MORGAN HILL, CA

News Facts:

Laurie Beasley, President of Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc., will be speaking at the Direct Marketing Association of Northern California event, May 17, 2017, 3:15PM-4:15PM, at the Crowne Plaza, Burlingame, on the topic: “Building Your ABM Marketing-to-Sales Playbook to Deliver Opportunities and Appointments to Sales.”

This session will launch from the point you’ve built your targeted account list, and guides you through how to reach out to your prospects and get them to engage in a sales discussion. We have found it can take 7-21 touches to find and pre-qualify a sales lead. This session will discuss ABM multi-touch marketing strategies for creating qualified leads you’ll deliver to sales. We will discuss extensive case studies on sales door opener campaigns, which included email, dimensional direct mail, and telemarketing to reach a target list and deliver opportunities and appointments to Sales.

Key Takeaways:

• How to decide on an offer
• Multi-touch strategies
• Why use dimensional direct mail
• The role of telemarketing in the multi-touch methodology
• Case studies with samples you can view

For more information on the event, or to register go here.

About us:

Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc. (www.BeasleyDirect.com) is known for bringing the latest marketing strategies to online and direct marketing. Beasley provides services in inbound and outbound marketing including: content creation, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), print advertising, social media advertising, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, website design, media planning/public relations, direct mail marketing, lead generation and nurture campaigns, and database management. Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc. helps clients in both B2B and B2C marketing and is privately held and headquartered in the Silicon Valley suburb of Morgan Hill, California.

About DMAnc (www.dmanc.org): The DMA of Northern California was formed to educate, inform and provide networking opportunities for Direct and Online Marketing professionals in the San Francisco Bay Area.

We hold monthly luncheon meetings, workshops, periodic half-day seminars, and provide opportunity for the best in learning and job networking in the Northern California marketing community

For More Information, Contact:

Laurie Beasley
President
Beasley Direct and Online Marketing, Inc.
408-782-0046 x21
lbeasley@beasleydirect.com

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DMAnc.org

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By Laurie B. Beasley, President, Beasley Direct Marketing

We’ve been sourcing B2B (business-to-business) prospect lists for our clients for more than 25 years. A lot of players have come and gone in that time. Dunn and Bradstreet (D&B) is the oldest list owner, and start-ups like Netprospex and Discover.org have come along. Some prospect list companies license their data for continuous updates in your CRM system, and some lists, like OmnichannelBase and Saphhire, offer lists for single or multiple campaign use. The question we are asked most often is “How do you tell which is a good list and which is a bad one?” We’ll try to answer that.

How to Tell Good B2B Prospect Data vs. Bad

Five criteria determine list quality and appropriateness for your purpose:

1. Amount and completeness of data available
2. The data source
3. How the data is validated
4. What selections are available
5. Are lists single or multiple-use?

In the chart below we show several B2B list providers and some of their features.

Figure 1: B2B Prospect List Provider Features

*Data source strategy definitions:

Heterogenous: Multiple types of data sources

Aggregated: Data collected and re-sold

Homogenous: One source of data, such as phone surveys

Evaluating a Prospect List by the Amount and Completeness of Data

The first criteria to evaluate a B2B list by is the amount of data they have available for your target market. As you can see from the chart above, the total amount of data available from various list providers varies greatly. For example, you have ReachBase, which boasts a stunning 73 million records, and we have Discover.org, which offers 360,000 records (they specialize in IT, Marketing and Finance job functions). The first thing you should do in your list search is give the list vendor a list of key selections for your target market. This should include: job function, industry, company size, and geography (if appropriate). You should also ask how complete the contact records are. For instance, ask how many of the contact records have matching email addresses and phone numbers.

Ask the List Owner How They Collected the List

The second criteria you should evaluate is the data source. In other words, how was the data collected? Some list owners are homogenous in their approach. They compile their data from one source, such as making phone calls to companies. Other list vendors aggregate their contacts from multiple sources, such as publications and websites. Other list vendors are heterogeneous; they do both phone validation and aggregation. The more sources for a list, the more complete and valid it is likely to be.

Check on How Frequently the List Is Updated

The third criteria you should use to evaluate a list is how often the data is validated or updated. How do they know their contacts are good? The more (and most recent) validation points, the better. Some lists don’t validate. Others use phone only. Others, like Netprospex, use phone, email, and social media to validate contacts. In our experience, the more validation points, the better the list will be. You should also ask how frequently they validate. Some list owners do so once per year. Others validate every 30 to 90 days. The more recent, the better quality the list will be.

Make Sure the List Has Your Targets

The fifth criteria for evaluating a list is whether they have your target market available in their database. If you’re marketing financial or IT products, you want to make sure they have contacts that are decision makers for those products. List owners profile product “interest” two ways: The first way is by profiling a target account by the technology they use. Some lists can tell you what financial or IT products are installed at a corporation. The other way is to profile by their product interest or purchase authority. This is typically done when a target fills out a qualification form to receive a free industry publication, or publishers will compile data on which white papers or webinars a target requests.

Find out Whether the List Owner Is Making Contacts Available for Single or Multi-Use

Lastly, find out if the contacts you purchase are for single or multi-use. This will affect your pricing, and your ability to email that contact only once or multiple times. Some list owners will only make the contact postal/phone numbers available to you, and for CAN SPAM compliance purposes, will send an email out on your behalf. This is most helpful in countries with email spam laws, such as the U.S., Canada and Germany. Some list vendors offer a service to continually update and clean records in your CRM. This is especially helpful, since Discover.org reports the following statistics about company data*:

• 40% of email users change their email address at least once every two years
• 20% of postal addresses change every year
• 18% of phone numbers change every year
• 60% of people change job functions within their organization every year

With that kind of movement, we highly recommend you clean your in-house data at least quarterly or best case continuously, using a list owner that offers that data cleansing service.

Seek Lists That Offer the Most Completeness and Validation…and Then Test Them!

Our experience in sourcing lists has told us that seeking the most complete, most updated, and most segmented lists will perform the best. Your best bet is to compare list options and pricing. Don’t be afraid to ask hard questions of the list owner. Some list vendors are proud of how they maintain their records and some try to hide that information. Then test. Order 10,000 records from your two or three finalists and do a test campaign. The ultimate proof of the quality of a prospect list will be in how many leads or orders you get through using it.

If you want help comparing or ordering B2B lists, feel free to contact Beasley Direct Marketing, Inc. at www.BeasleyDirect.com

*Discover.org, “The High Cost of Bad Data,” 2014.

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This blog was authored by Laurie B. Beasley, co-founder and president of Beasley Direct Marketing, Inc. Beasley Direct is a Silicon Valley direct marketing agency that has managed search, email, online, and demand generation campaigns for nearly 100 companies. Ms. Beasley serves as President of the Direct Marketing Association of Northern California www.DMAnc.org. She manages the eMarketing Roundtable for the BMA Northern Californiawww.NorCalBMA.org. She is also an instructor of online marketing at UC Berkeley Extension and teaches for the Online Marketing Institute www.onlinemarketinginstitute.org. Ms. Beasley frequently speaks on online marketing and demand generation topics for marketing organizations, including the DMA, BMA, AMA, Tech Council, and the Online Marketing Summit.

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Many people view search engine optimization (SEO) as existing in a vacuum, unaffected by what happens via other channels. But tweaking SEO without gathering input from other marketing channels is sort of like treating one body part in isolation from the rest of the body. It’s all part of a continuum, which means you can derive actionable SEO data from other marketing initiatives, such as using PPC testing.

As an SEO manager you have a great opportunity to determine what kind of language and keywords potential customers are using to search for your category of products or services. You can also determine which keywords translate more effectively to your website by using PPC testing without setting up new content on your site and waiting for Google to crawl it. You can use low-cost pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns to better understand your customer, and what language works most effectively to get site visitors to convert once they get to your site.

For example, let’s suppose I sell motorcycle accessories online. I have a list of keywords that all seem pretty good:

• Motorcycle helmet
• Men’s motorcycle helmet
• Womens’ motorcycle helmet
• Ladies motorcycle helmet

…and so forth. They are all fairly similar, so how can I tell which phrase my audience will use most frequently? PPC can test large sets of keywords in an organized and systematic way—in near-real-time. Using something like Google AdWords, I can set up test campaigns for a very small investment to run for two or three weeks. Each campaign uses a different set of keywords. Then, using Google Analytics or something similar, I can see which PPC ads enjoyed the highest click-through rate and drove the most traffic to my site. I can also see which ones successfully converted the most customers. This can be done much more quickly than waiting for Google to crawl my site and rank it.

In addition, I can take a look at the Keywords Detail Report within AdWords and understand the nature of actual searches driving the click-throughs, versus just the keywords I happened to be using. For example, if I am bidding on the phrase “women’s motorcycle boots,” I could go into Google AdWords and see that perhaps the phrase most people used was “red motorcycle boots.” (That would also give me useful information about customer needs.)

AdWords can also be used to drive inbound traffic to different landing pages to determine which page will be the most effective in gaining conversion. This allows me to shorten my keyword and content development timeline.

Last but not least, this data can tell you a great deal about the value of different searches from a competitive standpoint. By looking at the cost per click for the different terms you want to use, you can see which keywords and phrases are the most valuable, as the cost is determined by how highly they are valued by the marketplace (your competition). The higher the cost per click, the more value that click will have when a prospect gets to your website, based on the fact that your competition won’t spend money for clicks they can’t convert.

So don’t “silo” your SEO efforts. PPC testing is a quick, easy way to obtain valuable data to boost SEO effectiveness.

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John Thyfault, VP Search and Social Marketing, Beasley Direct Marketing

This post was authored by John Thyfault, Vice President of Search & Social Strategy, of Beasley Direct Marketing. Contact John at jthyfault@beasleydirect.com.

John has more than 18 years of marketing, sales and product development experience, and he brings a proven track record of successful campaign, program and product development expertise. His knowledge of search engine optimization and marketing, combined with an in-depth understanding of customer identification, market analysis and segmentation, allows him to deliver high returns on our client’s marketing investment for both business-to-consumer and business-to-business markets.

Prior to working with Beasley Direct, John was Senior Client Services Project Director at ThirdAge.com, a first wave baby boomer lifestyle and community website. At ThirdAge he successfully led major client sponsorships for Fortune 100 companies in healthcare (Tylenol), financial services (American Century), technology (Intel & IBM) and consumer products areas (Revlon & Viactive). He was responsible for strategic and tactical goal setting, project management, new product creation and web site production. John previously worked in Channel Marketing and National Account Sales for IDG Books Worldwide, the publishers of the immensely popular “…For Dummies” book series. Additionally, he managed the wholesale distributor sales channel for Tor/Forge Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

John is active in local marketing associations, including the Direct Marketing Association, the Business Marketing Association and is currently serving on the board of directors for the Silicon Valley American Marketing Association.

John has taught search engine marketing fundamentals extensively. He has led workshops for the Silicon Valley American Marketing Association, Northern California Direct Marketing Association (DMAnc.org) and the Business Marketing Association. He also teaches Search Engine Marketing at UCSC Extension (Silicon Valley).

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Poster of the Mars Curiosity Rover created by Beasley Direct Marketing for Anritsu’s VectorStar Campaign

by Laurie B. Beasley, president, Beasley Direct Marketing

Here is a successful multi-channel B2B direct marketing campaign case study that followed many of the guidelines we’ve been talking about, including an appeal to emotions, multiple touches, and a carefully designed offer. The audience was engineers—always a tough sell because of their skepticism—and we sought to persuade them to consider replacing a tried-and-true instrument with something they may not even have heard of. We did this not by leading with product features but with a pull on the heartstrings—reliving a recent event in which engineers were heroes because of the quality of their instruments and their work.

Background

Anritsu’s VectorStar Vector Network Analyzer (VNA) is used to measure microwave and mm-wave frequencies in design, testing and manufacture of electronic components where extreme accuracy is required. A new model leapfrogged the competition in features and performance, providing the opportunity to generate sales leads through a multi-channel marketing campaign. The primary audience for this campaign is electrical engineers (EEs). They think in a methodical way and demand proof of product claims. They require detailed specs and technical information to make a buying decision. They are not at all impressed by marketing copy and claims unsubstantiated by statistics.

The Challenge:

Anritsu’s predecessor company, Wiltron, invented the modern VNA tester in the late 1950s. While Anritsu continued to improve VNA high-performance technology, several well-funded companies have entered the market and developed similar versions of Anritsu’s products, taking the lead in sheer sales order volume. We needed to get Anritsu back on our buyer’s “short list”. Electrical engineers are process-oriented. If they are comfortable with a tool and that tool satisfies their requirements, it’s difficult to get them to switch. VNA testers start at $100K and have a long sales cycle because they are considered a capital equipment investment.

The B2B Direct Marketing Campaign Objective

Our goal with the campaign was to bring Anritsu to the table with new customers that the sales force had not yet penetrated, creating awareness of the Anritsu VectorStar solution and ultimately generating face-to-face consultation meetings with qualified firms. A consultation requester who met key budget, purchase authority, need and timeframe-to-purchase criteria was considered an “A” category sales lead. In addition, the “B”-rated leads are prospect contacts with proven interest that opted in to future communications, but were not yet qualified.

Creative and Multi Channel Direct Marketing Strategy

The creative focused on the Mars Curiosity Rover, which had made a spectacularly successful landing on Mars about the time this project began. Engineers are inherently interested in the accomplishments of other engineers and how they solved tough problems. The Mars Curiosity Rover landing was one of the toughest, with thousands of measurements and calculations that had to be coded into the landing and could not be altered during the “seven minutes of terror” during which the Curiosity Rover descended to the planet’s surface. To quote from our letter to prospects:

“As it descended through the atmosphere of Mars, the spacecraft carrying the Curiosity Rover fired its rockets 79 times, went through five configuration changes, and slowed from 13,000 mph to a standstill. In the final operation, a “sky crane” was used to gently deposit the Curiosity on the surface since retro rockets would stir up too much dust.”

We pointed out the extreme precision this required, and then made the transition to the reader: we think of the NASA and JPL engineers as heroes, but you are required to make equally exacting measurements every day. That’s why you deserve an instrument like the VectorStar.

Letter to prospects linking the precision of the Mars Curiosity Rover with the precision of engineers’ every-day problem-solving.

The centerpiece of the multi channel direct marketing campaign was a direct mailing in a transparent tube containing a poster with an artist’s rendering of the Curiosity Rover’s descent sequence on one side (NASA has done renderings but the client did not want to violate any potential copyrights so we commissioned our own) with Anritsu product specs at the bottom. Our hopes were that engineers would mount these in their cubicles, thus providing a constant reminder of the VectorStar, complete with a call-to-action. We followed this up with an email on the same theme, and then began the telemarketing campaign.

Twenty-four to forty-eight hours after the email delivery, the calling team began to engage email and direct mail recipients. This multi-touch process had the effect of increasing the number of contact presentations and shortening the lead generation cycle. Most contacts recalled receiving the direct mail piece or email. Many were familiar with the offering and willing to engage. Program metrics are indicative of the effectiveness of this process with the high volume of completed call scripts as partial evidence.

The call-to-action was a free gift when a prospect completed a VectorStar sales presentation. We tested two offers: an Anritsu-branded backpack (appealing because our target likes to carry lots of gadgets around) versus a VNA technical manual valued at $50. Because of concerns about accepting gifts, government and government contractors were offered only the book.

Additionally, all prospects that registered their contact information were immediately provided a free download link for a relevant white paper.

Because the price of the VectorStar VNA is $51,000 and up, we knew that repeated contacts—and often multiple contacts—within the same company would be necessary to close the sale. The goal of the multi-touch approach was to start the process by gathering as much information as possible while gaining initial commitment to enter the lead pipeline.

Results

Overall, the campaign was highly successful. Based on the sales CRM reports, the program generated over $2.8 million dollars in the sales pipeline during the three-month campaign window, and many high sales potential leads are still being nurtured.

The campaign had a specific goal of developing 69 “A” leads that were considered opportunities in the CRM system. Through direct response and follow-up calling we developed 115 leads, which put us at 167% of the goal. In addition, the Calling Team gathered 426 opt-in contacts for continued nurturing and development.

The VectorStar campaign shows best practices for an effective multi-part B-to-B nurturing campaign: start with a memorable contact sequence, then follow up with multiple touches that develop the prospect into a sales-ready lead. Because so many recipients remembered and engaged with the mailing and follow-up email, it was easier to get them on the phone and easier to complete an initial sales conversation. Because of this effective warm-up approach, calls were completed faster, allowing more contacts to be made within the allotted time and budget. The result: more leads and sales opportunities.

Appendix

A brief look at benchmarked targets versus actual productivity metrics in several key areas clarifies why the program was so successful:

The most telling metric from this group is Total Scripts per Hour, because it quantifies the calling team’s ability to engage prospects with the Anritsu VectorStar offering. This ability to engage prospects and their receptivity to Anritsu’s offer of a technical consultation was the basis for the substantial number of lead conversions.

Over the life of the initiative, 2,094 scripts were completed during 540 calling hours. This number exceeded program goal by 260%. To look at it from another perspective, when the program launched, the expectation was set that 810 Anritsu VectorStar dialogues would take place. In fact, 2,094 Anritsu VectorStar dialogues occurred. The additional 1,284 Anritsu VectorStar dialogues over the course of the campaign celebrate its success.

For more information on this topic and other, request our free Case Studies.

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Laurie Beasley, President, Beasley Direct Marketing

Laurie B. Beasley is co-founder and president Beasley Direct Marketing, Inc., a Silicon Valley direct marketing agency that has managed search, email, online, direct mail, and demand generation campaigns for over a hundred companies. Ms. Beasley serves as president of the Direct Marketing Association of Northern California. She manages the Online Roundtable for the BMA Northern California www.NorCalBMA.org. She is an instructor of online marketing at UC Berkeley Extension and teaches in the Level 2 Certification program for the Online Marketing Institute. She frequently speaks on online marketing and demand generation topics for marketing organizations, including the Online Marketing Summit, Interactive Marketing Week, DMA Annual Conference, and the Marketing Executive Networking Group.

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by Laurie B. Beasley, president, Beasley Direct Marketing

This is Part 3 of a Multi-Part Blog Series Derived from Our New Guide, How To Market Complex Products & Services. For a list of our free Digital Marketing Case Studies, click here.

In the typical tech marketing scenario, you’re collecting (or verifying) contact information and possibly asking qualifying questions so you can deliver a prime lead to your sales force. The reader is well aware you’re doing this. You need to compensate them with an offer of some kind of marketing collateral that is worth their time and gives truthful answers, even if they know it will come “arm attached” to a salesperson.

One of our favorite offers is a white paper on a topic of interest to the reader. It’s effective and inexpensive because it can be fulfilled electronically as a PDF. A good white paper provides information of real value because it solves a problem the reader faces, or gives them an expert technical perspective on a topic. It should NOT be a sales pitch disguised as information (though it’s fine, within the white paper, to mention the intersection of your company’s technology and the subject under discussion). Most likely you will ask the prospect to register on a web page, and you can then provide instant gratification by either giving them a download link or emailing a PDF when they register. 

We have also used sweepstakes giveaways, such as an iPad or other desirable gadget, to be awarded by random drawing from all entries by a certain date. (To do this legally, you must also let respondents enter with their name and address on a post card instead of filling out your contact form.) The downside of sweepstakes is that some people will respond just for the chance to win, and don’t care about your product. As long as you can weed out the prize-seekers before the leads go to your sales force (with a prequalification step), this shouldn’t be a problem, and you’ll net out with more leads than with a less juicy offer. Another benefit is that people will take pains to give you correct and complete contact information, so you can get in touch when they win.

In addition, because you are now at the first step in a lengthy sales process, consider a second marketing collateral offer when your prospect keeps a sales appointment or follows through on a similar commitment. If you go this route, use the gift as further qualification by making sure it’s relevant to their business; a scientific calculator is a better offer to a scientist than a box of Omaha Steaks. In the Anritsu VectorStar^TM case study that we will cover in a later installment, we offered a backpack for carrying around the many gadgets engineers tend to accumulate. For government employees and contractors who are not allowed to receive personal gifts, we swapped out a desirable reference book. The main thing to keep in mind is to make the offer business-relevant to your audience.

If you like more on this topic or others, request our free Digital Marketing Case Studies.

Laurie Beasley, President, Beasley Direct Marketing

Laurie B. Beasley is co-founder and president Beasley Direct Marketing, Inc., a Silicon Valley direct marketing agency that has managed search, email, online, direct mail, and demand generation campaigns for over a hundred companies. Ms. Beasley serves as president of the Direct Marketing Association of Northern California. She manages the Online Roundtable for the BMA Northern California www.NorCalBMA.org. She is an instructor of online marketing at UC Berkeley Extension and teaches in the Level 2 Certification program for the Online Marketing Institute. She frequently speaks on online marketing and demand generation topics for marketing organizations, including the Online Marketing Summit, Interactive Marketing Week, DMA Annual Conference, and the Marketing Executive Networking Group.

 

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