Free White Paper "The Five Deadly Sins of B2B Marketing” Offers Advice for Marketing Executives

SHARON, MASS. – November 11, 2008 – A free, informative white paper titled “The Five Deadly Sins of B2B Marketing” is available to help marketing executives avoid money-wasting, product-killing, and even career-ending mistakes that others have made in the past.

“The Five Deadly Sins of B2B Marketing,” outlines common mistakes that occur in major “business to business” marketing disciplines, including Internet marketing, advertising, public relations (PR), graphic design, and corporate and product branding strategies.

“We offer this white paper to generate new ideas about achieving marketing success,” said Rick Whitmyre, president, Tiziani Whitmyre Inc. “It’s designed to help companies achieve maximum impact and results from their precious marketing dollars.”

"The Five Deadly Sins of B2B Marketing" are described as:

1. Forgetting the Audience – Don’t assume. Know the decisions makers and take the time to target the customers according to the buying process.
2. Thinking Tactics First, Not Strategy – Use your strategic business plan as the foundation to deliver maximum communication impact.
3. Overestimating the Power of Creative – It’s the message as well as the medium. Positioning is critical to winning creative.
4. Underestimating the Power of Your Website – Utilizing the Web as the front end of your business will generate scores of qualified leads and sales.
5. Misunderstanding Public Relations – Papering the walls of editors’ offices with news releases won’t get results. Frequent editorial contact and relationship building will produce dramatically more effective news coverage.

Download a free copy of “The Five Deadly Sins of B2B Marketing,” white paper at: http://www.tizinc.com/DeadlySins or call 781-793-9380.

About Tiziani Whitmyre
Tiziani Whitmyre (http://www.tizinc.com/) is a Boston area-based marketing services and strategies agency that builds brands, generates sales leads, and delivers an ROI which maximizes payback on any marketing communications budget. Services include Internet marketing online (including search engine optimization, affiliate marketing, website design), public relations (PR), advertising, direct marketing, graphic design, and corporate branding strategy.

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B2B Marketing Deadly Sin #5 - Misunderstanding Public Relations

by Rick Whitmyre,
president and a principal,
Tiziani Whitmyre, Inc.

In our continuing series, the "Five Deadly Sins of B2B Marketing," let's look at Deadly Sin #5, which is: "Misunderstanding Public Relations."

Public Relations (PR) is about generating coverage in the media that reaches your target audience. And yet most B2B PR programs spend their budgets papering the walls of editors’ office with news releases. And that paper is intense. Most publications receive thousands of news releases each day – and publish just a few. Sure, the basic element in the PR food chain is the news release. But it only represents an opener that starts the editorial dialogue.

Successful PR placement requires continuous contact and relationship building with editors – over the phone and in-person. Most are overworked and underpaid. Like the rest of us, they appreciate people that make their jobs easier. Editors naturally gravitate toward companies that answer questions fully, provide executives and technical experts quickly, and furnish photos and illustrations that breathe life into complicated stories. Frequent editorial contact and relationship building forges the trust and awareness that pries open story opportunities and secures expanded news coverage in your target publications.

And another thing. Some mistakenly call public relations “free advertising.” First, it’s not free.

You’ll need a PR budget to hire the experienced PR professionals who can generate great editorial coverage. And it’s not advertising. It’s better. Editorial coverage comes with third-party credibility that carries significant weight with readers. Effective public relations can be a great brand building vehicle that takes the pressure off your advertising program (and cuts the cost).

Put most of your PR dollars into media contact, placement, and fulfillment. An appropriate budget ratio would be 30% for news releases and 70% for placement, case studies, and white papers. This approach will produce dramatically more effective news coverage. And can mean the difference between a mention in the “New Products” section, and a cover story.

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There are more Deadly Sins, of course. Want to see the entire series? We've developed a free white paper to help marketing executives avoid these money-wasting, product-killing, and even career-ending mistakes.

Download a free copy of it, “The Five Deadly Sins of B2B Marketing,” from http://www.tizinc.com/DeadlySins. Or, call us at 781-793-9380.

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B2B Marketing Deadly Sin #4 - Underestimating the Power of Your Web Site

by Rick Whitmyre,
president and a principal,
Tiziani Whitmyre, Inc.

In our continuing series, the "Five Deadly Sins of B2B Marketing," let's look at Deadly Sin #4, which is: "Underestimating the Power of Your Web Site."

OK, you have a web site. You’ve kept it updated. So what? Is it driving leads and business to your company? Is it reducing the cost of your marketing transactions? Does it project a global image? Almost every B2B web site we see is an underachiever; not fulfilling its huge potential to deliver leads, reduce costs, and improve customer satisfaction. Don’t think of your Web site as an on-line catalog. Think of it as a strategic competitive weapon.

Today, the web site is the primary image maker for your business. It’s the first place a person goes to check out your company. In those precious seconds spent viewing your home page, prospects form the vital first impressions that will forever color their attitudes about your company. What does the site say about your firm? Does it convey the image and depth of a global industry leader? Or look more like the personal web blog of your teenage daughter’s boyfriend. A client once took a particularly candid view of his company’s site. “We look like the guy selling a $5,000 Rolex from the trunk of a ’62 Dodge.”

Your Web site also is a back door into your enterprise. People come in by the thousands, wander around, and search through your offerings in total anonymity. With no pushy salespeople, it’s a shoppers dream. A recent survey shows that 90% of all engineers and technical buyers use the Internet on the job; 42% for as much as 7 hours per week. Over half query search engines to find and specify products. Google and Yahoo now play a critical role in directing cyber-prospects to your web site. When buyers launch Internet searches for your products and services –and they don’t find your site – those are lost business opportunities. This is especially troubling when you consider the resources invested to build and maintain your Web presence. Optimizing your site to appear on the first pages of Google and Yahoo is critical in today’s electron driven economy. And buying paid keyword sponsorships on these search engines attracts even more leads to your company.

But an effective interactive marketing strategy involves more than driving visitors to your Web site. If they come and go incognito, like ghosts in the machine, you’re leaving money and leads on the table. Sending visitors through landing and registration pages for high-value content can generate scores of qualified leads. An automated on-line database can collect and distribute those leads to your sales force, supporting fulfillment and remarketing.

A successful B2B site might log 50,000 to 100,000 visitor sessions a month. That’s quality time a customer spends browsing through your offerings. Compare that to the effectiveness of your other marketing communications. Where else can you engage so many prospects at such low cost?

Have you visited your own Web site lately? Have you searched for your own products or services on Google or Yahoo? Your web site can become a low-cost, global, 24/7, self-service front-end for your company. And your smallest competitor can do it better than you.

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There are more Deadly Sins, of course. Stay tuned...

Or, if you can't wait, we've developed a free white paper to help marketing executives avoid these money-wasting, product-killing, and even career-ending mistakes.

Download a free copy of it, “The Five Deadly Sins of B2B Marketing,” from http://www.tizinc.com/DeadlySins. Or, call us at 781-793-9380.

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B2B Marketing Deadly Sin #3 - Overestimating the Power of Creative

by Rick Whitmyre,
president and a principal,
Tiziani Whitmyre, Inc.

In our continuing series, the "Five Deadly Sins of B2B Marketing," let's look at Deadly Sin #3, which is: "Overestimating the Power of Creative."

Don’t assume great creative will produce great B2B results; that reaching your sales and marketing goals are tied directly to the effectiveness of the creative. Sometimes creativity and success are mutually exclusive. Focusing purely on creative is like buying a great looking car without checking the engine. You turn the key, but it doesn’t go anywhere. The engine represents the goals, positioning, and value proposition that power the communication.
The creative is the body that delivers it.

According to our creative director, “The creative is so much better and effective if I understand the goal and the positioning. When I’m told to craft an ad and simply ‘do something creative,’ then I’m only superficially addressing the issue. The result is a highly subjective discussion on the ‘creativity’ of the concept.”

We’ve seen what some might consider creative-free advertising deliver almost unbelievable results. Our firm developed a fractional space ad for a client that simply offered an Insider’s Guide. No big creative hook employed here. In fact, these executions would have been laughed out of the Addy Awards. But the ad produced thousands and thousands of leads. So why does that happen? There must be other reasons that don’t revolve around the creative. In this case, the guide stimulated latent need in the marketplace that had not been addressed. And it was placed in media focused tightly on the target audience.

Here’s another example. In probably the most successful ad campaign we’ve conceived, the marketing strategy was highly creative, not the ads themselves. And the client spent less than $100,000 on the media. Yet the campaign repositioned the competition as yesterday’s technology, turned the marketplace upside down, and put a hundred million dollars on the client’s top line.

An agency colleague once said, “The role of the client is to define the problem, and creativity is problem solving 101. The myth is thinking that the creative is the design and copy, when in reality it’s the entire solution.”

In B2B, it’s the message, not the medium. Sure the creative is important to grab attention. But you’re not selling toothpaste or hotel rooms. I know what a hamburger does. But I’m a little hazy about process optimization software that will lower my catalytic cracking costs by 3 cents a barrel. Spend more time on the positioning and messaging. The creative will take care of itself.

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There are more Deadly Sins, of course. Stay tuned...

Or, if you can't wait, we've developed a free white paper to help marketing executives avoid these money-wasting, product-killing, and even career-ending mistakes.

Download a free copy of it, “The Five Deadly Sins of B2B Marketing,” from http://www.tizinc.com/DeadlySins. Or, call us at 781-793-9380.

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B2B Marketing Deadly Sin #2 - Thinking Tactics First, Not Strategy

by Rick Whitmyre,
president and a principal,
Tiziani Whitmyre, Inc.

In our continuing series, the "Five Deadly Sins of B2B Marketing," let's look at Deadly Sin #2, which is: "Thinking Tactics First, Not Strategy."

In today’s, slash-the-budget, reorganize-daily marketing world, most ads, brochures, web sites, and PR campaigns bear little connection to the company’s business plan. Why? Poor management communication, revolving leadership, dynamic markets, mid-year adjustments, you name it.

A colleague once lamented, “I've found that 90% of the time, the vice president of marketing and the vice president of sales aren't talking to each other, and some times it’s the same person.” Next time, pull out the strategic or annual business plan before developing a campaign. Make your tactical decisions within the strategic framework. Engage the management team early in the process to gain alignment on the approach and to facilitate approvals. Achieve consensus on the target audiences and key buying decision drivers.

A clearly articulated positioning platform with a unique value statement and key customer benefits builds a strong strategic foundation to implement your messages. Creating information architecture for your company helps you choose the most effective marketing tools. And understanding the channel strategy and selling cycle helps deliver the communications with maximum impact. Develop a consistent tone and image for your campaigns that optimize your positioning. Enjoin customers in an ongoing conversation and move them to your value proposition.

As our creative director Fred Martins says, “a strategic plan is a great document that helps risk-averse people make decisions to move forward” – a key enabler in today’s corporate organization.

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There are more Deadly Sins, of course. Stay tuned...

Or, if you can't wait, we've developed a free white paper to help marketing executives avoid these money-wasting, product-killing, and even career-ending mistakes.

Download a free copy of it, “The Five Deadly Sins of B2B Marketing,” from http://www.tizinc.com/DeadlySins. Or, call us at 781-793-9380.

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B2B Marketing Deadly Sin #1 - Forgetting About the Audience

by Rick Whitmyre,

president and a principal,

Tiziani Whitmyre, Inc.

A while back, an agency lunch-time discussion focused on a subject that brings tears to the eyes of marketing executives: mistakes. Not minor gaffes; but money-wasting, product-killing, even career-ending mistakes. As we shared our war stories in this highly therapeutic session, some major themes emerged. Much of the marketing waste and carnage we’ve observed has revolved around one of five fundamental problems. We called these blunders the "Five Deadly Sins of B2B Marketing."

Of the five, we declared Deadly Sin #1 as "Forgetting About the Audience."

In fact, didn’t a former president say, “It’s about the audience, stupid?” Maybe I’m stretching the paraphrasing, but repeatedly we see B2B campaigns created with little understanding of the target audience, market, or customer.

A common complaint we hear: “Our CEO wants to communicate with one group while the sales manager is focusing on another.”

It’s agonizingly difficult marketing and selling to the customer’s corporate bureaucracy.

Scores of people are involved in the purchasing cycle: from manufacturing managers, IT professionals, and purchasing agents to vice presidents and C-level officers. Team-buying initiatives have created empowered armies of evaluators that put your product or service under microscope.

Who are these decision makers? Who are the key influencers? The answer can be anybody or everybody.

At one industrial client, when we discussed the target audience with a product manager, he was thinking about an engineer. But when asked the same question of the Chief Marketing Officer, he viewed the customer as a plant manager or vice president of manufacturing. Shop-floor sell or executive sell? Or both? A common dilemma.

We witnessed one client successfully market its solution to a customer’s plant engineers, only to have the deal killed when senior executive approvers had never heard of their brand.

Does your organization just assume it knows who is buying its products or services? Before launching the next campaign, take the time and discipline to map the customer’s buying process. Identify the key influencers and decision makers. Determine the customer’s buying drivers. Understand why they choose one product over another.

Gone are the days when could carpet bomb the entire market with advertising and direct response. With B2B marketing resources shrinking to nano-dollar proportions, defining the audience is critical. Target precious resources with pinpoint accuracy at the decision makers buying your products and services.

We've developed a free white paper to help marketing executives avoid these money-wasting, product-killing, and even career-ending mistakes. Download a free copy of it, “The Five Deadly Sins of B2B Marketing,” from http://www.tizinc.com/DeadlySins. Or, call 781-793-9380.

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Creative Is as Creative Does

Fred Martins, our VP and Creative Director, with 25 years of experience in art direction under his belt, is one heck of a creative guy -- on and off the job.

Among his many media is digital photography. Off, as well as on the job, it's a medium he excels at.

Just last month, he won the Mary Alice Arakelian Memorial Award for Best of Show at The Newburyport Art Association’s 2007 Annual Members Fall Juried Show, Part 1, with his photo “Flower Child,” of a vendor at a craft fair.

Now, another (a black and white shot called “Venice Light") been selected for exhibit in the 2007 New England Photographers Biennial Exhibition.

This show, underway now, is held only once every two years. It's a highly selective show, so the works on exhibit have to be the best of the best.

Check them out for yourself, including Fred's entry. The show runs through Oct. 28, at the Danforth Museum of Art in Framingham, Mass. (Details at http://www.danforthmuseum.org/.)

Then, why not take a look at the art & creativity from Fred's day job, right here at Tiziani Whitmyre (http://www.tizinc.com/).

Free marketing services white paper: The Five Deadly Sins of B2B Marketing

-- Download a free white paper outlining the common mistakes that occur in the major business-to-business marketing services disciplines --

May 30, 2007 -- During an agencywide lunch, one of our principals, Rick Whitmyre, led a discussion of all our old war stories about the mistakes we’ve made in business-to-business (B2B) marketing services. We discovered that most of us had committed the same money-wasting, product-killing, and even career-ending mistakes over the course of our professional work.

These failures seemed to revolve around some fundamental issues, including marketing services and marketing strategies, creative, Web development, and public relations (PR).

Following the lunch, Rick summaried the group's thoughts on our “lessons learned” and how we now turn those blunders into our competitive advantage.

The end result was a white paper called “The Five Deadly Sins of B2B Marketing” which outlines the common mistakes that occur in the major business-to-business marketing services disciplines, such as strategic marketing, creative, web development, and public relations. In short, they are:

1. Forgetting the Audience – Don’t assume. Know the decisions makers and take the time to target the customers according to the buying process.


2. Thinking Tactics First, Not Strategy – Use your strategic business plan as the foundation to deliver maximum communication impact.


3. Overestimating the Power of Creative – It’s the message as well as the medium. Positioning is critical to winning creative.


4. Underestimating the Power of Your Website – utilizing the Web as the front end of your business will generate scores of qualified leads and sales.


5. Misunderstanding Public Relations – Papering the walls of editors’ offices with news releases won’t get results. Frequent editorial contact and relationship building will produce dramatically more effective news coverage.

To download a copy, visit http://www.tizinc.com/white-papers/request_five-deadly-sins.html.

About Tiziani Whitmyre Inc.
Tiziani Whitmyre, Inc. is an marketing services and strategies agency offering advertising, public relations, and Internet marketing for B2B and B2C clients. The company’s services include graphic design, Website design, search engine marketing, corporate branding, direct response marketing, editorial services, media relations, and marketing and brand strategy. Tiziani Whitmyre’s integrated solutions approach supports brand positioning and the generation of sales leads for leading life science, biotechnology, high technology, industrial, manufacturing, and professional services companies. The firm is headquartered near Boston in Sharon, Massachusetts, and can be contacted at http://www.tizinc.com/ or 781-793-9380.

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[Tiziani Whitmyre, Inc.] [marketing] [Internet marketing] [web marketing] [white paper] [whitepaper] [B2B] [public relations] [PR] [marketing communications] [strategic marketing] [creative] [web development] [marketing services] [marketing strategies]

Posted by Tiziani Whitmyre, http://www.tizinc.com

Aubin, McGough Join Tiziani Whitmyre, Inc., a Boston-based Advertising, Public Relations & Internet Marketing Agency

SHARON, MASS. – January 15, 2007 – Tiziani Whitmyre, Inc. (TW), an advertising, public relations, and Internet marketing agency based near Boston, today announced two appointments to support the company’s growing integrated marketing services business.

Hope Aubin joins TW as an account executive in the company’s Marketing Communications Division.

Ms. Aubin previously was sales and marketing coordinator at Butler Automatic. She also served as marketing consultant and technical marketing manager at Invensys Production Management. Ms. Aubin graduated summa cum laude from Bridgewater State College with bachelor and masters degrees in management science.

“Hope brings to the company strong project management skills and significant experience in B2B marketing,” said Bob Tiziani, TW’s Chief Executive Officer. “She will have account service responsibilities in creative, media planning, and internet marketing.”

Michelle McGough is appointed interactive developer in the company’s Interactive Marketing Division. Ms. McGough joins TW from ServiceMaster in Lancaster, Ohio. She also held positions as a multimedia technician for Carolina Designs Realty, and Website administrator at West Penn Hat & Cap Company. Ms. McGough received a bachelor of science degree in computer information systems from DeVry University.

“Michelle’s experience in database development and multimedia programming will enhance our capability to deliver advanced interactive and ROI Marketing programs to our clients,” said Tiziani.

About Tiziani Whitmyre

Tiziani Whitmyre, Inc. is an advertising, public relations, and Internet marketing agency focused on the needs of B2B and B2C clients. The company’s services include graphic design, Website design, search engine marketing, corporate branding, direct response marketing, editorial services, media relations, and marketing and brand strategy. Tiziani Whitmyre’s integrated solutions approach supports brand positioning and the generation of sales leads for leading life science, biotechnology, high technology, industrial, manufacturing, and professional services companies. The firm is headquartered near Boston in Sharon, Massachusetts, and can be contacted at http://www.tizinc.com or 781-793-9380.

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