a bee in my bonnet

Giving away the milk (at a discount)

I grew up in the generation where our parents used to say:

"Why would he buy the cow, if you give away the milk for free?"

(I know, I am probably slotting myself in with all the oldies you know by admitting that.)

Well, don't tell my parents, but as a marketer, I am always looking for ways to give away the milk, or at least to offer it at a discount.

I think that most marketers need to explore "try before you buy," alternatives for customers. This can be as simple as running a blog, which -- for a services company -- can give prospects insights into how consultants work and what makes them tick. (It's one of the reasons I run this blog.) 

For products companies, "try before you buy" might mean offering a risk-free trial period, a web demo, or a money-back guarantee.

Arguably, one of marketing's biggest roles within a company is overcoming the objections or barriers to a buying decision. One of the biggest objections, in almost all sales situations, is risk. There are many ways to reduce the perceived risk, of course, from pricing strategies to customer case studies, and they are all important. (By the way, here is a great case study, by my friends at Kaszas Communications, that demonstrates how case studies reduce the friction in the sales cycle.)

A "try before you buy" offer is one of the most effective ways reduce a buyer's risk, their fear of the unknown. With that in mind, I decided to create my own "engage Gillian on a trial basis" project. Guess what? It worked!

What I did

I had decided that I needed to create a template for a simple marketing audit. I've called the process Five for the Win(TM), and I've designed it as a straightforward interview (2 hours) followed by a independent review of available marketing data (analytics etc - another half day of my time), to produce a report with findings in 5 key areas, and 5 top recommendations. (More on this in a future post.)

It's not meant to be exhaustive, but it gives my client great, data-backed, independent insights into what's working and what's not in their marketing efforts, at a high level.

Not free, but discounted

It is not totally free, but it is offered at a steep discount off my regularly daily rate for ad hoc work. (Like most consultants, I have lower rates for ongoing projects and longer-term commitments, and a higher rate for hours billed outside of any ongoing commitment.)

My Five for the Win process allows prospective clients to see how I think, and get some informed external feedback on their efforts, and an actionable set of recommendations.

Even if they decide they don't have ongoing work for me, or if I decide I can't really contribute what the company needs to move its efforts forward, there is an outcome that has made the "trial" engagement worthwhile.

And while it does cost money, a client that moves ahead with me as a consultant more than saves that same amount, because the project jump starts my knowledge of the company and its marketing challenges.

Outcome

So, I tried it on a real live prospect.

I've known the CEO of a smallish tech company for years. We've talked on and off about how he could tune his marketing, but, for one reason or another, he was never ready to engage me for any ongoing work.

Again, he and I met, and he wasn't sure exactly how he would engage me. "I know I could use some of your time, I just don't know how." I proposed he do the marketing audit, as a first step, and described the report I would produce. He knew he could use the report to reexamine and refocus his marketing expenditures, and agreed.

If he had had to pay my daily rate for this, the risk would have been too high (even though he knows me). But at a reduced rate, as an exercise that might easily save as much money as it costs, it was a no-brainer. As my trial customer, he got exceptional value, because he helped shape the process and the report, and because I spent days and days thinking about his business.

As I worked on the report, it became clearer how I might be able to help him to implement the recommendations. When he received it he acknowledged that while the news about how (in)effective the company's marketing efforts had been was not good, it was not a surprise.

He also bought into my top five recommendations.

Needless to say, he believes he got value from that first engagement, and this has led to a longer term, ongoing engagement for me with this company, worth tens of thousands of dollars to me.

In addition, we are already ahead of the game, because we are already on the same page as to what needs doing, and in what order.

And I proved to myself that anything you can do to reduce your customer's perceived risk of working with you is worth your time. So, go ahead, give away some of the milk for free (or at a discount).

Image credit: Red33 | Agency: Dreamstime.com

Money pot or money pit? Marketing to governments

I was at a great Zone5ive session last week. "Public Sector Marketing: Aligning your strategy and tactics to market to government."

(Disclosure: I am on the Zone5ive organizing committee. I didn't propose or manage this one. That was ably handled by fellow committee member, Peter Lloyd. Also, I have, in the past, done a small bit of work for one of the presenting companies, TELUS, but I am in no way compensated for mentioning them in this post, nor do I have any other work pending with them).

I knew it was going to be good. I knew two of the three panellists, Gwen Avery, Director of Public Sector Marketing at TELUS (and a fine presenter), and Peter Andrews, CEO of Grantium. So I went, even though the subject matter is somewhat peripheral to me.

I learned lots. Here are my top three takeaways.

1. Marketing to governments is a death-defying thrill ride

You're thinking, marketing to governments = boring. Right?

Wrong. Marketing to governments (B2G marketing) is not for the faint-of-heart.

The length of the sales cycle when dealing with governments is legendary. But there's more.

Costs to a company of responding to an RFP (request for proposals) can be upwards of $50,000, and the details of bids (winning and losing) can be made public to competitors. In fact, Grantium recently spent tens of thousands in legal fees in the US to protect information in one of its lost bids from a competitor.

To be successful in marketing and selling to government, the company needs to have deep coffers (TELUS, as a result of its diversified national business, and Grantium as a result of outside investment). Or, it must start small, with deals below the $25,000 threshold that triggers serious scrutiny within the public sector, and earn a reputation as a solid supplier that over-delivers. This is how the third panellist, Louis-Paul Normand from Interis, described his company's start.

All of this is why one of the keys in marketing to governments is the bid/no bid decision. If the company has not adequately influenced the content of the RFP, through marketing and proper differentiation, it is often not worth it to pursue the business. (This may be true in all enterprise sales, but seems even more obvious in dealings with government.)

2. There is more to the marketing mix than "business development"

I also gained an appreciation for the thoughtfulness with which these successful government suppliers allocate their marketing dollars. My limited past experience had told me that most marketing to government fell under the category of "business development," and was as much a sales activity as anything.

I was wrong. All three panelists looked at their marketing efforts as having three thrusts.  For TELUS these were described as:

• establishing thought leadership

• driving incremental revenue, and

• increasing the addressable market

Interis and Grantium had also classed their marketing efforts, and Louis-Paul labeled Interis' efforts by corporate marketing (brand and reputation), capability marketing (skills and services), and contact marketing (direct marketing and other activities to drive revenue).

With respect to the mix at TELUS, Gwen pointed out the company has a great, well recognized brand, in particular among consumers, for handsets. The job of the public sector marketing team is to make sure the company is known for what it offers "beyond adorable frogs and monkeys." :)

(TELUS is Canada's largest security IT consulting firm, for instance, and has a leadership position in healthcare IT.)

So, it spends a significant effort on building thought leadership, with almost a third of its public sector marketing resources focused on that goal. (Aside: I'd be interested in talking more to Gwen on the metrics they use to measure success for this thrust.) This is meant to ensure it is known in government IT and operational circles, and known for the right things. 

Marketing to drive incremental revenue accounts for about 50 percent of the effort, and increasing the addressable market accounts for the balance (20 percent).

(I love that Gwen comes to all of her speaking engagements with data in hand, for us numbers geeks!)

3. The toughest nut in B2G marketing: account penetration

The panellists were unanimous that the key marketing challenge with most government business is after the business has been won, to ensure adoption and penetration into accounts. It is vital to any company not to forget this.

Again, this is a challenge common to large enterprise sales, but my sense is that the nature of the procurement vehicles and annual budget cycles in government can complicate this and make it more acute.

Those are my top three takeaways. Were you there? Do you market to government? What have you learned?

Love my tweets, hate my @ replies?

I had lunch with one of the very savvy people I know last week.

I was surprised, as I am often, when he complained that he has trouble following the twitter feeds of people that have lots of @-replies in their tweets; that is, tweets addressed to other tweeps, using the convention of starting with @[username] at the beginning of the tweet.

He wasn't specifically addressing his complaint to me, but it is something I know I am "guilty" of.

It's true, @-replies can be annoying. They can disrupt the flow of an otherwise entertaining and informative Twitter stream filled with pithy observations and links.

People have told me that they feel compelled to try to dig down and read the entire conversation, either traveling from one "in reply to" link to another, or by using a service like Tweetree.

In fact, another friend of mine, Lynda Partner, had a post recently in which she gripes about the tweeps that have too many replies in their tweets.  She calls them the "socialites" and says: "you gotta wonder why anyone wants to follow one side of a bunch of conversations even if it’s with a celebrity - it smacks of teenage girl talk."

The thing is, you don't need to follow these conversations. You are in no way obligated to.  Twitter provides a settings menu (go to the notices tab) where you can choose which replies you will see. (Here is a Twitter help article explaining this.)

That's right. You choose what you see. If you are seeing @-replies you don't care for, then you should probably change your settings.

For instance, I have it set so that I see only the @-replies of people I follow when I am also following the person the reply was directed to. So, if @lpartner replies to @tcoopee or @robertlendvai, I will see it, because I (very happily) follow them too. I won't see it when she replies to @steveadolph (unless I go directly to Lynda's twitter profile to read all her tweets, or if I do a search and it turns up).

Folks - there is no right or wrong way to use Twitter. Some people use it as a social platform, a sort of Facebook Lite, an open networking tool (which probably describes me). Others use it to pontificate or to market their products, to narrowcast or broadcast their feeds. Some people use it to tell you what they had for breakfast.

None of these people is wrong. I follow people of most types, for a variety of reasons.

Who do you follow?