The Heinrich Report Blog

Strategies, insights and tactics for today's marketer

Archive for the ‘Lead Generation’ Category

Three Easy Ways to Develop Content That Builds Trust and Sales

June 2nd, 2011 by

Heinrich clients continually ask, “What is content marketing and why do we need it?” Content marketing, according to Joe Pulizzi, co-author of Get Content, Get Customers and publisher of the Junta42 blog, “is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience — with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

To put it more simply, content marketing isn’t about selling. Instead, it’s about offering your prospects and customers information that’s relevant to them — in their jobs, in their personal lives, or both. This is one reason social media has become so huge: It’s the one place where content is all about “me” the individual versus “you” the company.

Does content marketing work? Yes! According to a statistic cited by Pulizzi, Roper Public Affairs posted data that shows:

  • 80% of business decision makers prefer to get company information in a series of articles versus advertisements
  • 70% say content marketing makes them feel closer to the sponsoring company
  • 60% say that company content helps them make better purchasing decisions

Here at Heinrich, we’re dealing with the content marketing revolution too. Many of our clients don’t know that we can develop and implement both their content and social marketing campaigns, so instead of telling you what others are doing, I thought I’d show you how we’ve been incorporating content into our own marketing mix:

1. Turned our e-newsletter into a blog.

Like direct mail, email marketing is the workhorse for many companies. Email is wonderful because you can measure response almost immediately, and because performing A/B split tests on headlines, images, or copy is cost-effective. However, email lacks social’s engagement. And as you know, our inboxes are overflowing, which has lead to reduced open and clickthrough rates.

For all these reasons and more, we turned the Heinrich Report e-newsletter into a blog. (Lucky for us, we implement and manage blogs for our clients, so this process wasn’t difficult.)

A blog offers many advantages over an e-newsletter as it allows:

  • People to subscribe via RSS, which reduces inbox overwhelm.
  • Marketers to produce content very quickly, an important consideration if you’re in an industry where you need to comment on current events or breaking news.
  • Prospects and customers to engage with you through direct feedback.

The third point is the most important because it’s this engagement that builds trust over time. People who read your blog learn how you think, as well as how you handle positive — and not so positive — feedback. As the marketer, you have the opportunity to get to know people and, over time, turn those online relationships into business.

2. Became more engaged on Facebook.

For those of us who didn’t grow up with the Internet, using Facebook for business-to-business purposes has been a challenge because it’s just so . . . different from what we’re used to; however, that doesn’t mean you should ignore it.

Because Facebook is all about conversations (and definitely not about selling), it allows companies to show their personality — much more so than is possible with email or even a blog.

On the Heinrich Facebook page we’ve been experimenting with posting pictures of some of our office events and using questions and polls to conduct research. (Pay us a visit and give us a “like”!)

How does using Facebook help build trust? As with a blog, Facebook is a place where prospects can engage with you one-on-one. You can use the platform to ask questions — the way Netflix does about movies — or you can deliver information related to your products that your audience finds relevant.

Cabot Creamery Cooperative in Vermont, for example, posts recipes that incorporate its famous cheeses. In a recent post, someone asked the company to bring back its sliced cheddar “without animal rennet.” Gail from Cabot responded by saying the company uses a “microbial-based enzyme” in its cheeses. The customer replied, “Good to know!”

Not only is Cabot positioning itself as a company that cares about its customers and building trust, it’s also learning what its audience values, which allows it to develop products that meet people’s needs — and thus increase sales over time.

3. Developed a special report.

When I meet with my banking clients, I hear their pain with regard to content and social media marketing. As Pulizzi says, today’s customer expects a brand to be a resource of relevant information, not just sales messages, which is why Heinrich developed a new special report about content marketing specifically for financial services.

Whether or not you’re in financial services, download the report to see how we used nine real life examples of banks, credit card companies and insurance firms using content and social media marketing to reach out to their audiences. (Another report about how to incorporate social into direct mail is in the making!)

Special reports like this one help you build thought-leadership and trust. If the content is particularly valuable, others will pass it around to their networks (think Twitter and LinkedIn).

Content marketing is important because it allows you to communicate with people who have learned how to tune out overt advertising messages.

If you’re ready to develop or need help managing a content marketing campaign, Heinrich can help you. From blogs and social media to special reports and landing pages, we have the big picture perspective plus the tactical know-how to help you grow your business.

Feel free to give me a call at 303-239-5213.  In addition to replying to blog comments, I also love talking to people on the phone.

Category:  Content Marketing, Customer Acquisition / Retention, Lead Generation, Social Media Marketing, White Paper  |  Tags: , ,   |  No Comments

LinkedIn: It’s Not Just for Résumés — 4 Online Networking Tips

April 19th, 2011 by

“LinkedIn is just for job seekers,” said a commentator on a blog I read a while ago. “What?!” I heard myself saying aloud. Of course job seekers use LinkedIn, but the site is also all about business — finding it, building it and nurturing it.

LinkedIn is one of my marketing tools of choice. I use it to connect with clients, prospects and vendors, and to conduct research “on the fly” while on conference calls. For example, if someone on the call chimes in with an astute observation, and I don’t know the person, I’ll look him or her up on LinkedIn that very instant.

As I wrote in my post, Three Ways to Jump into Social Media (Even If It’s Not in Your Job Description), social media fluency is an essential skill marketers must have, and one important way to show this fluency is by developing a LinkedIn profile and proactively maintaining it — even if you’re not looking for a job.

Can your peers find you?

In a March 22, 2011, blog post, 100 Million Members and Counting, LinkedIn posted some of its numbers:

  • The site is growing at roughly 1 million members a week
  • 44 million members are U.S.-based
  • 73 of the Fortune 100 are represented
  • The three largest sectors are Service (20%), Finance (9%) and High Tech (9%)

Google isn’t the only search engine in town. In 2010, people performed over 2 billion people searches on LinkedIn. Having an optimized and complete profile ensures your peers (and possibly recruiters) can easily find you.

Getting started: Develop or improve your LinkedIn profile

Despite the relative maturity of the site, I still meet people who say they haven’t taken the time to develop a profile. As the numbers above show, however, it’s vitally important that you do.

If you already have a LinkedIn profile and want to improve it, you can find lots of articles on how to do so. I especially like this one by executive job search coach Meg Guiseppi, 29 Biggest LinkedIn Mistakes.

If you’re really all thumbs and can’t figure how to get started, I recommend that you get a how-to book, such as Neal Shaffer’s Windmills or LinkedIn for Dummies, and then spend a weekend setting up your profile. Or, ask a well-connected peer whose profile you admire to help you.

The most important thing to remember is that you can’t “set and forget” your profile. To be effective, you need to continually manage and update it.

How to use LinkedIn to drive business

The best way to get maximum benefit from LinkedIn is to view it just as you would a face-to-face networking event. This means you can and should do the following on a regular basis:

1. Invite people you know to join your network

Invite your present and former co-workers, friends at other companies, people you meet at conferences or seminars, vendors and customers. Should you accept invites from people you don’t know? That’s your call — some people do, others don’t. The important thing is to connect!

2. Participate in group discussions

Look for and join one or two moderated groups (meaning, the owner or manager is actively removing spam posts and moderating discussions) and begin participating in the conversations. Why is this important? Because you learn new information as well as meet people (maybe your next customer!).

3. Regularly update your status with business-suitable news

You can post your achievements, links to articles or blog posts you find interesting, or a quick factoid from a business book you’re reading. Keeping your status updated ensures your name regularly appears in the news feeds of the people in your network.

4. Create and share non-promotional content

One of the nice things about LinkedIn is that you can customize your profile by using one or more of the many apps available.

These apps help you build non-promotional content that can spark discussions with people in your network, which is how new business is often generated. A few of the apps that business professionals may find useful include:

SlideShare Presentations: Do you speak or give presentations for your company? Are you an expert on a specific topic? SlideShare is an easy way to share your expertise as it allows you to upload presentations for others to view.

Reading List by Amazon: Being an avid reader, this app is near and dear to my heart; it lets me post the books I’ve read along with my opinion about each one. The nifty thing about this app is that people can follow your Reading List, further enhancing your personal brand and sparking discussions with people.

Polls: This easy-to-use app lets you quickly gather market research from your network — a mini focus group as it were. The poll appears on your profile; you can also post it to your various groups or in the Questions section and ask people to take part in the poll. Post the results to spark more discussion.

As you can see, LinkedIn is far from being a simple résumé site. To get the most from it, make sure your profile is up to date and then experiment with the various apps as well as participate in one or two groups. You’ll quickly see the benefits of using LinkedIn to help grow your business.

Have you generated new business from LinkedIn? Post your story below.

 

Category:  Business Development, Customer Acquisition / Retention, Lead Generation, Marketing Research, Social Media Marketing  |  Tags: , ,   |  4 Comments

Build Business with Face-to-Face Networking

February 24th, 2011 by

In this article:

  • The value of face-to-face networking as an important component of a marketing plan
  • Three pillars of networking that can support your business and lead generation efforts

Remember the days before Facebook and LinkedIn? Face-to-face networking connected people and businesses. And it’s still going strong. Despite the deserved trendiness of Facebook and LinkedIn, face-to-face networking remains an essential marketing touchpoint, a core discipline for communicating your brand message and generating leads.
Face-to-face networking provides three essential pillars that help you build your business and keep it strong.

#1 Not just leads, qualified leads.

The whole concept of face-to-face marketing begins with recruiting the support of your immediate sphere of contacts — business people who know you and trust the way you do business. This is your networking “salesforce” and the first circle of your customer base. With face-to-face networking, you capture their business and win their trust and support. This is called a first-tier referral.

Next, through their knowledge of and experience with you, you capture the business of the many people who populate their sphere of contacts. Clearly, the more members you have in your first circle of contacts, the greater the multiplier when you add in the second level of contacts they know. This is the underlying concept behind LinkedIn, except that here you are contacting potential clients through face-to-face contact.

Since you are coming to their contacts with a warm referral, the chances of a successful sale are greatly magnified. This process ideally generates high-quality leads that include the potential customer’s contact data, an introduction, and permission for you to reach out to them, as opposed to waiting for them to call you.

Face-to-face networking groups exist that utilize this marketing dynamic. For an insider’s view into what we feel is one of the best models out there, we talked to Nancy Ann Stubbs, president of the Boulder, Colorado Chapter of BNI (Business Network International). Last year alone, the global entity of BNI generated over 6.5 million referrals for its members, totaling $2.8 billion worth of business!

BNI adheres strongly to the networking philosophy of spheres of contacts as a mutually supportive “salesforce.” “It’s the key to what we’re about,” says Nancy Ann Stubbs. “I’m keeping you in the forefront of my mind while I’m out in the world, and hopefully you [fellow chapter members] are doing the same for me.”

Referrals by fellow members lay the foundation for the next point of contact. When someone refers you, they get the contact information you need to proactively follow up and start a dialogue. “It’s not just leads,” says Nancy. “It’s qualified referrals. And that makes the difference.”

#2 A concise, powerful brand message.

Face-to-face networking can appear somewhat casual and conversational (“let’s meet for drinks or coffee”), but it’s a bona fide business opportunity nonetheless, a chance to recruit the person you are meeting as a client and ultimately as a potential member of your dedicated “salesforce.”

Regardless of the formality of the context, you are always the face and voice of your brand. It’s essential to be ready with your message, and have a clear, articulate pitch about your business and its benefits. If you have not clearly defined what you have to offer, how can your contacts, your “salesforce” do it any better?

BNI believes in the value of a strong, concise pitch, and the members must practice what they preach. At each weekly meeting, every member stands up in front of the group and presents a 60-second commercial about their business, their unique value proposition. “It’s your story,” says Nancy, “it’s what you can offer, and what differentiates you.” BNI’s 60-second commercial is a version of the “elevator pitch.” Out in the real world, you have a minute or less to communicate to a potential client who you are, what you do, why what you offer is interesting, and what exactly you are asking the client to do in response. That’s not a lot of time to convey a large amount of information, so being able to practice and refine your pitch in the “safe” context of a mutually supportive group is very valuable.
A 60-second pitch typically includes:

  • your name and the name of your company
  • your unique value proposition (one characteristic of your company or service that sets your brand/business apart from others in the field)
  • recruiting — the type of referral you are looking for, and what you are asking the “pitchee” to do
  • a strong close to your pitch with a tagline that will help the “pitchee” remember you and your unique value proposition

We did it, and so can you! You can hear Heinrich Marketing’s 60-second commercial here:

Build your business

#3 A supportive environment.

Whether you choose BNI or another organization, make sure you’re getting the kind of support you need to succeed. The structure of your organization should encourage your professionalism, and help bring it to even higher levels.

Let’s look again at BNI. Because each chapter is run like a business, each member’s success is vital. As a result, you’re with a group of people who genuinely care about the health and wealth of your business. The weekly meetings start and end on time, just like a well-run business. Attendance is mandatory. Members arrive on time and stay for the entire meeting. The agenda is set out and adhered to, every week. Cell phones and Blackberrys are off. Each member is fully present, fully engaged in the presentations of their fellow members.
In such a group, the success of one member becomes the success of all. “Givers Gain” is the BNI motto. The more you give to others in the group, the more they will reciprocate, as all share a common goal. “This is my marketing team,” says Nancy Ann Stubbs of her fellow chapter members. “I’ve got 30 salespeople working for me all the time,” spreading the word about her business, and bringing her high-quality, qualified leads from their spheres of contacts.

Effective face-to-face networking not only brings in customers, but also creates advocates for your business — just like an online social media campaign does.

Make face-to-face networking a priority.

Social networking and face to-face networking share common goals and benefits. They are complimentary disciplines, not competing ones. A successful business will do both. Relative to social media networking, face-to-face networking has the added benefit of humanizing your brand, establishing trust and encouraging dialogue. Isn’t that what effective marketing is all about?

Category:  Business Development, Lead Generation  |  Tags:   |  No Comments

What We’re Reading (and loving): The Referral Engine

August 23rd, 2010 by

At Heinrich Marketing, we spend a lot of time helping clients create effective referral strategies. So we were super excited when John Jantsch released his latest book, and packed it with great ideas that businesses of all sizes can use.

 

Hear that? Someone’s talking about you right now.

Let’s face it. In today’s social media-search engine-customer review-centric landscape, it’s not a question of whether you should get your customers to participate in your marketing. They’re already out there doing it. The marketing challenge as we see it: Enhancing tactics that give companies some measure of influence over the message that’s communicated during the referral process.

The Referral Engine explores ways to build the framework that supports a referral culture and help create momentum for your company. The old “refer a friend, get a reward” tactic just isn’t enough anymore. “Referral generation is a set of processes within the overall marketing system,” (page 9) says Jantsch, and in fact, “the ideal referral system…can eliminate the need to ever actually ask for referrals again” (page 11).

Build a framework where referrals can thrive.

Reading Jantsch’s book reminded us of last month’s Heinrich Report article “How to Make Your Content King“. In it, we explored how to use content as a way to create a meaningful dialogue with the customer. The Referral Engine reiterates the necessity for strong content, and assigns it new importance — the building blocks for a strong referral system.

Read How to Make Your Content King
Buy The Referral Engine

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Category:  Book Reviews, Lead Generation  |  Tags: ,   |  No Comments

Rethinking Lead Generation

July 15th, 2010 by

Rethinking Lead Generation

Heinrich Marketing helps clients maximize lead generation results. One thing we’ve learned along the way: You can increase conversions and grow your business simply by applying new approaches to basic lead generation principles. 

 

Here are just a few ways to shift your perspectives and maximize the efficiency of your lead generation strategies.

Align your sales and marketing teams.

Successful lead generation must delicately balance brand, marketing and customer needs. So clarity is essential. Is the brand message concise? Does the marketing strategy support it? Most importantly, are both relevant to the customers? To find a shortcut to all of these answers, start on the front lines of the business. Take the time to listen to account reps or any customer-facing team, and make sure they and the marketing team are on the same page.

 

  • Communication is key. It sounds so simple, right? But days are long and departments are busy. Be sure to take the time to bring your teams together to catch up, share ideas and see the big picture.

 

Tailor your message to the consumer’s buying stage.

When a sale is a process, timing is everything. Talk to your future customer the right way, and at the right time. A communication can feel more meaningful and memorable if it comes at just the right moment. 

 

  • Consider CRM tools like print on demand as a way to maximize the effectiveness of your messaging.  It’s a cost-efficient way to both personalize a message to a moment in time and track the potential customer reading it, and it’s all in one tool. Learn more here.

 

Keep content fresh and relevant across communications.

Prospects across numerous categories spend time researching online before they purchase a product or service. So, search marketing might have already led your potential customers to your online or social media efforts. A website, a blog, a newsletter, Facebook — they’re all places to demonstrate your value, state your brand message and start (or continue) an engaging dialogue. Even better, an enthusiastic reader can forward these on to others, and generate even more leads.

 

  • Be honest and direct. Promotions and sales-speak can sound crass in a blog or newsletter. Talk straight to the potential customer at this level, to reinforce that you’re legitimate, relevant and worthy of an emotional connection. Learn more here.

 

Grow leads from your own garden.

Utilize your marketing database to look at current customers with fresh eyes. Through segmentation and targeting, you can evolve your relationship, and point them in the direction of other parts of your business. Your new perspective should also lead you to revisit potential customers who have expressed an interest in previous lead generation efforts, but didn’t act.

  •  Explore cloud-based CRM tools. Great for segmentation, reporting and managing the sales cycle, tools like SalesForce.com can simplify the path from lead generation to sale. Contact us to learn more.  

 

In all, these approaches to lead generation facilitate multitasking: You can cultivate the relationship in each stage and stay one step ahead of the consumers at all times during the sales cycle. That’s the key. When you always have a plan for the next step you want them to take, be it as small as watching a webinar or as big as the sale itself, you can more quickly guide consumers down the path that turns them into a customer.

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Category:  Business Development, Lead Generation, Segmentation  |  No Comments