MarketingSherpa Blog

I’ve seen a 180-degree change in marketers’ attitudes toward search marketing in the past 12 months. Last year, marketers we spoke to in nearly every industry were busy expanding their search campaigns from hundreds to thousands and even tens of thousands of keyterms. The long tail was very much in fashion.

However, as 2006 has worn on, I’m more often hearing a new refrain. In part driven by excesses of 2005 as well as rising click costs, many marketers now tell me their revised SEM focus is about tightening focus.

If you’re cutting your search budget to target only keywords with immediately obvious ROI (i.e. where clicks convert on the first visit), first consider this real-life story that Michael DeHaven, Ecommerce Marketing Manager at CareerBuilder.com told me:

“We were beginning to cut the majority of our paid search budget, because we were struggling to get any ROI at all. Too many employers who clicked didn’t buy on their first visit.”

But, before the final SEM budget decision was made, DeHaven asked the tech team to create a new longer-term tracking system that combined multiple databases — initial search tracking cookies, ecommerce activities, the site’s registered user database and the business development and call center’s CRM systems.

Measured results were beyond dramatic.

“For one paid search team, there was maybe $10K in immediate revenues. When we evaluated it after 15 days, it was $120K. When we looked at the delayed impact 30 days out, there was about $1.2 million. Going further out to 45 days, it was over $3 million. It blew me away when I saw this.”

That one revelation not only changed CareerBuilder.com’s SEM plans, but it also propelled the marketing team to re-vamp the home page and email tactics they had in place to convert those delaying employers. Look below for Sherpa exclusive Case Studies on both of these revamp projects.

I hope you find this data as inspirational as I do.

BTW: Do you have interesting stats of your own tests to share with the Sherpa community? We’re accepting posted comments on *all* MarketingSherpa stories and Case Studies now at our site so that you can share your know-how with the community. Just click on the “Post a Comment” link on any story.

(Note: Marketing vendors and consultants, please don’t be self-promotional in your postings. Thanks.)

Useful links related to this article:

Case Study: How to Raise Email Newsletter Clickthroughs by Testing Content Types
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=29682

Case Study: B-to-B Home Page Design Tests to Turn More Clicks Into Accounts
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=29681

According to MarketingSherpa’s latest B-to-B Marketing Study (see link below) 80% of business technology marketers who’ve tested co-registration as a way to generate new business leads in the past 12 months found it to be effective.

That data didn’t surprise me because I’ve seen similar data from marketers in many different niches, ranging from ecommerce sites such as Sierra Trading Post to news organizations such as USA Today to tech giants such as Oracle. In fact, 32% of marketers who gather new email names via co-registration offers on third-party sites say those names perform as well as regular house names.

So, exactly what is co-registration?

You simply put your opt-in offer as an extra check box on another site’s registration page or order form. Then, the other site sends you the names of everyone who checks that box so you can add them to your email list. You can pay on a per-name basis, or in some cases run the campaign as a barter.

Source #1. Controlled circulation networks

Several vendors run online networks gathering business executive names mainly for controlled circulation business magazines. (Example, one of them is SynapseConnect’s FreeBizMag.com.) They place offers on a number of B-to-B sites and then ask responders to answer a long list of questions to qualify to receive targeted trade magazines for free.

Generally they sell co-registrations from this system for about $5-$8 a pop. This includes snail mail address and often even phone as well as email, and you can target by title, ZIP, industry, etc.

Most of these networks’ clients are trade magazine publishers, but I know of several B-to-B marketers who are using these services to grow their own lists as well.

Source #2. Creating your own third-party info site

I also know several B-to-B marketers who’ve gone this route. They got together with several complementary vendors in their same field and created an educational site for the industry. It can contain articles, a white paper library or a glossary, or even a special offer such as a sweeps.

All partners work together sending email campaigns to their own house files to visit this new site. Then all benefit from resulting registration opt-ins. An example of such a site is The CFO project.

Source #3. Special offers to business news sites

Although many trade magazines are still mired in the print-past and refuse to consider co-registration (often the ad sales reps haven’t even heard of it), some publications are testing ideas.

For example, The Economist has offered a co-registration program for more than two years to such advertisers as Oracle. In this case you purchase “complimentary Economist subscriptions” and they send out an offer to their opt-in list of free readers asking folks to sign up — handing over their email address to you — to get into the paid site. (See sample below.)

Source #4. Related vendor’s “thank you” pages

Are you friends with any vendors in your field who are not direct competitors but share a similar target market? Ask them if they would consider putting a co-registration offer on the “thank you” page of their own online offers.

So, when new prospects sign up for a webinar, white paper, email newsletter or to attend a user conference, the page after they sign up could say, “Thank you. You’ll get your XYZ in the mail. In the meantime, would you also like to sign up for this?”

Admission — aside from word of mouth, this sort of thank-you page co-registration is how my own company gains most of our new opt-in subscribers.

Three quick tips to maximize your co-registration campaign:

Tip #1. Isolate the incoming names

Best practices now say you should isolate co-registration names from your house list. Keep the files separate, or at least code name origin scrupulously so you can segment, mail, and track them separately. This way you know which partners send you great names and which to cut. You also can send targeted mailings and offers to those names in future that might not appeal as much to other lists.

Tip #2. Polish your creative

Your creative consists of a logo (generally 120×60 but some sites ask for 80×60) and about 250 characters of copy including white space. That’s not much copy, so just as you would with a search engine ad, carefully write it to be as powerful as it can be.

I recommend you test offer copy to see which pulls the best opt-ins for your program. However, “best” doesn’t equal “highest volume.” You want names that will be high-quality prospects, the rest are just a waste.

Tip #3. Be relaxed about barters

Don’t get too picky about name counts. Some barter deals will yield loads of names, others just a few. Again, remember that quality matters far more than quantity. As long as you are getting highly-targeted, responsive names, you are coming out ahead. Grab them and keep on smiling.

Useful links related to this article:

Co-registration samples:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/coreg/ad.html

— For a copy of MarketingSherpa’s new Business Technology Marketing Benchmark Guide, which features data on co-registration, go to:
http://www.sherpastore.com/technology-marketing.html?9006

For the longest time we didn’t filter junk mail at all for our incoming email. My concern was that some reader emails would get lost in the filters by mistake, and I had a zero tolerance policy for that.

But then my own inbox started routinely exceeding 4,000 messages a day, and that was nothing compared to our customer service department. Our other policy — reply to all legitimate messages in under 24 hours — was being broken because no one had the time to plow through the flood of junk.

So we did what everyone else does. We started using filters.

Now the system sorts incoming mail to three piles … probably good stuff, probably junk and almost certainly junk. We all check and reply to pile No. 1 continually throughout the day. Pile No. 2 is read twice a day, and pile No. 3 is reviewed by a human every 48 hours.

The horrible truth is, no matter how many rules and instructions we give the filters to help them know what’s junk and what’s not, legitimate mail still ends up in the junk box.

I have a very real horror of deleting a junk pile without carefully scrolling through looking for those needles of gold in the haystack. In fact, one time when I was out, my then-new assistant blithely deleted my junk folder to “clean up” my inbox, and lost several crucial messages that caused us a massive headache later.

However, this means we still have to review that entire massive mountain of email.

That’s why I’ve asked our IT specialist to look for a new email filter. Most of the filter marketing pieces triumphantly discuss how much junk they stop. “97% of junk gone!” I’ve told IT to completely ignore that type of marketing. What we want to know about – and, indeed, what every customer-facing organization MUST care about is *not* how much junk is filtered, but rather how much customer mail is saved.

Because I’d rather have a few more junk messages in my inbox than risk losing a single reader letter.

And I hope that’s the way your company feels about its customers as well.

So here’s a question to raise at the next management meeting: “How is our email filtered?” If you’re using a filter to evaluate message content or a challenge response system, then you’re almost certainly losing some important customer email.

The only safe type of filter that I know of (bearing in mind I’m a marketer, not a techie) is one based on blocking IP addresses of known junk mailers.

Got any advice or stories to share on this front? We’re accepting posted comments on *all* MarketingSherpa stories and Case Studies now at our site so that you can share your know-how with the community. Please post a comment to this blog, just don’t be too promotional.

I’ve started calling email open rates “measured opens” because just saying “open” alone is so misleading.

The annoying imprecision of email opens as a metric has been a problem for a decade now. Yet, every 18 months or so, a whole new wave of marketers discover it. Then, many of them email me dismayed queries. “Is it true? Is email open measurement really so vague?”

Yes, I write back. Precise email opens are an unknowable metric according to today’s technology.

First of all, obviously no text-only email has a measured open rate. Measurement depends on HTML, which doesn’t exist in text-only.

Second, if your recipient’s inbox is blocking HTML (as an increasingly large number do these days), they may open but they won’t see your lovely graphics, nor will the open be reported back to you.

Third, and this appears to be the biggest area of current confusion, when an HTML email is viewed in a ‘preview pane,’ that absolutely counts as an open.

According to an EmailLabs study, 69% of at-work email recipients always or frequently use their preview panes when sorting through their inbox. These are mostly Outlook users, but in the consumer world Hotmail and Yahoo are said to be offering preview panes to their users shortly.

I’ve encountered many myths about this preview pane open. Most center on the idea that preview pane opens can be measured separately (or eliminated completely) from “regular” opens.

“What if we move the HTML pixel that reports opens to the very end of the creative where the preview pane won’t trigger it?” asked one marketer recently. Nah, sorry, won’t work. When an email is open in preview, according to your stat reports it is completely open.

Besides, 33% of preview pane users admit they personally consider the preview pane to be an “open.” They rarely if ever open all the way, preferring to scroll up and down in that small box. (Have you told your email creative team yet to make your templates look great in the tiny box?)

On the other hand, for preview pane users, the email opens
automatically when they are reviewing their in-box. I know I’ve “opened” many messages without intending to as I surfed my in-box. (And then worried that the resulting “open” might tell the junk mailer in question that my email account was definitely interested in more of their crud. Blech.)

Open rate confusion perhaps arises because most email metrics reports look so darn precise with decimal figures and all. Also, most marketers are used to being able to get incredible Web analytics and can’t believe the same isn’t available for email.

Your email open reports can be used to spot major problems in delivery (if not a single AOL user opened your last newsletter, you know you have a problem.) And, they’re not bad for fairly general, broad “health of this list/campaign” reports where you’re watching trends over time. Plus, if you’re running subject line tests with an A/B split, a dramatic difference can be quite useful.

But the real metrics you should be watching are clicks and clicks-to-conversions (whatever your conversion activity may be … from pageviews to purchasing.)

Which means it’s time to tie your Web analytics — and if possible other data such as in-bound calls, printed coupon redemptions, brand perception, loyalty, etc. — to your email campaigns.

Unfortunately, this is a nasty tech back-end project for many organizations, involving silo-ed systems and databases. If email really matters to your bottom line, you’ll do it. Otherwise you’ll continue to slide along guestimating success based on general open and click trends.

If you are one of the former — or if you have some wonderful new tech to measure email that I’m not aware of — please post a comment to this blog.

(Yes, we’re accepting posted comments on *all* MarketingSherpa stories and Case Studies now at our site so that you can share your insights with the community.)

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Chances are you’ll be in a brainstorming meeting this month for the big fall campaign. “What should we offer?” your team will wonder.

You’ll begin to fret that the marketplace will be inundated with offers from your competitors — you know how crazy the fourth quarter can get. You may also fret that offers for your actual product are, well, a bit boring. Who really wants yet another coupon, shipping offer or white paper? Blah, blah, blah.

Shouldn’t you position your brand as new-exciting-innovative-attention-grabbing by offering something completely different?

It’s a mistake I’ve made. It’s a mistake I’ve seen a whole lot of marketers make. No one’s alone.

So, I was delighted to get a note last week from the marketing folks at Meade Lexus in Southfield, MI, about an offer test they ran in May for their service center.

As you’ll see from the photo in the link at the end of this
column, Meade built their service brand around being extremely creative and innovative. How? Well, the waiting room in the service center is ultra-luxurious with leather chairs, potted ferns, flat-screen TVs, an espresso bar and a fireplace complete with crackling fire.

Meade had 3,390 past customers and opt-in prospects to email. Naturally, they decided to feature a photo of their lovely waiting room in the email. But, what should the offer be?

Should it be something boring such as a 10% off service coupon, or should it be something innovative and classy such as a wine set? In the end, they decided to test both. You can guess from the tone of this blog which offer won.

But, my gosh, the amount of the difference in response was astonishing. 271 email recipients scheduled service because they wanted that 10% offer. Only 20 scheduled asking for their wine set.

Lesson — the offer that relates *directly* to your product or service is nearly always the one that will win any test. Here’s a sample of Meade’s campaign so you can see for yourself:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/cs/meade/study.html

P.S. Completely off subject but I’ve gotten a lot of Sherpa Reader letters and wanted to respond. … Yes, we’ve switched the format of our newsletters and are testing what works best — left column vs right column. I’ll let you know what wins in a few weeks.

In addition, after *months* of site redesign hell (if you’ve ever led a site revamp you know what I mean), we’ve just launched Stage One of the http://www.marketingsherpa.com overhaul. It’s a bit buggy yet, plus it’s still a project in process (you have no idea the delights we’ve dreamed up for you!) But, huge-sigh-of-relief, at least the first part is launched.

Biggest changes?

#1. Way, way, way better search engine for Sherpa so now you can find what you’re looking for much more easily. (My thanks to WebSideStory Search for their help with this.)

#2. Now you can post your comments and feedback directly on stories! Click on any story below to go online to try it out.

In the meantime, please do contact me directly with comments and suggestions — we’re building this site for you after all!

Over the past three years, I’ve seen paid search advertising rise exponentially to become the darling of business-to-business advertising. Marketer after marketer has told me how he or she has cut out much of their other advertising efforts and put the budget toward search because of its “effectiveness.”

And, let’s face it, there’s nothing that warms the cockles of a B-to-B marketer’s heart more than a truly targeted list. What more are search results than a self-targeted list?

So, this summer, when MarketingSherpa’s research team asked 1,900 business technology marketers to reveal which online advertising buy was most effective, I confidently expected the answer to be search advertising. I was wrong.

Turns out that search advertising was the most effective type of online ad for only one category — 84% of business technology marketers who target mid-sized organizations as their prospects using search ads rated them effective However, the marketers targeting extremely large organizations — the Fortune 1000 and the Global 1000 — did NOT rate search advertising as their top pick.

Plus, the marketers who targeted small organizations — ranging from your typical small office home office (SOHO) crowd to companies with fewer than 100 employees — said paid search advertising was not their top online pick. Search did pretty well, mind you, but it was not No. 1.

Key — please be aware this data was not sliced by the size of the marketers’ own organizations. Instead, it was sliced by the size of their prospect’s organization, because in marketing effectiveness it’s your prospect’s demographic that matters far more than your own.

So, what was most effective to reach the Fortune 1000 and Global 1000? White paper syndication services ruled the field at 78% effectiveness.

Why? My theory is that large organization decision makers often have a formal process by which they buy products and services. This formal process usually includes a research phase, most often assigned to a manager-level executive who combs the Web (and often trade shows) for appropriate vendor white papers as a starting point. This is why white paper syndication — the act of placing your white papers into the online library of third-party technology news and information sites (think CNET’s ZDNet, TechTarget, CMP TechWeb and others) — works exceptionally well when targeting the Fortune 1000.

On the other hand, white paper syndication was not one of the top picks to reach smaller companies. In fact, it was rated 19 points lower in effectiveness! Instead, to reach smaller organizations, the best rated online ad was an offer in a third-party email newsletter.

My guess is that executives at very small organizations, who may be wearing multiple job function hats, are more likely to respond to ads in email newsletters they’ve actively signed up for and respect. They have no time to go trolling for information, but may pay attention to media that’s pushed out to them — especially if it’s a quick, targeted read.

(Note: here’s a bit of irony — in general, the smaller a marketer’s own company is, the more likely that marketer is to devote more of his or her budget to online, especially search. Which I guess proves that what works for you in marketing may not be what works for those who are marketing to you.)

Anyway, given this data, I predict some frustration on B-to-B marketers’ parts when it comes to online media buying. Our research team discovered when looking over the online media field that although ads in third-party newsletters could be extremely effective, it can be harder to buy them than most other online media.

Many B-to-B media companies and trade associations offering ezine ads sell out their most popular newsletter spots months ahead of time. Plus, an increasing number will only sell a newsletter ad as part of a bundle. If you buy some banners, and perhaps sponsor a webinar, then they’ll toss in the email ads as well.

That’s unfortunate. While there is something to be said for your message being omnipresent across multiple media channels (the more places a prospect sees you in a particular time period, the more likely they’ll recall your message — up to a certain point), there also is a lot to be gained from targeting. If your prospect only reads newsletters and reacts to their ads, the rest of your banners are wasted.

Anyhow, it’s something to consider. In the meantime, if you’d like to see the detailed chart that this data is presented in, there’s a free download link immediately below.

Useful links related to this article

Executive Summary of MarketingSherpa’s Business Technology Marketing Benchmark Guide: http://BusinessTechnologyMarketingData.MarketingSherpa.com

MarketingSherpa’s Business Technology Benchmark Guide 2007:
http://www.sherpastore.com/Technology-marketing.html?8966

MarketingSherpa’s vendors:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/vendors.html

For most marketers, summer is not the time when you go to the beach or take that extra Friday off for a longer weekend. Nope, summer is the time when you gear up for the big fall season. Top 10 ways:

#1. Review past test data

I’ve noticed when marketers try to recall results from tests even just a few weeks back, their memories are pretty far off. You think you remember the numbers perfectly … but then when you actually look at the report, you’re surprised by the real data.

Lesson — never make decisions for your upcoming fall campaigns until you’ve reviewed the action numbers one more time.

#2. Launch new tests

More ecommerce sites launch tests during August than any other time of the year. If you surf sites whose peak selling seasons are the holiday season, you’ll find all sorts of neat stuff going on right now, including shopping cart redesigns, internal search results page revamps, 3D, audio and video added to merchandise pages, etc.

If you’re B-to-B marketer, now is the time to run an A/B test on your lead gen landing page to see if a few tweaks can increase your conversion rates. Clean up your landing page now before you begin driving heavy traffic with third-quarter campaigns.

#3. Face-time with other departments

Chances are summertime is a slightly easier time of year for the rest of the organization. Execs who couldn’t possibly spare time for a meeting with marketing in the past could be open to one now. Schedule lunches or meetings with everyone from business development to customer service. You don’t need an agenda past relationship building.

The relationships you build now will serve you well when it’s crunch time later in the fall.

#4. Customer verbiage studies

This is also the best time of year to grab at least few customers on the phone or in person. Your goal is to discover both their pain points (what could your product or service solve) and what sorts of language/verbiage they use to describe your offerings.

Your findings will feed directly into everything from search marketing keyword lists to email newsletter article headlines for fall. Nothing is sweeter to a customer or prospect’s ears than words they themselves would use to describe things.

#5. Canned content creation

Professional managing editors in the publishing world have a secret weapon they use to survive busy seasons — canned content. This may be anything from feature articles to interesting blog postings that they hold on hand for “just in case.”

Two keys — the content is “evergreen,” meaning it can be held for use in emergency situations at any time in the next six months to year without appearing dated. Also, the content is designated “emergency use only,” which means you don’t slip it into the regular schedule.

Fate does have an unscheduled, but very real, emergency in store for you this fall — probably just when you don’t have time to cope with it. A writer will fall ill, a launch will be delayed, whatever. You’ll be incredibly grateful to have that canned content ready to slide in at the last moment.

#6. Revamp analytics reports

Everyone I know who has a pretty good analytics system (data coming from their Web site and other marketing campaigns) complains they never have time to really review it.

I’m not saying this is the best time to review it. Instead, I’m saying summer is the best time to set up a few more reports. Why more when you need less? That’s the point — your new reports will be focused on the most useful data points only.

Think over what data do you need that will make a big difference in marketing decisions that will confront you this fall? Plus, what data would help you impress the management team that marketing’s doing a great job?

Boil down your analytics report needs to just those (far fewer) things and set systems in place — automated if possible, cheap temp or intern labor if not — to be able to produce them from now on.

#7. Revisit all templated/automated content

Run an exhaustive research mission to collect every bit of
automated content your prospects and customers receive. This is content such as service letters, email autoresponses, basic brochures, corporate “about us” pages, PowerPoint slide templates, transactional notices, employee email SIGs … even the on hold audio on your phone system.

Are the logos still correct? How about offers, tone, colors? Chances are something’s out of date. Something always is.

#8. Research external helpers

If business booms this fall and the management team turns to you to say “rev up marketing even further,” are you prepared? In the middle of your busiest season you may not have time to research vendors or hire and train more staff.

Now is the time to build an in-house file of external resources. Check out everything from transcriptionists (everything audio on your site should have matching text to help boost SEO) to graphic artists. You should have contacts, costs and samples of their work when appropriate.

Also, check when your main vendor contracts run out. Are you planning to re-evaluate vendors for 2007? You may not have time closer to January to start the RFP process on a proper researched foundation.

#9. Start a public swipe file

Buy a huge bulletin board and hang it somewhere that everyone in the marketing department (at least locally) can see it. Plus, start a house library of binders to browse through when the board is full. Companies with marketers worldwide often add a swipe file to their intranet or create a private group blog for them.

Then, start adding every piece of creative you like (even if you like only one element of it) to that file. Ask other departments to do the same (great way to help management feel “involved” in marketing.)

Include copies of everything from email newsletters to
PowerPoints and landing pages. However, don’t break copyright — generally, if it’s a marketing piece that’s run publicly you’re safe copying it, but not so if it’s an article.

Later this fall, when you are on crazy deadline and need an idea to spark your creativity, your swipe file is there to help you. That said, always test new creative. Never assume marketing creative, even swiped from huge successful organizations, is
something that’s going to work the best for you.

#10. Plan a fabulous vacation for January

If you’re not a skier, consider Australia or New Zealand.
Remember, their seasons are switched from ours, so you can have that perfect beach vacation you’ve always dreamed of and still be in marketing.

Please RSVP Today!
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This June, MarketingSherpa’s research team conducted our third annual study of business technology marketing — what works in the real world. 1,900 marketers participated either online or by phone. (Thanks everyone!)

The results, as always, were fascinating. You’ll find a link below to the complete study, but I thought you’d like to see this particular chart immediately:

MarketingSherpa Chart: Highly Effective Lead Generation Offers — By Type of Technology Being Marketed

http://www.marketingsherpa.com/images/leadgenoffers.gif

Here are my top three takeaways from this fresh data:

#1. Blogs (and soon podcasts) are primary lead gen vehicles

This year for the first time, blogs have joined top-rated tactics to entice prospects. I suspect this is as much due to the traffic generation from search engine friendliness of blogs to the thought leadership your management team can flaunt to build brand value.

However, our research from 2005 indicated very few techies read blogs actively. Blog-readers tend to be other blog writers, members of the press and general business executives (i.e. everyone except for the IT and engineering departments).

#2. Be wary of relying entirely on free trials

It must be emphasized that while free trials can work exceptionally well as lead generators, only prospects in the tail end of the sales cycle will generally respond to this offer. They are much closer to buying than other prospects so your sales force will be very happy.

On the other hand, if you focus on free trial accepters to the exclusion of other lead sources, you may slice the pipeline too thin and not generate sufficient volume. You’ll also miss out on prospects that were scooped up earlier in the cycle by your competitors who’ve been nurturing the relationship ever since. Remember, the lowest-hanging fruit is not the only fruit on the tree.

#3. Low-ball offers generate low-quality leads

Why are sweepstakes rated so low on this scale? After all, sweeps and freebie offers such as T-shirts and iPods, tend to get very high response rates.

Well, we asked respondents to rate the value of the effort — meaning the quality of the leads — rather than merely the quantity of leads. Dumping a mountain of extremely low-quality leads into your sales team’s inboxes will only earn you their wrath and distrust. And, adding $5 to $20 or more per lead for initial telephone qualification and scoring can bust your marketing budget.

#4. Your best offer is multiple offers

My biggest advice from the above findings: Don’t ever rely on one single lead generation offer alone. Add a combination of offers on a *permanent* position on the persistent navigation throughout your Web site, employee email signatures, email newsletter templates and other marcom materials routinely viewed by prospects.

The best offers — as is indicated above — are high in perceived educational value. Content rules. In fact, if your marketing budget were to expand by say $60,000 this year, instead of investing in an ad campaign, a trade show booth, a DM mailing or more paid search clicks … hire another writer for your staff.

Get someone who can kick out content — must-read white papers, keyword-heavy blog entries, compelling PowerPoint presentations, email newsletter articles, etc. Content is your best marketing investment for 2006 and beyond.

Useful links related to this article

MarketingSherpa’s Business Technology Benchmark Guide 2007:
http://www.sherpastore.com/Technology-marketing.html?8966

MarketingSherpa’s vendors:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/vendors.html

“Like it or not, in this position you have to be a control freak,” Bob Steelhammer, VP Ecommerce Cingular Wireless, said in a panel on customer experience last month.

I’ve posted the notes from the panel (shared exclusively with Sherpa Readers) below. The other members were VPs from Avaya and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts.

Most of what they said was head-nodding stuff to anyone who’s run a brand, a Web site or a global marketing team. Yes, everyone is redesigning their site for increased customer satisfaction. (Is any major site not in redesign pretty much permanently?)

The good news is that they are all measuring it by asking customers what they think. So, redesigns are supposed to be customer-centric; which in many organizations can be a political hurdle. “We can’t let internal company factors influence the fact that it is really the customer who has final say over whether they leave our Web site,” said Avaya VP Renee Rodgers.

Also, everyone is working very hard to keep the branding — from logos to ease of use — the same across offline and online in every country and marketplace they serve. “From a customer acquisition standpoint, we’re getting A+ best in our industry. But in B-to-B, maybe a C+,” admitted Steelhammer.

How do you improve? “You have to be militant,” said Rodgers. To do this, Avaya has hired a Senior Editor-in-Chief for each global region who monitors everything online, including intranets, extranets, Web sites and microsites.

You also have to integrate your marketing departments internally. “One of my first stops when I arrived at Cingular was to visit the CMO,” said Steelhammer. “Previously, ecommerce was kept separate. We decided to change that.”

So, I guess you could say for world-class organizations marketing is turning into the mighty Mississippi. Editorial, Web design, branding, ads, PR … it all flows together.

Anyway, enough with the rhapsody. Here’s a link to that panel:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/GlobalManagementPanel.pdf

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I really enjoy reading Mike May’s blog, E-venting.net, because I totally relate to it. He’s a conference consultant who helps events pick great speakers. Here at Sherpa I’m the one who leads the Summit Speakers Committee.

So Mike and I both wade through deep piles of speaker proposals looking for just the right people. As his blog reveals most often it’s daunting.

Which is sad. Hundreds of marketers and PR folks have put their hearts and souls into crafting speaking proposals that show organizers take one glance at and say, “Nope.”

For example, we received more than 160 speaking proposals for MarketingSherpa’s upcoming B-to-B Demand Generation Summit. We only had room for about 16 speakers total, so only 10% would make the final cut no matter how fabulous all the proposals were. What made the difference?

Here are some tips drawn from my own experience at both speaker selection and submitting proposals to other shows, plus some insights from Mike.

#1. Vendors: No, you can’t pitch your lovely company

If you’re a vendor to the field (i.e., your company markets goods or services to the types of people who attend this show), your chances of being accepted are extremely slim unless you:

– Detail which clients (i.e., people who match the attendee
profile rather than people who pitch to them) you’ve already gotten to agree to speak with you. Simply saying, “I can get some clients; ask me about that” will get you nowhere, because most organizers have been burned by that one in the past.

– Present new research you’ve conducted about the industry
(tactics, jobs, mistakes, etc., anything with numbers). The more exclusive for the show, the better.

– Offer to run a lab or workshop that the conference can pitch as an add-on extra (and you’ve got the leadership).

– Pitch your techies, scientists, engineers or other functional professionals who are completely and thoroughly unrelated to marketing and sales.

#2. Consultants: No tired speeches

Just as blog readers tend to read multiple blogs on the same topic, show attendees tend to attend multiple shows on the same topic. This is partly because it’s often easier to get budget for “training” than it is to get the content in any other format such as professional handbooks.

And partly it’s personality type. A certain demographic just adore going to shows. It’s their favorite way of keeping up in their profession.

Show organizers know this (which is why they often swap postal lists with each other for promotions). They also know if you presented a similar-sounding speech at another show, their attendees will be disappointed.

So, if you are planning on presenting very similar material in several places (and why not, you worked hard to develop the presentation), let the organizer know the areas are not overlapping audiences. For example, you may repurpose an internal presentation or only present at a series of regional niche events.

#3. Experts: Avoid overviews

Great — you’ve noticed there’s a show about a topic that you’re precisely perfect for. Let’s say it’s Widget Marketing. Don’t write a proposal saying you’ll give a speech about “everything about Widget Marketing.” You may think that sounds tailored to the show. The organizer thinks it sounds way too broad.

The organizer has to pick dozens or even hundreds of speakers on this same Widget Marketing topic. If your speech is an overview, then how does that stand out from everyone elses? You need an angle.

And, as Mike notes, don’t pretend to be an expert with hands-on experience when you’re really a novice with strong opinions about the topic.

In either case, the expert and the psuedo-expert, the only way you’ll get the gig is if you’re so incredibly famous that folks will show up to hear you speak about almost anything. (That’s called a Keynote.)

#4. Don’t ignore format

Review past events from the same organizer to see what format they tend to prefer. Most shows tend to focus primarily on one particular type of presentation such as group panels, intensive workshops, case studies, roundtables, etc.

#5. Copywrite your proposal

The conference organizer is viewing your proposal with the
attendee-hat on. They wonder, “Would someone buy a ticket to hear this?” Luckily they know what makes people buy tickets because the organizers copywrite show brochures that market tickets for a living.

The more your copywriting can match the types of descriptions used for that organizer’s other shows, the better. So, grab some old show session descriptions from the same organizer and let it inspire your description.

One final note — longer can be better. I’m not talking about marketing fluff, but rather specific speech details. A busy organizer may not have time to contact you asking for more details about your speech, so the slot may go to the description that was more fully fleshed out.

#6. Timing is critical

Organizers put together shows up to nine months in advance. By the time you see any promotion about the show appearing,
especially if that promotion names speaker names, it’s probably too late for you to get on board. Instead, contact the organizer to find out when they normally accept proposals for the next show.

While you’re at it — be sure to volunteer to stand in if needed of they have an unexpected hole. Since shows are programmed in advance, sometimes holes occur when speakers’ jobs change or their companies go through upheaval.

#7. Horrible but true — some shows ask you to pay

MarketingSherpa never ever, ever, ever asks speakers for a cent. However, I’ve discovered that puts us in the minority. Many show organizers either give you a gig if you are a show sponsor or ask you to pay for the gig outright.

I’m not saying it’s morally wrong — if the event is in a high-profile location such as NYC, SF, Chicago or London, the cost of putting it on is far higher than attendees ever suspect. I understand in business you have a responsibility to the bottom line.

However, I do heartily wish that more shows clearly labeled
themselves as using the paid gigs model. The situation can be very deceptive. It can also be hurtful when sponsors are
offended when their speaking proposals are turned down or
speakers are offended when they’re told, yes, but here’s the bill.

… anyway, if you would like to speak at Sherpa show, be sure to watch our “Fame” section below every week because we make announcements when we’re looking for proposals.

And, if you’d like to see who the lucky 16 speakers are who we chose for this year’s Demand Generation Summit, here’s a link:
http://www.sherpastore.com/B-to-BDemandGenerationSummit2006.html?1150

Useful links related to this article:

MarketingSherpa’s Fame section
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=2632

Mike May’s blog
http://www.E-venting.net