Because this is election season, and because I am an advocate of 1:1 marketing, I masochistically thought I would sign up for the campaigns of both parties to see how they are using email marketing to reach their constituents.   I now receive over forty emails a day asking for money.  How stupid of me.  I suppose I also now know that Obama is a Muslim talking the country down a socialist radical agenda, and that Romney is a Mormon and likely to attack Iran with nuclear arms.

The tragedy of political emails in the age of 1:1 Marketing is that they are so not 1:1.  There appears to be no feedback loop or evaluation of any interaction with the email.  It is entirely batch and blast.

Wouldn’t it make sense if I opened an email on an environmental issue that my next email might not be on the Keystone pipeline? (I’m making this up.)  Or if I contributed just this morning, that another solicitation at noon doesn’t really work, and merely pisses me off? (I’m not making this up.)

The second tragedy is that it seems they’ve sold or donated my email address and broken my trust.  There is a subtle proliferation of email senders in each party.   Not just the names of the sender, but the organizations.  Just because I responded to your immigration email, doesn’t automatically mean I want to receive emails from the NRA.

But surprise!  I did receive an email the other day that said… “Thank you for your contribution last month of $19.29.  We used that money to run a campaign for the left-handed speckled grebe.  It was a successful campaign and we figure we saved twelve grebes.  Now, we know things are tight, but we wanted to ask if you could help us with the right-handed grebe?  Etc.”

How much more effective could these campaigns be if they followed the basic principles of good email marketing?  Then again, as they say, maybe we would only encourage the bastards.

Do Great Things!

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

http://www.ratepublic.com

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Yesterday, 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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How 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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Would 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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Recently I wanted a piece of information from a web company for a service in which I was interested.  This time I really didn’t want to “read the whitepaper,” so I called them for a “demo.”  The resistance I had was that this would begin a sales cycle, yet all I wanted was information.

I keep returning to the Hubspot statistic that 80% of buyers say they find their vendors rather than the other way around.  We know that buyers today turn to the internet to get information and are further down the buying funnel when they contact us.

As marketers and sales people, we need to know that the next step of getting information from the Internet is getting personalized service on the internet, or from the experts at the company selling a service or product.  Customized landing pages do this.  In my case, I wanted to talk to a human, ask them questions, but really wasn’t ready for the buying cycle to begin.  I wanted information.   For example, this may occur when I am budgeting for a project next year.  I call this trend, “Access to Experts.”

What it means is that we shouldn’t always equate a personal inquiry with an assumption that the buying cycle is further than it seems.  It means that we still have to qualify, ask questions, determine needs and where the prospect is in the buying cycle.  It also means that the wrong behavior of pushing the sales process past where the prospect is comfortable may also kill the sale.  Knowing this fine line will become increasingly important because people have been conditioned by the Internet to just get the information they want when they want it.

You see a version of Access to Experts in chat features which provide some level of safety from the over-eager sales rep.  You also see it in social media.  I prefer the “No hassle, no questions asked, free five minute consult.”

Access to Experts will have ramifications not only for the way we sell, but also for the cost of and infrastructure of sales, and the way we measure the long term value of satisfied customers.

Did I mention that I spoke to the web services company the first time more than 18 months ago?  The reason I went back to them was that they didn’t cross the line or push the sale or try to manipulate me. They just provided the information I needed.  I respected them for this, and they earned my trust.  They decreased resistance.  Now I may open the buying cycle.

Earn their trust and they will return.

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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Resistance is futile… and a factor in Marketing Experiments formula for landing page conversions.

Their formula: C=4m + 3v +2(i-f) -2a. (A brainstopper in itself.)

A summary: The number of conversions is equal to four times the motivation of the user, plus three times the clarity of the value proposition, plus twice the quantity of the incentive to take action minus the friction element, minus twice the anxiety of entering information.  A more detail explanation can be found here.

For those less analytical, the formula from the prospect viewpoint is:  “What I want, plus what you got, minus the hassle.”

But it got me to thinking that as marketers and sales people, not only do we need to focus on our segmentation and value proposition, but we need to avoid resistance.  Being a sort of curmudgeon, there are large number of things that create resistance for me:

• The time of day
• Your interruption
• Your subject line
• Your unearned sense of familiarity
• Who you are
• Your yakking on about yourself
• Your failure to get to the point
• Your lack of humor or elegance
• The length of your email
• The number of calls to action
• The number of steps I have to take to find out more, if I am in your segment, and you do seem to have something of value.

This is why there are spam filters.  Like drug resistance for pathogens in evolutionary biology, resistance is evolving and increasing to the ways we market and sell.

There are ways to minimize these “resistances.”  But what if we eliminated them entirely?

What if we just provided easy to find, valuable information, for free when our prospects wanted it?  Would that be giving into the Borg?

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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A while ago, Hubspot wrote an interesting e-book called, “Hiring in the DARC Ages… Are the Right People on Your Marketing Team?  I recommend the e-book, and you can download it here.

The essence of the article is that the characteristics of successful inbound marketers are represented by the categories: Digital, Analytic, Reach and Content.  In other words, D= Hire Digital Citizens, A= Hire for Analytical Chops, R= Hire for Web Reach and C= Hire Content Creators.

My current client is looking for such a marketing person.  I’ve written the following introduction as well as a “test” for others to see how you stack up.  You can take the test online and apply here. Please feel free to rip off the intro or the test with credit if you find it useful.

The job introduction goes something like this:

Senior Inbound Digital Marketer

The old ways of marketing are dead.  Today 80% of our clients find us online.  And many prospects don’t buy from us immediately.  We have abandoned the marketing techniques of interruption and coercion.  Instead we are building trust with our prospects by providing useful information and content.  The tools we use are the web and social media.

The Burchfield Group is embarking on a tremendous growth initiative and is seeking a Senior Inbound Digital Marketer to join our team. This position will report to the Chief Marketing Officer.

The ideal candidate will possess a rare and unique combination of analytic and creative skills and has a demonstrated sense of curiosity and learning.  Your analytic skills come in two forms. The first is a working mastery of digital tools from html, to SEO, to Landing Page design, to database skills.  The second requires the ability to analyze inbound data for patterns, trends and actions.  The creative portion requires key content development, copy, and writing skills, as well as an eye for understanding what catches a prospects attention.

So you are part Spock, part Rembrandt and part Shakespeare.  Don’t measure up?  Don’t worry, no one does.  You use your sense of curiosity to learn the parts that you don’t have.  You also have the opportunity to work with seasoned marketing professionals (that’s me) who can help you understand our space.

Evaluate yourself by taking the test:

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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Here are three scenarios:

1.  The stock market crashes
2.  Your company is acquired by your biggest competitor
3.  Two of the largest vendors in your market merge

You’re in marketing.  What do you do?

Marketing is easy when things are sailing along smoothly.  But sooner or later, you are going to get an unexpected event because markets, competitors, vendors and customers change all the time.  Nothing stays the same.  If you expect things to always be smooth sailing, you may be living in another world.  So one of the issues marketing needs to deal with is how to respond to the event.

When I checked my finance page yesterday after the market dropped six hundred points, I saw something that reminded me of the need to quickly market to the event.  There was a pop-up ad promoting the book of some guy who predicted the last crash.  There was also an ad for gold.  These people were marketing to an event.  Their response time for their campaign was several hours.

A previous client of mine was acquired by their largest competitor.  It was an event.  With several months to go before the acquisition close date, they were susceptible to a fall-off in sales.  People didn’t know if they even had jobs, and who wants to buy from a company that may not be in business in three months.  Their marketing group activated a campaign within a day to assure current clients and provide a rationale for the merger to prospects.  The result was record sales in the month before closing.

In my current assignment, the number two and number three sized vendors just merged to become the largest vendor in the market.  What did we do?  Within an hour we pulled together our internal team, assessed the move, wrote a 1500 word paper, contacted 4000 prospects through an email campaign, issued a press and media release, and created a short video of the CEO speaking on the subject.  The result: five article placements, increased site traffic, increased lead traffic, and lots of new opt-in subscribers.

Marketing to the event is a short term tactic.  With today’s marketing tools, it is easy to react quickly and with a broad reach.  The question is… can your team respond?  It’s often the human element that is the weak link.  So here are a few questions for marketing.

• When the event happens, who owns the response? Do you?
• Do you know who you will use to help respond?
• Does your management team understand and value a quick response?
• Do you have a prepared list of stakeholders with whom to communicate?
• Will your communication fit your messaging strategy?
• Will it be timely, relevant and actionable?

How can you…marketing, take advantage of a drop in the market?  Are you going to be the next roadkill in the corporate budget, or are you going to lead your company?  You can imagine the drill.  Get ready.

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

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I heard someone say, “Marketing is just publishing.”  And if this is true, then the saying “Content is king,” should also be true.  The question is… does your king have clothes?  And is he dressed appropriately?

Great content is at the heart of any great marketing campaign.   It is also independent of media, and shouldn’t be confused with media.  Media is the way content is distributed, while content is the value and message of the information being conveyed.  In Quid Pro Nada, I discussed content as the currency in the new Internet marketing world and the value of giving it away for free.

Great content is also hard to accomplish.  A lot of content is garbage, mostly because it’s self-serving and sales oriented.   Talking about the features advantages and benefits of your products and services tends to be boring.  If you are still producing this type of marketing content, it’s why 95% of marketing literature thrown away (AMA).

Having a content strategy is a place to start.  Content strategy means that you have a content map of prospect needs for particular stages of the buying cycle.  This helps avoid offering ‘problem identification’ content to someone in the ‘evaluating stage’.   It also means that your messaging is consistent within any particular buying stage or part of the sales funnel.  Yet, as a marketer and consultant, my biggest content issues are tactical.  In thinking about content I’ve come up with four key elements and a set of questions you can ask yourself about each to see how well-dressed your king is.

The four elements are: 1) Creation, 2) Quality, 3) Focus and 4) Media.

Part 1:  Creation:

Marketing’s job is not content creation. A lot of CEO’s and sales people think it is.  But I rarely find a marketing person who is also a subject matter expert on the things that prospects, customers and clients care about.  That’s a tragedy in itself.   This doesn’t mean that marketing can’t create content, but unfortunately most marketers are too removed from the customer to understand their issues and interests. Rather, the best understanding of customers comes from Sales or R&D.

Marketing’s role is one of content facilitation.  Trying to get sales to create content is like… insert your favorite metaphor.  However, think of them as a source.  Sales people like to be interviewed.   Talk to them. Put them on video.  Go on a ride-along.  Sales can be a great source of truth. While you’re on a ride-along, interview customers and prospects.

The other area where real ideas for content are created is in the backroom of R&D.  If your marketing is not connected with R&D or consulting in a services organization, you are missing a great opportunity for content creation.   True R&D people and consultants are creative and naturally curious.  They have the ability to think about things differently and can be a source of thought leadership and content.

Lastly, good content has to be part of your organization’s culture.  Management owns responsibility for culture.  So if your CEO is not promoting a culture which values, creates and shares content, then have a strong talk with him or her.   It’s up to you to convey the value of content to the organization.  There are lots of ways upper management can promote content creation, from providing incentives, to allowing time for it, to setting an example.  Come to think about it, rather than talk to them, interview them on camera.

The questions to ask about content creation are:

1. Who owns content in your organization?
2. What are the best sources for content?
3. What is marketing’s role in its generation?
4. What is the value of great content?
5. How can you promote the value of content to your CEO?

In Part II I’ll discuss Content Quality.

Do Great Things.

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

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Part II: During the Webinar

There are hundreds of people on standby waiting for your webinar to start.  Are you really ready?  Will you forget some critical detail?   A power cable for your PC and its finicky battery?  Maybe you’ve nervously downed a glass of water and now wonder if you should have gone to the bathroom.   This is the point at which something could go wrong and most likely will.  Some things to think about:

1. Set up in advance. If you do your log-on, sound checks, and slide loads starting 30 minutes early, you’ll reduce the chances of something going wrong.   Give yourself plenty of time.  (PS: If possible, avoid speaker phones. VOIP is good.)

2. Have a moderator. I recommend at least three key positions. 1) someone to run the webinar from a technical standpoint.  This person coordinates questions and tweets. 2) The speaker or speakers.  3) A moderator to help direct the flow, timing and direct questions.

3. Stand up… speak to an audience… enjoy yourself. It’s necessary to project extra energy when you can’t see your real audience.  Standing up, walking with a wired mic and speaking to an audience, even if it is just a few colleagues, is important and will help the speaker focus.

4. Get right into it. Keep introductions to less than two minutes, one minute if you’re really good.  Your webinar will speak for itself.  No one except you cares much about the fact that your company is a world leader or that your speaker has three cats.

5. Make it interactive.  The best webinar I’ve attended took its first question within three minutes of starting.  This established an intimate and interactive exchange that made the event seem spontaneous and involved the audience.   Take questions as you go.

6. Use surveys if relevant. I’m not a big fan of surveys because they are almost always about the company putting on the webinar.  For example, “How many of you are using cloud storage today?”  So what?  If you run a survey, make sure you ask a question that everyone can learn from, and for which you might be surprised by the answer.

7. Limit it to 30 minutes. It’s hard, but very possible.  Make your content so precise and paced that you can cover your key points and questions in thirty minutes.   Few people can entertain for more than this time.  Did I say entertain?  There’s a concept!

8. Involve a client or user if possible. It’s nice to hear from the experts, but it’s also good to get validation from the trenches.  I like web sessions that involve end users, clients and others.  It helps break up the monotony of listening to one person for thirty minutes.

9. Thank your audience.  The first thing many stand-ups do is complement their audiences. If this is genuine and you respect your audience then you’ll be a long way toward a successful interaction.   Thank them.  Lastly tell them there is follow-up and where else they can go to get additional information.

10. Record it. Make sure audio-visual boy pushes the record button.   Damn, this should be the first item on the list. Hmmm…maybe there should be a checklist?

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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