Most companies consider tradeshows a great opportunity to meet potential prospects and reconnect with current customers. While this is true, tradeshows also draw another audience that you shouldn’t overlook—key media outlets and bloggers.

Follow these tips to schedule face-to-face media appointments at your next show:

• Make a plan.
  • If your company is exhibiting, most tradeshows provide exhibitors a pre-registered press list. Refer to your exhibitor manual for the person to contact about the list.
  • If your company isn’t exhibiting, then research which, if any, publications are sponsoring the show and reach out to them for an appointment. If no publications are sponsoring the show, then reach out to any key media on your list and inquire if they are attending.
• Start early. Pick the top publications and bloggers you’d like to meet with, and focus your efforts on them. Ideally, you should start media and blogger outreach three to four weeks in advance of your tradeshow. If you wait until the show is two weeks out, you may find most media calendars are booked. In your outreach, suggest a couple meeting locations, such as your booth, the press room, or a concession area.
• Be respectful. Many times bloggers, and sometimes editors, will provide tradeshows their cell phones. Only reach out to someone’s cell phone if it is critical you reach that person. Otherwise, limit your outreach to email and office phones.
• Be realistic. Just like you, editors, reporters, and bloggers want to meet with a number of people while at the show. That means they may only have, at most, 30 minutes to meet with you.
• Be prepared. Do your research on who your executives will be meeting with. Find out what beats they cover, as well as what they most recently wrote about. Also prepare a few talking points that you can comfortably discuss in 30 minutes. Be sure to allow enough time for the reporter/blogger to ask questions.
• Confirmations. Two to three days before the show, reach out to every appointment you’ve scheduled and make sure you know when and where you are meeting. Always have everyone’s cell phones in case people are running late.
• Follow up. Your job doesn’t end once the tradeshow is over. Be sure to follow-up with everyone you met with, preferably within five business days of the end of the show. Thank them for meeting with your executive, provide any additional information they requested, and offer to be a resource for them in the future.

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Mike Neumeier, principal of digital marketing and PR firm Arketi Group ( http://www.arketi.com ), expresses his gratitude to the more than 4,000 members of the BtoB Marketing Group on LinkedIn, which was recently awarded a BtoB magazine Social Media Marketing Award.

Clients often ask us numerous metric-related questions regarding the lead-to-sales pipeline. They sound like this: What percentage of leads will become qualified? How many leads do I need to generate to get an opportunity into the pipeline? What should my close rate be? What should my cost per lead be?

All of these are great questions, yet difficult to answer as an outside consultant with limited information. The reason is that while it is easy to provide generic ratios and metrics, based on experience or surveys completed by leading marketing sites, I question the value in them.  For example, if I were to tell you that it should cost you $150/lead, and that you will need 20 leads to have 5 be qualified, 2 to hit the pipeline and 1 to close, are you any closer to understand the true dynamics of how your lead-to-sales pipeline will operate. I argue not.

In our experience, every product/service, sales cycle, and lead-to-sales process is somewhat different. Some organizations struggle to get leads, others to move them through the pipeline, and others to close. Hence, while one may use an average or generic ratio for planning purposes, it will do very little to understand or help the situation your organization is facing.

So, what should organizations do? First, they should start by measuring every stage of the sales process, from lead-to-revenue, so they understand the metrics at each stage. Only once they have and understand these metrics can they focus their marketing efforts at the parts of the sales process which will net them the biggest improvement in overall effectiveness. For example, if you have enough leads, but very few hit the pipeline, you are probably facing one of two issues. Either the message that generates the leads are not in sync with your offering/capabilities generating initial interest, but no follow through, or your sales reps are inappropriately or over-qualifying them. Now, you have narrowed down the specific components in the process you can work on to improve the overall hit ratio.

Yes, the lead-to-sales pipeline is truly a numbers game… do you know yours? Companies using the best practices are measuring heavily, analyzing frequently and acting to refine and improve their close ratio. Now, that’s a path to generating revenue.

Some interesting info from a recent study by ExactTarget and CoTweet. It says that marketers trying to use social network to connect with consumers need to focus on five key social networking personas: Megaphones, Open Books, Social Butterflies, Business Firsts and Enthusiasts. 

As BtoB PR and digital marketing folks we were most intersted in the Megagphone and Business First groups. Below is what Marketing Charts, a favorate website of ours, wrote about these groups.

Megaphone
Representing 7% of online consumers, Megaphones want to connect, educate, and share resources and information online with others. Despite the relatively small number of them, Megaphones have a disproportionately large influence on brands and the internet as a whole. These consumers are by far the most active group of consumers in social media of all types. 65% regularly maintain a website, blog, or both.

Twenty percent of Megaphones use Twitter daily and have three times more followers than the average consumer. Their Twitter usage continues to increase, unlike many of the other personas. Megaphones are easily influenced; they’re the most likely consumers to become a subscriber, fan, or follower at the recommendation of others.

Business First
Representing 8% of online consumers, Business Firsts use the internet for business purposes, keeping up with the latest trends, communicating with business contacts, and making new connections through sites like LinkedIn. In short, they’re actively engaged in promoting their companies and personal careers online. These consumers use email constantly throughout the day, and although they don’t typically follow brands on Twitter, they’re among the most active Twitter users. Business First Consumers have nearly three times more followers than the average consumer.

They also maintain their own websites, blog frequently, upload videos, post to wikis, and write articles. The only exception is Facebook; they use this channel less frequently, primarily to connect with business contacts or to keep tabs on their children. These consumers are motivated to become a subscrivber, fan, or follower by the promise of product updates, company information, and education. They’re less likely to be motivated by discounts or entertainment.

More than half of Business First consumers are men between the ages of 25 to 54. These consumers receive more email per day and subscribe to more commercial email than any other consumer persona. Business Firsts are the most affluent persona, with a median income of $80,200.

To read the entire Marketing Charts article click here.

“That’s odd,” said my colleague in the nextdoor office, “why is ____ [another colleague] sending me an email that sounds like it’s meant for a prospect?”

“Uh-oh,” I thought, “that email wasn’t supposed to go out. What happened?”

At Arketi Group, we’re great proponents of email marketing, when used as a targeted tactic, and when respectful of the rules of privacy and of our audience’s willingness to receive marketing messages. Unfortunately, due to inattentiveness on my part, we’d just broken every such rule.

Frantic, I logged on to the email engine and clicked “Pause.” But it was too late.

I had just sent a personalized and supposedly “personal” email to every single individual on our list. Clients, prospects, employees, vendors, journalists, friends, family, strangers. All 11,000 of them.

The responses came flooding in. Unsubscribes. Bounces. And a great many “WTF?”s. The email – which was just a draft – was never intended for most of the people on the list, and to most of them, it made no sense.

We debated what, if anything, to do about it. Email everyone again, and apologize? Or leave it alone and hope it would soon be forgotten? Would a follow-up email, however apologetic, simply annoy people further? Or would ignoring the faux pas make them think we’re the kind of company that randomly spams our friends?

We decided to apologize. The mea culpa went out quickly and was to the point. It seems to have been the right thing to do – several people thanked us for the explanation and sympathized. We all make mistakes.

Our learnings:

• Email marketing is a powerful tool, but like any tool, that power can work against you; handle with care
• When an email is in draft, never assign it a “send” date, however comfortably far in the future that date may be
• When you make a mistake, apologize, and do so quickly.

In the end, only a handful of people unsubscribed; but it’s nonetheless disappointing that they are lost from our list forever. On the bright side, a good number more responded positively to the offer in the email, even though it was still a work in progress. And one respondent even thought the whole event – initial email and subsequent apology – was a strategy for stimulating interest and response.

I’d like to say we’re that smart, but in truth, this was just a case of “Oops!”

As a marketer, I find solace in numbers. I like hard facts and I get a high with I find stats that can back up my desire to run new programs.

With social media proving to no longer be a fad, many still wonder to what extent its value is being realized. That is why, upon seeing an intriguing tweet recently from Paul Gillin – “Stat junkies will love this big list of social media numbers.” – I had to click through. The result was a great compilation of 2010 findings on social media stats and market research.

Email Marketing is on the rise: 54% of marketers plan to increase spending on email marketing. Not surprising given the growing interest in lead nurturing.

Blogging is key: Nearly 90% of reporters and editors turn to blogs for story research. Talk about a great way to get some thought leadership coverage.

Strategy anyone: Only 41% of companies using social media have a strategic plan in place to guide activities. What?!? Let’s get smart people. Think about the time and resources that are being used to move these efforts forward. It doesn’t take much to create a strategic outline – determine where your audience lives, what your message is and, last but not least, have a semblance of an ideal outcome.

B2B social media spend: 6 of 10 B2B companies plan to increase social media spend in 2010. If your competitors are making a name in the space, shouldn’t you also?

Give them what they want: Tech buyers are most likely to click on news/articles, competitive comparisons and promotional content. If you are still only sending out links to brochures and datasheets, you might be missing out on a slew of prospects.

When reading the article, I’d highlight recommend scrolling down to these sections – “Social Media Use in Small to Midsized Businesses”, “B2B Social Media Marketing Statistics” and “Content Marketing.”

For the past few years, businesses have been looking for new ways to integrate social media with current marketing efforts. One of the newest trends is turning to Facebook and Twitter to quickly distribute information regarding both individual businesses and the industry as a whole.

Savvy businesses are now allowing Facebook users to subscribe to email lists through their personal pages. By doing so, organizations are able to grow their lists, a top benefit of integrating social and email for nearly one-third of respondents to a recent industry survey. The “Follow Us” on Twitter option also reigns as one of the most common ways to integrate social media with email marketing. Once a customer has selected to “follow” the company, he is able to access various newsletters created by the organization. A reported one-half of all small businesses already, or plan to, include “Follow Us” links in their emails.

More than three-quarters of small businesses consider the integration of social and email marketing an integral contributor to their growth in 2010. By giving customers and prospects the ability to sign up for lists on sites like Facebook and Twitter, the buyer feels the freedom to use “their channel of choice and sign up on their own terms.”

A 2010 survey of small businesses show that 54 percent plan on adding sign-up forms for newsletters and emails on different social media sights, making this trend a key element in social media marketing efforts.

For more information, read Social Media to Email Marketing Support in 2010

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Arketi Group Principal Mike Neumeier, APR highlights a few fundamental tenets to abide by when conducting outreach with the media. Some of the tactics and best practices to employ include:

1) Perform due diligence; be cognizant of a journalists habits and preferences
2) Avoid over-the-top jargon when corresponding with a reporter; simplicity is key
3) Don’t over-promise; expect the reporter to assess the validity of your claim
4) Leverage the appropriate social media platforms to engage the reporter

For more tips on how to build relationships with the media and deliver value visit, http://www.arketi.com/newsletter/news…

Let’s be clear – I’m not asking you to confess whether or not you floss daily – that’s between you and your dentist.  But we are seeing an alarming trend among B2B marketers in an area equally as troubling as bad dental habits – poor data hygiene.

As more and more of us look to personalized marketing, segmentation and longer term nurturing activities to feed the sales funnel, the need for more accurate prospect data becomes critical.  Knowing who your prospect is by name and email address is obviously no longer good enough.  The big question, however, is:  How many of us have the processes in place to ensure that prospect data is accurate? And relevant.  And actionable. And accessible. From recent, albeit informal, conversations with B2B marketers, it seems we have a long way to go. 

Regular data scrubbing, coupled with processes that limit the chance for ambiguous data entry while basic, seem lacking in today’s get it done yesterday environment. For example, do you REALLY need your CRM Prospect title field to be free form to capture every possible title or are you better off restricting it to a five option drop-down that will enable segmentation later.  And just like a little extra time spent in front of the sink can help avoid costly and painful tooth decay, practicing solid data hygiene can help avoid the long term pain of irrelevant messaging, high email bounce rates and an ineffective sales funnel.

According to a survey on Americans’ use of the Internet by Princeton Survey Research Associates International, 60 percent of American adults are wireless Internet users, anyone with a laptop who uses a Wi-Fi connection to access the Internet, or one who uses email, internet, or instant messaging on a mobile phone. An equal number of American adults, 59 percent, access online information using either a Wi-Fi connection or a cell phone, a significant increase from the 51 percent who reported doing so last year.

Even though the number of mobile phone users has remained relatively the same, users are now beginning to take full advantage of the many features that today’s smartphones have to offer. The use of mobile phones for sending photos, watching videos, and social networking has significantly grown over the past 12 months.

Though the use of wireless internet is still growing among 30-to-49 year olds, young adults continue to have the highest levels of wireless data use. As the future leaders of business, it is this younger generation’s use of the Internet that confirms the importance of the wireless connection to BtoB marketers.