Print advertising is best

Do you use printed advertising for your products or services? No?
It is said that B2B magazines drive more buyers than any other medium as it has the most positive impact.
Apparently, both editorials and advertising work very well for lead generation.

The question is how well and how can this be proved? Measuring is required.

Problem: proving the effectiveness of print advertising

B2B magazines need to measure and report their effectiveness to their customers: the supplier companies, distributors and professional services.
They mention the distribution of then number of copies per issue and the statistics of the reader groups. These are generic data about the audience.
However there is no one-to-one proof, as there is no apparent or automated self registration link from the printed ad to the communication from the interested party.

The potential customer will use the information found in the advertising to contact you using:
- Telephone number
- Email
- Website
- Address: writing an inquiry letter seems a bit outdated in B2B
These actions are completely disconnected from the printed media ad.
No link. No proof.

Asking the visitor his source
Asking the visitor where he found your company during a telephone conversation is possible and will likely be answered.
However asking the same question, when he fills out an online contact form could already be a question to much. Moreover the data captured online data will be far from complete, as only very few visitors will ever fill out forms.

There is no benefit for the potential lead to state where he found you, thus no reason to cooperate.
In order to encompass this, using promotion codes printed on the ad to be used an additional discount during purchase or during completion of the inquiry form will give the best possible feedback for print advertising.

However asking for a bonus code during the first inquiry visit on a website is probably over the top and will probably not be answered by any visitor. As the visitor is not yet even identified by company name or qualified as a lead.

The effort of cooperation needs to come from the potential customer.

Online advertising: embedded measurability

Online advertising has the big advantage of traceability: the trails of the source of the website visitor are easy to retrieve as the advertising or banner is linked with the website.
For every visitor on the website the origin can be known:
- An online advertisement: easy to measure: click through
- A link on a website
- A search
- A direct hit
Thus online advertising has the benefit of measurability that is embedded in the system.

Print advertising: no proof

- Printed media ads
- Directories
- Yellow pages
- Press Release can give an exposure to your brand in many magazines and newspapers.
- Editorials
- Leaflets from trade shows
Carry all the same contact information. Thus you can’t pinpoint where the different inquiries came from.

Print media needs to solve the measurability

If print media can’t solve the problem of missing to measure and to prove their effectiveness on-to-one, printed advertising will have an uncertainty, thus will be considered as a risk.
This will make print advertising less interesting for advertisers.

If you can’t measure, you can’t proof your Return On Investment.

Thus prices of print advertising will decrease as demand will decrease too because of the un-measurability.

Public Relations and Press Releases have no longer the importance they used to have.
Social marketing and blogging are slowly replacing Public relations and Press Releases.

Google launches Chrome using a blogger

When Google launched Chrome on September 1st, they offered Philipp Lenssen of Google Blogoscoped the scoop.
This site unofficially covers Google with subjects on Google and the tech world more or less daily since 2003.

If Google uses a blogger of an ‘unofficial’ Google site to do a world wide announcement of a major new product, how will PR agencies survive this brave new communications world?
Moreover the post on Blogoscoped has spread over the world at a fast pace.

So if Google uses a blogger, why shouldn’t your company?

Marketers struggling with Social Media Marketing

Coincidently a few days ago Mitch Joel remarks in his The Best Practices In Social Media Marketing Writing Project post on his Six Pixels of Separation blog, that Marketers are struggling to come up with answers because Social Media is still a very new exciting channel that we’re all discovering.
(At the same time he launches a contest on this matter)

Just like Doc Searls headlines about branding:
“It’s gonna get gooier” based on a quote from Steve Lohr in the NY Times: “A New Battle Is Beginning in Branding for the Web”
Although it is about branding, it is related to the same Internet revolution we currently experience, an evolution or revolution that will increase in intensity and impact on many things we take for granted: such as PR and PR (Public Relations and Press Releases).

Social marketing should add value

In any case Social Marketers should bring Add Value as advised by Reid Givens in ROI (Return On Intention) blog as it is conversation and community based, whereas traditional media is geared to interrupt, inform and talk at the potential customer.

Thus the next time your company has news to spread, will you still use Press Releases and Public Relations?
Why not use social media marketing, bloggers or the corporate blog (if it has enough reach)?
Just make sure bloggers can add value on the subject.
Remeber: Only ideas that spread win (Seth Godin)

The napkin persuasion selling power

If you sit down with a potential client over a dinner, a coffee or having a drink, drawing some simple images, icons, or words with arrows representing flows in between, you can do miracles.
Your intentional words and images on the napkin accompanied by your verbal explication are probably one of the best sales methods there is.

By visually breaking down the problem and solution people will understand better and easier by participating in your thinking.
Moreover the process of verbal explication and sketching the problem and solution is staged step by step, as it takes time to draw and write the few words on the napkin.

Involvement leads to participation selling

The build up and the moderate advancement of the explication due to drawing, writing and telling, makes persuasion power much higher than if you would use the exact same icons and wording in a (PowerPoint) presentation.
This is probably due to the high involvement of the person you are explaining to.

He or she feels being much more related to what you are explaining or expressing as it is created immediately and originally in front of him/her.
He or she experiences and gets involved in the creation of something unique, specially drawn for him/her: participation selling.

After your sales pitch, the potential customer can take the napkin with him as a trophy, having your effort, sweat and creation on a handcrafted document in which she/he has participated.

Do cheat by rehearsing:

Try out or exercise your napkin creations in advance in order to make your napkin selling successful. They won’t know you have rehearsed.

Use Napkins instead of presentations

Thus the next time you sit down with your potential customer or existing customer don’t show a presentation on your portable or printed presentations, just use napkins.

Be creative, be original, and let him grasp the uniqueness of the creation and the moment with you.

How good are your experiences with napkin selling?
How many sales did you already do on napkins?

Search on website

In order to have a search function on our website, we have implemented Quintura search.
They offer a free search for websites: this just requires registering as an affiliate/partner. Although they call it an affiliate program, it is just a widget you can place anywhere on your website.

After submitting, Quintura will first index your website fairly quickly.

The result is that Quintura not just provides the typical Google style search results, but also Web 2.0 style clouds of words that are related to your search.

This visualization provides more in depth exposure of the content of our website.

By pointing at a specific word the next search or refined search is launched.

This is how Quintura search differs from conventional search:
Typical process:
Query start - view results - refine query - find

Quintura process:
Query start - view cloud - click word - find

It saves on typing as you only have to click once for a refined search. Try it out on our website: LEADSExplorer

Although the search widget comes in different sizes, we wanted to have a big cloud, thus we have put the search on a separate webpage, showing the links underneath.

Benefits of search

- Stay longer
Having a search on the website. Could make some people stay longer on our website.

- Lead qualification
As they visit more specific pages on the website after each search, the pages will indicate the interests or needs of the visiting companies (our service reveals by name).
Thus we can better segregate the real leads from the others (like tire kickers).

Selling on fear: proof the benefit

Many vendors offer a wide range of security appliances with preventive and defensive solutions:
Anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti- hacker, spam filter,…
Their selling is based upon fear.

The problem with these solutions is that the buyer doesn’t:
- Completely understand the benefit
   In many cases the decision maker doesn’t or might not understand the magnitude of the problem.
   The problem is beyond his knowledge or experience. So how to calculate or estimate the costs expected to be saved by the security solution?

- Notice the effect or the benefit easily: immediately or even never.
   The benefit is only noticed when things go wrong: when the security wasn’t performing or missed its’ goals.
   Thus in case the installed or applied solutions weren’t effective.
   Then spending of money on the preventive solution could be considered as a waste of money, even if it has saved money and avoided problems on many occasions.
    Occasions that have been taken for granted.

In many cases it is very difficult to proof the security solution was effective and has saved more than it has cost to install and maintain.
How much money does an intrusion prevention appliance saves a year? Hard to calculate by company. Less difficult to calculate for an entire market as statistics and probabilities can be applied.

The tangible benefit sales

However the sole security solution that has an immediate visible result is the spam filter:
Everyone in the company will experience and notice immediately when a spam filter is applied appropriately. The less spam is very clearly visible in everyone’s email inbox.
Also for the CEO, who has immediate recognition for his decision and investment.

In case the spam filter becomes less effective, the employees and the CEO will address this very fast.

The easy to measure tangible benefit

So despite all the marketing, advertising and communication messages in order to bring awareness of the dangers involved, people are still the best convinced by something tangible they immediately remark and influences their work or habits. Thus selling on fear isn’t that effective as selling a solution or product with an immediate result that is easy to measure or experienced easily.
In sales it helps if you can show immediate tangible benefits.

Tangible benefits that are hard to proof or to measure are harder to sell than solutions with an easy measurable or experienced solution. 

That’s why LEADSExplorer sells an easy to measure tangible benefit: Leads.
Do you sell a tangible benefit that is experienced or measured easily?

Search Engine Strategies conference

One of the findings of the SES San Jose Session: Advanced B2B Search Marketing as reported by Jessica Cameron-Ruud is:

Reach prospects early in the buying cycle
The sales cycle can often be long and complicated. B2B marketers rarely face the fact that people are conducting product searches at the beginning of the buying cycle. Reality is, your customers are looking for your product information way before they are ready to convert. You have to be there early!

When: visiting your website

The earliest possible sign of interest is in most cases when employees of companies visit your website.
Hence you need a web service providing website visitor identification by company name.

Qualify visitors as leads

In order to differentiate the many companies visiting, you need to qualify these visiting companies as raw leads by the:
- Pages visited
- Time on each page
- Duration of visits
- Visit behavior
- Returning visits
- Number of unique visitors
- Internet origin of the visit
- Geographic location of the visitor
- Language used by the visitor
- Type and size of visiting company
- Market of visiting company
- Management and directors of the corporation

Immediately you generate more leads

This will give you a head start over your competitors for getting leads.
You can cold call on warm companies as they have shown their interest on your website.

When do you get your leads in their buying cycle?

The StumbleUpon effect

Two weeks ago our blog post “Top 14 power words” got ‘StumbledUpon‘. Immediately this bookmark attracted a good inflow of website visitors.
Soon after the same post was book marked on Mixx, Propeller, etc.
In total this book marking created about 1,000 additional visits in one day upon our website.
During the rest of the week, the website received significant additional visitors, but that number decreased exponentially.
Every now and then a new load of visitors arrives in “small groups” over a short amount of time.

Book marking reason

We have no idea why this post was ‘StumbledUpon’, whereas other posts, that are more interesting ones in our humble opinion, only get a couple of dozen visitors instead of 2,000+ in 2 weeks.

Observations:

1. Lots of traffic. However traffic is not lead generation.
2. After the first bookmark has become ‘popular’, others will bookmark the same post on another book marking website.
3. Most people just visit the blog post: Every visit and every page visit is registered by LEADSExplorer.
4. Only a small group of people visited other pages of the blog or the website - mainly website visitors from companies: information provided by the LEADSExplorer webservice.
5. After a few days, other people will link the blog post in their “best of the week” posts.
6. 98% are residential Internet surfers. Only about 3% of the visitors are people using corporate or company Internet connection: we know this, as we use LEADSExplorer on the website.
7. Most visitors are from USA - still French and German people do use StumbleUpon or one of the other book marking sites.
8. Visitors seem to read the entire blog post. The time spent by every visitor on the single blog post page is registered by LEADSExplorer.
9. People do read, leave and then come back to read the same post over again. Sometimes even up to 3 times. Don’t they read attentively?

Website visitor discovery, filtering and analysis

For every single website visitor the origin is presented and in case of a company: the company name. This makes it possible to differentiate between residential and corporate website visitors. This allows us knowing the reach of the blog post in our market (B2B).

We didn’t have to wade through those 1000+ visitors as LEADSExplorer provides filtering of:
- The visit data by number of pages
- Minimum amount of time
- Number of returning visits.
Thus making the discovery and analysis of visitors feasible and effective.

The viral results:

- Getting bookmarked has increased the number of visitors significantly over a short amount of time (2 weeks).
- This increase of visitors has brought an increase in ranking on Alexa: from about #950,000 to #650,000. We already decreased back to #690,000.
- Additionally, it seems that Google has ranked the website higher for several and different search results.
- The Technorati authority increased from 1 to 5 and the rank went up from 1,5mio to 1.1mio
- We didn’t receive any additional inquiry related or thanks to the blog post.
- We didn’t notice any additional conversion, no immediate lead generation as it is B2B, thus getting bookmarked won’t bring additional revenue directly.
- Thanks to the number of visitors there will be an increase of branding.

Conclusion:

- Getting bookmarked boosts traffic, not leads
- Getting bookmarked has nice side effects like increase in rankings: SERP on Google, Alexa, Technorati.
- Probably branding and awareness has been increased.
- If you want to know and measure the effect of getting bookmarked, having a web service defining who is visiting your website is a must have in B2B. Else you don’t know anything about your visitors, the effect and the value.

What were your experiences or results of getting bookmarked?

Ladies and Gentlemen of Sales… always prospect.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, prospecting would be IT.

The long term benefits of prospecting have been proved by businessmen whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience.

I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and greatness of your selling. Never mind. You will not understand the power and greatness of your selling until they have faded.
But trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really were in selling.

You are NOT as bad as you imagine.

Don’t worry about the lead generation; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum.
The real troubles in your sales are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Cold call.

Don’t be reckless during sales deals, don’t put up with people who are reckless with your deals.

Email.

Don’t waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The tail is long, and in the end, the race is only with yourself.

Remember sales you close, forget the failures; if you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old sales letters; throw away your old price quotes.

Listen.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know how to sell to the next lead. The most interesting sales people I know just have built trust with their leads, some of the most interesting salesmen I know still have this trust with these customers.

Get plenty of relationships.

Be kind to your relationships, you’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Maybe you’ll make a fortune, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll have leads, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll become sales manager at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 50th salesman anniversary.
Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself, either. Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s.
Enjoy your sales ability, use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.

Write pitches.

Even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room.

Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.

Do NOT read business magazines, they will only make you feel a laggard.

Get to know your customers, you never know when they’ll be gone for good.

Be nice to your sales assistants; they are your best link to your success and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that colleagues come and go, but for the precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography in relationships because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young.

Be at the top once, but leave before it makes you hard; be a failure once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Meet.

Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, products will change, you too will get old, and when you do you’ll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, products were great and competitors respected each other.

Respect your competitors.

Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a recurrent business, maybe you’ll have a big customer; but you never know when either one might run out.

Don’t mess too much with your career, or by the time you’re 40, it will look badly.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

But trust me on the prospecting.

Origin:
This is based upon “Everybody’s free (To wear sunscreen)” by Baz Luhrmann, who has used an essay called “Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young” written by Mary Schmich and published in the Chicago Tribune as a column “Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young” in 1997.

Read the entire “Everybody’s free (To wear sunscreen)” story.

There are many hurdles to overcome when selling, not always related to your products or solutions, but related to the people or their function in the company you are selling to.

1. The will hurdle:
The lacking of motivation.
Even though you have the best solution to the problem or risk, the manager or director is not motivated to take the risk to buy your product or solution.
How to motivate or convince him to take the risk of buying your product?

2. The skill hurdle:
The person who is in charge isn’t up to his task or job or just misses experience of the business he is in.
He hardly understands the benefits your solution or products are bringing as he doesn’t see the problem.
Probably your competitors will encounter the same hurdle, if they address the same problems for their products and solutions.

3. The bill hurdle:
Missing resources, having no budget.
The manager of director is interested in your products or solutions; however he hasn’t got the budget.
This is a money problem and is hard to solve from your side.
Instead of a one time cost or fee, maybe a recurring invoice can solve this problem.

4. The nil hurdle:
Lacking the authority to accomplish the task.
The manager of director isn’t the decision taker: the authority is at a higher level.
Thus you need to talk to the next level.

5. The situation hurdle:
Wrong location or wrong environment or wrong group of people within the company.
Your products or solutions are not suited for the business unit or the company or the group of people.

6. The moved hurdle:
People do get promoted or change functions in a company.
Then you have to restart your sales process all over again.

7. The time hurdle:
Although your solutions are interesting and adequate, there is no time to plan and to implement them.
You probably need to go and talk to a higher level in the hierarchy.

8. The brand hurdle:
Due to a previous problem with your company or brand, the decision maker in charge doesn’t want to know about your company. The reason or reasons can be fully irrational, but still selling will be nearly impossible.
Maybe customer references can help to change his mind.

9. The influence hurdle:
Even though you have no problems with all the above, your contact is not able to influence and persuade his directors or CXX of the company: thus you will get nowhere if you can’t contact the decision takers directly.

You have probably encountered additional hurdles in the companies you have been selling to.
Tell us about.

Price pressure

Selling at a higher price has many advantages.
The question is how to achieve a higher price and not getting squeezed in a price war between your competitors?

Analyze what the lead really wants

As a start you need to know what the probable buyer wants. What are his purposes for the solution and the drivers for the purchase?
This requires a in depth review of the signals he is giving you:
- His behavior on the website
- The search terms used
- The originating website
- The company itself
- The branding of the company
- A leading or lagging behind company
- The question asked in the inquiry email
- The wording in the reply emails
- The comments he makes during the telephone calls
- The vision he has for the solution
- The method of working he has in mind for using the solution
- The body language during the meeting
- Their competitors
- The solutions bought by their competitors
The goal is to try to define the mindset of the probable purchaser.

Differentiate your offering

Next you need to differentiate your offering from the others. Anything that differentiates your solution from the competitors is good enough.
Insist on those aspects, features, functions or benefits that are sensitive for the prospect.

Only if the products or solutions from your competitors are 100% compatible and similar, then differentiation will be difficult and hard to explain the premium. Then it comes to the good name, fame, reliability and sustainability of the company or brand.

Potential customers are willing to buy at higher prices or pay a surplus for additional features, advantages and benefits that can be both: tangible and intangible.
Make them feel as if they are to obtain a unique benefit or advantage that will set apart their selected solution.

Of course:
- Make believe to have a bargain value although it is at a premium price.
- Uniqueness of the solution
- Potential higher sales, revenue, gross margin, profit,…because it is at a premium price.

Free

Give something for free that has low value or cost for you, but is valuable to the probable customer.
Still the complete price is higher than of your competitors.
People just love to get something for free.
This works both in B2C as in B2B.

Career play

People have build careers because of buying more expensive (and complex) solutions.
Examples:
- Mainframes during the eighties
- ERP systems in the nineties.

In many cases by spending more money, one makes himself more important in the company, because of being the buying manager he is in charge of the expensive solution, approved by upper management.
And the high investment is allowed to cost even more in order to succeed.
This career insinuation has to be mentioned carefully.

Price isn’t the main driver

In B2C consumers take risks, whereas businesses seek:
- Reliability
- Service
- On-time delivery.
The price isn’t the main driver, quality and avoiding risks are more important.
A high price justifies the decision, just to avoid those risks and having high quality as the product or solution will be better because of the high price. This is a vicious circle.

The alternative: just say “No”

There is one more solution:
When the buyer wants a price cut or a big discount, just say “No” and leave him to the competitors.
That won’t do the competitors any good.
Selling at a 10% price cut results in at least 35% less profit, or at least the double amount of units needs to be sold to make up for the discount.

Thus instead of selling, you avoid decreasing the profitability of the company or business unit.

The next time a potential customer asks for a discount, will you think twice before committing?
Or do you need the sale so much?