B2B Lead Blog

I am especially looking forward to the next B2B Lead Roundtable webinar. You should be, too, if you’re eager to find out how your peers are responding to today’s marketplace, and how this represents an unprecedented opportunity to drive the highest performance from your marketing efforts.

Jen Doyle, MarketingSherpa Senior Research Manager and Lead Author of the 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report, will reveal key takeaways from this just-released publication, which is based on a survey of marketers from 1,745 B2B organizations.

We weren’t surprised by their responses. However, to call 2011 a tough year is an understatement, to say the least. Respondents admitted that their marketing tactics simply aren’t working like they used to, and reported  as much as a 50% decline in effectiveness for even their most tried-and-true marketing strategies since last year.

However, Jen will reveal how these challenges merely point to abundant opportunity to improve overall marketing strategy. She’ll show you precisely where that opportunity lies by guiding you through a five-step funnel optimization process that will ensure you produce better marketing results next year. I will be joining her, as will Kaci Bower, MarketingSherpa research analyst. Together, the three of us are going to provide takeaways you can begin using now to overcome today’s marketing challenges and set the foundation for higher marketing ROI in 2012.

If you’re eager to transform this year’s pressures into powerful results, watch the webinar replay below.

View Slides on Slideshare

Lead Generation, Lead Management, Lead Nurturing, Marketing Strategy, Webcasts/Webinars

Your success hinges on what you accomplish in the time you have, and that is never more true than these last few months of the year as we all race to meet projections, quotas and sales goals.

At our next B2B Lead Roundtable webinar, I will once again be joined by an outstanding in-the-trenches marketer, Pamela Markey, MECLABS Director of Marketing & Brand Strategy. Every day, Pamela is driving opportunity to MECLABS and is all too familiar with the challenges marketers are facing, especially at year’s end.

Together, we’ll continue the conversation we began in our last webinar as we reveal what has helped ourselves, our clients and businesses that have submitted their experiences to MarketingSherpa and MarketingExperiments, the primary research organizations of MECLABS.

(Missed the first webinar? Watch it here: b2bleadblog.com/part1)

In just 45 minutes, you’re going to learn how to effectively seize the next three months to drive the very best outcomes and begin 2012 from a place of power. Find out:

• How to avoid wasting time on the wrong prospects by directing energies to the ones who will be most likely to buy.
• Identify the best timing and methodology for contacting prospects – how long to persevere and when to call it a day.
• Generate timely feedback from sales on every lead you give them – and why that’s absolutely critical to success.

If you’re eager for a solid finish to 2011, I strongly recommend you attend!

Inside Sales, Lead Generation, Lead Management, Leadership, Marketing Strategy, Sales

The graph at right, published in MarketingSherpa’s 2011 Benchmark Report, provides a snapshot of what marketers care about most. And it’s very telling, especially now. As we approach the fourth quarter, I am acutely aware of why marketers believe generating better leads is a higher priority than generating more leads.

In an economy that’s more precarious than ever, there’s simply no room to waste time, budget or resources.  And there is little that is more wasteful, and frustrating, than chasing down leads that will never be customers. It’s no wonder generating a high volume of leads has dropped in priority as sales cycles have become longer – lots of poorly qualified leads can bring a sales cycle to a screeching halt.

Conversely, I have learned how to accelerate your sales cycle to warp drive: fill it with well-qualified leads.

That’s why, during our next two B2B Lead Roundtable webinars, I’ll examine the smartest strategies you can execute right now to attract the highest-qualified leads to your sales funnel and speed them directly to your bottom line – just in time to meet your end-of-year goals. Finish 2011 Strong: Six Funnel Focal Points to Maximize Time, Resources and Revenues – Part II will be held Tuesday, September 20, at noon EDT, 11 a.m. CDT, and 9 a.m. PDT.

If you’re concerned about how you’re going to meet your sales goals and revenue projections, I strongly encourage you to attend.

Lead Generation, Marketing Strategy, Sales Leads, Webcasts/Webinars

In the infographic below, MarketingSherpa gives us a sneak peak at key findings from their upcoming 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Study, which will undoubtedly be discussed in detail at their B2B Summits in Boston this September and San Francisco this October.

The infographic dissects all the stages of the marketing funnel – from lead generation to sales conversion – and the best strategies and tactics marketers are using to drive leads from one stage of the funnel to the next. For a complete, printable PDF go here:  MarketingSherpa Infographic

Here’s the irony and the opportunity: nearly 70 percent of marketing organizations haven’t even identified their own marketing funnel yet. But marketers whose organizations haven’t should be celebrating, says Jen Doyle, Senior Research Manager at MarketingSherpa.

“In the increasingly challenging B2B marketing environment, this represents a huge opportunity for marketers to get ahead of the curve, to be true contributors to the success of their organizations and see their work result in significantly improved ROI,” she enthuses. “Identifying and optimizing their marketing funnel will be great for their companies, not to mention their own careers.  

“Conversely, if they don’t develop their funnels, their marketing activities won’t be nearly as effective as they could be,” she points out.

That doesn’t surprise me, considering that tactics without strategy are little more than tasks. In this economic climate, who can afford to do tasks without the best possible results?

If you’re one of those marketers who are eager to take their organization’s revenue, and their careers, to the next level, I strongly encourage you to attend the B2B Summit and its Post-Summit Workshop. You’re going to get the hands-on training you need to intelligently start developing your marketing funnel immediately when you return to the office. Even better, if you belong to the B2B Lead Roundtable, you’re going to get the workshop for free – a $495 value – and $500 off the registration fee. Click here to learn more.

In the meantime, I also recommend you read this blog: Four Reasons Why Funnels are a Marketer’s Best Friend.

Marketing Strategy

According to MarketingSherpa’s 2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report, almost 70 percent of B2B organizations increased their inbound marketing budgets this year. This includes website design, management, and optimization, as well as inbound-marketing tactics including social media, virtual events and webinars, SEO and pay-per-click.

If you’re making the same investment, you will definitely want to attend our next B2B Lead Roundtable Webinar on July 19, Research from Harvard, MIT Pinpoints Hard Lead Conversion Lessons with Easy Solutions. David Elkington, Chairman and CEO of InsideSales.com, will share how his company has joined forces with these academic leaders to study how companies are managing the leads they’re generating through inbound marketing efforts.

The results are going to surprise and may even alarm you.

Consider this: merely responding to the leads you receive will put you ahead of 40 percent of B2B organizations! Companies are spending more money than ever to drive leads through their websites and the Internet, and yet, nearly half don’t follow up! That means there’s outstanding opportunity for those who do. David will give you practical, easy-to-implement ideas, underscored by case studies, to make sure you hold onto leads once you get them. The discussion will include:

• The speed at which leads go cold – it’s a lot faster than you think – and what to do about it
• The average time it takes companies to respond to leads
• The average attempts sales people make before they give up
• Why caller ID matters – even for B2B sales calls
• The best time of the day and day of the week to follow up with prospects

Watch the webinar replay:

B2B Telemarketing, Lead Management, Webcasts/Webinars

I’ve been having an identity crisis of sorts lately.

I’ve spent my career working in B2B. This blog and the LinkedIn group to which it’s connected are all about B2B lead generation.

Problem is, I don’t know if B2B is an accurate acronym anymore. David Meerman Scott in this interview insists that B2B and B2C are essentially the same: “Ultimately it’s people doing business with people…I think a lot of business-to-business companies forget that and they think they’re selling to Xerox and IBM and Cisco. No, they’re selling to the people at Xerox and IBM and Cisco.”

In contrast, Kristin Zhivago, who is going to be one of our keynote speakers at MarketingSherpa’s B2B Summits this fall, points out that B2B and B2C are as similar as a hysterical Justin Bieber fan and a Fortune 50 CEO. Read more in her recent Revenue Journal blog.

Here’s the paradox: I think Scott and Zhivago are both right.

B2B and B2C both have a common ground: relationships. But I don’t mean the “let’s play a round of golf” or “BFF” kind of relationship, I mean relationships that create professional trust, where “you’re in sync with your customer,” as Zhivago puts it. After all, in today’s economic climate, there’s just no room in anyone’s budget for a bad purchasing decision; jobs may hinge on solutions selected. That’s why marketing has to be more targeted than ever. We must identify precisely who our customers are. We must know how to speak to them and give them the information they want and need in a way that makes them pay attention and take the right action.

Consider this just-published MarketingSherpa case study.

In short, Central Desktop, a B2B software company, launched a cloud-based project-management platform. They determined their target market was executives in top advertising agencies and their affiliates. They developed a campaign encompassing email, direct mail, landing pages, and social media that were “in sync” with the mindset of this target market and engaged them in a conversation that was carried across multiple channels. (If you want to learn more about how to do the same, read this article.) It ultimately ended with a phone call from a sales professional to the warm leads. (This is where I would advise having a professional teleprospector make the initial phone call to qualify opportunity. This will increase the productivity of sales professionals whose time is more valuable. Dave Green explains more about this here.) Nonetheless, the campaign resulted in an increase in pipeline verging on 30 percent.

But here’s the point: their effort wasn’t B2B or B2C, it was B2CMO and B2VP.

Certainly, broad terms like B2B and B2C have their place – like big networking groups such as the B2B Lead Roundtable. But they’re not going to define my company’s marketplace and they shouldn’t define yours either. Do you agree? I welcome your thoughts.

Thought Leadership

If anyone knows the smartest, most innovative approaches marketers are using right now to drive more ROI, it’s Sergio Balegno. As Director of Research for MarketingSherpa/MECLABS Primary Research, he and his team of analysts regularly survey B2B marketers and compile their findings in publications like the just-released Social Marketing Benchmark Report. It analyzes how 3,342 B2B marketers are strategically leveraging social marketing and proving its value to the C-suite, which is what Sergio will discuss at our next B2B Lead Roundtable Webinar on June 21.

He’ll reveal how:

• B2B marketers are integrating social media and SEO to increase conversion rates by 59 percent.
• One B2B company used this combination to pull 70 percent more leads and double annual revenue per account.
• You can apply these strategies to do the same for your organization. 

This isn’t going to be another social media webinar talking about listening to your customers and being authentic. This will focus on key social media and SEO integration strategies that are driving real business results right now. If that’s what you want from your social marketing strategy, this webinar will definitely be an intelligent investment of your time.  I hope you can make it!

Lead Generation, Social Media, Webcasts/Webinars

Last week, I attended the first-ever MarketingSherpa/MarketingExperiments Optimization Summit in Atlanta. It was an
evidence-based marketer’s dream, three days chock full of real-world case studies and analyses that drilled down to the intricacies of what makes some online marketing campaigns convert better than others.

What surprised me, however, was how little this has to do with website or landing page design and how much it has to do with a prospect’s mindset. These marketers definitely weren’t learning where to place button “A” to get the most conversions, in fact, they learned that no matter how successful a landing page, chances are, copying the treatment simply won’t yield the same results.

That’s because no matter how brilliant the landing page, you’re not going to be having the same conversation with your customers as the brilliant designer is having with theirs. Which brings me back to the points of this article, “Integrate Online and Offline Marketing Efforts to Continue the Conversation.” Even though we use different mediums, lead generation is all about having a conversation that engages our customers and guides them along the buying cycle.

And these days, that buying cycle typically brings them to a landing page that will further speak to them in a way that will ultimately drive them closer to a sale. That’s definitely not about where to place a button; it’s about thoroughly understanding what motivates the customer to “click here.”

As Flint McGlaughlin, Managing Director and CEO of MECLABS, put it: “You don’t optimize landing pages, you optimize thought processes.”

Online marketing optimization leverages testing to make sure you’re speaking as clearly as possible and really getting through to prospects. As Adam Lapp, Associate Director, Optimization and Strategy for MECLABS Conversion Group, explains in this post, “Landing Page Optimization: Is it actually possible to optimize a landing page?,” that’s a never-ending journey.

While it certainly would be simpler to copy what someone else is doing successfully and apply their ideas wholesale to your online marketing campaigns, you must understand where your own customers are coming from and what’s driving them forward.

If you’re interested in more takeaways from the summit, I encourage you to check out these links:

Optimization Summit Wrap-up: 6 takeaways to improve your tests and results

Test with Poor Results Can Improve Marketing

Why Landing Page Optimization is So Important

Live from the Optimization Summit: Landing Page Optimization with Boris Grinkot

Live Experiment (Part 1): How many marketers does it take to optimize a web page?

Email Marketing, Marketing Strategy, ROI Measurement, Web/Tech

If you attended our most recent B2B Lead Roundtable webinar, you found out why Brandon Stamschror, Senior Director of Operations for MECLABS Leads Group, is passionate about investing in the very best data possible: it may cost more upfront, but the return is more than worth it.

During the presentation, Brandon details an experiment with a $3.6 billion Cisco partner where the difference between the best- and worst-performing lists was almost $600 per lead. They lowered their cost-per-lead by 60% by testing and improving the quality of their marketing lists.

Brandon expanded on this topic even further during an interview with David Kirkpatrick, a MarketingSherpa reporter. Brandon reveals why:

• Your database is probably not what you think it is.
• You should only collect the data you need.
• You’re never done cleaning lists.

For some insight on how to maximize the top of your marketing funnel and why that makes revenue flow faster, be sure to check out Brandon’s interview:

MarketingSherpa: B2B Marketing: Building a quality list

Let us know what else you would like to learn about attaining and maintaining data to drive more leads; we’ll be happy to address your questions here or in future webinars.

B2B Telemarketing, CRM, Direct Marketing, Lead Generation, Marketing Strategy, ROI Measurement, Sales, Web/Tech

I have a confession: you know the cliché about the cobbler’s kids? I’ve been there and done that. And you can see proof of it back in April, 2009, when I blogged about how to best leverage LinkedIn as a lead generation tool.  Step five was “create your own LinkedIn group and share relevant content.”

The problem was that my company at the time, InTouch, which became a part of MECLABS this year, didn’t have its own LinkedIn Group.  My message to my blog readers should have been, “Do as I say not as I do.”

I knew, having advised my readers to start a LinkedIn group, that I should at least consider doing the same. But I wanted to make absolutely sure that whatever I created would contribute value that couldn’t be found anywhere else. Why add to the noise?

So I began perusing groups in earnest. Surprisingly, I couldn’t find any one, at the time, that was completely dedicated to lead generation. Okay, let me qualify that – one that was completely dedicated to lead generation without self-promotion drowning out discussions that addressed real issues. That was the gap that needed to be filled, so three weeks later I launched the B2B Lead Roundtable.

Today, we’re celebrating its second birthday, and I am proud to say we are on the verge of 8,500 members. In fact, I expect that we will reach and exceed that milestone this week.

I am also glad that the B2B Lead Roundtable became what I had hoped: a forum where professionals can share their questions and insights without being inundated with people trying to sell them something. Instead, they’re given legitimate, compelling feedback from professionals who genuinely know what they’re talking about.  That’s probably because the vast majority are seasoned executives.

Read more…

B2B Telemarketing, Content Marketing, Current Affairs, Lead Generation, Lead Management, Lead Nurturing, Lead Qualification, Lead Scoring, Leadership, Marketing Strategy, Social Media, Thought Leadership, Web/Tech