B2B

11 reasons your B2B technology whitepapers are broken

By Bhaskar Sarma 4 Comments

If you are a B2B company and you don’t use whitepapers in your marketing mix you will get your clock cleaned by the competition.

Study after study over the years has consistently shown that whitepapers are one of the most influential marketing collaterals ever.

In fact, the only thing that can beat them in influence is positive word of mouth or personal recommendations.

According to the Eccolo Media 2011 B2B Technology Collateral Survey Report

62% of the respondents read whitepapers, second only from product brochures and beating other collateral like case studies.
65% considered whitepapers to be very or extremely influential in purchase decisions, the highest for any content collateral.

This quote from the survey captures, in a nutshell, what exactly is it about whitepapers and B2B technology marketing [Read more…] about 11 reasons your B2B technology whitepapers are broken

The Secret Words That Keep Your Prospect Reading!

By Bhaskar Sarma 4 Comments

The secret of great copy is pretty simple.

If you can connect emotionally with your ideal reader and write a sentence that builds upon the preceding one as effortlessly as water rolling off a duck’s back you have done your job,

For B2B copywriters and content marketers getting this skill right is even more important. Your copy is meant to persuade people to do something that hopefully ends with a substantial amount of money changing hands.

For this reason I have always believed that studying direct marketing sales letters is one of the best ways to write great B2B copy.

DM copywriters can’t use anything other than words to convert readers. So they pull out all stops and use everything from a catchy headline that grabs readers by the throat, a lead that sucks them in, body copy that makes them nod their head in agreement and a finely crafted close backed by rock solid guarantees that has them whipping out their credit cards.

10 little known factors that make mobile users trash your emails

By Bhaskar Sarma 1 Comment

Two quick questions:

Do you often use your smartphone to check email? And do you delete many of them because they are plain ugly and unreadable?

I won’t be surprised if you said yes to both.

Let’s look at some numbers

Morgan Stanley predicts that mobile devices will globally outsell desktops and laptops by the end of 2012.
Ericsson states that by 2017 there will be 9 billion mobile devices– more than the number of people on earth.
According to research by Tricom B2B and University of Dayton School of Business Administration 59% of US B2B decision makers used a smartphone to gather information.
See this data from a Google survey called “Think B2B: Connecting with the Customer”:

Properly done, email marketing is still one of the best ways to reach out cheaply and effectively to decision makers, especially in B2B.

But there are still a lot of marketers out there who are making mobile users want to poke their eyes out by sending them emails designed for viewing on larger laptop and desktop screens.

That’s like melting a candle, pouring the wax into your car’s gas tank and expecting to hear the engine start when you turn the key.

6 content marketing takeaways from the French Resistance

By Bhaskar Sarma 3 Comments

Around this time back in 1944, the events depicted in Saving Private Ryan played themselves out in the cities and the countryside of France.

The Allies and the Nazis were locked in vicious battles, and the good guys were winning.

But if you think about it, the D-Day landings on June 6, 1944 should have been a major disaster for the Allies.

This was no lopsided US v. Taliban situation and the Germans were sitting behind the Atlantic Wall– coastal fortifications made up of concrete and guns and radar and designed to make Hitler’s Europe impregnable to a seaborne invasion.

The Nazi supply lines were also less prone to stretching and disruption.

But all that counted for nothing. When the rubber hit the road, the Germans were rapidly pushed back and Paris was liberated in August 1944, effectively ending Hitler’s 4 year old reign over France.

How did that happen?

The Zen of gating B2B content: How, What and When

By Bhaskar Sarma 7 Comments

How many times have you given up on downloading a piece of useful looking content only because it was locked behind a registration form?

I had the same feeling today but figured investigating this topic should be fun, considering everyone had an opinion on it.

This particular form had everything, from reasonable and essential stuff like name and email address to more intimate info like home address and phone number.

As I stared at that form with several required fields the only thing going through my head was this:

“Dude, you will make for a very crappy first date when you ask all these things right after introductions.”

So I did what I usually do when I see content ( say, the schematics of the Death Star) that will help me with my job (Rebel Alliance pilot)…

…but gated behind a form

The Sherlock Holmes guide to creating buyer personas

By Bhaskar Sarma 11 Comments

If you want to get good at content marketing, you will have to understand who you are creating content for, and what’s in it for them.

It’s elementary, dear marketer.

But it’s also stunning how many companies jump into creating content without doing that basic legwork

That’s like Inspector Lestrade and his men trampling over the evidence on a crime scene and then expecting Holmes to catch the perp.

Ain’t gonna happen, folks.

If you want to get the kind of results out of your content marketing that the C-suite wants, and if you hate wasting money and time as much as I do, you will first sit down and create buyer personas.

And you are welcome to steal the operating principles of the consulting detective living in the flat at 221B Baker Street, London.

The game’s afoot, people.

Are Asian marketers mastering digital?

By Bhaskar Sarma Leave a Comment

This is one of the more interesting titbits contained in Econsultancy’s report titled State of Digital Marketing in Asia

And the answer is- yes and no. There is a mismatch between digital skills and business knowledge. Senior management is not as enthusiastic about digital while most are overwhelmed by the fast pace of changes and can’t keep up.

In other words, much like Asia, the answer is complicated and has several facets.

Marketing has changed in Asia Pacific

The Asia Pacific region is in the middle of an economic churn. Led by China and India, populations the size of mid sized European countries every month are bridging the digital divide.

And because of this, digital marketing is no longer getting the leftover treatment.

Budgets are actually being allocated to digital instead of it having to do with whatever scraps fall off the table. Companies outsource social media campaigns and hire SEO experts to get to the top of the search results.

And I am bombarded by spam SMSes that promise to teach me English, book a cheap flight or find me a girlfriend if I reply back with a code. *bangs head on desk*

Have a look at these stats from the report

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