Brands have understood that their marketing message needs to be entertaining in order to succeed in this world overwhelmed by entertainment available for free or paying in any channel.
HP shows how printers can be presented in an entertaining way in their HP Invent video:

However:
Although the video is entertaining which is quite an achievement with boring printers that do nothing but print which has resulted in a few hundred thousand (>300,000) views (The Audience Is Listening), it still misses the most important passion or sentiment.

Entertaining is good to get the attention.
Emotion or passion is also required once the attention has been given.
Entertainment will evaporate quickly.
Emotion and passion will stay for a long time with humans.

Emotional Marketing

Brands that will not make emotional connections with their prospects or customers will be less successful.
The people to target need to connect to the product or brand on the level of emotions. As soon people get to love your product or brand, they will buy. In order to love your product or brand emotions are a requirement: hence the need to play to their emotions.

As Michael Masterson stipulates:
1. People like buying stuff and services, but they don’t like being sold
2. People buy things for emotional feelings, not rational reasons.
3. Afterwards, people need to satisfy their emotional decisions with logic

Passionate Marketing for advocates

If a brand can get someone passionate about the brand or product, he will become a free sales rep. for the brand as an advocate.
An advocate will not only by the brand, but also advice and recommend his relatives and friends to buy the brand or product for a zillion of reasons without being paid.

In order to get someone to become an advocate the emotion must be really deep as he will position himself in order to help your brand. Picking up advocates requires an enhanced emotional connection. The main driving reason is that these people want to help others.
Again you need to give them memorable experiences during the entertaining marketing message in order to create the passion for your brand or product.
This is not solely for B2C but also for B2B.

How emotional or passionate is your marketing message – or just entertaining or still boring ?

Aspirational marketing video

This might be one of the best B2B video’s ever made.
This video tells a powerful story of what glass could do instead what glass currently does. This sure inspires for next generation of products: aspirational marketing video.
It sure went viral as it got over 16mio clicks.

Too perfect

Although the video is well made, continuously shows interesting applications and manages to show more possible functions and features with glass which keeps the attention, it could have been more entertaining as it seems to be happening in a perfect world. In most cases a perfect world is not entertaining and lacks sentiment or passion.

Emotion, sentiment or passion is missing

For a start the video is too long and there is no build up in emotion.
Being nice and perfect is not enough to entertain the audience and to be remembered too.
In order to be remembered people need a sentiment or passion: that triggers their brains more than anything else. Something that strikes them in their feelings or emotions instead of just amazement for technical achievements.
As emotions and feelings are personal they will stay longer with the viewers.
What is required is emotion, sentiment or passion in your marketing: emotional marketing even in B2B.

Apple had the emotion, passion and sentiment in this famous 1984 commercial:

What did you think about both video’s ?

As indicated in a previous blog post all marketeers will become entertainers in order to bring entertainment in their marketing as boring B2B messages would get the audience listening.

CISCO has understood this and now presents their Collaboration video with rapping VP’s and even John Chambers (CEO) using Auto-Tune to sing in tone – just like rappers (who need it to correct their pitch and disguise off-key inaccuracies).

It sure is a pounding marketing message and entertaining.

About a year ago they had this “normal” less entertaining (boring) video.

Of course some people always want to make fun out of a new marketing concept – even at CISCO:

What do you think of entertaining B2B marketing ?

The first Auto-Tune world hit record by Cher:

Content marketing seems the last resort as all other marketing methods seem to be in decline.
The idea of content marketing is simple: providing interesting content for free that will attract potential customers who could get interested in your products. The content is used as marketing currency.
All that seems great as content doesn’t cost out of the pocket money.

However content marketing has four hurdles:

1. Creativity

It requires creativity and imagination for generating content.
This is not a widely spread skill. Some people have it – some don’t.
Moreover it is hard or almost impossible to learn it.

2. Time

Creating,editing and publishing content requires an investment in time.
As you need large quantities of content in order to handle all aspects in relation to your solutions or products, a lot of time will be invested in generating your content.
Time is costly as it consumes your capacity of doing something else beneficial for your company.

3. Entertaining content

You content needs to be entertaining as boring content won’t get read or viewed and easily forgotten. Even worse: hardly anybody will talk about it so you will miss out the word of mouth promotion.

4. Publishing for exposure

You can publish all of your interesting content on your website and just hope people will find it.
You can publish your content on article websites and hope people will find it and click on the link to your website.
So you are somewhat limited in the publishing of your content.
If other websites, like blogs, would re-publish your content, this will likely increase the exposure and the findability.

5. Marketing the content

If your content marketing wants to be successful you need market your content in order to give it enough exposure and getting found on the Internet.

Back where we stared: marketing
So we are back where we started: content marketing requires you to market your content.

Content marketing is not as easy as advertising which mainly just costs money.

It is not because you lost the last deal that you will loose the current deal.
It is not because you just won a deal, that you will close the next deal too.

Winning strike vs negativism

People are strange when they are on a winning strike then they believe the winning strike will continue. It will show by their self confidence, happiness and probably ego.
This positive feeling and confidence will lead to even more closed deals.

On the other hand when they miss a deal they:
- Start doubting about themselves, their ability win and close deals
- Blame the company and the products the company produces which they need to sell
This negativism about themselves or the company they work for will show up in their attitude, their missing confidence and their behavior.
This negativism will show up during sales talks, presentations and negotiations. Leading to even more lost deals.

Attitude swings

It only takes a few deals to win or a few deals to loose to move from one stage or situation to the other. The swings in attitude, believe in themselves and the products can happen fast for most salesmen. It seems there is only a narrow grey zone between great / winning and bad / loosing.- making the attitude swings fast.

Only experienced and mature salesmen will take a different approach and let themselves less influence by the last deals won or last deals lost. Probably due to the many years in sales. Still even seasoned salesmen can start to doubt after a series or even a couple of missed deals.

In sales the only way is up

In sales having lost self-confidence and being negative will not get you any closer to closing deals. Moreover you will even start getting less and less leads in your funnel or pipeline.
Hence salesmen need to continue believing in themselves and see the benefits and advantages of the products or solutions they sell.
The only way is up for sales people as there is no other way out or change companies.

Many sales reps claim there is no point in calling during December as for most companies it is the last month of their financial year.
All focus is on getting the last sales deals closed in order to reach the budget, while others are planning their Xmas and Year End parties and holidays. This results in a slow month and sales reps aren’t motivated to call.

However during year-end:
- Chat time
Those who are not in sales might have time to chat, especially in between Xmas and New Year as not much is happening and they are in holiday mood.

- Reach unreachable people
People who are hard to reach might be reachable during this period of slower business.

- The new budget
This might be your last chance to get your solution on the yet to be approved new budget.

- The remainders of the budget
The remainders of budgets need to get spend before they expire: it is better they spend it on your stuff.

- New year – new budget
As from January 2nd the new budget kicks off and new purchase orders need to be send out.

- Keeping in touch
Keeping in touch with your customers and prospects by wishing them Happy Holidays can start an open conversation.

Social call instead of Sales call

Probably a sales call will not be appropriate around this time of the year, but chatting informally about the industry, business and then mention a few functions, features or benefits of your solution(s).
After all it might turn out that the year-end is not really slow, but good for staying in touch, discussing objectives and opportunities,

Tell your sales reps there is always something to do in Sales – whatever time of the year ! if they not agree then fire them.
Happy Calling Season as Xmas and New Year are an opportunity to address people differently

Christmas Is Cancelled (Part One) from Mark on Vimeo.

We all want leads at the lowest cost.
Preferably quality leads at no money.

Leads come at a cost

The problem is that in most cases (if not all) leads don’t come for free. It is possible to have an accidental sale where the lead has presented himself from a market segment you haven’t addressed or didn’t target at all. These are the real exceptions, as generating leads is costly and is in most cases a result of a process that has been running over a long time.
If you have generated yours leads through advertising, email marketing, social media, cold calling, trade shows, conferences, website or any other event or marketing effort, they all have required a considerable investment. Not all those investments have been equal and not all marketing investments have the same Return On Investment.

Social Media lead generation

Since the event and availability of Social Media consultants and bloggers have been preaching how easy it is to generated leads through these social media. However it is not: Social Media also requires time, effort and creativity that needs to be invested.
Having your video go viral world wide requires much more than just recording a video and posting it on YouTube. It even appears that most successful viral video’s, which weren’t cheap to create and make, have been supported by a massive email campaign.

Leads requires investment: money or time

In order to generate leads you or your company have to invest. This can be money or time.
If there is ample money then the problem is to choose the best to invest.

If you have limited amount of money then time is what you can invest: like cold calling, content creation.

Optimize the laggards

Still there are investments that companies make but not exploit them fully. Like their website: it costs time and money to create the content, to present nicely the content on the website and to generate traffic. However of all the traffic generated only a minority will contact or be converted into leads. This ad website result can be improved significantly as else it is a waste of time and money.

Analyze for leads

The best way to address the problem of lead generation on a budget is to start with an analysis:
- Who are your current customer: what industry, business, size
- Why did they bought your solution or product ?
- Define your target audience based on your current customers
- Study and understand their buying methods
- Design several market strategies that could work
- Then test these different marketing strategies on a small number
- Discard those that have no or little result
- Alter and tweak those methods that show some result

The best way to generate leads on a budget is whatever way you know to do yourself and seems to work.

How do you generate your leads cost effectively ?

In order to succeed in business with your business or sales you need to know your business and your offering by identifying:

1. The value proposition:
What value does your business or solutions bring ?
What is your value proposition ?

2. The uniqueness:
Many companies have me-too products. Still most of them have at least one unique function or feature that sets them apart.

3. The no competitors:
If you have a completely unique offering then be aware people won’t know about the offering or solution you bring. You will have an uphill battle to explain your solution as hardly anybody has ever heard of your solution.
It is better to have some competitors than none.

4. The perception:
How do you want your business or products to be perceived ?
Outstanding, high quality, low cost, cheapest on the market, exclusive, average but without any risk, market leading, innovative, conservative, …

5. The match with perception:
How does the reality matches with the perception you portray ?
If there is a discrepancy or a gap between portrayed perception and the real stuff, you will need marketing to fill the gap.

6. The business specialty:
Does business have a specialty ?
If your business is common and plain, then how will it get noticed ?
What sets you apart from the rest ?
If your business has a specialty then your marketign can focus on this making it easier and less costly.

7. The target market:
Have you identified your target market ?
The more precise you can identify your target market the better, cheaper and more effective your marketing campaigns can be runt successfully as you don’t need to address to the masses.

8. The target market demographics
Your target market consist of companies who are staffed with people. You should know the demographics of the people that advice on the type of solutions you offer (influencers) and the type of people that take the decisions like:
- Age
- Gender
- Education
- Personal interests
Don’t offer free football tickets in a golf or sailing environment. Know your demographic profiles.

9. The proposition:
According to the type of people you address and communicate a different message is needed:
- Users want functions
- Influencers van features
- Managers advantages
- CXOs want benefits
What change or improvement can your business or solution bring for the people in each of these subgroups of your target market ?
Who will get you the easiest or best to a successful deal ?
Who do you want to promote too and who do you avoid to address ?

10. The SEO:
As your website is an important part and tool in any B2B lead generation and sales process, you need to make sure you use the best SEO in order to get the people from your target market based upon the demographics and the proposition.

11. The channels:
Besides the website you need to consider other channels that are appropriate to send out your marketing messages as they need to match your the demographics of your target market and be suited to carry your proposition.
This can be email, online ads, printed ads, direct mail, cold calling, trade shows, conferences or even social media.
try to figure out which channels are likely to be used by the people in the demographics of your target market.
If they don’t read newspapers then don’t advertise in newspapers.
If they don’t visit trade shows then don’t waste money on trade shows.

12. The lead qualification:
Can you define the qualities or characteristics your lead has to have in order to qualify ?
The better and earlier in your sales process you can qualify your leads or you can dismiss your leads the lower your sales costs will be.
At the same time your feedback to marketing will be faster allowing marketing reacting or adjusting their marketing campaigns.

13. The distribution:
If there is/are a middleman(me) in your distribution (distributor and/or resellers), you need to know how profitable your business is for them. Is it worth for them to invest time (training) and money (storage space) in your business ?Can they make enough or more money on your business or products compared to competing products and solutions.
If there is noting in it for them you won’t sell.

14. The feedback:
All feedback from your channel (distributors or resellers) and end-users is utmost important as you always can improve.
Find ways to get feedback. Even if it comes at a high cost.

The better you understand your business, the better you can promote your business and sell more.

How good do you understand your business ?

Instead of just focusing and pitting all your marketing effort on one channel or one type of marketing will have less effect as multiple touches.

Difficult multiple touches

Once people have seen an ad or marketing campaign on one channel, they seem to be able to filter it out during the next appearances.
Of course if your messages are quite different then multiple touches using one channel can be effective. However what product or brand has enough interesting features or stories to tell in order to have multiple touches ? Even if your product is outstanding, you can only tell once it is outstanding. The next time on the same channel this message will be more or less ignored.

Multiple channels

Hence it is more effective to promote your product or brand using different channels as for first every time of remarking the brand or product on a new channel the interest will be increased.
The more you can make your product or brand be remarked using different channels, even with the same content, the more likely it will stick with your potential customers.

these different channels can be:
- Email marketing
- Direct mailing
- Print advertising
- Online advertising
- Telemarketing
- Social marketing
- Questions or replies on forums and discussion boards
- Press releases

The idea of multiple touches is great, but most products or services are not that interesting in order to generate enough interesting multiple touches.
Instead using more or less the same content or statements on multiple channels will be more effective.

The best would be if you could achieve multiple touches on multiple channels.

Are you using multiple touch or multiple channel or both ?

Currency exchange fluctuations

Once upon a time currencies were relatively stable and a price list could be valid for one year. There was no risk if your price quote was 3 months old.

Currently the currency exchange rates change significantly over a short time.
Publishing a price list becomes a daring undertaking. A gamble on the currency exchange rates. The validity of the price list should be less than one year – maybe even just 3 months in order to limit damages. In any case it leads to confusion for all: salesmen, distributors, resellers and customers.

Turning business into a gamble

Currency exchange rate changes and fluctuations can turn a profitable offer into a money loosing sale as both purchase prices and the sales currency fluctuate fast. Giving a price quote with a validity date of 6 weeks later has become a gamble.
Business shouldn’t be a gamble, but due to the fast changes in exchange rates it has become a gamble. Especially as you can’t predict if your sales currency will go up or down compared to the currency you are purchasing your products or services.
Seems only one thing is sure: the currency exchange rate will have changed significantly during the validity of your price quote. With a bit of luck the currencies get back to the rates when the customers signs the deal.

Uncertainty forecast

As your sales numbers and your purchase prices will fluctuate due to the changes in exchange rates, how will you be able to forecast sales revenue, margin and income ? Simply: NOT.
This uncertainty is exactly what businesses don’t need in these difficult times of recession. if you can’t predict sales, margin and income, you aren’t able to know your cash flow and make your cash planning.
The more uncertain an entrepreneur becomes, the less risk he is willing to take, which leads to less business and innovation.

If these currency fluctuations continue then bartering seems not such a bad idea