Social media promises to be the new frontier for marketers (we’re pretty sure, anyway—as Brian demonstrated, there aren’t hard numbers for social media’s ROI yet), and we’re all eager to get online and just tweet/post/blog/tag ourselves blue in the face. But without a plan we can’t know if our efforts are worthwhile. In fact, without a plan, we can’t even pinpoint what we consider to be a worthwhile outcome. So in lieu of hard data, Brian recommended starting out with quantifiable goals and educated guesses. We can continually refine and optimize our plan by measuring and evaluating the results we get.

5 Steps to Ensure Social Media ROI

1. Identify your goal.
2. Establish a metric (quantify your goal).
3. Get real about your current situation: what’s working, what’s not, what are your capabilities, do you need help, what is your risk tolerance? Make educated guesses at this point.
4. Plan your strategy and resources before jumping in with both feet.
5. Let results guide progress: Do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.

4 Phases of Social Media Campaign Development

Most companies skip phase one of the four-phase campaign development process Brian outlined. By jumping into a social media presence without planning what you’re going to do once you’ve begun engaging your audience, you may wind up unable to keep their interest for long or turn that interest into action (and profit).

1. Strategy and brand planning. Project your brand into social media. Plan your viral campaigns—games, contests, hooks, attention grabbers, excitement builders.
2. Establishing a presence on social media sites/increasing brand awareness. Set up your social networking profiles.
3. Engaging customers/developing brand affinity. Monitor the conversation, including mentions of your brand, your competitors’ brands, and relevant topics. Reply with information, offers, friendliness, and humor.
4. Engaging customers/pushing offers for ROI. This is where not skipping phase one really comes in handy. You need a steady stream of attention-grabbing, compelling incentives to lead your audience down the path to purchase.

The Golden Ticket to Social Media Success: Keeping Customers Motivated

Every step of the way, you have to give your audience sufficient incentive to keep paying attention and moving to the next step of your marketing plan. The Golden Ticket campaign shows how to create irresistible motivations that turn into purchasing momentum.

To qualify, customers will book a vacation and fan the Visit Myrtle Beach Facebook page.

Then customers will post a message to their wall (”I booked a vacation at X hotel in Myrtle Beach because I want to win a Golden Ticket”) referencing their golden ticket number.

Five lucky winners will find a Golden Ticket in their hotel room upon arrival entitling them to free show passes, VISA gift cards, and other prizes.

Specific benefits are defined for each step in the contest. By requiring a purchase just to qualify, this campaign ensures cash revenue from the outset. The Facebook posts generate positive word of mouth advertising for the hotels. The campaign will also build contacts for future email campaigns.

What’s the Verdict?

Social media campaign planning is more labor-intensive and expensive than search or email marketing, and its benefits have not been established. Your best bet? To move forward with a plan, learning from your data as you continually get closer to your social media marketing sweet spot.

Other Tips and Takeaways

1. Don’t be a victim of brand theft. Use knowem.com to check for and secure your personal, brand, or product name on over 350 social media sites.
2. In addition to your “2.0″ social profiles on Facebook, Twitter, etc, establish a presence on “3.0″ aggregator sites such as Friendfeed and Tumblr to add assets automatically via RSS, thus building links for SEO.
3. Use tools like CoTweet and Whos Talkin? to monitor and reply to social media chatter.
4. Make sure that your marketing is not only getting attention but inciting action—what are you doing to motivate your audience to do something?

Kleenex is one company basing their new marketing campaign around this popular trend. Getmommed.com is the site established by Kleenex to cater to consumers’ psychological needs for extra motherly care during the cold and flu season. Consumers are encouraged to visit the promotional site via Kimberly-Clark’s main Web page, print advertisements, and television commercials. Site visitors can complete a quiz matching them to one of eight cyber moms. Pick Magnolia and this Mom can cure your cold with home-style cooking, while Lisa offers craft and home decor ideas. Kleenex reports the most popular Mom is Jessica, the “Best Friend” Mom. After signing up on the site, consumers are able to request wake-up calls, text reminders, Facebook messages, and words of encouragement from their new Mom.

The GetMommed.com Web site makes sure you have adequate access to motherly TLC this cold and flu season.

Kleenex combines internet and mobile marketing, resulting in a highly interactive campaign. They avoid sending text blasts and e-mail advertisements to consumers, instead offering helpful services that consumers can voluntarily register for. Companies who want to effectively utilize mobile marketing to target their consumers can follow these simple rules.

Integration is key

Smartphones have given users the capability to scan all types of advertising mediums, so integration of all platforms is now extremely important in a company’s campaign. Kleenex effectively merged their platforms and prompted consumers to visit their site through print and television ads.

Give and you shall receive

Offer helpful services or incentives that smartphone owners will use on a daily basis. Kleenex offers weather updates, wake-up calls, or text reminders. These tools provide emotional consumer appeal and help build brand loyalty and awareness.

Get Social with Social Media

Leverage your marketing plan and business with social media sites. Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are all platforms that can take your campaign to the next level. Remember that connection of all social media outlets is key. Display links for Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube accounts on your campaign’s homepage. Kleenex integrates Facebook links on their main page, allowing visitors to view each cyber mom’s Facebook and befriend them.

Get to know Magnolia, Lisa, and the rest of the Moms through Kleenex’s Webisodes on YouTube.

Kleenex has successfully entered the cyberspace of consumers with these simple rules and the help of eight fictional Moms. They continue to establish strong emotional ties with consumers and create long-term brand loyalty. Follow Kleenex’ lead and your company could be seeing similar results.

Lest you think that snail mail has gone the way of the dinosaur and eight track player, consider the numbers: we spend 47 billion dollars annually on direct mail marketing—about 9% the of GDP. Compare that to the 6 billion dollars spent on internet marketing.

Closer to home, think about how direct mail affects you. I, for instance, am a Web developer. I haven’t had a printer hooked up to my computer in at least two years. I tweet. I also have one Harry and David’s catalog, two Coldwater Creek catalogs, and a brochure for the AMA Face to Face training series on my coffee table. A kitchen drawer is crammed with 20% off coupons from Bed, Bath, and Beyond. So even the techiest of the techies are touched by good old-fashioned hard copy, especially when it is targeted precisely to our needs and wants.

Direct mail also has a much longer shelf life than, say, a marketing email, which drops like a rock into the abyss of the overcrowded in-box in a matter of days. (How long have those catalogs been sitting on my coffee table? You don’t wanna know.)

Direct Mail versus General Advertising

The age of mass media advertising is over. Today’s marketing must be personalized and non-intrusive to break through the barriers of spam filters, TIVO, and our general self-trained indifference to advertising. Direct mail, though massive in scope, is not the same as general advertising, said Naples.

General advertising, such as a sign on the side of a bus, sells a product. Direct mail sells offers. General advertising creates sales. Direct mail creates customers—whom you can learn about and collect data from for better CRM and future marketing efforts. General advertising is short, appeals to the emotions, and maybe even tries to make you laugh. Direct mail can use lengthy copy that focuses on facts, and, Naples, says, it makes you money.

Tips for Direct Mail Marketing

• Use compelling offers in your mail: free trials, free samples, free information.
• Size does matter. A brochure tucked inside a standard size envelope outperforms a postcard.
• Make it personal. Send offers related to the recipient’s background, experience, and interests.
• According to the Direct Marketing Association, 42% of direct mail recipients like to respond online. Personalized URLs (purls) allow you to direct traffic to the Web in a highly targeted fashion.
• Direct mail can be used at any point (or every point) in the sales cycle.
• Add a magnet or a sticky so recipients can tack the mail piece to their refrigerator or wall.

Rhoads identified four distinct phases of adoption: Grassroots adoption, Results testing, Operationalize, and Widespread adoption. Careful planning at every phase, as the acronym suggests, will help you GROW your social media marketing program in a smart, profitable direction.

Phase 1: Grassroots Adoption

Before Intel began using any kind of social media, its employees were already blogging independently. In launching its pilot IT blog in 2006, Intel leveraged the enthusiasm and knowledge of these trail-blazers. Rhoads characterizes the grassroots phase as the foundation of a formalized marketing plan:

• Led by the passionate few
• Fed by hype
• Feared by Legal and IT
• Efforts are not tied to a formal strategy or ROI
• Limited barrier to entry
• Personal brands often trump company brands

By observing and analyzing the efforts of the independent bloggers, Intel collected enough data about technique and the potential for audience engagement to make an informed decision about moving forward with a pilot program.

Phase 2: Results Testing

Grassroots activity gets the ball rolling. The pilot program is a testing and organization phase. It’s the ideal time to make mistakes and then use what you learn to build a compelling case for adoption and to allay the “what-if” fears of reluctant stakeholders.

• Pilot your ideas with a focus on business results
• Prime your business case
• Do it all wrong quickly
• Mitigate risks to placate Legal and IT fears
• Get ROI and measurement standards in place
• POST exercise
  • People: Assess your customers’ social activities
  • Objectives: Decide what you want to accomplish
  • Strategy: Plan for how relationships with customers will change
  • Technology: Decide which social platforms to use

Phase 3: Operationalize

The pilot program lays the groundwork for further formalization of a social media program. This is the time to get all stakeholders on board and build infrastructure for scalable, repeatable business processes.

• Be absolute on the business case—proof testing is over
• Establish governance and guidance
• Provide infrastructure
• Invest in tools and training
• Define metrics and tracking
• Establish clear roles and responsibilities within the organization
• Scale participation (what level of knowledge and active participation is required of which employees?)

Intel developed numerous programs to communicate its objectives, educate and align employees, and set goals and guidelines for its new media marketing program.

• The Social Media Center of Excellence is a team headed by Rhoads to create guidelines, processes, strategies, and skill-building programs.
• Intel’s Social Media Guidelines provide a framework for increased participation—easing management concerns, getting everyone on the same page about expectations, and ensuring transparency.
• The Digital IQ training program is an online university aimed at creating a vast digital marketing force. Employees take 100 through 400 level classes based on their roles and responsibilities. Digital IQ also helps the Social Media Center of Excellence identify and place new voices in Intel’s social spaces.
• Digital IQ 500 is a further level of training that licenses anyone to practice social media on behalf of Intel. These 30-minute online courses were developed by key SMEs and the Social Media Center of Excellence. They include company strategy, legal and security cautions, moderation policy, and recommended best practices.

Phase 4: Widespread Adoption

Widespread adoption occurs only after the entire company has been primed and a scalable, sustainable plan for implementation has been established.

• Social media is integrated into campaigns
• Social media is included in the strategy phase
• Practicing social media becomes second nature
• Easily replicated processes are in place
• Dedicated roles have been established
• Executive support is cemented

Key Take-aways

Most companies do not have the vast resources of a global company like Intel, but we can all benefit from lessons Intel learned as it adopted social media marketing:

• Learn which way the wind is blowing from your resident enthusiasts.
• Don’t feel pressured to act immediately. Take the time to figure out where your audience is before jumping into a new venue.
• Define success and find a way to measure it.
• Use the proof-testing phase to demonstrate the potential value of social media and to examine and head off potential pitfalls—all of which will help get reluctant stakeholders on board.
• Further reduce anxieties and ambiguity for everyone by establishing comprehensive training and guidelines.
• Find your social media marketing “sweet spot:” where along your business’s marketing funnel can you use social media tools for the most impact?

Marie Callender’s partnered with Con-Agra foods to produce an array of home-style frozen food entrees including chicken pot pie, lasagna, and country fried chicken. Marketers reach out emotionally to consumers attempting to recreate feelings associated with the home and childhood memories. Marie Callender’s hopes consumers will pair compassion and love with their entrees. This is obvious with their slogan, “food from the heart prepared with love and care.” Creating a meaning behind their products helps to build communities of loyal consumers, who won’t stray to generic brands when times are tough.

In this commercial Marie Callender’s uses the childhood memory of baking with Grandmother as a “pseudo-spiritual” tactic.

Campbell’s has been an avid “pseudo-spiritual” marketer since the beginning. Their commercials generate themes of family, love, and meal-time connection. One of their most memorable uses of “pseudo- spiritual” marketing is this popular holiday television commercial.

Similar to Marie Callender’s strategy, Campbell’s has successfully utilized “pseudo-spiritual” marketing to generate strong emotional connections between products and consumers. Both companies continue to maintain their sales and brand loyalty. So next time you pick a brand name over generic, you may want to ask yourself, “why?”

Starbucks is now the top brand on Facebook. They have surpassed Coca-Cola in popularity, acquiring over 3.6 million followers on their fan page. They contribute their success to an aggressive social media marketing strategy and the construction of an online coffee community where Starbucks’ coworkers and customers can exchange stories and company ideas, connecting Starbucks fans worldwide. In addition they are using the social site to promote new products including the Via instant coffee. Last month Starbucks offered their Facebook followers a free cup of coffee for taking the Via instant coffee taste test at local stores.

Pizza Hut is also expanding their company with the help of iPhones. After downloading the Pizza Hut application, users are able to create and customize their pizza using the iPhone’s touch screen features. Similar to Starbucks’ strategy, Pizza Hut hopes customers will enjoy the interactive ordering experience, connect with the brand, and become loyal customers.

This demo video on the new iPhone application demonstrates how Pizza Hut is revamping the pizza industry.

The future for these social sites and devices is uncertain. Will they sustain popularity with users as more businesses utilize them for marketing purposes or will this just be another technology trend that will be replaced by something bigger and better?

It’s all about building trust with people so that they will listen when you have something to say. Brogan and Smith provided helpful tips from their own experience for breaking through the white noise of everyday life and getting attention.

1. Make a Habit out of Breaking Habits.

When you interrupt the patterns that govern people’s lives by saying and doing the unexpected in a manner that is helpful or insightful to others, you wake them up, you jolt them out of their mental auto-pilot mode, and you become visible.

With social media, you have the opportunity to become visible through many channels and to be seen as a whole person rather than a flat corporate entity. Brogan and Smith encourage companies to put a face to their marketing. Also, when you have a habit of breaking habits, you become more creative and more open to new ideas, which in turn fuels your ability to develop new angles and opportunities for yourself.

2. Stand Out, Start Something.

If you’re competing against others, you’ve already lost, say Brogan and Smith. Citing Cirque du Soleil and the iPhone as examples of game changers in their respective industries, they noted the importance of carving out more profitable spaces in which your company can operate.

For instance, PodCamp, a Barcamp-style “unconference” for new media enthusiasts and professionals co-founded by Brogan and Christopher Penn in 2006, was a way of standing out and starting something. By creating a community around a shared passion, they created the Next Big Thing without quite realizing it. That flood of attention and enthusiasm benefited them even as it created momentum for everyone involved.

“The only difference between a community and an audience is which way you point the chairs.”
—Chris Brogan

Chris Brogan on the evolution of PodCamp (interview with Adele McAlear)

(Toward the end of the presentation, an audience member amended this advice as “listen and then start something.” Don’t forget to check out what’s already going on and start participating before starting something new. Perhaps your Next Big Thing has already begun and is waiting for you to join.)

3. Build Your Network Ahead of Need.

Just as the worst time to find a job is right after you’ve lost one, the worst time to find a customer is right when you need one. If you have built relationships with people before you need the sale, it’s that much easier to get them to be receptive to your offer.

4. Create a Culture of Giving.

Chris Brogan describes his call-to-action as “Come back—I’ll give you more.” He says that by creating a culture in which he makes a habit of doing things to help people, he’s “training people to be nice” to him. Indeed, by setting the example of giving value to people without asking for something in return, you train others to pay it forward in a similar fashion. It’s no wonder that eventually you would become the beneficiary of that goodwill. As with collaborative efforts like PodCamp, generosity and inclusion build conversation and engagement, which is a recipe for trust and attention.

And speaking of recipes…

5. Give your customers recipes in which you are the ingredient.

You won’t find a can of cream of mushroom soup that doesn’t have a recipe on the label that requires cream of mushroom soup. Likewise, you should frame yourself as a necessary ingredient in your customers’ success. I found this piece of advice to be one of the most concrete of the presentation, and one that many of us could run with, when we decide how it applies to us.

What would a recipe for your business look like? If you sell widgets, could you suggest projects on your Web site that use that widget? If you sell expertise, could you create an event around that area of knowledge? AMA members, write in with your ideas and get some collaboration going!

What Is Social Media?

Social media is an umbrella term for the tools and technology people use to interact with content. It is the mechanism by which brand marketing has evolved from a monologue (one-to-one communication from advertiser to consumer) to a seriously super-charged dialogue in which many people can publish their message about a brand to many others.

Social media content is characterized as:

• Easy to interact with
• Easy to share
• Capable of generating realtime feedback
• Not being constrained by time and space

Social media has democratized brand messaging. Hanes was ready to join the conversation. Here is how they did it.

Hanes and Social Media: Tiptoeing into the Fray

Hanes’ overall strategy is to using social media tools to start a dialogue with their customers. They plan to accomplish this by:

• Developing a blogger network (the Hanes Comfort Crew)
• Tapping into their customers’ passion points (Passionately Pink for the Cure, Disney Celebrate in Comfort campaigns)
• Going where their customers are (Twitter, Facebook, real-world events such as the BlogHer conference)

I found it notable that several times during the presentation Graham described Hanes’ strategy as “tiptoeing.” To me this indicated a level of seriousness and humility that companies need if they are to survive and thrive in social spaces on the Web. Hanes is entering the social networking realm with a plan that prioritizes its customers’ needs and does not attempt to define or dominate the conversations that it starts with them.

The Hanes Comfort Crew

The Hanes Comfort Crew is a group of bloggers who broadly represent Hanes’ customer base: moms and dads, fashion and lifestyle mavens. These bloggers are not paid to write about Hanes. They were selected because they already had an affinity for the brand and had followings who were likely to share or be receptive to that affinity. Hanes gives these bloggers opportunities and ideas to talk about the Hanes brand in an authentic way. For instance, Hanes held its Comfort Crew kickoff by inviting the bloggers and their families to Disney World, where they discussed the products, tested out how the Hanes “wedgie-free panties” held up against a day of roller coaster rides, and created a lot of fun memories worth blogging home about.

Hanes also attended the BlogHer conference for women bloggers, where they built up even more buzz with their conversation-sparking T-shirt swag bags, footrubs at their Hanes Comfort Social, and expansion of the Comfort Crew (the original crew members each were invited to find 3–4 recruits from the conference attendees).

Hanes Got Crafty at the BlogHer Conference With These Cool T-shirt Totes

How Hanes Measures Success

Hanes takes a methodical approach to social media marketing, carefully crafting its message, setting goals, and measuring successes, just as it has always done with its traditional marketing tactics.

• They determined benchmarks for success in both traditional and social media.
• They looked at current brand conversations in both traditional and social media (e.g., number of blog posts about Hanes, number of tweets, print and TV ad circulation, etc.).
• They set goals to increase levels of conversation by 10% in both traditional and social media.
• They continued tracking and reporting monthly performance in each category.

2 Must-Do’s for Your Company

Graham and Keats left us with two cardinal rules for interacting with our customers in the social media realm:

1. When someone praises your brand, say Thank You.
2. If you make a mistake, apologize (quickly).

Other Takeaways

• Create real conversations by having interesting things to talk about and giving people things and experiences that they value. Hanes has a lot going on! They’re partnering with companies and celebrities we love to offer experiences worth talking about and participating in. I Googled Hanes and came up a T-shirt design competition to benefit Susan G. Komen for the Cure®, a Disney World vacation giveaway, a Michael Jordan celebrity invitational golf trip giveaway, an invitation to share your most embarrassing wedgie story (for a prize, of course!), dozens of news stories and videos, and reams of blog discussions.
• Don’t restrict your “social media marketing” to virtual venues. Go where your customers are in the real world, too.
• Create goals and success criteria for your social media marketing campaigns. Be methodical. Measure your results.
• Don’t say you’re great. Just be great. Social media gives people a way to spread their approval further and faster than ever before. Many thanks to Graham and Keats for showing how well Hanes has learned this lesson.

Five ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle:

1. Don’t throw out advertising too early - Redefine “worn out”.  Extend the schedules on which you would normally rotate your creative.  This turbulent economic climate leaves your customers and prospects seeking familiarity and stability.  When you find the effectiveness of your current creative waning, evolve what you have by introducing a new element rather than going completely back to the drawing board. For example, a sticker can take care of a change of address on a brochure. And when you do new things, plan with longer life and “refreshability” in mind.
2. Do something with that old bridesmaid’s dress you’re keeping - Reuse favorite advertising campaigns and direct mail pieces that worked well in the past.  Sure, a few things will have changed over the three years or so since you last ran an ad but editing is always less expensive than creating a new piece.  A few updated touches will create something new from something that might be old to you but thanks to audience turnover and poor long-term viewer retention, plenty of people will be enjoying for the first time.   For those that remember it, showing an old campaign can be a way to demonstrate that you are stable and give them a feeling of security.  Many large traditional brands have begun getting back to their roots and re-airing old campaigns for that reason alone.
3. Look in the trash pile - If you hired an ad agency for a project, chances are that they provided you with multiple concepts for earlier projects. Perhaps you can make use of one of the alternatives. There may be a charge to finish the piece, but it’s usually less expensive than starting over.
4. Car pool - See if anyone in your organization has unused seats.  Many organizations are siloed, especially around the area of technology.  Your IT department may have implemented a tool for Operations that might have marketing capabilities which are going unused.  A good example of a tool like this is Microsoft’s SharePoint. While your organization might be using it for internal collaboration, it is also an excellent tool to make external websites, secure micro-sites, promotional pages, and even to manage an electronic prospect dialogue strategy.
5. Switch to electric power - Marketers are still struggling to find ROI from broad use of the newest social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter but one thing is clear already.  The cost of reaching an audience using these tools is extremely low.  While they are not yet (and may never be) ready to carry the weight of a large portion of your marketing strategy this is a perfect time to replace some of the poorest performing media channels you pay for and add some inexpensive social media to your mix.

All of these ideas will be much more effective when used by a company with a well developed brand identity, and if yours doesn’t, there is no better time to focus on building your brand and taking bold brand actions.

Bill Cutshall

Kirsten Cutshall

This webinar had five tracks. Below is a summary of the key learnings and my personal review of each track.

Track 1: Social Communities and the Future of B-to-B Marketing

Patrick Crane, Vice President of Marketing, LinkedIn

• There are professional social networks and networks geared toward fun and entertainment. As you think about participating in a social network for professional purposes, consider the intentions of its community members. Both Xing and LinkedIn have a professional intent, whereas websites like MySpace and Facebook are more for socialization purposes.
• If you are an HR director or a job seeker, LinkedIn is tailored to fit your needs.

Review: Although not relevant to B2B or B2C lead generation, this track did open my eyes to how LinkedIn is emerging as the most important professional networking site for those seeking traditional employment or contract/consulting work. LinkedIn is also becoming a go-to resource for HR professionals.

Track 2: B-to-B Offer Strategies That Keep Your Sales Pipeline Filled with Qualified Leads

Russell Kern, President, The Kern Organization

• Your offer is the key driver for e-mail campaigns.
• When it comes to B-to-B demand generation, 13% of leads buy in the first 90 days. The other 87% buy within 91 days to 2 years.
• For B-to-B transactions, approximately 6–21 people are involved in purchasing decisions.
• In today’s economy, buyers do not want to talk to salespeople. Rather, they go to trusted advisors. Therefore, you should focus your time and energy networking with consultants and top advisors.
• Try to position yourself as a trusted advisor. 70% of B-to-B deals go to companies that are positioned as trusted advisors.
• B2B buyers are afraid to make mistakes, so they take a longer time than B-to-C buyers to make a purchase decision and have a longer sales cycle.
• When setting up an offer, the call-to-action needs to spark motivation in customers to engage.
• A compelling offer is
  • Valuable
  • Exclusive
  • Tangible
  • Relevant
  • Easy to deliver
  • Engaging/entertaining to the client
• Make offers simple.
• The title of the offer affects consumer response by 35%. Free information is the most powerful offer, and items like free brochures, whitepapers, DVDs, etc., outperform all other offers.
• The biggest snafu on offers for e-campaigns is not having the right offer for the proper sales cycle stage. If a sales cycle stage is more than 30 days and you have a plan of 20 touches, try to consolidate over six months instead of one year.

Review: I found the last tip to be the most insightful and relevant because it described the psychology of delivering compelling call-to-action offers.

Track 3: Lead Scoring: The Foundation of World-Class Lead-Management Programs

Loren McDonald, Vice President of Industry Relations, Silverpop Engage B2B

• 70% of leads generation during an e-campaign are considered to be long-term sales cycle (3–18 months). The other 30% consist of: 10–12% short-term buyers, 15–20% not qualified, mystery shoppers, or freebie-seekers
• Today, the biggest gap in CRM is failure to provide a lead-scoring mechanism.
• As marketers, we need to be lead-developers who score and route leads.
• Every sales and marketing organization should meet and collaborate to create a lead-scoring mechanism.
• Factors to consider and evaluate a grade to a lead include:
  • Time-frame for buying
  • Ability to make a decision
  • Purchasing power
  • Profile and demographic information
• Without lead scoring, you compromise your sales team’s ability to prioritize follow-ups based on highest probability to buy.

Review: Currently I am assessing the design of a lead-scoring mechanism into our CRM, so I found this information meaningful and right on target. The presentation was objective and insightful.

Track 4: Following the Leads: Identifying and Targeting Small Business Prospects

Denise Hopkins, Vice President of Marketing & Product Development, Experian Marketing Services

• We still require multiple channels to reach small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) as prospects. E-mail and search are the top tools Experian utilizes.
• Experian has developed profile information and provides specific messages and tones for each profile, expecting that some categories will perform better than others.

Review: When considering marketing to SMBs, look up the Experian profile categories, and the deck will suggest the tone and message to use toward your target.

Track 5: Lead Generation, the Cisco Way

Jere King, VP Field Marketing, Cisco

• Jere reiterated that when you start developing a campaign, you must know who you are marketing to. Then, position yourself accordingly.

Review: This specific track was pre-recorded and staged. This was the model for relentless self-promotion. The thirty minutes focused on sharing four video commercials that they thought were well done and represented the concept of understanding and knowing your customer.

Top Ten Takeaways

Thanks go to fellow attendee, Maria Pergolino, who organized a list of the top ten tips from the webinar.

1. Website visitors need clear directions on what to do when they arrive at your website.
2. You can do a lot even with a small budget.
3. Social media is not going away and needs to be embraced by ALL marketers.
4. Direct mail may not be dead.
5. Offers need to be relevant AND appropriate for the prospect’s place in the buying cycle.
6. Testing can allow you to enter a new market with little risk.
7. Incentives can work really well.
8. It’s okay if people who will never buy your product consume your content.
9. An event doesn’t need to have to trend on Twitter to be great.
10. Demand generation is just a piece of the entire Marketing puzzle.

Overall Review

The webinar started with 5,000 registrations and 1,200 participants. By the final track, 650 people were still watching. I walked out with great insights from three of the five tracks, which made it worth my while. From a technology standpoint, the team that organized the event and logistics did an amazing job, with an interactive flash website that enabled you to feel like you were at a virtual trade show. See the Attendee Guide (PDF) for a complete rundown of the website’s features.

Instead of walking away with a bag of koozies, pens and pencils, I was able to download about 20 presentations and whitepapers that I can read at my leisure and share with my team. These supplementary materials will serve as “IV drips” of continuing education.

A Final Word on Webinars as Continuing Ed for Marketing Professionals

Webinars can be a truly great avenue for continuing education, but my advice is to always read the subject and curriculum a couple of times before attending. Make sure the information is relevant to the knowledge you are seeking. Furthermore, if your time is especially valuable, consider searching for reviews and ratings on the speakers and the companies speaking.

Robert Cowes is Sr. VP of Real Estate & Interactive Marketing at IF Marketing & Advertising. Robert leads IF’s interactive product development as it relates to web technologies, e-marketing, CRM and Search Engine Marketing. He has a BBA in Finance & Marketing from St. Edward’s University and an MBA from Texas State University. Contact him at rcowes@yourifteam.com.