Professional Service Firm Marketing Tips & Strategies

eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale - Book Review

I recently picked up Ardath Albee’s eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale (Amazon affiliate link).I really liked this book as I thought it presented a clear strategy for using eMarketing tools to attract prospects and nurture them as they progress through the buying cycle. Ardath also presents a practical framework that business can use to model their customer, create relevant content, and map that content to the needs of prospects – and this is important – based on where they are in the buying cycle.

This is one of the few books that is going to get moved from my “read” to my “study” pile. I highly recommend that you pick up a copy. I will be incorporating many of the ideas in Ardath’s book into my business and I’m sure I will be blogging about how to apply many of the concepts she outlines in a professional service firm setting.

Here is a quick summary of what you will find in the book:

The first part of this book, eMarketing Essentials, speaks to the opportunities and benefits of eMarketing. It lays a nice foundation for the role of eMarketing in changing world of B2B marketing.

Part 2 of the book, Customer Consensus, begins the discussion of using persona’s to understand your customers and the buying process. While I thought the material about creating persona’s was a little light (to be fair, persona’s development could be an entire book), I found the sections on creating a buyer synopsis and the buying process to be excellent. Understanding the buyer process and the information a buyer needs in each stage of that process was my key take away from this book.

Natural Nurturing, is essential to marketing for complex sales. Depending on the nature of the purchase, a great deal of time can pass between the time a prospect first discovers you and when they make their purchase. Chapter 8 outlines a framework to use to assemble a natural nurturing track.

The fourth section of the book, Contagious Content, outlines the ingredients need to create marketing content that is relevant to your prospects and will differentiate you from your competitors by focusing on the needs of your prospects relative to where they are in their buying process.

In Persistent Progression (part 5), Ardath explains how to create content that keeps prospects and customers moving along the buying process. This section also contains a nice discussion about what marketing can do to help sales people close the deal when they hand off a prospect to sales.

Part 6, Meaningful Metrics, wraps up with a discussion of quantifying marketing results, measuring the value delivered by marketing to sales, and how to listen and use dialogue to continually improve your marketing efforts.

The Referral Engine - Download Chapter 1 Free

“Who knew that there’s a science to referrals? Not I–but now that I know, I want you to benefit from John’s expertise. In a sense, a cover blurb is the ultimate referral, and I’m here to blurb this book because it will help you succeed in business.” -   Guy Kawasaki -    co-founder Alltop

The Referral Engine is the second book from John Jantsch who also wrote Duct Tape Marketing - The World's Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide.

The Referral Engine will be released on May 13, 2010. In the meantime, you can check it out before you buy it by downloading a free chapter – Chapter 1 The Realities of Referral.

I will be giving away several copies of John’s book in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for details.

The Small Business Owner’s Guide To Alternative Funding

[Note – From time to time, publishers send me books that they think you, the readers of this blog, will be interested in. This is one of those times. They don’t pay me or even ask me to post about it.]

The current economic conditions have made it more difficult than ever for small business owners to obtain funding. In The Small Business Owner's Guide To Alternative Funding: What the Small Business Owner MUST Know to Get Through These Financial Times! VOLUME 1, Karlene Sinclair-Robinson points out the various methods other than a traditional bank loan that owners may use to obtain funding for their business.

The book is divided into three main sections. The first section reviews the basics of business plans, credit, and some common misconceptions of lending.

Section 2 provides an overview of small business funding options. The options covered include:

1. Personal Financing
2. Family and Friends
3. Peer-to-Peer Lending
4. Unsecured Personal Credit Lines
5. Microloan Programs
6. Asset-Based Loans
7. Factoring and Accounts Receivable Financing
8. Unsecured Business Credit Lines
9. Merchant Cash Advance
10. Purchase Order Financing
11. Commercial Real Estate Financing
12. Venture Capital Financing

For each option, the author provides a descriptive overview of the option, followed by a list of the advantages and disadvantages of that option, as well as the requirements you can expect to have to meet to obtain that particular form of funding.

The third section contains forms, case studies, a glossary, and a listing of reference web sites.

Overall, I thought this book provides a very nice overview of the funding options that are available to small business owners.

Unfolding The Napkin - Book Review

The Back of The Napkin is Dan Roam’s follow up to his popular The Back of the Napkin (Expanded Edition): Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures.

The main idea behind Dan’s books is that we can solve business problems by applying the principles of visual thinking and drawing simple pictures.

Rather than being just a sequel, this book is a “self contained four day workshop” where you work hands-on to learn Dan's method of visual thinking and problem solving.  Each day covers one of the steps of Dan's visual thinking process. The days are organized as follows:

• On Day 1, you learn how to Look, or visually collect information.
• Day 2 covers  Seeing or recognizing patterns.
• On Day 3, you use Imagining to discover new outcomes and on
• Once you have new ideas, you want to share them with others. Day 4 covers creating pictures to share you ideas with others.

I find Dan’s 6 x 6 rule very effective in analyzing problems. According to this rule, there are only 6 different kinds of problems, and each type of problem share the same 6 elements.

The last section of the book is a wonderful case study demonstrating how to take a particular solution and use the problem solving framework to present the solution to all of the stakeholders involved in a way that delivers information in a way that is important to them.

Inbound Marketing - Book Review

Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (The New Rules of Social Media)

The internet and other technology has made a profound change in the way that companies market their businesses.

The world is moving away from interruption based marketing towards a model of "getting found" by customers when they need our products and services.

Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah call this new model "Inbound Marketing". In their book by the same title, they give a thorough overview of how you can move from the world of expensive and increasingly ineffective interruption based marketing, to one where your ideal customers find you.

If you are new to inbound marketing, or if you have been wondering what all the hubbub about social media marketing is about, you definitely need to take a look at this book. Even if you have experience with inbound marketing, I think you will find some nice nuggets and reminders in this book.

Here is a quick list of the what you will learn in this book:

1. How to turn your website into a marketing hub
2. How to create remarkable content that people want to read and share
3. How to get found on Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Digg, etc.
4. How to track your progress
5. How to convert visitors into leads and leads into customers
6. How to use the data you collect to make better marketing decisions

By now, you've probably figured out why I like this book - this is the same stuff we help business owners with in Duct Tape Marketing.

And when you are ready to dig deeper into inbound marketing, make sure you visit the web site of the co-authors company, Hubspot. It is chock-full of great information and a great example of inbound marketing in action.

World Wide Rave by David Meerman Scott

Can you grow your business by turning your brand over to your customers and giving away valuable information for free? Yes, according to David Meerman Scott. In The New Rules of Marketing and PR, David explains how new web tools & technologies are the best way to communicate directly with your customers.

In his latest book, World Wide Rave: Creating Triggers that Get Millions of People to Spread Your Ideas and Share Your Stories , Scott explains how to create triggers that “…get millions of people to spread your ideas and share your stories”.

By accepting that we don’t really have control of our message anyway, we can focus on spreading our message by encouraging others to share it with their friends with similar interests.

The book includes several examples of people telling their story to a few select people, and then letting them take over and spread the story from them. My favorite story in the book is about Cindy Gordon, who told 7 Harry Potter fans about a new theme resort. Those 7 people ended up telling 350 million people.

Here are some of Scott's "rules of the rave":

• Nobody cares about your products (except you).
• No coercion required.
• Lose control.
• Put down roots.
• Point the world to your (virtual) doorstep.

The last section of the book provides advice for helping you "get found" on the internet.

By creating something valuable that people want to share and making it easy for them to do so, you can create a World Wide Rave. The question is, will you?

P.S. – after reading World Wide Rave, I took a shot at creating my own e-book. After just a couple of weeks, I’ve had a little over 300 downloads. If interested, you can download my marketing e-book “Saying The Wrong Thing Louder Doesn’t Make It Right” here.

The Sandler Rules - 49 Timeless Selling Principles and How To Apply Them

If there is anything that professionals service providers hate worse than marketing, it is probably selling.

I'm a big fan of the Sandler Sales system, and I've posted about it several times on this blog. I wish they had taught this stuff in college (but would I have been smart enough to take that class?).

The Sandler Rules: 49 Timeless Selling Principles and How to Apply Them.  Adapted by David Mattson, outlines 49 "Sandler Rules". These timeless selling principles will be more successful by showing you how to be "180 degrees different from the traditional salesperson".

The principles are divided into three main parts. Part One outlines six rules, or core concepts, that will transform your selling process (or help you get one).

Part Two contains rules that focus on execution. The 27 rules in this section outline many of the tactics that you will use "where the rubber meets the road" during your sales calls.

The rules in the last section help us remember the proper attitudes that we need to have in order to be successful in sales.

Follow the rules in this book and your sales will definitely improve.

Living Your Dream - 10 Free e-books That Can Help

Marcia Wieder, founder and CEO of Dream University, is giving away 10 free e-books to help you live your dream.

I found out about this offer via Michael Port. Here is what he had to say:

"Marcia is the CEO & Founder of Dream University®, Oprah guest and author, so I expect these 10 ebooks will be very helpful during difficult times. They won't cost you anything so why not download all 10."

You can download you free e-books here.

Suzy Welch and Jack Welch In Kansas City

Rainy Day Books are bringing Suzy and Jack Welch to Kansas City. Jack will be interviewing his wife Suzy about her new book, 10-10-10: A Life-Transforming Idea , in which she reveals a poweful new strategy for making difficult decisions and clarifying choices.

Here are the particulars:

When: Tuesday, May 5, 2009. Lunch begins at 11:30 am
Where: Overland Park Convention Center
Cost: $55 includes lunch and a signed copy of 10-10-10

You can register for this event at www.kcsmallbiz.com.

KC Area Business Book Club

The Business Book Club meets this coming Monday, April 20th.

Feed your growth and creativity by connecting with the big ideas driving business today. The Kansas Small Business Development Center, the Johnson County Library and the Ewing Kauffman Foundation bring you the Business Book Club.

The Business Book Club will meet on the third Monday of each month to discuss the business book selection and network over the lunch hour.

Contact the Kansas Small Business Development Center for information regarding the book selection. 913-469-3878