The Modern Marketing Field Guide

Everything you need to raise awareness,
drive response and close more business in
today's ever-changing customer landscape.
MATT HEINZ

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THE
MODERN MARKETER’S
FIELD GUIDE
Everything you need to raise awareness,
drive response and close more business in
today’s ever-changing customer landscape.
MATT HEINZ

1
WANT MORE SALES AND MARKETING INSIGHTS?
Check out Matt’s blog at:
www.MattonMarketingBlog.com

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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, disseminated or
transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the publisher
and the author. This includes photocopying, recording or scanning for conversion to
electronic format. Exceptions can be made in the case of brief quotations embodied in
critical reviews and certain noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Permission may be obtained by emailing: matt@heinzmarketing.com
This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information
in regard to the subject matter covered. Although the author and publisher have made
every effort to ensure the accuracy and completeness of the information contained in
this book, we assume no responsibility for errors, inaccuracies, omissions or other
inconsistency herein. Any slight of people, places or organizations is unintentional.
Neither the publisher, nor the author, shall be held liable for any loss of profit or any
other commercial damages, including but not limited to consequential, incidental,
special or other damages. The advice and strategies contained in this book may not
be suitable to some situations.
This publication references various trademarked names.
All trademarks are the property of their owners.
Copyright © 2013 Heinz Marketing Inc.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-615-48781-6
Art Direction and Design: Erin Alvarez
Published by Heinz Marketing Press
8201 164th Ave NE, Suite 200
Redmond, WA 98052
Printed in the United States of America

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This book is dedicated to my wife, Beth.
She knows why.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
5
INTRODUCTION
MODERN MARKETING—ESSENTIALS FOR YOUR FIELD KIT
The marketing of hope ......................................................................................................................5
Product marketing must focus on the past, present and future ........................................................6
Four new marketing skills you’d better learn quick ...........................................................................7
CONTENT STRATEGY
Same content, three access strategies ............................................................................................11
Compelling messaging isn’t enough ...............................................................................................12
How to write for lazy readers ...........................................................................................................12
Five stages of effective content strategy implementation ..............................................................13
Six attributes of successful, lead generating content ......................................................................15
Seven requirements of a higher performing white paper ...............................................................16
Ten reasons why top 10 lists make great content............................................................................18
Eleven reasons your content marketing isn’t working .....................................................................20
Twelve keys to greater success and results .....................................................................................22
How to (successfully) outsource content creation ...........................................................................24
Five keys to choosing a better tagline ............................................................................................25
How to write subject lines that don’t suck .......................................................................................26
You wouldn’t read this, but do you send emails like it? ..................................................................27
Ten common email marketing mistakes that kill your response rates .............................................30
How to get more people reading your blog ...................................................................................32
DEMAND GENERATION
Marketing is about people and problems, not products ................................................................37
The five jobs of an effective marketing campaign...........................................................................37
How to choose the right database list source provider ...................................................................39
Report: Analyzing 62 million web site visits for B2B marketing best practices ...............................41
How to rank on Google without knowing anything about SEO ......................................................43
Six secrets to A/B testing success ...................................................................................................45
Layout best practices fo effective B2B web sites ............................................................................46
Easy tactics to build brand, get referrals, and drive customer relations..........................................47
Eight ways to make your webinar more compelling .......................................................................47
Is your webinar vanilla or hot fudge? ..............................................................................................50
Why bullet points on webinar slides are okay .................................................................................51
LEAD MANAGEMENT AND NURTURING
Is marketing automation more important than sales CRM? ............................................................55
Analyze the marketing automation data that impacts revenue .......................................................56
How marketing automation enhances Google AdWords campaigns .............................................57
Five keys to successful marketing automation content ...................................................................59
Implement your marketing automation system with CRM integration ...........................................61
How to build a lead scoring strategy that sales will support ...........................................................63
Three keys to more effective customer profiles ..............................................................................65
Eight habits of world-class B2B lead management programs .........................................................67
The five stages of lead qualification ................................................................................................69

Disqualified doesn’t mean dead—nurturing leads back to life .......................................................71
Three quick examples that prove nurture marketing works ............................................................73
Four reasons and ways to ask your contacts to unsubscribe ...........................................................74
SOCIAL MEDIA
Three social media sites to keep you on your game .......................................................................79
Four sales-centric social media metrics you should be tracking .....................................................80
Five quick steps to accelerate your LinkedIn ROI ...........................................................................82
Ten ways to organically grow your Twitter followers .......................................................................84
Ten essential steps for a vibrant online community .........................................................................86
Seven ways social media can save you time (instead of wasting It) ................................................88
EVENTS AND TRADE SHOWS
Why attending events in person is still so important ......................................................................93
How to make the most of conferencing parties and networking events .........................................94
Six factors to consider when choosing to attend a conference .......................................................96
How to attend three conferences at once .......................................................................................97
How to work a tradeshow floor .......................................................................................................98
Proven essentials for a successful B2B marketing event ...............................................................100
Eight requirements for a successful event strategy .......................................................................103
Anatomy of a better pre-event email ............................................................................................105
The most important part of event marketing ................................................................................107
SALES OPERATIONS
My definition of sales enablement ................................................................................................111
It’s called a sales funnel (not a sales cylinder) for a reason ............................................................112
Eight ways sales operations can double your team’s productivity ................................................113
Three ways content marketing can make your sales team happy .................................................115
Why too many inbound leads might hurt your sales .....................................................................117
Eight ways to invigorate your sales training program ...................................................................118
Why marketing should own inside sales (and why they shouldn’t) ................................................120
Five reasons why inside sales is replacing field sales ....................................................................122
CUSTOMER LOYALTY AND RETENTION
Marketing is (and always will be) about trust and relationships ....................................................127
Listen to your lead customers, not just your biggest customers ...................................................127
Four keys to building solid client relationships .............................................................................128
The sure-fire way to show clients and prospects that you’re listening ..........................................130
Customer lifetime value—four phases to maximize success and profitability ...............................131
Three examples of how and why the little things matter ..............................................................132
Twenty-two ways to show your customers you love them .............................................................133
Five fast, successful ways to learn about your customers .............................................................134
Six keys to driving early customer success ....................................................................................135
CREDITS AND COPYRIGHTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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INTRODUCTION
The speed of innovation and change in B2B marketing has never been
greater. And the need for clarity, for a blueprint, for a guide to what’s really
working and how to apply it specifically to increase sales pipeline growth,
velocity and conversion—that’s what we get asked for more than anything else.
Which is why we wrote this book. It covers a lot of ground, but quickly.
We’ve addressed a comprehensive view of the sales and marketing pipeline,
but done it in quick bursts with lots of specific, actionable ideas, strategies
and tactics you can put to work right away.
We call this a Field Guide because it’s something you can use as a
reference guide on a regular basis. Get familiar with the table of contents,
and start first with the content most applicable to a problem you’re solving
right now. Then come back when you need something else, later. If you’re
using this book to guide your execution and success moving forward, we’ve
done our job.
Speaking of “we”, I’m excited to include in this book content from not
just myself but also every member of the Heinz Marketing team (at least
as of this writing). Special thanks to Maria Geokezas, Brian Hansford, Erin
Alvarez, Meghan Bardwell, Nichole McIntyre, Bailie Losleben and Jackie
Jordahl for not only their direct contributions to this book, but also for
“walking the talk” in their hard work for our clients every day.
Print copies of this book don’t encourage interactivity like a good blog
does, but we still want to hear from you—what worked, what didn’t, and
what you discovered new or next to build upon these best practices. Email
us at acceleration@heinzmarketing.com and let us know!
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Onward,
Matt Heinz
July 2013

MODERN MARKETING—
ESSENTIALS FOR YOUR FIELD KIT
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5
The marketing of hope
Hope may be one of the most powerful yet least utilized marketing
drivers in the world today. Make no mistake, hope drives marketing and
revenue performance already. When it’s spring training time in baseball,
for example, and every team has a chance. Sure, some are more likely to be
competitive than others. But every year dark horses emerge. Annual cellar-dwellers
get on a hot streak.
I’m a lifelong Cubs fan. They haven’t won the World Series in more than
one hundred years, and haven’t even been to the World Series since World
War II. But every Spring, even with a “rebuilding” roster, there’s still hope.
In 2011, the St. Louis Cardinals lost one of their top pitchers for the
year to injury. Experts immediately started to write them off. In 2012, they
entered spring training as defending World Champions.
Hope tugs at our most primal emotions, instincts, needs, fears and
desires. Its draw is incredibly strong, and drives the kind of irrational
thinking that leads to emotional decisions, many of which we don’t even
regret afterward.
We want to hope, we want to believe. These are difficult concepts to
make concrete, to translate into something material. But what’s far more
reachable for most marketers is to translate the idea of hope into selling
the future. What happens tomorrow, six months from now, or next season
is unwritten. Paint a picture of what that future might look like for your
customer or prospect, and they can’t tell you you’re wrong. They can tell
you you’re crazy, but if your story of the future aligns with something they
hold great hope for, they’re far more likely to listen.
The marketing of hope is really the marketing of a future you, or your
customers, desperately want. And that future can be packaged, written about
and presented in a way that makes that hopeful future feel well within grasp.
You’re not going to get many prospects to buy the present. What your
prospects want, and will open their checkbooks for, is the hope of a better
future.

Product marketing must focus on the past, present, and future
The best product marketers I know balance their time between the past,
present, and future. All three are critical to effective product management
and long-term relevance with an ever-evolving market.
Most product marketers focus the vast majority of their time on the past
and present. And by ignoring or short changing the future, they lose all
ability to proactively drive the long-term direction, leadership and strength
of their products.
By the “past”, I’m referring to fixing and improving what already exists.
Products get launched with bugs, so you have to go and fix them. Features
become irrelevant unless they’re updated. Legacy products and versions need
to be supported.
Maintaining long-term client relationships often pivots on your ability to
proactively manage the past.
By the “present”, I’m referring to new features that address real-time,
current-market opportunities. Adding an iPad app as soon as that platform is
launched. Creating mobile features that make it easier for clients to use your
product on the road.
These are new products, new features and improvements/additions that
are done relatively quickly without a lot of required foresight and planning.
Again, most product managers get sucked into spending most of their
time on the past and present. And that’s time well spent if it’s supporting
customer-driven priorities. But too often, focusing on the past and present
means you’re mostly reactive, not planning ahead, not staying strategic, and
mostly playing catch up or, at best, treading water.
By the “future”, of course, I’m referring to product planning. Having a
long-term vision for where the market is going and how your overall product
plan will adjust and evolve to take advantage.
This takes a lot of work, a lot of research, and a lot of time. Some
organizations are big enough or resources well enough to separate this role
out to a dedicated product planner. But for most organizations, the same
people (or individuals) are tasked concurrently with managing the past,
present and future.
Step one for overworked product marketers is to know they’ll
ultimately be held responsible for all three of these. Step two is to discuss
this framework with your manager and figure out how to ensure time is
adequately spent on all three.
But I’m betting that identifying where your deficiencies and weaknesses
are (especially the long-term risk to market position and product strength by
neglecting focus on the future) will help get the alignment and support you need.
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Four new marketing skills you’d better learn quick
B2B marketing today has changed significantly. And whether you’ve
been out of it for a while, or just want to make sure you’re keeping up with
what’s required for success now and in the future, here are four skills I
recommend you learn quickly.
1. Funnel math and revenue performance management
The mindset you want, even as a marketer, is that your job depends on
finding and closing business. It’s not enough to manage the trade show,
send direct mail, or even flood more leads to the sales team. You need to
understand the economics of the full sales funnel—how many opportunities
are required to generate a closed sale, and how many leads are required to
find a qualified, short term opportunity (for starters).
Next, knowing that today’s sales process is completely nonlinear, you
need to understand the fundamentals of lead nurturing and two-way
lead and opportunity movement. This includes the metrics behind these
dynamics for your unique market and industry.
Here’s a relatively simple mathematical model for understanding the
lead-opportunity-sale math for your company. And for revenue performance
management, I recommend reading up on best practices from Marketo and
others whose business focuses on revenue-centric marketing.
2. Social lead generation and buying signal mining
If you’re worried about followers and likes, you’re doing it wrong. Focus
instead on engagement, conversations, and driving an active, two-way
discussion about the issues, needs and pain points your target customers
care about most. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Your prospects are sharing their needs and buying signals on the
social web every day. Your responsibility is to listen, look proactively for
mentions of those keywords and buying signals, and become an information
concierge to drive top-of-pipeline lead generation for your organization.
Technology and process drive value here, not media buying and budget.
The social web is the greatest source of ongoing free leads ever seen. Are
you taking advantage?
3. SEO and inbound marketing fundamentals
The rules change (literally) daily, but it’s important to understand the
fundamentals of what drives natural traffic, and how to create content that
drives perpetual inbound interest for your products and services. If you
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understand (and read) nothing else, understand that the most important
drivers of successful SEO and inbound marketing are great content, and
inbound links that demonstrate others are validating your great content.
It’s worth reading content from SEOMoz, Content Marketing Institute
and others who keep up on the daily changes of the technical aspects of
SEO, plus educate and enable “the rest of us” on how to cut through the
clutter and drive value, traffic and conversions.
4. Lead management/nurture workflow development
Even if you aren’t using a marketing automation solution, your
marketing strategy should reflect the reality that the majority of your
prospects don’t convert (or move forward) right away, and that most of
them need “nurturing” in advance of being ready to buy.
This isn’t about buying a marketing automation system. It’s about having
a strategy that addresses how your customers buy and enabling processes
and tactics throughout your organization that address and empower your
prospects where they are.
No matter how tightly you manage your sales process your prospects
will decide (independent of you) when they’re ready to buy. Your lead
management and nurture strategy had better reflect that.
This isn’t to say that the old marketing focus areas and strategies aren’t
relevant or don’t work. Because many are and do. But if you don’t have a
working knowledge of the above four disciplines, it’ll be difficult to be a
working marketer.
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Same content, three access strategies
When we publish a new best practice guide, we typically put it up on
Slideshare and make it available for free to anyone who finds it there or finds
it on our blog. We also take that guide, put it behind a registration page,
and promote it to all of our blog readers via a sidebar.
Same content, available for free, in one place with just a click and another
with your name and email address required.
But it gets better. Our Productivity Manifesto is available for free with
just a click, for free with registration, AND for $2.99 as a Kindle single.
Are we crazy? Maybe, but there’s a method to this madness too.
If someone is following us on Slideshare or reading our blog posts
regularly, I don’t think I need to ask them for registration. They’re already
a follower, probably getting our newsletter, so I don’t want to increase the
number of gates between them and our content.
For new blog readers (folks who find us via a Google search for a topic
we’ve written about, or a retweet, or similar), they’re probably new to Heinz
Marketing and our content. In that case, I think it’s fine to ask for light
information in exchange for access to the content.
And on Amazon.com, our strategy adjusts again to the environment.
Kindle singles aren’t expensive to begin with, but we’ve had far more
traction by charging $2.99 than when it was just a free download to the
Kindle. Put a price tag on it, and there’s perceived value.
And of course, most of our best practice guides are aggregations of recent
blog posts on a particular topic. So, if you use the search function and have a
few minutes, you can get all of that content for free. Or you can get it in 15
seconds with a quick, free registration.
There are differences in value exchange that drive some of this, but also
careful consideration of the context of the user, the relationship that likely
already exists, and the benefit of adding or reducing barriers to access.
Lots of grey area here, of course, but it’s working (at least for us).
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Compelling messaging isn’t enough
It’s easy to get excited about how you’ve positioned your product, service
or business. You’ve done your research, analyzed the target customer, and
come up with a position that focuses on solving their problems. It gets right
to the heart of what hurts, what they’re missing, and what they need. It’s
compelling and you take it to market.
And it fails.
Why? Could be a number of reasons, but most “compelling” messages
fail because they aren’t unique.
Your messaging can’t be developed in a vacuum. Chances are, your
competitors (as well as other, even complimentary companies addressing the
same customer) have come up with the same messages, the same customer
pain points, the same problems to be solved.
So what makes you different? How do you approach the problem
differently? How are you addressing a more specific or unique angle of the
customer’s problem?
In some cases, the mere fact that your solution works could be what
makes you unique. Others boast, but we deliver.
What makes your message both compelling and unique, the combination
of those two, is what makes effective message development so difficult. It
requires far more market insight, and ongoing vigilance as the market (and
your customer) changes.
How to write for lazy readers
You may not consider yourself a lazy person. But, I’m willing to bet
you’re a lazy reader. A scanner. You don’t read as many long-form, New
Yorker-style articles as you used to.
You don’t have the time. Or don’t take the time. Or just prefer content
in more digestible formats.
Despite the reason or root cause, our attention spans are shrinking and
our consumption of content is following suit. How you write and present
content—if you want today’s busy executives, decision makers and potential
customers to read it—needs to reflect this as well.
Your customers, prospects and readers are moving fast, scanning for clues
of interest and relevance. The most important elements of your content
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should play to that—headlines, the first couple sentences, bullets and
subheads and bolded key points.
Think about the best used textbooks at the college bookstore. The ones
where previous students have already gone through and highlighted the
most important, salient points. Even if you write long, make it easy for
readers to scan, get the main points, and get out.
After writing your first draft, go back through and edit. Ruthlessly. Set a
goal of cutting word count by at least 33 percent, if not more.
Writing this way may not win you a literary award, but it will most
certainly get your points across faster and more widespread.
Five stages of effective content strategy implementation
This installment outlines five key structural stages of effective content
marketing implementation. Like most marketing programs, the vast majority
of your time will be spent in execution mode. But without proper planning,
your execution has far less of a chance of having the effect you desire.
What’s more, ensuring that your plan covers each of the key elements or
stages of the program is essential to maximizing success.
Below are five stages of successful content marketing set out by Sirius last year.
1. Objective
Seems basic and obvious, but the nuances of your specific objective or
need for a particular piece of content (or content program) may change how
you execute. For example, is your content intended to drive awareness and
discovery, or something more specific and deeper within the sales process?
Knowing what you need the content to do (i.e. what you want the audi-ence
to think and act on after consuming your content) will drive clarity and
precision through the rest of your program execution. Defining your objec-tive
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up front will also ensure all internal constituents (especially between
sales and marketing) are on the same page and agree on what you’re trying
to accomplish.
2. Asset architecture
Once you have the objective established (which also inherently directs
who you are targeting and with what purpose), you can effectively choose
the format and structure of the content itself. For example, what media
should you use? If written, is it a blog post, a white paper, a transcript of a
previous event, or something else? How and where should it be published
and accessible? Will you require registration? How long will it be, and what

will you request of (or offer) the recipient after consuming the content?
How will you measure consumption, impact and conversion? Think through
these and other structural questions before beginning to execute or even
outline the key points to be made. Different formats and structures lend
themselves to different angles and approaches to content. The better you’re
able to match your objective and audience to the right format, the more
productive the final product will be in delivering your desired outcome.
3. Execution
With the first two steps above in place, you’re ready to execute. Set a
clear production schedule with stages of review for key parties. Depending
on the nature of the content program and product, consider including a
customer review of the content before it’s finished as well, to make sure it
resonates and “works” not just with internal reviewers but a potential peer
of your intended end audience. Just as in product development, it’s easy
to make adjustments, cut corners or otherwise change the original plan to
get a final product out the door. But as you execute, ensure that you aren’t
compromising the objectives and original needs of the content and program
overall.
4. Measurement
Because you included measurement in your inventory of asset
architecture requirements, you won’t be scrambling during or after
execution to figure out if your plan worked. With measurement structures
in place, start reviewing the immediate and long-term impact of the content
program. Does the output or result match your expectations and objectives?
If you started with a limited test, have you seen enough to expand deeper
into the market, to more of your opt-in list, or across the rest of your
customer base?
5. Continuous improvement
As you measure consumption and impact trends, look for ways to make
your results even better. What are consumers of your content telling you
explicitly and implicitly about its value? What feedback are you getting
about how to make it more impactful? What have you learned from this
particular content program that can impact previously-launched programs,
but also make future programs more successful right out of the gate? Plenty
of content programs get launched and quickly forgotten about. And if they
continue to drive inbound traffic and/or leads, that may be okay. But there
are often best practices discovered in later programs that could be applied to
previous, now-passive programs to make them perform even better for you
in the background.
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Six attributes of successful, lead generating content
If you pull together some of the most successful, lead-generating
examples of content across the B2B world, and looked for what they all had
in common, I bet the following six attributes would be in place for most of
them. It’s no guarantee that your content will go viral and generate buckets
of qualified leads, but the more of these you nail the more likely your
ongoing content development investments will pay off.
1. Brief
The SEO experts say that a blog post should be more than 500 words,
but less than 1,000. But viral content doesn’t have to match that format. In
fact, some of the most viral content you’ll find is little more than a picture
with a caption, or a short but powerful idea written well. When you write,
look through your first draft and find entire sentences you can delete, that
don’t really add to your main point. If you’re thinking about creating a
three-minute video, make it two minutes or less. The more efficiently you
can communicate your story or message, the more likely people are to read
it and share it with others. This isn’t an attention span thing. It’s a we-are-all-
busy-so-get-to-the-point thing.
2. Valuable
Goes without saying, perhaps, but there’s a ton of content out there
that is little more than an excuse to publish some keywords to get Google’s
attention. Just because you achieve the magical five to eight percent
keyword density doesn’t mean your content is compelling, or teaches your
prospects something new, or compels them to want to share it with peers,
colleagues and respective networks. Great content makes your audience
think, then want to do something. Is your content that valuable?
3. Targeted
Who are you talking to? What do they care about? What are they
thinking about or struggling with right now, and how can you help them?
You aren’t likely going to create content that appeals to everyone, and if
you try it might just be too diluted that it doesn’t catch fire at all. If you’re
going to go viral, do so with a targeted audience. If you’re writing for sales
executives, create content that they can’t wait to share with their peers. Or
they’ll want to share with their managers and/or board to better understand
what they do. Worried that your content is too targeted? That probably
means you aren’t creating enough content. If you have more than one
audience you care about, generate enough diversity and volume of content
to impact them all (vs. trying to talk to them all at once).
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4. Broadly appealing
You’d think this conflicts with the idea that you want content to be
targeted, but there’s a difference between speaking to a unique audience,
and speaking to so narrow of a topic that others won’t relate. Great content
doesn’t catch fire if it’s written for one. And your initial audience won’t pass
it along if they don’t think others will also find it valuable. So, yes, there’s a
fine line between staying targeted and keeping content broadly appealing.
5. Unique
Some of your best content ideas will come by consuming the content
of others. But if you focus on writing or creating mostly reactions to what
other people create, you’ll have already missed the boat based on someone
else’s content that has already gone viral. What makes your content unique?
Your voice? Your perspective? Can you take an opposing view on a popular
topic? Sometimes content goes viral specifically with those who disagree
with you.
6. Findable
How are you seeding your new, great content so that others can find it?
Are you sharing it in your social networks? Seeding it directly to influencers
and other bloggers who already have large networks and will get the fire
going for you? If you create a great PowerPoint slide deck, for example, have
you posted it on Slideshare and added the right keywords to the description
to help it get discovered? Findability, though last on this list, is at least as
important as the quality and value of the content itself.
There are far more attributes to great lead-generating content, of course.
What criteria do you use when creating new content? What criteria do you
notice present on the content you most often read, retweet and pass along.
Seven requirements of a higher performing white paper
Ten years ago, white papers were a minimum of ten pages, heavily
footnoted, and quite formal documents. Today, they need not be so formal
to be effective. You’ll find white papers in a variety of formats, lengths
and styles. But most of them are intended to educate, nurture prospects,
segment buyer from browsers, and drive a qualifying next step from those
that are most interested in learning more.
No matter how you approach, write and format your white paper, here
are seven proven requirements that consistently drive greater performance
measured by views, downloads, registrations and conversions.
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1. Cover page
It may be superficial and not tied to the quality of the inside content, but
it’s extremely important. Your prospects will absolutely judge your book
by its cover. When that white paper is promoted on sites like SlideShare,
for example, browsers will choose their views and downloads based on
what best appeals to them visually. Don’t let the cover be an afterthought.
Get your creative team working on it well in advance of your expected
publication date, and make it shine.
2. Topic and title
I’m going to assume you’ve already chosen a topic that focuses less
on your product, and more on the problems your customers face on a
regular basis. White papers need to be educational to be effective. But a
great topic with a boring title may still fall flat. Combine a compelling title
with great cover art and you’re on your way to success. What makes for a
good title? Numbers, for one. Titles that start with “Five tips to...” always
perform better than “Best practices to...”. If you’re specific, the prospect
or reader will assume you know what you’re talking about. Imply expertise,
exclusivity, comprehensiveness, and unique insight.
3. Readability/scanability
When’s the last time you sat down and read an entire white paper front
to back? Exactly. Your readers are scanners too. They are going to read your
white paper the same way they read most newsletters and blog posts. They’ll
scan, look for subheadlines and bullet lists, trying to get the gist of the piece
without having to read every word. Make sure you write and format your
white paper with this in mind.
4. Light (if any) product integration
This is not a brochure, and today’s white paper readers get skittish at the
slightest scent of product promotion. Put a boilerplate and call to action at
the end, in a shaded box so it’s clearly separate from the core content. Your
readers will expect it, and will be more likely to appreciate and read it if
you’ve delivered independent value through the rest of the paper. Ignoring
your product message in the meat of the paper will often drive more
readerships of your product message and summary at the end.
5. Call to action or next steps
Never let a marketing and education tool like a white paper appear as a
dead end. Always offer something else—the next white paper, a subscription
to get alerts when new papers are published, a personalized assessment of
the reader’s ability to achieve the benefits described in the paper, etc. If your
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paper is educational in nature, don’t go right for the close (and oftentimes
that includes a demo offer, which may be reaching too far, too fast). But
think carefully about what the reader may want or need next and be explicit
about that offer (and don’t forget to track it).
6. White space
This relates closely to readability, but is more about design than it is
written format. Make sure your designers don’t try to cram as many words
as possible into fewer pages. Space things out, liberally use images and
visuals, use call-out quotes and statistics to call particular attention to your
most important points. Separate a tightly-written executive summary up
front, and consider some “brainstorming” questions at the end to get the
prospect thinking about how the paper might particularly apply to their
business. Liberal use of space in the design of white papers will increase its
penetration and impact.
7. Repurposability
Is your white paper the beginning and the end? Could the topic easily
and quickly be turned into a webinar? Or short series of blogs? Or white
paper “sequel” with proof of concept case studies? If you start to think
about the white paper not as an isolated event but the start of a series of
events anchored in the same content, you’ll exponentially increase the value
of your idea with minimal incremental cost.
What’s missing from this list? What elements of an effective white paper
are requirements for your organization?
Ten reasons why top 10 lists make great content
They’ve been described as lazy. Cliché. An insult to good writing.
Like ‘em or not, top 10 lists aren’t going anywhere. And the “list” format
as a favored blog post and white paper format is becoming more popular
than ever. Detractors blame the writers, but list-related content is just as
popular (if not more so) with readers. Here are 10 reasons why top 10 lists
make great content for writer and reader alike.
1. They’re easy to read
Like it or not, low-attention-span readers like to read in chunks. We like
our USA Today-style content, and top 10 lists fit into that format nicely.
2. They’re easy to skim
In most cases, you can pretty much read the headlines (skipping the other
text) and get the gist. In and out quickly.
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3. Smart people use them regularly
Guy Kawasaki formats all of his speeches in top 10 list format. David
Letterman has made millions with them. It’s a proven format, which only
adds to its acceptance and popularity.
4. They’re easier to tweet
People like to retweet and share content that their followers will also read
and enjoy. The shareability of top 10 lists is just higher, because the content
is more consumable.
5. They’re faster to write
Not always the case, and this is where detractors have a point that some
writers can get lazy with top 10 lists. Good content is still good content,
even if it’s formatted with bullets or shared in fewer words. But in general,
busy bloggers often feel they can knock out list-based content more quickly
(while enjoying the other benefits listed here).
6. Numbers in headlines always drive higher response
It’s a proven fact in the direct-response world that numbers, specifics,
drive greater response. Promising “10 reasons why...” will always drive better
performance and clickthrough than “Top reasons why...” Many reasons for
this, including the fact that a specific number (even if it’s a round number
like 10) implies comprehensiveness and expertise.
7. Long-term traffic impact is higher
Beyond the initial traffic bump of new content, top ten lists tend to drive
higher long-tail traffic over time. The reasons they’re attractive today make
them attractive to readers next week, next month, and so on.
8. They drive higher email response rates
Many writers repurpose their content into newsletters, nurture marketing
campaigns and more. Used in these and other formats, list-based content
increases performance of the rest of your marketing. The list format, for
example, plays just as well with webinars and white papers.
9. They imply breadth of insight and knowledge
I referenced this in number six above, but it was worth calling out
separately. Non-numbered lists can be seen as nebulous, or incomplete.
A round number like ten still might be seen occasionally as arbitrary, but
at least it’s specific and complete. Make it a top nine or top eleven list and
you’ll imply even more precision and comprehensiveness.
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10. They can easily be broken into multiple posts
Depending on the depth of content, a top ten list could be broken into
ten posts. Or two sets of five. Or expanded into an e-book (with examples,
visuals, etc. for each point). Lists are easy to repurpose and extend for
greater value.
Eleven reasons your content marketing isn’t working
While many companies are jumping onto the content marketing
bandwagon (and for good reason), plenty are putting in the work and not
seeing results. And although content development isn’t an instant ROI
kind of channel, if you’ve been doing it for a while and really aren’t seeing
inbound leads or qualified sales pipeline production, you may be doing
something wrong.
Here are eleven specific things we see most often in failing content
marketing programs.
1. You write mostly about yourself
Your content marketing program is different from your PR. This isn’t
a place to brag about your latest features, awards or hiring achievements.
Focus on your customer—what they care about, the problems they need
to solve. Even if it doesn’t have to do directly with what you’re doing or
solving, customer-centric content is always where you want to start to attract
attention, interest and repeat visits.
2. You’re entirely reactive
Creating opportunistic content—based on something that just happened
in your industry—is always a good idea. But if that’s all you ever do, you’re
missing an opportunity to drive specific themes and depth against topics
your customers are particularly attracted to. What events are coming up
in the next several months for your customers? What themes might be
important to “own” in their minds over time? Build a strong content plan
and editorial calendar to start with. You won’t always stick with it, but it’ll
make more of your content more valuable and sticky.
3. You leave a bunch of dead ends
If your prospects gets to the end of the blog post or video and has
nothing left to do, they’ll leave. You don’t always have to ask the prospect
to sign up for a demo or show interest in your product, but there should be
something else for them to engage in. The next article in a series? A video
going further into a particular problem? A best practice guide offering more
content on the same topic? No dead ends.
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4. Your copy is written entirely for SEO
The SEO experts will tell you to add a certain keyword density for your
targeted search phrases in your copy. They’ll tell you to write a certain
length, with headers, and lots of other specifics. And they’re right. But if
your copy is written entirely with SEO in mind, what you might end up with
is choppy, hard to read, and something that fails to create a bond between
you and the prospect. It might attract search traffic, but your conversion will
suffer as a result.
5. You create it but don’t promote it
Just because you create content doesn’t mean people will find it. Over
time, the search engines may like what you’ve created and start pointing
traffic to you. But until then you have to promote what you’ve created on
your own. Use your social channels, your email lists, ask your team to add
a link to their LinkedIn updates, etc. Feel free to get more aggressive with
meatier pieces of content (white papers, for example).
6. You create but do not participate
Please tell me you have comments turned on. And when someone
comments, do you respond? Within reason, you should be the most active
commenter on your own blog. The more you engage with your readers, the
more they’ll want to come back to you again and again. Show that you’re
willing to be an active member of the community, not just a one-sided
“teller”.
7. Your content is too hard (or too easy) to get to
Offering your prospects a ton of free content is a great way to attract
more attention and visits. But you need to have premium, advanced content
in parallel that requires a light registration. Conversely, you don’t want to
gate all of your content just because you can. Prospects will happily register
and give you their contact information if they already trust you. So find the
right balance between free content and gated content.
8. Legal has to review and edit everything
Not every legal department neuters content to death. But that’s not even
the real point here. If everything you want to publish needs to go through a
legal review process, it’s difficult to stay fresh. Want to lend your voice to a
hot industry issue that just came up this morning? If you’re waiting for legal
review, you might miss the boat.
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9. Your content is boring
I’m not even sure brochures and formal sales collateral should be written
in a stuffy way. But most of us, when we start writing business content, start
talking in a way that’s entirely different than how we’d address someone face
to face. To sound familiar, to build trust and rapport, write the way you talk.
Create content that makes you feel and sound human, like someone your
prospect might enjoy spending time with.
10. You’re too hard to follow
So I like what you’ve written. Your videos are awesome. Your perspective
is always well represented. Do you make it easy to follow? Is it crystal clear
how prospects can add your RSS feed to their reader, or follow you on one
of your social channels? Amazing to me how many blogs make it really
difficult to get notifications when new stuff is posted.
11. You don’t have objectives in the first place
Why are you doing this? Is it about brand awareness? Is it purely lead
generation? How will you measure success? This is the first question you
should ask, and answer it regularly to ensure you’re getting the results you
expect.
Twelve keys to greater success and results
Modify these tips as necessary for your company, culture and industry,
but they generally represent a solid foundation of best practices for ensuring
your content marketing efforts drive more value in terms of inbound traffic,
new followers and qualified leads.
Key Strategies:
1. Focus on customer needs and issues
Minimize references to your product specifically and even your product
category in general, in lieu of topics at the core of what early adopter target
customers are facing. Great content focuses on people and their problems,
not products.
2. Build for repurposing
Create content that can be leveraged multiple ways, in multiple formats,
to increase ROI from a core/smaller set of new content.
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3. Crowdsource as much as possible
Build a contribution team from inside and outside the company to
develop both content ideas as well as final products, to minimize content
creation costs.
4. Create and curate
Leverage original content as well as content created by others shared
through your social channels to drive interest, engagement and conversion
from target prospects.
5. Perfect is the enemy of good
Have a bias for action and publishing quality content quickly without
worrying about extraneous polish.
Key Tactics:
6. Editorial calendar planning
Develop a detailed, week-to-week calendar of new and curated content
across a set of common themes and target channels.
7. Resource identification
Secure roster of contributors inside and outside the organization to create
content, including commitment of at least one contribution per month.
8. Multi-media, multi-channel formats
Diversify content across written, video, podcast, Slideshare and other
formats to increase discoverability and engagement.
9. Contributed and curated content
Establish daily programs to curate content into the blog and other social
channels to increase network effect and followers.
10. Repurpose strategy and schedule
Build repurposing of content into the editorial calendar (i.e. blog posts
into white paper, webinar into blog series, etc.).
11. Blog and landing page conversion optimization
Continually refine all content hosting sites and channels to increase lead
capture rate on registration-required offers.
12. Tracking and reporting structure
Build dashboard of key metrics to track growth of key measures of
success (traffic, subscribers, lead conversions).
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How to (successfully) outsource content creation
Whether you’re writing for your own blog, managing one for your
organization, or are responsible for other multi-media channels of content,
you don’t have to be in it alone. There are countless external resources that
can contribute content for you, many at no cost. Here are six best practices
that the most successful publishers and aggregators use to fill their channels
with quality, traffic-generating and converting content.
1. Start with a plan
Know explicitly what kind of content you need to successfully feed your
target market with real value-added content. Base these content needs on
your customer personas (you have these, right??) which enumerate the
needs, problems and pains your customers currently face. Even if you have
volunteer content contributors, don’t be afraid to ask them for specific
content angles. They may appreciate the direction, and produce content for
you faster than if they had to guess at something on their own.
2. Build an editorial calendar and start using a system
Just like you would for a qualified sales opportunity, agree on a “close
date” with the external contributor. Make sure it’s a date that’s reasonable
for the contributor and follow up a few days in advance. There are several
content management systems available on the market today to help you keep
track of external content requests and commitments but a solid spreadsheet
can do the trick as well.
3. Find more content creators (inside and outside the org)
Expand how you think about who can contribute content for your
program. Others in marketing may be your go-to, but what about those in
product management, customer service or sales – who may have a unique
and compelling perspective on the customer? What about partners, other
industry bloggers, analysts or customers themselves? All of these groups
could have a vested interest in investing time to create and share their
content via your channels.
4. Expect slippage
Know up front that external contributors might not adhere to your
deadlines. Have enough of a pipeline of these contributors so that you’re
expecting more content than you need, but getting enough to fill your
calendar. Play the yield management game like an airline.
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5. Invest time to edit and provide feedback.
Your contributors will want feedback on what you need from them next
time, how to make it better, and how to get more of their contributions
accepted and published. Ensure their content works well, but avoid over
editing in a way that might discourage contributors from participating again
in the future.
6. Review, measure, adjust
Over time, you’ll get a sense for which contributors are producing the
best content, which draw the most attention, and what tends to drive not
only the highest quality consumers of content but also the best conversions.
Five keys to choosing a better tagline
By Meghan Bardwell
Choosing a tagline for your company or marketing campaign can be a
beast of a project. It’s like taking an angry, fluffy cat and trying to shove it
into a small box (I don’t know why you’d try, but I bet it’d be difficult). Or
like choosing just one subject line to use for every single email you send out.
In one short line, you need to define who your company is, as well as
communicate how a customer will benefit from your services or product.
Plus, you need to create a line that’s memorable. The last thing you want to
do is blend in with your competitors.
So, no pressure, right? Here are some simple steps to help you organize
your thoughts and get the ideas flowing:
1. Clearly identify customer benefits
What do you want your customers to get out of your product/services?
Will their workforce productivity go up? Will your program help them
measure sales results more effectively? Find what makes your product/
service a must have.
2. Determine why you’re different than the other guys
Do you have faster delivery? Are your products absolutely dependable?
Do you always complete projects on time? Find the characteristics that make
you shine.
3. Brainstorm, brainstorm, brainstorm
After you’ve defined customer benefits and how your company stands
out from the rest, schedule time to brainstorm taglines. This is the time
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to find a quiet spot and write down any line that pops into your head.
Seriously. Don’t judge your ideas yet—just try to get as many down as you
can. Think of the craziest line that you’d never use in a million years; it just
might spark another idea. Bouncing ideas off a partner can also be helpful.
4. Narrow down and refine
At this point, you should have a long list of awesome to terrible ideas.
NOW it’s time to critique. Cross out the taglines you hate. Circle the ones
you like. When you’re done, find the best of the best and refine them.
Take two ideas and marry them together. Keep in mind that it should
communicate your customer benefits and/or unique characteristics in some
way. If you have a couple great lines that you can’t decide between, get your
coworkers’ feedback. Have a vote, and may the best line win.
5. Sit back and enjoy a (insert beverage of your choice)
You’ve kept your brain hard at work trying to come up with a tagline,
and finally have one that makes your company or campaign stand out from
the pack. Now it’s time to reward your effort.
Scotch, anyone?
How to write subject lines that don’t suck
By Erin Alvarez
I’m on a lot of email lists. I’ve subscribed to newsletters, LinkedIn
groups, and registered for a few webinars that have now resulted in a lot of
daily email that I usually don’t have time to read.
The first thing I do every morning is delete most of these without even
opening them to see what they contain. Maybe the message or offer was
great.
But I didn’t read it because I couldn’t see any of the content in my
reading pane because it was all html that needed to be downloaded. And
I’m not going to do that unless the subject line made me want to click to
open.
Sound familiar? Most of us do this, so why aren’t we working harder on
our own subject lines?
Here’s a quick top five things to consider next time you hit “send.”
1. You talkin’ to me?
Who is your reader and why should they care? Make sure you understand
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your audience. What is their language? Before we hit delete, we quickly scan
for a message that will benefit ourselves, right? Know what interests your
audience and play to that. Do they care about money, figures, events? Will
they respond to humor or something clever? Don’t be afraid to be original.
2. You lost me at “FREE WEBINAR”
Aren’t all webinars free? Another strategy that fails is “Reserve your seat!”
webinars are not exclusive. We all know this. You’ve got about 50 characters
to tell your reader what’s inside, so don’t waste it on information that
doesn’t matter.
3. Who are you?
Make the most of your From line. Personalization is great if your readers
already know you. If they don’t, just use your company name in the subject
line and you’ll also free up some space for your teaser message.
4. But what about me?
Again, it’s not so much about you as it is about them. At least, if you
want them to care about you, first make it about them. Asking a question
forces the reader to briefly think about themselves and that might get you
the few extra seconds you need before they hit delete. Want to learn how to
crush your sales? Not Sales webinar on March 4th, Register now. Make the
message about the reader. Sell your home for five percent above market. Not
Our Real Estate Company is the best-find out why.
5. Protect your rep
Don’t exaggerate or make false promises that don’t hold up to the
content of your email. Your subject line is supposed to tell the reader what’s
inside, not necessarily sell what’s inside. Over the top subject lines are about
as trusted as a midnight infomercial.
You wouldn’t read this, but do you send emails like it?
It was bad enough when I got the original email below. It’s long, is
clearly from a badly-executed mail-merge, and offers very little value to
me, the recipient. Then I get it forwarded to me again, by the same guy, still
asking for a referral to his “buyer” inside a company I haven’t worked at for
eight years.
Unfortunately, this approach (and similar flavors of it) are all too
common. You probably get them regularly. But does your company send
emails like this too? If so, and you’d also never respond to something like
this, what makes you think it’ll be effective with your prospect list?
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Your buyers are incredibly busy. They hover over the “delete” button
with a vengeance. You have to earn their attention (and this email example
clearly isn’t doing the job well).
The offending email (with identifiable information edited to protect the
guilty)
SUBJECT LINE: FWD: Follow up Request for Head of Field or Channel
Sales @ COMPANY I WORKED FOR EIGHT YEARS AGO
Hi Matt,
I’m following up on my request for a referral to the Head of Field Sales,
Business Development, and Channel Sales at COMPANY to discuss email
below.
Please kindly advise.
Best,
Bill
—– Original Message —–
From:
to: Matt Heinz [matt@heinzmarketing.com]
Date: Thu, April 12, 2012 2:28 PM
Subject: RE: Referral Request to VP of Field Sales or Channel Sales @
COMPANY I WORKED FOR EIGHT YEARS AGO
Hi Matt,
I’m writing to request a referral to the VP of Field Sales, Business
Development and Channel Sales and any other relevant stakeholders at
COMPANY to discuss below email.
As you know, the biggest challenge of managing a Direct Sales Force or
Channel Partners, Resellers and VARs is consistent and predictable revenue
generation. We know that they will fall into the “80-20 rule” (i.e. 80 percent
of revenue is generated by 20 percent of Players/Partners—best case). We
know how to solve the problem–make it easier for them to generate new
customers!
Here is how:
1. Provide a steady stream of Sales Ready Opportunities at the right target
companies
28

2. Supply a steady stream of Qualified Executive Appointments—
in key accounts
3. Deliver a steady stream of RFI/RFA/RFPs (Request for Information,
Appointment and Proposals)
4. Help get referrals and expand network
Sales Executives, VARs, Channel Partners and Resellers do not want to find
new opportunities, they want to close deals. We can provide opportunities
that they can close. In return, you get predictable and consistent revenue,
new customers, more mind and wallet share from you Sales Team and
Partners and you will eliminate the 80-20 paradigm.
After 12 years of selling and business development efforts into the Global
5000, MY COMPANY has perfected a revolutionary prospecting system
that generates the first and only breed of “Sales-Ready Opportunities” that
produces:
a) Opportunities 100 percent focused on predefined, high-profile, suitable
companies
b) Access to the key Decision Makers and Influencers
c) 1000 percent more volume of sales-ready opportunities is produced than
with traditional marketing business development campaigns
d) Absolutely the best price/performance—we GUARANTEE results
e) Increase average win rates and deal sizes by 120–155 percent;
f) Shrink their sales cycles by 10–45 percent;
g) Reduce cost of sales with our Cost-Per-Opportunity (CPO) Pricing
Model while gaining over 500 percent ROI.
I welcome the opportunity to discuss how we may help your organization
and your partners produce the same results.
I appreciate your referral to the most relevant executives in sales. A reply and
cc: with their names would be best.
Kindly Requested,
Bill
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Ten common email marketing mistakes
that kill your response rates
Sometimes I wonder if it weren’t for the mistakes, how would we learn
what not to do, and where/how to get better?
Here are ten email marketing mistakes I see made most often. Some
good lessons and reminders here!
1. Writing subject lines at the last minute
All too often, marketers go several drafts deep on the body copy of an
email, and forget the subject line completely. Then, at the last minute,
someone writes a subject line without a lot of forethought about the
audience, objective, or strategy. Of course, the subject line is THE most
important part of the email. It’s the portal to get the rest of the email read.
If this was direct mail, the subject line is the envelope! If you don’t get past
it, everything else inside is wasted.
2. Unreadable without loading the images
Most of us have a default setting in our inbox now that blocks images
from loading until we say so. And images in email aren’t necessarily bad,
unless they entirely block whatever message or call to action you’re offering.
Have at least enough copy visible in your email without loading images so
that the reader can get the gist of what you’re saying/offering, and opt to
learn more by downloading images (if they’re necessary at all).
3. Call to action only at the very end
It’s a progression that makes sense. Introduction, explanation, pay-off,
offer. But many email readers are skimming, and looking for the “payoff”
earlier than the end of the email. Instead, look for ways to incorporate links
or offers to your call to action early in the email, and at least two to three
times including at the end of your overall, nicely structured message.
4. Sending from a building or alias (instead of a person)
Nothing lacks personality and intimacy than an email from “info@” or
“sales@” or (worst of all) “donotreply@”. Nobody likes to get emails from
an alias or building. It’s impersonal, and constrains your response rates.
Gone are the days when you could also fabricate something on your direct
mail piece. A quick Google search for whomever is in the “from” line will
“out” you as a faker. Worst case, pick someone on your marketing or sales
team to be the real person behind the sent emails. I often pick someone
from the sales operations team, who likely will get responses and questions
from a campaign anyway (from the recipients or from the sales team).
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5. Trickery to drive open or click rates
I’m not a big fan of the “fake forward”. Or subject lines that imply
something urgent to get the open, then address something altogether
different. Short-term trickery to drive top-of-funnel metrics will only
constrain the conversion metrics you really care about, and damage your
reputation and brand long-term.
6. Starting sentences with I and we (instead of you)
Prospects don’t care about you. They care about themselves. So, stands
to reason that they also don’t want to read about what you think of yourself.
Or your company. Address them directly instead. Use “you” more often
throughout your copy. Bring them directly into the message and offer.
7. Writing for yourself without thinking about the audience
You know clearly what you (your sales team, and/or your company)
want out of a particular campaign or email send. But what’s in it for the
customer? What’s the context into which you’re sending the message?
What circumstances are they likely to be working in when they get it?
Understanding and addressing these situations head-on is a great way to
create quicker rapport and response.
8. Using clear spam triggers in subject lines
Seriously, this should be obvious, but it’s not. There are a growing
number of keywords that smart email marketers simply avoid, and have
avoided for years now. Do a quick Google search for “Spam keywords” and
you’ll have this information at your fingertips forevermore.
9. No A/B testing
What are you going to learn 48 hours after the send? You’ll have open
and click rates, but compared to what? At minimum, test subject lines
as often as possible. Several of the email service providers and marketing
automation systems have embedded tools for A/B testing both in email and
landing pages. Use them regularly.
10. No testing before the send
Build a rigorous process by which you completely test emails about to
go out to customers and prospects. Test that the content is correct, that it
renders correctly, that it looks fine across the major email systems (especially
Outlook and Gmail). There’s a reason why software developers devote
so much time and resources to testing their products before they ship.
Marketers shouldn’t operate any differently.
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How to get more people reading your blog
Think you have great content and not enough readers? Beyond focusing
on great content for your intended target audience, here are nine ways to
get more people reading and following your blog.
1. Use your social networks
Just because they’re following you elsewhere doesn’t mean they subscribe
to your RSS feed, or know when you’ve written something new. Use tools
such as dlvr.it to automatically add new blog posts to your designated social
channels, with unique tracking URLs so you know which social networks
are most effective at driving traffic.
2. Invite comments and reaction
The most basic advice is to ask a question or two at the end of the post.
Explicitly invite your readers to comment, let them know you want their
opinion, and they’ll be more likely to come back again if they feel their own
voices will be heard. In your social networks, be explicit that you’re looking
for feedback on an idea or opinion. This may drive more traffic than simply
sharing the headline and link.
3. Say something controversial
No surprise that controversial content gets read and shared more often.
Take a side, back it up with research and/or reasoning, and consider sharing
the post directly with those who both agree with you and likely disagree.
Those who agree will more likely share it with their friends and followers,
and those who disagree may very well send their own followers to argue
with you in the comments. But that’s what you want, right?
4. Write about and link to others who are likely to talk about it
Don’t assume that others who care about the same topic are going to
read your post or automatically find it in their Google Alerts and Alltop
searches. Send them links, ask for their opinions, invite them to your
comments. Target especially those who may have their own blogs, social
networks with followers, or occasional aggregated news summaries of stories
and opinions they particularly like.
5. Find others talking about the same topic and add a link back
There’s nothing wrong with finding other content similar to yours (or
at least on the same topic), offering a summary opinion in the comments
section, and linking back to your own longer perspective on your blog.
There’s a difference between blatantly fishing for links with a quick sentence
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and link-back, and a thoughtful response specifically to the third-party post
and a contextual reference to your own piece. The first is spam, the second is
participation.
6. Make following you easier
Does your blog post template make it easy for readers to follow you?
Is your RSS feed, social handles, and an invitation to subscribe via email
prominent, ideally above the fold on the page? Make it easy and more likely
that people will come back again.
7. Repurpose and cross sell
Take your really good content and publish it in multiple formats. Turn a
great blog post (or series of related blog posts) into a webinar, video or best
practices guide. These can be shared on a variety of additional channels—
Vimeo, YouTube, SlideShare and more—to tap into a whole new audience
for your blog.
8. Tell the aggregators you’re there
In every industry and niche, there are publishers who focus on curation
of other great content from across the web. Find these curators and make
sure they know about you. Register your site on Alltop, submit it to
newsletter editors, and otherwise build relationships with the online curators
who represent a significant channel of new readers on an ongoing basis.
9. Be patient
This stuff doesn’t all work all of the time, and it doesn’t happen all at
once. The most important thing you can do is continue to produce great
content. The rest will work itself out.
33

Marketing is about people and problems, not products
I have a problem with the whole idea of “product marketing”. Not the
function, but the title.
Nobody really markets the product and does it successfully, because your
buyers don’t care about the product.
Successful marketing focuses on the people using the product - their
needs, their priorities, and their pain. The more you understand the people
and their problems, the more likely you’re going to build the right product
in the first place.
And if you follow that chain (people, problems, then product) you’re in a
far better position to create interest, preference and closed business.
Too many marketers today take the product or service in front of them
and build their marketing by describing it. What it does, how it works.
Features, and benefits of those features. But that’s not what your customers
want to hear, nor what they want to buy.
Narrow your focus on an audience that has a need. Focus on people and
problems, either before or (even better) at the expense of talking about the
product.
If your prospect believes that you understand them, their problems and
where they’re interested in going, you’ll earn the opportunity to talk about
the product. And when you do, that conversation will already be in the right
context to compel the sale.
The five jobs of an effective marketing campaign
We marketers have completely screwed up the definition of “campaign”.
Presidential politics? Now that’s a campaign! Barely a month after the
election and pundits from both sides of the aisle were already talking about
who might win in 2016. And the candidates who think they have a chance
are already building their organizations, their strategies and their tactical
plans.
That, my friends, is a campaign.
The email you’re sending next Tuesday? That is not a campaign.
37

Effective marketing campaigns mobilize your target audience towards
an end goal. It starts with reputation building and awareness, moves to
demand generation and sales enablement, then finishes with conversion and
actualization for the customer.
Yes, this is a lot more work than Tuesday’s email. Yes, this kind of
campaign will take a lot of planning and months to execute. But that, in
part, is the point.
The more thoughtful we are about the message we want the market to
hear, about how we want them to react to that message, how it differentiates
from competitors and drives preference for your business, product or
services—that’s where the true value of campaign development and
execution comes.
I really liked how SiriusDecisions framed the five jobs of an effective
marketing campaign at their summit last year. In summary, they said a
successful campaign must do the following:
1. Seed
2. Create
3. Nurture
4. Enable
5. Accelerate
Put together, effective marketing campaigns seed demand that is created
and nurtured by a demand center and/or field marketing, with an end
result that is enabled by sales and the customer onboarding program and
accelerated by communicating that success with the remainder of the market
and through existing customers to drive referrals, renewals and repeat
business.
Shifting from tactical, siloed campaigns to this type of comprehensive
campaign approach isn’t going to be easy for most marketing organizations,
especially those working without a long-term marketing plan or product/
market focus.
But look for ways to take your current email sends, paid search efforts
and other marketing channels and incorporate more of the five jobs listed
above. The more effectively you can incorporate them, the greater long-term
38
success you’re likely to see from finite efforts in the first place.

How to choose the right database list source provider
By Brian Hansford
Database intelligence and list source providers are everywhere. They
play an important role in an overall data management strategy. Even with
ongoing inbound contact capture efforts from websites, social media, and
events like trade shows, it makes sense to occasionally add fresh contacts
from a reputable source.
The problem is filtering through the plethora of list providers to find the
right fit for your requirements. Each vendor comes with their own set of
advantages and potential problems.
Here are some of the criteria points I recommend when selecting a list
and a data source provider.
1. Define the data standard
Every list or set of data records you purchase should meet a data standard
defined for your organization. (If you don’t have a data standard, you
need one NOW!) For example, a minimum percentage of your marketing
automation database should have record completeness with all of this
information:
sIRSTANDLASTNAME
s4ITLE
s0HONE
s%MAIL
s3TREETADDRESS
s#ITY

POSTALCODE
s2EVENUES
s.UMBEROFEMPLOYEES
s7EBSITE52,
You can measure your marketing automation platform to determine
the level of complete records. Incomplete and outdated records make your
database ineffective.
2. Who is the company providing you with data and information list services?
Don’t buy a list or database from anyone that doesn’t have a list of
reputable clients and does not have a major base of operations in North
America. And absolutely don’t buy a list from an offshore list provider with
sweatshop web scrapers. A vendor with a cheap list may give you three to
ten times as many contacts as a name-brand shop. The initial savings will end
up causing pain and costing you more in the long run.
39

3. Quality information
Even the best data has a limited shelf life and needs continual
maintenance and care. In 2011 the US Department of Labor reported
that over 11 million people changed jobs. The best vendors actively
maintain their data assets to keep up with the massive changes from
people continually moving and shifting where they work and what they
do. If the data sets you receive don’t meet quality expectations, those
vendors will work to fix the situation by analyzing what happened and
providing replacement contacts. Cheap vendors employ sweatshops and
web scrapers to pull and identify basic company contact information. This
information is ultimately worthless if you do not have reliable contact
information including verified email and phone numbers. The best data
solution providers can build a data set that meets your data standard and
segmentation criteria.
4. Contact-ability
Does your vendor test and maintain the quality of the database contacts
for accurate contact information? Do they verify email and phone numbers
regularly? Do they filter out spam traps that can put your organization’s
reputation and sender score at risk? If so, how do they manage their
updates? If your vendor doesn’t have a QA program, or gives you a flaky
answer, that’s a negative sign. Your preferred vendors will provide you with
the best information services that avoid spam traps.
5. Vertical industry expertise
Some vendors specialize in certain industries like healthcare and B2B
tech, and human resources. It pays to conduct research on vendors who
specialize in the areas you are targeting.
6. Data enrichment services
Vendors who only provide contact lists will come and go but never really
be viable data business partners. The best data and information vendors
provide detailed contact information, and in some cases information about
planned business initiatives. The best vendors can also test your existing
database to ensure duplicates records are not purchased with a new data set.
Quality vendors also assess the state of your current data health and provide
recommendations and tools for how to maintain data health. Even better,
these vendors will have tools that integrate with your existing marketing
automation and CRM platforms.
40

7. Service
I personally refuse to work with vendors who have poor service,
regardless of how good they claim their data products are. I fully expect
phone calls will be returned in a timely manner, as well as emails. If we
have questions or problems with data services we receive, it’s critical for our
clients that we have some investigation and resolution. We want data and
information service providers that have the same focus on client success as
we do. Companies that focus on transactions are merely commodities and
easy to replace.
8. Diversification
Strong data services partners work the best when combined with organic
inbound list building. Don’t rely on a vendor or a series of vendors to be
your only source of contacts. Combine the effort with submission forms on
your websites, event registrations, newsletter subscriptions, and even social
media.
Report: Analyzing 62 million web site visits for
B2B marketing best practices
62 million visits. 350,000 leads. More than 600 B2B sites.
That’s a lot of data. Pull together a report based on what it says about
marketing best practices—what channels are working, which lead sources
work best, which social channels are most important, etc.—and we’re talking
some seriously valuable insights for B2B companies and marketers of all
shapes and sizes.
Having access to that data, of course, is the hard part. Unless you happen
to operate the web and marketing systems for those 600+ B2B companies.
That’s where Optify comes in. I highly recommend downloading a copy
of their 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report. Lots of great best practices,
some which you’d expect but plenty more that were surprising and counter-intuitive
41
to me.
I asked Doug Wheeler, CMO for Optify, to help me dig into more detail
on some of the report’s findings.
What are some best practices that led to some B2B companies seeing
even higher conversion rates via email than the industry average in the
report, which was itself far higher than other channels?

These companies focused on executing digital marketing programs
(e.g. search engine optimization, content marketing and social media) with
highly targeted messaging and landing pages to generate ‘opt-in’ prospect
responses. Then, used email to nurture their list with direct relevant offers
until they received a conversion response.
Social media is still a surprisingly small contributor of leads and traffic
to B2B sites. What percent of traffic do you think that could reach at
“maturity”, and which channels do you believe will be most relevant to B2B
marketers?
It’s true that in our study traffic from social media was five percent or
less. Our surprise was that of that five percent the leads generated were
heavily slanted towards Twitter over Facebook and LinkedIn. In fact,
Twitter converted nine to one over the other two social media powerhouses.
As these digital channels mature for B2B purposes, it will greatly depend
on the marketing mix of the company and its target audience. Despite the
buzz and pressure to dive into social media marketing, marketers should
fully develop their buyer persona(s) to discover the online behavior of their
target audience. I would expect to see the LinkedIn platform deliver lower
volume than Facebook, but considerably more focused and valuable leads.
Remember, the conversion percent is important, but in the end the actual
sales price (ASP) of your product and your customer acquisition cost (CAC)
determine which of these social media channels delivers the best return.
Not surprising to see paid search conversions below two percent, but
it was somewhat surprising to see social media conversions less than one
percent. How do B2B marketers improve this? Better content, better
targeting, other?
Yes, the somewhat dismal performance of social media was a
surprise. Clearly, focused high-value content combined with one-to-one
communications helps make sure you are getting the most from your
programs.
You’ve addressed the opportunity for marketers with “not provided”
search traffic, can you quickly summarize that and give a couple tips for how
marketers can increase traffic and conversions from this?
In summary, Google has decided that any customer logged into a Google
product has the right to customer privacy. Therefore, any customer logged
in to Gmail, browser or any other Google product will have their keyword
search information blocked and Google returns ‘not provided’. This is now
over 40 percent of the traffic to B2B customer sites. Take your cues from
42

any paid search programs you may have—this does make the assumption
that it’s equivalent traffic for paid vs. non paid. In addition, treat all branded
traffic as ‘precious’. These are people that entered your company/product
name—there’s a reason!
Bing traffic clearly still pales in comparison to Google, but conversion
rates and time on site were materially higher for Bing. Why do you think
that is?
Although there is clearly less traffic from Bing, the higher conversion rate
may be due to the recent social features they are integrating into their search
results. The Facebook data that’s integrated into Bing search shows more
relevant results to the searcher due to social indicators from the searcher’s
own social network. This provides more confidence since the results are
from a referral rather than just the search algorithm. With more confidence
in the results, once a searcher clicks through to a webpage there is a higher
likelihood that the searcher will stay longer and convert more often.
How to rank on Google without knowing anything about SEO
I don’t consider myself a deep SEO expert and I know many marketers
(let alone business owners) feel completely lost when they try to read about
title tags, canonical links and more.
But you really don’t need to understand SEO to rank well on Google.
Sure, you can employ the latest SEO strategies and hire a great consultant
or firm to help you get and stay at the top of Google. But many of Google’s
latest, most significant updates boil down to one thing—relevance. And that
means by focusing on a few simple, common sense things, you can find your
content ranking and staying high on Google (and driving you some great
traffic) without knowing much if anything about SEO.
For example:
Focus on great content
Produce content regularly that your customers care about. Write,
produce videos, get others to guest-create content for you. Make good
content and watch what people react to. It’s more complicated than that, of
course, but it’s also really that simple.
Don’t worry as much about all the tools
It definitely pays to use tools such as Wordtracker, Optify and others
to scientifically choose the right keywords to use in your posts, as well as
ensure your “keyword density” is at the right ratios. But if you don’t have
43

time or don’t have access, keep one thing in mind. Focus on topics related
to customer pain, problems, outcomes and objectives. Create less content
about solutions directly. Most of your competitors are writing content about
their solutions and those “most desirable” keywords. Fewer are creating
content about the originating context your customers start with, and the
outcomes they’re seeking. But these are the keywords your customers use
most often.
Listen to your customers
What are they talking about? What topics are showing up more often on
the discussion forums and conference agendas? These topics are more likely
to be relevant right now. Create content for these topics before others get
there, and as search volume increases you’re more likely to get a greater
share of the traffic.
Look at your data
Notice any themes? Do you get more traffic or retweets when you write
about one theme vs. another? Do certain posts generate a little less traffic
but better quality visits and higher conversions via your lead forms? As you
produce more and more content, your metrics will be a proxy of what’s
working and what you should continue to create more of.
Look at your competitors
There are two ways to approach this. One, use their editorial calendar
(implied based on what they’re creating themselves) to draft off of what’s
working. Two, based on your insights from the above efforts, hit ‘em where
they ain’t.
Focus on your social relationships
Social and SEO are becoming more and more intertwined. So it’s
more important now than ever before to increase your social activity and
following, but also increase interaction between your social networks and
your content. Find those with high-influence followers and high Klout
scores, and focus on driving more engagement with them.
44

Six secrets to A/B testing success
By Bailie Losleben
Sending nurturing emails, running Google Adwords campaigns, and
providing great content pieces are a great way to get new clients—but
it’s only half the battle. In order to get your B2B marketing campaigns
generating leads you have to test, and test, and test some more.
Luckily, with a little structure, optimizing all of your campaigns can be
easy and eye opening. Here are six tips for testing success.
1. Keep it simple
Trying to test too many variables at once is like trying to figure out
the source of your indigestion while chowing down at an all you can eat
buffet. You have to take your time, test one variable at a time (or at least in
isolation) to really know what your audience is responding to.
2. Organized testing
Keep an active record of everything you are currently testing and
everything you plan to test in the future. This can easily be achieved through
a simple spreadsheet: record the results of the tests, what exactly was tested,
the winning version and what the next steps are. This will not only help
you make sound decisions, but will help you more easily optimize future
campaigns.
3. Use noticeable CTAs
The call to action in any marketing material should be obvious, and
strategically placed where the eye naturally lands. Play around with the
CTA: change the color, the language, the font. All of this can make a big
difference in your test results.
4. Color and style make a difference
Believe it or not, some of the biggest changes in performance come
from a simple color change. Try changing the colors of the CTA’s, headers,
graphics etc. Try testing product images vs stock photos- a simple image
change can have dramatically different results.
5. Test for your audience
What works for one target audience will not work for all. Even a new
product will probably require different marketing efforts than older products.
6. Test everything
s(EADLINES#ONTENT

DIFFERENTIMAGES
s#ONTENTMOVEWORDSAROUND

DETAILEDVSCONCISE
s#4!BUTTONSANDTEXTCOLORS

Layout best practices for effective B2B web sites
There are some fantastic web site designers and developers out there, but
few who really understand how to build a B2B web site. Effective design and
look/feel is important, but there are several layout and back-end requirements
that make a successful B2B web site perform well from day one.
Here are several front-end and back-end recommendations for B2B web sites.
Front End:
s5SEANARROW

TEXT
BASEDTOPNAVIGATIONWITHPOP
UP

DROP
DOWN
sub-menus.
s5SECUSTOMER
CENTRICANDVERTICALIZEDTERMSINTHETOPNAVSEEBOXCOM

Concur.com and Salesforce.com for good examples of this).
sOCUSONOUTCOMEBENElTSTATEMENTSINAPRIMARYABOVE
THE
FOLD
message box (rotating panels are okay if they’re easy to change and
control/reverse/etc, plus as long as you can track click rates for each
panel individually to see which message or offer performs best.
s)NCLUDEAFEWCALLSTOACTIONABOVETHEFOLDANDONTHERIGHTBOTTOMOR
right side (see Eloqua.com and Salesforce.com for good examples of this)
s)NCLUDESOCIALBUTTONSONTHEBOTTOMRIGHT

ANDMAKETHEMSTANDOUT
(LexisNexis.com has a good example of this).
sELOWTHEFOLD

FEATURETHREEORFOURMODULESTHATGODEEPERINTOSPECIlC
solutions, summary of blog post headlines, of primary benefit statements
(DocuSign.com has a good example of this).
s)NCLUDEAHORIZONTALCUSTOMERLOGOBARPROMINENTCOMPANIESUSING
you—DocuSign.com has a good example of this).
s)NCLUDEANEXTENSIVE

TEXT
BASEDSITEMAPFEATUREATTHEBOTTOMOFTHEPAGE
making it easy for visitors to navigate quickly to remaining site features
(box.com, IBM.com and Concur.com have good examples of this).
Back End:
s'OOGLE!NALYTICSISTABLESTAKES
s)NCLUDEWEBVISITORINTELLIGENCECODEFROM,OOPFUSEFREE ORTRIALSOFTWARE
from Optify or Hubspot so you can get better intelligence on what site
visitors are doing, and where they’re from.
s)FYOUGETTHE/PTIFYOR(UBSPOTTRIAL

CONSIDERTESTINGTHEIRLEADSCORING
tools and generating alerts/lead assignments when prospects do certain
activities that demonstrate near-term buying interest.
s#ONSIDER$EMANDBASEFORREAL
TIMEMESSAGECUSTOMIZATIONBASEDON
which company or individual is visiting the page (this might be a more
advanced feature to add later).
46

Easy tactics to build brand, get referrals,
and drive customer relations
This is a relatively easy way to drive some viral marketing and get your
customers (and employees) involved. Print some unique t-shirts that
prominently feature your logo or brand. Give them to all employees, and
ship them to customers.
Then, tell them to get out there and start taking pictures. Feature the
best photos on your web site, your blog, and your social channels. Create
contests for the most creative use of the t-shirt, the farthest away from your
headquarters, the most unique location. Incorporate them into scavenger
hunts (especially at your user conferences).
Make one day every week “YOUR BRAND HERE t-shirt day”.
Encourage employees and customers to wear their t-shirts that day and send
pictures.
Growing up in a suburb of San Francisco, a local Wilderness Supply shop
did something very similar. They featured these distinctive green bags they
would use to send you home with whatever you bought. And their back wall
was covered in photos of their customers proudly holding up their green
Wilderness Supply bags all over the world—on mountaintops, in remote
areas, at the North and South poles, at the bottom of the ocean and more.
It’s fun, it’ll get people involved, it’ll spark new ideas and creativity, and I
can measurably drive referrals and new business as well.
Eight ways to make your webinar more compelling
If you thought last year was the year of the webinar, wait till you see this year.
More and more companies are discovering the power of webinars as
educational, thought leadership and lead generation tools. And that means
you’re likely going to be inundated even more in 2014 with webinar offers.
As a marketer, this doesn’t mean you should pull webinars from
your marketing mix. Far from it, as they can still be incredibly powerful,
foundational tools. You just need to execute better.
Below are eight ways to make your webinars more compelling, help them
stand out from the crowd, and increase their power to attract and convert
prospects into followers, opportunities and closed business.
47

1. Choose a narrower target audience
If you’re trying to get as many attendees as humanly possible, you might
be shooting for too wide of an audience. Narrowing your focus to a more
specific target audience will help you hone the message, value proposition
and appeal of the event more specifically to a particular group of prospects,
decision-makers and/or influencers. Focus on quality of content and
audience, and not always the highest possible registration volume.
2. Solve problems vs. describing products
Unless you’ve promoted it specifically as a demo event, don’t waste time
describing or promoting your product. Your company or product can be
a sponsor of the event, but use the webinar to address and solve problems
your customers have. Help them think differently about something they
already struggle with. If you’re trying to introduce a solution, you might
be doing so out of context or too early, when the prospect doesn’t yet
understand or respect its ability to solve their problems.
3. Make your points more immediately actionable and tactical
We’re all busy people, and have tons to get done. So if your webinar can
help me get those things done, I’m all ears. But that typically means they
need to focus on content that’s very actionable and tactical, including best
practices that can immediately—right now—help me do my job better.
Leave the theoretical discussions for another event. The more actionable
your webinar, the more attractive it will be for busy prospects.
4. Make it really clear what people will learn
Every good webinar description needs a clear, short “you will learn”
section. Ideally, this is a bullet list at least three or four points long. It
should enumerate some specific, actionable things people will take away
by attending. This is tactical but critical. Scanners won’t read your two-paragraph
48
warm-up copy. They want to know, quickly, what they’ll get out
of it. If your bullet list passes the sniff test, they’ll register.
5. Tease the reader with quality, pre-event content
If your webinar will feature a prominent expert, author or speaker, why
not publish a short QA with that presenter on your blog a week or so
beforehand? If you’re going to feature a top ten list of tips to do X, why not
feature the first couple on your blog as well? Think about how you can use
your additional content, social and marketing channels to share snippets of
content relative to the presentation, and drive additional demand, interest
and registrations.

6. Create an extra incentive or offer to attend live
Is there something you could make available only to those who attend
live? Something like an extra white paper or free research report or e-copy of
the speaker’s book? Something of value without a ton of incremental hard
cost to you, but makes it that much more likely someone will 1) register,
and 2) actually show up.
7. Build the presentation for skimmers
We all do it. Attend webinars while multi-tasking with something else. We
listen, sort of, while checking email or flipping through RSS feeds. We aren’t
going to change this behavior, so we might as well optimize our webinars to
accommodate. So if you take too long to make a point, those multi-tasking
might miss it. But if you format and present your content with skimmers in
mind (think top ten lists, highlighted subsections, well-formatted and clear
divisions between points), you’re more likely to get the point across to more
people. And, bonus, skimmer-focused webinar content typically works much
better for subsequent, on-demand viewers of the recording.
8. Have a plan for takeaways
Think beyond just a copy of the deck and recording. Could you
summarize your main points in a one-page PDF? Create a checklist of to-dos
and action items out of the event? For attendees and non-attendees alike,
make it easy to distribute, pass along and digest the content in shorter, more
efficient formats.
49

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