EBlog

Should Marketers keep leads longer before giving to Sales?

In most B2B companies, a key job of Marketing is to generate leads.  Typically, a lead is defined as someone who makes in inquiry regarding a product or service.  Whether it's downloading a whitepaper, signing up for a webinar or an eNewsletter, once Marketing has a name and email, it is typically thrown over the wall to sales.

But should it be?  Is that too soon in today's social media world?

Today's buyer doesn't want to be bothered.

Today, buyers are able to get smarter about what we have to offer and what our competition offers, all without having to interact with anyone at our company.  They're putting off face-to-face meetings with sales until much later in the buying process (typically after the short list has been created). 

They're trolling the web, reading, learning, and downloading information from multiple sources.  They're likely not ready to be contacted, yet.  So how long should Marketers hold on to leads?

Don't pass them off to sales until they've been warmed up.

With complex B2B sales, buyers need to "consume" 3-5 pieces of content about your company before they really understand what you have to offer.  Wouldn't it be better to track what potential buyers are doing online, feeding them relevant content, until they've been hit 3-5 times, then push them over to sales once they're ready to engage?

By keeping leads in Marketing, you'll have the opportunity to better qualify them and ensure that they're ready to engage with your sales team.  You'll likely pass off less leads, but they'll be more qualified, and more ready to engage. 

Today you must adapt to your buyers.  

Social media is empowering the buyer.  Marketing and Sales need to adapt to how the buyer wants to interact with us.  That means, allowing them to get to know us through our web site and content versus through our sales team.

Your web site and your content are taking on the role that an initial sales meeting would have in the past.  To be successful and truly drive valued leads to sales, Marketers need to engage longer and in more relevant ways with potential buyers.  Weed out the ones who aren't right, nurture the ones who are in the 1st stages of the buying process and pass on the ones who are ready to engage.

Thoughts?

Sprint does data on steroids.

In the "OK, this is just cool" department, check out Sprint's data widget.  Here's just a bit of what you can follow:

• Internet buzz meter - type in what you want to compare (e.g., Republican vs. Democrat)
• Various videos from White House, Niagra Falls, and YouTube
  
• Energy being consumed around world by energy source
• Number of 911 calls being made
• Current flights
• Top Google searches for the day
• Doggy Daycare Cam
• Current National debt
• Number of people stuck in elevators
• Babies being born (number that is, not videos)
• Coffee cups being produced
  

What other cool widgets have you seen out there?

Can collateral be social?  Here’s our shot at it.

Last year, when trolling the web for social media posts, I came across Todd Defren's social media press release.  What Todd did was take all the interactive and engaging stuff that was happening on the web and apply it to a press release.  And voila, a traditional static piece of news becomes a more engaging and, I think, helpful piece of content.

So, I got to thinking why should the PR folks have all the fun?  How can us marketing folk create a similar experience with collateral? 

Extreme makeover meets the 2-page collateral slick.

We started with the old marketing stand by, the 2-page data slick.

Whether it's a product slick, a corporate backgrounder, or a service offering, most B2B companies create PDF versions of these for their web sites. 

We threw out our preconceived notions about collateral and concentrated instead on what types of content would better engage the reader and convey what we wanted.

Basically, we tried to answer the question, "How can we make the product, the company, or the service more engaging as well as create a way to lead readers to additional information?" 

The 2-pager on steroids - Collateral 2.0.

After many, many trials, tests, retests, and calls to Adobe we came up with a proof of concept for what we call "Collateral 2.0."  It allows marketers to push out multimedia and social media content via a traditional PDF format.

• We embedded video, a Flash SWF file, and hypertext links to bring the PDF to life. 
  
• You don't have to be connected to the web to view video or Flash, but you do to access hypertext link content. 
  
• We kept it under 3MB so it would be less likely to get rejected by email servers due to size. (We have managed to embed 2 videos and keep it under 4 MB).
  

The viewer does have to answer some default Adobe security dialogs to open the PDF and link to the web via embedded links, but it's pretty seamless.

Tell us what you think.

We'd love your comments, thoughts, and ideas.  Pull it down, check it out and let us know what you think.

Building Communities Panel - Event Highlights

Today at our Orange Talk, we had four great panelists share their expertise and experiences on building and leveraging B2B communities - Bob Smith, iBelong, Margorie Agin, Tandberg, Justin Thorp, Clearspring, Michelle Perry, Sourcefire. 

You can watch the entire discussion, check out photos, and download presentations.  Here's some of the best advice we heard.

For a community to succeed it needs to be integral to your business.

• Gathering and communicating with your customer must be a core value of your company.

You serve the community, it doesn't serve you.

• Find out what members want and give it to them.
  

Be clear about the purpose of the community.

• Define what it is and what it isn't. It helps keep people on topic.
  

Find a leader - someone who will be the face of your company to the community.

• This leader needs to get to know members in the community, forming relationships is key.
• They must be genuine and passionate about helping people.
  

Content is key.

• Seed your community so there's some relevant content there when you start.
• Create an editorial calendar that defines topics and who's responsible for content and monitoring.

Communities don't happen overnight.  It takes time to build momentum.

• You have to actively promote the community.
  
• Everyone inside your company from sales to marketing can help generate awareness about the community.

Some of our favorite quotes.

"If you don't want to hear what people have to say, then don't ask."

"If people want to misuse your brand, they don't need your community to do it."

"You've got to put some love on your members."

"You've got to give, give, give till your face falls off."

Thanks.

Thanks again to everyone who braved the traffic to come out, to our great panelists, and to everyone at EB who make this happen (it was definitely a community effort).

Putting the “why” in community.

I often hear people ask, "How do I go about creating an online community?"  "What resources will I need?" "How much time will it take?"  All good questions, but taken out of the context of "why" you want to create a community, they're difficult if not impossible to answer.

It's the "why" that needs to be answered first.  The "what" and the "how" are merely the tactics you'll use to implement the why.

Online communities aren't about you.

When I ask B2B companies "why" they want to start online communities, they typically answer with things like:

• To drive sales.
• To get more leads in the pipeline.
• To push out information about our products to our customers.

If you're starting here, ask yourself, "Would a community really want to help me do those things?"  The answer is they wouldn't - none of this benefits the member.

Shift your focus and think about what the community does for its members.  

Successful online communities focus on benefits to members.  Generating leads and driving sales may be desired outcomes, but they shouldn't be the "why." 

For example, Deloitte is creating a community for CFO's that allows them to discuss Sarbanes-Oxley regulations in terms of its effects on their businesses.  Which regulations are working, which are onerous, and what they think should be done to reduce the burden on businesses while protecting the public.  Deloitte plans to provide the information to the legislature to help them gain a better understanding of the real impact of the law.

Benefits to members?  Sharing information with other experts, learning from others, potentially having a positive effect on legislation that reduces impacts to their organization.

Benefits to Deliotte?  Getting into the heads of potential customers and having a better understanding of their issues and needs.  Now they're better positioned to adapt services to address those needs.  They're also increasing awareness with this specific audience.  All things that should positively impact leads and ultimately drive product innovation and sales.

Ask yourself "why" members would care.

So if your thinking about whether an online community makes sense for your company, ask yourself first if it makes sense for the members.

If you focus on truly trying to help or facilitate the needs of the community, you'll be more likely to be successful at realizing benefits to your company.

What communities have you see that have succeeded?  Why did they work?

Happy Halloween from EB

 

Some Halloween fun at EB.  From left to right, we got: 

• A neurosurgeon (with rusty knives)
• A confused football fan (Notre Dame hat, Michigan shirt)
• Guido (or that 70's guy)
• Woody the cowboy
• A pirate
• Mario
• "Hi, I'm a Mac"
  

What’s the key to making online communities effective?

A recent study by Deloitte, Beeline Labs, and the Society of New Communications Research asked over 140 organizations (B2B, B2C, NPOs) about objectives, success factors, and management of their online communities. Here's a summary of what they found.

Meeting objectives.

Online communities were the most successful at:

• Generating more word of mouth
  
• Increasing product/brand awareness
  
• Increasing customer loyalty
  
• Bringing outside ideas into the organization

Key success factors.

Not surprisingly the factors that contributed most to success where also what makes off line communities successful. Specifically:

• Connecting like-minded people
• The ability to help others
• Focusing on a hot topic or issue
• The quality of the community manager or team

Biggest obstacles.

The biggest obstacles to making communities work were:

• Getting people engaged
• Finding enough time to manage the community
• Attracting people to the community
  

Biggest surprises.

Some unexpected benefits:

• Our market will tell us what they want if we just ask
• Our customers are happy that we are reaching out
• The ideas generated by the community

Best advice.

If you're thinking about going down this path:

• Get commitment from the top
• Start with the business strategy (amen to that)
• Start slow
• Content is king (double amen)
• Participate, do not control - the community doesn't belong to you.

Shameless self-promotion:  If you're interested in more tips on building communities, our November event features 4 community experts talking about just that.  It's free and guaranteed to be informative.

Quote of the week:  Are you clued in?

"Companies that don't realize their markets are now networked person-to-person, getting smarter as a result and deeply joined in conversation are missing their best opportunity."

The Cluetrain Manifesto 

Good advice back in 1999 that's still relevant today.

If you want to start an online community, look off line first.

Many B2B companies are looking into whether they should leverage communities as part of their marketing strategy.  Whether your objective is to create a closer connection to your customers, connect customers to each other, or explore new ideas, it's important to build communities around something people are already interested in.

So how can you know in advance if people will be interested?

It's likely you'll never really know what the response will be until you try, but I did hear a great tip in a podcast the other day about looking at what your buyers are already doing offline and moving those communities online.  It's a great idea, so I started thinking how we could leverage that idea for our clients.

How do I picking the right topic to explore?

Start by identifying regularly scheduled industry events or meetings where your buyers get together to discuss topics of interest.  These can be centered around topics or specific roles.  Don't forget to look at local and regional meetings too.  Heck, you likely already participate in some of these meetings. 

Next, ask yourself:

• Which group would benefit the most from real-time, more frequent communications?
• Which group discusses topics that are I/my company can add value to?
• Which groups do I already have a connection with?

Prioritize the list, then start exploring the benefits an online community would bring to the participants.  There must be a clear benefit to the participants or you won't succeed. 

If you can sync the group's objectives with your company's objectives you're more likely to have a winning topic.

For those of you who've already started online communities, how did you go about selecting and audience or topic?

10 ways Starbucks is just like social media.

As I was standing in line at Starbucks this morning, I dawned on me; it's just like social media. Here's how:

1. There's a short, but necessary, learning curve to understand how to communicate properly (venti, misto, etc.).
2. There are regulars you see every time and others who pop in occasionally.
   
3. It attracts all types of people (some louder than others).
4. You can drum up business or just talk with friends.
   
5. All of a sudden they're everywhere you turn and more are popping up every day.
   
6. If you don't know the "process" the regulars can get a bit testy and they'll let you know what you're doing wrong.
   
7. It's the experience that makes it unique. 
8. Once you experienced it, you'll get hooked.
   
9. Once you get hooked, you'll find yourself thinking about the next time you can go.
10. You'll likely tell a friend and get them hooked too.