B2B Lead Blog

If you’re struggling with managing social media programs in the B2B marketplace, Zuzia Soldenhoff-Thorpe  (pictured at below) has some news for you: Most of your peers are too.

Why is she so certain? As a research manager for MECLABS Conversion Group, Zuzia spent two full days at MarketingSherpa’s B2B Summit in San Francisco providing one-on-one coaching to some of the nation’s leading B2B marketers. (Read more about who attended here.)  
Here’s what she has to say about her experience.

After my time in San Francisco, I am further convinced
social media is one of the most
challenging channels for B2B marketers to manage. It’s so unpredictable, yet there’s so much pressure surrounding it – everyone feels like they need to be on every social media channel or else. And there’s so many people claiming to be social media experts,  but don’t just blindly follow their advice. You see, I don’t believe anyone can be a true social media guru because there are constantly new ideas, platforms and  methodologies.

In fact, you could make a full-time job out of monitoring the hundreds of social media blogs and attain hundreds of different opinions on what you should be doing with your social media program. It’s no wonder marketers feel overwhelmed. 

So what’s a B2B marketer to do?

•  Know your audience. Where are they gathering online to learn about your product or services? Do they have favorite publications or platforms they turn to for industry information? For instance, an engineer may have a Facebook profile, but is he really on there to learn about the newest technology?

Fact is, you can never know your audience well enough. This was driven home to me when I had the privilege of spending more than an hour in a coaching session with the head of marketing for a European bank. He revealed to me the details of what should have been a highly successful social media campaign targeting a Scandinavian country. His bank invited fans of a super-popular European sport to submit a video depicting their passion for it to the bank’s Facebook page. Winners received prizes like a week’s stay at a five-star hotel in Abu Dhabi, meeting a star athlete, cash awards and free gear. They blasted online and national TV advertising everywhere throughout the country. They even had 150,000 page views. But alas, only a handful of people people submitted a video.

He was flummoxed. “What could I have done to make it a success?” he asked me.

There really was nothing he could have done, except understand that his audience was more private than other cultures. Apparently, no matter how passionate they are about a sport, his audience clearly wasn’t thrilled with the prospect of displaying that passion to their entire nation.

• Know what your competitors are doing. Analyze and monitor their social media. Learn from their mistakes and successes. Watch what’s being said, and where, about your company, product or service.
   
• Begin with a blog. Why be on social media if you don’t have anything to say? A blog is the means to provide meaningful information your audience will care about and a vehicle to distribute it to other social media platforms. You don’t need to write all of your own content. You can repurpose relevant content you’ve already created – this could be whitepapers, articles, and news releases. Use one of your public relations professionals or a freelance journalist to interview experts within your organization and write a blog post on their behalf. Use guest bloggers or provide content from a third-party source that’s respected in your field.  
   
• Consistency is critical. Make social media the responsibility of one or two people in the organization to maintain a uniform voice and image across your platforms. However, be sure to encourage as many people as possible within your organization to engage, post comments, promote your posts and spread your message.
   
• Because social media is so unpredictable, test and test some more. Is your audience paying attention and what are they paying attention to? Social media was created so people could engage and interact online, so it’s easy to ask and respond to questions, post polls, and conduct surveys. Don’t miss out on this unprecedented opportunity to identify what your audiences wants to see, read and receive.  

Again, developing, managing and monitoring social media is the bane of too many B2B marketers’ professional lives. It doesn’t have to be.  Don’t be overwhelmed by the newest advice from a social media guru.  Be strategic and selective.

What challenges have you faced launching B2B social media campaigns? How did you handle them? We’d love to know. And, if you want to learn more about how to make social media drive real opportunity for your organization, I strongly recommend you subscribe to the MarketingExperiments Blog which reports the latest from real-world marketers on what works – and what doesn’t – in social media, email marketing, content strategy and more.

Content Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Social Media, Weblogs

I just got back from this year’s round of MarketingSherpa B2B Summits in Boston and San Francisco, where I provided one-on-one coaching to attendees, marketers from Fortune 500 organizations, leading private companies, and emerging businesses. (You can read more about who attended here.)

Frankly, I don’t know who walks away more enlightened – the marketers I was coaching or me. Every year, I receive a personal introduction to the struggles they’re facing every day. And even though the latest MarketingSherpa B2B Marketing Benchmark Report essentially reported that it’s tougher than ever to be a marketer, you really can’t grasp how challenging it is until you’re working one-on-one with someone who is essentially a lone ranger for marketing within a large, complex organization.

Here’s what I learned during my coaching sessions this year: to advance in this economy, the C-suite absolutely must recognize the value of marketers and marketing. As part of that, they must give them the time and resources to set the foundation for best-in-class lead generation efforts. Especially considering that, year after year, attaining the highest quantity and quality of leads consistently remains marketers’ highest priority – just check out the graph at right.

Unfortunately, after too many coaching sessions with marketers who had neither the time nor resources to set strategy, I suspect too many CEOs think that most of what they learned in the marketing 101 course they took decades ago still applies today. The reality is (forgive me for preaching to the choir) is that marketing has been transformed in the past ten, even five, years! In fact, as with most everything these days, change is the only constant and you better keep up, or else. You can thank the cut-throat economy for that.

Revenues are scarce. So smart organizations are scrutinizing how they’re spending every penny of their resources. They want to make sure their highest-compensated sales professionals are spending their time closing the biggest deals they can, not qualifying leads or prospecting. They know that’s marketing must lead the way in ensuring this happens, so they allow their marketing organizations the time and resources to set the foundation to do so effectively and efficiently.

Their CEOs establish the directive for marketing to develop:

• A Universal Lead Definition (ULD) that prioritizes and defines the degree of a lead’s sales readiness, and requires the input and buy-in of both the sales and marketing teams. Learn more about creating ULDs here: Lead Generation Checklist: Universal Lead Definition.

• An Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) that uses the unique attributes of prime customers to prescreen potential opportunities. ICPs identify decision makers and key influencers, and ultimately serve as the basis for defining a sales-ready lead. Learn more about developing an ICP here: Lead Generation Checklist: Ideal Customer Profile.

• Accurate, manageable data that details the contact information of prospects who fit the ULD and ICP. Learn how data can make or break your marketing efforts here: Do You Expect Your Inside Sales Team to Practice Alchemy? And here’s a webinar replay that examines the power of data: Teleprospecting that Drives Sales-Ready Leads.

• A defined marketing and sales funnel that spells out specifically when a lead should be passed along to sales, or sent back to marketing for further nurturing until they are ready to move forward in the buying process. Read more about that here: Four Reasons why Funnels are a Marketer’s Best Friend. Or watch our most recent B2B Lead Roundtable webinar: How Marketers are Transforming Mounting Pressures into Revenue.

• A clear, concise value proposition. Read more here: Why a Value Proposition Makes Marketing Good.

Unfortunately, very few marketers I spoke with in Boston or San Francisco had the executive support to set this foundation for  marketing success. So it became challenging to provide advice that would lead to sustainable, long-term optimization. Nonetheless, we had plenty of “ah-ha” movements. But those quick wins were often centered on strategy designed to circumvent or overcome a flawed foundation. This felt like the equivalent of telling someone what color to paint the walls on a building with a crumbling infrastructure. After all, you can have the perfect messaging, but if that message is going to a list that’s filled with inaccurate data and contacts, or doesn’t include those who are most likely to buy, you’re wasting time, energy and money.

So what did I tell those marketers?

For the most part, I advised them to do what they could with what they have.

• Even without executive support, marketing can document the state of their current lead management process; and they should do so immediately. Without precisely knowing what’s happening with leads right now , marketers can’t identify the greatest bottlenecks or areas for improvement. But they can’t make any assumptions. This mean they need to meet with their sales and marketing leaders, along with their practitioners. Only then will marketers have a clear understand of the current state of affairs. By the way, getting all of the stakeholders together to agree on the issues and prioritize solutions is the perfect start to a funnel optimization process.

• Even without executive support, marketing usually owns the data. They can make sure it’s up to date and free of duplications. They can quarantine new data before it’s entered into the system to ensure its accuracy and make sure they’re valid leads. They can analyze and clean their lists to ensure that messages are targeted to those who are most likely to buy.

• Even without executive support, they can analyze their existing customers to create an ICP.

• Even without executive support, they can build a content library. They don’t need to be great writers; they just have to understand their value proposition and personas, and then repurpose existing content or identify third-party content that fit both. That’s not as overwhelming as starting from scratch.

• Even without executive support, marketing can demonstrate their value to sales through only sending them qualified leads. If marketing delivers a great “product,” sales will want more.

When sales begins noticing that they’re closing more deals faster, they’re going to be eager to collaborate, revenues will grow, and leadership will fully realize the value and power of marketing. After all, businesses that thrive in the new economy will be the ones that give marketing the time and resources to set the strategies upon which successful campaigns are built.

Content Marketing, Lead Generation, Lead Management, Marketing Strategy, Thought Leadership

Warning: If you watch only the first few minutes of this webinar, you might get discouraged about the state of marketing today. However, if you watch the webinar through the end, you’re going to be excited about marketing’s potential for driving more revenue than ever before.

At the beginning of the webinar, Jen Doyle, MarketingSherpa Senior Research Manager and Lead Author of the 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report, revealed that 1,745 marketing organizations are reporting remarkable declines in marketing effectiveness in 2011. But their other responses point to what’s causing this.

While almost all respondents said they’re expert at lead generation:

• 68 percent have not identified their sales and marketing funnels, no less optimized them.
• 61 percent send leads directly to sales.
• 79 percent don’t score leads.
• 65 percent don’t nurture leads.

What does this mean? In essence, they’re not making the most of the leads they’ve become expert in generating. Watch this webinar to learn the strategy that will transform leads into revenue as efficiently and effectively as possible.

View Slides on Slideshare

Use these timestamps to jump to key points fast.

8:20 – Jen compares B2B Benchmark Report responses between 2009, 2010 and 2011. Key findings: It’s increasingly challenging to achieve success. Challenges are growing in pertinence year after year. Marketers are torn between prioritizing more leads vs. better leads.

9:30 – Perceived effectiveness of tactics are declining severely. It’s getting more difficult to get results from the same marketing activities.

10:21 – The 2012 B2B Benchmark Report reveals that regardless of challenges, marketers are still not optimizing their funnels. Jen reviews the percentages: 68 percent haven’t identified sales and marketing funnel. 61 percent send leads directly to sales. 79 percent haven’t established lead scoring. 65 percent don’t nurture leads.
Read more…

Marketing Strategy, Uncategorized, Webinar Replay

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

The temptation to buy data at pennies per contact – especially when you have limited resources – can be overwhelming.

But whatever you do, you must resist.

In the short video below, taken at MarketingSherpa’s B2B Summit in Boston, Brian Carroll explains why.

Did you find this valuable? If so, remember, this is merely one of 60,000 minutes of revenue-driving information that is unveiled at MarketingSherpa’s B2B Summit. There’s obviously a lot more where this came from and, even better, there’s still time to discover it all. Just register for the San Francisco summit, October 24 and 25.

Human Touch, Lead Generation, Marketing Strategy, Uncategorized

A few weeks ago, I wrote about ways to combine sales and marketing knowledge to improve lead generation.  Let me be more specific about one strategy that the best sales organizations do that marketers should replicate in their demand-generation and lead-nurturing campaigns:

Stratify resources as part of a coverage model.

The idea is simple:

1. The best sales people call on the most lucrative accounts and handle the largest deals.  
2. The least-expensive sales people call on the smallest accounts and handle the smallest deals. 

This kind of stratification even occurs within large accounts, where an inside sales rep may handle smaller transactions and a field sales person handles the bigger deals.

In other words, sales leaders align resources with the revenue potential. 

Revenue is only one of the dimensions of this stratified use of sales resources.  Probability of purchase is another.  Thus, as products become increasingly commoditized, decisions move down the chain of command. Lower-cost inside sales people can manage such products and services, freeing field sales people to focus on newer high-growth products where the decision processes are longer.  In fact, when sales organizations use a division of labor to set up a teleprospecting function to support other sales people, the idea is that prospecting is a lower-probability activity that less-expensive phone resources can handle on behalf of a more-expensive field sales resource. This frees them up to focus on the high-probability sales-ready leads.

Finally, this same concept gets played out at the micro-level, too. That is, each sales person must decide whether a sales opportunity offers enough revenue potential or a high enough probability of success to warrant further investment of time.

Here’s a few ways marketing can apply this same idea:

Lead follow-up.  Not all leads have the same likelihood of purchase or the same revenue potential.  Divide leads into two or three tiers, ideally driven by automated lead-scoring rules.  For the top tier, make more follow-up calls.  Call all the buyer personas for the solution.  Tele-nurture personas with quarterly calls. Invest in experimentation with the cadence of calls, the integration of email, and even the use of mail. For the lowest tier, make one call within an hour of response and then use email to nurture.  

Demand generation. Not all prospects have the same value. Your investment should reflect that reality. Use the same stratification and invest more resources in the top tiers of the market to generate demand. 

1. Targeting. Hand-build a key account database to improve targeting and personalization. New data-as-a-service providers can build a best record from multiple lists sources. So identify and validate all the buyer personas. This kind of enhanced database can improve the possibilities for personalization and content segmentation.
2. Content.  For many marketers, a large account represents millions of dollars of revenue, often on an ongoing basis. These economics make it possible for a different way of looking at content investment. Vertical content, executive-level content, and even company-specific messaging become much more viable in this context. My favorite example of this idea was a client years ago who took out one full page ad in the local Cincinnati newspaper to solicit Proctor and Gamble. This company had a new technology for cutting diaper material. But P&G had big investments in its own diaper-cutting technology and so the client’s sales organization had spent years trying to open a door. The $100k ad, which used the headline, “Proctor and Gamble, we want to pamper your bottom-line,” resulted in just eight leads, but one of them turned into a $5 million deal within six months.  It is a fabulous example of this idea of stratifying resources to align with revenue potential.
3. Contact Strategy.  Marketing has three options here:
   1. Using higher-cost forms of contact, like a teleprospecting call or a more elaborate mailing package
   2. Using more frequent contact, and / or
   3. Placing more focus on the most influential buyers (e.g., the executive buyer)

 With this approach, marketing can create:

• Account-specific webinars or even on-site events
• Highly personalized communications and landing pages that reference other decision influencers in the account
• Teaser campaigns with very tailored messaging
• Teleprospecting campaigns that results in relationship building with key stakeholders

The possibilities are infinite.  Often, marketing can repurpose some of the content and design work for the next tier down.

Finally, in addition to the economic benefits, keep in mind that the best sales people call on these kinds of accounts.  Helping these producers make more money can result in a very powerful group of marketing evangelists within the rank and file sales teams and executive team.

Marketing Strategy, Thought Leadership

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

If you attended our most recent B2B Lead Roundtable Webinar, Six Funnel Focal Points to Finish 2011 Strong – Part I, you found out that even though the end of the year is less than 125 days away, there’s plenty of time to drive more opportunity through your sales funnel and to the bottom line.

That’s because Brian Carroll, Executive Director of Applied Research at MECLABS, and Pamela Markey, Director of Marketing for MECLABS, revealed some of the most valuable takeaways you can execute right now to drive leads fast. They drew upon MECLABS’ experience – specifically, more than 10 years of research, one billion emails, 1,300 major experiments, 10,000 tested sales paths, 5 million phone calls and 500,000 conversations, as well as hundreds of publications and conferences.

So, if you’re wondering how on earth you’re going to meet your end-of-year sales goals or quotas, don’t worry – there is still plenty of time. Just watch the webinar replay below and be sure to attend Six Funnel Focal Points to Finish Strong – Part II, Tuesday, September 20, 11 a.m. CDT, noon EDT.

View and download slides via slideshare

Want to jump ahead to key points fast? Review these timestamps.

2:55 – Find out the length of the sales cycle for most webinar attendees; it happens to be aligned with how 935 marketers responded to Marketing Sherpa’s 2010 Benchmark Survey.

3:47 – What three top-of-the-funnel approaches will maximize your resources and help you achieve your year-end goals within budget and time constraints?

4:45 – An overview of the source of ideas and insight revealed in this webinar.

7:12 - Clarify and test your value proposition, and then consistently communicate that message across all channels.

9:04 – Experiment 1: A case study of a B2B software organization reveals how clarifying value proposition increased the number of clickthroughs by 21 percent. (But it gets even better…)

11:09 – Value propositioned is defined: “If I am your ideal customer, why should I buy from you vs. my competitors?”

13:01 – Experiment 1 continues. That 21 percent increase in leads from the PPC ad escalated to a 272 percent increase in overall conversion. This led to 268 percent more projected revenue. Combined with the corresponding 66 percent reduction in cost-per-acquisition, this effort produced more than four times the monthly profit – a 302 percent increase.

15:23 – Download a worksheet that easily walks you through the steps of creating a better value proposition: MarketingExperiments.com/ValueProp.

17:25 – Optimize your list approach by testing them, and choose the list source that ensures you get the most leads in the least amount of time. Experiment 2 reveals how a “cheap” list ultimately cost $188,000 more than the most expensive per record list.

20.50 – Learn why the most expensive per record list drove campaign costs down by more than 60 percent.

21:38 - Find out how to run a test yourself to determine list efficiency.

24:47 – Re-engage your base. You can significantly shorten your sales cycle by selling to those who know and like you. Offer upgrades, bundles, new product lines.

25:50 – This case study reveals how a company with a month-long sales cycle gains 37 percent of its business from clients who initially engaged with them three months ago, and 27 percent from those who initially engaged more than a year ago.

31:47 – 70 to 80 percent of marketing-generated leads are discarded because they’re not ready to buy right now. Just because sales ignores a lead, however, doesn’t mean they won’t eventually buy. In fact, only 5 to 10 percent of prospects are ready to buy right now.

34:08 – Quick review of takeaways begins: complete the value proposition worksheet; make sure channel communication is clear and align conversion paths to that.

34:57 – Optimize your list approach. Test to find out how efficiently your sales team can turn those lists into sales-ready leads.

36:53 – Mine your base of existing prospects. What was your last touch and how can you re-engage them?  Complete the conversations you started back in Q1 and Q2.

40:54 Q & A begins

Inside Sales, Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing, Marketing Strategy, Sales, Sales Leads, Web/Tech, Webinar Replay

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 this recent interview with BNet Australia, Brian Carroll reminds us that 90 to 95 percent of customers aren’t ready to buy. (Find his comments at timestamp 18:14.)

So what do you do with them until they are?

You nurture them.

Learn more opportunities to leverage lead-nurturing in the video below.

This is the fifth in a series I developed for a leading IT organization to teach their channel partners about lead nurturing. My purpose was to make the concept easier to understand and accessible.

Here are links to the first four clips:

What are the advantages of lead nurturing?

What problems can lead nurturing solve?

What is the difference between lead nurturing and lead generation?

What are the ingredients of lead nurturing?

If you have any recommendations on how I can build on this series, I welcome them.

Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing, Marketing Strategy