ClickLaunch: Ardath Albee's eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale

Posted by Ambal Balakrishnan November 3rd 09

Ground reality - 1. B2B sales cycles are long and complex. 2. Marketers today are under high pressure to close sales and show results quickly. 3. Buyers don’t want to be pitched to. How do B2B marketers successfully navigate the challenges along the B2B sales course map? In her new book, eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale, Ardath Albee recommends that it is important to find answers to the following questions - Who are you buyers? What are their critical priorities? What do they need to know to make a buying decision? We have invited Ardath Albee to get an insider look into her book eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale

Ardath Albee is a B2B Marketing Strategist. Her company Marketing Interactions helps companies with complex sales and quantify marketing effectiveness by using interactive e-marketing strategies driven by compelling content. She empowers her clients to create customer-centric nurturing programs that leverage strategic story development to engage prospects until they are sales ready. Ardath’s book, eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale is now shipping!

Ardath Albee

Blog Marketing Interactions eMarketing Mastery Twitter Ardath421

Ardath Albee Content Marketing Expert Create content for each stage of the buying process that’s focused on delivering value from the buyers’ perspective.

Ambal Balakrishnan: Ardath, it is a great pleasure to discuss your new book eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale. Thanks for finding time out of your very busy schedule to provide your valuable insights to our readers. Tell us about what Marketing Interactions does?
Ardath Albee: Marketing Interactions helps B2B companies with complex sales increase and quantify marketing-to-sales effectiveness by developing and executing interactive e-marketing strategies driven by compelling content. Essentially we help companies use content to engage with and help prospects choose to become buyers because of the strategic advantages they gain by doing so.

Ambal Balakrishnan: Give us the background of how you gained an interest in B2B Marketing?
Ardath Albee: I’d been strictly B2C for a number of years as a turnaround specialist for hotels and country clubs. When I was invited to help launch a start-up B2B software company, it was a new challenge and time for a change. I’d always been a writer, but what I found as I helped companies use the software platform for best results, was that they needed a lot of help with content strategy. Through helping them become successful, I found a way to put my passion for both customers and writing to work and decided I enjoyed that work more than running companies.

Ambal Balakrishnan: What prompted you to embark on creating your book eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale?
Ardath Albee: That’s a good question. There wasn’t a good resource out there that tackled the exact challenge of content creation from a strategic perspective. I know. I looked. I’ve learned a lot about what that takes and want to share that knowledge to help marketers learn to fish, instead of having to hire people to fish for them. I wanted to write an accessible book that could be used as a guide for how to create content strategies that produce results, not a high-level book that gives you great ideas, but no way to put them into practice. I hope I accomplished that.

Ambal Balakrishnan: Please walk us through the book writing life-cycle from concept to launch?
Ardath Albee: Oh boy. Are you sure you want to know?

I was referred to my agent by a colleague. He was interested in my concept and worked with me to create the proposal for the book. Within about a month, he had interest from my editor at McGraw-Hill. We worked together to incorporate her ideas and that changed the original concept quite a bit. Then I signed and they asked me to complete the manuscript in 3 months. That was the most challenging part – writing the book while continuing to do client work.

After I turned in the book manuscript, we went through two revision rounds and then it went to final copyedits. Those required quite a bit of re-work on my part as that person didn’t understand my subject matter, but firmly embraced the publisher’s style guidelines. I requested they change most of it back, and I’m really thankful they agreed.

In the midst of all that, we went through two cover designs. The first one missed, but they nailed what I wanted with the second one and I’m very pleased. Their designers did a great job on the book design itself and it was really fun to watch it evolve.

Then, the day came when they asked me to get endorsements for the book. Oh, and told me I had two weeks to get them. Fortunately I had great support from some wonderful people who I consider luminaries in the industry. They all pulled together for me and I made my deadline. But, that was truly the hardest part. It was the first time I’d had feedback on the book outside of my editorial team and the colleagues who’d been Beta readers. It was terrifying to have some of the people I’ve got a huge amount of respect for, but don’t know all that well personally, as the first to read it. Thank God they liked it!

Then came the day that FedEx pulled up with cases of books. I finally got to see and hold the real thing. It was amazing. I still smile when I look at the copy sitting on my desk. But, the day after that, Amazon started shipping. A full three weeks early and I wasn’t ready due to my client project schedule. But that’s okay, I’ll get there – about the time it was supposed to be released.

The funny part is that I work in a business environment that moves fast. And I received the book in final form almost a year to the day I signed my contract. It seemed like it took forever. Most gratifying is that people are buying the book. And I’m hearing from them, which I absolutely love. That people are finding value in the book makes it all worthwhile.

Recommended Resources

Get Content. Get Customers. by Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett
Cashing in on Content by David Meerman Scott – a classic that I still reference.
Junta 42 Community and the Top Blogs list – you’ll find a great resource there.
The Customer Collective – a collection of blogs that includes both marketing and sales thought leaders.

Ambal Balakrishnan: Who is eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale addressed towards?
Ardath Albee: I wrote the book for marketing and sales organizations challenged with engaging prospects across the entirety of a lengthening, complex buying cycle. I think the book will be helpful for any size company that needs to answer that challenge.

Ambal Balakrishnan: How is the B2B Marketing landscape different than what it was a decade back?
Ardath Albee: A decade ago buyers pretty much had to speak with a salesperson to find out what they needed to know to make a purchase decision. The Internet changed that by connecting people with information about nearly everything. Buyers now can learn pretty much what they need to know to get to the creation of a short list without ever speaking to a salesperson. Not only has that made becoming the advisor to help people buy harder, but it’s transferred a lot of responsibility to the marketing side of the scale. In addition, instead of face-to-face, much of communication today is done digitally. That’s a wholly different process that requires us to develop different skill sets in order to work effectively.

Ambal Balakrishnan: How is Content Marketing for B2B’s different from B2C’s?
Ardath Albee: I think the biggest difference is that B2C doesn’t have the buying committees and influences that impact the B2B market. In B2B we have to address the buyer, but we also have to know how roles, responsibilities, corporate culture, industry specifics and stakeholders impact the problem and the choice to buy. We’re often dealing with complex systems where our product or solution impacts only a part of them, but still, we have to be able to address the ripple effect of everything else they touch.

In comparison, the most complex purchase a consumer makes is often their home. Much of how they decide is based on personal values and their buying committee is usually their spouse, and maybe the family. Generally the values you’re addressing are shared. In B2B, it’s not that easy.

Ambal Balakrishnan: You have an entire chapter dedicated to B2B Marketing Metrics. Which metric is the one you most reach out to in your metric toolbox?
Ardath Albee: Goal Achievement – aka Levels of Engagement. Whether opt in, other response activity or online dialogue, B2B marketers must motivate their prospects to respond in increasingly interactive ways or they aren’t generating the amount of interest necessary to progressively move them toward viable sales conversations. Every content “touch” must be designed to achieve a goal. With progressive goal achievement, marketing builds pipeline momentum that drives sales outcomes.This is not to say that contribution to revenue isn’t the ultimate metric, but that I use goal achievement much more often to tune and tweak marketing programs and make sure that metric sees impact.

Ambal Balakrishnan: What is one change you recommend for businesses to do better when it comes to handling complex sales?
Ardath Albee: Create content for each stage of the buying process that’s focused on delivering value from the buyers’ perspective.

Ambal Balakrishnan: What are the 3 key lessons you want readers to take away from your book?
Ardath Albee:

Know your prospects and customers really well.
Engage prospects and customers with compelling content that helps them, regardless of their timing to buy.
Nurture prospects continuously and consistently across their buying process—and beyond, once they become your customers.

Ambal Balakrishnan: What one “get started on right away” change do you recommend to the reader of your book?
Ardath Albee: Put marketers and salespeople in the same room and complete the Customer-Focus Tune Up exercise. You’d be amazed what you discover that can help improve relevance and how you’re using content to engage prospects.

Ambal Balakrishnan: Please recommend 3-5 resources (books, blogs).
Ardath Albee:

Get Content. Get Customers. by Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett
Cashing in on Content by David Meerman Scott – a classic that I still reference.
Junta 42 Community and the Top Blogs list – you’ll find a great resource there.
The Customer Collective – a collection of blogs that includes both marketing and sales thought leaders. The community is a great resource for marketers who are trying to better understand the process at the bottom of the funnel to create better alignment with their sales teams.

Ambal Balakrishnan: What kind of projects (both personal and professional) are you involved in when you are not blogging, speaking or consulting?
Ardath Albee:

Training my Australian Shepherd puppy, Bella – or just playing ball with her in the backyard.
Reading and writing women’s fiction.
Research and thinking. My husband thinks I’m nuts, but I’ll sit for hours and just think about something from different angles. And I love research. Crazy, I know.

Ambal Balakrishnan: Ardath, thanks for taking the time to discuss your book and sharing your B2B marketing insights with us.
Ardath Albee: Thanx Ambal.

Win FREE copies of eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale

To celebrate Ardath Albee's book launch, we are giving away 3 FREE copies of eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale

To enter this giveaway, simply do the following:

Follow @clickdocuments and @ardath421 on twitter
Tweet either the link to this interview or eMarketing Strategies Book with '#clickgiveaways'

We will randomly pick 1 lucky winner each day for the next 3 days and give them a copy of Ardath Albee's eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale. The winner for each day will be announced the subsequent day. Stay tuned!