How to Build Quantifiable Marketing Programs
April 25, 2007
7:30-9:00 a.m.

The Ritz-Carlton, Tysons Corner

Register Today!

  • Industry Insight

    Forrester Reports Increase in Vertical Industry Marketing Efforts

    IT product and service companies have increased vertical industry marketing efforts, according to the recent Forrester report, Tech Marketers Take Their Vertical Industry Message To The Web. An evaluation of the web sites of the 100 largest tech firms found that two-thirds promote their vertical industry capabilities on their home page. Government, healthcare, and financial services verticals top the list.

    These companies are trending toward delivering industry-focused content on videos and blogs. They’re also delving into visitor segmentation based on jobs and roles.

  • What’s Your Messaging Equation?

    Creating a Compelling Messaging & Positioning Strategy

    What does your company do that’s different and better than everyone else in your market? For many, this is a difficult question to answer.

    How do you meaningfully communicate this value proposition? That’s a harder challenge.

    Does everyone in your organization who interfaces with clients, prospects and industry leaders deliver the same message? Even tougher.

    Compelling messaging and market positioning must quickly and effectively communicate why a prospect would choose you over another product or service provider. It qualifies the prospect and clearly articulates what you offer.

    Effective messaging and positioning will firmly define your offerings, mission and benefits in language that matters to your universe of buyers. This is a critical step as companies move toward cohesive processes and consistent delivery of brand message. Messaging must include the problems the company, solution or product solves and how it improves the lives of your customers.

    This is ambitious work and calls for a careful process. It also calls for an honest assessment. Be prepared to answer some big questions like:
    How does my company impact our clients?
    How should we be selling against our competitors?
    What do our clients say about us?
    Why do our clients or customers buy from us?

    At a very basic level, here is the messaging equation:

    The Problem(s) that we solve
              +
    The Solution(s) that we deploy
               +
    The Benefit(s) our solutions provide
               =
    Why Us
    Learn more about practical tips to create or improve your messaging and positioning strategy.

  • 10 Tips to Ensure Revenue-Driven Messaging & Positioning

    Follow these tips to create, refine or affirm your company’s compelling messaging:

    1. Involve key players. Messaging workshops and strategy definition should include team members representative of departments throughout your organization. Not only will this help create a more robust picture, it also builds enthusiasm for the initiative.
    2. All the wood behind one arrowhead. Once the messaging and positioning for the company, new product, new practice, or other initiative is completed, ensure that everyone who touches prospects, clients, or industry leaders is fluent and can deliver it with consistency.
    3. Be honest. A messaging and positioning undertaking should be thoughtful and methodical. It should provide answers to questions on the company’s or product’s purpose, your current and prospective client base, your goals, how your clients see you, your differentiators, your competitors, your market characteristics, your sales process, your perception problems, and many more.
    4. Use this messaging as the baseline for all internal and external communications. Consistency is key. All print and web communications must focus on the strategic messaging.
    5. Don’t be too general. All things to all people ends up being nothing to nobody. Real life example of a message that’s too general: “We solve any digital challenge you may have.” Yikes.
    6. Lead with benefits. IT positioning can be tricky to craft. Get mired in functions and features and it will be even trickier to understand. Chances are, the people with real decision making authority are profoundly more interested in the business benefits than the feature details.
    7. Know your competitors. How else can you position yourself and sell against them? Know what they articulate as their value propositions and be prepared to address it head on.
    8. Be committed. The strategic messaging and positioning that’s the outcome of this exercise should serve the company for at least three years. Commit resources, time and company brainpower to both creation and follow through.
    9. Be aspirational. Many companies are limited by where they’ve been. Focus on where you’re going. One or two clients in an industry is proof of performance and should be leveraged.
    10. Sound overwhelming? It can be. But it can also be extremely effective. To find out more about how to create revenue-driven messaging and positioning that will propel your sales goals, contact sales@Q2marketing.com.

  • Taking Control of the Trade Show Conundrum

    By Pamela Girardin, President, Q2 Marketing

    Is this your company’s standard approach to trade shows: You show up for the install, put up your booth [or watch others put it up for you—making more money in that 4 hour period then you will make over the next 3 days], dress in your trade show uniform [if you are lucky enough to have one] and then proceed to stand in the booth for the next couple of days dreaming of the show’s close?

    How many people pass by the booth without ever stopping? How many people look down at their feet as they pass your booth? How many people take a giveaway and then walk quickly away before you can say “Hi. Would you like a pen?” Isn’t it amazing that hordes of people can be so rude as to pass right by without engaging you in conversation?

    Well if you have been a victim of the above, it’s time to take control of the trade show conundrum. Trade shows are an event unlike any other. Standing at the booth while waiting for people to approach you is a surefire recipe for disaster. You need to take control and here are some steps that will allow you to do so:

    1. Engage passersby in conversation. The beautiful fact of trade shows is that attendees walk around all day and night with their name badges hanging around their necks. As people pass the booth, make eye contact, address them by name and engage them in conversation. You would be surprised at how successful you will be with this approach.
    2. Qualify prospects BEFORE swiping their lead card. The show shouldn’t be about getting as many leads as possible. It doesn’t help anyone to come back from the show with 10,000 leads if only 100 are actually a fit for your offerings. You should come to the show armed with qualification questions that are asked before the card is swiped. If the lead is a prospect, sales will be armed with qualifying information up front, which makes for a more productive follow up call.
    3. Pack limited amounts of collateral and store it away from the front/registration counter at your booth. It’s well known that attendees at shows will grab every piece of collateral known to man with the best intentions on reading it. However, when packing up to go home, typically every piece of collateral is thrown into the hotel trash bin due to weight and/or available space in luggage. Let qualified prospects know that you would be happy to send brochures to their office after the show. Most will take you up on this offer. On the ones that don’t, give them the brochures that fit their issues/needs and let them know you will follow up with them once you are back in the office.
    4. Separate leads into different categories. As soon as you’re back to the office, you need to divide the show leads into different categories based on the answers to the qualification questions. Each category should have a different follow up mechanism: phone calls, emails or letter. Leads should be followed up within 2-3 weeks after the show.
    5. Actually follow up on the leads. It is always surprising to hear that companies spend a small fortune to go to trade shows but never follow up on any of the leads obtained. Instead, reps often get back to their offices and continue to follow up on the prospects they were working, and the trade show leads languish and eventually become forgotten.

    Your first attempts at putting the above steps into play may be a bit cumbersome. But eventually you will have all the steps down pat and your return on investment for each show will greatly improve. Shows can be tremendously successful. There aren’t many other opportunities where you will be hand delivered a large number of prospects that are qualified in regard to industry, decision making ability and more. It is your job to make the most of the opportunity. Good luck and enjoy the show!

  • Featured Q2 Marketing Educational Series Event

    How to Build Quantifiable Marketing Programs for Technology Companies
    ROI-driven measurement of marketing results is an important and timely topic that we’re all hearing more and more about. Pamela Girardin, President, Q2 Marketing, has spent her career running enterprise marketing departments for tech companies, and is keenly aware of the value of benchmarking, measuring and justifying marketing ROI. While analyst firms like Forrester and IDC are watching this very closely, they recognize a number of challenges, including the difficulty of defining ROI and empowering marketing professionals to act on what they know. This seminar will:

    • Explore these “gaps” between theory and practice in the quantification paradigm
    • Provide illustration through real-world case studies
    • Demonstrate how to benchmark and measure the success of marketing programs
    • Define success through revenue-driven marketing program results
    This is recommended for C-level and director level marketing professionals in information technology. This event is not open to representatives from other marketing communications agencies.

    Date: Wednesday, April 25, 2007
    Time: 7:30 am - 9:00 am
    Location: The Ritz-Carlton, Tysons Corner

    Register Here

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    Sign up here.

  • News Archive

    Visit www.q2marketing.com/news for past issues of the Q2 Quarterly.

Client Highlights

Strategic Positioning Case Studies
Q2 Marketing deployed the Q2 Messaging Development Process to help MDA Technologies expand into larger organizations and launch a first-to-market software product for hospitals. Read the case study.

Client Highlights

Q2’s rebrand of Johnston McLamb, featured in Washington DC Examiner

Pamela Girardin featured speaker at the Prince William Regional Chamber of Commerce’s monthly luncheon on Internet Marketing: Maximizing Your Presence Online

Q2 Marketing included in Advertising Age’s Small Agency News

Q2 Marketing begins integrated lead generation campaign with Accelera Solutions

Client Highlights

“The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem, of what to say and how to say it.”

Edward R. Murrow