Richard Bush, Base One

The effectiveness of your planning will determine the success of your campaign. That is for certain. Yet planning - like creativity - is a personal thing, so it is not possible to write a 'how-to guide' on planning an effective campaign. Instead, this chapter attempts to highlight the main principles behind creating an effective B2B campaign plan.

It covers the key steps of determining:

• Who to contact;

• What you want them to do;

• Where you are going to find them;

• When you are going to contact them;

• How much to invest in them;

• Why they should do what you want;

• How you are going to handle the responses.

Whilst every situation is different, the principles remain the same. Throughout this chapter the key principles are highlighted so that they are easy to refer to when time is short.

Step 1. What are you trying to achieve - What is your aim?

Defining your statement of intent or your aim is a good place to start. Ask yourself what in general terms are you are trying to achieve with this activity. To be executable your aim needs to be specific enough to give the campaign direction and purpose, but at this stage open enough to allow you some flexibility in the way you go about it. Below are some examples of aims with those felt to be on the right track ticked to illustrate this:

• To generate more leads for the sales team
• To open up new markets
• To increase awareness of our products within the educational sector
• To support the opening of our new office in Scotland by generating new business opportunities
• To increase sales during the last quarter of this year
• To increase sales appointments with our customer base

 

Key principle: To be effective your aim should give some guidance as to which section of your market you wish to target, together with an indication of what you wish to achieve. It is not a set of objectives. Campaign objectives can only be set once you have defined your target audience more accurately.

Step 2. Who are you trying to contact - Who are you targeting?

Targeting in B2B markets is more complex and even more important than in other markets for many reasons, the main ones being:

The difference in potential value of different customers In business-to-consumer marketing (for example, in the sale of kitchens) the difference between a high value customer and a low value customer will typically be a factor of 10 (or possibly as high as 50, if you consider lifetime value). In business-to-business (for example, computer sales) the difference can often be a factor of many thousands.

One of the important decisions to make later in the planning process is how much to invest per response. This will obviously be significantly higher for your high value segments than for your less profitable segments.

The scale of difference in potential value between your top customers and your least profitable prospects means that for most B2B businesses, it is essential to develop different strategies for each group to avoid under- commitment to your best segments and over-investment elsewhere.

Key principle: To ensure that you get a reasonable return from your investment you will need to develop different approaches according to the potential value of each target group.

The limited size of the different segments

The opposite is almost true when you look at the size of the potential audiences. Whereas, for example, there may be more than 500,000 owners of houses worth more than £200,000 to target with your new Kitchen Planning Service, the number of companies that will ever have a need for your new HR software may never be greater than 5,000.

Generating 100 appointments from 500,000 will always be easier than 100 appointments from 5,000. The strange thing is that targeting and segmentation within the 5,000 companies is even more important than it would be within the 500,000 house owners. As the required success rate is 100 times greater, the message has to be much more relevant to each group of companies' needs.

Key principle: The smaller your target audience, the higher the required response rate to deliver a given level of business. This, in turn, makes the accurate targeting of the message even more important.

The specific needs of different segments

Continuing with the same examples, whilst the requirements of a kitchen will vary depending on the size of the house, the family situation and the lifestyles of the owners, a couple of different propositions would probably be enough to cover the various reasons people might require your new Kitchen Planning Service.

On the other hand, the 5,000 businesses will be across a range of industries, covering companies employing from 500 to 50,000 people, those who currently outsource their HR function together with those who do not have a dedicated department and those which are growing whilst others are facing cutbacks. The list goes on.

The fact that most sales to businesses are intended to solve a particular problem - problems which will vary according to the types of businesses you are targeting - is what makes targeting so critical within B2B direct marketing.

The existence of the decision-making unit

The presence of the decision-making unit adds a second layer to the targeting phase of planning. Having decided which companies to include in your campaign, you then need to decide who within those companies you should communicate with.

The old adage of aiming as high as you can, hoping that the Managing Director will pass your mailer onto the right person, is no longer an effective approach. The decision between the other 5 or 6 possible contacts will also vary according to which segments you are talking to and what it is you are trying to achieve.

Key principle: Choosing the right contact from the decision-making unit is as important as targeting the right companies.

The existence of different job titles and functions

Having decided, for example, that you wish to talk to the person most likely to be responsible for drawing up a shortlist of possible suppliers of PCs, you still have to decide on which names to select. Do you select all Head Buyers? Or all IT Directors? Or all IT Managers? Or all Project Managers? The answer might be all of, or perhaps, none of the above.

A person's role in the decision-making unit is often unrelated to their job title and therefore you need to target by job function. Sourcing accurate cold lists of people for the above example is difficult and risky. The ideal would be to telephone each company to identify the right person but the cost of this may be prohibitive. An alternative approach would be to get people to 'self-identify' using inserts or other advertising media.

Key principle: There is often little correlation between job titles and job responsibilities. It is the latter that determines a contact's role in the decision-making unit.

Selecting the right companies

When deciding on which groups of companies you wish to include in your campaign, you need to consider three key issues:

1. The potential value

Are you targeting those that offer the greatest value (your gold customers/ prospects), those at the lower end of the market (your bronze customers/prospects) or those that lie in the middle (your silver ones)?

This decision must be made first because it immediately determines the size of the potential target audience, the potential value of the market segment and hence, how much you can afford to invest to get a response.

2. Their status/relationship with you

Within your chosen value segment, each company will have a different historic relationship with your company. Some may be customers already, others may be ex-customers, or companies who have responded to you in the past. Equally there will be many who are not even aware of your company or your product.

Their current status will determine your objectives. If companies are unlikely to be aware that you even exist then your first objective should be to remedy that, and perhaps to open a dialogue with them. If they are ex-customers then the objectives will be different again.

3. Specific needs/requirements

Finally, in order to develop propositions that are relevant to each target group, you need to divide each group according to its needs. A group's needs may be related to their industry, their size or to their development cycle (e.g. whether they are growing or stabilising). Alternatively it may be determined by who it is that they are targeting with their products/services. Your proposition will depend on what your company offers and how your products/services are used by your customers.

Key principle: The more focused your definition of the target audience is, the more effective your communication will be. You will always get better results from a smaller, more tightly targeted audience

 

Selecting the right contacts

Similarly there are a number of decisions to make when you are deciding who to contact within each company.

Are you looking to satisfy a need or to create one?

If your product or service solves what is a common and recognised problem, then you should target your communication either at the person who is suffering most from the problem, or at the person most likely to be appointed to solve that problem.

If, on the other hand, you are looking to create a need, perhaps by promising increased revenues, productivity, efficiency, etc. then you should target the person most likely to benefit most from your product/service.

Where is your target group likely to be in the buying process?

Different people in the decision-making units will be involved at different stages of the buying process. As an example, in the purchase of a telephone system the buying process within a medium-sized organisation might include those in Fig 1.

Obviously different companies are at different stages at different times so it is not possible to source lists of 'companies about to draw up a long list of telephone suppliers'. However, within any given list of 100 companies, 20 are likely to replace their telephone systems within a given year. And 5 within the next 3 months - that's 5%. So if you target your message at those companies, ensuring that you are communicating with those responsible for drawing up the long list, then the chances are that you will be included in that long list.

Within the same 100 companies, another 5% will be replacing their systems during the following 3 months, although they may not have decided yet, so a concurrent campaign eulogising about the problems of old systems could ensure that they are aware of you at just the right time.

What was your aim?

Remember your aim. If it was to increase the number of times that your company was shortlisted then you obviously need to ensure that you communicate with the people who draw up that shortlist.

Alternatively, if your aim was to encourage more companies to upgrade their existing systems now, then you may choose to target the people who are suffering most from the limitations of their existing systems.

Finally, if your aim was to increase your conversion rates from shortlist to sale, then, you will also need to influence those people as they enter the process, as they may be the ones blocking your sale.

Fig 1. Example decision making unit and their involvement in the buying process

Step 3. What are your objectives?

Having decided which groups of companies you wish to target and, more specifically, who within those companies you want to influence, you are in a much better position to set your objectives.

Objectives are important for two main reasons. First, by defining your objectives you will make it easier to communicate to everyone involved in authorising or executing the campaign exactly what it is you are trying to achieve. Second, the objectives you define will enable you to forecast, measure and evaluate the success of your campaign.

Like all good objectives they should be SMART:

Specific

Measurable

Aspirational

Realistic

Timed

As such your campaign objectives will define:

• what you want your target audience to do as a result of your communication
• what response rate you want to achieve
• what is the deadline for achieving this?

In addition, you can add qualifying statements, such as making it clear that an appointment will only count towards your objective if it is with the right person.

It sounds obvious, but it is important, because a campaign intending to generate leads will be very different from one designed to generate appointments. You will also notice that setting your objective to achieve a 10% response rate requires a different approach from aiming to achieve a 1% response rate.

Key principle: Your campaign objectives must define exactly what you want your target audience to do, what response rate you want to achieve and by when. It must also include any qualifying statements

Step 4. Where you are going to find your audience? - How will you select your media?

Only when you have completed Steps 1-3 should you consider which media, or combination of media to use. Rather than approaching the task with no clear focus on who to target or what results to expect, you can now be quite clear that you are targeting a certain number of companies, that you know which people within those companies you need to communicate with, and that you know what response rate and type of response you want to achieve. This will allow you to decide which combination of the increasing array of media to use.

Direct marketing has long been recognised as meaning more than just direct mail and, with the advent of the Internet, the range of media available has almost doubled.

We like to classify the media into two groups: primary and secondary. Primary media are those that can be personalised, whilst secondary media are those that can still be defined as being direct, but that are shared.

Primary media	Secondary media
Telephone	Inserts
Email	Email sponsorship
Direct mail	Off-the-page advertising Web advertising Radio

 

To decide whether to use primary or secondary media, consider the criteria below:

Situation	Primary	Secondary
Database available?	Yes	No
Relationship with target audience	Existing	New
Message complexity	High	Low
Commitment required for response	High	Low

 

There is significant overlap between the two, and often you could combine media from each of the groups, but these criteria will help you to narrow down the choice. To help choose within each group you can refer to the flowchart in Fig 2.

To decide further within a group you can then start to introduce variables, such as the cost for your volume of contacts, and the required response rate to achieve your objective.

Key principle: Media selection is complex and should be given careful consideration. Your choice should be reviewed for each new campaign, as a small change in the target audience or the objectives may lead you to a different combination of media.

Fig 2. Media selection guide

 

Step 5. When should you carry out your campaign? - When is the best time?

Often, you do not have much control over timing. However, it can be an important factor and could influence your results significantly.

First, consider the time of the year. Are there seasonal variations? Do people purchase your products using what remains of their year-end budgets? If you're targeting manufacturing for example, do they have seasonal shut-downs? Answers to these questions could affect when you run the campaign as well as the messaging.

Next, consider the more precise timing of your communication. Given the contacts included in your campaign, do you want to avoid Monday morning and Friday afternoon? Is the problem that your product addresses greater at any particular time of the day? Does your target audience typically work late, often after the 'gate keeper' has gone home? If you are using email, do you want to avoid the overnight email burden, or is hitting them during the lunchtime calm a good tactic?

Key principle: Timing might be considered a minor detail, but getting through to an additional person out of every hundred contacted is a potential 1% added to the response rate

 

Step 6. How much should you invest? - What is your Budget?

This is the most difficult question to answer and one of the most important decisions to make in B2B direct marketing planning. Often you will have a figure in mind - 'I'm doing a direct mail campaign, so £1 per mailer should do it' is a common statement - and one that condemns many campaigns to failure.

At this point it's worth remembering some of the issues covered earlier:

• your top 'gold' customers can be worth many thousand times as much as your least profitable customers
• small target audiences mean that opportunities are limited, making high response rates necessary
• a 10% response rate requires a different approach from one seeking a 1% response rate.

The limited number of potential premium customers means that, at times, you need to invest heavily to ensure you achieve the result you need. However, at other times it is right to try to minimise costs.

Calculating the budget

When deciding how much to invest in each campaign, reconsider the following:

• How much is each customer in this group worth to you?
• How much of that value can you afford to invest to get one of those companies to do what you want as a result of this contact? (A)
• How many contacts are there in this campaign? (B)
• What is an achievable response rate for the activity planned so far, given the chosen media? (C)

Your budget can then be calculated as:

Total Budget = A x B x C

The big challenge comes in deciding what these values should be. For example, you could decide to target 10,000 companies aiming for a 2% response rate allowing £50 per response:

Total Budget = 10,000 x 2% x 50 = £10,000 or £1 per contact

Both examples will generate 200 responses (presumably achieving your objective). In the first, you are only spending £1 per contact, the second £20! Which is the better option? I know which I would choose.

The one that is better targeted - the second one.

Although generating the same number of responses whilst costing twice as much, the quality of response should be much better due to the fact that the target audience is only one tenth the size.

Key principle: Do not set your budget until you have reached this stage. You can then calculate it using the total number of contacts, your allowable cost per successful result, and your expected response rate. If this results in too large a budget then you need to review your approach and then your expected response rate and the number of contacts

Step 7. What do you say and how do you say it?

The answers to these questions are the foundations of the creative brief, and hopefully the final communication, whether it's an email, a mailer or a telephone script.

The reason this is left until now in the planning process is that the message and the way in which it is communicated are determined by all of the stages in Steps 1-6. In particular, answering the following four questions will determine your communication:

• Who are you talking to?
• What is their role in the decision-making process?
• Where are they likely to be in the buying process?
• What do you want them to do as a result of the communication?

Ultimately the messaging should also communicate what you feel to be the strong points of difference between you and your competitors, but for each individual activity that is less important than the answers to these four questions. 

The proposition

The Institute of Direct Marketing defines the proposition as: "...a single minded approach to an emotional need supported by a rational argument that inspires people to act."

Whilst you may not agree that it is necessarily an emotional need supported by a rational argument - the proposition remains the message you have chosen to persuade the contact to do what you want them to do.

This is where a direct marketing proposition is different from a typical advertising proposition. The advertising proposition will focus on a product's relative strength when compared with the competition. It is associated with the benefit the advertiser wants them to remember at the point of purchase, or when they make a decision so that they choose brand X.

Your direct marketing campaign however, is designed to persuade people to take a specific action, which might simply be to respond, agree to an appointment, or attend a seminar. It may even be to buy. But you want them to do it now. The proposition is designed to persuade them to take immediate action, and it must therefore be centred on that action.

As an example, if you were running a company selling security systems that were more reliable than your competitors' systems, but you were planning to hold a series of seminars about the reasons for having a security system - perhaps focusing on recent crime trends - the proposition on the invitation would be about the benefits of attending the seminar, rather than about the benefits of a more reliable system.

Key principle: Every direct marketing communication needs a clear and strong proposition that focuses on the benefit of doing what you want them to do.

Any proposition can be presented in hundreds of creative ways, only some of which will connect with the target audience. These options can be reduced significantly by answering these two questions:

1. Is the benefit personal or commercial?

Should you appeal to them as people or as commercial decision-makers? Do you lead with a personal benefit or a commercial one? Continuing with the example of the 'security seminar', should your proposition focus on the benefit to the individual of finding out about the most recent crime trends, or on the benefit of their business being ready to face the current crime trends? This is a subtle, but important difference.

Your decision will be based on the four questions outlined earlier but as a rule of thumb, if the target audience are likely to be in the early stages of the decision-making process, or more junior contacts, then choose personal benefits; if they are later in the process or if you are targeting more senior people, lean towards the commercial benefit.

2. Emotional or rational?

Should you lead with an emotional or a rational message? Thankfully, by now, this question should almost answer itself. However, there are always times when the opposite of the obvious is going to be more effective!

Step 8. How will you handle your responses? - Why is the web best?

The final part of planning a B2B campaign involves the way in which you enable your target audience to respond.

The use of the web as a response mechanism has provided a better idea of just how many responses have been lost at this stage in the past - in other words, it tells you how many people were interested enough to visit the response area, but then for various reasons decided not to proceed. Actual response can be improved by a factor of three at this stage. Equally it can just as easily be reduced by two-thirds!

For B2B direct marketing, web response, at least as an option, is paramount. It is the preferred method for responders across all sectors, and at most levels, perhaps with the exception of very senior corporate contacts, where coupon response is still preferred. People like web response because:

• it's available at their desks;
• it's available 24/7;
• there's no queuing or waiting;
• it requires little commitment;
• there's no telesales person to get past
• the information is (or should be) available immediately;
• it's both quick and convenient.

From the point of view of the company running the campaign it's also ideal, although for other reasons:

• it has a low cost per response;
• it can be highly personalised;
• it is trackable and measurable;
• it encourages a quicker response;
• it provides immediate and low-cost fulfilment;
• it is the best way to build up your email database for future use;
• data capture is performed by the respondents themselves (therefore at no cost to you and invariably more accurately);
• it can be interactive;
• it has the potential to pre-qualify leads as effectively as telephone response.

For business-to-business direct marketing, web response, at least as an option, is paramount.

Key principle: Web response has become the preferred method of response to B2B DM for all except the most senior of contacst. It is immediate, it is interactive and it is convenient. It is also efficient and cost-effective for you 

Summary

By going through all eight planning steps, in this order, next time you plan a campaign, you will increase your chances of success dramatically.

The order is important: setting the budget too early or deciding on the message before you have properly identified your target audience and chosen your preferred media will end in disappointing results.

Following this process on the other hand, will ensure that you target the right people with the right message, at the right time, and in the right way. As a result it will deliver a better return on your investment.

Once you have a plan, the next stage is to make it happen and that starts with the creative brief. This is covered in detail in Chapter XX, Creativity.

If you'd like your next plan reviewed before you commit to it, or if you have any comments to make, feel free to email us at b2bforum@base01.co.uk and we'll get back to you as soon as we can.