I’ve been in the world of communications for quite awhile. Long enough at least, to remember when photos were shot on film, not digital media, and television, newspapers and weekly news and trade magazines were the fastest ways to deliver messages to your customers.

Not anymore.

Sure, these are still viable ways to communicate. But today’s buyers, business and consumer alike, are Web savvy. In fact, more than 70 percent begin their search for exactly what you sell online.

If your prospects aren’t finding you on the Web, or if what they find doesn’t represent you well, you’re losing opportunities – potentially your greatest number of leads – and sales. In the one-to-many equation, it doesn’t matter how good your salespeople are or how many of them you have. They simply cannot be where all your prospects are at the moment they decide to begin their research. But your on-line presence can.

Like most busy business owners, you know that you need a presence on the Web. So, you’ve invested in a website. But when’s the last time you, or anyone in your company, evaluated its effectiveness as a lead generation tool?? Your focus is on building your business, not your website. And, in the words of Hamlet, “There’s the rub.”

Even with the best of intentions, the time you or your staff has to devote to your website is limited. Keeping it updated and fresh and figuring out how to optimize it for search engines requires specialized knowledge and perhaps more importantly, time. Your website stagnates and becomes less and less effective. And your potential prospects end up as someone else’s customers.

Web marketing is an area where outsourcing makes perfect sense. Marketing firms that provide on-line marketing services, from the designers and programmers to social media and advertising specialists, have expert knowledge that can help you maximize the value of your web presence. They are every bit as focused on their business – making your web presence work effectively for you – as you are on what you do.

And notice that I didn’t say your website, but your web presence. Your website is of course the cornerstone, but there are many other places that your company should be represented on-line. Depending on your business, it could be on-line directories, Facebook, LinkedIn, FohBoh… and the list goes on. Your on-line marketing provider can help create and manage the action plan to keep your on-line presence funneling prospective clients to your door.

You may think that you can’t afford to spend money on marketing. But, as the saying goes “If you’re not growing, you’re dying.” If you’re spending money on salespeople, Yellow Pages, or any other form of advertising, but your on-line presence is weak, then you’re wasting money. And the good news is that it doesn’t cost a ton to get quality on-line marketing support these days.

Think about it – every hour you devote to building and maintaining a Web presence is an hour diverted from your business. Why not reclaim those hours by outsourcing design, content and maintenance of these vital marketing tools? The net ROI will be well worth it.

And just in case you were wondering, Marsden & Associates has the talent, tools and resources needed to build and manage your on-line marketing program. For over 8 years they’ve been delivering websites and on-line lead generation programs for companies large and small. I’m delighted to now be a part of the team.

We are thrilled to have new clients, new fun projects, and new additions to Marsden’s Associates. I’d like to introduce you to Ann Strople, our newest member of the team – though no newbie to marketing. Ann brings a strong background in building brands, crafting communications and developing on-line marketing presence for companies both large and small. For Marsden & Associates, Ann is focused on helping our clients hone their message and ensure it is hitting the mark in both on-line and traditional channels.

We’re already excited about Ann’s contributions to our clients’ marketing initiatives. Now we’re also looking forward to what she has to contribute to our blog. Please give her a warm welcome – and don’t hesitate to sing out if her message strikes a chord. (Yeah, I know that got a bit cheesy, but musicals always do that to me….)

Have you ever been to a restaurant, starving, you’ve already made up your mind what you want, way before you reach the table. In one quick breath you rattle off your order “I’ll have the steak with loaded mashed potatoes and green beans”.  As soon as the words leave your mouth your stomach growls with approval and anticipation. Fifteen minutes later, you spot the waiter walking toward your table, holding a tray of steaming hot plates. Your mouth waters, and you slide your glass of wine to the side to make room, you can almost taste that steak! The waiter stops at your table and plops down a delicious plate of sautéed salmon and steamed vegetables?  *record scratch*. “

Ummmm….I didin’t order this.” You politely say to the waiter. For a half second you almost tell him to leave the plate, you’re hungry and you do like salmon. But you ordered the steak, you send it back. That’s kinda how I feel about “cold” emails.

I’ll be honest; I have a steak/salmon (love/hate) relationship with cold emails. I love them, because they usually have some information that I could probably use. On the other hand, I hate them because well-I didn’t order (subscribe) to them. I have enough emails in my inbox, which I asked for, and sometimes I don’t even get a chance to read them. Yeah you may have awesome info but chances are I’m going to send it back (unsubscribe).

My advice for sending emails…I’m undecided. Send? Don’t send? It’s a toss up for me. If you decide to send, follow these simple guidelines:

• Tailor your cold emails to be more appealing to the recipients…if you obtained email addresses from a partner/vendor, shape your email message to appeal to that vendor’s buyers.
• In a B2B world, go straight to the value add –what information/education/assistance are you providing?
• Don’t ask them to answer questions (bogus survey), don’t try to sell – provide some truly valuable info/insight/research.  Earn their trust and they may give you the chance to talk to them again (by not unsubscribing, or worse, reporting you as spam.)
• Give them something free. You want them to actually subscribe to your emails right?

Don’t be discouraged; If your cold emails aren’t being read, just find another way to get your message across. Be creative. Just remember, no matter how good your salmon (cold email) looks, I ordered the steak and that’s (usually) what I want!

I’d like to introduce you to a new voice on Perceptions. Please welcome Erica Williams. Erica has joined Marsden & Associates to bring her talent, wit and marketing passion to our clients’ marketing communications needs. From time to time, she’ll share her views and suggestions here. We hope you’ll enjoy and add your thoughts to our conversations.  Anne Marsden

When E-mail Sucks
Are you unintentionally sending out e-mail that sucks?

I live with a BlackBerry and receive about 150 e-mails a day, every day. If a few minutes go by without an alert, I reboot, figuring there’s a ‘system’ problem somewhere. And I do read most of them… except the ones that suck. More on that shortly.

In my first job out of college, I was a marketing assistant for a global medical products company. One of my key duties was to create and implement e-mail campaigns. My first attempt was lackluster, but after falling and picking myself up a few times, I learned what wasn’t working and why:

1. Make the subject line compelling. If all I see is a one-line display on my mobile device, it better speak to me – not you, not your product – me. Think about it, craft it, and make it six words or less.

2. Don’t bury the key message at the bottom. Don’t frontload your note with background, especially if you expect me to take action on something. If it’s that involved, add an attachment and give me a ‘heads-up’ in the subject line.

3. Keep it short. We’ve all got too much electronic information to sift through. If it’s longer than a few sentences, call me… and keep the voice mail short, too.

4. Mail early in the day. This is one thing those of us of a certain age have learned from snail mail. Let’s see a show of hands: Who doesn’t check e-mail first thing in the morning, even before coffee? Right out of bed, I’m used to scanning for the ‘real’ mail and quickly dumping the trash. Email campaigns and/or email blasts will have a greater chance of surviving the delete button if you send them between the hours of 4-6am.

5. Cut out the fancy fonts. Some of your recipients may not have fancy fonts available on their viewing device. Stick to what works. Try classics like Times New Roman, Franklin Gothic or Arial

LET’S ALL DO BETTER. There’s enough sludge in the info pipeline, so let’s do our best to not add to it. Fit your communication to the medium. Twitter’s done this best with its 140-character limit. Why not set one for e-mail? I like 100 words. That’s about 500 characters, 7 sentences, or two paragraphs.

What do you think makes a good – or suck-y – email??

I have somehow gotten the bee bug. OK, sure, I  love honey, nature, gardening, and am always open to adventure… but mothering 6000+ bees in hopes of producing a few pounds of honey is still a strangely random interest.

And strange it is. Beekeepers are as varied and vocal a community as Harley Davidson riders …with some decidedly different expletives.

Living in the internet age, I felt fairly confident that I could learn, rapidly and relatively easily, from the avid bee keepers around me. I went to beekeeping school, I found and follow blogs on the topic, I joined a local beekeeping association for those (fool)hardy enough to try to keep bees in an inner city. I ordered my 2 NUC’s (a nucleus of a bee hive each holding ~3000 bees, a queen, and the basic start to a bee colony).

But now – where do I put them? What type and size hive? What about the placement? Do I feed them to help them get established?  Or as many beekeeping hobbyist say “Let them bee”?

I”M SO CONFUSED!!!

So afraid of doing the wrong thing! Of wasting time and money and worse still – killing a whole bunch of bees because I don’t’ know any better…

And that’s when it hit me – like any inexperienced, under-informed, over-achiever that wants to do the right thing – I’m going to latch on to whomever makes me feel the safest – the least scared – through this journey.

The website that talks to me the best – that offers comfort and a sense of “You can do it!” is the one that I’m going to listen to and the one from whom I will either buy – or will go wherever, and buy whatever they recommend.

I knew it the minute I was placing orders for a boat load of equipment – from a site that I knew next to nothing about – except that a beekeeper with an “Authentic Voice” said “Here’s what I did, here’s what I learned, and here’s what I recommend.”   Good enough.  Granted, this isn’t a multi-million dollar investment that my career is balanced upon.  But the emotional angst is still the same.

So – if you are a company that understands that your potential buyers (including B2B buyers) start their education and buying process on-line.  If you want to get to them while they are finding their way…when they have a desire – a need -  then you need to remember that they learn, and they make buying decisions with their hearts with as much, if not more than, their heads.

Which means you need to be the Authentic Voice they hear.  The voice that says, “I went through this.  I was scared. I learned.  And I found this approach worked best.”

Then you won’t be a voice in the wilderness.  You won’t be the voice preaching to the choir. You will be the voice building new colonies.

Bee Happy and Prosper.

ATLANTA –  – The Start-Up Council, a group of industry experts  committed to supporting the next generation of emerging companies, last week announced a call for entries for the Q1 2010 Start-Up Council Roundtable to be held on Wednesday, March 24. Created in 2006, the Start-Up Council is a forum providing gratis counsel to entrepreneurs launching new businesses by providing guidance on public relations, funding, legal, business development, outsourced manufacturing, marketing and branding. Entries will be accepted until March 1. Applications can be found at http://www.techspartacus.com/page/startup-council and submitted via email to gkeller@trevelinokeller.com or faxed to (404) 214-0729.

“The Start-Up Council has advised some exciting early-stage companies who are now taking off, experiencing their own success. We look forward to spending time with the next round,” says Genna Keller, principal at Trevelino/Keller Communications Group, the founding member of the Start-Up Council. “Particularly in this economic environment, we think it important to offer emerging companies a business resource for all aspects of growing a company, including potential funding sources.”

Each quarter, the Start-Up Council offers consulting with each individual firm, in a roundtable format, to discuss issues critical to a start-up’s business strategy and launch including brand identity, market strategy, venture capital, business development and public relations. Should companies wish for in-depth counsel, each entity in the Start-Up Council can be engaged individually – each providing a well-defined offering with a set of associated fees.

ABOUT THE START-UP COUNCIL

The Start-Up Council, a group of industry experts partnering to serve the start-up community, offers a consulting day “off the clock” to provide funding, accounting, legal, marketing and business development, branding and public relations expertise. Additionally, each entity in the Start-Up Council offers service packages geared to and priced for emerging companies. Start-Up Council members include Trevelino/Keller, Morris, Manning and Martin, Carter Allen, P.C., Flourishing Business, Fourth Quadrant, LaunchFN, Marsden & Associates, CGA Tech Counsel, The Enfuse Group, Moreland Group, AcuityCFO, Ask Remco, Brandikon, BChord, Realistic Solutions, Hothouse Inc., Habif, Arogeti & Wynne, LLP and Nvestor Relations. Affiliate supporters include ATDC, General Catalyst Partners, HIG Ventures, Imlay Investments Inc., and Noro-Moseley Partners.

NOTE:  This is my first year to participate in the Start-Up Council.  I am looking forward to the exchange of ideas and being able to help Atlanta’s hottest new companies get a jump start on their Marketing initiatives.  I’ll be sure to write about the experience afterward.

1. Marketing in a vacuum (meaning not involving Sales, or Finance, or IT, or Ops, in the process of designing and implementing Marketing initiatives).  I’ve seen it again and again, and I have a theory why it happens so frequently.   It’s often Marketing’s role to lead the company in new directions, and friction is a common result as we push people and systems to adapt to change.  And as the change agent it is easy to feel like the pioneer, with arrows in our back.  But we have to realize that some arrows may be self inflicted  because if we’d take the time up front to bring the other parts of the organization along with us, the change we seek wouldn’t be as painful – or take as long.  C’Mon Man!
2. Talking to ourselves – instead of the prospect.  As marketing professionals, we eat, sleep and dream about our products and services.  We are very, very proud (or should be) of our widgets and we want the whole world to know how fantastic they are.  Only problem is that we use our words and our myopic focus to communicate it.  When we speak from our Point of View, instead of our prospects’, then we’ve lost the opportunity right out of the gate. C’mon Man!
3. “Everything but the Kitchen Sink” approach. In our mad rush to make sure we have all our bases covered, we create a website, launch a blog, sign up for Twitter, and create a webinar series – along with a bunch of other seemingly imperative marketing programs.  And then we devote too little resources to maintaining any of them.  We complain about how understaffed we are and in the end are unable to show ROI on most of it.  Disciplined refusal to bite off more than you can chew is tough – particularly with an anxious boss saying  “what have you done for me lately”?  But in the end, doing a bunch of stuff poorly will end up killing YOU.  C’Mon Man!
4. Falling in Love with your idea. Don’t get me wrong - you’re supposed to be passionate about what you do.  But the endorphin rush that comes with falling in love with your newest, greatest program can drown out the signals that your slogan, or campaign, or promotion has serious flaws.  That’s why we test – to help bring the objectivity back to the process.  And when we don’t – when we think we have too little time, or too little resources to test – it’s like when we fall in love with someone – before we have our friends weigh in.…it usually turns out bad.  C’Mon Man!
5. Feet stuck in Concrete. This is the opposite of #3.  It’s when we are too obstinate – or too scared – to listen to our gut when it is screaming that it is time to change.  When we find all kinds of excuses to do nothing other than what we’ve always done – even when it is not producing results.  Albert Einstein once said “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.  Is  this your approach to your on-line marketing programs?   C’Mon Man!!

Those are my top 5 – what are yours?  C’Mon Man!!!

Oh – and by the way… GO SAINTS!!!

So, OK, yeah you for being up on the curve.  For doing the research, for finding the right words, identifying the long tail of real prospects versus the wild wild universe of surfers, and for mapping those key words and phrases to good content on your site, hence securing your place on the first few pages of SEO results for your prospects. That’s great – you got your potential prospects to your website – now what?

NOTE: If you’re not quite there yet – or if you haven’t even started, resolve to make 2010 the year that you do!  Because if you don’t, you’ll be watching your competition pull away by attracting your potential clients.  Studies show that in 2009, over 70 percent of B2B purchasers began their buying process by searching the web.  But your potential clients don’t find you when they do their research  – they find your arch rivals.  So get started, get SEO’d, and then after a brief pat on the back, ask yourself  “Now What?”

After getting SEO-ready, it’s time to get SCO-ready.  SCO = Sales Cycle Optimization.

SCO is the active process of providing content on your site (and beyond) that speaks to each of the key phases your prospects go through as they progress from curious informational researcher to active evaluator, and ultimately, hopefully, to buyer.  SCO also addresses the reality that your buyer is often more than one person.

Every sales cycle is unique to its product, though factors like technical complexity, breadth of organizational impact and the financial value of the deal all correlate directly to the length of time and number of people involved in the decision. The process of Sales Cycle Optimization is more complicated and time consuming for bigger, more complex sales – duh, but marketing even modest value and complexity products benefits from SCO.

To get SCO-ready,  here are 5 essential steps:

1. Map your sales process.  If you have multiple products or services, start with the top priority ones for your company in 2010.  Even if your cycle is pretty quick, it’s useful to put it in writing (better yet, in a diagram).
2. Involve your sales department.  They already know what the key milestones are and the typical time frames to move through the cycle.  The sales force also knows the decision influencers and their informational needs/biases.  Working with Sales will not only result in a better map, it’ll reinforce your common objectives while demonstrating Marketing’s goal to generate quality leads that the sales force can actively pursue.
3. Review the content of your website.  Assess how much of your content is targeted to each phase of your sales cycle.  Assess how much of your content actively speaks to the informational needs of each decision maker/influencer.    This will quickly point out where to focus new content development.
4. Review your lead conversion offers (i.e.Free White Paper, Webinar, etc.) to see if your offers cover all the steps in the sales cycle, and where you are getting the most conversions.  Are all your offers  front end loaded (Free Research Report)?  Or, god-forbid, back end loaded (20% off if you sign up NOW!)?
5. Finally, look beyond your website…how does your overall marketing plan and extended web presence drive support your lead generation campaigns?  Evaluate how well you’re getting seen and heard at the industry level.  From industry articles  to blogs; social media sites to webinars and conference speaking engagements.  All roads should lead to your website and ultimately, your sales force.

With these data points, you are armed  to get Sales Cycle Optimized.  You’re now ready to create new content.  Content for your website and content for other venues to shine the light on your thought leadership and superior solutions.  Content and offers that will create conversions at each stage of the sales cycle, so that when the visits move from curiosity to interest, you can send to Sales actionable leads while you nurture those still moving toward that goal.

Happy SCO’ing.  I’d love to hear your SCO ideas and war stories…

A Metro Station on a cold January morning.

The man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes.. During that time approx two thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

After three minutes a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried to meet his schedule.

4 minutes later:   The violinist received his first dollar: a woman threw the money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.

6 minutes:   A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

10 minutes:   A three-year old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time.

This action was repeated by several other children. Every parent, without exception, forced their children to move on quickly.

45 minutes:   The musician played continuously. Only six people stopped and listened for a short while. About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace… The man collected a total of $32.

1 hour:   He finished playing and silence took over.

No one noticed. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin valued at $3.5 million dollars.

Two days before Joshua Bell sold out a theatre in   Boston where the seats averaged $100

This is a true story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people’s priorities…

The questions raised: in a common place environment at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?

One conclusion reached from this experiment could be this: If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made… How many other things are we missing?

This is not just about everyday life – it’s about work, work relationships, and for those of us in B2B Marketing, it is equally worth a moment’s reflection about how, in our own mad dash for deadlines and results, we ignore great ideas and opportunities that are all around us.

More than a “Stop and Smell the Roses” story, this is a reminder that our own perceptions and preconceived approaches may be limiting our success.

The end of one year and start of a new one seems to me a good time to reflect on how we can open our senses and broaden our perceptions.

NOTE: The author of this piece is unknown (with the exception of the closing lines, which I added), and the photo is also without attribution, though the event was originally staged by the Washington Post in January of 2007.  It has been circulating the email ether for quite a while, but when it landed in my inbox this time, it hit a nerve and I thought it worth sharing.

Here’s a Video of the event  – take a moment to enjoy…and Happy Holidays.

When was the last time you worried if you had bad breath? Going into a meeting? Hot date? Job interview?

What did you do about the nagging uncertainty? …Mouthwash? Gum? Ask a friend?

See, that’s the problem. Bad breath is a silent stalker and an intimacy killer. You really can’t tell if you have it – and practically no one but your mother will voluntarily tell you if you do.

The same is true for marketing communications. You can put a lot of thought and effort into what you tell your prospects and clients.  You’ve developed tons of good information to put your best face forward, build your brand and create a connection between you and your buying audience. You’ve created multiple channels – from your search engine optimized website to email campaigns to white papers and video presentations to banner ads – all to convey that great information…

But are they working?  Or is there some invisible barrier that is turning off potential prospects, costing you lost business and revenue?  How do you know?

Good news – unlike real life personal interactions, where you can’t really ask the “Hot Date’ if your breath offends – you CAN find out if prospects are backing away before getting to know you.  You already have the tools…your website is your company Breathalizer!

No matter how big or small your organization, from a Fortune 50o to an up and coming start-up, you can combine the information readily available from Google Analytics (for free) or any number of more sophisticated tools (with comparable costs) with the data you’re gathering from your lead generation programs to see if your marketing communications is drawing them in like honey, or making them drop like flies.

Every B2B marketing professional knows they need a strong website – it is the company’s face to the world and often center of their lead generation universe.  Smart marketers rely on analytic tools to monitor various metrics, like site traffic.  But are you measuring the right things? And most importantly, are you creating places that ask the visitor to share some of their information with you?

It isn’t until you create a TWO WAY communication that you have the opportunity to convert a site visitor into a lead.  Are you creating opportunities for two way communications?  Do you have Landing Pages tied to the key product or service areas of your site, offering valuable, relevant information to visitors interested enough to let you send it to them?  If you answer yes, then you already have the means to  measure your marketing communications effectiveness.  If your site visits are strong, but nobody is “Converting” (i.e. filling out the form to get the free information), then you’ve definitely got bad breath.

The offense may stem from the perceived value or relevance of your offer (Hint: a “Free Needs Assessment” is great for someone that is ready to buy tomorrow but most of your site visitors will translate that offer into – “Warning – A salesperson will be bugging you from here on out!”).  Or maybe the malodor is the fact that you’re asking for their bank account and Social Security number just to download your Case Study.

Whatever the barrier is to getting conversions -  you now have the ability to test and evaluate: to compare the number of site visitors to the number of conversions, and the number of conversions for each offer you provide. Now you’re on your way to measuring whether your lead generation program is working – or if it has a problem.

So start thinking about your offers and calls to action – do you have different ones that appeal to buyers in different stages of the buying process?  Are you helping the newbies who are just leaning about their perceived need as well as actively pitching those that are in the later stage selection process?  (More on lead nurturing in an upcoming post).  Are you testing the effectiveness of various communications styles and tones?

The systematic use of multiple testing parameters, including comparative offers, different fonts, colors, page layout etc. are tactics commonly used by B2C companies.  But for B2B marketers who are communicating complex services of high value and long sales cycles, the use of landing pages and the testing around them to monitor their effectiveness is the best defense against bad breath.

Need help developing your company’s lead generation program and website “breathalizer”?