th, 2011

This is the third post in a series devoted to a pervasive problem experienced by SMB B2B companies. That problem is successful execution of their social media strategies. The best social media strategy on the planet is worthless if it isn’t implemented. The most difficult piece to execute for SMBs is the development of an ongoing stream of relevant and useful content. Poor quality content is cheap and easy to generate, but it does more harm than good.

In my last post, Getting Over the Social Media Content Hump, I listed all the ingredients of a successful social media campaign (that I could think of at the time). My intention is to take each of them – one per week – and delve deeper in an attempt to answer, “How can this facet of social media be leveraged to help develop and/or distribute quality, highly readable content.”

This week’s topic is Market Research.

Social media is a great tool for market research. You can research your clients and your competition, and improve your products and services via crowd sourced surveys. Knowing what your prospects and clients are saying, as well as what your competition is up to, is highly valuable in itself. Anticipating and validating product changes through social research, polls and surveys can be of extreme value. And these polls and surveys will also develop user-generated content.

Business Strategy Chart 300x199 User Generated Content via Market Research

This is a tactic that market research firms (e.g. Forrester, Frost & Sullivan, Gartner) have been using for decades. It’s no small task to develop a survey questionnaire that elicits valuable information, but there are consultants who specialize in this.

Can’t afford a consultant? Send an email around to your department heads: C-suite, Customer Service, Engineering, HR, Marketing, Product Management, Sales; and ask them for two or three market-related questions that each would love to have the answers to.

Then place these surveys on relevant sites like Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Twitter, and industry specific networking sites. The answers will give you a treasure trove of information that is, by definition, relevant and useful. The information came directly from your target audience!

Use this user-generated content to feed your blogs, group discussions, tweets, etc. And take another sheet from the research firms’ playbook – every year (or quarter, or month) update and re-post your polls and surveys. You’ll get more fodder for your content needs, and more up to date insight into the needs and wants of your clients and target market.

Beneficial side effects may include tighter alignment between your social media people and the rest of the company (and a new found respect for what social media can accomplish), and a closer digital relationship with customers and prospects. This blog post by Scott Frangos makes a crucial distinction between content and true connection (the kind needed to close high ticket B2B deals).

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Posted in acSellerant, Bob Leonard, business to business, content marketing, digital relationships, execution, market research, marketing strategy, new product launch, social media, trust | 2 Comments »

How to Get Over the Social Media Content Hump

Tuesday, January 11th, 2011

I wrote a blog post a week ago that obviously touched a nerve. “B2B Social Media’s Big Not So Secret” garnered the most traffic of any blog post I’ve ever written. David Meerman Scott tweeted the post – that certainly goosed my traffic. I also received a few comments and a flurry of phone calls and emails. 99% of the feedback was supportive of my premise, which was:

“Small to medium sized B2B companies are not realizing the benefits they should from social media marketing due to problems with execution.”

OK. Fine. I have agreement on the above premise. So what? How does that help the companies affected? Well, admitting to the problem is always the first step, isn’t it?

I’m going to devote the next several blogs to this topic. I think I have some helpful hints for the client companies, and the agencies and consultants working with them. I by no means have all the answers, though. So I invite all to comment with any insights you’ve garnered.

Here’s my editorial content list for this series of posts:

  1. Research – the good news is that social media enables ‘lurking and listening’. It’s easy to find and listen in on the relevant conversations that are occurring. The bad news is that this is time consuming. The conversations evolve and you need to keep up to date. Ideally all stakeholders will have their ears and eyes on the appropriate conversations. A (formal or informal) back channel needs to be established for information sharing.
  2. Involving client personnel in the process. This is a biggie. They’re busy people, and they’re crucial to the success of any content marketing or social media endeavor. They need to understand this (the best way is for the CEO to make it a priority). I specifically target sales people because they know what questions prospects need answered, what objections need to be overcome, and the competitive land mines that need to be defused.
  3. Development of target personas. You can’t create compelling content if you don’t have a clear idea of who you’re speaking to. What’s relevant and useful to one person is irrelevant and useless to the next. Target personas should include current customers, and targeted bloggers/media/PR types in addition to prospects.
  4. Determine your content strategy and who is responsible for executing each task. Include an editorial calendar, deadlines, information sources, etc.
  5. Messaging – what specifically do you want to communicate to each target type, and what do you want them to do (what constitutes a ‘conversion’)?
  6. Include distribution, outreach and socialization… the mechanics of how you’ll get your quality content in front of your target audience.
  7. Develop a feedback loop. We’re back to listening here. Track blog comments and reply to them when appropriate. See who retweets or mentions your content in discussions. Make it somebody’s job to document and enter into the CRM system (there are tools available to automate this process).
  8. Budget accordingly. Social media is an extremely cost effective marketing tool, but it isn’t free or even cheap. Understand that it requires a significant investment of time. Ensure that the people assigned are sharp and experienced enough to make this a successful endeavor.

Please let me know if I missed anything (I’m sure I have). We’ll take one topic at a time and within a couple of months, we should have a blueprint to follow to ensure our carefully developed social media strategies are executed successfully.

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Posted in acSellerant, Bob Leonard, business to business, content marketing, digital relationships, execution, marketing strategy, Sales and Marketing alliance, sales enablement, social media, trust | 7 Comments »

B2B Social Media’s Dirty, Big Not-So-Secret

Tuesday, January 4th, 2011

Everybody knows what to do and how to do it. If you don’t, there are dozens of good books on the subject, and hundreds of consultants and gurus (some excellent, others not so much). We know social media marketing is extremely effective, yet (for SMBs at least) it isn’t delivering the results that it should. Why not?

EXECUTION!

Everybody who works in SMB B2B marketing is well aware of this. The agencies, the consultants, the gurus… even the clients know it. From the client side they tell me, “Everybody wants to be a strategist. They come in and set up our blog, develop our content strategy, launch our company profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, and then they go away.”Ghostown4blog 300x220 B2B Social Medias Dirty, Big Not So Secret

What I hear from my fellow marketing professionals is, “The clients won’t invest in the process. Nobody on the inside ‘owns’ social media marketing, so it doesn’t get done. They asked me to develop the content on an ongoing basis, but I can make much more money (and have more fun) developing strategy.”

I’ve worked with three clients so far who came to the same solution; and at first, I thought it was a good idea. They all said, “Let’s find a recent college grad. The kids all understand this social media stuff, and there’s tons of them looking for a job.” Three times tried, and three times failed. Why? The kids do understand the platforms, and the peer to peer communications in a social context. They’re too young to understand business. They don’t know how to have a nuanced sales conversation with a seasoned business person. And they don’t have the industry (for my clients, that’s IT) experience. I’m sure there are exceptions to the rule, but those young men and women won’t work for $15 an hour even in this economy.

So what do we do? Perceptions are changing. The social media gurus are beginning to understand that the land grab is over. It’s time to start homesteading. Less blue sky strategizing (and sky high consulting fees) and more day to day work (which can still be fun and rewarding). There will also be less frustration over perfectly good strategies going to waste due to a lack of execution.

On the client side, people are finally internalizing the message that marketing (including social media) is a PROCESS. It has to be worked on every day. The ROI of social media marketing is mind boggling when compared to print and broadcast advertising. Clients are beginning to understand that they have to (whether by hiring full time personnel, or subcontracting to outside vendors) pay professionals a professional rate.

I think 2011 is the year that businesses get past this social media marketing stumbling block. At least the winners will. If you want to learn more about what acSellerant does in this space, please visit our landing page about ghost blogging. We have similar services for all types of online and offline content development.

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Posted in acSellerant, business to business, digital relationships, execution, marketing strategy, social media | 7 Comments »

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