Recently, Marketo — a marketing automation company with an extremely popular blog called Modern B2B Marketing contacted me and invited me to share my expertise in B2B demand generation with their readers.  While this article will soon post to their blog, I’m delighted to also be able to share these insights with my readers.

Here are the questions Marketo asked, along with my answers:

(Marketo) How did you first get started with online B2B Marketing and what do you like best about it?

(Jeff) In early 2009, I observed what happening in the world of B2B sales and decided to get involved.

Recently I asked Jill Konrath of Selling to Big Companies what happened. Her tongue-in-cheek answer was “Al Gore invented the internet.”

It was clear salespeople were struggling mightily to fill their pipelines. Having read Brian Carroll’s book, Lead Generation for the Complex Sale cover to cover several times, I decided I wanted to focus on this key business challenge. I decided to pen the white paper, How to Find New Customers, which Marketo generously sponsored.

What I like best about B2B marketing is this: It is the art of developing trust with strangers.Very few people and a tiny number of businesses excel at that.

(Marketo) In your white paper, How to Find New Customers, you discussed the ever-changing buying process. What are some of your forecasts concerning the future buyer? Can you give some advice on how to stay ahead of the curve?

(Jeff) Today, buying cycles are growing longer and decision making processes are growing more complex.  With empowerment of buyers, companies are facing increasing demands to empower their people to have relevant and provocative conversations with prospective buyers.   It is getting harder and hard for businesses to differentiate themselves.

Jill gave me a great example of how someone might differentiate themselves.

Printers are everywhere and their presses all do about the same thing.  If those printers talk about customer service and speedy delivery, they all sound alike.  However, if they focus on restaurant menus and help the restaurant design menus that engage the diner and increase the average ticket, they can truly differentiate their offerings.

Not only do they need to differentiate themselves but they also need to earn buyer credibility.  More and more buyers look for sellers to be experts in their business.  It is incumbent on B2B sellers to ensure their marketers and sellers demonstrate that expertise.  It’s no longer good enough just to know your product.

(Marketo) With all the various social media channels, what are your recommendations for B2B marketers looking to generate leads, find customers and create brand awareness?

(Jeff) I believe it is more important than ever for businesses to develop deep buyer personas and really get inside the minds of their prospective buyers.  Only with deep understanding can they determine where best to invest their marketing funds in social media challenges.

While they do the research, they will also likely find their prospective clients more fragmented than ever.  This is why most businesses need to use multiple social media channels.  I believe every B2B company today should have a really well done FaceBook Fan page.  They need to be very active on Twitter – especially listening and responding.  They need to have a very active blog and be reading blogs by other industry leaders.

In terms of increasing brand awareness, they need a deep and simple idea of what they stand for, and keep reinforcing it.  For instance, I have a slide share presentation on Linkedin entitled “What is a fearless competitor?”  Everything you do and everything you say needs to reinforce that message.

(Marketo) In your blog, Fearless Competitor, you discussed lead nurturing in detail. What are your top 3 tips for companies looking to get started with lead nurturing?

(Jeff)

1. Go back to developing that deep understanding of buyer personas.  If you with to read more about this, I suggest you pick up the terrific book by Ardath Albee entitled eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale.
2. Focus on story-telling.  Take the prospective buyer on a journey from Problem to Solution in a step by step manner with small and exciting tiny bits of information.
3. Use the idea from TV and radio of a “cliff-hanger” and tease them with what they will get in the next episode.  I especially encourage businesses to hire journalists to help them craft stories and cliff hangers today – they are out there.

(Marketo) What are some techniques and innovative strategies thatB2B marketers should use to help better align their efforts with the sales team?

(Jeff) Watch your language.  More than ever, both marketing and sales need provocative and customer focused language to engage prospective buyers.  They need a clear understanding of business problems to articulate their value in terms that the buyer uses.  And they need to equip both marketing and sales with the tools for success, including good Customer Relationship Management software, trigger events like iSell by OneSource (a Find New Customers client), and marketing automation like Marketo.  Empathy is the goal – one must develop and demonstrate it.

They need to develop good customer attraction strategies to offer real value and nurture prospective buyers regardless of their timing to buy.

We invite you to download the free and highly acclaimed white paper, How to Find New Customers, sponsored by Marketo.

We’re also proud that Find New Customers scored a 98.9 out of 100 in HubSpot’s website grader.  Thanks for all the links everyone!

What do you think? We love comments and people who share.

Jeff Ogden is President of Find New Customers “Lead Generation Made Simple” Check out the online show every Friday at 11am ET, “Laugh and Learn with the Fearless Competitor.” Find New Customers is one of few lead generation companies in New York.

Find New Customers helps companies like yours (with 50 to 5,000 employees and complex products) implement lead generation programs to improve the way you find and acquire high quality sales leads using best practices in online lead generation. Quality leads matter. In fact, a recent study found that sales teams with fewer, high quality sales leads closed more than sales teams with more leads of dubious quality.

If you wish to do sales lead generation online, contact the B2B lead generation experts at Find New Customers using the form below.