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.

1. traditional, interruptive advertising was no longer effective, and
2. traditional presales activities (educating prospects about your solutions) had been replaced by Google.

Largely due to the efforts of others, like Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett; and to the overwhelming evidence in the market place, my prospects now understand #1 and 2 above. So what’s next?

The Content, Connection, Conversation, Conversion Continuum

We all agree that to engage prospects we need to produce and publish relevant, useful, interesting and valuable content. You can’t just put it out there anymore, though. There’s too much competition for peoples’ attention.

We need to connect the content to our prospects. That means we have to deliver it to the online places where they hang out. That might be at industry-related websites like MSPmentor, or on special interest groups within Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Once you’ve set your content at the feet of the people it was developed for, if you’ve made the content compelling enough, your prospects connect with you. You’ve piqued their interest and they want to learn more… or they want to voice their opinion. They will comment on a blog post, in your online discussion, or they’ll email you.

Conversation ensues.  When a dialogue is created between you and your prospects, ideas are exchanged. This is the time to listen carefully. It’s a golden opportunity to find out exactly what prospects want. Let them tell you. If they feel they’ve been heard, trust is built.

Once they understand that you truly have their best interest at heart, the conversation will move from online to phone, and then face to face, as the topics move from features and benefits, to pricing, and to terms and conditions. The prospect converts into a customer. You close a profitable deal without selling anything.

Bob Leonard

In the B2B world, it’s going to require what Oliver Wendell Holmes called “simplicity on the other side of complexity”.

What I mean is that marketers are going to have to work hard to distill product and service information (features and benefits, competitive positioning, value propositions, etc.) into easily consumed, and quickly digested morsels. I’m not referring to slogans or tag lines. Marketers have moved beyond sales messages to delivering relevant and useful information. As the sheer volume of this information grows exponentially, marketers must learn to communicate to target prospects not only in a meaningful, concise way; but also using multimedia to engage more of the targets’ senses. To teach and to entertain simultaneously.

I happened to have a prediction ready for Joe because it’s something I’ve been thinking about quite a bit.

As a content developer, my primary communication vehicle has been the written word. As technology advances, and the amount of information available to people explodes, text on a page or a screen is becoming less and less capable of competing for peoples’ attention. So, I decided to work on something new. I was looking for something I could do largely by myself with just a PC, some software and an internet connection. I’ve found that thing. I call it ‘storyboarding’.

It’s a mashup of PowerPoint, video and podcasting (voice over).

I’ll be evolving this blog to that format within the next few weeks. And will be using it to help clients communicate to their customers and prospects.

Meanwhile take a look at Joe’s 100 Content Marketing and Social Media Predictions for 2010.

He said,  “Our services are virtual. We remotely monitor our customers’ systems and applications, and we fix things before they break. We used to get to play the hero now and then… swooping in when there was trouble and saving the day. How can we communicate that kind of value when we’re invisible?”

I know the answer, and I’ll share it with you in a minute.

On an earlier visit to that same office, I was asked to wait in the reception area for a few minutes until my client (the VP of Sales) was finished with a con call. So I sat and checked my phone, etc. I couldn’t help overhearing a conversation coming through the open door of their Help Desk area. One of the technician’s was busy relating how he had ‘helped’ a recent caller. She had phoned with a question that this technician considered “stupid”. He recounted (to the amusement of his peers) the conversation during which he solved the problem… and humiliated the caller.

At the time, I decided it wasn’t my place to mention this to my client; but his question was the perfect opening.

How do you communicate value in a digital world?

You make damn sure that every customer touch point is pleasant and reassuring. That Help Desk call was an opportunity for the technician to establish rapport, help the woman with her problem, and make her feel important. She is important. Her company is paying that technician’s salary.

I can divide my clients into two categories. Those who realize that so-called ‘soft skills’ are just as important as technical skills, and those who don’t. Guess who’s more successful?

If you’re remote, and your customer touch points are limited to an occasional phone call, an email now and then, and your website; make the phone conversations, emails and website as high quality as you can. Make them the Ritz-Carlton of phone conversations, emails and websites. If they’re the Holiday Inn Express of phone conversations, emails and websites, that’s how your clients will perceive your business, no matter how sophisticated and skilled your people are.

Evaluate your entire business. Look at every customer touch point and make sure that the employee (or digital entity) involved is not only technically competent, but is delivering Ritz-Carlton level service.

When that’s fixed, start (and maintain) a social media campaign. That’s how you develop digital relationships. More on that in future posts.

You should register to receive Joe’s blog. Content Marketing is the only thing that’s working today for B2B, and Joe is one of the world’s top experts. As the video illustrates, it has always worked for B2B, it’s just that we didn’t call it ‘Content Marketing’.

The way it worked was a salesperson knocked on doors and built relationships over time. Eventually he or she built trust and prospects began to believe what he or she told them. Very difficult and too expensive to do today. Much more effective and much cheaper to do it online.

Complex technology sales can’t be closed online, but trust and relationships can be built that way. Then, prospects will contact you when they’re ready to talk price and Ts & Cs. You still need smart, hard working salespeople, but you can deploy them more strategically.

That’s the way it works today. You have to build the content. Relevant and useful information. Added fresh at least three times a week. A blog is a good way to do that. Case studies, podcasts, surveys, videos, whitepapers and other types of content work too.