MarketingSherpa Blog

Originally published on B2B LeadBlog

There is one question at the heart of lead generation that your marketing efforts should clearly answer.

“If I am you ideal prospect, why should I buy from you rather than your competitors?”

To put this into perspective, take a few moments and ask yourself, “Do I clearly and succinctly state the core value proposition of the product or service that I am marketing?”

In other words, what’s the elevator pitch for what you offer in the marketplace?

Take a moment to write it down.

Here are a few examples of poor value propositions from the MECLABS Value Proposition Development Course to help you identify value claims that may need a little work:

• “We empower you software decisions.”
• “I don’t sell products and services; I sell results — my guarantee.”
• “We help companies find their passion and purpose.”
• “We are the world’s leading [our jargon goes here] provider.”
• “We have the solution your company is looking for.”

Now, let’s be honest as we’re among friends here.

If your answer was close to any of these, then you’re not offering value.

What you are actually offering is hype, bland-vertising and the creature comforts of company jargon that only you understand. I would also suggest that your marketing is likely underperforming as a result and could use a little work on value proposition development.

In this B2B Lead Roundtable Blog post, we’ll look at three factors you should consider when crafting value propositions that you can use to aid your lead generation efforts.

It’s all about connecting prospects to the right value

Before we go further, let’s put some context around digging a little deeper into value prop using the illustration of value proposition spectrum above.

When you answer the question of why customers should buy from you rather than anyone else, it’s a great starting point for really understanding the overall value your organization delivers.

However, the move from broad brush understanding of a company’s value proposition to the granular level of value prospects are looking for is where many marketers become lost.

Think of it this way:

A primary value proposition is why you buy from Apple or Microsoft.

For example, the prospect level value is why a CEO would choose a laptop with business class specs over a standard model.

Essentially, it’s where you take the big idea of value proposition and laser focus it to help you deliver the right message to the right people.

Here a few factors to consider that will help you do that using the three prospects in the example above.

Factor #1. Objective

The objective in your value proposition is where you move from finding purpose to finding focus.

To help you do that, you have to think about a prospect’s main goals and desired outcomes.

For a CEO, their objective is, perhaps, “I must increase the financial performance of my organization.”

This translates to new pressures for the business manager who “must achieve X amount of revenue by the end of the year.”

This is also where understanding how your product or service addresses existing pain points and deficiencies will really pay off.

Factor #2. Motivation

Motivation is tough to nail down and really differs at an individual level.

So a good place to start is by asking, “What are the core motivations that drive this prospect’s actions?”

I told you this would not be easy.

But here a hint: A little research on your existing customers will also help you understand some common prospect motivations for your offerings, and you may even discover a few patterns you never knew existed.

Factor #3. Experience

What are the past experiences of the prospect?

A prospect’s prior experiences will factor into their decision-making process.

Considering your prospect’s previous experiences when crafting your messaging can help your lead nurturing efforts by addressing how perceptions can impact choice.

Value proposition is the gateway to trust

All of these factors are helpful in building (or reworking) your value proposition, but they are still just a means to an end.

The value in your claims is only a gateway to building trust with prospects.

You still have to deliver on those claims, and more importantly, you have to recognize they are now more than claims.

They are a promise exchanged for trust and made payable to customers who will look to you to make good on those promises — or to your competitors if you don’t.

You may also like

Digital Marketing: How to craft a value proposition in 5 simple steps [More from the blogs]

Lead Generation Check list — Part 4: Clear and Universal Lead Definition [More from the blogs]

Lead Generation: The power of copy [More from the blogs]

Email Marketing: Do you test your legacy marketing? [More from the blogs]

400%.

That’s how much mobile email opens have increased in just three years.

“Which is kind of crazy,” Justine Jordan, Marketing Director, Litmus, said following the recent statistics from Litmus’ research on mobile.

And she’s right. How many channels increase that much in usage in that short amount of time? Not many.

Because of the sudden growth, not all marketing departments have been able to keep up with the trend.

With 50% of emails being opened on a mobile device, mobile email strategy is worth considering for any market, even B2B companies.

Justine spoke at MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2014 as an industry perspective in the session, “Email Design: How to optimize for ALL environments in a mobile world.”

She joined Allison Banko, Reporter, MECLABS, in the MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2014 Media Center. There, she recapped her industry perspective session, as well as hit on two mistakes she still sees among mobile emails: content strategy and best practices of mobile design.

“It’s key to get those two things working in tandem to really optimize the full experience,” she said.

In addition to her industry perspective session, Justine also joined a diverse panel of experts, solution providers and brand-side marketers on responsive email design. Watch a brief excerpt from that panel discussion below:

Originally published on B2B LeadBlog

For her first week on the job, Debbie Pryer, Program Manager, Siemens Healthcare, arrived ready to accept an intimidating challenge: Bring Marketing and Sales together for one common cause — generating quality leads.

According to Debbie, the process in place had been corrupted and broken by a system of incentives to drive lead volume with little check and balance in place for assessing lead quality before the handoff to Sales. The end result was a sales team overwhelmed with unqualified leads, 65% of which were tossed out.

“I had a roadmap of what was wrong,” Debbie said. “I had to figure out how to make it right.”

At MarketingSherpa Lead Gen Summit 2013, Debbie’s presentation “Lead Generation: How to empower your program like Siemens Healthcare” took the audience on a deep dive into some of the challenges Siemens Healthcare faced in its lead gen process.

One of Debbie’s key goals was to re-establish a long-broken trust between Sales and Marketing.

Suggestions were made about what could solve this dilemma. Although many brought up automation, Debbie knew that by bringing in more technology as a solution, she would simply be “automating the problem.”

Challenge your process

Debbie explained that returning to the first love of the company — the patients and the hospitals that serve them — was an ideal starting point for building a lead process that put prospect needs first.

Her solution was to “slide the leads into what they were already doing” in the sales funnel, rather than pushing unqualified leads into the funnel.

With this strategy, Marketing delivered higher-quality leads to Sales, and the two teams started to (slowly) restore trust.

You may also like

Email Summit

2015 Call for Speakers [Have interesting insights to share like Debbie did? Apply to be an Email Summit speaker.]

Marketing Research Chart: Most widely used lead gen tactics [MarketingSherpa Research Chart of the Week]

Lead Generation: How to get funding to improve your lead gen [More from the blogs]

Local B2B Marketing: 150% boost in lead generation [MarketingSherpa case study]

The Complex Sale: Lead scoring effort increases conversion 79% [More from the blogs]

This year at the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition in Chicago, Nicole Snow, Founder, Darn Good Yarn, sat down with Daniel Burstein, Director of Editorial Content, MECLABS, in the MarketingSherpa Media Center to discuss the challenges of navigating a multichannel digital landscape while retaining a small business identity.

Darn Good Yarn’s value proposition is based on stimulating growth in poverty-stricken areas of Nepal and India by recycling silk yarn into products Nicole imports and sells in the United States.

Nicole does not have a background of making yarn. In fact, when she began, knitting was only a hobby.

“[Starting my business was] a lot of learning and I tried to do things on the cheap; I was self-funded,” she said. “It was a real benefit because I respected every single marketing dollar. Every single test I did had to be really the right choice for me as a business.”

These careful business decisions penetrate the whole of Nicole’s business, from hiring employees to protecting her suppliers.

“People around the world work for me,” Nicole said. “I’m pretty proud of that business model because it really is indicative of a newer economy.”

Nicole has been very protective over the growth of her company, both in the U.S. and abroad.

She insisted part of becoming a successful small business includes “controlling growth and not allowing it to just blow up.”

“Then, you start getting abuses of supply chains and of humans that way and that’s important to us, to make sure that doesn’t happen,” she explained.

Here were two important takeaways Nicole offered to help small businesses navigate a multichannel digital world:

• Purposefully enter channels – Find a few channels that work best for your small business because you can’t be everywhere.

• Find advocates – Look for supporters who want you to succeed and build relationships with them.

Just posted… see how Nicole Snow’s small biz @darngoodyarn saw a 2900% inc. in growth #IRCE http://t.co/DPZNkGFKju pic.twitter.com/vRmMA6j2du

— MarketingSherpa (@MarketingSherpa) June 12, 2014

Remember your roots

Let your passion bleed through every decision that you make for your business.

As companies grow, adaptations to an organization’s process and strategy are inevitable. We surveyed 4,436 marketers on how management styles and approaches should shift as ecommerce companies grow. You can see that data on page 15 of the MarketingSherpa E-commerce Benchmark Study.

Want to see more interviews with IRCE speakers, industry experts and in-the-trenches marketers from the MarketingSherpa Media Center? All 32 exclusive interviews from IRCE are available for viewing.

Read more…

At MarketingSherpa Lead Gen Summit 2013, Joe Pulizzi, Founder, Content Marketing Institute, shared some of the forgotten strategies for generating epic content.

One of those strategies revealed how creating a mission statement for your content can help you define the desired outcome for your content marketing efforts.

So in today’s MarketingSherpa Blog post, I wanted to share two questions every marketer should ask about their mission statement to help craft (or refine) the ultimate purpose for content creation.

Question #1. Is our purpose clear?

Here are two examples Joe shared of mission statements that are clear and concise in their purpose and intent. They also have one other unique similarity that’s worth mentioning.

Their focus is exclusively on helping customers instead of trying to sell to them, or as Joe explained:

“It’s not about trying to sell more,” Joe said, “It’s about what is the outcome for my persona.”

Question #2. Who does our content serve?

Joe also explained that creating a mission statement help fill in the strategy gaps is essential to give content a much needed targeted focus.

“This is part of the strategy that most of us don’t have,” Joe explained.

Here are three recommendations Joe had for crafting (or refining) your content marketing mission statement:

• Core target audience – Who is your persona? What are you talking to?
• What will be delivered? – Is this information useful?
• The outcomes for the audience – What will your audience get out of consuming your content?

Read more…

Originally published on B2B LeadBlog

Marketing automation can help you manage lead nurturing efforts in a complex marketplace.

So where do you even begin in terms of an automation strategy?

In today’s B2B Lead Roundtable Blog post, we’ll look at three lead nurture tracks you should automate to aid your email marketing efforts from a MarketingSherpa Lead Gen Summit 2013 presentation featuring Keith Lincoln, Vice President of Marketing, SmartBear.

Path #1. Separate users from prospects

When you boil down behavior automation, using prospect actions as triggers for email sends ultimately creates a list within a list as you separate product users from potential prospects.

As Keith explained, the product download is where the track begins, followed by responding to those product usages with emails offering helpful content.

“The next thing we want to be able to tell our team is: Did they activate the software, or are they using it?” Keith asked.

Path #2. Turn users into customers

Automating a sales nurturing track is significantly different from a content nurturing track as it turns up the dial on complexity.

In this case, prospect behaviors trigger email sends based on a conversion process to turn free, one-time users to paid, ongoing customers.

“This is a little bit more complex than finding out if they are just activating the software,” Keith said.

Keith also explained how the sales nurturing track has been helpful in delivering additional customer intelligence to Sales on where customers are within the conversion process.

Path #3. Remind users the clock is ticking

Campaign-based triggers are probably the easiest of the three tracks to set up, and they also acknowledge the elephant in the room with free trials — time will eventually run out.

Using your free trial timeline can help you deliver helpful content to prospects when they might need it the most.

You can’t automate trust

As I mentioned at the start of this post, automation can help you manage lead nurturing, but you can’t automate trust.

Trust is earned by being helpful, relevant and honest with your prospects.

To learn more about how marketing automation impacts lead generation, you can watch the exclusive MarketingSherpa on-demand replay of “The Marketing Automation and Autonomy Paradox.”

You may also like

Email Summit 2015 [Have insights to share like Keith did? Apply to be an Email Summit 2015 speaker.]

Lead Generation: 2 simple tactics to determine cost per lead [More from the blogs]

Lead Gen: 17% lift in lead capture by including more details in email [Case study]

Email Marketing: 133% ROI for B2B’s first-ever lead nurturing program [Case study]

Having in-house bloggers on your marketing team can keep your content flowing, but there are limits to the audience they can reach.

One way to solve this challenge, according to Carolyn Kmet, Chief Marketing Officer, All Inclusive Marketing, is strategically recruiting third-party bloggers outside of your team to help deliver the right mix of credibility and content that can reach new audiences.

At this year’s Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition (IRCE) in Chicago, MarketingSherpa hosted the event’s official Media Center. Our team of reporters interviewed marketers from across a variety of business verticals to learn insights on what works in ecommerce marketing.

As Carolyn explained to Allison Banko, Reporter, MECLABS, third-party bloggers can deliver additional exposure opportunities for your brand.

“Bloggers can position brands beyond traditional reach,” Carolyn explained.

According to the MarketingSherpa E-commerce Benchmark Study, less than 40% of all companies surveyed utilize affiliate marketing as a traffic driver to an ecommerce site. Using bloggers as affiliates can help with driving traffic from audiences outside of your reach.

The trick is, as Carolyn explained, is to build relationships with bloggers and offer them content opportunities that make exposing your brand to their audience worthwhile.

To do that, she often recruits third-party bloggers outside of her team as affiliates and helps them access industry thought leaders for interviews that would be difficult, if not impossible, to obtain otherwise.

The affiliates create content from those interviews to share with their respective audiences.

“There’s a lot of transparency, Carolyn said. “It gives them fresh content for their audiences.”

Read more…

At MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2014, Allison Banko, Reporter, MECLABS, captured an interview with speaker Jeff Rohrs, Vice President of Marketing Insights, ExactTarget, who shared a concept that should appeal to your inner entrepreneur.

If something doesn’t make money, then it doesn’t make sense.

I say this because, according to Jeff, email marketers are often underappreciated (and underpaid) because they don’t effectively connect the dots for executives on the true ROI of their marketing efforts.

“I think email marketers tend to be underappreciated in their organizations,” Jeff explained, “and I think part of that is the language we choose to communicate the value we bring to executives.”

Jeff’s proposed solution is to change the conversation by adjust the way marketers view what they contribute.

In sum, stop telling people you build email lists and start telling them you’re building proprietary assets that are exclusive to your company. One additional point Jeff shared was how social media is experiencing growing pains due to increasing pressure from executives to see clear ROI from social media.

“The executives are beginning to demand more from those channels and email marketers understand that because they’ve fought those battles,” Jeff explained.

Ultimately, Jeff delivered the bigger idea that your organizational marketing goals should supersede the channels you use to deliver them. As a result, hopefully marketers will be able to tear down the silos that emerge from those channels in the process.

Read more…

Originally published on B2B LeadBlog

Getting to the heart of lead cost is not easy.

There are a multitude of factors to consider. For example, should you factor in nurturing into the costs? Even then, how much?

In today’s B2B Lead Roundtable Blog post, I wanted to explore cost per lead by sharing a few tips and insights from the panel of industry experts that spoke on the subject at MarketingSherpa Lead Gen Summit 2013.

Tip #1. Clearly define what a lead is for your organization

Before you can even get close to what your lead costs are, you first have to define what a lead is to your organization, or as Atri Chatterjee, CMO, Act-on Software, simply said: “Just because you have a name, it doesn’t mean you have a lead.”

The panel rightfully pointed out the idea of a lead can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

So the first step on your path to determining lead costs is to cut through the confusion by creating a universal lead definition that the key stakeholders in your organization can all agree upon.

Tip #2. Move toward thinking of lead cost in aggregate

So what should you factor into your lead cost?

This can get tricky, but let’s consider, for example, that you can buy a list of 2,000 leads from a broker for $20.

Does each lead cost only a penny?

Not so much.

I say this because when you factor the associative costs to create content, market and solicit to those leads, the true price is likely much higher.

One recommendation the panel had was to uncover some of the factors that you might be overlooking and consider them in your cost.

When you look at the price from an aggregated perspective, you’re probably a lot closer to a true lead cost.

This notion was also shared by Erik Matlik, CEO, Madison Logic, who summed up the factors to consider in your cost per lead.

“I would put literally everything into your cost per lead,” Erik said.

To learn more tips on lead cost, you can watch the MarketingSherpa on-demand replay of “How Much Should Leads Cost? Tips for different channels, industries and deal sizes.”

You may also like

Lead Generation Checklist — Part 4: Clear and Universal Lead Definition [More from the blogs]

Fostering Sales-Marketing Alignment: A 5-Step Lead Management Process [Case study]

Why the Term “Marketing-Qualified Lead” Creates Serious Confusion — Part I [More from the blogs]

What is personal branding?

A personal brand is an expression of a value proposition.

It is a powerful message that clearly articulates who you are, what you do and how you create value.

When applied to social media, a personal brand creates a memorable first impression that entices visitors to connect with you. When using LinkedIn, a brand message should be the professional version of your value proposition. This brand messaging should be consistent throughout your profile and capture the attention of your visitors.

Here are some tips to establishing a personal brand on LinkedIn.

Step #1. Personalize your URL

In LinkedIn, you have the ability to personalize your public profile URL. A personalized URL is essential to establishing your personal brand as it is not only friendlier from an SEO perspective, but it allows for people to find you more easily.

Here are the steps to personalize your LinkedIn URL:

1. Log in to LinkedIn.

2. Move your cursor over Profile at the top of the page and select Edit Profile.

3. Find your current URL under your profile picture and click Edit.

4. In the Your public profile URL box in the bottom right, click Customize your public profile URL.

5. Enter your new custom URL in the text box.

6. Click Set Custom URL.

Read more…