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How-To Articles

How to help your prospects buy

in General marketing, Sales & sales process

In my previous article, How to get the most from a print ad, I pointed out the importance of not inundating your sales force with unqualified leads.  When you run a campaign, focus on driving profitable revenue, not just a long list of names for your database.  It’s ROI, not just the response rate that counts.

But what about inundating your sales force with qualified leads?  Is it possible to generate too many responses?

Too many responses?  What a great problem to have!  But if you haven’t effectively planned to fulfill those responses, you’ll lose sales and can even damage your credibility in the process.

For example, in his Emergence Marketing blog, Gabe D’Annunzio points out how Verizon Wireless left him disappointed and frustrated when it came to delivering on their slogan, “We never stop working for you.”  He received an offer in the mail and tried to respond — NINE TIMES — and never got through.  His comment:  “This is clearly not my idea of a company that never stops working for me. This is a company that simply stopped working.”

Did Verizon just underestimate the response they’d generate with their offer?  Did they have other problems that were beyond their control?  Or did they fail to plan effectively?  Doesn’t matter.  A great offer without a solid fulfillment plan is wasting money and damages a brand.

Before you launch your next campaign, keep the following tips in mind:

1.  Own the fulfillment process. Someone needs to lead the operation and make sure your campaign is successful at every level.  Get with every employee/department that’s affected by the campaign at least four weeks prior to launch.  Communicate the goals, high/low/average projections, campaign details and fulfillment procedures; make sure everyone is staffed, trained and ready to fulfill.  Don’t forget about IT, shipping, inventory control, or your AR/accounting departments, depending on the offer and fulfillment procedures.

2.  Provide multiple ways for your prospects to respond. Create a unique landing page on your site with a form or further information; let people send you emails; provide an 800 number and staff it appropriately.  Besides making it easier for the prospect to respond in a convenient way, you’ll spread responses over multiple channels, minimizing the impact on any one “touch point.”

3.  Have a backup plan. Know what you’ll do if your campaign response goes through the roof.  Here’s the message Gabe heard:  “Due to the overwhelming demand we are unable to take your call so please hang up and try again later.”

After hearing that message once, I wouldn’t have bothered.  If Verizon is working for me, then why don’t they have an overflow procedure in their call center?  Or a web page that I can visit to sign up?

At the very least, they could have used a message that better conveyed their brand.  “We’ve experienced an overwhelming response to this offer and we’re working hard to answer your calls as quickly as possible.  Unfortunately our call queue is full, but please try back in an hour or two.  We apologize for the inconvenience and look forward to speaking with you soon.”

In this situation, a little vulnerability goes a long way.  An alternate contact channel would have been even better.

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How to develop content for your website

in Websites

Revamping your company’s website can be challenging, especially if you’ve never tackled this type of project before.

OK, honestly, if you’ve never done it before it can be a nightmare.  But I’m trying to be helpful here ….

These days, most business buyers and potential partners will review your site before they do business with you.  It’s potentially the most powerful sales & marketing tool you have – it can help you:

  • Generate leads
  • Nurture existing leads and move them closer to purchase
  • Deliver information about your products & services in a compelling way
  • Process orders, cross- and up-sell, and run special promotions
  • Communicate with existing customers and distribution channels
  • Generate publicity

Think of your site as an interactive brochure that speaks with different groups and converts visitors into prospects and customers.  It’s an extension of your brand and an example of the quality of work you do.

Although a site can be a substantial investment, it doesn’t have to be expensive; it just needs to effectively communicate with your market and support your brand.  Yet when you develop your site with richer content and some basic marketing functionality, you gain broad and potentially lucrative marketing capabilities.

So where do you start? With the content – the information and tools you’ll need to share with prospects and customers.  Design, functionality and programming all come later – first, you need to decide what your site needs to deliver to your market.

There’s a lot to think about, but here’s a basic process to get you started:

1.  Identify who will visit your site, then list the information & tools that each “profile” will want and need. For example, if you sell to three different customer segments – Fortune 100, midmarket, and small businesses – you’ll need to offer content that speaks directly to each segment.  Profile your visitors in as much detail as possible; try to identify what they really need each time they visit your site, then add that content to the list.

2.  Gather internal ideas. Invite someone from each team in your company; ask what content could help them improve the way they reach out to sell or service customers.  You can do this in a series of one-on-one meetings or hold a brainstorming session.  At this point you’re just collecting ideas so add everything to the list.

3.  Identify content that can help you sell to prospects who find you online. Most business buyers use the web to find information about products, vendors, and solutions for their problems.  And the higher the price of the product/service, the earlier the buyer starts the search.  When do you think prospects will seek you out and what do you need to give them to engage them, get them to request more information, and/or buy now?

4.  Identify content that you’ll need for marketing campaigns. Think short- and medium-term. Consider content such as special organic search landing pages, paid search landing pages, email newsletter section, news section, downloadable white papers, webinar archives, signup forms, etc.  You’ll want to make sure your site is ready to handle these activities.

5.  Check out your competitors. What content do they offer that you haven’t already identified and should include on your own site?

6.  Miscellaneous ideas. Is there anything else you may want and haven’t already thought of?  Browse other industry sites, award winners, even business sites in vastly different industries – you never know where a great idea will strike!

This process may take a day, a week, or multiple months depending on the complexity of the site and the content needed.

Now that you have a long list, it’s time to prioritize.  What do you absolutely need right away and when will you reasonably need the rest?  Understand what you’ll want in the medium-term, but remember that you can launch sections on a rolling schedule.

What happens next? This list goes a long way in helping you and potential vendors/developers understand the scope of your project.  If you’re developing the site in-house, your next step will be to organize the content to create the site architecture, then start defining your requirements for look-and-feel, functionality, technology, and reporting.

If all of this sounds overwhelming – you’re not alone.  But remember — how do you eat an elephant?

One bite at a time.

Feel free to add your comments below or ask a question directly!

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The lost art of telemarketing

The Internet has made B2B telemarketing nearly obsolete. Most marketers in this digital age don’t even consider using it in a campaign. Often that’s a mistake; phone calls can still be a very useful component in most B2B marketing campaigns.
In the telemarketing hey days of the eighties and nineties (i.e., before email), many companies used [...]

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Marketing is strategy, not an afterthought

The marketing function gets no respect. In B2B companies with less than $100 million in revenue, it’s the lowest rung of all the business functions on the ladder.
Why? Because everyone thinks they understand marketing, yet few do it well. Actually, not quite everyone, but ask 10 non-marketer business people to define marketing and you’ll hear [...]

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How to design an integrated marketing campaign

The New Year brings a fresh start for many marketing departments. It’s a great time to review which campaigns worked well in 2009 and generate new ideas for 2010.
For those small to midsize B2B companies that typically use only a single medium for marketing campaigns (or, worse yet, use only their sales team), here’s [...]

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