Red On Marketing Blog

B2B Sellers of the eCommerce Seas: At Shopping Cart’s End

In this third and final installment of our series on eCommerce, we learn of the power of hosted services. You already mastered the basics of launching an ecommerce B2B operation in “The Promise of the Shopping Cart” and the price you should can expect to pay in “The Key to an Overflowing Chest.” Now, like the mythic pirate Bretheren Court, you will have to choose your captain to host your financial endeavor.

I know you want me to just tell you the best shopping cart to pick, but there is no one universal “best” shopping cart.  Like the pirate lords, each business has different needs.  Let your end-goals be your compass and you’ll soon discover your ideal destination. I will give you this piece of hard-won advice: seek results-based B2B marketing, not technology-driven marketing. In other words, choose based on what will enrich your chest the most, not what looks like the coolest cutlass in the armory.

Shopping Cart & Web Site Costs

Hosted eCommerce web site services like Yahoo Merchant Services, Shopify, Volusion, and Big Commerce all deserve a closer look.  The upside: They offer an ‘SaaS’, or Software as a Service, which means you don’t have to worry about maintaining the shopping cart software, including security updates and upgrades. This can give you peace-of-mind in a stormy transaction environment because you don’t have to worry about the technical issues. Plus, you have a support network available to help you 24/7. The downside: You don’t get the full control of a self-serve hosted server account.

Beware hidden fees. They can add up and hurt your business.  Actually, “hidden” is not an accurate term because the costs are shown on your contract, but it’s up to you, the captain, to choose and stay on top of store charges.  You will pay a premium for premium service.  In addition to a monthly service charge, you could be charged as much as 2% more per-transaction. That is no small coin.

 

Self-serve hosted server account:  A custom site, while it may include “free” shopping carts, can require a great deal of skill to configure, upgrade and maintain.  That means that the developer brought on board to design the site becomes trapped in an endless loop of maintenance, upgrades and fixes. For the captain, this can result in a financial leak due to hidden costs and endless problems, especially if you try to build the site quickly “on the cheap.”

On the Upside: Self-serve hosted server accounts provide an enormous amount of flexibility.  A well-researched business plan and eCommerce strategy is a prerequisite to succeeding.

Brand prominence plays a pivotal role in the eCommerce battle for market domination.  Ultimately, you want the message to be about you and not another business entity like Google or PayPal.  It’s easy to fall into the “free” trap, but remember you’re selling a brand at that point (witnessed by the fact of low penetration of alternative payment methods).  In fact you’re already selling a brand: your business.  If you want to simply accept credit cards, would you rather accept credit cards, or, accept credit cards through PayPal?

It sounds (and is) so much ”easier” on the client side to simply accept credit cards and not require signing up for various other brands who then market to your clients without even paying the courtesy of a finder’s fee for your trouble. 

As a general rule, a smart sailor protects the brand and develops a strategy outside of PayPal and Google Checkout.  It may cost more in the short-run, but it puts you in control of your clients and client lists by going with a gateway and merchant account.  This gives a company a virtual payment terminal right out of the box and puts you on course for a successful shopping cart web site application. 

Are you launching your B2B company on the ecommerce seas? Want some guidance from seasoned veterans? Drop us a line with your burning questions before you weigh anchor.  

B2B Email Signatures Gone Wild!

Nobody likes long goodbyes. And a fancy email signature can cause more headaches than it's worth.

Do you know someone who's overloaded their email signature? What's packed into yours? Let’s go through a quick checklist. Count how many of these elements your signature has:

• Several styles and sizes of type
• Special line spacing
• Different formatting (like bold, italics, regular text)
• A company logo
• A picture of you
• Little icons (like tiny phone symbol)
• Special characters (like TM or SM in superscript)
• A call to action or sales message
• A disclaimer
• Links to social media accounts
• A catchy quote or motto

None of those things is so terrible by itself. Heck we've all got some of this stuff. But when you pile them one on top of another, the result can be jarring.

Understated elegance

A client of ours has agreed to be an example in this article. Meet Van Haas, who leads the best cost management company in Sacramento. He likes e-mail signatures with bells and whistles - and this is how his signature looked in the early days of our collaboraton -->

The message and contact info are hiding somewhere in there. But here was my plea to Van:

Imagine you bump into the CEO of a $200M company you want as a client. You follow up with a quick email note. She looks at it on her Palm and forwards it to the VP/Operations. He gets it at his work address but he's telecommuting using his Mac. With corporate firewalls and ISPs and email platforms all processing the info, the stuff that looked cool at the sender's end gets scrambled and whacky and squinty, if not lost. And the VP/Operations parks the email for later, when he has a minute to ask the CEO who the sender was. Great opportunity evaporates.

Van wrote back:

“Ok ok ok. I get it. But, I like fanciness. :-)” And proposed this:

Better!

But we're still in the land of fancy formatting. The simpler and cleaner, the better.

Even Microsoft is realizing this. In June the company announced that it would stop adding lines of promotional text at the end of Hotmail users’ messages. As reported by Todd Bishop of Techflash, Microsoft had been getting a lot of complaints about the taglines creating clutter. So even though the taglines promoting Hotmail generated about 2 million clicks per month, Microsoft realized that the clicks weren’t worth the animosity.

Here's the sparkling clean version Van has today - yeay.

What's in your email signature and why?

B2B Marketing Dealbreakers

How can it be that marketers – people who specialize in creating positive images – have such an image problem?

In my career, I have met a lot of marketing professionals. Hundreds? Thousands? And, on the whole, they're ok. Just folks trying to make a living.

But we also have more than our fair share of wanna-bes.

Spotting B2B marketing wanna-bes

Wanna-bes are difficult to spot until it is too late. They have great business cards, LinkedIn profiles, and brochures. But hook up with a chronic underperformer, and they can run your business into the ground.

The impact of chronic underperformance by a marketing consultant goes beyond the tens of thousands of dollars in wasted advertising, lost sales, and missed opportunities. It can also lead to lost customers, lost partners, a lower barrier to entry for competitors, and even PR crises for the organization -- not to mention a career crisis for the executive who picked the underperformer.

That's a dealbreaker!

Dealbreakers come in many shapes and sizes. Here are a couple to look out for -- I'll expand on these in future articles.

If your marketing consultant...

• Does cookie-cutter marketing, where every campaign is a variation on the same theme... that's a dealbreaker
• Has a "command-and-control" mentality, where the agency tries to tell the client what to do without listening to their needs... that's a dealbreaker
• Over-sells, meaning the agency is all bling and no cha-ching... that's the ultimate dealbreaker
  

This last bunch is especially irritating. They make lots of noise about design awards and awareness campaigns but say "it's just so hard to know" when prospects ask, "what did it produce?"

It is true, of course, that it is hard to know what marketing produced -- IF the marketer doesn't do closed-loop marketing. That's the sort where results from each effort are fed back into planning cycles. Indeed, deciding about future marketing efforts without a clear view of what's worked amounts to guessing. And guessing on the client's dime is not ok. It's... a dealbreaker!

More to come. Meantime, here are some related articles:

• Picking a Marketing Consultant: get what you pay for
• Corporate Logos — examples of what does, doesn’t work
• “Solution” is not the solution in B2B marketing communications
• Six Marketing Gotchas CEOs Can Avoid

B2B Companies, Look Out Behind You

It may be time to give your marketing materials a refresher

By Robert Celaschi

If you check out the little bio under my photo at the bottom of this article, you’ll see that “Robert has been a business journalist for 22 years...”

But it’s not true.

The fact is, this month marks 25 years since I started writing for business publications. I bring it up not to brag, but to point out how easy it is to let the details of marketing copy slip out of date. Where did the last three years go?

Even after all the research, all the editing, all the nice graphic design, you still need to keep an eye on the finished product to make sure it doesn’t get left behind as the rest of the world marches on.

Often it’s the little things that trip us up. For instance there’s that little line on most newspapers and magazines that says something like, “Vol. XXVI, No. 49.” Every edition should get a new number, and the volume number typically changes ever year or six months. It’s so easy to forget to change the number that many publications make part of their standard production checklists.

Even then it’s too easy to let the mind coast. I have seen weekly publications that dutifully change the number of the edition each week: 49, 50, 51, 53, 54 ...

Eventually someone says, “Hey, weren’t we supposed to change the volume number after 52 and start over with 1?”

Your turn

If you have been using the same marketing copy for more than a year, go back and read through it with a critical eye.

• Have any of the facts changed since they went into the brochure or onto the website?
• Do the photos and graphics still show reality? (Of course we assume that they did originally)
• Do the press release dates include the years?
• Do all your web links still go where you think they do?

Robert has been a business journalist for 22 years, both as a reporter and an editor. He joined Business Communications Group in 2005.

Need a fresh pair of eyes?

A fresh pair of eyes can help you ensure your marketing materials will be effective in 2010... especially if they're attached to an experience B2B marketer. Get help >>

Corporate Logos — examples of what does, doesn’t work

By Rebekah E. Donaldson

One of the big laughs in the fake documentary film Spinal Tap came when the band took to the stage to sing of Stonehenge. The set was supposed to feature a replica of a section of Stonehenge standing an imposing 18 feet tall. Due to a miscommunication problem with the set designer, it shows up at a ridiculous 18 inches tall.

Here’s a story about one of my own screw ups, some tips from the trenches of corporate logo design — and 5 corporate logos that help illustrate how a logo can help — or hurt — its owner.

When it comes to your corporate logo, you want something that works no matter what size. Sticking with the music theme for a bit, consider how graphic designers have had to adapt as the 12-inch LP jacket gave way to the 5-inch CD cover, and finally to the tiny icon that shows up on an iPod. A recent issue of Wired magazine gives examples. Your logo has to work as tiny square icon in a browser address bar and as a 50-foot long banner hanging from the ceiling of the Cow Palace… and also on business cards and in email marketing…

Creating corporate logos: when pros make mistakes

In 2007, I was trying to update our logo within two weeks. I considered lots of things before signing off on a final pick, but I didn’t test it in all contexts. Then when we applied the logo to our website, we had to use the logo in reverse — as white text on a blue background. The logo text looked a bit wispy and puny in this context — so we doubled back and doubled the letters’ width. I wasted some time and money fixing things because I skipped the step of testing the mark in a range of contexts.

Tips from the trenches of corporate logo design: factors to check

1. Is the name and tag line descriptive? Is the tag line credible?
2. Is the logo memorable? Attractive? Legible when tiny? Still strong when reversed?
3. Do customers instantly grasp the symbol, graphic or mark next to the logo’s words?
4. Can the logo fit inside a square? On one line if need be? In a column?

Compare the following corporate logos of companies trying to position themselves as on the leading edge of their fields. Symbols at right tell my opinion — I think three of them need updates to make them work. What do you think?

Bulldog Solutions’  logo meets all the criteria above.  The tag line, “Lead Generation Unleashed”, is small when logo is 150 pixels wide, but short and powerful like a bulldog. The dog can be shrunk to icon size and still convey just the right tone: tenacious, fierce, and loyal… with a wink of humor. The company actually uses a blue paw print for their browser icon. The name is clever but not too clever — together with the tag line it’s descriptive and compelling. Truly a brand identity helps its owner.

Bluewolf’s brand identity could work harder for its owner. The logo is clutter free, which is great. But what is a blue wolf? Why expend energy to figure it out? Their tag line doesn’t help me figure it out. It reads, “Success. Gauranteed.” Success at flipping burgers? The 100 meter dash? Fixing space stations? Also the logo is roughly 4 times as long as it is tall here. A 2×1 ratio is more versatile. Too, I’d add a unique mark their team could use when confined to teeny tiny spaces. (Indeed, I don’t see an browser bar icon when I visit their site. Warning: you’re forced to watch Flash if you visit. Heavy. Sigh.)

Rubicon Marketing Group’s red logo stands out — in a good way. In the browser bar they use a red capital “R” for their mark. The tag line “Marketing IS sales” is interesting – when I read it I think, “no B.S. here — tell me more!” Roughly 2×1 proportions make the logo versatile. There’s a bit of incongruity between the conservative traditional font and the hip modern out-with-the-0ld, we-are-pushing-the-envelope positioning statements. But otherwise a good example of a logo that helps its owner.

Verticurl’s logo has been updated since I started this post several months ago. Happily, now it has roughly 2×1 dimensions, has different type treatments to convey the distinction between the first and second parts of the word, and the tag line was moved below the logo and is pretty clear. Still worthwhile to consider a distinguishing mark. And for sure, someone needs to put a few minutes into the site banner, where the logo shows up blurry/pixelated. Good example of a logo that could work harder for its owner.

Pedowitz Group’s logo is most troubling. The graphic to the left of the words says to me “blue pizza!” and ”homemade logo! ” while the tag line text says: “The Leader in Web 2.0 Marketing” and their latest press release touts the company as “the world’s largest and most experienced provider of marketing automation services…” Oh no! The blue pizza is in the browser bar when I visit their site! (Flash in the site banner! Boo Hiss.) I recommend an upgrade for the logo, positioning statement, website, and marketing materials. The logo is hurting its owner’s brand.

Corporate Logo Checkup

There are certain kinds of corporate logos that won't help you - and others that will hurt your brand. Get our help checking your corporate logo design to make sure it's helping you in our Web 2.0 world.

“Solution” is not the solution in B2B marketing communications

By Robert Celaschi

I won't buy your product or service if you don't tell me what it is.

Fun and games!

Here’s a fun game:

Guess what each company is selling, using these lines from their press releases.

“…an expert in the image solution arena.”

“This is a result of an improved customer focus and strong actions to improve our solution competitiveness.”

“… delivers business-aligned solutions

“… a provider of mobility solutions”

And my favorite of the moment:

“… a trusted solutions provider to customers in manufacturing, health care, financial services, public safety, transportation & logistics, and other industries.”

Believe it or not, these companies sell specific things: elevators, servers, computer consulting services, camera phones, iPhone applications.

Drifting off message

I know how we got here. Back in the mists of the 20th century, some truly brilliant marketing folks got the idea that their company did more than push a product out the door; the product actually solved a problem for their customers.

“Mr. Customer, we aren’t just selling you a widget polisher, we are providing a solution to your scuffed-widget problem.”

But somewhere along the way, companies got so fixated on “solution” that they forgot to say what they are selling.

Think about the marketing material you are writing right now. When it falls into my hands, it may be the first time I have run across your company, and I’d really like to know what business you are in. But I don’t have time to play detective. Tell me the specific product or service, preferably near the start.

If you want to call it a “solution” later on, that’s fine.

Reality check

Here’s your homework assignment: Pick up some of your marketing materials and look at them through the eyes of someone who never heard of your company. Is it clear from the start what you are offering? Or are you merely providing vague “solutions” for an undefined problem?

Get help

We design and copywrite marketing materials that encourage prospects to take the next step.

B2B website design -- check the 9 must-have qualities

By Cris L. Rominger

What are the 9 must-have qualities of a user-focused B2B website design?

When approaching a re-skin or redesign of your company's website, it's helpful to keep in mind both branding goals and user goals.

For example, consider these questions:

Website branding goals 

• Do the changes communicate professionalism? Are they appropriate for our industry/market?
• Do the changes render error-free on different browsers? At different resolutions? On different operating systems?

Website user goals

• Do the changes help users accomplish their goals on the site quickly and easily?
• Are we communicating a clear value proposition?
• Is our site organized for our visitors? Are the paths to information clear?
• Is the orientation clear? Is the labeling instructive?
• Does our content instill trust and credibility? Is it formatted for online readers?
• Does our writing compel visitors to take action?
• Is our content portable?

Managing design to hit branding goals

While these questions may sound straightforward, they are also very easy to overlook in implementation.

Last October, Forrester Research released its Best and Worst of Brand Building Web Sites, 2008 Report. They looked at 20 top brands through two key questions:

• Does the site cater to user needs? (termed “brand action” in the results)
• Does the site support brand positioning?

The results were shocking: only 4 sites passed test #1 – Does the site cater to user needs? Only 7 sites passed test #2 – Does the site support brand positioning? And only 1 site passed both tests.

Fixing branding problems

According to Forrester principal analyst and report author Ron Rogowski, “Common Brand Action problems included poor text legibility, confusing category names, and missing or buried content. On the Brand Image side, sites were guilty of layouts, imagery, and production values that failed to support brand positioning. To improve the online brand experience, top firms should document their users’ goals, clearly define their brand attributes, and map relevant attributes to the right target users.”

Rogowski goes on to recommend that companies “…should also collect brand positioning statements and conduct Brand Image Reviews to ensure that the site presents the brand’s core attributes in a manner that is consistent with other channels and relevant to target users.”

Self-check site changes

If you need to evaluate your proposed site changes, try going down the free checklist we have posted called The B2B Website ROI Checklist.

Or, learn more about our  B2B Website Design Services >>

Copywriting marketing materials? How to speak prospects’ language

By Robert Celaschi

Copywriting marketing materials? The challenge is to ensure prospects are informed, not befuddled. An expert marketing copywriter gives tips on speaking their language.

Fans of Steve Martin might remember his plumber joke, supposedly told for the benefit of all the plumbers in the audience. It’s actually a joke about the disaster of using language that people won’t understand.

The joke

“This lawn supervisor was out on a sprinkler maintenance job, and he started working on a Findlay sprinkler head with a Langstrom seven-inch gangly wrench. Just then this little apprentice leaned over and said, ‘You can’t work on a Findlay sprinkler head with a Langstrom seven-inch wrench.’ Well, this infuriated the supervisor, so he went and got Volume 14 of the Kinsley manual, and he reads to him and says, ‘The Langstrom seven-inch wrench can be used with the Findlay sprocket.’ Just then the little apprentice leaned over and says, ‘It says sprocket, not socket!’”

[Worried pause.]

“Were these plumbers supposed to be here this show?”

Hitting the mark with marketing materials

When you are putting together materials to market your company, think about the audience you are reaching out to. When you talk about “plants,” will they assume you mean botanical or manufacturing? When you mention the AIA, will they know which AIA you mean? There is an American Institue of Architects, an Aerospace Industries Association, and other groups going by the same initials.

If your target audience is new to your product or service, help them get on board. They won’t be impressed if you dive right in with details about Langstrom wrenches and Findlay sprockets. They’ll be baffled, and they’ll go looking for some other company that they can understand.

On the other hand, your target audience may know more about Findlay sprockets than you do. In that case, they’ll appreciate you using their language. If you oversimplify your pitch, they might think you don’t respect their expertise.

Marketing copywriter’s reality check

There’s no standard formula for finding the middle ground between talking down to your audience and talking over their heads. But there’s one good test to see whether you’ve hit the mark: Ask them. Show a rough draft to a few people in your target market and ask them what they think.

Have you tested your marketing materials with someone in your target audience? Are there times when you need separate materials for the newbies and the veterans in your audience? Please comment.

Help with marketing materials

We can help you design and copywrite marketing materials that encourage prospects to take the next step. Learn more >>

 

 

 

Learn the social media secret handshake

By Rebekah E. Donaldson

Vendors and job applicants pitch B2B Communications each week. So far in 2009, about 1 in 4 indicate familiarity with social media. About 1 in 100 have engaged with us first through social media.

How can busy professionals get a grasp on marketing 2.0 — and start to engage and contribute? I recommend Inbound Marketing University as a foundation. After that, social media mentoring or coaching might be in order.

In 2008, after about the 100th pitch from a vendor who had no clue what a blog is, much less that we have one, I started taking note of how many vendors and job applicants use social media to demonstrate genuine interest in the companies they are courting.

Here are the numbers from Q1 and Q2 2009:

• Vendor/job applicant use of social media to engage with prospect 1%
• Vendor/job applicant social media experience 25%
• Percent of vendors/job applicants we hired who used social media to engage 100%

What does it mean to demonstrate interest using social media?

For example — if you’re starting from scratch:

1. Click the button that says “Blog” on our home page.
2. Enter a cogent comment about something (anything!).
3. Look for me to reply. Reply thoughtfully to my reply. 

Together we build knowledge and community.

Empowering marketers to get a footing with social media

What tools or help would really empower people to follow this advice, though?

In an effort to think constructively about this issue (instead of going bananas that job applicants and vendors are seemingly ignoring the “secret handshake” of social media), I asked colleagues in a Hubspot Forum and one of my LinkedIn groups about whether it seems useful, ethical, and practical to set up a B2B Communications Social Media Mentor Program.

Learning the social media secret handshake

Among the responsees received (attribution shown, if I got permission):

“…maybe the key is to embed somewhere in your blogs the way you prefer to be contacted for employment. That way if they really are interested in your company because they have looked through your posts to understand what you are about, then they will know the secret handshake, so to speak…” — Jim Lapic, DIYshutters.com

“Not sure you’re doing yourself favors by helping people “put on the right makeup“. Social media/blogging is nearly 15 years old now. It’s been a major marketing force for at least the last 5 years, and maybe more. Anyone who wants to work in communications and doesn’t get that, or can’t figure it out, doesn’t understand the medium. Is that the sort of person you want to hire?….”

“….The ones who actually are smart enough to try to engage you are the ones you should be interested in. They get it. I think at that point, your idea of giving them some direction and structure is great. Just make it clear whether they might wind up with a job (a giant carrot) or a reference (a mini carrot) at the end of your process. As long as you’re clear, you’ll wind up with some young folks who look at you and your company in a very positive light. And you never know where that good karma might get you. ” Ann Blanchard, Blanchard Enterprises and Handirecords

“Wow! It sure sounds like it would be very helpful, the ethics seem clear to me in your description of the purpose and intent, I would wonder at the manageability….” Jerry Wilkinson, Green Frog Outdoor Furniture

“One suggestion, instead of a resume make it a contest to see who can be most creative with social media to submit their qualifications….” Geoff Sakala, Owner, Metro Media

“….Look at the Murphy-Goode campaign: http://www.areallygoodejob.com/video-thumbs.aspx… the campaign brought thousands of people to their site….” Bill Betz, Investor/ reverse engineer at Pavement Marking Technologies, Inc.

“….If you treat your intern with respect, trust, and include him/her in the decision making process, you will create a professional you’ll be proud to recommend or one day call a colleague. Plus their work will reflect that empowerment.” — Jenny Koreny, Online Learning & Multimedia Designer

A foundation for social media coaching and mentoring

I would be happy to engage with vendors and job applicants through social media… if everyone is on the same page about marketing best practices.

Just look at how useful it can be. The people named above (and others) helped me think through an issue – without payment or quid pro quo… without my traveling anywhere… on their own time. That made me want to help them back (see links above).

It’s all good because we’re all on the same page about the value of social media marketing and how to go about it.

Learn the ”secret handshake” at Inbound Marketing University

I recommend Inbound Marketing University for learning the social media “secret handshake.” 

The IMU program includes webinars by thoughtleaders in the social media, internet marketing and lead generation industries and culminates in an inbound marketing certification exam. 

Learn more about IMU >>

Social Media Coaching from B2B Communications

I offer a 90 minute social media coaching session focused on your social media marketing needs and questions.

Learn more about my social media coaching >>

Six marketing gotchas CEOs can avoid

By Rebekah E. Donaldson

In a normal year, alot of missed opportunities can hurt sales. This year, they can kill a company. So it’s time to get deadly serious about avoiding marketing mistakes.

Are there patterns in the marketing mistakes small to midsize companies make? I think so. In particular, I’ve noticed at least six ”gotchas” when it comes to CEO-led decisions about marketing. In a new ebook called Six Marketing Mistakes that CEOs Can Avoid and a series of blog posts here, I’ll describe each one’s telltale symptom… and outline a better way.

Combining CEO + CMO duties

If you are going to be Chief Marketing Officer as well as CEO, you need to take the shortest, least expensive route to:

• Get found by the right people
• Start meaningful conversations
• Alleviate worries about buying

If you’re already doing all three things well, you win a prize: a pipeline full of great leads!

Sidestepping six marketing “gotchas”

If you are falling short in any of those areas, very likely you are making some marketing mistakes. In a normal year, those mistakes merely hurt sales. But this year, when it seems like every other company is either failing or already belly up, marketing mistakes can be fatal. So it’s time to get deadly serious about avoiding them.

1. Gotcha: Tactic Tunnel Vision
2. Gotcha: Hiring Specialists Too Soon
3. Gotcha: Awareness – The Red Herring
4. Gotcha: Push Marketing
5. Gotcha: Coordinating Specialists
6. Gotcha: Me-Too Marketing Plan

In a new ebook I try to describe each one’s telltale symptom and why it’s a problem — and outline an alternative route.

It’s called Six Marketing Gotchas that CEOs Can Avoid — and I hope to hear from readers in this forum about what I got right and what I got wrong. (The publish date is 6/15/09 but you blog readers are getting access early.)

Fire away!