Lead generation challenges for small IT B2B businesses – Part 2

In the last post I spoke about how, by identifying a Single Target Market, Small B2B technology businesses can become better at generating leads. I even spoke about how marketing and sales have to incorporate psychology more than plain analysis to attract the desired audiences.

So in this part, we will look at how we can help get our message better addressed to our audience , so that they connect with us, respond to us etc.

There are typically two methods for getting leads – the “pull” method or the “push” method. By its very nature, the word push means that you are pushing something against a resistance. While in the pull method, the person is being “pulled’ or “attracted” with what you say or do and wants to interact with you and therefore responds to you. There is now right or wrong method. Both have to be used to get leads. However with the “pull” method or also called the marketing driven leads, the advantage is that the prospect has shown interest in what you offer and therefore has reached out to you.

For marketing however, the biggest challenge is to be able to convince someone, with the messaging, so that they can comprehend the message and then respond back with an inquiry.

But even before you can convince someone, you have to be able to reach that person. This is where by targeting a “Single Target Market” ,at a time (which we covered in our earlier posts, can be seen here), you reach a focused audience.

The analytical aspects of reaching out and convincing are related to the number of people being targeted, the number of mails that reached, the CTR, etc.

Now come to the psychological aspect of marketing and how you can utilise this aspect.

Humans have 5 senses – smell, see, feel, hear and taste. If you use one medium – say email with text, then the other side will only read it. So they will only use one of their senses – viz “see”. On a podcast, they can only “hear”. In a video or film , they can hear and see. By utilising the 2 senses together, your message can have a better impact.

As per Cisco, by the year 2022, more than 82% of all Internet traffic would account for with video. People recognise the power of audio+visual since ages. Films have impacted us so much – whether it was Ben-Hur or Star Wars . This does not mean that there won’t be people who would like to read or would like to listen. Different people have different preferences, but as a marketer, when you are trying to make an impact video/films have a larger impact because they utilise the power of the human brain.

Watch the video here

When you use videos to showcase how you have helped others, how you have solved problems for others, similar to themselves, then it creates more trust. Since the brain comprehends better with the use of two senses, if the customer is facing a problem, similar to what you have solved, then they are able to immediately apply it to their scenario and think – “we should check them out”. That gets them to reach out to you – a “pull” lead. The more “pain” in the problem that you show in the video and it is relatable to others in the same industry, the higher the chance that you will be able to get someone to say “tell me more”. This is where the psychology comes into play.

Even though the customer has replied back to you of his own volition, it doesn’t mean that he is ready to buy from you. In most B2B scenarios, there is an elongated buying cycle which starts with someone being told to first do the research on different options, then figure the budget etc. This cycle doesn’t apply in case there is a disaster and someone needs something “right now”. As an example, if you have had your roof destroyed in a cyclone or tornado, you need to figure out a solution now and will not go through your usual buying process. Similarly in organisations if say there is flooding in a data centre, then they need to figure out, how to keep the systems running, NOW.

Other than the disaster scenarios, B2B buying is process driven and you need to nurture the lead over the process. We will take this up in the coming posts.

Till then .

Carpe Diem!!!

Lead generation challenges for small IT B2B businesses-1

B2B, Marketing, Positioning, segmentation, single target market

One of the big issues that small, B2B technology businesses face is that they try to be everything to everybody. They think that if we were to limit the market then, they may miss opportunities. A lot of technology businesses have mainly engineers driving various functions. They are very good at analysis, but marketing also has to do with a lot of psychology.

My team also has this challenge and I have to keep reigning-in their continuous “want” to try and spread the “net” as wide as possible.

One of the questions which I have to keep answering are typically like:

What if we don’t get a response to our email campaign. If we send it to many more people at least someone will respond

This is a very enticing statement – at least someone will respond. You however don’t know how long it will take before that “someone” will respond, because you don’t know the amount of time it will take to reach that “someone”. Every organisation has limited bandwidth. To be able to reach the whole “universe” of your “someone” it may take years. Everyone will be busy in the organisation, but you won’t get any results and after spending 6 months or 1 year, you will not know what you did right or wrong.

I have written multiple posts about the concept of a “Single Target Market” , at a time, which I took from Dean Jackson. All marketing books talk about segmenting and finding a niche. But when you limit your thinking to a single target market, then you focus your energy only on targeting that “one”market.

When you are segmenting, or finding a niche, depending on the interests of the people doing the segmentation, they may may make it very wide or very narrow. However the phrase “Single Target Market” makes it very clear that you are looking at “unique”, “Only One” , “Single” part of the whole market. Watch my video below to get a better understanding of this.

/One way to figure whether the Single Target Market that you have thought of is the right one one, can be figured with the following process. If you are willing to be paid only after the client gets the result, then you have the confidence that you can successfully execute for that market. If you have doubts, then you need to recalibrate your hypothesis.

Once you have isolated your focused market, you can then go about checking the market potential, first on paper and then testing your hypothesis. If you run tests quickly and your hypothesis doesn’t work out, then you either adapt your offering/messaging/value proposition or you change the market. You learn your lessons fast and you adapt your offering faster.

But by doing it this way, you are quickly testing at a low budget if the market cares about your offering or not. You will live to fight another battle. If however you target a very large market space and can’t figure out where things are going wrong, then before you know, you will run out of money to sustain your operation.

There’s no doubt that it’s sexy to be able to tell people that we can do every thing. Today Amazon, ships almost everything. But Amazon started by just shipping books. As they became better at selling books, they launched other items. Each time they launch a new geography they follow a similar formula. But if you try to become Amazon on day one, you will be grounded very very fast.

Another question then that comes up is “what if” the customer we are targeting in the single target market, doesn’t need what we offer. Then you need to do more homework on your hypothesis before going out in the market. The more well defined your hypothesis, the better your tests will be.

So if you think an offering is good for the auto industry, then you need to think, how are the customers solving the problem right now and why should they listen to what you have to offer. I have a whole series of posts covering these points, which is basically my checklist for launching a new product or service into the market. I would suggest you visit those posts to get a more practical understanding of the process.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Entering new into a technology based B2B business

B2B, Marketing, new launch, single target market

Even if you have an old business but you are entering into a new market or entering with a completely new product/service it makes sense to identify the Single Target Market that you would like to focus. Most of us in business don’t have the luxury of creating a product from ground up based on market research about a need in the market. More often than not, we are given a product or service and as marketing heads, we are supposed to identify the right market, right audience etc.

I typically follow a checklist of about 12 items which primarily focus on the customer side of the issues that we should be looking for when we decide to take a product or service to the market.

Before anything else that we do, I would like to understand, what is the problem that the customer thinks that we are solving……not what we think, we are solving for the customer. So as an example – using automation, I might help the customer reduce his time for making a data entry of items that are coming into his factory by reading the incoming invoices quickly.

However for the customer, it might mean, that there are less trucks waiting in line on the road, because the entry is happening faster due to the use of automatic invoice readers. In the present situation, without the automatic readers, the line of trucks could be blocking the road and because of which the cops might be paying a visit to them often to get the road cleared. Maybe even levying a fine.

So while you may think you are solving the problem of inputing invoices and saving time, the actual problem you are solving is eliminating the hassle for the factory manager to ensure the roads don’t get blocked by the trucks coming into their factory.

Why is knowing “what is the problem” important – for two reasons – first is the perception issue – the customer may actually not think of a putting up automatic readers because they already have experienced people doing the job today and putting up an investment in a new technology may not be a priority, so your proposal gets pushed back.

However talking about the line of trucks, which are causing a traffic jam, could be a different ball game.

Its the same solution from your perspective – automating the incoming invoices with the trucks – but to the customer it may be a different aspect.

So it’s important to quickly test your ideas with customers with actual interactions to identify the right message that may resonate with customers. If you follow my blogs, you will notice, I lay a lot of emphasis on testing of different messages, strategies etc. Its absolutely critical , if you want to succeed, to quickly test what is working and what is not.

Generally if a message resonates with an audience, the response can be very quick. However if a message is not resonating, then you have to keep tweaking before giving up. A lot of times dropping the product is a much better idea then to be stuck with the “sunk cost bias”

This post focussed on one of the key starting points to help you identify the market you need to focus on and identify the issues from the customer’s perspectives.

In future posts, I will cover other points in my check list.

Till next time then.

Capre Diem!!!

P.S: If any of you , is however interested in receiving my 12 point checklist to help you plan your marketing strategy for a new launch, just message me with your email id and I will send it out to you.

The power of Silence for Focusing on your business

Focus, Marketing, peak Performance, Productivity, single target market, Uncategorized

For a lot of people who follow Buddhism , today is an auspicious occasion since it Lord Buddha’s birthday. One of the things linked to Buddhism and the overall philosophy of religions that originated in the Indian Sub-Continent is the practice of “Dhyan” and Yoga. While there are a lot of people who follow and practice Yoga across the world “Dhyan” is something that is missing in our lives. “Dhyan” involves sitting in pin drop silence and just focusing all your energy to think.

We all (me included) are so busy running after deadlines all day that we don’t give our brains the bandwidth to actually do what it can do best – which is THINK. When you get into the “Dhyan” stage you are able to connect a lot of the dots which otherwise seem impossible to connect.

I have many times earlier, mentioned a practice by Dean Jackson called the focus finder. Its a very practical way to do a brain dump and then get on to the activity of Thinking.

Today I was a little frustrated that I was not being able to figure out a solution for identifying a Single Target Market. I keep giving you folks a lot of inputs on why you should go about identifying the Single Target Market and the incredible benefits it can have in your marketing.

But today I had a mind block and I was not able to think through on what would be my STM. After lazing around mindlessly and watching un-necessary web series for about an hour, I decided to just sit down with my notebook and pencil and started jotting down thoughts as they came to me about my “bullseye ” (the STM)

While doing this my brain also kept throwing up additional items that I could include. But I had to make my STM as sharply defined as possible. So I kept listing down, all the people whom I would not be able to help.

Automatically I ended up putting a lot of AND statements to ensure that there were as little possibilities as possible for some additional markets creeping in.

Once this was done I went two steps further, I even identified the the markets, one variable away and two variables away. This would help me, in case, the STM I have defined is not viable economically and I have to expand it a little bit.

While I spent close to 2 hours dilly – dalling, I was able to achieve all this in a matter of about 45 minutes, when there was pin drop silence and I was only focusing on this activity. These 45 minutes were more precious because of the immense productivity I got.

If feasible I would suggest everyone to regularly do these focus exercises, they can increase productivity levels dramatically and because you take out everything from your brain and put it on paper, there’s no chance of missing things.

Till next then.

Carpe Diem!!!