Branding is the most difficult part of marketing and it can take years to achieve recognition of the brand by people or potential buyers.
We consider our blog as promoting the brand of the solution.
Whatever channel is used by the reader:
- The blog on our website
- Reading using rss
- Reading on a blog aggregation website
- A micro blog excerpt with a link to the blog
The content that is linked with the brand name brings eyeballs.
Thus similar as advertising but paid with content.
However there are differences with advertising as the blog posts:
- Are the advertising themselves: spreading the brand name.
- Attract interested parties because of the content itself: target the market with content.
- The distribution is uncontrolled: from one original copy to many on blog aggregation website
- Can get bookmarked on StumbleUpon, Digg, Mixx, Reddit, Propeller, Buzz generating more traffic
- All the different bookmarks and copies get indexed by search engines increasing search weight
Some of the visitors reading the blog will click through to the website, looking into the proposed solution.
The content of the blog posts have subjects related to the market we are serving, thus should attract the right audience.
The more people (like you) read our blog posts, the higher the change of getting remembered when it comes to buying a solution for lead capturing or lead generation using the website or nurturing prospects and customers.
The more noise our blog can make, the more our blog posts are getting referenced, the more eyeballs and the more branding.
At the same time the posts are building trust as the brand becomes a more familiar or recognized name.
So who do you call when you need leads from your website? (Not Ghostbusters)
Reach your leads early in their buying process on your website
Advertising is easy:
The company has a marketing budget.
The marketing manager calls the advertising agency for an advertisement concept.
After meetings and trials the advertising is ready.
The invoice for the concept gets paid to the advertising agency.
The marketing manager then orders a media campaign.
After meetings the invoices get paid to both the media agency and the media.
Then the marketing manager orders a survey of the effect of the advertising campaign.
In case of an online advertising campaign many numbers can be generated.
Again the invoice gets paid.
Main effort for the company:
Ordering and spending money as creativity is outsourced.
Money cannot create social media
There are many forms of social media: from participation in forums to commenting on blogs to writing a blog.
In all of these cases efforts are required that cannot be outsourced.
Each of these efforts can be minimal, but will add up significantly over one day, one week, as each of them require a statement or a positioning.
For larger publicly traded companies this even becomes nearly impossible as each statement needs to be approved by the corporate communications director.
Requirements of a blog
In case of writing a blog there are at least 2 or 3 posts a week required else:
- The effectiveness will be minimal
- The return on investment near by zero as there will be no followers or recurring readers.
Thus the effort and the time invested become important.
The writing itself is probably not the biggest issue. The original content is.
Someone or a team in the company needs to:
- Find new ideas and concepts related to the company or business
- Needs to react to events in the market and the world
- Needs to position the products or solutions with the subjects
- Bring entertainment by the writing
This is not a task lightly to undertake.
Moreover the quality of the posts needs to be high and consistent in order to draw attention and enough readers.
Companies can spend large amounts on blogging but with no result as there is no interest.
Create content
Thus the problem is not in just paying money to writers.
It is to generate enough interesting content regularly by the writer or writer staff.
- Writing on demand is never the same as writing from the hart.
- Writing a blog post several times a week becomes like writing a TV soap.
- Writing needs to bring entertainment.
- Writing needs to generate interest
Then there are more issues:
- The feelings, conviction and the passion for the business, products and the company needs to be embedded into the writings like a CEO would do.
- The CEO or other directors need to agree upon the content and ideas exposed in the blog posts.
These requirements demand that the writer will need a high status and position within the company as he or his team is responsible for more than just a page a day, as they become the face of the company.
Blogging can not be solved with paying an invoice.
Blogging requires more than just writing.
Small companies can challenge the big corporations
This could change the face of business for good, as:
- Big cash rich companies can spend millions on advertising
- A small company can spread ideas and information thus penetrate and conquer market segments at a very low cost.
Thus for the first time in the industrial world, money isn’t the sole method to bring guaranteed success as any competitor large or small can challenge big advertising spenders with a quality content using social media.
Ads are easy, social media is not.
Social media requires hard work, intelligence, conviction, passion, skills and involvement.
Cold call on warm companies: those who have shown interest on your website
The current Alexa ranking: 497,914
When on July 11 it was only ranked 962,000
We know Alexa is inaccurate. Still between 1,000,000 and 500,000 there is a significant difference.
No expenses
- No advertising
- No email campaigns
- No paid links
- No paid bloggers
Not spending any money
Just content
- Content on website: about 70 pages
- Content in the blog: a page a day keeps visitors coming
- Content in comments
Where did we get this traffic?
1) Search engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN: 50%
2) Bookmarking on StumbleUpon, Digg, Mixx, Propeller: 12%
3) Comments on other blog posts: 17%
4) Direct hits: 17%
All other sources count for less than 4%
Bookmarking can vary significantly as:
- You can’t control the bookmarking at all
- The number of visitors it attires varies.
Note: Don’t ever bookmark yourself.
The Direct hits are the surprise as this means that:
- People enter www.LEADSExplorer.com directly into their browser.
- People have bookmarked the website in their browser.
Traffic is great.
However traffic isn’t leads.
And still far away from paying customers.
Double post with more or less content: as a test to see which one gets the most traffic
Cold call on warm companies: those who have shown interest on your website
If you sell a solution for improving or increasing sales you need to know what the interests are related to your solutions or products by the decision marker: VP Sales or CEO.
- More sales
- More leads
- More qualified leads
- Easy sales process
- Organized leads follow-up
- Better lead management
- Less missed opportunities
- Less expenses
- Convenient communication methods
- Higher margins
- Meet or exceed the quarterly numbers
- Have a backlog for the next quarter
Mindset of CEO or VP Sales
Are CEO’s or VP Sales actively searching on the Internet for solutions that improve their sales?
Probably not, as they are busy and occupied with day to day tasks and operational problems.
Their mindset is not to go Google on these matters or to find tools or solutions that could help.
Their mindset is on the market segment they have to sell to, finding customers, watching competitors and to manage their sales people in selling.
Are these methods still effective?
- Cold calling a VP Sales or CEO is not hard to do
- Does your VP Sales or CEO read the direct mail he receives by post or email?
- Is your VP Sales or CEO still influenced by advertising or advertorials?
- Press releases can be effective if the content get edit by journalists as these are trusted parties.
- Trade shows and conferences require travel and time: thus less likely to happen.
Note: Cold calling stays an option, especially if you could cold call on warm companies: those who have shown interest in your products or solutions on your website. As you also know the specific interest in one product or solution, you can start an interesting conversation with the VP Sales or CEO.
Indirectly
Addressing them directly is not feasible, then you need to communicate to the parties they trust or have a business relation with:
- Marketing agency, Web agency, PR agency
- Sales and management consultants
- The influencers in the company
Reaching these agencies or consultants might be easier as they are always looking for new business, thus actively searching and investigating.
The same applies for the influencers as they also are keen on finding new methods and solutions as it is in their nature and gives them the opportunity to be interesting.
These people you can reach by generating content and news:
- On your website
- White paper syndication
- Article writing for industry magazines (print or on-line)
- Blogging (a blog a day keeps trouble away)
- Press releases.
- Speaking at conferences
By reaching indirectly you need to have a clear benefit for those parties involved. Think about this benefit and define it before your engage into a conversation with them as they expect this.
Limited resources
As the resources of company are limited, you need to decide how to use the available capacity. Thus you need to decide where to spend time and efforts in order to get the VP Sales and CEO of companies interested when approaching them directly or indirectly.
Currently, as the service is still in Beta, we just blog and have content on our website.
How do you reach a VP Sales or the CEO of a company?
Reach your leads early in their buying process on your website
The Brand that will withstand
a recession is the Brand
that will become bigger
when we all again get richer.
A Brand you trust during harsh times
is the Brand that you remember lifetimes.
If you take leadership or impose your brand during recession, people will remember the brand during better times.
What to do during recession?
- Larger Brands should look in (or develop) their offering for growth products
- Niche Brands should focus investment on core their Brand
- Weaker Brands can only survive if the price versus quality is right
- Luxury Brands will do less good to the larger public. However there is still and will be a large population of rich people.
Great depression of 1929
During the great depression of 1929, successful companies like Procter & Gamble (soap opera’s), Kellogg’s, Camel cigarettes and Chevrolet relied heavily on advertising for creating brand loyalty.
The new communication channel was radio.
So what are you going to do?
Less advertising or more advertising?
People and companies will keep on buying, but will shift and change their requirements.
The new communication channel is Social media.
Adopt new communication channels and lead generation methods?
Or stick with proved methods and channels?
Reach your leads early in their buying process on your website
Another world wide retail brand without advertising is The Body Shop brand as Anita Roddick (founder) didn’t believe in advertising.
However she got dismissed as she should have started using advertising.
Success in retail is the most difficult to achieve as you need to address the masses: millions of people.
Companies in retail are spending signifcant parts of their revenue on their advertising. Thus not advertising can make a huge difference in profits.
B2B without advertising
In B2B there are probably several examples of companies without advertising, but the most striking big brand name is certainly: Google.
Google is a service for consumers and business people, but sells an advertising service to businesses: AdWords that generates revenue for websites having AdSense.
Word of mouth
The secret of the success of Inditex: word of mouth advertising.
Read the story behind Inditex.
Their customers (mostly women) do show off their clothing they buy at fair prices, thus other people (women) will talk about them if they look great in them. As competition is strong in the fashion market (retail), the success of Inditex is even more remarkable as their competitor H&M is all about advertising: the louder the better in order to stimulate word of mouth.
The competitive edge of Zara (Inditex) over H&M is their complete vertical integration: from design to sewing/stitching to distribution and selling allowing good quality for a fair price.
Although Google is in advertising, they really never have spent any significant amount of money on advertising: not online and not in print.
Google offers incredible free services, where people talk and blog about.
They spend significant amounts of money on free services that have created word of mouth.
How you could not spend on advertising?
So how could you achieve the same without spending money on advertising?
For a start you need customers in order to start word of mouth.
Then these customers need to be very satisfied with your products, solutions or services in order to recommend them to others.
The problem is in your products:
Are your products remarkable enough to be talked about?
Probably not.
The cost to give away products for free will be too high, thus you need other means to get the word out.
Referrals, quotes, case studies, white papers, conferences and press releases
The problem with B2B products, solutions or services is that they are mainly used within the company walls. Thus no exposure to the world for your solutions.
This is the rule for most products used in business, except for a few products or services for marketing as they are being shown to others: like website design, trade show boots, marketing videos, …
In most cases people won’t show your business products to the world, but their own products made with your solutions.
This is why referrals, quotes and case studies are so important.
Use them on your website, in Press Releases, your newsletter and during conferences or trade shows.
They are worth every effort as obtaining the grant to use their logo and story will not be without effort.
Ask yourself: who of your customers could agree upon:
- to be used as reference in meetings?
- to have their logo on your website?
- to have a case study or white paper written about their application of your solution?
- to be mentioned in a press release?
- to present on a conference about their case study?
- to present on a conference organized by your company?
- to participate in a panel talk on a conference related to your solution?
Social media
If you get lucky, social media could get on your side of your brand.
Just do not count on this.
This blog occasionally gets bookmarked, but that has only a temporary effect.
Reach your leads early in their buying process on your website
The actors in this plot say what they think, which is not exactly what they should say in a normal business environment.
The inconvenient truth - not suited for business.
The inconvenient truth in business
Would you be able to say what you really think during your sales process?
- Would people be able to take the truth?
- How much do you say that you are honestly convinced of when meeting people?
- During a sales meeting, do you really mean everything you say?
- Would life and business be easier if we all would tell the truth or your real opinion?
In any case you would not sell much anymore.
Is doing business walking on thin ice too?
Maybe the truth in business and selling is that the whole truth or the real opinions are never been told.
This is the inconvenient truth.
Business and sales people all walk on thin ice in order to get business done.
Reach your leads early in their buying process on your website
In order to reach your customers in B2B you need to make very clear what the company is selling, create awareness and spread the brand name.
During the buying process people need to come up with your band name in order to get on the short list of possible vendors.
This is exactly what Still GmbH does since many years by putting a scaled-down model of their forklift trucks on top of their service vans in many countries.
Benefits
Thus anywhere in traffic their statements are very clear:
- They sell forklift trucks
- They are in demand as you see them often
Comparing with the typical painted van with logo and tag line:
- These have lesser impact
- Are less remarkable
- 2-D whereas this is 3-D
- High up thus more likely to be spotted over a big distance
Is this effective?
Probably as Still does it still since many years.
Problems:
- Not really ecological as these mini models on top of their vans do consume energy.
- Not al companies have service vans driving around the country.
- Not all products or solutions are suited to be placed on top of the roof of a van.
- Only a few products are enough recognizable when put on display.
- If you have a wide product range, which one should you place on the roof?
Issues for Still
- As these vans equipped with models of their forklifts have become the brand image of Still GmbH, removing these from the vans would raise questions about the company.
- Still GmbH has a much wider product range, but you can’t put all of them on a roof of a van.
- Some people probably won’t buy, because of the waste of energy.
- Calculating the Return On Investment will be impossible: how to measure the advertising, awareness and branding effectiveness of these vans?
So how could you promote your business physically in order to:
- Communicate clearly your products?
- Bring awareness and branding?
Reach your leads early in their buying process on your website
Online advertising exists in different formats:
- Google AdSense
- Text link ads
- Banners
- Pop ups
- Paid top links on search result page
Who clicks?
Do you click on these advertisements?
No.
Do you know anybody who is clicking on these online ads?
Who is clicking on these advertising?
- Less experienced Internet surfers
- Less educated Internet surfers
- Accidental clickers
- Youngsters
- Lower income
- Outside major metro regions
Not exactly the people you want to have as visitor on your website as they are not your typical customer (ChasNote).
In a business environment even less people will click on the online ads, as people are probably more experienced and do not fall into the category of the “Natural Born Clickers“.
Thus how sure you are you have clicks from people in companies if you don’t know if it’s a company or not?
If you can’t measure you don’t know.
If you don’t know you are wasting the marketing budget of the company.
As Danny Flamberg says: “Pay no attention to anything like online metrics”
If you accidental click on a pop up and then link slows down the progress of your applications or Internet as the build up of the pop-up or new webpage requires computing power.
Then you will pay even less attention to what is appearing on your screen, as you start reaching for clicking the “X” in order to close the pop-up (in case you can find the “X” or “Close”).
Thus you focus on the “X” instead of the message or picture.
It annoys, disturbs and slows down your work.
Thus this is destroying the online advertising as said by J.W. Crump in theBivingsreport.
Who is clicking on ads in B2B?
So if:
- You
- Your colleagues
- Your friends
aren’t clicking on the online advertisements, WHO IS?
Some people must be clicking, that probably aren’t employees of companies.
Online ads in B2B can be wasting company money.
Marketing should know the clicking companies
Marketing department should know who is clicking by company name!
Then they can measure and calculate the Return on Investment on B2b online ads (ROI).
Get a web service that reveals the company names of your website visitors.
Microsoft has dumped the career of Bill Gates in sitcoms and has changed to address Apple with their Mac advertising campaign: “I’m a PC - I’m a Mac”.
This campaign is very clear and to the point: no more clues and hints like the Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates sitcoms.
Microsoft addresses the advertising of Apple, where the PC has been “made into a stereo-type”, very directly with the same tagline “I’m a PC”, showing all kinds of people declaring they use the PC too.
These videos are clear enough to be understood by the public it is intended for.
Apple Mac is the wrong opponent
The Apple Mac still has a low market share of 10%(worldwide).
Microsoft addresses the wrong opponent, the wrong competitor.
People no longer care so much about their computer as long as it allows them to surf the Internet.
On-line applications have become more important than off-line.
Web services using a browser are becoming the most popular platform.
Web services instead of Microsoft: Office, Dynamics CRM, Financials,…
People use web services both at home and in businesses:
Consumers:
- Banking transactions: on-line (any bank)
- P2P Payments: online with Paypal
- Buying: online shopping with eBay
- Calling: on-line with Skype
- Writing: online with Google Apps
- Video: online with YouTube
- Finance planning: online with Mint
Businesses:
- Banking: online
- CRM: online
- Lead generation: online
- Web analytics: online
- Conference calls: online
- Webinars: online
- Office: online
- Project: online
- Invoicing: online
- Accounting: online
- ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning): mostly on a local server
So instead of attacking Apple, it might have been better to send out a positive message on how good Microsoft is into you enabling to use web services. “Enabling web services for the people”
As this expresses your real use and goal.
Do you buy a Mac? a PC? Or a Linux notebook?
Who still cares?
No, you will just buy a device that gets you onto the Internet with the least hassle.
This can be a computer or a mobile device, as long as it delivers you the Internet for the web services you need.
Who cares about the operating system, as long as you get your service without a headache.
Browser wars
Whether you use a PC, a Mac or a Linux, they all deliver you the Internet through a browser.
The browser wars are much more important!
FireFox (52%), Internet Explorer(26%), Safari(10%), Opera, Chrome (according to ReadWriteWeb)
The Browser will be the new operating system independent from any operating system and nay hardware: computer or mobile device (smart phone - PDA).
This has already been made clear by Google Chrome, to be used for many reasons:
- To enable applications in your browser
- To collect data from you as Google is into advertising
- To eliminate Microsoft Operating system domination
The problems: browser and web services
Thus attacking Apple won’t matter, as the real problem are the browser and the web services.
It is probably a waste of time.
About your business and marketing
Big companies get it wrong
As it has been always before: the Big leading companies with big money overlook the real problem.
Maybe their marketers no longer speak to the people or business owners.
Probably they loose contact with their users.
They address the wrong problems at the wrong moment.
Small to medium companies better get it right
In your small or medium sized company you cannot make such mistakes as it will be felt in the bottom line fast, because of the high advertising costs.
The advantage you have over the big companies is that you are nearer to your customer or even part of the community of smaller and medium sized businesses.
Knowing your problems is in many cases knowing their problems and pains.
Moreover you should be aware of the threats for your business.
Try to define your opponent or your biggest threat in order to have your answers ready whenever your customer or the potential customer starts asking questions.
If you dare you can address the threat directly with advertising.
Just be sure to pick the right threat, as advertising costs money and your audience of buyers and potential buyers need to understand it and recognize the situation or problem you are addressing.
More Microsoft videos on the same theme
Two more videos from this series found by TechCrunch
And it just keeps going on: maybe less is more.
Who cares about the operating system as we all use web services?
The functions and features of the web service for a certain price are more important to you.
The integration or data exchange of the different web services is a bigger issue.
If an European retail giant like 
Another world wide retail brand without advertising is 
In B2B there are probably several examples of companies without advertising, but the most striking big brand name is certainly: 
As competition is strong in the fashion market (retail), the success of Inditex is even more remarkable as their competitor 
Benefits
Do you click on these advertisements?
Microsoft has dumped the career of Bill Gates in 
