Category: B2B Lead Generation


Blog Mills. Really?

Filed Under: B2B Lead Generation, Messaging, Thought Leadership by Prairie Sky Group — Leave a comment
February 13, 2012

Marketing and Lead Generation Minneapolis St Paul Minnesota AtlantaYesterday, I had a colleague send me a link to a site that offers to write your blog for you.  The price was very reasonable, an introductory offer of $68.75 per blog!  He asked for my reaction.

My reaction was, “Really?”  And not in a good way.

Think about it.  Do you really want to phone it in?  If you are truly passionate about your business, how can you simply hire out the content and voice of your business’s soul?

I believe that marketers and business bloggers need to provide thought leadership, push the envelope, and not just offer rehashed stuff.  Because when you do rehashed stuff, your readers won’t tell their friends about your posts.  It will be boring.  Your readers will drift away from your blog.  Your posts will wind up like my insurance agent’s newsletter.  I will never read his stock subject, “Summertime Grill Safety.”  I might look at “Five Ways Not To Blow Yourself Up.”  But no newsletter or blog service will ever come up with that title.

Like every other industry, the marketing business can also follow the path of mass production.  Figure out how to produce more at a lower cost, offer it for a lower price, and then spend the money you make “marketing or advertising” your service to the masses.  You may sell something.  So will a hundred other organizations.  They will all be the same.

Yes, occasionally there is a technical discontinuity that happens in the marketing business.  For example, the creation of websites becomes more automated and doesn’t require experienced html programmers.  This can lead to lower costs for putting up a site, and suddenly there are website companies springing up from South Dakota to Manila.  This doesn’t mean you can’t take advantage of improvements in technology or marketing.

We are told that blogging helps generate leads, and social media helps leverage your content.  I believe this to be generally true.  But you need to do the hard work.  Thank you to those that do it.

So if you are contemplating blogging and want to generate leads, I would advise against using a blog mill.   You might just as well lock yourself up with everyone else… or blow yourself up.

Do Great Things!
Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Driving Sales With Customer Focused Marketing
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

PS: For those of you who want to stop the other kind of mill you can visit this site.

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Trigger Events and Five Steps to a Better First Impression

Filed Under: B2B Lead Generation, E-Marketing, Marketing, Messaging by Prairie Sky Group — Leave a comment
January 31, 2012

Marketing Lead Generation Minneapolis St Paul Minnesota AtlantaHow long do you think you have to make a good first impression?  Yes, the number may depress a few of the less confident out there.  Various studies say the number ranges from three seconds to thirty seconds.  These impressions then often guide other’s opinions of us regardless of how hard we work to change them.  As “they” say, you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

Why?  The answer is simply that this is the way our brains are wired.  We make snap judgments because it has somehow helped us survive, pick a better mate, avoid a harmful conflict, or negotiate a better position.

Even in the digital world, many inbound and outbound marketers forget the axiom about first impressions.  It’s especially true when encountering trigger events, such as registering for a newsletter or webinar.  However, unlike your hunchback, there are things you can do to make a good first digital impression.  Here are five steps.

Step 1.   Be responsive

Marketing Sherpa data says that immediate response to a trigger event will get you double the response rate compared with waiting twenty-four hours.   Fall-off continues with more time.   If you are batch and blasting or filtering trigger events, you are losing traction and should consider an automated response.   Simple thank-you emails with a little personal touch (hope you enjoy the webinar, or let us know if you have specific questions) go a along way toward establishing trust.

Step 2.   Deliver value

Nothing pleases prospects more than getting something of value they didn’t expect. Sure they registered for a webinar, but what if you gave them a complementary whitepaper or assessment in your response?

Step 3.   Be explicit about your communications

Let them know how frequently you will communicate, what you will communicate, and how you will protect their information.

Step 4.   Open the door

It’s also important to make sure they’ll receive your communication.  A step to ask them to white-list you or test your communications guarantees that your email will get through.

Step 5.  Keep your communications short, sweet and relevant

Really.  Respect your prospects.  Just because you have their email doesn’t mean they want to see the latest photo of your new CEO.  Underscore relevant.

Do these things and soon you’ll have enough clients and customers to have that hump removed before face-to-face meetings.  What hump?

Do Great Things!

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

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Is Your Marketing and Sales Approach a Product of Weakest Links?

Filed Under: B2B Lead Generation, E-Marketing, Sales by Prairie Sky Group — Leave a comment
January 29, 2012

Marketing Lead Generation Minneapolis St Paul Minnesota AtlantaWould you show up on a first date by bringing an engagement ring and your parents along?  While this may be a custom in some countries, it could be interpreted as intrusive or presumptuous in our culture.  Courtship takes some finesse, and often requires a number of steps. Often the best approach is the product of each of these steps.  So why should it be any different with inbound and outbound marketing, or sales?

Recently, my son-in-law proudly informed me of his number one page ranking for his new furniture outlet business.  I was impressed and ran a quick Google search to confirm it.  Sure enough, he was number one.  However, I was more impressed with the number two search rank which had a value statement in the search response promising me I’d get the best design at an affordable price.  My son-in-law’s statement said he had 10,000 square feet of warehouse space.  I didn’t much care, because I wasn’t looking for a warehouse.   When I dutifully went back to my son-in-law’s number one ranking and clicked it, I was taken to his home page.  I’d been searching “sofas.”  This confused me a little.  When I did find what I was looking for, it took me four or five extra clicks.  Then there was no action I could take except to look at a picture of a sofa.  His competitor took me immediately to what I’d searched for and then offered me design help.

In the Prairie Sky Group business development model, there are three vertices to a strong prospect triangle.  One is inbound marketing, one is outbound marketing, and the other is sales.  All three are required for success.  But each individually is a product of a number of steps.  As you recall your grade school math, when you multiple a number or fraction between zero and one by another between zero and  one, the product is smaller.  It’s our job to get each of these steps as close to one as possible so the product is as high as possible.  This is very difficult.  It’s also why we need to test and retest in any campaign or sales approach.  Decrease the resistance.  Make each step an advance.  Incremental improvement in each of these steps leads to more qualified leads and greater close rates.

Did I mention that my son-in-law and daughter eloped?  That’s another story.

Do Great Things!

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

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My 100th Blog Post! Should You Blog?

Filed Under: B2B Lead Generation, Clients, Marketing, Personal Marketing Skills by Prairie Sky Group — 1 Comment
January 6, 2012

Marketing and Lead Generation Minneapolis MinnesotaA lot of marketers and companies ask themselves if they should start blogging in order to generate leads.  It’s the new conventional wisdom.  So there are millions of business blogs.  And there are thousands of marketing blogs, some great, but most very dusty.

I started the Prairie Sky blog as an experiment.  I had some grandiose ideas, a few ulterior and selfish motives.  I wanted to see if I could create 25 posts with a small investment of time.  I wanted to test the conventional wisdom that you need a blog to generate traffic and leads.  As goals, these turned out to be important, yet not as important as I thought they would, so I keep asking myself, why I blog?

I thought my blog would be about the technical aspects of how to create leads.  I have a few posts on these subjects such as how to create a name based gender-assigning algorithm, or 30 tips for running a webinar, or how to create an automated marketing campaign or great landing page criteria.  I will expand some of these because I’m involved in the technical details of tools and trade every day.

But rather, it is the soft subjects of sales and marketing management, messaging, motivation, understanding clients and culture that I have gravitated toward.

One reason is that I see such a poor understanding of the fundamentals amongst my clients, especially at the management level, that the tools and technical discussion seems wasted.  For example, it doesn’t matter if you have a competitive keyword analyzer or generator if you haven’t thought your story through and written for humans.  It doesn’t matter if you can run an automated campaign or create a landing page if you don’t understand your prospects.  So I have leaned toward the basics.

This doesn’t answer the question of whether you should blog.  But if you are thinking of starting a blog for your company because it will make you famous, create a jillion leads, sell more product, it is just one step.

In some ways, I am surprised at reaching the 100 mark.  This is small in comparison to many, though more than most.  I’m not sure what I expected… perhaps a band and fireworks.

I’ve learned a lot.  In the end, the reason I blog is because it’s simply the right thing to do.  It allows me to connect and help other people, dialogue (internally and externally), test ideas, and serve our marketing community.  I am compelled to do it.  I recommend it.

I’m excited to see where it will lead next.  Thanks for your support.

Do Great Things!

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
Lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

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CEOs: Call Your Company – Access to Experts Part II

Filed Under: B2B Lead Generation by Prairie Sky Group — Leave a comment
November 14, 2011

Marketing and Lead Generation Minneapolis St Paul MinnesotaThe other day I needed to get a quote on a service costing tens of thousands of dollars.  I visited a website of a well known vendor, spent five minutes trying to find the information I needed, then looked for the “Contact Us” page.  The page had no phone number, only an email form.  Looking further, I finally found a number and called.

I got an automated phone system, listened to the endless array of options and pushed the number that sounded the most likely.  I was routed to India or Pakistan and immediately asked for my name and telephone number.  Patiently I gave the information and explained what I was looking for.  Twenty minutes later, after numerous checks with the attendant’s “supervisor,” I gave up.  The person on the phone had failed to understand my need.  That company was Equifax.

Five minute later I was talking to Trans Union.  I found the number quickly on the Internet, dialed and talked to a person who stuck with me, forwarded my request to a business sales person who called back within 30 minutes, and gave me a full quote.  The value of the transaction could be up to $65,000.

Of course you’re familiar with this phenomenon.  But my question is this.  If we are all familiar, and have experiences like this, then why does the difficulty of helping a prospect via the Internet or phone still persist?  VPs of Marketing, what will your CEO find when he calls his own company? Surf your own sites.  Call your own number.  You might be surprised.

Do great things.

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (cell 24×7)

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