By Michael Cannon

When you peel the onion back on why your marketing team is failing you,
what you find is that the issues are focused primarily on four categories of marketing content:

1. Customer-facing collateral (company website, brochures, videos, etc.)
2. Demand generation (advertising, events, etc.)
3. Internal-facing sales tools (competitive analysis, sales opportunity overviews, etc.)
4. Sales support training (product, competitive, sales enablement, etc.)

When you peel down to another layer, what you see is that it’s rarely the content that’s the problem but rather the messaging in the content — or more specifically, the lack of effective messaging. The messaging is focused mostly on what your product does and includes, and how it works, instead of being focused on why your product is the best way to help your customers achieve their business objectives. It’s primarily descriptive, and not persuasive.

Proof that most customer communication (content and sales conversations) is ineffective can be seen in over a decade of research reports and is summarized in the following benchmark data:

•  Over 50% of your marketing and sales communications aren’t relevant to your customer
• More than 70% of your marketing content isn’t relevant to your sales teams

Just for a moment, consider these data points and the cost burden they place on your P&L. Even if your organization is 10% to 20% better than the average, the cost is too high, and avoidable.

Top 10 Reasons Why Marketing Is Failing

When you peel the onion back yet another layer and ask, ”Why is it that most of the messaging in Marketing’s content is not relevant or useful?”, the following items emerge:

1. Poor visibility into the true cost of ineffective customer communication
2. Lack of clear differentiation among messaging, content, and conversations
3. Inaccurate model of the categories, styles, and types of messaging required for market success
4. Misguided priority setting
5. Erroneous business model for allocating sales and marketing resources
6. Ineffective new-product development process or commercialization process
7. Lack of method and skills to create persuasive messaging
8. Poor alignment around the definition, rating, hand-off, follow-up, and reporting of leads
9. Limited sales experience
10. Lack of a formal feedback loop from Sales, a.k.a. content usage and rating system, to understand what is working, what is not, and “why?”

An additional reason is that executive leadership manages Marketing primarily on the quantity of content produced rather than the effectiveness of the content.

For a description of the first nine reasons and their solutions, read “9 Strategies to Increase Marketing Effectiveness”

A sales portal with basic content-management functionality resolves reason #10.

What do you think is the best way to change how executive leadership manages the marketing function?

What’s on your top 10 list?

 By Michael Cannon

The truth is that prospects do not give much credibility to
what you say about your company and its products and services. Your communications are mostly perceived as claims.

Given this reality, in what way can you communicate your competitive advantages so that prospects are more likely to believe you?

Yes, customer stories, testimonials and case studies (written, audio, and video) are the most credible and most powerful tool to influence the buyer’s decision…but only if they’re done right.

The Problem with Most Customer Stories

You know your customer stories are not very credible and influential when they are written from the perspective of the company and product, i.e., “Look what we did.” You can tell your stories are self-centric when they use a lot of pronouns such as “we,” “our,” your company name, and your product name. These words indicate that you have made your company and product the hero of the story. This story style reduces your credibility and your influence on the buyer’s decision.

Secret to the Most Influential Customer Stories

To make your customer stories highly credible and influential, they must be written from the perspective of the customer, i.e., “Look what I did.” You can tell your stories are customer-centric when they use a lot of pronouns such as “I,” “we,” “us,” and “our.” These words indicate that you have made the customer the hero of the story. This story style increases your credibility and your influence on the buyer’s decision.

Your customer stories must also highlight how your customer was able to solve his/her business issues using your key competitive advantages. When you communicate your key differentiation points with the customer as the hero of the story, it enable prospects to more easily visualize themselves using your company/product as a tool to become a hero in their company.

Once you have created customer-centric hero stories, liberally distribute them across your website, in your collateral, sales tools, and demand-generation programs. It will make all these customer communication tools more effective.

See examples of customer stories that apply this principle of persuasive communication:

Success Stories

Quotes

Call to Action

Take a look at one or two of your customer stories and determine “who is the hero of the story?” If it’s your company and/or product, then you know what you need to do. Customer stories are the most credible and most powerful tool to influence the buyer’s decision — but only if they’re done right.

By Michael Cannon

In a prior post, we reviewed “The Easiest Way to Get Customer Testimonials and Case Studies.”
Now the focus is on how you can utilize persuasive messaging as a tool (outline) for making your customer stories much more influential.

Let’s say you have business-creation messaging to enable the early phases of the buyer’s journey, a.k.a. the Technology Adaption Life Cycle (TALC). If the top three reasons to change from status quo are: 1) Reduce Operational Costs, 2) Improve Service Levels, and 3) Reduce IT Complexity, then you want your customer stories to be in alignment with these top three reasons and the supporting data.

The same goes for order-creation (competitive) messaging. If the top three reasons to buy the solution from your company instead of the competition are: 1) Lowest Operating Cost, 2) Highest Service Levels, and 3) Lowest Risk, then your customer stories must also be in alignment with these positions.

This may seem like a “duh,” and it is, but many customer testimonials and case studies do not make this alignment obvious, if it’s there at all.

Not deploying persuasive messaging into your customer stories causes them to be interesting, but not influential. View these persuasive messaging examples (requires registration) and see how they are organized into highly influential customer story outlines.

ACTION ITEM: Pull out one of your customer stories and review it now. Does it clearly support one or more of your top three reasons for a customer to change from status quo and/ or choose your product or service? If not, commit to updating that story with the ideas above. Customer testimonials and case studies are the most effective sales tools you can create, but only if done right.

By Michael Cannon

Trend One: Content Selling

B2B content marketing today is focused primarily on lead generation
and is used mostly by Marketing to drive the early stages of the buyer’s journey, i.e., awareness, consideration, and preference.

In the future, content will be focused mostly on customer/revenue development. It will be deliberately used by Marketing and Sales to support all stages of the buyer’s journey.

This trend is a predictable response to the three big market drivers:

1. The internet enables buyers to do a lot more of their buying without talking to a person.
2. New internet communication channels, such as interactive blogs, social media, YouTube, etc., accelerate trend #1.
3. Web-enabled software, such as marketing/sales automation and big data analytics, also accelerate trend #1.

These drivers enable Marketing to a) see much further into the buyer’s journey, b) create content that more effectively supports more/all of the buyer’s journey, and c) do more/all of the selling.

They enable the trend to Content Selling. It’s how the marketing profession becomes much more relevant to revenue, customers, and the direct/indirect sales teams.

It’s why I think Marketing is poised for greatness.

To learn more about supporting the buyer’s journey, read this article: The #1 Way to Enable Greater Market Success: Messaging Breakthrough Accelerates Each Phase of the Technology Adoption Life Cycle.

Trend Two: Messaging-Enabled Content

I say “poised for greatness” because there is one big barrier in the transition to Content Selling: It’s the painful fact, borne out by over a decade of primary research, that about 50% of our marketing content is neither relevant nor useful to our prospective customers.

This number is just too high. It must be driven down in order to improve the ROI of content marketing and to enable the shift to Content Selling.

Making our content more relevant and useful requires that content be developed from its persuasive messaging components. For example, the two biggest buyer journey decision points are 1) the decision to change from the status quo, which requires “Why Change?” Messaging, and 2) the decision to select a particular vendor, which requires “Why You?” Messaging.

Creating persuasive messaging as a separate deliverable and then deploying it into all your go-to-market content (collateral, demand-generation, sales tools, and sales support training) is the core of messaging-enabled content. It’s what is required for Marketing to accelerate each stage in the buyer’s journey and the transition to Content Selling.

To learn more about how to create messaging-enabled content, read this article: 5 Easy Steps to Make Your Customer Communications 30 to 50% More Influential.

Thoughts? What trends do you see?

By Michael Cannon

The main reason it is so difficult to get customer quotes is that a company
is usually trying  to get the quotes when it needs them, not when the customer needs something from the company.

The easiest way to get testimonials and case studies is to ask for them when the customer is negotiating for something they want, like a bigger discount or other concessions as a part of the buying process.

If you’re providing sales support, try this approach: “I’ve got approval to give you X (an extra 3% discount) if you can get the customer to agree to provide us with Y (testimonial/case study), sometime in the next 60 days.”

If you’re talking to the prospective customer, try this approach: “If I could get you X (an extra 3% discount), would you agree to provide us with Y (testimonial/case study), sometime in the next 60 days?”

Make it clear that they will have final approval over the content, that you will write the quotes for them to select from and edit, or that you will interview the key contributors and write the case study for them to review and edit.

It’s not a lot of work for the customer, costs them nothing to give, and they get what they want. It’s an easy yes.

By Michael Cannon

This may seem self-evident, yet a lot of customer communications
(content and conversations) are not comparative.

When you are developing communications to influence people to change from the status quo — i.e., the goal is opportunity creation — it’s not about the value of your solution. It’s about the value difference between your solution and the customer’s current solution.

On the other hand, when you’re developing communications to influence people to buy your solution rather than the competition’s — i.e., the goal is order creation — it’s not about the value of your solution either. It’s about the value difference between your solution and the competitors’ solutions.

The comparison point is completely different depending on the goal of the communications.

The operating principle is that if buyers understand how you help them solve their problems or reach their objectives meaningfully better than their current solution and/or meaningfully better than the competition, then you have a higher probability of getting them to agree to change and to select your solution.

ACTION ITEM: Grab one of your customer-facing pieces of content. Determine what action you want the reader to take, i.e., “What is the goal?” per the concepts above. Then review the content to see if it’s making the right comparison. If not, now you know what to do.

For assistance, read:
5 Easy Steps to Make Your Customer Communications 30 to 50% More Influential

By Michael Cannon

In Part 2 you learned about  one of the best and fastest
ways to make your product easier for to sell.

Another great way to get more mindshare from the Channel Sales Forces (inside, field and distribution channel) is to revise your sales training goals.

The underlying goal of most sales product training is “to provide Sales with what they need to know in order to effectively sell the offering.” It’s the wrong goal.

A better goal is to get Sales “motivated to sell your product” by getting them 1) excited about the opportunity, 2) confident that they can be successful, and 3) committed to “start selling” your offering.

The traditional training goal is directed at selling Sales on a great product. It’s often “data dump” training that is very long and technical. It usually ends up making your product look difficult to sell and discourages Sales from even trying to sell your product.

The new training goal zeros in on “selling Sales on a great opportunity.” The training is short. It’s focused mostly on how and why Sales can make a lot of money quickly by selling your product. Try the new training goal at your next Sales event and watch your revenue rise, all because you got Sales motivated to sell your product, i.e. excited, confident, and committed.

Learn additional ways to make your Sales Support Training a lot more effective: “Solving the Six Biggest Problems with B2B Sales Support Training.”

By Michael Cannon

In Part 1 you learned about a critical  messaging distinction
that you must make in order to get a larger  percentage of the channel sales forces (Field, Inside and Channel Partners) to sell its product or service.

The next recommendation is to accept–no, embrace–that the channel sales forces are lazy. Or to say it another way, they are revenue-optimization machines, meaning that they want to make the most money for the least amount of work.

When you view it like this, it’s exactly what a company should want from its sales teams. It can also be a source of real frustration for those marketing teams who unknowingly make their products more difficult and time-consuming to sell.

Instead of complaining and/or using this reality as an excuse for poor results, you must do what it takes to make your products easier to sell. The easier they are to sell, the more the sales team will sell them. It’s that simple, and ignoring this reality is perilous to your career.

One of the best and fastest ways to make your product easier to sell is to make your marketing content more influential/useful – make sure it includes clear, relevant, differentiated and provable answers to the prospect’s primary buying questions. Then show the channel sales forces how they can use the content to answer the prospect’s primary buying questions too.

Here is one way to do it: Four Steps to the Most Influential Customer Communications

How do make your products easier to sell?

By Michael Cannon

One of the Product Marketing Manager’s greatest frustrations
is not getting a larger percentage of the channel sales
teams to actively sell their product or service.

A major reason for this problem is that Marketing does not differentiate channel messaging from customer messaging. One of the channel buyer’s primary questions goes something like, “Why should I spend my precious time selling this offering?” Yet, most of the messaging contained in the collateral and training delivered to the channel is focused on one of the customer’s buying questions, such as “Why should I buy this new solution from your company instead of your competitors?”

The questions and the answers are quite different for each buyer type. For the channel teams, a compelling answer looks something like this: “The addressable market this year is $245M, and the average deal sizes are $150-200K with 2-3 month sales cycles. We have 3 customer case studies to support you and our new release gives you a significant competitive advantage right now!”

Message to the channel more effectively and you will get larger percentage of the channel sales teams selling more of your product! Try it and see.

What do you do to get the channel more motivated to sell your product?

By Michael Cannon

A few days ago I received the promotional email below. It’s a perfect example of how the marketing profession consistently angers customers and wastes resources.

Read why and what they should have done instead.

How It Angers Customers

The whole point of the email was buried in the last paragraph. They required readers to plow through a lot of irrelevant, chest-thumping blah blah blah copy to find the point. And for those few who did read to the end, there was no persuasive reason to take the offer. It was a waste of my time and thus made me angry. The brand association is now Autonomy = useless, time waster.

It’s a simple example of how the marketing profession angers customers every day – the majority of the marketing content is considered useless by customers and by the field channel sales teams too. Take a look at over a decade’s worth of research that clearly supports this perspective.

How It Wastes Marketing Resources

Because the promotional copy was so bad, I’ll bet the click-through rate was less than 0.01%. Between the creative/project time and the list rental, they wasted well over $10,000 and reduced their brand value immeasurably.

What They Should Have Done

Create messaging that incorporates objective principles first and then write the copy.

Assuming the primary goal was to get readers to download the decision matrix, then the messaging needed to provide a persuasive answer to one simple question: “Why should I download this matrix?” Even without reading the matrix I’m guessing it would help 1) increase alignment between business requirements and product functionality, 2) reduce the time you spend comparing and selecting a vendor, and 3) reduce project- and user-adoption risk.

Revised Copy

Title: Insights to Acquire the Best Web Content Management Solution

Subtitle: Decision Matrix Guides You Through Critical Considerations

Are you considering a web content management system?

Would you like to:

1) Increase alignment between business requirements and product functionality?

2) Reduce the time you spend comparing and selecting a vendor?

3) Decrease project- and user-adoption risk?

Get a free copy of Ovum’s Decision Matrix: Selecting a Web Content Management Platform Vendor, 2012-13.

Register Here

Now compare it to the promotional email below. Is it 30-50% more influential? Will the click-through rate be 2-3x higher? You betcha!

Plus the brand association is now Autonomy = useful, time saver. Priceless.