Lead Generation Insight

It's probably clear by now that an individual's compensation or an enterprise's growth is tied to what sets it apart. You won't succeed in this marketplace if you don't specialize and offer something that is truly distinctive. But it's not...

It's now tougher than ever to turn prospects into customers. But prospective buyers won't make any moves unless they understand the full scope and magnitude of the challenges they currently face - and comprehend what a value-rich solution might look...

As the pace of marketing innovation accelerates, B2B marketers are struggling with growing complexity and growing expectations. "B2B Marketers now have access to dynamic technologies that are transforming how leads are generated, prospects are engaged and customers are acquired," according...

Some say content is king. They recognize the power of relevant and resonant content to attract buyers, guide them through challenging decisions and drive growth to new levels. But many other organizations seem to consider content an unruly tyrant. One...

We've been liberated to elevate our businesses and ourselves through the new tools of marketing. In fact, new tools mean new rules. We no longer need to rely on the media for attention and publicity. We are the the media...

Are you personally seeking higher visibility in your field or profession? If you answered yes, you’re not alone. More and more of us are aiming to be widely recognized. This can benefit us personally as well as the companies we...

Dan Roam is giving us the power of sight. How about that for a gift? Roam, who is the author of the best-selling book Back of the Napkin and the newly released Unfolding the Napkin, is an expert in discovering,...

Just got finished watching Michael Lewis (one of my favorite writers) on the Charlie Rose show. He was describing his new book, The Big Short, about contrarians who bet against the sub-prime mortgage debacle and made millions doing so. What’s...

As one of the most insightful and prolific strategists in the emerging field of content marketing, Ardath Albee deserves your attention. She is the author of the compelling new book eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale. But she also blogs...

Jack is back. With a new season of 24, Kiefer Sutherland (aka Jack Bauer) is back on TV taking out bad guys. Should you care? I think so. Here’s why: Every week, this fast-paced drama offers us insights into the...

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The sales environment, like all aspects of the world around it, has changed drastically over time. Though these changes have occurred, selling, at its core, has basically not. Selling, distilled down to its core, can be described as the transference...

There are two types of business owners: 1. Those who view their sales team as an asset. 2. Those who view their sales team as an expense. Type 2's do not understand the value and contribution of their salespeople. They...

It seems simple enough: After reviewing their web site for the first time, a prospect contacts a supplier and wants to order something. (As all the marketers shout Halleluiah!) Before we get too excited, let's stop and examine this scenario...

There are two types of business owners: 1. Those who view their sales team as an asset. 2. Those who view their sales team as an expense. Type 2's do not understand the value and contribution of their salespeople. They...

Clemson's Dabo Swinney received encouraging support for their coming ACC title effort from perhaps the most unlikely of sources, South Carolina Gamecocks' Head Coach, Steve Spurrier. The Clemson Tigers, ranked #25, face neighboring Georgia Tech, ranked #12, for the coveted...

There are two types of business owners: 1. Those who view their sales team as an asset. 2. Those who view their sales team as an expense. Type 2's do not understand the value and contribution of their salespeople. They...

There are two types of business owners: 1. Those who view their sales team as an asset. 2. Those who view their sales team as an expense. Type 2's do not understand the value and contribution of their salespeople. They...

Yes, thank heavens for this economic crisis! You heard me right. I am actually grateful for how it has impacted me. As it turns out, this horrible recession has revealed to me just how deep a sales rut I have...

Kudos to Drew McLellan and Gavin Heaton who conceived the amazingly successful Age of Conversation marketing series and have since undertaken the massive task of assembling almost two hundred authors from around the world for the third installment, Age of...

There are two types of business owners: 1. Those who view their sales team as an asset. 2. Those who view their sales team as an expense. Type 2's do not understand the value and contribution of their salespeople. They...

Here is a simple way small businesses can offer their customers an advantage in doing business with them as opposed to their larger competitors: make yourself available and respond faster. Many businesses place roadblocks and barriers to customer interaction – voice mail, call screening, auto attendants, unnamed email boxes, etc.  These are barriers that limit [...]

There is no possibility of a sales opportunity until a benefit is established in the mind of your prospect. Until your prospect acknowledges a need, want or desire to purchase whatever it is you have to sell, there is no way in the world they will buy. Think about it. Your prospect has to want [...]

The diagram to the left is a simple transistor circuit. There’s nothing special about it, except one thing — no matter where you put it, it acts the same. Whether it’s in a VHF radio, radar repeater, or an advanced weapons system, it functions the same. If you understand how and why that simple circuit [...]

“The time has come for one of us to buy and you’re the only one at the table that can do that.� It’s not the most polished closing statement ever made, but it won a $3.5M deal when I gave it. I smiled, looked our prospect in the eye, and almost saw one of my [...]

I have no good reason why, but I recently found myself reading press releases.  I surfed a dozen or so websites, reading press releases of all sorts, from all sorts of companies. They suck – press releases that is, not the companies. Here’s what’s wrong. Press releases overwhelmingly are about the company, not the customer.  [...]

There was a time when being a Jack of All Trades, Master of None seemed like a great idea.  The thought was to offer something to everyone.  Sure, you couldn’t really do it all yourself, but you could partner.  Companies in numerous industries chased this theory with a so-called Best of Breed strategy.  I worked [...]

It’s tempting, but don’t do it.  Under no circumstance should you ever simply give someone a quote. I’m not saying you shouldn’t quote your product or service.  I’m saying you should never simply give a quote when asked for one. You should present it. When you give a quote, the emphasis in on price and [...]

When is a lead not a lead? There’s a number of different ways to answer that question. That’s the point. A lead isn’t a lead when the people consuming the lead (sales) don’t agree with the definition of the people creating the lead (marketing).  What results is frustration and lack of respect from both sides [...]

For some companies and individuals, the negotiation before the close is long, gut wrenching, and sometime tense.  Lots of people play games at negotiation-time:  one-off requests, take-backs, hidden competition, unknown decision makers, etc. And then there’s the lawyers. If you’re selling to a company that plays games at negotiation, it’s frustrating, but not hopeless.  And [...]

When is a lead not a lead? There’s a number of different ways to answer that question. That’s the point. A lead isn’t a lead when the people consuming the lead (sales) don’t agree with the definition of the people creating the lead (marketing).  What results is frustration and lack of respect from both sides [...]

The ability to instantly publish content, send email, and Tweet give the impression that speed is a marketer's friend. Maybe so, maybe not. But, just because we can push content out more rapidly than ever, doesn't mean that your buyer's pace for making a purchase decision will match your stride. In fact, quite the opposite is likely true. Consider these...

As B2B marketers with full plates and a never-ending buffet of programs that need attention, we often forget to consider that internal marketing can be as important as external marketing. This is even more true with the rise of social media. Internal marketing is about educating everyone involved about how your company is going to market, who your customers and...

Earlier this week I wrote a post asking the question Does Sales Care About Alignment with Marketing? Some great comments were made about the fact that sales will LOVE marketing if they get QUALITY leads. But not much was said about what it takes to make that happen. B2B marketing and sales alignment, sales enablement and integrating the pipeline into...

In case you're living under a rock, the Sales 2.0 Conference is on Day 2 in San Francisco. I've been following the Twitter stream since I'm not at the conference, and really wishing I was. Craig Rosenberg raised the issue of whether or not Sales cares about alignment with marketing? He said that during his panel discussion, he noticed that...

With the increase in publishing opportunities and the distribution of marketing across the enterprise (from field marketing to corporate marketing to demand gen to product marketing, and more), B2B marketers are sending a considerable amount of marketing content into the ether. The problem is that all the variations derived by different marketing functions may be creating confusion more than driving...

In a webinar I did for Hoovers last week, I was asked if I thought cold calling had any value in today's business environment. That's not a question that I, as a content marketing strategist, get asked very often...if ever. But, given my background, a few things popped to mind immediately. Cold calling will be as effective as the conversation...

Yesterday afternoon I caught up with Jon Miller and Maria Pergolino to get an inside view of their new Revenue Cycle Analytics (RCA) as well as what's coming up. I have to say that I'm really impressed. RCA provides some serious strategic visibility enabling B2B marketers to prove the value their marketing programs drive for their organizations. One of the...

Much of the conversation about marketing and sales alignment is based on the mandate that both sides must agree to what constitutes an ideal lead. I agree that this is a necessary step to enable marketing to develop high-quality leads that sales will accept and pursue, but it's only a starting point for marketers. A B2B lead definition assigns key...

I just saw a Tweet come through the stream from the Marketing Sherpa B2B Summit that reads: So if sending an email isn't nurturing what is? #b2bsummit Lead nurturing is about providing the right content at the right time that addresses a problem that a prospect is focused on (or at least considering) solving. Lead nurturing is based upon content...

Yesterday, I wrote about static value. Today, I'm writing about the need to revisit your idea of the pipeline funnel to see if it might have changed without you noticing. Focus.com - thanks to Craig Rosenberg and Sarah Miller - invited 14 Focus Experts to share their picture and definition of the B2B sales and marketing pipeline funnel. I was...

One out of two companies (44%) acknowledge that high-profile negative customer experiences have at some time compromised their brand, yet only 29% have high ability to handle... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

In previous blog posts, I explored the relationship of Marketing Operations to Social Media and the �instant gratification� Marketing ROI organizations... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Today our Marketing Analytics team lead, Creig Foster, dives into the sexy topic of predictive analytics (PA). Why are we so enamored with PA? One of my students, the Marketing Operations leader... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Whether in a new business process, in conversation with current client executives or via a daily supply of Tweets from Social Media experts and wannabees alike,... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

As I write this, I’ve just celebrated my 26th Valentine’s Day as husband to the love of my life, Melissa. A successful long-term marriage... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Marketing and IT are arguably two of the most overloaded and under-resourced functions in the enterprise. As marketing complexity increases, a key aspect of a scalable marketing strategy is... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

My avid readers (both of you? ( [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

I'm finishing up Bill Stinnett's excellent book, Think Like Your Customer, which should be required reading for anyone in Sales and Marketing, especially if you market high-value products and... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

In addition to our webinar, I’ll be speaking about Marketing Operations before the Sales & Marketing SIG of the East Bay IT Group (EBIG) this Thursday, November 16... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Well, I didn’t have any takers go out on the limb by sharing their thoughts on the Henry Stewart Conference in advance of my post, so here we go. One... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

“The average hyper-active IT user has between 5 and 20 online interactions online a day and excels at cataloguing relevant content.� The recent study I authored on the IT buyer audience, “A Profile of TechTarget’s Hyper-active IT Researchers,� is a great expose on the idiosyncrasies of the most active IT buyers in our network. As a [...]

Demand generation. It’s not just about filling the pipeline with a volume of leads - but maintaining a relationship with those leads as they move through the buying cycle. Yes, the extremely active, sales -ready leads should be escalated to the sales team, but what about everyone else? B2B marketers are continually faced with the challenge [...]

As we enter 2010 and online marketing strategies are getting even more targeted, IT marketers forget about the importance of nurturing organic search leads versus their targeted leads.  Marketers are concerned with only promoting to a certain audience and utilizing leads that are from email list promotions.  Late stage leads that are further down the [...]

Social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter are continuing to gain traction and increasing in popularity every day.  People use these sites to keep in touch with friends, keep up to date on the latest trends and stay up to date on some of their favorite products, groups, etc.  More recently, social networking sites [...]

Demand generation. It’s not just about filling the pipeline with a volume of leads - but maintaining a relationship with those leads as they move through the buying cycle. Yes, the extremely active, sales -ready leads should be escalated to the sales team, but what about everyone else? B2B marketers are continually faced with the challenge [...]

While an influx of leads is always a good thing for marketers, many don’t have the resources to follow up on all of them as quickly as they would like. This can pose a serious problem as leads are followed up on in a random order and a hot lead can end up being called [...]

I don’t know of any marketer that doesn’t have improving lead conversion to sales high on their list of priorities these days, especially since marketers are so focused on revenue and getting the most out of their budget dollars. As marketers, you do the best you can to cultivate and prioritize leads so they are [...]

A new report reveals helpful insights on how the B2B marketing landscape is changing and how marketers should respond to better meet customer needs. The data supports much of the research TechTarget has done over the past several years, and is a good reminder to all B2B marketers that your customers are in the driver’s [...]

One of the challenges I often hear from online marketers is figuring out what to do with the hundreds of leads they generate from their online campaigns. Understanding the best way to identify the real opportunities for marketers and sales people can be found in the content they download, the stories they read, and the [...]

2009 was the year of the “Great Recession�, in which both consumers and marketers had to get creative to make the most of drastically cut budgets. One area which saw a large impact was the face-to-face trade shows - which, when all is said and done, can get quite costly when you start adding dollars [...]

Every day I see companies committing Selling Suicide. They are desperate for new sales, but because they are clueless about what their buyer cares about, they place one barrier after another in the way of the buyer - a buyer who was already on their site, virtual money in hand, totally committed to buying. Only the most determined buyers make it through the maze of confusion, conflicting messages, and missing information. It is so sad. read more

Two great studies surfaced this week that will really help you target bloggers more effectively and improve your landing pages. TechCrunch: 2010 State of the Blogosphere Talks about how bloggers drive traffic to blogs (mostly Facebook and Twitter, not surprisingly, with LinkedIn being a distant third). read more

I'm giving a webinar for Ryma Technology Solutions on November 3rd called "The Secret to Revenue Growth and Career Advancement." Ryma makes software that helps product managers managing product development. On their GrandView community site, they're asking this question: "What mode is your company in today?" read more

Here's a picture of how leadership works, from the corporate perspective. The is the corporate operating environment. It consists of a nested series of concentric circles, and it starts with the individual, at the bull's eye.   read more

Social media is really a bunch of channels where groups of people gather and discuss particular things. Social media isn't "one" thing. If you think of it as "one" thing, you quickly become overwhelmed with all the things you could be doing, instead of focusing on only the things you should be doing. read more

When you read the latest books about how people buy, you find that they all tend to have the same fatal flaw. In each book, even though the authors are describing today's savvy customer, the salesperson is still portrayed as having more knowledge than the customer. He is described as the main player who acts as a guide to the customer's buying process - as if the customer were ignorant and needed the salesperson's help. This is completely untrue. Now more than ever. read more

I was recently interviewed by Daniel Burstein at Marketing Experiments (nice guy), in reference to the Marketing Sherpa guide I had written called "How to Become Indispensable to Your CEO." Daniel's interview article is entitled (not surprisingly) "Marketing Career: How to become an indispensable asset to your company (even in a bad economy)." I've got several new articles in the works, but they're still being polished up, so I thought I'd send a little shout-out to marketers in the meantime. rea more »

What makes your business special? It doesn't matter if you are one person working out of your house or a company with thousands of employees. If you are the most efficient at what you do, you're golden. Efficiency is a big concept. That label belongs on a lot of good things. If you are efficient, you:

Two people. On the phone, having a conversation. That's what people use phones for - to have conversations. What happens in a conversation? One person says something. The other person listens, understands (or asks a question to make sure he understands), then responds appropriately. The conversation moves from point A to point B because BOTH people are talking - and listening. Now let's apply this to sales calls. Yes, it is possible for a salesperson to have a conversation with a potential cu more »

My guest today is Elizabeth Vanneste, Chief Marketing Officer, Miller Heiman. We are going to be talking about aligning sale and marketing, and the impact it has on a company's sales results. 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.

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 more »

One of the questions in the article was "How can b2b marketers improve their lead-nurturing efforts?" In my opinion I don't think the answer could be more wrong. 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.

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, more »

Responsible for B2B marketing or lead generation? Be my guest at B2B Marketing University in Dallas on June 23, 2010. The all-new-for-2010 content is focused on helping you stay ahead of the curve and excel in the changing B2B marketing environment. 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.

Attend the Northern California Business Marketing Assocation's Sales Lead Roundtable on Wednesday, November 3rd in Palo Alto, CA at 8:30 am to learn about the Top 10 trends in B2B lead generation and how to take full advantage of them. 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.

Revamping Your Website? Here is a list of some of the questions you should ask anyone offering to (re)design your company website, and the answers which you should be looking to receive. 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.

B2B Marketing University: 3/3 in DC and 4/7 in Palo Alto 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.

Join us for a conversation with Gord Hotchkiss (author of The BuyerSphere Project) and B2B marketing and sales lead expert, Mac McIntosh, on the current realities of B2B demand generation. 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.

B2B Marketing University. A free half-day seminar on April 7, 2010 in Palo Alto, CA. 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.

I hope the spring weather has reached your area. We've finally had rain here in Atlanta, and the buds and blooms are vigorous. Recently, a reader asked: "What is the 20% of sales process improvement that generates 80% of the...

Recently I spoke with Burke, the VP of Business Development for an engineering firm in the material handling industry. What he told me was a great model for how selling can be made easier - and more effective at the same time.

We will no longer be updating the blog messages on this site. For future blog posts, and Sales Performance Improvement Forum (SPIF!) messages please visit our primary website: www.salesperformance.com You'll see the blog page in the menu, the url is...

I hope the spring weather has reached your area. We've finally had rain here in Atlanta, and the buds and blooms are vigorous. Recently, a reader asked: "What is the 20% of sales process improvement that generates 80% of the...

If you are a salesperson, and you need a productivity boost, there are lots of possibilities, such as better meeting preparation, more practice presenting, maintaining your relationships, and working to become more organized. However, what if your entire organization needs...

Last week’s blog post “Why People Are NOT Your Most Important Asset� created some strong reaction. Here is an example: Michael, I was recently fired from my sales job, because I wasn’t on the road “cold calling� enough … Instead,...

Why Prospects Don't Understand Your Value - And What You Can Do About It All too often businesses launch products, promotions, and proposals that do not achieve their goals. When that happens, cost of sales goes up and confidence goes...

Sales executives often think that having the right people is the key to success. This article shows why this is myopic, and presents a better idea.

Michael Webb and Bill Bentley will present a remarkable approach that simultaneously increases forecast accuracy, provides powerful information about the sales process, and eliminates waste in sales and marketing.

Most companies haven't thoroughly considered how their sales process should be designed, much less how to make sales easier. This webinar shows how to do it.

I had a meeting last week with a potential client for my inside sales training courses, who posed a provocative dilemma. She asked: “Geoff, how would you deal with training a younger demographic of inside sales rep, who tends to think they know everything (but doesn’t)?â€� She noted several challenges in working with this demographic. I mentioned one or two concepts, but I think this whole topic is worth addressing in its own blog post. Although this post is geared to Managers, it’s got som more »

After reading my post 4 Common weak phrases that erode telesales success, Charlotte Boston wrote me last week, with this:  “I have just come across your blog, and although helpful in directing people away from the negative phrases they may habitually use, there seems to be a space left that needs filling with positive suggestions… I find a there is a lot of information on the internet that tells us what are the worst things to do, yet to come across any specific information on what we could more »

Lots of times, when I’m delivering my inside sales training courses, people in my classes ask me to recommend books on Sales. There are a bunch of good ones, and not all of them are current, because, to a very large extent, the study of sales is the timeless study of human nature combined with the study of what creates profit and loss for businesses. There you have it, ROI selling (if you haven’t read my whitepaper on that subject, you might want to take a look, and it’s free).  I’m a vo more »

Geoff - Is there a MEANINGFUL difference between "dials" and "calls?" – David  This question came from a frequent poster on my blog, and these elements of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are among the most common topics that have come “over the transomâ€� in the last month or so. It’s no surprise, as companies are trying to fight as hard as possible to gain market share in times that are challenging for many inside sales departments.  For the purpose of this discussion, I’ll use the t more »

If you do online demonstrations and webinars, you know very well that in spite of your great product offering, superior questioning skills, and good delivery, you sometimes come away with a promise for future business, or a flat “no.â€� In other words, no order. You can still get a “winâ€� out of it, though.  To preface the rest of this post, ensure that you’ve read my whitepaper on conducting a successful sales webinar, so that you haven’t left any bases uncovered when you did your due more »

Today's post wasn't written by me. It was written by an individual that has just landed herself an outstanding six-figure inside sales job. I know her, because she took one of my inside sales training courses.' target='_self'>inside sales training courses. More than one company was bidding for her, so she was able to choose from among several. How was she able to accomplish this? She gave outstanding employment interviews, and I know, because I got feedback from more than one company. She "wowed" more »

I got a call this week from a blog subscriber that desperately needed some tips for selling in a "down" economy. Now that summer's here, his prospects are ramping down in terms of their purchases. He's really feeling it at the end of the quarter, and wants to ensure he doesn't have the same situation at the end of the upcoming quarter as well. The philosophy I teach in my inside sales training courses has always been that you sell all year ‘round just the same as you would when things are toug more »

Salesforce.com is a CRM database tool that's become the standard for many companies' inside sales teams, and I've seen it used many times when I coach team members during my inside sales training courses. It's powerful, but like most robust tools, it needs to be tweaked for the characteristics of the team using it, based on use cases. Generally, I encourage my clients to either have a dedicated Saleforce.com expert on staff, or utilize a consultant to assist in making the best use of the CRM. One more »

Today I'm flying over the Kamchatka Peninsula. It's completely covered in snow, with huge Mt. Fuji-shaped volcanic peaks thrusting out of the landscape. Relatively few extol the beauty of Kamchatka because it's not exactly a tourist destination, remote and uncompromising. It looks cold down there, and it reminds me that no matter how bad a grim sales day can be, there are many jobs that are worse than sales. Just ask those miners working 30,000 feet below me. But then again there are a few reall more »

This past week I delivered an inside sales training course to a client that makes devices used to diagnose electrical problems. This company makes terrific equipment, has begun to take market share away from its biggest competitor (who owns 90% of the market), and has hired me to train their inside sales team to take over and own the market in one year. In a coaching session that occurred last week, we cooked up some bright ideas that the competition probably won't be using. I'm going to tell yo more »

While I'm on the "Fatal Mistakes" topic, here is a presentation about seven of the main ones that executive teams make time and time again.Some of the text is small to read in this small blog-sized format. To make it easier:There is "Full Screen" button in the top right of the viewer, orYou can download the presentation.Please comment below on which one is your favorite - or if you think I'm wrong!7 Fatal Sales Mistakes CEOs and VP Sales Make -

Note: I first published this post exactly one year ago. Unfortunately it bears reposting again and again!. I have a feeling this same post will be relevant for another few years until the conventional wisdom evolves.If you're looking for help with growing sales, and especially in creating an amazing inside sales lead generation function, I have an overview of my sales consulting practice at www.PebbleStorm.com/cpr.-----------For companies selling products worth less than $100,000-$250,000, the more »

(Want expert help - based off of salesforce.com's $1 billion best practices - in building your B2B Sales Machine? See Build Your Sales Machine)I'm a big fan of Marketo, mostly because of the people there like Jon Miller, Kelly Abner and now Maria Pergolino. Marketo's application and the team's knowledge and practical experience around demand generation and lead nurturing is A+!So when they shared their new "Definitive Guide to Lead Nurturing" with me, I knew it'd be something worth sharing with more »

Last night I spoke at a Meeting Of The Minds event in Westlake Village (SoCal). MOTMS was started by Kurt Daradics of FreedomSpeaks and Baron Miller, and is a great group of entrepreneurial people that meets monthly. I really had fun sharing with them last night. The format was casual (more of an interview) and not a presentation, and so rather than a slide deck, I put together a collection of sketches I've done over the past year, and at different times during the talk I'd call one up to share more »

As I wrote about in My original notes on frustrations with the way work, uh, works, PebbleStorm: CEOFlow is like "advanced PebbleStorm". I've been playing with my CEOFlow circles for awhile, and finally this morning they really clicked: My sales advisory/consulting service: www.CEOFlow.com/servicesSubscribe to CEOFlow by Email

Bessemer Ventures collected a great set of learnings around what it takes to build a successful SaaS ("Software-as-a-Service") company: Bessemer's Top 10 Laws for Being "SaaS-y". It's excellent! Your key monthly business metrics are: CMRR (Committed Monthly Recurring Revenue), Churn, and Cash flow - “Bookings� is for suckers Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and Customer LifeTime Value (CLTV) are the best more »

Last year, Brian Mackley of Tech Advocacy and I started a business called DataSalad, to offer marketing lists based around the user and customer lists of vendors (such as lists of salesforce.com or NetSuite customers).We created DataSalad because we were sick of all the "junky" lists and data sources out there. DataSalad creates databases of contacts and companies through primary data-gathering and research, and guarantees them. Like organic food, which costs a little more but is worth it more »

CNN Money/Fortune interviewed me a few months ago, and some quotes turned up in a couple of their articles worth sharing:1) Fortune Small Business article: "Why to be wary of commission-only sales staff""Hiring a salesperson on commission sounds like a cost-saver, but investing in your staff usually pays off in the long run. "2) CNN Money article on "Hire picture-perfect employees""We answer three questions about how to find and keep your company's most important asset: its workers. Plus: Advice more »

Eric Golden (CEO of Equipois) & I (Aaron Ross bio) are organizing a formal, facilitated CEO group here on the westside that will meet monthly. The group will help CEOs support each other in navigating through and prospering from the economic turmoil, focusing on topics such as creating predictable revenue, and working with investors and customers in the new climate. The CEO group is afilliated with Nitro.la and CEOFlow: Nitro.la, in partnership with USC, UCLA and Caltech, is a non-profit mentorin more »

Ah, fun with compensation :) PhoneWorks just published another sales comp report worth checking out. Here's their introduction and a link to the full online report:A question on everyone’s mind these days is, “How is the slow economy affecting sales compensation and quotas?�. We set out to answer this question. As we do every year in the fourth quarter, Phone Works conducted an online compensation survey of inside sales professiona more »

I just saw the results of yet another market survey that almost failed to ask what turned out to be the single most important question. Several people within the vendor's company, each with decades of experience in the target market,...

I'm seeing a lot of blog and email traffic that is motivating this post -- two earnest requests directed to people who are just beginning to develop buyer personas or put them to work. Request #1 - Outsource buyer persona...

My friend David Meerman Scott has done it again -- he's written another book that is perfectly aligned with the needs of his buyer persona. The new book is "World Wide Rave: Creating Triggers that Get Millions of People to...

I recently reviewed twenty-four buyer personas produced by four product marketing teams. While most needed a lot more work, Kristine’s was exceptional. I didn’t know the story I’m about to share with you when I reviewed Kristine's work. As none...

My largest client for the last decade has been Pragmatic Marketing, the company that inspired and marketed the Effective Product Marketing seminar that I developed in 2001. When I sold the seminar to Pragmatic Marketing in 2007 and trained another...

That’s my answer when people ask me how many buyer personas they need. It probably isn’t satisfying when I answer a question with another question, especially when the expected answer is a number -- three, five, ten or whatever. But...

Judging by the current interest in buyer personas, 2010 could be the decade when companies realize the competitive advantage that belongs to those companies that have the deepest insight into their target buyers. Armed with a well-researched buyer persona, the...

For the last few weeks I've been helping a client conduct their win/loss calls, listening to recent buyers talk about how they made the decision both for and against my client's solution. Once again, I was amazed at the useful,...

Here is a frequently asked question -- who should develop our buyer personas? For years I answered the question within the questioner's expected context -- I'd say that the people in marketing or, more specifically, product marketing, should own this...

The most important component of buyer personas is missing from much of the discussion I'm seeing in whitepapers and blogs. Personas can't make a credible impact on sales and marketing strategies if their description is limited to information about demographics...

Sorry for the inconvenience. We recently moved to a new platform and thought all of our RSS subscribers canme over but, lo-and-behold, we were wrong! Here are the current RSS feeds for our sites: http://feeds.feedburner.com/socialmediatoday_allposts http://feeds.feedburner.com/theenergycollective_allposts http://feeds.feedburner.com/myventurepad_allposts http://feeds.feedburner.com/smartdatacollective_allposts more »

At a conference recently I was asked by someone what I did, as soon as I mentioned the term social media she scoffed and mentioned something along the lines of “Social Media in B2B? So you help write ...

In a 2009 International Vacation Deprivation Survey from expedia.com: One in three employees do not use their allotted vacation days each year, even though they said they are more productive after r...

Have you heard of AMC’s critically acclaimed series “Breaking Bad?� If you’re a business to business marketer, you ought to check it out. I consider it an Owners Manual for B2B marketing today. P...

Today’s Social Media Marketing 2010 conference (search for #smmuk10 on Twitter) was a great mix of theory and case studies, presentations and debates, clients and the odd social media agency. We pre...

Recently I had a conversation with a very good friend of mine who is a director level sales executive for a global Fortune 100 organization.  We have been known to mix it up, dig into big issues, an...

The dysfunctional relationship that can exist between corporate sales and marketing departments has the potential of souring social media initiatives by adversely impacting the resources, time and att...

I awoke at home on a sunny (!) morning in London last week to the dulcet tones of Bill Clinton’s erstwhile Labor Secretary, Robert Reich, talking about BP on the BBC: “To start with, it actually ...

Most writing on good management and what it takes to get to the top focus on leadership. It is regarded as one of the most important areas of personal development. This also explains the growing i...

It looks like the mid-year re-evaluations and updates to the “start of year� predictions for the future of advertising are rolling in at a rapid pace. Today’s entry comes from one of the largest adv...

Social media and content marketing are not like other tactics. You can’t just plug concept A and offer B into media C. You need a team with heart and passion…

In the age of social media, transparent marketing is no longer much of a choice. Every company is now transparent, whether they’d like to be or not, thanks to an army of bloggers, tweeters, and Facebookies. So let’s take a look…

Learn a few simple principles to help you improve the ROI of your PPC ads…

Maxed out your email testing ideas? Research analyst Nathan Thompson reaches down into his big bag of tests to pull out a few things you might not have tried yet…

One-off test gains are always exciting. But true ROI lies in understanding the big picture – not just where you’re winning but where you’re losing as well. Before our upcoming web clinic on this topic, let’s see what your peers are doing…

When you’re trying to optimize your entire marketing funnel, and you get into internal battles, who is in charge? The answer is simple – the customer…

Get inside tips for working with the IT department from Adam Davis, the Director of Technology for MarketingExperiments…

Get inside tips for working with the IT department from Adam Davis, the Director of Technology for MarketingExperiments…

Stumped on the next test for your e-commerce of lead generation site? Adam Lapp gives you a few ideas, including a tactic that delivered a 19.6% increase in lead generation form submissions…

A few weeks ago, we published a powerful Facebook case study that generated a lot of questions from the MarketingExperiments community of marketers. So I tracked down one of the key marketers that drove this success and dug a little deeper into the story to help you identify strategic ways to produce your own social media marketing triumphs…

Great question that was asked at Focus.com. It also came up tonight at dinner with my sister, Ardath. It all boils down to CONTENT. If you want to participate on social media sites to drive interest, the only way to...

Great question that was asked at Focus.com. It also came up tonight at dinner with my sister, Ardath. It all boils down to CONTENT. If you want to participate on social media sites to drive interest, the only way to...

I recently received some great questions about what's blocking organizations from purchasing marketing automation, and what are the biggest obstacles to using marketing automation technology as well as it could be used. Understanding that these are questions that could be...

I am at the Online Marketing Summit in San Diego, and I spoke on the Demand Generation & Sales 2.0 Panel yesterday. It was a great conversation, with great questions from the room -- people are definitely engaged in how...

I'm reading new research from Marketing Sherpa about how buyers rank the most valuable content and offer types, and it's very interesting. As marketers, we're all so used to hearing it's about educating your buyers, providing relevant content -- so...

Getting valuable content to your target market is important. It helps you build relationship and regard. But putting together compelling content takes more than just providing information to your leads. It’s also taking into account and triggering four Key Engagers....

I recently listened to an interview between Perry Marshall, a marketing expert that I follow and Joshua Russell a Professor of Screenwriting and Film Aesthetics at DePaul University. It was a fun and interesting conversation where they explored the power...

I was listening to an audio that came with a subscription to a series of panel discussions called "The League of Extraordinary Minds". it was a conversation that the organizers of The League had with Tony Robbins. In this conversation,...

LinkedIn has experienced HUGE growth -- particularly in the business/professional sector of the social media space. But recent experiences with LinkedIn have led me to believe that they are accidental recipients of that growth, and don't really get (nor are...

I was at a coffee gathering for the local Business Marketing Association as a follow-up to a social media panel presentation that I was unable to attend the previous week. It was a great conversation -- but there was this...

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 p more »

I have been an avid iPhone user almost since the day it came out. I just had to have one and it killed me that it took a week to get one when it first hit the market. I love everything about the iPhone except the fact that it has been hard to actually use [...] Related posts:Social Customer Support delivers Strong ROI In a recent poll by the TSIA of firms... It pays to provide Support with Social Media In a recent Forrester Report on “Customer Experience Pays Off... Customer Service is the N more »

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 Choo more »

I have been an avid iPhone user almost since the day it came out. I just had to have one and it killed me that it took a week to get one when it first hit the market. I love everything about the iPhone except the fact that it has been hard to actually use [...] Related posts:Social Customer Support delivers Strong ROI In a recent poll by the TSIA of firms... It pays to provide Support with Social Media In a recent Forrester Report on “Customer Experience Pays Off... Customer Service is the N more »

I have been an avid iPhone user almost since the day it came out. I just had to have one and it killed me that it took a week to get one when it first hit the market. I love everything about the iPhone except the fact that it has been hard to actually use [...] Related posts:Social Customer Support delivers Strong ROI In a recent poll by the TSIA of firms... It pays to provide Support with Social Media In a recent Forrester Report on “Customer Experience Pays Off... Customer Service is the N more »

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 noiseâ€� 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 t more »

I have been an avid iPhone user almost since the day it came out. I just had to have one and it killed me that it took a week to get one when it first hit the market. I love everything about the iPhone except the fact that it has been hard to actually use [...] Related posts:Social Customer Support delivers Strong ROI In a recent poll by the TSIA of firms... It pays to provide Support with Social Media In a recent Forrester Report on “Customer Experience Pays Off... Customer Service is the N more »

Everyday I provide support on the social web to customers. For the last 18 months we have solved hundreds of issues both small and large for customers around the globe, some as quickly as 15min others as long as 24 hours. But what’s becoming clear to me is that real time communications is essential in [...] Related posts:Social Customer Support: AT&T is doing it Right! I have been an avid iPhone user almost since the... 3 More ROIs in Social Media – Conversations Leads and Advocates If you more »

If you follow me you know I talk a lot about the ROI of Social Media since I happen to have stumbled on a great ROI using Social Media in providing support for our customers at Avaya. Social customer support I would argue is the single best place to focus your social media efforts since it [...] Related posts:Social Media Listening for B2B Marketing One of the biggest challenges for organizations today is managing... How to Choose a Social Media Listening Platform for B2B Marketing In the last more »

At a recent BlogWell event I got a chance to hear Robert Raines from Chevron present his Social Media program and how he reports their activity into the Boardroom. It all starts with the Pulse Report that Chevron had produced by Edelman (their PR firm) using their Alterian’s SM2 social media monitoring tool. They identified [...] Related posts:Understanding the Value of Social Media Data There is a big difference between data and insights. Technology... How to Choose a Social Media Listening more »

We just did our last show for the year. This one is always a great show because our customers are there, and nearly everyone else is a prospect (or knows the person at their company who should be). And all … Continue reading →

I humbled myself and showed you how Yahoo ripped me off with a Search Network of shill websites (See OMG, Yahoo Search PPC is a rip-off. Now my paused Yahoo Marketing Solutions account has been moved/merged with my (active) Microsoft … Continue reading →

No one will argue as of 2010 ThomasNet has survived the cross-over to a web-based directory service. No simple feat! However, even though ThomasNet has thousands of advertisers and users, but it was never leveraged into a marketplace. (Of course … Continue reading →

I’ll be spending the rest of this week in Chicago at the Annual BMA (Business Marketing Association) Conference. The theme this year is ‘Engage!� And while I don’t expect anyone to drop on one knee, I do expect we’ll be … Continue reading →

My company website needs a refresher. The home-page is functional almost to a fault. I found a couple good examples of consumer websites (Subaru & REI) that had layouts that could work for us. And lots of style cues to … Continue reading →

Had a discussion yesterday and my brain kept flipping back to this picture: So how do we deal with lazy customers who won’t RTFM? Make a better FM? Really Two cliches I think apply to this: Doing things RIGHT is … Continue reading →

We are currently targeting the solar panel industry, so I’ve subscribed to a number of newsletters about the industry. One today had a press-release about attempts to sell knock offs. Check out what the manufacturer (from Italy) had on their … Continue reading →

BtoB Magazine has its hands full, trying to offer content for different types of B2B marketers: Agencies, technology companies, big companies, small companies. The August 16 issue has a two-page feature on ‘manufacturing marketing’ with three articles and a list … Continue reading →

This is not the first time I’ve received a warning email from a trade show organizer warning exhibitors about “Expo-Guide� scamming for directory listings. But this email seemed rather complete, including possible grounds for canceling the contract, so it is … Continue reading →

Who doesn’t love to see an ugly brochure … as long as it isn’t ours? B&Z Marketing is running a promotion to find the ugliest B2B brochure. The prize? A complete re-do. With a prize value of $5,000, you might … Continue reading →

I've been working on a lot of sales enablement kits lately.  My biggest learning on sales enablement came about ten years ago, when I did a study for a big enterprise technology company on marketing effectiveness.  We looked at three marketing objectives: Generate demand, drive awareness and comprehension, and enable the sales force.  In hindsight, it was ultra-simple.  But, we came up with a really powerful conclusion.  The most effective programs, in terms of ROI, were sales enablement pro more »

In honor of MLK day, I'm not writing about my livelihood, marketing, but rather about a slightly larger and more relevant topic, health care.  Don't worry, faithful readers, you'll get more abstruse marketing ideas soon. I started thinking about this problem in detail because I've recently switched employers, which has meant switching health insurance companies.  This has led to the typical bewildering array of changes.  Some Doctors take one insurance plan (the old one) but not the new one. more »

Every once in a while, you see a picture that takes a news story and basically explains it better than any interview or analysis can.  As my friend John Shomaker said as a preface to his email, "Money chart. Ridiculous discounts to other shows. Did you ever see it - horrible. Not funny at all, and yet Leno thought it was a different format. Same show, just earlier, but with horrible writers." I guess that about covers it for Jay Leno.  Sorry man.  You're just not that funny.

The latent pipeline concept that I layed out last week is one that sounds good on its surface, but as a German colleague of mine would say, "where is the detail?" The key to operationalizing latent pipeline is having a really good grasp of marketing from the customer's perspective, that is, online. What I call this (and this is my term) is online topography. I call it this because it reminds me a lot of a topographical map. You have features on the map (mountains, streams, trails) and you also ha more »

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 more »

Customer insight is important to marketers for many reasons. Understanding your customers helps you in formulating market strategy. It helps in campaign design. It helps the sales force understand how to approach acquisition targets or retain existing customers. It is the raw material out of which great marketing happens. In the B2C space, customer insight is well understood, and whole industries and many great companies have made it their business. Segmentation schemes that provide predictive li more »

A client of mine is having challenges forecasting and managing the pipeline. They sell servers and storage (typically smaller deals 25K - 100K).Was curious what others have traditionally seen in terms of deal cycle times (defined as length of time from qualified lead to deal close) and how they are varying in today’s environment. Would also be interested in understanding typical cycle times…From when customers respond with an interest until they are connected with the appropriate channel/sale more »

There are a lot of articles on the value of marketing in a recession. Most of these were written around three recessions: 1982; 1991; and 2001. These recessions ranged from severe (1982) to mild (1991 and 2001). The current "downturn" is definitely a "severe recession"--the question is, is it a depression? I'll set the following rules, somewhat arbitrarily, about separating a recession from a depression. A depression must satisfy 4 of the following 5 conditions:Negative GDP growth for at least ei more »

Relationship marketing, unlike direct marketing, is about cultivating a customer (in the case of B2B, this could mean many different audiences inside one company) over the long-term, and ultimately driving loyalty. Customers’ attitudes change in a positive direction; they become satisfied with the brand; they ultimately perceive the brand to be high-quality, caring, etc. and will stay a customer for life. At least, that’s the idea. The problem with relationship marketing is that you can’t t more »

Over the past decade, I’ve been involved with many projects to “de-tangleâ€� 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 more »

Thanks for the RT. RT@wenbryant - 5 Ways to Segment Your Lead Nurturing Campaign http://bit.ly/d7yXK1 @B2bMarketingZ

Quelques conseils pour adapter ses contenus BtoB. RT @Marketo Is Lead Nurturing Possible Without Lots of Content? http://bit.ly/91swzU

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RT @jonmiller2: RT @dougkessler B2B Lead Nurturing & Marketing Automation Case Study http://t.co/1UklUL1

RT @mktginsightguy: How to Design a Profitable Lead-Nurturing Program Right Now including "Segment your audience" http://bit.ly/axsiOF

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RT @ChrisFougereHFX: Check it out: How to Make Big Strides with Quick Wins in Lead Nurturing #Eloqua_D&B http://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/24003

RT @ChrisFougereHFX: Check it out: How to Make Big Strides with Quick Wins in Lead Nurturing #Eloqua_D&B http://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/24003

Good introduction to Lead Nurturing http://bit.ly/diTW8K

Lead Nurturing for B2B is core marketing tactic that social can now support http://bit.ly/d91nXu #sm2010 #sales #b2b

Our interview series on “How Good Data Turbo Charges Lead Generation� is turning out more exciting with each passing weak and uncovering some really good insights from experts in the B2B marketing and lead generation space. This week we speak to Ardath Albee, CEO of Marketing Interactions and author of the upcoming book E-Marketing Strategies for [...]

If you’re an avid reader of marketing and sales bestsellers, you’re bound to enjoy this one. Have fun! Don’t forget to tweet this to your followers if you enoyed it: RT @neil_s Check out our new quick “Business Marketing And Sales Bestsellers Quiz� warning: this one is not a piece of cake – http://bit.ly/kQD9r

“My connect rates are great! I connect with someone 80% of the time when I dial any number off my list!� … Aren’t we missing the point here? How many of those dials end up connecting with the real decision maker at that account? Not as many in several cases. Typical scenarios of an inside [...]

We’ve been building very specific role based business contact lists for our customers very specific campaign requirements for what seems to be a very long time now. Over this time we have worked with such a range of B2B companies it’s difficult to recall every project undertaken especially for those who had a smaller, one [...]

Every company works towards improving their sales and marketing effectiveness. It’s a never-ending process in quest for how to generate better results and in today’s perspective, how to do this more efficiently without exponentially increasing resources to get those better results. The “Lean Mean Marketing And Sales Machine� is going to be a series of [...]

  I have been tracking Sales 2.0 conference updates from @greenleads and @damphoux this morning and came across this tweet that that RT’d on @readycontacts just now. For the first time in a long time I heard someone say something “real� about the challenge of generating sales. While all the discussions on social media, marketing automation [...]

Everyone visiting your website is a potential lead. This is especially true for B2B companies because the most likely reason business contacts visit a B2B company website is because they are looking for a similar solution. So its critical for you to have complete knowledge of who is visiting your website. Its like having CallerID [...]

B2B demand generation is getting tougher than ever before. Mass marketing is dead. Direct marketing is ignored. Email marketing has turned into a spray and pray tactic. But sales quotes have remained the same and are growing. In this situation, its imperative for every marketer to think outside the box – I know everyone says [...]

If you’re an avid reader of marketing and sales bestsellers, you’re bound to enjoy this one. Have fun! Don’t forget to tweet this to your followers if you enoyed it: RT @neil_s Check out our new quick “Business Marketing And Sales Bestsellers Quiz� warning: this one is not a piece of cake – http://bit.ly/kQD9r

“My connect rates are great! I connect with someone 80% of the time when I dial any number off my list!� … Aren’t we missing the point here? How many of those dials end up connecting with the real decision maker at that account? Not as many in several cases. Typical scenarios of an inside [...]

Learn the content marketing basics with the latest B2B Marketing Cheat Sheet: Content Marketing

B2B social media is about engagement and relationship building. Learn how Twitter helps marketers evolve their strategies with these 12 tips from Marketo.

Listen to Marketo's CEO, Phil Fernandez, in this opinion piece. Learn why the world needs a revenue revolution.

I’m pleased to share some smart advice from Kathryn Roy, Managing Partner at Precision Thinking, a consulting company that addresses three key areas for B2B sales & marketing teams — primary research, strategy, and sales enablement. She’s worked with some of the most successful B2B companies including IBM, Avid, CA, Constant Contact, and Lotus, and [...]

At the Sales and Marketing 2.0 Conference, we caught up with attendees to ask them the question, What does sales and marketing 2.0 mean to you?

This post about Dreamforce shares the 14 things you probably don't know about the world's largest cloud computing conference.

David Raab, Principal of Raab Associates, and Jon Miller, VP of Marketing at Marketo, discuss the top metric that matter for marketing measurement.

What exactly is a lead? We brought together some of the top minds in B2B demand generation, Jill Konrath, Craig Rosenberg, Sandy Carter and Jon Miller to give us their perspectives on lead definition and marketing and sales alignment.

Blog post on why B2B Companies should Use Linkedin Company Pages Plus 4 Examples of B2B Companies with great Linkedin Company Pages and 4 Tips to Get Started

Jep Castelein of Lead Sloth explains how to optimize trial conversion rates using lead nurturing.

I recently wrote an article on 4 Tips to Increase Holiday Sales that was meant to help prepare eCommerce Stores for the upcoming online holiday shopping season.  The time for preparation of the holiday season is quickly coming to a close.  Implement these 4 tips now to increase your visibility and conversion rates this holiday season. 1.  Take Advantage of Cyber Monday - Cyber Monday is followed by Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) and is the biggest online shopping day of the yea more »

Search engine optimization, SEO, used to be the domain of internet experts and marketing agencies – but that hasn’t been true since at least 2005.  The keys to getting found online are at the fingertips of most small businesses and some don’t even know it!  Here’s a list of the Top 3 website components you MUST control to effectively target qualified online traffic.  Most modern website creation tools, or content management systems (CMS), can empower you to control these elements witho more »

At HubSpot, I spend a lot of time speaking with CEOs and owners of manufacturing about integrating inbound marketing into their businesses. During these conversations, I often get the same response: “Our customers are just not online.â€� I get it. Really I do. Having spent many years in the manufacturing industry I understand. Often manufacturing and Industrial companies make or design something that they can only sell to a set group of businesses. Perhaps they have to be an “approvedâ€� supp more »

Want to be able to measure your Twitter ROI? Would you like to see how many clicks, retweets, replies, and faves your tweets have received? Soon you’ll be able to, right on Twitter. Twitter has started inviting a select group of users to test their new Twitter Analytics dashboard. Users will be able to see all sorts of data about their account, such as which tweets are most successful, which tweets caused people to unfollow them, and who their most influential retweeters are. How Twitter Analyt more »

In a previous life, I used to be on the road for a few days each year. For one week each month, my routine was turned upside down, my commute took me to the airport instead of the office, and then my job was to talk with potential customers face-to-face instead of over the phone and email. I flew all over the country, on every airline, and it only took a few months of this routine for me to fall in love with Southwest Airlines. Compared to all the other airlines I flew, Southwest just seemed to f more »

In a new report from Econsultancy, when small and medium sized business were asked how they decide on new marketing tactics, they gave analyzing competitor efforts as the number one determinant. However, the large companies surveyed said they make decisions on new marketing tactics based more on whether these tactics are aligned with long term strategies.The study shows other reasons which will be revealed in an upcoming webinar on November 19, but I wonder why smaller businesses are so much mo more »

If you run an ecommerce site and your store is not one of the top 500 online retailers, you likely are up at night obsessing about how to get on that list. After all, those 500 claimed nearly 70% of all online purchases last year. eCommerce has become a winner-take-most model and it’s remarkably difficult for small and medium-sized online stores to catch up without truly changing their customer acquisition model. Cyber Monday is an important kickoff to the shopping year – how will your store more »

LinkedIn is a great social network for small and large businesses to reach out to relevant prospective customers. LinkedIn Answers in particular allows you to find people publicly stating that they have a specific problem or need that your product or service would solve. It’s pretty awesome. What’s even more awesome is that you can get high-quality traffic to your blog from LinkedIn Answers, and get some really qualified leads as well. Here’s what you can do: 1. Create a New Blog Post in Re more »

This guest post was writen by Stephen Denny (@Note_to_CMO) of Decision Triggers, a marketing consultancy that works with corporate clients to improve their sales and marketing performance by applying the social psychology of influence to critical customer-facing initiatives. Marketers have two choices when they’re standing at their customers’ virtual gates. We can either beat against the door even harder or we can tap the right decision triggers and be invited inside. If you’re like most more »

As a small business owner, you recognize the importance of making people aware of your organization's credibility. For nearly 100 years the Better Business Bureau (BBB) helped you work towards that goal by rating reputable small businesses. However, a recent controversy related to the BBB's current rating system exposed the need for improved trust-building mechanisms. While the BBB will remain an important player in this landscape, small business owners should take the time to build credibility f more »

The response to our summer webinar series, B2B Marketing Best Practices That Need to Die was tremendous. It was extremely well-received, and featured hours of killer content from the likes of Steve Woods, Adam Greco, Mike Damphousse, Jep Castelein, Rob Rose and David Lewis. You can catch the recordings here, or you can join Demandbase CMO Greg Ott on this Thursday (10/28/10) at the Marketing Cloud Virtual Event: The Art & Science of B2B Marketing and Sales as he highlights the top best practices more »

Thought leaders talk about building “buyer personas,� but I have been wrong on more than one occasion when I thought I understood my target audience. Run a report on the titles of the primary contacts at your closed/won opportunities. You might be surprised by what you find...

The series concludes on Tuesday 9/28 with Adam Greco, Senior Director of Web Analytics and Insight at Salesforce.com. Adam manages all aspects of web analytics for various Salesforce.com websites, was previously one of the leaders of the Omniture Consulting team, is the author of the popular Omni Man Blog, and is one fo the hosts of the BeyondWebAnalytics podcast. In a nutshell, he knows analytics and he knows CRM. Who better to speak about how they can work together?

The series continues on Tuesday 9/21 with Steve Woods, CTO of Eloqua and author of Digital Body Language. When I approached him for the series, he decided to take on lead management -- discussing best practices to live by (as well as a few that need to die) ...

His message was different and refreshing in a room full of "inbound" marketers, to whom the thought of pursuing leads instead of just letting them stumble upon you on their own seemed downright distasteful. As if their reputation would be damaged by dialing a phone. Mike wasn't afraid to say "bulls**t!" and seemed to be the only one who wasn't ashamed to actually pick up the phone to generate leads. And he is our speaker next week...

As marketing transforms from art to science, lead scoring has become a priority for aligning sales and marketing to improve sales efficiency. However, the “recipe� and real-world examples haven’t been widely published demystifying how to successfully design and implement a lead scoring system within your firm.

You should spend more time educating them about the implications of doing nothing rather than telling them how you perform 1.3 times better than the other guy.

Many B2B marketers have too many leads in their database who have never been followed up on. Essentially, there is a lot of untapped revenue in those databases, that can be extracted with improved lead nurturing processes. The result: you generate additional revenue from your existing leads.

B2B marketers are under significant pressure to improve conversion and clicks, to lower cost per marketing qualified lead, and generate more pipeline. An optimized campaign will, on average, consistently deliver 2-4% conversion rates. But how do you get to 5-6-7%? How do you go beyond best practices?

How many of your visitors go straight to the "About" page because your home page doesn't tell them anything about you? And maybe you have done some work to understand your "buyer personas" -- but if they don't know what you do, why would they click on the track designed for them?

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...

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...

As I’ve written before, when dealing with the complex sale, most people aren’t coming to your website to buy; they’re coming to your site for information. And people are hesitant about giving up too much info on forms before you've...

It takes time and commitment, but LinkedIn has become ideal venue to nurture relationships and generate new leads, especially for sales people involved in a complex sale. On that topic, I wrote an guest article for MarketingProfs, titled "10 Tips...

Effective lead generation really depends on how much you know about your target audience and how well you use that information to tailor a relevant messages and conversations.I thought this post by Carolyn Goodman for Target Marketing Magazine was a...

Tradeshows and events are still being used consistently by B2B marketers for lead generation. With that in mind, Roger Lewis has some useful tips on how to improve your lead management strategy with from tradeshows. Lewis emphasizes how vital lead...

The January sales push well on it's way and most B2B marketers I know are looking more ways to generate leads faster. But here's a question to ponder... Do you have a process have a process for handing leads (from...

Rain Today, a great resource for those who market and sell services, selected their Best Book s of the Decade for marketing and selling professional services. I was humbled to see that they picked my book, Lead Generation for the...

To help you start the New Year, I’d like to wrap up my Lead Generation Checklist Series with the secret to successful lead generation – and, for that matter, marketing in today’s B2B space: lead nurturing. At it's core, B2B...

Here's the summary from MarketingSherpa Email Summit event: Following MarketingSherpa’s 2010 Email Marketing Summit last week, we sat down with copious notes to pick out the most important themes from three days of workshops, panel discussions and presentations. Read on...

Lately I've been advising a couple of different companies who are either introducing a new product or contemplating a new market. Invariably the question comes up how should we think about which markets to enter. Simple answer: wherever you can maximize your opportunity! Well not so simple really, when you start thinking about it.

I had a great conversation with my dear friend and neighbor, Walt Thinfen. He’s the Vice President and Chief Information Officer (CIO) of Visioneer, a high tech company here in Pleasanton, California. I took the opportunity to get his thoughts on how our clients and other technology vendors could do a better job of selling to the CIO. Listen in on this conversation for some great gold nuggets some of which might really surprise you.

Thinking about surveying your partners to assess your channel program and prioritize objectives for the coming year? We recently conducted such a survey for a global software organization, and despite current challenges in the economy, we heard channel partners asking for some fairly common resources.

Bill Reed, Sam Young, and I have been running several appointment setting campaigns for numerous tech clients with surprisingly outstanding results. We use a very unique, proprietary approach called Vector, which is resulting in 65% to 75% of our completed appointments rated as “goodâ€� to “excellentâ€�, meaning they are moving to next steps in our client’s pipeline by meeting rigorous criteria. As part of our approach, we acquire target customer prospect lists through a variety of means â more »

I had a very nice lunch conversation last week with Chris Kenton, CEO/founder of SocialRep, a social media technology company, and his CTO, Terry Blankers. He’s leading his startup through hyper growth as he adds to his stable of high quality clients like Toyota, Wachovia, and CreativeLabs. One of our topics of discussion was the importance of product management. I was very impressed that Chris and Terry were already thinking about product management so early in their company’s history. He more »

If you’re like most executives you manage a global team. But what’s the secret of running a team that cuts across time zones, cultures, and languages? How do you create a strong culture that balances centralized control with distributed authority? What metrics drive the right behaviors and business outcomes when you can’t see your team on a daily basis? I had a great lunch with my friend, Suresh Balasubramanian, who is a director in charge of a sales/field marketing team in a very la more »

A few months back Sridhar discussed the importance of tailoring your product or solution to the channel. It’s a vital step to ensuring that you will maximize the revenue opportunity through channels. An integrated program will ensure initial mindshare AND pave the way for initial success. Your channel partners have lots of products, and shifting attention to your solution will take focused effort. At Aventi, we have been assisting a major IT vendor roll out a major worldwide program to cha more »

I’m very pleased to announce a new Aventi Group’s offering masterminded by our very own Bill Reed. Aventi’s Vector for Channels is a deliverable made up of methods, tools, templates and even a bit of software aimed at helping technology clients optimize channel sales. Specifically, Vector for Channels is intended to help the VP of Sales/Marketing drive higher response rates from demand generation programs for the channel, increase channel sales rep effectiveness with sharper honed needs- more »

Why is it that CEOs rarely invite the VP of Sales to strategic planning sessions? The most common reason is the fear that the session would distract them from their primary job, sales. I think this is very shortsighted. I ran a strategy session this week with a CEO and his whole staff including the VP of Sales. At the end of the day the CEO told me how valuable it was to have the VP of Sales bring his experience to the table. Here are reasons why you might have the sales executive join you more »

“Believe it or not, there are some bright spots out there…� said an executive vice president of sales for one of our technology clients, a Fortune 500 company. He went on to say “….but the hard part is getting an audience with our customers’ executives for a top-down view of these bright spots.� Sound familiar? The key to successful sales has always been to get a peek into your customers’ executive level mandates and business challenges. more »

I just came across this ebook, How to Create a Seven-Minute Rifle-Shot Presentation, by Joey Asher. It's excerpted from 15 Minutes Including Q&A, his new book. It's excellent. Definitely worth your time to download it. It starts out with this: For most people, requiring that they give their presentation in seven minutes or less will seem absurd. "How can I...

Get this -- a recent IBM study found each contact in a person's network was worth $948. Amazing, isn't it. I was blown away by it. That's why I wanted to let you know about these two FREE resources from Keith Ferrazzi: Executive Relationship Management® Blueprint His upcoming networking webinar Keith is the author of Never Eat Alone & Who's...

Ashley Cox from CxTec isn't afraid to read SNAP Selling while dressed up in her Halloween costume. Before long, her competitors won't stand a chance. if you order SNAP Selling today, I’ll also send you my Winning Sales Questions e-manual—and that’s a $77 value you get for free. It contains over 500 powerful questions that will transform your sales results....

If you're selling to the corporate market, it can often take months of working with a prospect to get them to the point of finally making a change. The last thing you want to do is blow it after all that time you've invested. One of the sagest people I know on this topic is Mike McLaughlin, author of Winning...

How can you quickly establishing a relationship with new prospects -- especially when there's no time for chitchat these days? Truthfully, it's tough. With so much business being conducted via phone & email today, you don't get a chance to visit their offices to see their photos, trophies or knickknacks. Don't you wish you knew more? That's exactly what Dan...

If you are working for yourself, you need to check this out right away. Today is International Freelancers Day. And, there's a online videoconference going on FRIDAY and SATURDAY. Click here to attend this FREE Online Conference now . On Saturday, there are a whole slew of excellent speakers you won't want to miss. (All times in ET.) 9:00: Real-Time...

If you're not in love with the job you have, join me on Thursday for this webinar with Jonathan Fields. Career Renegade: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love When: November 18 at 1pm ET, 12pm CT, 11am MT, 10am PT Register now: Sign up even if you're busy & we'll send you a link to the recording....

What do you do with people who promise, promise, promise that they'll order for you, but just keep asking for more samples and more time? That's the question that Helene posed for me the other day. Here's what I told her: Just because you're a salesperson, doesn't mean you're a doormat. If you feel like you're being used, you probably...

Get this -- a recent IBM study found each contact in a person's network was worth $948. Amazing, isn't it. I was blown away by it. That's why I wanted to let you know about these two FREE resources from Keith Ferrazzi: Executive Relationship Management® Blueprint His upcoming networking webinar Keith is the author of Never Eat Alone & Who's...

Jay is the owner of a massage therapy company. He's trying to figure out how to sell his services to the corporate market. Like many of you, he doesn't have a strong business case to capture a company's attention. That's why he recently asked me: I'm have trouble figuring out my value position for selling to bigger companies. When a...

The Top 10 Nominated Sales Articles for November 2010 - who will win this month?.

The Top 10 Nominated Sales Articles for October 2010 - who will win this month?.

The Top 10 Nominated Sales Articles for September 2010 - who will win this month?

The Top 10 Nominated Sales Articles for August 2010 - who will you vote for?.

The Top 10 Nominated Sales Articles for July 2010 - who will you vote for?.

The Top 10 Nominated Sales Articles for June 2010 - who will you vote for?.

The Top 10 Nominated Sales Articles for May 2010 - who will you vote for?.

The Top 10 Nominated Sales Articles for March 2010 - who will you vote for?.

The Top 10 Nominated Sales Articles for March 2010 - who will you vote for?.

The Top 10 Nominated Sales Articles for February 2010 - who will you vote for?.

Web browsers are integral to everyday life for anyone who spends any time on the Internet. Whether you work for an online company, spend your days blogging and tweeting, buy everything from clothes to airline tickets online or connect to friends, music, and your community on the Internet, you do so within the confines of a browser. Most people use the same few browsers, and probably don't think much about what their particular browser choice offers (or doesn't offer) when compared to other browse more »

If you've been trying to introduce social media and networking tools and create an online community centered around your company, products or services, there's a good chance that you've hit walls when it comes to explaining how exactly these new products can be monetized. While B2C has leveraged the power of social media and social networking with great success, B2B is still struggling to justify the investments required to develop, host, and manage social tools and communities on their websites. more »

Social media and online communities have exploded over the past few years, but most B2B marketers still haven't figured out how social media can be implemented and monetized as part of their overall marketing strategies. With stable revenue sources already in place, insignificant budgets for developing and building new (and untested) marketing tools, and little data on the ROI of social media, B2B marketers are sticking with traditional online models (including lead generation and banner advertis more »

There's a new criminal in town, and it's out to get your content! As the web expands, and content creators face increasing pressure to develop new, unique, interesting and accessible content for the masses, content theft increases too. Content jacking is the unauthorized, unattributed redistribution of content from its original website to another site, and content thieves will sometimes post articles without permission, or even scrape entire websites and steal all of the content contained therei more »

For those of us who keep an eye on trends in social media, it seems as if EVERYONE is jumping on the social media bandwagon. From Barack Obama and John McCain's use of the technologies in their campaigns, to major IT companies like IBM and SAP's social efforts, one might easily get the impression that social media is everywhere. Social media isn't really everywhere - only 35% of B2B marketers participating in a Forrester Research teleconference currently use social media in their marketing effor more »

There has been quite a bit of disappointment over Google, Yahoo and Microsoft searches, and their agreement in censoring search results as part of China's Golden Shield Project. According to Wikipedia the Golden Shield Policy is the censorship and surveillance project operated by the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) of the People's Republic of China. Because of this policy, some people have ceased their use of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft searches, and are looking for alternative search engines t more »

Email list hygiene - and the specific practice of scrubbing out bad email addresses - should be of the utmost concern for any of you out there who actively distribute marketing materials via email messages or enewsletters. When sending your marketing materials to huge lists that have not been scrubbed for junk, you run the risk of destroying your company's reputation and losing business along the way. And while it would be easy to sit here and cite statistics about email bounce rates, blacklistin more »

The recently released the BtoB Online Lead Generation Guide 2008 provides a comprehensive overview of the B2B lead generation industry's recent innovations and upcoming trends, and is published in an interactive format that puts their own suggestions regarding content usage into action. The interactive guide has a range of features that allow users to search, bookmark, customize, and generally manipulate their experience with the content within. To explain all of the features, the guide contain more »

Have you seen or heard of tag clouds, yet never been too sure what they are or why they're on so many sites? Have you ever want to see what your website or blog would look like with a tag cloud? I was curious about tag clouds myself - so I did a little research and created a few tag clouds to share on this site. According to Wikipedia, tag clouds are "...visual depictions of user-generated tags, or simply the word content of a site, used typically to describe the content of web sites." Flikr, t more »

A recent Marketing Sherpa report addresses lead nurturing best practices, and is a helpful update on how to best reach prospects once they've engaged with your content, but not independently returned to your site. By applying the practices outlined in Lead Nurturing Best Practices: New Data, Charts, Tips to Put More Punch in Your Cultivation Tactics, you can align your lead nurturing program with what's shown to be working industry-wide. In compiling this report, Marketing Sherpa partnered with more »

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

2009 has been a long year but as I reflect back on my many conversations, I've created a top 5 list of items to avoid in 2010: 1. Not having a defined social media strategy You would be surprised by the number of companies that say “yeah, social media is important but it’s not important to us at the moment�. In 2010 you will not have a choice but to make social media part of your overall

Hi everyone. Between taking a nice vacation, recovering from the vacation and then work travel, the ‘old blog was collecting some dust. During my travels and discussions with customers, one of the items that keeps coming up is the need for clean, complete and accurate data. When you have the right data you can laser focus your marketing efforts and achieve a higher response from your marketing

I have the pleasure of welcoming a new bunch of Eloqua team members who we start off with a boot camp here in Toronto so they get to know each other and the rest of the company. I’m going to outline some of the cool things our customers do but I’ll also provide a short intro on what I do in my day to day. To make it easy for everybody, I like to describe my role as a sherpa for our customers. Not

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

Are any of you out there new fathers? How about new parents? I’m still getting the hang of holding my 2 month old son while I check my emails or read a book. I’m getting much better at this juggling act and on some of those nights when he stays up I’ve been able to generate some blog post ideas – I just didn’t have the two hands needed to type until now. :) So here we are. My biggest inspiration

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 (

This week's blog post was inspired by an idea by Yaro Starak over at Entrepreneurs-journey.com who suggested to look for blog ideas by scanning Facebook groups. I decided to do a quick scan on Linkedin instead and found a great topic on email marketing. Here is the question that was asked:How does your company email customers about events and web seminars without sending too many emails to the

When I say that you should become an eco-marketer, I don't mean that you should add some corny green recycle image to your website (who would do that?) or support a "Save the Whales" campaign. Although I'm a big supporter of environmental issues and started my career running an environmental organization, I would like to focus on eco-marketing in terms of demand creation.I focused my research

For someone who lives and breathes customer service as part of my profession I am very critical with companies I deal with as I have a high expectation on the type of service I should receive. I’ve finally found a company that does a fantastic job at servicing its customers across many channels and you know I have to blog about it. Up here in Canada we’ve had three main mobile providers for as

"Should I handle the objections during the time of the sales presentation OR ask for another appointment to answer the objections?" -- Harriet Mpora When possible, handle common objections prior to your presentation in pre-sales materials, then again address in your presentation, and right before your close. Always seek to address objections before your prospect asks them -- but almost never in another appointment.

I'm wondering if I need to hire a copywriter with advertising experience in the Construction industry. I'm a building contractor that would like to start advertising to the contractor market and am looking for some useful tag lines. If you are an expert in what you do, then you don't need a copywriter who specializes in your specific field. They don't need to have sold in you field, nor have written for your industry before. However, they must ...

I started sending out the following letter (attached.) I have been getting about a 1/2 percent response. Anyone have any suggestions on increasing my response rate? Perhaps the best advice anyone can give you it to tweak and test one thing at a time until you know what works. Only through testing will you know what works. But, don't make this common mistakes ...

John finally get an appointment to sit down with purchasing and a long sought decision maker, yet is already wrong on two issues of the prospects experience, you'd think he'd be more prepared. According to a recent study, executives say 82% of sales representatives are unprepared for meetings.

Before your company changes its logo, read this very important message! On a live chat for Inside Strategic Relations subscribers, a reader asks:If one's company is chaging Logo, doesn't that affect level of sales? And, how can one overcome this handle? -- Unknown (via Chat)

I am currently having trouble trying to find the demographics and the psychographics of my target market (mid level, top level, and, ceo executives). I wanted to know is there any information that you could possibly give me or point me in the correct direction? -- Chris Momon, The BOSS Group Having a clear and understandable profile of your best customers is a valuable influencer of selling results. Knowing your customers helps you take the right actions, rather than just educated guesses. Ge more »

What would be a good presentation to do for a dinner meeting for a group of Purchasing professionals? -- Ted Kosiek, Kerneos Inc You're in luck, my wife is a purchasing professional with a Fortune 500, and member of the local chapter of one a large purchasing associations. When speaking in front of any trade group, there are three things to consider:

Many less informed marketers say special reports are over-done and most of the time lacking value, especially in lead generation. Do special reports as part of lead generation still work?

I had some sales letters and articles written on {Freelance Site Here}, they don't bring in the response I was expecting. How are your clients writing articles to connect with prospects and for newsletters? -- Terry G. One thing, I pride myself on is providing visitors real unique value from real life experiences. Visitors of this site expect a unique prospective that advances their interests, and so do your customers. Here's why that statement so important.

My newsreader brought to my attention B2B lead generation advice from a popular publication, an expert proclaiming that cold calls followed up by email works. It seemed simple enough until he missed one critical point.

Which doctype should I use in HTML email? there are subtle differences in how email clients render HTML emails with a variety of doctype declarations... Or no doctype at all. (tags: coding) The... [ click the title or the link below to read the full post ]

What do Email Professionals Make? How much can you make as an Email Professional, and what is the best title to have? And which part of the country have the highest salaries? Bill McCloskey recently... [ click the title or the link below to read the full post ]

Facebook's New Email Offering Facebook describes this as next generation messaging. Zuckerberg said "It will be seamless, informational, immediate, personal, simple, minimal and short." (tags:... [ click the title or the link below to read the full post ]

No, social media doesn't mean email marketing's dead -According to the Econsultancy report, How We Shop in 2010: Habits and Motivations of Consumers, email marketing is still the channel of choice... [ click the title or the link below to read the full post ]

Marketing Return on Investment (ROI) Calculator The folks over at Toddle released a cool calculator that you can use to see how effective your last campaign was and to give you an idea of how much... [ click the title or the link below to read the full post ]

Reportlet: Animated Gif Usage Surging -This free 9-page report discusses the three major limitations of animated gifs, deliverability concerns, and outlines a number of animated gif tactics used by... [ click the title or the link below to read the full post ]

Ten Numbers Every Email Marketer Should Commit to Memory -here are the ten numbers that every email marketer would have committed to memory- (tags: analysis) Email Marketer Sues Microsoft, Yahoo,... [ click the title or the link below to read the full post ]

email the online activity with the highest overall penetration -The TNS “Digital Life� survey of internet users around the world found in September 2010 that on average, surfers spent 4.6 hours a... [ click the title or the link below to read the full post ]

I attended (and spoke) at the European Email Marketing Conference in London today and yesterday. I am back at my hotel in Amsterdam now and spent some time digging for the best takeaways from the... [ click the title or the link below to read the full post ]

E-Mail: This Isn't Hard For a decade, e-mail marketers have measured everything wrong, and are now reaping the rewards of poor measurement techniques with ever-declining open/click/conversion rates.... [ click the title or the link below to read the full post ]

If you think that magicians and neuroscientists have little to talk about, you’d be wrong: both deal with issues like attention and consciousness, albeit in a different way. And, as it turns out, marketers can learn from both groups, and in particular, from understanding why magicians can fool us even when we are trying to pay attention. read more

Advertising is a brilliant and nutty pursuit, and I have to admit that I love it. In fact, I keep a folder (electronically on Evernote, and I carry a beat-up manila folder in my backpack) just to collect stuff that makes me wince or smile. Here are four recent tidbits from the Dim Bulb archive:   read more

Toxic bosses. Debbie Downers. Our language reflects the idea that some people have a real emotional effect on their fellow workers. Now, interesting research not only confirms this idea but adds to it in several important ways: read more

Boutique hotel is my thing, it is not about being cool or being seen, I’ve passed that stage and it is not about the brand. Do I care if it is W or X or Y? I am sick of staying at the Sheraton or Marriot of the world, it is not only depressing, it reminds me that I am another one of those global travelers without a life. read more

I’ve been holding back on laying into the third and latest Sins of Greenwashing report — in part because I’m feeling too much like a broken record — but I’ve got to weigh in. The report, if you’re not familiar with it, is published by TerraChoice, a Canadian-based environmental marketing agency. (Earlier this year, it was acquired by UL Environment, a division of Underwriters Laboratories. GreenBiz is engaged in a partnership with UL Environment that is wholly unrelated to Te more »

If you read this blog on a regular basis, you are probably receptive to the idea that marketing needs to “reboot� itself. Whether driven by the initiative of a visionary and focused CMO, or the – not so gentle - intervention of the executive board, the profession needs to challenge some of its most deeply rooted orthodoxies. The alternative is simply too costly. read more

Sometime in the next year or two, I predict U.S. companies will undergo a human resources crisis. As businesses stabilize and people become accustomed to a certain degree of economic uncertainty, a high level of turnover is likely to threaten companies’ recoveries. read more

I recently received an email from a teen that I speak with that piqued my interest. I thought I’d share it with you:   read more

Carlos Jordan de Urries (left) and Chrystele Bazin (below), senior consultants at Sofrecom (a France Telecom Company) have updated us on the status of Social Media in emerging markets last Monday in Cairo. In this presentation, we’ll focus less on international Social media platforms and more on what the motivations are for people to follow – or not follow – brands like Coca Cola for instance. read more

In 1971, Herb Simon said: What does an abundance of information create? Basically a scarcity of attention. And the interesting thing about the quote below from Samuel Johnson was that it was written in 1751. So, one hundred and fifty years ago, people were complaining that there were too many ads in the world. read more

Yesterday Xerox launched a new global marketing campaign titled, Real Business.  Xerox is calling it their most ambitious and innovative campaign ever created. Realbusiness.com includes interactive billboards, innovative media, video, and what they are calling “attention-grabbing digital units� showcasing Xerox’s clients, featuring brand icons, such as P&G’s Mr. Clean.   The launch of the website will be followed by TV ads and a global roll-out...Europe is up next.  more »

For years, the Ritz-Carlton has been recognized for its ability to delight customers.  Although I’ve used them frequently as a best in class example for clients, I never truly experienced what makes them so good…until now.My family and I just returned for our summer vacation where we had the good fortune of staying at the Ritz-Carlton on Grand Cayman in the Cayman Islands for the week.   While we originally booked the Marriott, a special off-season promotion through American Expre more »

The Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary defines a cloud as a “visible mass of particles of condensed vapor.�  According to CIOs interviewed for an article in the June edition of the Harvard Business Review magazine, cloud computing might as well be defined as “vaporware.â€� The article includes research by Gartner Group VP, Mark McDonald, who found that CIOs interest in the cloud has grown from 5% in 2009 to 37% earlier this year.  However, three out of four re more »

In the “good old days� companies like IBM built a ubiquitous brand with unique products and then dictated their terms and funds to sales channels. Brand advertising was typically done on one of the three major TV networks aimed at the mass market to create a “pull� that would have customers do whatever it took to get those products regardless of price, location or availability. Product marketing teams would assemble sales and marketing material, and route it to partners more »

I’m working on my umpteenth “transition the organization from being product led to solution focused…� project. In today’s market environment, I imagine other organizations are pursuing this strategy as a way to improve margins, increase sales, etc.The challenges facing companies that venture down this path are fairly consistent and complex…and certainly not easily described or solved in a post. With that said, I thought it might be helpful to describe how o more »

In my post on 6 Steps to Getting Control of Social Media, I mentioned the concept of an “upside-down funnel�.  I thought I’d spend some time explaining it in this post.  As with most new technologies, social media is starting to “settle in� and common applications of the platforms are becoming known.   In many large B2B organizations, that means social media is finding a home in the marketing communications group, often landing in PR. That seems fine for B2 more »

In 1962, Thomas Kuhn wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolution, and fathered, defined and popularized the concept of "paradigm shift." Kuhn argues that scientific advancement is not evolutionary, but rather is a "series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually violent revolutions", and in those revolutions "one conceptual world view is replaced by another".So what if you spent half your time at work on Linked-In, Facebook or Twitter? Yes, the recession has slowed business significan more »

Lots of clients are now interested (finally) in getting their Social Media house in order. Fortunately, there is a ton of information on Social Media available…unfortunately; I haven’t seen anything that tells a Marketer what to do about it.After spending a year and a half on this topic and working with clients, here's a quick “To Do� list based on the best and worst practices observed. The first 3 deal with the current state, the remaining 4 are future looking. At this more »

I attended the B2B Social Communications Case Studies and Roundtable event in New York last week, my first live event since the downturn. Got to admit, I was impressed by the attendance (probably close to 250 folks) and list of companies presenting included; Microsoft, Amex, Intuit, Dupont, IBM, Deliotte, Pitney Bowes, and others. I came away with some great new insights, not only of social media in a B2B world, but also regarding the structure of the event itself. Get In, Then Get Out - In my l more »

Not yet, but it’s getting close. The potential suspects in its death…the recession, the CFO and the Legal Department. Suddenly, every legal department around the country has become the de facto Web 2.0 governance committee. What doesn’t get killed, modified, or mangled is left to the CFO to cut. Senior executives, who for the most part lack an understanding of the tools, are growing tired of all the noise around Digital, Web 2.0, Social Media, etc. They are now directing  more »

Salesforce.com’s big Dreamforce conference is over. The keynotes have been distilled down to talking points for the media. The hangovers from the after parties have been dealt with. The Black Crowes have flown away, the hangovers from the after parties...

I was having dinner with a super smart marketer a few weeks ago, and I asked him what his big idea was for 2010. And this bright guy articulated a strategy of media dominance, of placing his brand everywhere that...

I'm at the CMO Club conference in San Francisco this week, and while the audience of 80 texted "Doing more with less" as the number one issue facing marketers in 2010, the real buzz around the show seems to be ROI of social media. Blake Cahill had a post over on VisInsights on the value of social media for B2B companies (he's doing a webcast with Sirius Decisions' Jonathan Block) and one of his lines stopped me:

Olivier Blanchard Basics Of Social Media Roi View more presentations from Olivier Blanchard.

In a room filled with 600 marketers from companies large and small. Last night at the welcome reception, I met one-person marketing departments and reps from some of the largest multi-national corporations in the world for both service and products...

Before doing some spring gardening this weekend, I loaded up the ol' iPod with a bunch of recent marketing-related Podcasts. Podcasts, you recall, were the world-changing, paradigm-shifting phenomena of four years ago, kind of like Twitter is today. My day...

Spoke with Rodger Roeser of That Marketing Show recently about Web 2.0 marketing tactics, measurement and Digital Body Language. The show's online now. Check it out here.

Dr. Robert Cialdini will change the way you communicate forever. His research, books and talks (he'll be keynoting at the Eloqua International User Conference next month), have been read and attended by hundreds of thousands. He consults for Fortune 100...

David Meerman Scott and I went over time on our B2B Magazine Webinar on social media and agreed that we'd handle Q&A on this blog (and perhaps over on David's as well). I consolidated some of the 50+ questions we...

Stephanie writes: Hi You hit it right on: Must Unlearn what you Learned. My struggle is old time thinking. 'How come we aren't in print magazine and our competitor is.' How do you convience old time thinking of Print versus...