Naperville, IL—July 21, 2010

Marketing agency FUSION b2b is pleased to announce PINpoint™ Internet Analysis and Rating Service based on over 50 variables, and includes a complete report with detailed analysis and recommendations,

The proprietary FUSION PINpoint system is unique in it’s analysis of both website and social media for a comprehensive evaluation of Internet presence. Ratings are based on key search engine data, website meta structure, website traffic, social media integration (use of blogs, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.), inbound links, indexed pages, site design and usability, and other variables.

“PINpoint Internet Analysis and Rating Service considers search engine optimization (SEO), and how social media integrates with websites, which are key drivers of search engine results”, states Pavel Solyak, Internet Director for FUSION b2b.

The Free Internet Analysis and Rating Service is available to qualified companies, and will be completed and emailed to your attention in approximately 48 hours.

To request a free PINpoint Internet Analysis and Rating service, simply submit your website address and email address HERE.

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Recently, FUSION b2b has witnessed an upsurge in clients’ interests, either for entering new markets or entering multiple markets with a targeted approach for each. As FUSION developed marketing plans and strategies for each client engagement, several similarities were identified and formed into a system or process called Vertical Market Development or VMD™.

What is VMD? FUSION typically begins with sales analysis in which customers are segmented into similar groupings, whether SIC/NAICS codes (Standard Industrial Classifications or North American Industry Classification System) or home-grown market descriptors. With sales data, FUSION can quickly identify largest revenue or highest margin segments, and often applies the 80/20 rule to prioritize segments for market development investment.

Within each market, the sales cycles are evaluated and decision-making processes are identified. It is important to note that in a given market, several sales scenarios may occur, or may differ by size or type of purchasing organization. Initial information is gathered from internal stakeholders, including sales personnel, but ideally such intelligence is gathered first-hand from customer interviews or surveys. Quite often, both channels (distributors or retailers and end users) must be considered.

With this information, FUSION develops a profile for each market segment. Included in each segment profile is a list of top customers (or prospects) or, in smaller markets, all customers in each segment.

But market profiles and customers lists are only the beginning. Who are the decision-makers at each customer location? Most often this information is not available, and must be determined through a telemarketing qualification process. During this process, FUSION qualifies mailing and email addresses, and asks whether other customer contacts participate in decision-making for our client’s product or service. If yes, we obtain his or her contact information.

Also during the surveys and interview process we will often qualify what types of marketing information these decision makers need. Finally, all this customer information, or intelligence, is captured in a single record—a marketing
database—that will serve as the engine behind our direct marketing.

However, we’re still not ready to deploy marketing. With this market-segment-specific insight, we should consider what types of marketing communications will best suit each segment’s information needs. In business-to-business scenarios, we often recommend educational and strategic marketing information such as white papers, “how-to” guides, or other thought provoking, problem solving content.

Now we’re finally ready for direct marketing—whether via mail, email or internet content that drives search marketing initiatives. We may even complete more telemarketing, but this time with offers or promotions that relate to identified customer marketing information requirements. We also measure results by documenting new customers, or asking the basic question, “How did you hear about us?”

“VMD is nothing more than intuitive marketing, backed with a whole lot of experience to deliver a complex yet streamlined process,” says Neil Brown, FUSION b2b managing partner. “It’s truly strategic direct marketing, based on market intelligence, customer insight and aggressive direct marketing.” So how can Vertical Market Development work for you and your markets? By following seven easy steps, let FUSION assist you in implementing VMD to increase your sales.

VERTICAL MARKET DEVELOPMENT STEPS

1. Sales analysis and market segmentation;
2. Purchasing, decision-making and sales cycle determination;
3. Market profiles including top customer identification;
4. Telemarketing qualification, including mail and email;
5. Educational marketing communications development;
6. Direct marketing implementation via mail, email, internet, more telemarketing;
7. Measure the results.

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Despite high interest in database marketing (DBM), many marketers still have not implemented DBM. One of the reasons for this is a lack of practical information. Depending on your objectives, you should consider one or more DBM strategies including:
1. Segmentation
2. New Customer Acquisition
3. Customer Penetration
4. Customer Retention
5. Marketing Intelligence
6. Measuring Results

Step 1 – Segmentation

Segmenting customers and prospects into various classifications is the first step in DBM. The most basic level of segmentation involves classifying, coding or sorting customers and prospects by type, size or potential. Business marketers can utilize Standard Industrial Classifications (SIC codes) established by the federal government to categorize most business types. Other typical classifications include sales revenue, employees, product purchases, purchase interest, etc.

A higher level of segmentation involves profiling, scoring, or modeling of customers and prospects. Profiling identifies frequencies (percentages) of different categories, for example, financial services comprise 17% of XYZ Corporation’s customer base. In addition, the 80/20 rule can be illustrated utilizing percentages, for example, 80% of XYZ profits are derived from the top 20% of customers.

Scoring, as the name implies, ranks segments or individual customers by some predetermined criteria, often sales or gross margin contribution. Dividing the ranked list into three groups is common to identify heavy, moderate, and light users. Mail order marketers utilize RFM, that is recency, frequency and monetary or transaction value, as criteria for judging customer worth.

Modeling employs statistical techniques like multiple regression to identify factors that correlate to high sales potential or likelihood of promotional response. Prospective customers can then be “fitted” to these models to determine which prospects should be priorities.

Step 2 – Customer Acquisition

Identifying and communicating with high potential prospects is a goal of most marketers. The segmentation tools described allow you to focus on prospects that are “heavy users” or that fit predetermined criteria. DBM can be utilized to identify new customer “gains”, and to track trends in new customer activity. Finally DBM can be used to target and manage prospect communications, marketing, and sales programs.

Step 3 – Customer Penetration

What is your “account penetration” level by customer? DBM can help identify penetration by comparing transaction data to total customer purchases. In addition, modeling “ideal” product mix by customer type will identify cross-sell and up-sell opportunities. Again, the segmentation step can identify opportunities.

Step 4 – Customer Retention

Strategies in this area have grown in importance since the high cost of new customer acquisition has been well documented. DBM can support the identification of lost customers to be reclaimed, dormant customers to be reactivated, as well as the Lifetime Value (LTV) of customers. DBM often is the foundation for implementing loyalty building strategies including continuity or points programs, recognition, and other value-added marketing or sales programs.

Step 5 – Marketing Intelligence

Sometimes a by-product of DBM is the ability to utilize the database as a marketing intelligence device. Segmentation supports intelligence gathering. Often a customer record will include unlimited text entries. Remote database access and “real-time” updating reinforce marketing intelligence applications.

Step 6 – Measuring Results

Tracking of marketing, sales, advertising and communications program results is possible by “capturing” customer/prospect responses, transactions, etc., in the database. Updating customer records allows the database to remain “fresh”. In addition, coding and sorting allows for the testing of alternative programs or offers, with responses carefully measured to support ongoing improvements.

Why Database Marketing?

Database marketing promises to deliver more effective marketing and communications, first by improving customer understanding through segmentation, and then by using this information to communicate with customers in a targeted, even personalized, way. At least six DBM strategies should be considered including segmentation, customer acquisition, penetration, retention, market intelligence and measuring results.

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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.

Find us on Twitter to get other B2B marketing and branding tips. Feel free to contact us via by leaving a comment or via contact form to see how Fusion B2B can help your business.

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Improving the effectiveness of new product launches is of critical importance to most companies and brands as development costs can be stratospheric, coupled with extremely high failure rates. Some estimates of new product failure as high as 90%! Certainly the new product development process is complex and multi-functional—not just marketing—but typically involving many departments such as engineering, operations, purchasing, executive management and others.

The scope of this checklist does NOT address the many product development processes. Rather, the focus of this New Product Launch Planning Checklist are the marketing activities required to improve product launch effectiveness. No question that different markets or product types will require vastly different new product launch approaches, and have different budget resources. So a New Product Launch Planning Checklist should allow for a range of market and budget scenarios. This planning checklist is based on a typical business-to-business (B2B) market scenario.

1. 1. Secondary Research (already published)
      • Internet search
      • Syndicated research studies
      • Data from category publications, associations, websites, databases
   2. Primary Research
      • Customer interviews (also sales personnel, channel partners)
      • Customer/Channel surveys
      • Focus Groups
      • Test Markets, Beta Tests
   3. Competitive Analysis
      • Patent research
      • Reverse engineering
      • Branding/positioning analysis
      • SWOT analysis
      • Pricing analysis
      • Market research to determine share, volume, channels
   4. Testing
      • Concept testing (interviews, focus groups)
      • Product evaluation (interviews, focus groups)
      • Copy testing (interviews, surveys or focus groups)
   1. Market Definition
      • Market segments
      • Customer identification (demographics, titles, units)
      • Channels
   2. Product Definition
      • Feature set, functionality, accessories
      • Prototypes
      • Competitive positioning (comparison, differentiation)
   3. Sales Objectives (Revenue, Volume, Margin)
      • Pricing (trade, discount schedules)
      • Cost analysis
      • Market share, other measures
   1. Branding
      • Re-branding, Sub-branding
      • Naming
      • Identity (logo, graphic theme)
      • Trademark search, trademark registration, identity standards
   2. Internet
      • Website development, re-development, microsites, landing pages
      • Search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM)
      • Social media (profiles, followers, blog and forum posts)
      • Email campaigns (landing pages, registration forms)
      • Webcasts, webinars, web conferences
   3. Advertising
      • Media (research, planning, placement, traffic)
      • Print (trade publications)
      • Online (banners, directories, Google AdWords)
      • Broadcast (TV, radio)
   4. Publicity
      • News releases
      • Press list
      • Press kit
      • Press events
      • Article (writing and placement)
      • Media relations
      • Distribution (internet, wire service)
   5. Sales Promotion
      • Programs
      • Training (sales, customer service, customers)
      • Contests, coupons, sweepstakes
   6. Collateral and Content
      • Brochures, product sheets, flyers
      • Catalogs, manuals, instructions, installation manuals
      • Educational pieces (white papers, guides, how-tos)
      • Electronic versions for web, re-purpose above for web
   7. Trade Shows and Events (national, international, regional shows, dealer open houses)
      • Exhibit design
      • Booth graphics
      • Pre-show promotion
      • Inquiry management
   8. Channel Marketing
      • Dealer or distributor programs
      • Promotions
      • Merchandising support, POP, packaging
      • Training programs
      • Launch kits
      • Retail line reviews
      • MDF and Co-Op programs
   9. Direct Marketing
      • Direct mail
      • Database marketing
      • List procurement, email, webcasts
   10. Photography and Video (supports all tactics above)

RESEARCH AND TESTING

PRODUCT PLANNING

MARKETING STRATEGIES/TACTICS

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