Any B2B marketer and any creative agency who works with business to business clients must be using email as part of the marketing plan.  Business needs to add new customers to mailing lists and drive outbound messages for new products and services on a regular basis.  We listened to a great seminar hosted by the UK’s B2B Marketing magazine and have written up the notes for you to download.

Listen again using this link (you have to register with BrightTalk)

Read the slide notes below and if you like them; share with colleagues:

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Image by glennharper via Flickr

Do relationships matter more than marketing or advertising for B2B?

There is some truth in this but it is often over-stated.

Many web experts talk about the glorious ‘free’ things that come to them  just because of their relationship and web presence – but we believe that without a proven track record in the area of expertise – this is all wishful thinking.

Srini Rao wrote a nicely titled post about how relationship marketing helped him to land a dream client – read it because it sounds awesome.  The plot line goes something like this – you hang out in a surf bar and drink a beer / shoot the breeze  and at the end of the night the owner hires you to promote his surf travel brand.

Wow – the good life just arrived.

How did he make it happen?

I have no doubt that this really happened.  Sometimes serendipity is just there for you and good things happen.

But there were several pre-conditions needed for this beautifully desirable outcome:

1. Track record expertise in marketing brands
2. A clear understanding of the surf marketplace (and involvement as a consumer)
3. The client was ready to buy
4. Give away some free advice over a couple of beers to demonstrate expertise / build the relationship
5. Right place, right time, friendly fellow, made friends and KAPOW – new client.

Except for the last, every other one of these is a deal enabler.

Missing any one of them, it would have been virtually impossible for Srini to close this deal.  Take our expertise in the rowing marketplace.  We now have three clients who sell into the space and proposals out to two more.  The last proposal happened because we were at a regatta and got chatting… in fact, read steps 1 through 5 above – that’s EXACTLY what happened.  Now we’re waiting for the client to decide to hire us.

Why did this new client relationship happen?

Because of the four points listed above.

So take your business development plan and check out the steps in our biz dev methodology

1 – state your business

4 – profile raising

5 – relationship development

Each will help you position yourself appropriately to be in the right place for those relationships to blossom and hopefully you’ll also land your ‘dream’ client!  Well done Srini, we applaud you.

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There’s an old saying that cobbler’s children have no shoes. It refers to the fact that a busy cobbler will be so busy making shoes for his customers that he has no time to make some for his own children. If I had a dollar for every ad agency that has used that metaphor as their excuse for why they neglect their own new business program I could have retired long ago.

It’s time to stop treating your agency as its most neglected client and promote it to your most important client. It’s time to give the cobbler’s children some new shoes!

How?

Empower your new business director. Give them the clout and resources to get what they need from the agency as if they are the primary contact person for your most important client. Their projects are not put on the back burner when the agency gets busy. Allow them the time, resources and realistic expectations to build a consistent new business pipeline.

Choose your best target audience. Who is your agency’s target audience? That is the first question that needs to be answered. Without it there is no direction for your agency. It’s time to take a rifled approach to your agency’s new business. You can’t stay focused if you don’t have a target identified.

Practice what you preach. Use the tools that you recommend your clients use. Demonstrate their success for your agency. This is especially true when participating in social media. Walk the walk, not just talk the talk. Create a new business program using social media to generate inbound leads for your agency. This doesn’t replace traditional methods for agency new business but refines, enhances and integrates them into a powerful agency new business machine.

Be transparent. The transparency that social media mandates is changing the way agency’s do business, and it is a much needed change. It compels us to lead with benefits instead of capabilities. Everything is now laid out bare on the table, including agency compensation. Perhaps even more performance based agreements. On the client side perhaps replacing our current broken system of pitches and RFPs with something new. Long term relationships should be a mutual goal because it benefits both the client and agency. For that to happen there must be the “win-win” for both and that can’t be done without being transparent.

Be a Leader not a vendor. If you want to stop clients from treating your agency as a vendor you must lead. To be in a position leadership means to have a genuine expertise, a point of differentiation. Your agency can no longer afford to be everything to everybody. So the next question you need to answer, “what is our expertise?” When you answer this question, plant that flag in the ground, this is what we do best, it will command respect, higher premiums and give clients outside your market a reason to do business with your agency. A small agency was recently included in a pitch for a national account because they were willing to say this is who we are, this is how we are different than other agencies, this is our expertise.

This article was originally published here.

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Image via Wikipedia

Devising appropriate ways to measure your social media campaign for new business development is key to proving that your work is delivering results.

Today we suggest some ways to measure the success of your work

1. The number of Followers on Twitter
2. The number of Fans on Facebook Fan Pages, Events
3. The number of tweets & RTs on Twitter
4. The number of Shares & Likes on Facebook
5. The ratio between Followers-Friends
6. The authority of the people that follow you
7. The authority of the people that share your content
8. The average quality of your previously shared messages
9. The number of unique mentions/shares (similar to Link Diversity)
10. The rate and the source of links that you share

Moreover search engines are expected to use Social Media buzz to determine:

How fresh a particular post is

If an page is still useful/valid/up-to-date

What are the current trends

Which terms are related to the particular post. They are likely to use the keywords and the hash tags that can be found in the content of the shared messages.

The theme or the topic of expertise of each author.  Users that tend to post high quality messages about a particular topic are likely to be considered as experts.  Bing already uses this feature by recommending users on Twitter.

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There are a lot of places online where your personal and company profile is visible.  This is the modern-day equivalent to directory listings that used to be a very important part of B2B marketing in the past.

I was reminded of this by a recent follow request from StrewIt.  I have no idea what the service is but if you “visit them and start Strewing!!!” apparently all will become clear.  Not.

Twitter biography

So much for them.

Well to take our own medicine, we created the Creative Agency Secrets Linked In company page.

Other places where  your personal and company information could be kept up to date:

• Facebook page
• Skype
• Delicious [topical right now]
• Website about page
• Industry specialist directories
• Techcrunch directory
• Industry magazine website listings

Why not add in a new calendar item for yourself every few months – to update your online profiles?  Set a reminder as a task or a diary date so you don’t forget.  Include in the task the list of sites to check and add in any new ones that have become important in the intervening period.

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Cold calling – The folly of pre-mailing

Recently I was asked how would I write an introductory letter to send prior to cold calling?

My answer “I wouldn’t”.

Reasons to write

There are a couple of key reasons people send an introductory letter:

• They believe it will be read and as a result the prospect will be more open and receptive to their call.
• It makes the call feel less cold so makes making the call easier.

The reality:

The vast majority of your mailings will go straight in the bin, a few will get skimmed first and then binned.  A few will find their way into a pile and become buried, and if you’re lucky and the gods are on your side a few may actually get read.

When you call

So how does this translate for someone receiving a call from you?

If they just skimmed the material or binned it without reading it they probably have no memory of ever receiving it.

Straight away this triggers two doubts:

1. Did you even send them anything or is this just a gimmicky opening you use to get them chatting?
2. Secondly, if you did send them something it must have been of no interest to them or they would have remembered it.

This is not the best footing to start a call.

In short, pre-mailing prospects is time wasting, ineffective and often leads to doubt and mistrust in the minds of those you call.

Invest your time and energy into making more calls and asking more people to take the next step with you.

Success belongs to the askers, so stop mailing and keep asking: the results will speak for themselves.

Paul Foley, Noodle Coaching

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A white paper has long been seen as a ‘serious’ way for a B2B business to position itself as a thought leader in its niche.

Reading an Economist article recently about the glut of white papers (and my comment) being produced by management consultancies under the guise of research and new thinking, made me reflect on the number of white papers I’ve had cause to author, promote and release to clients’ databases of contacts.

Why do it?

The usual rationale for writing and publishing elegantly-crafted, well-researched opinion statements is that it positions your organisation as a leader in its field.

But the more organisations that do it with less-than-original content, so the whole genre risks being debased.

For a pure research business, a white paper publication schedule is a logical part of promoting their services.  For Forrester and Gartner, this is incontrovertible.

And the highly regarded global consulting organisations like Boston Consulting,  McKinsey and Bain would have no problems holding their own in “company”.

O’Reilly Media uses newsletters as its communication tool of choice.  Now they do consult as well as train, publish and research.  And this seems a logical way of creating a communication channel for each niche tech segment in which they are expert.  In fact, the ‘thought-leadership’ of Tim O’Reilly and his team of writers is not contested.  They don’t need to write white papers to lead thinking.

And Altimeter Group states its mission as “Altimeter Group is a research-based advisory firm that helps companies and industries leverage disruption to their advantage.”  And so I’d expect leading thinking from them and they choose to display this by media interviews and articles.

But what about your company?

If you cannot satisfactorily answer these questions – don’t publish white papers.

1. can you say something completely original or based on new research?
2. are you proposing something that is a ‘game changer’ for your market or industry?
3. does your brand have the authority to carry off leading this new market direction?
4. can your company solve the problems or issues raised in the white paper research?

If you cannot, honestly, answer in the affirmative don’t do it.

Just publish a newsletter instead.

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Blogs Can Convert Visitors into Leads for Ad Agency New Business

The chief benefit to your agency from using social networking is “getting new business leads.” Creating a community of followers through Twitter and a regularly updated stream of content on a blog builds engagement, can boost your agency’s presence on Google and ultimately bring in more prospective clients.

Don’t just take my word for it.

Inbound online marketing platform HubSpot’s The State of Inbound Marketing report that inbound marketing can double average monthly leads for small and medium-sized businesses. It can also generate leads for less money  inbound marketing bring leads for less money.

“This report is designed to help businesses and marketers understand the current usage and results of inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is a set of marketing strategies and techniques focused on pulling relevant prospects and customers towards a business and its products.

Inbound marketing is becoming widely accepted because it complements the way buyers make purchasing decisions today — using the Internet and related media to learn about the products and services that best meet their needs.” – Hubspot

Three key takeaways from this report:

1. Businesses are generating real customers with social media and blogs. The use of social media and company blogs as marketing tools gets your company better brand exposure, but it also generates leads that result in real customer acquisition.  41% of companies who use Twitter for marketing have acquired a customer from a Twitter generated lead. 41% of companies using LinkedIn for marketing have acquired a customer from that lead generation source. 43% of companies using Facebook have acquired a customer and 46% of those using company blogs have acquired a customer from a blog generated lead.
2. Inbound Marketing channels continue to deliver dramatically lower cost per lead than Outbound Channels do. Respondents who spend more than 50% of their lead generation budget on inbound marketing channels report a significantly lower cost per sales lead than those who spend 50% or more their budgets on outbound marketing channels.
3. Inbound marketing budgets are increasing while outbound marketing budgets are decreasing. As a percentage of the overall lead generation budget, inbound marketing expanded slightly from 2009 to 2010 and outbound marketing contracted. The net effect is that the gap widened from inbound marketing having a 9% greater share of the overall marketing budget in 2009 to a 15% greater share in 2010.

An additional report highlight that I thought was interesting: Customer acquisition through blogs is directly related to frequency of posts.

The report concludes that, “Traditional outbound marketing techniques – including direct mail, print advertising and telemarketing – are becoming less effective. Buyers are not only finding ways to tune these messages out, but more importantly they now have the capability to evaluate the products and services they need on their own.

Click here for a downloadable copy of this report. There’s also a free Webinar On Demand: The 2010 State Of Inbound Marketing

Here are five things that you need to incorporate into your blog to have success:

1. A genuine passion for the topic
2. Expertise, credibility, authority
3. Honest recommendations that really work
4. Welcoming, helpful, rewarding information, given freely
5. Demonstrate value

These are the things we should incorporate into any agency new business program. A blog is a great tool that almost forces you to do these things.

A blog is a new tool for agency new business. It is possible to stop chasing business and have business chasing you.

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Steve is the author of a new book, When Growth Stalls: How It Happens, Why You’re Stuck, and What to Do About It[Affiliate link] and his publicist got him to write an article for creative agencies based on the principles in his book.

Many thanks, Steve

Times are tough for every company out there, especially those of us in the marketing and creative services business. As an agency principal who has struggled with growth issues in the past, I have written the book on stalled growth—in more ways than one. My new book, When Growth Stalls, is based on years of quantitative and qualitative research. It reveals four destructive internal dynamics that tend to wreak havoc on all struggling companies, including professional services firms. But perhaps more interesting is the genesis of the book: a two-year period of misery my own firm went through earlier this decade. Do you know what 94% turnover feels like? It’s not fun.

I learned the hard way that acting according to your natural instincts is often the worst thing you can do when times get tough. I’d like to give you five tips for business development in 2010, based not only on my research but hard-won experience.

1. Don’t lose your nerve. One of the most common characteristics struggling companies deal with is the temptation to hunker down. It’s true that depending on your situation you may have to be careful with your cash, but the steeper the hill the more fuel your firm is going need to crest it. That not only goes for short-term business development efforts, but for long term operations enhancement. You can cut your way to survival, but not to success.
2. Keep your heads together. Notice I said “heads,” plural. Unless you’re a sole proprietor, your colleagues are also taking this journey through the valley of the shadow of debt. When growth stalls at work, it stalls at home too. If your partners/management/staff have suffered losses in their retirement portfolios, if they’re having trouble paying their kids’ tuition or their home mortgage, and if they’re worried about whether they’re going to have a job next week, they’re not thinking normally. Oh, how easily doubt can creep in and sniping begin, creating a vicious internal cycle. Make sure you stay (or get) on the same page in terms of where the business is and where it’s going.
3. Focus on your sweet spot. If you’ve been in business for any length of time, you must be doing something right. Find out what it is and be it. We in the agency business are notorious for not following our own advice and sticking to our knitting. In fact, we want to knit, sew, crochet, stitch, tailor, quilt and sometimes even weld. If we aim a flashlight at prospects they may or may not notice; if we aim a laser at them we’ll get their attention.
4. Think today. At the beginning of this year my partners and I projected our revenue for 2010. Then we promptly set the projection aside. Who has any idea how this crazy year is going to end up? If we make our decisions based on some fuzzy forecast of a faraway future we’re likely to make big mistakes. We’re managing month-to-month now, focusing on taking care of our clients and meeting new prospects. One good win (or one bad loss) could completely change our firm’s trajectory.
5. Think tomorrow. We just made a major strategic decision to expand our capabilities. Why? Because we could. We’ve been evaluating the decision for months, and while investing in infrastructure is not easy for anyone right now we recognize that by doing so we could leap ahead of our competition. And it gives us something new and exciting to share with our clients and prospects which will make them feel better and more secure about us.

Over the past six years I’ve studied hundreds of companies and personally interviewed dozens of CEOs about the pitfalls and potholes associated with stalled growth. When growth stalls it’s natural (and easy) to lose your nerve, forget your focus, allow internal division and shift directions too often. It’s also unproductive and destructive.

Steve McKee is president of McKee Wallwork Cleveland and a monthly columnist for BusinessWeek.com. Learn more about When Growth Stalls and take a simple, quick and confidential self-diagnosis by visiting www.WhenGrowthStalls.com.

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Reading Jay Baer’s recent post about truth and candour, I think he has got a great point.

The RSS-reading public loves a screw-up – an opportunity to poke fun at hubris and pride brought low.  Domino’s is the most recent example of a long list of internet marketing screw-ups.

He says

I never thought I’d see a day when corporations were the most trustworthy and forthright among us, but it draws nigh.

Wow.

The honest corporation is coming… can’t wait.  And yet, a small part of my brain seems to doubt this.  Many people would love to see honesty triumph over evil manipulators but human nature being what it is makes me think that ‘trying it on’ will continue.  It’ll just take a new form.

But taking the moral high ground and thinking positively – I’d like to set a challenge for you.

What is the worst rumour or gossip about your organisation?

I can’t answer this for you.  If you are party to the senior corporate people, policies, strategies and mess-ups that have happened in the past year in your company – you can answer this.

• What is the one thing that has the potential to most embarrass your organisation if it were leaked to the public?
• Which bit of bad news would cause you the most sleepless nights / stress headaches?
• How would you choose to publicly humiliate your employer?
• What could an employee reveal that would make your share price tumble or clients to resign?

The short, easy answer to all of the situations is to not let it happen in the first place.

Quick fixes

Go read about Crisis PR and get some free or professionally paid for advice on how to handle a situation if true but bad news does hit the headlines.

Check employment contracts for privacy and secrecy statement clauses and enforce them if needed.

But in the medium term, surely it’s better to run a clean ship?

What might you choose to do differently if any of the scenarios above came to public light?

Becoming a trustworthy corporation

Firstly, do you want to be a trustworthy corporation?  What are the benefits?

If yes, go and make a list of things to do differently.  Share it internally and make your own subsequent management decisions about what changes to make.

‘Nuff said.

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