What’s the not-so-secret but often neglected success factor in B2B direct marketing? Simply this: your in-house prospect list (house file) can be your most important asset in a successful direct marketing operation. And this is equally true whether you are communicating with prospects at their email addresses, physical addresses or telephone numbers. A house file can vastly decrease your cost of lead and new …
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Patience and Persistence – A Powerful Combination in Marketing
Posted: Jan 27 2012 by Christopher Ryan on our GreatB2BMarketing.com blog in B2B Marketing
As has been stated in works ranging from the Bible to the Beatles, there is a time for every purpose. Sometimes the best course is to persist and push through the obstacle and sometimes the best course is to apply a little dose of patience. Here are some examples of when to practice persistence. Be persistent in setting goals for your marketing programs. Better yet, make them intentions. How many unique visitors will you have at your website? How many inquires ...
10 Minutes to Better B2B Marketing
Posted: Jan 17 2012 by Christopher Ryan on our GreatB2BMarketing.com blog in B2B Marketer
I was attending a fitness class at my health club this past weekend and the instructor was talking about how full the club was in early January and how many of the people were “New Year’s resolution” exercisers who would probably be absent within a month. He said that many people have noble intentions and set major goals, but they take an approach bound for failure, by overdoing it in the early stages – for example, exercising every day for ...
A Dozen B2B Marketing Mantras for 2012
Posted: Jan 3 2012 by Christopher Ryan on our GreatB2BMarketing.com blog in B2B Marketing
The Fusion Marketing Partners team got together last week to do our year end recap and strategize plans for 2012. The bottom line is that we had a good year. As part of the discussion, we talked about some guiding principles (mantras) for how we will conduct business in 2012. Here is a sampling that might give you some ideas for improvement in the coming year.Focus on the three marketing measurements that probably matter most to your organization: boosting awareness, generating leads ...
Say What You Mean – Mean What You Say
Posted: Dec 20 2011 by Christopher Ryan on our GreatB2BMarketing.com blog in Content
I just read an interesting article by Dan Pollatta in the Harvard Business Review, with the clever title I Don’t Understand What Anyone Is Saying Anymore. The premise of the article is that business people speak with so much gobbledygook and industry jargon – it is hard to understand what they are talking about. The topic of communication is important to us at Fusion Marketing Partners because we have to either create compelling messages for our clients or coach them on ...
6 Tips to Prepare for B2B Marketing Victory in 2012
Posted: Dec 8 2011 by Christopher Ryan on our GreatB2BMarketing.com blog in Marketing Plan
With only about three weeks to go in 2011 I hope you are turning at least some of your thoughts to what you will do in the coming days to ensure that 2012 is your best year ever. I know it is tough to close out the year strongly while simultaneously planning for the future, but it vitally important that you do so. Year-end planning reminds me of the cartoon where the guy is standing in waist deep water swatting at ...
Should You Say YES or NO to Social Media?
Posted: Nov 29 2011 by Christopher Ryan on our GreatB2BMarketing.com blog in Social Media
Last week, I was seated next to a guy at a business breakfast who told me he was embarking on a second career and becoming a writer. The speaker at the event mentioned social media and the guy immediately stated, “I hate social media. I know social media would be good to help me sell books but I’m not sure if I can bring myself to do it. What do you advise?” The first thing I thought of was to tell him ...
Attention to “Detale” is Crucial in B2B Marketing
Posted: Nov 17 2011 by Christopher Ryan on our GreatB2BMarketing.com blog in B2B Marketing
With apologies to my excellent English teachers over the years, the headline of this post illustrates why attention to detail is so important in marketing. All of us make mistakes, and I have made many. But keep in mind the old carpenter’s expression, “It is better to measure twice and cut once.” Likewise, it is always better to prevent mistakes in the first place, as opposed to correcting them after the fact. We practice this at Fusion Marketing Partners and ...
Are Your Marketing Claims Believable?
Posted: Nov 7 2011 by Christopher Ryan on our GreatB2BMarketing.com blog in Copywriting
Today’s post was motivated by an unsolicited email I received from an outsource payroll company, that made the following two claims:If your business has fewer than 20 employees, statistics have shown that you can save money by outsourcing your payroll operations. On average, 40% of the entire administration time of a small business deals with payroll processing.Both of these claims suffer a credibility gap because neither is attributed to any independent source. The company sending the emai. […] ...
B2B Lead Generation – How Much Information Should You Capture?
Posted: Oct 27 2011 by Christopher Ryan on our GreatB2BMarketing.com blog in B2B Leads
I just read an interesting article at Web Ink Now, titled New B2B Lead Generation Calculus. Noted marketing thought leader David Meerman Scott revisits that often-debated topic of whether it is better to collect opt-in data before allowing people to download your content, or to make that content available without requiring anything from the website visitor. As Scott explains, “There are those who believe in making content like white papers totally free without registration in order to sprea. […] ...
Intentional Marketing Beats I’ll Try Marketing
Posted: Oct 19 2011 by Christopher Ryan on our GreatB2BMarketing.com blog in B2B Marketing
Do you want to make a big difference in your B2B marketing and sales performance? If so, adopt the practice of “intending” instead of “trying”. Most of the time, when I ask a marketing manger to do something, I get an answer like the following: I’ll try to find you the information you need to make this campaign work. I’ll try to generate some leads. I’ll try to help the sales force make their sales targets. You get the picture. The common thread is the ...
Should You Use a Marketing Consulting Firm? by Christopher Ryan
I was doing a talk about branding and positioning to the Peak Venture Group last week and was asked an intriguing question from a technology start-up CEO: Should I hire an in-house chief marketing officer (CMO) or outsource this role? Here is a rough synopsis of the answer I gave this gentleman. Note that my …
Salespeople: Are they Dinosaurs or Something Else? – by Christopher Ryan
I read an interesting discussion on LinkedIn titled: How soon will the internet turn your salespeople into dinosaurs? Not surprisingly, this discussion generated a lot of comments – 132 to date. Some agreed that sales reps are an endangered species while others took the opposite approach, maintaining that sales professionals are essential to the success …
Do You Need a Coach to Be Successful in B2B Marketing? – by Christopher Ryan
I read a posting by Patrick McClure at the Sales Lead Management website titled The First Fundamental of Success: Get a Coach. McClure points out that every Olympic athlete has a coach and this is one of the reasons why they are able to obtain such high levels of performance. So how does coaching apply …
Push Marketing vs. Pull Marketing by Christopher Ryan
I am a marketer by trade but as a consumer, I get as annoyed as anyone by the persistent and unrelenting intrusiveness of push marketing techniques. As hard as we try to get away from unwanted promotions (TiVo, Sirius Radio, cable, etc.), marketers find new ways to track us down and share their messages with us, …
Is the B2B Marketing Services Industry Broken? – by Christopher Ryan
I just read an interesting article at Hubspot.com titled Is the Marketing Services Industry Broken? The article makes a rational case that services firms are failing to provide good value to their clients in many important ways. And while I believe many of these types of generalizations are tough to justify, there is indeed some truth in the …
Pricing Strategies in B2B Marketing
There is no magic bullet in pricing. However, we can all agree that maximizing our value to customers is a very good thing for both the top line and bottom line. I happened to attend a very good presentation on this subject at the Inverness Group meeting in Denver. The speaker was Jonathan Bein, Managing …
Nine Questions to Develop Your B2B Branding Strategy
The first step in developing a branding and positioning strategy is to determine your starting point through a series of nine questions. The first question is: What is the scope of your branding problem—is it to position an entire organization or simply to position a product or series of products?
Bridging the Gap Between B2B Marketing and Sales by Christopher Ryan
If you are a marketing manager at a company that uses direct sales representatives, these people can be either your best friends or worst nightmare. Chances are they are somewhere in between, but the point is they can make your life easier, or they can be a constant source of irritation. In fact, careers can …
