Most of us don’t, although there are always a few exceptions like Madonna and Lady Gaga, but that’s another story.

This story isn’t so much about your sense of style, rather it’s about the common pitfall of companies shaping their messaging from the inside out.  It’s easy to fall into the trap of creating an ad, Web site or other communication piece that reflects your company’s internal structure instead of focusing on the customer’s viewpoint. It can all make complete sense to everyone on your team – sound great, be well-designed and engaging, but does it speak to your audience? The way a company is organized and how they talk about themselves and their products may not always match up with how customers think and search.

Here are three things you can do to make sure that you’re speaking your customer’s language:

1. Know who you’re talking to and align your message to each touchpoint.
A “click to talk” option that shows up instantly when someone hits your homepage may not be as effective as positioning  this helpful tool on a product page where the user is actually seeking more detailed information.

2. Do a keyword search.
There are free tools like Google Adwords that can provide insight into how people are searching.  More than twice as many people search for ‘health care” with a space, vs. “healthcare.”

3. Ask them.
Card sorting exercises, surveys and focus groups are all great ways to get some insight into how your audience thinks and what they need. Spend some time with the actual people who make up your audience. Talk to them and observe them - what people say they do and what they actually do are often different things.

I was reading my colleague Shari’s blog post it’s all in the timing, which talks about the importance of delivering the right message at the right time in order to build an effective customer relationship. It got me thinking about the number of Marketing Automation offerings available today that can help marketers manage the timing and delivery of those messages.

A few months back, I was asked to conduct a Marketing Automation analysis and create a summary report for our staff.  During the research phase, I spoke with a lot of different Marketing Automation companies and found out a lot about how each platform differs from another.  

As I was ready to put together the report, one thing stood out.  No matter how big or small your company is - there really is a Marketing Automation tool available for every company.  The way to determine which one is right for you will depend on a couple of factors: budget, available resources and size of your sales staff.  Depending on those factors, you can narrow down your selection to a couple of platforms.

Platforms range from $85 to $6500 per month.  That’s quite a range!  A lot of the platforms base those costs on variables like the amount of users, services and functionality, total messages sent and number of contacts in your database.  Smaller organizations with minimal budget, most likely do not have multiple campaigns going on at one time, so the smaller platforms make a lot of sense.  The larger, more robust platforms are great for enterprise-wide solutions covering several different verticals and thousands of contacts. If you’re looking into a Marketing Automation tool, I’d be happy to share the details of my research with you. Just let me know.

One thing to keep in mind is that Marketing Automation is not 100% automatic. While the tools are really comprehensive, they do require attention. Marketing campaigns require a strategy, content and design development, and someone to manage them. You will need to consider the amount of hours it takes to manage and oversee your marketing campaigns in addition to the cost of a Marketing Automation tool.

There are more ways than ever to reach out to prospects – e-mail, banner ads, offers of whitepapers and webinars, social media, and the list goes on. Suppose you do get a nibble and someone takes you up on your offer? How do you make sure that when you get the right person’s attention, you keep it? If the timing of your response isn’t right or the message appropriate, you may be wasting your efforts and end up annoying your potential customer rather than building a relationship.

I recently registered to download a whitepaper that looked like it might have some promising information. I didn’t even mind providing my contact information in exchange for the content. It seemed like a fair exchange. Not 30 seconds after I downloaded the document, an e-mail from a sales rep for the company landed in my inbox.  It felt pushy, much like walking into a store and instantly having a sales person inquire if they can help you. This kind of instant swooping in may not cost you a lead, but it doesn’t get the relationship off to a very good start.

Waiting too long to respond can be equally problematic. I got a voicemail the other day from a company that I had downloaded information from a year ago. I had to wonder why they were getting around to contacting me now. Where they hurting for business? Were they unorganized? Bottom line, nothing very positive came to mind.

In both of these examples the timing was off, and as a result, nothing was gained. As important as it is to get a response, it’s just as important to remember that you are talking to a person on the other end of the communication. It takes time to build a trusting relationship with someone you just met, whether in-person, or via the Web.

This is where a good content strategy and advance planning can help. Start by mapping the buyer’s journey and understanding what they’re looking for at each point on that map. Anticipate their needs and provide the right information at the right time to start building that relationship and keep it going.

Many thanks to our clients, partners and prospects who attended our webinar yesterday, titled “Your Customers Have Changed … Have You?”  We would especially like to thank our clients who responded to our survey earlier this fall, which asked them about the topics in which they are most interested – and this topic rose to the top of the list.

In the webinar, we discussed how digital and social media have changed B2B buyer behavior (and some things that remain the same) and what we believe is the implication for marketers.  It begins with a brief history of B2B buying, discusses the concept of information asymmetry and how increased B2B spending in digital and social channels has rebalanced the power between sellers and buyers, and ends with a framework we’re using with our clients to adapt marketing to present-day B2B buyer behavior.  This is an introductory, top-line view.  We plan a follow-up webinar about using the framework to develop content strategies.  So please be on the lookout for that!

Please leave a comment below with any feedback, insights – heck, even criticisms – about the webinar or topics you’d like to see discussed in our future webinars.

By the way, this was the first live webinar I had ever done.  I have a new respect and admiration for the people who pull off webinars so gracefully…