Red On Marketing Blog

B2B Sellers of the eCommerce Seas: Promise of the Shopping Cart

Like the crafty Pirates of the Caribbean, B2B sellers lured by tales of gold on the high seas of the Internet need to be aware of the dangers lurking in ecommerce waters.

Just as Captain Jack Sparrow and Will Turner have different goals and fighting styles, each business has different needs. For example, typically B2B companies have comparatively few products posted online compared to thousands featured on a consumer site. That leads to different considerations when choosing the appropriate vehicle for sailing off into the profitable sunset.

So before you hoist your flag and open for business, let’s take a moment to understand the moving parts in a working ecommerce platform.

Payment Gateway: This virtual port is where an order is actually charged to a customer for a transaction. It is not part of the shopping cart! Payment gateways provide a high security Internet portal for each merchant for manual order transactions and account reporting. The gateway also offers an application programming interface, or ‘API’, for sending and receiving encrypted order transaction information.

This is the source of eCommerce, the passing of dubloons from one account to another electronically. A payment gateway does not need a shopping cart, but a shopping cart needs a payment gateway. The merchant pays a monthly gateway fee and a percentage on each transaction.

Merchant Account: A B2B seller needs a merchant account to accept credit card transactions from the gateway. A merchant account is generally an added option to an existing business account at the business’s local bank. The merchant pays a monthly fee and a percentage on each transaction. Many factors come into play when a bank calculates a merchant's various fees, so it’s important to keep a working relationship with your banker. Missing data like exact address match, as well as off-page factors like your business credit, can influence your rates. Take the time to shop around for rates. The points can add up faster than skeletons in a Disney battle scene.

Alternative Payment Methods: Be sure to examine both sides of every payment method. PayPal accepts credit cards from out-of-network clients; however they have a lifetime limit ($2,500) before clients are required to sign up. PayPal can hold funds from out-of-network (large amounts) or unverified sales. This is part of fraud protection and can take some time to clear. A merchant account, on the other hand, goes right into your bank account. You own it, not PayPal.

Shopping Cart: In its most basic form, a shopping cart is a specialized web application that allows a customer to add products, calculate prices, estimate taxes, and estimate shipping. The application will then bill (not charge) the customer, produce a nice receipt page and send an email confirmation.

Shopping cart websites are essentially the check-out part of a brick and mortar supermarket and a virtual product catalog rolled up into one. The idea is to make it work like a real shopping cart... where you walk around choosing stuff and putting it in your basket. When you're ready to pay, you go to the checkout and it's all added up. You pay by credit card or debit card, and your payment is verified electronically. On the merchant’s side all the payment transactions and approval codes are batched for payment at the end of the day via the gateway. Sales are compared to gateway transactions to reconcile the accounts. 

Fraud protection: The online merchant is at a disadvantage with fraud, having both cyber gangs and the credit card companies against them. Specialized services provide card-not-present fraud protection for merchants at an additional cost. 

The Whole Enchilada

A gateway combined with a shopping cart application provides the greatest flexibility in selling products by giving payment transaction and merchandising tools to the B2B company. With that flexibility comes additional learning and time requirements. 

When evaluating services, don’t forget the cost of your time in managing a store and the daily clerk duties it entails. The simpler the flow, the easier it will be to utilize the resource.

Separate “must haves” and “nice to haves” based on your long-term business priorities. That’s where developing a written business plan around an online service or product line is so important. Mastering the mechanics of digital distribution and payment is far more important than trying to build the best B2B website at first. Small steps get you there quicker.

There is no one size fits all in B2B online sales.  That's why it is important to get the right kind of help with B2B eCommerce.

I just want to take payments

Many times in the services industries there is no one set price for a product, or clients pay for time or by subscription. This can be difficult to handle with a standard shopping cart. That is where experienced sailors of the ecommerce seas can help keep you from getting seasick.

This is the first article in a three part series on B2B eCommerce. The next installment examines the pros and cons of different ecommerce solutions and how you can minimize the price of doing business online. Please share your experiences and ask your burning questions about how to protect your booty from the curse of too many fees.

This article is by Sam Chapple, captain of Ecommerce and Internet Marketing at B2B Communications.

B2B Marketing Agencies - Who Needs 'Em (DEALBREAKER SERIES PART 2)

After you resolve to do more effective marketing, there are a few decisions ahead. Among them:

1. Do we need professional help? Or could we do it ourselves?

There are lots of good reasons to self-serve:

• Saves cash
• Keeps all marketing communications efforts centralized
• Builds skills internally
• Leverage free resources available

DIY resources

There are great resources available for DIYs. I recommend just about any MarketingSherpa benchmark report or how-to guide you can get your hands on. Even if it's an old outdated version it could  be an eye opener. Vendors like Google Adwords include campaign set-up and support, so why not take their free advice?

Or, if you already do mailers and telemarketing, you could always increase the volume of each. All that requires is bigger lists and a bit more cash outlay. It could be low-hassle, in the sense that the path to increased exposure is nice and short. No fussing with messaging. No fiddling with design. Just feed more bills in and get more leads out.

Machine out of order?

If that will work, do it. And instead of messing with marketing, do something more fulfilling.

It’s a question only you can answer. You have the 30,000-foot perspective on how you’re doing relative to your business goals.

But as you weigh your decision, let me offer a couple points:

• First, unfortunately, bad marketing is worse than no marketing at all. The reason is that it takes more time and money to repair the damage from a bad impression, than to make a good first impression.

• Second, if you're a b2b company, it's probably not enough to just do more of what you’re used to doing already – if what you’re doing is conventional marketing like advertising, call outs, mailers and Yellow Page ads. I could go on about why; in a nutshell, it's because savvy business decision prevent and resent interruptions. 

Inbound marketing involves helping your target market find you easily when they are searching for help. It includes such tools as search-engine optimization, which is a way of making sure your website contains the same keywords that people are most likely to use when they are looking for your kind of product or service. But it has to be done in a way that impresses both search engines and high-potential prospects. And SEO is only one of many tools used in inbound marketing.

As Laura Ramos, formerly of Forrester Research, wrote in How To Avoid Becoming Obsolete,

“Focusing simply on new campaigns, clever advertising, and delving into social media will only paper over problems. Turning up the heat on conventional marketing activities won't spur the profound changes required.”

Decision point

If you don’t need professional marketing, stop here.

And if you need help shifting to a new, more productive, inbound marketing approach, it’s still not time to hire. It's time for your next decision. Look for our next Dealbreakers article due out next week!

B2B Lead Generation Results, By Source

Visits and conversions by source for www.b2bcommunications.com Sept 7 to Oct 6 2009

By Rebekah E. Donaldson

Here is a screenshot showing the sources of our website traffic that converted to leads over the last month. Looking at the chart, I answer:

• What does this chart tell you about lead sources?
• How much did you invest to get the site working this way?
• We need to generate leads - what's the best way?

Visits and conversions by source (1 month)

This chart shows how different sources have driven visits, leads, and customers to www.b2bcommunications.com. The key on the right shows the sources tracked.

What does this chart tell you about lead sources?

To see our lead sources, we open our Hubspot account (more on this below) and go to the "Reports" tab and pick "Sources". There we have a chart showing visit to lead ratios by source:

Totals for Sep 7-Oct 7, 2009
Sources	Visits	Visit to Lead	Leads
Organic Search	590	0.68%	4
Referrals	265	2.60%	7
Paid Search	0	0%	0
Direct Traffic	547	1.50%	8
Email Marketing	0	0%	0
Social Media	86	8.10%	7
Other Campaigns	0	0%	0
Totals	1,488	1.75%	26

According to the chart, visitors from social media sources convert at the highest rate. A visit-to-lead conversion rate of 8.10% means that in the last month, eight out of ten visitors who came to the site via LinkedIn or other networking sites, responded. Visitors referred to our site from an article, blog, or website are the next most likely to respond.

How much did you invest to get these leads rolling in?

Hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of dollars over several years. The site re-launched in 2007 and it's been an ongoing process to make it so visitors find what they need and take the next step. And there's still so much work to do! Meantime, we've been at blogging, search engine marketing, and social media marketing since 2007 - and public relations since 2001. We've tried to always close the loop (see below), so we know which B2B lead generation activities work and which to avoid.

What is Hubspot?

Hubspot provides advice and software that helps businesses get found on the Internet by the right prospects and convert more of them into leads and customers. We use it to build landing pages, attract traffic, nurture contacts, track leads, and connect records about leads and sales with records about marketing efforts.

We need to generate leads - what's the best way?

Here are just two of many ways to get started. Do both or pick the one that work for you:

Get a 60 Minute Internet Marketing Planning Session.

Try Hubspot - Use all the powerful features of Hubspot for B2B lead generation. Free for 30 days.

NOTE: We are pitched weekly by companies looking for affiliates to rep their stuff. So far, we've partnered only with MarketingSherpa and Hubspot. In each case, we bought their stuff and recommended it to others before we were ever a partner. Now that we are a partner, we get a small % of sales we help generate. Just so you know.

Rebekah E. Donaldson ("Red") has led Business Communications Group since 2001. More >>

 

Picking a Marketing Consultant: Get What You Pay For

By Rebekah E. Donaldson

We’ve all heard the phrase, “You get what you pay for.” The truth is, sometimes you get a lot less than you pay for.

This is the first in a seven-part series of articles to help you get what you pay for when you choose a marketing agency. I’ll start today with a decision tree that shows the five key decision points. As the series progresses, I’ll show you a framework that CEOs can use to sort out the answers.  In later articles I touch on the various types of marketers in the industry. You’ll also find 11 questions to ask an agency – with an example of what counts as a good answer (“pass”), and what counts as baloney (“fail”), for each. And in my seventh article in this series I’ll give five warnings, each of which begins, “Why to watch out if you hear…“

Outsourcing marketing – opportunities and threats

On the one hand, you need effective marketing because of competition and economic conditions; on the other hand, you risk:

• Wasting money
• Wasting time
• Making a bad impression on customers and internal stakeholders if marketing poorly represents the company

The real risk of taking the wrong path

A lot of marketing-related companies are vying for your attention — and your money. Cash vacuums like Google Adwords. Thousands of marketers with consulting practices. Marketing automation software companies, web hosts, email marketing tools, graphic designers, online directories, multimedia companies, social media sites and dozens of other types of vendors.

Fig 1 - Picking a marketing consultant decision tree

Five key decision points – overview

After you resolve to do more effective marketing, you need to decide:

1. Do we need professional marketing help?

This decision is easy to overlook. After all, vendors like Google Adwords include campaign set-up and support, so why not take their free advice? Or, why not redouble your efforts with mailers and telemarketing, which produce a trickle of leads? That just requires bigger lists and more investment in the same types of marketing as before.

In this series I outline why not. And if you do need professional marketing help, you need to decide:

2. Do we need to outsource marketing or should we keep this in-house?

In 2009-2010, talent of all kinds can be had at bargain prices. But maybe you feel ambitious. Perhaps you’re up to managing marketing directly?

If you are interested in outsourcing, you may wonder:

3. Do we need a formal RFP process to look for a consultant?

There are some benefits to doing a traditional request for proposals. But that process can take months to complete.

If you can arrive at a short list more quickly and easily on your own using search engines, social media and referrals, what sort of professional marketers should make the list?

4. What kind of agency do we need — specialists or an all-in-one firm?

Specialists in marketing subdisciplines are critical to overall marketing success — but it’s risky to grasp at individual tactics (see also our Six Marketing Gotchas CEOs Can Avoid ebook). If you decide you need a firm to be accountable for helping you move the needle for your firm (not just hit marketing-centric numbers), you’ll need to decide:

5. Who should we pick — what do we ask to ensure we get the best agency?

Some folks grapple with what I think of as “early” decisions, like whether to outsource. Others skip the early decisions and go straight to weighing one resource over another.

Now that you see the path we’ll be following, we’ll start looking at the individual elements in more detail. If you haven’t already, please subscribe by email.

B2B Email: Your subject line can kill your pitch (or, Hi, I want to talk to you about … uh, stuff)

By Robert Celaschi

Something strange happens to people when they send marketing email. They’ll take a powerful, persuasive marketing message, and torpedo the whole thing by slapping a lousy subject line on it.

What makes it really strange is that the email might contain a press release or other message with a really great headline. The sender could have cut and pasted it. But no, instead they type a vague or garbled mess of words that makes me shrug and move on.

I’ll confess I’m sometimes guilty of sloppy subject lines. I’ve struggled and sweated to craft the right message. I’ve set the right tone. I’ve targeted the right people. I’m ready to press the “send” button and then — oh, yeah, gotta put some kind of subject line on this puppy. Zip-zip-zip, done. Instead, I should take even more care with those precious few words that may determine whether the email even gets opened.

Let’s look at a half-dozen real subject lines that real marketing people emailed to me in the past month.

Subj: New Dilemma For Small Business Car Leases After Unemployment

Huh? Let’s see: I gather that there’s a new dilemma of some sort. For whom? Small Business Car Leases After Unemployment. Uhhhhhhh, sorry, does not compute. This one would work better with a simple colon after “Business.” Not great, but better. The story is about businesses transferring the leases on company cars, because they’ve laid off so many of the workers who used to drive them.

Subj: Non-Profit

That’s it, just “Non-Profit.” There are a lot of nonprofits out there. They do a lot of different things. I had to dig way, way down to discover that this nonprofit is a foundation that helps children. They are holding a fund-raiser this month in Miami. If I hadn’t picked this as an example for the blog post, I wouldn’t have bothered to find out any of that.

Subj: Survey: A Quarter of Firms Scaling Back Training

A direct hit. Tells me everything I need to get started. Now I’ll open the email and find out the details. Whoops — turns out that while 26 percent are cutting back their training programs, 28 percent have expanded. But, hey, they got me to read it.

Subj: Boston – Social Media Capital?

I don’t like questions for subject lines. Why are you asking me? Don’t you already know? If not, go do some more research and get back to me.

Subj: Time for Change in Credit Card Game

Maybe it is indeed time for a change in the credit card game, but since I have no idea what this means, it’s hard to say. The easy fix here would have been to condense the first line of the enclosed press release: Consumers now can say “no” to credit card interest rate hikes.

Subj: July home sales increased 12 percent; median home price declined 19.6 percent

This one delivers. I feel like a double winner, because I learn about sales volume and about price. This is about the California housing market, by the way. Bad news if you are a seller with a fat mortgage.

Your turn!

OK, you get the idea. Now take a look at the email you’ve sent in the past month. If someone didn’t already know your message, would they get the right idea from the subject line?

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

Get help to make marketing materials that encourage prospects to take the next step.

“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.

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 >>

B2B marketing ROI of a blog – with traffic and leads chart

By Rebekah E. Donaldson

I talked with Sacramento Business Journal senior reporter Kathy Robertson this week about the return on investment from the Red On Marketing Blog. Her questions got me thinking about why I do it, and this post is the result. 

To ground things in real world and tangible results, you’ll see a screenshot showing where our website traffic and leads came from this week.

I’ve written the Red On Marketing Blog since Fall 2007. Yes, one reason I started it was to market our company. Another is that we help our clients with staying at the top of certain search results in Google, and social media (which includes blogging) is part of how we do it. We need to walk the walk.

We track everything with lead management software. Social media has tangibly helped us. Leads are up 400% this quarter over the same period last year. We have new leads every day – many from our website. So social media might sound like a fad or B.S. to some CEOs. But it’s moved the needle for our company.

Referrers — week of June 15 2009

Of our current clients, most found us online. For example, one Sacramento CEO found us when he searched “Sacramento search engine optimization”; another when he searched in LinkedIn for “B2B marketing Sacramento”; and so on.

Blogging is part of Social Media

The Red On Marketing Blog is intertwined with other efforts. It doesn’t stand alone. I’m active on LinkedIn – mostly I try to answer questions – and on Twitter. Sometimes, helping in those forums means pointing to B2B marketing articles, and other B2B Communications resources.

One realization I’ve had is that a marketer’s mindset can backfire with a blog or other social media participation. When I started blogging, I thought about it in terms of

1) Make a calendar of article topics.

2) Chip away at the calendar.

But that can lead to really boring blog posts. And everyone hates boring.

You Said WHAT?

Before starting the blog I’d been reading other people’s blogs for a couple of years. People like Josh Bernoff and David Meerman Scott publish edgy stuff that gets people talking (and pisses off some readers – a cost of being interesting).

The threads of comments after they post are crazy – dozens and dozens of smart people write in to respond.

I really wanted to do that.

Stirring Things Up

Fortunately, I have strong opinions — especially when it comes to cases of marketers getting things terribly wrong.

When I gave stronger opinions, you (readers) did too. Example: “From the Shocking Marketing No Nos Department.” When I published that piece, our blog lit up with comments and backlinks. It was referenced in many more places online. The lesson to me was: Speak up! Call it like you see it!

So after that I co-wrote an ebook. It took 9 months and was like having a third baby. Kind colleagues promoted it with social media (thank you Dianna Huff, David Meerman Scott, Peter Kim, Peter Caputa, and other colleagues).

Behind the Scenes Battles

One behind-the-scenes struggle I have is over topics appropriate for the blog. On the one hand, there is value in publishing about basic marketing techniques and issues. In fact, my colleagues at B2B Communications keeps reminding me that some of you may want intro material . But I fear you’re bored with the same old stuff like ”segment your audience!” “get the word out!” It seems like recycled, regurgitated truisms. (Who’s right? Please comment.)

Girl’s Dream Comes True

One thing that surprised me was that our blog helped us become a MarketingSherpa Affiliate. (MarketingSherpa is like Consumer Reports for marketers – loads of objective data that helps you make good decisions.) I think we’re the only one in Sacramento, California and surrounding regions. It gives us a lot of credibility – most marketers really admire Sherpa – as well as access to their material and the ability to pass along discounts.

One of their big decision criteria was around the quality of guidance we provide through our blog. They looked and said we were doing a great job. So the blog helped us stand out among much bigger agencies. It’s also led to interviews, invitations to speak, and other exposure with organizations like Forrester Research and Hubspot. Each of those organizations reaches tens of thousands of subscribers with their updates. The blog is also one of our top sources of search engine traffic and exposure for our services.

Most importantly, it’s sparked interactions with hundreds of small business owners and business to business marketers.

Keeping it Real

Still, even if we didn’t get the business benefits I’ve listed, knowing what I know now, I would still write a blog. Blogging helps keep things real. It makes me stay abreast of new data and ideas, instead of throwing up my hands because there’s too much. It makes me a better thinker, a better listener, a better writer, and a better salesperson.

Your turn

My hope is that, if you’re one of those business folks who has been blogging, but doesn’t know if it’s worth it, or you’ve held off because you don’t think anyone wants to read a blog written by you, maybe hearing about my experience will help you keep at it or get started.

Do you blog? Why or why not?

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!

B2C versus B2B – do B2B buyers feel more risk?

As featured in web marketing and e-commerce portal WebMarketCentral.com

Whether you’re marketing to consumers or business decision makers, you’re still marketing to a human being – right?

Yes — but decision makers may feel more risk when it comes to the average buying decision.

 

Perceived risk is generally higher for B2B buyers

We wrote an e-book that covers how B2B marketing differs from consumer marketing, called What Marketing Directors Need in a B2B Marketing Consultant. But here is a short version.

In business to business (B2B) marketing, a purchase of professional services may impact the company’s customer service, productivity, operations, legal issues, reputation, sales, and/or the bottom line. The perceived risk of a wrong decision is high. In B2C decision making the level of perceived risk is typically relatively low, because most consumer purchases can be returned or exchanged.

Purchase decision anatomy

Enquiro surveyed 1,000 B2B buyers to learn what the top influencers are in the purchase decision. They found that “respondents across all phases indicated that the website of the vendor” was the top influence on buying decisions. The upshot: if you’re a B2B company, get it right when it comes to your online presence.

Prospects are looking to educate themselves, do their own comparisons, and create their own short lists. Charts comparing solutions, suggested decision criteria, ROI calculator tools, case studies, testimonials, certifications, awards, affiliations, and executive profiles all help diffuse fear of making a wrong decision.

Agree? Disagree?