The Power of Story-telling in B2B Marketing

Posted by Jeff Ogden on May 16, 2011

Find New Customers | The Power of Great Story-Telling

Story-Telling is a powerful tool in B2B marketing. Strong characters, great story lines and an engaging plot grabs the viewer and holds on tight.

Since the biggest challenge in content marketing is “Producing engaging content” according to MarketingProfs, B2B companies can take a lot from story-telling.

This image is from the FX drama, Justified, which takes the lawman image from the 1800′s and updates it to the present day. It’s gripping, entertaining and fun. The New York Daily News called it “The Best Dramatic Show on Television.”

Bowd Crowder

US Marshall Raylan Givens is an old style law officer in a rural area of Kentucky. Soft spoken and reserved, he encounters dangerous situations and colorful characters, like the mercurial Boyd Crowder. (Walton Goggins (The Shield) plays Boyd Crowder and is a superb actor!)

Justified has rich characters, strong stories and hooks from one episode to the next.

Don’t you wish your lead nurturing campaigns had the same effect? To learn how Find New Customers can help you improve your lead nurturing programs, click here. (You’ll find some outstanding content there.)

What do you think? Can B2B marketers learn to tell stories?

Tomorrow morning - Final part of the Mac McConnell Lead Scoring white board talk.

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Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers - a website filled with great free content on B2B lead generation and marketing.

He presented “How to Build a Great Personal Brand” at the 140 Social Media Conference on Long Island and will appear on Sales Lead Management Radio on June 9th.

Find New Customers helps companies with between 150 and 5,000 employees who sell complex products to businesses to implement world-class lead generation programs. As companies struggle to create quality sales opportunities, they turn to lead generation companies like Find New Customers.

Do consultants make the best executives?

Posted by Jeff Ogden on May 16, 2011

More and more I see top independent sales and marketing experts taking jobs as VPs of Sales and/or Marketing.

What is happening and why? Why are companies hiring people like Nigel

Nigel Edelshain

Edelshain of Sales2.0 (became VP of Sales and Marketing for TurnTo Networks) and Jep Castelein of LeadSloth (joined Marketo) And why are they better choices for those companies than hiring from competitors?

Should you consider a marketing consultant as a VP of marketing over a candidate from your industry? I think the answer is a resounding “Yes!”

Here are 3 things that consultants offer that you don’t find with the usual candidates:

Consultants have world-class networks (Top industry gurus know and trust them.)
Consultants have documented expertise across multiple industries. (They’ve published blogs, eBooks, white papers, etc.)
Consultants get things done(They’ve founded companies, booked revenue, turned prospects into customers, built solid relationships - all on their own.I cannot over-emphasize how important this is. Data shows that only 1 in 10 persons is a Producer (creator of things like blogs), while 2 out of ten Contribute (e.g comment on blogs) and the vast majority - 7 out of 10 - are merely Consumers (e.g, read blogs). You need to hire Producers.

My advice. Don’t overlook consultants when you need strong, innovative leaders.

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

Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers. He’s presenting at the 140 Social Media Conference on Long Island on May 26th and appearing on Sales Lead Management Radio on June 9th.

We help companies with between 150 and 5,000 employees who sell complex products to businesses to implement world-class lead generation programs. As companies struggle to create quality sales opportunities, they turn to lead generation companies like Find New Customers.

Great guest bloggers coming

Posted by Jeff Ogden on May 16, 2011

Aprimo hired Find New Customers because of our world-class network of top experts. Now we bring you these top experts as guest bloggers.

You’ll know some of these too. Over the next 60 days, we’ll bring you some of the best minds in B2B marketing, including:

Joe Pulizzi, author of Get Content, Get Customers
Steve Gershick, the Innovative Marketer and co-founder of DemandCon
Stephanie Tilton of Ten Ton Marketing
Doug Kessler, Velocity Partners UK
Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs and co-author of Content Rules
Plus many more

We thank each and every one of you for offering to make Fearless Competitor an even better blog.
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Kill the live webinar

Posted by Jeff Ogden on May 16, 2011

Live webinars are a big mistake.

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Stick a fork in live webinars. They are done.

The live webinar should land on the ash heap of history.

Have you ever had audio problems? Loss of video? Who hasn’t? Why are their so few live shows on TV?

The webinar experts at Avitage are right. Recorded webinars are the way to go. Jim Burns, CEO of Avitage told me that in the last 10 years, he’s done a live webinar only once - last week - and it was a disaster.

Deliver the webinar to no audience and record it. When the time comes to start, simply press Play. When it ends, do the Q&A session live. The result will be a flawless webinar every time.

No audio problems.
No speaker delays.
No problem.

Your audience will thank you (except they will never know what you did.) And if you need help with your webinars, contact the pros at Avitage.

What do you think? Do you deliver recorded webinars? Do you plan to try it? We love your comments and sharing.

P.S. We just did a live webinar entitled “Stop Marketing in the Dark” sponsored by Act-On Software. While they wanted to record it and play it on demand, they were unable to find out how to do it in Cisco Webex.

Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers. Find New Customers helps companies rapidly grow revenue by transforming how they attract, engage and win new customers. Contact Find New Customers by calling (516) 495-9350 or by sending an email to sales at findnewcustomers.com.