B2B Lead Blog

I’ve been blogging for over five years. When I started, there wasn’t a business case on the ROI of blogging, nor was there a lot written on B2B lead generation. I started blogging because I wanted to share with everyone what I thought were useful B2B lead generation ideas, tips, and resources – material that I was already freely giving to my clients.

I have to say, my expectations were pretty low. I thought maybe I’d attract a few new clients, but I didn’t know it would generate so many leads, or develop into a book deal with a major publisher – who came to me, by the way. Blogging became a way to help build my company’s reputation, and your reputation helps people make conclusions about your brand.

Still not convinced that you should delve into social media? Maybe you think there’s no way to measure social media’s success. Here’s a case study that MarketingSherpa released earlier this month that follows one company through its social media adventure. In the end, the team’s analysis showed a dramatic correlation between the use of social media channels and the growth of the company’s Web traffic and leads. They showed a 155% increase in unique Web visitors and they also generated more links on non-brand search terms that helped boost their search engine results positions.

MarketingSherpa Members can view the case study at length.  Here’s a look at the 5 steps they took:

1.    Created a blog to start and join online conversations
Blogging and conversating brings in that human touch that I am forever pushing. It can seem like a daunting project, but this company set up an online monitoring system that helped them finetune their blog. They scanned the Web, the blogosphere, online fourms, and communities to find conversations relevant to their industry and their technical audience. An RSS feed gave the team something to review each morning. They used several scanning tools including TweetScan for Twitter posts, Google Alerts for industry terms, and Boardtracker.com to monitor technology forums and message boards.

When the scanning tools found a relevant conversation, such as a blog post, a team member would join that conversation and point readers to content on the same topic at the company website. The team also used their blog to write stories on subjects that had the potential to go viral. Those stories generated links from other industry blogs and articles in major trade publications.

Read more…

Human Touch, Lead Generation, Marketing Strategy, Sales Leads, Social Media, Thought Leadership, Weblogs, Word-of-Mouth

Inside CRM ranked the top CRM blogs based on their insights, readability and frequency of posting. I'm honored to have been included on the list.

As I read over the list (which includes 20 blogs) I discovered some new ones worth reading along with bloggers already follow like Jim Berkowitz, who writes the CRM Mastery Blog; John Jantsch, Duct Tape Marketing Blog and Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba who write the Church of the Customer Blog. I feel honored to be included in such great company.

Read Inside CRM's complete list "The Best CRM Blogs of 2008"

CRM, Personal Messages, Weblogs

Yes.

I came across a blog this weekend that reinforced my thoughts. This post, written by Christian Fea, CEO of Synertegic, Inc., started off with a this statistic that he found on compete.com: Twitter had around 3 million people visiting the site in 2008, and it grew 640% between November 2007 and November 2008.

Ok, so how do we harness all of social media’s potential and use it to build a lead generation system?

Well, I’ve started to use my Twitter account a lot more, and I’ve found some productive uses for the application:

• Sent mini survey question and got answers quickly
• Promoted new blog posts and upcoming webinars
• Shared articles, resources, and blog posts that I found interesting
• Learned what topics my network finds interesting faster
• Discovered some useful blog posts and resources by using tweetscan

There are lots of great resources out there if you want to learn more about how to use Twitter to generate leads, and I’ve include links to several of them at the end of this posting.

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Human Touch, Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing, Marketing Strategy, Sales Leads, Social Media, Thought Leadership, Web/Tech, Weblogs, Word-of-Mouth

Search engine optimization (SEO) remains critically important for B2B marketers doing lead generation online. And it’s pretty common advice to hear: launch a blog because the relevant content will attract links and improve your search engine visibility.

Blogs can offer little-known companies name recognition, and the chance to boost traffic and generate leads well beyond what they’d get if they were simply offering a list of goods and services for sale on their website.

But should you write a blog exclusively for search engine visibility?

Some what say yes but not me. I think a frequently updated, well written and relevant blog by an author who has passion for the subject will out perform others that were only for SEO.

Lee Odden over at the Online Marketing Blog shares a useful perspective on why blogs written solely for SEO objectives will inevitably fail. If you’re thinking of blogging for SEO it’s definitely worth checking out.

Link: Online Marketing Blog: 3 Reasons Why Blogs for SEO Fail

Marketing Strategy, Web/Tech, Weblogs

I had a great time doing my webinar on putting the human touch into lead generation sponsored by Citrix Online and we had almost 1600 people register. Wow!

In my presentation I emphasized how lead nurturing is about timing, consistency and relevance.

Today (which happens to be my 38th birthday) I got this email with a personal video from Gary Anderson, CEO of NetBriefings. I wanted to share this with you because I think it is a great example of lead nurturing by combining the human touch and timing in a personal way that connected with their business value proposition.

Brian, I heard it was your Birthday today! Here is my personal Birthday Video Greeting!

http://proclaim.netbriefings.com/flv/nb/nsux9/nbnsux9101573/   

Have a Great Day!!!!  You deserve it!!

Gary W. Anderson

The video is 29 seconds but it made my day and I must confess that it caused me to think about his company (which is the point). Please note: it’s not a polished or pretty video but he put in some effort to be personal and that’s what made it stand out. That said, I don’t think this would work for everybody.  Let me know what you think.

Human Touch, Lead Nurturing, Marketing Strategy, Personal Messages, Sales Leads, Web/Tech, Webcasts/Webinars, Weblogs

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

The gang at MarketingProfs put together conference that’s worth checking out. Now here’s the best part… no conference travel required. The B2B 2.0 Marketing Expo is March 5, 2008 and you can register here.

Current Affairs, Event Marketing, Web/Tech, Webcasts/Webinars, Weblogs

If you don’t have time to search though multiple blogs I recommend you check out Alltop. The site was launched by marketing wiz, blogger, author, entrepreneur & venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki.

What’s different about Alltop? It’s really a selection of the top 50 RSS feeds (i.e. mostly blogs) in 20 categories. All that information is collected listed in a single page. Personally, I’m finding Alltop useful for keeping up with other topics I’m interested in but don’t want to spend a lot of time on.

The small business section includes the B2B Lead Generation Blog along with publications like Fast Company, Entrepreneur, Forbes and some of my favorite bloggers like Jill Konrath, Patrick Schaber, Seth Godin, John Jantsch, and Yvonne DiVita.

Current Affairs, Web/Tech, Weblogs

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)

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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

As someone in B2B, do you feel left out of the social media buzz? I read a good article on "What’s Wrong With Social Media For B2B Marketing" by John Miller who also writes the Modern B2B Marketing blog.

John’s article highlights something most of us in B2B marketing have come to accept. B2C marketing gets the vast majority of links and clicks while B2B hears the quiet sound of crickets chirping.

I remember when I started blogging in 2003 and there was only 11 true B2B marketing related blogs. Now there’s are over a hundred. John lists about 80 of them on his blog.

John concludes, "The result is that there are fewer pundits and thought leaders writing about B2B marketing, resulting in fewer links to those early adopters who do write about business marketing techniques. And since links mean leadership on the web, the result is that the less-trendy subjects in B2B marketing—like marketing accountability and lead management—get left behind."

Personally, I think the reason B2B marketing receives less attention comes down to time and momentum.

Read more…

Current Affairs, Lead Generation, Leadership, Marketing Strategy, Podcasting, Thought Leadership, Web/Tech, Weblogs, Word-of-Mouth