Category Archives: Business to Business Marketing Strategies

Tips for improving your business to business marketing strategies and campaigns.  Learn how to find a market niche, and why having a niche is so important.  There are also posts about finding your ideal client (and why you need that too).  Trying to market to everyone only leaves you “spraying and praying” without actually hitting anything.

These pages also cover common business to business marketing mistakes (made by companies both large and small). If you’ve made one of these, you’ll learn how you can fix the errors you’ve made (and avoid future gaffes).

Need more clients? Or better clients? Check out the posts on lead generation, how to set and negotiate higher fees, and what red flags to look for when prospecting for new work.

Finally, there are posts on creating your brand and your company’s “story.” What you are selling isn’t necessarily what you think.  The way you present your products and services can make a big difference in your results.

Got Questions? Get Answers! Ask Jodi!

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question mark imageI get a lot of random questions from clients, family, and friends.

“Jodi, why do the pictures overlap the text on my Web site?”

“Jodi, why is it OK to send snail mail to people you don’t know, but not email?”

“Jodi, how do I stop spam on my blog?”

They think I’m Google. Heck some of them think I’m better than Google.

They say things like,
“Jodi – you are an amazing wealth of knowledge! You’re better than Google and Bing rolled into one!” — Bob Poole.

So, I decided to add a new feature to this blog (and my monthly newsletter, which comes out tomorrow). You’ll see it on the left, in the sidebar. I call it “Ask Jodi”!

Got a marketing question? Ask Jodi.

Photo: andreanna

How to Go Viral

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Viral campaigns can be a great way to get more attention, press coverage, and gigs. But how do you create one?

Marketing Sherpa (August 12, 2009) just shared the tactics used by past viral marketing honorees at its B2B Marketing Summit.

Why go viral?

The payoff is that you can start small and power up to 3,000,000 views on YouTube, network press coverage, industry coverage, blog coverage, and speaking gigs.

You don’t have to break your budget to do this, and of course, if you’re already in the video production business, you can do it yourself.

How to go viral

*create something that’s humorous, encourages involvement, and is worth spreading
* encourage viewers to add their own photos and comments
* include a “treasure hunt” or contest that requires visitors to search for something (and spend more time on your site while they do it)
* start with a small seed of existing clients and contacts
* add YouTube postings, and links on Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn
* send press releases to trade publications

My personal favorite on Marketing Sherpa’s list is VeriSign’s campaign featuring the fictitious Liberty Fillmore (Cart Whisperer), who shows us that abandoned shopping carts can be saved.

http://www.nomoreabandonedcarts.com/

This campaign works because it’s funny, asks viewers to share their own photos of abandoned carts, and includes a contest to find the wandering shopping cart on the site (it moves around every day). It has over 3.3 million views so far.

See more past winners and details of their winning campaigns (open access only until August 19).

Got your own campaign that’s gone big?

Want to be honored for it? Nominate yourself here (deadline is August 21).

Photo: Mike Licht

Thank You For Complaining?

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complaint department imageA few days ago, I got an unwanted marketing email from Ted’s Montana Grill. They had sponsored a recent HARO happy hour I’d signed up for, but that was my only contact with them. I had no relationship with them, and hadn’t given them permission to contact me.

I was pretty shocked and sent Peter an email complaining that sponsorship didn’t equal permission. He told me he’d make sure I was removed from their list.

Yesterday, someone from Ted’s called me from their headquarters in Atlanta. Apparently, their email service provider had a glitch. She thanked me repeatedly for complaining and bringing the problem to their attention!

Pretty remarkable.

Contrast this with Lexis/Nexis’s failure to manage a simple directory listing process. (I’ve spent over three hours trying to update a client’s listing and it’s still not right. Among other things, they’ve managed to misspell his name). It’s been over a month and it’s still not resolved.

Complaints can be an opportunity. If you get one, try to fix the problem. If you keep getting the same complaint (as Lexis admitted keeps happening), your customers are trying to tell you something. Listen to them.

Photo: wikimedia

Is Brand Advertising Useless?

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branded cow imageAdvocates of “branding” will have you believe that it is essential to a company’s existence.

You must “leverage your brand,” have customers “engage with your brand,” “advertise your brand”… blah blah blah blah blah.

Branding is for cattle.

Marketing is for results.

Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t have a well-designed logo. Nor am I suggesting that you shouldn’t think about what your company stands for, how you want to treat your customers, or what your Web site should look like (and how that reflects your company values).

What I am saying is that yelling about your brand is just that. Yelling. Nobody cares about your brand. Nobody sits at their desk saying, “I’d really like to engage with a brand today… which one will it be?”

What you do want is marketing. Measurable marketing with clear results. Internet marketing that drives visitors to landing pages (count the visits, count the clicks, count the orders). Print ads with calls to action. And, a Web site that trumpets what your clients get by choosing you.

Measure results. Make money. Know what works.

Photo: racatumba

5 Quick Ways to Tell if Your Marketing is Broken

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broken lamp image

This blog is called Fix Your Broken Marketing. But what exactly is broken marketing? And how do you tell if your marketing is broken?

1) Poor return on your investment. If you’re putting ads in the yellow pages, speaking at events, inserting ads in magazines, or sending direct mail pieces and not getting results your marketing is broken.

2) Spending money without being able to measure the results. Just throwing money at the wall (or those direct mailers) and hoping something sticks is broken.

3) Failing to calculate the cost of your leads versus the value of the customer. If those yellow pages ads are costing you $8,000 a month, but bringing in customers only worth $4,000 a year, your marketing is broken.

4) No call to action. If you don’t tell people to do something, they won’t.
For example, putting an ad in a trade publication without telling readers to call or click, or speaking at events without asking for contact information (don’t make it a commercial, offer something your listeners will want to get).

5) Not targeting. Trying to sell to everyone is selling to nobody. Pick a distinctive niche, such as photography for college brochures and catalogs or video services for pharmaceutical trade shows.

Photo: gary hymes