Technology Marketing by Tatum MarketingJust another WordPress weblog

If you’re focusing all your technology marketing efforts on reaching out to new prospects and not worrying too much about how visible you are to anyone looking for you, stop right now! The ease with which your prospects can find you is critical.

Today’s business technology buyers are very proactive about seeking a solution. In asking hundreds of business executives how they chose a new vendor or technology, MarketingSherpa found that a whopping 80% of decision makers believe that they found the vendor. Only 20% said the vendor found them.

This means that putting yourself in a position where you are easy to find is becoming more important than (dare I say it) email blasts, traditional ad campaigns and direct mail programs.

Think of it this way. As MarketingSherpa says “Instead of hunting down new prospects, you are the prey they are hunting”. So, put on a big orange vest, wave your arms around and make sure they can see you in the jungle of competition and other distractions.

But seriously, how do you do that?

1. Start with the search engines. That’s where your prospects – around 65% of them – start. Identify your best key words and do what you can to rank high when someone searches for those key words. (I realize this is far easier said than done and we’ll go into the “hows” of it in another post.)
2. Create value-packed white papers and syndicate them on sites where your prospects go to research new products.
3. Become a thought-leader. Write and place articles on websites, in newsletters and in publications your target market reads. Launch a blog. Participate in roundtables and speak at trade events.
4. Win some awards.
5. Do everything necessary to make sure your current clients are thrilled with you and your product. Create a formal referral program to help them get the word out about you.

Am I saying that you can stop actively seeking new prospects? Heck, no. Twenty percent of your prospects will buy from a vendor who found them. And those might easily be your most profitable opportunities.

Technorati Tags: target marketing, technology marketing, awareness, visibility

I know. I know. It’s January 3 and you’re probably sick of trends and predictions. Stick with me, though. Here are a few that are likely to matter most in business technology marketing:

TREND: Online marketing is where the action is.
BtoB magazine found that 79.1% of marketers plan to increase online spending in 2008. The Wall Street Journal predicts that online advertising will continue to grow relative to off-line advertising such as print and radio.

What this means: Ignore online marketing at your own peril. Study after study shows that business buyers begin their decision-making process with an internet search. You’ll have more competition for key word terms and search engine optimization, but you’ve got to be there or your prospects won’t be able to find you. And, since each lead is likely to cost a little more, pay close attention to what you do after the click-through.

On the other hand, this creates an interesting opportunity for advertising in trade publications. Fewer advertisers equals less competition and hungry media sales teams who are willing to negotiate prices.

TREND: Event marketing budgets are growing.
The same BtoB study mentioned above also found that nearly 50% of marketers plan to increase event marketing budgets this year. Trade shows rank especially high as valuable information sources in the reach and negotiation phases of the technology buying process (MarketingSherpa).

Interestingly, I speak with a lot of leaders of technology companies, and very few are happy with their results from trade shows. Yet it’s the most common marketing tactic used.

What this means:
Technology buyers like to see you at trade shows, but few of you are really taking advantage of this opportunity. For 8 keys steps to making trade shows work for you see Are Trade Shows Really Worth the Effort.

TREND: Mobile delivery is becoming critical.
According to MarketingSherpa, 64% of business technology decision makers view email via a mobile device. These prospects are increasingly clicking through to whitepapers and web pages from those PDAs and SmartPhones. Yet the same survey in 2006 found that 91.4% of marketers didn’t think mobile marketing applied to them and weren’t planning to do anything about it in 2007.

Whoops. Guess you’d better rethink that for 2008.

What to do: Take a look at your outbound email on a Blackberry. If you’re like most technology marketers, it’s going to be ugly. Call on your email and web teams to address the problem. Here’s a big opportunity to get ahead of your competitors – especially important if execs and other mobile technology users are among your buyers.

TREND: Bloggers are gaining influence.
When MarketingSherpa asked tech buyers to rate information sources in terms of value, “blogging by industry peers” got the highest ratings. “Vendor blogs” didn’t rank as high, but 64% of buyers found them to be of some value. Numerous advertising agencies report that thought-leadership blogs rank high on their clients list of 2008 priorities. The top two reasons business technology companies have blogs – or are considering them are 1) search engine optimization and 2) to establish thought leadership.

What this means: Blogging has become a very powerful means of communication. At minimum, consider it carefully before you decide not to do it. You’ll need a dual-prong blog strategy: one prong aimed at external bloggers and the other at your own blog.

What Next?
Not surprising, there are many more changes occurring in business technology marketing. We’ll cover these in future posts. Leave us a comment to let us know what you’d like to see covered.

Technorati Tags: technology marketing, business marketing,

If you’re one of a decreasing number of people who still thinks marketing is an art that can’t be measured (or you employ someone who feels that way), I have two words for you: that’s ridiculous! Not only is it possible to measure marketing, it’s vital to ensure that your company’s marketing program reaches its highest potential. At minimum, you can measure activities. Soon, you’ll be able to measure results.

Most importantly – and this is where a lot of measurement efforts fail — you can measure progress against the plan.

Here are a few guidelines to help you get started or to assess your current measuring system:

1. Keep it simple – collect only data you’ll actually act on. With applications such as CRMs and web analytic programs, it’s easy to measure more than you really need to know. Just ask yourself this question: “What will I do with this information?”
2. Make sure the data is collected in the same way all the time. If you’re trying to spot a trend, consistency is often more important than accuracy.
3. Look at the findings regularly and share it with others. There’s nothing like a little visibility to make sure things stay on track.
4. Integrate your marketing measurements with measurements for sales, customer service and any other client-facing groups. This will allow you to see how well the entire process is working.

What should you measure?

While marketing analytics can get very complex, especially for large, multi-national, multi-business firms, you can accomplish a lot by just tracking some combination of the following:

• In-bound inquiries. How many new inquiries has marketing generated this month (or week) and over the last 12 months (or year-to-date).
• Qualified Leads. How many of these inquiries are actually real prospects?
• Sources of leads. How many leads have come from each of your major sources: teleprospecting, direct mail, email campaigns, networking, referrals, online or offline advertising, public relations, search engines, events. At what cost?
• Qualified opportunities. How many real sales opportunities are currently in the pipeline. How many were generated by marketing? How does this compare to the number and value you expected to have?
• Progress against your marketing implementation plan. Have you and your marketing people completed the activities you committed to complete?
• General website traffic. What is the trend for the number of people visiting your site? Where are they coming from? What percentage sign up for your newsletter or to download information?

How often should you review your measurements?

For a high-level strategic view of marketing progress, a monthly review will give you a good picture. To actually manage a marketing effort on a tactical level, a weekly review of the data is better.

I prefer charts and graphs over words and numbers simply because my brain can process images and tell me whether I’m seeing good news or bad news much faster than I can read and figure out what the words and numbers mean. I’ve been told by experts that this is true for nearly all humans, so I encourage you to try it.

Here are two secrets to making measurements work:

Secret #1: Continuously compare what’s really happening to what your marketing plan says should be happening. For example, it’s good to know that you’ve generated 150 qualified leads so far this year. It’s far better to know that, according to your plan, you should have generated 200 leads by now.

Secret #2: When you review the reports – whether monthly or weekly – act on the information! Make decisions. Redeploy resources. Change your approach. Whatever it takes to get and stay on track.

Just get started.

Those of you who are already well into a good system of measuring and reporting on a complex marketing operation are likely to tell me I’ve oversimplified things here. And maybe you’re right. There are loads of other important bits of information that are good to know and watch. The point I want to make is: you don’t have to do it all in order to get a benefit. As Nike says, Just Do It!

Technorati Tags: marketing, marketing measurement, marketing strategy, marketing plan, susan tatum, tatum marketing

People who don’t resent telemarketers are weird or really bored. The dinner-interrupting phone calls have become a cliché, and poorly trained B-to-B telemarketers have led many of us to put our business phone lines straight into voice mail.

This is unfortunate because telemarketing – more correctly called teleprospecting in the way I’m using it – is a must-have in just about any business-to-business sales and marketing program. And, surprisingly, it can be very effective. Why? It’s timely; it’s easily customized for the specific situation; and it adds an important channel of communications to an integrated lead nurturing program. And, a good telemarketer can actually get through to your prospects.

Believe it or not, well-executed telemarketing can help establish credibility and build relationships. Numerous studies have shown that communication is around 15% what you say, 25% how you sound and 60% how you look when you say it. Given that it’s generally both impossible and prohibitively expensive to have face-to-face conversations with prospects throughout the entire sales cycle, telemarketing can be the next best thing to being there.

It’s also the best way to find out what’s going on right now inside your prospects’ organizations. This may well be the most important reason to have telemarketing as part of your sales and marketing efforts. As Travis Eakes of telemarketing firm TLE.market says “you can’t just sit around and wait for people to find you on Google. One out of three legitimate prospects might find you. Two out of three won’t.” (For more information on Travis’ take on telemarketing, download our report called Secrets of B-to-B Telemarketing).

Teleprospecting has traditionally been the responsibility of the sales force. Lots of companies still do this, and I’ve found that it sub-optimizes both the teleprospecting and field sales effort. Here’s why:

• It’s expensive. Your field sales people are likely to be among the most highly compensated of all your employees. Do you want them cold calling or closing deals?
• It’s distracting. See above comment.
• It’s inconsistent. The minute the sales rep gets enough hot prospects to work, the cold calling stops. That means no new prospects are going into the pipeline from this activity. When the sales rep works through the hot prospects he or she will go back to cold calling. Let’s say your typical sales cycle is 12 months from awareness to purchase. That’s a big gap in revenue!
• It’s less effective. Sure, sales people are good on the phone. But their skills are more suited to talking with customers and prospects that already have a relationship with your company. Cold calling is a very different skill.

If your sales people don’t have enough qualified opportunities to be working on, you probably should look to your lead generation and nurturing programs. Don’t assign your field sales people to cold call.

Telemarketing is also a good way to qualify prospects. Telemarketers can follow-up on inquiries from your website and other marketing activities and determine fairly quickly just how qualified the prospect is and whether or not – and when – this company is likely to become a customer.

Telemarketers can help eliminate friction or sticking points in your sales cycle and move the sale forward. They can increase attendance at webinars and other events. And they are the best way to validate information for your database.

You can choose to handle your telemarketing in-house or you can outsource it to any number of telemarketing firms. The best option for you depends mostly on which strategy your company culture leans toward. Are you good at managing outside service providers – where you’re likely to get a more consistently effective effort – or do you prefer to keep things under your own roof?

The most effective telemarketing efforts start with clear and measurable objectives. Typical telemarketing objectives include: identifying existing opportunities, setting appointments for your sales staff, promoting attendance to events, and verifying or adding data to your database. The objectives will help you determine what level of telemarketing expertise you need.

Once you’ve set your objectives, select your strategy (in-house or outsourcing) and develop a plan. Like just about anything else, it helps tremendously to think things through carefully before you actually implement a program. Your plan should consider issues such as training, integration with other marketing and sales efforts, and data sources, to ensure success.

Telemarketing – teleprospecting – has a critical place in business-to-business marketing and it has too much to offer to ignore. Many experts agree that telemarketing is the best way to get through to top executives. Whether you choose an in-house or outsourced effort, approach as you would any other revenue-generating investment and you’ll get the most out of it. Just don’t call me at dinner time.

My two previous posts have covered a loose connection I discovered between Mark Joyner’s “simple-ology: the science of getting what you want” and marketing. It’s a simple, three-step process to hit a target. The first two steps, which I wrote about earlier, are 1) identify the target and 2) focus on it. This post covers the third step – persistence. Keep trying until you hit your target.

Much to the dismay of business owners who wait until the last minute to launch a marketing program, marketing is a complex process and it takes time to work. Persistence is a key part of making marketing pay off.

1. First, experience and plenty of 3rd party research indicates that most prospects need to be exposed to your message 5 to 7 times – or more – before they begin to recognize you. When I was studying marketing in college the magic number was 3 but it keeps going up due to a never-ending increase in the sheer volume of other messages your prospects receive. The important point is, you can’t just run a single ad and declare it a failure. Give it some time. The same is true of all but the most direct of direct marketing methods. (More about that in other posts).
2. The second reason persistence is so important is that many – actually most – of your best prospects won’t be ready to buy the moment they begin to show interest in you. You’ve probably heard the old dating analogy – you don’t just meet someone and ask them to marry you. You’ve got to date a little first. Marketing is dating.
3. Third, there’s a lot of competition out there. Even if your product or service is absolutely unique, plenty of other things are competing for your prospects’ time and money. If you make a connection and just walk away, they will forget you quickly – no matter how fabulous you are.

So there you have it. 1) identify your potential targets. 2) Pick the best one. 3) Keep at it. These three steps should be part of your marketing strategy and your marketing system.

Simple as it seems, I am constantly surprised at how many companies don’t get this. I’m hopeful you won’t be one of them.

Technorati Tags: marketing, marketing strategy, marketing system, susan tatum, tatum marketing

A few days ago, I talked about a simple approach to marketing success that encompasses basically these three steps: 1) identify your potential target markets, 2) pick the best one, and 3) stick with it. I am borrowing from Mark Joyner’s Simple-ology method of achieving personal success. (More about that here.) I looked at the importance of segmenting your target markets in the last post, and now I want to talk about the second step:

Pick your best market and focus on it.

Every successful entrepreneur knows (or will learn) that you can’t do everything. A very fine management consultant once told me “companies don’t fail from lack of ideas and opportunities; they fail because they don’t ignore the weaker ones.”

Put another way, if you pick your optimal target market and focus solely on it – at least until you get it off the ground – you’ll get results much faster than if you try to hit multiple targets at the same time. And, as an added bonus, you’ll know you’re hitting your best market because you picked it!

How do you pick your best market? Here’s a 3-step process that does the job well:

1. Brainstorm a list of all possible target markets. As I mentioned before, target markets are often defined by industry, job responsibility, geography, revenue, or number of employees.
2. Define the criteria you’ll use to rate and compare each market’s potential. For example, these criteria might include: size of the market, number of competitors, barriers to and cost of entry, your level of expertise within the market, and so on.
3. Compare the markets based on these criteria to find the one that offers you the opportunity to sell the largest quantity of your product or service at the highest price with the lowest cost.

Now, focus your resources on getting your fair share of this market, and stay focused on it until your program is solid enough that you can put some attention elsewhere without experiencing a drop in results. Then you can move on to your #2 market opportunity. It’s that simple.

Technorati Tags: marketing, marketing system, target market, b2b marketing, strategic marketing, susan tatum, tatum marketing