Guest post by Hernán Gonzalez.

Experienced marketers understand added benefits are what make a sale and features are what provide value. That meant that campaigns with lots of bells and whistles were assumed to be more productive. Each accent added to a brand’s “wow” factor and more updates meant more sales would soon follow. However, the creation of modern day analytics tools has changed the marketing environment from hopeful anticipation to anxiety. Today, added benefits can actually be measured and thus, there is no longer a good reason to pay for features that won’t deliver.

Clients are now able see how much ROI they receive real-time. While this may useful, it also means that if metrics don’t add up, businesses are more likely to return to agencies asking why a campaign is underachieving. At that point, should the agency be responsible to change the site design, content and layout until performance rates are higher? Good Question.

The answer lies in better consultation practices, workforce preparation and adaptation. Even the most seasoned agencies can have trouble achieving a balance between all three on the first attempt, hence the need to include revision fees in the initial budgeting consultation. Clients and agencies alike understand the value of these services, and after all, there wouldn’t be a point in investing in them unless a profit was guaranteed sooner or later.

Marketers should no doubt place as much value on the results as their clients, since a reputation can easily be created or ruined depending on the success of a campaign. What can be done to eliminate concerns about metrics for both parties? The responsibility falls on to the agency, yet clients can at times be too fast in making their own evaluations in regards to what the resulting numbers really mean. For example, a site may convert fewer visitors into subscribers, but the percentage of customers out of those conversions is higher. The click through rate from Facebook may be high, but few products are being bought.

Determining whether a third party or the agency itself should interpret these statistics should be an important part of negotiations. Not only will establishing the importance of metrics assist in showing the agency’s concern for a campaign’s success, but it will help clear the air regarding the extent of their role in adapting to ever-changing analytics. Clients should be educated so that they recognize the difference between attractive statistics versus those that actually matter. A few primary attributes should serve as the basis for determining what’s worth a call for agency resources, such as monitoring actual sales as opposed to casual “Likes” on a Facebook page.

Despite the need to deliver measurable results, less tangible values should not be overlooked. Although they don’t provide monetary worth in and of themselves, “Shares” and page views could translate into the establishment of a broader customer base and increased media attention. Brand exposure and visibility are difficult and complicated things to measure, it not completely impossible. The benefits of both can help lead to more endorsement, brand reach and eventually may provide the exact sort of concrete worth clients are eager to see.

As long as a solid plan is established and agreed upon by the agency and client, marketers must return to the basics through the discovery of their customers’ existing problems or areas of growth. By confirming the results businesses are after- higher click through rate or conversions – marketers can set goals that are within reach and provide improved results. The most significant area of this practice is in the avoidance of cutting costs until ROI has been confirmed. While agencies should and do continue to adapt to the changing marketing landscape, they also need funding to maintain the resources needed for updates based on metrics’ fickle nature.

Hernán Gonzalez is Creative Director at Dutch Monaco.

Guest post by University Alliance.

Mobile access to the web has surpassed browser usage. Consumers are growing fonder of their smartphones and tablets, using them to access content and make online purchases in staggering numbers. In fact, by 2015 more U.S. Internet users will access the web through smartphones than through PCs, according to technology site Mashable.com.

Still not convinced? Consider these 2012 statistics:

• • Twitter estimates 55% of users access the site through a mobile device.
• • 34% of marketers have generated leads using Twitter.
• • Click-through rates on search result ads are higher on mobile, according to a Marin Software study. In the fourth quarter 2011, smartphone click-throughs were 1.25%, tablets were 1.31%, and desktop/laptops were .95%.
• • 57% of Facebook users “like” a business because they want to receive special offers and promotions, according to Mashable.com.
• • Consumers are engaging with their favorite companies on Facebook, says Mashable.com. 77% said they interact by reading posts and updates, while 17% share experiences and news stories, and 13% post updates about brands they like.
• • 56% of consumers are more likely to recommend a brand to a friend after becoming a Facebook fan, according to Mashable.com.

But what do these trends mean for today’s businesses? And what do marketers and business owners need to know—and more importantly, do—to keep ahead of consumer demands? First, they should recognize the benefits of creating a mobile strategy that their best customers will respond to.

What Can A Mobile Strategy Do For Me?

Once upon a time (like a year ago), having a mobile strategy was an option, and revamping your company website for mobile was very progressive. Now, having a mobile strategy is a must—no matter what size your business is.

Consumers use mobile devices for entertainment, with books, movies, games and videos; to interact with friends and business on social networks, like Facebook and Twitter; and increasingly, to find information and make immediate buying decisions. What does mobile mean to your company?

Mobile is a direct channel to your target audience. It can have a significant impact on your marketing efforts by increasing awareness of your brand, events and special offers. Mobile marketing can drive traffic to certain locations, and provide a mechanism for instant feedback and engagement. Plus, it can create a whole new generation of opt-in prospects, and give you the means to convert them to customers and evangelists.

Mobile can help you acquire new customers, increase your engagement with them, and drive sales; and you’ll be more successful at all three when your brand message is delivered across all mobile platforms.

Cross-Platform Is a Must

It’s important to note that all mobile platforms are worthy of attention. Focusing on just the iPhone ignores huge sections of your market. Apps, games and videos must be developed for Androids and iPads, as well. And don’t forget about the Amazon Kindle, Windows Phone and BlackBerry. Fortunately, cross-platform mobile frameworks make it easier for developers to generate new versions of an app, so it functions properly across platforms.

When done well a smart mobile marketing strategy can be hugely successful, as demonstrated by the Oklahoma Lottery.

How One Organization Successfully Embraced Mobile

The Oklahoma Lottery recognized mobile marketing’s power to reach new markets. They launched a 30-day promotion, creating an exclusive Mobile VIP club. Participants had the chance to win $100 per day by texting in to join the club. Updates and winners were posted on the company Facebook page and mobile website.

At the end of the month-long contest, the Oklahoma Lottery had over 13,000 new, highly engaged fans. The very next day, they launched an iPhone app, and invited the Mobile VIP club members to download it. The result? 667 click-throughs from the text to the app on Day 1. By targeting their audience through their mobile devices, they amassed an entire community they can tap into to promote special events, drive sales and introduce new products.

With the enormous growth of mobile devices, mobile marketing strategies are a must for every business. As the Oklahoma Lottery’s effort shows, knowing how to create and execute a mobile marketing campaign can open up tremendous opportunities for your business.

Developing a Mobile Marketing Strategy is Essential

Mobile media marketing puts your brand right into the hands of your target audience. No one knows what the next mobile craze will be, but it’s clear that mobile devices are increasingly the consumer’s choice for staying in touch, finding information and making buying decisions. Savvy marketers will continue to stay on top of mobile marketing trends and deliver informative, usable content that their customers want—no matter where they are.

This guest post was provided by University Alliance and submitted on behalf of University of San Francisco.  USF offers online marketing courses including SEO training, search engine marketing, social media training, advanced mobile marketing training and more.  To learn more about University of San Francisco’s certificate programs visit www.usanfranonline.com.

References:

Mobile stats:

http://mashable.com/2012/02/16/mobile-commerce/

Social Media Stats:

http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/social-media-statistics-stats-2012-infographic/

Recent research from MarketingProfs shows that 84% of B2B companies use social media marketing in some form, and the figure is likely higher for B2C firms. But that’s a bit like saying that most Americans exercise regularly; it’s probably true, but there is a big difference between walking the dog around the block a couple of times per week and training for a triathlon.

Image credit: The Far Side

And just as there are significant differences in the results one will obtain from an intense training regimen vs. the occasional stroll, the MarketingProfs study points out that the “best in class” B2B social media performers are producing more than three times the number of leads from this channel than are “laggard” firms. In fact, another recent study from HubSpot reveals that 63% of B2B companies aren’t generating leads from social media at all.

In social media, as in physical training, it takes time to see substantial results. And so, just as it’s easy to slip off a training schedule, it can be tempting for busy marketers who aren’t seeing an immediate payback from social media efforts to neglect those efforts. This is apparent from the large number of abandoned blogs, orphaned Facebook pages, silent Twitter feeds and the like littering the social media landscape.

I recently did some “spring cleaning” on my Twitter account using Twit Cleaner and was stunned—though perhaps I shouldn’t have been—to discover that hundreds of those “following” me hadn’t tweeted a thing in the past 30 days, 90 days, 180 days, even a year or more.

Billy Mitchell recently commented on this phenomenon as well, writing that “Although social media marketing continues to be a hot topic among B2B marketing professionals, a surprising number of B2B companies are (either) not planning to start, late to get started, only going through the motions with little or no results (or) have already given up.”

The good news is that, just like there’s never a bad time to start exercising (unless you’re in a body cast perhaps), there’s never a wrong time to step back, reassess, and re-launch social media marketing efforts. The first step is to take a look at your social media program and determine if you’ve got a results problem that’s really an activity problem. And understand that if that’s the case, you’re not alone.

I recently conducted a competitive analysis on behalf of a client looking at 10 companies in the IT management software market. Note that these weren’t hair salons or auto body shops or some other type of business whose core isn’t the online world; these are companies whose buyers were trading messages using now-obscure online communication protocols since before the Internet had a name, and long before the term “social media” was introduced. This is a group of companies that, although primarily SMBs, should be fluent in online and social communications.

So while certainly not a scientifically valid sample, the findings about social media use among these 10 companies are nevertheless telling:

• • Two of the vendors’ websites have no social media buttons/icons/links at all, and three have only a limited social presence on their sites (e.g. social account links only on their Home and Contact pages).
• • Only four of the 10 have blogs, and of those, three have had a total of four or fewer new posts in the last 60 days.
• • Three of the companies aren’t on Twitter. Of the seven who are, three have fewer than 100 followers. Six of the seven companies tweet, on average, less than once every four days.
• • Though nine of the 10 companies are on LinkedIn, though only three have complete, optimized company profiles and product listings. Eight companies have 50 or fewer followers.
• • All of the companies can be found on Facebook, but only three have complete or professionally designed pages. Three others have unmanaged “community pages” which the companies don’t maintain and may not even be aware of.   Four of the 10 pages have fewer than 10 “likes.” Four have no wall posts at all, and four more have fewer than 10 posts over the last 60 days.
• • Seven of the ten companies have no presence on Google+, and only one has a complete, optimized profile there.

What should you do if your company’s social media strategy isn’t firing on all cylinders, or how do you avoid this fate if your company is just getting started in social media?The topic of social media marketing could fill a book (and has in fact, several), but here is a seven-step approach to get things moving in the right direction.

1. Research your company’s social media landscape, so you understand where your prospective buyers are congregating and active.

2. Listen to the conversation for a while before jumping in, so you get a solid sense for the tone, etiquette and group dynamics of each social venue as well the popularity of various specific discussion topics.

3. Develop content that answers the questions you see being raised. The more relevant your content is to the concerns of your prospective buyers, the more likely it is to be read and shared. In order to produce content on a regular basis without breaking the bank, find ways to re-use and re-purpose existing content (e.g. a white paper can be re-used as a presentation, a couple of blog posts and a bylined article) and spread the workload among several internal subject matter experts, so one writer becomes overwhelmed.

4. Respond to questions and engage your buyers and influencers in social media. Reach out. Interact. Build relationships. That will encourage followers to share your content and  customers to reinforce your messages.

5. Convert followers to known prospects or even customers through targeted calls to action. This is where the “R” happens in social media ROI. Any time you are able to engage prospective buyers with your content, give them an easy (but not obnoxious) way to perform a conversion action: sign up for your newsletter, subscribe to your blog, register for a webinar, download a white paper, or start a free trial. Make the action fit the content. Experiment. Keep it fresh.

6. Measure. The ultimate measure of social media success is leads or sales, but there are dozens of intermediate measures that, while not success metrics in and of themselves, are crucial for letting you know how your current efforts are working. What should you do more of, less of, or do differently? Running a social media program without metrics is like driving a car with no gauges. Not a good plan.

7. Persist. Building readership for a blog takes time. Building a significant presence on any social network takes time too. Establishing credibility, cultivating relationships, optimizing your online presence…none of this happens overnight. Stick with it. The losers are those with abandoned blogs, silent Twitter accounts, orphaned Facebook pages. Those who score in social media are often those who just keep shooting.

While most companies have now adopted social media marketing practices of some sort, many are still struggling to see the hoped-for results. If your company is in that group, you aren’t alone. Keep at it. Learn. Experiment. Measure. Tweak. Prevail.

With more than 90% of companies now using social media to find employees and 82% having a Facebook page, there’s no question that business use of social media has become commonplace. But “use” and “success” are two different things. Many organizations, having now realized that the “build it and they will come” model doesn’t work in social media and that it isn’t just another channel for promoting news releases and marketing brochures, are stepping back and retooling their social media strategies.

If you’re developing a new social media program, revamping one that’s failed to achieve hoped-for results, or just trying to make an existing strategy more successful, one key component to start with is an analysis of your social media or digital landscape. This analysis will help you understand:

• • Where your prospective buyers are congregating in social media, and what they are talking about.
• • What your competitors are doing in social media.
• • Which voices are most influential in your market space.

Here’s a four step plan for creating a digital landscape analysis for your organization, to help build or rebuild a successful social media marketing strategy.

1. Evaluate how your competitors are using social media. For both strategic and benchmarking purposes, create a spreadsheet listing your top competitors and, for each, showing:

• • Social features on their website (e.g. do they have a blog, how prominently is it featured, social bookmarking links, social media account links, etc.).
• • Twitter metrics (followers, following, frequency of tweets, general level of interactivity).
• • Facebook / LinkedIn / Google Plus metrics (i.e. followers/fans/circles, how complete is their profile, level of activity).
• • YouTube metrics (total videos uploaded, subscribers, video views, recency of last update).
• • Other social activity and presence (Flickr, SlideShare, Wikipedia, etc.).

Collecting this information is Phase I. This will give you a rough benchmark for your own social media activity (if you already have an active program) and will help you identify any positive outliers—competitors who are far more successful than average in social media—to take a closer look at.

When creating your strategy, you’ll revisit this data and take a closer look at exactly what these competitors are doing (particularly the more successful ones). The point is not to copy anyone else’s strategy as your company’s approach should be designed to capitalize on your own unique strengths, but rather just to see what you can learn from competitors’ success and make sure you aren’t overlooking any obvious tactics or techniques.

2. Identify the key influencers in your market. The next step is to identify the influential voices in your community that you’ll want to reach out to, connect with, and begin building relationships with. These are the journalists, bloggers, analysts (industry or financial) and others who can help amplify your content, spread your story, and lend credibility to your messages.

If you’ve got the budget, the quickest and easiest way to build a list is by using a PR and social media monitoring tool such as Cision, Vocus or MyMediaInfo.  If not, or to supplement the results from those paid tools, do some manual research using free tools like AllTop, Technorati and Google Blog Search.

These tools will tell you who is talking about a particular topic, but not necessarily how influential or important any individual source is. In an ideal world, there would be a standardized measure of some sort. Since we don’t live in an ideal world, use influencer rating tools like Klout and Kred in conjunction with checking which blogs are featured most often on blog rolls of target bloggers (an informative though imprecise measure of influence) and the Pagerank of each blog. Combing these measures provides at least a rough guide to the relative influence of various sources.

3. Find relevant groups on Facebook and LinkedIn. This is as simple as searching within “groups” on each social networking site for your primary keywords and recording the results. Note how many groups you find, how large the groups are, and how active they appear to be. Business-related topics will generally have more, larger groups on LinkedIn than Facebook, while the opposite is typically true for consumer topics.

Once you’re in the execution phase, you’ll of course want to monitor, contribute to and interact within the most important and active groups on your list. But in the digital landscape analysis, it’s enough to flag these groups for further investigation.

4. Look for other places where people are talking about your industry. Your prospective buyers are likely having conversations in places well beyond the big five social networking sites. If you’re using a professional (fee-based) social media monitoring tool, start there to identify these message boards, forums and other sites where people in your market are asking and answering questions.

An excellent free tool for conducting this research is Google Discussion Search (run a search on Google, click “More” in the left sidebar then click “Discussions”). It takes a bit of manual effort, but you can build a fairly comprehensive list of discussion forums and message boards by running multiple searches on Google Discussion Search, capturing the results to Excel using SEOquake, then sorting the list by frequency.

With these four steps completed, you’ll have a comprehensive picture of your company’s digital landscape in place to serve as a basis for developing a new or revised social media strategy and tactical plan.

The inbound marketing experts at HubSpot along with Jeff Ente of Who’s Blogging What have just published an outstanding collection of social media insights, 54 Pearls of Marketing Wisdom by “26 of the world’s best marketing experts.” The assembled pundits weighed in on one or more questions regarding social media strategy, mobile marketing, online content, guidance on allocating resources between social networks and more.

Among the experts are Seth Godin (author, most recently, of We Are All Weird), Jeff Bullas, Sarah Worsham, Ian Lurie, Sharlyn Lauby, Valeria Maltoni, Heidi Cohen, Maddie Grant and Joe Pulizzi. Quite a lineup.

A few highlights of the 66-page report include:

Seth Godin: “I think the relentlessly ebbing of perceived privacy is happening faster than most people thought it would. This is leading to both small pockets of frustrated, trapped people who are afraid of what’s known about them, and a larger portion of the population that’s redefining what they think is normal.”

Linda Bustos (on Google+): “I notice that retweets of my blog’s articles are down since it’s launch, understandably, especially since Google Reader removed other sharing options in favor of the Plus button…I’m also surprised that there’s room for another social network. This and new sites like Pinterest show us there’s still room for new social networks, provided they offer something Twitter and Facebook don’t.”

Sharlyn Lauby: “After what seems like countless failed attempts at social by Google (Buzz, Wave, Orkut, etc), Google+ is already enough of a hit to force marketers to leverage, if only for its search implications.”

Heidi Cohen: “With increasing smartphone penetration, the following mobile marketing elements are the cost of entry: mobile website (fast loading, streamlined to main mobile function and easy to use), mobile search, and email marketing (the top mobile device activity). optimize to be read on-the-go with mobile call-to-action and phone number. ”

Dave Chafey: With mobile I always start with the current level of mobile usage for a company through analytics – to make sure decisions aren’t swept away by the ‘mobile web access to replace desktop access by 2014′ hype. Sure, for some brands in fashion and publishing mobile access is more than 20% in 2011. But for many others it’s in the single digits. Most mobile usage will be around search and the social networks, so make sure these work locally.”

Maddie Grant: “Marketers should stop marketing and start connecting. Start solving problems. Start building relationships.”

Joe Pulizzi: “Every piece of your content should be excellent enough that customers are compelled to share it. With Panda and four (maybe five) major social networks, the best content will rise to the top. That means, velocity will not be as important as truly impactful content.”

Michael Lazerow: “Content needs to be not only interesting, but also engaging and shareable. Content is constantly evolving, so brands need to stay ahead of the curve as best they can. Before you publish anything, think to yourself: is this something I would share with my social network? Is this something that my audience would identify with?”

Cameron Chapman: “The way that content is distributed now is both fantastic for those who are publishing content, and disastrous for the general public. On a daily basis I come across content littered with errors, either intentionally or accidentally, that is being passed around as gospel. Content creators need to take it upon themselves to verify everything they’re putting out there.  In many cases, it goes unnoticed, but when it is noticed, it destroys your credibility. I hate to see an infographic or any content that obviously involved a lot of time made useless because someone didn’t fact check.”

And there’s much more, including my thoughts on social network resource allocation on page 39. It’s a hefty document, but the wisdom is handed out in easily digestible bite-size chunks. Want to be ready for what’s coming in social media tomorrow? Download 54 Pearls of Marketing Wisdom today.

Social media, content aggregation and curation, user-generated content and other developments have dramatically changed the B2B buying cycle over the past few years. Marketers need to think like publishers not only to improve their company’s visibility in search (which is where 93% of B2B buying cycles now start) but also to address the differing information needs of buying team members, at different stages during the decision process.

This evolution has changed life for sales reps as well. Prospects often don’t surface until much later in the buying process than they did just a few years ago. Buyers are better informed (and expect sales reps to be better informed about their industry and likely challenges as well), and often need only a few key questions answered (most critically, price) by the time they contact a sales person.

How can B2B organizations, marketers and sales professionals adjust to, and thrive in, this new environment? Find out here in some of the best blog posts and articles of the past year offering strategic guidance and insights for B2B marketing and sales executives.

B2B Marketing Trends,  Tips and Strategies

The Top-10 B2B Marketing Trends for 2011 by Everything Technology Marketing

Holger Schulze laid out these ten predictions in January 2011. For the most part, the predictions were on target. And also, for the most part, these predicted areas of focus (e.g. social media ROI, lead quality, content marketing) will remain priorities in 2012.

Just What Do Marketers Do, Anyway? by MarketingProfs

Barbara Bix and Olga Taylor craft an intriguing case for focused market research and targeting using the example of a violin virtuoso playing in a subway for $32, after having sold out a concert with $100 tickets just days before. Bix and Taylor explain that “Quality and price are important, but only in front of the right buyer, at the right time and place,” then provide guidance on determining those attributes in order to maximize profits.

You’ve Got New Visitors at Your Site. Now What? by MarketingProfs

Contending that “Only by creating rich experiences—in the form of content, features, interactivity, and the like—can businesses convert visitors into more than just passing window shoppers,” Gretel Going details a process for creating the right kinds of content based on buyer types, stage in the buying process, and differing content preferences, utilizing an array of different formats from ebooks and webinars to video and mobile apps–in addition to great web page copy.

B2B Websites NOT Great At Demand Gen by Business2Community

The insightful Ardath Albee picks up on the theme of the post above, noting that while B2B marketers expend great efforts on SEO and social media marketing to attract visitors to the websites, research shows that their websites are then often “ignoring the very audience they worked so hard to attract.” This post details a conversation she had with Craig Rosenberg about B2B website usability, effectiveness and conversion rate optimization.

Is Youtility the Future of Marketing? by iMedia Connection

Frequent “best of” contributor Jay Baer writes that “The difference between helping and selling is just 2 letters. But those letters make all the difference. Your company needs to become a YOUtility. Sell something, and you make a customer. Help someone, and you make a customer for life.” He illustrates the concept of YOUtility with real-world examples and explains how any company can do this.

3 Tips on How to Use Search Engine Marketing Effectively by ePROneur

Because “getting to the top of the search results requires work and the understanding of not only what tactical methods you need to use to get there, but also what foundation you need to build and have in place to be most effective,” Rania Kort outlines three high-level strategies for optimizing a company’s presence in search.

101 awesome marketing quotes; A presentation by Thewebcitizen

Ilias Chelidonis shares 101 marketing quotes from a HubSpot presentation, such as “Remarkable social media content and great sales copy are pretty much the same–plain spoken words designed to focus on the needs of the reader, listener or viewer” and “Make the customer the hero of your story” (so true).

10 rules for entrepreneurial survival by TECHdotMN

Getting your attention by opening his post with “If you’re an entrepreneur, there’s something wrong with you. You have a genetic predisposition for risking it all…You are a masochist who is mentally prepared to run an ultra-marathon with an invisible finish line. Yet, you are confident in the pursuit of your destination,” Lief Larson of Workface goes on to list 10 survival rules for entpreneurs. For example, #8: “There are no shortcuts. There is only one right way to do things: the right way. Dig your heels in and be prepared to endure. ‘Overnight success’ can take years in the making.”

Why lead generation and branding aren’t mutually exclusive by iMedia Connection

Chris Chariton shares five ideas on how “sales and marketing can work together to generate leads and build the brand as part of the same effort.” Among her ideas is increasing your company’s “findability.” As Chris notes, “pushing information out to customers and prospects is not nearly as effective as it once was. Instead, you have to make sure they can find you when they’re looking” (which is why web presence optimization is crucial).

Addressing Changes in the B2B Buying Cycle

No One Wants To Read Your Whitepaper. Let’s Hope They Recycle It. by Marketing Automation Software Guide

Writing that “I have no interest in reading a War and Peace-style sales pitch — and, let’s face it, that’s what most whitepapers are these days…Companies need to find new and more direct ways to reach the buyer 2.0 without going all Tolstoy on them,” Lauren Carlson recommends alternatives focused on providing the information that buyers need, when they want it, in forms that are more digestible and engaging.

The Future of Buyer Relationships by Business2Community

Tony Zambito outlines seven aspects of changes in the buying cycle brought about by social media and the explosion of user-generated content, including the importance of building an online reputation, understanding how social algorithms work, and producing real-time content.

The Blurry B2B Buying Process | New Breed of B2B Buyer #2 by Chaotic Flow

Joel York offers his insights on reaching “the new elusive B2B buyer” who seeks to engage with sales “only when there is clear value to be gained, not just to get information.” He demonstrates the imperative of marketing automation through some interesting variations of the traditional sales funnel model.

Five Ways B-to-B Marketers Need to Change Their Game by Biznology

Citing dramatic changes in the typical B2B sales cycle – “Buyers don’t really want to talk to vendors until somewhere akin to 70% of the way down the road, at the stage of writing RFPs and getting quotes…Business buying processes are getting longer, and—most important—involving more parties than ever before.  The so-called Buying Circle in large enterprise B-to-B—the influencers, specifiers, users, decision-makers—comprises as many as 21 people, according to Marketing Sherpa”—Ruth Stevens challenges marketers to “think differently” and use these specific techniques to maximize impact with buyers.

B2B Sales Trends and Strategies

Salesmen are Dying and Other IT Trends by IT Marketing World

Tom Pisello details changes in the B2B buying cycle resulting from the immediate access to vast amounts of information now available online. It isn’t exactly “death of a salesman” but it does mean death to the old way of selling. Pisello concludes that “Advanced ROI business case tools and training should be provided to direct and channel sales professionals to help them advance from traditional product / solution selling, to the value selling buyers now demand.”

Gartner: 5 Questions for Anyone Selling Technology by Inflexion Point

Bob Apollo shares five questions posed by Steve Prentice of Gartner in a presentation on the use of technology to drive business innovation, along with his interpretation of what those questions mean to those focused on selling technology-based products or services in a B2B context.

5 Ways To Influence B2B Group Buying Decisions by Social Media B2B

Noting that B2B purchases are normally group decisions, Adam Holden-Bache suggests “five things to consider as you create social media content targeted at B2B group buyers,” including highlighting the value of your offering (based on buyer roles) and showing how it will integrate with the buying company’s existing tools, systems and processes.

And Finally…

Future Trends: 2012 Online Marketing & Technology Predictions by TopRank Online Marketing Blog

This post opened with Holger Schulze’s predictions for 2011, and fittingly closes with Lee Odden’s prognostication for 2012. He challenges marketers to think how their audiences will be consuming information in the coming years (evolving online and device technology) rather than narrow concepts, then presents seven compelling reports and infographics outlining “key technology, social business and digital marketing trends for 2012 and beyond.”

Many books fail to live up to what’s promised on their covers: exciting title, raving blurbs, boring content. But The Power of Strategic Commitment by Josh Leibner, Gershon Mader and Alan Weiss is just the opposite—it’s a vital and engaging guide to effective leadership, despite the yawn-inducing title.

Power is written for leaders at all levels of any size organization. After defining what they mean by “strategic commitment,” the authors explain why it is so crucial to organizational success.

Basically, most organizations operate at a sub-optimal level because employees are more concerned about protecting their status quo than with making bold changes that will propel the organization to higher levels of success. This isn’t because they are bad employees, but because they don’t have effective leadership. (As the writers note, “Only when leaders are willing to ‘own’ the current state of affairs, and admit to themselves that they have caused the current levels of apathy, resistance, or resignation, can they begin to address and improve the situation.”) The authors then outline explicitly why this is the case, and most importantly, what to about it.

Often, it isn’t so much what an organization does that determines success, but how it does it. As a case in point, the authors cite Apple’s retail stores: “Online purchasing has created a new legion of buyers who aren’t willing to wait for bored salespeople to attend to them inn retail outlets. Yet Apple, Inc. was able to create very successful retail outlets by assigning a salesperson to customers from their moment of entry, through all purchases, right up to departures. (As one woman shopper was heard to remark, ‘Life should be like this, with a man assigned to you for as long as you want him.’).” Ouch!

The authors contend that many books about execution, motivation, and leadership fail to provide the information needed to really move the needle because they deal with only single factors of organizational excellence. What’s needed is true employee engagement with the corporate mission; commitment, as distinct from compliance.

Noting, from their observations in years of business consulting, that “when strategy fails it is almost always due to poor implementation, not poor formulation,” the authors argue that consensus is not the same as commitment. “Consensus is not commitment. People agree to ‘live with’ something, but that doesn’t mean they would ‘die for’ it.” They point out that in highly effective organizations, there are often passionate disputes—but these organizations are not disrupted by internal politics.

Along the way, the authors enthusiastically skewer “flavor of the month” management fads:

“In the early 1990’s, process reengineering…was the most popular organizational business response to improve effectiveness…By the late 1990s, it had become apparent that you could improve processes until the cows came home, but if people and functions were not genuinely on board ad buying in, then productivity gains would be ephemeral at best…In a leading manufacturing organization, the CEO’s engineering background and belief in the ‘science’ of Six Sigma drove him to ensure his managers and employees were rigorously complying with the process rather than truly owning the need to improve quality and the customer experience. As a result, Six Sigma was pervasive but customer satisfaction levels continued to decline. No customer ever proclaimed ‘Wow, I love what they’re doing with Six Sigma,” or ‘Quality teams have really improved by loyalty!’”

The lesson they draw is: “Organizational commitment to a CEO’s strategy is…perhaps the key factor in the success of the strategy and its organizational objectives.” In a nutshell, they recommend dictatorship in setting objectives (the “what”) but democracy in determining the means to achieve them (the “how”), and conclude “Including and engaging employees so that they can fully commit to the strategy is the ultimate factor in whether strategy succeeds or not.”

Leibner, Mader and Weiss identify two key issues at the heart of strategic commitment: content and context. Content is “the plan.” To be effective, it must be valid (the correct path for the organization based on research and independent thought) and it must be clearly communicated so that everyone in the organization can “get on the same page.”

Context has four key drivers:

• • Credibility (are leaders and managers being straightforward and honest?)
• • Courage (do leaders have the resolve to see the strategy through? Do employees  believe that management will be “open to hearing the real, often negative feedback, and will they have the guts to deal with the real issues?”)
• • Competence (are the organization’s leaders capable of executing the strategy; do they know what they’re doing?)
• • Caring (do the leaders understand the impact that the plan will have on employees? Will they give employees the freedom to contribute, and recognition for those contributions? As the authors sum this up, “the more that people believe that management values them as resources and not as expenses, the more committed they tend to become.”)

Leiber and Mader are the founders of Quantum Performance, Inc., a strategic management consulting firm that has worked with numerous Global 1000 clients. Weiss is a consultant, speaker, author of 32 books, and head of Summit Consulting Group. The three bring years of experience to this book, and illustrate many of their points with true-life stories from name-brand clients. But the principals and guidance presented here apply to organizations of all sizes, and non-profit and government agencies as well as businesses.

The book closes with appendix containing several helpful tools, checklists and tips to help put the authors’ ideas into practice.

The Power of Strategic Commitment, despite the dry title, is an engagingly written and vital guide to developing leadership practices that enable higher levels of organizational success.

Guest post by Kristin Zhivago

Tom is right. As he contended in Web Presence Optimization Reloaded, you should be “everywhere.” You have to appear in all the channels where your customers may be lurking.

But—and this is big—if you appear in those channels with a message that does not resonate with your potential buyers, it’s worse than not being there at all. You will be convincing potential buyers that you really don’t understand their issues, don’t know what they really care about, and aren’t really going to be able to solve their problems. You will be “unselling,” rather than selling.

Details about the revenue-growth method (including the questions you should be asking customers), are in Kristin's new book, Roadmap to Revenue: How to Sell the Way Your Customers Want to Buy.

How do you make sure your content—wherever it appears—is relevant and convincing?

You ask your current customers a tested set of questions that will result in you knowing exactly what you should be saying to your future customers. Using this method, you will actually be able to reverse-engineer your successful sales so you can produce new sales in quantity. Fortunately, you only have to interview 7 – 10 customers of any given type to see ironclad, bankable patterns emerge. These patterns will direct your company’s efforts going forward, and will result in higher revenue.

You should ask your questions on the phone, in a conversation. Your customers will be more relaxed and tell you more on the phone than they will in person. They will also give you more usable information than you’d ever get out of an emailed or webform survey. People tend to “clam up” when they’re typing something that could be used against them in some way. And “listening” to social media won’t tell you what their buying process was, or what they were thinking as they made the purchase. Even social media companies hire me to have these conversations with their customers.

The interviewing is just the first step to increasing your revenue. Equally important is what you learn, and what you do with the information after you have analyzed it and discussed it.

You will learn:

• Why they came looking for your solution—the problem they were trying to solve, and how they describe it. These words and phrases will become the magic words that resonate with customers. They won’t have to translate your internal jargon into the words and phrases they would naturally use.
• What their concerns were as they were trying to buy. I say “trying,” because only a few companies in the world actually make it easy for their customers to buy from them. Most companies place one barrier after another in front of buyers when they’re attempting to buy.
• What they like about your company, products, and services (which you should be promoting), and what simply isn’t working (which you should fix).
• What they wish you were selling. It could be a small tweak to your existing product line, a new service associated with your product line, a new way of packaging or supporting the product, or even a new product that would provide a new revenue stream.

Armed with what you’ve learned, you will then map out their buying process. You will create marketing and selling tools that make it easy for them to take the next step in their buying process, encouraged by what they see as they go.

Using this approach, all of your online and offline content—and the tools produced for salespeople—will resonate with customers. Your product developers will know exactly what they should be focusing on. Top executives will know what should be offered, how the business should be structured, and even what people are willing to pay for those products and services. You will know the promises that they want you to keep, and you will make the necessary changes to your company so you can keep those promises. You will create a revenue-growth action plan that lays out the steps you need to take to make all this happen. You won’t have to guess and experiment anymore.

As you make these changes to your website, marketing and selling tools, products, and services, customers will respond positively. They will buy more. And, they will tell others how great you are, which will increase your sales even more.

Kristin Zhivago is a revenue coach who helps CEOs and entrepreneurs sell more by understanding what their customers want to buy and how they want to buy it. She blogs at http://www.RevenueJournal.com.

Twitter, YouTube videos, text messaging…there’s no question attention spans are short. Everyone is busy, asked constantly to “do more with less,” including most critically their time. To connect with buyers in this environment, your business website needs to provide them with the information they need—quickly and concisely.

By the time a buyer reaches your site, he or she has likely done the basic research. The problem is defined, the solution set narrowed, and now it’s time to choose between competing vendors. In order to make the short list, and ideally to win the business, your site needs to quickly answer five critical questions.

1. Who are you? Unless your brand is a household name, at least within your industry, this is a critical element. Don’t waste your “About” page company history and trivia—make it “sell” your company. Write about awards, media/analyst recognition, number/importance of customers, length of time in business, the experience of your founders, funding, growth and financial performance, and/or any other information that conveys the message: we are the “safe” choice to buy from in this industry.

2. What do you sell? While that is obvious to you, it isn’t to prospects unfamiliar with your company. Use keyword research tools to make sure you are using terms your prospective buyers use, and make it clear and concise. Do you sell a point solution or something that’s part of a broader product suite? Products only or also associated services? For example, suppose you sell web content management software. That could mean a free or low-cost content management system, enterprise content management software, or a web marketing system that includes CRM and email capabilities as well as a CMS.

3. Who do you sell to? No company, especially a small business, can be everything to everyone. Make it clear who your target customers are; this will help weed out prospects who aren’t really qualified and enable you to tightly focus your web copy on your best potential buyers. Do you sell to consumers or to other businesses? To what specific demographic? To big companies or small? In a particular industry or set of industry segments? Make it clear to your site visitors if they are “in the right place.”

4. Why are you the best choice? This is where you differentiate yourself from the pack. Be as direct and factual as possible about your differentiators: service, price, features, capabilities, technology, experience, focus, expertise, acknowledgments, TCO, ROI…tell your prospects what makes your product or service uniquely suited to their needs.

5. How do I buy from you? If a qualified buyer has landed on your site and you’ve done a good job answering questions 1-4 above, this is the critical final question. What do you want the person to do next? Can they buy directly from your site or is it a more complex, high-value purchase that requires a sales cycle? If the former, give them a clear and simple path to the purchase. If the latter, you may need to provide more than one option—but don’t offer too many choices, which may overwhelm the prospect. Possibilities include downloading a white paper or report, signing up for a newsletter, contacting you for more information, following you on Twitter or Facebook, signing up for a free trial, viewing an online demo, or registering for a webinar. Different options likely make sense on different pages. Keep it simple and clear. Test different calls to action.

Much of this may seem obvious, but many business websites still either overload visitors with too much content or make key information hard to find. Differentiate your organization from competitors make it an effective sales tool by concisely answering these key questions for your prospective customers.

A few weeks back, I had a chance to get away for a few days “up nort” as Minnesotans say, for some fishing and relaxing with the family. While there, my mother-in-law took us to the Woodtick Theater, a bluegrass music show in the huge metropolis of Akeley (population: 432). The show itself wasn’t really my kind of thing, but then again, I wasn’t the target demographic (see below). But as I thought about it later, this little theater definitely has some marketing and management lessons to teach any business.

You’ve almost certainly never heard of the Woodtick Theater and are unlikely to see it written up in any business book, but consider:

• • The theater is in its 20th season.
• • It’s always been profitable.
• • It has raving fans and an extraordinary level of repeat business.
• • The employees love working there; many have been with the theater for a decade or more.

That’s an impressive set of performance metrics for any business. So how do they do it? Here are five keys to the theater’s success than any business can apply.

Focus on your target market.

Looking around the theater, I felt…young. While there were a few 20- and 30-somethings, and even some teens, in the crowd, the vast majority had hair that was grayer or less present than mine. The target audience for the show is definitely the post-retirement, AARP, RV-driving, early dinner crowd. Other than a Keith Urban song from the late 90′s, the newest song in the troupe’s repertoire was the Beatle’s Penny Lane. And it was these folks who were clapping most enthusiastically, singing along with many of the songs.

The point is—no business can be all things to all people. Particularly for small businesses, focus is critical. Identify your target market, as precisely as possible, and focus on producing messages that appeal to them and products and services that delight them.You’ll likely pick up some “bonus” business from outside your defined target market, which is great, but don’t let that dilute your focus on your core market.

Do the simple things well.

As noted above, the Woodtick Theater plays bluegrass music. As guitar players know, one can play nearly any bluegrass tune with just four chords: G, C, D and E minor. That’s not so say the band members weren’t talented—they were. They may have done just fine playing something from Lady Gaga or Nickelback, or Tchaikovsky for that matter. The point, rather, is that their audience likes the simple songs, ones they know and can sing along with, played well.

Likewise, your customers don’t expect you to be able to solve every problem under the sun, but to be competent (or better) at getting the basics right. Set realistic expectations, then strive to meet or exceed them. As blatantly obvious as that may sound, it’s surprising how many enterprises fail at the basics, like making it easy to contact customer service or returning sales calls promptly.

Make it easy to recommend your business.

The Woodtick Theater hands every guest a “keepsake” printed program; it not only talks about the show, but includes a few corny jokes, the history of Akeley, and most importantly: a discount coupon for the show. This encourages patrons to either come back for another show, or more frequently, recommend the show and pass along the program and discount.

How can your business make it easy for customers to recommend you? That depends on the type of business you’ve got, but a few tactics include producing an email newsletter that’s worthy of forwarding, including social sharing buttons on your blog and website, being active in social media, having a presence on review sites like Yelp (if applicable), or even developing a formal referral program with discounts or other incentives.

Constantly gather, and incorporate, customer feedback.

It’s easy to ask customers “how are we doing?” But the fact is, unless the customer is extremely happy (or unhappy), their answer is likely to be along the lines of “just fine.” Not terribly helpful.

The manager of the Woodtick Theater told me that he constantly watches how the audience responds to their act. “We change our songs frequently in order to keep the show fresh, so we watch how the audience responds. If they are smiling and singing along, we’ll keep that song in the act. If they don’t seem to really love it, we’ll throw that song out and try something different.”

Most businesses can’t collect feedback or witness customer behavior that easily, so they need to employ other methods to monitor and observe customers in action. The best companies find ways to understand how customers are using their products in the real world and utilize that information to constantly improve their products, add new features (or drop features that aren’t needed or valued) and produce new innovations. For example, LEGO Group is known for involving its most passionate customers intimately in its new product development process.

Make customer satisfaction everyone’s job.

Everyone we encountered at the Woodtick Theater—not just the performers, but the emcee, the lady at the ticket booth, the young guy who sold us our popcorn–was pleasant and smiling. All seemed to enjoy being there and wanted the audience to enjoy the visit as well.

Employees want several things from their jobs: an income, benefits, a comfortable work environment, a supportive boss. But they also want to feel that their efforts make a difference. Regardless of whether or not an employee is customer-facing (and through social media, that definition has expanded), every employee should understand how well the organization is performing on customer satisfaction metrics, how that satisfaction is measured, and how their individual efforts contribute.

That may be obvious for sales or customer service personnel, but what about the data entry person in accounting, the guys on the loading dock, or the janitor–how do their efforts impact customer happiness? Well, customers  may not rave about accurate billing or consistently getting their orders right, but they will certainly notice if those tasks aren’t done correctly. And if customers visit your office, fairly or not, how neat and clean it is will affect their perceptions of your company.

If you ever find yourself in northern Minnesota and the prospect of hearing a couple of retired music teachers perform a song like “Ghost Chickens in the Sky” (seriously, that was on the playlist) appeals to you, you may want to check out the Woodtick Theater. But regardless, any organization can benefit from the business practices that the theater exemplifies.