Monthly Archives: June 2011

Find New Customers | Great content on B2B demand generation and always FREE

Posted by Jeff Ogden on

B2B Lead Generation | Free content at Find New Customers

“The content at Find New Customers is so good, you really should make it a pay site.”

That has been suggested several times. Problem is, that is not our business strategy.

We use the Elevation Principle (as Mike Stelzner spoke of in this book Launch.) Click highlighted words for “My Totally Awesome Review of Mike Stelzner’s book, Launch.”

Elevation Principle

The elevation principle says that great content combined with other people and without marketing messages will help your business rapidly grow.

The Elevation Principle:

Great Content + Other People - Marketing Messages equals Success.

With about 1/2 of salespeople failing to make quota today (from CSO Insights)  it’s clear they need a lot of help.

With CMOs saying the lack of quality sales leads is their #1 challenge (MarketingSherpa), they need a lot of help too.

This is why Find New Customers will always be free - if salespeople and Chief Marketing Officers are struggling, we’re here to help.

With this new form of marketing you rapidly grow by giving gifts free of marketing messages while your competitors struggle to survive.

As Mike Stelzner says, we believe in giving the gift of free content to those struggling sales and marketing leaders.

What will you find at Find New Customers today?

  1. A free Education section on B2B demand generation.
  2. A Thought Leadership page with articles, podcasts and events for your learning.
  3. Free tools you can use to measure your existing B2B demand generation programs.
  4. A CEO page for business owners and leaders.
  5. And last but not least, our remarkable white papers on lead generation (How to Find New Customers), B2B sales (Definitive Guide to Making Quota) and email marketing (Moving from Transactional to Conversational Email Marketing).

If you manage salespeople or head marketing, why don’t you visit Find New Customers today and take advantage of our gift of great free content on how to solve your most vexing problems?

What do you think? Please post your comment below.

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

To learn more about Jeff, please click on Who is the Fearless Competitor?

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, can certainly help your business dramatically improve the flow of sales-ready leads to salespeople.” Paul Dunay, Buzz Marketing for Technology.

How to create one kick-ass lead generation campaign in just 5 steps

Posted by Jeff Ogden on

B2B Lead Generation | How to generate leads

How to create one kick-ass lead generation campaign (from scratch)

Recently I visited a 1/2 billion dollar business intelligence company who was looking for a global leader for lead generation. They rejected me, (the President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers) saying “the team did not think you are the one to create our lead generation campaigns.”

So we dedicate this post to Peter Isaacson, SVP of Worldwide Marketing at Microstrategy - who concluded I was unable to create lead generation campaigns.

Want to share a comment with Peter about his conclusion? Email your comment to pisaacson at microstrategy.com.

This is why this blog topic is how to create a kick-ass lead generation campaign. We can show the world (and one clueless business intelligence software company) how to create great lead generation campaigns.

Let’s get started. Here’s how to create one kick-ass lead generation campaign:

  1. Start with great research
    The most important thing you need to do is great research. Who are the target buyers? What problems are they trying to solve? What questions do they need answered to buy? Whom do they prefer and would they buy from us?
  2. Find thought leaders and keywords
    Who are the respected thought leaders in the industry? When searching for a solution to the problem we solve, what words do people use in search? Network with those thought leaders and use those keywords in your content.
  3. Map and develop content
    You are looking to create content to move prospective buyers through a buying process. So you need to map content to buying stage, decision role, industry, product line, etc. The goal is to create modular content that can be used as needed on a one to one basis. Keep in mind that content marketing is an ongoing strategy. You cannot stop.
  4. Build landing pages and develop attraction strategies
    We suggest thought leadership using a blog and personality, such as humor, interviews and so forth. Also, as you create content, you’ll want to reuse the keywords you devised in step 2.
  5. Launch, measure results, and continually refine
    Now we are ready to launch. But you need to measure results and continually refine and improve the program. You want to move the focus on one approach to another based on results. Marketing is the process of continual experimentation and refinement.

What do you think? We love comments and people who share. Please enter your comment below.

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Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers. He presented “How to Build an Awesome Personal Brand” at the 140 Social Media Conference and appeared to discuss B2B lead generation on Sales Lead Management Radio. 

To learn about Jeff, please visit “Who is the Fearless Competitor?“

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 for sales teams, they turn to lead generation companies like Find New Customers.

Google’s Panda update dooms the SEO industry

Posted by Jeff Ogden on

IMHO, the industry is dead.Hearse

When I worked for a UK search marketing firm, Green Light, they used two main strategies to drive SEO results:

  • On page optimization - layouts, keywords, etc.
  • Link Building - they used to buy domains just to get links.

But as this video by Rand Fishkin points out in How Google’s Panda Update Changed SEO Best Practices forever -  with the Panda update - the Google algorithm changed dramatically. Machine learning and social sharing drive results today. Inbound links and keyword stuffing are dead.

What do you think? Does the Panda update kill the business for search marketing firms? Post your comment below.

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Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers. He presented “How to Build an Awesome Personal Brand” at the 140 Social Media Conference and appeared to discuss B2B lead generation on Sales Lead Management Radio. 

To learn about Jeff, please visit “Who is the Fearless Competitor?“

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.

“All Marketers Are Liars” - Seth Godin talks at Google

Posted by Jeff Ogden on

This Sunday we’ll share a really interesting video from one of our favorite keynote speakers - Seth Godin. He explains how Google has been so successful when so many other have failed. It’s the whole talk - 46 minutes long, so watch at your leisure.

Hope you enjoy it.

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Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers. He presented “How to Build an Awesome Personal Brand” at the 140 Social Media Conference and appeared to discuss B2B lead generation on Sales Lead Management Radio.

To learn about Jeff, please visit “Who is the Fearless Competitor?“

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 for sales teams, they turn to lead generation companies like Find New Customers.

Gunman updates Facebook status During Standoff

Posted by Jeff Ogden on

(We’re introducing a new weekly blog feature today - highlighting some wild and wacky story from the week just past. This will be our regular Saturday feature.

We hope you enjoy it. Please enter a comment below to let us know what you think of this new feature.)

This is certainly “Weird News of the Week” - a gunman during a 16 hour standoff with SWAT teams, regularly updated his Facebook status.Standoff

As reported by Mashable:

During a 16-hour standoff with SWAT teams, an armed man in Salt Lake City who had taken a woman hostage updated friends and family about the incident on Facebook.

Jason Valdez, according to the Associated Press, made six status updates, posted pictures of himself and the woman (“Got a cute `Hostage’ huh,” he captioned one of them), and added at least a dozen new Facebook friends during the standoff.

Valdez had taken the woman hostage Tuesday evening when police tried to serve him with a felony drug warrant after a missed court appearance.

“I’m currently in a standoff … kinda ugly, but ready for whatever,” Valdez first wrote on his wall. “I love u guyz and if I don’t make it out of here alive that I’m in a better place and u were all great friends.”

Friends and family responded with more than 100 messages. At least one of them warned Valdez about police activity outside, to which he responded, “Thank you homie. Good looking out.”

After officers swarmed the room, Valdez shot himself in the chest with a handgun. The AP reported that he was in critical condition on Tuesday.

What do you think? Are we all too addicted to Facebook updates? I sure think so.

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Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers. He presented “How to Build an Awesome Personal Brand” at the 140 Social Media Conference and appeared to discuss B2B lead generation on Sales Lead Management Radio.
To learn more about Jeff, please click on Who is the Fearless Competitor?
Leave a comment Posted in News and Oddities

Laugh and Learn featuring @fearlesscomp | Episode 31 : Thank an Engineer

Posted by Jeff Ogden on

B2B Lead Generation | Laugh and Learn Episode 30 | Thank an engineer

In this episode of our weekly B2B marketing show, Jeff Ogden, President of Find New Customers shares a valuable marketing lesson using wit and humor.

In this episode, we show how a company can make fun of world without their products. As we like to say - a dose of personality is what B2B companies really need, so “let your freak flag fly!”

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Thanks to the Savvy Sisters and their B2B marketing blog, we have the results of the campaign. Thanks ladies.

Amber Pizano, Video Marketing Manager, Texas Instruments, shared the objectives and results on the Social Media B2B blog.

Goals:

  • Show design engineers that TI “gets” them and that they appreciate engineers for bringing today’s innovations to all of us.
  • Build brand loyalty.

Objectives:

  • View multiple “thank an engineer” videos
  • Forward video link to a peer or friend
  • View system block diagrams or other TI.com portal pages
  • Share stories regarding engineering innovations on the TI community forum

Results:

  • After 5 months, the video campaign had 151,000 views and 25,000 “further actions” people took from the landing page to TI.com portal pages.
  • Viewers spend an average of 4.21 minutes on the page, indicating they are engaged and watching more than one video.
  • 90 submissions were received for the video contest with very little promotion of the contest.

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Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers. He presented “How to Build an Awesome Personal Brand” at the 140 Social Media Conference and discussed B2B lead generation on Sales Lead Management Radio. He also was a special guest on HubspotTV.
To learn about Jeff, please click Who is the Fearless Competitor?

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 for their sales teams, they turn to lead generation companies like Find New Customers.

Friday to-dos

Posted by Jeff Ogden on

Looking for some fun this Friday? Here’s what you can do. Mark your calendar.

11am - Laugh and Learn featuring @fearlesscomp runs here.

4pm - HubspotTV

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Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers. He presented “How to Build an Awesome Personal Brand” at the 140 Social Media Conference and appeared to discuss B2B lead generation on Sales Lead Management Radio.
To learn more about Jeff, please click on Who is the Fearless Competitor?

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 can certainly help your business dramatically improve the flow of sales-ready leads to salespeople.” Paul Dunay, Buzz Marketing for Technology.

My totally awesome review of the book, Launch, by Michael A. Stelzner

Posted by Jeff Ogden on

I review the new book by Michael A. Stelzner, Launch, here. And the “totally awesome review” comment was intended simply to get your attention. Only you know if this review is really good or really bad.

Who should read this book?

  • Marketers: Launch was written for any marketer who’s been struggling to figure out how to grow a loyal fan base without the hard sell. It’s not just a book for social media marketers. Launch is for anyone who wants to get a grasp on how new media has forever changed the way marketing must function. The book was designed to help marketers figure out how to best launch a company, website, product, or service—or how to take an existing company to the next level.
  • Small business owners: Launch was crafted to help small business owners figure out how to respond to an ever changing world without performing the types of activities people hate to do (like selling). The book provides a refreshing alternative to those marketing books that focus on “gaming systems and people.” Instead, Launch focuses on how to build lasting relationships that will help grow small businesses into empires.

So, the answer to the question, “Who should read Launch?” is people just like you!

_____

I feel vindicated. Almost three years ago, I founded Find New Customers on a radical idea - publish lots great free content on B2B lead generation, network with top experts, and avoid all paid advertising. Several people told me I was foolish - I should charge $ for my content. I refused. But was I being smart or foolish?

Michael Stelzner, the author of Launch, is also the founder of the wildly successful site Social Media Examiner

Only after reading the book, Launch, by Michael A. Stelzner, did I learn the name of this strategy - the Elevation Principle. And how this approach can launch your business. While I don’t pretend to execute as well as Mike, the similarities are striking.

Elevation Principle

The elevation principle says that great content combined with other people and without marketing messages will help your business rapidly grow.

The Elevation Principle is the core message of this book. Simply put, it is Great Content plus People minus Marketing Messages = Success.

Does this principle work? Check out what Mike accomplished using this approach:

In just about 18 months they grew to over 80,000 newsletter subscribers.

  • Michael Stelzner launched Social Media Examiner in October 2009 from his Southern California office. He had zero previous experience with social media.
  • Start-up costs: $4,000 for design and website development.
  • Within two weeks of its launch, Social Media Examiner joined the ranks of Technorati’s Top 100 Small Business Blogs and remains in the Top 10.
  • 80,000+ email subscribers receive Social Media Examiner updates 6 days a week.
  • The site receives more than 700,000 page views each month.
  • Social Media Examiner is in the top 1200 of all websites in America. [Alexa]
  • Advertising Age ranks Social Media Examiner among the Top 20 marketing blogs.
  • Social Media Examiner is commercial-free and does not display advertising.
  • Publishes annual Social Media Marketing Industry Report (a statistical guide showing how marketers use social media marketing). 100% free; no registration required.
  • Operates on the “Elevation Principle” business model: Give away digestible how-to content that creates a loyal, well-fed business community.
  • Revenue driver: online professional development conferences. Sales to date from summits exceed $3M.

What do I think you will find in this book? Mike has an easy, conversational writing style honed from years of writing white papers - so it is an easy book to read and digest. He’s also skilled at using analogies - for instance, he compares your business to a rocket and content marketing to rocket fuel.

With this new form of marketing you rapidly grow by giving gifts free of marketing messages while your competitors struggle to survive.

Mike also talks about two kinds of fuel - Rocket Fuel and Nuclear Fuel. Rocket Fuel is content your prospective buyers want while nuclear fuel is labor intensive content, such as white papers, industry studies, etc.

Mike Stelzner introduces Launch from Michael A. Stelzner on Vimeo.

A discussion of this book is not complete without addressing what he says about marketing messages. Mike believe that buyers are bombarded with marketing messages today - so they have the opposite effect of what is desired - they actually turn people off. Mike believes marketing messages are like friction today. You are right, Mike. I hate all those car and pharma ads on TV - we DVR through them.

Great book, but how might it be improved? In the book, Inbound Marketing, authors Halligan and Shah used checklists at the end of each chapter. Launch might have been better had it used this approach. But since there is a companion landing page with more, this point is quibbling. And they promised me they would add videos to take the viewers deeper.

We give this book a full 5 Star review - out of 5.

Want your own free copy? Make a sign that says something like “I love Find New Customers and plan to Launch my business” Snap a photo of you with the sign and email it to jeff dot ogden at findnewcustomers.com. The best photo gets a book - we’ll even pay the shipping.

How Big is Content Marketing today?

Posted by Jeff Ogden on

B2B Lead Generation | The Rise of Content Marketing

Did you miss our radio show on Sales Lead Management Radio? Not to worry. You can listen to the show here.

Each day, more and more B2B sellers recognize that their prospective customers are looking for content at EVERY STAGE OF THE BUYING PROCESS. The number of companies not doing content marketing is dwindling by the day. In fact, I believe that companies without quality content will not survive much longer.

At Find New Customers, we’re big believers in content marketing too, which is why our website, Find New Customers, is filled with great free content on B2B demand generation - simply put, it’s our gift to you to help you grow your business.

Check out this great infographic by Divr.it. We thank them for it.

Have you seen our new free “cheat sheet” - 7 Keys to B2B Marketing Success? No sign-up needed. Go grab it now! Or sign up for our demand generation podcasts in iTunes.

Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers. He’s also the author of three great white papers, including How to Find New Customers (Lead generation);Definitive Guide to Making Quota (B2B Sales) and Moving from Transactional to Conversational Email Marketing. (email marketing) All three can be downloaded from http://www.findnewcustomers.com/getcustomers.

To learn about Jeff, please visit Who is the Fearless Competitor?

Find New Customers 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 for sales teams, they turn to lead generation companies like Find New Customers.

The Fearless Competitor to review the new book by Mike Stelzner - “Launch”

Posted by Jeff Ogden on

Win a free copy of this great book. Details below.

The Fearless Competitor and President of the B2B lead generation consultancy Find New LaunchCustomers was invited to review the new book by Mike Stelzner, Launch. This is due to the remarkable popularity of this blog (Thank You!) and our past book reviews.

Just 50 bloggers were selected to review this book and to receive a second copy to give away. We are honored that they selected the Fearless Competitor.

How YOU can win this book!

One lucky fan of Find New Customers will get a free copy of the book by taking a picture of yourself using the theme “I Love Find New Customers and Plan to Launch my Business.”

Make a sign or t-shirt and take a picture. Send your photo to jeff dot ogden at findnewcustomers.com. I will review all the photos and select the best to get a free copy of this amazing book. (We’ll even pay the shipping costs for you.)

This give-away is compliments of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers. No purchase necessary to win.

What do you think? Enter your comment below.

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Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers. He presented “How to Build an Awesome Personal Brand” at the 140 Social Media Conference and appeared to discuss B2B lead generation on Sales Lead Management Radio.
To learn more about Jeff, please click on Who is the Fearless Competitor?

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.