Q2 Marketing Blog – Technology Marketing, Public Relations, Brand Consulting

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5 steps to successful and measurable white paper marketing

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 - by Becky Sheetz-Runkle

In technology marketing, the virtues of white papers are well known. But the deployment strategy too often goes off course. When this falls short, measurable results are sure to follow.

A successful white paper distribution strategy really only requires five steps:

1. A marketable topic that provides important content to potential buyers.

Just because your engineers are excited about a technology doesn’t mean this topic will generate enthusiastic readers. Research your topic and make sure you’re really filling a market niche and supplying needed content. If this step is not dead on, how can the program be successful?

2. Structure and content that delivers on the promise of valuable information.

This step can do one of two things. It can build on the credibility of the company that develops the white paper. Or it can damage your company’s credibility if the reader goes to the trouble to download your data, only to find the information is poorly organized, badly written, and/or hopefully week on good content. There’s a middle ground in there too, but that falls short of motivating the prospect to do business with you.

3. Visual appeal that contributes to the positive perception the reader has of the company.

White papers are marketing pieces and should fit with the overall corporate brand. Charts, graphs, screen captures and other visual depictions should be handled by an experienced graphic designer, as should all parts of the white paper. Not everyone who can design a white paper should design a white paper. After all, you want this document to be read by your audience. Visuals are important.

4. A distribution strategy of reaching potential buyers, customers, etc.

Writing the white paper is the easy part. Really. As difficult as it can be to extract important information out of your subject matter experts and convince your C-suite and peers that you’re not giving away trade secrets at every turn, the most difficult part of any white paper strategy is distribution. Take the time and allocate the budget to do this step properly. Before you embark on developing the white papers, research white paper search and syndication services like bnet, techtarget, knowledgestorm and more, as well as more niche-focused services. Also consider the white paper as a pull to an advertising or direct mail campaign.

Also, determine how you will continue to nurture those leads once they are in your pipeline.

5. Benchmarking and measurement methods to determine and define success.

Before you begin, determine what success looks like. Realistically. Is it the number of qualified downloads, qualified additions to your marketing database, inbound leads, search engine optimization, synergy with a PR program, etc.?

Posted in Advertising, Brand Consulting, Business to Business Marketing, Business to Government Marketing, Direct marketing, Industry Trends, Lead Generation, Online Marketing, Public Relations, SEO, Sales and Marketing, Search Marketing, Technology Marketing, White paper marketing | No Comments »

Building brand a loyalty a recession marketing must

Friday, July 10th, 2009 - by Becky Sheetz-Runkle

Customer loyalty is another casualty of the recession. Buyers, including your customers, are aggressively hunting to spend only on what appears to be the absolute best decisions with their budgets. This is true in any economy, but at no time is it a greater reality than now. This poses a threat to pretty much everyone, and the tech sector is no exception.

We recently discussed two of the best ways to build brand loyalty:

1. Say thank you.

2. Remind your customers that you’re great

Let’s spend a little more time on number two. Reminding the buyer why they bought from you in the first place, and all of the virtues of your product or service is absolutely critical in this economy. The first and most important question is: does your company deliver exceptional products or services? If the answer is yes (and let’s hope it is!), how are you communicating that?

Down times are the absolute best times to both build brand loyalty and aggressively communicate the values of your brand. How do you do this?

It’s essential for you to communicate why your business is the superior choice to the many competitors you probably have. If your customers (or prospects) can find it cheaper, there’s a good chance they’re looking for it right now. How can your marketing messages head off that threat? Make sure you’re communicating why it’s a better investment to spend a little—or a lot more—and work with you.

Dropy by next week for a discussion on the best tools for carrying out this objective.

Posted in Brand Consulting, Business to Business Marketing, Business to Government Marketing, Customer retention, Economy, Industry Trends, Sales and Marketing | No Comments »

The 5 Fastest Ways to Generate Leads in a Recession–part 3

Friday, June 5th, 2009 - by Becky Sheetz-Runkle

Leads. Leads. Leads. They’re worth their weight in gold in any economy. But in a recession, qualified lead volume is as essential as it gets. This is the final of our three part series on the five fastest ways to generate leads. Read part one and part two of the fastest ways to generate leads.

To recap, the first four of the quickest ways to generate lead–and sales:

Webinars
Seminars
Speaking Engagements
White Papers

One quick note on the tactics mentioned in these two recent articles: A lot of companies are still spending significantly on lead generating marketing activities. Word on the B2B and B2G tech marketing street is that these activities continue to work, but a greater volume of leads are needed to close sales.

We’ve saved our most non-traditional marketing activity for last as we explore the fastest ways to generate leads. The last program is telesales. We consider this to be non-traditional from a marketing standpoint, because it falls much more under the banner of sales than marketing. But, like in much of the sales and marketing world, this should be a shared responsibility.

The business model of firms that provide telesales is only growing in this economy. There is no shortage or companies that provide this service. Here’s how it works: they make the cold or slightly warm calls to schedule meetings for your sales people and/or technical experts. These can be very helpful in any economy, but especially now when leads volume is so desired. But just because this is a tactical sales exercise doesn’t mean marketing should sit on the bench.

One of the biggest frustrations executives have with outsourced telesales is the script. The telesales people use the elevator and subsequent messaging the company provides. If the message is off target, the value proposition unclear or the message otherwise misaligned, the calls will have limited success.

Marketing should be engaged at day one to craft the call script and ensure it’s aligned with the corporate messaging, product messaging, etc. Marketing should also be involved in the strategic selling process for each movement within the funnel.

Examples: What is the next step that should occur from a marketing standpoint? Should the lead be added to the marketing database, deleted from the database, scheduled to receive a follow up communication such as a white paper, webinar invitation, enewsletter, etc? This is all part of the sales and marketing process. The best case scenario is that the calls close in the short term. But that won’t happen all the time, so the plan for nurturing the leads through the pipeline has to be considered carefully—and early—in this process.

Additionally, marketing should be involved in testing the message. How well are the calls going? Do prospects understand the value of the product or service? What are their push backs? Marketing must evaluate this feedback and hone the script until it’s fully optimized. Again, it’s a process. The days of throwing random messages against a wall to see what sticks are over in today’s ROI-focuses marketing paradigm.

Generally speaking, the programs highlighted in this three-part piece are the five fastest ways to generate leads. If there are any that you’re not currently exploring, now’s the time to take a closer look.

Posted in Brand Consulting, Business to Business Marketing, Business to Government Marketing, Direct marketing, Economy, Industry Trends, Lead Generation, Messaging & Positioning, Sales and Marketing, Technology Marketing | 3 Comments »

The 5 Fastest Ways to Generate Leads

Monday, May 18th, 2009 - by Becky Sheetz-Runkle

Now is the time to leverage marketing to generate leads. In an economy where it takes considerably more leads and more times to make sales, moving quickly to keep the pipeline full is of the essence. Marketing should be helping you in the endeavor.

This article examines the five fastest ways to leverage marketing to generate and nurture leads. These tactics are designed to work in unison with more long-range marketing activities, and can be executed on an ongoing basis. They’re also meant to fit tightly with and enhance your selling process.

Webinars. Once you’ve figured out what you have to say with your webinar or series of webinars, promotion is the biggest consideration. Any media organization that you team up with to promote your webinar will be able to provide you with the list of registrants. Assuming you have a good topic that people care about, this should represent a healthy list of prospects in a reasonably finite period of time.

But beware, there are many webinar pifalls to avoid.

Seminars. The next step up from webinars is face-to-face seminars. These are more risky because you need to fill a real live room. With webinars, none of your attendees knows if they are one of 50 or one of 5,000. But when you’re in a room together, it’s all transparent. So seminars pose a constant challenge to fill a room. If the topic of your seminar is “Ten Ways Product X Can Improve Your Business Process,” don’t expect much of a turnout. The seminar must be educational in nature. Advertise good content and deliver, and you’ll build a reputation for high quality events.

As with webinars, seminars provide qualified leads. But unlike webinars, you’re team is able to actually engage potential buyers face-to-face during networking time and Q&A. Seminars are much more powerful at building and promoting your brand to attendees than webinars. They also build greater interaction with your brand and more vested prospects.

Check back later this week for more of the 5 fastest ways to generate leads.

Posted in Brand Consulting, Business to Business Marketing, Business to Government Marketing, Direct marketing, Economy, Lead Generation, Online Marketing, Search Marketing, Technology Marketing, Webinars | 2 Comments »

Six Principles of Brilliant Branding from Starbucks’ John Moore

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 - by Becky Sheetz-Runkle

Build a business that’s profitable, makes employees and customers happy and you don’t need to worry about branding. Branding will take care of itself.

These aren’t sentiments you’d expect from a marketer, must less John Moore, who designed and implemented marketing programs for Starbucks Coffee for eight years. But he’s pretty much an authority.

I attended his presentation before Accelerent last week. Special thanks to Brad Powell of JX2 Professional Software Services for the invitation. In his talk, Moore espoused six principles worth consideration—if not embracing—by marketers everywhere. Because he’s a heck of a wordsmith, some of his phrases are repeated here verbatim, or at least close to it. Here are the first three of his six principles:

1. The more obvious you are, the more original you appear…and vice versa. And here’s something particularly compelling for some in the tech marketing world. There’s no such thing as a dull product category. There are only dull brands.

He stressed the importance of earning opinions from your customers. A way to do that: unconventional names for your cup sizes. By taking something common and making it uncommon, you make your customers feel special, citing loyal customers who speak Starbuckian.

2. Be careful when defying your “circle of expectations.” The more obvious you are, the smaller the circle gets. Starbucks’ mark in the sand, as defined by Moore:

· bold coffee (this isn’t Folgers!)

· high quality beans

· not cheap

· non-traditional marketing consisting of locations as billboards and patrons carrying the distinctive cup

· comfortable stores

· engaged employees–another part of the Starbucks experience

The point is that the smaller the circle, the more effective the brand. Starbucks tried milder coffee, cheap coffee, salads, ice cream and other brainstorms that Moore said were unsuccessful because they were outside the circle.

3. If you want to earn customer loyalty, first earn employee loyalty. Your competitors can replicate your products and programs, but they can’t replicate your corporate culture.

Check back later this week for more on Moore’s six principles….

Posted in Advertising, Brand Consulting, Case studies, Industry Trends, Marketing Research, Public Relations, Research and studies, Sales and Marketing | 2 Comments »

Ten tips for choosing the perfect ad agency

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 - by Becky Sheetz-Runkle

Looking to land a marketing or PR agency? Or maybe you’re considering the options and looking for alternatives to the agency or agencies you already have? Here are some fundamentals for making the best choice.

But first, if you haven’t already, read the four essential ingredients you’ll need before selecting a marketing agency.

And now, for the first 3 tips for securing the perfect marketing agency for you:

1. Commitment to delivery. Agencies sometimes lack structure. Everyone you talk with is going to tell you they hit their clients’ deadlines. To get to the real issue, ask their references about their track record in hitting deadlines.

2. Seeing the big picture. Your account manager should have a firm grasp of your business objectives. The agency methodology should be more about helping you reach your goals than creating award-winning pieces. They must understand how and why you want to impact your audience.

3. What’s the ROI? The agency needs to be able to demonstrate return on projects like yours. If you’re looking at web marketing, what’s the agency done and how has it impacted their clients? If they’re trying to sell you on direct marketing, what’s their track record? How have they measured past success and how will they do it for you? A formal measurement methodology in plain English is a huge plus.

Check back soon for the rest of the ten tips for selecting the perfect marketing agency.

Posted in Advertising, Award opportunities, Brand Consulting, Business to Business Marketing, Business to Government Marketing, Direct Mail, Direct marketing, Industry Trends, Lead Generation, Marketing Research, Messaging & Positioning, Online Marketing, Promotional Marketing, Public Relations, Referral marketing, SEO, Sales and Marketing, Search Marketing, Social Media, Technology Marketing, Trade Shows, Webinars, White paper marketing | 1 Comment »

Customers desire social media interaction

Monday, December 1st, 2008 - by Becky Sheetz-Runkle

Americans who use social media feel better about companies when they can interact with them through social media. At least those are the conclusions of Boston-based Cone’s 2008 Business in Social Media Study.

Cone defines social media as “technology facilitated dialogue among individuals or groups, such as blogs/microblogs, forums, wikis, content sharing, social networking, social bookmarking and social gaming.”

They find that 93% of social media users believe a company should have a presence in social media. A full 85% believe a company should also interact with customers via this media.

Below are select findings:

–30% of Americans use social media sites and tools two or more times a week.

–13% of social media users interact with companies via these sites two or more times a week. 12% interact one a week. 13% interact once a month and 21% interact a few times a year.

–Those surveyed believe the role of companies within social networks is to:

1. Provide virtual customer service (43%)

2. Solicit feedback (41%)

3. Provide new ways to interact with the brand (37%)

–The bottom line is that 56% of respondents feel a stronger connection with companies that offer social media technology, and 57% feel better served.

The survey was fielded by Opinion Research Corporation on September 11-12, 2008 to 1,092 adults.

Posted in Brand Consulting, Marketing Research, Research and studies, Social Media | No Comments »

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