Understanding How to Validate Marketing Claims

How many times have you heard or said, “If we can simply get customers to try our product, we know they would buy?” It’s a familiar theme with many clients and unfortunately is often a precursor to a marketing campaign to drive adoption by making increasingly outlandish claims of performance. It’s usually after these marketing campaigns fail to deliver the desired results that ResponsePoint gets a call.

When we talk with clients about enhancing their marketing message to improve trial and adoption, the first thing we look for is how are they validating their message to customers and prospects. Simply saying “best-in-class” or “25% better than the competition” doesn’t really mean anything, unless you can back it up with cold, hard facts. This isn’t always easy, but knowing how to validate marketing claims in a meaningful way is critical to driving adoption.

There are basically four ways to validate your marketing message:

• Third Party or Customer Testimonials
• Side-by-Side Comparisons
• Demonstrations
• Samples

Each of these offers its own advantages based on your business. When making a claim, backing up your words with facts is critical to winning the mindshare of your customers. Without proof, even the most realistic claim can easily be discounted as marketing fluff.

And you don’t need to invest millions in developing the proof. Customer testimonials don’t need to be long explanations of what you did. Often reaffirming quotes are enough to validate marketing claims. Product comparisons can be publicly known facts organized in a single chart that visually highlights your advantages and benefits. Demonstrations can be recorded and posted online for easy reference; and product samples don’t need to be free, they can be limited time trials. The key is to find the right validation for your product, one that will resonate with your customers.

Check out how ResponsePoint uses our own customer testimonials to illustrate our value when working with customers. These are promoted both on our homepage as well as on a customer testimonial page of their own.

Aligning your Communications Strategies to Your Audience

Improving B2B lead generation performance starts with knowing your customer and adjusting your strategy to meet their specific needs. In today’s media-saturated environment, no one consumes information on only one platform. Advances in digital technologies such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are everywhere. And they are augmenting, not replacing traditional media such as direct mail, telemarketing, advertising and events to create a broader customer experience.

Being able to develop campaigns that reach across multiple platforms in a complimentary manner requires understanding what you sell and who you sell it to. In the B2B environment, this will include mobile-savvy groups that are going to interact and react entirely differently than their non-technical counterparts.

This requires sophisticated planning and preparation as well as testing to ensure that the message you are sending, reaches your audience the way you intended. Often, this means making subtle changes to your outbound message based on the delivery vehicle and filling the gaps with secondary or follow-up activities such as telemarketing, personalized websites or e-mail blitzes.

The goal, as always, is to move your customers through the purchasing process as quickly as possible. To do that you need to communicate with them on their terms and in a manner they will respond to – be it online or in person. At ResponsePoint, we can help you align your communications strategies to your audience and coordinate the appropriate avenue of interaction to maximize your marketing results.

Need an incentive, write an e-book!

I receive a lot of promotional e-mails, we all do. And like most, I read very few of these e-mails. I scan most of them for articles of interest and to identify trends that may be helpful to promoting our clients and our business. One trend that I’ve been seeing a lot of lately is the offer of a free book.

E-publishing has made it affordable for virtually anyone to write and publish their own book. Many of these are pretty good and offer valuable advice on their topic of expertise. These are the type of books that you actually wish were printed and often share with others.

There are also numerous examples of e-books being utilized simply as a promotional tool to capture user information online. These e-books are light on content and use lots of illustrations and graphs to fill up space. Ultimately, they provide little value and tarnish the effectiveness of the higher quality publications.

Fortunately, recognizing these inferior quality e-books is not difficult. Simply watch for key phrase such as “the number of pages”, “the number of pictures” or promoting themselves as “a step by step guide.” All of these typically represent filler content required to add pages and create bulk. Higher quality e-publications promote the content of the book, reference customer case studies and, above all else, highlight the experience and credibility of the author. If the e-book you are about to download is missing any mention of an author, then you should be cautious of the content and value you are receiving.

Managing your channel and partner programs

Channel and partner programs require a different way of thinking about sales, communications and marketing. Without question, it’s much more complicated than simply treating your channel partners the same as you would treat your own sales force. The most important thing to realize is that unless
your channel is solely dedicated to selling just your products, there’s a level of competition for their time and attention that shouldn’t exist with your own sales force. With that said, there are many things you can do to improve your channel programs over and above the obvious of increasing their compensation.

Several ResponsePoint clients involve us directly in their channel programs. Recently I had the chance to meet with and interview several channel partners from different organizations. I gained a better understanding of their wants, needs and motivations. At the top of everyone’s list is access to better quality leads and improving access to new prospects. Not surprising since these two things are directly linked to the ability to sell.

More interesting is their request for more lead time, involvement and coordination in the promotions within their target marketplace. Distributors and partners not only want to know in advance what promotions are going to be done, but they want the ability to add elements of their own to these campaigns to improve results in their local markets.

The challenge of course is always funding. “Who pays for these activities” is typically the stumbling block. Companies need to be sure they are getting value for their investment in a channel partner’s promotion. The solution is a well-developed and fully managed channel program that leverages trusted vendors to do creative, project management, marketing execution and, most importantly, measurement.

At ResponsePoint, we manage these types of activities to ensure that programs requested by channel partners meet predefined standards established by our primary customer. This includes managing requests that involve co-op dollars, branding requirements and other proprietary information. In addition, we also provide internal support for channel programs when resource constraints within our customer’s own marketing organization are unavailable.

If you have a channel program that needs new life or if you are simply looking for ways to increase the value of your existing program, give us a call.

The right person to make the call

Telemarketing isn’t easy. It requires a unique set of skills, support and extensive training to be done right. What separates the good from the bad are the details that go into preparing for each call before it’s made. Do they know my business? Do they know what my needs are? Are they prepared to explain what value they can provide me and my business?

As someone with intimate knowledge of the telemarketing process, I know the preparation that is required to successfully manage B2B lead generation programs. At the top of that list are people with the skills to effectively communicate with others over the phone.

Phone skills are not universal and even more rare is the ability to connect with a stranger over the phone. Even the best script in the world won’t do this, and unless your product or offer is so compelling that you can make a sale on the first call, you need to be able to develop a connection with that person so they’ll take your subsequent call. And even if you do have that silver bullet product, this still won’t get you past the gatekeeper or help you find the right person.

That’s why having the right person working on your programs is so critical. At ResponsePoint, we have the right people. A team with the skills and background to understand your business advantages and the ability to build relationships with your prospects.

When to seek out a second opinion

Have you ever had a really great idea that really wasn’t? Woken up in the middle of the night with an idea for a new product, advertising campaign or creative approach to marketing that simply couldn’t miss; only to wake up wondering why you ever thought it would work.

As marketing professionals, we get paid to be innovative. This can often lead us down exciting new possibilities that lack feasibility, but every once in a while, you come across that spark of an idea that keeps you going through numerous dead-ends.

With ownership however comes bias. Moving forward without seeking the council of people you trust can cost you time and waste huge amounts of capital. Validating any idea requires a second, third and often dozens of opinions. Seeking the input of others, particularly those looking at the problem from the outside can often lead to a more concise vision of reality and level-set expectations.

Also important is to seek the advice of people whose backgrounds and business styles compliment your own. For example, if you are a natural risk taker, the advice of someone more prone to using caution is critical. Or, if you’re an engineering wizard, you should seek the advice of sales and marketing experts.

Too often, bad ideas could have been prevented with the help of others. At ResponsePoint, we have experience dealing with all types of people and groups in numerous situations. We can also provide access to a wide range of experts in different fields and bring together confidential advice to help you make an informed decision about your next great idea.

Defining the ideal customer

B2B lead generation starts with understanding. Understanding what it is you are selling and who you should be selling it too. This information needs to be ingrained into the mind and spirits of your sales and marketing teams, and preferably your entire organization.

Surprisingly though, according to a study conducted by Forrester Research, only 60% of employees say that their companies have a clearly defined set of target customers. And only 24% of those employees shared the same idea of the perfect customer.

This basic concept of the perfect customer can spur some lively debates internally and potentially reveal some interesting characteristics of your potential customers. Having this discussion as a group can help pinpoint things that what work well in the sales process and what doesn’t. From there, you can start building your lead generation programs that will more precisely meet the needs of sales.

As marketing and sales professionals, it is our job to eliminate this confusion by developing the criteria for the perfect customer and then communicating it to the world. Having this information can dramatically reduce the cost of sales and improve the results of your marketing programs. At ResponsePoint, we can help you build that picture of the perfect customer and build programs to help spread the word.

Test-drive before you buy a marketing automation tool

There are numerous vendors that offer marketing automation solutions. Each can have its own level of sophistication and functionality; and depending on your need, may or may be the right solution for you. Evaluating solutions, like any other purchase is easier after you have experience using similar tools. This background, gives you a point of reference to understand features and make comparisons. It also helps you determine what features you really need and which are simply nice to have.

What do you do, however, if you have not used marketing automation before and don’t have this frame of reference? You look for the recommendation of people you can trust that do, and if at all possible, get familiar with their systems to build your own frame of reference.

At ResponsePoint, we utilize a variety of marketing automation tools and can help you evaluate which solutions might be right for you. We’re also able to set up programs and run them for clients using our subscriptions to third party automation services. In this way, you may be able to test-drive a solution as a way to gain a first-hand understanding before you buy.

Marketing automation offers instant gratification

If you can’t deliver it free, the next best thing is fast and cheap. Marketing automation enables companies to increase their marketing operations by leveraging economies of scale that allow you to reduce the average cost per lead as your audience grows and at the same time improve your responsiveness to the customer. For your customers and prospects, this means getting personalized information when and how you want it.

The essence of the solution is a “build it once and use it many times” model. This model is simple to understand but harder to implement without the right tools and planning. Knowing the customer sales cycle and building into the process value-added incentives that will keep the customer interested until they make a purchase or multiple purchases is the key.

At ResponsePoint, we’ve been working with marketing automation solutions and have helped companies understand and build solutions that cross multiple channels of communication, incorporate proven nurturing components and get you closer to your customer without breaking the bank. For help establishing your marketing automation programs, give us a call.