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Today’s guest post comes from Laura Patterson, president and co-founder of VisionEdge Marketing and author of the book “Metrics In Action: Creating a Performance-Driven Marketing Organization.“

The emphasis on proving marketing ROI and accountability has only increased in our current business climate. Even an economic recovery won’t eliminate this topic. So, if you have yet to join the marketing accountability bandwagon, it’s probably time.

Updates on website visits, open rates, followers and friends are no longer sufficient.

This is where a dashboard comes in handy. Marketing dashboards benefit both marketing and the C-Suite. They can give at-a-glance view that quantifies the overall impact marketing has on the business and how marketing initiatives increase customer acquisition, retention and share of wallet. When done right, a marketing dashboard can be invaluable for making course adjustments and aligning with sales.

If you’re ready to start a marketing dashboard or yours to the next level, here are five steps to follow.

1. Align Marketing to Business Outcomes
This step may seem obvious, but it’s often our first misstep.  If you don’t know what business needle you need to move, the rest becomes moot. You need to understand which customers, new or existing, how many, and what we want them to purchase comprise this number, if you’re to measure performance and define the strategies, programs and tactics to support these objectives.

2. Choose Your Metrics
Select outcome instead of output metrics.  Outcome metrics measure marketing’s impact, efficiency and value. Typically, these metrics fall into the following categories:  customers (acquisition, retention, value), product (adoption, innovation, price and/or margin), competitive positioning (market share, brand preference), and financial (budget, payback).

3. Document the Data Chains
Create the data chains between the marketing activities and programs (i.e. number of webinar participants), objectives (i.e. number of qualified opportunities) and business results (i.e. rate of product adoption in a particular vertical). Data chains help visualize the link between programs, strategies, objectives and outcomes. These are vital to framing your marketing dashboard.

4. Acquire the Data
Measurement requires data; develop a data inventory to identify the data you have and what is missing.

5. Validate and Review
Develop an alpha dashboard to validate the data, data chains, and process. The alpha can reveal whether the marketing dashboard captures the performance information required and/or whether changes are needed. Revise the dashboard and create a beta version you can “float” with stakeholders.  Once you have “buy-in”, pilot the dashboard for several quarters to stabilize everything and train everyone. Then you’ll be ready to consider automating the process.

It takes time and investment to create a viable marketing dashboard, but it’s worth the effort.  With it you’ll have a visual look at your marketing performance and the health of your programs.

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5 Steps for Creating a Viable Marketing Dashboard is from Eloqua’s It’s All About Revenue, a Blog Covering Business To Business Marketing

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Below is the deck I presented at the Online Marketing Summit a couple weeks back. It’s called “From Content to Customer” and it focuses on the nexus of B2B content marketing and demand generation. Huge thanks to partner JESS3 for the creative genius.

The substance was co-developed in concert with my colleague, Elle Woulfe, who moves the levers in our demand engine, and it’s in this duality – from “pre-funnel” creative content to “in funnel” functional content – that this presentation’s special brand of value can be found.  Simply put, most sessions tend to focus on either trendy content marketing/social media themes or lead generation methodologies. They are either denim or Dockers. This deck brings those disparate worlds together.

The essential takeaways are:

• Content has minimal value in absolute, but tremendous value when mapped to the right stage in the funnel
• When it comes to distribution, think of suspect-stage content as “many to many,” prospect-stage as “one to many,” lead-stage as “one to few,” and opportunity stage as “one to one”
• When it comes to prospects, content that assuages professional fears tends to be most effective
• Mismatching content to stage can backfire … mitigate by asking yourself, “Is this piece of content, delivered at this time, advancing the buyer’s journey?”

Elle or I will be presenting this deck at several events this year. Please feel free to ask questions in the comments section, and we’ll do our best to answer them in future presentations. In the meantime, a question for you: How would you classify this particular piece of content? Would you consider this deck to be suspect-stage content or is it better for prospects?

How to: Mapping Content to the Buyer’s Journey is from Eloqua’s It’s All About Revenue, a Blog Covering Business To Business Marketing

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If you work in B2B marketing, there’s a good chance you’ve heard about lead scoring.

But maybe you’re wondering what exactly lead scoring means, who are the types of companies using it and why you should do the same. Luckily, we caught up Brian Carroll, Executive Director of MECLABS, to get the answers.

Check out his summary below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What is lead scoring?
Well, lead scoring is a way to quantify the value of your leads. And there are really three factors that are part of lead scoring.

So first of all, you’re looking at are they the right people, the right companies. You’re targeting the demographic data such as right industry, the size of company, the title or the contact level. This is demographic data that you’d normally have in a database.

The second part of lead scoring is really looking at the explicit information. So this is going to be information that you know about that customer. What content have they consumed?

That’s going to provide – you’re going to look at behavioral data. What got their interest, and that will apply to the score. Were they looking at product pages on your website? Did they download a certain white paper? Have they attended a certain event or webinar? Which will also tell you a lot about what their interest level is because as people get more interested, the amount of time they’re willing to spend to consume content that you provide goes up. So someone who’s barely interested isn’t going to attend a Summit like we’re at a marketing summit.

The third thing is, is this is implicit data? And so this is information that you’re going to look at about that customer, and there’s a lot of behavioral things that are a part of that. I would look at trends that I see about this customer. Over a period of time, what types of content have they given us? What are the behaviors that they have exhibited? And so what we’re really looking at is lead scoring is bringing all these pieces together, so we’re looking at that customer, and trying to take and quantify the value of at what point do we engage our sales team or do we engage our inside sales team? And so in sales, there’s either direct sales or indirect sales.  And what lead scoring does is it – it doesn’t replace the human touch.  In my opinion, I think it should be used to help you prioritize where you put the human touch. So that’s what lead scoring in my opinion is really about.

Who is using lead scoring?
Well, I think a lot of tech companies really led the way, because lead scoring really requires marketing automation to do it. I’ve seen it done manually; it just becomes too cumbersome. And so that’s where we found companies that are more innovative, and more competitive have embraced lead scoring, because what they’re really trying to do is shorten time to revenue. They’re looking to shorten time to profitability. And when it’s intensely competitive, everyone’s looking for an edge.

What I’ve seen is technology companies, financial companies. But over the past few years, we’re seeing that it’s moving across multiple industries: manufacturing, consulting services. So what we’re seeing is as marketing automation spreads across different markets, technology or software companies, or IT-driven companies we’re really leading the way. And I found that it’s because they’re looking that edge, that they’re looking to shorten their time to market that’s really driven it. But now it’s moving across almost ever industry I’m seeing lead scoring use right now.

Why do I need lead scoring?
If you’re a marketer that’s generating a handful of leads every month it really isn’t going to make as huge of an impact as an organization that’s generating lots of interest, lots of people. And so the companies who are embracing lead scoring, the reason why they’re doing it is they’re trying to get an edge. And the biggest, and most precious resource we have as leaders in this company is two things: it’s our time, and our organization energy.

As part of that, our energy is in the resources of people, it’s going to, in the resources of money. In this economy what I’m seeing is that more, and more companies are looking at lead scoring as a way to give them an edge so that they can maximize their energy. They’re maximizing their team’s effective selling time, and they’re also spending more time engaging people who actually want to be engaged. Because you’re able to measure someone’s engagement level with your content.

So in other words, to shorten it, lead scoring helps you know that there’s a valid business reason to connect with someone instead of guessing. And when you know that, it gives you a better edge in the marketplace to talk to the right people at the right time, and increase your likelihood of being relevant.

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The What, Who and Why of Lead Scoring [Video] is from Eloqua’s It’s All About Revenue, a Blog Covering Business To Business Marketing

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There’s a lot of speculation about whether social media’s explosive growth threatens email marketing. Perform a Google search on the subject and it might lead you to think the two are viscious enemies locked in mortal combat.

So we decided to look at the data to see whether social referrals are driving more traffic to brands’ websites and landing pages. We found that while social referrals are growing fast, email is still pulling in more eyeballs and traffic.

The data, which is based on five quarters of activity among 392 clients, shows that referrals from our customers’ top five social media sites are on a tear between Q4 of 2010 and 2011, jumping from an average of 2,133 visits per month to 9,191. That’s an increase of 331%!

But email continues to deliver the largest share of both impressions and visitors. For some emails just getting someone to open the email is of value. (Those reading this article from their inbox, for instance.) The average number of opened emails per month grew from 98,001 in Q4 of 2010 to 123,982 in Q4 of 2011 – a 27% increase. Click-throughs to the companies’ web properties rose from an average of 11,360 per month to 13,470 – a 19% increase.

If the data confirms anything, it’s the immense value of email and social. A link coming from Facebook, LinkedIn or StumbleUpon might be the result of a peer recommending a resource to the visitor.

But remember: a click-through on an email is the result of them receiving the email, opening the email and then following the provided link. That’s quite a commitment.

If marketers want to maximize the value of their campaigns and assets, they’ll need to explore new opportunities in social media while simultaneously improving their email marketing with tools like targeting and segmentation. So ignore the prophets of doom, and concentrate on creating great stuff.

Does Social Media Deliver More Traffic Than Email? is from Eloqua’s It’s All About Revenue, a Blog Covering Business To Business Marketing

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Has your inbox ever been plagued by a poorly made “sales email”?

You’re not alone.

Most of us have received one of those cringe-worthy emails from some anonymous seeming sales rep. The wrong name, the impersonal subject line (“XYZ” placeholder, anyone?), the comic sans font, we all know it when we see it.

In fact, a quick Google search for “worst sales email” yields a strong sampling of entertaining emails and customer rants. Sales emails play a critical role in finding opportunities, but not if the recipient is left shaking their head.

So here are three tips for how you can avoid ranking at the top of that “worst sales email” search.

1. Be Timely
“Time kills deals.” The faster you can get those leads to sales, the faster they can reach out, the more relevant you are. The formula is that simple. Setting up alerts that inform your reps when a prospect performs a specific action can help shorten the time it takes to respond.

2. Give Them Content
Whether it’s serving up a set of email templates or even sending them copy in a Word document, pre-formatted responses save sales from going to far afield.  Whitepapers, videos, case studies, and invitations – save them time and hassle of trying to create ‘marketing-messages’ on the fly.

3. Build Relationships
Serve up all of that juicy insight on how a buyer interacts with your website and marketing campaigns right within the CRM. The sales team will have the upper hand, and can tailor their conversations and build credibility.

Luckily, there are tools that enable sales to act fast without delivering emails with funky fonts. Why not help them make a good impression from the start!

Oh, and please share your “worst sales email” story. I know you have one.

How to Avoid Sending the Worst Sales Email is from Eloqua’s It’s All About Revenue, a Blog Covering Business To Business Marketing

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You know the feeling: Just when you think you have something (almost) all figured out, someone goes and blows up your self-image. As the person responsible for Eloqua’s content marketing efforts, that’s how I felt when reading Altimeter Group’s latest research: Content: The New Marketing Equation.

Turns out, however, illumination can be a very good feeling.

You see, today’s report, published by Rebecca Lieb, is filled with practical tips and heady observations for those just cutting their teeth on the practice, all the way up to forward-looking companies like Nestle (whose program, I was delighted to discover in the report, is run by one of the most influential figures in modern marketing practices, Pete Blackshaw). This accessible “content marketing for everyone” framework is central to the report – Lieb (and her researchers Zach Kirchner and Jaimy Szymanski) go so far as to apply an intuitive metaphor to a company’s content marketing maturity: Stand, Stretch, Walk, Jog, Run. (Eloqua’s own program was highlighted as the example of “Walk,” that is, a model characterized by strategy and processes.)

I won’t be so bold as to review the report. It’s relatively brief and written in Lieb’s signature “smart-but-not-haughty” style. Instead, I’ll share with you a few of the lessons I learned:

1. Conventional wisdom can be a trap. One blog, regardless of how compelling the articles are, isn’t necessarily the answer. For example, Indium created a whopping 73 blogs to accomplish its particular goals. (Note: We are sticking with “It’s All About Revenue” … don’t expect any new blogs from Eloqua.)
2. Culture isn’t limited to the marketing department. When I think about inspiring colleagues to participate in our content efforts, I think first about my colleagues in marketing. But a true content culture is pan-organizational. It involves everyone.
3. Writing isn’t (necessarily) storytelling. Certainly when we hired our corporate reporter, Jesse Noyes, we did so because he writes well, delivers quickly, and hates buzzwords. But Jesse’s real magic lies in his ability to tell stories. Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got until … an analyst report points it out for you.
4. There’s always another gear. Until reading this report, I’d considered the apex of content marketing to be the DeBeers “three months salary” guidelines – a remarkable program in which the supplier tells the buyer how much to spend (a lot) on their products. Well, it turns out, there’s another level entirely. Red Bull not only uses content marketing to move more hyper-caffeinated drinks, but it also has a content division (including a record label and print magazine) with its own P&L responsibility.

The report is embedded below. Consistent with the letter and spirit of the study, Altimeter has made it available for free.

How to Balance the Content Marketing Equation is from Eloqua’s It’s All About Revenue, a Blog Covering Business To Business Marketing

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Feel like you saw more web banners and online ads this past year? You’re not imagining things.

ComScore released its U.S. Digital Future in Focus for 2012 on Friday and it showed big brands are pushing online display ads hard. In the last quarter of 2011, 145 advertisers delivered more than 1 billion display ad each, a 38% increase over the year before. And more of them are appearing on your Facebook account.

Some usual suspects appear at the top of most ads for the year: AT&T (about 105.8 million), Experian (about 67.6 million) and Verizon (about 49.5 million). But Google broke through for the first time this year, delivering nearly 40.5 million online ad impressions.

The reason for this sudden rise, comScore explains, is the battery of products Google is marketing, which include Google Chrome, Google Offers and Google+. A quick look at Google’s most recent annual report shows the company recorded a $700 million increase in advertising and promotion this past year.

But the growth in online display advertising isn’t just due to Google’s deep pockets. It’s clear that advertisers like Facebook more than ever.

Facebook now accounts for 1 out of every 4 online display ads, accounting for over 1.3 trillion ad impressions in 2011, according to the comScore report. The social networking company far outpaces its nearest competitor Yahoo!.

One reason advertisers might be hitting up Facebook – as if its user base of 850 million wasn’t reason enough – is its stickiness. It accounted for nearly 15% of all time spent online in December.

Google might be spending more on online display ads, but it clearly plans to collect more. In January, Google CEO, Larry Page, said the company eventually expects to sell $5 billion in display advertising per year. In September, a Google VP said he thinks the online display advertising market will become a $200 billion industry.

With Yahoo! in a publicly weaker position, Google clearly wants to dig into Facebook’s ever larger slice of the pie.

From the point of view of a consumer, you can expect the barrage of online display ads to continue. From a business standpoint, it means standing out amid all that noise will become tougher.

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Facebook and Google Going Big on Online Display Ads is from Eloqua’s It’s All About Revenue, a Blog Covering Business To Business Marketing

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It’s so sad to see when two people who have so much in common – all the same interests, the same sense of humour, the same goals – never become a couple. The same heartbreak often occurs among sales and marketing teams.

This Valentine’s Day we have a few tips and tricks to help your sales and marketing departments to fall in love.  It should be so easy.  We just have to make them see the light on a few very common points….

Speaking the Same Language
In order for a romance to work, the communication lines have to be open. For sales and marketing this often means agreeing exactly on what qualifies as a “lead.”

Lead scoring can help bring them together on lead follow up. By setting a common set of criteria for what an ideal lead looks like, setting up a scoring system ensures only ‘sales-worthy’ leads make it into the hands of sales for follow up.  Sending over hot leads to sales and seeing success on those marketing-generated leads makes everyone happy.

Keep Them Warm
Absence is said to make the heart grow fonder. That doesn’t apply when it comes to keeping the heat between your organization and your leads.

With lead nurturing you can keep those leads close until they’re ready to buy. By creating a nurturing programme based on job function, job level and online behaviour, you can give prospects the next best piece of content to take them along their buyer’s journey to close. In turn, sales will love marketing for sending over prepared buyers.

Giving the Gift of Enablement
Nothing makes sales and marketing more compatible than their shared goals. So when marketing enables sales to prospect on their own it deepens the relationship.

By plugging in marketing automation with CRM, you can provide sales with a rich set of marketing information, giving sales visibility into which prospects are visiting your web site (and how often) and what whitepapers they are downloading. Marketing helps do what they do best – close deals.

This is just the first blush of a romance. For more detailed information on how to make the love between sales and marketing blossom, visit our booth (C10) at Technology for Marketing & Advertising conference in London on February 28-29. And hear how McAfee Inc. sparked a sales and marketing romance at the ‘Email, Mobility, and Analytics Theatre’ from 12:30 – 13:00 on February 29.

How to Spark a Romance Between Sales and Marketing is from Eloqua’s It’s All About Revenue, a Blog Covering Business To Business Marketing

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If you send every “lead” to sales, regardless of quality, they will have to kiss a lot of frogs to find the prince. Not everyone who fills out a form, attends a webinar or clicks through on one of your emails should be passed to sales.  Marketers have to evaluate buyer fit (Do they map to your ideal customer profile?) and buyer behavior (Have they shown interest in what you sell?).

What constitutes buyer fit and intent differs for every company. Lead scoring makes evaluation scalable and automated so the ready prospects go to sales, and others get nurtured. But even with scoring and nurturing today, you should have a follow-up formula. That next touch can help advance leads to the next stage.

Here are 5 lead conversion tips to do just that.

1. Know Your Buyer
The way you follow up with a lead can, and should, vary dramatically for prospects at different stages of the buying process. A new contact that registers for a webinar should get a different follow-up email than someone who is already talking to sales.

Tip: Use batch signatures when following up with contacts from events and webinars. This allows you to start a one-to-one dialog. The sender for open opportunities could be the rep they’re already doing business with and customers can get their communications from their account manager.

2. Know Your Goal
Only have four fields of data on your prospect and need more detail to score and route them?  Are you trying to understand buyer intent so you can drive them to a specific asset? Having a firm handle on what you’re trying to achieve will dictate tone and call to action.

Tip: Progressive profiling is a great way to collect additional data without increasing friction.  But you might consider if gating the asset on a follow up email is worthwhile. If understanding buyer fit and intent is your primary goal, then a second form can help. Consider how progressive profiling or gating maps to your nurture strategy.

3. Share Your Follow Up
If you’re using batch signatures or if your sales team is following up directly with leads from a certain program, make sure they know the follow up campaign.  This will help you avoid bumping into each other and that reps know the context.

Tip: Work lock step with the sales team to avoid unnecessary collisions.  The sales team should understand your lead management processes and what part of lead conversion marketing controls. This will help them engage the right people.

4. Follow the Golden Rule
The Golden Rule in marketing is relevance.  Take the time to customize your follow-up emails. Customize your form auto responders to match any search or display campaigns. That little bit of contextual relevance can go a long way.

Tip: Mention the name of the asset they downloaded, or the webinar or event they attended. Provide additional assets in your follow up that are relevant to that topic.  Think of how Amazon.com recommends stuff based on past purchase history.

5. Respect the Buyer’s Journey
In B2B sales, it’s hard to find any two buying processes that look exactly alike. Unpacking past wins can help divine trends in the buying process and automate the delivery of key content.

Tip: Even if you’re already nurturing your buyers, make sure you’re also analyzing the results of your nurture program. Use this information to optimize your nurtures. Just like your follow up campaigns, nurturing works best when it’s tailored to buyer role and stage.

Of course, we’re just scratching the surface here. If you want more tips, join me for this free webinar tomorrow on how to turn webinar leads into closed sales. It’s the perfect Valentine’s gift to give yourself!

5 Lead Conversion Tips That Work for Any Marketing Program is from Eloqua’s It’s All About Revenue, a Blog Covering Business To Business Marketing

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Goals are personal. As marketers we all have different ideas of what we need to accomplish.

But when charting out gaps and room for improvement, it’s nice to know what your peers are most concerned about. If you put improving how you manage your contacts or measure marketing effectiveness among your top goals for this year, don’ worry. You’re not alone.

Our Revenue Lifecycle Assessment is a series of questions designed to assess current marketing maturity level in relation to an ordered set of priorities to identify where there is the most opportunity for improvement to meet your goals.

So, when looking at this chart, even though the practice area Lead Assignment is actually ranked as a very high priority (3/4 score), marketers also rank their level of maturity as very high, so the opportunity for improvement is lowest.

Conversely, measuring Funnel Stage Conversion is a very high priority, and marketers rank their own maturity as very low, so this is an area that requires additional effort.

Success means knowing your goals as well as where you are in relation to those goals.  Be aware of high priority areas of improvement while celebrating your strengths.

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What Should Worry B2B Marketers Most This Year? [CHART] is from Eloqua’s It’s All About Revenue, a Blog Covering Business To Business Marketing