President's perspective

In today's very competitive business environment, a successful company needs to remember one essential thing—you must effectively read your market environment and then make the necessary adjustments, big or small, to optimize your opportunities. Competitive forces, governmental regulations, changing market drivers and more can rigorously challenge your value proposition. What was highly needed and ultimately valued yesterday may not be desirable today, and what customers need from you today probably will not be the same as in the future.

At VantagePoint, we have always tried to "practice what we preach." After we read our own "tea leaves" and asked our clients what they earnestly desire and need from us, we sharpened our focus and began to offer more comprehensive capabilities in specific areas, in order to fully satisfy their desired outcomes. Many VantagePoint clients recognize both the challenges and the risks in identifying the best opportunities to pursue, and can therefore take strategically appropriate measures to realize them.

Most companies—and our clients are no exception—have wrung out as many costs as they possibly can and now are actively looking for the right growth strategies to further impact their bottom line. In the past two weeks alone, three new clients have engaged VantagePoint to assess their market opportunity options, define a clear path of pursuit, and provide the right tools to help them realize their potential within the selected market opportunities.

All this brings me back full circle to the point of the changes we have made to support our new strategic intent "to advance our clients' businesses by enabling them to identify, pursue and realize market opportunities." That's why we exist; pure and simple. We take the guesswork out of where companies should focus and instead provide very real and tangible marketing solutions to help them turn opportunities into realities, helping them to achieve their desired growth goals.

We would be delighted to provide a better understanding of how we can help you to not only identify your best opportunities of pursuit but also to realize them, through our demonstrated pragmatic approach and marketing solutions that work. As a VantagePoint client, you'll be in good company; our expertise is dedicated to companies whose sales are between $50 million and $2 billion. For more information, call us today or visit our recently updated Web site at www.vantagep.com.

Craig O'Neal
President/CEO
VantagePoint

Determining a value proposition that resonates

Successful go-to-market strategies require five key specifics: identification of the right market, the right target customer, the right channel(s) to market, the right product and the right value proposition.

The right value proposition sounds deceptively simple, but this key point often falls victim to the most erroneous of strategy pitfalls—"we know what our customers need." Truth is, in many cases we don't know what the right customers want. We may know what customers generally want; we may even know what history has shown us customers generally buy, or generally don't buy. But general strategies usually fail.

Value propositions resonate when they are:

  • Simple: Be clear, concise, and easy to understand. Explain the "Why."

  • Compelling: Bold, strong statements motivate the customer to investigate. Can you quantify the compelling statement in financial or other measurable terms?

  • Believable: Make claims that are reasonable and realistic. Doubt kills.

  • Attractive: They resonate with the targeted customer for the right reasons.
The success of every go-to-market strategy decision (in this case value proposition) is based on the depth of your understanding about customers' needs, expectations and behaviors. Assumptions and anecdotal information just don't work.

There is only one way to get "real" customer insight—systematic, rigorous input of what the customers in your markets buy, why they buy it, how they buy it and what will get them to buy more of it.

Using such voice of the customer data, VantagePoint utilizes a proprietary Buying Map process to determine the appropriate value propositions (yes, there are multiple value propositions to consider) throughout the go-to-market strategy. We have found the greater the clarity and relevance to the target audience, the greater the value proposition's ability to motivate the audience.

Wayne Cameron
VP of Strategic Services
VantagePoint

VantagePoint launches new corporate Web site

VantagePoint has launched our new Web site to provide streamlined functionality and navigation and to showcase our solutions and services in an easy and intuitive manner.

"B-to-B marketing is constantly evolving, and VantagePoint is as well," says Craig O'Neal, President and CEO of VantagePoint, Inc. "Our new Web site captures the essence of our value proposition and strategic intent—helping our clients identify, pursue and realize opportunities."

Our clients typically approach us in one of two ways: they're looking for a solution to a particular business issue,such as channel marketing or a new product launch, or they need a firm to provide a specific service, such as creating a new Web site. With this in mind, we have structured the site with two entry points—Solutions and Services—to make it easier for our visitors to understand how we can help them.

We're also working to create a portal where our marketing partner clients can access their Resource Centers through our home page.

The new Web site is only the beginning. Just as we assist our clients in keeping their Web sites' content relevant and fresh, we will do the same for our site. It's our intent to make www.vantagep.com the destination of choice for B-to-B marketers.

Staying true to VantagePoint's outcome-focused orientation, in the end our Web site—like our clients' Web sites—is just one tool to stay in touch with our clients and to move their businesses, and ours, forward.

Geoff Smith
Director of New Business and Interactive Marketing
VantagePoint

Manufacturers expect to raise Web spending

According to a study by SVM E-Business Solutions:
78% of of manufacturing companies plan to increase spending on their corporate Web site this year
60% of manufacturers will increase spending on e-mail marketing
48% will boost spending on search engine marketing
52% of respondents consider their Web site to be their most powerful marketing tool

Reprinted with permission from BtoB Magazine, BtoBonline.com, ®2006 Crain Communications.

E-mail back in the media mix

Forrester Research senior analyst Shar VanBoskirk says, "E-mail is second only to search in companies' online marketing budgets today, with 80% of marketers using, piloting or planning e-mail marketing programs, and 88% expecting e-mail effectiveness to increase in the next three years."

Excerpt from article by Carol Krol, reprinted with permission from BtoB Magazine, BtoBonline.com, ®2006 Crain Communications.

Five tips for reliable online survey results

Online survey sources are plentiful and can be inexpensive. But simply having the tool won't lead to reliable results. Here are five tips for maximizing response rates and the quality of results:

  • Validate assumptions. Focus your effort by having some expectations in mind and then using the survey to test your assumptions. A good rule of thumb is that research should validate 60%-70% of intuition, and the rest should be new insight.
  • Match the survey type to your objectives. Online surveys aren't good for every purpose. Use Web surveys to get a general sense of what your customers think about a topic, telephone research for deeper discussion and focus groups if you want to dive deeply into a topic.
  • Make the survey interesting. Even long surveys can yield very good response rates if the questions are interesting. And seek an audience that cares deeply about the survey topic.
  • Keep it simple. Keep questions short and specific, and avoid complex, hypothetical questions that require people to make a lot of assumptions.
  • Avoid the most common questionnaire errors. One common mistake is asking demographic questions at the beginning of the survey. It basically tells the person you're trying to sell them something. Another is leading the respondent with questions that mention your product name. A third is to offer response options that are unbalanced. Also, avoid questions that ask for a rating on a one-to-10 scale. Five-or seven-point scales are more statistically valid.

Excerpt from article by Paul Gillin, reprinted with permission from BtoB Magazine, BtoBonline.com, ®2006 Crain Communications.

How important is a great Web site?

According to Jakob Nielsen, principal at Nielsen Norman Group, busy business people have stopped saving brochures and advertisements because they assume they can look up the equivalent information on the Web.

Nielsen's group is just finishing a usability study of B-to-B sites. He says most of the research participants told them that when they are considering doing business with a company, one of their first actions is to check out its Web site. Thus a site that inadequately communicates the credibility of a vendor and its products can have a seriously detrimental effect on incoming leads, long before you start your official sales efforts.

Reprinted with permission from BtoB Magazine, BtoBonline.com, ®2006 Crain Communications.

Online video ads grow

Online video ad spending in the U.S. will reach $640 million in 2007, according to research firm eMarketer. By 2009 advertisers will spend $1.50 billion on video ads online, eMarketer projected.

Excerpt from article by Kate Maddox, reprinted with permission from BtoB Magazine, BtoBonline.com, ®2006 Crain Communications.

What's new at VantagePoint

VantagePoint adds two to support new strategic intent:

Charles Richardson, VantagePoint's new Associate Creative Director, is responsible for both concept development and copywriting for VantagePoint and our key clients. Richardson most recently served as Associate Creative Director for Jackson-Dawson Marketing Solutions, where he worked for six years, and was previously with Leslie Advertising for eight years. He earned BS and MA degrees in English from the University of South Carolina.
Suzanne Douglass has joined VantagePoint in the role of Public Relations Specialist. Douglass has worked in a variety of supporting PR roles, most recently with St. Francis Health System. She earned her degree in Public Relations Journalism from Bob Jones University. She will be involved with supporting the public relations needs of several key VantagePoint clients.

VantagePoint wins big in multiple creative awards venues:

VantagePoint recently won multiple awards for our creative marketing and advertising efforts on behalf of several of our business-to-business clients in the Southeast.

"We are honored that VantagePoint's work for our partner clients has earned so much recognition from a variety of distinguished organizations," stated Craig O'Neal, VantagePoint's President and CEO. "We are dedicated to providing exceptionally compelling creative work that will produce results for our clients. These latest awards demonstrate that we are accomplishing this important and focused objective."

The 2006 Summit Creative Awards competition is dedicated to furthering excellence in the communications industry. Among thousands of submissions from twenty-six countries, VantagePoint brought home the gold - and more - in the following categories:
Gold: Faces Trade Show Graphics Client: Capsugel (Trade Show/Display)
Silver: CSI Brochure Client: Saia (B2B 4/Color Product/Services Brochure)
Bronze: CommScope Product Direct Mail Client: CommScope (B2B Magazine/Newspaper)

Transportation Sales & Marketing Association (TSMA) Communication Awards Competition promotes effective advertising and marketing in the transportation industry. Second Place: CSI Brochure with interactive CSI CD Client: Saia (Sales Literature category)

2006 PICA (The Printing Industry of the Carolinas) Awards: Lewis E. Kale Memorial Award for Best Process Color Printing for the Capsugel Printing Brochure. PICA is the symbol of print media excellence throughout the Carolinas.