B2B Lead Blog

Prospects that come to your organization because of peer recommendations are two and a half times more responsive than any other marketing channel, according to a study by the American Marketing Association.

A member of our B2B Lead Roundtable Group underscored this statistic when she noted recommendations are how one of her clients earns most of its customers. It’s no wonder she wanted to find the best way to formalize her client’s referral process.

I brought her question to three referral marketing experts:

• Angela Bandlow, Vice President of Marketing, Extole, an advocacy management platform
• Gal Borenstein, CEO and Chief Strategy Officer, the Borenstein Group, a branding, marketing and public relations consultancy
• Richard Beedon, Founder and CEO, Amplifinity, a brand advocate management platform

All agreed the most powerful referral programs aren’t campaigns or tactics, but rather executed as long-term strategies that build new marketing channels.

Here’s some of their advice on how to make this happen:

1. Identify your audience

Be warned – this may not be the person who signed the contract, or whose name is in your database. That person could be the chief financial officer instead of who you really want – the person who works with your product every day.

“You could offer someone a flight to the moon, but it will only be relevant if the person getting the message is actually interested in your product,” Borenstein said.

2. Know precisely why they chose your product

Borenstein related this illustration:

“Let’s say your customers bought a piece of electronic equipment. Your marketing and sales department could insist that customers bought the equipment because they loved the product. In reality, they purchased it because the price was right or the shipping was convenient,” he said. “If your messaging is misaligned with their motivations for buying from you, it won’t be believable and they won’t respond.”

Make sure internal perceptions align with external reality by going to customers directly, through surveys and interviews, to identify the top three to five reasons why they buy from you. Never assume you already know.

3. Identify when they’re most excited about working with you

“The best time to ask for a referral is when customers are happiest and most engaged with your company,” Bandlow said. “There’s no one set formula to determine this. It’s going to change with the types of products and services you’re selling.”

4. Know what motivates your audience and know their regulations

Bandlow shared a story of a client who sold very technical products. They sampled multiple incentives to identify what their audience would like best. While most of what was sampled fell flat, one item succeeded against expectations – a t-shirt featuring the words “data nerd.”

Here’s what happened when they expanded the program to their entire marketplace:

• They identified more than 400 brand advocates
• Advocates shared across Facebook, Twitter, PURLs and email
• They drove 156 sign-ups for their services
• Their average order value was 28% higher than leads from other sources

However, some organizations have strict rules around gifts.  Bandlow points out you can get around that by offering:

• A contribution to a favorite nonprofit in their name
• Discounts on services
• A free pass to an annual industry conference

5. Make it personal by using your sales people

“It’s not all online and digital,” Beedon said. “The best way to acquire referrals is face to face. Furthermore, calling it an Ambassador or VIP Program as opposed to just a Referral Program can make it more appealing and personally rewarding.”

“Make the prospect feel special through a personal, face-to-face invitation by their account representative,” he continued. “Design a mobile app so that it’s easy for your sales professionals to enroll people anytime, anywhere.”

6. Remember referral sources aren’t just customers

“Employees and third-party affiliates can recommend you to as many people as your customers – sometimes more,” Beedon said.

7. Promote your program across all marketing channels

“Place your referral program on banner ads, in newsletters, on the front of your website – anywhere you’re touching your customer, employee and partner audiences,” Beedon advised.

8. Have reasonable expectations

“If customers don’t buy in the winter, don’t launch a program on January 1 with the hope of increasing your numbers. Make sure your expectations are aligned with what the market will bear,” Borenstein said. “Furthermore, don’t focus on the leads you’re going to get that quarter, consider lifetime value. A handful of customer referrals for a $100,000 piece of equipment, for instance, can result in millions of dollars in business over time.”

Related Resources:

Should lead generation ignore current customers?

Lead Generation via Industry Experts

8 Questions to Steer Your Marketing Priorities

On Lead Nurturing: Looking for a “hot” date?

Referral Marketing

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

It takes time and commitment, but LinkedIn has become ideal venue to nurture relationships and generate new leads, especially for sales people involved in a complex sale.

On that topic, I wrote an guest article for MarketingProfs, titled “10 Tips for Using LinkedIn to Generate Leads.” MarketingProfs decided to make it a “premium article” so it’s available only to paid subscribers.

You can read some of the ideas I shared in this summary article published by MarketingProfs.

Here’s just a few of the ideas I share:

1. Create a polished and personally branded profile on LinkedIn.
2. Join LinkedIn groups where your clients/customers gather and participate.
3. Target groups by activity level (relevance), not just by size
4. Post relevant content on groups.
5. Answer questions posted on LinkedIn.
6. Create your own LinkedIn group and share relevant content.

Read Are You the Missing Link?

Related Posts:

Lessons on Using LinkedIn for Lead Generation 
5 steps for using LinkedIn as lead generation tool

Also, if you’re interested in connecting on lead generation topics and use LinkedIn, consider joining me and  the 4,200 members of the LinkedIn B2B Lead Generation Roundtable Group.

Human Touch, Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing, Referral Marketing, Sales, Social Media

I’ve heard more B2B marketers citing LinkedIn as a key social network they want to add into their lead generation and marketing strategy. I often get asked questions like “how do you generate leads via LinkedIn (without alienating your network)? How are you doing it? What works, and what doesn’t etc.” 

In this post, “5 steps for using LinkedIn as lead generation tool,” I share what I’ve learned so far. I’m still experimenting and I’d love to get your input on this.

My colleagues over at MarketingSherpa just posted a terrific case study on Using LinkedIn for Lead Generation. In the case study, they profile a marketing team and their lessons on “joining LinkedIn groups, sharing relevant marketing collateral, and qualifying the leads that come through the channel.”

Here’s a quick look at the 6 lessons they learned:

Lesson #1. Target groups by activity level (relevance), not just by size
Lesson #2. Join groups under your own name, not a company
Lesson #3. Place collateral in the context of a conversation
Lesson #4. Response rate is highly variable
Lesson #5. Create social media-specific landing pages
Lesson #6. Quality can be an issue with leads from LinkedIn

Read MarketingSherpa: Using LinkedIn for Lead Generation: 6 Lessons

Resource: 2009 Social Media Marketing and PR: Benchmarks and Best Practices

Related posts:

Read 5 steps for using LinkedIn as lead generation tool
Savvy B2B Marketing: Using LinkedIn to Gather Industry Intelligence

You may also want to check the B2B Lead Generation Roundtable Group on LinkedIn. This group is all about sharing ideas that focus on the many aspects of B2B lead generation such as lead nurturing, lead management, teleprospecting and more. The group has grown to 2500 members in just 8 week but I’m even more excited about the quality discussions. I’m learning a ton from members. Check it out

Lead Generation, Marketing Strategy, Referral Marketing, Sales, Sales Leads, Social Media, Web/Tech, Word-of-Mouth

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

”We know more about our prospects (leads) than we know about our current customers” was a shocking statement I heard from a client and it stuck with me. In fact, it’s the impetus for this post.

When you have a complex sale, it can be easy to think of lead generation as only a process for acquiring new customers rather than a process that can also be applied to generating new or more business from current customers.

A while back I was in a meeting with a marketing leader of a Global 100 software firm.  He shared a story about their new CEO at the time. The CEO asked 10 members of the executive team to write a list of their top-10 customers. Amazingly just 4 of the 10 executives got 5 of more of the customers correct!  Their VP of Sales faired best, with correctly listing 8. 

In the same meeting it was pointed out that the top-10 customers accounted for over 50% of their $300 million in revenue. The CEO immediately declared that, “we’re focusing on our customers first!” From that meeting they dubbed their new initiative as, “The Customer First Plan.” 

As a result of reaching out and talking to their customers, they saw a net revenue increase of 15% from current customers and their customer referrals increased by over 100%.

Still, I’m amazed at how many marketers seem to only emphasize new account acquisition when they could also be going further with their existing customers.

According to research by the CMO Council, “Marketers Are Flying Blind When It Comes to Leveraging Customer Data.” The study showed, “just 6 percent of marketers say they have excellent knowledge of the customers when it comes to demographic, behavioral, psychographic and transactional data, while over 50 percent report they have fair, little, or no knowledge of the customer.”

Read more…

CRM, Lead Generation, Lead Management, Lead Nurturing, Marketing Strategy, Referral Marketing, Sales, Sales Leads

Last year, I wrote a post on giving away ideas to proactively educate and attract future customers. I was surprised that it generated such a lively discussion.

Michael Stelzner wrote the following comment on my post back then, “I have been giving away my trade secrets for years (against the advice of advisors). The results have been amazing. The fact is that folks look to you as a thought leader when you share your secrets. In addition, the discussion that comes from sharing results is a better idea.”

Today, Michael just launched a series of videos on how he is leveraging educational techniques to pull in inquiries and generate leads. Michael told me he’s got a bunch of videos he plans to release over the next few days telling how he generated over 60,000 inquiries and leads for his business by giving away his ideas.

Watch his first video, "How To Generate Mass Interest in Your Business During Tough Times." (No need to do anything special, it will just start playing.)

Update: I just did a teleseminar on generating leads via white papers Michael Stelzner and you listen to the recording here.

Marketing Strategy, Referral Marketing, Thought Leadership, Weblogs, Word-of-Mouth

Have you dipped your toe in the water of social networking yet? And if not, should you start? That’s a question I know a lot of very busy B2B marketers ask themselves which is why I found Tessa Wegert’s ClickZ article on "Facebook as a B2B Marketing Tool" interesting.

In the article, Wegert highlights how some marketers are experimenting with using the Facebook site for proactive marketing and build targeted niche networks and B2B communities.

I’ve been using LinkedIn for several years because it’s geared more for business people. But I’ve heard the audience demographic of the Facebook is now moving from being focused on college kids to becoming a place for adults.

Overall, social networking sites are proving to be great tools for job seekers and recruiting. But I still wonder about the value of social networking tools for lead generation and business development that Wegert’s article brings up.

Read more…

Current Affairs, Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing, Marketing Strategy, Referral Marketing, Sales, Sales Leads, Web/Tech

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

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