Marketing in economic downturn

As Mc McIntosh questions about marketing in ‘Some thoughts about B2B marketing during a difficult economic times’, many will pose the same questions how to get more sales.
Whenever an economic downturn occurs, many of the sales managers or CEO’s decide to start massive cold calling or emailing campaigns.
They need the sales, thus anything will help. Cold calling has proved to be effective before and should still be.

Their logic is: the more prospective calls, the higher the likelihood to get leads, then pipeline gets filled up and eventually more revenue.

However this is like shooting in the dark and the potential targets will be overwhelmed by inquiries from many companies with propositions they are not interested in.
Moreover you can’t push customers that aren’t interested, not even with additional discounts.

Downturns are decision points in time

History has shown that economic downturns are the turning point for changes in selecting solutions.
A solution lasts as first choice or leading as long as the economy grows: no reason for change.
Then the decline in sales or income arrives and managers need to take new decisions.

The easiest decision are going back to the previously proven solutions like mass direct mail, email campaigns and cold calling.

However since the last downturn technology has changed, thus those who will take advantage of new solutions will be the winners.
Changes in technology: the Internet is omnipresent, company websites, email is generic, people know how to use search engines effectively, Instant Messengers, online video, wifi, even mobile Internet.

Cold call on warm leads

Adapting to new technologies and available information, LEADSExplorer proposes a new solution: Cold call on warm leads.
Just call or email those companies who have visited your website and which you have qualified as raw lead.
That will save time, money and effort.
In order to know who to address in these visiting companies has become easier than ever before, thanks to the information available on the Internet as explained by Geoffrey James in Sales Machine. Internet Data Mining allows you to find possible contacts and information about these contacts, which has been automated in LEADSExplorer.

So instead of mass marketing campaigns, just take care of those companies who have visited your website and you have qualified as a raw lead.

7 Reasons to sandbag deals

In 7 Reasons to Sandbag Colin Wilson (Managing Director & Founder FirstBorder) explains why sales reps do sandbag most of their future deals:

1. Pipeline – no funnel
If the sales rep puts in his “maybe” business deals, he will get management on his back if the deal doesn’t crystallizes.
Thus there are only pipeline deals and no funnel.

2. Setting the target
Sales people are paid on commission and commission is function of the target that has been set. If a deal can’t be closed before the end of target, he is better of with moving the deal into the next period.

3. Commission caps
Once a commission cap is reached, more deals won’t bring more income. Thus sandbag the deal until the next quarter.

4. Bad quarter
Instead of having a bad quarter, it is sometimes better to have a terrible quarter and make up for in the next quarter.

5. Protection
By showing all possible deals in the funnel and loosing many of those throughout the quarter will leave a bad impression. Thus delaying these deals, until they become more certain, gives protection.

6. Unwanted attention
Upper management is attracted by big deals, causing unwanted attention and overhead.
By sandbagging, the problem of upper management is avoided.

7. Unnatural Acts
In order to make the numbers for the quarter, any deal in the pipeline needs to be closed at any price by giving discounts. Not good for current and future business. The best thing to do is not to show up the deal in the pipeline at all.

Thus the main sandbagging reasons are:
- The drive to get commission, but without getting punished.
- Avoiding the involvement of Management.
- The personal ROI of the Sales rep.

The careful Sales rep

All good sales men have one or two deals sitting in their drawer, just in case their next quarter isn’t good enough. Also these deals can work as a lightning protector when management gets upset over missing targets or a lost deal.

Solving the CRM failure

As the Sales reps sandbag their deals, no CRM will be up-to-date and will be effectively used as garbage in is garbage out.

There should be an automated link between the lead generation, the actions of the potential customers and the actual sales follow-up in the CRM system for making the CRM interesting and beneficial for the salesman.
By getting or qualifying the leads from the website, using the website as a source of information about the deals and leads and the CRM as an Internet Data Mining tool about the potential customers, the CRM becomes interesting for the Sales rep.
This brings many benefits for the Sales rep to work with the CRM.

The over hyped Online Display Market

As the growth of measured-media has come to an end, marketers increase their spending in unmeasured media such as websites, public relations, data base marketing and social-media websites.
However the effectiveness of the online media over the traditional advertising has not been proven. And is now even being challenged by Abbey Klaassen in Advertising Age, declaring that the Online Display Market is over hyped. As these ads appearing next to content on websites, aren’t much more effective than print ads printed next to print content.

Apparently online ads are most effective when complemented with a branding campaign in other media.

Content is king on the Internet

Perhaps the solution is in having content on the Internet:
Instead of advertising, companies need to create and generate their own content, draw their public. Their content should be more engaging.

There are several prerequisites:
Consumers or buyers should:
- Find the content - amongst all the other content
- Keep the content - it should have value
- Have reasons to share the content - be interesting enough
- Be remarkable

Where to publish content?
- Website
- Blog: corporate or product blogging, like this blog
- Online Articles
- Online White papers
- Online Presentations
- Referencing websites

Question

So are you buying ads just now or creating content that will last “forever” ?

Frank Reed raises some questions in his post Small and Medium Business (SMB) Search Marketing - What’s the Deal? about Search Marketing in SMB’s:
- What is the adoption rate of search marketing?
- Still wasting money on bad spent ads? (like Yellow Pages)
- Drivers to move to the internet?
- What provider to choose?

This has been picked up by Mike Moran in his post where he claims that Small Businesses Need the Internet in order to make more from less.
He points out that there are several hurdles:
- The Internet is still too hard
- Search or Internet marketing as it is a bit scary for them.
- Inertia
- The complexity of the technology: website, SEO, JavaScript, …

We completely agree on all of the above, still we would like to think one step beyond, as we consider having a website and search marketing as a first step:
- How to write and bring the necessary and interesting content? The website needs visitors.
- What would a SMB company get from search marketing efforts?
- What would their website bring as leads?
- Would the website generate new customers?
- Would the website initiate a conversation with potential customers?
- Would their current customers use the communication channel provided?
- Would it decrease sales and marketing costs or increase sales?
- Would Sales get things done and follow-up on leads?

Much depends on the type of business:
- B2C or B2B
- Distributor, Reseller or Retail
- Selling online or not
- Low or high value item or services sales

In B2B LEADSExplorer offers a solution in order to:
- Get leads from the website
- Use the website visit data throughout the sales process
- Nurture the leads or customers
- Combine your website with a CRM
- Feel the pulse of your website for every customer or lead.
- Have the CRM as a source of information instead a data entry application

This beyond having a website and execute search marketing, as this solution involves the website into the lead generation and sales process.
LEADSExplorer leverages the investments already made in the first step.

B2C marketing event

The Tour de France is mass media event, followed by millions of people in many countries during 3 weeks.
During the entire tour during every “étappe” the cyclists, their cycles and even the team manager cars are pictured nicely and get a lot attention during the event this adds up for viewing minutes. Additionally the winner crossing the finish line will be broadcasted almost worldwide on every TV news show and newspaper.

The tour is preceded by a show on the road too: The Publicity caravan
- A 20 km-long procession
- 200 brightly decorated vehicles
- 43 brands represented on average each year
- 15 million gifts distributed
- 45 minutes of rolling entertainment
This adds up to the totals costs, but gives local visibility.
All this is very B2C marketing.

Marketing B2B companies

One would expect only B2C companies sponsoring the “équipes”, however several of the 21 teams are being sponsored by B2B companies:
- CSC Consulting, Systems integration and Outsourcing.
- Saxo Bank Forex and currency trading
- Barloworld Materials handling and warehouse equipment
- Lampre Pre-coated steel production
- Agritubel Equipment for farmers made from tubes

Some of these companies are only selling into 2 or 3 countries, whereas the Tour de France has European and even worldwide reach.

B2B Sport sponsoring

Sponsoring of these sport teams is very expensive. How can these expenses being justified as only a small portion of the total viewing population is to be addressed?

This sponsoring sure will motivate their employees and their customers; still this is only a minor part of the total population watching and following the Tour.

So we wonder why B2B companies sponsor a cycle sports team? During the whole year?
How many leads doe this generate, or has it all to be attributed to customer relationship and branding?
Or are these marketing people are on dope too?

Feed the Search Engines

Google, Yahoo!, MSN Life and all the others are all the same:
You need to feed the Search Engines continuously, as they are like vampires needing fresh blood regularly.
Preferably on a daily basis.
You need to write content on a regular basis and add it to your website or blog as they will suck it in and index it.
Without content they are nothing, just like without blood vampires are nothing.

They get also addicted, as the more you feed them, the more they expect from you as they keep on coming back to your website more often. Tame them by feeding them content.

SERP

On the other hand: once you have reached a certain level or ranking, people will find your website thanks to a high SERP (Search Engine Results Page) and thus they will click more on your link in the found searches.
These clicks will increase the SERP even more: as a perpetual motion.

SEO

Many companies or consulting firms will promise high SERP, but there is no such thing as certainty or guaranteed success in SERP.
To our experience it is the content and the regular new content of the website, and the pages linking to your website.

The Search Engine rules

- Feed the Search Engines with content.
- Feed them on a regular (daily) basis.
- Keep consistent in the content matters and subjects, else they will get confused.
- Use the appropriate keywords in the content.
- Give each page a different title using some of the keywords.
- Make sure the content is interesting for humans to read.
- Publish related content on other websites that link to your website.

- Don’t copy any content word-by-word as you will be punished.
- Don’t cheat with paid links or references.
- Don’t fight the Search Engines: obey

- Beware with reciprocal links.
- Beware of the fact some related to each other.

- Pray to you get linked, referenced and tagged by others.
- Pray to get discussed or commented as this adds to the content interest level.

- Serve the Search Engines, as they will bring you visitors: your lifeblood

Nurturing for visitors

We have nurtured the Search Engines with website content and regular blog posts.
We will keep on nurturing the Search Engines.
We need to come up with new content for getting more visitors.

Thus we need to look on the Internet for new ideas and subjects using the Search Engines.
Avoiding becoming vampires ourselves?

Panic: The Lead selects Open Source

The potential client declares he has selected an Open Source solution.
There are two possibilities:
- He is really planning to use Open Source
- He uses the Open Source as a threat to get lower prices

In both cases you loose…
So the best thing for you is that the lead really adventures the Open Source.

Open Source benefits?

Not free
Only a limited number of Open Source software is really free to use. People who think Open Source = free are at least forgetting operating and maintenance costs.

Not similar or comparable solution
In case of your solution the lead had very specific requirements you had a hard time to match and would have cost investing in additional functions and features.
In case of the Open Source the purpose of the application often is different. The basic requirements of the potential customer are not answered and the specific requirements are often a far cry.

Legal advice
There are legal aspects involved too: try to figure out what exactly is allowed with the Open Source:
- GNU General Public License (GPL)
- GNU Library or “Lesser” General Public License (LGPL)
- GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL)
- Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL)
- Common Public Attribution License 1.0 (CPAL)
- Common Public License Version 1.0
- Open Software License, all versions through 3.0
- Q Public License (QPL), Version 1.0
- Open Public License

It is a myriad of different licenses: thus consider the need and the cost of hiring a lawyer with knowledge in this field before even thinking about using the software.

One possible problem is: when you change or add software, it is likely your modifications have to be put into Open Source too. This could be good: any bugs might be solved by a willing programmer for free. On the other hand, this might also mean that the features you paid for become available to your competitor too.

The Linux specialist
As in most cases the Open Source software is based upon Linux, finding a Linux specialist is required in order to:
- Understand what is required to run the application (type of Linux, server requirements, …)
- Set up the servers
- Installing the application and the Open Source data base (MySQL, ProstgreSQL ?) or other prerequisites
- Running the application
As you only need his services temporarily or not every day, you can only consider a consultant or someone who does it ‘after hours’.

Even if you have an in-house Linux specialist you still have to take his time and thus wage into account.

Business analyst and application specialist
As these software applications are often very refined due to the many people who have contributed, these applications can have many functions and features.

Less is more doesn’t apply in this case.

So you are going to need a business analyst for analyzing what you really need of the solution and if the application really is a solution to your needs.
And additionally an application analyst who knows how to set up and parameterize the application in order to become a solution for your problem/company.

Running the solution
As the Open Source solutions requires to be run on:
- Your own sever: you need to obviously have the server and in house or external competencies about operations (backups, maintenance, …) and the application
- Managed server (at a monthly fee): you still need knowledge about running/upgrading the application.
- Hosted application: Could be a more sensible alternative, but certainly not free either.

Upgrades
An active Open Source project is supported and developed by many developers. New versions are available at all times. Often even ‘nightly builds’ for the masochists among us. Unless the developers get bored and abandon the project, which is not that unusual. You could always fund further development yourself, but for most clients a commitment and investment like this is totally out of scope.

There’s even a site for abandoned projects looking for a new maintainer.

Upgrade path
IF an upgrade is available: Should you upgrade and when to upgrade?

It is well known, upgrading from older sources is sometimes impossible to do, so you need to choose your upgrades carefully. As you are not a specialist in the these matters, who will guide you in order not to get stuck in an older non upgradeable version.

Who will assist in case the upgrade goes wrong ? Who can you hold responsible to fix the problem ? Can you pick up the phone and demand someone to fix this asap ?

Support
In case you bump into an error or a bug, you can post it on the message board or forum, and wait and hope until someone picks it up top solve.
As you are not important in the developers’ community having no status whatsoever, it can take long before your error is being looked at and being solved if it gets solved at all.

With some Open Source applications entrepreneurs have started small support companies, at a cost ofcourse.

Security risk
As the source code is available to any hacker, they can search for security issues to misuse your application or data if it can be publicly accessed on the internet.

‘Security through obscurity is no security at all‘ is an often quoted saying. While this basically is true, there’s no black/white to software engineering. Real-world practical situations are often far from theory and the ideal situation.

One should not depend on security through obscurity. One should also not ignore that there are people looking for bugs in the Open Source application you just installed with the sole intent of exploiting them for their own use.

Conclusion

So let the lead go with the Open Source as he has set his mind on low cost and cheap solution. Although he hasn’t made a complete picture of the costs involved, the customer is always right.

Maybe the lost customer will become a potential customer after a year of running into (to him unknown) problems.

In any case, a follow-up call 9 months later would be in order and might cause you to re-evaluate him as a lead.

The customer is always right.

You have tried free directory listings.
You have executed all possible SEO techniques.
And still your website is mentioned after many, many pages of competitors.

Publish a presentation for a high SERP

You want to get indexed fast and obtain a higher rank (SERP)?
1) Make a PowerPoint presentation.
2) Publish it on Slideshare, Scribd or Authorstream

Publishing tricks

In order to make this successful you need to embed the company or product name into the url of the presentation.
This can be done by:
- Having the name in the presentation title
- Signing up for the service with a username that is your company name or product name.

Example where we used both the username and title
http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/LEADSExplorer-72039-leadsexplorer-1-2-3-slides-leads-crm-lead-generation-website-customer-retention-qualification-123-business-finance-ppt-powerpoint/

http://www.slideshare.net/LEADSExplorer/leadsexplorer-in-123-lead-generation-crm/

We use Scribd less as the upload of the presentations has become painfully slow, reports errors and misses the upload.

Embed presentation in your website

This always looks cool!

Uploaded on authorSTREAM by LEADSExplorer

We consider publishing of presentations as teasing Google, but it also works with Yahoo! and MSN Live.

If you would be interested, how persistent a salesman can be in order to achieve his first goal: managing to get the conversation started with a potential customer, then look into this email thread example with a possible lead.
The approach Dave Kurlan is using is pushing it to the limit, by trying everything just to get a response in order to start a conversation.

Questioning the thread

Although he sends several emails, there is no information of benefits or pitch.
It is amazing people do respond to such “empty” messages.
- Would the goal be attained faster/easier by proposing a possible solution suited to the situation that company is in?
- Would showing the understanding of the problem of the potential lead by the salesman allow starting the conversation faster?
- One can propose a solution even if the addressee says he is not interested. Then you still can ask “Why?” or “How different is your problem?”

Here is an example of a persistent salesman on a market:

The salesman on the market is convinced the ignorant man will buy sunglasses.
Thus he persists in showing, forcing to experience different sunglasses and proofs the quality of his products. He doesn’t give up and gets the conversation started.

Engaging the conversation with knowledge

We are all convinced if you as a salesman fail to get a response or fail to engage a conversation, you need to be persistent in order to get a response. To get a dialog started.
Moreover, if you leave the lead alone, he will not automatically come back to you. You have lost the deal already.

In case your website has been visited by the company, you know already about their interest, that you can enhance with available data on the Internet to be used in your teasing or proposing messages.
Teasing someone with a message that addresses his or the problems of the company, will enhance the likelihood of getting a reply and starting a conversation.

Thus you have to look for clues by:
- The pages visited
- The search terms used
- The originating website
- How the returning visitors get on your website
- How many unique visitors from this company are visiting.
This is to be combined with Information from the Internet on the company, management, people, products and solutions.

In any case you have to be persistent, so don’t give up after the first call or email, neither after the third call.

Consensus on blogging: the reach and influence

Although you could try to calculate the ROI (Return On Investment) of your corporate or product blog (Jason Stamper), still in many occasions there will be no direct link between the blog and the revenue made.
The blog is not solely responsible for making the sales.

As Charlene Li says “The ROI of the blog’s - it’s not about the math”

The main importance of the blog is in the Reach and Influence according to Anne Gentle
Whereas MarketingSherpa explains “How to Calculate a Blog’s Reach & Influence — More Complex Than You Think”
This exposé is commented by Vinny Lingham
Wayne Porter explains in “Blogs- Influence Or Reach?”, how blogging has translated into serious dollars.
Whereas Mark Taylor discusses a study on blogging in “The Increasing Reach and Influence of Blogs”

Summarizing:
A blog has:
- Visitors and thus traffic
- RSS feeds that brings the content to many websites and readers
- Inbound hotlinks from blogs to blogs – traffic quality
- SERP (Search Engine Result Page) improves – blog has the keywords related to your products or solutions
- Voice: this is about the influence.

The problem is that most topics are hard to quantify and difficult to bring into relation with a sale or the changes in revenue as many other factors are influencing too.

Reach and Influence - Trust to be added

The Reach and the Influence are obvious; still we would like to add Trust to the list:

Reach:
A blog can reach far beyond your normal communication channels as it gets duplicated, rewritten or referred to.
The blog reaches different audiences in many parts of the world and many different businesses.

Influence:
The blog can become influential with certain groups or communities.
It can acquire a status.
The blog can also send out the same concept of statement over and over again using different wordings, different content or different thesis. Just like “….. washes whiter than ….”.

Trust:
A blog or the blogger can become a trusted party, as he/she has proved on several occasions to have foreseen the future or has giving the right insight.
The blogger builds a relationship with his readers. The readers identify themselves with the blogger and start knowing him, feel like a friend.

If the trust relation is present and the blogger recommends a product or a solution, this trust will drive people to investigate in the recommended product or solution.

For example, if Seth Godin (Seth’s Blog ), Brian Clark (Copyblogger), Michael Arrington/Erick Schonfeld (Tech Crunch), Liz Strauss (Successful Blog) or Scobleizer who have all been building trust, advices on any product it sure will generate interest, thus visits.

Will people trust corporate bloggers too?
Probably, because of the trust and relationship that has been build.

Thus write a blog that reaches further than your normal audience, influence your market and build trust.
Then harvest on your investment by implementing LEADSExplorer on your website/blog to know the companies who are visiting and find out about their interest.