• Demand Generation Machine


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    B2B Online Marketing: How To Get Noticed

    Its unanimous amongst marketers that good web content along with strong SEO is a top priority in 2008 and its all about getting noticed or found by prospects. The more content your business can generate online in terms of blog posts, articles, PR, news releases, document downloads, landing pages & micro sites the more visibility you have to those who searching the web. The number of links and pages you have a presence on has a direct impact on how big a footprint your business on the web and in turn how many eye balls you have managed to capture with your messages.

    The only way to build this volume of content and get noticed is by a constant and consistent effort to develop more online content and put it out there for prospects to find. The more coverage you have, the better your chances of being found. A few must dos to get noticed are:

    -Blog as much as you can and as often as you can for your business blog. If you can’t find the time to blog everyday, find others who can do this for you whether other colleagues or professional bloggers

    -Push out articles and news releases regularly. PR is a great source of content and is often searched

    -Build out landing pages & micro-sites with very clear specific messages for different offerings and targeted at specific groups of prospects. Each of these should be focussed on a specific set of keywords that your relevant market would most likely search

    -Make use of other rich media content like videos, interviews, podcasts and images as a lot of these rank higher in search results as compared to text based content.

    -Spend time daily on activities like building links to your content, interacting and commenting on relevant blog posts and forums

    They key is to do this consistently and build on this every day. Adding online content to create that big footprint of your business on the web is a full time job and needs a dedicated effort but can have great results in the long run as your business comes up on more search results. Keep that content coming!

     

    B2B Lead Nurturing Pull or Push?

    Pull based marketing is the mantra of our times and words like web forms, click throughs, page views and webcast sign-ups make their way to every marketing meeting. While all these tools are out there waiting to capture responses from prospects and feed them into a lead nurturing system how do you attach a priority or a level to each of the leads to determine how qualified they are or how ready they are?

    There was an interesting presentation by Pete Jakob of IBM UK who in his presentation “Click to Cash” actually covers and activity based scoring system they use to score response activities by their ‘readiness’. This scoring system or priority ranking is also a great measure of which leads need to go through the lead nurturing process longer before they can be passed on to sales.

    Email opens, click throughs and page views make up the bottom of the pack and usually require a longer cycle of nurturing before they qualify as opportunities for sales people. This is followed closely by library resources viewed, articles viewed, RSS feeds viewed and online polls taken which maybe only slightly more qualified than the first set. Downloaded whitepapers, surveys taken, discussion form fills and webcast sign-ups rank considerably higher and can be considered more qualified leads which can often go directly to the sales stage. Finally you have attended webcasts, recorded webinar downloads, viewed demos and requests to be contacted by a salesperson which rank the highest and among those which may not require much lead nurturing before they are qualified.

    So a good exercise would be to identify your lead sources based on how ready are the leads you get from them and then design a lead nurture process for them based on where they fit so that these leads are directed correctly and you make the most of your pull marketing strategy.

     

    Why revert to B2B Lead Generation in Times of Recession

    Yes the recession has hit companies worldwide and everyone has felt the pinch. Time to cut costs, jobs, budgets and expenses. Lets start with the pay cuts. No bonuses or increments for the staff this year, in fact half will have to take pay cuts. No free lunches, no client entertainment budgets, we’ll cut IT spending by 50%, inventory by 30% and marketing and lead generation budgets by 50% as well.

    Stop! Rewind! Can you repeat that last part? Did I hear cut marketing and lead generation budgets as well?

    Now every marketing and sales team knows you need to generate X number of leads or prospects to have Y number of opportunities in the pipeline to close Z number of customers. In tough times when companies are holding back from buying it doesn’t mean that all prospects are going to stop buying altogether so you should stop selling, it only means they are going to be harder to come by. So if they are harder to come by within the same pool of leads then you need to increase Y and to do that you need to increase X. So to close the same number of customers you would target under good market conditions you would have to generate, comb through and qualify a larger volume of leads and generate more opportunities understanding that the rate of closure will be lower. So contrary to hacking away at the marketing budget like the others, step it up to ensure a better chance of being able to close the sales targets you set out to achieve.

    How much should lead generation be stepped up? Work backwards. Determine where you stand, how far are you from your target closures and then accordingly decide how many more leads would you need to start off with to close the remaining. Its not rocket science. Its about generating sales.

     

    B2B Lead Online Lead Generation

    There has been a lot of discussion on what will be the “in things” within B2B lead generation and what to look out for during the rest of 2008/2009. BtoB Magazine published an interesting article on “What is working well for lead gen”. Marketing leaders shared their views which ranged from lead management through well configured CRM systems, networking at dinner events to newsletters and blogs. There are several different takes from several different marketers on the trends within lead generation and while all of them depend on what works best for specific types of companies one thing is clear: Businesses are clearly moving a lot of focus towards online marketing.

    The shift in focus from traditional outbound marketing, email marketing, tele prospecting, direct marketing towards online lead generation has seen marketing leaders allocate more resources towards blogging & online content development, landing pages & microsites, podcasts, white paper campaigns, SEO, SEM, online lead capture and nurturing and more. The whole process of how to generate more interest online, capture web leads through online form fills or downloads, optimize search results and create more awareness is clearly a common area of interest across different types of businesses this year and one that wont lose momentum any time soon.

    Companies experimenting with social networks, advertising on twitter, capturing information on web visits, overhauling their websites are all going to be things to look out for over the next year. Its quite clear that the lead generation is shifting online and while there is no substitute to the cold call or the email right now it will be interesting to see how the shift towards online lead generation develops.

     

    Outsourcing your b2b lead generation

    Handling expectations is a crucial aspect of any business and there is no exception when it comes to B2B lead generation and marketing support. Evaluating third part companies or vendors who can support or supplement your lead generation efforts to drive more sales can be a harrowing experience but a lot of this is really about matching requirements and expectations. As a marketer or sales manager here are a few things you should know while looking for support with your b2b lead generation activities:

    • Decide which areas you could use a vendors support, what activities can they supplement and where you would like to focus your internal teams skills so that you use external support to maximize efficiency of your internal efforts. For example if your internal sales team spend more of their time looking for decision makers and contacts within accounts rather than making sales calls
    • Outsourcing some of your lead generation activities or by engaging a vendor for services should mean you have less of an overhead and fits in seamlessly with your existing process. If outsourcing your requirement involves high involvement of your time and your internal teams time then its not very productive and defeats the purpose of engaging a vendor.
    • Select a service or vendor that fits your requirements on an engagement model you are comfortable with. Support can be availed on resources or bandwidth that you need for your activities, time based pricing, performance based pricing (which is what we primarily offer at Better Inc), long term commitment basis, project basis and more. Factor in your budgets, your time lines, whether you are looking for a long term partnership or you just need extra bandwidth or support when things get hectic and you need in spike in lead generation efforts. Select a model that fits you.
    • Outsourcing demand generation activities doesn’t mean giving away your entire process of generating good sales leads. Always test with a smaller project or a smaller commitment if you are unsure and gradually increase as you become confident that there is value in what you are paying for.

    If your requirements are clear, expectations are right and you have located a company that could fit well with your requirements then outsourcing some of these activities can give you a great boost with meeting or exceeding your sales targets.

     
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    • Hi folks, welcome to our blog where we discuss smart b2b demand creation strategies and highlight our experiences in delivering expert lead generation services to global technology companies at Better, Inc.
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