Experience-based marketing is not a new concept, as it has been around for a while and many B2C companies have had a lot of success implementing it. The challenge is for B2B companies to use such techniques to advertise and market. Experience marketing gives the target audience a first hand experience by giving the audience the ability to touch, feel, see and know your offering or product.

Max Lenderman, the author of “Experience the Message“,  says engaging potential customers is more important than shoving advertisements into peoples’ faces. With an attention span of 8 seconds which is equal to that of a goldfish, it is really hard to reach the target audience minds with one or two or even 10 instances of our marketing campaigns. I like two examples that Max Lenderman gave at the Art of Marketing event.

Example 1: In India having a cell phone has become the fifth necessity after food, housing, clothes and electricity. Most of the people in rural places are not educated and their main preoccupation is with farming. Reaching such an audience to promote products is a difficult task. Billboards, TV, newspaper ads or online ads are all off limits. How do companies reach such audiences? The way marketing agencies do that is by implementing experience based marketing. They use pop ups in stores where they engage the audience via a street play, drama or musicals.

Example 2: Charmin, the maker of bathroom tissue, opened up a few free to use washrooms in one of the busy New York areas. People in New York’s Time Square area had resorted to washroom use in Starbucks or nearby restaurants. Now people are happy to see these public washrooms conveniently situated  that also provide an experience nothing like they have ever experienced before. In addition to providing a washroom facility, Charmin has richly decorated that place with fancy chairs, and a stage to dance and sing while waiting. Many people have left with pictures and most importantly praise and promise to use only Charmin from there on. View the video.

Takeaways for B2B marketers:
1.      It is more important to engage with the audience while marketing or showing off your product.

2.      Instead of spending thousands of dollars in billboards, banner ads and other expensive ads, make use of experience based marketing by giving away  free to use products and giving prospects a first hand experience.

3.      B2B marketers can learn from these examples by letting their potential customers experience the product before making a decision like the 30 day free trial by ActiveConversion.

4.      Make it easier for them to use/try the product. It is easier to make people switch if you change the environment to making ease of use your priority.

To all you B2B marketers, can you bring the flavor of experience into your marketing?

We at ActiveConversion make use of various social media channels – with our presence in Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn groups, Slideshare, YouTube, Digg, StumbleUpon, Flickr and many more. Keeping track of all these social media channels and updating them on a regular basis is difficult and time demanding, but if we use them smartly they work very well to our advantage. With the advent of Internet and as the web 2.0 matures, the online community is an ever growing powerhouse, and it is quintessential to engage with our audience.

Broadcasting

Traditionally websites were developed as a brochure, with static content, one way communication. But as Web 2.0 matured, websites became more than just a brochure. It was necessary for companies to adapt to this ever changing World Wide Web where two- way communications was more than a necessity for any B2B type company. This communication can be in any form; blogs, forums, and online community etc. Similarly, social media channels started as a means of personal use. Twitter & Facebook mainly started as people to connect with their family and friends to let them know where they were or what they were doing or simply share activities and photos. Now B2B companies can also use Facebook and Twitter, but it is important to know the difference between using these channels to broadcast your message versus using them to engage with your targeted audience.

I recently attended “The Art of Marketing” event and found a very close connection in all the speeches that had a common theme of “Engaging”. It is important to understand that our users or customers, and our audiences are the most powerful and the biggest advocate for our products. For B2B companies, the new way of creating customer relationship is by engaging and knowing who their audience is and what are they talking about. Here are some of the speakers who talked about engaging with the audience:

Mitch Joel, the author of “Six degrees of separation” said the Internet is almost going to be as important and pervasive as the electricity”. In the social media world where B2B marketers are trying to connect with as many people as they can and create a solid followers base, it is important to understand that it is the basis of who is following you more important than how many followers you have.

Engaging

Gary Vaynerchuck, author of “Crush It!” cleverly stated that “Internet is just a baby and it still has to grow up and unleash its power”. Whether you are in B2C or B2B, Twitter, Facebook’s and similar social media accounts are a must have. If you don’t have either of these, it is not too late to jump on the bandwagon. Facebook credits are soon going to be precious currency and if we don’t use Facebook, and there is a big chance that companies might miss out on large opportunities in the future.  Social Media should be used intelligently in a way that we not only broadcast our messages and offers but to engage and be involved with our audience. Having a conversation with our audience, providing opinion, resolving issues on the go and engaging with our audience is a key.

Sally Hogshead, the author of “Fascinate” said, “Create messages for our network’s network”. Don’t ignore the larger network which is linked to our immediate network. Social media lets you connect to this web of networks that you simply can’t ignore.

So go ahead and start engaging in conversations!

Both before and after the Global Petroleum Show, companies seriously interested in you will likely visit your website. Knowing who is interested in your product and services (and especially when), is something that you can use to increase your trade show return of investment substantially.

Finding The Needles in the Haystack
Research on trade shows have shown that serious buyers will gravitate to doing their research online and arrive at your website both before and after the trade show. But trade shows like the Global Petroleum Show can have two huge wins for exhibitors; Opt ins, and after show website visits.

Opt Ins
By virtue of the fact they are going to the GPS show, anyone visiting your booth is qualified in so far as they are in the energy industry. When one of them asks to be scanned for more information they are doing what is the holy grail of  marketing; they are “opting in”.

When someone asks for their badge to be scanned for more info, you can email nurture them  while always leading off with “you are receiving this because you visited our booth”. Then use a new breed of software to notify you as to who keeps coming back to your website, or visited the right pages on your website; it will tell you who to call, who you stand the best chance of building a relationship with.

The Bigger They Are, The Less They Call
Every exhibitor at the GPS hopes for booth visits from big, sought after accounts. But ironically the bigger the account, the less likely they are to call you after a trade show for fear of salespeople chasing them months on end. Regardless though, if these big accounts are interested in your company they will likely visit your website after the show to investigate your company further. Again, knowing who is visiting, who is interested in your company, who you should target over the weeks and months following the GPS show can be a significant competitive advantage.

eHow To Guide
Here’s a quick eHow To Guide from ActiveConversion that further explains what I’ve mentioned above. Good luck at the Global Petroleum Show 2010!

Wellesley, Mass. - January 25, 2010. THINKstrategies, Inc., the leading strategic consulting company focused on the business implications of the on-demand services market, announced today that ActiveConversion has been named the latest winner of the Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Awards program, which is aimed at promoting the measurable business benefits being delivered by today’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions.

The BoSS Awards program was announced in January 2009 by THINKstrategies as an initiative aimed at bringing greater attention to SaaS and cloud computing companies that are producing tangible business benefits for specific user organizations. These benefits include increased sales, lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, faster operations and greater profitability.

ActiveConversion recently released another in their popular series of “eHow To” guides.  This one deals with using Marketing Automation to leverage B2B Blogging.  From the summary:

Lead nurturing is the process of communicating with prospects who are not yet ready to buy. B2B Blogging enables marketers to contact such prospects on an ongoing basis.

Only 10 to 25 percent of all leads are sales-ready. A similar percentage of leads are not qualified at all. This means 50 to 80 percent of all leads generated are potentially wasted if no appropriate action is taken.

With B2B Blogging marketers can realize significant benefits. Leads that are not sales-ready are not lost and significant online lead generation effort is not wasted. Automation of lead nurturing increases the ROI of all online marketing activities.

To download this whitepaper on why, when, and how to implement an automatic lead nurturing plan for your business, click on the image!

ActiveConversion recently published an “eHow To” guide to Lead Nurturing that we at the SMB Marketing Blog would like to share with you (link, or click on the image at right).

From the landing page for the guide:

Lead nurturing is the process of communicating with prospects who are not yet ready to buy.

Only 10 to 25 percent of all leads are sales-ready. A similar percentage of leads are not qualified at all. This means 50 to 80 percent of all leads generated are potentially wasted if no appropriate action is taken.

With lead nurturing B2B marketers can realize significant benefits. Leads that are not sales-ready are not lost and significant online lead generation effort is not wasted. Automation of lead nurturing increases the ROI of all online marketing activities.

To download this whitepaper on why, when, and how to implement an automatic lead nurturing plan for your business, follow this link or click on the image to the right.

(eHow To Guides)

Last week at the Salesforce Dreamforce conference, ActiveConversion was invited to be part of a panel on email marketing. The panel covered some basics on email marketing along with specific applications on campaigning within Salesforce, lead nurturing and the impact that social media has on email marketing.

An interesting observation I took away was that many B2B Marketers are not using email marketing on a regular basis.  I feel like this is something which we take for granted, because we have been using email marketing for so long.  I thought it would be valuable to cover the 5 tips for email marketing which were covered in the presentation:

1. Targeted Lists – Ensure you spend the time when building your lists to segment them.  This allows you to send out more targeted messages and offers, which will help give you a higher response rate and better return on your efforts.  Fields to segment on include: Country, City, Zip, Phone, Company size, Job title/level, past purchases, Age, Gender, etc
2. Targeted, Relevant & Fresh Content – Build messages which are relevant to those groups which you’ll be targeting in your offer. Use fresh content and offers to encourage the desired outcome of your email (ex. New whitepaper, limited time discount, new product announcement, etc)
3. Tracking and Reporting – To improve the quality of your email marketing be sure to use the built-in tools for tracking or reporting of your marketing campaigns.  Some of the metrics you may choose to measure success on include: Unique open rates, Unique click-through rates, Delivery success rate, Conversions and Unsubscribes, and Post click-through activity scoring.
4. Go Viral – Email is a great means to get your marketing messages out because they are easily forwarded and shared with others.  Make it easy for your emails to be forwarded or shared by your recipients
5. Permission is everything – Allow prospects to opt-in to receive your marketing messages and respect their privacy and requests if they choose to unsubscribe. When you are requesting information from your prospects, ensure you make it clear that their information will not be sold or rented to any third parties and it is being collected to be able to provide information on your company’s products and services

You can view the recording of this presentation and panel discussion here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eAkoptsBG0

In the “olden days”, a web site was part of an SMB’s collateral; you had one because it equaled credibility, or because everyone said you had to have one.  It was part and parcel of the main “all or nothing” goal of marketing; get them to call your phone number.  You were sceptical of anyone who came near you wanting to talk about Web Marketing because the ROI from your website was terrible.

Since the “olden days” Google has fundamentally changed the landscape.  How many of us recycle the last version of the yellow pages unopened when the new one comes out?

The study found an overwhelming number (85 percent) of business buyers go online during the purchasing process, and 83 percent found the vendor from which they eventually purchased online. Of those using the Internet, over 70 percent start with a search engine.[source]

So the new goal is to get found by Google through Search Engine Optimization (SEO), driving potential customers to your website.  Other tools drive traffic to your site; PPC and banner ads, email campaigns, link referrals, and drip or nurture email campaigns, are all ways to increase the number of visitors and eyeballs looking at your website.

But instead of just pushing these visitors to do what the brochure of old asked them to do (call your business phone number), a new breed of software – Marketing Automation Software -  is letting your website be much more than a brochure.  This new breed of Marketing Automation software, of which ActiveConversion is one example, uses a well designed SaaS based solution as a heart rate monitor, measuring which of your potential customers have a faster pulse.  By faster pulse I mean which ones spend a lot of time on your site and visit a lot of pages vs those that see one page and leave.  Which are so interested that they come back a second time, and execute goal clicks, calls to action, or fill out forms?  Which among your anonymous visitors exhibit the same behaviours, and are worth cold calling?

This class of SaaS based solution keeps a long-term history of the heart rate read-out for your website, they spot trends, show buy signals by showing historical click streams, and announce when a potential customer is worthy of one of your limited sales cycles, worthy of a phone call from you, instead of passively waiting for them to contact you.

Strap a heart rate monitor on your website!

Our 'burning' Lighter

I caught up with an old colleague this week that I hadn’t seen in years. We traded stories and did the ‘where are they now’ thing and talked about how we had taken the career paths we had. As diverse as those paths were and the different businesses that we’re in, we ended up on the topic of social media. Amazed at the power, yet still respectfully wrestling on how to fully capitalize. As an aficionado of great consumer electronic products, he quickly brought out his iPhone and showed me an app from Smule, the Sonic Lighter . He fired it up and I saw a very real looking natural flame flicker on the screen, that waved back and forth with movement of the iPhone and the flame even flickered when you blew on it … kind of cool, but I quickly dismissed it as a novelty at best. The big ‘so what’? Then he connected the iPhone to the network, and with a view of google earth, he said, “check it out, these are all the Sonic flames ‘burning’ in the world right now”. The world? Right now?. It was amazing to see at that global level. He navigated to north America, zoomed down to a street level view of the city, and there was ‘our’ flame flickering on the map. A couple of blocks over, another flame. I’ve been in the GPS industry and around technology for many years, so that part I got. And we all remember the hype around LBS apps and the press on ‘find the nearest Starbucks’, but the concept struggled on a number of fronts. Yet now,  there it was. A global, ubiquitous platform of iPhones which provided a medium for these colored flames – A community, so simple, yet so powerful. Most of what we’ve seen with the iPhone to-date is at the personal or consumer level and centered around entertainment, but there are B2B marketers all over the world salivating and looking to take advantage of this reach.  As a B2B Marketer, are you going to be one of the pioneers …… i-Marketing.

Boxers or Briefs?

BTW – Smule is now running global polls based on flame color. So for $0.99 download the iPhone app and take part in that long standing debate … briefs or boxers. To track the world’s preference, view the Smule Under-pants Map at http://app.smule.com/soniclighter/boxerbrief/.

BTW -As real as the flame appeared, it’ll never replace the waving back and forth of the good old bic flame at a great concert ….. now i’m just dating myself

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.