B2B Lead Blog

If your organization’s marketing and public relations teams aren’t working hand in glove, you’re missing a key lead generation opportunity.

That’s the word from three experts in B2B PR and marketing:

• Wendy Marx, president of Marx Communications, a B2B public relations firm; she blogs about B2B communications for Fast Company
• Laura Sturaitis, Executive Vice President of Media Services and Product Strategy, Business Wire, a press release distribution company
• Tom Becktold, Senior Vice President of Marketing, Business Wire

They agree that, more than ever before, prospects are engaging with B2B organizations through public relations efforts. They share seven opportunities to transform this engagement into leads:

1. Make it easy for everyone to embrace, understand and share your story

Journalists don’t have a monopoly on news

People are gathering information from all kinds of sources.

“There are so many avenues to spread your message, it totally frees up what you can do in public relations,” says Marx. “You can share news on your blog, your website, social media, YouTube; you’re no longer solely dependent on journalists to get the word out.”

Multimedia press releases spread news faster

Multimedia press releases use links, videos and images to tell the story, and they attract attention.  Sturaitis has found they attract three to five times more attention than the traditional news release. They allow audiences to engage with your organization and spread your message in the way they prefer.

At right is an example. Click on the image to see the entire interactive release.

A news organization may run the release verbatim. A blogger may grab an image. A prospect doing a Google search may send the video to decision makers.

2. Always include a call-to-action in your press release

Again, journalists aren’t the only ones reading them.

“Drive readers back to a landing page or specific content on your website where you can collect their contact information, track where they’re coming from, and add them to an email list,” advises Marx. “Not only will this generate leads, it can directly measure public relations effectiveness.”

3. Get more media coverage by making the lives of journalists easier

Give them only what they want most: a story they can use

“Journalists and bloggers are very hardworking. They don’t have a lot of time, and they don’t want information that’s not relevant to what they’re doing,” says Marx.

Do your homework to thoroughly understand what the journalist or blogger is covering. Provide the writer useful information to help develop a good story that applies to his or her beat.

Reporters want more than words

“Reporters want visual content,” Becktold points out. “Between doing a piece where there are no multimedia resources and doing a piece that includes them, reporters and bloggers are generally going to opt for using the multimedia content.”

Audit your website

Is it easy for reporters to find the information they need, such as biographies, downloadable photos or essential company information?

“Click through your website as if you’ve never been there before. Pay attention to where the links take you,” advises Sturaitis. “Is it logical? If you’re a reporter on deadline at 9:30 p.m., are you going to be able to easily find the company address or how the CEO’s name is spelled?”

4. Repurpose your media coverage

“If you get great press, that’s just half the job,” says Marx. “Use social media to promote it. Talk it up in your blog. Send it out as an email to prospects and clients.”

5. Pay keen attention to SEO keywords

When Public Relations and Marketing use different keywords, it can undermine search engine rankings, warns Becktold. This affects organic traffic and can even increase pay-per-click costs.

In contrast, when PR and Marketing use precisely the same keywords, this can significantly improve organic search rankings and decrease the cost of pay-per-click advertising, he explains.

“Google your keywords and see what pops,” he advises. “If your name doesn’t show up in organic when pay-per-click advertising appears, your keywords may be misaligned.”

6. Focus on what the customer values

“It seems like marketing communications tools and platforms are changing every nanosecond now,” confesses Marx. “What won’t change as fast is what your customer values about your company and the importance of promoting that.”

That’s why it’s important to:

• Clearly and concisely communicate your value

“Good writing will always matter,” says Becktold. “Get to the point. Search engines prefer that and so does your audience. Everyone’s attention spans are shorter.  Be compelling, be engaging.”

• Know precisely how your customers are finding out about your value

“Focus on where your clients are; you don’t have to try every new platform or tool, you just need to be aware of them,” advises Sturaitis.

A good way to learn where your clients are coming from is to talk with whoever manages your website analytics, she notes.

“They’re going to have the analytics on every webpage to tell you how people are getting there,” she explains. “That will identify where your audiences are and how they like to engage with you.”

• Be consistent with your value messaging

“Don’t talk about your company one way on your website, a different way in social media, and yet another way to the media,” says Marx.

7. Use what you learn

“The public relations process will help clarify who your audiences are, where they congregate, what kind of conversations they’re having and how they interact with different types of content,” says Becktold. “That’s critical knowledge that benefits the organization’s entire lead generation effort.”

Here’s the upshot: Public relations is so much more than just press kits and publicity. In fact, Marx believes public relations professionals were the first content marketers. The faster you position public relations at the marketing strategy table, the more quickly it can become an invaluable, cost-effective lead generation tool.

Related Resources

Public Relations: 5 tactics for getting your message to the media

Public Relations: The best press release is no press release

Public Relations: 5 interview mistakes that drive journalists crazy (and how to avoid them)

Public Relations: Getting corporate data out of subject matter experts heads and into quarterly trend reports increased media coverage 261%

Public Relations (PR)

Have you had some great marketing successes this year? Then you’ll want to let my colleagues at MarketingSherpa know. They’re compiling their ninth annual MarketingSherpa 2011 Wisdom Report. It shares the best thoughts, ideas, anecdotes and takeaways from marketers in 2010. 

In fact, even if you’ve had disappointments, and are willing to share, they’d like to hear from you as well. After all, failure is often the best teacher.

Tell us, what are some of the best lessons you learned this year?   

Great marketers are always working so diligently to put everything and everyone else in the spotlight. That effort deserves attention. That’s why I strongly encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity to attain some very positive publicity. 

Share your wisdom here, but you’ve got to do it soon because the deadline’s December 21.

B2B Telemarketing, CRM, Cold Calling, Current Affairs, Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, Event Marketing, Human Touch, Lead Generation, Lead Management, Lead Nurturing, Lead Qualification, Lead Scoring, Leadership, Marketing Strategy, Public Relations (PR), ROI Measurement, Referral Marketing, Sales, Sales Leads, Social Media, Thought Leadership, Trigger Events, Web/Tech, Webcasts/Webinars, Weblogs, Word-of-Mouth

The single biggest issue for B2B marketers is effective lead generation. I wrote an eight part series on building an effective lead generation program a while back. To help readers who missed the series, I pulled all the posts together in order.

In this series, you’ll read the following posts:

1: The Right Mindset: Conversations, not campaigns
2: Sales and Marketing – One Team
3: Develop and intensify your Ideal Customer Profile 
4: Clear and Universal Lead Definition
5: Treat your marketing database as a valued asset
6: A Multi-modal lead generation portfolio approach
7: Effective lead management
8: Lead nurturing for lead development

You may also find this ebook that connects with the series relevant.

Can you think of other critical success factors I’m missing?

B2B Telemarketing, Books, CRM, Current Affairs, Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, Event Marketing, Human Touch, Lead Generation, Lead Management, Lead Nurturing, Lead Qualification, Leadership, Marketing Strategy, Public Relations (PR), ROI Measurement, Sales, Sales Leads, Social Media, Thought Leadership, Web/Tech

A few weeks ago I wrote a post called 5 steps for using LinkedIn as a lead generation tool and step number five was ‘create your own LinkedIn group and share relevant content.’

Well, last Thursday I launched the B2B Lead Gen Roundtable Group on LinkedIn. I wanted to create a group to discuss and share ideas that focus on the many aspects of B2B lead generation such as lead nurturing, lead management, teleprospecting and more.
 
I’m jazzed at how fast the group is growing and even more excited about the discussions that are already taking place.

My first question to the group was if lead distribution should be fair or optimized? What do you do? Do you invest your hard won leads on your top performers or do you try to help your weaker sales people? In this economy should we take a Darwinian view of lead generation and focus on helping the strong sales people get stronger?

What’s your take on lead distribution? I’d love to hear what you have to say.

Join the B2B Lead Gen Roundtable group and let me know your thoughts.

B2B Telemarketing, CRM, Cold Calling, Current Affairs, Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, Event Marketing, Human Touch, Lead Generation, Lead Management, Lead Nurturing, Lead Qualification, Leadership, Marketing Strategy, Podcasting, Public Relations (PR), ROI Measurement, Referral Marketing, Sales, Sales Leads, Social Media, Thought Leadership, Trigger Events, Web/Tech, Webcasts/Webinars, Weblogs, Word-of-Mouth

I wanted to be sure to let you know that MarketingSherpa is gathering content for its seventh annual “wisdom report.” It’s a great opportunity for you to share your top 2008 story – and get back lessons learned from colleagues worldwide. “Marketing Wisdom from the Field Report” will be published in January and distributed free to all MarketingSherpa readers.

Here are a few suggestions for ‘wisdom’ stories:

-Test campaign that worked better (or worse) than anticipated.
-What you learned about a specific tactic
-How you coped with a recessionary economy and the impact it had on your 2008 marketing plan and budget.

Deadline for quotes for the ‘wisdom report’ is December 31. 

Here’s the link: http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/91070/wisdom-report-survey

Current Affairs, Leadership, Marketing Strategy, Public Relations (PR), Thought Leadership, Word-of-Mouth

When I started the B2B Lead Generation blog back in 2003, my purpose was to have this blog be a launch pad for practical ideas, not commercials. So that’s why many of you probably don’t know what I do in my day job as CEO of InTouch. But today I’m making an exception. 

After a long partnership with MarketingSherpa as a featured speaker and presenter at their B2B marketing summits, we made the decision to be acquired by MECLABS Group, the parent company of MarketingSherpa and MarketingExperiments. Read the press release.

With this acquisition, nothing will change for InTouch clients, future clients, partners and employees. We’ll keep our name, our staff, and office in Arden Hills, MN. I along with our executive team will stay intact and we will continue to focus on building the company.

I often talk about the need for a “human touch” in marketing to overcome this age of automation and depersonalization. I fervently believe the only way to drive sales is to feed this need for relationships.

What exactly does InTouch do? We’re a professional B2B contact center that provides clients with the essential human touch required to develop and convert more leads into sales.

At age 24, I started InTouch (then Carroll Communications) back in 1995 out of my apartment living room with a second hand computer and $350 (I’m not kidding). At the time, I hoped to make a living while making a difference with how companies acquire and grow customer relationships through B2B telemarketing.

In 1999, we acquired one of our clients with which we had developed awfully good synergies, iNETech, an IT consulting Services Company specializing in software application development and I gained two great business partners, Pat Lorch and Brandon Stamschror. The new name of the firm, of course, was InTouch.

Since then, our company has been executing lead generation programs designed to profile sales prospects, uncover viable opportunities and create demand. Core services include: teleprospecting, lead qualification, lead nurturing, lead management, and marketing automation tools. Peg Davis over at MarketingExperiments blog wrote a great post that explains more.

That’s why all of us at InTouch are excited about tapping into MarketingSherpa’s practical case studies and know how, and MarketingExperiments’ online laboratory to discover what really works. Together, we can profoundly change the way people think about lead generation for the complex sale.

Plus, now our research for you will be supplemented by the team at MEC Labs Group. They run an actual laboratory facility in Jacksonville Beach, FL, where they conduct live campaign experiments in partnership with folks such as The New York Times and Reuters.

I want to sincerely thank you all of you for reading this blog. I have learned so much from your comments and our conversations. This blog will continue. And I look forward to us learning, doing and sharing together what really works for lead generation for the complex sale. 

Current Affairs, Lead Generation, Lead Management, Lead Nurturing, Lead Qualification, Leadership, Public Relations (PR), Sales Leads

Click here now to buy a ticket to the Demand Gen Summit and get a copy of my new book: "Lead Generation for the Complex Sale" Register by 9/28 For a $100 Discount

You’re invited to join me at MarketingSherpa’s Demand Generation Summit at your choice of Boston (Oct 15-16) or San Francisco (Oct 29-30.) I’ll be speaking on “Blogging, Podcasting, Speaking Gigs, & Book Authorship: How to Generate Leads and Measure ROI as an Authority.”

Some of the other topics include: New B-to-B Search Marketing; Maximizing White Papers, Ezines Webinars & Podcasts; Marketing to Fortune 500; Video, Viral & Web 2.0 B-to-B Marketing; How to Measure & Manage Leads and more.

I hope you can make it. Register here

Current Affairs, Lead Generation, Lead Management, Lead Nurturing, Lead Qualification, Marketing Strategy, Podcasting, Public Relations (PR), Web/Tech, Webcasts/Webinars

Would you like some inspiration or some fresh ideas for your marketing and lead generation strategy?

If so, MarketingSherpa just released their “Business Technology Marketing Benchmark Guide 2007-08” and I had the privilege to interview Anne Holland about this year’s findings. Very useful stuff. Download the Executive Summary

During our in-depth interview, Anne shares some terrific insights and helpful data on numerous marketing and lead generation tactics.

Three data points that I found particularity interesting:

1. Teleprospecting works. As we all know, tech buyers are a notoriously tough crowd to cold call. Sherpa’s findings contradict the "calling doesn’t work" line we’ve heard for years. Their data shows that over 50% of tech buyers admitted to short listing a vendor after receiving a well timed and relevant phone call.

2. Sherpa’s data shows that more decision makers (not just influencers) are attending webinars and watching archived events. This indicates the importance of relevant educational events and online content for lead generation.

3. Companies who provided fewer but higher quality "sales ready" leads to their sale people have better sales conversion rates than those that send lots of early stage leads and that creating a "cost per lead" culture just does not work.

Listen to podcast now (31 min MP3)

Read more…

B2B Telemarketing, CRM, Current Affairs, Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, Event Marketing, Lead Generation, Lead Management, Lead Nurturing, Lead Qualification, Leadership, Marketing Strategy, My Podcast, Podcasting, Public Relations (PR), ROI Measurement, Referral Marketing, Sales, Sales Leads, Thought Leadership, Web/Tech, Webcasts/Webinars, Weblogs, Word-of-Mouth

Before the Internet and social media tools, companies could only communicate through the filter of advertising or media ink placed by a PR firm. But fortunately the rules have changed.

I just interviewed David Meerman Scott author the new book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly. The book was officially released on June 4, 2007.

David also writes the Web Ink Now blog and has been named to the MarketingSherpa Viral Marketing Hall of Fame for the past two years in a row. During our interview we cover a variety of topics that are relevant to lead generation, PR and marketing.

Show Notes

• The New Rules of Marketing & PR
• Strategies for reaching more buyers directly via the web
• The role of content in reaching people earlier in their buying process
• Building your online credibility and authority
• Thought leadership and the changing role of media and journalists
• PR tactics that work

Listen to podcast now (MP3 27 min 12 MB)
Subscribe to the Start With the Lead Show

David is a friend and colleague so I’m happy to see his book is doing so well. As I write this post his book is ranked in the top 100 of Amazon Best Sellers. Congrats David! Get your copy of The New Rules of Marketing & PR on Amazon.

Books, Marketing Strategy, My Podcast, Podcasting, Public Relations (PR), Thought Leadership, Web/Tech, Weblogs, Word-of-Mouth

I just got back from speaking at the New Marketing Summit and it was great. But it seems that I can’t attend a marketing conference with out hearing marketers swap complaints about their sales teams.

I don’t know about you but I’m fed up with the same old story.  Companies continue to waste millions of dollars because of poor teamwork and collaboration between marketing and sales.

Even the very best lead generation program cannot compensate for poor teamwork and collaboration, but unfortunately we continue hear about it time and again.

Sales and marketing often believe they are working together but collaboration takes more than annual or even quarterly planning meetings. Teamwork is something that must exist in a very real way each day.

I’ve found the most powerful way to foster teamwork and collaboration is to do more frequent and effective meetings. At InTouch we call them “huddles." We have short huddles daily and weekly between the marketing and sales team. 

In our huddles we do three things: Talk. Understand. Execute. (Repeat again) Talk. Understand. Execute. (Repeat again) Talk. Understand. Execute. Okay got it? (Repeat again).

In addition to huddles, there are other ways that sales and marketing can and should collaborate together.  This is just one list of 35 possibilities that we’ve tackled in our huddles and I hope you’ll add your own too.

Read more…

Lead Generation, Lead Management, Lead Nurturing, Lead Qualification, Leadership, Marketing Strategy, Public Relations (PR), ROI Measurement, Referral Marketing, Sales Leads