Don’t Just Think ‘Lead’ Generation; Think ‘Need’ Generation

 

Article From: Production Machining, AJ Sweatt, principal from AJ Sweatt Logic & Communications

 

A mistake I often see in companies that serve manufacturing or industrial markets is in the system for managing “leads.” It’s not entirely a mistake, per se, but more of an overreliance on the system at the expense of customers. 

This approach almost immediately renders the prospect or customer as a number to conform with protocol. It creates the impression that the primary concern of the company is gettin’ the dough and moving on to the ‘next one.’ It minimizes the problems a prospect is trying to solve, while elevating the company’s bargaining position. And we rationalize this as just how business is done.

How many relationships—business or otherwise—are sustained or even last after a beginning like that? Maybe some. But I’ve seen far more partnerships fail under the weight of this system than those that were built on loyalty. 

To understand the point, think about this: Imagine the last time you were on the phone with your cable company, power company, or another service provider, trying to resolve an issue. We’ve all experienced the frustrations from dealing with automated systems and bureaucracy. How many conversations have we all had, lamenting the crumbling of our entire society and culture, based on our loss of basic customer service and social skills?

I’ve had these conversations, and many, many times with company owners and marketing cats. They share your (our) frustrations when bumping up against the cold, hard truths of relationships built on a lead rather than a need. They get just as angry and frustrated as we all do in those situations. And then they return to their jobs of demanding or sustaining the same type of system in their own companies that frustrates their own customer base in the same ways.

A customer isn’t a lead to be harvested, but a person serving something that needs help to grow. Yet, a lead-based system can permeate an entire organization, where overworked and misdirected resources follow flowcharts or standard practices to build revenue rather than loyalty. Consider this: Does your company promote a system that serves leads rather than needs by passing the responsibility of gathering the customer’s problems and challenges to sales or applications engineers for engagement, costing time?

Does your company promote a system that serves leads rather than needs by passing basic contact information down the line and counts this as success? Does your company not bother to follow up with the customer, even if the company doesn’t get the sale, to see if they’ve been taken care of? Does your company push automated, broad messaging designed to attract targets to an audience that actually has very specific, real needs? Does your company treat a new addition to a database as a success? Does your company look to generate a contact, rather than one that shows the potential the customer can realize by partnering with you?

Is the cycle of lead generation a seemingly unbreakable machine that can’t even be discussed, deviated from or challenged?

I’m not suggesting that sound lead acquisition and management systems aren’t critical to any successful manufacturing enterprise. What I am asking, though, is to think if the system to manage leads in your company has become the tail wagging the dog and may be unintentionally harming sales.

Some customer relationships just don’t work out. That’s a fact of business life. But many end too soon because they begin on a foundation that leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy of disappointment. These systems are often built on measuring a lead reaching a specific point in the chain through the seller’s organization and less about the progress the customer is making at each stage.

Consider our own frustrations as we deal personally with lead generators and bureaucrats. And then ask yourself, “Are we generating something valuable or just an invoice?” 

 

Ad Clickers - Less Likely Prospects

 Using a search engine or industry web site to find information, answer a question or reach a web site to buy something has become as second nature for most of us as using the remote control to surf TV channels.  Search advertising borrows from the inherent utility of the search engine and industry site - buyers are presented with links that match their query and are designed to quickly direct them to specific products and services.

 

Online display advertising, however, is a different story. Prospects go to web sites for information and engagment not to click on ads that send them elsewhere.  Recent research has only 16 percent of prospects clicking on display ads in a given month indicating that most visitors to a typical advertiser's site get there some way other than clicking an display ads.

 

So how valuable is click measurement as a means of assessing online display ad effectiveness?

 

Not very.  In fact, click-based display campaigns can run completely counter to your interests as an advertiser. Optimizing your campaign for click, instead of optimizing for conversions, is pursuing the wrong objective. For display advertising, clicks aren't just suboptimal, they're anti-optimal. And they're likely to produce significantly poorer results.

 

Search behavior is linked to an explicit and often an immediate need. There is a clear reason for searching, with a clear result in mind. When prospects consume most types of online content, they have arrived at their destination. There's typically no intent to leave at the earlies opportunity.

 

Prospects don't expect to click on an ad. Relying on display clicks to drive conversions is often a dead end.  Visitors most likely to click on display ads are often vastly different from your best prospects. If you're optimizing your campaign for clicks, there's a good chance you're actually anti-optimizing for sales. Instead, optimize toward your ultimate objective: the campaign conversion rate rather than toward the click-through rate.  Focus on developing the ncecssary systems and skills to understand the true impact of your ad investments throughout your prospects' path to purchase.

 

Connect with people who really are your prospects. The low click-to-conversion correlation doesn't mean display ads are ineffective. 

 

Next time: How to optimize for conversions.

 

Source: Konrad Felman, Quantcast

 

 

 

 

 

 

Five Things Good For Your Web Site

 Detailed Product Information: Your customers and prospects want to see up-to-date and comprehensive product information that is well organized, filled with product details and technical specifications to allow for product comparisons. The vast majority of your audience comes to your Web site to discover if and how your products can meet their needs.

 

Offers and Landing Pages: Your Web site visitors crave information that will help them do their jobs more effectively. Your job is to offer white papers, technical articles, application notes and other educational content. Sprinkle offers on relevant pages throughout your Web site and send prospects to specific landing pages that describe the offer in more detail to capture prospect information to generate leads.

 

Consistent Page Design: Keep your visitors on track and avoid confusion by adhering to consistent page design. Navigation menus should appear in the same place on every page, usually across the top or down the side, or both if your site has multiple levels of hierarchy.  A user-friendly design may use a wider column for the main content and a narrower column for secondary content. Make sure your headings, font size and typeface are consistent too.

 

Contact Features: Because one of the primary goals of your Web site is to capture lead information, you must make it easy for prospects to contact you. A good idea is to have a phone number and email address on every page, plus a link in the navigation menu to a Contact Us page.  Landing pages should include forms as well as phone numbers and email addresses to give users multiple options for contacting you.

 

Basic Search Engine Optimation: Almost every site can benefit from basic SEO techniques to help drive more qualified traffic from search engines for specific keyword searches.  Make use of page titles, description meta tags, keywords in page copy, site maps and simple HTML pages to make your Web pages more search engine friendly.

 

Next time, five bad things to avoid for your Web site.

B2B Content Marketing



 B2B marketers often turn to content marketing for lead generation and prospect nurturing throughout the lengthy sales process. Recent research points to a growing number of B2B marketers ramping up content marketing for more brand-based goals, namely boosting thought leadership and brand awareness. Sales and customer acquisition were each cited by 29% of respondents.  Customer retention and loyalty were also important content marketing goals for about a quarter (26%) of marketers.

 

Though engagement as a campaign end goal was only cited by 20% of respondents, as a tactic, it was vital for content marketing success. More than half of B2B marketers used content marketing to foster greater audience engagement -- necessary for drawing leads and generating greater brand awareness. Other top reasons B2B marketers turned to content markeing to achieve their objectives included its ability to establish brand trust (47%) and offer marketers a way to create faster, more frequent touchpoints with customers and prospects (33%).

 

The creation of content assets needed to satisfy those multiple touchpoints appears to rest heavily on the shoulders of marketers. 94% of technology marketers created their own content from scratch, with 39% adding third-party content. About a third reported reusing content where applicable, and 30% encouraged user-generated content.

 

When generating content from scratch, engagement was again a common tactic. 81% of B2B marketers cited engaging and compelling storytelling as the most important elements of effective content marketing. Even within the technology sector, a highly technical, complex industry, engagement and originality trumped professional writing when generating content marketing. While prospects may rely on technical, professional content to make decsions, they are initially drawn to brands that offer a more engaging, dynamic content experience. 

SEO Techniques - A Love, Hate Relationship

There is a growing consensus among online marketers that over-

emphazing Search Engine Optimation (SEO) techniques is one of the worst things that a business can do -- not just because it's often a waste of money, but also because it can be counterproductive.  There is no telling how many company websites have been penalized by Google and Bing for their misguided SEO zeal. The bottom line is that, before your business goes overboard with SEO techniques, there are a few important cautions to consider.

 

SEO is not the end goal. To begin with, ask yourself this question: What's the purpose of your online business presence?  Is it to do SEO just for the sake of doing SEO -- or is it provide customers and prospects with superior products and services? The answer is the latter and, yet, many marketers get sidetracked, making the focus of their online presence on SEO rather than simply providing their products and services. SEO techniques are not necessarily helpful to your business. In many cases, they are simply distractions.

 

SEO can hurt. If you're familiar with Google's recent Panda, Penquin and Penquin 2.0 algorithmic update, you should know that SEO techniques can hinder just as much as they can help. Google is constantly seeking to reward websites that provide substantative, engaging content -- and to penalize sites that seek to "game" the system with SEO trickery. The recent Penquin 2.0 update, for example, penalized sites that used paid links and other duplicitous SEO practices.  The bottom line is that Google wants your site to focus on quality and content, not just SEO techniques and, as such, an overemphasis on SEO can actually hurt your website's online rankings.

 

True SEO meets customer and prospects needs. True search engine optimation is not about keyword stuffing, buying backlinks, or any other tricks and gimmicks.  True SEO is about answering customer and prospect needs and demands. What are your targeted customers actually searching for? What kinds of information are they seeking?  If you can provide them with the answers they need, Google will reward you for it. If you're too obsessive about flash-in-the-pan SEO techniques, Google will likely leave your site in the dust. Rather than treat Google as an obstacle to overcome, marketers should instead treat Google as an ally -- and that means playing by Google rules, not trying to circumvent them with SEO tricks. The solution is to focus on your core product offerings.

 

Source: Zsolt Bicskey, Business 2 Community

 

Forgetting To Fish Where The Fish Are



 

 

 

 

Make sure your line is always baited and in the water. In other words, you must have your message in front of customers and prospects on a regular basis. Sporadic advertising efforts that come and go will cause you to miss out on significant chunks of sales opportunity. It's not the case of the big fish that got away; the big fist never new about you. Make sure you're attracting prospects while they are looking which should be every day, 365 days a year.

 

Today, virtually all engineering, technical and industrial buyers use print and online resources throughout their buying processes, including locating suppliers, manufacturers, components and products. That means you must make investments in appropriate media to reach this audience and forge more, and more frequent, connections with customers and prospects.

 

Focusing on lead quantity versus lead quality.

 

More leads! More leads! This may be your strategy, but it's more effective to have a balanced focus on both lead quantitity and lead quality. If marketing focuses lead generation efforts solely on quantity, fewer leads will convert to customers, more sales resources are wasted, and sales people will quickly learn to distrust leads that marketing generates. Ask any sales rep. They will tell you they'd rather have a handful of highly qualified prospects than a suitcase full of unqualified leads.

 

Abandoning brand exposure.

 

Brand exposure is so important, but some companies shove it aside in order to increase emphasis on lead generation. Yet, continually exposing customers and prospects to your brand keeps your compnay top of mind, increases lead generation opportunities and helps reduce sales cycle because prospects will already be familiar with your brand and value proposition.



Buying Has Changed Forever - Part IV

 

"Stay In Touch" eamail campaigns are useful for all prospects that are not immediately ready to engage with sales. They form the backbone of your lead nurturing program by "dripping' out relevant content to prospects over time, helping to educate them and build trust and credibility for your company. By touching prospects regularly, they help keep your brand top of mind so that the prospect will contact you when they are ready to move to the next step.

 

A good place to start is with the "Buying Committee" -- the group of individuals that will be involved in the purchasing decision. Even at medium size companies (100 - 500 employees) research shows the average number of people involved in a decision is 6.8 -- and the number goes as high as 21 individuals on a buying committee at larger companies. Your nurturing content will need to to speak to each of them and address their unique needs.

 

Most of the people that you speak to at a company will fall under categories related to your marketing efforts, whether they have final say in the purchase or not. The category definitions may include the "Champion," a user with purchasing authority; the influencer, a person without the buying authority but with significant input, such as a consultant or middle manager or user; and the executive staff.

 

People want to do business with people. We're human, and we crave interaction with people who know us. When you build content especially for your buyer personas, you build a relationship with people before you've even met them.