Tuesday Marketing Notes (Number 8—November 15th, 2005)

A B2B Marketing Newsletter for BMA Members
____________________________________________________________

Weblogs, Schmeblogs: What Sells Your Product on the Internet—and What Doesn’t

Separating Reality from Illusion (Part 1)

by Eric Gagnon

There’s a lot of hype these days around the Internet again, now that online ad revenues are way up and the dot-com bubble is a fading memory.

The hype is pushed along by Web pundits and bloggers, who boldly proclaim the death of print advertising, direct mail, trade shows, and the other mainstays of B2B marketing programs, and urge business marketers to dump all their budgets into AdWords pay-per-click campaigns, then sit back and watch the money roll in.

It’s true that the Internet is changing the way people do business, and how they market, buy, and sell their products, but you have to trust  your own good sense. From the B2B marketer’s perspective, you need to be skeptical of the hype you’re reading on these new ways of using the Internet to engage with customers and prospects: A few of these are well worth doing, some are things you should start doing because they might be big one day, and some of these are just hype, and a waste of your time and money.

I’ll pick out the most talked-about developments on the Internet, and tell you which ones I think actually help you generate sales reponse for your B2B marketing effort.

Your Company’s Web Site

Let’s start with the obvious: How informative and effective is your company’s Web site? Can someone tell what products you’re selling, what they do, and—most important—what those products can do for them, in the first 10 seconds they’re looking at your site?

When it comes to Web design and content, I’ll go against the grain and tell you what your prospects really want: They just want the plain facts about your company’s product, the basic reasons why they should buy it from you (and not from someone else), how much it costs, and how to buy it.

That’s all. Everything else is just developing solid, persuasive content to get them these facts, and designing a site layout that makes it easy for prospects to get to the information they’re looking for.

It’s always surprising to me how many companies actually go out of their way to keep their essential product information a mystery to their interested site visitors: Silly flying company logos in Flash graphic intros, essential information and product details left out of site product copy, and using lazy, nonsensical tech jargon and marketing-speak instead of plain language that answers the questions your prospects ask about your product.

You’d think the Web guys who design these things never actually had to sell anything to anyone in their lives (and the secret is, many of them never did!)

So before you even think about adding something new to your site, make sure you’ve covered these basics of clear presentation. As a marketing manager, you do this by developing the essential sales content for your site that answers the most common questions these prospects are asking about your products, and selecting a site layout that helps prospects get to this information easily.

When working on Web site development projects for your company, it also helps to be armed with a little knowledge of Web design and prototyping, to help you drive the process of building Web sites that generate sales response for your company.

We’ll talk more about Web prototyping and development for marketing managers in Part 2, in next week’s TMN.

E-Mail Communications

Are you making every effort to capture the e-mail addresses of site visitors and prospects, by offering them something of value in return, like a free newsletter or report?

If you’re not sending out informative, structured e-mail communications to your prospects and customers, you’re missing out on the best way to create an ongoing communications link to your prospects and customers. And the more you communicate with your prospects and customers, the higher probability they will buy from you.

In this day of instant global business communication, more and better communication with the individuals in your market is a good thing. An ongoing E-mail communications program, in the form of newsletters, regular product and news announcements, product application tips, etc., is the best way to create this open channel to your customers and prospects.

This open channel to your market makes it easy for prospects and customers to communicate with your company more frequently. This increases the flow of interesting new product and marketing ideas to and from your customers and prospects, gives you a better handle on what features and solutions your customers and prospects really want from your product, and makes it easier to resolve customer service problems.

Here are just a few examples of useful, informative topics you can cover in the e-mail communications you can develop for your company’s marketing communications program:

• Product application tips documenting ways to expand the utility and versatility of your product;
• Technical and problem-solving advice on your product;
• Examples showing how use of your product or service increased a customer’s revenue, productivity, or lowered their expense;
• Relevant industry news items, with comment and analysis by your company’s top executives

The benefits of this open channel also allow you to discreetly integrate new promotions and product announcements into the informative content you distribute to prospects and customers. As long as it’s done with a light hand, embedded promotional messages in these e-mail communications become another valuable marketing tool for you.

Web Video

Another new and very exciting feature you should strongly consider adding to your site is Flash video—and I don’t mean those dumb flying-logo-and-rolling-text Flash screens you see on every other B2B Web site.

Macromedia, the creators of Flash, recently introduced Flash video, an exciting new video format that makes video clips instantly playable from inside Web pages, without forcing the user to select a media player or bandwidth speed to play the video.

This means every Web page can offer viewers an embedded video clip (with audio soundtrack) which can automatically be played when the page is displayed, or when clicked by the user.

By making full-motion video and audio effortlessly viewable on over 90% of all Web browsers, Flash video opens up many exciting new multimedia opportunities for you to present and sell your company’s products or services.

For example, you can set the home page of your company’s Web site to play a short video clip introducing your company and its product line. Better yet, you can add a cookie script to this page to play this video for site visitors only when they access your page for the first time, and not when they visit your site again.

Interior product description pages can benefit greatly by adding demonstration or use videos showing your product in action. Simple narrated graphics and tables can explain complex technical aspects of your product to interested prospects. Television news stories on your company’s products can be displayed and promoted on your site. Flash video provides you with many exciting new opportunities to use the power of spoken words and imagery to sell your company and its products (we’ll cover production of Web video on Part 3 in the upcoming November 29th issue of TMN).

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Search Engine Advertising

By now you’ve certainly heard of Google AdWords and other pay-per-click (PPC) search engine marketing programs, where advertisers bid for placement of small text ads displayed next to keyword search results.

There’s a lot of hype around PPC these days, but my experience has been that the actual volume of sales response—measurable clicks to targeted site pages—is usually low for B2B marketers, at least for now. But I expect this to grow significantly over the next few years.

For the B2B marketer, getting into PPC now is like a local retailer getting into radio advertising in the late 1920’s, or television advertising in the late 1940’s: The first advertiser in the pool usually builds a dominant lead in their product category.

That’s why I would always tell any B2B client to carve out a modest expenditure from their marketing budgets to get into this game, learn how it’s done, and start developing ways to turn clicks into inquiries, and inquiries into sales from their Web sites.

The secret to running successful B2B AdWords (and other PPC) programs is:

• Give something of value, free, to the prospect;
• Do this from a dedicated landing page created specifically for each PPC promotion;
• Get the prospect’s e-mail address, and establish an open channel with the prospect by offering ongoing e-mail communications containing useful information that’s valuable to the prospect;

Pay-per-click is a very important topic, and I’ll cover more on this in a future issue of TMN.

Weblogs, RSS feeds, Podcasts, and Other Stuff You Don’t Need to Worry About

Everyone says you gotta have a blog. I say for most B2B marketers they’re a waste of time.

And I say this as an avid Weblog reader. I spend my early morning reading my list of a dozen or so Weblogs and news sites instead of the morning paper. In fact, my wife says I spend too much time reading Weblogs (I think she spends too much time on eBay, so it’s a standoff).

But reading news, culture, and media pieces written by interesting, articulate people who seem to have lots of time on their hands is an entirely different form than the typical subject matter generated by most B2B companies, because the “good stuff” a company has to say is usually so valuable that it should remain under wraps.

It’s a fact that most of the really interesting and readable stuff that someone would want to see in your company’s Weblog is stuff your company would be better off keeping to itself, like the inside scoop on a new joint venture, a new direction in business development, or a new product idea or observation.

This information comprises a company’s core knowledge base and, as such, is far too valuable to be blabbed on a blog. Everything else either isn’t very interesting, or is more effective if it’s disseminated to, and published by, your industry’s trade media.

The exception to this would be B2B companies in the “information business:” Consultants, publishers, analysts, etc., who make a living by disseminating information and opinions. Here, blogging is another form of information distribution and communications, great self-promotion, and an interesting way to spread new ideas around in an industry.

Otherwise, don’t be fooled by the hype surrounding Weblogs and other “Web 2.0” developments coming down the pike. The same thing goes for RSS feeds, podcasts, tags, video blogs, etc. (a daily podcast for Amalgamated Tool and Die Company? Get real!). Most people in B2B environments (that is, outside the small coterie of Webheads who are pushing this stuff) are too busy to use these new features. Maybe one day, but not now.

It’s always tempting to add new Web features that everyone says you should add to your site, but if you stick to your job of describing the benefits, features, and applications of your product as clearly as possible, in language that motivates readers to take the next step closer to buying your product, the tools you need to do this are right in front of you: Web pages, e-mail, and video.

Comments? Suggestions? Send them to me at eric@realmarkets.net

_____________________________________________________________

Eric Gagnon (eric@realmarkets.net), is president of GAA, a sales and business development consulting firm, and is the author of The Marketing Manager’s Handbook, the master study guide for the Business Marketing Association’s Marketing Skills Assessment, Skill Builder, and Certification (MSA/B/C) programs.

For more information on The Marketing Manager’s Handbook, available to BMA members at a special discount, link to:

http://www.businessmarketinginstitute.com/book.html

_____________________________________________________________

Test, Train, and Build Your B2B Marketing Skills for Better Sales Success: BMA Announces New Assessment, Training, and Certification for B2B Marketing Managers

For more information on the new BMA Marketing Skills Assessment, Skill Building and Certification (MSA/B/C) training and professional development program, visit http://www.businessmarketinginstitute.com