Sales and Marketing Archives - Falconry Group Marketing Seattle

For those about to curate, I salute you

B2B, Sales and Marketing, Social Media No Responses »

Feb 212013

In fact, I’ll even help you.

Curating other peoples’ content is one of the best ways to build your own social media brand. Content curation, if done well, communicates several attractive qualities about you:

a) You know who the cool kids are.
b) You’re not afraid to put your opinions on display.
c) You’re magnanimous (like a boss!) So you’re secure enough in who you are to acknowledge others’ contributions to the conversation.

Like anything else in social media — or life — there are better and worse ways to curate content. For a look at something that — in my opinion, at least — leans toward “better,” here’s a tweet I curated today (we can discuss curating Google+, LinkedIn and Facebook content some other time).

First, the original tweet:

Eliminating Insecure and Unreliable File Transfer with FileXpress [New #video] bit.ly/13gvOzx #MFT

— FileXpress MFT (@FileXpress) February 21, 2013

Now, if we just wanted to “phone in” our curated content, we could just click that little Retweet button, couldn’t we? Or we could do slightly better and copy-paste an “old school” retweet along these lines:

RT @FileXpress Eliminating Insecure and Unreliable File Transfer with FileXpress [New #video] http://bit.ly/13gvOzx #MFT

To be fair, sometimes a quick retweet is all we have time for. And sometimes the original tweet/content is so good, it deserves a straight pass-through. But if the opportunity to curate is there, and we have the time, we take it. Because we aren’t mindless automatons, are we?** No, we’re not. We’re human beings. We’re original. We have something to say. We have value to add. So we consider following the pro tips* below.

Links that appear closer to the start of the tweet are more likely to be clicked. No, I don’t know why they are more likely to be clicked. They just are.

Editorialize when you curate. Insert an opinionated/arresting/ironic/funny comment to give your retweet some pop. Separate your editorial comments from the content being curated with a familiar symbol. My personal favorite is this: }

Trim text down to the minimum, while keeping it readable to English speakers. Leave as much as 25 to 40 characters of “RT space,” if you can. This lets others get a word in if they decide to RT your RT. Note: it’s ok to neuter the meaning of the original headline (a little) in the process of making this extra space. After all, this is the Internet. Truthiness before truth!

Here’s an example of how I used these tips in my curated tweet:

Clever new #MFT #video by @attachmate bit.ly/13gvOzx } RT @filexpressEliminating Insecure File Transfer

— Tom Scearce (@TLOTL) February 21, 2013

* Use of the term “pro tip” is not meant to imply that I am an actual professional. In fact, I’m willing to bet a large sum that you can share a curation tip or two of your own in the comments section. Care to take that bet?

** If you had to think about that question, it’s ok. And it proves you’re not a mindless automaton.

Time Management for Marketers

Sales and Marketing No Responses »

Dec 042012

Has it been a while since you’ve viewed a marketing presentation and chuckled?

No I don’t mean, “chuckled politely at the presenter’s semi-relevant but awkwardly-referenced New Yorker cartoon.” I mean, “chuckled because information that is really, personally useful to me is delivered in an engaging, entertaining way.”

If it *has* been a while since you’ve chuckled like that, check out this Slideshare by Portent CEO Ian Lurie. It’s all about how marketers can must manage their time better if they want to be successful in their jobs.

Ian has an amazing talent for simultaneously maximizing white space and meaning in his presentations. This one is no exception. Read it and you’ll see what I mean.

Also, for added convenience, Ian has organized links to all of the people and tools he references in the preso (including my personal fave, IFTTT) on this bit.ly page.

Enjoy!

Time management for marketers: Don't get whacked out poo brain from Ian Lurie

Slides from our recent talk at NACE

Sales and Marketing No Responses »

Sep 132012

Tom Scearce, The Falconry Group Principal speaking at #NACE joint meeting. twitter.com/FalconryGr/sta…

— Falconry Group (@FalconryGr) September 12, 2012

On Tuesday of this week, Falconry Group presented to a gathering of the Seattle, Tacoma, and Portland chapters of the National Association of Catering and Events. The event was held at the beautiful Alderbrook Resort and Spa on Hood Canal, about 90 minutes from Seattle.

The title of the presentation was “10 simple changes you can make to get more leads online,” and the slides are embedded below. The opening slides are photos from a vacation to Italy I took with my in-laws in 2006. A story about this trip was used to set up the rest of the presentation, which begins on slide 14. We filmed the presentation and will be posting clips to the website soon. For a copy of my presenters notes (four pages long – including links to additional source material) please email hello@falconrygroup.com.

10 simple changes you can make to get more leads online from The Falconry Group

Small Business Marketing Do’s and Don’ts

B2B, Sales and Marketing, Social Media, Strategy No Responses »

Aug 032012

Tom Scearce was recently a panelist on a marketing experts’ roundtable titled “The Do’s and Don’ts of Small Business Marketing.”

Other roundtable participants included:

Shawn Naggiar, Chief Revenue Officer at Act-On Software, Inc.
Ivana Taylor, a Marketing Strategist at Third Force, and founder of DIYmarkets.com
Whitney Keyes who is a Strategist at Whitney Keyes Production
Maria Ross (moderator), the Creator & Chief Brand at Red Slice

This lively discussion addressed questions such as:

• Strategies for acquiring new customers
• Prioritizing small business marketing activities with time and budget
• Avoiding common mistakes in email marketing

Tom emphasized list segmentation and targeted content to increase relevance and conversion, citing a client example of the Portent internet marketing email series. Shawn stressed getting directly to the point, while not trying to “close the deal” in lead nurturing emails. Ivana stressed the need to keep your company goals in mind when communicating with prospects. Whitney shared tips on getting new customers, using the dating metaphor to emphasize how using the contacts you already know can expand your reach.

Hear The Conversation

Listen to the roundtable via this audio player:

Or you can download it here.

Enjoy!

Marketing for Non-Marketers – 3 Examples

Sales and Marketing, Strategy No Responses »

Jul 122012

This is the first Falconry Group blog post from our summer intern, Hanne Ockert-Axelsson. Welcome Hanne!

Have you chosen to be an engineer, a research scientist, or another profession requiring advanced analytical and technical skill? If so, in college did you ever nod off a little in those business pre-requisite classes? Especially during the marketing sections.

If you’re in the workforce now, you could be forgiven for skipping the optional marketing “lunch and learns.” You’ve got products to build, problems to solve, and deadlines to meet.

To people with the advanced knowledge required to build viable products, marketing can seem like a trivial detail. It’s something those nice marketing people do at the beginning and/or end of a product development cycle. This view of marketing is understandable. Architects and general contractors design and build great houses. But, for various reasons, they usually don’t sell them.

I hope you won’t agree with this statement too quickly, but truth-be-told, I’m not a “natural” marketer. I’m really fascinated by marketing, and I’m excited to gain more experience as The Falconry Group’s summer intern. Ultimately though, I want to build great products; specifically in the category of pharmaceutical research and development. This field is, and must be, a business. And I know that marketing strategy and execution can make the difference between success or failure. (I like success better!)

It seems like truly great products and great marketing come in the same package. Having a strong product is one thing. Communicating those strengths effectively in a brochure or web video is another. To turn a target audience into customers, we have to do both.

I’ve come to see marketing as an essential component of a great product. If I’m helping build that product, buyers need to know why it’s great. So they’ll buy it. So I can get paid!

Here are three things that I, a lifelong non-marketer, have learned about marketing:

1) Marketing myself. It’s my name on the résumé and LinkedIn profile. I’m the one sitting in the interview chair. If I’ve gotten that far, I probably think I can do the job. But if I can’t explain why I can do it to a potential employer, I’m unlikely to get an offer. Selling oneself can be awkward. But it’s essential to getting a foot in the door.

2) Marketing a product. Last year, I met an undergraduate advertising major who, along with a few friends, was starting a business. Their product was coconut water. Now, in any natural foods store, there are ten different varieties of coconut water. Most have brand names and packaging that promise more health to healthy consumers. These guys differentiated their coconut water by packaging it as a hangover cure. I thought this was clever. Instead of fighting for attention in the existing market of coconut water guzzlers, they focused on creating a new market of buyers. And those buyers will likely to buy an extra unit (or two) of the product, if it’ll make that $#@%&@* headache stop!

3) Marketing a brand. So we were successful with our last product, but now what? In the echo chamber of brands vying for buyers’ attention, our great product today will be tomorrow’s old news. Nobody wants to buy the original iPod anymore. But Apple isn’t really selling iPods, or even iPhones or iPads. They’re selling a lifestyle. That brand promise keeps Apple customers loyal while the Apple product folks cook up the next great idea.

Ok, now it’s your turn:

Do you agree that great products and great marketing ALWAYS go hand-in-hand?
Do you have any examples of great marketing overcoming a weak product? Or vice versa?

Your comments below please!

A lead nurturing preso we posted to Slideshare

B2B, Marketing Automation, Process, Sales and Marketing, Social Media, Strategy No Responses »

Mar 302012

This is a presentation on lead nurturing we created for a webinar a while back. We think it’s kinda neato. Sorta spiffy. Swell, even.

The deck includes some easy-to-follow examples from work we’ve done with clients. However, there’s no audio. Just slides. If there’s enough interest, we’ll record an audio track and add it to the preso. Cast your vote via email [info at falconrygroup dot com] or in the comment section. Democracy – don’t you just love it??

Lead Nurturing That Works – 7 New Ideas for Increasing Lead Scores, Conversion, and Pipeline

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No, really, I can quit automation any time

B2B, Marketing Automation, Process, Sales and Marketing 2 Responses »

Mar 212012

The team down at Austin-based Marketing Automation Software guide asked for my commentary on one of their blog posts. I’ve been meaning to write about this topic anyway. So I’m happy to oblige.

Before I start, bear with me on a couple of points:

1) I’m going to make one or two contextual jumps from marketing automation to the general (mis)use of automation in our culture.

2) I may get a little “aggro” about this stuff. Now, I rarely launch into angry screeds on this blog. I’m more of a blue-sky, happy-talk, it-will-all-work-out-in-the-end marketer. So if I offend anyone, please give me a get-out-of-jail-free pass this one time. Or give me hell in the comments section.

Ok. End of preamble.

Justin Gray, CEO of LeadMD, posted this gem last week: Marketing Automation ROI: Myths and Facts

Gray nicely summarizes the soaring hopes and earthbound realities companies experience when deploying marketing automation (MA) software. And he outlines several smart strategies marketers can adopt to increase their odds of success.

Gray’s straight talk is refreshing. Because much of the chatter in the MA space is influenced by MA software vendors. In the past, I have been critical of these vendors’ marketing and sales practices. I also believe that (some of) these vendors are (partly) responsible for the unrealistic expectations Gray notes in his piece.

But responsibility and blame are two different things. As Bono once sang, “If you need someone to blame // Throw a rock in the air you’ll hit someone guilty.”

The MA software vendors operate in a highly competitive, fast-growing space. In reality, they are only doing what they feel is required to grow revenues and create shareholder value. So I’m simultaneously aware (I’m a Gemini – it’s what I do) that these criticisms (a) are pointless, and (b) ignore a much larger reality in our culture.

Folks, we have got to put down the automation crack-pipe. It is killing us.

No, this is not yet another Quixotic lament about the quickening pace of technological change. I love everything that technology does to benefit humanity. But I H-A-T-E to see it used to de-humanize human relationships.

A poorly designed sales process is far from the worst offender. There are many others, like political robocalling, commercial robotexting, robo-foreclosures, and [insert your example here].

And now here’s THIS ridiculous news story, which befouled my laptop screen yesterday morning.

“Employers ask job seekers for Facebook passwords”

Yes, I realize the story isn’t about a failure of automation. But if “give us your login” becomes a mainstream hiring practice, you know there’d be an app for that!

The request to inspect an applicant’s Facebook account is a symptom of the same disease that we (wrongly) treat with marketing automation software. That disease is the belief that we can insulate our corporate and personal assets from the unpredictable nature of human relationships.

The truth is this: recruiting — like marketing, sales, management, or anything else in business — is like life itself. It involves uncertainty and risk. And, natural disasters aside, most of that randomness involves other people.

People – dang them! – don’t always do what we want them to do. So we build and operate systems to help us understand their behavior. But no machine can out-human a human in anticipating, and tending to, another human’s changing needs. That day may come. But even then, it won’t come cheap. This is why we attract, hire, and retain great recruiters, marketers, salespeople, and managers. And we outfit them, when necessary, with labor-saving software.

This topic relates closely to the name of our business: The Falconry Group.

The falcon and falconer in our logo are like any two people in the business world. We each have different talents (or talons) and abilities. We all have our own stuff going on. And we’d all like to believe that we don’t really need each other to survive.

On some days, in some ways, we’re right about that. And if a poorly designed business process pushes us together against our will, a broken wing or a clawed-out eye can be the result!

But sometimes, like the trend line in our logo, we choose to work together. And when we commit the time and resources to do it right, the results are, predictably, amazing.

Why Leads Matter – Part 2 of 2

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Aug 172011

Part one of this series described the importance of minimizing friction and maximizing trust as you attract and manage leads.

Part two describes how these low-friction, high-trust* leads help you feed your beast.

* These adjectives are TLOTL equivalents of free-range, grass-fed, gluten-free, and no high fructose corn syrup.

Why Leads Matter, Reason #2: Leads have unique and valuable insights into how you can get more new business.

If you have an established business, you have customers, employees, vendors, shareholders, and tax authorities who need your attention. Every member of those groups has a commercial relationship with you. Those relationships come with obligations and expectations. Your reward for maintaining those relationships is… …you get to keep running your business. And truth be told, if you’re doing an AMAZING JOB of managing those relationships, you probably don’t need to worry too much about leads. They will seek you out and buy from you. And if they have to crawl through five miles of gravel just to join your exclusive club of happy customers, they will thank you for the privilege.

If you’ve reached this state of business bliss, leads are, understandably, an afterthought. If you’re a generous CEO, you might consider a kind gesture towards them. Perhaps free first aid kits.

But 99.9% percent of businesses don’t have these high-class problems. For those companies, existing commercial relationships consume nearly all their resources. Some growth occurs organically. But customers churn, prices flatten out, fixed costs stay fixed, while shareholders demand predictable, profitable growth.

This reality is why I’ve titled this series of posts, “Why Leads Matter.” If I ask a CEO how to define a lead, many will give a straight-forward answer like, “it’s the people who talk to Sales about buying our product.” That’s a good start, but it’s incomplete.

Like any living beast, your business must eat. You may have great hunters on your sales team. But they hunt leads. Leads feed your beast.

By definition, leads haven’t bought your product, yet. But they’re considering a purchase right now. And that makes them unique.

Your customers and past customers have already drunk your Kool-Aid. Focus group attendees will accept your $250 in exchange for two hours away from home and their opinion of your Kool-Aid in a simulated “I’m thirsty” scenario.

But your leads, right now, are accumulating a ton of information that is valuable to you.

How so? Well, they’re:

researching the overall market (analyst reports, research briefs, etc)
listening to consultants, resellers, and others knowledgeable in your category
talking to salespeople **
looking at web sites, advertisements, and promotional offers **
receiving email and direct mail, attending webinars, viewing infographics **
participating in social media conversations**

** yours and your competitors’

The wisdom of this crowd can’t be overestimated. You could easily pay someone $100K per year to know your market as well as your leads. Maybe you already do. If so, ask them to show you how your leads are being heard in your product, marketing, sales, and operations plans. Remember, these are people who have given you (some of) their attention. They deserve (some of) yours.

Yes, this is my dog (The Mighty Quinn) when he was a puppy. No, I didn’t stage this pic. Please don’t report me to PETA.

One more nice thing about leads: you’ve already paid for them. Whether you’ve spent $100 or $100 million to bring leads to your door, they’re here now.

Short-term revenue is an ideal way to exchange value with your leads. But it’s far from the only way.

Listen to your leads.

Then feed them to your beast.

Why Leads Matter – Part 1 of 2

B2B, Process, Sales and Marketing No Responses »

Aug 102011

I think leads are important.

[I know. Shocking.]

In fact I think the topic of leads is important enough to warrant at least 10-15 uninterrupted minutes of a CEO’s time each week.

As the owner of two small businesses, I know that’s expensive time. Leads are worth it.

In each of my next three posts, I offer a new reason why.

Why Leads Matter, Reason #1: Leads mark the key moment in time when previously invisible and anonymous people trust your brand enough to voluntarily “de-cloak.”

Why do they de-cloak? Do they do it because they’re ready to buy?

Sometimes they are. But at this point, probably not. They may buy later, if they still trust your brand and value your products. Right now, they just want information you have that (they believe) will be useful to them. So they volunteer information they have that (you believe) will be useful to you. And they would like this exchange to be frictionless.

What does “frictionless” mean to your leads in this context? It means that when they “buy” your product information with their contact information, they get what they pay for. Nothing less, and nothing more. If you promise people who fill out your registration form a free buyer’s comparison guide, give them a good one, and promptly. But don’t follow that up with an encore of three promotional emails per week until death-or-the-unsubscribe-link-do-you-part. And don’t tell your sales team to call blitz that group of people. Doing that may yield a few sales (that you might’ve won anyway), but it will leave a poor impression on the 90%-plus of your leads who don’t return your sales reps’ calls.

This kind of silent damage to your brand usually goes unreported. Your leads are too busy and polite to complain about it. But it only takes one disgruntled ex-lead to, in a fit of keyboard rage, flame your brand to 5000 Twitter followers, and their 5000 followers, and so on…. The choices only get worse from there, e.g., cease-and-desist letters, public mea culpas that distract your staff, etc…

Let’s not use the lead management process to mass produce disgruntled ex-leads. A poorly designed process won’t mass-produce revenue. In fact it might mass-reduce revenue. Instead, let’s help buyers get information with minimal friction, and then optimize the process to book more new customers.

When we remove friction we make room for trust. Trust, as you may have noticed, is a bit of a scarce resource these days. But real trust, which can only be earned and never bought, is a powerful thing. Trust attracts new visitors to your web site. Trust converts visitors to leads and leads to customers. And over time, trust makes customers into loyal fans who refer their peers and help you attract more visitors to your web site, and so on….

Image credit: Graur Razvan Ionut

A marketing automation infographic and a random Coca-Cola reference

Sales and Marketing No Responses »

Jun 302011

My friends over at Focus asked me if I wouldn’t mind sharing an infographic they recently published on marketing automation. The infographic has some interesting metrics and data points from leading research and analyst firms covering the MA and CRM space. For anyone wanting a quick intro or an updated “lay of the land” in this category, it’s a good read.

[Attention all Federal Trade Commission hallway monitors: no money was exchanged and no other quid pro quo took place here, ok? Sheesh....]

Now, since this is a blog, I feel obliged to add some perspective on this topic. So, on top of the ones in the infographic, here’s two more metrics for you to consider. The good news: assuming you have some basic tracking tools like Google Analytics and/or a CRM system you can pretty easily apply these metrics to your business.

Metric #1: Your fresh leads who don’t buy. This is the basic “lead nurturing” scenario, and the subject of many marketing automation discussions. Let’s say you generate 100 leads per month and 8 of them end up buying your product. There’s up to 92 more leads that still need attention in some form. Sure they may have bought from your competitors. Or they may have shelved the project. Or they may have just been kicking tires in the first place. Marketing automation can help you stay connected to these 92 leads per month – that’s a run rate of 1104 leads per year for anyone who is counting — in a way that is cost-effective, scalable, and branded.

Metric #2: Your web site visitors who don’t become fresh leads. A lot of people don’t realize how marketing automation can help improve lead conversion. Here’s just one way: let’s assume those 100 leads per month above are derived from 15,000 unique visitors to your web site each month. Marketing automation can help you track and score those 15K “uniques” from the moment they reach your web site, which may occur well before the lucky 100 become known to your sales team. The benefits of this are two-fold:

a) Sales-effectiveness. Your sales people can better understand the prospect’s motivations and interests, as shown by the keywords used, and the pages/content viewed by that person before contacting your sales rep. This allows your sales team to use precious “talk time” more efficiently, presenting the benefits of your product or business that matter most to the prospect. And with the help of lead scoring (a point system that reflects the expected commercial value of a web visitor or lead), your sales team can further optimize talk time by calling out first to the highest scoring (hottest) leads.

b) Marketing effectiveness. Your marketing expert(s) can easily optimize landing pages, phone trees, email templates and other assets by analyzing the rich website and CRM data that are “married” to your leads and orders. And as powerful as Google Analytics is, most companies either don’t or can’t use it to answer important profit-related questions about your sales process. Questions like, “how do we attract, convert, and close more law firms with between 5 and 50 employees in major cities?” A smart implementation of a marketing automation process can answer questions like this.

Enjoy the infographic! (and click it to enlarge)

If you find the original post of this infographic on Focus.com, there’s some good banter in the comments section about marketing automation products being over-hyped and ultimately too hard to deploy (i.e., “shelfware.”). For the record, here’s my take:

Over-hyped = YES

Shelfware = NO, at least not with my clients.

Note: I’m hereby adopting a new policy on this blog. There will be a minimum of one self-promotional plug required in each post. There’s a limit to this all-you-need-is-love marketing, you know. Just ask the evil geniuses at Coca-Cola, who with one brilliant TV ad released about 40 years ago, heralded both the death of 60′s idealism and the birth of Gen-X cynicism.

But I non-sequitorize, or, something….

Anyway, most of the deployment issues with marketing automation occur when companies realize (typically, and unfortunately, post-purchase) that they lack the commitment required to do it right. There are other issues too. The products still need to mature, and the talent pool of implementors still needs to grow. There will be a shakeout in the marketplace for sure, and perhaps soon. But the basic building blocks of marketing automation are here to stay.

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