10 tips from the big dogs. How to do social media marketing right for B2B lead generation.

February 2, 2012 By Kathryn Neal Odell Leave a Comment

We gleaned 10 tips on social media + B2B lead generation from a panel of top marketers from Molex, Navistar and Marketing Innovators International at the BMA Chicago marketing seminar on February 2nd. Whether you’re just starting out with your social media + lead generation strategy or tweaking an existing one, there might be an idea you can use below:

  1. Benchmark the competition to accelerate your strategy.
  2. Make sure you execute your brand (set up accounts for your company) across the major B2B related social media outlets: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. See example of the Molex YouTube channel.
  3. Set a strategy and baseline measurements for each of these social media outlets.
  4. Embrace that social media activity to drive engagement, consideration and conversion to a sales opportunity is a daily activity.
  5. If you’re just starting out with your social media strategy, remember you’ll need to allocate resources not only for the launch but also for maintaining this activity.
  6. Make a point to stay current on new social media technologies so your company can be an early adopter with all the benefits that provides.
  7. Blog. But provide relevant content by capturing your buyer’s persona to produce higher engagement. See this example from Navistar as they connect to those in the trucking industry.
  8. Use keywords in all of your company’s social media outlets with hyperlinks to your site to drive SEO.
  9. Should your social media strategy have an acquisition or retention focus? Focus on current customers first.
  10. Ideas to leverage LinkedIn for B2B lead generation? Use it for targeted ad buys. Join in relevant LinkedIn Group conversations to provide point of view comments and create awareness but avoid being “sales-like” in your comments – think thought leadership.

Want more? Check out: 6 Instant B2B Social Media Lead Generation Improvements

Filed Under: Social Media and B2B Lead Generation

Do you make these mistakes positioning your marketing agency?

January 30, 2012 By Kathryn Neal Odell Leave a Comment

If you run a creative firm or marketing agency, you already know you’ve got a lot of competition. But do you know how to stand apart from those other firms in the eyes of the marketing decision makers you’re targeting? Take a quick look below at what marketing firms and agencies typically grab onto as their points of differentiation:

  1. We’re full service
  2. We offer comprehensive solutions
  3. We provide great ideas
  4. We are results oriented
  5. We use an integrated marketing approach
  6. We have a wide range of experience
  7. We are strategic
  8. We have great chemistry
  9. We provide you with our best people
  10. We have award winning creative

If you’re using this type of positioning – well, so are many of your competitors. And to a corporate marketer, they’ve heard this all before. So, let’s get you positioned the right way. In Tim Williams’ book (Take a Stand for Your Brand), here are some questions to get you started:

  • What kinds of clients have you been most successful attracting in the past?
  • What’s the one thing your agency is most known for?
  • What kind of focus would you choose if you were starting your marketing firm for the fist time?

Next, build your positioning by choosing to do it in at least one of these three ways below:

  1. Focusing on a discipline. Examples: PR, design, digital.
  2. Focusing on a category. Examples: B2B, financial services, technology.
  3. Focusing on an audience. Examples: Seniors, youth, women.

And this positioning gives you a distinct advantage in lead generation and new business development, too. To a corporate marketer looking for a marketing agency, which would stand out more?

  • A full-service marketing firm with great creative…or
  • A brand communications firm that specializes in experience marketing for major travel and entertainment brands like Southwest Airlines and Norwegian Cruise Lines.

Limiting yourself to the things for which you’re most known actually will expand your firm.

Filed Under: Positioning

True differentiation. Is it possible for a consulting or business services firm?

January 22, 2012 By Kathryn Neal Odell Leave a Comment

When you’re a business services firm (staffing, IT, payroll, etc.) or a consulting firm (management consulting, HR consulting, etc.), spend time to discover what you offer that is truly different in the eyes of your decision makers. It will have a significant impact on how you market and sell your services.

Again, always keep in mind that your decision makers are multi-tasking and time-starved. If they aren’t able to instantly see a uniqueness about you, they’ll just put you in the bucket with the rest of your competitors. “Oh, it’s just another (_______) firm.” Fill in the blank with consulting, IT, staffing, etc.

Here are some examples of how to carve a niche for yourself that will help decision makers categorize you in a good way:

  • Staffing firm. Too broad: “We specialize in placing experienced creative and marketing professionals in rewarding positions with a variety of firms.”
  • Staffing firm. A better way: “We specialize in providing on demand talent to digital or interactive marketing departments of B2C companies.”
  • Consulting firm. Too broad: “We create your competitive advantage by aligning your people, processes, culture, and strategy so everyone focuses on your vision.”
  • Consulting firm. A better way: “We work with staffing firms who want to develop and execute a plan to expand globally.”
  • IT services firm. Too broad: “We provide managed IT services.”
    IT services firm. A better way: “We provide IT solutions for small to mid-size companies in the hospitality industry in the Chicagoland area.”

You might think that this is narrowing your market. It is! But by narrowing your target market, you are creating the type of specialization that will make you stand out from your competitors and make it easier to brand, market and sell your services.

Filed Under: More

Simple content marketing plan to support 2012 sales efforts.

November 13, 2011 By Kathryn Neal Odell Leave a Comment

You need to create awareness and educate your prospects. Your salesperson is bugging you for relevant content as she drives opportunities through the pipeline. If you’re strapped on resources, here is a simple way you can get your content marketing started.

  1. Do a quarterly spreadsheet showing: what content is planned each quarter, which formats it will be in, who will create it, when each piece is due, how it will be distributed and how it will be used in the sales cycle. Here is an example from the Content Marketing Institute.
  2. What stage of the sales cycle is the content needed? To educate your prospects or nurture leads? Then plan for things like blog posts, an infographic, a slideshow, a quick video link, results of a survey, “how to” articles and guides or an industry article. During the active part of your sales cycle with a qualified prospect? Case study, whitepaper, webinar, solution comparison outline, demo.
  3. Keep buyer personas in mind for each content piece: influencer, decision-maker, user, etc. Tweak content as necessary to increase relevancy to that person. Click here for more insight on this.
  4. Note on size: Keep content short and highly relevant to your targets or it won’t be read. White paper, survey results: 1-2 pages. Case study: 1 page. Online video: “YouTube” length: 1-3 minutes max. Webinar presentation. 30 minutes max.
  5. Click here to see how you can repurpose or recycle each content piece for maximum impact, such as a blog post that can also be a how-to article download.
  6. Plan how you will distribute each content piece. Link on website, press release, guest blog post, provide link via email campaign to your opt-in list, etc. Then do your social media announcements as each piece is published. Twitter, LinkedIn status update, etc.

To dive deeper into these topics, the Content Marketing Institute’s post on 50 Questions Answered on Content Marketing is a great starting point.

Filed Under: Content Marketing

Are the sales tactics you’re using still in the 1990′s?

October 27, 2011 By Kathryn Neal Odell Leave a Comment

The speed of technology has given us a never-ending supply of cool apps for our smartphones – and revolutionized the new business development model you need for your business services or creative firm.

Take a quick look. Need to upgrade?

You have the Vintage New Business Development Model (1990′s) if:

  • You want your salesperson to “dial for dollars” and “get meetings”.
  • Your biz dev person keeps track of their contacts on a spreadsheet or in their Outlook.
  • You do email blasts to prospects or clients about press releases or the awards you’ve just won.

You have the Progressive New Business Development Model (2000′s) if:

  • Your salesperson uses an online CRM to track sales activity and monitor the pipeline.
  • Your email marketing references case studies.
  • You “get” the importance of lead nurturing in the sales cycle: right message, right time.

You have the Transformational New Business Development Model (2010′s) if:

  • Your CRM is tricked out with marketing automation and other sales enablement apps.
  • You emphasize content marketing to educate/build awareness of your company’s services: buyers know about you.
  • You reduce and reallocate your biz dev roles: lead nurturers and senior closers.


Filed Under: Business Development

More on productizing your services. Solution packages.

September 24, 2011 By Kathryn Neal Odell Leave a Comment

In the previous post, we talked about how B2B services firms and creative firms need to productize some of their services to make selling and buying easier.

When we work with creative firms, for example, we drive their team crazy with this productizing stuff. (How can you productize creativity, they ask.) But because marketers solve problems, creative firms need to sell solutions.

And when we work with our consulting or business services clients on their sales approach, we coach them on how not to say things like, “We’re a consulting firm.” Or, “We’re an IT managed services firm.” It’s just too broad for decision makers to be able to quickly take in how it will solve their particular problems.

Let’s say that you’re a marketing agency and one of your specialties is providing content marketing. You can’t just approach companies and say, “We offer content marketing services. Is this a current challenge of yours?”

What they’ll say: “We’re handing this all in-house.” What they’re thinking: “Sounds expensive. Sounds complicated. I don’t have time to figure this out.”

Your buyers are looking for the Staples’ Easy Button when it comes to solving their problems.

And that is why productizing some of your offerings does the trick. In the above scenario, you can:

  1. Develop content marketing service packages at different price points
  2. Name these service packages
  3. Develop a sell sheet on each

You can offer them different “turnkey solutions” that makes it easier for them to understand and easier to buy.

This still leaves the door wide open for your other services and other “non-productized” or customized things that you do.

The important thing to remember is that your targeted decision makers are overworked and time-starved. Give  them clear, easy to understand options so all they have to do is say, “I’ll pick Option B!”

Filed Under: Productizing

Why a business services firm productized their offerings.

September 9, 2011 By Kathryn Neal Odell Leave a Comment

You already know that you have a lot of competitors. And frequently you are going after the same decision makers. Besides a focus on your true differentiation (see this blog post), as a business services or creative firm, you must consider productizing some of your offerings. Make it easier for your salesperson to sell – and easier for your decision makers to buy.

We talked to a Chicago database and CRM consulting firm, Anthem Marketing Solutions, about their success with the productized services strategy.

Why did you decide to productize your services? “We decided to productize some of our services and approaches for two reasons,” said Christopher Carroll, their COO. “To differentiate our business from the competition and to aid our business development efforts. It’s much easier to market a branded solution than it is to sell a broad menu of capabilities. This is our ‘tip of the spear’ strategy, whereby we lead with a turnkey product that’s accompanied with a specific set of steps, objectives and outcomes. Once the tool’s been deployed and the client relationship is solidified, we may introduce additional services to aid the client.”

“From a business development perspective, it has resulted in more leads, more qualified conversations with prospective clients, more new projects, and stickier relationships.”

Filed Under: Productizing