By the time the U.S. Presidential election is over, the two candidates will collectively have spent close to a billion dollars on the largest, most complex political marketing and PR campaigns in history. Although most of us will never have the huge budgets and manpower behind these campaigns, here are six valuable tips business-to-business marketers can take away from the election campaigns that can be applied regardless of the size of your company or budget.

1) Find Smart, Trustworthy People to Advise and Help You

One of the first things McCain and Obama did when deciding to run for President, well before they announced themselves as candidates, was surround themselves with exceptionally talented, passionate people with proven track records of success in their respective areas (yes their choices of advisors is debatable, but the concept is solid).

If you’re like many marketers I know, you’re smart, talented, hard-working, and capable of forming effective marketing strategies and tactics and implementing them. But trying to do everything yourself (or not being able to rely on your colleagues or staff) means you’re making decisions in a vacuum, not necessarily based on the best knowledge or information available. An outside perspective can be very valuable in making decisions objectively. Also, being able to focus on your core responsibilities allows you to perform at your best, while other capable people handle other details.

Who can you turn to for help?

• Marketing/PR consultant

• Virtual assistant (to aid with administrative tasks and campaign details)

• Industry associations and interest groups such as MarketingSherpa, MarketingProfs, Business Marketing Association for third party research and professional opinions

• Partner with other companies and utilize their expertise

2) Multi-Channel Marketing/PR Strategy is Best

Most voters I know don’t just view, listen to, or read one source for information on who they’re going to vote for, and the Presidential campaigns certainly know this and take advantage of the available communications avenues: TV, radio, Internet, blogs and social media, telemarketing, direct mail, signs, bumper stickers, word-of-mouth, you name it.

You may be thinking, “If I had the huge budget that the candidates do, my company could do that too.” But it doesn’t have to take a huge amount of money to make multi-channel marketing effective for any business, and it’s necessary as your customers, just like when their ‘voter’ hat is on, gather information about solutions to their problems (i.e. what you’re selling) from many sources. Using a mix of traditional and online marketing and PR tactics ensures you’re reaching your key audiences.

However, it is possible to do too much marketing, which leads me to my next point….

3) Don’t Wear Out Your Audience

I live in Virginia, and if you’ve been watching the news you’ve maybe heard it’s one of the states both candidates most need the electoral votes from. For the past 3 months not a day has gone by that I haven’t received a direct mailer from one or both candidates (and local election candidates as well), much less seen them on TV, Internet, etc. At least 15 campaign volunteers have visited my door in the past 2 weeks alone, and the telemarketing calls are endless. I care deeply about the election and the future of my beloved country, but ENOUGH ALREADY!

Your customers and prospects will begin to feel this way if your company is over-marketing, particularly when it’s outbound marketing such as emails, phone calls, and direct mail. It’s been proven that it takes multiple encounters with your company and/or your products or services before someone purchases, but if you ‘interrupt’ your audience and demand their attention too often, you become like the boy who cried wolf and your audience will either ignore you or be irritated. When they are ready to buy those negative feelings may carry over and prevent them from contacting you, because they don’t want to be marketed to even more frequently if they do.

Some signs you’re over-marketing:

• High rate of recipients un-subscribing from your email campaigns
• Email recipients reporting your emails as SPAM (even if they opted-in to your list)
• Low rate of subscriptions to newsletters
• Telemarketing campaigns contact same people repeatedly in short timeframe

4) Embrace Social Media

Both candidates used social media marketing via Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs and several other outlets to “reach younger voters,” but many older voters have also caught on to the value of social media to stay up to date on the candidates and campaigns.

Using social media for B2B marketing is valuable on its own (see my blog post re: use of industry peer blogs and RSS to influence B2B technology buyers), but using it to support your other marketing efforts makes it twice as effective. For example, if you’re launching a new product or service to a specific market, posting about the problem it solves on your blog, discussing it on other industry peer blogs, using videos on YouTube to demonstrate it, and using Twitter to drive like-minded followers to your blog or website are effective, low-cost avenues of promotion.

5) Face-to-Face is Effective and Valuable

There is a reason Obama and McCain spent so much time traveling the country to speak to groups in person and rally supporters – it works. Both candidates and their campaign advisors are well aware that trust is a big factor in deciding whom to vote for, and one of the most effective ways to gain and maintain trust is for voters to see them up close, to listen to them live, maybe shake their hand and have a brief word. Although the vast majority of people that go to campaign rallies and events are already supporters, they need to be reassured that their candidate will meet their needs once the candidate is in office. The actual number of voters who attend rallies is very small compared to the total number of voters registered, but the ‘hard core’ supporters are usually the most vocal and will carry the campaign message to others.

A similar scenario plays out in the business-to-business world. When comparing products and services of similar type and cost, people are much more likely to buy from (and continue to buy from) people they trust and like. The ability to meet your prospective and current customers in person at some point in the sales cycle and/or after the sale gives your company a big leg up in gaining and keeping their trust and confidence and subsequently a steady stream of repeat sales.

How do you meet your customers face-to-face without breaking the bank:

• Several regional or local events hosted by the sales team responsible for that territory, instead of one big annual event

• Attend industry conferences and events, you don’t have to sponsor it to enjoy the great networking benefits. Let your customers know what events you’ll be attending, they may be attending as well (via e-newsletter is good option). Gather those you meet and take them to dinner or drinks after the event is over for the day.

• Since your top 20% of customers normally produce 80% of your sales revenue, concentrate your efforts on them first before reaching out to meet with others

6) Help Your Supporters Help You

As I mentioned above, the biggest supporters of each candidate are the most likely to vocalize their support and actively campaign on their behalf. Each campaign has many regional and local offices, special websites, and a multitude of other tools used to ‘mobilize the troops’ and make it as easy as possible for supporters to use offline and online means of convincing others to vote for their candidate.

Does your company have particularly happy customers, partners, industry analysts, media, or other fans of your products or services? Make it as simple as possible for them to pass along your information to others, and most people are happy to do so.

Some simple ways to accomplish this:

• Post a ‘referral toolkit’ on your website, or better yet your customer intranet site if you have one. It can be as simple as a .zip file containing your company brochure, a couple of customer case studies, and a white paper or article. It enables supporters to easily email the information to others.

• Ensure you post a press kit to your website and send it (ask permission first) to industry analysts and media you know are fans

• Encourage your website and/or blog readers to share the information posted by using widgets that enable them to quickly share it with others via social media or email

• During a customer feedback survey, provide the option for them to write a brief testimonial quote (if they wish to be named)

• Include a ‘forward to a friend’ button in your e-newsletters and ask readers to pass it along to non-subscribers who may be interested

• Always give out 2-3 business cards to contacts you meet, one for them to keep and some to share

What marketing or PR lessons have you gleaned from the Presidential campaigns? I’d love to get your thoughts.

During the summer of 2008 I visited the websites of 300 business-to-business technology companies looking for one thing: RSS feeds.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a Web feed format used to publish frequently updated information such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video in a standardized format. Website or blog visitors may subscribe to RSS feeds through a widget button on a site using Feedburner (recently acquired by Google) or other free service.

I found that 70% of B2B technology companies are not using RSS at all, and of the 30% that are using it, only 10% are using more than one feed in order to offer targeted information updates.

What’s the big deal about RSS? MarketingSherpa and KnowledgeStorm surveyed over 3,000 B2B technology decision makers, asking them “How important is RSS in helping you stay up-to-date on technology information?” 8% responded that it was a “necessity”, 24% responded that it was “important”, and 39% said it was “nice to have.”

While only 16% of the general public uses RSS feeds, 71% of technology buyers assign at least some value to their RSS use. By not offering this option, most B2B tech marketers are missing out on a valuable opportunity to influence this audience.

According to Rok Hrastnik, author of “Unleash the Marketing and Publishing Power of RSS,” the problem with most RSS marketing plans is that the marketer doesn’t go beyond providing a simple RSS feed for all of their online news or blog.

Marketers need to correctly plan their RSS marketing strategy, starting with deciding how RSS content will be delivered. Mr. Hrastnik recommends providing individual RSS feeds for:

- Individual target audiences

- Types of content

- Content topics

Want step-by-step instructions on how to best implement RSS? Get your free copy of my research report The Most Powerful Online Tool for Influencing B2B Technology Buyers

A KnowledgeStorm research report found that 53% of B2B technology buyers had already been influenced by blog content at least once when making purchase decisions.

Industry peer blogs differ from a vendor’s blog or industry analyst blog because the information and opinions offered are perceived as being from an independent source not influenced by any particular company or organization. Technology purchasers consider these blogs to be similar to word-of-mouth, with the blogger leading the discussions and other peers volunteering information and opinions on the topics.

Examples of popular technology industry peer blogs include TechCrunch and Scobleizer, but there are a variety of peer blogs discussing various B2B tech niches including Customer Relationship Management,Enterprise Resource Planning, Service-Oriented Architecture, Business Intelligence, and Software-as-a-Service.

Want to know how a B2B software company uses industry peer blogs to drive a 30% product trial conversion rate? Get your free copy (no registration needed) of the full research report: The Most Powerful Online Tool for Influencing B2B Technology Buyers

The Big Mistake 90% of Marketing Directors Make When Engaging Bloggers

A great way to use industry peer blogs to influence tech buyers is submitting a public comment on a particularly relevant post that all readers of the blog can view (comment settings are different for every blog, some require blogger approval before comment is public). Most blog systems enable you to enter your name, e-mail address, and website along with your comment, providing other readers (and the blogger) an opportunity to go to the website you entered. It’s a terrific opportunity to increase your credibility with your target audience while driving quality website traffic.

However, according to professional blogger Darren Rowse of the ProBlogging blog (#27 on Technorati’s
list of Top 100 blogs), many comments left on some blogs are for shameless self-promotion purposes only and aggravate both bloggers and readers, and many are made by marketing or sales personnel.

Instead of adding value to the ‘conversation’ and knowledge exchange, comments that blatantly have no other purpose than advertising only serve to ruin your credibility, brand image, and chances of having bloggers link to your website or blog.

Discover the Top 10 Blog Comment Sins and How to Avoid Them

In the short time I’ve been blogging, I’ve already seen the tremendous value in driving traffic to my blog by posting useful, actionable comments on industry peer blogs - I highly recommend it.

Ever wondered why you do the things you do, make the decisions you do, or why someone else behaves a certain way? Ever wanted to get inside the minds of your potential customers, partners, investors and other people important to your company and know their hidden fears and thoughts so you know how to overcome them?

If you’re a fan of Malcolm Gladwell’s book ‘Blink‘, you should check out ‘Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions‘ by Dan Ariely, a MIT professor and researcher who looks at behavioral science and sociology in terms of how it affects every part of our lives.

Knowing why people do what they do and how we’re all influenced by different mediums has always interested me, I think it’s part of what drew me to marketing and PR. Seeing test results of landing pages, headlines, etc. and seeing the big difference just one or two simple tweaks can make is fascinating to me and makes me want to dig deeper into WHY. During college I took an entire course in persuation theory, and it was a great class, but didn’t offer much in the way of practical, real-life examples that I could relate to.

Ariely has discovered in 20 years of researching behavioral economics that people tend to behave irrationally in a predictable fashion. Drawing on psychology and economics, behavioral economics can show us why patients get greater relief from a more expensive drug over its cheaper counterpart, why honest people may steal office supplies or communal food, but not money, why people trying to lose weight can’t pass by the dessert cart, and other “irrational” behavior.

According to Ariely, our understanding of economics, now based on the assumption of a rational subject, should instead be based on our systematic irrationality. Ariely argues that greater understanding of previously ignored or misunderstood forces (emotions, relativity and social norms) that influence our economic behavior opens opportunities for reexamining individual motivation and consumer choice.

I’m about 70% of the way through the book, and I’m already forming ideas for how to apply what I’m learning to my business and my clients’.