Do you understand the value of long-term customer relationship?

If you think the primary performance driver of your business is ROI, then what about the returns you get from customers not only today, but throughout your customer’s lifetime?

Identifying high value customers plays a big hand in retaining customers that count! 

By calculating customer value, you will be able to analyze previous investments and gain a better understanding on future marketing investments.  

As customer retention is far better and cost effective than acquisition, customer value should precede customer acquisition. To create customer value, you need to constantly reinvent, refine and evolve customer experience and service.

By understanding your customers’ lifetime value:

• You can get to know what customers want,

• You can get better at giving customers what they want,

• Customers will get better at staying with you.

It is possible to create your own generation of high value customers by constantly surpassing your customers’ expectations through value.  As visionary Steve Jobs beautifully stated, “If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, ‘A faster horse!’” People don’t know what they want until you show it to them. That’s why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.”

Customer value is more than knowing the lifetime period; it is about providing an everlasting experience. Don’t Just “Do The Math”, Understand Customer Lifetime Value

How do you segment your database?

By asking “who” and “what” to segment? 
By demographic and firmographic metrics such as gender, geography, company size or industry vertical?

What demographic segmentation does is, it answers the question of 'WHO your customers are'. It however falls short in answering core questions of 'WHY customers are buying' and 'WHAT problem is the product or service looking to solve'?

While it may be easy to identify observable and actionable segments based on who your customer are, it lacks in recognizing new and profitable groups that cut across demographics such as those that revolve around needs and behavioral patterns of customers.

Alternatively, focusing on 'WHY customers buy' will help in identifying new segments based on motivational attributes and distinguish demand driving pockets that could be targeted.

Some of the metrics that could be utilized in motivational segmentation include:

• Adoption Stage – Is based on the stage in which your customers are in the adoption cycle - their psychographic patterns and different needs.  
• Value Driven – Is based on different objectives and distinct problems your solution solves. 
• Price Driven – Is segmentation that includes a highly classified group of customers who are willing to pay premium prices to access a solution.
• Event Triggered – Are segments based on events that influence your customer’s business such as recent mergers, new product launches or compliance mandates.

Conceptualizing creative names for segments can be a lot of fun. They can however be of very little use if not exclusive! Segments need to be developed based on unique variables used to target them.

While some marketers segment based on rules and assumptions through their experience, others use sophisticated mathematical and clustering models to define data sets into segments. However, what seems to be unaddressed is the question of ‘how and when do customers migrate from one segment to another?’

In the lifetime of a customer, it is necessary to keep segments dynamic to allow for regrouping based on migration over time. The topic of Customer Lifetime Value and LTV based segmentation will be discussed in future. Stay tuned to this space. Here’s to a successful dynamic segmentation! From us at Info CheckPoint

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An ideal database is designed around the needs of B2B marketers and the results the data would facilitate. The objective while screening databases is to focus not only on quantity of contacts, on quality and accuracy of profile information as well.

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CIOs and CMOs are Out…B2B Tech Buyers are the IT Decision Makers Today!

Why would you want to impress a CIO, CFO or CMO, when B2B Tech Buyers are the ones actually making the decision?

Let’s begin with, ‘Who are B2B Tech Buyers’?

They are IT decision makers who decide whether solutions, software and products purchased are in lines with the technical requirements of the company.

• For accounting software purchases they would typically be a financial officer or controller.
• For technology purchases they would typically be an IT professional.
• For sales relationship management software purchases they typically are sales managers.

While they need not necessarily be in charge of sanctioning finances, they are definitely the ones integral in influencing and selecting IT solutions. A deeper understanding into the mind of the B2B Tech Buyer is possible through the following stats.

It no longer is about influencing CFOs, CIOs and CMOs. Whether you like it or not, 89% of B2B Tech Buyers play a strategic and definitive part in the decision making process of the final purchase. 

Speak their language

Let them decide

Make them select you!

Feel Like Persecuting Those Pop-Up Ads? We Agree

How do you feel?

...When you’re watching television and an ad breaks in.

...When you’re driving to work and billboards distracts you.

...When you’re checking out information on a site and a banner ad pops up.

...When you’re connecting with friends on Facebook and an ad joins in on the conversation.

It’s annoying right?

That’s why lead generation marketers are moving away from what is called interruption marketing. It no longer is about screaming to a whole bunch of people with the hope that your potential buyer will eventually get the message. It is about interaction, it is about engagement and it is about relevant messaging.

What marketers are inclined towards today is disruptive marketing, where the disruption here is positive. It basically involves nudging a prospect when they are searching for information with relevant messaging. As Jaime Szulc, Levi’s CMO stated in the Direct Marketing News, “You not only have to be disruptive, you have to be disruptive in a way that is relevant on a very personal level. It creates energy so that people will get engaged.”

Disruptive marketing is about breaking down those conventions and biases and inculcating a radical perspective about a brand, product or service. It’s about initiating action than reacting to change. 

A step further from disruptive marketing is interactive marketing, which is based on involvement, influence, intimacy and engagement with the market. It is no longer about traditionally constructing a structured brand identity. It’s about getting customers involved in carving the essence of the brand and shaping their future experience. 

Transcend from interruption to positive disruption marketing

Let your customers in to your brand’s mind

Indulge in interactive marketing to

Involve, Interact, Influence

Connect with your market

Organized Your Marketing Team into TOFU, BOFU and MOFU Yet?

No, this is not a post on a tofu recipe. It is although a post on how you could categorize your marketing team (as formulated by Mike Volpe, CMO of Hubspot).

• TOFU (Top of Funnel) - This team will focus on strategies to attract prospects. Strategies ranging from blogging, search marketing, using social media channels to paid ad campaigns. This team’s goal  is to find new contacts or leads and build a marketing database.
• MOFU (Middle of Funnel) - This team will focus on strategies to build trust. They will initiate nurturing programs to build a relationship with leads and also be involved in scoring to qualify them for the sales team. This team’s goal is to classify leads generated by the Tofu team, to score them and forward qualified prospects to the sales team.
• BOFU (Bottom of Funnel) - This team will focus on strategies to create a bridge with the sales team to increase conversions. They will create content that will help sales teams close deals. This team’s goal is to generate the maximum of leads that convert by working closely with sales teams.

We plan on implementing this is great yet simple approach to optimizing our marketing team efforts. What about you? Are you ready to organize your marketing team into Tofu, Mofu and Bofu? We are keen to hear how it goes.

Kick-start your process. Begin with finding new leads. Ask us how

From Contacts 

Through Content 

To Conversion

Is “Buyer Persona Backlash” Retarding Your ABM?

Based on a B2B marketing survey, only 50% of marketers possess an understanding of their target market and only 36% actually keep buyer personas in mind while creating content.

And then they wonder why they are constantly challenged with the “right person, wrong company” situation. What marketers need to do is to get their context in perspective. For instance, consider a marketer identifies the target market as enterprises. However, there is a high level of response, interest and engagement from SMBs. The context of the content here (created for enterprise customers) would be totally off. How SMBs address business issues and situations is quite different from enterprise customers. 

It takes a second to do basic research on people and companies online. Why then would marketers and sales people think they can just pick a phone or personalize content without understanding the context the persona will resonate to? This counterproductive approach is not only a waste of time it’s not going to win anyone any customers!

Here’s where Account Based Marketing (ABM) comes in. 

Jason Stewart of Demandbase interestingly spoke of creating an ‘Account Persona’. He said, “The point I was making about the efficacy of buyer personas was not that they were ineffective, simply that there needs to be an account-based component to the evaluation of our prospects that relying on buyer personas (or buyer role demographics like title/department) alone as a targeting mechanism could lead to trouble.”

Account based marketing is a business marketing approach that includes communication with individual customer accounts or prospects within the context of the market or industry they operate in. For budget challenged marketers to get ROI on their efforts through ABM:

• they need to understand strategic priorities of their target market, 
• they need to identify the role of individual influencers and decision makers within the company and industry, 
• they need to map their services to the needs of their audience and 
• then they need to customize their marketing plan around their target market.

As marketing functions rapidly evolve, it will pay to pay attention to the latest B2B marketing practices. And while marketing approaches may change,

Your prospects and customers are still people.

Know them,

Relate to them,

Converse with them,

Engage them

And then think about converting them to customers!

Want to connect with your target market?

Get To Know How

You got 60 seconds before people close your video!

Imagine this…

• Every month, more than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube 
• Every month, over 4 billion hours of video are watched on YouTube
• Every minute, 72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube 
• 70% of YouTube traffic originates from outside the US
• YouTube is localized across 53 countries and in 61 languages

Source: - YouTube Statistics 

So how do you get people to view your brand above the noise, connect and resonate with it through your videos? With ‘YouTube marketing’….

• You don’t have to be viral, tell a story – While viral videos do generate millions of visitors to your video, they may not necessarily visit your website. Instead everybody loves a good story. Telling your story, about the passion of your business, about the history of your brand, will create a better brand connect than unrelated videos of dancing monkeys.
• You got to keep it short - Attention spans of your audience are down to a few seconds. While the receptiveness of people has shifted from words to visual content, even videos nowadays fail to capture their short-wired attention span. Maybe the number of devices a person owns and uses, at a single point of time has something to do with this distracted interaction. A 30 second video is definitely more preferred than a 20 minute one.
• You Have to Personalize and Customize - YouTube is localized across 53 countries and in 61 languages and 70% of the traffic originates from outside the U.S. If you are not customizing, personalizing and localizing your brand message, it may not resonate with the global audience. 
• Get Real, Use Live Streaming – It is always exciting to watch something that’s happening miles away in real-time. Live streaming, used by big brands such as Coke and Intel, has brought the brand experience to millions, transcending geographical boundaries. Get real and share your brand experience with your audience. This definitely makes your brand personal and helps in building trust.
• Analyze and Get Insights, Don’t Speculate – With YouTube marketing it’s not about the number of visitors, it is about who are the visitors. Similar to any lead generation effort, it’s not about the number of people who visited your page or liked your video, it is about how many of them are interested in your business, how many of them can buy and how of them are willing to become customers. 

With video marketing and YouTube marketing, it is important to know the objective and goal of your video first before creating it. It should be aligned with your overall social media strategy, so that all channels are effectively utilized and your audience gains an overall brand experience through various touch points.

Here’s an interesting article we came across on, "How YouTube can be a Marketing Tool for Small Business” 

What you think of our video? Did you close it in 6 seconds?

Unlearn and Relearn - “What Was it You Wanted Sell Me?”

The annual conference of the Business Marketing Association held back in 2009 in Chicago was interestingly titled, Unlearn. Here’s a simple yet striking depiction of how marketing fundamentals don’t change (based on the popular ad of the McGraw-Hill "Man in the Chair" in 1958). It may be few years old, but still relevant. Take a look

To answer the marketing challenges of then and now:

• I don’t know who you are – Launched in 2010, Info CheckPoint is headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska. We have a team of 200+ data expert professionals, marketing specialists and thought leaders. Get to know more. 
• I don’t know your company - We provide credible business to business (B2B) data through an online application that allows instant accessibility to exclusive business information. Check us out.
• I don’t know your company’s product – We provide an advanced, online search application that allows instant access to data to facilitate targeted communication significant in leveraging business growth. Get to know how to use it. 
• I don’t know what your company stands for – We stand for Data Quality and an easy access to niche contacts. “Your Search Ends Here” for high quality databases. 
• I don’t your company’s customers – Our customers typically are business development executives, marketers, sales representatives, recruiters and enterprise customers. Check out our customized solutions.
• I don’t know your company’s reputation – Just ask our clients.
• I don’t find you in the Social Sphere – Find us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn 

“Now, What was it you wanted to sell me?” – Well, we provide data. Not just data that you want, data that you need!

Got the Swag? It’s Just Not Enough!

When Seth Godin spoke of swaggering marketers, he referred to those who have ‘all bark and no bite’.

A characteristic trait of most marketers is their confident poise in marketing an idea, product or brand. However, more often than not, with the intention of challenging competitors, their sway tends to sweep them away. How many times have they claimed to be “world’s best”, “leading provider”, “highest quality” or “state-of-the-art”.

Once marketers blow trumpets, they’ve got to put on a show! When they cannot deliver what is promised, their spunk then becomes too audacious. When an over promise is under delivered, trust and credibility is lost. It’s quite the opposite when an under promise is over delivered, it’s a pleasant surprise. If one has to over promise, back it up!

Don’t just offer swag, offer solutions, offer value and offer a brand experience.
Well, we would surely like to ‘swagger’ along with a show of our cards…..
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