Daily Archives: July 28, 2011

Google Universal Search - what works?

Posted by Jeff Ogden on

Now that link-building, the backbone of the search marketing industry is gone, what will happen?  (Time to fire your search marketing company, I think.) Three things work today. In order of importance:

  1. Videos
  2. Images
  3. Blog

Seems the blog is no longer a nice to have. Thank God Fearless Competitor is so popular!

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Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers. He has continually adapted and learned as the years passed by, becoming an expert in social media, demand generation and content marketing.
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, they turn to lead generation companies like Find New Customers.

An open letter to Ardath Albee

Posted by Jeff Ogden on

I need to get something off my chest.

I have enormous respect for Ardath Albee of Marketing Interactions, as one of the top experts in B2B marketing on Earth. Unfortunately, the feeling is not mutual. She accused me of heinous acts, like excessive self-promotion, using content for personal gain and plagiarism.

I’m deeply sorry, Ardath. I really blew it with you. As much as I would love to get a do-over, it’s not possible. One cannot change the past. But I can look for root causes (and not just symptoms) to try to prevent them in the future.

One of the biggest mistakes I made in the past is assumptions. For instance, I look at a piece of content - it is so familiar to me that I assume it is not proprietary. That certainly made an “ass out of me.” Trying to explain my logic to an upset person was a disaster.

The simple and best thing to do would be to reach out to the author in advance and confirm my assumption. That was a huge mistake I made with Ardath - I did not reach out. I deeply regret that failure of mine.

I learned. For instance, after I blew it with Ardath,  I wanted to write a blog post based on the book Made to Stick. I contacted New York Times best-selling authors Dan and Chip Heath and asked for permission to use their content.. They gave me the green light in writing to use it. No problem whatsoever. Since then, this is the approach I have used. I learned and adapted.

Had I taken that simple step with Ardath, many problems would have been avoided. But I failed to do so.

Since that fiasco, I’ve worked very hard to be a model corporate citizen and do the right thing all the time.

I’m sorry, Ardath. Truly and deeply. Even if this is not recoverable, I want you to know how sorry I truly am.

Jeff Ogden

The Future of Demand Generation

Posted by Jeff Ogden on

The Future of Demand Generation

Great discussion on the realities of B2B demand generation today. via this roundtable at Focus.com.

We know all these speakers well, except for Jason. Loved the comments about the importance of content and process - no value from marketing automation if you don’t have your own house in order.

Find New Customers is also a partner with Demandgen. Click the link above to visit it on Focus.com.

Event Speakers

close
Jason Hekl

Principal, Demand A Lot Marketing
An advocate for DIY marketers, and an early adopter of marketing automation technologies, with a wealth of “hands on” experience with several of the leading tools.
Thor Johnson

CMO & CEO, Team Thor Marketing
Thor Johnson leads Team Thor Marketing, a US-based marketing consulting agency providing strategic planning and implementation guidance to automate demand generation and drive sales force performance.
David Lewis

CEO, DemandGen International, Inc.
David Lewis is an early pioneer in Internet marketing, marketing automation, and CRM systems with over 22 years experience marketing and selling technology solutions through direct sales channels, on

Moderator

Steve Gershik
Chief Marketer, 28Marketing

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Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers and is considered by many to be one of the top experts in Lead Nurturing. He’s appeared on radio shows to discuss lead nurturing and scoring and wrote 7 Keys to Successful Lead Nurturing.
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, 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.

Nine Things Successful People Do Differently

Posted by Jeff Ogden on

Nine Things Successful People Do Differently

Found this great post at The Harvard Business Review Blog. Get the full article here.

Here are the 9 things successful people do differently. It a good list for you to evaluate both other people and yourself.

I summarize very briefly below, but you have to go to the original article to real the full thing.

  1. Get Specific
    Be honest and regularly measure progress
  2. Seize the moment to act on your goals
    Be specific. Pick an exact time.
  3. Know exactly how far you have left to go
    Honest and regular monitoring of progress
  4. Be a realistic optimist
    Believe, really believe that you will be successful
  5. Focus on getting better, rather than being good
    Most think abilities are fixed, but the research shows otherwise. The brain is a muscle. It needs exercise and training.
  6. Have grit
    Gritty people don’t give in to failure.
  7. Build your willpower muscle
    Push yourself to do things you would not normally do.
  8. Don’t tempt fate
    Stay focused and don’t try to achieve multiple goals at once.
  9. Focus on what you will do and not what you won’t do
    Focus on good habits you want to achieve rather than bad habits (e.g. smoking) that you want to give up.

Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D. is a motivational psychologist, and author of the new book Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals (Hudson Street Press, 2011). She is also an expert blogger on motivation and leadership for Fast Company and Psychology Today. Her personal blog, The Science of Success, can be found at www.heidigranthalvorson.com. Follow her on Twitter @hghalvorson

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

Read my blog on Kindle

Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers. He’s also the host of Mad Marketing TV.
Find New Customers helps companies rapidly grow revenue by transforming how they find, engage and win new customers. To contact Find New Customers, please call (516) 495-9350 or send an email to sales at findnewcustomers.com
To learn about Jeff, please click Who is the Fearless Competitor?

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

Marketing, circa 1982

Posted by Jeff Ogden on

B2B Demand Generation | How the World Has Changed

(We congratulate the 28 companies who have downloaded How to Find New Customers in July 2011! - one a day. Have you read it?)

I was graduated from University of Notre Dame with a degree in marketing in 1982. I still love that school with all my heart - but they rejected my son. That was deeply disappointing.

The world was MUCH simpler then. Here’s what the world looked like then:

  • We listened to 8-Track tapes. At the end of the year, a new media called Compact Discs is introduced in Japan.
  • There were few TV channels. Dallas was the top rated show. No one had heard of cable TV.
  • There was no Internet.
  • There were no cell phones.
  • There was no Facebook, Linkedin or Twitter.
  • A brand new singer named John Cougar (now known as John Mellencamp) released “Jack and Diane”

If you wanted to sell stuff, you had only a few channels to consider:

  1. Broadcast TV
  2. Radio
  3. Print (Newspapers and Magazines)
  4. Yellow Pages
  5. Billboards

If you wanted to get leads for sales, you spent on ads, print media or hosted events. The choices were very limited. Marketing channels were simple.

Fast forward to today. What was once scarce is now overwhelming. I cannot count the times business owners have said “We’ve tried almost everything and nothing works.” Sorry, but you’re doing it all wrong.

The media choices are endless today. So what is the marketer to do? No company except maybe Google and Microsoft can afford to advertise in every channel. Jumping from one failed approach to another does not work.

Here’s what I recommend for you. Think Outside In.

Stop thinking of taking your products to market. Instead, put yourself in the mind of buyers and work back to your products and services. The number of choices shrinks dramatically.

Instead of guessing what channel to use, ask your prospective customers which channels they trust. Instead of guessing what information they need, ask them. Only by gaining deep insights into buyers can you determine the best ways to work with them.

You’ll find customers only use a few channels. That’s where you need to be.

Here in a nutshell is B2B marketing, circa 2011:

  1. Buyer personas
  2. Search marketing
  3. Content marketing
  4. Mapping the buyer journey
  5. Lead nurturing
  6. Lead scoring
  7. Metrics
  8. Continuous improvement

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

Read my blog on Kindle

Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers. He has continually adapted and learned as the years passed by, becoming an expert in social media, demand generation and content marketing.
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, they turn to lead generation companies like Find New Customers.