Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Advantages Of Print


If you believe that print is dead, you didn't get the memo. Recent research shows that print advertising campaigns combining internet advertising achieve up to 25 percent higher response.
Print has some characteristics that the web simply can't match.  Six reasons follow though you may think of even more.

Targeted Marketing: Magazines offer the ability to target a specific demographic. Advertisers can target subscribers that B2B magazines qualify by industry segment, job title and more.

Print Ads Have High Retention Rates: Magazine ads can be viewed in a single glance and don't require scrolling or clicking through. When people read offline, they tend to have longer attention spans. Web reading is useful for gathering quick blurbs of information, but people pay more attention to what they are reading with print. For this reason, buyers tend to remember more of what they read (and see) in print.

Brand Marketing With Print: Because print ads are inherently visual, graphics and text can be used to convey an emotional response to create brand  recognition.

Print Has Authenticity: Sure, getting a case history or some other kind of editorial in a magazine's web site is a big deal.  But it's an even bigger deal for that story to appear in print.  Print has a tangibility that doesn't exist with the web. On a more personal scale, marrying the solidity of print to the convenience of the web strengthens both media.

Print Readers Are Focused: If you're browsing the web with six tabs open and watching TV in the background, you may not be that receptive to all the advertising going on around you. But if you're reading a magazine, you're generally focused on just that. Most of the time someone reading a magazine is not multitasking.

Sometimes Unplugging Is Very Appealing: We're creatures of our tech-saturated times, and that's not going to change. However, people are starting to see the value of occasionally unplugging themselves from their devices and the web.



Friday, April 18, 2014

Maximize Your Marketing Automation Process

 
According to Frost & Sullivan, the majority of marketing leaders report dissatisfaction with results from marketing automation. CMO's know their marketing automation isn't delivering results but aren't sure what do.  There are three key questions to evaluate if your shortcoming rests in the process alone:
  • My prospects and customers are not presented with quality content.
  • My entire program is automated without leveraging personalized one-to-one nurturing.
  • My lead generation program is not guided by a lead management process.
Lack of Content: Research shows that the #1 reason for marketing automation failure is lack of content. Without quality content the system is on the road to failure.  The majority of marketing departments struggle to produce sufficient content to fuel marketing automation. Focus on producing the right content to engage prospects depending on where they are in the buying journey.
 
Undefined or Lack of Lead Management Process: A lead management process converts early stage interest to sales qualified leads. Marketing teams that operate ad-hoc suffer from below-average conversion rates. Successful marketers generating optimal conversion rates share a common trait. They operate from a documented lead management process that result in more qualified leads flowing from the top of the funnel.
 
Over-emphasized Automation: Ultimately, people buy from people. Just because you can automate something doesn't mean that you should automate everything. A lead management process should be built on the buyer's process. A buyer's process map provides insights into when the right level of human interaction is desirable. There is missed opportunity to exclude human intellect. Prospects who are early of midway through the buying process don't want to be "qualified." They want to engage and discuss key concepts. Automation by itself causes leads to go away. Prospects respond favorably to their first human contact that seeks to provide one-to-one nurturing.
 
Source: Vince Koehler, Sales Benchmark Index

Thursday, April 17, 2014

Nobody Wants To Get Blasted

 
Just recently, I came across an e-book called Conversations, Not Campaigns.  The title caught my attention, if only because it was aligned with my personal views about marketing: Most people don't want to be "sold" to. Think about it: Do you want to be campaigned to, and treated like a gigantic walking wallet?  No, you'd probably prefer to be a part of a conversation, and treated like an intelligent human being. The psychology is simple.
 
Gone are the days of batch and blast. The bigger-is-better, hard-sell, batch-and-blast mentality is now the dinosaur of modern day digital marketing. Contemporary buyers expect personal and relevant emails on a non-disruptive schedule. Bottom line: Nobody wants to get blasted.
 
While most marketers are now on board about the importance of content marketing, can you put your finger on what really makes your content engaging?
 
Engaging content should stimulate organic dialogue.  It's all about a relationship-oriented mindset, which means:
  • Being spoken with instead of talked to
  • Dialogues instead of narratives
  • Personalization instead of classic automation

Much of this may sound like common sense when it comes to your digital marketing efforts and the volume of customers and prospects you're trying to retain and acquire, but the human touch often takes a backseat to technology's ability to automate.

Less blasting...more engaging!

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Enchantment To Break Down Barriers

 
 
Having a great product is one thing, but your company needs to thoroughly enchant its customers to be truly successful. The more innovative the product or service, the more you need enchantment. In a perfect world, just a great product would have the world beating the path to your door, but it doesn't work like that. Creating an enchanting brand requires authenticity, trying to help users, and trying to see the world from the customer's perspective.
 
Enchantment is a key to breaking down barriers that can hold your business back. Identify key elements that create enchantment for buyers who aren't eager to convert. No one sets out to build a product or company hoping or knowing people will hate it. You want your product or service to be embraced. To make this happen, you have to not only consider the qualities that make your product or service a joy to use. Its also about how you market it after the fact.
 
So now that you have a product or service with depth, completeness to make buyers more productive, "give them peace of mind."  What's next? How do you actively enchant when it's out on the market?
 
Do a pre-mortem, not a post-mortem.  The term "post-mortem" has become the norm for many marketers to analyze what went right, what went wrong, what could be done better. A post-mortem is something you do after something dies to make you feel better.  The problem with this: It's too late. If it doesn't go well, a post-mortem can turn into a bunch of finger-pointing and anger.
 
When you do a pre-mortem, you ask your team, "Let's pretend that our product, or our company has failed. We failed. Now, what are all the possible reasons we failed?" Maybe it was the lack of distribution, an unsophisticated sales force, an unreliable product, or inefficient technical support. Whatever it is, you come up with all of the reasons. And then, in an unemotional way, you talk about how you can eliminate each of these reasons. This is a very different conversation.  Do a pre-mortem so you never have to do an actual post-mortem.
 
Once your product is out in the wild, its success rests largely on marketing.  And enchantment should be your marketing team's wheelhouse to break down barriers of resistance. You need to explain your product, why it's needed and why it's "lovable."
 
 

Monday, April 7, 2014

Media Usage Trends

 
We (Gardner Business Media) just completed our fourth annual Media Usage Survey to gain insights about media usage trends and buying behaviors of today's manufacturing technology buyer. I now follow with an overview and what findings mean for suppliers targeting this group.
 
Brand awareness remains the most influential factor impacting media usage and vendor selection. Industrial buyers rely on sources and suppliers that they recognize and trust. The influence of brand is most apparent when buyers review search results, select vendors and conduct research.
 
More than 70% of manufacturing buyers look for products or services at least once a week. The majority of manufacturing technology purchases are influenced by at least three people.  There is no significant increase in overall mobile use, but significant gains appear in laptop and tablet usage. Primary mobile use is email and web browsing as buyers prefer browsers to apps when accessing web content on mobile devices.
 
Social media adoption has increased somewhat for the third consecutive year.  However, the perception of its usefulness remains flat.  LinkedIn and YouTube are the most useful social media sites for manufacturing buyers.  Twitter and Facebook are blocked at nearly 20% of responding companies while LinkedIn and YouTube are the most open social sites.
 
The most influential criteria impacting a buyer's selection of a potential vendor is technology followed closely by service and reputation.  Buyers turn to peers, technical articles and tradeshows when forming a perception of prospective vendors. Still, process-related trade magazines delivered in print continue to be the top "push" media influence with buyers.

MY OBJECTIVE:

To share common sense lessons learned with 40-plus years experience in marketing, sales and as a B2B publisher.

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