Join Matt Sonnhalter for a Marketing Minute and learn about the modern press release and how key elements make it a strong, effective communication tool.
To view other videos from Sonnhalter, visit our YouTube channel here and let us know if there’s a B2T marketing topic you’d like us to cover.
By John Sonnhalter, Rainmaker Journeyman, Sonnhalter
One of our biggest challenges is to make sure we have the right message for buyers as they go through the buying process. Another challenge is to deliver it in a way that they want to receive it.
I recently read an article by Jeffrey L. Cohen in Social Media B2B, The Most Effective B2B Content Types for Each Funnel Stage that I found very helpful. He summarizes a study by Regalix that asked B2B marketers to indicate which content types were most effective at each stage of the sales funnel.
Awareness – it makes sense that social media, blog posts and infographics would be used to get your attention.
Consideration – they narrow their search by looking at white papers, visiting websites and web-based events.
Purchase – when they make a purchase the website, case studies, research reports and videos top the list in helping close the deal.
Loyalty – keep in front of them using newsletters, social media, email, mobile and web-based events.
Advocacy – when someone becomes your advocate, you’ve hit the holy grail. Best way to touch them is with social media, blog posts or videos.
How do these content types shape up to what you’re seeing?
As the Thanksgiving weekend approaches, we’d like to say thanks to the many friends and clients we’ve had the good fortune to come in contact with over the years. We’re all running in several different directions all the time, and this time of year we need to slow down a bit to appreciate the things around us.
So this weekend, don’t take your briefcase home, and your emails will still be there Monday morning when you get back in the office. Recharge your batteries this weekend. Play with your kids or grandkids, visit an old friend or watch some football. We take a lot of things for granted sometimes – our Families and Friends.
Enjoy the weekend. We can get back to the rat race next week.
By John Sonnhalter, Rainmaker Journeyman at Sonnhalter
Your potential audience doesn’t want quantity, they want quality. So if you’re trying to generate more content quicker just for the sake of having it, don’t waste your time. You need to accelerate demand, not noise.
I recently read an article by Carlos Hidalgo from Content Marketing Institute on How to Develop a Buyer-Centric Content Marketing Strategy that made several good points.
The best way to connect with your audience is to determine what kind of content they want. In other words, what motivates buyer behavior and how do they get information? If you know these, you can build the correct content architecture.
Content Marketing’s main purpose is to drive specific business outcomes. So the buyers aren’t looking for more info, just the right info. He points to a 2014 ANNUITAS survey where less than 3% of those responsible for content marketing activities were happy with their outcomes. Here’s another scary fact from Sirius Decisions — that 70-80% of all content is never used!
These are not good numbers to take to the C-Suite to get more funding. If you can’t achieve positive and measurable results that can be tied to sales revenues, you really don’t have a content strategy at all.
This post originally appeared on INSIGHT2PROFIT.com
Years ago, an Ohio-based specialty metal business made the decision not to charge for freight costs, even though their products were extremely heavy. The rationale? None of their competitors were charging, so they couldn’t either.
In reality, this company was No. 1 in the industry, so all those competitors were actually just following their lead. When the company realized what was going on, it had the opportunity to change the policy for its entire industry.
And so it did—collecting more than $1 million in additional revenues.
Smart companies know pricing strategy isn’t just about the price on the invoice. To have an immediate impact on your bottom line without formally raising prices, here are three areas to tackle first.
If you’ve been operating for decades, your freight policies have probably been in place just as long. Maybe you don’t charge for freight at all, or fees are the same across all territories—or you charge the same as you did 50 years ago even though shipping rates have risen dramatically.
To start, ask yourself:
This line of questioning can help internal stakeholders determine if there’s opportunity for improvement without much effort, as the aforementioned specialty metal business discovered.
When you place an order on Amazon.com and you want 2-day shipping, you understand you’ll have to pay premium pricing—in this case, $99 for a year of Amazon Prime.
Your customers realize this, too. Yet many manufacturers and distributors don’t charge extra for rush orders.
If your lead time is two weeks, but your buyer needs his order in three days, are you charging extra? In order to get that order to the buyer within his limited time constraint, you’ll have to disrupt your operation, move around other orders and pay higher shipping costs. You might even put other orders at risk. You should be paid for those efforts, but many manufacturers don’t actively seek compensation.
Remember, if a buyer needs an order faster than usual, they’ll gladly pay to get it sooner.
It’s natural to want to offer discounts to your biggest customers, but if you don’t have a discounting strategy in place, the practice can steadily erode your bottom line.
Discounts shape your customers’ perception of your pricing: With every discount your give, the lowered price becomes the new standard. The next time that customer calls with an order, she will expect that same price, even if the order is only half the size.
The key here is to communicate early and often regarding volume discounts. When buyers understand why they are receiving discounts for a specific order, they will begin to understand the rationale behind your invoicing and, therefore, not expect discounts with every order.
Additionally, the threat over-discounting poses on profit often goes undetected since most companies don’t truly know how much profit is lost when sales reps offer discounts. Your company does not need to ban discounts all together, but a discount ceiling should be put in place to keep your profits from decreasing too drastically.
Raising prices throughout each of your product lines can be a highly complex process that demands a lot of analysis. Freight, expedites and discounts are areas you can impact quickly without upsetting current customers.
Start by identifying improvements that can deliver the most profit with the least amount of risk and effort. The extra revenue you uncover can be used to support larger-scale strategic pricing efforts in the future, such as increasing product prices, which will require more time, effort and commitment.
Bad pricing practices are more common than you’d think. Find out why bad pricing happens to good companies in our free guide.
By John Sonnhalter, Rainmaker Journeyman, Sonnhalter
Now that it’s time for budgeting for next year, the question is, where are you going to allocate your dollars? There’s always more opportunities than there is money to fund them.
Social media – have you tried some efforts in it this past year? What were the results? What were management’s expectations?
Mobile marketing – Has this been on your radar screen? Do you have plans to be mobile friendly in 2016?
I recently read a post from Jeffrey Cohen at Social Media B2B that highlights the latest CMO results on B-to-B Statistics on what and where money is being spent. You can get complete details here. What’s amazing is that only 23% of marketing projects run by B-to-B product companies use marketing analytics.
Here are some highlights on budgets:
Here are some highlights on social media impact:
Here are some highlights on mobile and internet:
Hopefully these numbers will help you in your upcoming budgeting processes.