Michael White's seminar on selling technology products emphasizes the importance of digital marketing in generating leads and driving sales through online channels. The presentation outlines strategies for utilizing social media and effective web marketing techniques to engage informed buyers who increasingly research products online. It highlights the evolving landscape of sales and marketing, where businesses must adopt automated marketing processes to compete effectively.

1. Selling technology products
Driving sales with digital marketing
InvestNI Seminar
Michael White, 25 May 2011

2. Agenda
 How to drive sales, generate leads and increase revenue using web
marketing and social media
 The internet redefines how companies buy goods and services
 Today when people want to buy something the first place they look is on the
web, whether they’re looking for shoes, a car or a 50k technology product
 Buyers are doing most of their initial research online before initiating
conversations with vendors and are better informed at an earlier stage
 Buyers are also more difficult to reach because of the increasing volume of
electronic communications they receive
 During this presentation you will see how you can use internet marketing,
social media marketing and “sales 2.0” techniques to promote your products
and services more effectively
 You should take these “demand generation” processes as seriously as you
take product development, finance and quality

3. Credentials
• Co-founder of DohertyWhite Oct 2009
• Enterprise Ireland Marketing Mentor
• Ex Head of Marketing at Singularity
• Senior Software Product Manager at Siemens
• Also roles at Elavon, Deloitte & Touche, Misys Corporation and AIB Bank
Michael • Trinity College Dublin Computer Science graduate (1990), Post-Grad Dip.
White Computing (2004)

4. Why focus on Digital Marketing?
1950s
to Sales people find and persuade the buyers
1990s
Buyers start to search online, find product
1997 information from multiple vendors
2006 Buyers confer with each other via online networks
2009 Sales now use online tools to prospect, generate
and qualify leads Marketing Automation
4

5. Why focus on Digital Marketing?
Because this is the way businesses buy technology
In a survey of 4000 technology
buyers in the US, 80% of these
buyers said they found the
vendor, not the other way round.
Source: B2B Technology Marketing
Benchmark Survey 2008

6. Why focus on Digital Marketing?
Because your competitors do
B2B technology firms in the US
spend an average of 7.9% of
revenue on marketing.
Source: B2B Technology
Marketing Benchmark Survey
2008 (MarketingSherpa)
B2B technology firms spend about
33% of that marketing spend on
online marketing, increasing by
about 3% per year.
Source: B2B Technology Marketing
Benchmark Survey 2008

7. What is Digital Marketing?

8. How to generate leads and sales
Generate more leads at
the top of the sales funnel
using online marketing –
email, Google pay-per-
click, social media and PR
Use simple techniques to
filter and process these
leads .
‘Hot’ leads go straight to
sales team or
partners/distributors, ‘warm’
leads go to ‘nurturing’
program, ‘cold leads’ are
qualified out within 24 hours

9. How to generate leads and sales
Review what you’re selling – its benefits, pricing, why it
1 is better than competitors – the value proposition
Understand your buyers – who they are, where they are,
2 which organisations, what roles, what do they want
Create ‘content’ – online information that your
3 buyers will want such as buyers’ guides, research
papers, case studies, industry surveys, ROI calculators
Drive traffic to your company website using Google
4 pay-per-click, SEO, email, social media, PR/online PR
Capture visitors contact details in exchange for high
5 quality, relevant content
6 Filter these contacts, sell to the ‘hottest’, generate revenue € $
7 Nurture ‘warm’ and ‘cool’ leads until they’re sales-ready ? “”

10. The tools you use
1 Revise website 2 Generate content 3 Launch Google 4 Start Email 5 Generate PR
based on buyer to attract visitor pay-per-click Marketing and online PR
analysis, add registrations ads campaigns
landing pages
6 Post to Corporate 7 Launch Search Engine 8 Hardcopy Mail to 9 Telemarketing
Blog and Social Optimization selected contacts qualification of
Media activities warm leads

11. Your website
1. Your web-site
 The most important marketing tool you have
 Your best sales-person 24/7/365
 A sales lead generation machine
 Drive visitors to your site  Home page is the most
 Get them to take “Most wanted action”
important page
 Structure, text
 Give visitors plenty of
things to click on
 Make downloads and
‘buy now’ offers
prominent
 Look at competitor sites
for comparison

12. Drive traffic to the website
 Quick way to get traffic to
your site
 Tell Google which search
terms you want to be
found for
 E.g. show my ad when
someone searches for
‘industrial fuel pumps’
 Only pay if someone clicks
on my ad
 Create specific ‘landing’
page for the ad
 Avg. 50c per click, can set
maximum daily/weekly
budget
 Can lock down by
geography, time, day

13. Drive traffic to the website
 Do not spam
Email  But do regularly email contacts
who have ‘opted in’ to
communications
 91% of internet users use email
 Cost effective, broad reach
Reply
 First, build your list
 Next, draft your email
Visit  Keep it short
 “Call to action”
 Test every element
 From & Subject – determine
whether email is deleted or
SPAM opened
 Certain words will attract spam
filters e.g. ‘Free’

14. Drive traffic to the website
 First step – keyword analysis
 Choose words you think people will look for when searching for your
kind of product or service
 Configure your site
 Seek links to your site

15. Drive traffic to the website
• What? Basically like a website that you can easily edit and update
• Why? Draws more traffic to your web-site, leads, sales
• Can paste in YouTube videos, SlideShare slides
• Can form the basis for your LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter marketing
• Allows readers to provide feedback
Tips
• Decide who you’re targeting
• Mix of entries – news,
opinion, video, photos,
informative
• Set a schedule e.g. once a
week
• Use images and video
• Basic, medium and rich
posts, light & heavy
• Strong headlines

16. Drive traffic to the website

17. Drive traffic to the website
 Why? To draw online traffic, and to sell to people 24 hours a day
 Video yourself talking about your product or service
 Relate to your business – e.g. “how we used the product”
 Video a customer talking about themselves and working with you
 Home-made is good
 Sign-up on YouTube (2 minutes and its free)
 Post it on YouTube, and customize your YouTube page
 Link to YouTube from your website, blog, Twitter ….

18. Drive traffic to the website
What?
• Professional network
• 250,000 users in Ireland
• 75 million worldwide
Why?
• So people can find you
• So you can find prospective customers – ‘
prospecting’
• So you can promote events
How
• Create your personal profile
• Connect to people you know
• Join Groups
• Get staff to create their profiles and connect
• Create company profile
• Fill out company product and services

19. Drive traffic to the website
Facebook users by age

20. Drive traffic to the website
1. Set up and fill-in your Personal Profile
2. Set up Facebook Business Page (not Group and not Personal page)
3. Put links on your website, email signature, press ads
4. Encourage people to ‘Like’ you
5. Find other pages that have high numbers of your target
customers, “Like” them and post to their wall
6. Post videos, make offers, upload photos – keep up a steady stream of content
on a frequent schedule

21. Drive traffic to the website
What
• Free storage area to put up slide presentations, word documents, PDF
documents
• Really useful for anyone involved in professional services
• (Will post our slides here after the seminar)
• Can collect leads from people who download your content
• Can place stuff here and link to it from your blog
• Can also record voice over on your slides then post it here, then link to
your blog or website – good for recording a sales pitch or product
demo

22. Thank You
Email michael.white@dohertywhite.com
Mobile +353 86 383 8981
Phone +353 7491 16689
Twitter @michaelgwhite
www.dohertywhite.com