Have you ever seen those advertisements with a butterfly and an oil derrick illustrating the oil company’s concern for the natural environment? This sort of advertisement, while helpful in improving company image, is not well designed to create business to business leads and sales. If B2B sales leads is the focus of your campaign, shift your advertising message on to the applications and benefits of using your product or service. Next, let the ad design and layout enhance your image.
Headlines Should List the Benefits
By including the benefits in the headline, you will have a good chance of attracting the readers’ attention and gathering more inquiries or requests for more info. If, after taking in the headline, a reader is left asking, ’so?’, you may have described features instead of benefits. The benefit is the answer to the ’so what?’ question.
Mention the Applications
In the case that your product or service is particularly suited for an application, mention this fact. Once a reader recognizes the application for the product or service you offer they are more likely to respond. You are far more likely to receive a response from someone in the records department of a hospice if they realize that your barcode software is especially suited for tracking patients’ medical records.
Make Them Skimmable
Everyone is short on time these days, and that is true of those who read the trade magazines you advertise with as well. Keeping this important point in mind, design your ad so it is easily ’skimmed’ by readers while keeping the message clear. This can be done by illustrating key points with subheads, illustrations, and bulleted copy.
Testimonials Make Great Ads
The target audience already expects your message will be biased. Even so, they trust their colleagues to give it to them straight. You can use this social fact to your benefit by integrating quotes and testimonials from satisfied customers into your ads. Or, simply mention some of the high-profile businesses you serve. Or, include a statistic such as ’selected by 90% of engineering firms.’ Even so, in order to be credible you should concentrate on specifics. As an example, list the full name and company title of the individual being quoted, or include the respected customers as a list. If you do opt to use statistics to demonstrate credibility, it’s a good idea to back it up some some referenced data.
Fractional Ads in Each and Every Issue
For better business to business lead generating, your ads need to already be placed and present at the time your prospect has the greatest need for your solution. So, if working with a small marketing budget, instead of placing a small amount of large ads annually, you may instead consider keeping a fractional ad running in each issue. By maintaining an ad in each issue your business will look bigger, more successful, and consistent.
Wrap Ads Have Great Value
A wrap ad is in fact a series of fractional advertisements which are created to look like a series of announcements - each run on a single page which surrounds a half page ‘island.’ This style also works well for 1/3 and 1/2 page ads. This type of advertising works well in regular-sized magazines even though we see them more commonly in publications which are tabloid-sized.
Make a Great Offer
If you would like your audience to respond to your message, you’ll need to offer a compelling reason to do so. When writing your call to action, always address the readers’ question, ‘what’s in it for me?’ Understand what your audience thinks about and what causes them to do choose whether or not to respond to your message. These sorts of concerns will convert into noticeable improvement in your business to business sales lead generation campaigns. In addition, you may want to consider providing notes about how other customers have applied your offerings to successfully solve their business problems.
The number of responses can be greatly increased by extending an offer of a valuable premium or ad specialty. However, try to keep these offers specific to the interests of your target audience. That is, offering a sizing ring tool is only attractive to those who use rings. Still, just about anyone may like a free screwdriver set and inquire about a way to get it, even if not genuinely interested in your offerings. The majority of your prospects may prefer to try your offering out themselves before going through with the purchase. If you can find a way to offer samples or demonstrations cost-effectively, you’ll be able to produce more inquiries as a part of your business to business sales lead program.
Choose Your Words
The word ‘free,’ although overused, remains a compelling generator of inquiry. Direct marketers have known this all along. ‘New’ is another word that has been tried and tested. Legally, however, this word can only be used if the offering is indeed new, usually no more than six months old.
Speak in the First Person
In your copy, utilize words such as ‘your,’ ‘you,’ etc. in order to put it in terms of the readers’ perspective instead of bragging about how great ‘we’ and ‘our’ is. As an example, ‘our product is 40% faster than the competition’ will not be as effective as ‘you will work 40% more quickly.’
Ask for the Sale
As most any experience sales associate will tell you, you will not get the sale if you don’t first ask for it. By creating benefit-driven offers which prompt action, such as, ‘write, call, fax, or email and we’ll send you your free Component Guide, specially-designed to help you quickly choose the product which best satisfies your barcode needs.’ Notice the item is called a ‘guide,’ suggesting the benefit as opposed to ‘brochure,’ or ‘catalog’ which just describes an item.
Compel Them to Inquire Immediately
If you offer some incentive for those who act immediately, you will gather more inquiries. You may try something such as, ‘If you’re among the first three hundred to inquire, we’ll include a pamphlet free, entitled, ‘15 Ways to Reduce the Costs of Inventory.’
Match Your Offer to the Buying Cycle
As prospects begin to collect information, they’ll need printed material but usually are not yet ready for a phone call. When the time to make a purchase approaches, prospects are more eager to speak with representatives, sales people, distributors, or see a demo and discuss prices. You will be able to increase the amount of inquiries generated by making offers which appeal to prospects in all phases of the buying cycle. You may like to offer notes on application, a demo, an analysis, a telephone sales call or any combination.
Merchandising the Offer
The way that you present your offer can be just as important as the offer, direct marketers have discovered. As an example; if you are offering sample literature, consider the inclusion of a tiny picture of what they will receive upon inquiring. If they need to present a coupon, include a small illustration of scissors cutting around the serrated border of the coupon. Put numbers to call in bold letters, to help them stand out on the page. Also, don’t forget to tell the audience all the methods by which they can inquire.
Make it Easy to Reply
If some members of your audience need the info pronto, they may like to go to your website immediately, or call the 24 hour 800 number at any time. Other responders may be more comfortable with the idea of using a magazine reader service post card, or coupons in reply-mail cards. You will affect better business to business lead generation by offering multiple choices. Many creative directors detest coupons, but they do indeed work. If you decide to publish a telephone number in your ad, be ready to pick up during business hours coast to coast.
Mention the Website
Be sure that your company website makes is simple to gather information about your products and services. Then refer your audience there for more information. You may also like to include an ‘info request’ button on each page, redirecting them to a web form which lets them answer a series of questions to tell a bit about them. Here they should be able to select a method of preferred contact as well - quickly respond to requests in the correct format. The more techniques like this that you put into use, the better your business to business sales leads generation programs will be.
M. H. “Mac” McIntosh is described by many as one of America’s leading business-to-business sales and marketing consultants and an expert on sales leads. He is president of Mac McIntosh Inc., a B2B marketing consulting firm that helps companies get more high-quality sales leads and turn them into sales. More tips at Mac’s Sales Lead Insights: B2B Marketing Blog.
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