“Bob Hebeisen just reordered Viagra®”… and other Facebook marketing campaigns you should never see

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Bob Hebeisen

By Bob Hebeisen

The other day I was reading an article on Ad Age Digital about Facebook marketing. It was a recap of various case studies of successful Facebook marketing campaigns including Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Forever21, eBay, MTV, TripAdvisor, Ticketmaster, and Major League Baseball.

At the end of the article, the author insists…

“Any way you look at it, the future of nearly every business
is intimately entwined with Facebook…”

This is a crazy statement. Come on, gotta stop the hype. Facebook marketing is a good tactic for many — but not all — consumer brands. And it is not an efficient or effective tactic for most B2B brands.

Are the fish inclined to take your bait?

There is an old adage about marketing and sales: “fish where the fish are.” It means your marketing and sales efforts should be focused on media that can deliver your target market. It wouldn’t make much sense to go fishing in a pond where all the fish have been removed, it would not yield positive results. Likewise, if you spend your time executing marketing campaigns to lists and media devoid of your target audience then you will experience very poor results.

But I think a more apt adage would be to “fish where the fish are inclined to take your bait.” I know that is not as catchy as the original phrase, but let me explain. You could fish all day long in a lake full of fish, but if the fish are for some reason not inclined to take your bait then you will not have good results.

That’s what I think is the big problem with Facebook marketing for many brands. There is little doubt that Facebook can deliver your target market. We all know the stats:

However, there is one sobering statistic for B2B marketing:

But that’s not the biggest problem.  For many brands (some consumer and most B2B) people are just not willing to engage on Facebook. The “fish” are present, but they are not inclined to take your bait.

Examples of Facebook marketing campaigns you should never see:

#1. Bob Hebeisen shared the Groupon™ “25% discount on United Site Services Portable Toilet Rentals” — Sure, event planners place a high value on reliable service vendors. But the minutia of our work lives is often too technical or mundane to share on Facebook because it would be excruciatingly boring for our friends and family. United Site Services does not have a Facebook page.  As a B2B marketer for the software company PTC, I “liked” Facebook campaigns that my own company was running, and shared technical videos and published case studies about CAD software on Facebook. I can tell you now that it bored the heck out of 99% of my family and friends.  Even the design engineers who were included in our target market joined our Facebook campaigns in very small numbers and engaged very infrequently.  Marketing bandwidth would have been better spent elsewhere.

  • Social Media that makes sense: United Site Services has built some basic interactive components into their own website: a sizing and configuration guide that helps event planners get the right number and type of units based on their audience needs.  They could host a blog about all sorts of event management topics to engage their buyers.  They could build a stronger presence on LinkedIn and participate in LinkedIn discussion groups for event planning.

#2. Bob Hebeisen’s APC Back-UPS® ES 550VA uninterruptible power supply saved the day this morning when the power spiked while performing the month-end financial close — It might be true, but it is not really something you would type into your Facebook status update. APC does not have a Facebook page.

  • Social Media that makes sense: APC supports their user community with a robust set of discussion forums.  This makes a lot more sense than Facebook for a technical buyer, and for a product you hope you never have to rely on.

#3. Bob Hebeisen likes Joshua Spirn & Associates bankruptcy attorneys — The brands you are affiliated with in your work life may represent highly confidential activities.  Your company would probably not appreciate it if you were publicly “liking” a bankruptcy attorney on Facebook for all the world to see (and in fact it might represent an SEC violation if you work for a public company).  Joshua Spirn & Associates *does* have a Facebook page, and it is pretty well populated with status updates.  But only one person has clicked the “like” button to receive the attorney’s status updates in their feed, so I would question whether maintaining a Facebook presence is an effective use of their time.

  • Social Media that makes sense: Joshua Spirn Associates has excellent search engine ranking and they have 24×7 live chat on their website.  That probably contributes greatly to new business.  They also maintain a weekly blog.  This is a good idea, but there is no real opinion sharing on the blog, it is more of a running list of local companies who have declared bankruptcy, so there is little or no commenting or other audience interaction.  They would probably benefit from actively seeking endorsements on services like Yelp (only 1 endorsement) where the identity of the endorser is kept somewhat anonymous.  They could also explore LinkedIn (they do not have a company profile on LinkedIn, and there are some discussion groups dedicated to bankruptcy law they could participate in).

#4. Bob Hebeisen just reordered Viagra® — Unless you are Bob Dole, Pele, or another celebrity endorser of Viagra, you are probably not interested in broadcasting your affiliation with that brand — even though you might be a devoted and grateful user.  Viagra does not have a Facebook page.

  • Social Media that makes sense: I think Viral Video would be a great social media element for Viagra’s marketing strategy.  But, surprisingly, it is almost impossible to find any of Viagra’s celebrity endorsement commercials on YouTube.  So it would seem that not only have they opted NOT to upload and distribute these videos on YouTube themselves, but they actively police other individuals from uploading them.  Viagra does have a YouTube channel but it is currently devoted to informing people about pharmaceutical piracy.  Viagra apparently has exactly zero sense of humor about erectile dysfunction, and maybe that is the best tone for them to set from a business standpoint.

I’m not saying there are no uses for Facebook marketing in the B2B world. There are some business products that are so pervasive and used horizontally across so many different industries and job functions that Facebook is a good medium. For example, the Microsoft Excel Facebook page offers tips and techniques and moderated peer support to its 81K+ friends.  Frankly, users might be better served finding answers on the Microsoft Excel Support Site or the MSDN Forum, but Facebook is much more approachable for most non-technical users.  Microsoft’s time maintaining the MS Excel Facebook page is probably time well spent.

It’s about context

The reason Facebook doesn’t work for the majority of B2B brands is not that the audience is absent.  It is not that you can’t select the right people through profile data or relevant “likes”.  It is not because of any mechanical problems with Facebook as a medium — it is a great platform for publishing content and enabling people to interact with it (likes, comments, shares).  It is not because the results cannot be measured — with appropriate campaign discipline it is just as easy to track Facebook campaign effectiveness as any other web or email campaign.

The problem with Facebook for B2B marketing is purely related to context — it is a place where people gather for non-work related fun.  Even if you are Facebook friends with your work colleagues, you probably do not interact with them on Facebook *about work matters*.  It is not the place where people are looking for work-related product information or brand interaction.

Posted in Blog, Community Site, Facebook, LinkedIn, Social Media, Viral Video, Yelp | 2 Comments

A Case Study in Landing Page Optimization: How to Double the Impact of Your Budget

Posted on November 21, 2011 by Bob Hebeisen

By Bob Hebeisen

I’m pleased to have another article published by MarketingProfs, one of my favorite marketing websites. I’ve reprinted it here for your convenience:

A Case Study in Landing Page Optimization: How to Double the Impact of Your Budget

by Bob Hebeisen
Published on November 15, 2011 on www.MarketingProfs.com

In this article, you’ll learn…

    • An example of how an optimized landing page nearly doubled conversions
    • Six detailed steps for optimizing your landing page to produce results

I just finished a landing page optimization project for Alpha Software. The company relies heavily on a 30-day free trial of its Alpha Five database software, and then works to convert trial downloaders to purchasers via email marketing and inside-sales calling.

The results of the A/B split test on the company’s landing page came back recently, and I am pleased to report that the optimized version is converting pay-per-click (PPC) clicks to free-trial downloaders at double the rate of the original landing page:

    • Original landing page: 393 clicks at a cost of $670.53, converting to 20 downloads (5.1% conversion rate, $33.53 per converted lead)
    • Optimized landing page: 386 clicks at a cost of $676.23, converting to 39 downloads (10.1% conversion rate, $17.34 per converted lead)

With almost the same media investment, Alpha is now driving nearly twice as many leads!

Here is a SlideShare presentation (watch it in full-screen mode) that documents what changes I made and why:

I applied the following six landing page optimization principles to this task.

1. Control the flow

You should design your landing page to function like a cattle chute, making your offer or call-to-action (CTA) the only possible path through the page. Sorry, I know that is a crude analogy for your prospects and customers! But your landing page will be much more successful at converting clicks to leads if you eliminate links that allow visitors to navigate away from the page:

    • Eliminate top and side navigation. Even the top and side navigation bars that are parts of your website’s template should be eliminated from your landing page. That approach is a really hard thing for Web designers and bloggers to wrap their heads around because their main mission is to encourage free flow of traffic across the site. But giving prospects an easy way to navigate to other content on your website is in conflict with your mission to get them to respond to your CTA.
    • Eliminate extraneous navigation. Alpha’s original landing page had a bunch of magazine review quotes at the bottom of the page that included hyperlinks to the actual articles. Including the quotes and logos was a good idea (see principle 3: “dispel anxiety”), but I eliminated the hyperlinks.

2. Sell your CTA

Use powerful language on your landing page to sell your CTA. Landing pages are often the forgotten variable in online lead-generation marketing campaigns. You spend so much time and money creating ads and offers and buying media… that you forget to continue to sell your CTA on the landing page, and so your prospects stall out and don’t convert.

Alpha’s original landing-page headline read “Free Trial – 3 Minute Download”—with no real explanation about what the product did or what its benefits were. It’s no surprise the company had a low conversion rate. Why would visitors download a free trial of software if they don’t even know what it is? So I rewrote the headline to read “Free 30-Day Trial of Award-Winning Database Software” and included two bullet points describing key benefits.

Alpha’s Original Free Trial Landing Page

.

The Optimized Landing Page — drives nearly twice as many leads!

3. Dispel anxiety

Today’s prospects are cynical. If you want them to fill out your form and submit to inevitable marketing harassment, you’ll need to dispel their anxiety and prove to them that you are worth the aggravation.

Here are three ways to gain your prospects’ trust:

    • Display your privacy policy. On Alpha’s page, we noted the privacy policy right next to the “download” button.
    • Include third-party validation. Third-party validation on your landing page will convince prospects that you are a reputable company. Alpha was fortunate to have a wealth of positive press reviews of its software, so we featured the logos and pull-quotes from those articles. You could also include award logos, professional certifications, logos of organizations with which you are affiliated, logos of well-known customers or business partners, etc.
    • Shorten your forms. Asking for too much information may seem like an unfair transaction for anxious prospects and will cause massive form abandonment. Luckily, Alpha already recognized that risk, and the only piece of information it asks for on this landing page is the prospect’s email address.

4. Tidy up the page

No prospect has a long enough attention span to plow through a poorly organized landing page. Here are some things I did to Alpha’s page to tidy it up and make it easier for prospects to consume:

    • Eliminate extraneous copy and graphics. For the optimized landing page, I reduced the number of magazine reviews displayed from six to four. One magazine wrote two articles about Alpha Five, so I kept the strongest one. I also pulled out three of the weaker reviews and replaced them with two stronger reviews that were not originally included. I also reduced the copy length for all the pull-quotes because they were too long and they forced Alpha to use type that was so small it was practically illegible. So the new page included fewer, pithier magazine reviews displayed in larger, easier-to-read type.
    • Organize your copy. When I reviewed Alpha’s original landing page, I noticed the messages were fragmented and scattered on the page. I categorized the content down into product description and benefits, trial download features, and press logos and quotes. I then created three content blocks on the optimized page for each category. The new page is organized and flows.
    • Position the most important content above the scroll line. A fortunate byproduct of the tidying-up process is that we were able to move the most compelling stuff up higher on Alpha’s landing page, enabling prospects to take in more of the content without scrolling. Overall, the page is tidier, easier to read, and shorter; as a result, it’s less imposing to prospects who land on it.

5. Embrace good SEO principles

Did you know that Google AdWords gives priority to ads with landing pages that have higher relevancy scores for the keyword associated with the ad? So if you are bidding the exact same amount for a keyword as your competitor, but your landing page content is more relevant, Google will place your ad above your competitor’s ad.

Here are a few SEO tips to keep in mind when designing your landing page:

    • Use a descriptive HTML title tag. Alpha’s original landing page had no title tag, so I added one that read “Free Trial of Alpha Five Award-Winning Online Database Software for creating relational databases for desktop, Web, or mobile devices.”
    • Use appropriate Meta information. I added Meta tags to the optimized landing page that included several of Alpha’s most popular keyword phrases.
    • Use popular keywords in your page copy. I added some of Alpha’s most popular keyword phrases to the body and bullet copy of the page.

6. Keep testing

Results can always be improved. So, although we have taken a major step forward by doubling Alpha’s conversion rate with this landing page optimization project, we can continue to test major and minor variations to further improve the conversion rate, testing elements such as…

    • Headline
    • Bullet copy
    • Layout
    • Button copy
    • Button color

* * *
Related Reading About Landing Page Optimization

Though a lot of this stuff is just common sense, landing page optimization is actually a pretty well-documented science. The following are additional reading materials on landing page optimization:

MarketingProfs resources (free):

MarketingProfs resources (PRO):

Other resources:

Posted in A/B Testing, Landing Page Optimization, MarketingProfs, Pay Per Click, Portfolio - Bylined Articles | 4 Comments

Landing Page Optimization: my case study is featured on WhichTestWon

Posted on October 24, 2011 by Bob Hebeisen


By Bob Hebeisen

I’m excited to report that the Landing Page Optimization work I recently completed for Alpha Software Corporation was featured today on my favorite marketing website, WhichTestWon.com!


How To Optimize A Landing Page
I created a SlideShare to show you a side-by-side comparison of the two landing pages and an explanation of the changes I made to optimize the results. You can check it out below (spoiler alert: don’t view this SlideShare before you try to predict which landing page performed better on WhichTestWon.com, that is cheating!):
View How To Optimize A Landing Page on SlideShare. View more presentations from Bob Hebeisen on SlideShare.

Notes About This Case Study And Its One-Week Appearance on WhichTestWon.com

This case study ran publicly on WhichTestWon.com for one week between Wednesday, October 26th and Wednesday, November 2nd.  If you click through to it now you will see it has been moved to the “premium” section of their website where it is still featured but only for subscribers who pay for a premium membership.

I worked pretty hard to promote traffic to this post.  I issued multiple Facebook and Google+ status updates about it, Tweeted about it, posted status updates on LinkedIn, I posted links in relevant LinkedIn groups and comment threads, and posted comments on other marketing blogs under relevant topics.  And of course I blogged about it here.  Thanks to my friends and followers who shared the link and echoed the promotion (notably: Julie Danahy Hebeisen, Stacey Clement, Judi Cook, Reid Overcash, Hank Anderson, and Kevin Dickey).  Lisa Seaman, editor of WhichTestWon.com, tells me my case study received more traffic, submissions, and comments than any other case study in the past several months (bit.ly tells me my shortened link was responsible for 27% of the clicks).

It was fun to watch the results and the comments of the responders.  To my surprise, the response to the case study was split almost evenly, with 49% guessing that option A was the winner, and 51% (correctly) guessing that option B was the winner.  The thing that seemed to throw many people off is that “3 minute download” was part of the headline of the old page, and people thought this would be an important feature that would make more people respond. (Note: in the optimized landing page I did not delete this benefit, but I moved it from the headline to a less prominent position on the page.)

The truth is, the changes I made to the landing page were almost entirely textbook Landing Page Optimization fixes that are well-documented if you do your research (check out the SlideShare linked above, the last page of it has links to several good articles on Landing Page Optimization).

The fact that this audience of professional marketers could not tell which of two pages drove leads at double the rate of the other is a little bit shocking and disconcerting.  I think it reflects some general misconceptions about landing pages, and some lack of experience by some of today’s younger marketers:

  • Misconception #1: more is better.
    Unfortunately I think marketing in general has become an exercise in pouring as much content onto your website as possible.  This impulse is driven by search engine marketing’s push for keyword density and by content marketing’s push for a machine-gun paced publication schedule.But savvy marketers with a direct response mentality know that short copy usually wins, and removing distractions and options almost always improves response rates.
  • Misconception #2: promoting free navigation through your website is good.
    Promoting free navigation through your website and blog is usually a good thing.  Generally, webmasters and marketers should strive to make it easy for visitors to engage with multiple pages and navigate quickly to find what they want.But landing pages are different.  It is much better to strip out all extraneous navigation from your landing page.  I use the analogy that your landing page should be like a cattle chute and the only way for your visitor to travel through it should be to go through the offer/call to action.

Why is WhichTestWon.com My Favorite Website?

After the test ran, I congratulated Lisa Seaman because they have created a website/blog that is so fun for marketers to interact with that it feels like a game.  You are challenged each week to use your marketing instincts to predict which version of an A/B test is the winner. Sometimes it is obvious, but more often than not it is difficult to predict the results and tricky to explain why one variation works better than the other. The moral of the story is you should always test, and you can really get burned if you just rely on your gut instincts. 
Posted in A/B Testing, Google, Landing Page Optimization, Pay Per Click, Portfolio, Portfolio - Bylined Articles, Search Engine Marketing, Testing and Measurement, Website Marketing, WhichTestWon.com | Leave a comment

Tapping Internet Memes for Viral Videos*

Posted on October 20, 2011 by Bob Hebeisen
(*at least I hope it goes viral!)

By Bob Hebeisen

For the past few months I have been contracting at Alpha Software Corporation. In business since 1982, Alpha is a real bootstrap organization with lean, highly productive permanent staff, and they plug in contractors and service providers to add capacity.

Well, the bootstrapping must have rubbed off on me a little bit because while I was working on a landing page optimization project, I found myself playing around with a meme video, hoping it would go viral.

Why a Meme?
When we first started talking about viral videos, someone tossed around some ideas about funny and intriguing video concepts. But I think it is really hard to come up with something funny enough to go viral. And then it is also difficult and costly to get it produced with high enough quality to pay off the concept (and also to reflect positively on your brand). And finally, once you get it produced you need to get enough exposure to feed the chain reaction that makes it go viral. If you mess up on any of those variables, then you’ve wasted a lot of time and money on a flop.
The rules are different when you are talking about Internet memes:
  • Internet memes are already funny. They are, by definition, a running joke.
  • Internet memes typically have low production value and can be “hacked” with technology that is free to download or already on your computer.
  • Internet memes already have an audience because people are familiar with previous versions of them.
And so I wound up creating this viral (I hope) video “MS Access 2010 Dog Tease.” It was surprisingly easy to create, here are the steps:

1. Find a meme that fits your brand and your message
After a little bit of brainstorming, we decided to do a version of the Dog Tease meme. The original Ultimate Dog Tease video is a viral blockbuster with over 65 million views on YouTube. If you search YouTube for “dog tease” you will see it has been modified, copied, and responded to hundreds of times for comic and promotional effect.
Here’s why the Dog Tease meme made sense for Alpha Software:
  • Alpha Software Corporation is dog crazy. Specifically, Richard Rabins, the Co-Chairman, is dog crazy. He always has been. When I worked there back in the ’90s, Richard instituted a policy where any employee could bring their dog to work at any time (the woman I shared an office with had a 140 lb. English Mastiff named Jagger she would regularly bring to work). More evidence: earlier this year, Alpha issued a press release announcing that Richard’s dog Clifton had joined Alpha as “Director of Sniff-Testing.”
  • The theme of the Dog Tease meme is disappointment. The dog’s hopes get built up when the man starts talking about food, only to be dashed when the man announces that he ate the food himself, and then gave it to the cat. Alpha’s brand is all about picking up off the floor the disappointed customers of other database software. So we did a version of the dog tease video that starts with a disappointed dog but then gives him renewed hope.
When we started discussing using a meme, Richard suggested the Dog Tease meme, and it was a perfect choice.

2. Get the source video
Sure, you can find the video on YouTube. But you need to get the video file *onto your hard drive* if you want to modify it and then output your own video. Mashable published a list of applications you can use to download YouTube videos to your computer. I ended up using Easy YouTube Video Downloader, which is a plug-in for FireFox that adds a button to the YouTube interface and allows you to download any YouTube video as a MP4 file, it couldn’t have been easier. Please note this disclaimer from the Mashable article:
…downloading personal copies of YouTube videos is not supported by the YouTube Terms of Service, which states: “You may access User Submissions for your information and personal use solely as intended through the provided functionality of the YouTube Website. You shall not copy or download any User Submission unless you see a “download” or similar link displayed by YouTube on the YouTube Website for that User Submission.”

3. Script it
The hardest part of the whole project was developing the script for the meme video. It wasn’t difficult, just tedious. Since you are going to re-use the existing video and just replace the audio, the first thing you need to do is map out the script of the original video, and then fit your revised script into the same cadence so the video and your new audio match up and look natural. You can see from the screen shot below the way I used MS Excel to map out the original script on a timeline and then draft the replacement script to fit.

You can download the spreadsheet document I used for scriptingto make it easy if you decide to do a video of your own.


4. Produce it
This is surprisingly easy, even for someone like me with next to zero video production experience. The means for doing it are readily available, here’s what I used:
  • The standard microphone from my laptop computer
  • Audacity, an opensource freeware audio recording and processing software
  • Microsoft Windows Live Movie Maker (which ships with Windows 7) for mixing the new audio track to the video and outputting the new video
There was one thing I was unable to do with Microsoft Windows Live Movie Maker. The original dog tease video was only one minute and six seconds long. That’s not enough time to get much of a marketing message across to your audience. So I came up with the idea that we could double the length of the video simply by running it forward and then in reverse, like a mirror image. Since the video footage is just a dog shifting around, wagging its tail, and making funny faces, it actually looks pretty natural when you run the footage backwards, nobody who I’ve shown it to has even noticed it until I point it out. Microsoft Windows Live Movie Maker does not support the ability to run your video in reverse, so I had a friend with Final Cut Pro on the Mac who did it for me in about 30 seconds. Here’s the doubled video file if you want it.
  • First I recorded the dog’s voiceover and dropped the audio clips into Microsoft Live MovieMaker. Audacity lets you easily record the audio, trim dead spots from the beginning and end of your recording and smooth over any hot spots, and then save them as .WAV files. MovieMaker lets you import audio, position it on the timeline just right, and mix it with the original video. Record each vocal outburst as a separate file, so you will end up with around 15 little audio files for the dog.
  • Next I output the new video with just the dog’s voiceover. Why did I do this? Because MovieMaker does not have multi-track capabilities for audio, so any overlapping of the dog’s voiceover with the man’s voiceover could not be accommodated. So I output the video with just the dog’s voiceover and then I started a new MovieMaker project with that interim video to add the man’s voiceover.
  • Then I recorded the man’s voicover and dropped the audio clips into MovieMaker.(Again, I recorded each vocal outburst as a separate file and I had around 15 little .WAV files for the man’s voiceover.)I imported them into MovieMaker and positioned them just right on the timeline.
  • I added credits and a call-to-action (CTA) to the end. MovieMaker makes it easy to add title screens, credits, and captions to your videos, and to use basic animation techniques like wipes, fades, scrolls, etc. The CTA is to download the Alpha Five free trial.
  • Finally, I output the finished video. When outputting the video from MovieMaker, I just used the recommended settings for the output file and I wound up with about a 40MB .WMV file and the A/V quality is totally fine.

5. Post it
This is pretty straightforward. We posted it on YouTube and Vimeo, and might post it on a few other video sharing sites.
However, before you upload the video, take some time to think about how you can maximize the SEO value of your video. For example, when we first posted the dog tease video, we named it “Alpha Five Dog Tease.” That seemed logical, we didn’t even really think about it. But then I got the idea that we should post it as “MS Access 2010 Dog Tease,” and that made a huge difference in the number of people who would be able to find it through Google and YouTube searches. I also developed a strong 500-character description for the video that is chocked full of keywords, and added some important search tags. Solid SEO discipline.
So did changing the name from “Alpha Five Dog Tease” to “MS Access 2010 Dog Tease” make a big difference? Well, I can’t quantify it. But after I made the change I ran a YouTube search on “MS Access 2010” and I was quite pleased to see this:
Notice the little thumbnail image of our Dog Tease video about half way down on page 3. I know that if I was searching and was presented with this page of thumbnail images, amid the sea of images of screen shots of programming dialog boxes I would definitely click on the one thumbnail image featuring the cute little face of a doggie!
Finally, if you are revising somebody else’s video for your meme, then you should give them due credit for providing the original material. This will preserve good will and will make it less likely that they will flag it as a copyright violation. I gave credit to IcePrincessXXIV (the person who posted the original video of the dog) in both the video credits and the YouTube description.

6. Promote it
You’ve already got SEO working for you thanks to the care you took in naming/describing/tagging it when you posted it. Now you need to push some messages out that drive traffic to the video:
  • Email/E-newsletter
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Blog
  • Website
  • Forums
I found a good blog post about how to promote your viral video. Suffice it to say that it is not easy to get your video to go viral! I am going to do a separate blog post about all the promotional plan I devised to get the video to go viral.
Try to encourage visitors to interact with it: give it a thumbs up rating, make it a favorite, leave a comment about what they like the best… and (most importantly) share it via email, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.! All these things increase the viral exposure of the video and makes it rise to the top of search rankings.
You can also push the interaction even further: challenge your audience to make their own versions of it. When we announced the dog tease video on the Alpha Software blog, we linked the script and the video file to the blog article so readers could play around for themselves.
Create a Dog Tease video of your own and post it as a response on YouTube. It’s easy and fun to create a Dog Tease video…
  • Step-by-step instructions can be found here.
  • The video source file can be downloaded here.
  • The script template can be downloaded here.
  • To post your own video as a “video response,” go to the MS Access 2010 Dog Tease video on YouTube, click your cursor into the “comments” box and you will see a control appear on the side that says “create a video response”, which will allow you to upload your video.
We hope to see some response videos posted to YouTube!
Posted in Internet Meme, Meme, Social Media, Video Marketing, Viral Video | 5 Comments

Is Tradeshow Marketing Dead? 12 Tips to Resuscitate a Classic Lead-Gen Tactic

Posted on July 2, 2011 by Bob Hebeisen

By Bob Hebeisen

I am very pleased to have recently had an article published in MarketingProfs, one of the premiere marketing websites.  I am republishing it here for your viewing pleasure:

Is Tradeshow Marketing Dead? 12 Tips to Resuscitate a Classic Lead-Gen Tactic
by Bob Hebeisen
Published by MarketingProfs on June 23, 2011

Many have pronounced tradeshow marketing dead. But with the right strategy, hard work, and flawless execution, tradeshows can still be a productive part of your marketing plan.

Here are 12 ways to breathe new life into your tradeshows.

1. Start planning early
Maybe you have received a call from a tradeshow sales rep offering an unbelievable discount to replace an exhibitor that just backed out two or three weeks before the tradeshow. But getting into a tradeshow at the last minute is almost never a good idea. It shows you are being reactive with a major investment of time and money, and that is never a good sign.

If you start planning well in advance, however, you have the opportunity to obtain a quality booth space, get on the speaking agenda, secure adequate sales engagement, and plan appropriate pre- and post-show promotion. Your chances of having a positive experience are much higher.

Remember that most of the tradeshow cost is T&E (travel and entertainment), collateral and sign production, drayage, labor, rentals, etc.—so a last-minute deal on the exhibit cost is not really much of a deal.

2. Make sure the audience is a good fit
Most shows will publish a Web page for attendees that includes a “who should attend” description. Read it to determine whether the show is a good match for your target market.

In a LinkedIn discussion about the topic, one of the participants suggested asking for the previous year’s attendee list. It doesn’t have to have full contact information; the company name and title for each registrant would give you a good idea if the audience is right.

Ask for the entire list so you can fact-check the salesperson’s claim about last year’s attendance number, and also to gauge wheat-to-chaff ratio. Don’t expect every registrant to be from your target audience, but determine whether the ratio is acceptable.

3. Get on the presentation agenda
I talked to a colleague recently who told me she has pared down her tradeshow participation plan by doing only the ones at which she is able to get a slot on the presentation agenda. Pretty smart.

It is much more likely to be worth attending a show if you can get on the agenda; it is validation that your message is on target for the audience. Conversely, it might not be worth doing a show if you are not on the presentation agenda. Exhibiting alone might not be a large enough value proposition to warrant the investment in tradeshow marketing.

Tradeshow attendees in North America are so jaded about walking the exhibit floor, especially at the executive level, that exhibitor presence alone might not be worthwhile. A speaker slot ensures your message will be delivered to a large audience and gives your speaker a chance to mention your booth number for follow-up discussions.

4. Establish a service level agreement with sales
Do not do tradeshows without appropriate Sales buy in. Tradeshows should be a shared effort between Sales and Marketing.

Work with the sales manager to establish a service-level agreement for Sales to work hard to promote your participation before and after the show, engage attendees during the show, and follow up aggressively and systematically after the show.

If you can’t get Sales to agree, you are better off just renting the list of attendees and focusing on marketing for lead generation.

The service-level agreement goes both ways, so be sure to outline all the investment and hard work Marketing will deliver, and be sure to stick to your commitments.

5. Negotiate for the full list of registrants
A one-time blast or a pre- and post-show blast will probably be offered as part of the exhibitor package. That might be good enough, but negotiate for unlimited use of the full list, if possible.

6. Promote your participation to customers and prospects prior to the show
All tradeshows are local, so the saying goes. Promote your presence at the show within a 100-mile radius via marketing and sales. Mandate a sales call campaign in that territory as part of the service-level agreement mentioned above. Promote it at least two weeks in advance to give members of your audience time to arrange their attendance if they so desire. Promote a relevant offer they can collect by visiting your booth. Get free exhibitor passes from tradeshow management, if possible.

7. Demand aggressive and professional performance from booth staff
Again, this is part of the service-level agreement with Sales. Mandate uniform attire so visitors know who is working. Prohibit any phone or BlackBerry use in the booth area; it interferes with engagement. Have a practiced elevator pitch and engagement question ready. Get out into the aisle and engage with everyone who walks by.

I once worked with a company that was an absolute barracuda on the tradeshow floor. Sales management worked the booth and led by example. They harassed and cajoled the sales staff to work with a high level of aggressiveness. And marketing staff members were expected to work equally hard. Staff members from surrounding booths would look at us wide-eyed, as if we were possessed. It was part of the sales culture, and we got excellent results from tradeshows.

An aggressive approach can mean the difference between driving 50 leads and driving 500 leads from the same tradeshow.

8. Capture detailed lead information
Obviously, rent a badge scanner. Also, preprint a stack of 8.5″ x 5.5″ cards that have qualifying questions on them and room to take notes. Salespeople should put their own names on the cards and take notes on every conversation. Staple business cards or badge scan printouts to these note cards, and deposit the cards in some sort of basket or box.

9. Provide giveaways, raffles, and tchotchkes
I consider it a sad reflection on humanity, but such gimmicks do work to drive booth traffic! Give away something small (a blinking pen), and raffle off something bigger (an iPad).

Have collateral, printed analyst reports, or free trials on hand for serious visitors who aren’t into the gimmicks.

10. Enter all leads into a CRM system for Sales follow-up
No exceptions. Add notes from the note cards (see above) to the customer relationship management (CRM) record (there is nothing more annoying to a sales prospect than having a long conversation with the sales rep at the booth that is completely forgotten when the follow-up call is made).

There is always temptation for salespeople to cherry-pick the best conversations and follow up with those prospects directly “offline” because they don’t want to wait for the CRM system to push them the leads. Eliminate the temptation for offline lead follow-up by getting the leads into the CRM quickly and completely, and by pushing them immediately for sales follow-up.

Measure lead conversion carefully, and report back to Sales. Sales follow-up should include a relevant offer (analyst report, free trial) for leads who require further nurturing before they are ready to buy.

11. Continue post-show marketing with an appropriate offer
Send “thanks for joining us” emails to leads captured at the booth, and “sorry we missed you” emails to customers and prospects within a 100-mile radius. Even if they did not attend the show, prospects will perceive you as being active in their locality.

Include a valuable business offer (analyst report, free trial) to encourage further engagement.

12. Hold a post-mortem review with Sales and Marketing
One week after the show, conduct a post-mortem meeting with all marketing and sales participants to determine whether the show was of good quality and should be considered again next year.

Evaluate the performance of Sales and Marketing vs. the service-level agreement. Identify areas for improvement. Track CRM performance of the leads; it would be premature after only one week, but schedule follow-up meetings for ongoing tracking. Tabulate all costs.

Document the post-mortem discussion so you don’t forget your analysis when you are considering next year’s show.

* * *

That’s 12 solid tips. Did I miss anything?

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Check out the article posted on MarketingProfs.com, along with a bunch of great reader commentary.

Posted in Field Marketing, Marketing Planning, MarketingProfs, Portfolio, Portfolio - Bylined Articles, Trade Show Marketing | 1 Comment

E-newsletter Marketing: Make E-news

Posted on July 1, 2011 by Bob Hebeisen

By Bob Hebeisen

I thought I would take a moment to clip an old article I wrote back in 2005 when I was doing contract marketing work for an email marketing/e-newsletter marketing company called IMN.  It was originally published in Target Marketing Magazine (print and online).  I have reprinted it below for your viewing pleasure.

Make E-news
December 2005
By Bob Hebeisen
Published by Target Marketing Magazine

With the right tools and strategy, e-newsletters can help convert leads and boost sales

Recent months have seen a historic boom in online marketing expenditures. Forrester Research categorizes it as a “resurgence” and predicts that overall online marketing spending will top $26 million by 2010. With all the emphasis on banners, sponsorships and search engine marketing—all lead generation tactics—direct marketers need to be sure not to neglect lead nurturing activities, or they will risk low conversion rates and poor ROI.

E-newsletter marketing is an ideal tactic to nurture leads and convert them to sales. It is relatively easy to implement and can build relationships, move leads along the sales cycle, and uncover leads ready to buy.

By following some easy best practices, you will give your e-newsletter marketing program the best chance for success.

Choose the Right Tools
You could pay a Web development company to develop and manage your e-newsletter program for you, or you could hire some internal programmers to do it. Frankly, that’s probably overkill, given that there are good tools available to let you easily develop your e-newsletter without the overhead. There are many tools to consider, including off-the-shelf desktop software and Web-based tools. A quick Google search on “create HTML e-newsletters” is a good place to start. Your minimum requirements should include:

  1. A wizard-driven interface that will help you build and publish your e-newsletter with minimal design skills and zero HTML programming; and
  2. List management tools that let you handle subscribe and unsubscribe functionality automatically for anti-spam compliance.

Get the Analytics You Need
We’re talking about direct marketing, so make sure your e-newsletter tool can deliver the analytics that will make you successful.

E-newsletter marketing can provide a wealth of metrics that let you understand your subscribers, test messaging and offers, and identify serious sales leads.

The key is to make sure your e-newsletter resides on a microsite. This homepage should include a table of contents and synopses of all the different articles in a given issue, and each full article should occupy a separate HTML page. This means your e-newsletter isn’t simply a static message sitting in a subscriber’s inbox; instead, as readers are clicking around your e-newsletter and reading the articles, they actually are navigating through a microsite.

Why is microsite architecture important? The answer is tracking. With a microsite, you get more than open rate tracking; you can track each individual subscriber’s behavior as he or she digests your e-newsletter. Did the subscriber open your e-newsletter? What articles did he or she read, and how often? Did he click any external links that took him to your corporate Web site? Did he forward an article to a friend? This information—and more—is trackable, if your e-newsletter service supports a microsite architecture with robust reporting capabilities.

This knowledge can be very powerful. For example, I recently spoke with the marketing manager of a company that provides antivirus and intrusion prevention software solutions. She developed an e-newsletter to build credibility with her sales leads—busy IT managers who have little time or patience for marketing spin, and who want to be sure they’re dealing with a company that has vision and expertise. As the marketing manager reviewed reports on subscriber behavior, she realized those active readers were pretty good sales leads; by reading and re-reading articles about her products, they were exhibiting behavior that indicated they might be ready to buy. Now, each time she sends out her e-newsletter to her more than 30,000 subscribers, she can pass along 200 to 400 solid leads to her sales people for appropriate follow-up.

This is known in e-newsletter parlance as “informative marketing.” Find out what your subscribers are most interested in, and react accordingly—e.g., write more articles on the most popular subject matter, plan marketing campaigns based on offers that generate the most reader interest, or follow up with contextually relevant sales activities.

Compel Readers to Action
As with any good marketing program, the objective is to get your audience to react. In most cases, you are trying to get it to escalate its level of sales engagement. Here’s another example: An Internet sales manager at an auto dealership publishes an e-newsletter to build relationships with prospects and customers, with the overall objective of selling more cars and service. He uses several mechanisms to compel readers into action. For instance, he carefully has designed his e-newsletter to prominently feature links to his dealership Web site—the inventory page, the test drive request form, the service coupons page, etc. He has found that roughly 2 percent of his Web site visitors ultimately convert to vehicle buyers, so if he can increase his Web site traffic, that increased traffic will correlate to increased sales. Since starting his e-newsletter campaign, he has observed that his Web site traffic doubles and triples in the two weeks following each e-newsletter send.

He also gets his readers to react through good copywriting that delicately balances hard- and soft-sell articles. On the hard-sell side, he provides articles on financing promotions, dealer incentives and service specials. He also includes vehicle reviews, with links to the Web site test drive request forms and inventory pages. It’s common sense that subscribers interested in reading a vehicle review might also be interested in test-driving that vehicle, so he makes it easy for them to take that next step. These articles are precision-engineered to compel readers to click to the Web site and escalate the sales engagement with the dealership.

Auto dealerships know that 45 percent of deals occur within two weeks of the lead’s first contact with the dealership, so their sales force is trained to hit prospects hard for the first couple of weeks. However, that means 55 percent of the eventual sales occur after two weeks—and a full 25 percent of sales occur after eight weeks, according to Kain Automotive, an automotive Internet and business development consultancy. Therefore, if dealerships can use lifestyle articles like driver safety tips, vehicle maintenance advice, or write-ups of local travel destinations in an e-newsletter to keep these tire-kickers engaged, they stand a better chance of reaping sales from them when they’re ready to buy.

The Power of Rich Media
Incorporating rich media in your e-newsletter is another effective technique to engage subscribers and get them to pay attention. In the same way that rich media banners have reinvigorated online banner advertising, e-newsletter service providers are supporting rich media to enable their clients to make a bigger impact with subscribers.

Podcasting is one of the latest rich media innovations benefiting e-news-letters. Podcasts allow e-newsletter marketers to provide audio content in their newsletters via MP3 files. There are many ways marketers can use this technology. For example, many

e-newsletter authors provide a brief “letter from the editor” to lend a personal touch to their e-newsletter. A podcast provides a natural evolution of this concept in an even more personal and compelling way. Also, technology vendors might provide an audio Q&A podcast where an expert is interviewed about a product or strategy. This is the same concept as a whitepaper, but is far more dynamic and engaging.

Flash also can be used to deliver compelling, animated multimedia messages—and the use of streaming video is becoming more viable every day. These formats are ideal for presenting product demos and other content in a highly impactful and memorable way.

The best thing about rich media in an e-newsletter is that it’s trackable, just like any other content. You can see the aggregate viewership of your rich media content, and which individual subscribers viewed it. You then can react accordingly, with follow-up sales and marketing activities that ultimately can convert your leads to sales.

The bottom line: E-newsletters aren’t what they used to be. They’ve evolved into highly interactive communications vehicles that leverage the best of Internet technology and direct marketing techniques. By choosing the right tools and following best practices, you can use e-newsletters to convert leads to sales, and new clients to lifelong customers.

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A couple of notes about this article:

  • At the time you can see IMN was really pushing a new feature, their ability to link podcasts to their e-newsletters.  At the time, podcasts were new on the scene and were gaining huge popularity.
  • The only thing I didn’t write in this article is the headline (“Make E-news”), that was created by the magazine publisher.  I always hated that title!
Posted in Email Marketing, Portfolio, Portfolio - Bylined Articles, Target Marketing Magazine | Leave a comment

What Is A List Broker And Why Should I Use One?

Posted on June 17, 2011 by Bob Hebeisen


By Bob Hebeisen

In my years of experience working with PTC’s Value Added Resellers (VARs) on their marketing activities, it always baffled me why none of them were using a list broker. I had countless conversations with VAR marketers to try to explain the value of it. I built it into every presentation I ever delivered on marketing planning and marketing tips and tricks. I even invited a really excellent list broker (Oceanos List Intelligence, http://www.oceanosinc.com) to co-present a VAR marketing training webcast on list acquisition and packaged an engagement with Oceanos as a “free consultation” for the VARs (would have been free anyway, but I was trying to build some excitement around it).

But PTC’s VARs never took the advice. They did rent and purchase lists occasionally, but they would always purchase directly from individual list owners instead of engaging with a list broker. The only explanation I can come up with is that the VARs are, by nature, very reactive marketers. They don’t have a big marketing staff, they don’t put a lot of time into developing a plan. And when a list owner or ad rep would call with an offer they would just accept it (or not) without conducting much of a competitive analysis.

Your Audience Acquisition Strategy Should Be Marketing Priority Number 1
As I have said many times: there is nothing more important in marketing than understanding your target audience and coming up with a plan for how to get your message in front of them. My previous post was about how to define your target market. Now that you have defined your target market, you should consult with a list broker to put your target market plan into action.

4 Reasons You Should Use A List Broker:
#1: Compare Apples To Apples
Lists are an important investment and they should be rented or purchased only after careful consideration and comparison. The list broker will take your target market definition and then conduct a research project to develop an exhaustive “list universe report” of all the postal/email/telemarketing lists that match your definition.

The list universe report will include data cards for each list source. Data cards are essentially spec sheets that describe everything important about the list:

  • How the list was sourced
  • How many records are in it
  • Does it include postal/email/telephone contact information for each record
  • What key categories you can select or filter out to ensure you get the best match against your target audience (company size, industry, job title, etc.)
  • Cost (base cost, minimum purchase amount, cost for each selection criteria applied, shipping & handling fees, etc.)
  • Etc.

Once you get the list universe report, you can use it to make an “apples vs. apples” comparison of lists to ensure you are getting the best value. You can make your list selection a strategic decision instead of a reactive decision. And therefore you will spend less time chasing your tail on low-value activities and more time executing against a plan that can be measured, vetted, and defended.

#2: A List Universe Report Can Inform Marketing & Product Decisions
A list universe report is not just good for renting or buying marketing lists. It is a window into the world of your target market. Take your list universe report and start to look into the various list sources and you will find:

  • News publications and websites you should be targeting for PR efforts and perhaps advertising
  • Professional Associations you should be sponsoring, supporting, and joining
  • Trade shows at which you should be speaking, attending, or exhibiting
  • Conversations that are occurring that can help to guide your product roadmap and marketing messaging
  • Competitors you should keep your eye on
  • Potential integration and co-marketing partners
  • Opinion leaders you should be following on Twitter

#3: A List Broker Can Do It Better Than You Can
In a job interview once I was asked what my first activity would be if I got the job. I said one of my first activities would be to engage a list broker. The guy said “do you know what SRDS is?” Yes, I know what Standard Rate and Data Service is. I know what data cards are. I know that I can go on the internet and find data cards and media kits myself. I once worked as a list broker, using tools like NextMark to create list recommendations for clients. My experience made me appreciate the services of a good list broker even more. That’s because even with access to *subscription* tools (they are not free) like SRDS, NextMark, and Marketing Information Network (MIN) I learned that it is hard work and that experience matters.

Here’s the thing: wouldn’t you rather have someone do it who is more highly skilled than you? When I was a teenager I once changed the brakes on my car. I know I can do it. But I would rather not spend my day running back and forth to the auto parts store, crawling under my car, bashing my knuckles on the undercarriage, and swearing a blue streak. Instead, I prefer to get an experienced mechanic to do it in their garage with a hydraulic lift and all the right parts and tools. I will be more confident in my car’s ability to stop afterwards, because I know that a skilled expert can do a brake job better than me. And I consider it well worth the cost. Which leads me to this…

#4: A List Broker’s Services Are FREE!
Any VAR should immediately understand this business model, because List Brokers are Value Added Resellers of lists. List brokers essentially buy lists from list owners. They get a broker’s discount on the price of the list from the list owner, just like a VAR gets a marginally discounted price when he buys the software from the ISV. And then the list broker resells the list to you at the list price (thereby making their money on the margin).

So you pay exactly the same amount you would pay if you purchased the list directly from the list owner, but with a ton of *added value* from the list broker:

  • A list universe report that helps you conduct an apples-to-apples comparison of various list sources
  • Aggregated billing (you pay one list broker instead of many list owners)
  • Management of the logistics (managing the schedule, managing your suppression list of existing customers, managing the suppression of previous list buys, QC of your emails for email marketing, etc.)
  • Aggregated open/click reporting from multiple list buys (for email marketing)
  • Historical record of the transactions — so over time you don’t waste money buying the same list twice, or a list that performed badly for you in the past

The list broker does not charge you for that added value, it comes along for the ride. It is the biggest no-brainer in marketing!

Next topic:What are the 3 types of lists, and what are the advantages/disadvantages of each.

Posted in Audience Acquisition, Email Marketing, List Broker, Marketing Planning, Media Planning, Target Market, VAR Marketing Techniques | 3 Comments

How To Define Your Target Market

Posted on June 14, 2011 by Bob Hebeisen


By Bob Hebeisen

Inspired by a recent discussion in the B2B Lead Roundtable group on LinkedIn, I thought I would outline a few important steps for defining your target market.

There is really *nothing* more important in marketing than having a good definition of your target market that everyone can agree with. If you do everything else right (i.e., you have the right message, the right offer, the right medium, the right timing, etc.) but you are talking to the wrong audience, then your marketing will almost certainly fail. So developing a good target market definition is well worth investing a little time and money.

#1 Consult With Sales
Meet with your head of sales and ask him/her who the target market is. Ask him/her for their description of “the perfect lead.” Tease out the difference between decision-makers and influencers since most B-to-B sales involve a decision-making *unit* (DMU) of more than one person.

Also identify people who are often obstacles in the sales process who should NOT be brought into the DMU and should perhaps be filtered out of lead generation efforts. For example, I have learned that often the IT department is an obstacle (resistant to change) and they should not be brought into the discussion until the line of business managers are converted to internal champions. Note that you might have different targets depending on company size, vertical industry, and geography.

#2 Get Perspective From Product Management
Have the same conversation with your product manager that you had with your head of sales.

#3 Reconcile The Differences
The next step is to bring the head of sales and the product manager together in a meeting and reconcile the differences in the definitions they each gave you separately.

It is actually quite common that the target market definitions from sales and product management will not be perfectly aligned, and you are bringing a valuable service to your organization by brokering this discussion and resolving the differences. You could also take the additional step of running some analysis of your existing customer base to quantify which titles and industries are most prevalent.

As a team, prioritize the members of the DMU into primary targets and secondary targets. Prioritize the vertical industries and geographies.

#4 Draft Your Target Market Definition
Now it’s time to get it down on paper. It’s important to make sure your target market definition is “actionable” — i.e., you need a target market definition that uses common terminology and categories that are used by media or list professionals. For example, use SIC or NAICS codes to identify key vertical industries. But I also recommend including some softer criteria that you or your media and list professionals can use to do open-ended searches.

For example, here is a good audience definition for PTC’s MCAD products that the VARs could use:

 
JOB TITLES:
  • Primary: Manager/Director/VP of Engineering, R&D, Product Development
  • Secondary: Design Engineer, CAD Administrator
  • Omit: IT Manager/Director/VP of IT, CIO

JOB FUNCTION: Managers of design and engineering teams charged with designing and manufacturing new products. They are constantly striving to improve design efficiency, reduce construction materials and cost, improve structural strength and function, streamline collaboration with other team members, and speed time to market. Target audience may be using competitive software products such as Dassault SolidWorks, Dassault Catia, Autodesk AutoCAD, Autodesk Inventor, Siemens Solid Edge, SpaceClaim, etc.COMPANY SIZE: Less than $100 million in annual revenueKEY INDUSTRIES: Discrete Manufacturers (NAICS codes: 2400, 2500, 2700, 3000, 3200, 3300, 3400, 3500, 3600, 3700, 3800, 3900) [Note: this list of NAICS codes could be refined further by looking at each subcategory at http://www.naics.org.]
  • Omit: defense contractors, state and federal government agencies

GEOGRAPHY: USA & Canada (or a list of states, postal codes/zip codes/SCFs, area codes, etc. if your selling territory is tightly constrained).

Notice that the target market definition has both “hard” categorization (job titles, key industries, etc.) and “soft” categorization (job function). This gives you lots of important stuff to search for, and lots of categories upon which to evaluate one list source vs. another.

Also note that I have included some things to *omit*. For example, I have omitted state and federal government organizations and aerospace & defense contractors — that’s because VARs are not allowed to sell to these industries since they are handled by PTC’s Direct sales force. Likewise I have limited the company size to $100 million or below — that’s because PTC’s VARs are charged with selling to small and midsized businesses. And if you are a VAR that sells in a limited geographic territory, be sure to specify that. No sense paying for leads you are not allowed to sell to.

It’s important to note that you will never be able to find any list source or media that perfectly matches your target market definition. You will need to exercise good judgment to choose between multiple imperfect sources based on hard data and contextual data.

#5 Get Sign-Off
Get both the head of sales and product management to sign off on the final target market definition. Alignment is critical. Now you are sharing accountability for the marketing/sales/product management activities that occur henceforth — they should all make sense in the context of the target market definition you have all endorsed.

The importance of this step cannot be overstated. How many times have you heard complaints from the sales organization that your lead quality is not good enough? Now you can hold up the signed piece of paper and say, “this is the definition you signed off on; do we need to revise it?”

#6 Put Your Target Market Definition To Work
Now it’s time to take your target market definition and use it to put together an audience acquisition plan. I like to start by engaging a list broker (I have had excellent experience with Oceanos, http://www.oceanosinc.com). The list broker will deliver a report of postal/email/telemarketing lists that are available for reaching your target audience. Then, as you explore these list sources you will identify key publications, social media communities, websites, directories, trade shows, professional organizations, etc. You can also use your audience definition to engage a media planner to create a media plan (magazine, online, radio, TV, etc.). Or ask your list broker if they also offer these services.

Stay tuned for my next blog posts, which will be a detailed look at list acquisition, including how to work with a list broker, the 3 major categories of lists, and the advantages and disadvantages of each category of list.

Posted in Audience Acquisition, Marketing Planning, Media Planning, Target Market, Vertical Marketing | 1 Comment

Sunday Morning Quarterback: Agricultural Heavy Equipment Advertised on ESPN

Posted on June 13, 2011 by Bob Hebeisen


By Bob Hebeisen

I was watching ESPN SportsCenter on Sunday catching up on the highlights and I noticed a commercial playing during one of the breaks. It is for a company called Case IH which sells farming heavy equipment (tractors, combines, etc.). The commercial is well produced — beautifully filmed wide shots, soulful voiceover, rich music soundtrack — clearly, little expense was spared. You can see my camera phone video capture of the commercial here (sorry, not sure why it did not capture the audio). The video is also currently playing on their USA website home page at www.caseih.com.

I was surprised to see a TV ad for such a narrow vertical market running on ESPN. Could ESPN “broadcast” cable TV really be an efficient vehicle for reaching purchasers of heavy farm equipment? Isn’t there a ton of waste? (For example, me and all my neighbors sitting in Greater Boston looking for Red Sox highlights?)

But Wait, There’s More!
Then I was totally blown away when I saw the second half of the commercial, which promoted various discounts:

  • “$25,000 off Steiger Tractors”
  • “$15,000 off Magnum Tractors”
  • “$15,000 off Axial-Flow Combines”
  • Check out caseihdeals.com for more info

Holy fertilizer! I have never seen a $25,000 discount advertised! I wonder if they will throw in a Sham Wow if I order within the next 60 minutes!

Wrong Media, Wrong Message
An article about the ad campaign published August 16, 2010 at www.farm-equipment.com notes that “the campaign will run primarily in agricultural trade journals… targeted national support for the brand through a television buy and Internet banner ads… direct mail and new dealer tools.”

Duane Nelson, Case IH director of global branding and marketing, said “this campaign won’t leave a doubt in anyone’s mind that Case IH is the equipment maker that puts farmers first.” Ironically, seeing this ad on ESPN made me doubt that Case IH (or their ad agency, Cramer-Krasselt/Milwaukee) knows anything about their target audience. I suspect their prospects probably are not living in Boston. And they probably are tending the fields or at church on a Sunday in June at 10:00 am instead of watching the tube (granted, my knowledge of hard-working god-fearing farmers is completely based on stereotype).

National TV seems like a terribly inefficient way to reach buyers of heavy farm equipment, and I have to believe they would be better off doubling-down their investment on vertical print, database building, targeted web, social media development, channel marketing funding, etc. Use these methods to drive traffic to the same commercials posted on YouTube.

Maybe the ESPN commercial was “added value” negotiated into the plan for no additional charge along with a more targeted cable buy and media plan. But if so, I would have gone with one of their more branding-centric ads, not one promoting discounts (example of Case IH branding-centric ad here). Promoting discounts in a broad-based medium like TV just conveys the impression that you are selling a commodity product, and that cheapens your brand. Better to adopt a message that your product delivers superior *value* vs. the competition (something like: “feature-for-feature superior to Caterpillar, but priced lower to help today’s farmers weather the current economic turmoil”).

Posted in Audience Acquisition, Media Planning, Vertical Marketing | Leave a comment

Portfolio – Product Blog Writing

Posted on May 9, 2011 by Bob Hebeisen

I thought I would take a moment to document a blog post I authored for PTC’s Creo product blog as a portfolio piece. I’ve clipped it below for your viewing pleasure:

What do small and midsized manufacturers really want?
By BOB HEBEISEN
Published: February 9, 2011

Jens Heineck is Business Development Manager and 17-year veteran at INNEO, PTC’s largest Value Added Reseller (VAR), headquartered in Ellwangen, Germany. During PTC’s MCAD Technical Committee meeting, I asked him about INNEO’s unique experience offering multiple approaches to modeling.

Bob Hebeisen: Before recently, most of our resellers sold either parametric or direct modeling. But you’ve been representing both modeling paradigms for a long time.

Jens Heineck: That’s right, INNEO has been a Pro/ENGINEER* reseller for 22 years and a CoCreate* reseller for 20 years – we were selling CoCreate for 16 years before PTC acquired CoCreate in 2007. [*Editor’s note: Pro/ENGINEER is now known as Creo Elements/Pro, and CoCreate is now known as Creo Elements/Direct; learn more about the product renaming announced in October 2010 here.]

BH: So you must see many of your customers using both modeling paradigms within the same organization.

Heineck: A few, but not many. That’s because when the products belonged to separate companies, each vendor wanted us to have separate business and sales and marketing teams dedicated to their product. So we were running them as separate business organizations. When a new prospect came to us, we would try to decide whether they were best suited for parametric history-based modeling or direct history-free modeling, and then one or the other sales team would pursue the deal.

BH: And when PTC acquired CoCreate in 2007, did you change that? Did you bring the two organizations together?

Heineck: No. Even after the acquisition it was always hard to use Creo Elements/Pro and Creo Elements/Direct together on the same model, so we chose to keep separate sales efforts for each product. Sometimes we would get deeper into a sales engagement and realize that this Creo Elements/Direct prospect could benefit from some parametric modeling in their design process, or this Creo Elements/Pro prospect could benefit from some direct modeling. But because there was no way to take the same model back and forth between the two products without breaking the history tree, there was never an easy solution we could offer.

BH: So Creo’s AnyMode Modeling will be the answer to that.

Heineck: Yes. It’s very exciting! The need is there for both modeling paradigms for many designers and manufacturers.

BH: Aside from AnyMode Modeling, what else about the Creo strategy is important to the small and medium-sized manufacturers you serve?

Heineck: AnyRole Apps is really a great thing.

BH: Why is that?

Heineck: This AnyRole Apps idea is a radical new concept in ease of use. Let me give you an example. I was skiing the other day and I was talking with this guy. We were talking about what we each do for work. It turns out he is an engineer, traveling around the world managing different teams of designers. He is “old school” – he literally hand-sketches his designs. Sketches an axle and a bracket and so forth – very basic conceptual stuff. And then he faxes his sketches to his team, and they convert them to CAD models using Pro/ENGINEER [now Creo Elements/Pro] and then he reviews the models and directs them to make changes. I asked him why he didn’t use a CAD tool, and he said years ago he had tried to learn Pro/ENGINEER and several other history-based tools. He gave up; they were all too hard, too big. So what he really needs is a simple 3D direct modeling design tool for concept development and to easily iterate designs from his staff. Maybe he needs some kinematics functionality to see how components work together. What he doesn’t need are the complexities and menu items for a bunch of features he will never use.

BH: That’s a perfect definition of ….

Heineck: Yes! As he explained it to me, it struck me that he was precisely describing Creo and its AnyRole Apps methodology – the right functionality for the right task at hand. Creo’s AnyRole Apps strategy is really the best answer for true ease of use. The need is there for this.

INNEO’s Jens Heineck sees a need for a new approach to CAD ease-of-use and for better interoperability between parametric modeling and direct modeling. What do you think? Please post your comments below.

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A few notes about this blog post:

  • At the time this blog post was written, it was a challenging time for INNEO and other PTC VARs.  PTC’s flagship CAD products, Pro/ENGINEER and CoCreate, had just been merged and relaunched as a new product called Creo.  VARs like INNEO had something like 40 years of combined product and sales history with Pro/ENGINEER and Creo, and now they needed to change course very quickly.  Product strategy and development at PTC were moving very fast, and (as usual) the trickle-down effect for the VARs was really not on the radar screen of anyone in executive management.  I was working very hard to fill the gap by collecting, digesting, and disseminating important information to the VARs, adapting marketing programs for the VARs, and keep them engaged.  This blog post was part of that effort to keep the VARs engaged.
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