Vancouver-based Vitrium Systems announced the launch of a new, online service that allows marketers to embed a registration form into PDF’s. The new system, dubbed PDFSalesLeads, allows marketers to take advantage of the portability of electronic sales literature while providing an interactive form inside the document that will allow the reader to provide the contact information required to carry the sales process to the next step.

During a sneak peak of the new service, Vitrium’s Manager of Marketing and Communications, Randa Codron, explained how PDFSalesLeads provided a solution to the dilema of making prospects register to download PDF’s online or giving digital documents away without any idea of who’s reading them. “PDFSalesLeads allows users to complete their registration information inside the PDF while they are engaged with the content,” she explained. “You can set the form up to appear on any specific page, so the reader has a chance to decide whether the information your providing is something they want more information about.”

Furthermore, the technology stays with the document, so PDF’s that are passed from one user to another also pass along the interactive registration form. All registrations are collected in real time back at the PDFSalesLeads web site and can be integrated into SalesForce.com.

View an online demo.

This is a handy break-through for small and mid-sized marketers who want to expand their reach via the Internet but can’t spend a lot of wasted time sorting through irrelevant leads or trying to follow up on bogus registration information. At just $49 per month, the service is affordable.

The possibilities of this technology appear to go beyond simple registration. During our conference call, I asked if there were plans for creating other interactive forms that could be imbedded into PDF’s. While Randa couldn’t be specific, it does sound like PDFSalesLeads may be just the first of a number of utilitarian products to roll out of Vitrium’s R&D team.

We’ll be watching for more developments from Vancouver in the future.

For some, the mix of social media with B2B marketing is a tough one to swallow.  While several business marketers were quick to jump onto web sites, the communications tended to be one-way (not interactive), with many web sites becoming little more than electronic brochures that were cheaper to produce and easier to distribute than their paper predecessors.

But with the ‘web came the promise of interactivity.  And that promise is now starting to mature in the form of social media (or Web 2.0).  But what’s a business to do if it sells, primarily, to other businesses?

Thanks to Brandon Bryce, President & CEO of Large Mouth Communications and an article that recently appeared on the Large Mouth web site entitled “Who’s afraid of the Web 2.0?”

Here is a summary of the five tips Brandon offers B2B marketers when it comes to taking advantage of social media marketing:

1. Remember that not all social media platforms are created equal.  Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, Facebook all have their strengths and weaknesses.  Those need to be evaluated against your marketing objectives BEFORE jumping into a social media campaign.

2. Listen before you speak.  Web 2.0 is about interaction and the whole concept of interaction requires reaction to stimulus.  If you’re not paying attention to what your customers are saying to you, you can’t react appropriately and with the proper attention to detail.

3. Understand the difference between meaningful dialogue and SPAM.  There is a line that separates engagement from abuse.  Know where that line is.  Understand how close you can come and don’t dare step over.

4. Get personal – but keep it professional.  Web 2.0 requires a different kind of intimacy with the customer and the brand.  That takes some getting used to, but it’s well worth the discomfort.

5. Embrace transparency.  Honesty is the best policy … and no where is that more true than on the Internet.  Resist the temptations (available via technology) to create false cases, phony advocates or trumped up/exaggerated claims.  You WILL get found out and the fallout can be toxic.  Worse yet, nasty facts – especially if they’re true – can linger for years and be easily found thanks to online search tools like Google and Yahoo!  Keep it honest, open and clean.

Of course, this short summary is just the tip of the iceberg.  Brandon goes into much more detail.  The post is definitely worth the read.

It’s not “greenwashing” per se - but more than a few people are skeptical of catalog and direct mailers when they say they’re concerned about the environment and want to cut the wasted circulation out of their marketing efforts.

As far as I’m concerned, if they save a little “green” (money) and a few trees in the process, I’m all for it.

Randy Erdahl, co-founder and president of Minnesota-based Decision Inteligence recently shared some ideas on how to cut the waste out of your mailing lists with Target Marketing magazine (one of the best, pure-marketing magazines around, in my opinion):

1. Use e-mail activity history to identify candidates for fewer catalogs. Identify customers who show a preference to shop without catalogs by looking at e-mail histories. These customers are prime candidates to test contacting through e-mail more and catalogs less, saving money on paper and postage, and at the same time, adding value to those customers by making it more relevant.

2. Set up a contact optimization stream test that can compete against the current circulation decision-making methodology. “Stream tests are excellent ways to learn if these new contact strategies work,” Erdahl said. Design a stream test to measure how well the results are. This approach measures over time the impact your new strategies have on the results and helps you determine if your test contact process (channels, frequency, etc.) is the right move. Stream tests quantify the results for you, said Erdahl, and determine how you should move forward.

3. Use ZIP code or other geographic level filters to screen prospect lists. “You should know what ZIP codes or other geographic areas are vast wastelands for your business, and you shouldn’t be mailing into them and [should be] suppressing them right up front in your prospecting efforts,” said Erdahl.  “And find out where your hot spots are.”

4. Update catalog-sales-per-mailing models. You need multiple, detailed statistical predictive models in this day and age. If you use RFM, run, don’t walk, exclaimed Erdahl. If you don’t build separate models for customer segments, jog! And if you aren’t using different models for different catalogs, walk fast! The more detailed models you have, the better off you’ll be in eliminating wasted mailings.

There is also a webinar you can go to (on demand) that explores these issues and strategies in more detail.

An article posted to BtoB Magazine’s web site a while back pointed out an interesting result from a recent Hearst survey: nearly 50% of all b-to-b marketing budgets are spent on online programs.  That spend covers everything from web site development/enhancements to online advertising to SEO to webcasts to Social Media … you get the idea.  The survey goes on to explain that trade shows account for 17% of marketing budgets, direct marketing (12%) and print (11%) account for most of the rest.

But like most media property-driven market research, it ignores a significant pool of resources that often go untapped by most b-to-b marketers and the media.  I understand why.  For a magazine or other media outlet to try and identify how much money and human resource is dedicated to internal communications, training and organizational behavior, they would have to step waaaaaay out of their comfort zone.

It’s kind of like asking an amateur astronomer to find Dark Matter in the universe using his existing, backyard telescope.  They may have an idea where to point the telescope, but they can’t really see what they’re looking at.

Instead, I’d point you to this most excellent post by John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing.  In it, he explains how everyone in a company has a marketing responsibility.  “Here’s a little flash – anyone associated with your business that comes into contact with a prospect or customer is performing a marketing function.”

John advocates the idea of businesses provide marketing training for everyone in the business – including administrative and finance people.  A quarterly “all hands” brand meeting would cover a variety of topics including:

Why you named your company what we did – attach this to your personal story

What colors, images, fonts are official and why – create a simple style manual of standards

Your core marketing message – and why – help everyone connect their position to the message

The way you want the brand to be thought of in the market – your goal, your one word of association

Benefits of your products and services – demo them and present them just like you would to a customer

Description of your ideal customer – use photos and success stories of real customers

Your current lead generation activities – show off ads, run radio spots – sell them on the campaign

Your lead conversion process – everyone should know the next step when a prospect calls

Key marketing metrics – sales generated, leads generated, referrals generated, PR generated

Your marketing calendar – show everyone you have a plan for the future

(Read the entire post here.)

So, why mention this along side the Hearst study?  Because one of the things that I think is missing from John’s suggestion is the idea of bringing in outside information on the market, trends and competitors.  Magazines currently reeling from advertising cutbacks have a tremendous wealth of untapped and under-reported information that could be leveraged to supplement internal communications sessions like these.

Realistically, this could be a significant revenue opportunity for trade journals that could be nearly “uncontested” with regard to competing publications, trade shows or online programs.

From a business owner/manager’s point of view, there are few marketing spends that produce a faster and greater return on investment than internal team building and training.  There is real power behind the idea of getting everyone on the “same song sheet”  when it comes to dealing with customers, suppliers and one another.

Any agency (advertising or PR) reading this post should see this as a significant opportunity to tap budgets outside of their client’s marketing department.  You can be very creative and very, very effective.  Broker the relationship between media properties and client and produce the “event” – you could make everyone happy and successful as a result.

Don’t bury your lead.  Tell people who you are and what you do.

Clearly.

In fact, I can remember the day I first heard an advertising colleague refer to a client’s service as a “business solution” – I thought it was brilliant.  Apparently, so did every other B2B copywriter in the 1980′s.

And when everyone uses the same words to describe different things, everything starts to sound the same.  Even when they’re not.

Learn the lesson the easy way now.  Check out Robert Celashi’s post here.

When you start
The key to starting the development of your corporate collateral strategy is “focus.”  You need to build concensus among your managers concerning the following:

• Identify your target audiences, what they believe and how they view your company, product and services.

• Focus in on the things about your brand, your products and services that make a difference to your target audience(s).

• Draft messages that clearly and succinctly present your brand’s key messages to each audience.

Identifying the right pieces for your marketing “kit”
The post continues to provide a great rundown of the types of pieces that might be included in your collateral strategy.  Elements include:

• Pocket folder.  A “toolbox” for all your marketing tools.

• Product and Services List. What seems obvious to you, may not be obvious to your audience.

• Customer Testimonials. Include testimonials from some real-life satisfied customers.

• Case Studies. Case studies are an ideal way to explain to potential customers what kinds of problems you solve.

• Process Description. Show your clients what your model or process looks like.

The blog post goes on to provide additional, out of the box suggestions as well as some tips on producing your own collateral, how to participate in trade shows and more.

John points out that with the new, low price of the iPod Shuffle, it makes a very appealing (and impressive) premium vehicle to carry your B2B pitch via podcast.

Read the whole post here.

That sounds great on the surface, but what a closer examination of the story will tell you is that the biggest parts of the budgets seeing increases are online marketing and event marketing/trade shows.

What’s this mean for agencies and trade pubs trying to ride the wave of increased budgets for 2008?

It means it “ain’t gonna happen” – not this year, anyway.The rationale for spending more money on events and trade show marketing can be seen easily enough.  Marketers are looking at a tough economy in ’08 and are concerned primarily with customer acquisition.  In fact, nearly 2/3rds of those interviewed said acquisition was their top priority.  Leaving little to chance, it’s much easier to tie sales results – and new customer sales in particular – to a face-to-face experience.

So what’s behind the increase in online spending?

Some of it is the perception that new customer acquisition can be managed much easier with online marketing.  The targets can be drawn tighter and many parts of the sales process can be automated.  

But what is really at work here is a migration from older business marketing traditions (i.e. advertising in trade journals) to a much more measurable media in online.  This move has less to do with the economy and more to do with economics.  Business marketers like the measurability of online marketing programs, that’s a fact.

For agencies, though, all is not lost with a move to the online world.  You don’t have to be a tech-savvy shop to benefit during and after the digital migration.  Instead, agencies (both external and internal) need to focus on the messages and the methodologies used online. 

Greater process measurement means an implied ability to break everything down to a very granular level.  Marketers can (and should) figure out what’s working, what’s not and (most importantly) why.  More than ever before, marketers need to consider matching their investment in online marketing with increases in their research budget.  The financial benefits from such a move could be significant.

Finally, let me say this about B2B’s survey.  And I’m not trying to sound catty about it.  But the survey pool was too small for the methodology used.  The survey was conducted via an online survey tool (like Zoomerang or Survey Monkey) and a total of 213 companies participated.  While this pool might provide a general sense of what ALL business-to-business marketers might plan on doing next year, the survey group appears to be too small to provide any kind of clarity on trends within industry sectors  (general or specific).

But hey, the survey is done and available for free to those who want to review it.  (B2B 2008 Budget Forecast)

The question itself indicates a subtle ethnic bias that most white business people can’t see. But while white business owners may suffer from an ethnic blind spot, minority-owned businesses have more to do to bring attention the opportunities they represent.

First, for traditional B2B companies (usually owned and operated by whites), understanding the diversity of the American business culture as well as the consumer culture can yield a fresh perspective and new opportunities in a variety of areas:

Employment – Minority groups today account for 25% of the US population. That number will more than double over the next generation. The ethnic shift is likely to be even more pronounced among those people of employable age.Employers who recognize this trend and work to develop corporate cultures that are more open and accessible to people of various ethnicities will be positioned to review and select from a significantly larger talent pool of job applicants. An additional benefit to such an employer would be the positive “word of mouth” within various ethnic communities – resulting in a likely reduction in employee recruiting costs.

Client Relations – Just as it is likely most B2B companies’ own employment base will change over the next generation, it is fair to assume the employment profile of their clients’ will change over time as well. The ethnic/cultural background of your key client contacts may necessitate a change in your company’s approach to cultural diversity.

Growing and Start-Up Businesses – Today, ethnic businesses are growing faster and increasing spending more quickly than the national average for all businesses. Minority start-ups outnumber white start-ups by a ratio of nearly 2:1. Sales for minority businesses are growing at a dynamic rate of nearly 24% per year.

Healthcare and Related Markets – The health needs of some minority groups are more pronounced in some areas (e.g. Hispanics and the incidence of diabetes, African-Americans and the incidence of heart disease). While these tendencies have been identified by several drug and device manufacturers, there are several opportunities for companies who produce goods that support the lifestyle changes that go along with treatment. Food companies, financial service companies, technology companies, etc. can all benefit from getting to know and understand the needs of these markets in greater detail in order to stimulate more sales and product use.

Pull-Through Opportunities – Identifying cultural opportunities in the end-user market can create new business opportunities with existing customers.

For minority-owned businesses, there are a few significant challenges they need to overcome in order to break through the “checkmark” mentality so many white-owned businesses have when it comes to accommodating ethnic markets and minority-owned businesses.

Awareness – Opportunities in minority and ethnic markets need to be brought
forward and explained to companies that have traditionally operated in “the mainstream.” And with the mainstream, nothing succeeds like success. A coordinated push of positive examples and subsequent opportunities will get noticed by the more savvy entrepreneurs.Education – Many white business owners and managers are intimidated by cultures they don’t understand. The only way to overcome those fears is to spend the time required to educate and inform them.

Partnership – True partnership is a two-way street. Inter-racial business relationships need to start out slow, allowing the white partner to catch on and catch up. Both parties need to make their intentions clear and to put matters of difference on the table so they can be addressed. A clear understanding of the give and take of the business relationship will help make a stronger, working partnership when things finally hit their stride.

Finally, it’s up to all of us to recognize and celebrate the success stories. We all need to do what we can to commend businesses that find new ways to work together and benefit from the partnership. These stories will be of interest to the media and to the public because as the population continues to diversify (ethnically), the media will be searching for ways to entertain and inform that new public.

In the B2B segment, there is a distinct opportunity to lead consumer trends and benefit both strategically and economically as a result.

Charlotte Sibley, with Shire Pharmaceuticals, uses customer reaction as a barometer of innovation inside her own company. “… if I get a lot of pushback from internal customers, I know I’m pushing the innovation envelope,” she says.

Blogger Dave Pollard provides a list of non-technological ways of looking for innovation (from his How To Save The World blog:

• How you design your core offerings (e.g. the Mercedes Smart Car’s unique and imaginative attributes)
• Product system: How you link and/or provide a platform for multiple products (e.g. the Microsoft integrated productivity suite)
• Core processes: How you create and add value to your offerings (e.g. Wal-Mart’s reinvention of retailing as shelf-space leasing)
• Enabling process: How you support the company’s core processes and workers (e.g. Starbucks’ premium wage and benefits packages to attract superior staff)
• Service: How you provide value to customers and consumers beyond and around your products (e.g. Singapore Airlines’ thoughtful and pampering extras)
• Delivery Channel: How you get your offerings to market (e.g. Martha Stewart’s multi-media ways of getting her ‘home’ stuff to your home)
• Brand: How you communicate your offerings (e.g. Absolut vodka’s “theme and variations’ advertising concept)
• Customer experience: How your customers feel when they interact with your company and its offerings (e.g. the Harley Davidson owners’ community)
• Networks and alliances: How you join forces with other companies for mutual benefit (e.g. Sara Lee sticking strictly to branding and outsourcing all manufacturing)
• Business model: How you make money (e.g. Dell’s pay-in-advance for a custom-made PC model).

If you’re interested in investigating the concept of customer-driven innovation further, you may want to check out this white paper by Howard Moskowitz, Ph.D.