User-Generated Content via Market Research

Posts Tagged ‘business to business marketing’

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.

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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Tags: b2b, B2B marketing, Bob Leonard, business to business marketing, content strategy, digital relationships, LinkedIn, new product launch, Twitter, useful and relevant information
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:

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.
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.
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.
Determine your content strategy and who is responsible for executing each task. Include an editorial calendar, deadlines, information sources, etc.
Messaging – what specifically do you want to communicate to each target type, and what do you want them to do (what constitutes a ‘conversion’)?
Include distribution, outreach and socialization… the mechanics of how you’ll get your quality content in front of your target audience.
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).
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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Tags: acSellerant, b2b, B2B marketing, Bob Leonard, business to business marketing, content strategy, digital relationships, execution, return on influence, social media, social networking sites, useful and relevant information
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 »

Crucial Components for B2B Social Media Success

Sunday, August 29th, 2010

Success in B2B social media marketing is like success in every other endeavor. It requires thought, planning, time and effort. Your social media plan must:

1. Include input from Sales. If you haven’t already, align Sales and Marketing. You can’t afford not to. Sales should be immersed in the conversations taking place with prospects offline. That information is critical to success in migrating, extending and amplifying those conversations online.

2. Be no longer than six months. You can’t plan beyond that. The conversations you need to be having with suspects, prospects and leads is influenced to a significant degree by the environment. Things change in a hurry. Your plan should define how you’ll adapt, not predict the future.

3. Develop and define target personas. Who are you trying to reach? What are their interests, needs and wants? If your content isn’t relevant and useful to that person; it won’t be consumed, remembered or acted on. You have to know, specifically, who you’re engaging in conversation. What’s relevant and useful to one person is irrelevant and useless to the next.

4. Include search engine optimization (SEO), link building, and probably paid search, too. Place your QUALITY content where your targets are congregating online; and take the extra step to PULL others to your blog and website. If they can’t find you on Google, you don’t exist.

5. Have a content strategy that doesn’t assume ‘existing resources’ will do the development. Beyond the strategy itself, this is the most important piece of the plan. Hire someone (either permanent staff or an outside consultant) as a dedicated resource… someone who is an expert at content development. That means not only an excellent copywriter, but one who has SEO skills, and one who understands how to deploy multimedia to communicate your messages quickly, clearly and persuasively.

6. Include distribution, outreach and socialization… the mechanics of how you’ll get your quality content in front of your target audience (which includes not only prospects, but influential people in your industry, in the blogging world, in the media, etc.); and give them the tools they need to comment and distribute.

7. Build in an analytics plan. List key performance indicators (KPIs). What are your goals? They should include traffic, blog comments, retweets, and conversions. This last, conversions, are where the rubber meets the road. What action(s) do you want your targets to take after consuming your content? That must be clearly defined up front. Google Analytics will give you reams of data for free. You don’t want reams of data. You want the half dozen or so stats that will give you a good idea of how well the plan is meeting its goals.

8. Serve existing customers. It’s easier to keep existing customers than it is to obtain new ones. Does your social media marketing plan lay out how you’ll keep your current customers informed and happy? Social media isn’t only a marketing tool. It’s also an excellent research, customer service and PR tool. Make sure your plan leverages it across all those departments.

9. Include Facebook along with Twitter, LinkedIn, and Foursquare. There are so many people on Facebook you’d be crazy not to try to reach .01% of them. Also look at niche social networks that may aggregate your targets. Once the content is developed, there are tools that automate the process of distributing to these platforms.

10. Follow through. After the content is distributed, you have to follow through. Your social networks must be monitored; and questions and comments must be answered. That’s the essence of conversation. Listen.

11. Build your house list. It’s your most valuable marketing asset. Your plan should include integration of the various social media platforms into your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.

12. Include a feedback loop. You developed relevant and useful content for your target audience. You distributed it. You socialized it. You listened and gathered intelligence re what your target thinks of your messaging. You’ve seen which content drives traffic and conversions, and which doesn’t. Feed that information back into the plan. Tweak, and repeat.

13. Be reasonable. There’s a perception that social media is low cost. The price of admission is practically zero, but social media marketing is a process. It requires a significant investment of time. You must listen, participate, and converse over time. Budget money and other resources accordingly.

14. Do the math. The easiest way to check on #13 is to do the math. Your social media plan should put a dollar value on a customer, and provide a worst-case cost estimate for acquiring that customer. Your customer acquisition cost, using social media, should be no more than a few percentage points of the lifetime value of that customer. If it isn’t, something is wrong with either your plan or your pricing.

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Tags: acSellerant, b2b, B2B marketing, b2b sales, business to business marketing, content strategy, digital relationships, execution, LinkedIn, sales enablement, social media, social networking sites, Twitter, useful and relevant information
Posted in acSellerant, Bob Leonard, business to business, content marketing, digital relationships, execution, marketing strategy, Sales and Marketing alliance, sales enablement, social media | 10 Comments »

Sales 2.0 Merges Sales and Marketing

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

I’ve been watching this coming for a long time, and I believe it’s really here now… and it’s a massive opportunity for SMBs (or SMEs for my Euro and Asian friends). Sales 2.0 finally does away with the ineffective and inefficient sales tactics that so many SMBs continue to use (as if they’re on auto-pilot). Cold calling and ABC (Always Be Closing) have been dead for years, it’s high time we gave them a decent burial.

In complex B2B sales, people still buy from people. I don’t want to give the impression that ‘Closing’ has gone away. It’s still extremely important, and the people who are ‘Closers’ are extremely valuable. More about this later.

Sales 2.0 merges Sales and Marketing to target prospects more effectively, using online technologies in innovative ways, to bring in more business at a significantly lower cost of sales. Information is available free (or close to it) today that you couldn’t buy for any amount of money five years ago.

Now we can find highly specific target prospects much more easily, AND we don’t have to interrupt them while they’re trying to do something else. Outbound sales messages, when they’re done via phone or even in person, are analogous to interruptive advertising. An Alterian poll determined that in 2009, 95% of advertising was ignored or disbelieved by its target audience. The old saw was that 50% of advertising didn’t work… you just didn’t know which 50%. Today, you can rest assured that 95% of advertising spend is wasted.

How do you build trust when your prospects won’t engage with you? Today’s B2B buyers want to engage in conversation where and when it’s convenient for them. That means social media. It’s not expensive, but it’s not free. It takes time and effort, knowledge and finesse. Increasingly, Sales and Marketing people are going to have to immerse themselves in social media (or hire a trusted resource) to do demand generation, lead nurturing and to build relationships… albeit digital relationships.

Now we get back to the ‘Closers’ I mentioned earlier. In B2B they’re essential, and they’re expensive. You don’t want them (and they wouldn’t do it anyway) spending time writing blogs, Tweeting, and trolling Discussion Groups on LinkedIn. The good news is they don’t have to. Once a digital relationship is established with a prospect, and the lead is qualified, whoever is handling social media for you should turn the realtionship/lead over to one of your closers. (You have at least one, or you wouldn’t be in business.) When the prospect is nearing a buy decision, they will want to speak with a sales person.

If the Sales 2.0/Marketing operation has done its job correctly, that face to face conversation won’t be focused exclusively on price. Your closer can spend their time and energy developing a personal relationship… and closing a profitable deal.

This is the first post in a series about B2B Sales 2.0. The next one will be titled ‘Sales 2.0 is Sales Enablement’.

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Tags: B2B marketing, b2b sales, Bob Leonard, business to business marketing, digital relationships, return on influence, social media, social networking sites, trusted advisor
Posted in Bob Leonard, business to business, digital relationships, Sales and Marketing alliance | 9 Comments »

Torturing Leads vs. Nurturing Leads

Tuesday, May 4th, 2010

I used to think the worst thing my clients did to qualified leads was to ignore them once they found out they weren’t ready to close this quarter (or even this month).

Complex, high-ticket B2B solutions have long sales cycles. If you have a qualified lead (they have the need, budget and authority), keep them engaged and nurtured. There are right and wrong ways to do this. I’ve seen clients waste time and money on what they think are ‘nurturing’ activities, only to end up with annoyed, tuned-out prospects.

Here’s my list of Lead Torture vs. Lead Nurture:

Lead Torture – calling leads just to ‘touch base’ (“Are you ready to buy yet? I need to make my quota.”). Lead Nurture – calling leads when you have something to talk about, something that is of interest to that individual. Having a valid business reason to make the call.

Lead Torture - Tweets about mundane or arcane (too techie) matters; salesy, obviously self-serving Answers and Discussions on LinkedIn; invitations to become a fan of your company page on Facebook. Lead Nurture - a thought through, coordinated social media plan that has an objective, is congruent across platforms, and consistently delivers interesting, meaningful and/or entertaining information.

Lead Torture – sending the same, tired brochure (or case study or white paper) over and over again. Lead Nurture – sending new, relevant and useful information on a regular basis (blogs are a great way to accomplish this AND improve your SEO at the same time).

Lead Torture – sending weekly emails, written by whichever technician wasn’t billed out at the time, containing technology feature dumps. Lead Nurture - sending a weekly email that curates news items from the Net; items that are of interest because they’re related to that prospect’s industry, business role, etc.

If you’re going to do it, do it right. Otherwise you’re training your leads to dismiss your messaging and your company.

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Tags: business to business marketing, content strategy, digital relationships, lead nurturing, LinkedIn, relevant content, Twitter, useful and relevant information
Posted in acSellerant, Bob Leonard, business to business, content marketing, digital relationships, execution, sales enablement, trust | 1 Comment »

Using Social Media to Design New Products

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

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.

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Tags: acStream, b2b, Bob Leonard, business to business marketing, content strategy, custom publishers, LinkedIn, multimedia graphics, proof of concept
Posted in acSellerant, acStream, business to business, content marketing, digital relationships, execution, information technology providers, marketing strategy, new product launch, sales enablement, trust | 1 Comment »

The Content, Connection, Conversation, Conversion Continuum

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

I am officially retiring acSellerant‘s tagline – “Relevant and useful information builds trust. Trust sells.” When I first came up with that slogan, I was on a mission to convince B2B companies that:

traditional, interruptive advertising was no longer effective, and
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.

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Tags: b2b, Bob Leonard, business to business marketing, LinkedIn, MSP, return on influence, trusted advisor
Posted in acSellerant, Bob Leonard, business to business, content marketing, digital relationships, sales enablement, trust | 2 Comments »

Posts Tagged ‘business to business marketing’

Torturing Leads vs. Nurturing Leads

Using Social Media to Design New Products

The Content, Connection, Conversation, Conversion Continuum

The Content, Connection, Conversation, Conversion Continuum

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