There is one fundamental difference between Business-to-business and business-to consumer communication. Unlike B-to C, the purchase decision or the sales cycle is typically longer With B-to-B.  Therefore, your goal is to build rapport and position your company as a source of valuable information. By focusing on delivering solid content and advice, you position you and your company as the “go-to” source for customers and prospects when the need to buy arises. Here are some key-steps to consider when creating a B-to-B email marketing campaign:

1) Get subscribers to sign up. How? By making your offer so irresistible that they need to become a follower.  Offer something of value, think from a prospects perspective “what’s in it for me?”.  This can be a case study or a white paper that will help improve your prospect’s business.  It also needs to be exclusive, meaning that it can’t be found anywhere on your website and can only be accessed by signing up.  Your Headline will be key to drawing interest.

2) Make the sign-up process as simple as possible. The less intrusive you are the more likely you will get sign ups.  Remember, this is a sales funnel with steps to an end goal.  You can always get more information later.  Ask for the following: name, position/title, company name and email address.

3) Send a welcome email immediately after your prospect signs up.  Don’t worry you don’t have to do this manually.  There are all kinds of email auto-responders out there.  Some popular ones are aWeber, Constant Contact, and ComF5. This is a crucial step in creating rapport. Again, keep it relevant and interesting and engage.  This is where you can give your prospect the link to valuable information you promised.

4) Keep it personal.  Your Auto-Responder system can do this for you. But always craft your messages as if you are sending it to one person. If you’re seeking to develop a relationship then make it come from a real person. ALWAYS, ALWAYS make it easy for your prospect to contact you…include contact information or even a photo of you to make it personal.

5) Encourage participation…engage.  Try doing a survey, you will also increase likelihood of participation if you promise to deliver the survey results.  Again, make sure it’s relevant to their business.

6) Increase the probability that your email gets opened…test send out times and correlate with open rates.  Wednesdays or Thursdays tend to be the best days to send and mid-day (11am-2pm) is an optimal time to send.

7) What’s your strategy? Why are you sending this email? Every email should have a specific goal in mind. Building rapport? News update? Provide survey results? Encourage sign-ups for a seminar? Always remember….STRATEGY BEFORE EXECUTION.  Once you have the objective, design your piece with that purpose in mind…no distractions…keep it simple and to the point.

8) Trust: Your “From” name will impact open rates. It should be familiar to the subscriber the more trust the subscriber has equals higher open rates.

9) Headlines are key.  Avoid salesy headlines, don’t get too cute here either.  Again think, what’s it it for me…clearly outline the benefit your reader should expect to get by reading on.

10) Always be testing.  You can not improve things that you don’t track.  Things like: Headlines, Design, Topics, Delivery Times etc. can al be tracked.  More importantly, what does the data tell you and what are you going to do about it next time?  Study your open rates and always strive to improve them by testing.  Studies have shown that average B-to-B open rates hovering in the 10% range.

11) Be the trusted source of information.  Industry news relevant to your customer, studies, statistics etc.  Help them become a better company and you will be rewarded with business in the long run.

12) Include Links to other relevant information.  Keep your newsletters short but with enough meat to add value…add in links to additional information for further reading.

13) Remember Marketing is a support function to Sales.  Get your sales team involved. The marketing department is usually the sender of emails.  If the newsletter is to generate leads they should be coming from the sales team….make it personal, develop the relationship.

14) Think Mobile. With the increasing usage of smart phones a good chunk of emails are being read from them.  Make sure your emails look good on mobile devices prior to sending them out.

Tagged with: email marketing business to business

Filed under: Marketing Strategy

Great customer service is something everyone desires…yet rarely can it be consistently achieved.  The folks over at getsatisfaction produced an interesting infographic on the 10 commandments of Good Customer Service.  I wonder why they didn’t title it Great Customer Service?  Isn’t good customer service the expected norm? At any rate a good inforgraphic but falls short on substance.

At the top of the list they have “commit to quality service”.  What is quality service?  How do you define this?  And can you execute day in day out in a systematic fashion without fail?  Can your system be deployed across your entire team?  The human factor is the true litmus test…if each and every member within your company can consistently deliver your quality service system…you’ve made it.  When I think great service for some reason Starbucks comes to mind.  I don’t know why, since I’m not a raving Starbucks fan but every time I go (3-4 times a month) the experience regardless of location is remarkably the same.

Know your products is a no-brainer…it can be argued that it should be top of the list.  It’s never been so easy to get information…most of your customers will know more about your product than you do.  The step beyond, is knowing your products relative to your competition and positioning its strengths according to customer wants and needs is what will get the sale.

Know your customer.  Lets face it, you cannot be all things to all people.  The name of the game is to focus on who your heavy user is…think 80/20.  That’s is roughly 80% of your revenues will come from 20% of your customer base…focus on getting more of these types.

Points 4 thru 7 are self explanatory.

Point 8 assume that your customers tell the truth…it’s amazing how so many companies take the opposite stance.  I tend to think that if the person is actually taking the time to tell you about a problem they have with your company…they are giving you an opportunity to keep them as a customer.  Sure there are scammers out there but do you really want to waste your energy on them?  They likely affect less than 1% of of your overall sales.

Point 9 focus on making customers not sales.  If you want your advertising and marketing budget to shrink this point is for you.  Make your customers do the marketing and advertising for you.  Make stark raving fans out of them and watch your expenditures shrink.

Point 10 make it easy to buy.  When cash is on the table make it dead simple for your customers to give it to you.  A great post on this can be found at Jeffery Gitomer’s post titled Do you take YES for an answer?

Two Quik Tipz to achieving Great Customer Service:

1. Shop your competition…what are they doing well and what are they not.  And do better than them….period.
2. Shop other businesses in other industries…you don’t live in a vacuum.  Try to adopt ideas from other leaders.  Check out companies like: Amazon or Zappos….there’s a reason why Amazon is at the top of the infographic list below.

(Click on Image to enlarge)

Tagged with: great customer service sales infographic

Filed under: Infographics

Within the upcoming weeks the True North Sports & Entertainment Group will be unveiling a team name for Winnipeg’s NHL Club.

The debate rages on…should they be called the Jets or something else.  From a purely selfish standpoint of grasping onto the past…the Jets name has a strong emotional tie to my youth.  Things like staying up beyond my bed time to listen to games on the radio.  Drawing endless renditions of goalies and their masks.  Buying cheap seats at the local McDonald’s.  Hanging out with my girlfriend (now my wife) at Jet home games or at the Pembi during away games.  Names like Sullivan, Hull, Lukowich, Hawerchuk and Selanne are synonymous with the Jets.  As is the “wrap around” voice of Curt Kielback.  But that was the past.

I read an article recently in the Free Press quoting a “brand expert” that the new owners should keep the old name…because of brand equity that was already built up.  What a cop out position…talk about taking the easy route.  Over 15 years have past since the Jets left town…there’s an entire generation that have not even seen the Jets.  I say out with the old and in with the new.  Time to forge ahead with a new future with it’s own distinct history.  No longer can the hex of the Calgary Flames, Edmonton Oilers, or Vancouver Canucks have any effect on the new team.  We start a new rivalry…one that is dominated by us.  The media will have nothing to draw upon, there will be no energy given to self fulfilling prophecies of coming up short on old rivals.

The True North Sports & Entertainment Group have paved their own road to success.  It’s their story and they should be allowed to author it….it’s a great story already and it’s great to watch it unfold.  Judging by what they have done with the Moose I have no doubt that they’ll be providing fans with an entertaining product that’s a winner.  Unlike the other “brand expert” I believe the brand will take care of itself if you provide what the fans are looking for.  Creating a new brand is not easy, believe me I’ve been there and done it.  There are no shortcuts in creating a brand either…brands are built over years…not days.  For me….I’m in…no matter what the team is called.  I can’t wait for the opening faceoff.

Tagged with: Marketing Strategy winnipeg jets nhl new team name

Filed under: Marketing Strategy

In Winnipeg, every Father’s Day is marked with the running of the Manitoba Marathon.  This year, I am participating in my 3rd running of the half marathon.  I don’t really enjoy running but participating in the marathon is fun and what it forces me to do for at least 3 months of the year is focus on an activity that requires a strategic commitment to achieve a goal.  In many ways, this is a lot like marketing and sales.

In order to complete a half marathon or a full marathon you need to train your body to run these distances.  Failure to do this can result in severe injury.  Case in point, I ran my first half marathon without training…what a mistake.  Running at a decent pace to finish within 2 hours I was hobbled with excruciating pain down the side of my left leg…this occurred around the 6 mile mark.  Having never felt this type of pain before I decided to ease up on the pace.  I ended up finishing the race in 2 hours and 14 minutes.  My quest to finish the race resulted in me limping around for the next 3 weeks with IT band syndrome which could have been avoided with proper training.

The following year I decided to run the half again with a goal of breaking 2 hours.  To do this, I developed a race strategy to help me finish within my desired time.  Starting in March, every week I would run 3-4 times a week with each run averaging to around 3-5 miles.  My long runs would get a mile longer with each passing week.  My last long run would be a 10 mile run the weekend before the race.  This strategy resulted in a pain free race that I finished within 1 hour and 54 minutes…mission accomplished.

This year my goal is to finish the race within 1 hour and 45 minutes…hopefully my running strategy works.  If it doesn’t I’ll have to develop another plan for next year.

So how does running a marathon compare to marketing?  The end goal of marketing in my opinion is to have a positive effect on sales…I don’t really care about marketing to brand a company unless it ultimately increases sales.  Increasing sales is like finishing the marathon in a certain time frame.  And just like finishing a marathon you should have a strategy on how you are going to achieve higher sales.  Can you achieve higher sales without a marketing strategy? Yes, you can.  But just as I did with my first run…marketing without a strategy can result in a lot of pains.  These pains typically are ones of inefficiency, frustration of not knowing which tactics are best and sometimes a negative impact on profitability.

Just like a training plan for a marathon, a marketing plan for increasing sales gives you the chance to make proper educated decisions to change course along the way.  Focusing, on strategy before execution and being committed to your marketing will result in a less painful path to achieving your sales goal.  So what’s your plan?

Tagged with: marketing sales strategy training steps

Filed under: Marketing

Came across another interesting Facebook post from a friend.  And it reminded of a very simple but hard to execute (on a consistent basis) tactic in marketing.

Now I get paid to help businesses large and small increase their sales through proper strategic implementation of marketing tactics.  Here’s a real low hanging fruit tactic that any business can implement right away….as in today.

No one ever argues with me when I say – the best sales person and/or marketing is a happy and loyal customer that spreads the word about how great your company is to do business with.

Yet, one of the most overlooked aspects of any business is the customer experience.  In the post you see to the left is a customer experience my friend had at a car wash.  I am familiar with this car wash and at $20 a pop….I would say expectations are pretty high for a clean car inside and out.  Her little rant has generated a lot of related feedback…unfortunately for the owner of this car wash none of it is very good.

The customer experience factor often goes unchecked because there are so many things that compete for the owner’s time.  Here are a few take-aways from today’s tip:

1. How are you doing on the customer experience front? Couple of ways to find out: ask your customers and do a mystery shop of your business,

2. Loyalty programs for an existing customer for the most part will cost less than marketing to get a new customer to try you out,

3. I’ve said this before but it’s worth repeating…start listening…social media is a place for people to be heard…good, bad or indifferent…your business is being talked about.  You have a chance to be pro-active and in the worst case scenario be reactive.

Tagged with: sales marketing customer experience social media

Filed under: Sales