Marketing Dilemma: What's Your Niche?

Every company has to maintain a unique value proposition to own a share of customers' minds for their brand. For a brand to be number one or two, it has to occupy one of the following positions in customers' minds:

Be the best in its class.

Have a unique set of attributes.

Be the cheapest.

If a brand does not "fit" one of these perceptions, then it has a "fuzzy" value proposition for most customers. Brands exist in the mind and represent a collection of experiences over time. The mind is like a dripping sponge of brand value perceptions. The only way anything new can get in is to replace what already exists with a newer brand value perception.

Typically, brands lose positions as the result of the introduction of faster, better or cheaper solutions.

Every marketer must compare their company's unique resources with specific customer's changing requirements and select those that the company can satisfy better than competitors. When this is done well, and promoted effectively, a brand will "own" a position in the mind of a certain set of customers and prospects.

Every market consists of customers with strong and weak perceptions of competitor's levels of satisfying their specific requirements. Marketing in its simplest form is analyzing customer requirements in depth and then modifying product offerings and related value propositions so that they "fit" better with the requirements of a certain segment of the market than their competitors.

Evolving Your Marketing Model

With increased attention on our customers and markets, traditional models of product marketing become less relevant. In fact, if we continue to operate according to the older models, we risk turning our marketing approach into a repetitive process that offers little capacity to differentiate in an evolving marketplace.

Market studies show that based on both anecdotal and measured outcomes, a significant and positive correlation can be achieved when a firm organizes its marketing model to be more market- and solutions-focused. This positive correlation exists regardless of market conditions. Recognizing the promise of a market-driven, solutions-oriented model, companies have begun to shift away from the long-recognized “4 P’s” marketing approach, which is focused on product,
promotion, price and place to organize the elements of marketing. The new model focuses on the solution, the customer needs and the market environment.

Reprinted from July 2012 Metalworking Marketer, Eduardo Conrado, Motorola Solutions

Lead Generation Techniques

New research about the web shows that only nine percent of prospects fill out a form required to access additional information.  Instead, letting prospects download without filling out a form, but then thanking them while asking more about their needs results in a a 45% form completion rate.

People hate filling out forms.  They hate giving personal information.  However, if you do something useful for them first, they are more likely to give you that information.

Web marketing and communication is about helping prospects along their way rather than getting in their way. Once they're on your website, don't try to get attention.  Rather, pay attention to what the prospect wants to do.  Make decisions based on evidence of actual behavior on your site.  Use facts, not opinions.

Marketing on the web is more about being found when prospects are searching for solutions or products or services like yours.  Prospects are in control when they visit your website.  You simply need to figure out how to help them buy, matching your marketing/selling process to their buying process, not just try to sell them or make them fit into your sales process.  

Try asking only a few key questions (name, title, email) with an offer for additional information thus capturing the lead when they hit submit.  Then, ask additional questions on a second page.  According to this new research, this approach doubles the number of captured leads -- and nearly 45% of them answer the second set of questions as well.

Magazines Boost Impact

Based on independent research from The Association of Magazine Media, advertisers need to maintain magazine spending even as they add online and social media activity.  The reasons include:

• Magazines are the most consistent medium in driving results across the purchase funnel.
• Magazine advertising beats online advertising in boosting purchase intent.
• Magazines out-perform other media to influence prospects to start an online search.
• Print ads rank as the #1 offline source in driving "actionable" web traffic.
• Video on magazine websites lead all other media in driving visits to a company's website.
• More 18-34 year-olds read magazines and they read more issues on average than ten years ago.

Effective Lead Generation

 If you're like a lot of other B2B marketing people, lead generation remains a top objective.  Everybody wants their web site to keep their sales funnel full of engaged prospects. 

But what about the best offer strategies to garner the attention of prospective customers and entice them to inquire?  What will make them raise their hand and open the door for future communication and personal follow-up?  Here are a few lead generation offers that are effective:

Webcasts continue to be one of the best lead generation offers in the arsenal.  Whether developed internally or with 3rd party organization, a well-produced webcast is a great way to engage customers and begin an active dialogue with them -- generating strong lead response while positioning your company as a thought leader.

White papers are one of the top lead generators being used today. The key to a successful white paper is making the material editorial in nature rather than promotional.  Create a piece that resonates with your target audience and people will come and get it.

Everyone loves case studies.  Prospective customers like them because they provide a sense of security that the product they are buying will actually work in their application.  If customers like them, your salespeople will love them too.  An finally, editors love to use them as contributed stories for their publications and web sites.

Product samples aren't an option for everybody, but where economically and logistically feasible, product samples are one of the best lead generation offers available.  What better way for a customer to evaluate your product than with an actual sample?

If a physical sample isn't available, a video demonstration may be the next best option to show your product in action. Exhibiting at a trade show?  Live reports from the show floor are interesting and integrate nicely into your social media efforts.

Interactive calculators and online tools are another good way to demonstrate and differentiate your product from the competition.  

Sell More

How do top performing companies achieve their results? For starters,they sell more.

Seems like a no brainer, doesn't it?

But when I say they "sell more," I don't mean they "sell more products" (although they do). What I mean is that they "spend more of their time selling." In fact, at top performing companies, sales reps spend 72% of their time selling, compared to 59% for average companies, and 47% for the least mature companies.

Why is this? Simple: Top performers maximize revenue by ensuring that only the most qualified sales leads are passed from the marketing department to the sales department. When this happens, sales spends more time following up leads from marketing. When it doesn't happen - that is, when marketing delivers unqualified leads to sales - the sales reps quickly grow frustrated and decide to generate their own sales leads. So, instead of spending their time selling, they spend their time prospecting on their own. Often, this means crawling through databases, creating their own marketing materials, and basically duplicating the work that's already being done by the marketing department. In short, sales reps spend their time marketing instead of selling and companies generate less revenue. On the other hand, when the sales team focuses on selling to the high quality leads the marketing delivers, revenue goes up.

The key here is that the marketing department must deliver qualified leads. Without that, the trust between the departments breaks down. This requires the marketing department to adopt lead scoring tactics to ensure they are qualified, and to work with sales to come up with a mutually agreed upon definition of what constitutes a qualified lead. Leads with low scores that don't meet the criteria of that definition get recycled back into the marketing database for more nurturing, while leads that do get passed to sales. This allows the sales team to spend more time selling.

Your Expert May Be Killing Your Website Content - Part II

The best players usually don't make the best coaches.

The point guard on the Portland Trailblazers NBA basketball team recently hired a shooting coach to help him with his shot. The guy he hired never played pro basketball and he didn't do much in college. However, he's a good shooting coach, partly because he knows what it's like to lack the natural ability and gifts of the best players.

The same idea applies to content creation. Contrary to what you'd expect, the "people who know" in your company may not be he best sources for content. Despite being so good and knowledgeable, the experts nevertheless likely lack the ability to teach what they know. And, because great content often involves explaining to people who aren't as knowledgeable, your experts could be the main obstacle that keeps you from creating a steady stream of content.

An obvious solution to that problem is to ask people who are new to your company to write content, which would also help them learn more about your products. You'd certainly want to edit what they write, but at least you'd get some good content churned out.