B2B Lead Blog

Remember Casey Kasem’s year-end top 40?

Okay, so there may be some of you out there who don’t. For those of you who were merely twinkles in your parents’ eyes back in the day, Casey Kasem is a radio personality and voice actor who just turned 80 this year. I remember sitting in front of the radio as he would countdown the year’s top hits every New Year’s Day.

If you want to amuse yourself while gauging societal mores over the past 40-something years, you might want to check out this link:  American Top 40 Year-end Countdowns. Did you know, for instance, that Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Waters was the number one hit in 1970? Contrast that with the number one hit in 1988: Walk Like an Egyptian. (Let’s hope this doesn’t define the difference between the Boomers and Gen X. Ouch.)

That said, as this is the last blog before 2013, I was inspired by Mr. Kasem to do our own version of a year-end countdown. I compiled a list of the top 10 most-tweeted blog posts from the B2B Lead Roundtable Blog. Here’s an at-a-glance analysis that could provide a glimpse of the most pressing issues lead generation professionals have faced in 2012:

• Understanding and leveraging social media. Four blog posts focused on some aspect of social media. This interest is also reflected in lead generation budgets. Social media came in second for budget increases in 2012; 74% of the 1,915 marketers who responded to MarketingSherpa’s 2012 Lead Generation Benchmark Survey reported they intended to increase their social media budget this year.

• Understanding leads and their place in the sales and marketing funnels. Five blog posts outlined the importance of understanding where customers are in the buying cycle, and responding appropriately. We obviously hammer on that topic because it’s key to optimally generating leads. Yet, most marketers, 64% to be precise, send leads directly to sales whether they’re ready to talk to them or not, according to the MarketingSherpa 2012 Lead Generation Benchmark Report.

• Making the most of their lead generation investment. The year’s most-tweeted B2B Lead Roundtable Blog post focused on driving return on trade shows. This post received hundreds of tweets – twice as much as the next most-tweeted post! (Unfortunately, that tweet-count disappeared due to blog platform changes.) These high numbers reflect where lead generation budgets are going: For the past seven years, trade shows have surpassed websites, email marketing and paid search to secure the top spot as B2B marketers’ biggest investment, according to the MarketingSherpa 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report.

Now, without further ado, here’s the list of the top 10 B2B Lead Roundtable Blog posts for 2012:

1. Nine Simple Tactics to Drive a Higher Return on Trade Show Investment
2. B2B Public Relations: 7 tactics to pull more leads into the funnel
3. Lead Generation: How 64% of marketers starve Sales of opportunity
4. B2B Social Media Marketing: Focus on leads, not likes
5. Lead Generation: 81% of marketers use email marketing
6. Universal Lead Definition: Why 61% of B2B marketers are wasting resources and how they can stop
7. Why 75% of Marketers Are Experiencing Lead Generation Pain and How to Stop It Before It’s Too Late
8. Social Media Marketing: 6 tips for running a valuable LinkedIn group that attracts prospects
9. B2B Sales Cycle: 4 steps to avoid the wasteful ‘no decision’
10. How IntraLinks Used Social Media to Generate Twice as Many Sales-ready Leads as Any Other Channel

Thank you for reading the B2B Lead Roundtable Blog. May your holidays overflow with peace and joy, and remember, “Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars.”

Weblogs

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

This week I was in San Francisco doing a live, streamed presentation, Uncovering Trends and Best Practices in Lead Generation, for Cisco. It’s part of their on-going Partner Velocity Program which provides in-person events, in-depth resources, and online marketing tutorials to their value-added resellers worldwide.

I believe Cisco sets the standard for how to engage channel partners, and am honored that they asked me to share my ideas around where they need to focus their marketing attention and resources. In essence, smart marketers approach their work like a portfolio manager; they’re constantly thinking about and testing the optimal investment strategy.

In the playback below I examine how to make the best investments of marketing time, money and energy, and point out the areas where too many marketers are squandering opportunity and resources. I cover:

• The latest trends in lead generation.
• How to create buyer personas.
• Social media as a lead generation tactic.
• Steps to optimizing the B2B mix.
• Guiding principles to effective B2B telemarketing.

Of course, I only had an hour to speak and each of these topics could be a webinar on their own. In fact, that’s precisely the case next week, considering the topic for the next B2B Lead Roundtable Webinar: Teleprospecting that Drives Sales-Ready Leads – How One Company Slashed Their Cost per Lead by More than Half.

What other points would you like me to expand on? Let me know; watch the broadcast replay and review Cisco’s excellent blog post about my presentation. I’d love to hear from you.

B2B Telemarketing, Human Touch, Inside Sales, Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing, Lead Qualification, Lead Scoring, Social Media, Thought Leadership, Webcasts/Webinars, Webinar Replay, Weblogs

As you can see, my blog has a new look.

That’s because it isn’t just my blog anymore. There are a multitude of thought-leading voices that deserve a platform, and I look forward to making sure this blog provides that opportunity. This will truly be a roundtable to discuss and explore the best ideas. Click here to see our regular contributors; I look forward to adding more in the coming months.

There’s a new name, too. That’s because, when I began this blog in 2003, lead generation had a far narrower scope than what it encompasses today. The internet and the applications that have evolved with it have created a new marketing and sales world. Today, we’re leveraging concepts that were nonexistent eight years ago. Whole companies and careers have been built up around them – as they should.

We now have within our reach the ability to engage more customers in a much more meaningful way than ever before.

This, at heart, is what lead generation is all about – but I don’t believe the term “lead generation” is adequate enough to encompass  all that driving leads entails – the process is so much more involved than it was a decade ago. Whoever heard of lead nurturing or marketing automation or revenue performance management in 2003? The platforms weren’t available to execute them.

However, regardless of innovation, our work is still about creating the conversations that drive leads and, ultimately, revenue. We hope this blog continues to be the inspiration for them.

I hope you like our new look, and our new name, and I would love to hear what you have to say about it. Feel free to comment here or on the B2B Lead Roundtable LinkedIn Group.

Finally, if you have subscribed to our RSS feed, be sure to update your subscription to the new feed at the top right of the page as the previous RSS feed will end soon.

I look forward to keeping up with the accelerating evolution of the business environment, and helping you do the same. 

Lead Generation, Personal Messages, Thought Leadership, Web/Tech, Weblogs

What if someone asked you what your last words would be?

In essence, that’s what Daniel Burstein, Director of Editorial Content for MECLABS, asked of me when he requested I publish my last blog post today. Of course, this isn’t my last post, but I like Daniel’s idea and am honored to join other top bloggers in sharing our most important message.

For me, that’s to embrace the power of trust and let it drive everything we do. You see, trust is the foundation of relationship, and relationship is what business is built upon. Without trust, there is no relationship and there is no business.

So how do you create that trust? Paradoxically, it’s never been easier or more challenging.

As we all know, social media has changed everything. It seemed like yesterday that marketers were able to micromanage every aspect of image and message disseminated to the marketplace. Now, our customers say who we are. So, of course, if what we’re saying about ourselves isn’t aligning with what’s actually happening, we’re going to be in trouble fast.

On the other hand, thanks to social media, it’s never, ever been easier to demonstrate why we are trustworthy and why we are worth doing business with.  And this can make all the difference in the world in creating opportunity. I know it has for me.

You may recall that the dot-com bubble burst not long before 2003, and like many other marketing organizations at the time, my teleprospecting and lead generation business was seriously struggling. We lost our three top clients and 40 percent of our revenues in a mere two months. I was contemplating how we were going to survive the crisis when I recalled clients repeatedly telling me, “We really value your services. But we value more than just that – your ideas have really helped improve our lead generation results.”

That’s when inspiration struck. I thought, “Why not teach our future clients what we learned and add value before they even start to look for services like ours?”

When you give people what they value, without expecting anything in return, you build trust. So, with that in mind, I started the B2B Lead Generation Blog in October of that year. It was free, it was easy. And it has resulted in opportunities that I would have never imagined in my wildest dreams – from publishing a bestseller to becoming part of an organization the caliber of MECLABS.

Looking back, it feels nothing less than miraculous. Such is the power of trust. And that power begins with trusting yourself enough to embrace your own inspiration and take that first step. You never know where it may lead.

Human Touch, Leadership, Thought Leadership, Weblogs

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

If you’re a follower of marketing and sales blogs beyond just this one, you’ve probably noticed all kinds of blogs and tweets sprouting up today around The Blog Tree, just released by Eloqua and JESS3.

And I think the attention is well deserved.

Every blogger has some kind of blog roll, but without guessing from the names or clicking through each and every one listed, it’s challenging to know what you can learn from them and what value they provide. And if you wanted to know what blogs influence them, how they’re connected to other blogs, or how they contrast and compare to the rest, you were out of luck unless you had hours upon hours of time to invest in research.

Until The Blog Tree.

At a glance, you can see the scope of the best content in the marketing and sales blogosphere and how it all works together. Joe Chernov, Director of Content at Eloqua, puts it this way:

“Anyone can cobble together a list of Twitter tips or ‘must-read’ blogs and crown themselves ‘content marketers,’” he explains. “But when you produce content that surprises, informs and delights, you don’t have to market it. It blooms naturally.”

I am humbled and proud that the InTouch B2B Lead Generation Blog has a leaf on The Blog Tree, as do the blogs of our sister companies, Marketing Sherpa and MarketingExperiments.

I look forward to watching The Blog Tree continue to flourish as more thought leaders share their insights and fresh blogs emerge.

Read more…

Social Media, Thought Leadership, Weblogs

To be successful at lead nurturing marketers can’t rely on one specific channel but rather they need to leverage a multi-modal portfolio of channels especially when you have a complex sale.

Why? The goal of lead nurturing is to maintain a relevant and consistent dialog with viable future customers – regardless of their timing to buy. In short, it’s about relationships.

To help illustrate, I created a mind map of what multi-modal lead nurturing looks like (click image to enlarge).

Are there any lead nurturing channels/modalities that I’m missing?

Download Multi-Modal_Lead_Nurturing

If you keep the idea about that nurturing is about building relationships top of mind, the way you nurture leads will naturally go beyond a single channel like e-mail. You’ll start thinking about how you and your sales people can be a relevant resource. When you do that, you don’t have to sell to people. They will come to you first when they are ready.

Related posts:
What IS and ISN’T Lead Nurturing
How lead nurturing improves lead generation ROI
5 Lead nurturing tips to create relevant and engaging emails

Email Marketing, Event Marketing, Human Touch, Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing, Sales Leads, Social Media, Thought Leadership, Web/Tech, Webcasts/Webinars, Weblogs

More marketers are embracing social media and inbound marketing practices for lead generation. That’s a good thing.

I’ve written about how you can leverage social media tools like blogs, twitter, LinkedIn, etc. to drive interested visitors to your website or landing pages to register for educational content and other assets. It works.

But remember most people coming to your website aren’t coming to your website to buy. They are coming to your site for information. People start to question the value of giving up too much info on forms before you’ve earned their trust.

Have you thought about your web forms? Are you asking for far too much information before you’ve earned their trust?  I wrote about this in my post, Why Most B2B Sites Fail to Convert Sales Leads. I would add that you need to leverage a robust lead qualification process too.

Earlier this week, I came across a relevant post by Chis Koch (@Ckochster) on “how old-school data capture is poisoning marketing and what to do about it.”

In his post, Chris dares us to rethink how and if we should gather information from prospects. He writes, “As social media becomes more prevalent in marketing, we’re going to have to rethink how we gather information from prospects.” Check out his post. I agree.

You’ll do better by thinking of lead generation as a process of micro-conversions that build an opportunity profile over time, such as requesting an email address, then asking for first and last name, later requesting a phone number, and so on.

I read of one company that trimmed down the registration to include an extremely simple, two-field form. Conversion rate more than tripled with this simplification. At the same time, the company expanded their email follow-up process and was able to increase the total amount of personal data collected over time.

Related posts:

7 Tips on how B2B marketers can leverage social media
How to use social media for lead generation

CRM, Lead Generation, Lead Qualification, Marketing Strategy, Podcasting, Sales Leads, Social Media, Thought Leadership, Web/Tech, Weblogs

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