Browsing Category Communicate B2B Value

How do you find out what your customers really want? How do you tell your customers about your innovations in a way that makes them understand why you’re the best company to help them solve their problems?

This is maybe the most fun part of what I do. I use my technical background in engineering and software development, put it together with my marketing and product management experience (not to mention many hours spent studying great short stories) to translate your innovation into communication, and make your benefits clear to your customers.

Contact me to find out how I’ve done this for other B2B companies.

The videos here capture my conversations with B2B execs about these questions.

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What’s Your Conversion Rate on B2B Social Marketing? – with Nulogy’s Jason Tham

Posted by Aldwin Neekon

Nulogy’s Jason Tham tells us about their success rates with LinkedIn.

“Well over 50% of the leads that get to a web demo close.”

Jason Tham is the CEO of Nulogy. They provide software solutions for manufacturers. Or to be exact, they provide “Software solutions for contract packaging & manufacturing, kitting, assembly, POS, and co-pack of consumer goods.”

“Our marketing right now is fairly grassroots, so the measurement looks incredible because, frankly, well over 50% of the leads that get to a web demo close.

So we’ve been doing some stuff on LinkedIn…There’s a lot of user communities…and groups in LinkedIn that talk about best practices in packaging, innovations in manufacturing, or for branded products and they sometimes ask for what software can I [use] to manage this?

We have…some ads running alongside for people who have the key words, which is packaging, contract packaging, or CPG. And it’s funny, we typically get a few demos a week…requests from people clicking on that, filling in the information, saying send me some information, and let’s book a web demo.”

What’s Essential for B2B Marketing Now? – with Palomino System Innovations’ Markus Latzel

Posted by Aldwin Neekon

Markus Latzel tells us what he thinks executives need to know about the what’s necessary to establish credibility with their customers.

How are you increasing the trust and credibility you have with people at companies that are currently not your customers? What do the companies you trust and admire have in common? How did you find those things out about them?

“Having a following is no longer a nice-to-have.”

Markus is CEO of Palomino System Innovations. They have developed the WebPal system, which is “a suite of products designed to centralize control, enhance communication, and facilitate workflow management.”

“In 2010, 2011, we’re now getting to a point where not only a website is a must-have, but also a social network, and a following is a must-have, and that following is something that needs to be visible to the first-time potential customer – to the first-time lead. So they not only say ‘Has website, check’, they’ll say ‘Has following, check’. And that is something that I think a lot of providers out there, a lot of executives out there need to keep in mind from a marketing perspective, that within a couple of years, having a following is no longer a nice-to-have in order to increase the number of leads. It’s a simple must-have in order to establish credibility and establish your business in the market.”

How Does B2B Marketing Evolve as Your Company Grows? – with Firmex’s Joel Lessem

Posted by Aldwin Neekon

How does a CEO decide which marketing programs to fund or cut? How does that change as your company grows? Joel Lessem of Firmex tells us his approach and shares some metrics about their success with inbound Google search.

“You just try to pour as much gas into that engine as you can and you measure the success.”

Joel is CEO of Firmex.

From their website:”Our products enable our clients to securely share large volumes of highly confidential and sensitive documents for commercial and financial transactions, litigation, clinical studies, procurement and regulatory compliance.”

“I also think in a small and medium sized business it’s even more significant because…one of the things you look at when you talk about marketing success, well you really got to look at marketing and sales as two sides of the same coin. When you look at your spend as a CEO you look at ‘What’s my sales and marketing cost?’ and I don’t really care if I spend 90% on marketing or 10% on sales or either way, whatever has the lower cost of acquisition is better, right, as far as scaling the business.

So when you look at marketing you really say well what can I attribute to marketing as part of that cost of acquisition? So when I look at a successful marketing situation I look at really that cost of acquisition. Now, that being said, as you mature as a company – certainly in the early stages of a business – and Firmex is, just so you know, we’re at 40 employees growing at 60% a year, but in the early stage you need to monetize your any type of marketing activity as fast as possible. So you’re looking at cost of acquisition…from lead to close in a relatively short time.

I think as your business matures you can look at more awareness development, more knowledge development…and the question really is how do you measure that? Is it hits to the website, is it other metrics you can measure that will drive that. But at the end of the day in an early stage business you want to grow the business substantially without running out of cash you got to be…how fast can I monetize these marketing efforts. And fortunately with things like Google and other media when people actually come to you – generally speaking, in our case we qualify about 50% of the inbound leads are ready to buy…which is substantial, so you just try to pour as much gas into that engine as you can and you measure the success.

Now unfortunately there tends to be sometimes laws of diminishing returns as you go down one channel and not the other.”

How Do You Engage a B2B Social Marketing Community? – with Palomino System Innovations’ Markus Latzel

Posted by Aldwin Neekon

Once you’ve built an online community, how do you keep them engaged? How do you bring new people in? Markus Latzel tells us how they are doing it at Palomino System Innovations.

“Sometimes the discussions aren’t even entirely positive.”

“Now, in order to bring traffic to that site we need to think about how do we engage the dialog, how do we engage the community?

So, one decision that we made was to not open the blog itself up for discussion but to rather have discussions in forums such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

On the LinkedIn side, there’s a particular phenomenon in that we are now getting direct requests about our services as an immediate result of users, LinkedIn users, seeing the kind of work we are engaged in.

It’s one important part of the marketing, which is aided by building a social community, is the necessity to constantly re-iterate what we’re doing and how we’re doing it, and how well we’re doing it.

It is very difficult for a technology provider – I’m a computer scientist by trade, and so’s pretty much everyone in here – it’s sometimes difficult for us to constantly toot our horn and say how good we are doing. If we have a community talking about it, if we a community that quite clearly engages into the discussion, then that is one way that we can re-iterate the good word without constantly having to do it ourselves.

Sometimes the discussions are not even entirely positive. Sometimes the discussions are on – Hey, guys, you know, we found a bug here, when are you going to fix that? But then it always ends on a good note, we can always say well, just so you know, it actually is already fixed. As soon as you log in next time you’ll find that this issue has been addressed.

Seeing that kind of discussion online already is a good sign for us and any LinkedIn user or Facebook user or anybody connected to the social networks out there will use that as an initial reference about how well we’re doing before they decide to contact us.

So, bottom line is, now more than ever, initial phone conversations start with I heard about you guys on LinkedIn.”

How do You Choose Which B2B Marketing Tactics to Use? – with The Mezzanine Group’s Lisa Shepherd

Posted by Aldwin Neekon

Lisa Shepherd’s advice on choosing tactics: see it from your customer’s point of view. What are the things your customers do when they’re buying?

“Figure out what is the buying process. Because in B2B it’s complex.”

Lisa is CEO of The Mezzanine Group.

They provide marketing outsourcing and consulting to B2B companies and professional associations.

From their website:”The Mezzanine Group’s mission is to make our clients recognized leaders in what they do.”

Almost all my conversations here are with CEOs of B2B software companies, but Lisa is so knowledgeable about B2B marketing in general that I had to ask her to share her insights with us.

“I think a good starting point for companies as they’re thinking about what should they do in marketing is to spin it around. It’s not about what they should send out in marketing, they should start by thinking about – What do our customers or our prospects do when they’re buying?

So spin it completely around and figure out what is the buying process. Because in B2B it’s complex. It involves multiple stakeholders, big ticket items, risk. And so, a company really needs to understand what are the steps that the stakeholders in our buying process go through?

[For example] if you’re selling to government, that’s complicated. There are numerous people involved, there are going to be tenders, there are going to be bids. How are you going to get invited to that bid? What are the points in that bid? How are they going to evaluate it? Who’s involved in evaluating it?

These are the questions that companies need to have answers to in order to figure out what role can marketing serve for them?”

How Do You Overcome Social Media Noise in B2B Marketing? – with KMI’s Matt Airhart

Posted by Aldwin Neekon

Now that everyone from the biggest corporation to your local bakery has a social media presence, how do you stand out to those who matter most to you? Matt Airhart of KMI tells us how they did it.

“When we were first, people could find us but now there’s this huge underlying roar of social media information out there…how do you rise above that?”

Matt Airhart is the CEO of KMI. They create employee health and safety software solutions. To quote from their website, they create “web-based software solutions that help companies operate more sustainably, safely, and efficiently” and “enable companies to reduce injuries, increase the effectiveness of regulatory compliance initiatives, perform audits and inspections, manage Greenhouse Gas reporting, and initiate or improve corporate sustainability programs.”

“We were probably the first company in our industry on the social media bandwagon. We got a Twitter account and started doing multiple tweets per day, tried to keep them more or less on topic for what people looking for our software would find interesting. We set up a Facebook page and tried to develop some interesting content there and keep it relatively up to date. We started pushing Friend requests or Like requests on Facebook to all of our customers who we had a good relationship with, to all of our friends and family just to build the awareness as big and as quickly as possible. We also set up a LinkedIn account for the company.

We took a shotgun approach as I said, we covered all of our bases: Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. We tried to keep the content fresh enough to have people driving traffic through it, have people recognize it as a place that was worth going. We didn’t have a cohesive strategy. We more just tried to make sure that we were doing it. And that made sense early on.

In the last 6 months what we’ve seen is everyone is doing it now, every bakery down the street has a Facebook account and is Tweeting. Now we’re trying to reassess and figure out, OK when we were first people could find us. But now there’s just this huge underlying roar of social media information out there and how do you rise above that and have it be effective, have it be useful?

So far we don’t have a perfect answer. What we’ve done so far is we are focusing on Tweeting less and having them be very thoughtful. So we’re not re-Tweeting something, we’re not Tweeting news that you can find in a hundred other places. We’re trying to build a brand of saying things that were developed internally, that make people think, and that make people appreciate the way we think.

That’s a challenge because it takes a while – I mean how hard is it to have a creative thought? And how hard is it to have a creative thought every day? It’s a challenge, but it’s a fun challenge too. The other thing we’re doing is forcing ourselves to focus more on LinkedIn because ultimately, with social media – the general, personal social media space being so full now, it’s hard to be seen, and it’s definitely hard to be seen by somebody who’s actually out looking for a business relationship, out looking for a software purchase or a consulting company. So we’re trying to focus a lot more on LinkedIn, and we’re finding that LinkedIn is becoming a more and more effective place.”

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