b2b sales marketing define ideal targetCategory Archives: Marketing

B2B Go To Market Strategy – Choosing the Right Target Market

b2b sales marketing define ideal target

Although it may seem obvious, choosing the right target market is something that many organizations overlook in their haste and excitement to get their product or service out to potential buyers. Of course they know who their basic customer will be: Companies like X, with Pain Y, Net Revenue Z, etc.; but they haven’t taken the time to really challenge themselves to look beyond the basics to ensure they’re going after the right people in the right corners of their market.

When considering who will make up your ideal and high-probability customers, you need to put your main market through five key filters:

  1. The Need Filter. Again, it may sound obvious, but many organizations don’t really think about who needs them. If you’re selling in healthcare, a small practice will have very different needs than a hospital or a franchise holding with 10 locations. Where is the greatest likelihood of finding companies that need to address the pain you cure?
  2. The Flush-with-Cash Filter. Are you addressing a space that’s hurting financially or is flush with cash? Always go after the latter. Solving a problem for an industry segment that is going through a tough financial time (due to changing consumer demands or government regulations for example) is going to make selling cycles long and arduous.
  3. The “Just Right” Size Filter.  Much like Goldilocks, you need to find a target market that offers you just the right opportunity to become a market leader. You want a space that’s small enough that you can become the market leader in a relatively short amount of time but large enough that it’ll carry significant value (to your investors, partners, etc.) when you do.
  4. The Competition Filter. Don’t beat your head against the wall trying to crack into a very mature or overly competitive space unless you are 100% confident your offering is a game changer that is heads and shoulders above everyone else (and even if this is the case, tread carefully and carry a big stick in the shape of industry and thought leaders supporting you). Competition is a good thing on many levels, but don’t let pride talk you into a no-win situation.
  5. The Partner Filter. Now may not be the right time, but eventually you may look for partners to either help you sell/market your offering or to somehow complement/supplement your product. Are there potential partners in your product’s ecosystem that afford you this opportunity or will you always be going it alone?
b2b sales marketing define ideal target

Who’s in your ideal customer bulls-eye?
(Photo via 1monthop)

Once you’ve addressed the five filters, you’ll be ready to look at the core attributes of your ideal client. These are the typical criteria you think of when you list off who fits in your market (more on defining your Total Addressable Market in a previous post). These attributes, combined with the filters above, act like a bulls-eye—the center is your perfect customer and the subsequent layers are your additional, but not ideal, opportunities. We all know it’s unlikely you’ll snag a perfect customer every time, so consider the following when evaluating an opportunity:

  • Is this opportunity meeting all your ideal attributes? If yes, do whatever you have to do in order to win the deal (T&C concessions, pricing augmentations, etc.). Securing them will be worth it in the long run and any offers you make will be leverage-able down the road.
  • Is this opportunity meeting some or most of your ideal attributes? If yes, don’t undercut too much just to get the deal done. It won’t be leverage-able across future deals and you’ll start an internal environment of acquiescing to one-off changes.

Selling is hard. There’s no two ways about it. But setting yourself up for success is well worth the investment of your time and resources. Thinking through the filters you can put on your market as well as how you’ll handle different situations with different levels of opportunities will help you get the customers you need—and want.

Creative Quandary: Above or Below the Fold?

Where to put your best content?

[Have a creative quandary of your own? Submit your questions in the comment field below!]

Q: How do you know what to put above the digital ‘fold’?

Where to put your best content?

Where to put your best content?

A: As long as the internet has existed, there has been discussion about how to best utilize the limited visual real estate of website. ‘Above the fold’ comes, of course, from the newspaper terminology about prioritizing top stories to appear above where the paper is physically folded in half. In digital terminology, above the fold is very similar–it’s the first 600-700 pixels of a screen (depending on the computer/device), generally speaking, what someone sees when he lands on your website using a standard computer monitor.

While some designers believe you should use this space to engage visitors with snazzy graphics and ‘big idea’ headlines, others believe that you need to immediately offer up content and messaging to connect with the visitor. Those who err on the side of keeping it graphics-driven and thus visually stimulating will argue that a visitor will scroll when he is appropriately engaged (here’s a good argument on this side of the fence). Those erring on the other side of the argument will say that sure someone might scroll, but they’ll tune out the further down a page they travel and miss all your best content if you’re keeping it lower on the page (here’s an overview of scrolling and attentiveness).

Most websites today use banners to get their big ideas across and these tend to fall more in the category of using graphics and punchy headlines to get a visitor’s attention. Some pros and cons to this approach:

Pros 

  • Studies have shown that you have 2-3 seconds (seconds!) to capture a visitor’s attention and engage her to keep reading. Displaying eye-catching graphics and headlines above the fold helps lower your abandon rates and keep a visitor reading (and scrolling)
  • By only having a fixed space to work with, you’re forced to simplify content and think about the real net-net of your messaging for your visitor as well as tie it into a graphic that gives them the immediate “Oh, I get it” moment that will keep them engaged

Cons

  • The first 600-700 pixels is not a lot of room to work with, especially when you consider that this prime real estate also includes your logo, navigation bar, header images, etc., so you actually have even less space than you think. If you use graphics just because you think you should (rather than because you have a great visual grabber), you might run the risk of losing visitors.
  • If you’re selling complex B2B solutions, relying on more design and fewer words may lead you to oversimplify to the point of being vague and cliched

How do you decide which way to go? It’s actually pretty easy: design for your audience.

How does your target market read the web? At OppSource, we’ve seen it all. There are audiences who prefer longer, more in-depth content, both in emails and online. We’ve also seen just the opposite where prospects gobble up infographics and visual analogies. The best thing you can do is TEST, TEST, TEST! Put out two different versions of your homepage and watch the analytics. Also, take a look at your competitors’ sites and test it out for yourself. How are their sites set up? Are you engaged instantly? Are you compelled to scroll for further information?

Ultimately, it comes down to how effective your site is speaking to the people that really matter – your potential prospects.

ROI or MQL – Where’s your focus?

marketing ROI focus
marketing ROI focus

Following the ROI path can be more difficult–but ultimately more rewarding. (photo via growmap.com)

In reading the latest headlines and watching the trends in direct response marketing, it seems to me that the marketing world is, much to its own detriment, focused on a “More is Better” approach when it comes to Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) production.

I have talked with several marketers who have spent large amounts of capital on Marketing Automation Platform (MAP) investments and months perfecting lead scoring algorithms to end up with parades thrown in their honor because of the large number of MQLs they were able to produce.

Inevitably, however, there comes a time when the confetti falls and someone in Finance or the C-suite wants to justify and quantify all that marketing spend…and they come calling for the marketing ROI reports that show all those MQLs actually went somewhere meaningful and led to more closed business.

It reminds me of my first sales manager who said that if I only made more dials I would generate more sales. It did not take me long to realize that one had no direct correlation to the other – I learned that making the right dials produced more sales.

MAPs (in the right hands) can do wonderful things to create demand, uncover demand, and find demand – but at the end of the day, is it the right demand? Are the right people at the right accounts actually converting to the MQLs you’re proudly handing off to Sales?

Human intelligence and intervention is key to vetting MQLs as actually having the potential for ROI (more on this in our Lead Scoring whitepaper). Your cost per MQL may rise a bit, but just as my old sales manager learned, the ticker tape parades last longer when the result produced is the right result.

A How-To for Marketers: Building a Clean Marketing Database

If only it were this easy to clean your marketing database. (photo courtesy Illinois Roof Cleaning)

[Feeling hungry for more information about strategically using data to get after your target accounts? Join us for a webinar on April 24 and learn the secret sauce of account-based pursuit. Register now!]

If only it were this easy to clean your marketing database. (photo courtesy Illinois Roof Cleaning)

If only it were this easy to clean your marketing database. (photo courtesy Illinois Roof Cleaning)

After reading DemandGen’s recent post about marketers’ focus on cleaning up their data to achieve better ROI, it got me thinking about the processes we use here at OppSource and what best practices we recommend to our clients to help control the health of marketing databases. Although most marketers already have a database in place, there’s always an opportunity to create a new or supplementary database (pursuing a new target segment, for example) and there are some key things you need to plan before you purchase or create a database.

Before purchasing/creating a marketing database:

  1. Define your Total Addressable Market (TAM). You really can’t be too exhaustive in defining exactly the companies and contacts to which you want to market. Examples of company attributes: Minimum/Maximum Revenue, Minimum/Maximum Number of Employees, Geography, SIC code, etc. On the contact side, be sure to define titles, roles, and departments as well.
  2. Do a little digging on third-party sites (D&B, government sites, etc.) and get a feel for just how many companies and contacts meet your TAM. If it feels too small, your constraints may be too narrow. If it’s too large, you might want to reconsider who your ideal targets include.
  3. Contact multiple third party list source providers. Provide them with your very detailed Total Addressable Market definition and ask them to tell you how many companies/contacts they have  to meet your needs. If the number of companies is larger than your number in Step 2, this should be an alert that the data provider may not have the highest quality data.
  4. Provide the list providers with any suppression rules and suppression lists. Make sure you don’t end up buying data you don’t need or won’t use.
  5. Ask for samples ( 20 to 50 records) from all list providers. Take the time to review the samples and confirm that the contacts and companies provided fit your Total Addressable Market and that the contacts/companies are not included in the suppression list. Marketers often get trigger-happy to complete data projects and end up buying lists without really knowing what they’re buying. The last thing  you want is for a salesperson to get something passed to them that doesn’t match what you discussed. If the samples look good, move forward with to Step 6. If the list provider is unable to provide samples that fit into your TAM or included contacts/companies that should have been suppressed, move on to another provider.
  6. Don’t pull that trigger too soon – make sure you take the time to understand what the list providers’ processes are for replacing bounced contacts.

Once you’re confident that you have providers that can get you the data you need at the right price for your company, here are some helpful hints for the purchasing process:

  1. Purchase all of the data that fits into your TAM and is not supposed to be suppressed from the cheapest list provider first.
  2. Next, give the second cheapest list provider a new suppression list that includes the purchased data from Step 1 and any other contacts/companies that were on the original suppression list.
  3. Repeat this process until you run out of list providers.

You have now purchased a clean database. Prior to importing any of this data into you system, take some time and review the data to confirm you’ve purchased the right companies and contacts one last time. This can be done rather simply by using Excel. If you run into any issues with the data, contact the provider(s) immediately to rectify the situation. It’s much easier to do this on the front end rather than if someone complains months down the road.

When you do import the data, don’t forget to properly add any tags/attributes/categories you’re using throughout your programs so that it’s consistent with any existing databases.

3 Tips for a Meaningful B2B Social Media Presence

B2B Social Media OppSource
B2B Social Media OppSource

There’s a lot to choose from – make sure you’re making the most of your social media presence

In today’s digital age, it is next to impossible to ignore the fact that our world is social, your customers are social, and your business efforts should be, too.

But you knew this already. You have some obligatory social platforms setup and there you are, being social! However, is having a social media presence enough? For many business professionals I encounter, one of the greatest challenges they face is not knowing where to begin in making their social efforts count. It is not enough to have the ‘build it and they will come’ mentality when it comes to social media.

Here are three tips to making your presence on social media meaningful:

  1. #Hashtags are your friend. When used correctly, hashtags are a great way to associate and engage with groups or topics outside of your network. Once you #hashtag a word, your post goes out to the social sphere where others searching under the same hashtag can find you. Likewise, you can search hashtags that interest you to find others sharing similar information. Tips to try: Use hashtags at industry events you attend to expand your presence and connect with others. Network with others in your field by hashtaging current events. Follow hashtags that clients or prospects are using to stay up to date on what is relevant to them.
  2. Put down the bullhorn and listen up. You wouldn’t meet up with a group of friends and talk about yourself the entire time without letting them get a word in, would you? Social media is no different. Yes, it is important to share what you have going on, what’s exciting in your company, and the kinds of solutions you can offer to others—but don’t make this your only message. Build your audience and listen to what others are saying. Respond to other’s posts and engage with the discussions. Tips to try: Think about how you interact with people naturally and replicate it on your social platforms. Might you mention a great article you read and what you thought about it? Post it! What about that study that came out that’s getting a ton of buzz? Tweet it! Can’t wait to get to that industry event next month? Share it!
  3. Integrate, integrate, INTEGRATE! The thing about social media is that it’s, well, social. People want to see what you’re doing, what you’re saying, and where you’re going. The interesting thing about social media is that, while it’s a great tool for direct engagement, it’s also a great tool for passive engagement. Putting access to your social presence everywhere your customers and prospects might see it is a necessary way to tempt them to interact with you. Tips to try: Links to your platforms need to be everywhere: your website, your email templates, your employee signatures, your corporate pitches–everywhere. Consider a live feed from your social platforms directly onto your website homepage. Live tweet during webinars for additional cross-promotion.

Of course, there are many ways to get more from your social media. The most important thing is that you make the effort to make it meaningful.

[Infographic] Still relying on marketing luck?

March_Infographic_teaserImage

Cut to the chase and download the infographic here.

Marketing stats to avoid 2013

In thinking about St. Patrick’s Day this weekend, I started thinking about how we all rely on luck every day. Luck to hit that green light, luck that the weather will comply with our weekend plans, and, in this line of work, luck that our marketing gambles will pay off.

Some of marketing does come down to luck. No matter the data and planning that goes into a campaign or an event or an asset, sometimes it just doesn’t generate the results you expected. While you do have to roll with the punches at times, there are some sure bets around the ways you should stop relying on luck, namely in how you’re communicating with prospects.

There are countless surveys and reports out there that talk about marketing trends and we’ve compiled a St. Paddy’s infographic that talks to some critical ways the same old tactics and vehicles just aren’t working anymore, including:

  • Emails that aren’t mobile compatible (Nearly 40% of email is opened on a mobile device according to Litmus)
  • Case studies (Consumption of case studies has gone down by 22% in three years according to Eccolo Media)
  • Not knowing where to socially reach prospects and thought leaders (LinkedIn is the most popular social channel among B2B marketers according to a 2013 B2B Content Marketing Report)

May the luck of the marketer be with you!

Enabling Moment-of-Interest Marketing™: 4 Challenges to Overcome

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Can’t get enough of this topic? Check out the webinar recording that discusses it in-depth.

How B2B buyers get information

Data from Google/Compete Tech B2B Customer Study, U.S. Sept 2012

As B2B buyers bring more and more of their consumer habits to their B2B purchasing efforts, winning at the critical moment–the Zero Moment of Truth as Google calls it–is all the more crucial to producing (and measuring) marketing’s ROI. Where a B2B buyer may have formerly called a sales line directly or filled out a Contact Us form and alerted you of his interest, he’s now able to seek (and decide) without alerting you.

So how do you make the most of a prospect’s demonstrated interest in order to win at that moment of truth? By implementing Moment-of-Interest Marketing™ best practices. To do so, you’ll first want to address four challenge areas endemic to almost every organization:

  1. Know what the prospect really goes through. Oftentimes, we automate processes that work great for us but aren’t really optimal for our prospects. Going undercover to experience your company the way your prospects do is a great way to ensure a logical, consistent, compelling brand experience while also ensuring your back-end processes work how you expect (i.e., did you get added to an email nurturing queue after you downloaded something? Did you receive a 1:1 reach-out?).
  2. Determine your breaking points. Do you actually know where your breaking points are? (If you’ve gone undercover as outlined in #1, you probably have a better idea) Is there any chance you can implement Moment-of-Interest Marketing™ with how your teams are aligned today?
  3. Do something about the silos. Sales and marketing living in silos is nothing new–but what are you doing about it? Charting clear responsibilities, expectations, and measurements is critical if you ever hope to make the most of prospects’ moments of interest. (Read more about smarketing love in our archives.)
  4. Rework those dated workflows. Your technology has to work with you, not against you. MAPs and CRMs are great, but they’re tools, not brains. If you’re using technology to automate unproductive workflows, automation only makes them unproductive faster. Take stock of your systems, their setup, and their ownership and restructure accordingly.

There are certainly more challenges than these (if someone wants to share tips for building your own printing press for additional campaign funding, I’m all ears), but these are the biggest hurdles we see clients face every day. What’s your biggest challenge?

More than a message – how you deliver content matters

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I’m continually amazed by marketing and messaging choices that have great intentions, are tailored to the right audience, and then go out in the absolute wrong vehicle. While I certainly think you should mix your vehicles and tactics (let’s hear it for the resurgence of direct mail!), you cannot put your main messaging effort into the wrong basket.

For example: on my drive to work yesterday, I was listening to a news piece about how the federal government is undertaking an enormous effort to move all pay-outs to be electronic versus sending paper checks. The logic is good–they can save about $1B/year and it’s more secure than mailing checks which are easier to steal and forge–but the messaging path is all wrong. Namely, they’re using a website to get the word out.

Obviously, a website makes a lot of sense. It gives the opportunity for multiple pages and contact options, an easy way to add resources, and the ability to link to all appropriate setup forms to get the desired enrollment processes completed. But then you have to pause and think about who this audience is–namely, my grandparents. Who use computers to play Solitaire.

I’m certainly not suggesting there aren’t plenty of computer superusers among this audience, but I can’t see it being the majority–especially among the group who has not already taken the initiative to streamline how they receive benefits. In fairness, the interviewee in the segment I listened to did say that they would be making personal reach-outs to continue educating and converting recipients but I had to wonder if these reach-outs were going to tell someone to go online and what that directive would achieve.

What vehicle is right for your audience? (Photo via answers.com)

At any rate, the point of my story is that you can hit a demand gen dead-end if you’re not meeting your prospects where they are. I used to market to shop-floor managers and we once sent a successful fax-blast campaign because they frequently didn’t check in to their email but received orders all day long through their fax machines. Before you waste a lot of time and energy executing a great new messaging track, consider:

  • Where does your audience spend its day? Mostly in front of a computer? On the road with a mobile device? In a highly-regulated industry that probably blocks that great YouTube video you want to send?
  • How does your audience like to consume information? Technical buyers might actually read that 25-page whitepaper but the marketers among us might prefer an infographic with easy-to-read/repurpose/tweet stats and charts.
  • What kinds of calls-to-action consistently work? Do landing pages lose your hand-raisers’ interest? Does a microsite work wonders? Will direct mail get you anywhere?

It’s all about getting to the right person with the right message at the right time–and then engaging them when they show interest. If you want to delve further into this topic, join us for a webinar on March 6 to learn more about how you can enable Moment-of-Interest Marketing™ for yourself.

Showing your audience a little email love

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B2B email love

Show your email recipients some love. (Image via Sodahead.com)

As someone who has written a ton (I don’t think I’m exaggerating–I bet if you printed them all off they’d weigh about a ton) of B2B emails, I know how hard it can be to come up with consistently compelling messages. After you’ve segmented your lists, narrowed your offer, and setup all necessary tracking and distribution processes, it can be exhausting to think about getting the words just right, especially if you have an aggressive messaging calendar.

We hear a lot these days about the overuse of email as a marketing vehicle. Sagefrog Marketing Group found that B2B survey respondents placed email just behind a website in terms of vehicle use and I’d be surprised to find many B2B marketers who don’t consider email integral to their marketing mix.

Despite my understanding of the difficulties in email marketing, I still find myself incredibly frustrated when I see poorly written emails with lackluster offers in my inbox. This week brought the perfect example.

The setup on the email was pretty good. The subject line of “Interesting Article: Marketing Trends” made it look like it could be an email from a colleague and got me to open the message. Unfortunately, it was downhill from there. The interesting article it called out was from a third-party vendor, not of the sender’s own creation. This was a bad idea for two reasons:

  1. Sure you can track if I click on the link in your email, but you have zero visibility to what I do after that. If you had used this third-party vendor’s stats in a blog post or a whitepaper of your own, you’d have a much better idea of how I consumed the information. You’re sending me away from you, your brand, your website, etc. If I was intrigued, I’d be more likely to reach out to this third-party vendor than to recall how I got there.
  2. The “interesting article” was interesting–so interesting in fact that it felt oddly familiar. I scanned the header and realized that it seemed familiar because I’d had already read it–when it was originally published in November 2011.

As I realized that I had not only been sent away from the sender entirely and routed to an asset that was over a year old (which I equate to at least 5 years in Internet Time), I glanced at the footer of the email and saw a copyright for 2012. Could this be a minor mistake on the technology side of the house? Sure; it’s early February and email templates might not have been duly updated yet. But could this also mean that I was receiving a recycled email that was sent originally in 2012 and was getting tried again? I couldn’t help but wonder. And if your email recipient is ever wondering if she’s loved enough to get some fresh content on an original (or at least mostly original–it’s ok to spruce up something that’s worked before!) email, you’ve got problems (like me unsubscribing from your list).

In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, I won’t leave you in the dumps pondering my email tale of woe. If you spend a great deal of time conveying messages via email, show your audience a little love today and every day by:

  • Using fresh content and offers (if you’re going to recycle, make sure you upcycle and improve on what was previously used)
  • Making sure your fabulous call-to-action meets the expectations you’ve set
  • Leveraging others’ great ideas and stats into cited, proprietary assets (always send an email clicker back to you, not into the great unknown)

How do you show your email recipients love?