Promote your business with dynamic QR Codes!

Did you know that businesses all over the globe are using QR (quick response) codes like the one below to drive current customers and prospects to all kinds of promotions? Some clients are using them to gain and increase Facebook Fans, promote new food and drink items, for promotions and discounts, getting customers to their web sites, and much, much more.

For example our partner company, Qrlette is offering an introductory QR code for free so you can test out this dynamic new technology for your own business. For example, if you scan the below code more than once, you will be see an additional set of marketing links/destinations as part of our demo Bellandi Group QRLette Campaign.

This featured intro campaign gives you the ability to drive customers to 5 different links (marketing areas: web, facebook, menu,etc.) with only one QR code and single campaign you can implement over time.

Scan the image below and see how a Dynamic QR Code works. Each time you scan it, you will see a different page.

Contact us if you would like more info.

1)      What is your ROI? Have you closed leads from this venue in the past? If you have good results, renew. If you have no past results to review, create some for this year, and track them.

2)      Coordinate a complete campaign for the event that will deliver your message and engage your prospects. Make sure the content from your sessions (if you have some) encourage people to stop by the booth next to see more, and at the booth talk about the sessions and cross promote.

3)      Tweet! Tweeting is a great FREE way to highlight things at the event for attendees you don’t want them to miss, and get great content out to prospects and customers who did not make the show.

4)      USE your CRM or SFA tool! If you don’t have a Customer Relationship Management or a Sales Force Automation tool, GET ONE today!!! These tools today are a “must have” for sales people and the only way to measure if your marketing is working, or NOT working. Top “Social CRM” on the market today is www.nimble.com , Top “SFA” is www.netsuite.com , and Top “Free” starter (not long term solution but a baby step with no out of pocket dollars) is www.zoho.com.

In looking at its choices, Agilent chose Bellandi Group – not only because of its history with the show, but also because of the innovative and ownership Bellandi Group brings to its success.

Bellandi Group supplied Event leadership with Ami Heath, a Director who has managed upwards of 250 events per year, to help them manage the show. Ami brought in I Was There technology to help get merchants participating in exposing the events and offering giveaways.

In addition, Bellandi Group supplied an event PR program, an on-site event management staff and and full campaign to promote the event and its participating product lines.

Bellandi Group excels at taking the disciplines of design, marcom, PR, social networking and event management and merging them together in a manner that drives results. Contact Ami for more examples in event management: Ami@BellandiGroup.com.

During these 11 years, Dirk got to know  the needs and frustrations of physicians well. He saw that they did not necessary like the business aspect of their profession while they loved helping patients manage their health.

This lead Dirk to pinpoint two areas to help physicians with:

1. Giving them both tools and knowledge to enable them to better manage their practice
2. Giving them better market presence and awareness by creating a consumer-facing website that had a robust directory of physicians along with articles and service provider information.

Medical Voyce needed a marketing service firm that could help them craft a website that could handle a fairly complex directory, be based on a content management system (CMS) that allowed for easy information updates and still be cost effective.

Bellandi Group addressed this need by creating the site around Drupal, a powerful open-source CMS that integrated the look and feel of Bellandi Group creative designers with a complex back end directory.

The site has received lots of great feedback from healthcare consumers, was featured in KKTV commercials and has grown steadily in traffic. See Medical Voyce website.

Talk to us about our Drupal and WordPress website design capabilities.

Some of the larger ones simply came in much too high on their pricing. Other agencies, were too narrowly focused, just concentrating on Internet Marketing or on Branding and Design.

The Mining Exchange ended up selecting Bellandi Group because it was able to address their needs for Advertising, PR, Internet Marketing, Design and Printing all under one roof and for a cost-effective price.

The first deliverable was an ad placed at the Women’s Open at the Broadmoor that delivered a large quantity of leads and a high degree of awareness.

Bellandi Group continues to plan with The Mining Exchange how to best launch effective local marketing campaigns to compliment the excellent corporate marketing of Wyndham.

Approach Taken and Lessons Learned:

1. Because of the short time to ramp up, we quickly recruited seven subs to help for very low prices due to the slow economy.
2. We put subs in groups of two so the Xmas vacation would not slow anyone down.
3. Two subs were on PR, two subs on event management, one sub on product marketing for content generation, one sub on SEO/PPC programs, one sub on graphic design and myself to help with all areas as needed.
4. The teams were highly empowered to move fast and were told they needed to get results. Any obstacles were to be escalated upward. It was a given that there would be some overlaps, so subs were coached to be understanding and team-oriented.
5. The turning on of seven subs in one week and the fast moves made by the subs initially shocked the system of the I Was There people already in place, but it quickly became an exciting story to follow as results started pouring in.

Results

1. The product marketing person was instantly teamed with the graphics person and Web development crew already in place and told to quickly finish the Web content based on positioning we worked out in short order.
2. Visits were made over a two-week period to the mayor’s office of Aspen, the Aspen Chamber of Commerce, ESPN’s X Game’s group, Snowmass Ski Resort, KSPN radio (announcer of X Games), over 100 local merchants, four local major hotels, and a variety of local marketing groups. The reception was positive and many programs initiated based on ideas that came out of them.
3. We bought a sponsorship from ESPN that included a booth, advertisement and the participation in a kick-off charity event.
4. We hired an ex-Pro that recruited pro athletes to be at our booth for photos and signings for all four days. ESPN was excited about this and did announcements regarding it during the event to push attendees to our booth.
5. We put together campaigns that gave away merchandise every hour and a snowboard every day for the best photos and videos submitted to our website via mobile or web-based technology. We partnered with KSPN (official radio station of X Games), set up at their headquarters and had them interview our CEO hourly with announcements about winners each hour.
6. We ran PPC programs on Facebook and used Twitter and LinkedIn to tie into these give away campaigns. We had to launch this very close to the event and keep it small as this was beta software and we did not want to go too viral if it didn’t perform well. Looking back, this was a good decision.
7. PR-wise, we were interviewed on local TV stations, put into local newspapers after we got the Mayor to use our product and do a photo opp, and picked up by several other magazines. We, again, were asked to not go too crazy with PR, but prototype some approaches.
8. With regards to leads, we got long lines of people at the booth every day to meet the athletes. We had people creating IWT accounts for them while in line and teaching them how to upload pictures. We also got people trying the software based on the radio coverage (website at http://iwasthereproof.com) and contests. We gave away 20 snowboard and 100s of beanies, fleeces and scarfs.
9. We designed posters and cards for merchants to give out that had a QR code on them, which led to specials done by the merchants. The merchants gave out over 20,000 cards and experimented with QR coded promotions.
10. We had discussions with 10 merchants about branded merchandise they could sell throughout the year and QR coded campaigns they could run. Several hotels were also interested.
11. We partnered with two bars each night to do giveaways and show photos and events taken from the Hill at the bars at night.
12. We did on-the-street research with over 100 people to gather feedback on the brand, the use of the mobile and facebook apps and the difference in preferences of age groups regarding commemoration, photo sharing and use of social networking.
13. We learned a lot. There were a lot of successes and some failures. The connectivity on the mountain via AT&T was not good and created very slow photo uploads. The iPhone mobile app worked, although it needed some improvements, but the Android app release had to be cancelled and the Blackberry app was Web-based and did not work well.
14. There was a wide discrepancy in age groups for use of social networking and preferences for how they would commemorate their presence at the event. This was great info for the company and is being used to redesign their product strategy and marketing strategy going forward.

Problem:

Accanto Systems was a new company that had spun a division out of Sunrise Telecom. They sold protocol analyzers and large networking monitoring systems to Wireless and Wireline service providers. They needed to develop awareness about the new company and create more professional and effective sales tools. Lastly, their channel was not well-trained in the new products and was widely varied in its ability to generate leads, indentify new business and close sales.

Approach Taken & Lessons Learned:

1. An internal positioning workshop was held to determine the best positioning and key messaging to use in launching the new company;
2. A new website was designed based on Drupal;
3. SEO optimization was completed and ongoing PPC and SEO programs were put in place;
4. Sales collateral was totally rewritten and rebranded;
5. The company was launched at the Mobile World Congress conference;
6. An aggressive but cost effective PR program was put in place to create a monthly stream of customer wins, new product and partnership stories;
7. To help the VAR Channel with lead generation, off-the-shelf marketing programs were developed in the areas of email, road tours, vertical events and webinars; and
8. Social networking programs involving Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook were prototyped to learn how to best use these tools in this market.

Results:

1. The company launch at the Mobile World Congress in Spain and was widely successful and received a lot of press and analyst coverage.
2. The new website and sales collateral proved highly effective during the sales process.
3. The channel marketing program adoption grew each month as the channel was interacted with and began to see results from educating their customers.
4. Leads generated from the channel marketing programs were collected, distributed, tracked and reported upon.
5. Getting an estimate of sales based on leads provided required inside sales subs for first pass qualification. 100% tracking was not possible, but enough tracking was done to make statistical estimates.
6. Accanto’s business grew 25% in 2008 in an economy where many companies were shrinking.
7. It had more deals in the funnel in 2009 than it can adequately respond to.

MyEstateManager.com was a new company that was focused on building the premier website in the industry for offering free information to people who recently lost a loved one and needed guidance on estate management. The business model was based around attracting service providers such as funeral homes, flower shops, etc., that paid a subscription fee to be listed in the directory and advertise on the site. MEM needed to prototype the best way to sell their program to service providers.

Approach Taken & Lessons Learned:

The sales prototyping program was broken up into several test subprograms. One assigned senior sales reps to sell the program to their own network. Another used experienced inside sales people to call the businesses that were initially listed in the directory. A third emailed to a list with an invite to a webinar and let the webinar sell the concept and demo the site. PR activity was also done to create a groundswell of awareness in the community.

Results:

1. The senior sales reps did a great job in finding contacts and presenting the program. By having senior people do this, a lot was learned about needed product features, pricing, messaging and sales approaches. A number of hot prospects were identified, some closed and a recommendation on next best steps was developed.
2. The inside sales reps had to depend more on the product than the senior sales reps who sold mainly to their own network. As a result, this program became more sensitive to needed product features, evidence of visitor traffic, etc. After a month of initial testing with this program, it was decided to put these resources on hold until further product features and website traffic were completed.
3. The third program that focused on a webinar was done in two ways. One webinar was marketed to a purchased list. Lots of emails were sent out and attendance ended up around 20. A second webinar was pitched to an Association audience where the members were invited by the Association. The latter had double the attendance and a lot more interest at the end.
4. The experiment helped to flush out the need to focus on the one-to-many sales model that resulted from working with associations. Next steps were designed to recruit associations, get them to agree to a webinar to their members, manage the logistics of the webinar and follow on. Sales could then focus on hot prospects instead of cold lists.

Oracle purchased a new company whose product pricing was below $5,000. Because many of Oracle’s products were closer to $250,000 and higher, these products sometimes did not receive much attention from the sales force. They also often did not get the dedicated marketing they needed to acquire enough leads and opportunities to keep the revenue climbing. They engaged Bellandi Group to help them with lead generation and lead nurturing until Oracle figured out how to merge them with rest of corporation.

Approach Taken & Lessons Learned:

To gain focus on the product line, a group of sales people were spun out to focus only on these products. Additional lead generation programs were put in place that consisted of email programs, webinars and follow up phone calls. While this dedicated sales force was used to do phone calls, most of them were from MCI and were doing high-volume cold calling. They were not using Best Practice lead generation and lead nurturing techniques that were being promoted by B2B industry thought leaders. One of these thought leaders is Brian Carroll from InTouch (www.startwithalead.com). The graph above shows how leads are first nurtured and made sales-ready before being passed to sales. In order to improve their lead flow and conversions, we designed and put in place lead generation and lead nurturing programs.

Results:

1. The sales force liked this “trusted advisor” approach, as it gave them a reason to call or email the prospect.
2. They previously had to make cold calls and repeat scripted messages.
3. They found this approach ineffective and not well received by the prospect.
4. We put in place thought leader lead generation programs including webinars, white papers, analysis offers and Web-based demos.
5. We used email to promote these programs to prospects, then used the inside sales team to monitor interest in the program (open rates, downloads, etc.) and nurture the lead to a webinar, demo or sales appointment.
6. The sales force spent more time on nurturing, less on cold calls, enjoyed their job more and became more effective in progressing and closing leads.
7. Lead nurturing is an old topic that has renewed interest in the industry as we can no longer afford to work only leads with immediate interest.
8. By observing all of the actions of a given prospect, inside sales people could have an intelligent conversation with the prospect and suggest some logical next steps.
9. This group was eventually merged with the rest of Oracle and the separate lead generation activities turned off once corporate took over.

Problem:

When GoldMine Software was growing their Partner Channel Program from 90 partners to 2000, they did a great job of providing solid tools for partners to use and created good quality leads. However, they lost visibility of what happened to the leads once they were passed to the channel. Since GoldMine was 100% channel-focused and all sales were being driven through the channel, this created a large gap in forecasting sales, tracking ROI, identifying which prospects were being converted to customers and capturing data for why leads were not closed.

Approach Taken & Lessons Learned:

We created a Partner Portal into our CRM that allowed us to automate the process of assigning leads to partners by region and level. Partners were assigned unique log-in information so they could go in and get their leads at their leisure. They were assigned no more than 10 at a time, and an email was sent to let them know that they had been assigned leads. Each partner had 48 hours to pick up the lead or it was reassigned. When the partner logged in, they had the option to either “Pick It Up” or “Pass It On” if it was not a good fit for them. The “Pass It On” leads were reassigned. We had weekly calls with the partners to review all the leads that they were working. After the meeting, the partner would go into the Partner Portal and update the leads.

Results:

1. This allowed us to know which partners had what leads and where they were in the sales cycle, therefore bridging our forecasting gap.
2. Following the lead from beginning to the end allowed us to track live cost-per-lead and cost-per-close, which helped us to spend marketing dollars more efficiently.
3. Tracking and rating the lead also gave us a big picture of why were winning and losing deals. We fed that information back to the product development department for future product enhancements.
4. Establishing this 360-degree view of the sales cycle and putting measurements into place enabled us as a software vendor to better track “live” customers so we could nurture them through the partner and “Create Customers for Life.”