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B2B Lead Generation Articles on b2b marketing
- Mapping Content to the Sales Funnel AND Buyer types
Buzz Marketing for Technology | Nov 21, 2010 | Permalink
You often hear about the concept of mapping content to the sales funnel (especially in B2B Marketing) but it’s not so common in practice. I will self confess that I have ignored this one for a while. The other version of this is the mapping of content to your buyer types and this too is [...] Related posts:- Influencers vs Advocates in B2B Marketing According to Wikipedia – Influencer Marketing is a form of...
Could Facebook become a Lead Nurturing platform? When you think of lead nurturing platforms you typically think...
B2B Marketing Content: Lure or Lasso? I picked this saying up from Gary Vaynerchuk’s new book...
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- Mobile Codes and B2B
B2B Marketing Confidential | Nov 21, 2010 | Permalink
Over the past decade, I’ve been involved with many projects to “de-tangle” digital marketing for big companies. Big companies want to know what’s out there in the digital landscape, and how it all fits together. Most importantly, they want to know why the latest trend is important to them. Take Twitter, for example. Is it a real, honest-to-goodness life changer that will be used addictively by a whole generation of digital influentials? Or, will it be the Segway scooter of web 2.0, a tool in search of a solution, that enjoys a surge of activity followed by a slow decline into boredom and malaise? I won’t comment on Twitter (at least not for now), but I will mention a truly cool tool that could be very, very important for B2B marketers.QR codes were invented in Japan in 1994 and are used...
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- Using Audience Targeting to Own the Latent Pipeline
B2B Marketing Confidential | Nov 21, 2010 | Permalink
B2B marketers are intimately familiar with the concept of a funnel or a pipeline. Whichever term you use--you might use both--the ideas are the same from company to company. A lead is entered into a system at some point in time. It might be someone inquiring on the web site, or it might even be a name from a list. From this point onwards, that lead can either move forward, do nothing, or drop out of the system. The resulting graphic looks like a funnel.Having covered that ground, let me state up front that this post is not about pipeline management, acceleration, nurturing, systems, or email marketing. This post is about a fundamental problem with the funnel concept as operationalized at most B2B marketing organizations today, and what I think is a pretty seminal idea on how to fix the ...
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- 10 Tips for Using Twitter And Email Marketing for B2B
Anything Goes Marketing | Nov 21, 2010 | Permalink
I was told that every blog needs a "top 10 post" and I thought today would be a good day to write one on a topic that is growing in popularity. That topic is Twitter and how best to use this tool for your B2B marketing efforts. I thought I would take a stab at providing tips on blending a tried and true tool like email with Twitter. Let me know what you think and if you have additional tips (
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- B2B Marketing Trends From Eloqua Experience 09 Via Twitter
Anything Goes Marketing | Nov 21, 2010 | Permalink
Earlier this month I left my newborn and poor wife at home for an unforgettable week at Eloqua Experience in San Francisco. This sold out event brought together some of smartest marketers from all over the world. While there were a few keynote speakers, the conference focused on having the Eloqua community share their experiences so we could all learn from each other.The main difference this year
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- 5 Corporate B2B Blogs That You Should Copy
Anything Goes Marketing | Nov 21, 2010 | Permalink
The importance of blogs in your B2B marketing mix can't be overlooked. Blogs are too important in keeping customers and future customers informed about your industry, your products and your company, driving people to your website, and generating leads. A recent study by Hubspot found that those companies that use blogs generate 67% more leads than those that don't. However, anyone that can open a
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- Thoughts on how to follow-up on website leads when you use marketing automation
B2B Lead Generation Blog / Brian Carroll | Nov 21, 2010 | Permalink
A few months ago, at the MarketingSherpa B2B Marketing summit in Boston, I was asked on how best to follow-up on leads generated via the web by Richard Hill. Richard writes over at the Idea Exchange blog on marketing automation...
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- Most important B2B Marketing Metrics For CEOs
B2B Lead Generation Blog / Brian Carroll | Nov 21, 2010 | Permalink
Today CEOs expect marketers to provide metrics and to be accountable to meeting their numbers just like sales people. They do have a bunch of activity metrics and some squishy metrics like brand recognition. At the same time, most CEOs...
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- 5 Steps To Creating A Lead Gen Machine & The Predictable Revenue That CEOs Love
B2B Lead Generation Blog / Brian Carroll | Nov 21, 2010 | Permalink
In a recent post I talked about the most important B2B marketing metrics to CEO’s or what I believe CEO’s should be measuring. All too often Marketing is measuring one thing while the CEO’s are asking a question those measurements...
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- Are kids Brains Different when it comes to Social Media?
Buzz Marketing for Technology | Nov 20, 2010 | Permalink
I know it sounds like a crazy idea but hear me out. So you know how your grand parents used to tell you about the Great Depression and how you needed to save for a rainy day. My grand dad used to save everything including the wood and nails from old construction projects but I [...] Related posts:- 3 More ROIs in Social Media – Conversations Leads and Advocates If you follow me you know I talk a lot...
What’s your Social Media diet? I often get asked the question – how do you...
How to Choose a Social Media Listening Platform for B2B Marketing In the last post we covered how to create a...
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- Scott Cross (Office Depot) Talks Efficient Customer Response, Customer-Centri...
B2B Marketing Confidential | Nov 20, 2010 | Permalink
I recently interviewed Scott Cross for an upcoming issue of MarketBridge's client email newsletter (Minds Over Markets). Scott is Director of Strategic Campaigns at Office Depot. Scott's a super smart guy who's tried a lot of innovative things and has a firm grasp on the big picture of B2B Marketing.---------------------------------------------------AH: Talk a little about how customer data is being used to bring together vendors, manufacturers, retailers and distributors in a more customer focused strategy, and where that’s headed from a B2B perspective. SC: The manufacturers don’t really understand who is making the decisions and what information is available within the network of their distributors and retailers. A lot of them aren’t set up to understand the information, and don’t...
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- B2B Marketing needs a stronger Why
Buzz Marketing for Technology | Nov 19, 2010 | Permalink
Last year I wrote about how the balance of content has shifted. Bottom line is there is more content being produced by Users than by Publishers these days. Which means Publishers (or Marketers) are now the “white noise” in comparison to User Generated Content. Our messages are being drowned out by user generated content. This struck [...] Related posts:- The 4 P’s to Social Media Marketing Ok ok – based on the great response I got...
The 4 C’s of B2B Marketing We’ve all heard about the four P’s of marketing....
Customers don’t care about Channels Let’s face it at this point social media has gone...
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- Content Marketing Basics: A B2B Marketing Cheat Sheet
Marketo | Nov 19, 2010 | Permalink
Learn the content marketing basics with the latest B2B Marketing Cheat Sheet: Content Marketing
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- Mac McIntosh Announces our New Division for Implementing Lead Generation: Acq...
Sales Lead Insights | Nov 18, 2010 | Permalink
Mac McIntosh Inc has provided consulting and speaking/training related to helping companies like yours generate more qualified leads and drive more sales using the latest B2B marketing strategies, tactics, media and technology since 1990. However, many of our clients have also been having us help implement their marketing-driven lead generation programs for them. So we decided to create a new division focused on those implementation services and named it AcquireB2B. If you'd like to learn more, please use my Contact Form, call me directly at 1-800-944-5553 or +1-401-294-7730, or check out the marketing consulting or speaking and training pages on my website.
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- B2B product marketing professionals: This might interest you
Sales Lead Insights | Nov 17, 2010 | Permalink
As business is slowly recovering from the "Great Recession," many B2B marketing professionals are looking for jobs. Three product marketing job openings came to my attention, so I thought I'd share them here: Product Director, Campaign Solutions (Near Los Angeles, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Boston or Toronto) Are you someone who thrives on developing a roadmap from scratch? Do you [...] If you'd like to learn more, please use my Contact Form, call me directly at 1-800-944-5553 or +1-401-294-7730, or check out the marketing consulting or speaking and training pages on my website.
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- Mapping Content to the Sales Funnel AND Buyer types
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Lead Generation Topics
, but I will mention a truly cool tool that could be very, very important for B2B marketers.<br/><br/><a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code'>QR codes</a> were invented in Japan in 1994 and are used a lot in Asia. They’re all over the place in India. The basic concept is simple—a mobile two dimensional barcode. Instead of putting barcodes on merchandise for use in payments, you can put them anywhere. Here’s what one looks like. This is the one for wikipedia's home page:<br/><br/><br/><a href='http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_30veOO2AATQ/SWfJzk_9ElI/AAAAAAAAAEY/8p5R-lTaREM/s1600-h/WikiQRCode.png'><img src='http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_30veOO2AATQ/SWfJzk_9ElI/AAAAAAAAAEY/8p5R-lTaREM/s400/WikiQRCode.png' id='BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5289418175312368210' border='0' alt='' style='width: 185px; cursor: hand; height: 185px;'/></a><br/>Microsoft’s biggest announcement at this weeks’ CES was their version of QR codes called <a href='http://www.microsoft.com/tag/'>Microsoft Tag</a>. These are two-dimensional color codes that contain a lot of information and are very readable by mobile phones’ cameras. A key to adoption of these codes is ease. How close do you have to be to the code to take an accurate picture; how much light is necessary; how good does the camera have to be to pick out the contrasts in color. From what I’ve heard through some savvy friends, the new Microsoft technology is best-of-breed on all fronts. Here's what a Microsoft Tag looks like for B2B Marketing Confidential:<br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><a href='http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_30veOO2AATQ/SWfMAVYYxII/AAAAAAAAAEg/9BlFkxA7yXU/s1600-h/b2bmktgconfcode.jpg'><img src='http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_30veOO2AATQ/SWfMAVYYxII/AAAAAAAAAEg/9BlFkxA7yXU/s400/b2bmktgconfcode.jpg' id='BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5289420593481434242' border='0' alt='' style='width: 152px; cursor: hand; height: 152px;'/></a><br/>However, we’re back to the Segway question. Will this thing take off, and will it last? I think it will. For one thing, it’s taken off and lasted in the more mobile-phone-savvy countries already. For another, it’s got a lot of real, honest-to-goodness business applications. Microsoft points out several of these:<br/><ul><li><strong>Real Estate Listings:</strong> Snap a code of a for sale sign, take a virtual tour on your phone.</li><li><strong>Business Cards:</strong> Snap a code on a business card and download the person’s contact info. </li><li><strong>Dating:</strong> Print out a t-shirt with your code. If people are interested, they snap you and get your digits (my friend Jeremy came up with this, I agree, it’s a bit sick). </li><li><strong>Linking to Facebook / Twitter:</strong> Snap codes and people automatically see what you’re looking at and where. </li></ul><p><br/>There are lots of others that I’ve thought of for B2B marketers: </p><ul><li><strong>Put codes on retail displays / end caps.</strong> Snap the code and you download a coupon and get loyalty points</li><li><strong>Put codes on all of your hardware components.</strong> Snap the code and you’re automatically routed to the best tech support person for that device, along with the device’s serial number and configuration. </li><li><strong>Put codes on drug posters.</strong> Snap the code and a doctor downloads all the clinical data and prescription guidance. </li><li><strong>Put codes all over at events.</strong> Snap the codes to create a customer event portfolio, complete with time visited. The sponsors also know who you are, who else you visited, etc. </li></ul><p>There are probably 10,000 other applications. I came up with the above in three minutes; I think with some heads-down time you could come with many more meaningful B2B applications. So B2B marketers, start planning for mobile / QC codes in your planning. Some open questions:</p><ul><li>Is Microsoft going to out-innovate Google here for a change, or will Google release their much better version shortly and snap up all the share? </li><li>What does this mean for GPS integration? Didn’t even go there but imagine that… </li><li>Implications for privacy? Is there a way to streamline “opt-in”? </li></ul><p><br/>So, so cool. I don’t say stuff like this too often, but this is exciting.</p><div class='blogger-post-footer'><img src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/36395142-4307494113981434002?l=b2bmarketingconfidential.blogspot.com' height='1' alt='' width='1'/></div>
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![](http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=http://b2bmarketingconfidential.blogspot.com/2009/12/using-audience-targeting-to-own-latent.html&title=Using-Audience-Targeting-to-Own-the-Latent-Pipeline&bodytext=B2B marketers are intimately familiar with the concept of a<strong> funnel</strong> or a <strong>pipeline</strong>. Whichever term you use--you might use both--the ideas are the same from company to company. A lead is entered into a system at some point in time. It might be someone inquiring on the web site, or it might even be a name from a list. From this point onwards, that lead can either move forward, do nothing, or drop out of the system. The resulting graphic looks like a funnel.<br/><br/>Having covered that ground, let me state up front that this post is not about pipeline management, acceleration, nurturing, systems, or email marketing. This post is about a fundamental problem with the funnel concept as operationalized at most B2B marketing organizations today, and what I think is a pretty seminal idea on how to fix the problem.<br/><br/>The problem with funnels is that they're missing a lot of the folks that are actually going through the purchase process. This is because we as marketers are dependent on our own internal systems to track these folks. Our own websites; our own emails; our own sales reps; you name it. However, we <em>know</em> there are many individuals with needs that are going down an awareness / consideration / trial / purchase process that we are <em>completely oblivious to.</em> I call this the <em>latent pipeline.</em> For analytics geeks, this should be a comfortable term. It is the implicit pipeline that we don't have information about but that we <em>know</em> exists.<br/><br/>I'd argue that the latent pipeline can be broken into two parts. The first part is the upstream part of the funnel that could be defined as "pre-company web site". This is when <em>latent prospects</em> are starting to think about their needs and what they're going to go do. Today, this is going to be largely addressed via search, assuming that we can intersect people when they type in search terms. There is no question that this is a powerful tool for intercepting prospects, but I'd argue that there's an even more powerful way to target them. More on that later.<br/><br/>The second part are the folks that are going through our stages, as defined via our systems, that we don't know about. So, when we have 10 leads that are "qualified", there are another 50 leads out there that are being qualified by other companies. We don't know about them, so chances are, we'll never get to pitch to them. Ouch! That's pretty harsh.<br/><br/>So, we've defined a pipeline that has an explicit and a latent component, that will look something like this:<br/><a href='http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_30veOO2AATQ/SykLkQ_j19I/AAAAAAAAAGg/nRUzyUxD2u0/s1600-h/B2BFunnel.png'><img src='http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_30veOO2AATQ/SykLkQ_j19I/AAAAAAAAAGg/nRUzyUxD2u0/s400/B2BFunnel.png' id='BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5415872744554485714' border='0' alt='' style='width: 416px; height: 357px; cursor: hand;'/></a><br/>This fundamentally changes the concepts of B2B marketing, when you think about it.<br/><ul><li>Acquisition marketing really becomes about understanding the top of the <em>latent funnel</em></li><li>The scope of CRM can be expanded to include not just leads / opportunities in <em>our</em> CRM system, but to leads / opportunities in <em>other company's</em> CRM systems</li></ul><p>I'm not suggesting that we all go do industrial espionage and steal other firm's CRM data. I'm suggesting that through online audience ownership, we can extend the CRM layer from the explicit to the latent, via display advertising. I already posted on this once, so <a href='http://b2bmarketingconfidential.blogspot.com/2009/10/verticalizing-intenet-marketing.html'>read that one.</a> Basically, I'm arguing that we need to take a few steps to own the latent pipeline:</p><ol><li>Understand our audiences</li><li>Map their typical B2B Internet behavior and map their pre-buying cues</li><li>Build analytical models to tag them</li><li>Target them via display advertising before they ever come to our site</li><li>Keep doing search marketing</li></ol><p>In other words, create a rich, targeted online tapestry that is always on, and no longer shackled to company web sites and email. B2C marketers are ahead on this, but B2B has so much more potential.</p><p>I know this needs more detail. Next post will be on how one might do the steps above and make it work.</p><div class='blogger-post-footer'><img src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/36395142-1612949307234063484?l=b2bmarketingconfidential.blogspot.com' height='1' alt='' width='1'/></div>
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![](http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=http://www.sales-lead-insights.com/2010/b2b-product-marketing-professionals-this-might-interest-you/&title=B2B-product-marketing-professionals:-This-might-interest-you&bodytext=As business is slowly recovering from the "Great Recession," many B2B marketing professionals are looking for jobs.
Three product marketing job openings came to my attention, so I thought I'd share them here:
Product Director, Campaign Solutions
(Near Los Angeles, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Boston or Toronto)
Are you someone who thrives on developing a roadmap from scratch? Do you [...]<p/><table cellspacing='0' border='1' cellpadding='15'>
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<td>If you'd like to learn more, please use my <a href='http://www.sales-lead-insights.com/contact' target='_BLANK'>Contact Form</a>, call me directly at 1-800-944-5553 or +1-401-294-7730, or check out the <a href='http://www.sales-lead-experts.com/consulting/' target='_BLANK'>marketing consulting</a> or <a href='http://www.sales-lead-experts.com/speaking/' target='_BLANK'>speaking and training</a> pages on my website.
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