Results in detail:

Improving content marketing strategy took nearly 40% of the vote.  I was surprised by the amount of votes content received.  However, the importance of content strategy to lead generation cannot be understated.  Consider:

• If you’re advertising or implementing direct mail; it’s the message that drives engagement.
• Paid search for lead generation success relies on good content to attract clicks; and good content to convert clicks into web form conversions.
• Your website’s content is the key to keeping website visitors on your site and persuading those visitors to engage. 
• Great downloadable content that solves business problems generates leads; that simple.
• Great nurturing content that tells a compelling story with the goal to shorten sales cycles is the key to increased sales opportunities.
• Great content is the fuel to social media messaging, sharing, and engagement.
• The key to SEO results is content; the right keywords; the right meta descriptions, and the right keywords in your site.

In essence, great content marketing encompasses all of the other choices in the poll.

Marketing Automation doesn’t work properly without a well-thought out lead nurturing strategy and content map. Search Engine Optimization is all about content; and content written in buyer’s language. Remember, with SEO, it’s not about what you do, rather it’s about what your buyer’s queries are in search engines to find your solutions. Pipeline Conversion rate optimization; from landing pages to the follow-up sales process, all work better when content is being distributed on an ongoing basis to your prospects. Social Media Engagement is all about content- your trust and credibility via social media channels is what drives your social media effectiveness.

What do you think of the results above?  Do you agree?  What would you vote for and why?

Below are a variety of books that I consider the cream of the crop in b2b marketing and lead management.  I’ve built my practice utilizing key points made in each book in addition to my own lead generation experiences.  I would look forward to discussion on any books you think should be on my “hall of fame” list.  Books are listed by funnel category. Click the book images to be hyperlinked to Amazon.

General B2B Marketing & Lead Generation

Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs

Brian Halligan, Dharmesh Shah

The original book from Hubspot that started the transition from outbound marketing and push advertising to inbound marketing; the process of making prospects find you.

Maximizing Lead Generation: The Complete Guide for B2B Marketers

Ruth P. Stevens

The definitive overview of lead generation strategies and tactics.  The book covers the entire buying process including lead capturing, content, offers, lead nurturing, and measurement.

Lead Generation for the Complex Sale: Boost the Quality and Quantity of Leads to Increase Your ROI

Brian Carroll

One of the first books to discuss the complex buying cycle of B2B and how to align sales and marketing to engage and nurture prospects.  A great overview on how to keel leads in the pipeline.

Content Marketing

eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale

Ardath Albee

A great complement to Brian Carroll’s book. Ardath goes deeper into developing buyer personas and matching content to buyers throughout their own buying cycles.  It’s probably the first book to marry content marketing with lead management strategy.

Get Content Get Customers: Turn Prospects into Buyers with Content Marketing

Joe Pulizzi, Newt Barrett

The original primer that reviews content marketing best practices and why content delivers leads and nurtures them into customers.

Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business 

Ann Handley, C.C Chapman

The practical guide to developing marketing content that people care about, and how to implement that content via social media and demand generation

Search Marketing

Internet Marketing: An Hour a Day

Matt Bailey

An amazing, practical guide to attracting prospects to your website and how to convert them into leads and sales.  Matt emphasizes search engine optimization and website usability strategies with the goal to attract quality traffic.

Keyword Intelligence: Keyword Research for Search, Social, and Beyond 

Ron Jones

A newer book covering researching and planning the right keywords for your website, SEO, paid search, and social media.  A great step-by-step guide on keyword strategy.

Outsmarting Google: SEO Secrets to Winning New Business

Evan and Bradley Bailyn

A smart practical guide to implementing search engine optimization. The book is packed with tips and tricks to get your site to its highest position possible. The guide describes proven techniques that reflect comprehensive testing and extraordinary insight into Google’s secret rules.

Advanced Google AdWords

Brad Geddes

One of the best overviews of planning, implementing, and optimizing paid search and display campaigns using Google Adwords.  Makes complicated processes easy to understand.

A Strategic Guide to Lead Generation using Pay-Per-Click Search Marketing

Paul Mosenson

Ok fine; I included my own ebook on paid search, as I cover search marketing for lead generation, rather than other books that discuss e-commerce approaches.  Packed with useful strategies and tactics, the book will show you my approach to increasing conversions, building revenue and increasing ROI utilizing this important channel.

Media

There aren’t any newer media planning or digital media books anymore worthy of my hall-of-fame, so I’ll showcase two from the old days!

Advertising Media Planning, Seventh Edition

Jack Sissors, Roger Baron

The original and best book on practical media planning and buying concepts and how to choose, purchase, and analyze all forms of media. Updated to include online.

Advertising on the Internet, 2nd Edition

Robbin Zeff, Brad Aronson

Published in 1999; still my favorite book on display advertising- choosing mediums, research, targeting strategies, tools, and measurement.  Many concepts still exist today.

Social Media

I know; I know- we all have our favorites.  Here are 4 that nicely cover B2B social media and social media for the enterprise.

The New Rules of Marketing & PR: How to Use Social Media, Online Video, Mobile Applications, Blogs, News Releases, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly

David Meerman Scott

Still the one-of-a-kind, pioneering guide, offering a step-by-step action plan for harnessing the power of the Internet to communicate with buyers directly, raise online visibility, and increase sales.

No Bullshit Social Media: The All-Business, No-Hype Guide to Social Media Marketing

Jason Falls, Erik Dekkers

The title says it all.  Rather than go through philosophy and theory; the book is a practical no-nonsense approach to use social media to drive leads and sales. 

Social Marketing to the Business Customer: Listen to Your B2B Market, Generate Major Account Leads, and Build Client Relationships 

Paul Gillen, Eric Scwartzman

One of the best books on B2B social media.  The book covers how to implement social media into your business, how to utilize social media in the buying funnel, and how to create relationships that lead to sales.

The Executive’s Guide to Enterprise Social Media Strategy: How Social Networks Are Radically Transforming Your Business

Mike Barlow, David B. Thomas

This is a thorough overview on developing and executing successful social media strategies supporting collaboration, teamwork and communication in modern corporations and the enterprise.

Conversion Architecture

Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions

Tim Ash

The first and one of the best guides on the science of turning visitors into leads through practical landing page optimization techniques. The books is packed with case studies, practical strategies, a detailed review of the Google Website Optimizer tool

Conversion Optimization: The Art and Science of Converting Prospects to Customers

Khalid Saleh, Ayat Shulairy

A great practical guide on driving conversions. The book covers design, usability, and analytics on your site to increase your buyer-to-visitor ratio, whether you’re involved with marketing or designing a large ecommerce site, or managing a modest online operation. 

Lead Nurturing

Think Outside the Inbox: The B2B Marketing Automation Guide

David Cummings, Adam Blitzer

A solid overview of marketing automation principles and best practices that drive revenue growth.  From the folks at Pardot.

Digital Body Language

Steven Woods

From the cofounder of Eloqua, the largest marketing automation platform for the enterprise, Woods discusses the complex B2B lead-to-sales process, demand generation strategy, and of course the lead nurturing process.

The Definitive Guide to Lead Nurturing

Jon Miller

From the cofounder of Marketo, the fastest rising marketing automation platform, comes this ultimate guide and workbook on how to implement lead nurturing strategy and content that shortens sales cycles.

Demand Generation and Lead Process

Balancing the Demand Equation

Adam Needles

Probably the newest book in my hall-of-fame, but worthy.  Adam smartly uses industry data and buyer 2.0 trends to explain the proper design of a demand generation engine including how marketing and sales need to align themselves to make the engine work.

The Truth About Leads

Dan McDade

Leads are our lifeblood.  Dan from PointClear gives B2B firms practical advice on how sales and marketing aligned can drive revenue and manage the lead generation process.  Dan gives interesting insights on lead quality and sales team management.

Web Analytics and ROI Measurement

Marketing ROI: The Path to Campaign, Customer, and Corporate Profitability

James Lenskold

ROI is today’s key business tool for measuring how effectively money was spent–yet few marketing managers receive any ROI training at all. This classic show marketing executives at every level how to use ROI to support their strategic decision making.

Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity

Avinash Kaushik

From Google’s greatest analytics thought leader, Avinash neatly explains how to take all of that analytics data and transform it into actionable outcomes and insights that will lead to improved website optimization.

Well that’s it; my top 25.  As marketing and sales professionals, we always need to keep educating ourselves and learning new approaches that contribute to quality lead generation, demand generation, and funnel optimization strategies that contribute to increased sales closes and revenue.  My suggestion; get away from the computer for awhile and read a book,  then take what you learn and apply to your own business.

Or not.

Steve Ballmer’s opening-day keynote last week apparently conjured up a little déjà vu, with many of his product announcements having been heard before – more than once.  There is even some speculation in the press and blogosphere that Microsoft’s decision to exit may not have been entirely its own.

What is interesting, though, is Microsoft’s official explanation for ending its starring role. In a blog article posted in December, Frank X. Shaw, the company’s communication chief, wrote that the time had come, “because our product news milestones generally don’t align with the show’s January timing.”

Now, on one hand this sounds like boilerplate rationalization. Sort of like the politician who says he won’t seek reelection because, “I want to spend more time with my family.” After all, Apple said exactly what Microsoft did when they pulled out of MacWorld.

On the other hand, Microsoft just might be on to something. And it’s something that applies particularly well to B2B vendors.

Times keep changing

In his post, Frank posed some questions. Here are two:

• “Are we adjusting to the changing dynamics of our customers?”
• “Are we doing something because it’s the right thing to do, or because ‘it’s the way we’ve always done it’?”

These are questions that all B2B communicators ought to ask themselves and their management – for a couple of reasons.

First, even if you weren’t at CES competing for attention with 3,000 other companies, you may not be getting heard. If you’re saying the same things you’ve been saying for years, the message has lost its glitz. Especially if they are the same things your competitors have been saying all along too. Often, the reason for not changing the patter is, “we don’t have time” or “we can’t reach consensus on something new.”  It usually boils down to a variation of, “the way we’ve always done it.”

Second, it’s not always obvious that you’re falling behind. It doesn’t matter whether you have a Twitter, Facebook or YouTube presence. What matters is whether you’re serving up the right information. That’s because B2B buyers have grown more sophisticated in the ways they educate themselves, select vendors and make purchasing decisions. So even if you have a Website, videos, webinars, a blog and white papers, you should continuously ask if what you are saying is being understood, leaving an impression and making a difference. If it isn’t, it’s time to adjust.

On your own terms

In the ideal, you want to communicate to an audience of decision makers, consultants, industry thought leaders and influencers who you have a stake in convincing. Hopefully, these are the same ones who have a stake in what you are selling.

Today’s marketing and publishing tools let you do that.

Just like Microsoft, you don’t have to depend on the kindness of the press. Instead, you control the timing, rhythm, distribution channels and content of all your messaging. Even if you’re part of a small or medium sized company. And you can tailor your messages in response to the questions your audiences are asking. But to do that, you need to continually stay up on what’s important to them.

So who knows whether CES is looking for a new headliner with more cool or if the tradeshow circuit no longer fits Microsoft’s strategy. Either way, the lesson is the same: Customer expectations and behavior are changing. So if you want to stay relevant, you have to change too. Perhaps in some fundamentally dramatic way.

Frank’s two questions are a good place to start.

I was joined by Anna Talerico from Ion Interactive, Chris Goward from Wider Funnel, Justin England from ReachForce, Greg Ott from Demandbase, and Bob Leonard from acSellerant. Among the topics discussed:

• Linking prospects to a landing page, microsite, or website, and which direction makes sense
• How to implement A/B tests and what factors to consider
• The content and design elements of a landing page that drives conversions
• A review of offers: downloads vs. free trials/offers
• Web form technology and structure- how many fields, and how to gather business intelligence with limited form fields
• Measuring conversions and what to look for in your analytics

The 45 minute roundtable can be heard here:  Conversion Rate Discussion

Let’s do some math:  Let’s say your average landing page visitor to email/lead capture conversion rate is 15%.  Let’s assume your average sale per customer is $5,000. Let’s increase your landing page conversions by as little as 5% and see the outcome of your potential sales, assuming we’re using Sirius Decisions best-in-class pipeline conversion rates:

So we have 9 more sales in this scenario, and that’s an increase in sales revenue of $45,000.  Just be a 5% increase in conversions; all other metrics being equal.  So while you spend all that effort on SEO, social media, paid search, email marketing, and online display, if your landing pages don’t align with the user need, and you make it hard for prospects to find your web form, you will lose leads, and that means visits to competitors.

If you’d like to learn more about our conversion management approach, click here.  Then, think about your own digital destinations, and think, what if we increased our own conversions by 5% (or more!).  

Let’s look at the mind-set of potential buyers of a b2b complex solution (with 6-18 month buying cycle, provided they enter the funnel in the first place).

I use search engines because:

• I’ve uncovered a business need, and want to research solutions

SEO marries the user queries with my solutions

Paid search attracts immediate inquiries with promotional messages

I use social media because:

• I want to ask my connections about their experiences with potential solutions
• I want to learn more about what other firms are offering to solve my needs.

This is the essence of inbound marketing; designing a mechanism that encourages warm leads that have identified business problems to engage with your solutions and submit their email addresses to gain further insight via content or free trials. 

What if Your Prospect Is Unaware of the Need; or is Not Ready to Search for a Solution?

Remember advertising?  Your marketing strategy still needs a component to target potential buyers not in your lead funnel.  The message strategy has to be different than paid search.  The mission is to convince a prospect they have a need, and that your firm can provide a unique solution to that need.  Once you create the demand for your solution, then the opportunity exists for the prospect to enter your funnel.  This is where strategic advertising comes in, and as a former Media Director, I am well-versed in advertising/media strategy as well as inbound lead generation tactics.  So let’s do a quick review of advertising tactics for lead generation:

In the computer category, SRDS lists 92 domestic publications targeting all levels of IT and technology readers.  Let’s look at Information Week as an example.  Besides the usual color and b/w print ads, you can market your solutions on their technology portal:

http://createyournextcustomer.techweb.com/media-kit/

There’s a wealth of opportunities:

• Community sponsorships
• Digital issue advertising
• Event sponsorships
• Content syndication
• eNewsletter sponsorships
• Digital banner ads
• iPad sponsorships
• Tech Center sponsorships

In fact, SRDS lists 340 digital websites in the information technology category where laser-focused digital advertising can occur.  The key to lead generation is the message.

Because audiences are likely to be outside the funnel, your advertising message needs to promote informational content or webinars, explaining to audiences how a solution such as yours can contribute to their bottom-line cost efficiency and productiveness.  Advertising’s job is to persuade.  Your message needs to link prospects to a landing page, like paid search, so that prospects can easily sign up, register, or download.  Once the lead is captured, the prospect enters the funnel, because your content helped identify a lead, or offered a solution to the need they may have identified.

Testing of course needs to occur.  You need to test publication, digital property, marketing tactic, and message.  You need to tag all digital messages so that analytics can measure the visitors. Once tagged, you can measure the cost-per-conversion, and make strategic tweaks along the way to optimize your media and message strategy.

Please keep in mind that your cost-per-conversion goals should not compare to paid search, since paid search audiences are a little further into the funnel.  But you should still track ROI by estimating your pipeline conversion rates and evaluating lead performance via analytics.

Here’s a creative lead generating ad from Intel.  Typically your ad should link to a landing page, but Intel embeds the form right into their ad. Lead captured; may the nurturing begin.

In summary, although social media, paid search, and SEO are mission-critical for lead generation success, don’t forget the power of persuasion. And distributing that message via targeted channels that your audiences still use, whether it be print, online portals, or direct mail.  Convince target audiences they need to update their current systems or process.  That’s the history of b2b marketing, isn’t it?

Everybody does list-format blog posts this time of year.  Thought I’d give it a shot as well, running through a master list of “resolutions” as preparation for improving your inbound marketing and lead generation strategies for 2012 and beyond.  Consider these as the stepping stones for optimal business growth by aligning marketing & sales, and developing a content strategy designed to generate leads and nurture them into sales.

Process:

1. Set your lead generation campaign goals. How many qualified leads.  Cost-per-lead. Inquiry-to-lead conversion rate.  Lead-to-sale conversion rate.  Revenue-per-lead. Campaign ROI. 
2. Make sure marketing and sales understand what constitutes a quality lead so that marketing can do its job generating and qualifying sale-able leads. 
3. Have a sales-level agreement in place to define when leads are routed to sales based on their qualification status or lead scores.
4. Look at your pipeline conversion rates; find inconsistencies by total company, sales regions, sales people, and work to improve sales process throughout the funnel
5. Understand the power of social media and search engines in the buying process; and do consider more time/resources/financial allocation towards inbound marketing and demand generation strategies that attract prospects to your funnel.
6. Review your marketing budgets line item by line item, and review activities that are considered unnecessary spending or have not worked to support your brand or lead generation strategy, and remove/optimize those older approaches.
7. Develop or substantiate your brand. Evaluate your position in the marketplace. Do a SWOT analysis.  Reassure that the solutions you provide satisfy your prospects needs.
8. Restate your company objectives; and reassure all of your messaging and sales approaches support those objectives. Those objectives include revenue, market share, branding, and lead generation objectives.
9. Laser-focus your solutions to the target audiences most likely to buy from you. Limit waste messaging, and present a clear case to the key stakeholders who have purchase influence.
10. Evaluate your resources. Do you have the right people to execute a full-fledged lead management program?  Consider outsourcing to lead generation consultants who can complement your team; not replace them.
11. Evaluate current media mix for lead generation.  Reassess and optimize media placements, direct marketing tactics, trade show leads; traditional/digital media mix; Continue to integrate social media into your mix.
12. Energize and be committed.  An “update” on your sales-marketing structure needs to take place in order to serve prospects better.  Marketing and Sales need to be aligned more than ever.  Make it so, and commit to teamwork.

Audience:

1.  Take a hard look at your targets. Define who are the final decision makers as well as the influencers. Understand each has their own media habits, needs, and drivers to purchase, and that outreach and message strategies have to be targeted specifically to those audiences.
2. Start classifying your targets in detail.  What their needs are. What their duties are. What their business challenges are.  What kinds of content do they engage with? How long are their buying cycles?  What are their preferred communication channels? What keywords do they use to research your solutions? This is called Buyer Persona development.
3. Consider market research to further identify the needs of your buyer personas which leads to a message road map that all your communications needs to follow.
4. Develop a content strategy that focuses on key messages that resonate with the buyer personas of your targets. By matching messages with your targets; increased engagement with your solutions occur, and that means more leads.
5. Also, have your sales people speak to their clients.  Ask them questions; why they purchased? Who they considered? How they found you? Gather marketing intelligence and gain feedback from those who do business with you.

Content:

1. Prepare a detailed content roadmap that reviews what your key messages are and how those messages will be communicated into the marketplace.
2. Match those messages with your personas pain points; what do they need, and how do you fill those needs?  What messaging contributes to the “persuasiveness” of your solutions?
3. Tell a story through the buying funnel.  Guide audiences with appropriate topics from initial interest through problem ID through solution comparison through expertise example to competitive advantage and then to validation.  Each stage has its own content message and delivery strategy that needs to be followed.
4. Ensure you have the resources and staff that knows how to write, design, and produce engaging content for sharing and thought leadership, such as white papers, case studies, ebooks, and articles.
5. Consider audio and video into your content.  Testing the distribution of messaging via sound and vision can have an impact on message engagement and conversion.
6. Use the SEO process as an integral first step to developing your content map. Specifically, the right keywords that your targets search for have to be part of your message and content assets, your website, and your blog.
7. Have a content and promotional plan for your webinar, virtual trade show, and online events. Engaging messaging and topics attract registrations.  Follow-up messages continue the nurturing process and promote a strong call-to-action.
8. Make sure all content has proper sharing integrations so that your messages can be emailed, saved, tweeted, and shared via social media channels.
9. Test and measure your content using tools such as Google Analytics, social media insight analytic platforms, and URL tracking such as Bit.ly, and determine which kinds of content via which channels bring more traffic to your site, and engage most audiences.
10. Utilize marketing automation tools to manage your lead generation efforts and content distribution strategy.  By automating targeted content delivery, distributed to prospects based on their behavior and buying cycle phase, increased engagement occurs, and that means higher lead conversions and increased sales opportunities. This is the basis of lead nurturing.

Conversion Optimization:

1. Don’t avoid the most important element of lead generation; optimizing your landing pages so those visitors are strategically persuaded to donate their email address in exchange for content, registration, or trial. 
2. Assure that the offer is clearly visible, and that the benefits of doing business with your firm are clearly stated.
3. Utilize optimization tools to perform A/B tests to ensure your messages are being communicated properly and conversion rates are being optimized.
4. Make sure your landing pages are focused on a singular topic, and are aligned with your paid search ad, banner ad, or social media promotion.
5. Limit the number of fields in your online submission form; but ask only for the most important information. Inquiries can be qualified later during the follow-up process; attracting inquiries is the priority.

I could go on and on with preparation and optimization tips and tweaks, but if you commit to a lead generation and lead management process, your revenue will increase and your market share will rise. Follow the content road map and have a message strategy for a.) your website, b.) your landing pages, c.) your lead attraction content  d.) your blog  and social media e.) your lead nurturing plan, and f.) your email and newsletter content. Without proper planning, your message approach won’t be optimized for lead generation. 

There are two classifications of this type of technology:

1. Website ID:  Tracking which firms or IP addresses visit your site
2. Smart Form:  Tracking which firms or IP addresses fill out your web submit forms.

How it Works:

When someone visits your site, a javascript tracking code shoots a cookie to the user’s computer. Analytics packages do this all the time to measure website performance.  Taking it to the next level, tools and platforms exist that cross-reference the IP visitor with company ID if known, and in the case of a web form, prospect ID.  Many of the visitors may come from general ISPs which are not useful, but when the firms are identified, that’s when it’s advisable to strike when “the irons are hot”

Because of how cookie’s work, among the additional intelligence that can be gathered are what keywords visitors used to find your site, what location (so you can assign sales reps), time zone, how many pages visited, what pages were visited, etc. Because of that’s gathered, this technology can be a powerful tool for engaging prospects, although one could say it’s a fine line between capturing prospect behavior and privacy concerns. But again, this information is tied to a company visit; not a user visit.  The tools make it easier to ID companies and prospects who work at those companies, by combining those IP lookups and visiting companies with data from various online contact databases and LinkedIn, therefore making it easier to contact the “who” rather than the “what.”

Here are some screen shots of the kinds of information you can track from various platforms:

This is VisitorTrack, a program developed by netFactor Corporation.  Here, you can see the types of information gathered purely from a site visit, and what additional intelligence can be gathered.  I like the search engine and search phrase features.  You can capture contact info from Jigsaw and LinkedIn, and then easily contact those visitors or potential prospects.  Sales people can be alerted immediately when activity occurs.  JumpLead, Leadlander, LeadsExplorer and ProspectVision have similar functionality.

 Here’s an example of Loopfuse Marketing Automation. Here I can see how people from CDW Computer Centers navigated my website or clicked on email links via my lead nurturing efforts.  Additional intelligence is available via integrations with Hoovers and Jigsaw.  Plus you can research trigger events with Google.

Here’s ReachForce.  The issue here is improving conversion rates while capturing intelligence.  By limiting form fields, conversions increase.  The downside of limiting for fields is the lack of prospect intelligence gathered. That’s where ReachForce and DemandBase (below) fill in the missing “fields” by matching the company name of the visitor via form field with much more information on that visitor, compiled through numerous online sources and databases.

DemandBase has a similar structure.  By only asking for just a few required fields, additional intelligence is gathered via IP addresses.

DemandBase integrates with Analytics packages and Salesforce as well, allowing you to track website activity of classifications of companies.  This data allows you to make recommendations on the kinds of companies that are most engaged with your website or landing pages.

So What Can You Do With This?

Well, a number of things.

• Identify the types of firms visiting your websites, landing pages, and blogs via search marketing and social media, and focus on the industries or company sizes most engaged with your site and content.
• For straight visitor ID opportunities, if you reach out to a prospect, you do have to be careful.  Although these audiences visited your pages, they may not be ready for engagement and thus could be in the research only phase of their solution search, otherwise they would have submitted their email address.  How you structure your follow-up needs to be treated delicately. Be honest with the prospect. Mention you use a tool that tracks company visits, and you just wanted to learn about the intent.  Feel free to offer these prospects a white paper, and if they accept, put them into a nurturing sequence. The search engine keyword identification can be a valuable tool to guide the conversion.
• For Webform ID opportunities, these audiences are a real inquiry, since they submitted an email address for a paper, demo, registration, or trial.  The smart form technology allows you to specifically engage with the prospect, have better conversations, and allows an easier qualification or lead scoring process based on keyword, company size, industry type, and other information gathered without having to rely on web form fields.

The technologies described above are very useful tools for both marketing and sales.  By gathering intelligence on visitors, the time saved in lead qualification is evident.  I just touched on the tip of the iceberg, so please visit each solution for more information.  I would be happy to discuss them in detail as a reseller, and represent you if there’s a technology you’d like to consider purchasing.

A-    Analytics.  All activity of the lead generation process needs to be measured via a robust analytics program.  Specific dashboards exist to manage each step of the funnel; from prospect attraction to conversion to lead close.  By optimizing website and landing page traffic; conversion lifts will increase.

B-    Buyer Personas.  Its one thing to know the demographics of your target audience; but it’s another thing to understand what makes your prospects make business decisions to purchase; the pain points; business needs; drivers; purchase cycles.  Without this information, you can’t possibly target your audience’s needs properly with the right content that satisfies those needs.

C-    Conversion Architecture.  Driving clicks to your websites and landing pages do not persuade visitors to become leads unless the right elements are in place to optimize conversions.  Design, content, layout, trust factors, and web form design all contribute to the positive or negative lift.  Don’t take conversion strategy lightly.

D-    Demand Generation.  These are all those activities that together drive interest and engagement in your firm’s products or services.  Advertising, public relations, direct marketing, webinars, trade shows, and social media all work together to attract audiences to your solutions.  What’s your plan? 

E-    Email Marketing.  Email is a critical element of marketing, providing an opportunity to promote follow-up content to prospects.  A subject line, content, design, and offers all need to be continually tested for optimization.  Your email platform needs to be robust enough to manage audience segments and provide analytic tools to monitor your tests.

F-    Funnel Optimization.  Where marketing and sales need to work together as leads proceed through the funnel.  Nurturing content, social media, and sales/follow-up approaches all need to work in sync to ensure leads do not leak out of the funnel.  Marketing Automation is a platform that is key to funnel optimization and marketing/sales alignment.

G-   Google.  What else can G be?  Marketing on the search engine, optimizing for rankings, and participation on Google+.  Whether it be the noun or the verb Google; managing the search engine and its properties are essential for lead generation.  

H-   Headline.  Took me awhile to think of this one; but whether it is your website, landing page, blog post, or content, the headline of the message is what drives prospects to read further and engage with your solution.  Of course, SEO and keywords within the headline are important considerations as well.

I-    Inbound Marketing.   Inbound marketing is the combination of marketing tactics that draw traffic to your digital destination when prospects search for your solutions.  So pay-per-click, social media, and SEO are the key strategies for inbound marketing and when optimized, will benefit you in the long-run, and keep prospects away from your competitors.

J-   Jump Page.  Commonly known as landing pages or microsites, jump pages are unique web pages designed to complement an advertising or paid search campaign to promote an offer, survey, or promotion for lead capture.  When these pages aren’t optimized to its fullest, bounce rates increase, and conversions decrease.

K-   KISS.  Keep It Simple Stupid.  When it comes to content marketing and website copy, don’t get too complicated with technical jargon and long content.  Prospects are busy, and they need to be convinced in the benefits of your solutions in less than 10 seconds, or goodbye prospect.

L-    Lead Nurturing.  Nurturing is the concept of communication to prospects that are not ready to buy, with relevant and interesting content, with the goal to shorten their buying cycles because of the solutions you are reminding them of. Lead nurturing content must be dynamically sent to prospects wherever they are in the buying process, from educational messages to validation messages.

M-   Marketing Automation.  This growing platform is the essential ingredient in managing the funnel optimization process, by combining demand generation tools and landing pages, with form development, lead scoring, lead nurturing, analytics, and CRM integration.  If you’re serious about revenue growth and campaign management, a marketing automation tool is essential.

N-   NuSpark Marketing.  Alright-a plug for my lead management firm. (o:

O-   Optimization.  Search engine optimization as you know is the process of writing and structuring your website with keywords so that Google indexes your site and makes a determination on page rank.  By continuing to optimize (back links, fresh content) high quality prospects looking for solutions will come to you and not your competition.

P-   Paid Search.  Paid search is the most compelling and quickest method to generate leads via search engines.  The right keywords, ads, landing pages, and bids all contribute to a successful campaign, but always be testing.  Our paid search for lead generation ebook is available for download and explains in great detail how to run successful campaigns.

Q-   Qualification.  Prospects that download content or register for webinars are not “leads” yet, but are just names.  A sound qualification process via lead scoring or other means will save sales time and effort, because marketing is only sending sales those leads that reach a certain criteria under BANT guidelines (budget, authority, need, timeframe) or website/email content behavior.

R-    A tie: Revenue and ROI.  That’s what this is all about; optimizing the entire lead generation and funnel activity processes to increase revenue and improve marketing ROI. By avoiding optimizing some of the tactics suggested in this post, your revenue growth will suffer.

S-    Social Media.  If you know your audience uses social media for buying research, then you need to be here in some fashion.  That doesn’t mean every channel, but focus your time on those channels where you’re comfortable your audience spends their time as well.  Before you get started, or if you are already using this group of channels, have a magnetic content strategy, participate in discussions, learn the tools, keyword your profiles, listen to your brand, and have a measurement strategy that includes business KPIs. (Hey, that’s another K)

T-     Telephone.  Looking for a creative way to touch base on mobile and tablet marketing, so the word is Telephone!  Many business audiences when they travel use their smartphones and tablets for email and research; so your websites and emails need to be optimized for all platforms, devices, and operating systems.  Location-based marketing platforms are growing.  Avoid it, and get left behind.  (Testing is another T word that’s just as important; always be testing to optimize your lead generation performance).

U-    Usability.  The user experience of a website or landing page is just as mission critical as the content.  Ease of navigation; logical navigation, and an optimal path from home page to call-to-action contributes greatly to conversion lift.  Such conversion tactics as live chat and short web forms enhance lift; and that means more sales opportunities.

V-    Variety of Content. Content comes in a variety of formats; white papers, articles, case studies, webinars, podcasts, videos, ebooks, blog posts, Slideshare presentations, etc. You want to make sure your content is relevant to the target buyer personas, but also prepared in the formats your audiences most prefer.  Content can be repurposed across channel as well.  Have a content strategy in place, mapping the content to your audiences; and have a lead generation AND a lead nurturing content calendar. Bottom line, engaging content with relevant keywords in your buyers language is what drives leads and conversions.

W-  Website.  The website is the most important first impression a prospect will engage with and determine whether a call to sales is worthwhile.  Good websites combine relevant keyword-friendly content, smart-clean design, and proper usability and conversion architectures that guide that prospect into your website and persuade that prospect that you are indeed the solution that satisfies his business needs.   If your bounce rates are high (over 40%) and your site engagement is low (pages per visit, time on site), we have a problem and we need to optimize.

X-    Exercise.  (Best I can do).  You think well when you have consistent exercise; and you’ll feel better too.  When your mind and body is refreshed, you can do your best thinking, and that means continually having the energy to be creative AND analytical when optimizing your marketing/sales funnel and managing all the tasks involved with proper lead generation activity.  Don’t work all day; take some time for good health- physical and mental.

Y-    Yes.  This one is about having a positive attitude when designing a lead management system.  Whether you’re limited by time, resources, effort, or management buy-in on your solutions, stay positive, and continue to problem-solve.  There are many tools, platforms, and people ready to step in to help if need be.  Stay focused; praise your co-workers, and continue to work as a team. Positive results will occur. Think “Yes.”

Z-    ZZZZZZZ.  As a follow-up to exercising and also managing your time and priorities in a busy day, also get good rest.  A good night’s sleep refreshes your mind, sharpens your thinking. and gets you ready for the next day; ready for more lead management optimization efforts. 

As you just read, there are many elements to developing a proper funnel optimization and lead generation system.  I would love to hear more about what suggestions you have, as alternatives to mine.  I need a good “N” for example.  Otherwise, thanks for reading!

In its simplest form, segmentation is the process of sorting the names in your lead database into neat little piles. Not unlike what you do on laundry day.

Only instead of keeping your white shirt from turning blue, these piles set the stage for a range of marketing and sales activities – from personalizing outbound content, to prioritizing sales resources, to predicting whether a particular lead will turn into an honest-to-goodness paying customer.

Among the more commonly used segmentation criteria are things like job title, industry, company size and the company’s position in the buying cycle. These categories help establish the context for your value proposition. For example, a vendor that makes process control software might emphasize efficiency to small businesses and growth potential to larger ones.

From a content marketing perspective, segmentation increases the probability that your message will be heard, be understood and—more importantly—be remembered. That’s because you:

• Speak to individual pain points, interests and motivations in the language the recipient uses
• Select communication channels that the recipient is most comfortable with

It was with this notion of segmentation in mind that I recently read a report from Forbes Insights titled, The Rise of the Digital C-Suite: How Executives Locate and Filter Business Information.

The 2009 report (forgot to put it in the “to read” pile) points out that when it comes to gathering business information, executives fall into two categories: young and old.

Forbes labels those of us over 50 as Generation Wang (as in Wang Laboratories).  Youngsters under 50 fall into either Generation PC or Generation Netscape, depending on whether they came of working age before or after the Web explosion.

Here’s the scary part. Even Gen Netscape cannot escape the ravages of time. Yes, those digital natives are in their 30’s and early 40’s and entering the ranks of senior management – running companies, starting businesses and creating markets.

Not surprising then, when it comes to seeking information, Forbes detected some interesting age-related distinctions among senior managers …

• Over 50 percent of Gen PC/Netscape executives gather information on their own while Gen Wang prefers to delegate
• 44 percent of Gen PC/Netscape use subscription search engines versus 6 percent of Gen Wang
• 30 percent of Gen PC/Netscape seek guidance from contacts in online communities versus 6 percent for Gen Wang
• By a 3-to-1 margin, Gen PC/Netscape will view online video and use mobile devices for work
• Gen PC/Netscape execs are at least twice as likely than their Gen Wang counterparts to use LinkedIn or Facebook for networking
• And they’re twice as likely to click on a paid link or banner ad

Here’s the conundrum: The executives you need to convince are split across two worlds. Up-and-coming managers are comfortable in their digital skin while older ones use technology to augment the traditional methods they’ve always used. So a one-size-fits-all approach to distributing content will likely fall flat in one group or the other.

What to do?

Take a look at the approximate ages of senior managers among your customers and most promising prospects. Do they span the generations? Are they trending that way?

If so, consider using age as one of your segmentation criteria. Emphasize mobile, social and video with younger managers.  But realize that those 50 and older will respond better to a combination of online and ol’ fashion telephone, face-to-face and print. And they’ll have more internal influencers helping them out. If you’re in doubt, make it a point to have your CEO bring up the topic in conversation with other executives.

Although it may seem a bit indiscreet, selecting content formats and channels based on age just might cut through the noise and attract attention across a broader set of decision makers.

So before turning in for the night, download the report (no registration), warm up some milk and read what those kids and old folks are up to.

Michael is one of our Content Strategists and can be found here: 

Michael Selissen

Founder and Chief Writer

Case Mountain Communications, LLC

michael@casemountain.com

www.casemountain.com

And then marketing firm WebMarketing123 put out a report, the 2011 State of Digital Marketing from a survey of just 500 marketers, of which two-thirds were B2B.  The number one priority of B2B marketers? Generate Leads: 46%. 

Of course, many times the numbers just don’t make sense, or perhaps it’s how the questions are asked.  From the same WebMarketing123 survey:

How do you measure the success of your digital marketing program:  #1- website traffic, #2 lead generation, and #3 click-through-rate!  Bet if you ask top management the same question, you’ll get answers like ROI, Sales, and Profit metrics.  Of course! 

What makes the biggest impact on your lead generation goals?  57% say SEO.  25% Pay-per-click, and, 18% social media.  This again is where numbers can be made to jade the picture.  Are these B2B companies e-commerce or online catalogs, where a lead can be classified as a “request-a-quote” or are they complex products, meaning that multiple touch points via media and content have to occur before the prospect becomes a lead?  If you’re a complex product, you’re going to get much of your leads from landing pages, and that’s pay-per-click or other media tactics that attract audiences to sign-up or download. I do wonder what mix is the audience in the survey, catalog vs. complex?   Now I’m a big believer in SEO, as you should be, but how you answer all depends on the type of firm you are.

Same survey; companies 200-1000 employees.  How do you currently allocate your digital marketing?  45% to pay-per-click.  24% to SEO.  So the larger companies must know something.  Pay-per-click is the fastest digital method to generate leads.  SEO generates leads over the long-haul, and good-quality leads, but SEO does take time, and depending on level of competition, you can’t make Google’s first page on everything you sell.  That’s where paid search enters the picture, and that’s why I wrote a new ebook, A Strategic Guide to Lead Generation Using Pay-Per-Click Search Marketing with Google Adwords.

This is the only eBook of its kind that attempts to focus on the strategies and process to manage paid search for B2B firms with complex products, or those firms whose prospects need multiple touches and lead nurturing throughout the funnel in order to become a valid sales opportunity.  Other PPC books focus more on ecommerce firms but not lead generation. This ebook discusses purely lead generation, and the best methods to manage enterprise and large scale campaigns. Among the contents:

• Developing a search strategy via the buying funnel
• Utilizing Salesforce, marketing automation, and dashboards to measure cost-per-opportunities and ROI
• Keyword Strategy
• Bidding Strategy
• Quality Score Management
• Writing Effective Ads that Generate Leads
• Landing Page and Conversion Optimization
• Measurement and Analytics

It’s my pleasure to present the eBook.  Let’s start generating quality leads and positive ROI, and respond to the challenges as described above.  Here’s the download link: Pay-Per-Click for Lead Generation eBook.