Synch-Up: The GetSynchronicity Blog

Exactly what is content marketing? It’s the practice of attracting, acquiring and engaging prospects and customers by distributing relevant and valuable information. It’s a strategy built on the belief that if we establish a relationship with potential customers by regularly delivering valuable data, they will eventually return to us with their business.

It works for some of the savviest brand marketers in the world. It also requires a steady stream of content, which creates challenges for many already under-staffed marketing departments.

That’s where event programs come into play.

Think of all the materials produced for trade shows, meetings and conferences. Keynote speeches and executive presentations. Session handouts. Videos. Market research, competitive analyses and more. Re-purpose these materials and suddenly event programs become a remarkably efficient delivery mechanism for content that can be leveraged across other marketing channels like white papers, webcasts, slide share sites, blogs and even YouTube posts, Twitter campaigns and Flickr shares.

It’s a whole new way of looking at the value of trade shows and conferences.

Last week, ICEEM ran a post regarding the link between exhibitions and purchase intent. The critical point worth noting is that the exhibitor must take an active approach toward engaging the prospects. Now that’s a concept we can get in back of. We’re reprinting the entire post here for readers of Synch-Up. Read on… and thanks to ICEEM, Exhibit Surveys and ARF.

Last year, Skip Cox of Exhibit Surveys wrote a White Paper, Exhibitions Must Deliver (even more) Value to Exhibitors in the Post-recession World. In it he highlights an important statistic from the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF). It states:
There is plenty of research and evidence to support that participating in exhibitions accelerates the sales process, and some of the more sophisticated exhibitors are doing this on their own. One such research project we have reported on in past white papers is the study titled “Experiential Marketing: A Master of Engagement – Research on How Engaging Events Pay”. This research conducted for the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) by Exhibit Surveys and Gallup & Robinson proves that face-to-face engagement truly and effectively drives exhibitor results. It drives the brand metrics that in turn drive purchase intent, and purchase intent has proven in turn to be a good predictor of actual sales.

“Active” engagement is defined as the meaningful face–to–face interaction that takes place in the exhibit. The higher the level of engagement, the better the results. This graph illustrates the impact of exhibit engagement on Purchase Intent, a key metric of success because of its high correlation with actual sales, but similar increases were evident for all key brand metrics tested (e.g., awareness, consideration, brand fit, etc.).
From a consultative standpoint, the most urgent issue, and one that is easily addressed with data, is to educate and then convince your key exhibitor clients in the simple necessity of adequate booth staffing. Staff resources are often as scarce as budget to invest in shows, but the lost opportunities of not staffing adequately and effectively are very significant in terms of the negative impact on ROI.
A disturbing trend we are seeing is that although exhibitors continue to do a good job of attracting their potential audience to the exhibit, the degree of face- to-face engagement is declining often because of fewer staff resources. In 2009, for every 100 qualified attendees (those in the target audience) who visited the average exhibit, only 53 were engaged face-to-face by someone in the exhibit. There has been a steady decline in this metric.
As the ARF’s research confirms, effectiveness in exhibiting as a marketing medium is a matter of commitment – i.e., committing to the show, committing enough and the right booth staff to the event. When an exhibitor actively engages a prospect on the show floor, as the graph above illustrates, sales are likely to follow

I’ve been on a rant for the past three weeks about post-event lead follow up. I’m going to end this three-part posting with quotes from two of my favorite sources:

“Lead nurturing is the process of building relationships with qualified prospects regardless of their timing to buy, with the goal of earning their business when they are ready.”
- The Definitive Guide to Lead Nurturing by Marketo

“Lead nurturing….Get good at it. This is the mythical Golden Link between Marketing and Sales… In the new B2B world, not doing lead nurturing is simply malpractice.”
- The New B2B Marketing Manifesto

‘Nuff said.

BtoB Magazine recently published a study in conjunction with Marketo Inc. that found most companies don’t do a very good job of following up opportunities post-event.

Specifically, the study found that over half of respondents have some form of marketing automation system but the systems are being used primarily to deliver email invitations and drive attendance to events. Only 21% of respondents indicated using their automation systems for a process of lead scoring and only 19% employ a nurturing process.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Despite the improvements in technology to capture and track leads, event marketers are not putting automation to use in the post-event follow up process.

Reasons vary from lack of resources to low priority among management to lack of knowledge about event automation. But, really, can there be any acceptable reason for this? With 83% of respondents indicating that the primary goal of their events is to generate leads, doesn’t reason suggest that a secondary goal should be to track those leads?

I’m not suggesting that process will be the same for every marketer. Nor will it necessarily be easy. But surely more than 20% of us should have follow up programs in place to nurture and, ultimately, measure the value of the leads we’re producing.

Thoughts?

“They just don’t get it.”

How many times has marketing said that about sales? Organizations tend to put up walls between departments. The one between marketing and sales can be especially difficult to scale, particularly when the topic is following up leads generated by events.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot since last week’s Synch-Up. That post cited a BtoB study about the link between marketing automation and the sad state of post-event follow up. It seems to me that the bigger issue is – and always has been – the relationship between sales and marketing. The wall still exists but I see evidence that some organizations are working to break it down.

Consider the healthcare organization that created a new lead management position on the event marketing team and filled the spot with a veteran from the sales support/CRM team. And just this week I began working with a technology company that transferred their former event marketing manager to a newly created CRM-integration position on the sales team.

These companies have gone way past “They don’t get it.” They’re investing in systems and in people to make sure that everyone gets what they need, when they need it and in a way that they can act upon it.

What are you doing in your organization to help people “get it?”

“Showing up is 80% of success in life.”
- Wood Allen

Woody might have a point but, as legions of marketers have discovered, following his philosophy at a trade show produces little more than a pile of expenses.

Look at it this way, showing up does nothing more than put you on equal footing with every other exhibitor on the show floor. The real question is what will you have done to differentiate yourself from the crowd? Success is achieved by those who put in the extra 20% effort, who do more than just show up.

Who’d have thought Woody Allen would have something to say about trade show marketing?

Media columnist Catharine P. Taylor posted an article last week with the attention getting title Hey, Social Media Experts: What You Do Is Worth Nothing!

Catharine makes a point. In a world inspired by books like The Start Up of You, marketing is no longer the limited province of well-heeled companies aspiring to differentiate or distinguish a product or service. Today, we’re inundated by legions of professional entrepreneurs, constantly “inventing, adapting and reinventing” their jobs and self-aggrandizing their personas.

But that’s taking a narrow view of the role of social media.

In the world of B2B marketing, it’s also a remarkable tool for sharing valuable content, exercising thought leadership and developing a community. Particularly for marketers participating in trade shows, meetings and events social media represents a powerful way to expand the face-to-face experience and build year-round, continuous engagement with the people that matter to us most. Really, isn’t that a key objective of all marketing?

I’ve attended three industry conferences in the past four weeks. I’ve attended a handful of keynote addresses and sat through dozens of presentation sessions. Two were inspiring. A few were mediocre. Most were disappointing or downright annoying.

Why?

The speakers, all of whom were highly accomplished professionals in their fields and well qualified to present their material, were nonetheless not prepared to deliver a public address. Here then, are four tips to help the speakers at your events connect with the audience.

Identify the audience Point of View
What should the content of your presentation engender? Interaction with you audience. Your message must speak to the interests of the audience, not talk at them. Identifying the mindset of your target and understanding their point of view is everything. Without a concrete understanding of the forces that drive their behavior, there is no effective way to organize your message. To get started, ask questions like:

 What challenges does my audience face everyday?
 Why would they want to hear my message?
 What are their stated needs?
 What are their unspoken needs?
 What one thing is sure to hook their attention?
 How do their needs and my objectives intersect?

Don’t Write or Outline the Presentation
Don’t write your presentation and don’t outline it in bullet or PowerPoint form. Instead, use that time to gather as many sources and collect as much data as possible. Ideally, you’ll have more source data than is ultimately needed for your spoken presentation.

Identify Audience Compatible Content
Since you’ve already assessed your audience’s point of view, you’ll be able to identify content sources and data that are likely to ignite the interest of your audience. Sort your audience compatible data by answering the following questions.

 If I could only present one piece of information, what would it be?
 If I could only present three pieces of information, what would they be?
 Choose a key word for each piece of information that you wish to include in your presentation.
 Write the words on cards, one word per card.

Practice, Practice, Practice
Most of the jittery presentations that I’ve sat through lately had nothing to do with stage fright. The speaker nerves arose because the presenters didn’t prepare their content properly. Practicing a presentation out loud is absolutely essential. Whenever possible, work through the development of your presentation with a partner or a team. The only thing that truly prepares you for a live audience is live practice. Use the following method:
 Shuffle the subject cards you made in the step above.
 Look at the first card and improvise verbally on the subject of that card.
 Repeat the process until you’ve improvised on all of your cards. Trust your sense of what’s working.
 Edit your subject cards based on what you discovered in the verbal improvisation. You may find that two cards can be combined into one card or that you actually need more content for some of the cards.
 Place your subject cards in an order that you feel will be effective for your audience and repeat the verbal intelligence exercise.
 Edit your index cards as necessary. Note the links that start to develop between each of your subject cards during your verbal improvisation. Remember these links are crucial to the “audience friendly” flow of information.
 Finalize the order of your cards and do several more verbal improvisation runs.

With enough practice, your presentation will automatically become simpler, more direct and more effective.

The gold standard for lead generation has always been to identify the decision maker. That’s as true for events as it is for other marketing channels. In fact, the change in trade show attendance over the past few years has prompted a significant number of exhibitors to focus almost exclusively on those few who have the final say.

I’m not suggesting that we abandon relationships with decision makers, but it may be time to start paying attention to the influencers in the crowd.

Take a look at group dynamics and you can learn a lot about the power that influencers exert. Leadership guru John Maxwell explains how to spot the influencer. When talking to a group, ask the participants to agree/disagree with a statement. Then watch what happens. Frequently, you’ll find most members hesitate to respond. They’ll wait and take cues from other group members. Typically, one or more people in the group will eventually nod in agreement or disagreement. When a majority of the group follow the lead of one particular “nodder” – you’ve found your influencer.

Decision makers frequently surround themselves with influencers – trusted advisers whose opinion they seek before taking action. With attendance at trade show and conventions back on the rise, it’s time to again start paying to these persuasive forces in the sales cycle.

I just finished reading the eBook “Winning the Zero Moment of Truth” – Google’s definition of the critical moments that lead to an individual’s decision to purchase a product or service. Since Google is defining ZMOT (as it’s acronymed), it’s pretty much seen as the online research a prospect does before interacting with a brand.

Google author Jim Lecinski builds a compelling case, one that marketers need to explore and exploit. But is Google’s ZMOT the end game it is made out to be?

Isn’t ZMOT really just another touch point on the marketing continuum – albeit a remarkably efficient touch point?

Aren’t tradeshows, meetings, conferences and events touch points that hold equally powerful potential? The potential to disseminate information, provide comparison shopping and share reviews and recommendations? And don’t face-to-face events of all kinds offer one additional advantage that ZMOT – as defined by Google – can’t offer? The advantage of a hands-on experience?

Embrace the potential of ZMOT. But don’t lose sight of the power of face-to-face marketing touch points.