The man in the commercial is focused on getting his morning coffee and nothing else.  He dismisses everyone, including the cashier at McDonald’s, until he is presented with his coffee. The coffee guy represents everyone you want to talk to, whether you are targeting consumers or businesses.  He doesn’t want to hear anything else until he gets his coffee, just like prospects don’t hear anything from you that isn’t relevant either.

Marketing and sales people often approach people in all the wrong ways.  They only think about themselves and what they want to accomplish, rather than thinking about what is going on in the mind of their prospect.   People in general mostly care only about what is going on in their life, how they feel, what they need to accomplish and what they need in order to do that.  In order to reach people and present what you have to offer, you first have to try to understand those things for them.  After you determine that, in order to get their attention, you need strong value propositions.

Here are a couple of examples of bad approaches.  In this voice mail rcvm128_2010082508395100, Jennifer doesn’t clearly articulate what company she’s with and simply says she “has a couple of questions.”  She’s only thinking of herself, what she wants to know to move her sales process forward, and doesn’t state any compelling value proposition to entice me.  In this voice mail rcvm128_2010082515292500, Kirby says what he specializes in, lead generation and appointment setting, and does give somewhat of a value proposition but it is very weak: to “expand your client base in getting clients.”  Again, it’s mostly focused on himself.  So what can we do to better position ourselves, and not be a Jennifer or Kirby?  Take the time to do your market research and be thoughtful in the way you present your information.

If targeting consumers, you can read secondary research or do a custom survey to find out what’s important to them so you can be relevant.  You can also test your marketing messages before investing a ton of money in various media  (as aside, I work in market research at C.A. Walker if you need assistance in this area).

If targeting businesses, you can evaluate the people you are trying to reach by studying job postings for all the titles.  Print a bunch of them (Indeed.com works great for this) and create profiles for each.  You need to understand their responsibilities, their involvement in decision making, who else may be involved (target them all), their measures (metrics) of success, and their business drivers.  Then study the company looking at their website, articles, investor reports and presentations.  You should be able to pick up from these resources their current plans and issues in order to craft relevant messages.  You may also want to conduct your own survey to better understand these people and test your messages as insurance that you’re doing the right thing (as aside, C.A. Walker can also target specific business titles in surveys).

To create marketing ROI, you have to have the mindset that you are there to serve others.  The more you can understand your targets’ current needs and stop focusing on yours, the better.  Like the coffee man, you must try to insert yourself at the moment that they have a need (“I can give you coffee!”).  Good value propositions help people see that you understand them and can help them achieve their measure of success or fulfill their need, while focused on their issue (“I know you really need your morning coffee.  I can give it to you cheaper than Starbucks and it’s convenient!”).

It is a bit of a guessing game, but if you did a good job on your research it is likely you found many issues that you can address.  I suggest trying to find 10 things you can talk about.  You can then contact your target with 10 different value propositions over a period of 4 to 6 weeks.  If you did this right, something should “hit” because it’s what they are dealing with.  If none do, then you can move on and come back to them in a month or so when you have something else you can talk about.  You may also come across articles that relate to them, which you can share to help them stay on top of trends in their industry.  The best part of this technique is that you never have to feel like you’re bothering someone, contacting them multiple times, because you are offering them value that is targeted to what you’ve learned about their needs.

Your Turn:

What are your ideas for marketers and sales people to be more engaging?

Related posts:

1. The Rise of Engagement Marketing

“53% of marketing budgets for US companies have increased in the past year, in the face of slow economic conditions. This extra budget is being used to fund high-return Online Lead Generation campaigns, with Email Marketing the top area of spend, with 75% of organizations using it.”

Furthermore, they share a few open-ended responses, one of which is:

“Better comparability between online and offline Cost per Lead has enabled us to shift budgets from off- to online.”

In Email – the most accountable marketing going? the author claims that out of all the marketing channels available, PPC and email are the best to evaluate ROI.  Their reasoning is that other channels only show you the good – when someone takes an action to buy – but with PPC and email you can see who clicked but did or did not buy.  Furthermore, they say with email you can re-target those who did not open, who opened but did not buy, etc., which the author claims gives it an edge over PPC.

Here is the problem I have with these articles’ claims – both were authored by companies who stand to profit from their statements.   This is an important point.

The first article, a press release, includes research from two companies who specialize in and profit from eMarketing.  What is their relationship?  A search reveals that Econsultancy pays Clash-Media nearly $2,500 a year for a Platinum Level listing in their online vendor directory.  Furthermore, they are the ONLY marketing consultant/supplier with expertise in email marketing who is at that paid level.  Does this mean that Econsultancy might be able to be strong-armed by Clash-Media into publishing the parts of the study that best supports their position?  It’s not unheard of for a client to try that sort of tactic, but it’s not something that the company I work with, C.A. Walker, would ever allow.  We certainly welcome companies to commission studies that could be used for press, but facts are facts.  If study results do not support the client’s desired outcome, they know going into the study that this could happen and we will not change or tweak results to suit their intended purpose.

I’m not saying that the research in the first article isn’t accurate, however, the relationship of the two companies raises a red flag.  The other issue I have with this particular study is their statement that “Email Marketing the top area of spend, with 75% of organizations using it.”  The implication is that the most amount of money is being spent on email marketing, which is not what 75% using it means.  75% of the people in my office may be wearing sneakers right now with shoelaces in them, but that doesn’t mean that shoelaces are a top area of spend for any of us.

Lastly, regarding this study, I found online the results from their same study from last year, 2008, which states that “over 50% of marketers’ budgets now spent online.”  That would mean that online marketing is now equal to the size of ALL the money spent combined for broadcast and cable TV, outdoor advertising, direct marketing, magazines and newspaper, specialty advertising, events, and sports sponsorships.  Logically, it doesn’t make sense.  Once again, it seems they used a figure where 50% of the companies checked off that they are participating in online marketing, and they extrapolated that to mean that 50% of their budget is spend online.  Unless the survey asked respondents to share their BUDGET SIZE with them and how that was broken out, which is highly unlikely that marketers would share, this claim does not hold up.

The second article was written by Pure360 who sells email and mobile marketing solutions.  I thought it in poor taste for the author to say that TV advertising is his “pet peeve” because of its lack of accountability.  Television advertising is still one of the most successful marketing channels that there is.  More people *still* watch TV than are online.  The fact that it is difficult to evaluate ROI in no way diminishes the power of television advertising.  Granted, with the increase in use of DVRs the effectiveness of TV ads drops, but advertisers simply have to get more creative to overcome the desire to flip past a commercial.  The problem is not DVRs – the problem has been, still is, and probably will continue to be – bad and overly repetitious TV advertising.

The author really needs to have a larger view of engagement metrics across all channels before he could possibly ever argue that email is the best.  That’s actually why I put this blog together, because it takes a serious study of these matters,  over a great deal of time, to be able to draw any conclusions about which is best and what metrics to use for what channel.  What I plan to focus on next is exactly this – how do we best measure engagement across different channels?  What is the latest thinking from the top thinkers (including the researchers who I work with) in these areas?

Related posts:

1. Evaluating the ROI of Your Online Friends
2. New Marketing Program May Increase ROI for Retailers