Marketing TECHniques: Activities that Jumpstart Sales
Featuring best marketing practices for today’s tech companies.
Raise your hand if your company marketing efforts produce an ongoing stream of leads. Or portray a valuable, strong, consistent brand to the market. Here’s one tech marketing whiz who can—her programs have successfully delivered prospecting pipelines to a multitude of sales teams over the last 20 years.
Meet Jeannine Perri, a career NJ B2B technology marketer and currently the director of partner marketing at ePlus, a leading technology solutions provider with customers across the US and around the world. She’s a pro at driving marketing programs that facilitate sales prospecting activities and create meaningful engagement opportunities.
Q: You’re a big proponent of the multi-touch outreach for companies to begin a conversation with prospects. Can you tell us what it is and why that’s important?
A: A multi-touch campaign involves taking a company’s message (offer, announcement, promotion, invitation, or collateral) and sharing it across many different types of media. Because prospective buyers are always busy, using the many communications available today including hardcopy, email, phone, social sites, and voicemails increases the opportunity to engage in a way that the buyer prefers. Someone might not like to pick up the phone but would rather read and respond to an email. Another might be encouraged to take action because of the creativity shown in a hardcopy mailer they received.
I recently developed an integrated marketing campaign targeting 150 prospects which featured multiple components. The materials included an email message, a custom designed three-dimensional box with a smart button – custom coded to the individual, social media ads, outbound calls to encourage a response, and a landing page to capture inbound responses. All pieces had the same look & feel, using same colors – fonts – messages – and call to action.
Q: You use social media as one of the components in all of your marketing campaigns. Can you give us a few examples?
A. Social media engagement is a goal for all of my marketing programs. One and done marketing activities are a thing of the past. Once you connect socially with someone, you share and see each other’s interactions over many business cycles. Doing so allows you to grow your professional relationship. One example of how I’ve used social media is LinkedIn advertising, where we create an e-brief to support a proven ROI a customer has received and/or to create awareness of solutions that could benefit the end users.
Q: In 2018, the IT buyer receives a deluge of sales messages. How do you create a campaign that cuts through the clutter?
A: Recipients are fickle and tired of being sold to. To cut through the noise, be sure that your messaging is concise and targeted at the right audience so that you are speaking the same language. Provide bullet points of what benefit the potential buyer would get from participation in your event and/or by responding to your marketing message.
Developing marketing events as a “Series” has proven to be a success. Compile dates, topics, and registration information on one invitation for your outbound communication efforts. Doing so limits the number of messages to the recipient.
Q: What is your favorite amusement park ride and why?
A: Tilt-A-Whirl. Reminds me of my childhood. It stays on the ground, and you cannot get on the bright umbrella cart without smiling.
[Leadarati helps IT firms drive value and increase opportunities through social, digital and online communications. Follow Anita on Twitter @Leadarati ]
