December 15th, 2011 - Posted in General by Alexis Brill
We often help clients promote events they’re hosting – from conferences, to executive roundtables, to luncheons, webinars, road shows and more. We use a multi-touch marketing approach to get people to attend these events and raise awareness about a client’s brand or product. Our typical approach to event promotion is using direct mail, email, and social media in a strategic campaign. We find excellent response rates using a multi-touch approach, and have success growing clients online community. That said, I often see email marketing standing out as a very strong element in drawing attendees to events.
Email marketing may seem like it’s receiving less attention these days, with the savvy technological advances of social media platforms and applications. However, when it comes to reaching someone with a direct message and an exclusive invitation, email can be very effective. Here at enter:marketing, we have many internal best-practices and tried & true approaches to reaching a strong event RSVP rate.
If you don’t have a database list to send emails to promote your upcoming event, we can provide that service as well. We offer end-to-end event promotion, with strong email creative development, outbound strategy, and follow-up, using our best practices. Just remember: when promoting an event, always include email marketing to drive your response rate.
November 7th, 2011 - Posted in General by Tim Freestone
If you are still measuring your marketing value on a cost per lead or cost per meeting basis, you are not taking advantage of the services and technology available to make true business-relevant marketing decisions.
When you go into a marketing activity, in the least, start with a complete understanding of the following data points:
- Average Opportunity Value
- Average Closed Sales Rate
- Average Sale Value
Start there.
Then figure out how much you are willing to spend to drive one opportunity. Think 10X at least (this is a very rudimentary equation but for illustration purposes let’s go with it). So if your average opportunity is $100k, you should be willing to spend $10k. Then figure out what process will require, wait for it, the LEAST amount of meetings/leads to identify one opportunity. I know, I know. “But Tim,” you say, “that makes my cost per meeting and cost per lead go up!” Yes. Yes it does. Ask your sales team what they’d rather do, go on 10 meetings to get one opportunity or one meeting to get one opportunity. Chase 50 leads for one opportunity or 10 (this assumes you have sales that will even bother with leads). The answer to that is obvious. And, if they can do their part and turn opportunity into sales, and do so at a decent conversion rate, well my friend, now you are cooking with gas.
When you stop to think about it, we’re conditioned to asses marketing a little bass-akwards and alf-hassed. Break the mold, take the time to approach marketing completely, spend against opportunity and sales measurements, and start seeing real, actual, business building results. Crazy talk I know….
(Note: look for a follow-up post on the obvious-but-ignored flaw in butts-in-seats approach to event marketing.)
June 3rd, 2011 - Posted in General by Manpreet Jassal
“If you’re trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think.” – David Ogilvy
I remember reading that quote in one of my marketing books a long time ago. Ogilvy’s statement still holds true today even though it was said in the 60’s. Our overall goal as marketers is to change a person’s worldview on something. Nobody is spending their valuable resources and time to send something to someone and make them chuckle. We want them to get up and do something, maybe not at that moment, but do something really soon.
The main problem in a lot of today’s marketing is the language. If you’re not talking in the language that I am thinking in, there is no chance at all for your message to get through to me. So how do you do that?
Once you know the demographic you are marketing to, you have to know what they are looking for. And let me tell you they are not looking for the features and benefits of what your product does. Your product might be the best thing since the microwave oven, but if I don’t think it’s anything special, you lost me. So let’s say you are targeting IT decision makers and you are letting them know you can do backup 1,000,000 times faster, but everyone marketing to them is telling them the same thing. So how do you earn equity in their mind? To be continued…
March 3rd, 2011 - Posted in General, Strategy by Tim Freestone
Pop quiz:
When faced with the opportunity to have a phone conversation with a decision maker at a target account, the appropriate action is:
A) Get excited about the opportunity and fully prepare to better understand the decision makers issues so that the follow up face-to-face is an effective use of everyone’s time.
B) Get frustrated it’s not an in person meeting, discount the value of the connection and give it your C game.
C) Blow it off completely and complain that marketing doesn’t work.
Seems like an easy answer, but if I had a nickel for every time I saw B and C take place I’d have well over $20. Read the rest of this entry »
November 15th, 2010 - Posted in Solution Provider Services by Tim Freestone
Nothing is more exciting than getting a hot lead – a prospect who wants to make a fast decision. Your sales costs stay low, and you turn an opportunity into revenue as quickly as possible with little effort. If only they were all that easy, right?
Of course, it rarely works that way. Most sales opportunities take some time and planning on your part in order to become revenue. For larger sales, the cycle can take quite a while to come to a conclusion, and you may have to wait a few months before you can even get started in earnest. Since some of the best opportunities you have may not be ready right away, you need to develop a lead cultivation strategy in order to keep the opportunity warm until you can engage the decision-maker in the sales process.
It’s what you do before you get started that can turn a long-term lead into your next big opportunity. Invest your time in cultivating a lead, and you’ll be the first call when it’s time to start discussing a purchase. Also, you’ll make it harder for your competitors to swoop in and steal the opportunity from you.
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September 27th, 2010 - Posted in Social Media Marketing by Tom Johansmeyer
I’ve had clients and internal stakeholders ask me some pretty detailed about their corporate blog performance. They’ve wanted to know why their bounce rates are so high, why they aren’t getting more traffic from search engines and why the pageviews-to-visit ratio is so low. In some cases, these are valid questions to ask about a corporate blog, but generally, they are pretty close to irrelevant. When you launch a corporate blog – either to market your company or provide information or support to existing customers – you need to focus on the right metrics.
Especially for corporate bloggers who either consume mass media blog content regularly (or who got their starts writing for independent mass market blogs), it’s natural to use the metrics that have become accepted in those venues. Unique visitors, pageviews and stickiness measures directly indicate the performance of blogs like Technorati and Gadling because of the underlying business model. However, they don’t speak directly to the success of your corporate blog. The reason for this is pretty simple: traffic does not directly drive revenue for your organization. It may contribute to sales possibilities down the road, but it doesn’t offer a straight connection, particularly in the B2B space.
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July 12th, 2010 - Posted in Solution Provider Services, Strategy by Tim Freestone
Marketing campaigns don’t add up to a strategy. Sometimes it may look that way, but that’s just a bit of luck at work. It’s far more effective to go the other way — start with a strategy and use that to drive your campaigns.
IT solution provider marketers tend to focus on the campaign, a perspective resulting largely from demand generation considerations. The best way to bring in leads, however, is to use a coordinated approach that maximizes the value and potency of your marketing efforts. One-off campaigns just don’t have the same effect.
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June 16th, 2010 - Posted in Solution Provider Services by Tim Freestone
Sometimes it seems like IT sales professionals treat a full lead pipeline as a security blanket. They like to know it’s there … but they don’t do anything with it. The sense is that just having lead available means the future is secure. After all, they can pursue them anytime they want, right? Unfortunately, leads don’t get better with age – especially the hot ones. Eventually, someone will meet a prospect’s needs, taking away the near-term opportunity and giving another company the chance to turn it into a long-lasting relationship. In the end, a full pipeline actually provides little security, if it isn’t approached with swift action.
Of course, there are other reasons why leads are left dormant. Some sales professionals prefer to chase leads that have big tickets, not recognizing that a small client now can become a big one later. And, every rep has his or her favorite accounts, which provide a consistent flow of revenue with little opportunity for growth. In some cases, fear is involved: nobody wants to chase an opportunity and lose.
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June 1st, 2010 - Posted in Solution Provider Services by Tim Freestone
The potential for social media to build your brand and drive sales is salient, but there’s more to marketing than electrons. Direct mail remains a powerful way to engage IT decision-makers and lure them into your sales cycle.
Direct mail is both effective and increasingly unexpected. E-mail inboxes fill up quickly with newsletters, pitches and white papers, making it easy for yours to get lost in the shuffle. But, a well-designed mailer with a powerfully conveyed message can pop – and it has to be touched, put on a desk and opened.
Paper isn’t easily deleted!
As you put together and execute your marketing plan, be sure to include a significant direct mail component in your mix of marketing tools. It’s another way to reach your market, and one that will make you stand out.
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May 13th, 2010 - Posted in Solution Provider Services by Tim Freestone
Most IT sales professionals know what it takes to close a deal. Put one in front of a well-qualified prospect, and the rest takes care of itself. The problem, of course, is getting those meetings. Without effective marketing support, sales teams are stuck cold-calling, hovering at networking events filled mostly with job-hunters instead of decision-makers and otherwise trying to find very small needles in incredibly large haystacks. The odds against success are high.
The situation is made worse by a tendency – in both sales and marketing departments – to focus only on the present. Even if you can rack up enough appointments for this month, what happens next month? Next quarter? Next year?
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When it comes to event promotion, email marketing is a must
