written on January 14, 2009 by Matt Minarik
Imagine coming into work one day to find a stack of new, fresh, hot business leads!! People that you have never met before are now telling you that they want what you have to offer and are willing to pay for it. Could it be true?! Yes! You can have that happen, and it sure beats sitting at a long, boring trade show booth trying to entice vast crowds to come and talk to you. As IBM's #1 lead generator, I was able to devise a methodology based on priorities that garnered more leads for IBM than anyone else in that worldwide company of 300,000 employees. The methodology was really simpler than it sounds. It is this methodology that I will present in more detail in MindSpring over the course of the next few months on B2B (Business to Business vs retail or consumer) lead generation.
But let me give you the basic priorities of marketing success now. You will note that there are no ‘P's' in these priorities. Once you understand these priorities and methodologies, you should be able to double your response rates - and this applies to all forms of communication; e-mail, direct mail, telemarketing, trade shows, sales calls, etc. I am serious when I say double your response rates. In using this methodology I have been able to get as high as 50% response rates on direct mail! I typically get between a 10% to 20% response rates now for my clients. Now, don't expect a 50% response rate by learning from this short article, but you can certainly increase your response by 100% - you can easily go from 2% to 4% if you just focus on these elements of all successful marketing.
There are five things that determine the level of success in all sales and marketing campaigns - and these five things come in a specific order.
#1 is the List or the target audience you are approaching. After all, if you sell financial services, then you don't want to reach high school students wandering the malls (or untargeted trade show wanderers looking for free pens). The list accounts for up to 75% of the success of the campaign! When I construct a campaign, I spend the most amount of time on the list.
#2 is the Offer. The offer is defined as 'what the customer gives for what he / she gets'. The offer is second most important element and is worth up to 50% of the success of a campaign.
#3 is the Creative, which is not what a graphic designer puts together, but is defined as the vehicle that takes the offer to the audience (list). Now, with apologies to all my creative colleagues out there, the creative is only worth up to 25% of the success of a campaign. Don't get me wrong, here. I have seen campaigns pull 100% better response based on the creative; i.e., a 4% response rate verses a 2% response rate; but in terms of B2B marketing, it is not as important as either the list or the offer. After all, who cares how the right person gets the right offer just as long as they get it?
#4 is Timing. Timing 'floats'. Timing can be more or less important than either the creative or the offer, but it is never more important than the list. The importance of timing is dependant on what is occurring in the business at that specific time - end of budgets, beginning of budgets, acquiring a new company, seasonality, etc.
#5 is actually as important as the list, and it is Follow-Through. I have seen great campaigns that generated tons of leads, but the sales personnel didn't follow-through on the leads and so the opportunity went flat. How terrible.
Along with these priorities, we need some 'glue' to hold all this together. The glue of all sales and marketing is Trust. No matter how good your list or your offer, or your creative is, and no matter if your timing is right and your sales people follow-through, if the customer doesn't trust that you will deliver then you won't get the sale. Trust is a three-legged stool; and the three legs are; Results, Competency, and Personal Character - and they all reside on a platform of Consistency. Define those three legs and put them into your message to the audience.
Lastly, when you write your piece, talk about the customer's needs and not what you can do for them. Some of my best responses have come when the customer doesn't even know what my client is selling. If you talk about the customer and their problems, they'll always want to be around you.
Now you have the framework of what makes a campaign work. From here you understand how to prioritize your time and your costs and efforts. For example, most companies spend inordinate amounts of time on the creative and very little time on the list - just the opposite of what they should be doing. Typically, the best list is your current customer file. It is 5 to 50 times easier to resell to an existing customer than it is to sell to a prospect. That is because of the glue; because they trust you.
So if you want to come in to work and be welcomed with a ton of leads, then simply go through the priorities of List, Offer, Creative, Timing and Follow-through, and message it with the 3-legged Trust stool and you will be on your way!
WRitten by: Matthew Mann Minarik
President, Hi-Q-group
mmm@hiqg.com
440-724-6363