10 Marketing Lessons from DemandCon

Posted by Jeff Ogden on May 26, 2011

B2B Lead Generation | 10 Marketing Lessons from DemandCon

I wasn’t at DemandCon, but Matt Heinz of Heinz Marketing was and he wrote a great post. Thanks for sharing it with our readers, Matt.

Love all ten take-aways and could not agree more - like Invest in Process before Tools. We bolded the items we consider most important.

Interestingly we wrote a similar post about this - Buying Software is Easy. Lead Generation is Hard.

Here’s part of Matt’s post with a link to the rest:

Ten marketing lessons from DemandCon

Two packed days of great content, sharing, networking and learning just wrapped up in San Francisco at the first DemandCon. Impressive quality of people and thinking here focused on B2B demand generation, marketing automation and sales funnel improvement. You know a good conference when the word “firehose” is used often.

My notes from the past 48 hours are vast with much left to think about, but here are 10 immediate lessons for marketers worth sharing.

Define the process first, invest in tools later
The sales process must mirror the buying process
Lead nurturing does not require expensive tools
If you’re feeling behind on all this, you’re not alone
The funnel concept isn’t as relevant as it used to be
Marketers need to think like salespeople
Marketing stories need to remain consistent through the entire funnel
Marketing metrics need to tie to revenue, not activity
None of this works without great content
Your ROI from a good conference is you to you, not the conference

Read the rest of 10 Takeaways (including details about each lesson) at “10 Lessons from DemandCon“

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

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Thank you @ckburgess and @tompick for referring @fearlesscomp as a “Special Honorable Mention” for the #nifty50 men of Twitter. I’m honored.

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 today and appearing 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.

Find New Customers releases “7 Keys to Successful B2B Marketing”

Posted by Jeff Ogden on May 26, 2011

B2B Lead Generation | 7 Keys to B2B Marketing Success

“Your customers are frazzled - crazy-busy. They are in endless meetings. Their To-Do Lists are overflowing.” Jill Konrath, SNAP Selling

With prospective buyers busier than ever, we need to distill marketing down to its very essence - people want to quickly scan content today. But if they see something that piques their interest, they also want to be able to dive deeper. In short, we need personalized content - get what you need, when you need it.

“We’re proud of our new cheat sheet - 7 Keys to B2B Marketing Success. It addresses the needs of today’s buyer - for simple, bite-sized content with the opportunity for more.” says Find New Customers President, Jeff Ogden.

This new cheat sheet has clickable links on each one of the 7 Keys - each one takes you to a landing page with more information on that Key. This give the consumer of the content power of what she gets.

Grab this new free cheat sheet by clicking the image below. No registration needed. Just point and click. Whatever you think of it, please tell your friends.

7 Keys to Successful B2B Marketing
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Thank you @ckburgess and @tompick for referring @fearlesscomp as a “Special Honorable Mention” for the #nifty50 men of Twitter.

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.

Link to us

Posted by Jeff Ogden on May 25, 2011

Organic search is our #3 source of traffic to Find New Customers, but you can help us make it even bigger.

Google loves inbound links so we made a simple page that you can use to link your blog or website to Find New Customers.

Link to us

Just copy the text from the link and paste it to keywords on your blog or website.

Thank you.

Need a great speaker for your B2B marketing event?

Posted by Jeff Ogden on May 25, 2011

Got a big user group meeting or content marketing event coming up? Need a fun and engaging speaker?

Hire the Fearless Competitor as your speaker. Click on my face to learn more.

Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor

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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.

Whom are you targeting? Participation inequality

Posted by Jeff Ogden on May 25, 2011

B2B Lead Generation | Huge Differences in Participation

I wish to share with our readers an interesting observation. I read it most recently in the book by Brian Solis, Engage, (Chapter 20, pages 243-267) but I’ve seen it previously too. And I’ve observed it first-hand.

The bottom line:See that tiny yellow sliver? Those are the Producers. They are rare indeed.

Producers actively create content, write blogs, record videos, etc. and are exceedingly rare. “Producers” represent only 1 out of 10 active members. The vast majority, “Consumers” watch YouTube videos, read articles, etc., but create nothing.

The fact that a tiny minority does almost all of the work is borne out by this fact: The vast majority of book reviews at Amazon.com are created by a handful of people.

Without question, the Fearless Competitor is a Producer. We’ve founded companies (iOptimize Marketing and Find New Customers), written white papers, written a popular blog, have our own YouTube channel, etc. That - by definition - is a producer.

What does this mean to you? If you want to engage and share content in marketing, find the Producers in your industry.

If you are looking for senior marketing folks, look for Producers. That means you should look for the products of Producer - blog articles, white papers, videos, etc. If you find a lot, you found a Producer.

Conversely, if you find nothing but comments on blogs, you found a Contributor. And if you find nothing, you found a Consumer. IMHO, this should trump industry experience.

What do you think? What has been your experience? We love your comments? Don’t just be a Consumer, but write a response to become a Contributor. Or write a blog post about this post and become a Producer.

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Speaking at the 140 Conference Long Island

Posted by Jeff Ogden on May 25, 2011

Speaking at the 140 Conference Long Island

@fearlesscomp (Jeff Ogden, President of the B2B Lead Generation consultancy,

Jeff Ogden

Find New Customers, will be a featured speaker at the 140Conference Long Island to be held at Touro Law Center, tomorrow May 26th.

Why me?

@fearlesscomp gets a perfect Twitter score of 100 out of 100 and was a featured guest on HubspotTV recently. His blog has been read by over 49,000 people and is nationally syndicated.

We expect this event to sell out quickly, but you can get a discount off registration by using my special discount code of http://ow.ly/4HFTI

Learn more about the event, why you ought to attend and how to sign up by watching this intro video by Sueann Shirzay.

I also appear on Sales Lead Management Association radio on June 9th.

What do you think? We love comments and our subscribers.

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Buying software is easy. Fixing lead generation is hard.

Posted by Jeff Ogden on May 25, 2011

B2B Lead Generation | Buying stuff is easy - fixing problems is hard.

SaaS marketing products like Marketo, Hubspot, Eloqua and the like are very, very easy to buy. Give them a credit card, they give you a login. Done. The transaction can be completed in minutes.

It’s actually way too easy, I believe.

It’s a lot like dieting. Most everyone wants to do it but promises don’t match reality.

Look at this image. “Scientists discover rare weight loss “Wonder Herb.”

I’m sure you don’t buy that. You know full well that there’s no “Wonder Herb” in dieting. Dieting is hard and arduous. Watch “The Biggest Loser” to see how hard it is.

Unfortunately, there’s no “Wonder Herb” in B2B lead generation and marketing either.

Want to hear what it’s really like to buy marketing automation? Read an actual user story in Marketing automation—lower your expectations.

The author, Liz McCellan writes “Don’t get me wrong. I think marketing automation is a smart tool to invest in, but I want to give some candid advice about setting the right expectations.” She goes to compare marketing automation to becoming a parent - everyone congratulates you, but you are in for hard work. One recommendation: She urges you to set realistic dates - and then add at least 6 more months.

Liz makes a great point in her article. What does your software purchase do toward fixing your company’s problems with generating quality sales leads? Absolutely nothing! (This is not a knock on products from companies such as Marketo, Eloqua, Silverpop, Neolane, and Pardot. They are fine products from solid companies.)

The only way to REALLY fix your lead generation challenges is to do a lot of hard work - the diet and exercise, if you will - which we summarize in these 10 steps.

Are you ready to do what it takes?

Craft deep buyer personas - a deep understanding of prospective buyers and concerns.
Define your keywords - the words buyers use to search for solutions.
Agree on the common definition of a lead and identify key trigger events which drive decisions. (So sales will get fewer, better leads.)
Map content to the buyer personas and buyer variables (using keywords) (So you can take buyers on a journey and you do well in search)
Fill in the gaps with new content (using keywords) (No gaps in the journey.)
Optimize the website, blog and social media based on keywords (so you rank well in search.)
Design lead nurturing campaigns in a Problem to Solution story-telling format using your content. (Earn trust till they are ready to buy.)
Using the agreed lead definition, agree on the behaviors and demographics that indicate buying propensity (lead scoring). (Remember, we need fewer and better leads for sales.)
Create metrics to measure the effectiveness of your programs. (So we can refine it over time.)
Deploy everything in your new marketing automation software.

Notice that the real use for the software you bought is in Step 10?

Unless you are ready to invest in those 10 steps using internal and/or resources like Find New Customers, you will never really fix your problem with sales lead quality.

What do you think? Is buying software a panacea for fixing real problems in most companies? We love your comments and sharing.

Find New Customers interview of content marketing expert, Jim Burns of Avitage

Posted by Jeff Ogden on May 24, 2011

B2B Lead Generation | Using Video in B2B Marketing

Content marketing is a critical business imperative today. In a brand new study by Holger Shultz (2011 B2B Content Marketing Report), it was found that over 7 out of 10 companies are increasing investment on content marketing in 2011. Yet companies continue to struggle to create engaging content and skyrocketing costs of creating the volume of content needed using “point production” techniques.

Jim Burns

I had the pleasure of interviewing one of the top experts in content marketing

today, Jim Burns, CEO of Avitage. Jim is very knowledgeable about how to use

video in B2B today. Jim and his team have been working on innovative, practical approaches to creating and delivering video for years.

Jim shares with me great insights into video and how it can even be used late in actual sales cycles. With only 1/2 of salespeople making quota today, companies need to use the power of video to improve win rates and close more deals.

In Part 1, Jim makes the point that, as another content type, video must address today’s relevance standards for content.

In Part 2, Jim shares tips and concepts on where video content can be used, particularly the use of video during actual sales meetings.

I strongly urge you to watch the two short clips below and share your thoughts in comments or share on social networks.

Here’s Part 1:

Here’s Part 2:

What did you think? Please let us know.

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Content Marketing tips and techniques

Posted by Jeff Ogden on May 24, 2011

B2B content marketing | tips and techniques

SoftwareAdvice.com invited me to do a guest video post for their very popular blog on B2B marketing.

Content is the fuel of B2B marketing today - studies have shown that buyers looking for engaging content at every stage of the buying process. But creating engaging content is the biggest problem faces by B2B companies today.

Here’s the video I created with tips and techniques for marketing executives to deal with this challenge.

The 140 Conference on Long Island

Posted by Jeff Ogden on May 24, 2011

Jeff Ogden | 140 Social Media Conference | Long Island

140 Social Media Conference | Long Island

“Passionate” “Informative” “Personal” “Inspirational” “Fast-Paced” “Unpredictable”

This social media conference invited me, Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor and President of the B2B Lead Generation consultancy, Find New Customers to be a featured speaker this Thursday.

My talk on the “7 Keys to Marketing Success using Social Media” starts at 12:45pm. I’d love to see you there.

Click here for my personal speaker discount code.

Here is the full list of speakers.

What is the 140Conference?

The world has changed, is changing right now, and you know it; it’s exciting and terrifying all at once. The 140 Characters Conference is your opportunity to learn what this change in the world is, how it affects us here in Long Island and how it affects your life and your business personally. When you leave this conference you will walk away with real answers.

The #140conf events provide a platform for a worldwide community to: listen, connect, share and engage with each other, while collectively exploring the effects of the emerging real-time Internet on business. On Thursday May 26th 2011, Long Islanders become an important part of that community.

The schedule is unique and fast paced. We will provide a platform for as many people as possible to share their thoughts and engage in conversation with the audience. Individual talks are 5 minutes, “Featured talks” are 10-15 minutes and Panel Discussions are 10-15 minutes.

Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers.

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.