The Connector

How do you find new clients?

Suzanne Kendrick — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 21:57:42 +0000

All businesses focus on sales, it is less common for a company to have formal strategy for generating leads. And giving a new sales person the Yellow Pages is not a lead generation strategy…For many companies lead generation is a very random event that happens by good luck rather than any sort of management.

How do you set up a Lead Generation Strategy?

How many new weekly leads do you need to create an active pipeline? Take a look at your existing sales. How many new sales (not repeat customers) are required to achieve your sales targets?

What is your lead conversion rate? How many leads convert into sales? How many leads are needed to achieve the sales target?

What is the cost of a lead? Have you budgeted for lead generation? What are you prepared to spend to generate leads? In the beginning of the process it is not easy to analyse the cost per lead but once you set up a formal process it is easy to measure.

Target Markets Clearly identifying your target markets has a major affect on the outcome of your lead generation and marketing activities. What are your best target markets for new leads? Think outside the square! Getting this right is the foundation of your marketing and sales activities.

What is the lead process? The bigger and more complex the buying decision, the more steps needed from lead to a serious prospect. Every promotion will need its own strategy and actions e.g. website enquiry – qualifying phone call -send information – follow up phone call, initial fact finding meeting – demonstration – - proposal- further follow up … and sale. The lead process has to be set as a process, not a random activity.

Sales vs Lead Generation It is important to know where Lead Generation stops and Sales starts. This depends on the nature of the product or service, and how ‘warm’ and ‘pre-educated’ the prospect needs to be before a sales person takes over. With Sales CRM systems you can record and measure outcomes at each step. Excel spreadsheets work well too for less complex businesses. You can then see where and why you lost a sale and improve this part of the process. Leads just “slipping away’ is often insidious and can appear happen ‘invisibly’ e.g The quote that didn’t convert to a sale the client bought somewhere else. With a good sales process, you can find out why they bought somewhere else. Forming and keeping a relationship is vital in the sales process especially in the longer term and this sort of follow up can create a good impression.

Measuring Marketing Activity There are many and various marketing options. Once chosen the marketing activity needs to be measured e.g follow up activity, response, sale. Setting up a marketing matrix showing dates, response, leads enables you to refine the cost per lead and eventally you will be able to see the cost per sale for any marketing activity. Analysing results makes it is easy to decide your next marketing activity.

Who is doing what? Once a lead generation/sales process has been documented people need to be allocated tasks and managed so that the plan becomes a reality. Done diligently, the leakage stops and the results start to flow

Get the creative juices flowing People love to focus on the creative first but actually you don’t get pudding until you have eaten the main course! With a good strategy, the right creative is obvious. For example one of my clients wanted to set up an social media campaign but simple analysis showed them the bulk of their customers were rarely online – they were always on mobile. We ran an SMS campaign instead. The other common situation we find is companies who want to rev up their online marketing but have not done the basics with their existing clients as far as their database hygiene.Good marketing creative with the wrong strategy/poor logistics can never work.

Keep Reviewing the Process The plan is not made and then put in a drawer. Constant review of the outcome and sometimes the objectives is important. Some campaigns need time to land and for small companies there is a tendency to want instant results. The key point is to track outcomes and keep reviewing, and assessing if a change in direction is needed to get you back on course

Let The Connector help you. Your existing staff may not have time or skill to solely focus on Lead Generation. We can set up the process, do a campaign, set up a CRM and make it a reality.

Doing Anything about your Mobile Marketing?

Suzanne Kendrick — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 02:46:36 +0000

Google Mobile recently gave a presentation in New Zealand with some interesting statistics on the Australian and NZ mobile market. To be fair, most of the info was from Australia (surveyed 30,000 people) but what happens over the ditch is usually not too far away for NZ. The press release gives some further detail.

-¼ of people surveyed have purchased from their mobile device

-more people search for maps on their smart phone than PC

-Searches are one of the most popular uses of the mobile internet. Two in five Australians search on their smartphones daily as opposed to three in five on their PC.

-⅓ ofAustralian smartphone users made a web-based purchased after a local search

-There are 1 million mobile queries per day in NZ

-1 in 5 mobile devices are smartphones in NZ

-1 in 2 mobile sales are now a smartphone in NZ. Prices continue to fall

-30% of NZ mobile searches are local i.e people looking for what is available nearby

Are you in charge of developing marketing for your business?
If you have not done anything yet in this area, it is not too late. It is important though to now make sure mobile is part of your marketing strategy. It is a good idea to start exploring ways to use mobile marketing to grow your sales and revenue

For example have you checked what your web site looks like and how it functions on a smart phone or tablet? But about four out of five Australian websites are not optimised for smartphones.
Will you need to create a mobile website?
Is it easy for mobile customers to find the data they need?
Is the navigation easy to use on a mobile phone?
Have you considered geo-location, customer loyalty systems?
Have you considered SMS to promote your products and/or services
mobile display ads and mobile search to drive customers to your business
Using location-based services to connect with customers?
Mobile customer loyalty systems
Would a mobile app be useful for your clients?

Mobile is presently a way to differentiate your brand from your competitors. Mobile marketing is not a fad. It is not a gimmick.
This mobile new media thing is not going away and your customers will expect it.

Data Quality: How Good is your Data?

Suzanne Kendrick — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:00:48 +0000

Data Quality: How good is your data?

The quality of your data is critical to the success of your online marketing. An email address is vital.

Often we are are given a client list and on the first email out to the database more than half of the emails bounce.

We see this as an opportunity, no need to hit the delete button!

It’s time to get on with improving your data.

The fact that a contact is in your database means that there is already some connection and knowledge. We believe it is better to update the data rather than delete the person. There are free online tools that let you play detective.

Use LinkedIn and other search tools to find where the contact has moved to
Use LinkedIn and the phone to find out who replaced your contact in an organisation
Find a tool to do some basic deduping and merging

Talk of data integrity is for many ‘an insomniacs cure’ but development, implementation, and maintenance of a data quality plan will lead to more success for your business especially for your online marketing.

How about some motivation to get you started

It gives a bad impression as well as being a waste of money sending the same material twice or more to the same person.
It gives a bad impression if the person left the company many many years ago.
Sending the same eMail twice or more times to the same person looks like spam even if different eMail addresses are used. Spam has more offending than selling power. You look disorganised. Would you want to deal with this company?
When aiming to create customer intimacy, a 1-1 conversation, two or more unrelated accounts for the same person does not work
Having companies represented in two or more unrelated accounts for the same company with a different line-of-business assigned may work for your staff and divisions but the customer experience of your company as a whole is poor. Do you have and use a CRM? Do you have an integrated view of your clients?
Maintaining data for two or more unrelated accounts for the same real world company is expensive and confusing

How do you Improve your Data?

Identify areas for data quality improvement . You can use data profiling and data quality tools to uncover and determine root causes of data quality issues. Or if you have less budget you can send out an email to the entire database and then start looking at the bounces.

Make data quality part of the business by establishing a data quality process for determining, investigating, and resolving data quality issues, Make sure you include setup time ( do you have a CRM?) and scheduling of periodic updates. This needs to be established as an on-going process to maintain quality data.

An easy place to start is adding business cards that are on people’s desks and not in the database. Add Conference lists, merge database systems.

This is the perfect taskfor a detail-oriented, problem solver with research skills and who really understands the importance and benefits of data quality. Sales people are notoriously poor at this task but are often given it.

Call Us. This is what we do! Outsource this role to The Connector!

LinkedIn: How well are you using this powerful network?

Suzanne Kendrick — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 02:03:02 +0000

LinkedIn is a remarkable business tool that in my view, is underutilised in New Zealand. Many people think of LinkedIn only when they are looking for a new role but have you had a look at Linkedin recently?

LinkedIn can be used for:

Building brand awareness.
Establish people in your company as industry experts.
Connecting with prospects, customers, vendors, suppliers and peers.
Generating leads and sales
Advertising jobs
Building a company profile
Applying for jobs

Having spent plenty of time on LinkedIn, I see most people do not use LinkedIn well. You have to get the basics right first in LinkedIn with your profile and linking to your existing contacts. This is easy to do this by letting LinkedIn access your email address book. All your existing contacts that you have an email address for, will show up if they are in LinkedIn. But hold on, before you get carried away with this there are a few steps to get ready:

Improve your Personal Profile: It is remarkable how many people in business are poorly represented in LinkedIn. A sloppy profile says so much.As LinkedIn is a person to person medium your profile must be well written, current and relevant profile. I like Guy Kawasaki’s Linked In Makeover advice.

Set up a company profile - As LinkedIn is so highly optimised your company can show up higher in Google if you have a good company profile. Many companies are keen to have a profile on Facebook which is relevant if you are a consumer based business but neglect to put themselves on LinkedIn.

Get Active!: At the risk of sounding like your GP, get active for results. Post frequently, join Linked In Groups, answer questions, ask questions. Be genuine, helpful and do not just send out a sales pitch. People want to link to somebody who sounds interesting and knowledgeable.

Create a LinkedIn Group: Set up a group that is relevant to the clients you want to talk to

LinkedIn Cheat Sheet: Follow these ideas from LinkedIn for Dummies

Learn how to Search in LinkedIn: There are many modules on line to teach you how to use the Advanced Search Feature on LinkedIn.

While this is effective, it takes some time and effort.

Finding it all too time consuming? Use Hootsuite to manage your Facebook, Twitter, WordPress and Linked In Profiles

Once you have become a good user of LinkedIn, we can then move to the next steps of:

Build your personal or corporate brand
Improving your recruiting
Expanding your networks
Increase your business development and referrals
Become a thought leader
Gain insight and intelligence from your contacts
Get to know more people in your sector

Each company person needs to do this differently. Don’t forget to link to me Suzanne Kendrick and I can help you get more out of LinkedIn.

Being on Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook is not a social media strategy

Suzanne Kendrick — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 20:52:05 +0000

Being on Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook is not a social media strategy. They are merely tools and channels for you to distributeyour content. Presence and content mean little to your customers, unless you can really engage with them.

Plenty of social media is same old, same old. The action in the social space is marketing and advertising using the same thinking with new technology. The essence of all things social marketing is relationships. Marketers often use social media as mediums for traditional marketing.

A relationship strategy differs from a marketing strategy in that it recognises the long-term value of forming lasting relations, as opposed to “intrusion” marketing strategies. Old marketing strategies focus upon acquisition of new clients by targeting demographics based upon prospective target lists. Wouldn’t it be better to have your existing customers talk to their friends?

A relationship strategy requires understanding the needs, attitudes and intents of customers. Once understood then it is a process of fine tuning tactics, images and communications that attract buyers. Noticing, listening and hearing your customers only happens if somebody is watching closely.

Clearly social media is already having an impact on customer relationships. Customers are opting to follow on Twitter, join communiies, opt in to blog, or “Like” you on Facebook – they are signaling they are opting in to some sort of communication with you, a relationship. They see a chance to engage. Don’t wreck it!

Much has been written about being customer focused marketing. What is funny is that customer focused strategies are often always phrased in terms of the benefits to the company. And here is the difference…Previously customer focus is about the benefit to the business. The customer is treated as an object, a means to the companies ends. Yes, organisations want to serve customers better—but for their own sake. Then businesses are surprised when customers don’t rush to their initiatives.

Do companies people understand what the term “relationship” means to a buyer?
The term “relationship” has been hijacked – mostly it a one way conversation. When you say, “follow us on Twitter, join our Facebook Like page are you actually going to talk to people? Are your “join and follow” are going to be quickly revealed as the usual one-sided barrage

A relationship strategy built on working with and listening to your customers is a good strategy to follow. Your customers by in large, want you to do well, they want to be surprised and delighted.

A relationship strategy begins with having the right philosophy. How are we going to really get to know our customers? How are we going to talk and listen?

We all just want to be heard

Suzanne Kendrick — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 19:24:48 +0000

A frequent first experience for a company when it makes it easier for its customers to talk to them is the customer service issues increase.

Customers just want to be heard. They are not going to slam the door and walk out. They just want you to do better. To hear what their experience has been.

We all want to be heard. It’s gratifying, empowering, and makes us feel valued. And in a difference of opinion, we want our side to be represented. We want others to understand who we are, to hear our valid arguments, even if they don’t agree with us–though, of course, we’d like that to happen as well.

Companies don’t need to panic and run for cover. They just need to listen.

Social media gives your customers an easy way to deliver their message. Quickly and publically. This is different and challenging for many companies. No longer is a customer complaining privately but the whole Facebook page, management team etc etc can see the dialogue.

Consider this – Sensing a receptive audience, your customers are happy as their experiences and ideas have an outlet.

They will worry less whether you agree with them, but be pleased that your company is willing to let them talk.

Understand and listening to your customer – having a willingness to try has a huge effect. Look at the frustration with outsourced international call centres.

A company should see and understand that -listening to your customer – having a willingness to try has a huge effect.

Pat on the Back – Acknowledge

Suzanne Kendrick — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 07:14:30 +0000

We all like to be acknowledged – how about sending a positive pat on the back to a company that you enjoy. Here’s a format to get your creative juices flowing. Find them online and get in touch.

Dear (Name):

Thank you so much for making (product)! Your (specific product) is my favorite (product type)! I’ve tried so many different (product types) over the years, and have never been this happy with one before. Thank you!

I would also like to thank you for being environmentally responsible. I think the initiatives put forth by your company are fantastic. I wish more companies were like you!

Please keep up the good work! I appreciate your efforts!

You are not your customer

Suzanne Kendrick — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 17:57:44 +0000

Are you really competing? Have a look at your market. Who is in it? What are they doing as far as online marketing/social media.

In New Zealand, the answer is most likely to be nothing. NZ business are woefully behind the rest of the world in waking up to online marketing.

“I am too busy to focus on talking to my customers”
“My customers don’t use this stuff”
“I don’t really need to do this as sort of xyz works for me”
“I’ll continue doing what I’m doing now on that front, which is nothing as it is too hard to start”
Just because you don’t do something does not mean your customer is the same”.

Customers are choosing to interact with other people and brands through vehicles of communications, social media.

While you think your competition is that company entering the market, it’s probably your own your own apathy, sitting still, ignoring/justifying the problem.and doing nothing.

Stop worrying so much about comparing yourself to every other possible competitor you can imagine and start comparing yourself to nothing. Are you and your business really worth the hassle, the risk, the time, the money? Or should you just wait until tomorrow.

Being Naughty

Suzanne Kendrick — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 03:01:58 +0000

Online marketing looking stagnant and flat? Could be time to inject a little controversy, a little novelty.We are not talking a BP, Toyota prolonged marketing agony here, just a little bit of spice.

Are your topics boring. Are you just posting for the sake of it?

Trendwatching talks this month about Maturaliasm

“Let’s face it: this year will be rawer, more opinionated, more risqué, more in your face than ever before. Your audiences (who are by now thoroughly exposed to, well, anything, for which you can thank first and foremost the anything-goes online universe) can handle much more quirkiness, more daring innovations, more risqué communications and conversations, more exotic flavors and so on than traditional marketers could have ever dreamed of. In short; audiences in mature consumer societies no longer tolerate being treated like yesteryear’s uninformed, easily shocked, inexperienced, middle-of-the-road consumer.

We’ve dubbed this MATURIALISM (mature materialism)

So, this year, the question is how far you can/should go as a brand, when mirroring societal beliefs that are about anything but being meek. And no, we’re not saying you have to be rude or nasty or inconsiderate; this is about being a tad more daring and diverse if you want to move with the culture”

What will get your community talking? What do they care about? Disagree about?
Your active lurkers are the hidden asset of your online community but what will get these people really interested

So come on, let yournaughty side have her day!

Online Community Management Fundamentals

Suzanne Kendrick — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 18:36:46 +0000

In 2007 Web Strategist Jeremiah Owyang researched job descriptions for online community managers and these tenets were fundamental to all of the job descriptions

1) A Community Advocate
As a community advocate, the community managers’ primary role is to represent the customer. This includes listening, which results in monitoring, and being active in understanding what customers are saying in both the corporate community as well as external websites. Secondly, they engage customers by responding to their requests and needs or just conversations, both in private and in public.

2) Brand Evangelist
In this evangelistic role (it goes both ways) the community manager will promote events, products and upgrades to customers by using traditional marketing tactics and conversational discussions. As proven as a trusted member of the community the individual has a higher degree of trust and will offer good products.

3) Savvy Communication Skills, Shapes Editorial
This fundmanetal, which is both editorial planning and mediation serves the individual well. The community manager should first be very familiar with the tools of communication, from forums, to blogs, to podcasts, to twitter, and then understand the language and jargon that is used in the community. This individual is also responsible for mediating disputes within the community, and will lean on advocates, and embrace detractors –and sometimes removing them completely. Importantly, the role is responsible for the editorial strategy and planning within the community, and will work with many internal stakeholders to identify content, plan, publish, and follow up.

4) Gathers Community Input for Future Product and Services Perhaps the most strategic of all tenets, community managers are responsible for gathering the requirements of the community in a responsible way and presenting it to product teams. This may involve formal product requirements methods from surveys to focus groups, to facilitating the relationships between product teams and customers. The opportunity to build better products and services through this real-time live focus group are ripe, in many cases, customer communities have been waiting for a chance to give feedback.

In 2010, do these fundamentals remain the same?