Technology Marketing by Tatum MarketingJust another WordPress weblog

A lot of technology marketers are still missing the point about marketing being a process. And this leads them to waste tons of time and money running single-tactic “campaigns” that don’t pay off.

Let’s be sure you’re not in that boat.

If you never put much thought into how your prospects buy, now is the time to do it. No matter what you’re selling, your buyers are going through a multi-stage decision-making process that looks something like this:

Stage 1: Blissfully unaware. At this stage, the future buyers have no idea the problem you can solve even exists.

Stage 2: Problem acknowledged. Something happens in the business and these future buyers begin to recognize the pain.

Stage 3: Research. At this point, buyers begin to identify the problem and define their needs and solution requirements.

Stage 4: Vendor identification. Buyers make a long list of possible solution providers.

Stage 5: Vendor filtering. Often through an RFP process buyers whittle the long list to a shorter list.

Stage 6: Vendor selection. Finally a single vendor is chosen.

Stage 7: Purchase. Negotiations begin.

The interesting thing about this process is that buyers are likely to navigate stages 1 through 4 and sometimes even stage 5 without ever talking to a sales person.

Think about that. If the sales people aren’t helping the prospects through the first stages of the buying process, who is? You guessed it: marketing.

And isn’t it pretty obvious that no single marketing tactic – no ad, no email, no website, no trade show – alone can move a prospect through all 4 stages?

So, buying is a process and marketing must match that process with a process of its own.

We’ll discuss how marketing can help at each of these stages in a future post.

Technorati Tags: technology marketing, marketing process

Are there certain aspects of your marketing program that could be better? Of course! Even the best of the best can get better.

And, according to a recent online survey, B2B marketers have “plenty of room for improvement” when it comes to making their direct marketing campaigns more effective.

The survey — conducted by marketing communications agency Godfrey — found that while 80 percent of B2B marketers maintain a sales lead or inquiry database, only 55 percent use it regularly for direct marketing.

What’s more (or less in this case) is that only 40 percent regularly engage those in their database via email and/or newsletter.

The survey results go to Susan’s point yesterday that stressed the importance of not only engaging prospects early before they’re ready to buy, but also nurturing the relationship throughout the process with regular contact.

New-age direct marketing is “a direct communications roadmap of continuous cultivation that provides more targeted information and leads prospects to the point where the sales channel can take over,” said Lynne DeMers, strategic direct marketing team leader at Godfrey.

Clearly, a more advanced and sophisticated strategy is required in marketing these days — ideally a multi channel approach that incorporates both online and offline communication while capitalizing on the growing “touch points” offered by Web 2.0 technologies.

Speaking to the customer — and speaking the customer’s language — through sharply targeted campaigns will create a more positive, lasting impact with prospects. And, done effectively, this approach will deliver much greater results than traditional mass marketing methods, where a two percent response rate is considered successful.

For years, it was standard operating procedure in technology marketing and sales to focus technology efforts on only those prospects who were “qualified” and ready to buy. But that’s the old way of thinking and these days that approach will cost your company a lot of very good potential leads.

Welcome to the new world of technology marketing where prospects who may not buy for a year or even two command the same amount of attention – albeit somewhat different – as prospects who are ready to buy now.

It’s natural to focus on the prospects who are actively looking and ready to make a final decision. The further along in the buying process the prospect is, the sooner the deal will likely close – and, thus, bring in revenue. Sales 1.0.

But engaging prospects earlier in the buying process provides some significant advantages. The earlier you engage with a prospect:

• The more likely you will be considered a valued advisor and not just another vendor
• The less competition you will probably have
• The higher the chances that you’ll actually secure the sale AND
• The higher the price you can charge.

You could call this Sales and Marketing 2.0.

We’re often asked to analyze a new client’s website as part of our Technology Marketing Action Plans (TechnoMAPs), and I find that the “About Us” section frequently poses a challenge. Yes, it’s called “About Us”, but really it’s about you from your prospects’ point of view.

The “About Us” section is your opportunity to show your visitors who you are and why you’re qualified to help them solve their challenges better than anyone else. In technology marketing, it’s especially important to provide credibility and proof of your ability to deliver.

Proof of your ability to do what you say you can do is best provided in the form of case studies, testimonials, awards and other forms of support from 3rd party experts. And that’s where it gets especially challenging for start-ups with no track record.

Bryan Eisenberg has a great post on the ClickZ Network titled How Start-Ups can Build Effective “About Us” Pages. In it, he talks about the unique needs and motivations of four different consumer temperaments (called personas), and how you can develop your “About Us” pages to speak to each type of buyer.

Bryan is writing specifically about start-ups, but his message is worth reading no matter how established your company is.

It looks to me as if technology firms often spend the bulk of their website efforts on introducing their products or services, and less effort on developing a good story to tell in the “About Us” section. Nearly every website I look at can be improved by paying attention to this.

This is great place to get your PR people involved.

Like Susan, I’m still trying to warm up to video-based marketing — even though I come from the MTV generation. I’m even old enough to remember when MTV actually played music videos!

If I recall, some were absolutely great. Most others weren’t. Even 20-some years later, that ratio hasn’t changed with video-based marketing. There’s still a lot of bad stuff out there.

But there’s some absolutely brilliant marketing going on, too. And some of it — suprisingly — is being done by b-to-b tech companies. Few would expect these companies to find new business leads on places like YouTube, but that’s exactly what NetQoS did with spectacular results.

In the hum-drum world of network management performance — where marketing creativity is quite limited — NetQoS did something a little bit alien by releasing a 3-D, Tron-like video of its technology that has the look and feel of Space Invaders.

The viral video was posted on YouTube, Google Video and numerous targeted sites and blogs. Bolstered by a coordinated seed strategy, the video quickly took on a life of its own, creating a magic buzz.

The video had nearly 50,000 views in the first four days (it’s now over 66,000) and has generated more than 2,000 leads. The $6,500 campaign has already contributed $500,000 to the company, and counting.

“It helped us reach a group that we were not able to through traditional means,” said Pam O’Neal, director of marketing operations. “Our target audience is smart, cynical and marketing-averse, so this type of consumer-oriented approach, where we stress teaching rather than selling, is helping us get the right traffic.”

MarketingSherpa put the video in its 2007 Viral Hall of Fame (see the report here).

But to revisit Susan’s point from earlier this week …

Even though Web 2.0 communication vehicles can be extremely powerful, they require a level of understanding and be used properly if they are to be effectively implemented into a campaign.

Check out the video here to see how NetQoS did it right.

1. Have you identified your ideal prospects and focused your attention on attracting and developing these prospects?
2. Are you clearly differentiating yourself from the competition and does your messaging reflect this?
3. Have you defined the stages of your prospects’ buying process and created marketing responses to meet the prospects’ needs at each stage?
4. Are you focusing your demand generation efforts on establishing a marketing relationship and not trying to force a premature conversation with your sales team?
5. Do you qualify your marketing leads before you pass them on to your sales team?
6. Do you have a process for developing leads that aren’t yet ready for sales?
7. Have you established a clear understanding of how each of your marketing tactics contributes to the entire marketing process?
8. Have you automated the labor intensive activities that are easily automated?
9. Have you properly established your credibility?
10. Are you consistently measuring results and testing to achieve better response rates?

Technorati Tags: technology marketing, demand generation, lead generation, lead nurturing, lead development

The CEO of a software company contacted me the other day and said “We’re behind on our sales goals. I need more leads. What’s the best way to get them?”

Most technology marketing “experts” would have jumped right in with suggestions about email campaigns, pay-per-click advertising, direct mail and so on. But I asked him about his marketing process.

“We go to some trade shows,” he said. “And we run ads in a trade publication. But it doesn’t work. We don’t get any business from it.”

“What happens when you get an inquiry from one of your marketing programs?” I asked.

“We give the names to our sales team,” he responded.

And therein lies the weakness in many – if not most – technology marketing programs.

Technology purchasing, as I’ve written many times, is a multi-step process. Technology marketing must match this process. When inbound inquires are immediately turned over to sales as “leads”, you skip the most critical part of the process – lead development.

As a result, you can easily lose as much as 80% or more of your best potential leads.

In the case of the software CEO mentioned above, we found that the company’s marketing efforts were, in fact, generating plenty of inbound inquiries. What it wasn’t doing was developing those inquiries into leads the sales team could really work with.

So, we established a lead development program and a lead qualifying process, and suddenly the sales team was covered in good leads – without the company spending another dollar on actually acquiring those leads.

It’s perfectly natural to look at the number of inbound leads as a measure of marketing effectiveness and to want to add more of those prospects to your pipeline. But, you may simply be dumping more names to a faulty system. And that’s a great way to waste marketing investment.

Before you decide that your marketing program needs to be generating more leads, take a close look at what happens to the inquiries you’re already getting. If you’re sending them right to the sales team without qualifying them first, you’re in a great position to improve results by taking two steps:

1. Filter the prospects so that your sales team gets only those prospects who are truly ready to talk with them.
2. Put the remaining prospects into a lead nurturing program that educates, offers value, and subtly moves the prospect closer to the sale.

More on how to take those steps in future posts.

Technorati Tags: leads, lead generation, technology marketing, lead nurturing

There is no shortage of options when it comes to 3rd party email marketing vendors. Our experience has been primarily with iContact and Constant Contact, both of which are full-featured and easy to use.

Email vendors generally charge a monthly fee – some with minimum contract requirements and some month-to-month. You also have the option of selecting a company that sets its rates based on the size of your list or one that charges you according to the number of messages you send each month. Unless you send a very limited number of messages – for example, a monthly enewsletter and nothing else – you might want to stick with a vendor who charges according to the size of your list. If you send frequent messages, your costs can really add up.

In addition to price, email vendors vary in their ability to provide tracking reports, easy forwarding capabilities, simultaneous html and plain-text versions of your messages, and ease of creating messages.

Following is a list of email vendors in no particular order. As I mentioned earlier, iContact and Constant Contact are the only two with which I personally have any significant positive experience.

If you know of a good vendor that’s not on this list, please post a comment with the vendor’s name and we’ll add it to the list.

Email Marketing Vendors:

Constant Contact
Phone: 1-866-876-8464

Marketing Services Savvy
Email: info@northskyinc.com

EmailBrain
Phone: 1-866-873-3019

Benchmark
Phone: Sales 562-354-7238
Email: service@bmesrv.com

Streamsend
Phone: 877-439-4078 ext. 819

Listrak
http://www.listrak.com/
Phone: 717-627-4528

iContact
Phone: 866-803-9462
Email: support@icontact.com

My NewsletterBuilder
Phone: 828-232-0016

GetResponse
Phone: 1-877-EMAIL-GR
1-877-36245-47

Spinner Mail

Phone: 800-454-0918
Email: sales@spinnermail.com

ContactPro
Phone: 800-531-0228

Subscribermail
Phone: 630-303-5000
Email: support@SubscriberMail.com

Your Mailing List Provider
+32 57 300 801

I read Jeff’s recent post on video-based marketing with great interest since video is getting such tremendous attention these days – and not without good reason. Video can make it much easier to explain complex concepts and it allows us to put the all –important visual personality aspect into what are otherwise flat communications.

However, much like flash in the earlier part of this decade, video can become a real annoyance if it’s used incorrectly. I, personally, am not a big fan of talking-head videos that pop up uninvited on websites – a trend that began with the internet marketers and is now finding its way into the technology marketing sector.

Before you get annoyed with me, I’m the first to admit that just because I don’t care for something doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. And I’m probably aging myself by admitting I get a little thrown off by people appearing on my monitor and beginning to talk at me. At Tatum Marketing, we are carefully watching video use by some of our clients and I will keep an eye out for other – more scientific – studies of the tactic.

Jeff’s discussion of the Interwrite Learning video contest is a great example of how to use video the right way. The company clearly thought its objectives through and called on a group of pros (Shycast) for production support. With the emergence of do-it-yourself video creation applications I can’t help but wonder when (not if) we’ll see an avalanche of poorly conceived video ads and website additions.

My point, in case you’re wondering where I’m going with this, is that video is a very cool, potentially very effective, tactic when properly designed and executed – and used for the right reasons. But, don’t let yourself get sold on using video just because you can.

Consider your objectives and how video fits into your overall marketing program before you take the plunge. Then, go ahead and do it right!

Technorati Tags: video marketing, technology marketing

Today is the busiest shopping day of the year, but rather than risk being trampled at the local mall, I browsed a new survey that explores the technology buying process.

Found great deals — of information, that is. In its online poll of more than 1,000 technology buyers, Enquiro Research uncovered some interesting revelations about the unique audience that is technology buyers. Among them:

– 89% say finding information online plays a definitive role in their decision-making process;

– Online sources of information, including vendor Web sites, search engines and industry Web sites, ranked higher than offline sources of information in influencing purchase behavior;

– Marketers that use search marketing have a 76% chance of engaging and influencing technology b-to-b purchasing decisions.

Most interesting to me, however, was its emphasis on marketing basics. Even though technology buyers are highly-sophisticated, the best practices remain simple in their application.

“If you want to know what people want, ask them — then give it to them,” the survey states. “It pays to know your customer.”

The survey is available as a white paper here.