SMB Marketing Blog

A Complex Sale is simply defined as one where there is more than one person participating in the purchase decision. This may be a single decision-maker supported by various official and unofficial influencers or many decision-makers. With small business defined as those with fewer than 100 employees, and medium-sized business with fewer than 1000 employees, many B2B transactions will involve a complex sale.

Complex sales take longer to close and the chief risk is wasted resource expenditure on unwinnable deals.  A formalized sales process mediates risk by answering the ‘fit’ questions before the process can proceed from one stage of the sales cycle to the next.  A formal Sales Process is a form of qualification that assures and optimizes revenue generation.

You can develop your own Sales Process but I highly recommend that you adopt or customize proprietary methodologies such as Miller Heiman.  Many SFA (Sales Force Automation) and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools embody the principles of these Sales Processes.

A critical component of your sales process is modeling the decision-making process of your target customer.  Often they will have a semi-formal process for purchase decisions.  In this case you have a ready-made model which the target customer will generally disclose to you.

The Sales Cycle assumes intelligence-gathering at every stage but the initial stage is probably the most important.  Your first contact into the target customer is the Entry Point.  Often individuals in organizations are tasked with vetting vendors.  In traditional businesses this individual is called a purchasing agent.  In technology companies it may be a Product Manager.  Whatever the title and function, you must identify this individual, engage that individual and persuade sufficiently to allow you to proceed to the next step.

Just as importantly, you must gather the information you need to help you decide if it is worthwhile to proceed to the next step.  To the less experienced this may be opposite of what should be done, but it is essential to a winning Sales Process.  Think of discarding cards on your way to a winning poker hand.

So the question circling of late, over the past weeks for me but arguably it probably goes back months for some, is whether there is true business, or more specifically marketing value for B2B within social networks, like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.  “It’s about tapping into the network, it’s about building brand, it’s about SEO”, -  I’ve read it all. Facebook is more social, LinkedIn is for the business professional, and well Twitter … a fad!

As an executive in a SaaS based start-up in B2B marketing automation for SMB’s, I’m looking into how to capitalize on these mediums and so I have been exploring and evaluating all of them. And for me it came down to -  Can you make money on your investment, albeit in this case the big investment is time. That being said, isn’t that what all business decisions come down to?

So in cutting to the chase and as the title proclaims, I’m a sceptic turned convert. My first experiences were frustrating to say the least. How could this possibly add business value through marketing, it’s noisy -I didn’t care what people were eating at that moment (albeit amusing at times), physically doing, etc.- and it consumed way too much time and I wasn’t getting any immediate return. But with time and invested effort (ie don’t follow those Twitter’ers that post what they’re doing, literally), it started to fall in line.  As they say, patience is a virtue.

The decision for me was about going back to the fundamentals of marketing.

The definition on Wikipedia states: Marketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.

Seems straight forward and obvious. Social media clearly presents a medium for communicating, delivering and exchanging of offers, the question is whether you can identify YOUR customers, clients and partners within the membership. Hey, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it … the opportunity lies for those able to “crack the hard nut” and find the customers in the communtity.

So again, it comes back to Generate, Manage and Convert – generate your leads through inbound marketing activities through the social media groups. Manage and nurture the leads with an automated marketing solution. And in the end you identify qualified leads ready to convert to sales. An investment with a measurable return – Business value!

So I began the process as a sceptic and now confess I’m a convert. And who wouldn’t be …. A large community, green fields, many challenges, but apparent opportunity and a clear demonstrated value for a start-up business like ours by using Social Media to drive our inbound marketing. An apparent ground swell there for the taking. So we’re currently using social media to raise awareness, build brand and grow the top line through new customer acquisitions.

We’ll see where this adventure takes us ……..

You can find me on;

Twitter - www.Twitter.com/tsydoryk

FaceBook - http://www.facebook.com/people/Terry-Sydoryk/884015014

LinkedIn - http://www.linkedin.com/pub/0/028/648

Do you have an innovative, breakthrough B2B product?  Are you wondering why every sale seems to be a slugfest when you have the best thing since sliced bread?

In 1994, I was given Geoffrey Moore’s book, Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers by one of my staff who had attended a vendor seminar in Mountain View, CA.  When I got around to reading it, I was in near shock.  I had just spent the past three years learning the hard way how to market to early adopters.  I considered those techniques to be my personal secrets.  And here was everything spelled out in black and white in a book published in 1991.

I was working for a small computer animation software company in a relatively young market.  We had a breakthrough product but our market was divided:  A few prospects couldn’t wait to get their hands on our software, while most just scratched their heads and couldn’t be bothered.

By carefully listening to our customers I discovered that many of them knew of each other.  Through more listening and research I developed a profile for this type of customer.   A very simple dimension of the profile was years of experience.  The market was growing and the longer an individual was in that business, the more likely they knew the opinion-makers.  Picture a pyramid growing.

By Year Three we had developed tailored marketing messages and collateral to appeal to this audience.  The messages and collateral  just made ordinary prospects scratch their heads even more.  We even modified our largest Trade Show booth from an open demo kiosk plan to one where we had three separate private demo rooms for invited guests.

More importantly I recognized that our sales were being invisibly supported by something Moore had pointed out.  He defines a market as:

• a set of actual or potential customers
• for a given set of products or services
• who have a common set of needs or wants, and
• who reference each other when making a buying decision.

Moore goes on to say:

Getting the last part – the notion that part of what defines a high-tech market is the tendency of its members to reference each other when making buying decisions – is absolutely key to successful high-tech marketing.

Your product or service may appeal to a wide range of businesses but unless those businesses can reference each other you don’t have a market.  Marketing to the computer animation software market at large was a waste of time.  By marketing to a smaller group of prospects we increased annual sales 10X in less than three years.

The key to marketing technology to nascent markets is a deep knowledge of customer requirements and an understanding of how early adopters acquire, assimilate and share information on their buying decisions.

Among web analytic statistics, the bounce rate is one of the metrics often overlooked by many marketers. A bounce rate is the percentage of single page visitors to your website that leave your website quickly after arriving. Some advanced systems also use visit duration to calculate bounce rate which treats visitors as bounces if they stay on the site for less than 5 seconds.

Bounce rate can also be defined as a negative statistic. It measures how engaging your website is to your visitors and how it relates to them. It also measures how effective and ‘sticky’ your landing page is when it’s used with a campaign. Lack of relevancy is a major cause of bounces, and solving this can increase lead generation by an order of magnitude.

A high bounce rate usually indicates something wrong with your website’s landing pages. However, the problem can also be caused by where you acquire your traffic. Let’s look at a few things you can do to reduce bounce rates (lower is better).

Analyze the bounce rate for your traffic sources
Many inbound marketers use social media as part of their marketing campaigns. However, many of these referrers are of low-value. These visitors aren’t “looking” when they arrive at your website so they tend to leave immediately. You don’t have to worry too much about bounce rates from these traffic sources but you should know which referrers contribute to the higher bounce rates. If you are using social media advertising like Facebook ads, you should have a specific landing pages to create demand and guide your visitors to whatever you’re advertising.

Not giving the banana to the monkey
This is a classic conversion problem. When people arrive at your website and can’t find what they want, they leave right away and go to your competitors website instead. You only have a few seconds to let the visitors know that they are at the right place so “give the banana to the monkey”.   Make sure you have clear and obvious conversion points for your visitors.  These conversion points should also tailor to the different interests of the visitors such as  home buyers vs home sellers at a realtors website.  While home buyers want to see what listings are available, the home sellers want to know why they should use the provided services to advertise their homes.

Match interests to the sales cycle
This is mainly related to organic search engine traffic. A website might rank highl on certain keywords but these keywords are often irrelevant.  Similar to the previous point, when people don’t find what they are looking for, they leave. Many ‘content’ websites with high search visibility often receive high traffic for irrelevant search terms. You should understand the Search Buying Cycle and adjust your content to use keywords according for different phases of the buying cycle.  Also avoid having too much unrelated content, like too much profile information on every client.

Improve landing pages
Pay-Per-Click campaigns often have high bounce rates.  Simple landing pages with only one call to action are often the issue. Email marketing campaign can possibly cause high bounce rate too if the subject line is misleading or the links take visitors to an unrelated page.  It might also be the offer that’s too aggressive (eg buy now) on the landing page. Consider having micro-conversions on the landing pages. A micro-conversion doesn’t turn the visits into sales but it turns visitors into leads so that you can nurture them into sales. This is particularly effective for B2B.

B2B websites typically have average bounce rates of 10-30%. If your bounce rate is higher than that, you should flag it and find out why. Having high bounce rates doesn’t mean the end of the world if you understand what’s causing it and take actions to improve it. It might take a few round of tests to nail it down but the effort you put in will turn your website into one that’s relevant for your visitors. They will engage if it fits their needs.

Google calendar

2009 is here and so is our new blog. We wanted to share what we see as best practices to help contribute to the B2B marketing community. Much has changed (for the better I might add) as online marketing and  advertising, email and search engine marketing has made selling to their customers more effective and efficient. Businesses everywhere can now reach their market instantly, globally and with a fraction of the millions it used to take.

Of course, our ActiveConversion SaaS product has helped lead this charge, especially for SMBs, tech companies and B2B services companies. But it’s a combination of tools, content and tactics such as online marketing that make this strategy work. And that’s why we started this blog – to give you quick tips and techniques to make your B2B marketing REALLY work.

If you haven’t already, to understand what we mean for this first post, read a synopsis of  Seth Godin’s ‘Meatball Sundae’. Essentially, Seth’s thesis is that you can’t just mix something you want (like ice cream), to something you still like (like meatballs), and expect a good result. The book postulates that new marketing (like social marketing) won’t work well when just added haphazardly to existing marketing. As a result, it then gets dropped, with the familiar ‘we tried it, and it didn’t work for us’ excuse.

A simple example we’ve seen are websites. Most websites are still being built by companies used to creating brochures. So what you get is an electronic brochure  that (usually) look great, but aren’t measured, have no calls to action, aren’t search engine optimized and generally fail. We’ve even seen websites without a single form on the site – which make sense in a Meatball Sundae – brochures don’t have forms!

In any case, we hope to help usher in a new generation of B2B marketing, that will make your business or company more successful in the year(s) to come. We hope you’ll follow it and profit!

Happy New Year!