Christopher Ryan, Author at Great B2B Marketing

July 21, 2017 by Christopher Ryan

6 key Rules to Expand Your B2B Marketing Influence

Marketing influence is a timeless subject but the ways we capture and communicate are constantly evolving. I originally wrote about this subject in 2011 and updated the material for my 2015 book, Winning B2B Marketing . And whether you are a one-person consulting shop, work for a mega corporation, or anything in between, you need to constantly expand your Circle of Marketing Influence.

Starting with your organization at the core, everyone that you can possibly do business with can be pinpointed somewhere in relation to the center. As those individuals in the outer reaches of our marketing influence are brought closer, they become part of your inner circle. Those nearest to the core are friends, former colleagues, loyal customers, prospects in an active sales cycle and others you have direct influence on. Those farthest away comprise your total addressable market (TAM) but many or most of them may not even know that you exist.

Traditional lead-to-revenue (L2R) models track this movement through the marketing and sales sequence using terminology such as suspects, leads, qualified prospects, opportunities and customers. The idea is to locate individual suspects in the larger universe (TAM) and convince them to engage and then make a purchase. By contrast, in today’s pull marketing world, the idea is to broadcast powerful and consistent messages to the cyber universe and give people good reasons to engage with you. The key point is that prospects choose to engage with you – you do not have to chase after them. And they are much more likely to engage if they are already in your sphere of influence.

Over time, the inner- and middle circles grow as people become closer to you. Because you are providing the right message at the right time, people are educating themselves and they willingly engage – not because of the persistence and brilliance of your sales people and you pushing yourself on them, but rather because they actually need your products or services and are searching for a solution. The complexity of the sales process decreases, the sales cycle shrinks and your close rate goes up. This is what we call a winning trifecta!

Let’s take a look at how the circle of influence relates to your business. The Inner circle is comprised of your key influence group including employees, partners, customers, active prospects, personal contacts, and blog contributors. The Middle circle is the moderate influence group and includes contact lists, blog readers, suspects, social media followers, group members (e.g. LinkedIn), affiliates, industry experts, press, and analysts. The Outer circle is the low influence group and includes your potential prospect universe/TAM including email lists, direct marketing lists, occasional blog readers, media readers, and suspects.

The Starting Point: Where you are today

This first graphic shows where you may be in your current evolution as a company or individual, particularly if you are in a fairly new business. Sadly, even some older companies have a small circle of marketing influence. In this case, the size of your inner circle and contact lists are small in relation to the entire prospect universe (total addressable market). And it is also true that marketing is usually more expensive at this stage (relatively speaking) because you often have to spend marketing funds to first educate suspects before turning them into prospects. In fact, even though your goal is to build a strong push model, it may be necessary to do a fair amount of push marketing at this stage.

The End Game: Where you are going

This second graphic illustrates the impact of how your consistent marketing and targeted outreach efforts will help you grow the number of key influencers and moderate influencers. Over time, these parts of the circle of influence will become a rich source of low-cost qualified prospects and customers. Also important to your fiscal health – your marketing campaigns can evolve from push marketing to pull marketing and you will generate leads and new customers at a much lower acquisition cost. In our practice we’ve seen the impact of building up the marketing influence database as it results in a two-third reduction in cost-per-lead over a two year period.

Rules for Expanding Your Circle of Influence

We’ve talked about the why, let’s now discuss the how. Follow these six rules to expand your marketing influence.

Be intentional. Amazing how I meet someone who has 300 LinkedIn contacts and they tell me their goal is to expand their network to produce better results. My advice to that person is to start today and add relevant connections throughout the year, with a goal of 500 connections (adding one per business day). A year later, I look at their profile and they have 320 connections. I call these accidental connections because a few people will connect even if you take no action.
Be methodical. Expanding your circle of influence takes time and a bit of work, but not so much time or effort if you spread the effort out. To start, block 2-3 hours per week on your calendar to devote exclusively to social media and network building. The investment will take a bit of time to pay off, but it will pay off.
Be available. Don’t ignore your network and then scramble to catch up when you need something. We all have those people in our lives who only reach out when they want something (job, reference, etc.) but are otherwise silent.
Be valuable. If you have content to share, make sure it’s the good stuff not just a rehash of what everyone else is offering. Not to say that you need to give away your trade secrets but it is usually better to offer something unique.
Be generous. Following up on the previous rule, you should willingly share information, references, comments, compliments, congratulations and so forth. You are planting seeds for the future. Just like with real seeds, some will produce fruit and some will fall on barren ground. The point is that you have no idea which seeds are which – so do not try to be Machiavellian about your networking. If you are available and add value to enough people, you will gain in return. That’s the way life works, both at home and the office.
Be realistic. Good networking is about quality of communication but it is also about quantity. If you wait until the perfect opportunity to reach out, you may have to wait a long time. The point is to communicate often enough to remain top of mind (without being annoying).

The Circle of Marketing Influence is an excellent way to remember that your mission in B2B marketing is to continually expand the number of people who know what you do and why you are the obvious choice in your market.

Porter Gale wrote a book titled “Your network is Your Net Worth”.The title really says it all. Build your network, expand your influence and reap the benefits.

July 10, 2017 by Christopher Ryan

When It Comes to Marketing, Should you be Credible or Incredible?

I got the idea for this post when listening to one of our Fusion Marketing Partners’ clients present at a webinar. The company official who presented was not particularly dynamic or polished but he did a great job of presenting the information in a thoughtful and logical manner and he definitely had what I term “marketing credibility”. As someone who studies and practices communication for clients and our own company, I read and listen to many so-called gurus who represent themselves as experts in their space.

Here are some statements I have heard or read recently that fall into the incredible category:

“Our xxxx software always outperforms our competition.”
“Our special xxxxx supplementation is guaranteed to make you lose weight”
“We have 100 percent customer satisfaction.”
“My normal consulting rate is $10,000 per day” (but you can join my private coaching group for only $500).
This timeshare will probably go up in value big time.
“Buy this stock now because it will double in price within six months.”

Don’t know about you but I tired of these incredible claims. And yes, I did once buy a timeshare and learned a painful lesson (fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice and shame on me). Yes, people fall for these claims and yes (with a few limitations) it is pretty much a free market where you can say anything you want. But unless your goal is short-term sales, regardless of the cost in brand reputation, it’s best to be in the credible camp. I wrote an earlier post on the subject of incredible marketing claims.

Our goal when building marketing credibility and thought leadership for clients is to help prospects and customers know, like and trust the client. Perhaps the third of these attributes (trust) is most important. People who know you and like you will still not buy from you if they don’t trust you. Here are six strategies to build and keep trust and credibility:

Be honest. In every situation. This is so important because once lost, trust is hard to regain. We marketers are trained to put our best foot forward and to project the most optimistic picture of our product and/or services. But beware of making statements that are so outlandish that other things you say, even if true, are questioned.
Meet your commitments. I have a professional services provider I have been working with for many years regarding dozens of different matters. Yet the past six months have been one missed deadline and one unfulfilled promise after another. I reluctantly (and sadly) have to say goodbye to this provider because their credibility well has run dry.
Admit your weaknesses. Again, this is hard for us marketers but it does help you connect with, and build bridges to, your client.
Take the high road. Factual statements about your strengths vs. the competition are fine, but make sure you are more focused on why you are better instead of why the other company is bad. When you go on the attack, you may damage your opponent but sometimes do more damage to your own reputation. When in doubt, keep it positive!
Hold your fire. Even if you take the high road, there is no guarantee that you and/or your company won’t be on the receiving end of someone else’s criticism/vitriol. As I painfully learned earlier in my career, it is usually better to let things pass than engage and escalate the situation (exactly what the critic wants you to do). Yes there are exceptions to this rule – no one likes a doormat.
Be genuine. This is a tough one because when you are communicating, you have a tendency to want to please the people you are communicating to and tell them what you think they want to hear. But remember that the biggest rewards go to those who are seen as unique and special, not to those who imitate others or are always saying what’s convenient or flatters the listener. In this world of imitators and false prophets in the marketplace, a “real” person is always the preferable partner.

I’ll leave you with a really good quote from Ann Voskamp about credibility in writing: “Good writing, from my perspective, runs a lot like a visual on the screen. You need to create that kind of detail and have credibility with the reader, so the reader knows that you were really there, that you really experienced it, that you know the details. That comes out of seeing. “

I think Ann is saying that when it comes to credibility, seeing is believing. People with marketing credibility give their supporters (and their detractors!) observable evidence that they’re up-front, honest and dependable. And they never forget that in the long-term, being credible almost always beats being “incredible”.

in Marketing / Marketing Credibility 1 comments

June 28, 2017 by Christopher Ryan

Boost Revenue with the Right B2B Marketing Funnel

One of the most important decisions to be made when designing a lead-to-revenue (L2R) strategy is the type of B2B marketing funnel model to support your revenue goals. There are lots of permutations but fundamentally, it comes down to a choice between two major flavors: wide or narrow funnel. I’ve talked to CEO’s who want a large number high-quality leads at a low cost-per-lead. While this sounds great in theory, there is almost always a trade-off between quantity and quality – unless you are willing to spend exorbitant sums to achieve this goal.

Let’s explain by taking a closer look at the two funnel models. Note that I have simplified the number of steps involved but this should still give you the idea.

Wide Funnel – Type A: As the graphic illustrates, this type of funnel is designed to create lots of activity early in the lead-to-revenue process by casting a wider net. The goal is to get lots of suspects to opt-in, and use personal (usually telephone) or automated methods to qualify suspects and turn them into prospects. You ask for very little information (e.g. name and email address) in order to encourage response and your content offer is targeted at those who are earlier in their buyer’s journey. In this model, you attempt to separate the wheat from the chaff after the opt-in.

Narrow Funnel – Type B: This funnel model is narrow at the top, because the goal is to generate fewer opt-ins – but with a much higher average quality than type A. To accomplish this, you offer content that is useful for prospects that are closer to a buying decision and you ask for lots of information from the prospect. This will definitely reduce response from those who are early in the buyer’s journey and in this model, you attempt to separate the wheat from the chaff before the opt-in.

Note what the two B2B marketing funnels have in common. First, you still have to go through the same qualification and selling steps and once the leads are qualified, you should achieve the same conversion metrics with either model. In other words, you can be just as productive with either model from a revenue standpoint. Second, the costs to fill the top of the funnel may be the same with either model, although you can save some expense because of the reduced cost of personal lead qualification on the narrow funnel.

Funnel B has the advantage of keeping your inside and direct sales reps focused on prospects that are more likely to buy in the short-term. This is because you are using your marketing messaging and opt-in process to discourage those not currently in the market for your products or services. However, the narrow funnel has a huge disadvantage – you don’t get to keep talking to the people who opted-in but were not yet ready to engage.

Using the examples above – if you implement Funnel B, there are 600 inquiries that you don’t get a chance to nurture and convert into qualified leads at a later date. And remember, once you have paid for the initial acquisition, you can often convert these prospects into opportunities at little or no cost. Our experience shows that you can often get another 50-75% sales downstream from the pool of those not ready to engage in the short-term. Again, using the above numbers, this would cost you another 10-15 sales.

So which B2B Marketing funnel is right for you? For the reasons mentioned in the two preceding paragraphs, I usually recommend the wide funnel (type A), but there are exceptions. Best to carefully consider the ramifications of each approach and make the right decision before you lock in your marketing programs.

in B2B Marketing / Buyer's Journey / Marketing Funnel 1 comments

June 19, 2017 by Christopher Ryan

Use Pull Marketing for Easier and More Productive B2B Sales

In a recent conversation, a B2B sales rep told me something to the effect: “I hate my job because no one wants to talk to me. They don’t answer the phone, they don’t return my voice messages, and they almost never respond to my emails.” He also mentioned the fact that his sales cycles were getting longer, more people were involved in each deal and the entire process was more contentious. Other than that, everything was great (just kidding on this last part!).

This sales rep happens to be a nice person, but being nice is not much solace when you are working in a system that is set up to be adversarial and often painful. The model his company employs is called “push marketing” and the idea is to find out where the suspects are and push our way to them. The opposite end of this spectrum is what my company, Fusion Marketing Partners, practices, “pull marketing”. Pull marketing is inbound focused – the idea is to get prospects to come to you.

Charles Green wrote a very interesting article about this titled, If Selling Is Too Hard, You’re Doing It Wrong. He talks about how much of selling is a competitive struggle between buyer and seller: “When we think this way, we spend an awful lot of energy. It’s hard work—particularly because much of it is spent trying to persuade customers to do what we (sellers) want them to do. And getting other people to do what we want them to do is never easy (if you have a teenager and/or a spouse, you know this well).

I’ve seen sales training where reps are encouraged to use aggressive and high pressure tactics on prospects. This is definitely a push model. From a marketing perspective, push tactics include cold calls and emails, overly forceful sales letters, and unsolicited pitches. LinkedIn has become a hotbed for aggressive sales tactics and this has caused many otherwise open networkers to be much more careful about accepting new connection requests.

Pull marketing is a great antidote to this competitive struggle because you are more often dealing with prospects who already have expressed an interest in what you are offering. Instead of hiding, they are more likely to accept the attention of a sales rep. The process becomes one where you help them buy instead of trying to sell them something. After all, most people like to buy but few of us enjoy being sold. A pull-oriented, buyer-centric marketing and sales model is more pleasant (and productive) for both the buyer and the seller.

Following are some of the characteristics of the push vs. pull models.

By the way, there are often instances where we can’t find enough pull traffic to fill the sales pipeline and we then use some push marketing methods to meet lead and revenue objectives – adding push marketing tactics over time. At the end of the day, pull marketing creates an environment of cooperation between the buyer and the seller so reps feel like they’re contributing to a win-win outcome, not endlessly bugging prospects who have no desire to talk. B2B sales reps (like the friend I mentioned above) love this change in marketing strategy because they see an easier, more enjoyable and more profitable light at the end of the tunnel.

in B2B Sales / Pull Marketing 0 comments

Last Updated: June 8, 2017 by Christopher Ryan

How to Be a Branding Rock Star

To paraphrase the Dicken’s classic, A Tale of Two Cities, I’ll cover the best of branding and the worst of branding, starting with the worst. I read a Chicago Tribune article two weeks ago about how the company that owns Devry University is changing its name to Adtalem Global Education. The rebranding comes just months after DeVry University agreed to pay $100 million to settle a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit alleging it misled tens of thousands of students about their post-graduation job and income prospects.

Just in case you are wondering, the company says that the new name comes from a Latin translation of the phrase “to empower” and also says the rebranding has nothing to do with current legal difficulties. According to Adtalem CEO Lisa Wardell, the new name “makes clear our purpose to empower students and our status as a global education provider.”

It’s hard to believe the timing of the rebrand was totally divorced from the hit to the company’s reputation but even if it were true, I’m puzzled as to why they chose the name Adtalem. Many companies (including those with big budgets) do a very poor job of rebranding and sometimes end up with a name more puzzling than the original name. Here are three lessons to be learned from this particular rebranding exercise:

Don’t call your company (or product) something that requires a Latin translation. I’m sure “Adtalem” seemed very chic when the powers that be bantered around names in the conference room. Perhaps the person who suggested the name even got a bonus for his or her creativity but it doesn’t seem like good branding to me.
Don’t name your company after your dog, a Greek god, your child’s teddy bear, a blending of the founders’ names, or anything else that causes prospects to ask: What the heck does this company do?
Unless you have strong venture funding and/or the type of story that drives viral awareness, pick a name that is at least somewhat descriptive of what you do.

AOL’s Branding Roller Coaster

Perhaps the best rebranding occurred in the 1990’s, when a little-known company (at that time) changed its name from Quantum Computer Services to America Online (AOL). I had some dealings with Quantum/AOL at that time and thought then and now that the rebranding was simply brilliant. What better way to express the fact that you were an American company whose goal it was to bring the entire country (world) online?

I am bringing up the AOL rebranding from a couple of decades ago because of its tie to current news. As reported by theVerge.com: The next chapter in Yahoo’s strange journey from cornerstone of the early internet to aged Verizon subsidiary is a bold rebranding. After Business Insider first reported on a potential Yahoo name change, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong tweeted to confirm the details: “It’s now official: After the Verizon deal closes and it gains control of Yahoo’s core web assets, Yahoo and AOL will merge to form a new entity called Oath.”

This name change is getting plenty of attention and a lot of it is unflattering. And it’s kind of sad to see a company with that many resources do such a poor job of branding.

Be a Branding Rock Star

If you really want to see some examples of branding rock stardom, let’s look at some bands with mediocre names that hugely benefited from new names.

MAROON 5 started life as Kara’s Flowers
VAN HALEN’s original Name was Rat Salad
NIRVANA began as Pen Cap Chew
LINKIN PARK’s original Name was Xero
BLACK SABBATH was first known as Polka Tulk Blues Band
THE WHO began as The High Numbers

The exact impact of the name change for any of these bands is impossible to measure. But common sense tells us that the new band names are way more valuable than the old names. And the moral of the story: When it comes to branding, be a Van Halen and not a Rat Salad. Be an America Online and not an Oath.

If you would like a quick way to evaluate the health of your brand, take the free online Brand Health Assessment and Scorecard.

in Branding / Rebrand 2 comments

June 1, 2017 by Christopher Ryan

Niche Marketing: Four Rules to Guide Your Success

First things first – what do I mean by the term niche marketing? Our friends at Wikipedia say that niche marketing is “the subset of the market on which a specific product is focused. The market niche defines as the product features aimed at satisfying specific market needs, as well as the price range, production quality and the demographics that is intended to impact.” BusinessDictionary.com has a great take on this: “As a strategy, niche marketing is aimed at being a big fish in a small pond instead of being a small fish in a big pond.”

I’ve had execs from B2B companies complain that they just aren’t getting any traction in their market. They are faced with larger competitors that have a lot more people and dollars to devote to marketing and sales. Often, the problem is not just the competition but also the fact that their internal resources are spread across too many product lines, too many industries, too many messages, and so forth. Unless you have more money and time than you know what to do with, you are probably best off to heed the words of those who proclaim: “The riches are in the niches”.

Here are five benefits of being a marketing specialist instead of generalist:

It is much easier to showcase your expertise if you focus on specific niches. Niche marketers need to work hard to stay on top of their games instead of belting out generic platitudes.
As a specialist, you have the opportunity to stand out from the crowd and show empathy and understanding for your target prospects.
You can charge higher prices and achieve better margins. There is a premium to be gained when you have a specialized solution.
More brand loyalty. Customers love companies who specialize in fulfilling their unique requirements and will reward such firms with allegiance and high margin revenue.
Greater levels of expertise. The more you focus on your niche, the more your expertise (real and perceived) will blossom.

The potential disadvantage to B2B niche marketing is that by defining precisely what you are, you are also defining what you are not (everything else). This can limit your ability to scale your market presence or force you to undertake an expensive rebranding program. Better to figure this out early. And if you organize your web presence correctly (e.g. by utilizing micro sites) you can cast both a fairly wide marketplace net while still appealing to profitable niches.

Here are four important rules for niche marketing:

Don’t muddy your message. Hone in like a laser on what makes you unique and special and most importantly, what your prospects and customers need to know to have a better professional and/or personal life.
Align the rest of the organization around the marketing message. Niche marketing doesn’t mean just throwing some industry-specific keywords onto your website. Your product strategy, service plan and sales model need to be in sync.
Stay one step ahead of your customers. As a player in a specialized business game, you had better understand the rules and trends of that game. You don’t have to know everything, but you must know enough to be seen as a trusted authority.
Stop trying to be the best. This is not the most intuitive advice but makes sense when you ponder it. One of my favorite business thinkers is Michael Porter, noted economist, business adviser and business professor at Harvard. Porter urges companies to stop trying to follow the herd by being the best (when measured by what other firms do) and instead strive to be different. Read this HBR article for more on this subject.

One other smart thinker when it comes to niche marketing is noted copywriter Bob Bly, who stated in a recent article, “The secret to making more money as a copywriter … author … consultant … speaker … freelance writer … independent contractor … Internet marketer … or in virtually any other business on Earth – is to become a highly paid specialist — and pick a lucrative niche market with huge demand and limited competition.”

Go forth and Get Rich in Your Niche!

in B2B Niche / Marketing / Niche Marketing 0 comments

May 12, 2017 by Christopher Ryan

Eight Critical Brand Health Questions You Should Be Asking

Complacency is a deadly risk to the health of your brand.

Perhaps the most enjoyable part of my job is helping B2B clients “brand” their companies, products (or services) and create a personal brand for executives. I’ve written a lot about the subject of branding, including my recent article for CustomerThink titled, Six Steps to Ensure Your Brand Strategy Supports Your Lead-to-Revenue Framework. Because this subject is so critical to most company’s revenue and growth, I thought I would share answers to eight critical branding questions that directly affect the health and well-being of your company:

How important is brand health to my company’s success? My obvious answer, with a few exceptions, is that it is extremely important. As a former colleague once told me, “Do you think it would sell as well if they called it ‘cold dead fish’ instead of sushi?” Great companies work hard to create and maintain a positive brand image and it pays off big time. Visit the Brand Health Scorecard for a quick way to measure your brand health.

What can we do if we sound just like everyone else? The first answer is: Don’t be like everyone else. The second answer is: Do whatever it takes to differentiate your company, products and services from a marketing perspective and then go make this happen company-wide. But don’t change the branding if you aren’t prepared to make the other changes that reinforce the brand.

Should we brand using a narrow or wide focus? Most of the time we advocate a more narrow focus. As they say, there are “riches in niches”. However, there is a big caveat. Don’t brand yourself so narrowly that it boxes in your ability to expand in the future. This can be a delicate balance that requires a lot of time and attention.

What are the biggest branding mistakes companies make? I see so many mistakes that it’s hard to pick just a few. Perhaps the biggest is failing to take the issue seriously and complete due diligence on your brand decisions. Many go forward with a weak or even a harmful brand. Another fatal flaw is to let ego override a good branding advice – e.g. “I don’t care what the experts say, I want to name this company after my dog.” Don’t laugh – this type of thing happens every day. A third mistake is to do a good job in top-line branding but fail to follow through on the rest of the company’s messaging. You know this is a problem when people look at your website and say, “What they heck does this company do?”

How do we know if our brand is working? Here are five ways to tell:

Results: If you are losing market share and leaking revenue, there is a good chance that your branding deserves some of the blame.
Quantity: How often are people talking about your company and its products or services?
Quality: Who is talking about you and what are they saying?
Website traffic: Are you getting more unique visitors and do they spend more time on site? A decline in either of these numbers is a bad sign.
Congruence is a customer experience (CX) measurement that indicates whether the current brand aligns with your customers’ experience from initial contact through usage of the product or service. Net Promoter Score (NPS) is another way to measure this.

What is the risk of ignoring the issues surrounding our brand health? Of course, there is the option to “do nothing”. Complacency and inertia are strong forces that are very difficult to overcome, especially if you have achieved a modicum of success in the past. The biggest factor driving change should be (as mentioned in #5) a stagnant or declining sales pipeline and waning revenue.

Does my company need one or more thought leaders? Great question indeed. The answer is yes, but only if you have a credible executive, who has worthwhile things to say, and will share his/her thoughts on a regular basis. Of course it helps if that individual can be depended upon not to jump ship to the competition. Such an individual is like gold and is far preferable than content coming from a generic source such as “marketing” or “admin”.

How do we fix an under-performing brand? Before attempting any type of brand improvement, it is a good idea to know where you currently stand. A good way to find out is with the free Brand Health Scorecard. The scorecard measures six different categories of brand performance. It will take you only a few minutes to complete the questionnaire and the results will start you on the path to brand success.

in Brand / Brand Health / Branding 0 comments

May 5, 2017 by Christopher Ryan

Moving Up the Relationship Hierarchy

You often hear marketing and sales pros talk about how to turn vendor interactions into meaningful relationships. I find it rewarding to work with our clients to implement strategies that move these relationships from being considered a vendor at one end, to a partner at the other. In some instances, the relationship will spend some time in the consultant and trusted advisor modes as the intermediate steps. And while this hierarchy model is generally thought to refer to services organizations, it can also apply to product companies – especially if there is a service component involved.

The following chart shows various relationship attributes and how they apply when you are at different levels of the Value Hierarchy. As you can see, the further up the food chain you go, the greater the rewards. In fact, a trusted advisor or partner can often command 5-10 times the compensation of a vendor.

Mladen Kresic, CEO of K&R Negotiations (and noted sales negotiation expert), has a great perspective on the hierarchy as it applies to sales in his recent blog post, Breaking the Master/Servant Sales Relationship. Kresic stated, “Moving from the master/servant paradigm isn’t about gaining the upper hand in a brute power scenario, but rather about moving to a peer-to-peer relationship where mutual benefit flows from mutual respect and acknowledgment of exchanged value. From our experience, the master/servant trap is an easy one to fall into, even with some of the world’s top-tier service organizations.” The “servants” Mr. Kresic is referring to are definitely stuck at the vendor end of the spectrum.

So what can you do to get to the top of the food chain and stay there? Here are a few suggestions:

Never take your place in the hierarchy for granted. Whether it is your spouse, your marketing peers, your business partner, or your client, you need to continue to earn their trust.
Under promise and over deliver. We have a tendency when dealing with a new customer/client to say things to please them. I got in trouble a couple of times earlier in my career by telling the CEO or VP of Sales, “I’m sure we can deliver all the leads you want.” Yes I knew that hitting the lead target would be difficult, but I wanted to please and score a few points.
Be impeccable about deadlines. Having hired many vendors and consultants in my career as a marketing executive – a few of whom became trusted advisors or partners – the one thing that separated the latter from the former was the way they either met, or did not meet, their deadlines. No one likes to chase you to do what you already promised to do.
Go the extra mile. Yes, this is another cliché, but your willingness to do the unexpected and unasked for, can be a huge contributor to the strength of the relationship.
Listen. Yes, your relationship is based on some type of commerce. But your customer/client is also a human, with all the goodness and baggage that entails. If he or she considers you a trusted advisor or partner, they may share both negative and positive parts of their work or personal life that have little to do with your existing contract. You may be tempted to brush this off to get back to the business at hand, but resist the temptation, open your ears and close your mouth (unless asked to do otherwise). It will be an investment that pays off for you and your client.
Stay in touch. Regardless of how your relationship ends, stay in touch with your ex-clients/customers. Send them useful articles; make yourself available for quick calls, comment on their social media posts, and whatever else you can do to be of assistance. Some of our best clients have been with us while with multiple companies. They have become friends and I believe they consider my team and me to be trusted advisors and partners.

If I had to sum up these six strategies in a single overriding concept it would be: Always make the relationship as important, or more so, than the transaction.

in Marketing 1 comments

April 24, 2017 by Christopher Ryan

You Need to Become Good at Content Marketing – Here’s How

Next month, I will be speaking at an event called, the Summit on Content Marketing. Beginning May 22, the Summit is an online conference for individuals and businesses who want to develop a successful content strategy, increase buyer engagement, grow their audience and improve the quality and quantity of leads. I am looking forward to the learning experience – I know some of the speakers and the conference organizers have put together a top roster.

So, why should you care about the subject? Amazingly, I’ve had a few B2B company executives tell me that content isn’t all that important to their company’s success. While this may be true in rare circumstances, the rest of us are competing against companies that would love us to go silent on content – it would make us much easier to beat. One tech company CEO even suggested that all he needed on his website was the company phone number because “We pay our sales reps to sell our products. The rest of the website may not be necessary.” I know most people reading this don’t have such a myopic view of content marketing but what exactly can it do for you? Here’s a short list:

Differentiates you from the competition
Supports your brand’s value proposition
Attracts organic search traffic
Converts visitors to leads
Targets various stages of the buying cycle
Shortens the sales cycle

Other than this, content marketing doesn’t do much for you! So with all this good stuff as the payoff, what am I going to talk about during my Summit session? The title is B2B Content Strategies that Move Your Prospects Along the Buyer’s Journey, and I will be covering these topics:

How to Use Digital Content to Shorten the B2B Sales Cycle and Increase Close Rates
How to Engage and Convert Readers with a Compelling Story
Seven Essential Content Marketing Best Practices
How to Time Your Content to Match the Buyer’s Journey
How Asking “Why” Makes Your Marketing Content More Effective
Best Ways to Measure Your Content’s Impact on Revenue

As just one teaser of what I am going to talk about, consider how content can impact the “stuck” prospect. He or she may be stuck because you haven’t sold the value, because there are objections that have not been overcome, or because the prospect is lacking what they consider critical information about your products or services. Content can be used to fill all of these gaps, and many more. In fact, most of the successful companies in any industry have something in common – they have plenty of good content to help speed the buyer’s journey.

The bottom line is that the wrong B2B content aimed at the wrong prospect can slow the buying process or stop it entirely. Fortunately, the right content strategy can be a powerful enabler of lead generation and sales. Well-placed and well-timed content is a key component of the lead-to-revenue (L2R) process and can drive better results at several critical junctures in the buyer’s journey.

Hope to see you (virtually) at the Summit. In the meantime, may all your content efforts be productive and effective.

in B2B Content Marketing / Content / Content Marketing 0 comments

April 11, 2017 by Christopher Ryan

Seven Things You Can Do (or Not Do) to Increase Marketing Success

One of the good things about being a B2B marketing practitioner for so long is the perspective it gives me on what works and doesn’t. Following are some seemingly random yet important strategies to increase productivity and reduce disappointment. These tips are a blend of marketing success tips and personal productivity ideas that will keep you focused and happier on the job – as well as avoid unnecessary pain (the worst type of pain).

Don’t download unlicensed photos. Really pay attention to this one. When you get the urge to copy and paste that interesting photo you stumbled across on the internet, STOP. It is not worth the potential legal and financial consequences. It’s like driving when you are inebriated. You may get away with it once or even dozens of times – but the one time you get caught can be extremely painful. If you doubt this, just read this article from someone who made the mistake.
QA the email before hitting the “send” button. I know this one from painful experience. You write a brilliant email, either to go to one person or perhaps hundreds/thousands of prospects or customers. But perhaps you are distracted or didn’t bother to do a review. Within seconds you get a sinking feeling. Did I really hit the “reply all” button and send it to the entire company instead of the one person I had a beef with? Did I really include the damaging stuff at the bottom that recipients weren’t supposed to see? Did I really just send 5,000 people a message addressed to “Dear [first_name]:”. As just one of many examples, Business Insider reported: UC San Diego mistakenly sent a welcome email to all 46,000 applicants for the freshman class, including about 28,000 who had already been rejected. In a case of false hope to the extreme, the school sent: We’re thrilled that you’ve been admitted to UC San Diego. Oops!
Stand up and walk every 52 minutes. You’ve heard about the perils of sitting for long periods of time (e.g. “sitting is the new smoking”). And there have been many published reports on the ideal amount of time to work with intensity before taking a break. As many articles, including this one from Fast Company shows, 52 minutes seems to be the ideal time period, with a 17 minute break. I’ve tested this idea and the 52 minute work period works for me – although I am ready to get back at if after only a 7 or 8 minute break. You achieve two benefits with this 52 minute routine – shortening the deadly sitting thing while clearing the cobwebs and generating more productive output.
Don’t take it personally. Remember that line from The Godfather, when Michael Coleone tells his brother, “It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s strictly business”. This despite the fact a rival crime family shot up their father. Well, the same is true in the business world. Much of the things we get upset about are not meant personally – it was just the other person doing what they perceived to be in their own self-interest.
Assume good intentions. This goes along with the previous point. Whether it is a boss, co-worker, client or partner, people will do things that anger and/or disappoint you. One of the best pieces of advice I received about being married is that when you assume the motivations/intentions of your spouse, you are wrong 80+ percent of the time. The same is true in the business world. You are better off assuming the best – it makes for a more pleasant and productive environment.
Don’t waste time chasing people. There are individuals in this world who are poor communicators. You send them an email or call and it takes days or weeks for them to respond. In my experience, this has nothing to do with how busy or important an individual happens to be. I know CEOs who are fast to respond and retirees who are glacially slow. Try to limit your reliance on such people or it will drive you batty – unless of course it is your boss, in which case you might want to look for employment elsewhere.
Make stuff happen. There are business environments (and marketing departments) where action is encouraged and mistakes are accepted (as long as they are not repeated). And there are others where action is discouraged and employees are punished by those ready to pounce on any new idea. But if you are a doer, you must do. Marketing success and sales results happen because individuals try things. They may fail, but they learn the lesson and try again until they succeed. They have a propensity to act, not to ponder, think, meet and criticize.

Please share your own strategies to increase marketing success.

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