Today is July 4th, and Nathan's is holding its famous annual hot dog eating contest in Coney Island, New York. According the a story CNN ran today, this contest has done marketing wonders for the hot dog and burger joint. Since 2003, Nathan's sales have doubled, with very little budget spent on any other types of marketing - Nathan's has invested most of its annual marketing budget to promote its hot dog eating contests. A pretty gutsy strategy, which luckily has worked very well for them.
This got me thinking today about the various types of marketing programs I've seen succeed, and it does not surprise me that when done right, the types of marketing that engages its users can by far be one of the best marketing investments you can make. We recently ran a couple of such programs to engage with our audiences, and in all of the cases they worked wonders. In one of the programs we asked our technical users to take an online quiz to show off their level of technical know-how, and the results were really good. During the American football season, we asked our users to play a virtual online football game, where they would move up 10 yards for every correct answers about our products, the company and the types of problems we solved. And when they achieved a "touch down" they would qualify for a special prize. Again, the results were by far better than any other online program we had done. What was great about this game, is that not only did it attract more people on average than other programs because of it's "fun" and "entertainment" factor, but we used the game to educate the market about our products, the market itself, our company and how we could help them solve their critical challenges. I don't want to take credit for this idea all together, as it wasn't mine, but how it was executed and the engagement process was done well enough to make it a huge success.
So, the lesson here for you is: find ways to engage with your audience, and contests and fun ways to establish that engagement work really well. But also pay close attention to the details of the event and put yourself in the audiences place, and why they may or may not want to engage. On average, compared to any other program, you'll find this to be very successful. User engagement marketing programs should always be on your annual marketing plan.
Monday, July 4, 2011
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Leveraging the analyst community to increase awareness
As I had mentioned in another article that one of the top 3 sources that generates natural market pull and awareness is the analyst community (the other two being your own web site and its ability to attract traffic and PR).
Here is how to win with the analyst strategy.
The companies that are on top of the analysts' mind will get the most benefit, because as the analyst clients call to ask questions about products and services, the analyst will drop names of companies that they not only remember, but care about. So, it is important to make the analysts your friends and make sure that you are fresh on his mind.
What should you do to accomplish this and stand apart from your competition? Here is a trick that will surely help you get there:
Schedule at least 3 analyst inquiries per week per analyst firm. If you are a customer of firms like Gartner, Forrester, IDC and others, you have (in most cases) unlimited access to the analysts. When you schedule inquiries, you are saying "I want to speak with an analyst to ask questions and learn" and they don't have a choice but to schedule a 30 minute call with you. But what you are really doing on the call is to spend 50% of the time to ask questions and learn for the sake of learning (that can't be bad either), but spent 50% to educate the analyst about you! Analysts, like you and me always want to learn, and by taking 15 minutes to bring them up to speed on your company, strategy, and recent customer wins, can be appreciated by them as well.
Doing this consistently on a weekly basis is time consuming, but I will guarantee you that it will pay off in the long run. Once you have gone through a long list of analysts, start again with the first analyst and repeat. You must do this consistently and not only will you be well educated, but each analyst firm and their analysts will know your company well.
Here is how to win with the analyst strategy.
The companies that are on top of the analysts' mind will get the most benefit, because as the analyst clients call to ask questions about products and services, the analyst will drop names of companies that they not only remember, but care about. So, it is important to make the analysts your friends and make sure that you are fresh on his mind.
What should you do to accomplish this and stand apart from your competition? Here is a trick that will surely help you get there:
Schedule at least 3 analyst inquiries per week per analyst firm. If you are a customer of firms like Gartner, Forrester, IDC and others, you have (in most cases) unlimited access to the analysts. When you schedule inquiries, you are saying "I want to speak with an analyst to ask questions and learn" and they don't have a choice but to schedule a 30 minute call with you. But what you are really doing on the call is to spend 50% of the time to ask questions and learn for the sake of learning (that can't be bad either), but spent 50% to educate the analyst about you! Analysts, like you and me always want to learn, and by taking 15 minutes to bring them up to speed on your company, strategy, and recent customer wins, can be appreciated by them as well.
Doing this consistently on a weekly basis is time consuming, but I will guarantee you that it will pay off in the long run. Once you have gone through a long list of analysts, start again with the first analyst and repeat. You must do this consistently and not only will you be well educated, but each analyst firm and their analysts will know your company well.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Successful Webinar Tactics
If you're doing B2B marketing, then you are probably doing lots of (or at least you should be doing lots of) webinars - which are online live presentations.
As a marketer, you need to track and have specific goals for a number of metrics that differentiate a good webinar from a bad webinar. Here are the variables you want to measure and strive for the best outcome:
- Get the most registrations from each webinar (email to registration conversion)
- Get the right type of audiences (registration to opportunity conversion)
- Get them to show up during the webinar (registration to attendance ratio)
- Get them to stay for the entire duration of the webinar (attendance to stay ratio)
- Get them to buy (opportunity to sale ratio)
How do you succeed in all these? Well, after having done hundreds of webinar, I've learned that an entire book can be written around webinar strategies and tactis, as there are many variables that affect webinar outcome. However, here is a summary of a couple of key things you want to make sure you do to achieve a successful webinars.
1) Invite your own prospect database, but always have a plan to purchase or go after external databases as well for invitation to the webinar.This ensures that you hit your target registration metrics. You might have to invest in multiple databases, if the target is high. And you'll want to set your target to align with the sales target and everything else you to do support sales. It's always best to do fewer webinars and do them well (with lots of registrations), then doing lots of webinars with small registrations.
2) Give the audience at least 2 weeks from the first email to register. Ideally, you want to give them 3 weeks.
3) Send at least 3 reminders (first email about 2-3 weeks out, 2nd email about 1 week out, 3rd email the day before the event). Make sure that the subject of your last email starts with "Last chance to register for...".
4) Keep the emails as short as possible. If you can't read the entire email in less than 10 seconds, don't bother sending it out. It will not get read. Keep the subject related to the webinar. And always, make the emails personalized to the recipient.
5) Always have a drawing for a nice reward for people who register and attend.
6) Don't give the reward out to anyone - make them take a final 3-5 question survey, and ask them more about their business needs. And make sure the audience knows that only people who submit their surveys will qualify for the reward. This will dramatically help with the 'attendance to stay' ratio.
7) Keep the presentation under 30 minutes. You start losing people after that. Also, make it interactive with Live Polls during the presentation.
8) Have someone introduce the main speaker. This gives the speaker much more credibility.
9) Have people submit their questions, and then cover as many as you can at the end, but always have 3-5 questions pre-written to ask, in case there are no questions. I've also found that when you ask a question of your own, it is a nice ice breaker and gets others to start asking questions.
10) Promise the audience that they'll get answers to all the questions in a few days via email. In about 2-4 days, send out an FAQ style document that has all the questions submitted, a link to the recording of the webinar and a copy of your slides to the audience that registered. This not only ensure that people that could not make it see what was covered, but more importantly, it makes it real easy for people to forward to their friends and colleagues.
And finally, post the recording of all webinars you do as "on demand" presentations on your web site, to continue to produce leads over time. The more webinars you have, the better.
Good luck.
- yh
As a marketer, you need to track and have specific goals for a number of metrics that differentiate a good webinar from a bad webinar. Here are the variables you want to measure and strive for the best outcome:
- Get the most registrations from each webinar (email to registration conversion)
- Get the right type of audiences (registration to opportunity conversion)
- Get them to show up during the webinar (registration to attendance ratio)
- Get them to stay for the entire duration of the webinar (attendance to stay ratio)
- Get them to buy (opportunity to sale ratio)
How do you succeed in all these? Well, after having done hundreds of webinar, I've learned that an entire book can be written around webinar strategies and tactis, as there are many variables that affect webinar outcome. However, here is a summary of a couple of key things you want to make sure you do to achieve a successful webinars.
1) Invite your own prospect database, but always have a plan to purchase or go after external databases as well for invitation to the webinar.This ensures that you hit your target registration metrics. You might have to invest in multiple databases, if the target is high. And you'll want to set your target to align with the sales target and everything else you to do support sales. It's always best to do fewer webinars and do them well (with lots of registrations), then doing lots of webinars with small registrations.
2) Give the audience at least 2 weeks from the first email to register. Ideally, you want to give them 3 weeks.
3) Send at least 3 reminders (first email about 2-3 weeks out, 2nd email about 1 week out, 3rd email the day before the event). Make sure that the subject of your last email starts with "Last chance to register for...".
4) Keep the emails as short as possible. If you can't read the entire email in less than 10 seconds, don't bother sending it out. It will not get read. Keep the subject related to the webinar. And always, make the emails personalized to the recipient.
5) Always have a drawing for a nice reward for people who register and attend.
6) Don't give the reward out to anyone - make them take a final 3-5 question survey, and ask them more about their business needs. And make sure the audience knows that only people who submit their surveys will qualify for the reward. This will dramatically help with the 'attendance to stay' ratio.
7) Keep the presentation under 30 minutes. You start losing people after that. Also, make it interactive with Live Polls during the presentation.
8) Have someone introduce the main speaker. This gives the speaker much more credibility.
9) Have people submit their questions, and then cover as many as you can at the end, but always have 3-5 questions pre-written to ask, in case there are no questions. I've also found that when you ask a question of your own, it is a nice ice breaker and gets others to start asking questions.
10) Promise the audience that they'll get answers to all the questions in a few days via email. In about 2-4 days, send out an FAQ style document that has all the questions submitted, a link to the recording of the webinar and a copy of your slides to the audience that registered. This not only ensure that people that could not make it see what was covered, but more importantly, it makes it real easy for people to forward to their friends and colleagues.
And finally, post the recording of all webinars you do as "on demand" presentations on your web site, to continue to produce leads over time. The more webinars you have, the better.
Good luck.
- yh
Monday, April 11, 2011
Good verses Great Leads
As marketers we are constantly trying to get more and higher quality leads. In a recent study we found out that the best leads that convert to opportunities and then eventually into sales come from the company's own web site! This shouldn't be too shocking, since most people that fill out a form on your web site and convert into a lead most likely has a pain that your product or service can help alleviate. And some how they've found their way to your web site.
This got me thinking that in all the marketing activities we do, it all comes down to two types of marketing tactics - those activities where we go after prospects, and those where the prospects come to us. And in all the analysis I've done, and I'm sure you would agree, those prospects that come to you are much better leads, with a higher conversion rate, than those where we chase them - such as email blasts, shot gun approach banner ads, trade shows, and so on.
The question is, how do we get more prospects to find us and come to us, at the time of their pain (meaning they are ready to make a purchase potentially). Well, there are only four places that I've counted that you need to be, to get in front of these prospects:
1) The web - of course! People use the web as the first place to start their search for a product or service when they are in need. You want to make sure you have a solid AdWords strategy, and that your web site is very well optimized for search engine. More on that in a future blog post.
2) Analyst Community: Many organizations who make large purchases go to the analyst community for advice. And you better be one of the company names that those analysts throw out as potential products/services. You want to have good relationship with the key analyst firms, and makes sure that they are very well educated on your products and services.
3) Media & Press: This is where people go to read and learn about the latest trends and products. You want to make sure you are well covered in your space.
4) Social Media - This would technically fall in the same category as #1 above (the web), but social media requires its own strategy. Some people who may need a product or service will go to a forum and post their question to the community for product/service recommendations, and/or how to solve a particular problem. You want to have a daily summary of all these posts, and the ability to respond/reply to those folks very quickly. If you don't already know, you can do all this via technology today. More on that later as well.
So, there you have it - four (technically 3) specific places that your prospect go at times of need, and you want to get in front of them at the time they are looking. Investing well in these four categories will surely help improve your overall business.
- yh
This got me thinking that in all the marketing activities we do, it all comes down to two types of marketing tactics - those activities where we go after prospects, and those where the prospects come to us. And in all the analysis I've done, and I'm sure you would agree, those prospects that come to you are much better leads, with a higher conversion rate, than those where we chase them - such as email blasts, shot gun approach banner ads, trade shows, and so on.
The question is, how do we get more prospects to find us and come to us, at the time of their pain (meaning they are ready to make a purchase potentially). Well, there are only four places that I've counted that you need to be, to get in front of these prospects:
1) The web - of course! People use the web as the first place to start their search for a product or service when they are in need. You want to make sure you have a solid AdWords strategy, and that your web site is very well optimized for search engine. More on that in a future blog post.
2) Analyst Community: Many organizations who make large purchases go to the analyst community for advice. And you better be one of the company names that those analysts throw out as potential products/services. You want to have good relationship with the key analyst firms, and makes sure that they are very well educated on your products and services.
3) Media & Press: This is where people go to read and learn about the latest trends and products. You want to make sure you are well covered in your space.
4) Social Media - This would technically fall in the same category as #1 above (the web), but social media requires its own strategy. Some people who may need a product or service will go to a forum and post their question to the community for product/service recommendations, and/or how to solve a particular problem. You want to have a daily summary of all these posts, and the ability to respond/reply to those folks very quickly. If you don't already know, you can do all this via technology today. More on that later as well.
So, there you have it - four (technically 3) specific places that your prospect go at times of need, and you want to get in front of them at the time they are looking. Investing well in these four categories will surely help improve your overall business.
- yh
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