Advertising is one of the most expensive elements in the marketing mix, whether print, broadcast or online. And because of the fickle and subjective nature of advertising, seemingly great ideas can flop, while unexpected approaches surprise even the most experienced marketers. With all financial investment at stake, it makes sense to gain insight into customer reaction.

There are a variety of options for advertising testing. The extent of testing depends on the expected advertising budget-both ad production and placement. Clearly a $1.3 million Super Bowl spot requires more elaborate testing than a $20,000 print ad.

So what are the advertising testing options? And when should you use one testing type vs. another?

Most experts agree on two broad types of advertising testing: concept testing and copy testing.

Concept testing is sometimes called pre-testing, and is generally exploratory using headlines, rough layouts or storyboards. Concept testing typically uses qualitative research techniques including focus groups or depth interviews to gain insight into effective ad concepts, identify problems or issues, or to generate new ad concepts.

In contrast, copy testing evaluates different executions of an advertising campaign using finished (or close to finished) ad executions. Copy testing typically employs quantitative research techniques including surveys to measure recall or recognition. Larger sample sizes can provide a level of statistical validity decisions that may be important with larger investments.

What’s more, you may use both types of testing for an important or expensive advertising campaign, using concept testing for the early stages of campaign development, and copy testing to select the final ad option.

Finally, advanced copy testing using quantitative techniques can also involve physiological measures including eye-movement analysis, galvanic skin-response methods and brain-wave analysis. Although I will suggest these are too complex or expensive for most requirements.

And what would a blog post about advertising testing be without an example of an actual ad test. Earlier this year, FUSION b2b conducted an ad test for client BOSCH Power Tools. Per above ad testing types, this was definitely a copy test using finished print ads with a striking visual (ala Cyborg) and varying headline, copy and the treatment of the direct response offer.

(click any ad example above to enlarge)

We set-up a survey using the free web-based SurveyMonkey tool and posed four (4) questions:

1. Which headline do you prefer most? Which headline would you stop and read?
2. Which copy version do you prefer most?
3. Which Free Offer treatment and layout position do you prefer most?
4. Please rate overall preference of each ad on a scale of 1-5 (1+hate, 5=love)

The ad test was emailed to a random list of remodelers, the target audience from the circulation of Hanley-Wood’s Remodeling magazine. We received hundreds of survey responses making the copy test statistically significant, and most importantly, a clear direction with a large percentage of respondents selecting the “Maximize Your Multi-Tool” headline and copy. The preference for “offer treatment” was even more pronounced with nearly 68% preferring the offer in yellow, top right position (an unconventional offer position, and unexpected outcome).

More Resources:

Advertising Research Foundation

As always, please comment, Retweet, Facebok Like and bookmark using the Share tools.

Originally posted by Channel Marketing Insights, written by Anna Johnson.

Experienced marketers spend years honing their skills to identify ways to differentiate their product from the competition. And as traditional differentiators like price, quality, and features become more uniform across the competition, the marketing differentiating tool becomes obsolete. The mistake that’s often made, however, is the idea that commodities don’t require marketing. In fact, the opposite is true.

Channel Management Insights sat down with Eaton Electrical’s Channel Operations Manager, Tamie Janocsko, to learn what marketing techniques the company uses to help grow its business. While other companies fear the risk of their product becoming a commodity, Eaton Electrical embraces it. There’s a certain freedom when you abandon the rules you learned in Marketing 101. Once released from the dogma of product marketing, you can start to see new opportunities in parts of the business that you never saw before. Do you think that Eaton’s best practices don’t apply to your business because you happen to be the clear market leader based on traditional differentiators? Think again. The following insights, while especially useful for marketing commodities, are not entirely novel. All companies can reap the benefits.

Uncovering the Opportunities

So how does marketing make an impact when selling a commodity? “Determine the areas during the selling and buying process that are invaluable to your customer. Chances are you will uncover a new opportunity for differentiating your business,” says Janocsko. For Eaton, they discovered a long time ago that customers were loyal to their distributors. If Eaton could win distributors’ business over the competition, then Eaton’s revenue would grow. “Changing the focus of our marketing efforts to making meaningful connections with over 2,200 partners helped us to differentiate our company in a new way.” Janocsko continued, “So we set out to design a selective partner program where Eaton was instrumental in every partner’s success.” Here are three ways that Eaton Electrical’s partner program helps them to differentiate themselves from the rest of the competition.

Exclusivity is Rewarded, Not A Requirement

At first glance, Eaton’s partner program levels of gold, silver, and platinum are seemingly generic…in name only. But take a peek at the benefits for each level and discover an impressive and cohesive program strategy that enables partners to be successful. At each level there is training, certification, price discounts, rebates, and marketing and sales support that is perfectly configured and packaged based on the level of commitment from each partner. In addition to these benefits, Eaton carefully selects partners that exclusively sell their products. Exclusivity is rewarded, but not a requirement to participate in the partner program. The partner’s level of commitment determines the  level of benefits. For example, “The prestigious platinum Eaton Electrical partner level is very selective and offers preferred pricing among other program benefits that gives them a competitive edge over other distributors in their local market,” says Janocsko.

Solution Selling

Eaton has invested a lot of time, training, and materials to support solution-based selling. Their distributors almost always bundle other materials and services with Eaton products. So Eaton has taken the initiative to create marketing and selling materials to support different solutions ranging from alternative energy, industrial, residential, and smart grid. By preparing the solution materials so they can be easily customizable, partners can focus on finding and closing new business instead of figuring out ways to market their services. “The solution materials are carefully designed with compelling and relevant content.” Janocsko continued, “The distributors would have to work really hard and spend a lot of money to create their own materials of the same high quality.” This benefit alone helps their partners to impress new clients.

In addition to the solution marketing materials, Eaton has created an impressive virtual city and home so that distributors and their clients can learn for themselves how Eaton’s must-have products fit into the overall construction scheme. “The virtual house and Eaton City are beautifully designed, and easy to access and explore online,” says Janocsko. “These virtual experiences help the contractors convey to their prospective clients how important their work is to the overall construction project. By establishing themselves as the best expert in their field, this impression helps them to win new business.”

Advice For Newbies

We asked Tamie, “What advice would you offer someone who finds themselves working for a company with commoditized products and at risk for little or no growth?” She offered the following suggestions:

1. Get to know the market. Ask yourself, what are the trends in the market and how do your commodities fit in with the trend? For example, optimizing energy and energy conservation are key drivers in the market right now and Eaton has answers as to how their products tie into energy conservation solutions.
2. Get to know your channel partners. Find out why they like working with you. Ask what problems they are facing and what they need to be successful.
3. Write the strategy based on the information collected in items 1 and 2. Find out what important initiatives your partners are taking and ask yourself, do they address what the market is demanding? And then create the market strategy and programs that help tie your partners’ initiatives to what the market is demanding.
4. There will be prospective partners whose business initiatives are not compatible with your market strategy. That’s OK. Not every prospective partner will be a good fit. Being selective has its benefits and the partners lucky enough to participate will appreciate the exceptional experience your program has to offer.

Conclusion

Marketing commodities isn’t as scary as most people make it out to be. In fact, businesses like Eaton Electrical that see opportunities when others see limitations are successful and resilient. This year, Eaton celebrates 100 years of providing the world power management solutions. This is a testament to their ability to find creative and impactful ways to differentiate themselves so their business continues to grow. And with prospective partners competing to take part in Eaton’s program, these lessons are not only wise but ripe for the taking.

One of the most important decisions you can make as a marketer is finding a marketing agency to partner with that can generate great ideas, as well as manage and implement projects expertly and efficiently. And perhaps most important, help you be successful with measurable marketing results. Shouldn’t be too hard, right? After all, there are hundreds of agencies out there begging for your business. Many of them are fantastic. Some just will not be a good fit. Still others will be disasters-in-the-making.

Entering into a union with a bad agency partner not only can end in divorce, but can also be expensive, embarrassing, even get you fired. Yet, it happens all the time. What are some of the straws that break the agency partnership’s back?  A recent survey by FUSION b2b identified the following:

Reasons for firing an agency:
1) Poor marketing or sales results
2) Agency advice is weak (marketing, strategy, creative)
3) Agency fees are excessive or disputed
4) Agency is not in tune with new media (SEO, social, blogging, etc)
5) Agency hired by prior management

And conversely….

Reasons for hiring an agency:
1) Need a specialist for a specific marketing project
2) Get new ideas for marketing
3) Want a new partner that can achieve results
4) New managers/management not tied to old partners

As in everything, due diligence can help prevent the former scenario and make the latter a success. There are several avenues that will lead you to potential agencies. One of the best is through referral/networking. Searching online can net a lot of names, but narrow down by reviewing results-oriented case studies on agency sites. Or, if you have the budget, you can hire an agency search firm to help you. But before you do anything, determine key drivers.

Phase I: Establish Selection Criteria

• Realistically assess your budget vs. agency size
• Decide if category or industry expertise is critical
• Determine if specific marketing skills are important (creative, internet, direct, PR, etc)
• Consider geography. Will there be frequent on-site meetings?
• If you have an in-house marketing department, think about how an agency will work with it and augment it
• Do a mini SWOT analysis to determine what your new agency can leverage and/or improve

Phase II: Identify Potential Agency Candidates

• Depending on the scale of your marketing program, narrow down to 5-10 or more agency candidates that fit your criteria and review their websites thoroughly
• Next, make contact with the most promising candidates and set-up phone interviews
• Send an written request for proposal (RFP) to agency candidates who did well in the phone interviews
• Conduct on-site visits and/or request agency presentations from a shortlist of agency candidates that did well with RFP responses
• Request the team that will be working on your account be in the presentation—know the players!
• Do ask for budget parameters for the types of marketing projects and programs you will be assigning
• Recruit a selection committee that, depending on program scale, is at least two and no more than 5 managers
• Use a scorecard or ranking on 5-10 criteria to add objectivity, but also consider your “gut” instincts

Phase III: Choose Your Agency!

At this stage, be sure to have internal discussions with your selection committee. While committee members should rank or score agency candidates individually to avoid a dominant personality imposing his or her will, committee members should openly share their results and reasoning.

This group meeting and process should deliver the clear winner. However, if it’s down to two viable choices, invite them to duke it out by executing the same test project. Then, evaluate them based on responsiveness, strategy and ideas, creative execution, project management and budget.

May the best agency win!  Now, all that’s left is to deliver the good news.

Other great Agency Selection Resources

1. Webbiquity – How to Choose a Marketing Agency (Ad Agency)
2. Inc. – How to Choose an Advertising Agency

Originally posted by The Business Marketing Institute, by Eric Gagnon

We’re hearing all kinds of news about companies pulling out of their print advertising schedules, with no end in sight. At the same time, there’s a lot of happy talk out there from people in and around the B2B marketing field telling you that cutting back on print advertising is a bad idea.

Yes, cutting back on advertising that generates measurable sales response (that’s sales leads), and that pays for itself over your sales cycle is a bad idea. However, most advertising doesn’t do this: Most advertising is a foolish, very expensive exercise in buying fairy dust called “branding,” which can’t be measured, and which usually has no impact on product sales.

In good times, a company will go along with the notion that running expensive full-page ads that do little more than make an appearance in a publication to create a weak memory in the mind of the prospect about your product (this is called “brand awareness”), and that this will work its mojo on those mystical forces that cause people to buy from your company instead of someone else.

But when the music stops, as it has now, companies wise up to the fact that significant parts of their marketing budgets don’t produce anything that can be linked to revenue, and can’t be measured by any rational means even if it did. The smart guys who got you into these advertising programs when times were good don’t have a lot of answers these days, except telling you to keep on doing it, because when others stop doing it you’ll be the only one doing it, so, somehow, you will win.

Huh?

May I suggest a different approach?

Stop Running Stupid Big Ads, and Start Running Smaller, Smarter, Response-Generating Ads

You can, and should, run advertising, if you can run the kind of advertising that motivates prospects to contact your company, and if you can track and measure this advertising against sales closed by your sales team to generate a solid return on this expenditure. Doing this keeps your marketing program generating sales leads in a recession, and doing this with smaller, hard-working, response-generating print ad programs costs a lot less money. This also saves you from being forced to make an all-or-nothing decision about print advertising, especially if your company works with distributors and independent sales rep networks who rely on your advertising program for leads, and, in a larger sense, as a sign of your company’s presence in and committment to their market.

A program of stripped-down fractional-page ads (quarter-page sizes, for example) using clear, effective presentation that grabs trade publication readers, and presents a strong offer that motivates them to contact your company, can often be the crucial move that changes your print advertising from an expensive cost sink into a measurable, response-generating, investment in sales for your company.

Keys to Producing Smart, Fractional Ads that Generate Measurable Sales Response

Even if you’re delegating the task of producing small-format response genering ads to your ad agency or layout designer, it’s very important for you to have solid knowledge of the principles required to produce these kinds of ads, and for you to apply these techniques to your print advertising projects.

Why? First, you’ll get a better final product if you start with a basic, rough sketch that lays down your product’s key sales benefit, and your offer, because these initial copy and layout notes provide a useful starting point for your agency’s designer who is producing your ads (you’re not designing your ad for your agency, you’re just giving them something to work with by getting the benefits and their visual order down on paper).

Second, and most important, the process of writing down and visually organizing your own product’s presentation is your first step toward developing the skill of  identifying effective layout and presentation when it’s done by others on your behalf.

This week, let’s produce an fractional response-generating ad for a hypothetical oilfield equipment company. For this example, we are developing an ad for a company that sells a system which uses a network of sliding valve sleeves tied to a single computer control station that allows the operator to more efficiently monitor and control multiple oil reservoirs tapped by a single pipeline.

Here are the major benefits of this product:

• Shorter detection and response times, leading to:

• Increased efficiency and productivity;

• More economical and reliable than competitive systems

The major sales benefits comprise the most important elements of your ad, the headline and subhead. The headline, usually combined with a product shot, is the most prominent part of a fractional ad. The headline/product shot combination is often set at the top of fractional ads, because magazine page-flippers (your potential prospects) tend to look at smaller ads from the top to the bottom, so setting the headline and product shot at the top of your ad improves its immediate readability. This isn’t a hard-and-fast rule, and if you or your designer come up with a better, more eye-catching layout, you can always try it and see how it works for you.

Which Comes First: The Copy, the Layout, or the Headline?

Now it’s time to produce our ad. If you’re one of those purely right-brained creative types, you could begin with a blank layout and start pushing text blocks around and see what happens. That’s fine, and you may come up with a great layout, but I’ve found the most efficient way to produce an effective fractional ad is to get the most important elements—the headline and product shot— down on your ad space first, work these into shape, and then work the other elements in around them.

Start this process by setting your headline, and making it prominent, and then usually the other elements of your layout—copy, promotional offer, logo, etc. fall into place after your headline.

Let’s say we’ve chosen a quarter-page size for our ad, which for most magazine-format publications is 3-1/2” wide X 4-7/8” high.

Start by getting your headline and product/application shot down on the page, like so:

We also have a subhead that fills in the rest of this product’s story:

Shorter Detection and Response Times
on Multi-Reservoir Fields Can Increase
Output Up to 35%

Subheads in small ads work best when they’re teamed up with headlines to convey the entire benefit “story,” so let’s move our subhead right up below the headline, like so:

Now, let’s arrange our two product shots (diagram and console photo) so we can work the other ad elements in. This usually involves shifting them to the left or right, and since we have an odd, long graphic, let’s enlarge this for contrast, add a drop shadow, and make it a graphic element of the ad, set over the top of the photo:

On fractional ads, you can make a bold headline even more noticeable by reversing it and placing it in a solid color field, like so:

Next, we’ll run our body copy alongside the picture:

The Free Premium Offer

Now we come to our premium offer—this is what goes into our ad to motivate readers to pick up the phone or link to our company’s (or client’s) Web site. It’s the token of value we offer the reader in exchange for asking the reader for their contact information.

Since you don’t have the space available in a full page ad, you need a strong offer to make your fractional ad work, and, next to a free sample or free trial offer (neither or which are practical for many kinds of products), the best offer to make to trade publication readers is an information-based premium that is useful and has value to your intended prospects.

The best free information premiums are the ones that are specialized to meet your prospects’ on-the-job interests, or help them do their jobs in a better, more productive, or more useful way, preferably, while showcasing your company’s product.

Good examples of inexpensive, high-value premiums that present well in fractional ads are:

• DVDs: Specialized how-to- or applications videos involving your product’s field of use;

• Reports: Industry surveys, studies, white papers, or specialized analysis with high perceived value and interest to the prospect;

• Books: Custom-published books on specialized topics directly of interest to your prospects, and involving your product;

• Wall charts or slide guides: Charts or slide-guide calculators, featuring reference tables, calculations, nomenclature or other categorized information in your industry

Pick the right premium for your market and you’ll not only have an item that draws interest and response to your fractional ad, you’ll have an offer that sets your company and your marketing program apart from your competition. You’ll also have a premium offer you can use in your other marketing projects, like mailings, postcard decks, Google AdWords search programs, etc.

Presenting the Premium and the Offer

For our hypothetical example, a slide-guide calculator combining some common and useful oilfield calculations, with some additional calculations showing the projected yield from using our company’s system, would make an excellent free premium offer for our ad.

Slide guides, also known as wheel guides, available from companies like Datalizer Slide Charts, Inc. (www.slidecharts.com) can be produced to calculate useful values for an industry-specific application. Best of all, if you’re working with a company or client in a technically-oriented B2B field (as most of us are), slide guides can be custom-developed for your particular application.

Slide guides have high perceived value, even in today’s world of ubiquitous handheld electronic gadgets—all you have to do is develop a useful function for one that serves the prospects in your market.

You can produce slide guides for figuring common technical calculations in your industry, or you can produce purely promotional slide guides highlighting features in your product line. You could also create a slide guide that combines objective calculations with products in your line, to match these results to specific product attributes of interest to your prospects.

To finish our ad layout, let’s work in our slide guide art, our copy describing the premium, our grabber headline for our offer, and company logo and contact information:

As you can see, we make sure readers see our FREE offer, and we give them the option to both call our company, and link to our Web site, to sign up for the premium. Since they don’t want to bother with calling your company, most readers will link to the Web site.

Which brings up our next point: Make it easy for readers to get your premium, by asking only for the basic information you need to fulfill their request—name, address, e-mail, etc. Most marketers are tempted to make readers jump through hoops by asking too many survey-type questions, or they force readers to speak to a sales rep before the prospect really wants to, since it’s too early in the sales process. Both of these actions drive down response because they turn your prospects off, so don’t do anything to block the open front end of your “sales funnel” too soon.

Testing Different Ad Page Sizes

Once you have a workable fractional ad layout, consider the option of producing another version in an even smaller page size. For example, testing both quarter and eighth-page versions of your ad broadens your marketing options, because it allows you to run your ads more frequently, and in more publications.

How to test: You can test two ad sizes by publication, or alternatively in each issue of the same publication. For example, you can run half-page ads in three issues of one publication and smaller, quarter-pages in three issues of another publication, then switch these ad size placements in these two publications after three months, tracking and measuring your response every month. If your half-page ad is already pulling good response, you may be surprised to find little or no fall-off in response compared to the smaller size. Given the page space cost reduction for these two sizes, this effort could give you a significant increase in your return from the smaller size. You’ll never know if you can get about the same sales response from a smaller ad, unless you try.

Now, Let’s Make It Smaller!

There’s more to making a smaller version of a larger fractional ad than merely producing a scaled down version in the smaller size.

To make a fractional ad even smaller, you must distill the copy and elements down, taking the best elements from the larger size, and you must often discard certain elements (such as product shots) to maintain the boldness and clarity of presentation of the smaller ad.

When you’re working with a very small ad size, sometimes it also makes sense to flip the “story” and “offer” around, by leading with your free promotional offer in the smaller ad size, or presenting it exclusively. This allows you to compensate for the reduced size of your smaller ad by getting that very powerful word, “FREE,” right up on top of your smaller ad.

And since we want to produce a very small eighth-page ad size from a quarter page ad, we’ll try this in our ad, shown here:

From the standpoint of visual drawing power, both of these ad sizes hold their own against much larger ad page sizes, as you can see below:

If you are working with a limited marketing budget, having two strong ad sizes like these gives you more flexibility in your ad space buying options. This means you can run in more issues of a publication, and you can expand your print advertising to more publications in your field.

Fractional ads like these, using bold, clear presentation of benefits, and strong premium offers, are the lead generating workhorses of business-to-business marketing programs, generating sales leads month after month, and this is the approach you can take to get the most from your marketing budget in the tough environment ahead.

Originally posted by The Business Marketing Institute, by Eric Gagnon

QR Codes are everywhere! The hype is backed up by statistics like 14 million American’s scanned QR Codes in June, 2011 alone! (source: comScore) Clearly most of what we encounter is consumer advertising and retail applications. So what about business-to-business marketing? Are QR Codes an effective marketing vehicle? The answer is yes! And this blog will demonstrate the what, where and how of QR Codes.

What are QR Codes?

Think of QR Codes (quick response codes) as a 2D version of a barcode. But while barcodes provide simple information such as quantities, SKU or part number, quantities, dates, price, etc., QR Codes can perform object hyperlinking, meaning they can encode data in space that is two dimensional. They can transmit text, find and open a website, or even download files. QR Codes offer several advantages over barcodes, one of which is that your prospective customer can read or scan them from a variety of angles, rather than having to be correctly aligned, as they would typically find necessary with using a barcode.

Each QR code generation service supports different QR code executions. Below is a comprehensive list of the information QR codes can support:

1. URL (scan to visit our website)
2. Calendar event (scan to add our event to your calendar!)
3. Contact information (scan to add _____ to your address book)
4. Geo location (scan to check in at _____)
5. Phone number (would automatically call given # when scanned)
6. SMS (send a text message)
7. File downloading (scan to download our product brochure)

What Marketing Applications Can Use QR Codes?

Because these codes can be easily and quickly be scanned by a smartphone application (app), they can be placed on all types of printed marketing mediums. QR Codes allow marketers to deliver static print communications to website-based registration pages, promotions, downloads and more. Print applications include:

• Magazine and newspaper ads
• Newsletters
• Business cards
• Coupons
• Direct mail, postcards, stuffers
• Packaging
• Signage and point-of-purchase graphic

Below is an example of a trade print ad with a QR code that hyperlinks to a website.

How Do QR Codes Work?

First you need to generate a QR Code through any of the available services, most of which are free. Once you generate the QR Code, simply embed the image in your printed digital file. You could also adhere the QR Code as a label if the aesthetic requirements are not demanding. Following are a few of the free QR Code services we found:

• Kaywa
• Bit.ly (allows for metrics on how many scans of a QR code)
• BeQRious
• Delivr
• Azonmedia
• Maestro
• goQR.me
• Online QR Lab
• Mobile-Barcodes

5 Tips for Using QR Codes

Tip 1 – Mobile-Friendly Web pages

Whatever web pages the QR Code will browse to, make sure the pages are mobile-friendly, with simple graphics, minimal copy and small file sizes for fast loading. Keep in mind that the pages will be displayed on a small mobile phone display. Also be explicit in communicating where the QR code will take the end-user. You will boost the number of scans you receive if you explain the benefit of scanning the QR code! Our upcoming blog on mobile marketing will detail how to convert standard websites to mobile versions.

Tip 2 – Keep the URL Short

Long domains (or URLs) with obscure characters make for larger QR Codes, and have a greater chance of scanning errors. Keep in mind that we recommend listing the domain adjacent to the QR Code for users without smartphones. Use a URL shortener like TinyURL.com or Bit.ly.

Tip 3 – Make it Interesting

The prospect has gone to some trouble to scan your QR Code and browse to your web page. Make sure you make it worth their time! Promotional specials such as price discounts, free merchandise, or coupon specials are popular. If possible, make it fun or interactive. For direct mail, you can even personalize the experience with custom domains for each mail addressee. By all means, don’t bore them with long-winded copy.

Tip 4 – Pre-Test Your Codes

Once you’ve created and printed your QR Codes, test them before launching your campaign. You will need to download the (likely free) application to a smartphone and scan. Be sure to test loading speed. For a list of QR Code phone applications, click here.

Tip 5 – User Instructions

As QR Codes are still relatively new, make sure the printed QR Code has a brief instruction close by, and also lists a (brief) domain for those without smartphones or the QR Code application. Even though QR codes appear to be everywhere, not everyone knows their uses.

QR Codes are gaining popularity because they are effective in directing your prospects and customers to web-based offers and information. In addition, QR Codes are extremely cost-efficient to execute using available free-ware. Because QR Codes are web-based, campaign measurement is possible through analytics and registrations.

Please share your examples of QR Code marketing applications via the comment tool below, or attach files via our contact email!

Now that LinkedIn has announced it will go public we will see several implications throughout the social media and B2B world. The companies valuation of 2 billion dollars will shake the social media space, but it will not shatter it. They are the first of many Social Media power houses that are making the jump to the market, not the last. Expect for Facebook, and Twitter to follow suite.

With all this new money flooding the Social Media Space expect to see great things emerge. Things such as Twitter Analytics and LinkedIn Analytics will allow B2B marketers better metrics and ROI justifications. The user interfaces of the sites will also become more friendly, and so will the dashboards given to advertisers. One word comes to mind when I hear that money is heading towards the social media space is easier. It will become easier to advertise, connect, and find what you need on social media faster then ever. This IPO may also turn skeptics into believers and lead them to invest in Social Media advertising. Companies may now decide it is the time to jump onto the Social Media space and make it work for their company.

Where does B2B fit into all of this?
LinkedIn is a B2B powerhouse and it will only gain strength with this IPO. The value of connecting with someone, and learning about them has fueled our industry since LinkedIn’s inception in December 2002 (launched in May 2003). B2B is all about relationships, and LinkedIn is just one tool that makes relationship building easier. Expect to see better company pages on LinkedIn, where company’s customize and show off their skills and talents. LinkedIn will inevitably release an email service that will fully integrate with an individuals profile (like inMail, but could be sent messages from any email client: Example: FUSIONb2b@linkedin.com).

by Eric Gagnon

Many agency and marketing folks often consider running only full-page ads in their B2B campaigns, under the mistaken assumption that a full page ad always makes a bigger splash than any smaller ad size.

But you can run a successful lead-generation advertising program using smaller ad sizes, if you focus on highlighting the boldness, clarity, and readability of your product’s major sales benefit, you can make a small ad generate even greater sales response than full-page ads.

In fact, once I’m able to un-hypnotize a client from thinking they need to run full pages, I usually advise them to start a new advertising program with half, quarter, and (sometimes) even one-eighth ad sizes, to reduce the risk and expense of their print ad buys, and to test the response of the publication, sales message, and promotion used in these ads.

It’s a Fact: Ugly Little Ads Work

If you flip through successive issues of any trade publication, you’ll often see the same smaller half, quarter, and one-eighth page ads repeating every single month.

This is often a telltale sign these fractional-space ads are paying their own way by generating solid sales leads for their advertisers, where larger, prettier, full-page ads in the same pubs often appear and disappear like footprints along the beach.

In fact, some fractional ads have become legendary for their pulling power and longevity. According to top ad executive Fred Poppe, the late co-founder of Poppe Tyson, the ad below for Downs Crane and Hoist ran in trade publications for 35 years, outpulling the average ad in these publications by 50%:

Who Can Benefit from Running Fractional Ads?

Just about any type of product can be advertised effectively in a smaller page size, but companies selling a product or service that customers order when they need it—such as industrial supplies, commodity products or materials, or specialized engineering or technical services—are especially suited to smaller ad programs.

These are the kinds of products readers want when they need it (and not before), and they’ll usually buy it from the last company whose ad they remembered in the latest issue of their industry’s trade publication. And to meet this need, a smaller ad (if it’s effective) that repeats, issue to issue, is often more memorable than a one-shot, three-time run of full page ads.

Keys to Fractional Ad Layout and Presentation

Let me show you a few techniques you can use to boost the attention-getting, persuasive power of a smaller ad for any B2B product or service, to make it do the work of a much larger ad.

Let’s start with a rough sketch of the ad copy layout. These were sales copy benefit points we developed for a company selling a fiber-optic visual inspection system that helps technicians pinpoint leaks and flaws in pipelines, engines and other closed mechanical components:

We’ll create a one-quarter page ad (3-3/8” W x 4-7/8” H), but these techiques apply to even smaller ad sizes all the way down to one-eighth page ads, although some elements would have to be scaled down, or removed, as appropriate.

Setting the Headline

For smaller ad sizes, text usually does a better job of communicating sales benefits than product shots or illustrations. So when you’re producing a fractional ad, you’ll want your headline to do most of the work of attracting attention to your ad.

The copy for this headline presents a very effective and compelling sales benefit, so let’s make it the boldest feature of this ad, and give it about a third of the ad’s total space.

Bold, sans-serif fonts generally work best for headlines, so let’s set this one like so:

Set like this, the headline above doesn’t make the best use of the one-third space we’ve reserved for this ad, so let’s work on its line breaks and justification to make it fit better into this space.

When working with text, you can often improve the readability and appeal of a headline by changing its line breaks. While we’re at it, let’s increase the font size of the headline, which obviously makes it bolder:

—the tweaked headline on the bottom looks much bolder and more readable, but we can make it even bolder by reversing the type and placing it inside a solid color box. Muted blues, greens, or reds look best for this effect:

See how reversed text makes this headline look bolder and more readable? Reversing text in solid color is a great technique for increasing boldness in a fractional ad.

This technique also works well when producing a black and white ad, by using a 50% black screen instead of color:

Filling in the Subhead

In this ad, the subhead we developed from th three-step copywriting exercise:

Highlight Potential Surface Flaws and Other Surface Defects With IntelliScan AVIS

— starts to tell the story about this product, rounding out the main sales benefit expressed in the headline.

Get the subhead right up close to the headline by snugging it right up under the headline, so the reader’s eye moves from the headline, down into the subhead.

You can set this subhead in the same type as the headline, or in a slightly less-bold variation, like so:

You may notice we also shortened this text a bit, so we could make the subhead line a little bigger.

Show Me the Product!

Smaller ads require tight, close-cropped product shots. A photo of the product in use is always better than a standalone shot. Here’s a good shot we can use for this ad space:

Now We Negotiate…

Optimizing a small ad for maximum sales impact always seems to be a negotiation between the major elements of the ad—headline, subhead, product shot, body copy, and call to action/contact info.

Since we’re making the headline do most of the selling for this ad, the product shot will stand behind the headline and subhead, but we want to make it equally prominent with the body copy.

Placing the Body Copy

By placing the product shot directly to the left of the body copy for this ad, we’ll save space in this ad, and boost the readability and interest of both:

Make Me an Offer, and Tell Me What to Do Next…

The purpose of B2B advertising is to generate quality sales leads for your company’s product, and ads will always pull better if you offer some kind of FREE promotional premium or FREE incentive for the reader to contact your company.

For sales of technically-oriented products, FREE premiums, like software utilities, special-function calculators, or white papers, or any other FREE deliverable that puts your product into the prospect’s mind and/or helps him/her to do their job better, or more productively, is a definite motivator for sales response—that is, getting the reader to call your company, contact a rep or distributor, or visit your Web site.

(Did I mention that it should be FREE?)

Here, we’re offering access to a Web video and a white paper on technical aspects of materials inspection.

We’ll also place the company logo and contact information at the bottom, with the phone number and Web site link, set large and readable.

And here’s our final ad:

Now, let’s pull this ad up alongside any other full-page ad we might see in a typical trade publication, and see how it stacks up:

As you can see, this ugly little ad more than holds its own against a full page ad costing three times as much. The secret is using a bold, readable headline that answers a prospect need (it helped that we reversed the type on it, too). Once you draw the reader’s attention with the headline, the rest of the elements of the ad can do their work.

Ugly, little, hard-tugging ads like this one won’t win any design awards, and your CEO won’t wave them around in front of his board members, but they’ll likely pull solid sales response while keeping your marketing budget under control. For my money (and yours) I’ll put my trust in these ugly little ads every time.

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Developing effective taglines is a disciplined process that melds insight with positioning strategy and creativity. So what is a tagline, and how can tagline development deliver a breakthrough? Sometimes called tags, positioning taglines, slogans, jingles, unique selling propositions or descriptors, taglines distill your corporate or brand position to a few simple and memorable words—ideally from one to five words, and never more than seven words.

Taglines are flexible, persuasive, differentiating, extendable and very often, more memorable than the corporate and brand names they modify. Why? Many names are legacy names, likely descriptive and sometimes over time, less relevant to positioning due to changing markets. With years of equity, it can be difficult to change names, but taglines can change with new campaigns, or to target different audiences.

Like names, there are different types of taglines. With metaphorical names that have highly provocative meanings, sometimes simple, Descriptive taglines can add clarity and anchor aggressive branding. For our client AfterMath, we chose a simple descriptor, Claim Science to communicate industry focus and differentiation. In addition to descriptive taglines, Fusion B2B has identified other tagline types including Metaphorical, Aspirational, Comparative and Jingles. And note that hybrid types abound.

Like their name counterparts, metaphorical taglines deliver meanings (ideally double meanings) and associations that reinforce desired positioning, often when names by themselves cannot. Metaphorical taglines can be particularly effective when paired descriptive names to reinforce a position and improve memorability.

A great example of a metaphorical tagline is Chevy Trucks, “Like a Rock”, communicating durability, and leveraging memorability by virtue of the popular (Bob Seger) hit song. On the corporate front, GE’s “Imagination at Work” delivers the double meaning.

Consumer product brands and corporate America are enamored with Aspirational taglines. And why not? Consumers often buy products based on a desire for self-improvement, and corporations always want to be perceived as benevolent. One of the most famous taglines in history, “Nike, Just Do It”, is clearly aspirational with a meaning of achievement and athletic performance. In the corporate arena, examples abound, from HP’s “Invent”, to Apple’s “Think Different”.

When a secondary competitor seeks to take on the category leader, a comparative tagline can quickly and effectively deliver differentiation. Consider Taco Bell’s “Think Outside the Bun”, or “Pork, the other white meat”, or the poster child for comparative taglines, Avis: “We Try harder”.

Jingles are most often associated with catchy tunes for consumer products with big advertising budgets. Fusion B2B and IDeas BIG also uses jingles to describe tagline types that use slogans that employ rhythm, rhyming or alliteration. Examples include Bounty, “the quicker picker-upper”, or “Don’t get mad, get Glad”.

The process of developing effective taglines is, not surprisingly, similar to name development. Product or industry category understanding is required, along with customer insight and competitive positioning. Tagline generation is followed by scoring using several criteria, screening and trademark search. Final selection from a shortlist of taglines can be supported by customer testing and old-fashioned judgment.

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