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B2B Lead Generation Articles on lead generation
- Should Marketers Shift From Brand Awareness to Lead Generation?
Sales X Marketing | Jun 10, 2009 | Permalink
In the current economic climate, should marketers be shifting more budget from brand awareness to lead generation? Focusing efforts on your web and online activities for lead generation can be well measured, and is in fact brand-building as well. I...
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- Pushing Prospects through the Pipeline
Accelerating IT Sales | Jun 10, 2009 | Permalink
A recent Marketing Sherpa report addresses lead nurturing best practices, and is a helpful update on how to best reach prospects once they've engaged with your content, but not independently returned to your site. By applying the practices outlined in Lead Nurturing Best Practices: New Data, Charts, Tips to Put More Punch in Your Cultivation Tactics, you can align your lead nurturing program with what's shown to be working industry-wide. In compiling this report, Marketing Sherpa partnered with Eloqua (a lead management & demand generation powerhouse) and On24 (a leader in the virtual event and webinar space), to survey over 1000 marketing professionals to learn about their lead nurturing methods. According to the report, lead generation isn't what's difficult - with the general t...
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- Keywords, content and tag clouds
Accelerating IT Sales | Jun 10, 2009 | Permalink
Have you seen or heard of tag clouds, yet never been too sure what they are or why they're on so many sites? Have you ever want to see what your website or blog would look like with a tag cloud? I was curious about tag clouds myself - so I did a little research and created a few tag clouds to share on this site. According to Wikipedia, tag clouds are "...visual depictions of user-generated tags, or simply the word content of a site, used typically to describe the content of web sites." Flikr, the photo sharing site, was the first high-profile website to use tag clouds, while the origins of tag clouds can be traced back to Douglas Coupland's 1995 Microserfs. The first site I found was TagCrowd. TagCrowd is a web service that allows you to use their technology to create a tag cloud fo...
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- BtoB Online Goes Interactive with the Lead Generation Guide 2008
Accelerating IT Sales | Jun 10, 2009 | Permalink
The recently released the BtoB Online Lead Generation Guide 2008 provides a comprehensive overview of the B2B lead generation industry's recent innovations and upcoming trends, and is published in an interactive format that puts their own suggestions regarding content usage into action. The interactive guide has a range of features that allow users to search, bookmark, customize, and generally manipulate their experience with the content within. To explain all of the features, the guide contains a narrated tutorial that points out and explains each of the features available. The fact that BtoB Online published the guide as more an interactive tool than as a document is interesting, and could signify a change in how content is distributed online. In the past, most similar publication...
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- Scrub Your Leads For Job Security
Accelerating IT Sales | Jun 10, 2009 | Permalink
Email list hygiene - and the specific practice of scrubbing out bad email addresses - should be of the utmost concern for any of you out there who actively distribute marketing materials via email messages or enewsletters. When sending your marketing materials to huge lists that have not been scrubbed for junk, you run the risk of destroying your company's reputation and losing business along the way. And while it would be easy to sit here and cite statistics about email bounce rates, blacklisting and silent deletes done by ISPs, I think the issue of list hygiene can best be explained by putting yourself in your clients' shoes. If you are a third-party email marketer, your clients have placed their trust (and their money) in your business model - they provide you with content, you m...
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- Using Social Media to Shorten Sales Cycles
Accelerating IT Sales | Jun 10, 2009 | Permalink
Social media and online communities have exploded over the past few years, but most B2B marketers still haven't figured out how social media can be implemented and monetized as part of their overall marketing strategies. With stable revenue sources already in place, insignificant budgets for developing and building new (and untested) marketing tools, and little data on the ROI of social media, B2B marketers are sticking with traditional online models (including lead generation and banner advertising) and resisting the inclusion of social media tools on their sites and in their campaigns. If your company is already running a website that, through email marketing, SEO tactics, and organic traffic, attracts return visitors regularly and requires users to register to view content, than ad...
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- How B2B Marketers Can Monetize Social Media
Accelerating IT Sales | Jun 10, 2009 | Permalink
If you've been trying to introduce social media and networking tools and create an online community centered around your company, products or services, there's a good chance that you've hit walls when it comes to explaining how exactly these new products can be monetized. While B2C has leveraged the power of social media and social networking with great success, B2B is still struggling to justify the investments required to develop, host, and manage social tools and communities on their websites. In most companies, new product ideas are welcomed and products are developed when there is a clear path to ROI - if something isn't fiscally viable, it probably won't last long in many marketing departments. Since social media and networking is still relatively young, there isn't a vast repos...
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- B2B Lead Qualifcation- Your Lead Generation Campaign Effectiveness Monitoring...
ReadyContacts | Jun 10, 2009 | Permalink
We’ve discussed the advantages of setting up a dedicated lead qualification process to help connect with and qualify inbound leads and leads generated from various marketing programs like events, conferences, whitepaper downloads etc. and a recent sequence of events here at the ReadyContacts brought to light another advantage of having a strong lead qualification process [...]
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- How Good Data Turbo Charges Lead Generation: An Interview With Green Leads Pr...
ReadyContacts | Jun 10, 2009 | Permalink
As we continue our quest to uncover more expert insights into how quality marketing data impacts the effectiveness and success of marketing and sales campaigns across businesses we had the good fortune of discussing some of these issues with demand creation and sales 2.0 thought leader Michael Damphousse, President of Green Leads in this interview. [...]
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- How Good Data Turbo Charges Lead Generation: An Interview With Ardath Albee C...
ReadyContacts | Jun 10, 2009 | Permalink
Our interview series on “How Good Data Turbo Charges Lead Generation” is turning out more exciting with each passing weak and uncovering some really good insights from experts in the B2B marketing and lead generation space. This week we speak to Ardath Albee, CEO of Marketing Interactions and author of the upcoming book E-Marketing Strategies for [...]
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- Should Marketers Shift From Brand Awareness to Lead Generation?
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 and <a href='http://www.on24.com/'>On24</a> (a leader in the virtual event and webinar space), to survey over 1000 marketing professionals to learn about their lead nurturing methods. </p>
<p><img src='http://www.acceleratingitsales.com/pipeline_revised_2.jpg' height='249' alt='pipeline_revised_2.jpg' align='right' width='165'/></p>
<p>According to the report, lead generation isn't what's difficult - with the general thinking being that most lead generating companies already have plenty of leads, they just don't have plenty of sales ready leads. In order to deliver high-quality, sales-ready prospects to your sales team, you need to put your energies into nurturing your existing leads over the long term, and expect that it will take up to 24 months for some of your leads to turn into sales. To effectively nurture leads over the long term, your lead nurturing programs need to be elevated within your organization, and given the same kind of time and energy that's put into generating leads.</p>
<p>The Marketing Sherpa report touches on a few key concepts that I've examined and explained in further detail below:<br/>
<strong><br/>
Best Practice #1. Use multi-media touches to nurture leads </strong></p>
<p>In order to effectively reach your prospects, you need to use more than email newsletters or triggered email messages to move leads through your sales pipeline. While email marketing is a tried-and-true method of nurturing leads, you need to do more. According to the report, a combination of email messages, direct mail, and telemarketing efforts works best when trying to segment your leads. </p>
<p>If you really want to reach people where it counts, you can look to telemarketing as a tool to help increase your brand awareness, determine where in the buying cycle prospects are, and offer educational materials to help further their awareness of your company, products and services. Direct mail is a great way to invite people to virtual and face-to-face events, and remind users of new content or marketing materials they might want to check out on your site. Email marketing is a good tool for drip-nurturing, and can be employed when you have a group of prospects that are actively involved in researching solutions, and want to nudged along with new content or new information related to your offerings. <br/>
<strong><br/>
Best Practice #2. Quick response to Web leads can maximize conversions </strong></p>
<p>With our always-on world, it's no longer good enough to wait 24-hours before making contact with a new prospect. With so many competitors vying for the same sets of eyes, it's crucial that you cement your relationship with new leads inside of an hour (!). And according to the Marketing Sherpa data, "calls placed within five minutes of receiving a Web lead have the highest likelihood of making contact." </p>
<p>To achieve this kind of real-time responsiveness, you need to move toward automating your lead generation and reporting processes, so that leads land in your CRM system as soon as they're generated. And while moving from weekly lead reports to automated reporting processes might require an overhaul of your entire lead management practices, doing so may also significantly improve your overall sales. </p>
<p><strong>Best Practice #3. Use a lead scoring system </strong></p>
<p>Lead scoring is a great way to segment your leads and determine how best each prospect should be nurtured through the pipeline. By rating leads based on a series of filters, such as their location, their time frame for implementing a solution, or their role in the IT decision making process, you can place your leads in separate silos, and nurture each group according to their specific needs. </p>
<p>Scoring is also an effective way to separate the "wheat from the chaff," and figure out how long any given lead should require nurturing before they reach sales readiness. While some leads may enter your sales pipeline with low scores, you can develop strategies for nurturing those prospects and keep your pipeline full as each group of leads receives your messages and moves through the buying process. </p>
<p>By scoring leads, automating reporting so that leads are contacted immediately upon entering your CRM system, and nurturing your scored and segmented prospects with a variety of tools, you should be able to accelerate your sales as you continuously move leads through the pipeline. </p>
<p>You can learn more about Lead Nurturing by listening to this podcast from <a href='http://www.theinnovativemarketer.com/'>The Innovative Marketer</a>, <a href='http://media.eloqua.com/audio/TIM22.mp3'>What is lead nurturing and why should you care?</a></p><img src='http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~r/AcceleratingItSales/~4/sCBFB5JiLFc' height='1' width='1'/>)
, I can select the "Links" option and see a list of all of the URLs on the page or in the guide! The publication also contains a fairly in-depth search feature, the ability to bookmark pages and have the bookmarks appear in my browser bookmarks/favorites, and social networking functionalities.</p>
<p>The inclusion of a "<a href='http://www.btob-digital.com/leadgenerationguide/2008/templates/send_to_friend?pg=1&pm=1&u1=friend'>Share</a>" option in the navigation bar is a big step for the B2B crowd which has been slower than the consumer sect in the full adoption of social networking within the industry. By addressing social networking in the very make-up of this guide however, BtoB Online is acknowledging the momentum that social networking has gained in the past year, and invited the use of social networking across the industry. </p>
<p>The guide can be embedded into blogs as a custom widget, shared with friends via an easy-to-use message containing the URL, or submitted to social networking sites such as <a href='http://www.stumbledupon.com/'>Stumbledupon</a>, <a href='http://www.newsvine.com/'>Newsvine</a>, and <a href='http://digg.com/'>digg</a>, among others. </p>
<p>In addition to the new interactive format, the guide also contains a host of valuable information for anyone working in the B2B lead generation industry. From advice on lead scoring and lead nurturing to resources for those looking to find out more about lead management vendors or understand the industry through statistics, the guide is packed full of useful tools. </p><img src='http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~r/AcceleratingItSales/~4/zp1jcgBhMNk' height='1' width='1'/>){kind=logo}
 in your business model - they provide you with content, you market their content with a variety of email messaging tools, and you send them a list of names (or leads) who have responded to their content. This method of generating leads is used by all kinds of companies (both consumer and B2B-based), and helps all of the involved parties in achieving their business goals. The client is presented with a list of high-quality, (hopefully) sales-ready leads, and the lead generation company is well-compensated for their efforts.</p>
<p>While mutually beneficial however, this relationship relies on the lead generation company's maintenance of their email lists. When working with a reputable lead generation organization, you should feel confident that the leads they deliver not only meet your specific requirements (such as being from certain geographical locations, or from companies of particular sizes), but that they also come with correct contact information. It's easy to generate 1000 leads, what's more difficult is generating 1000 qualified leads!</p>
<p>At the <a href='http://www.webbuyersguide.com/'>Web Buyer's Guide</a>, we have developed a lead management system that allows us to scrub out junk leads on the back-end, and therefore remove junk from our lead databases. Before this system was in place, we would unintentionally sell those tricky-to-spot, but poisonous leads with titles like "None of Your Business," and names like, "Mickey Mouse." Since gaining the capability to scrub lists of new subscribers before they even become potential leads however, our rate of delivering junk leads has plummeted. </p>
<p>When we do occasionally deliver a random junk lead, I always feel bad, and worry about how our clients might respond. And while we never charge for junk leads, I also fear that some clients won't bother reporting their findings (and receiving a refund), and will instead simply choose to stop doing business with our company. After all, if a client purchases 100 leads and 5 are junk, they've potentially been gypped out of a couple hundred dollars worth of leads!</p>
<p>From years of experience in delivering leads, I've learned that it's easier to scrub lists when you're not under immediate pressure to deliver your product. By building some sort of system into your business practices that allows you to clean your lists before you're faced with the pressure of generating leads, you are more likely to remove junk that's both obvious (Mickey Mouse) and less obvious (Bart Simpson). Personally, I would much rather ditch the leads on the back-end than lose business by delivering junk. </p><img src='http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~r/AcceleratingItSales/~4/0ZQXyNOoZNs' height='1' width='1'/>)
 marketing tools, and little data on the ROI of social media, <a href='http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.san&s=93322&Nid=48678&p=975096'>B2B marketers are sticking with traditional online models</a> (including lead generation and banner advertising) and resisting the inclusion of social media tools on their sites and in their campaigns. <img src='http://www.acceleratingitsales.com/staircase.jpg' height='195' alt='staircase.jpg' align='right' width='195'/></p>
<p>If your company is already running a website that, through email marketing, SEO tactics, and organic traffic, attracts return visitors regularly and requires users to register to view content, than adding social media and networking tools is a logical next step for growing your business. By providing loyal users with a website focused on serving their needs and hearing their opinions, you build stickiness into your site, encourage increased engagement with your content, and gain priceless insight into what your members are researching, testing out, engaging with, and most of all - thinking about purchasing.</p>
<p>B2B marketers already know that the buying process is lengthy, especially when big businesses are making the purchases, and everyone from the development group to the CFO is involved in making the final decision. This process means that B2B buyers seek out content, share their findings with colleagues, engage with various kinds of research materials, and consume educational materials until a consensus is achieved and a purchase is made. </p>
<p>If marketers already know that the B2B buying process lasts anywhere from 3 - 18 months (depending on the size/revenue of the buyer & the costs involved), and that successfully navigating this process requires offering a range of content and content delivery methods that appeal to potential buyers, than creating a venue where users return regularly, engage with your content, and express their needs (via created content, forums/commenting, reviews, and content consumption) is an ideal way to identify and target users with appropriate and timely messages that ideally help shorten the sales cycle. </p>
<p>By implementing social tools on your site, the quantity, quality, and type of user data that can be collected and analyzed changes, and you gain access to previously unavailable information that can guide you in targeting, customizing and delivering content delivered to users right as they realize that what you've delivered is exactly what they need. While you may need to develop new ways of tracking and reporting how users interact with your site, your efforts will pay off in the form of new types of data that can be used for marketing purposes, included as part of your lead scoring efforts, or offered to clients in an effort to increase your overall cost-per-lead.</p>
<p>In these challenging economic times, vendors are looking for as much information about their prospects as possible, so they can leverage the data and reach out to niche markets, segment their leads according to their stage in the buying cycle, and arm themselves with a better understanding of each of their leads. Allowing users to express themselves via social media tools, self-submit personal information related to their buying needs, and engage with content on their own terms allows leads to fulfill their own research and education needs, and provides sales with a more complete picture of their prospect. Armed with this kind of full-bodied data, you can potentially remove yourself from having to nurture leads through parts of the buying process, and shorten the sales cycle. </p>
<p>Opening up B2B sites to social media has the potential to be a win-win situation: users benefit when they content more deeply, and engage with your content, and sales benefits when they are handed sales-ready leads who have nurtured themselves through the buying process by actively engaging and interacting with your marketing materials. People want their voices heard - and by offering social media on your site, you show users that you really are listening and responding to their needs. </p><img src='http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~r/AcceleratingItSales/~4/37Ea3NSjKog' height='1' width='1'/>)
 however, no one has the ammunition to prove the profitability of using social media as part of their marketing campaigns. </p>
<p>You can sense the impatience of some of the media industry's most influential players in this roundtable video produced by <a href='http://www.foliomag.com/'>FOLIOMag</a>. In this video, <a href='http://www.foliomag.com/video/folio-roundtable'>Creating Community</a> media insiders discuss (and sometimes argue) why social media is so important, and how it can be monetized when partnered with existing lead generation efforts. </p>
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<p>Some of the benefits of social media highlighted in the video include:</p>
<p>1. The ability to use social media to extend your content (by allowing users to create their own content, comment on existing content, and share your content via bookmarking/tagging tools), extend your reach (by breaking down your website's "walls" and connecting to users via widgits and sharing tools), and increase your site's stickiness (by giving users a reason to stick around and interact with your site's offerings).</p>
<p>2. The chance to give your customers what they want, all while gathering deeper information about your audience. This allows you to deliver content with greater relevance and selectively target users with the data they've openly provided.</p>
<p>3. The opportunity to grow your audience by attracting social-savvy users (and their friends), establishing deeper relationships with your users (by responding to their messages, comments and content), and moving away from the current "broadcast" method of communication (1-way communication from you to your users).</p>
<p>4. The competitive advantage of being able to deliver an increased level of depth, quantity, and quality with your leads based on the new kinds of information able to be gathered via the social tools. </p>
<p>5. The capability to reach new advertisers by offering social media as a product on its own merit, or as a part of an integrated marketing campaign.</p>
<p>If you're interested in learning more about how you can measure ROI and monetize social media as part of your overall marketing strategy, the resources below should help you get started.<br/>
<a href='http://constructingsocial.com/planning/'><br/>
Social Media ROI Resources</a> from <a href='http://constructingsocial.com/'>Constructing Social</a><br/>
<a href='http://redplasticmonkey.wordpress.com/2008/03/28/online-community-roi-models-and-reporting-research-study-posted/'><br/>
Online Community ROI: Models and Reporting - Research Study Posted</a> from <a href='http://redplasticmonkey.wordpress.com/'>Bill Johnston: Online Community Strategy</a></p>
<p>A <a href='http://www.marketingcharts.com/'>Marketing Charts</a> Study: <a href='http://www.marketingcharts.com/interactive/study-marketing-execs-must-realize-and-learn-to-use-power-of-social-media-3657/'>Marketing Execs Must Realize and Learn to Use Power of Social Media</a></p>
<p><a href='http://www.frogloop.com/'>Frogloop's</a> ROI Calculator: <a href='http://www.frogloop.com/social-network-calculator'>Is It Worth It? An ROI Calculator for Social Network Campaigns</a></p>
<p>The <a href='http://www.toprankblog.com/'>Online Marketing Blog</a> post: <a href='http://www.toprankblog.com/2008/08/ses-san-jose-social-media-analysis-and-tracking/'>Social Media Analysis and Tracking</a></p><img src='http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~r/AcceleratingItSales/~4/7et7_w2_31E' height='1' width='1'/>)