DG Marketing Strategies

Are You a Revenue Marketer?

2010-03-12T11:01:00.001-08:00

Hello Fellow Marketers: Are you a Revenue Marketer?

Join my Partner, Debbie Qaqish, one of our resident Demand Generation experts, and John Follet, Chief Analyst at Demand Metric, as Debbie presents findings from her forthcoming white paper: The Revenue Marketer.

Introducing the Revenue Marketer:

How Marketing Fulfills Their New Revenue Obligation

Thursday, March 25th from 2 - 3 PM EDT

Attend this webinar and you will learn:

The anatomy and skills of the Revenue Marketer
Typical measurement of revenue impact by the Revenue Marketer
The 2010 opportunity for the Revenue Marketer

C-Suite expectations for return on marketing spend are changing, and there is a trend towards tying individual Marketer's variable compensation directly to revenue generation. This webinar will introduce the methods with which Marketers are leveraging technology and aligning themselves with sales to contribute and measure their contribution to revenue targets.

Who Should Attend?

Marketing Managers, Directors and VPs at B2B companies involved with generating new business leads and pipeline for their company.

The Revenue Marketer - No Longer an Oxymoron

2010-02-26T04:56:00.001-08:00

Two years ago, using the term "revenue" and "marketer" together was an oxymoron - a phrase in which two words of contradictory meaning are used together for special effect, e.g. "jumbo shrimp" or "wise fool." In 2010, it is no longer an oxymoron, it is a special role in marketing that is making a measurable impact on revenue

With the business imperative to drive top-line revenue growth in 2010, businesses are exploring all options to achieve this goal. This business driver paired with the new marketing automation tools that are now available to marketers, create an environment where, for the first time, marketing efforts equate to revenue production.

This is an epic change in the world of marketing and one that requires the successful Revenue Marketer to have a revenue focus and a unique set of skills across the Revenue Marketing Team. In 2009, I interviewed 12 leaders for my Demand Generation Essentials series and these Revenue Marketers had amazing stories to tell in how they re-shaped the role of marketing in their companies. You can listen to these interviews at http://pedowitzgroup.com/dgassets.htm.

Here is a synopsis of the key roles for a Revenue Marketing Team:

1. VP of Marketing Revenue

Obsesses over driving revenue through marketing effort
Works closely with sales to align marketing and sales initiatives
Manages a lead funnel and has a predictable run rate for leads to the sales funnel
Understand the customer's buying process and digital body language
Focuses on revenue oriented metrics to measure success

2. Business Analyst

Focuses on improving the performance of campaigns that lead to revenue
Responsible for reporting and dashboards

3. Power User

Sets up and executes campaigns
Fully leverages the technology

4. Revenue Creative

You will need a lot of creative but the creative needs to be focused on driving a dollar of revenue
Think about creative as the way to invite and create a digital relationship

5. Content Maker

Content is king in the world of the revenue marketer. It is what fuels campaigns and helps set up the view the the client's buying process
Your content, third part content -anything that creates an exchange of value

The numbers are in. Revenue marketers around the globe are making a measurable impact on revenue. Key metrics for the Revenue Marketer include:

# of Marketing Qualified Leads passed to sales
Conversion rate of an MQL to an Opportunity
Conversion rate of that Opportunity to close
% of the sales funnel contributed by marketing
Length of sales cycle

The Revenue Marketer is certainly no longer an oxymoron in 2010. It is a marketing role that is here to stay.

What have you experienced?

Lean Manufacturing Concepts Applied to Lead Production

2010-01-26T05:38:00.000-08:00

"So, Debbie, how do we apply lean manufacturing concepts to demand generation?" This recent question from not one, but two of my clients, made me start thinking how cool this could be. This is a topic I have been thinking about for some time and so over the next few months, using social media and client conversations, I'd like to open up this dialog.

The first wave of companies to adopt lead generation and demand generation practices and tools were primarily technology and business services firms with a sprinkling of financial services. As we enter the next big wave of adoption, the manufacturing sector is now looking at how they can embrace demand generation to help improve the revenue picture in 2009. And a big part of their discussion includes how to apply one of their foundation processes - lean manufacturing - into the discussion.

From Wikipedia, lean manufacturing is defined as "a production practice that considers the expenditure of resources for any other goal than the creation of value for the end customer to be wasteful, and thus a target for elimination. In a more basic term, More value with less work."

I find this fascinating as my view of demand generation is very much like a factory production line. In 2004 when I bought my first marketing automation system, I actually produced a flash file of an assembly line that created leads in a predictable and measurable system. This is still a metaphor and language I use today with my clients. I often talk about "getting to a run rate" or "follow a Plan-Do-Check-Act" philosophy to test, test, test as you begin production or "demonstrating a measurable return" or "producing the highest quality leads." While these are all very common concepts to the manufacturing world, they are startling concepts to marketing. This is why I am so pleased to have this discussion. My belief is that lead production is a process and that wasteful time and effort can be driven out of the process to produce the lowest cost, highest quality lead that will delight our customer - the sales team. I also believe that by taking a manufacturing approach to lead production, marketing can get better buy-in and alignment to this invaluable initiative.

There are a few major areas we can dissect:

1. Eliminating waste
2. More value with less work
3. Test, test, test

The whole genre of marketing automation systems focus on the word "automation" in terms of reducing waste for the marketing team. This waste is time spent doing heavily manual processes and producing higher quality leads which eliminates "lead waste" or leads that aren't worth the follow up time required. The application of technology to improve process is widely accepted in manufacturing and has transformed the manufacturing industry through the years. The application of technology to transform marketing begins with less "transformation" and more "another project to do." Make no mistake about it. This class of technology is powerful and it is transformational. The most successful marketers see this, embrace it and drive the change across the company. Other marketers will get there, especially as this becomes a common set of practices that created a competitive advantage for companies.

My husband used to work for Lever Brothers and his plant produced Surf detergent. Their newly constructed plant had state of the art technology and processes which allowed them to produce a case of Surf and deliver it to the LA plant for less money than the LA plant could produce the same case of Surf. Which plant stayed open? In these trying economic times who doesn't want more revenue that costs less to get? That is part of the promise of marketing automation.

More value with less work speaks to the most common top challenge we hear from marketers responsible for lead generation - producing higher quality leads. With the power of functions like lead scoring, automated programs and automated responses based on online behavior, marketing automation fits this lean tenet perfectly. This shifts the responsibility for some of the key qualifying of a prospect from the expensive shoulders of sales people (it's even more expensive when they don't do the follow up) to the ever vigilant marketing automation system. When set up properly, it is executed well with a high level of predictability.

Finally, while I'm not sure if this is a part of lean, you must test, test, test. Every production line has to be thoroughly tested before full production runs begin. At my husband's plant, they would often run different formulations of Surf. The formulations would vary by the part of the world the product was being sent to. Before every full production run, they had multiple tests to ensure the end product met all the specs of their target market. Marketing needs to take a very similar approach. When beginning with lead generation and working with these powerful tools, you only think you know what will happen - you have a best guess. In order to produce the highest quality lead for your target market (sales), you need to test, test, test everything from your list to your message, to your subject line, to the expected prospect response and behavior.

Over the next few months I want to talk to the market and continue this dialog with an end purpose to apply discipline and rigor to the lead production process. This is going too be fun!

Improving B2B Lead Management hosted by the Direct Marketing Association

2010-01-09T13:01:00.001-08:00

Dear Fellow Marketer,

On behalf of our affiliation with the Direct Marketing Association we are extending this webinar invitation nation wide as an opportunity for you to kick off 2010 with specific, valuable, marketing insight from Forrester Research, Eloqua, and The Pedowitz Group.

We have assembled 3 top industry experts to help you clearly understand how you can improve your marketing process by identifying, monitoring, and evaluating the online research behavior of prospective buyers.

Panelists:

Laura Ramos – Forrester Research – Vice President, Principal Analyst. Author – B2B Lead Management Automation Market Overview,Improving B2B Lead Management.

Steve Woods – Eloqua – Chief Technology Officer / Co-Founder. Author – Digital Body Language.

Debbie Qaqish – The Pedowitz Group – Chief Revenue Officer. Demand Generation Agency – Digital Buyer Behavior applications.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Sincerely yours,

Scott Benedetti | The Pedowitz Group
Director Demand Generation & Sales Operations
Phone: 732-475-2806 | Skype: 732-475-4110
Email: scott@pedowitzgroup.com | www.pedowitzgroup.com

Webinar Details:

How to Track a Buyer's Online Purchase Research Behavior: and then send appropriate messages to influence that buyer's purchase

Wednesday, January 13th 2010
10:00 AM Pacific
1:00 PM EST

More Information Here

Manage your subscriptions here

The Pedowitz Group
14162 Seabiscuit
Alpharetta, GA 30004
USA

The Elephant on the Conference Room Table

2009-09-15T04:52:00.000-07:00

On September 17th, I'll be interviewing Tom Weinbaum, VPof Demand Creation Marketing at Foundation Source. Isn't that a great title! Our topic is "Lead Management" and how to do it successfully. This is often a highly charged area as for the first time, marketing is requiring accountability from sales and vice versa - I call it "The Elephant on the Conference Room Table."

It's the Monday morning senior management team meeting. It starts with the VP of Sales giving an update on the sales pipeline and revenue and then it's your turn, Mr/s Marketer to give an update on the lead funnel and the impact you are making on revenue. Your report focuses on all the leads you are turning over to sales, how qualified they are and how you don't think they are being followed up on (is that correct English?) Sales volleys back that what they are getting is not qualified and so goes another Monday morning senior management team meeting.

People there is an elephant sitting on that conference room table that no one is acknowledging and it's called lead management. This has been a topic of my last few blogs because I think it deserves a lot of attention in 2009. My friend Eric Blumthal of Count5 just responded in our LASER Lead Generation Group on this topic and here is a synopsis of the problem.

1. Sales and marketing don't have a common set of lead definitions
2. Sales isn't classically trained to work the very top of the sales funnel - nor are they compensated for this work (in a sense)
3. Marketing is not trained in selling at all - they don't know what they don't know
4. No one is responsible for working these leads they way they need to be
5. There is no "lead management process" in place with assigned roles, accountability, tools and time lines

Here is an example. Marketing works hard to get a lead - as defined by marketing. How often does marketing take it upon themselves to have their own definition of a lead and never invite sales to this discussion? VERY often. Sales gets LOTS of leads from marketing and based on prior experiences, sales will cherry pick through these leads and call them when they get some free time or the pressure to get more opportunities into the sales funnel gets high. Big mistake as the shelf life of a lead is 72 hours max and in some industries, several hours. Does all of this sound familiar?

Here is a sample outline of a joint sales and marketing workshop I have facilitated many times that will help address that elephant on the conference room table.

1. Do a survey - have sales comment on lead production from marketing and have marketing comment on lead followup from sales. Discuss the results.
2. Create a common set of lead definitions, given the tools available to marketing today. "I, Marketing, will pass a lead to sales when it meets this set of criteria..."
3. Create an SLA with sales - "I Sales, will follow up on qualified leads from Marketing within 24 hours of receiving the lead."
4. Jointly develop campaign ideas. Sales is your best resource for what potential leads will respond to..ask them!

Of course, this is all very simplistic but you would be amazed how often these basics are not in place. Why? Because this represents a process and role change for marketing - it's hard for marketing to do and it's hard for sales to accept. It is the elephant sitting on the conference room table that everyone is hoping will go away. It won't and you will have to address these process issues around lead management.

How have you addressed this issue in your company?

Metrics That Matter

2009-09-08T08:28:00.000-07:00

If your CEO or VP hasn't yet asked you for metrics that demonstrate your impact on the business - get ready for 2010 because it's coming! As we travel across the country and meet with marketers now fully tasked with making a lead generation and demand generation impact, it is apparent that more and more companies are asking for, even requiring, "Metrics That Matter." In business speak, this means what is the revenue contribution from marketing. For many marketers, this is a daunting task but with the arrival of marketing automation systems on the market, this is now a slam dunk!

As you look at how you can report on "Metrics That Matter," here are five best practices:

1. Start with what you have
As you adopt marketing automation systems and implement and begin to fully utilize them, you will change what you measure because you will now be able to measure things you could not before. However, in the beginning, start with what you can tangibly and discretely measure. Items such as: # of emails sent, % open, % click-throughs and % effective rate (click-through/open)

2. Create a set of base-line metrics
To see improvement, you have to start with a baseline. Create a baseline (even if it is your best guess) for every key metric you will be tracking and reporting. Try to get general agreement on these metrics.

3. WAG for every campaign
A few years ago Harvard Business Review did an article on the art of guessing (Wild *#* Guess) in business and found that experienced professionals were often no more than 10-20% away from their WAG when compared to actual results. For the DG marketer, this means that EVERY campaign needs to have a set of WAGs associated with them - from Day 1. This will help you get used to working to achieve these key metrics.

4. Only a handful of metrics matter
While there are many things you can measure, ask yourself - "What does my leadership team care about?" This will help you define the Metrics That Matter. For example, your CEO could probably care less about how many emails got sent out or the number of opens or even click-throughs. What he probably cares about are the number of highly qualified leads sent to sales as measured by the % of these leads that converted into opportunities.

5. Walk and talk like a VP of Sales
Last year we did a study on metrics by interviewing top Demand Generation Marketers. We found many common attributes across this seasoned group but one of the most surprising was they sounded like a VP of Sales. They were incredibly Metrics That Mattered driven and could tell you at anytime where they were against plan - almost like they had a quota (some did.) Additionally, they were deeply integrated with sales and knew that if sales was going to achieve their quota, then they had to achieve theirs.

What have you seen?

No Lead Left Behind!

2009-08-31T19:16:00.000-07:00

If you ask any marketer who has recently invested in marketing automation, being able to launch all kinds of lead nurturing programs was probably one of the top reasons they invested. I recently spoke to Jim Kanir and Heather Bennett at M5 and they have 16 different lead nurturing programs that they are running. AND, they just implemented Eloqua in March! So, can it be done? Yes! Can it be done quickly? Yes! Can it be done effectively? Yes! Listen on Sept 3 at 1:00 EDT as we talk to Jim and Heather for the Demand Generation Essentials Series.

In the meanwhile, here are 5 Best Practices for improving your lead nurturing programs:

1. Map out the Life of a Lead
- Go to a white board and map out the path of every type of lead in your company
- Map it our from inquiry to close
- Identify all the places where you have "lead leakage" (What does not convert
to the next step.)
- These are an ideal set of leads to nurture
- Examples might include:
- All prospects that received a demo but did not convert
- All leads passed to sales that did not move to the next stage after 30 days

2. Set up lead nurturing based on behavior
- Identify a set of online behaviors that indicate specific interest, but not
yet ready for a sales call
- Set up a program that places that prospect into a specific lead nurturing
program based on that online behavior
- Examples might include:
- A visit to your pricing page
- Multiple pages visited in a solution section

3. Set up lead nurturing based on demographics and a form
- Create a form and ask a question like - "What is your number one initiative
for 2010?
- Give several options and force one answer
- Based on that answer, place that prospect into a nurturing campaign on that
top initiative

4. Set up a lead nurturing program post a trade show
- Number one lead complaint is about trade show leads - you typically get a lot
but the quality is not good.
- Take the leads from the trade show and place into a nurturing program to help
qualify

5. Set up a lead nurturing program to re-awaken a database or a list
- Create a high level thought leadership campaign or a series of offers
- Drip to the identified list
- Examples might include:
- Old leads
- Old contacts

What have you seen work?

Social Media and the Boston Bruins Interview Today!

2009-08-27T05:52:00.001-07:00

Dear Fellow Marketer:

Remember to join me, Debbie Qaqish, at 1pm EDT today, as I talk with Laura Zexter of the TD Garden and Boston Bruins on BlogTalkRadio. Laura will share with us how TD Garden and the Boston Bruins go to market using multiple channels, how they integrate social media, and how they implemented their most recent campaign - The Golden Ticket. If you haven't registered yet, sign up now: The DG Essentials Series - Real Live Stories. Real Life Results.

Why Register?

It's a simple, one time process
Once registered, you have access to all 12 DG broadcasts, including past shows
You will also have access to the entire Demand Generation Toolkit, which includes podcasts, white papers, worksheets, and Q&A script from the broadcasts

Instructions to Access Internet Broadcast

Once you click on the Blog Talk Radio link here, click the Play/Chat button (this option will appear immediately before the show begins) and have your computer speakers turned on - you'll hear the live interview streaming over the internet. You do not dial the phone number in order to hear the interview.

Instructions to Participate During the Show

Live questions - dial the Call In Number shown at the top of your screen:
646-478-5604
Chat Room - to comment in the chat room, you must first be registered and logged into BTR. If you haven't registered for BTR yet, click here. Please register for BTR before the show. After you have logged in, you must refresh the page, then your display name will appear, and you will be able to make comments.
During the show you will be prompted to ask your questions, either through chat or call-in. Instructions will also be given throughout the show for how to ask questions.

Looking forward to your participation,

Debbie Qaqish
CRO
The Pedowitz Group, The Demand Generation Agency

Follow me on Twitter: DebbieQaqish
Today's Blog: Social Media Food for Thought

The Demand Generation Essentials Series
– Real Live Stories.
– Real Life Results.

Flex your social media muscle
Tweet this Share this

DG Definitions of the WEEK:

Subscription Management also known as Preference Management is a process that a list builder uses to add and/or remove members from their lists. It can be used for multiple list building purposes such as direct mail, but is often more associated with email and telemarketing.

Manage your subscriptions here

The Pedowitz Group
14162 Seabiscuit
Alpharetta, GA 30004
USA

Social Media Food for Thought

2009-08-24T19:29:00.000-07:00

How well do you know your social media channels as they pertain to your prospects? What the heck does that mean? Many marketers will bundle Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn into one clump of “social media” when there is much more opportunity to act upon. Each of these channels offers a different behavioral outlet for prospects. As online marketers, it is our responsibility to understand how our prospects behave through these media of social expression.

Each of these social media channels offer a different means of expression and interaction between members. Twitter allows for thought leaders and influences to share snippets of wisdom under 140 characters mostly through observation. “What are you doing?” asks the infamous site, which is slightly different and will elicit different answers than Facebook’s “What’s on your mind”. Who are those thought leaders and how do they influence your prospects? Facebook provides not only profile pages of individuals but also groups and fan pages where discussions are held. What is said in these discussions and what does that tell you about your market? LinkedIn has a similar pattern of groups and profile pages, but on average is updated less frequently. The hesitation of what to add on these pages loses candid thought that the instantaneous social media outlets of Facebook and Twitter provide.

Many of us feel that we know our prospects from a face to face value, but do we know their online behavior? How often do your prospects check Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn? What groups or fan pages do they actively participate in on Facebook? Finding these answers can be tedious, but rewarding. In a Web 2.0 world where active participation keeps you up to date with your prospects, why would you waste a goldmine of opportunity offered through these various channels?

What have you seen or experienced?

Reminder - 3rd DG Essentials Series Interview Today!

2009-08-13T07:07:00.001-07:00

Dear Fellow Marketer:

Remember to join me, Debbie Qaqish, at 1pm EDT, today on The DG Essentials Series - Real Live Stories. Real Life Results. I will be discussing lead scoring with Pam O'Neal, Vice President of Marketing at BreakingPoint on Blog Talk Radio.

Lead Scoring is such a "hot topic" today and Pam will share with us how she implemented lead scoring at BreakingPoint. I'm sure you will find the show very informative, as she describes how she got started with lead scoring, how she learned to experiment to get it right, and the wins and challenges she had along the way.

Here's how you can hear this interview on Blog Talk Radio:

Once you click on the Blog Talk Radio link from this email, the click Play/Chat option will appear as soon as the show begins. Click "Play" and have your computer speakers turned on to hear the live interview streaming over the internet.

Note: You do not dial a telephone number to hear the radio show. You will hear the audio 'STREAMING LIVE' over the INTERNET via your computer speakers.

This interview is part of the 12 Week DG Essentials Series and includes top Demand Generation Marketers talking about topics that are influencing today's business. Topics include:

Using social media for demand generation
Improving lead quantity and quality
Using marketing automation and other Web 2.0 technologies
Aligning sales and marketing
Tracking and reporting on measurable results

The DG Essentials Series - Real Live Stories. Real Life Results. is a virtual, free, and live educational series!

Join us, today!

Debbie Qaqish
CRO
The Pedowitz Group, The Demand Generation Agency

Follow me on Twitter: DebbieQaqish
Today's Blog: Lead Scoring De-Mystified

The Demand Generation Essentials Series
– Real Live Stories.
– Real Life Results.

DG Definitions of the WEEK:

Lead Scoring – is a process using a marketing automation system that allows you to assign points to demographic data ( a C level title might get 10 points while a Director title might get 8 points) and implicit behavior ( visiting 10 pages on a specific solution on your website). This point system is designed to identify when a prospect "raises their virtual hand" letting you know they would welcome a call from sales. This is an MQL.

Demographic data - hard data that is pulled from CRM (title) or a form (# of emplpyees). Part of the total lead score.

Behavioral data - online behavior such as number of pages visited or the visit of a key web page. Part of the total lead score.

Manage your subscriptions here

The Pedowitz Group
14162 Seabiscuit
Alpharetta, GA 30004
USA

B2B Thought Leadership with Debbie Qaqish

2009-08-11T12:12:00.001-07:00

SilverPop interviewed me for a blog post. Check it out here: B2B Thought Leadership with Debbie Qaqish

Posted using ShareThis

The Taxi-Cab Driver, The Day Laborer and The Marketer

2009-08-11T04:35:00.000-07:00

As a consultant, I often travel around the country to visit clients. Usually, I take a cab from the airport to the client location. Taxi drivers are a hard-working group of people. Typically they log 12 hour days and often wait hours at a time at a 'premium spot', like the airport, where they know there will be lots of travelers and hopefully long drives where the fare and tip will be high. Every 1 in 10 drivers is different though, and you can spot them right away. Their cabs are cleaner, their step is livelier. But what really makes them different is they make an effort to get to know you and what your plans are for the week. These drivers realize it is not about this fare, but all the future fares. They often offer to drive you for the week and give you their card so you will call them the next time you are in town. These drivers never wait in line. They have clients and they set and manage a schedule.

When I am at home, there always seems to be something to do around the yard. For the bigger jobs that are labor intensive, I can drive a few miles down the road and hit a couple of spots where the day laborers hang out. As soon as I pull the truck in, they swarm in. First person(s) that get in the truck wins the job for the day. Once in the truck, we negotiate the pay rate and they are paid in cash when the job is complete. The other laborers who weren't so lucky sit around and hope another truck will pull up soon. Every day they repeat this process. Every so often, I will notice that some of the workers are smarter than the others. When the job is complete, they take a few extra minutes and walk the neighborhood, handing out cards and referring them to the work they just did. This typically leads to more business for them and before long they are managing their own crews and they don't wait on corners any more.

Most marketers I know work very hard and they spend hours per day working on their website, sending out email campaigns, working events. They can't always measure the impact of their efforts, but know if they work hard enough, some of their activity will produce leads and help the sales team bring in more revenue. Then there are the smarketers. These are the people that realize it is not how hard you work, but how smart you work. They leverage social media, marketing automation and tools to create conversations all over the web, not just on their website. They do not wait for prospects to come to them, they take the conversation to the masses, but focus their efforts through key channels. They use technology to drive more activity with no additional labor. They are driving revenue while everyone else is managing costs.

Every field has workers that toil for their keep. Every field also has intelligent game changers. They don't follow the same trail as everyone else. They forge ahead and find new paths and create new opportunities. Which one are you?

Lead Scoring De-Mystified

2009-08-10T12:12:00.000-07:00

As I was designing the 12 Demand Generation Essentials for our current educational series on BlogTalk Radio, Lead Scoring became DG Essential #3. It's important and effective. Yet, when I went to find a marketing practitioner who had deep experience in this area, I came up very short. They just did not exist. In talking to some of my friends and colleagues in the industry, the reason for lack of Lead Scoring implementation had little to do with technology and everything to do with process. Here are some of the reasons why and what you can do about it:

1. Sales and marketing don't often speak the same language. - Yet, when you do lead scoring, you have to do it with sales. A good lead scoring system produces high quality leads for sales and who knows better than sales which questions to ask for qualifying and propensity to buy?
2. Lead scoring creates "fear." - "What do you mean I (sales) don't get to see everything?" Even though sales people complain about lead quality, they still feel like they have to see everything so if you slow down the lead flow, this can create tension with sales.
3. Change, change, change. - Since lead scoring is an activity that has a big impact on sales, it often creates a lot of change and when was the last time marketing lead a change that effected sales? Lead scoring forces a discussion, a common set of lead definitions and direct responsibility for marketing in producing quality leads and sales in following up on these leads.

So, how do you address the above issues?

1. Involve sales from Day 1
2. Keep is simple, simple, simple
3. Turn something on - Like I tell my clients - "No small animals will be harmed in the process"
4. Implement, review (get feedback from sales) and tweak - Think about it. The chances of you getting this absolutely right the first time is very small.

What have you seen that works?

Reminder - 2nd DG Essentials Series Interview Today!

2009-08-06T06:47:00.001-07:00

Dear Fellow Marketer:

Remember to join me, Debbie Qaqish, at 1pm EDT, today as I talk with Edwin Thompson, Director of Marketing Programs at Brainshark on BLOGTALK RADIO. If you haven't registered yet, sign up now: The DG Essentials Series - Real Live Stories. Real Life Results.

On today's show, we will be talking about one of the hottest topics in marketing: "How to Better Align Sales and Marketing". You will hear Edwin Thompson talk about his strategies and tactics for successfully integrating sales and marketing both prior to, and after, implementing a Marketing Automation System. You will hear how this alignment made a major impact on revenues at Brainshark.

HERE'S HOW BLOGTALK RADIO WORKS:

YOU DO NOT DIAL A TELEPHONE NUMBER TO HEAR THE RADIO SHOW. You will hear the audio 'STREAMING LIVE' over the INTERNET via your computer speakers.

Once you click on BlogTalk Radio, click Play/Chat (this option will appear immediately before the show begins). Be sure to have your computer speakers turned on to HEAR THE LIVE INTERVIEW STREAMING OVER THE INTERNET. During the show, you will be prompted to ask your questions. I will give you instructions on how to ask questions, during the show.

This interview is part of the 12 Week DG Essentials Series and includes top Demand Generation Marketers talking about topics that are influencing today's business. Topics include:

Using social media for demand generation
Improving lead quantity and quality
Using marketing automation and other Web 2.0 technologies
Aligning sales and marketing
Tracking and reporting on measurable results

The DG Essentials Series - Real Live Stories. Real Life Results. is a virtual, free, and live educational series!

Join us, today!

Debbie Qaqish
CRO
The Pedowitz Group, The Demand Generation Agency

Follow me on Twitter: DebbieQaqish
Today's Blog: Why is achieving sales & marketing alignment so hard?

The Demand Generation Essentials Series
– Real Live Stories.
– Real Life Results.

DG Definitions of the WEEK:

Service Level Agreement (or 'SLA' for short) is a document which captures the roles and responsibilities of sales and marketing through the Lead Management process. It also includes the lead language and criteria established between sales and marketing for the proper follow up and disposition of leads supplied to sales from marketing.

Marketing Qualified Lead (or 'MQL' for short) means a lead is ready for sales. It meets the jointly agreed upon criteria established by sales and marketing and has been through a lead scoring program. The lead scoring program looks at both the quantitative data (i.e. title/ role, number of employees, etc.) and the online behavior (i.e. number of visits to the site, number of pages viewed, number of people from one company visiting the site in a period of time, etc), to ascertain: How qualified is this lead? What is their propensity to buy?

Manage your subscriptions here

The Pedowitz Group
14162 Seabiscuit
Alpharetta, GA 30004
USA

Why is achieving sales & marketing alignment so hard?

2009-08-06T03:27:00.000-07:00

I love everything about selling (having been a VP of Sales for many years) so when I became a full time VP of Marketing, aligning the two teams to help improve lead generation just made sense to me. In addition, we bought a marketing automation system and this technology gave me a concrete way to involve sales and to help improve key aspects of their pospecting and sales cycles. I think it has been my experience and understanding of sales that helped me knit all this together. This does not seem to be the norm and this is the crux of the problem for the mis-alignment between sales and marketing.

I was talking to a Marketing Director recently and we were doing a Life of a Lead process flow - a key process to map for implementing marketing automation - and I was stunned to find out they knew next to nothing about sales or the sales process in their company. This is analogous to not knowing the profile of your target audience. How do you message them? How do you interact with them? What kind of high value offers do you make?

Whether you have sales in your background or not, the lesson learned is to get to know sales and your company's sales process and remember that the sales team is your ultimate customer. You produce Marketing Qualified Leads and they consume them. Once you have this sales savviness as a foundation, take a look at this post from Steve Woods of Eloqua which presents some great ideas for how to better align sales and marketing beginning with the impact you can help them make on revenue.

What has worked for you?

Sourcing & Selecting a Marketing Automation Solution

2009-07-30T13:51:00.000-07:00

Debbie Qaqish on Blog Talk Radio

Listen to the interview with Mary Gary of Fluke Networks as she talks about Sourcing and Selecting Marketing Automation - a fabulous interview filled with details you will want to hear. Once you get to the site, it is the Featured Episode. Also be sure to join us next week when we talk to Edwin Thompson from Brainshark.

Reminder - 1st DG Essentials Series Interview Today!

2009-07-30T08:58:00.001-07:00

Don't forget – We're holding our first interview today to kick off the Demand Generation Essentials Educational Series! If you haven't registered yet, sign up now: The DG Essentials Series - Real Live Stories. Real Life Results.

Join us today at 1:00 EDT when we talk to Mary Gary of Fluke Networks about how to Source and Select a Marketing Automation System.

Instructions: Once you click on BlogTalk Radio, click Play/Chat (this option will appear immediately before the show begins) and have your computer speakers turned on. You'll hear the live interview streaming over the internet. You can ask questions at the end of the interview.

Over the next 12 weeks, we'll interview top DG marketing practitioners and hear their real world accounts about what worked – and what didn't work – on their journey to achieving measurable demand generation success. Topics include:

* Using social media for demand generation
* Improving lead quantity and quality
* Aligning sales and marketing

It's educational, it's live, it's fun and it's fast paced. Go to our DG Essentials Series Landing Page to find out more, to register and to see what will be covered each week.

Debbie Qaqish
CRO
The Pedowitz Group, The Demand Generation Agency

Follow me on Twitter: DebbieQaqish
Today's Blog: DG RFP's don't work!

DG RFP's Don't Work

2009-07-27T19:21:00.001-07:00

I was recently working with a client who had put out an RFP for a marketing automation solution and they were a little confused about the responses. All vendors indicated they had all the features and functions they were looking for! How were they to make a decision?

For more complex marketing and sales organizations, I don't believe that using the old tried and true software RFP approach for sourcing and selecting Marketing Automation is the key to choosing the right system for your company. Rather, it is a basic, standard part of the process and building Use Cases is what really helps a company determine what system will work best them.

Twelve months ago, we weren't seeing any RFPs in the Demand Generation space. But finally, our market is growing more sophisticated and I am seeing all kinds of RFP templates and processes. Don't get me wrong. RFPs provide a foundation for doing low level comparisons. But anyone can check off that they have a feature or function. It really comes down to how all this gets knit together to create an effective Demand Generation program. That's where building your own Custom Use Cases come into play. Areas to consider:
1. Describe your power user - If this is a part of their job, they are not too technically inclined and you need to get things done quickly and with a slim staff, you might want to look at systems that are easy to learn and use. What if that power uses leaves and no one else is trained?
2. Map out The Life of a Lead(s) in your company - This will give you a good idea of what your marketing automation system will need to do and what it will need to integrate with. This process will give you important details on your CRM integration requirements
3. Define your Lead Management System - how will leads be passed and what kind of SLA's will be put into place for sales and marketing.
4. Define the kinds of campaigns will you need to execute - Global or only US? Use of templates, dynamic content, triggers, lead nurturing etc.
5. Define the key metrics you will need to track
6. Based on the above activities, fully vet 3 - 5 Use Cases with envelope ROIs.

Feature comparisons will only get you so far in your decision cycle. To truely understand what you need in marketing automation, take the time to build and vet Use Cases. This also serves as your ROI justification to your executive committee and if you involve sales in this process (which you should), you will have early and active buy-in from your major consituent.

What have you seen?

But I Don't Have Enough Content to Start a DG Program!

2009-07-21T05:05:00.000-07:00

When talking to marketers about beginning a Demand Generation initiative, "But, I don't have enough content to feed that engine!" is a common concern. My answer - maybe you do and maybe you don't. What I do know is that a new way of looking at content is required when beginning a DG program. Here are Five Best Practices:
1. Chunk, chunk, chunk your content
In an email, you are making one touch, with one idea. You don't need to throw the encyclopedia at them. Take one element from a current content piece that will provide one point of value for your subscribers.
2. Third party content
Who says you have to write it all? As long as the piece is relevant, provides a point of value for your subscribers and elicits behavior you can score and respond to, it works!
3. Micro-papers from your blogs
I often find that what I blog about can make a great mini-paper. If you add to that any comments your blog created, you have a piece of content worth using.
4. Interviews
You can interview anyone - a client, an analyst, etc. Create and send it out as a podcast. I use BlogTalk Radio - free and easy. This also helps you mix up your content types
5. Content is king
In this internet world we live in, content is king. If you don't have it, you will need to get it! Look at what your competitors are doing...

The One-Armed Basketball Player

2009-07-02T16:14:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid, we used to play basketball all the time. Every day, after school we would be out there, playing until well after sun-down. There was a kid named Robert who was a few years younger than us. He was pretty fast and you could tell he was going to be a great athlete when he got older. Of course, us older kids beat him up pretty good under the hoop. Robert was fast, but he could only go to his right. After a while, we figured out that if we pressed him left, he couldn't do anything, thereby neutralizing his speed. One day, Robert was out goofing around with some of his friends and broke his right arm. For two weeks, we didn't see Robert at all. Then one day, his Mom dragged him down to the court and told him she was tired of him hanging around the house. "Please get out here and play with your friends." Robert was tenuous for the next week, just sitting on the sideline and moping. Finally, he couldn't resist getting in the game. Now, he only had a left hand. At first, we took it easy on him, because we knew he was right-handed. We would usually wrap up around 8:30-9, but Robert was still there, shooting. The next day we came back and he was always there first. Robert was determined to strengthen his left hand, something he never used. After about a month, Robert could move left pretty well. After another 2 weeks, he was shooting better with his left hand then he ever did with his right. Then the cast came off. Now, Robert was dangerous. He could move left or right with equal speed and power. He developed a sweet cross-over dribble that left you hanging onto your shorts. In time, Robert was starting for the school basketball team and ended up being one of the best athletes the school had ever seen.

What does this have to do with marketing? EVERYTHING. We use one channel too much. We rely too heavily on email at the expense of social media, text, RSS, direct mail, offline. As marketers, if we can develop left and right channels, we can be more effective. One channel is too predictable and ineffective. Multiple channels will help you win many times over.

Creating an Unfair Advantage

2009-07-02T10:42:00.000-07:00

Don’t you just love that phrase? I do. For me, it represents the real opportunity before all demand generation marketers today.

As I reflect on that phrase, it is clear that we now have a whole new genre of tools at our disposal that cross both marketing and sales and that use the power of the web to help us make better pursuit decisions – from the very top of the lead funnel all the way deep into the sales funnel. For example, if I’m a demand generation marketer or a sales person, I want to know the minute my top prospects are responding to my emails, visiting key pages on my website or tweeting about my offerings. Insight to this kind of on-line behavior helps me make better decisions that result in more business for my company. AND, I can respond manually or automatically to this behavior.

I bought my first marketing automation system 5 years ago when I was looking for a way to produce high quality leads for our sales team that would have a measurable impact on revenue. I’ll never forget the first time I saw a marketing automation demo. I sat in my chair amazed at how it worked and thinking furiously how this was going to dramatically change not only how we created leads but also how we sold. This was beyond gaining a competitive advantage, this was going to give us an unfair advantage – and it did.

Yet, the market has been slow in the uptake with only about 2,000 companies currently using the more sophisticated marketing automation systems with sales extensions. But we are seeing phenomenal growth in this category in 2009.

Fast forward to 2009. “Gaining an unfair advantage” is a phrase that popped up last week while interviewing Jon Miller of Marketo for our iGNITE Demand Generation Series. We were discussing Marketo’s new Sales Insight solution and I had asked Jon how their customers were responding to it. He said one of his customers said that Sales Insight gave his team an “unfair advantage.” I got goose bumps! Who doesn’t want an unfair advantage in this challenging and hyper-competitive market?

My contention is that the current genre of marketing automation tools and sales extensions can provide a company with an unfair advantage. “Gaining an unfair advantage” needs to be the rallying cry for all demand generation marketers in 2009 and beyond. You have access to tools, processes and best practices that can create this “unfair advantage” for your company. Use them!

What have you seen?

Sneak Peak - Debbie's Session at Boston OMS May 2009

2009-06-07T10:22:00.000-07:00

The Pedowitz Group has taken the OMS Tour by storm! Aaron Kahlow sneaks into Debbie's Demand Generation Essentials session at the Boston Summit in May. See Debbie's thoughts about the Boston conference here. You can also check out Aaron's entire vlog of the Boston OMS Tour on this Channel.

What DG Marketers Can Learn From Charlie Chaplin

2009-05-21T06:12:00.000-07:00

We can learn a few things about how to appropriately staff for demand generation from Charlie Chaplin in "Modern Times."

As a factory worker on the line, he was over-worked in a highly manual process. The result? Poor product and a very frustrated worker. Now I know that you aren't going to go out and tear down your existing lead generation factory, but imagine if the character had had the benefit of a great automated system. How would his job change? What would happen to the result? And, how would he feel about his new role?

As marketers take on marketing automation systems in order to produce high quality lead generation, they are discovering that a new set of skills is required to support new automated techniques. Just this morning I had a conversation with one of our clients around how to properly staff for demand/lead generation. Here are the 4 key roles I outlined for her. For this blog, I thought I would continue to use Mr. Chaplin's manufacturing analogy. After all, you are in the Lead Production business!

1. A System Power User - Someone who will be the Power User of the marketing automation system. This person is responsible for building the emails, landing pages, forms, list segmentation and lay-out of campaigns. They are also responsible for building the work flow of the campaign and for suggesting ways to improve the overall campaign structure.

A good analogy for this role is the person responsible for the line in a manufacturing facility. They use all the machines and technology to ensure the production run produces as envisioned and designed.

2. Analytics - someone on the team needs to be responsible for analytics for 2 reasons:

A. You don't know what you don't know when you get started. With that as a premise, you will have to do a lot of experimentation, testing and tweaking to get to the point of producing high quality leads for sales on a scalable and predictable basis.

B. You will begin tracking and reporting on metrics that are new. As you do this, you will be looking for ways to show the impact of marketing on revenue and this means tracking your impact into the sales cycle. This takes a new way of thinking, working with systems and analysis.
In a manufacturing setting, this role is analogous to the QA person who is always looking at key measures and ways to improve key measures - with the ultimate goal of producing defect free leads - this means sales accepts and closes all of the leads you produce!

3. Digital World Communicator - This is a communications role for the digital world. As you write copy in emails, landing pages, forms, etc, being brief, to the point and following the stream of consciousness is critical. If a prospect clicks on a Google Ad based on a topic, the landing page they go to needs to continue that topic, that stream of consciousness. It's all about behavior and setting up a digital dialog to elicit behavior.

In the manufacturing world, this role is analogous to the Plant Manager - the person responsible for understanding the business requirements and translating that to production.

4. Strategist and Change Agent - No one really wants to hear this one but it is the most important role of all. EVERY client we work with is surprised at the amount of change demand generation with a marketing automation system invites. Some are ready for the change and can make it happen quickly. Others, need a bit more time. This senior executive is responsible for not just getting campaigns out the door but for impacting revenue for the company. If you think about the Life of a Lead from marketing inception through the hand-off to sales to opportunity and close, demand generation can impact ALL of these areas.

This role is the executive (the suit) who is in charge of surveying the market and their constituents and determining how best to use the production resources to meet the needs of the company. It is a powerful position and carries a lot of responsibility for the bottom line.

Enjoy watching the clip of Charlie Chaplin in "Modern Times" and consider how introducing a powerful marketing automation system changes key processes and roles in your company.

This is just a high level of overview. What have you seen? Have you seen these roles as separate roles or are you seeing these roles being combined? Would love to hear your comments!

DG and Peanuts

2009-05-17T19:03:00.000-07:00

This weekend, I went to my family's 41st reunion in Blakely, GA. If you need a map to look it up, that's OK! It's a small town in southwest Georgia and a staple of the economy is peanut farming. As a matter of fact, it is one of the richest peanut growing regions in the world! On a trip to the Piggly Wiggly to get fruit to make a gigantic fruit salad (got to feed about 200 people), I noticed that the small town was really touting their peanut-driven economy with these banners flying around the town square. They wanted to make sure that everyone was fully aware of their intense focus as a community on peanuts.

As I thought about this PR move, it occurred to me that as B2B companies look to implement a demand generation (lead generation) program, they are actually finding new ways to fuel their own economy - the economy of leads that get passed to sales and get closed. And, like peanuts in southwest Georgia, a little PR can go a long way.

Just this past week I was at a client location and part of what we talked about was how to "promote" marketing's new demand generation program to senior management, sales and other groups who might need to understand this new focus. I asked them a simple question, "Do you have a PR firm?" The answer was Yes and I simply explained they need to develop their own internal PR for demand generation and to consider both formal and informal means of communication. It's a PR calendar for demand generation which serves the same purpose of any PR effort - educate and get on board key constituents.

While you might not need to put up red banners all around the office, finding a way to provide this key education on a new focus for marketing is a brilliant move. Maybe Demand Generation Proud?

What have you seen that works?

Debbie Qaqish Interviewed By HubSpot

2009-05-13T05:42:00.000-07:00

My partner Debbie was just interviewed by HubSpot on her viewpoints on Demand Generation: http://tinyurl.com/r2l9ps

Boston OMS is a WOW!

2009-05-06T17:43:00.000-07:00

We kicked off a 16 city speaking tour with the Online Marketing Summit in Boston - our topic - what else but demand generation! I was a little worried that our session might not be that well attended as so much attention was being paid to the social media elements of the tour. Was I ever wrong! With 100 people in attendance at the Boston event and 3 consecutive sessions being run, our session on Demand Generation Essentials drew over 50 attendees! Part of the reason may be that OMS is now offering a certification for demand generation and our course helped "students" earn credit. Kudos to Aaron Kahlow and team for bringing this much needed certification to market via the Online Marketing Institute.

My big take-away - anything to do with lead generation is still hot and getting hotter and education is the key!

What are you seeing??

$15,000 in Free Services for Eloqua Implementation

2009-04-10T08:03:00.000-07:00

This week, we issued a press release about offering up to $15,000 in free services to support an Eloqua implementation. Our goal is to help marketers get quicker time to value and focus on selecting the most appropriate platform for their needs. It has been the subject of much debate. We believe we can help marketers of all backgrounds be more effective and drive more revenue for their company. True process change takes time in any organization, but with today's SAAS offerings, there is no reason why marketing and sales can't achieve quick returns with the low hanging fruit while they continue to make more measured changes over time.

Making a Decision for Marketing Automation

2009-03-23T19:38:00.001-07:00

As I talk to marketers about their goals and objectives for 2009, many are looking at marketing automation systems. While I applaud their forward thinking, I also find that they are making decisions without iron clad ROI and/or a true understanding of what a marketing automation system can do for them.

We highly recommend building out a series of Use Cases which will:
- Show specifically what the investment will return for you and by when
- Provide a clear vision to how the solution will be used
- Engage and align all key areas of the company – sales, marketing and senior management in the process thereby producing buy-in, collaboration and a common vision
- Create your “Go To Market” campaign schedule with agreement from all parties
- Provide your training case around your solution

How did you approach this important spend?

An Interview with Kelly Scott

2009-03-19T09:29:00.001-07:00

Today we interviewed Kelly Scott about viewpoints on Demand Generation and what best practices are being used to help marketing drive revenue.

TPG: 1. What are some of your most effective lead generation programs?

Kelly : We've had lots of success with webinars, "lumpy package" direct mail campaigns, and live product demo events.

TPG: 2. How do you measure your marketing performance? What are some of the key metrics you use?

Kelly : Our #1 metric is the % of leads that convert into 1st appointments for our sales team.

TPG: 3. What percentage of your budget is allocated towards lead generation?

Kelly : Not nearly enough.

TPG: 4. How do you achieve alignment with your sales organization?

Kelly : Blunt force... just kidding! We constantly communicate back and forth to make sure everyone's on the same page.

TPG: 5. How do you define a qualified lead?

Kelly : A qualified lead for us is someone who is in the market for a new phone system.

TPG: 6. What role does technology play in your lead generation efforts?

Kelly : It plays a major role. As a technology firm, we have to make sure we stay on the cutting edge.

TPG: 7. How is your organization leveraging social media to drive demand?

Kelly : We have a company blog, our CEO twits (or is is tweets?), and we're also on FaceBook.

TPG: 8. What are your three top priorities for this year?

Kelly : 1. Increase Revenue 2. Increase Revenue 3. Increase Revenue Oh, and I think we're trying to increase revenue.

TPG: 9. What advice would you give a marketer who is just getting started with lead generation?

Kelly : Don't be afraid to try something new. Just remember to test and retest. You never know when you'll stumble across something that works.

TPG: 10. How do you see the role of marketing changing?

Kelly : I see marketing becoming less and less "theoretical" and more metrics and results driven, especially with the new technology that's available to give marketers more access to data.

2009-03-18T12:54:00.000-07:00

Email and Beyond!

After attending the Marketing Sherpa Email marketing conference, I can tell you, we have a LONG way to go for marketers to fully understand, embrace and leverage the incredible new processes and tools available on the market today. This in no way diminishes the focus of the conference – it enhances it! I saw an incredible thirst for education around all elements of using the web to improve lead flow and lead quality to sales. The rooms were packed, great questions were asked and marketers were very engaged. Learning these basics is incredibly important and these marketers were out to get all they could! Education, certification and training for marketers will continue to be a major theme in 2009 and 2010.

At the same time, my life everyday is about working with marketers who have a huge need to move well past email marketing as a singular solution and squarely into the land of demand generation. We define demand generation as the revenue focused activities from both sales and marketing that get quality leads into the top of the funnel and help pull opportunities through the sales funnel faster and more effectively. Demand generation is based on the notion of building unique one-on-one relationships, automatically, with your prospects based on their “digital body language.” It’s the other half of the discussion that sales and marketing is missing.

I frequently hear that the percent of demand generation marketers is small, maybe as high as 4% of all marketers. Consider this statistic. If you add up all the customers held by the marketing automation companies like Eloqua, Marketo, VTrenz, etc, the number is probably around 1500, tops! What are all the other marketers doing?

They are getting up to speed. Where are you?

What are your thoughts?

Thinking Like Your Prospect, And Why You Need to Do It!

2009-03-16T15:55:00.000-07:00

Last week I had the opportunity to work with a large, well-known education brand to develop a demand generation strategy. One area of deep exploration was who do they sell to and how do these people buy. I think every marketer would agree that this is fundamental to any effective lead generation program. Yet, because marketing is at least one step removed from the actual prospect/customer and because thinking about online behavior is new, this is a challenging exercise to work through.

Here is what we did to help this company begin to sort this out. Please feel free to share how you have addressed this issue!

1. Develop a Persona Profile – this is not your typical marketing profile. We were looking for who they are, where do they go to get information, how they think, who do they talk to. The idea behind the persona is to understand them well enough so we can get them into the sales process WHEN THEY ARE READY. This is not about collecting marketing data.
Execution Idea: Have the cross-functional team (sales and marketing) who is creating the persona present their findings in ROLE of the persona. It’s fun and even more importantly, it’s easy to remember and associate!
Execution Idea: Do Not let a single word or phrase be anything but the prospect perspective. NO corporate language allowed.

2. Map the Decision Making Process – how does this persona make decisions, who do they talk to, where do they go? Based on where they are in their process, what kind of information helps them take a step closer to your solutions?
Execution Idea: Have the cross-functional team (sales and marketing) who is mapping the Decision Making Process use flip charts and think in big buckets of stages such as Realization (I realize I have a problem), Education (what kind of solutions are out there), etc.
Execution Idea: Stay in role!

3. Map the Life of a Lead in your company – this is the process of walking through all the steps you take a lead through from first contact to a piece of closed business to life cycle of the lead
Execution Idea: Make someone in the group “a lead” and have them walk through what happens to them from the first contact to being a closed piece of business – this is your “As Is” state

4. Define the Gaps between how the prospect makes a decision and how you process them from lead to close
Execution Idea: Use your flip charts from Steps 2 and 3

5. Develop the New Life of a Lead – this is your “To Be” state
Execution Idea: Re-write Step 3.

Working with very clear personas in Step 1, helped this process be successful. Otherwise, it would have been all over the map!

What have you seen that works?

Why Email Deliverability is Like Moving to a New Neighborhood

2009-02-27T09:41:00.000-08:00

I was trying to explain to a client the various aspects of email deliverability, IP warming, reputation etc. We ended up discussing the analogy of moving to a new neighborhood.

Today, you are really popular. Your kids get invited to all the parties and you play tennis and know everyone at the club. Things couldn't be better - you are welcomed and accepted. Then you move and everything changes. No one knows who you are, and you have to start all over again making friends and reintroducing yourself to the community, even though as a family you haven't changed at all.

As it relates to email, when you move your domain from one carrier to another, you have to 'start over' and work on your relationship all over again and it takes time. There are things you can do like move over your spf records, but the fact remains is that you have to reearn your reputation and build trust again. Over time, you will (hopefully) be just as popular in your new neighborhood as in the old one.

An Interview with Cathy Johnson

2009-02-24T05:46:00.001-08:00

Today we interviewed Cathy Johnson about viewpoints on Demand Generation and what best practices are being used to help marketing drive revenue.

TPG: 1. What are some of your most effective lead generation programs?

Cathy : Executive to Executive interviews

TPG: 2. How do you measure your marketing performance? What are some of the key metrics you use?

Cathy : Number of leads passed to sales; dollars closed by sales from marketing generated leads

TPG: 3. What percentage of your budget is allocated towards lead generation?

Cathy : 50%

TPG: 4. How do you achieve alignment with your sales organization?

Cathy : Marketing participates in the weekly sales meetings; processes are put in writing and agreed upon by both sales and marketing.

TPG: 5. How do you define a qualified lead?

Cathy : Identified decision maker(s), budget and timeline

TPG: 6. What role does technology play in your lead generation efforts?

Cathy : We use Salesforce.com; we're looking into marketing automation

TPG: 7. How is your organization leveraging social media to drive demand?

Cathy : We're not

TPG: 8. What are your three top priorities for this year?

Cathy : 1. Revenue 2. Revenue 3. Revenue

TPG: 9. What advice would you give a marketer who is just getting started with lead generation?

Cathy : Get sales and marketing working together first and implement lead definitions and lead processes that both agree upon.

TPG: 10. How do you see the role of marketing changing?

Cathy : Marketing is increasingly more responsible for helping to build the pipeline.

An Interview with Debbie Qaqish

2009-02-24T05:36:00.001-08:00

Today we interviewed Debbie Qaqish about viewpoints on Demand Generation and what best practices are being used to help marketing drive revenue.

TPG: 1. What are some of your most effective lead generation programs?

Debbie Qaqish: Thought leadership with patience. So often, people think one email = one lead. That's not so for most businesses. Having a great thought leadership series with directed messaging around client pains and issues is one of the most successful campaig

TPG: 2. How do you measure your marketing performance? What are some of the key metrics you use?

Debbie Qaqish: Number of leads created Number of leads accepted by sales % of leads converted to opps % of leads that close to business

TPG: 3. What percentage of your budget is allocated towards lead generation?

Debbie Qaqish: 75%

TPG: 4. How do you achieve alignment with your sales organization?

Debbie Qaqish: Many ways. See my BLOG posts for February.

TPG: 5. How do you define a qualified lead?

Debbie Qaqish: A qualified lead is a jointly defined definition between sales and marketing which says - this lead is ready to be called by sales.

TPG: 6. What role does technology play in your lead generation efforts?

Debbie Qaqish: Enormous! I spoke to someone last week who is still doing COLD CALLING. I couldn't believe it. With the plethoria of tools with varying levels of sophistication and price points, NO ONE should ever be making cold calls.

TPG: 7. How is your organization leveraging social media to drive demand?

Debbie Qaqish: Lots of experimentation to get to something that is scalable.

TPG: 8. What are your three top priorities for this year?

Debbie Qaqish : 1. Lead quality 2. Use of social media 3. New solutions

TPG: 9. What advice would you give a marketer who is just getting started with lead generation?

Debbie Qaqish: Align yourself with sales. You cannot do this on your own.

TPG: 10. How do you see the role of marketing changing?

Debbie Qaqish: A lot! Marketers are now running lead generation businesses for the company and are making measurable contributions to revenue. This is not your Daddy's Oldsmobile!

An Interview with Neal Bush

2009-02-23T14:55:00.001-08:00

Today we interviewed Neal Bush about viewpoints on Demand Generation and what best practices are being used to help marketing drive revenue.

TPG: 1. What are some of your most effective lead generation programs?

Neal : search engine marketing, SEO and email

TPG: 2. How do you measure your marketing performance? What are some of the key metrics you use?

Neal : number of new qualified sales opporunties per month, new

TPG: 3. What percentage of your budget is allocated towards lead generation?

Neal : 10%

TPG: 4. How do you achieve alignment with your sales organization?

Neal : weekly meetings with sales management, sales advisory council with Marketing and Sales

TPG: 5. How do you define a qualified lead?

Neal : one that has completed a form and sat through a demonstration

TPG: 6. What role does technology play in your lead generation efforts?

Neal : tremendous amount, we utilize technology and automated triggers to move people in and out and between campaigns

TPG: 7. How is your organization leveraging social media to drive demand?

Neal : we are just dabbling in it at this point, creating groups on Facebook and Linked In, we blog a lot

TPG: 8. What are your three top priorities for this year?

Neal : get more with less, upsell existing customers into new projects and products

TPG: 9. What advice would you give a marketer who is just getting started with lead generation?

Neal : take your time, be careful and baseline and measure everything

TPG: 10. How do you see the role of marketing changing?

Neal : a marketer needs to not only be more analytical today but also much more in touch with technology and how to use it.

Web 2.0 Selling...It's Here, Now!

2009-02-20T07:29:00.000-08:00

This blog is inspired by reflection on what has changed in selling - the answer is EVERYTHING. My background includes being a VP of Sales for many years, working for one of the world's most renowned sales training companies and now working in the lead generation space. This mix has given me a forward thinking perspective on what is Web 2.0 Selling and here it is.

First, the Buying Process. By now, you've heard everybody and their brother talk about this yet FEW companies have a documented Buying Process - how their customers buy, how they go through their decision making cycle, who is involved, what kind of information are they looking for and when. But, boy can they tell you about how they Sell! How customers buy is THE game changer for sales. No longer do they need to pull in a rep to get education - they get it online and actually use information gleaned from online to go deep into their buying cycle and YOUR sales cycle.

So, what has happened? MARKETING, not sales, is now using powerful "lead management" systems that help them look at, track and automatically respond to online behavior. They get a lead qualified, pass it to sales who now has a lead to follow up on - IN THE TRADITIONAL WAY. Most sales groups have no further insight into online behavior! Did I miss something here? Why is this insight only in the hands of marketing. As a sales person, I would want to have access to ALL information around what an opportunity is thinking, doing to help me shape better pursuit decisions.

I predict this will change dramatically in 2009.
1. As marketing gets more educated and comfortable with these tools and begin to work more with sales in bringing this capability into the SALES process, we will wind up with a group of sales people who will find they cannot live without this invaluable digital behavior.
2. The lead management companies are coming to market with additional solutions that are just for sales people to use as they pursue opportunities
3. This entire market is maturing rapidly

It is going to be a lot of fun to introduce digital insight and behavior into the sales process and see how it all changes in 2009. And, at the end of the day, this is a response to how our prospects and customers have changed.

How do you think sales will change in 2009 with these new tools and behaviors?

"The Year of the Lead"

2009-02-19T04:54:00.000-08:00

It seems like demand generation has exploded onto the marketing scene in 2009. Call it lead generation, lead management or demand generation, the appetite for leads has grown exponentially between this year and last. The business is coming from very focused and motivated marketing teams who understand this is "The Year of the Lead." The pressure from their companies to produce revenue in this type of atmosphere has opened up exploration of new ways to impact and create revenue. The spotlight is now squarely on demand generation solutions.

You see this in several ways:
1. The marketing automation companies and consulting groups are seeing rapid growth in this environment
2. Even in companies where marketing budget and/or teams have been cut, the focus on lead generation continues and we see many companies who are now "outsourcing" their lead generation function. A recent study from DemandGen Report showed that the budgets for lead generation are holding steady in 2009 (after big increases in 2008) and in some cases are increasing.
3. Participation of marketers in professional events focused on demand generation is growing and the fact that we now have events focused in this area is growing

Along with that appetite has also come a much broader knowledge of the exciting marketing category. I had a conversation yesterday with a marketer just beginning to look at lead management systems and how to improve leads in his company. He was WELL educated. He had spoken at length with a peer in another company and he had great ideas for what he wanted from a demand generation program. This is strikingly different from even a year ago. At that time a typical conversation would have been me doing ALL the educating.

The net? If your CEO or VP has asked you for more leads, better quality leads or ways that marketing can impact revenue...they are serious. It is "The Year of the Lead."

Tell me your opinion! What are you seeing?

10 Best Practices for Sales & Marketing Alignment

2009-02-12T07:40:00.000-08:00

This week I was working with a new client and we were conducting the lead management kick-off meeting. This client had just purchased a lead management system and was preparing to soar into the world of Web 2.0 marketing. In attendance were the marketing staff and a significant number of sales people. The ratio of sales to marketing in this meeting was 3:1.

The purpose of the kick-off was to:

Begin building a collaborative lead management relationship between sales and marketing

Begin building a jointly constructed lead management process

Introduce the team to the capabilities and possibilities of their chosen lead management system

Build a set of Use Cases (highly customized lead management scenarios for the company with priority)

The entire team fully participated, shared and respected each other’s opinions and ideas during the session. The result of the day was a sales and marketing team that was fully charged and excited about Web 2.0 lead management in their company.

I share this story as a way to set up how every company needs to better align sales and marketing around ALL lead generation efforts. In a study we conducted last summer, we asked leading marketers what one piece of advice they would give to a new lead generation marketer – the answer was a loud and resounding – “Get aligned with sales.” We see this as such a critical success factor that in our newly published LASER Approach, we outline beginning the lead management dialog with sales even before your company invests in a lead management system

The case above is finally beginning to become the norm yet I still see companies in which marketing does not or can’t engage with sales in building and improving lead management. Here are a few ways you can improve your own alignment with sales and your lead generation efforts. These are not rocket science, but they are Best Practices that will ensure you lead generation success. What have you seen that works?

Work with sales to:

Build a language of leads
This is the most BASIC step yet EVERY company we work with has an issue of not using a common language of leads
Build a common lead management process
When is a lead handed over, how is it handed over, what is the responsibility of sales when it is handed over, how does sales hand it back to marketing if not yet sales ready?
Create a lead scoring program
You cannot create a lead scoring program without sales. Time and time again, when we facilitate a lead scoring exercise with sales and marketing, marketing is amazed at what they learn
Build Sales Champions for the lead management program
Identify and work with a few sales people to ensure they have high quality leads and access to the prospect digital behavior so they can make better pursuit decisions. They will never go back to selling with this and it will win over the rest of the sales team.
Build a priority of campaigns
Nobody knows what is hotter in the market than a quota carrying rep. Ask them what kind of program or message will produce “Hot Leads.”
Create a regular communication cycle
This includes the campaign calendar which gives them time to order their priorities to follow up right after a campaign. It also includes communicating on how programs are doing and the impact marketing qualified leads are making on the funnel and the revenue picture for the company
Create a feedback loop
You will need to get feedback on the quality of the leads so you can make adjustments for future programs
Service Level Agreements Marketing is working hard to produce leads that fit the requirements of sales. Sales should have specific duties and responsibilities when it comes to lead follow up and disposition
Guiding Principles
As marketing spends more and more time in the lead management part of their business, their role changes and you need to re-set expectations. Creating 5 – 7 Guiding Principles will help everyone understand the new role of marketing and reduce potential friction.
Finally, if you don’t know how sales works in your company, learn!

What have you seen that works?

Fail Fast and Fail Forward!

2009-02-11T07:02:00.000-08:00

"Fail fast and fail forward!"

This is advice I recently heard from a veteran sales & marketing professional when asked what advice would he give to the fledgling demand generation marketer. While this is not something you expect to hear, it makes perfect sense given the unknown territory the demand generation marketer is responsible for. The statement sums up an approach which uses an hypothesis for all elements of an untested demand generation strategy, test it, analyze it, if it fails, move on to the next option.

However, what I see every day are marketers who believe they need to get it right the first time! So let's debunk the idea that is has to be perfect every time. The use of a hypothesis, testing and improving through cycles is not new in a business setting. Entire industries such as manufacturing and software development were built on this concept. To help you ratchet up your level of professionalism as you work in your organization to improve demand generation, let’s borrow a model that is known and accepted around the globe in every industry – the Deming Cycle.

Developed by Edward Deming in the 1930’s to improve the manufacturing process (and demand generation IS a process), the idea is that perfect quality was not possible in the first iteration of a manufacturing process. Deming outlined a simple, yet highly effective 4 step process that tests and builds in quality over numerous cycles. It’s called PDCA or Plan-Do-Check-Act (also known as the Deming Cycle, Shewhart Cycle, Deming Wheel, or Plan-Do-Study-Act.)

PLAN
Establish the objectives and processes necessary to deliver results in accordance with the specifications.

DO
Implement the processes.

CHECK
Monitor and evaluate the processes and results against objectives and Specifications and report the outcome.

ACT
Apply actions to the outcome for necessary improvement. This means reviewing all steps (Plan, Do, Check, Act) and modifying the process to improve it before its next implementation.

Without using this specific language, the most successful marketers in demand generation use this kind of process. They take the approach of planning the best they can given what they know today and given the data and systems they have at hand. They are not afraid to approach this as a series of experiments. They begin with a hypothesis, run the experiment, see what happens and adjust the next cycle as needed.

Here is a recent example of Plan-Do-Check-Act for Demand Generation. Last week we launched a "test" campaign for one of our customers. We tested two different elements: the subject line and text versus graphics in the body of the email. We had 4 different emails that we tested. As usual, the CLEAR winner with a 45% click-through to form completion ratio, was not the one we expected! We were convinced going into the test that this would not be the winner. In fact, the one we liked had horrible performance. So, later this week our client will now confidently launch the broad campaign knowing he has chosen the best option and should expect a very good result.

So as you look at your demand generation efforts, don't be afraid to test, test, test! It will make you a more successful marketer.

Social Media Begins with The Buying Process

2009-02-09T04:20:00.000-08:00

This past week-end I attended SoCon ‘09, a social media conference held here in Atlanta. We had over 300 attendees and we covered a lot of topics. I facilitated one of the break-out sessions - "Using Social Media to generate leads for a B2B company - and it was well attended with about 40 participants. I had, of course, spent some time prepping for the break-out session, but based on everything I had earlier that day, I scrapped my approach (and my PPT) and decided to really get back to basics (and used a white board.) It struck me as I was listening to all the dialog (while I was twittering my impressions of the conference) that this crowd was very focused on the "pretty-shiny widgets" of social media and this crowd was also very passionate about social media and what could be done with it. I heard people say things like "I've been trying to get my company to blog for 3 years now!" or "If my company would just listen to me about social media."

While your company does need to listen, I think the more fundamental approach to social media for a B2B company is - Where are your customers? Do they go on-line and if they do, where do they go and why?

So to answer this question, in our break-out group, we:
1. Created a basic Customer Buying Process
2. Generated a list of social media tools
3. Identified the boulders - stuff we couldn't do anything about
4. Used 4 different buying scenarios - A transactions buying cycle with a buyer who has some knowledge and use of social media, a transactions buying cycle with a buyer who is a big user of social media, a complex buying cycle with a buyer who has some knowledge of social media and a complex buying cycle with a buyer who is a big user of social media.

I gave the 4 teams 30 minutes to talk through their scenarios and to identify which social media tactics and strategies they would use and why. The result? The RIGHT kind of conversation around if and how you need a social media strategy.
Ah-ha"s included:
- Wow, never thought about a buy cycle (Well think about it now! The power is now in the hands of the buyer!)
- Wow, my brain is bleeding (Yes! Thinking about how and why your prospects act on-line and with what tools is brain bleeding work but necessary.)
- We can use a lot of the same tools all along the buy cycle, we just will use them a bit differently - We can see that LISTENING is key in the early days of social media for lead generation

Lesson learned is that technology is still just technology. This stuff is beyond cool and we all need to be playing with it, learning it, and thinking about it. However, it is the smart application of that technology to drive a business result that creates new relationships and new business. With that said, we are still early days in understanding social media and the impact it will have on all of us. So for many, setting up social media as an experiment and as a way to listen is Step 1. Some people are getting "leads" through social media, but not in an automated fashion. We'll have to see about Step 2 in which we will find a way to "monetize" the chatter through automation.

Social Media and Lead Generation

2009-02-06T06:00:00.000-08:00

This weekend I am attending and chairing a break-out session at SoCon 09 - a social media conference being held here in Atlanta. I am very excited to be going and I am most looking forward to talking to my peers about what they are doing with social media. Social media is all the buzz right now and I frequently have clients asking me - "How should I be using social media?" In the B2B world of lead generation (my world) this is still the trillion dollar question. My first response to this question is "What are your prospects doing on-line, where are they?" I recently had this conversation with a very conservative, 100 year old printing company in the mid-west. When we began to explore who their buyers and buying influencers were, we hit upon a particular profile of a "packaging engineer" and discovered that these guys (gals) live on the web. So, we are creating a social media strategy - very low key - something like Bob's Blog - that will create an interaction among this group sponsored by the client. And, the important thing about this strategy will be to LISTEN to what these engineers have to say! It is an experiment and we do not have a set of lead generation metrics tied to it. We are going to play and see what happens.

This brings up my second comment about social media. For all of us of a more "mature" age, if you really want to understand social media - look at your kids. We now have an entire generation of kids who have grown up in the digital age and it is simply a part of their DNA. I am an "informal" mentor in the GA Tech MBA program and from time to time, they will ask me to talk to one of their students about the big bad world of Web 2.0 marketing. I met with one of these students last November and as a 22 year old, she had done an internship for a major insurance company, suggested a social media strategy for them, they adopted it and offered her a job! When I asked her how this happened, she replied "It was just obvious!"

As this group of kids become the managers and leaders, social media will zoom! I am taking my 22 year old with me to SoCon and she will probably know more than me! Maybe she should run the break-out session!

Finally, I am working on my own learning and experiences with social media. I personally blog, facebook, linkedin and twitter and am a proponent of all things Web 2.0, find myself still fully in the exploration stages. I am currently working on "creating a work flow" for how I interact with all of my social media. Here is what I do: - When I fire up my laptop early in the AM (yes, I am an early bird) I: - check my blog - and take the time to respond or write one (love, love, love to blog) - set up my IM - I am connected to my entire team all day as we work on client projects - set up TWIRL - a little app that helps me twitter (this is on all day). I use Twitter all day for my brainstoming comments and quite frankly for social media ideas - check my LinkedIn Groups (I use this a lot for finding people, creating new relationships and communicating with professional groups) - check my Facebook (I use this a lot for current relationships) I will frequently re-visit many of these late in the day as well.

In closing, we live in a very exciting time to be a marketer. It's a time to explore new ideas and new technologies so education is key. Keep communicating on line, going to conferences and seeing what people are actually doing. I look forward to a great dialog on this post!!

5 Ways to Pay for Demand Generation

2009-02-06T05:05:00.000-08:00

There are many marketers that value the role lead and demand generation play in their organization, but often times, coming up with budget to pay for the platform is often an issue. Value in an organization is placed on traditional things like PR, Direct Mail, Tradeshows, etc. The trouble is, these channels are difficult to truly measure in terms of the revenue impact they have.

The average Marketing Automation System runs about $60,000 per year. Companies can run these platforms internally and typically allocate 1/2 to 3 FTE to use the technology as part of their lead generation efforts. An average marketing technologist will make about $75,000 loaded. Other companies choose to outsource their demand generation efforts, and these fees can range from $5,000 to $25,000+ per month depending upon the services and scope required. So let's say, internal will run approximately $135,000 per year and external will run approximately $120,000 per year. Where do you get this money, and what kind of return should you expect?

1. Reallocate your PR budget. The average B2B company is spending $10,000 per month on retainer, and usually gets 1-2 speaking engagements, a by-line article, and a press release. Shift 50% of that and you just about have the software paid for. In return, you will be able to run unlimited outbound and nurturing campaigns, score and profile your leads, integrate with your CRM, and see a 3X increase on average in lead production. Assuming you have a 30 to 1 lead to close ratio at an average sale of $50,000, and you sell 1 new person per month, marketing automation will get you an additional $1,200,000 per year against the same spend you have now. That's a 10 to 1 return on investment for no additional budget.

2. Do one less tradeshow. The average tradeshow costs $30,000, and you are lucky if you get 2-3 good leads. You will have to run 3-4 tradeshows to get one customer, costing you $120,000 to gain $50,000. Hardly a worthwhile investment. $30,000 is 1/2 a year of a license. Using the math in step one, you will have produced $600,000 in the first 6 months with additional revenue, giving you more than enough to pay for the rest of the year and beyond.

3. Eliminate one direct mail campaign. Assuming you send out 10,000 pieces at a total cost of $1.50/piece, including design, print and postage, then you can save $15,000 and pay for 3 months of marketing automation. That 3 months will net you $150,000 and pay for the license for 2 years.

4. Reduce Google Adwords Spending. The average B2B company is spending at least $30,000 per month on pay per click. Trimming just $5,000 per month will pay for the license, generate an additional $1,200,000 in sales and allow you to double your Google Adwords Budget next year.

5. Reduce your Agency spending. A typical Agency gets at least $10,000 per month on retainer for creative services, but typically is not helping you with demand generation. Refocus that money on marketing automation. These platforms will repurpose existing content, drive additional traffic and convert more leads to sales. Shift your content strategy from agency created to user generated. This is much more cost effective and significantly more valuable in conversion.

There are probably a number of ways you can shift your budget around, but these 5 will be more than enough to get you started.

When good technology goes bad!

2009-02-04T05:12:00.000-08:00

As marketers, we've all been there. We've planned for our webinar, spent countless hours making sure our content was beneficial to the participants, worked on our campaigns to invite people and then 30 minute before hand, tested everything. Then the curtain goes up and what was just tested 30 minutes ago...freezes up! What do you do? How do you handle this?

The answer is with honesty and transparency. This happened to me yesterday and as the speaker AND a veteran of many, many webinars, I can tell you it was highly embarrassing. You don't want to waste people's time while you are "trying to get up and running" and you certainly don't want to give people the idea that your "Web 2.0 skills are sub-par". Yet, this is what can and did happen.

My apology email is going out this morning. I don't want to make this conversation about "what system to use" ...I've heard stories of all of them "freezing up" at one time or another. I want to make this about just being honest and saying...thank you to the participants who did hang in until the end and for the ones who dropped off early, I can't blame you.

We will continue to run webinars (with a different provider) and I hope that all of you will return for our next one. We have fabulous content, insight and experience to share with the industry and I hope to see you all there!

Keep your fingers crossed, lightening doesn't strike the same place twice, does it?

The Perfect Storm..ooops, Opportunity!

2009-02-03T08:43:00.000-08:00

In my opinion, 2009 is the year I call "The Perfect Opportunity" for marketers. I realize budgets are being cut and people are being laid off but between all of this the focus on lead generation is growing, not shrinking. For those marketers responsible for lead generation in their companies, 2009 represents a monumental year in career potential.

Just as in a Perfect Storm in which a unique set of conditions come together to create a gargantuan event, in 2009 we have a set of conditions that I believe creates the Perfect Opportunity. What are they?

1. Your company is now ASKING you for help! They are asking you to work with them to produce more leads with a focus on quality because this means more revenue. Where else will they get it from in this tough 2009?

2. The technology is here, now, and it works! There is a plethora of marketing automation/lead management solutions on the market. And, unlike the early days of CRM, this stuff works! Your job is to select the right solution for your needs!

3. Buyer behavior is online! Your prospects and clients are getting all of their information online and this is where you need to be...creating digital dialogs and relationships. This is actually the prime condition to the Perfect Opportunity.

The role of marketing has the chance to really grow and change in 2009. You need to be ready to not just accept this role, but lead your company in the right direction.

Lead Generation is serious business!

2009-01-30T07:35:00.000-08:00

I've had a few interesting conversations this week that really bother me and they have to do with marketers who really do not understand lead generation and what it can do for a COMPANY. This is clearly an educational and also a political issue but it does provide a platform for helping define who is going to be successful and who is not. Here are three things I've heard:

1. "It's just another thing to do - just like I have to do creative, branding, PR etc." They don't have a dedicated resource or resources for this initiative and they often do not see the big picture of how they are impacting revenue. Successful lead generation marketers treat lead generation as a MAJOR initiative and have dedicated resources at both the tactical and strategic level and can show the direct contribution to revenue. It is not "just another project."
2. "It costs too much!" Compared to what?? How about the $10K plus you spend every month on PR? Just because it is a budgeted item doesn't mean it produces more value than an effective lead generation program. Successful lead generation marketers, because they track through impact on revenue, can show great ROI from their total investment in lead generation programs.
3. "My job is to get leads to sales, after that I don't care." This common attitude is a recipe for failure. Study after study shows that having ongoing communication and active participation with sales in lead generation efforts leads to success. Those barriers have to come down for a program to be successful.

Enough complaining for the day but it does show we still have a long way to go to help companies and marketers fully embrace the power of marketing automation!

Unfair

2009-01-20T05:12:00.000-08:00

As I sit here today and witness history in the making with the swearing in of Barack Obama as the President of the United States of America, I have to reflect on the topic of change. We live in a new day and a new time and while this may sound like the same refrain, this current tide of change is different and significant. It does not represent just a generational change. It is a historical change which takes us all into unchartered territory with no going back! What we will see and what we will experience in our lives based on this singular event is awe inspiring and yet, we can only begin to imagine what this change will mean. What we are sure about is that this is a change that is here to stay and it will shape our lives for many years to come.

The same is true for this new generation of marketers focused on working with sales to create leads and ultimately new streams of revenue. This latest reshaping of the role of the marketer is significant and has caught many people off-guard and unprepared. We constantly hear marketers talking about "getting an education" and in fact, we often bake this into our consulting offerings. And the education around this change goes beyond marketing to include sales and senior management. People "hear" about these new practices and given the search for revenue in 2009, are open to what marketing can do and how marketing can contribute like never before. The challenge for marketing is to be ready to lead this change and to help their companies leverage new technologies and strategies to make a revenue contribution.

This is not going to go away or abate. It is a new day for the role of marketing for every size organization. Get ready for your swearing in and taking a leadership role in these exciting times.

Why Email Marketing Isn't Effective Anymore

2008-08-08T06:25:00.000-07:00

Over the last 2 years I have noticed a significant decrease in the measurable results marketers are seeing in their emails. Open rates have trailed off, and click through rates have also declined. Of course, to produce the same or more leads, most marketers are just sending more email but not addressing the underlying issues. There are several reasons why email isn't effective any more:

1. The rise of social media and a new generation. Today's under 25 crowd uses Text and IM long before they use email; they get information more organically - Twitter, Facebook, Chat; information is more interactive and conversation based. As my friend Aaron Kahlow likes to say - email is like the telegraph and social media is the telephone; how do you think your firm can have a more meaningful conversation?

2. List quality and permission; the average list turns over 25% per year and very few organizations have routing data cleansing and enrichment programs in place. Additionally, the majority of marketers still use an opt-out strategy vs. opt-in or double opt-in. The end result is that marketers have huge lists that are inaccurate, not segmented, and not built on permission. This leads to poor return on investment.

3. Noise and Filters; the average executive today receives over 150 emails per day. In addition to ISP and corporate spam filters, many executives have additional filters on their inbox and they also engage in polite 'unsubscribe' - meaning they just delete your email upon receipt instead of actually unsubscribing. The result - your emails are getting lost in a sea of noise and screening mechanisms. Instead of trying to figure out how to differentiate, marketers just send more hoping that will cure the problem.

Email can still be a viable tool in your arsenal, but to make it more effective, take the following steps:

1. Implement a subscription management system that allows your users to determine what they receive, how they receive it and when they receive it

2. Implement routine data cleansing and enrichment programs. The best marketers constantly refine their lists. It is not the size of your list but the quality.

3. Make your emails more relevant - subject matter and content along with a targeted list will always yield a better result

4. Use multiple channels - don't rely on email only. Use social media and offline tactics to build a demand generation ecosystem

Follow the above steps and you can start to gain more effectiveness from your email programs.

Lead Generation Strategies - X, Y and Z

2008-07-29T05:34:00.001-07:00

Today we finish the alphabet and look at several lead generation strategies that begin with X, Y and Z:

The Letter X

Xpert on Demand

If you are really well known for expertise within your marketplace, why not have an ‘Xpert on Demand’ function on your website. Rotate several people throughout the week and allow visitors to call or chat in real-time with an Industry Expert to have their questions asked. Then, archive the questions, post them to a F.A.Q. section on your website, and add this content to a RSS feed. Now your expertise will be heard around the world!

The Letter Y

YouTube

Taking the planet by storm, YouTube has become the ultimate way for users to express themselves and for creative marketers to reach a broader audience. Simple humorous videos or stories under 5 minutes in length work well. Strike the right chord and you can reach hundreds of thousands of people very quickly. Finish the video with a simple URL that directs people back to a dedicated landing page. If you are short on resources, consider working with a local college or university drama department. They will get a real-world experience and do the job for free and your company gains the benefit.

The Letter Z

Zero in on active prospects and customers

Leverage the power of cookies and page tagging to monitor the individual patterns of visitors on your website. Develop profiles based on activity levels, navigation patterns, and content downloads. This will allow you to segment your list better and offer more personalized relevant content that will convert your leads at a higher rate.

Lead Generation Strategies That Start With "W"

2008-07-28T05:48:00.000-07:00

Today we look at several lead generation strategies that start with "W":

Website

What better way to drive leads then by leveraging the power of your website? This is your most important asset, bar none. Your site should be fully optimized, highly interactive, and post fresh content on a regular basis. Knowledge Centers, games, podcast series, online testimonials, video and audio – all should be elements incorporated into your site. Ensure that every page has a strong call to action and that your forms link directly to a marketing automation system and can notify sales reps in real-time when online valuable behavior is occurring. Top off your website with good chat functionality and reach your visitors in more ways than ever before.

Webinars

Webinars are still a preferred method of B2B marketers for driving demand. Interview formats and guest speakers are two of the better ways to showcase good content and drive visitors. Make your webinars more effective by automating the pre-event marketing and post-event follow-up. This will allow you to scale and host more events on a go forward basis.

White Papers

Especially useful for early stages of the buy cycle, white papers can explore relevant industry topics in-depth. White Papers help position your company as Thought Leaders. Make sure that the paper is really a good examination of a business problem, not an extended brochure that promotes your specific product or service. Scheduling a new white paper for every quarter will keep your company’s image fresh and ensure you are taking a Thought Leadership position in the marketplace.

Lead Generation Strategies That Start With "U" and "V"

2008-07-25T05:14:00.001-07:00

Today we look at several lead generation strategies that start with "U" and "V":

The Letter U

User Groups

User groups are another effective way to generate more demand for your products and services. You can have different groups for executives, who want to discuss strategy, resourcing, process – and practitioners, who want to discuss product roadmap, how-to, hear case studies, etc. Providing valuable content and giving your user community the opportunity to interact on a regular basis strengthens support for your brand and gives you a chance to highlight other services and products your users may not be aware of.

The Letter V

Viral Marketing

Viral marketing can be a simple video, story, or podcast. It can also be a game, or an immersive experience. Backup Trauma (www.backuptrauma.com) by LiveVault is an excellent example of how to build a compelling experience that takes a humorous approach, while highlighting the strengths of the company. This particular version generated millions of downloads for LiveVault. The key to a successful viral campaign is to tap into the emotional element – make it funny, controversial – something people just have to watch and pass on. A good viral approach can drive more demand than almost anything else on this list.

Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds haven’t been really embraced by B2B marketers yet. They involve using Avatars (representations of you in a character form), having an online experience in an alternative , 3-D virtual world. The most common approach has been game form, where Advertisers design games and experiences that take the visitor through different scenarios while highlighting their brand. Second Life is the best know vendor in this space. If you really have a creative bent and some time on your hands, this is another approach that really leverages the interactive nature of the Internet.

Virtual Tradeshows

Growing in popularity, virtual tradeshows offer visitors the experience of going to a tradeshow without leaving the comfort of their office. They typically support an actual live event. While online, you can check in for sessions, viewing them in webcast form, post questions, visit ‘virtual tradeshow booths’ and network with other online visitors. This is an inexpensive way to reach many people – typically they cost $5000-$20,000 to promote. Consider adding one of these to your arsenal this year.

5 Things To Consider When Evaluating a Marketing Automation Platform

2008-07-24T06:29:00.000-07:00

There has been a lot of buzz in the last few years about Demand Generation or Marketing Automation. Both terms refer to the practice of combining multiple marketing channels that drive prospects to a website onto a single platform. These platforms monitor a prospects online behavior and use some type of workflow/trigger system to deliver messages in an automated fashion over a period of time. This helps the marketing organization deliver relevant and personalized messages in a highly scalable fashion. There are many vendors and things to evaluate when considering a Marketing Automation Platform. Below are 5 major things to consider.

1. Business Objectives - what are your main goals? Do you want to send out more email effectively? Do you want to integrate disparate systems? Is resource and budgetary planning important? How many channels do you plan to use? Are you trying to drive more leads ... more qualified leads? Do you need more help in cross-sell/up-sell? Whatever it is, make sure that you clarify with your team what you are looking for not just for today, but in the next 24 months. Fortunately, most vendors out there are on demand and have flexible contracts - but once you seriously commit to a platform, it does get harder to switch over time.

2. Cost - most marketing organizations are not familiar with buying technology, but they are very familiar with buying services. This will be a new type of purchase for many, and your budget will play a big role in determining what you can implement. Like most things, you get what you pay for. Solutions are available from under $1,000 to over $10,000 per month. Depth of functionality increases as you move up the food chain. Depending upon what you are looking for, you can find the right vendor at the right price. Software licenses are not the only price consideration. Evaluate start-up costs such as deployment, implementation, training, integration and system migration. There can also be ongoing costs for customer support, training, and additional modules. Again, consider all of these variables in your budgetary process.

3. Vendor Rating - there are at least 15 vendors in this space, with more jumping in every month. Some vendors have been around a long time, and have hundreds of customers in their stable and are financially secure. Other vendors are exciting and new, but unproven. Your appetite for risk will play a big part in your decision. Also look at the vendors support network. Do they have partners and affiliates that can help you with best practices and value-added services? Are there regular user groups and online forums where you can network and share with other customers? Is the vendor accessible? Are they continuously updating and refining their product to meet the demands of the market? What do the analysts think about them? Ask yourself these questions when making your purchase decision.

4. Usability - how easy is it to implement and use the product? As marketers, we are constantly on the move and seriously multi-tasking. We need systems that can support the way we work, not for us to support the software. You should be able to try before you buy and decide for yourself whether or not you can use it in your daily work routine.

5. Results - ultimately, it comes down to financial results, and the KPI's you choose to evaluate the success of your decision. A marketing automation system should help you get a better lead to customer conversion rate, higher transaction price, shorter sales cycle, and an increased opportunity to close rate. The vendor you choose should have demonstrated success in this area with multiple customers, especially in your industry. If they have a hard time demonstrating value, then you will too, so tread carefully.

There are many other things to consider when making a technology purchase, but the 5 criteria above should get you well on your way to making an informed decision.

Lead Generation Strategies That Start With "T"

2008-07-23T05:03:00.000-07:00

Today we look at several lead generation strategies you can use that begin with the letter "T":

Text Messaging

More and more B2B marketers are turning to this medium. The younger generation is entering the workforce, and Text ranks #1 as the preferred communication choice ahead of Instant Messaging and Email. Texting provides a real-time and interactive experience. The more conservative marketers have subscribers texting in a code to get a promotional offer or be redirected to a landing page. Other marketers are gaining opt-in permission and adding texting to a rich, multi-channel approach to campaigning. Texting should be tested as part of your marketing plans this year.

Telemarketing

Many B2B marketers are using Telemarketing and/or Inside Sales as a viable lead generation function. Other uses include organizational mapping - calling into a company and determining all key contacts for your product and service; data validation, opt-in for mailing lists, and surveys. Savvy marketers who track their website visitors, pass on unknown visitors in real-time to a telemarketer who then uses a reverse DNS lookup of the visitor to call into the target company and gain contact and lead information.

Trade Shows

Many tradeshows don't give the same return as they once did, which is why so many marketers opt to not do them or go to very few. Instead of paying money for a booth, consider being a panelist or speaker at the event, hosting your own cocktail party, or doing a guerilla 'on-floor' promotion, passing out coupons and using SMS with contest codes to draw attendees. Any of these approaches will yield a much better return on investment .

Testing

Taking just a few extra minutes on every campaign to test will yield a much better response rate. Simple A/B split testing, comparing subject lines, calls to action, or content headers can help you optimize every campaign. Start with 10% of your list and perform the test. After a few hours (with email or phone) you will have enough of a gauge to determine which version you should send the other 90% to. Doing this within the campaign, as opposed to waiting until the next one will produce a much better outcome.

Lead Generation Strategies That Start With "S"

2008-07-22T07:52:00.000-07:00

Search Engine Optimization

With more and more buyers turning to the Internet to start their research, it is imperative that you have an ongoing SEO program in place. Both natural and paid search have their place, but natural listings should dominate the majority of your effort and budget. A combination of in-house and consulting resources can work well to ensure you have a good mix of best practice expertise and company/industry specific knowledge. Most B2B marketers spend a considerable portion of their budget on this tactic.

Speaking

Speaking at events is an excellent way to build your Thought Leadership in the marketplace. In addition to having your executives speak, consider using sales and marketing personnel at local and regional events. Your marketing team can prepare 3-4 standard presentations, and then have your team that is virtually located speak on them cost-effectively. Turn your organization into a team of speakers and Thought Leaders and reap the returns.

Seminars

Running live seminars is another way to build Thought Leadership. Focus on education and teaching and down play the product pitch. If you do a good job of providing content and transferring knowledge, the sales will take care of themselves – especially if you mix your customers and prospects at the same event!

Subscription Management

Instead of ‘spray and pray’, give your subscribers the option to choose what content they want to receive and when they want to receive it. You can start by categorizing your content into simple groups such as events, product and service updates, newsletter, etc. Over time, you can get more sophisticated as you gauge how subscribers respond. You will see a much better response from your lists by taking this approach.

Pop Quiz: Time To Test Your Company's Lead Effectiveness Quotient

2008-05-06T06:35:00.000-07:00

More leads, more leads, more leads. Every day B2B marketers are continually under pressure to produce more leads to help the sales organization meet its quota. But are more leads the right answer? In an ideal world, you would generate one lead that would convert to a customer. While this may not be possible, generating a consistently higher quality of leads will ensure that the sales team gets a better swing every at bat, and you won’t see those leads coming right back at you or just ignored.

To produce higher quality leads on a consistent basis, your company may need to implement a lead scoring system that can act as a filter between all the leads that you do generate and the ones that end up in the hands of the sales team. Those leads that are not ready to be passed over should be incubated in a lead nurturing program until they show signs of being ready to buy.

It could be that your organization actually needs fewer leads that are truly sales ready. Take the following quiz and use the matrix at the end to determine what next steps you should take.

1. Do you currently have a formal methodology for scoring leads?
a) No process
b) Manual Process, Inconsistently Enforced
c) Manual Process, Consistently Enforced
d) Automated Process, Consistently Enforced

2. Which factual/demographic attributes are you using to help score your leads?
a) None
b) 1 or more of the following: Budget, Authority, Timeline, Revenue, Industry
c) Business Need
d) B and C

3. Which behavioral attributes are you using to help score your leads?
a) None
b) Email Opens and Clickthroughs
c) Website Activity – 1 or more of the following: Key Content Pages, Visits, White Paper Downloads, Form Submissions, Trial/Downloads
d) B and C

4. Which statement most closely pertains to your organization?
a) No leads are distributed
b) Most to all leads are distributed to either a single person or a lead queue
c) All incoming leads get distributed to the sales team
d) A and "B" leads get distributed to the sales team, and "C" leads get nurtured by marketing
e) All "A" leads get distributed to the sales team, and "B/C" leads get nurtured by marketing

5. How would you describe your lead management process?
a) We do not know what happens after leads are handed off to the sales team
b) We can manually review lead status in our CRM system and use that data in our marketing analysis
c) We have an automatic reporting process in place that lets us know when leads are followed up on
d) Answer C plus a mechanism to reassign leads that aren’t followed up on within a specified time period to someone else.

6. Your organization uses the following lead scoring scale:
a) No scoring scale is used
b) A/B/C or How/Warm/Cold based on criteria
c) Numerical score based on criteria
d) Numerical score and Grade Ranking based on criteria

7. You adjust and modify your lead scoring scale:
a) Never
b) Annually
c) Monthly
d) Quarterly

8. Once you have scored a lead, your organization:
a) Never changes it
b) Changes it when the lead moves forward in the funnel
c) Changes it when the lead moves backward in the funnel
d) Changes it based upon your nurturing and prospecting criteria dynamically

9. With your lowest scoring leads, your organization:
a) Discards them and/or never uses them
b) Distributes them to the sales or inside sales team
c) Nurtures them for up to 6 months
d) Nurtures them for up to 1 year

10. When building your lead scoring model, you solicit input from:
a) No one
b) Marketing
c) Sales
d) Sales and Marketing

11. In your lead scoring model, you:
a) Have None
b) Score leads but don't weight them
c) Weight each criteria equally
d) Weight each criteria differently based upon historical conversion rates and available information

12. Your organization separates incoming leads:
a) It doesn't separate leads by any distribution method
b) By Direct Channel Only
c) By Direct and Channel
d) Direct, Channel, Named and Non-named Accounts

13. Does your marketing/sales organization look at past interest and changes in baseline activity to prioritize follow-up?
a) No, our team doesn't do this
b) Yes, Sometimes
c) Yes, Most of the time
d) Yes, Always

14. When aggregating lead data, your company:
a) Has no way of aggregating lead data
b) Can aggregate data by campaign and provide score
c) Can aggregate data by campaign, division, and product line and provide score
d) Can aggregate data by campaign, division, product line and company level and provide score

15. Your company follows up on new leads within what time period?
a) 1 week
b) 1 day
c) 4 hours
d) 1 hour

SCORING GUIDELINES
Give yourself 1 point for every A, 2 points for every B, 3 points for every C, and 4 points for every D answer. After totaling your scores, use the matrix below to see how your organization compares.

49 – 60 – World Class Lead Effectiveness. You have a great process in place and should be using automation to get consistent results. Next Steps: Look at doing Company Level and Profile-Based Lead Scoring. With Company Level Lead Scoring, you can aggregate all of the individual scores into a composite score. For those of you engaged in complex sales, this is invaluable as the sum of the parts is greater than any one individual. Profile-Based Lead Scoring establishes different scores for a person based on the role that they occupy. A given individual can be a partner, a vendor, and a customer of one or more products. A score for one product or role can be completely different for another product or role based upon the key requirements for any given situation.

37 – 48 – Very Good Lead Effectiveness. Your systems are fairly well defined, but you can optimize and improve them in several areas. Key Considerations: Are you consistently automating the process? Do you have a closed-loop process in place with your CRM system to provide you with the feedback you need to continuously make adjustments? Are you tracking both explicit and implicit criteria? Once you can get consistency and automation in all facets, you can explore Company Level and Profile-Based Lead Scoring.

25 – 36 – Good Lead Effectiveness. You have some scoring in place, but it is mostly manual. Chances are, you are not tracking both explicit and implicit criteria and you don’t have a weighting system in place. Next Steps: Begin by developing a scoring model that looks at both explicit and implicit criteria. Next, look at ways you can automate the process. Examine your distribution and assignment rules – can you hold back some of the leads and develop a lead nurturing program that will market to them? After this, look at how you can integrate your CRM system with your marketing system to give you better closed loop analytics. Once you have taken these steps, continually optimize and make adjustments over a 4-6 month period until you have a consistent model in place.

< 25 – Poor Lead Effectiveness. You don’t have much of a model in place. You are most likely sending all inbound leads to sales with little or no filtering and this is affecting your conversion rates down the pipeline. Next Steps: Begin by setting up a manual scoring system that both sales and marketing can agree to. Have your inside sales or telemarketing function use this criteria consistently and record the results in your CRM system. From there, you can look at ways to automate the function. Take some time and examine your marketing campaigns and how visitors are behaving on your website. Can you extract some key observations and turn this into a consistent behavior score? Once this is in place, you can look at fully automating the function and investing time into developing a lead nurturing program.

The job of the B2B marketer is harder today than ever before. Don’t let the company view your department as an expense. Expenses get cut, investments get nurtured. Help sales close more business and be accountable for driving revenue. Do this with an effective lead scoring system. It is an essential tool in your arsenal and will help you and your company grow consistently over time.

What they didn't teach you in Business School: 5 Critical Things Today's Professional Marketer Needs to Master

2008-02-06T05:21:00.000-08:00

Today's business schools have come a long way since the day I graduated. The programs are more involved, internships are more prevalent, and the case study programs continue to impress. With all the improvements, I find that today's graduates are still lacking some key skill sets that will ensure their success on the job in years to come. Additionally, professionals that have been in the field for more than five years are also lacking key skills that threaten their job security. In this article, we examine 5 critical things that every professional marketer needs to master.

How to use technology to scale demand generation: There is no questioning that today’s marketing professional is much more tech savvy then previous generations. They can text, blog, engage in social networks, and use the internet in a variety of ways. What they haven’t learned how to do is leverage these technologies to build sustainable revenue streams for their companies. Marketers tend to overuse email at the expense of other channels and miss opportunities to engage with their prospects and customers in a meaningful fashion. Instead of using technology to scale, many marketers spend their days in hand-to-hand combat, performing a variety of key tasks manually. This is very inefficient and slows top-of-the-funnel growth. The first thing marketers need to do is build processes that can source leads from a variety of channels. These processes should include target profile, messaging, scoring, routing, follow-up, management, and disposition. Once these processes are in place, marketers can then select and use technology to drive demand. The most successful marketers leverage an ecosystem to drive a continuous flow of leads. There is no silver bullet. By building a variety of acquisition channels, marketers can more predictably grow their business. Key technological components should include:

Automating Event Marketing, Registration and Follow-Up. This includes webinars and live events.

Implementing website tracking at an individual level to monitor digital body language and build active buyer profiles and personas.

Implementing lead scoring and lead incubation programs to determine sales-ready leads and market to the remaining leads not ready to buy.

Integrating online forms with CRM systems and developing automated form handling routines in addition to the auto-responder.

Using RSS to syndicate content and drive traffic to the website.

Building or sponsoring specific social networks.

Hosting an active blog on the corporate website.

Integrating website tracking with online and offline demand generation programs.

Leverage streaming video and audio as part of podcasts or viral campaigns. This is just a starting point, but the above items should be considered a staple in every marketers demand generation arsenal.

How to develop a sustainable and healthy relationship with sales: This topic has gotten a lot of press over the last year. One of the biggest reasons sales and marketing are not aligned is because they are not measured on the same things. A sales team is always measured on revenue and thinks short term – this month, this quarter. A marketing team is typically measured on leads, programs, or softer metrics and has a much longer time horizon – 6 months, 1 year, etc. To ensure a better working relationship, there are several critical things every marketer needs to do:

Ensure you are measured on revenue, not on leads. As long as you continue to be measured on your spending, you and your department will be considered an expense. In business, expenses get cut, investments get nurtured. Get your team to be measured on revenue and this will significantly change your alignment with sales. Once you are being measured on the same things, your approach to marketing will be completely different. You won’t think about how many leads you drove this quarter, you will think about whether your programs helped make the quarterly sales target.

Have a shared and written definition of what constitutes a qualified lead. You can deliver all the leads you want to sales, but they will continue to reject them as long as you have different ideas about what a lead is and isn’t. Set up a working session with the sales team and determine what constitutes a qualified lead. Examine both traditional measures such as budget, authority, need and timeline. Also take a look at online behavior – content downloads, webinar attendance, key page views. Develop a scoring matrix around these components and ensure that you deliver only those leads to sales that meet these criteria. Revisit the matrix on a quarterly basis and adjust as needed.

Set up working teams. Instead of having siloed functions, pair up field marketing with the regional sales team and give them a shared goal. It is amazing what will happen when they have to work together instead of pointing fingers at the other.
Reporting on Marketing Success in Financial Terms: Remember those accounting classes we took in school – the ones we slept through while we anxiously looked forward to the creative ones? Guess what? The awards we have been giving each other over the years for our creativity don’t count anymore. Today’s board wants to know how we are spending the company’s money. It is no longer sufficient to report on leads, clickthroughs, impressions, or campaign awards. Today’s marketing professional needs to be financially savvy. They need to know lead to customer conversion ratios, return on marketing spend, lifetime value of a customer, net present value of a lead, and a variety of other business metrics that indicate how well marketing is managing the company’s money to grow revenue. It’s time to dust off that textbook and get back to basics. Your job security depends upon it.

Develop strategies, to get, keep and grow your customer base: It is easy to focus on programs that bring in new customers – that typically gets most of your budget. But what about your customers? We have all heard the adage, it is easier to keep a customer than get a new one – but is it? If you are not allocating more than a token amount of your budget to service your customers, they could be looking elsewhere. Many companies have a variety of products and services that they want to sell to their installed base to build wallet share and improve loyalty. With all the talk about Net Promoter and the clear correlation between customer loyalty and long-term profitable growth, it is essential that today’s marketing professional implement programs that address customers at every stage of their need cycle. There a number of methods that can be invoked here, from customer advisory boards to using technology to deliver automated cross-sell/up-sell campaigns, today’s marketer can reach their customer and grow the long term value of the relationship. It just takes a focused effort.

Understand and Align with the Customer Buy Cycle: I have lost track of how many professional sales training courses I attended over the years. They all prescribed one process or another for controlling the sales cycle and getting in synch with your customer. These methods worked for a long time until the Internet came along. Now, your customers have the power to initiate the buy cycle, long before you even know about it. We are not in control of the sales process. The customer is in control of the buy process. They go through various phases – awareness, identification, evaluation. The key to selling today is to understand where the buyer might be’ at any given time and to develop strategies and tactics that serve up the appropriate content and messaging. Do they need a white paper or an analyst briefing? Do they need a demonstration or an ROI calculator? The marketer that changes their focus from selling to helping customers buy is the marketer that will succeed in today’s competitive climate. Search engine optimization, site navigation, pay per click, link referral, decision/offer maps are all techniques that can and should be leveraged to help you align with your customer. There are many skills today’s marketer needs to master to not only keep their jobs but to grow and enjoy a satisfying career. At the root of it, understand how to leverage available technology and implement the proper financial metrics. Doing this will put you well on the way to marketing success.

Debbie Qaqish Joins The Pedowitz Group

2007-11-16T14:27:00.001-08:00

It gives me great pleasure to write that Debbie Qaqish has joined our team. I have known Debbie for over 2 years and she is first class all the way. Our clients are lucky to have her and we are all thrilled. Debbie can be reached at debbie@pedowitzgroup.com

Lead Generation Strategies That Start With "R"

2007-11-02T05:10:00.000-07:00

Today we look at several lead generation strategies that start with "R":

RSS, or really simple syndication, is the easiest way to publish your content and distribute it throughout the web. It also allows you to re-syndicate other people's content. Tools like RSSInfo can grab content from other feeds and display them as part of your website in HTML. This has several advantages. Creating the feed only takes a few minutes. From then on, your website will have fresh content everyday. The converted HTML will contain search-engine friendly keywords. If you aggregate content from several good sources in your industry, you have now done your customers and visitors a favor because they don't have to go anywhere else. All of this increases your SEO, and drives more visitors to your site. Make sure you have a good call to action on your blog landing page so that you can convert visitors into leads.

Reference Program. We all talk about having a reference program, but the reality is that customer-focused marketing is often near the bottom of the priority list. However, if you have been following the work by Fred Reicheld and The Ultimate Question, you know that customer loyalty is a key indicator of long-term growth. Instead of having your key prospects call your best reference near the end of the sales cycle, why not videotape your top 10 customers and post the videos on your website? Organize the videos into 2 minute segments and then track which segments are getting the most hits and organize future marketing messaging accordingly. This now allows salespeople to point prospects to your references much earlier in the sales cycle, not burden your key customers, and ultimately close more business.

Recency. A recent study by Knowledgestorm showed that sales teams that wait more than 24 hours to contact a new lead have less than a 10% chance of reaching them. This is often one of marketing's biggest challenges. You create all the leads and get upset when sales does not follow up on them. By implementing lead scoring, you can filter out the tire kickers and browsers ahead of time and reduce the total amount of leads sales has to follow-up on. Adding in a autoresponder to your form, combined with an IVR phone message can instruct the prospect that you value their business and forward them to a landing page for specific instructions. Tactics like these can greatly help the response rate and make the visitor feel important, while guiding the salesperson to follow up on the most relevant leads right away.

Stay tuned for the letter S...

Lead Generation Strategies That Start With "Q"

2007-10-26T04:53:00.000-07:00

Today we will explore several lead generation strategies that begin with the letter "Q":

Questionnaire:

Questionnaires or surveys are a great way to generate leads and gather more information about your prospects and customers in the process. You can leverage the phone, direct mail, email, or your website to ask questions about industry trends, business need, budget allocations, processes used, technology or just about anything that will allow you to gain a greater insight. People respond to questionnaires if there is a perceived benefit, such as getting the results of the survey for free, a coupon to Starbucks, a free trial, etc. Over time, you can develop themes for your questionnaires and add these to your thought leadership repertoire.

Quizzes:

People always like to test their knowledge, especially if they are industry veterans. Hosting an online quiz that gets updated regularly is a great way to build a loyal following and also gauge just what people do and do not know. Use the gaps in knowledge to create more targeted product and service offerings. Don't forget to offer a small prize for the best scores as an additional inducement.

Stay tuned for the letter R...

Why Delta Doesn't Get It

2007-10-19T05:51:00.000-07:00

I was flying from Atlanta to Dayton, OH to visit a client and was sitting in first class. A couple on their honeymoon came on board. He was in the Air Force. For some reason, the woman got upgraded and ended up sitting next to me. Her husband was in coach. Half of the first class seats were empty. The woman asked the flight attendant politely if her husband could move up and sit with her. The flight attendant said she wasn't in charge and would have to check. She ended up doing nothing, so I decided to help the woman out and motioned the managing flight attendant over. I explained the situation. After 5 minutes of conferencing and furiously looking at paper, he came back and said there was nothing they can do. Mind you, this was an hour flight; at most this was going to cost a glass of wine. Here we have a patriot for our country on the plane, a newly married couple - imagine all the goodwill that would generate. Instead, Delta chose to follow some stupid rule, alienate passengers and show once again why the airline industry is losing so much money. They don't understand the customer, and obviously don't care enough to make the extra effort. As a frequent flyer, I found this to be very disturbing. When will the airline industry wake up and deliver an experience that actually helps the customer?

Lead Generation Strategies That Start With "P"

2007-10-08T04:50:00.001-07:00

Today we explore the letter "P' for lead generation strategies:

Podcasts.

One of the hallmarks of Web 2.0 strategies, podcasts allow you to deliver audio and video presentations via the web. Since it leverages multiple senses, it allows your target audience to interact with your website much more effectively than just reading text. Podcasts can be effective for playing archived webinars and seminars, interviews, customer testimonials, analyst briefings, and many more. Use your imagination. Think of your website not as a place to store written text, but as a multimedia platform. The possibilities are endless.

Personalization.

In today's marketplace, we are bombarded with saels messaging from multiple channels. Marketers that take the time to personalize their messaging and market one-to-one will yield a much greater return. You may have received a direct mail piece that has your name on it and a unique URL. When you type in the URL you are directed to a page that seems to speak directly to you. Email sent with dynamic content that tailors to your demographics and interests is another form of this tactic. Websites that allow you to self-select your interests and needs and then morph the pages to your profile and remember you the next time you come back are perhaps the holy grail of this strategy. Whatever you do, remember that everyone wants to be treated as an individual, even if they fit in a larger marketing profile.

Public Relations.

PR is still one of the most cost-effective strategies you can leverage to drive demand. But you shouldn't settle for a PR firm who can't tell you what kind of demand they are driving for your business. Impressions are yesterday's metric. Instead of using generic URL's in your press releases and articles, insert specific links to a dedicated landing page that will reinforce the PR program. Then use your web tracking software to measure the number of hits and subsequent conversions. Tie your PR firm to performance rather than expensive monthly retainers.

Partners/Channels.

Selling indirect through the channel can be a very effective strategy for growing your business. Over time, investing in a channel strategy can deliver superior leverage and grow your business exponentially. It does take a good 18 months for any good program to start showing solid benefits. You also need to be prepared to invest a considerable amount of time and energy up front to get the program up and running. In most cases, the partners you recruit will not have your product as their primary product or service, so it takes extra attention and a good economic return for them to get established. Once you have gotten the program going, your costs of sale drop significantly and you can see some solid positive growth.

Personas.

Instead of trying to track 100+ fields of data, consider aggregating your prospects into several categories and label those categories. For example, "Set and Steady" may be a 50 year-old male CIO with 2 children who is risk adverse and relies on a tight circle of contacts to advise him on key decisions. An "Up and Comer" may be a 34 year-old woman who is assertive and willing to take risks. She is an avid reader and uses research along with instinct to make decisions. Neither is right or wrong. They are just possible representations of your target audience. Once you identify the profiles that most likely describe your prospects, it is much easier to market to those profiles or personas. Your prospects will think you are marketing directly to them, but what you are really doing is marketing to the representation of who they are; attempting to guide their thoughts and actions based on perceived behavior or anticipation of what they will do. This is a very powerfule form of marketing and is really starting to have an impact in B2B.

Stay tuned for the letter "Q".

Lead Generation Strategies That Start With The Letter "O"

2007-10-08T04:40:00.000-07:00

Today we look at the letter "O":

Offer: If content is your number one priority, then your offer should be a strong number two. To shake people out of their complacency, a strong offer is needed to motivate them to take action. The offer should be related to your product or service. Giving away a free iPod is nice and will drive traffic, but it doesn't usually relate to your core business (unless you are in Telco). Studies have shown that C-level executives don't respond well to discounted offers early in the sales cycle. Consider offering a benchmark analysis, audit or some other service that will have an immediate and deep impact on your prospect's business. Free trials can be effective, along with private access to an industry expert or analysis. View your cycle not as the seller, but as the buyer. What does your prospect need at any given point of time to move to the next step? Once you determine that, you will have greater clarity on what offer you should provide.

Stay tuned for the letter "P"

Lead Generation Strategies That Start With "N"

2007-09-24T07:19:00.001-07:00

Today we look at lead generation strategies that begin with the letter "N": Newsletter: Everyone talks about it, but more often than not what starts off as an ambitious projects often ends up in the project file that no one has time for. Finding new content, editing and layout all compete for precious time. How can you use Web 2.0 to make it easier to publish and make your newsletter more compelling at the same time? Audio and Video feeds. It is much easier to grab your CXO or customer and do a 5-10 minute interview than it is to ask someone to sit down and write an article. In this way, you make your newsletter more interactive and you don't have to spend as much time writing. A quick post to YouTube and setting up a podcast feed via feedburner and you now have a syndicated newsletter to start driving demand to your website. Add a little creativity and you can turn your monthly video newsletter into a tv or radio show, complete with themes and supporting story lines. Networking: Instead of going to shows and being part of the masses, join the boards. Many of these organizations are starving for volunteers and would welcome your contribution. Have all of your sales and marketing people join at least one association in their area and serve on the board. Now at events, people will come up to you instead of the other way around. You will get much better leads this way. If you can't find a suitable group to join, start your own and make all the rules. How about running an online networking event? Social networking via community sites accomplishes this very well. Stay tuned for the letter O

Lead Generation Strategies from A-Z: The Letter M

2007-09-21T05:40:00.001-07:00

What are some ways to generate leads with the letter M?

Marketing Plan. Most marketers I talk to do not have a formal, written marketing plan or a demand generation plan. They have a budget, but there is usually not an overall plan to follow. A good marketing plan outlines the objectives and goals the team needs to follow that align with the corporate strategic direction. Things will change throughout the year, but just because you change direction doesn't mean you throw out the map. To drive sustainable revenue growth, your team needs to develop an annual plan with objectives, goals and tactics and then develop key performance indicators and controls to measure your performance. Your plan should be reviewed on a monthly basis with your team. It is too easy to get caught up in the daily grind and forget about all the other things you need to be doing. Sustainable revenue growth companies operate consistently from a plan.

Measurement. How do you measure your marketing performance? Hint: It is not the creative awards, # of impressions, or clicks you get. It is all in financial terms. Your CFO and board only want to know a few things: 1) What is your Revenue per Marketing Spend? For every dollar they give you to spend in marketing, how many dollars in revenue are you returning against that dollar? 2) Lead to Customer Conversion Ratio - How many leads does it take to generate one customer 3) Lifetime value of a customer - how much revenue and referral revenue will a customer produce over its lifetime, and have you stratified these customers into tiers based upon that return? 4) Lead Portfolio - what is the average rate of return per given lead and how much does it cost to take one lead through to a sale. By concentrating on these financial drivers and looking at how much revenue marketing is producing, not the number of leads, you will align your team much better with sales and endear yourself to the Board.

What Is A Lead Portfolio and How Does This Help You Manage Leads?

2007-09-21T05:31:00.000-07:00

Many of you probably have a stock portfolio or some type of investment plan. Leads need to be looked at in the same way. Not all leads have the same value, risk, or rates of return. To run a sustainable revenue growth operation, you need to have a balanced lead portfolio of varying quality and rate of return. Start by scoring your leads with explicit and implicit criteria. Explicit criteria includes budget, authority, need, timeline and other relevant hard data. Implicit criteria is behavioral - it looks at website visits, content viewed, webinars attended, etc. Together with Explicit criteria, you get a much better picture of your leads. Once you have developed a scoring system, you can assign percentages - 80% and above are A's, 70-80% are B's, etc. Then, using your CRM system you can set up closed loop reports to look at how long A leads have taken before they convert into sales, how long it takes for a B lead to convert to an A, etc. In this way, you start developing a much more multi-faceted approach to evaluating lead performance. Your CFO will be very open to discussing this with you, and you will be on your way from talking about Marketing as an expense to Marketing as an investment.

Lead Generation Strategies That Begin With “L”

2007-09-19T11:23:00.002-07:00

Today we explore several different ways to create demand with the letter “L”.

Lead Scoring. Not all leads are created equal. In many cases, inbound leads are being sent directly to the sales team. Whether they are web to lead, or call to lead, sales teams are inundated with a large quantity of requests. From marketing’s standpoint, this is typically considered good, but from sales it isn’t because the majority of those requests are not sales-ready leads. Enter lead scoring. Lead scoring is the process of automatically qualifying and screening inbound requests for the purposes of determining which requests are really leads and which ones aren’t. The sales ready leads are usually then sent either to the sales team or to an inside sales/telemarketing function for further qualification. Leads that are not ready to buy are held back in an incubation or nurturing program, until they exhibit signs of buying behavior. Lead scoring works by reducing the overall number of opportunities, but increasing the conversion rate, shortening the sales cycle, increasing average deal size and increasing overall revenue. The analogy is simple: give salespeople high quality at-bats, and more often than not will knock it out of the park. Lead scoring works best when you marry both explicit data such as budget, authority, need and timeline with implicity behavior such as website visits, downloads, and webinars attended.

Lead Nurturing. Lead Nurturing, Lead Incubation, Lead Harvesting is the process of continuously marketing to leads that are not sales ready. Many times after sales disqualifies a lead, it falls into a black abyss. Or worse, marketing spends more money and time to reacquire the same lead over and over again. With lead nurturing, you use marketing automation to leverage channels such as email, direct mail, microsites and telemarketing to send a continous series of messaging to your prospects. When the prospects display buying behavior, they are then routed to a salesperson for follow-up.

Linking. Linking is one of the best ways to drive traffic to your website and optimize your position in search engine rankings. Identify complementary partners, associations, industry boards and other websites where it would make sense to have a link pointing back to your site. You then reciprocate. You have now turned the power of the web to your advantage by leveraging everyone else’s position to amplify your own. This is easy to do and very cost-effective.

List Acquisition. Ideally, you want to grow your house list organically. But sometimes, it does make sense to acquire a list if you are just starting out or entering a new market. There are a number of good list brokers out there. Do your homework and try to use as much criteria as you can to build a highly targeted and relevant list. Keep in mind that even the best lists will never be more than 80% accurate due to shifting patterns. Leverage off-shore calling centers for a few bucks per call to validate the names on the list and obtain email permission (usually about 20% of the time).

Lead Generation Strategies That Start With “K”

2007-09-19T11:23:00.001-07:00

Knowledge Center. One of the best things you can do for your visitors and customers is to provide them with a central place to acquire knowledge and make informed decisions. Over 70% of B2B Decision Makers are now doing their primary research over the Internet. Why should they go to other sites when you can provide them everything in one destination. You can use RSS Syndication to bring in relevant content that is complimentary to your offerings and add them into the Knowlege Center. Intersperse this with your own white papers, interviews, podcasts, analyst briefings, tools, benchmarks, research and anything else relevant to help your buyers make a more informed decision. Consider gating your content. For simply supplying their email address, visitors can get access to good content that is valuable. For filling out a more detailed form that better profiles their buying intentions, you give them access to even higher value content. This will also signal to your sales team which prospects are showing much more serious buying behavior and they can then prioritize their time.

Stay tuned for the letter “L”

Lead Generation Strategies That Start With “J”

2007-09-19T11:22:00.001-07:00

Today we look at the letter “J”.

Join Professional and Trade Associations. As part of your lead generation strategy, you should map out all trade groups and associations that your target profile would be actively a part of. Look for niche organizations and other associations that your competitors wouldn’t necessarily be a part of. As you expand your sales and marketing teams, ensure that you have a local membership in every region that you have field personnel. Rather than just joining, consider offering your services as a board member. Many of these organizations are starving for people to help them out. A lot of times it is as simple as asking to be on the Board or to run a committee. Once on the board, you will have access to a much better network, and at events, attendees will seek you out rather than the other way around. If you can’t find a suitable association that meets your needs, how about starting your own? You get to call the shots and control the players and content. This is one of the most powerful ways to network. Why sit in the back of the room and fight everyone else for a valuable contact when you can stand up front and have people come to you?

Stay tuned for the letter “K”

Lead Generation Strategies That Start With “I”

2007-09-19T11:21:00.001-07:00

Today we look at Incubation, also known as Lead Nurturing or Lead Harvesting. The challenge for most marketers, is what happens to the leads after the pass them off to sales. Many times, these leads fall into the abyss, never to be heard from again. Worse is when the marketing team spends more money and campaign resources to reacquire the same lead again and again.

Incubation takes leads that are not ready for sales and keeps them warm with a series of marketing messages over a period of time. Then, when the lead exhibits signs of buying behavior, marketing can move the lead back over to sales. Incubation can consist simply of a series of emails or phone calls over a fixed period of time. More experienced marketers use multiple channels such as direct mail and personalized landing pages to vary the pace and content of the incubation period. You will need a marketing automation platform to accomplish this on any type of scale. Companies such as Eloqua, Vtrenz, Pardot and Loopfuse all have technology that can deliver the goods to varying degree. Incubation ensures that all leads get followed up on and your conversion rates will be higher down the line.

Stay tuned for the letter “J”

Lead Generation Strategies That Start With “H”

2007-09-19T11:20:00.002-07:00

Today we look at Hosted Wiki’s.

What is a Wiki?

A wiki is a group-editable website. Wikis are composed of web pages you can write on, enabling fast and easy collaboration. It’s as easy to use as email. You might be familiar with www.wikipedia.org, the online encyclopedia. Wiki’s allow users to have socially revelant and contextual conversations. How does this help you build demand for your products and services? Hosting your own wiki around relevant industry information allows professionals within your space to network and collaborate with each other around specific topics. When you host the wiki, you have access to that network and are also viewed as a thought leader. People that end up using your wiki will be much more highly qualified than someone that just fills out a form for more information on your website. There are a number of free wiki tools out there like www.pbwiki.com, www.wetpaint.com and www.wikispaces.com. They are easy to set up and maintain and are also highly optimized by the search engines. Consider staring your own wiki today.

Lead Generation Strategies That Start With “G”

2007-09-19T11:20:00.001-07:00

In my continuing series on lead strategies from A-Z, today we look at the letter “G”.
Games. We all love to play them and are captivated for hours while we try to win. Websites like Click Software’s Service Tycoon can help reinforce the benefits of your value proposition while holding the visitor captive.

Ideally, the game should be unique, relevant to your industry, and neither too simple nor too difficult to play. A competent player should be able to finish a complete game in about 10-15 minutes, preferably less. You have probably seen themed variations of first-person shooter or “whack-a-mole” games as they are fairly popular. If you do go this route, chances are your game won’t be too popular since it won’t stand out. The challenge here as with most things is to come up with something unique. Vodafone’s campaign is a good example of a unique twist.
An interesting variant of online video games is industry-related trivia games, with prospect-qualifying questions mixed in. These are unlikely to get wide viral distribution, but more likely to appeal to people within your target market. In addition, these have multiple uses; for example, they can be used effectively at trade shows to attract booth traffic while also pre-qualifying your show leads.Stay tuned for the letter “H”

What's Next In Lead Scoring?

2007-09-19T11:19:00.001-07:00

2007 was a big year for many B2B marketers, as they developed processes and adopted automation that would score leads for their sales readiness and then distribute only the most qualified to sales while nurturing the remaining leads with marketing messaging until they were ready to buy. Prior to this year, most marketers relied on explicit data such as budget, authority, need and timeline to evaluate leads. This year, thanks to web and email tracking software, they were able to look at behavior data for the first time and add it to the mix to get a better understanding of their leads. Next year, leading marketers will adopt profiles and personas as part of their scores. In other words, an individual can be a partner, customer, and vendor all at the same time, or they can buy multiple products. How they are scored in one arena will not be the same as how they are scored in another. CRM systems will move from having a one-size-fits-all score per contact or account to a series of fields that represent the complexity and multiple dimensions of companies and people. It could look something like this:

Name: Category: Score:
Jane Doe Product A 92 - Hot
Product B 75 - Cold
Partner 85 - Warm

Personas will become more mainstream in targeting and messaging and marketers use today’s Web 2.0 mediums to personalize their messaging and market one-to-one. Lead Scoring, and subsequently Lead Nurturing/Incubation will also migrate to support this approach.

Lead Generation Strategies That Start With “F”

2007-09-19T11:18:00.002-07:00

In my continuing series on 60 ways to generate leads from A-Z, today we look at lead generation methods that start with the letter “F”:

Feed Management. Today, it’s all about syndication. With so many people tuning in to get their information from the Internet, you can’t afford not to distribute your content. Services like Feedburner, Attensa, Blogbridge, and more can help you package your content and distribute it to multiple audiences. The best part is most of these services don’t cost anything for you to leverage. The more people that see your content and why you are different, the more people you will be able to attract to your website. Good use of links within your content and feeds will also strengthen your position in search engine rankings.

Flywheel. In his book, Good to Great, Jim Collins describes the flywheel effect, which is a metaphor for how big companies were able to achieve momentous growth. The concept of a flywheel is that it takes a while to get started, but once it gets rolling, it is almost unstoppable. Demand generation is the same thing. There is no one magic bullet that will help you generate leads, but if you build an ecosystem with multiple programs running that support an overriding objective, you will be able to significantly outperform marketers over time, especially the ones that are principally relying on email to accomplish their lead generation objectives.

Stay tuned for the letter ”G”

Lead Generation Strategies That Start With “E”

2007-09-19T11:18:00.001-07:00

How can you drive revenue with the letter E? Let’s take a look at some of the strategies:

Email. I know, this is kind of like “duh”, but it is amazing to me how poorly email is used as a medium. For starters, many marketers are still using either no permission or opt-out as the preferred subscription management, as opposed to double opt-in, the gold standard for list quality and performance. Marketings working with better permission and quality lists outpull their counterparts by more than 4 to 1 in response rates. Hardly anyone is doing testing. No one says you have to do something complicated like multivariant, but at least do an A/B split test with subject lines and calls to action on every email campaign. It doesn’t take much longer and can improve your performance by up to 400%. How about just good copywriting? With the ubiquity of blackberries, most executives are reading their email on mobile devices. That pretty HTML template with endless copy isn’t going to cut it any more. The best thing you can do with email is get the respondent to the website as quickly as possible where you can engage and lead them through a more interactive experience. What about how you are using email? Are your autoresponders optimized to have additional calls to action and relevant messaging, or are they just an afterthought? Are emails being used only for new prospect acquisition, or are you also leveraging them for customer education, knowledge management, lead nurturing, or a host of other options? Email is a very powerful medium, and when used to its fullest extent, can be a very valuable part of your Web 2.0 marketing mix.

Executive Briefings. Whether they are breakfast meetings, teleconferences, hosted summits, or a variety of other approaches you can take, executives like to network with other executives and learn from their peers. If you do not have some kind of high-level educational or thought leadership program that is targeted at senior level executives, consider adding one today.

Stay tuned for the letter “F”…

What Is A Smarketer?

2007-09-19T11:17:00.001-07:00

You may have heard this term before. Ellen Reid first coined the term to describe her approach to publishing and used the moniker to name her company. Omniture uses it to describe a world-class Search Engine Marketer. Perhaps the way I heard it used best was by my good friend, Debbie Qaqish, VP of Strategy at Knowlagent. She was describing the ideal marketer for today’s demanding B2B environments. Someone who has experience in both sales AND marketing. A marketer who realizes that their job is to produce revenue. Not just fill the top of the funnel with high quality leads, but stay active in the pipeline with sales ready messaging and real-time marketing that helps the sales team shorten the sales cycle and increase close rates. A Smarketer bridges the gap between sales and marketing because he/she knows to embrace both functions in proportion to what the prospect needs at any given time during the sales cycle.

There are certainly a lot of good sales and marketing people out there that can perform the traditional roles well. But the Web 2.0 world demands smarketers. Perhaps that is why the marketer’s job span is so short today. Are you a Smarketer? If so, you are in high demand.

Please let me know who you are.

Lead Generation Strategies from A-Z: The Letter D

2007-09-19T11:16:00.001-07:00

Direct Mail. An oldie but a goodie, many marketers have moved away from direct mail since email has become so cost effective. To make direct mail work for you in a Web 2.0 world, make sure that you add a personalized URL to each DM piece that takes the respondent to their own personalized microsite. Once there, you can tailor content based on title, industry, behavior and other characteristics to create a more compelling experience. Most marketers I have worked with see a 3-5X lift over their normal response metrics using this approach.

Deminar. At the end of the day, we still need to sell and people will want to view your products at one time or another. A deminar is a webinar that is exclusively focused on demoing your products and services. Make sure your marketing communication clearly outlines this. Those that attend will be a very targeted and segmented group. You can pre-record parts or all of this and then take Q&A live at the end to aid in scalability.

Database. What is 2.0 about your database? For starters, many of us are still at 1.0 with duplicate and stale data that is not properly segmented. The average B2B list turns over at least 25% per year. First, put a process in place that will continuously update and cleanse your database. Once that is complete, you can use your database to develop key buying personas. Personas are representations of your ideal buyers and are easier to build marketing strategies around. You can then develop your website and supporting materials around those personas and track how each segment performs.

Stay tuned for the letter E…

60 Ways To Generate Leads from A-Z: The Letter C

2007-09-19T11:15:00.001-07:00

How many ways can you generate demand with the letter C?

1. Customers. We often concentrate so much on new logo acquisition, that we forget about our most cherished asset - our customes. Studies like Reicheld’s Net Promoter concept clearly show a direct correlation between loyal customers and long term profitable growth. Most companies I talk to do not have any formal ongoing marketing programs that deal specifically with their customers. Instead, they are concentrating all of their money and attention on getting new customers. It is so much easier to focus on your existing customer base as a channel. Turning your customers into advocates will do a lot more for your net growth than any lead generation campaign.

2. Content, Content, Content - as long as you continue to produce timely, relevant content that helps your prospects and customers stay informed and make better business decisions, you will continue to generate new leads. Where do you get good content? It is all around you. For starters, you can set up an aggregation of all of the industry feeds right on your site. Everything that the analysts, industry pundits and third parties write can be showcased on your site for convenient access. Instead of always writing your content, consider a podcast series where you interview your customers, executives, industry luminaries. A 10 minute interview that can be streamed via your website will have lasting value. What about hiring college interns or developing a program with your local university’s business or journalism department? They get real-world experience and you get a slew of writers for no cost.

3. Community - Some communities you may be very familiar with - eBay, LinkedIn, Facebook. Once just limited to B2C and personal relationships, many B2B marketers are now creating vertical communities that directly target their market and serve their customer base. Companies like Neighborhood America have software and services that help you establish communities pretty quickly. This strategy is rapidly gaining ground with many marketers who are trying to deliver relevant content to the right people at the right time.

4. Co-Registration. Easy and cost-effective, co-registration is the process of having people sign subscribe to your list when they sign up forl another list. You may have seen these checkboxes from time to time when you have signed up on a particular form. They ask you if you would also like to register for another newsletter or list. By developing 10-12 good co-registration partners, you can build your list through the efforts of others that are going after the same market. Ideally, find partners that complement your products or services. Of course, if you are really daring, you could partner with your competitors and help each other share the burden in acquiring leads. This lowers the cost of lead acquisition while helping to build a highly targeted and relevant list. I’m not sure of how many people would go for this, but it is a thought.

5. Conferences. Conferences can be a great way to network and develop new sources of leads. Instead of sponsoring, see if you can get one of the speaker slots. If that is not an option, come up with a highly impactful and relevant giveaway, like a wheel chart that you can distribute along with your business cards. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

6. Chat. Many B2B marketers are starting to warm up to the idea of using chat or Instant Messaging on their website. Not all people respond to email or phone. A chat window is another way to interact with your visitors in real time while they are on your website and showing interest. You can staff the function with your inside sales team, who in many cases would be qualifying the leads anyway.

Stay tuned for the letter D…

60 Ways To Generate Leads from A-Z: The Letter B

2007-09-19T11:14:00.000-07:00

Today we look at some of the ways we can generate leads that start with the letter B:

1. Blogging: This has become a must-have for any serious B2B marketer. Once considered a fad, or something too difficult to control, marketers now recognize the power in giving key stakeholders a voice and leveraging the internet as a platform. Blogging helps you reinforce your brand, develop your people as brands within your corporate structure and a useful medium to deliver targeted messaging. When combined with RSS, podcasting, and other Web 2.0 conventions, Blogging becomes a great way to generate demand. Makes sure every post has a relevant link, like this: www.pedowitzgroup.com/blog so that you can track how effective your blog is at driving traffic back towards your website.

2. Banner Ads: Typically these deliver less than a 0.5% response rate, but depending upon the site and the cost of the ad, they may be useful in reinforcing a targeted campaign. Again, make sure the landing page URL is unique to support the ad. Don’t send the respondent to your home page.

3. Benchmarking Assessments: Everyone loves to be benchmarked and see how well they stack up against the competition. When you can deliver a valuable assessment that rates a respondent in a critical business area, you build trust and confidence as a thought leader and then you can use that data to build a master database of highly relevant market data that you can repurpose. The people that fill out the assessments also generally provide much more information than just a white paper download, so you can feed this into your lead scoring program to determine how to handle. Most of your competitors won’t do this type of service, so if you are looking to distinguish yourself, this is a great area to do it.

4. Breakfast Meetings: The power lunch has moved to the power breakfast. Most executives are too busy to take long lunches, but getting an exclusive briefing first thing in the morning before the crazy day starts is always a good play. When you can have an analyst or top name customer join you for the breakfast, you should have no trouble attracting some of those executives you have been coveting.

Stay tuned for the letter C…

60 Ways To Generate Leads from A-Z: The Letter A

2007-09-19T11:13:00.000-07:00

I was thinking the other day of all the ways you can generate leads. We are all probably doing some of these, but can we do more? Which are the most cost effective? Which get the best results? Over the next few days, I will present my thoughts on the various ways to generate demand in alphabetical order. Some of these letters were tough (like Q ) If anyone has any more suggestions, please feel free to post!

The Letter A

1. Autoresponders. We all know what they are, but do we always use them? Typically, this is a text email that your receive after you submit a form, but it can do so much more. This is a great chance to reinforce your brand and use some of your better templates along with strong calls to action. Many marketers view this as just a formality, but it is an excellent way to get another message across to someone that just expressed interest in your product or service. The best part is it doesn’t cost anything but the time to set it up initially and then you are set.

2. Adwords. Given a choice, and please don’t kill me Google, I would rather see marketers focus their efforts on search engine optimization first. Most of the heat map studies done by Marketing Sherpa and others show that the attention is being paid to the top few listings returned from the query. Seldom if ever do searchers go to page 2 or even view on the right. First, concentrate on getting the top listing for keywords in several categories. Once you have that down, it does make sense to invest in some highly targeted Adword campaigns. Before you begin, ask your customers what words they use to search for your products and services. You may be surprised to find out they are quite different from the terms your marketing team uses.

3. Analysts. As respected third party advisors, analysts can be very useful in writing about your firm and getting you in the door with new prospects. One of the best ways to use them is to pay them for co-sponsored webcasts, webinars, or even paid interviews that you can podcast. That way, you can reuse the content repeatedly and make your website much more engaging.

4. Awards. How many of you are sponsoring awards for the markets you serve? Everyone loves to receive awards and sponsors will gladly pay premium dollars to be part of an event where their key target market is. Consider developing your own industry focused awards and then invite people to submit nominations for various categories. This is something that the press will pick up on as well and help you contribute to your Thought Leadership position in the marketplace.

5. Advertising. An oldie, but a goodie. Targeted ads in key industry verticals, both online and offline, especially when they can support a bi-line article or case study pack a good one-two punch. Instead of just putting the ad in, make sure you put a targeted URL in the ad so you can track which people came to your site as a result. For example, www.pedowitzgroup.com/wallstreetjournal [ed. note - this link won’t work] is much better than www.pedowitzgroup.com
Stay tuned for the letter B…

How To Set Up A Lead Scoring System in 7 Easy Steps

2007-09-19T11:11:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I wrote about a new study by Eloqua showcasing how effective lead scoring really is in helping companies drive revenue. Today I am going to outline 7 steps to set up a lead scoring system for your company.

1. Criteria.

Most of us are familiar with BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline) criteria for evaluating leads and have been using it for years. This is called explicit criteria. But since most “buyers are liars” today, this data isn’t always the most reliable. More marketers are using implicit or behavioral data as an additional gauge. Criteria such as website visits, email clickthroughs, white paper downloads, etc. can be more indicative of true buying intent, and when married with explicit data, provide a more well-rounded view of the value of the lead. To get started, sit down with your sales team and come up with a written definition of a lead that everyone can agree on, using the above criteria.

2. Weight Attributes

The next thing you need to do is weight the criteria. Since not all items should be given equal consideration - for example, the decision maker might have more value than the buying timeframe - you need to set up a weighting system. The easiest way to do this is by leveraging a LIPERT scale of 10 points. Give 10 points to the criteria deemed most indicative of buying intent, and 1 to the least. If title is one of your categories, you can assign 8 points to the decision maker, 7 points to an executive, 6 to a manager, and 5 to a gatekeeper.

3. Develop Rating System

The next thing you need to do is build your scale and determine your rating system. The easiest way to do this is to take the high end of each of your criteria from step two and add them together. For example, say you had 5 criteria, worth 10, 9, 8, 7 and 6 points respectively. You would add them all up to get a total point value of 40. Next, determine what percentage are your “A” or “Hot” leads. Usually, the top 20% is a good start. So, leads from 32-40 points would be a “A” lead. Keep going until you get to your C leads. Anything below that should go straight into lead nurturing programs.

4. Determine Actions Based On Rating

The next thing you need to do is determine what actions should be taken for each type of lead. “A” leads can go straight to the sales team, while “B” leads go to inside sales and “C” leads go to nurturing. Or, you can have the “A” leads go to inside sales for further qualification before they are routed to sales. The possibilities are endless, but once you define them, ensure you have a platform in place to apply the rules consistently.

5. Monitor and Adjust

No lead scoring system will be 100% accurate right off the bat. It takes many companies 6-9 months of continuous tweaks to get it right. Communicate regularly with your sales team and monitor your conversion rates once the system is enacted. Whatever you do, don’t make too complicated of a system with loads of criteria. It will be too difficult to manage and maintain. Start small and incrementally add criteria until you have a system that both sales and marketing are completely confident in.

6. Build Your Porftolio

Once you start scoring and distributing your leads, maintain a portfolio, similar to a stock portfolio of how well your leads perform. Monitor length of time it takes for different rated leads to move through your funnel and convert, along with the corresponding dollar values. This will help you maintain a holistic view of your lead performance. Just because leads are B’s, C’s, and D’s today, doesn’t mean they won’t turn into ‘A’s somewhere down the road and convert into revenue.

7. Report on Financials

Your CRM system is the best vehicle for this. Monitor your lead to opportunity, lead to close, opportunity to close and average revenue per deal both before and after lead scoring starts. This will be the truest gauge on how well lead scoring is performing for your organization.

Lead Scoring: Fact or Fiction?

2007-09-19T07:08:00.000-07:00

Over the last year, Lead Scoring has been gaining in popularity among B2B marketers as a means of screening off most of the inbound leads they generate and ensuring that the sales team only works with the most qualified leads. Now that companies have had these programs in place, the question many are asking is, does this actually work? Eloqua recently surveyed 10 of their customers who had used the lead scoring program for 6 months or more to find out what kind of impact lead scoring was having on revenue and opportunity conversion. They found that the number of opportunities sales worked on went down by 22.9%, while close ratio increased by 30.5%, average revenue per deal increased by 17%, and overall revenue increased by 17.8%.
Clearly, there are benefits to organizations that implement lead scoring. In my next posting, I will outline several recommendations on how you can get lead scoring up and running in your company.