Trust and the Big Lie of Lead Generation

Posted by Jeff Ogden on November 9, 2011

B2B Lead Generation: Capturing Accurate Information on Forms

Last Friday, someone filled out this form to download content. It’s exactly the theme of this post. People lie.

(By the way, we no longer deliver the content after the form is completed, we email a link to the content. This ensures they use a valid email address.)

First Name : zxzx
Last Name : zxzx
Email (valid corporate email address is required) : [email protected]
Job Title : Sales Leader
Phone # : sdsd
Web Site URL : dsds

Vince Giorgi writes the blog TouchPoint City and he recently wrote a very

provocative post called The Big Lie of Lead Generation.

I wish to comment about it there.

The big lie Vince cites is this.

People put fictitious information on registration forms on your landing pages. Why? They don’t want to opt in to your telemarketing and email campaigns.

More than 1/2 admit to faking phone numbers. When asked why they put in fake information, almost 3 out of 4 cited “Avoid follow-up sales calls or marketing contacts.”

Even IBM screws up. In a recent CMO study, they ask for not only name and email, but phone number, company size, street address and phone number.

I abandoned it and I bet a lot of other people did too. Really dumb move by IBM - asking WAY too much.

What’s the marketing take-away here?

Earn trust and use progressive profiling.

It’s not enough to capture information - a people who don’t trust your company don’t provide accurate information. Your brand is important, people must trust it.

This is why you need a good, frequently updated blog (this blog posts 7 days a week) and to be active on social media - listening and sharing.

Becoming a thought leader and establishing a trusted company, like Find New Customers, (who’s motto is “Always be helping”) is key in getting accurate information.

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

How many leads will you need to make your quota? Use our free calculator.

Please note that our wonderful free “cheat sheet” on lead nurturing “The 7 Keys to Lead Nurturing Success” is a small taste of what you get in our terrific white paper, How to Find New Customers.

Jeff Ogden 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 emailing sales at findnewcustomers.com.

Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing [INFOGRAPHIC]

Posted by Jeff Ogden on November 5, 2011

B2B Demand Generation | The Move from Outbound (Traditional) to Inbound (New) Marketing

Superb infographic by Voltier Digital that ran at Mashable that I HAVE to share today with our great fans. More and more good lead generation programs have larger and larger inbound components. Enjoy!

Thanks to the Internet, marketing has evolved. Buyers no longer rely on billboards and TV spots — a.k.a. outbound marketing — to learn about new products, because the web has empowered them. It’s given them alternative methods for finding, buying and researching brands and products. The new marketing communication — inbound marketing — has become a two-way dialogue, much of which is facilitated by social media.

Another reason why inbound marketing is winning is because it costs less than traditional marketing. Why try to buy your way in when consumers aren’t even paying attention? Here are some stats from the infographic below.

44% of direct mail is never opened. That’s a waste of time, postage and paper.
86% of people skip through television commercials.
84% of 25 to 34 year olds have clicked out of a website because of an “irrelevant or intrusive ad.”
The cost per lead in outbound marketing is more than for inbound marketing.

Inbound marketing focuses on earning, not buying, a person’s attention, which is done through social media and engaging content, such as blogs, podcasts and white papers. This content is interesting, informative and adds value, creating a positive connection in the eyes of the consumer, thus making him more likely to engage your brand and buy the product. So it costs less and has better a ROI.

This infographic from Voltier Digital highlights the differences between the two kinds of marketing. Let us know your opinions in the comments below.

Infographic courtesy of Voltier Digital

2012 Revenue - Making It Happen vs. Hoping It Happens

Posted by Jeff Ogden on September 29, 2011

B2B Lead Generation | Ensuring You Make Your Number in 2012

The folks from CSO Insights and 3FORWARD did a webinar by this title recently. The key lesson was that, for 2012 planning, what you do today is critical. The investments you make today pay dividends next year.

Jim Dickie, CSO Insights

Here are some of their conclusions:

Sales quotas keep going up and up - faster than ever. (For instance, over 9 out of 10 companies raised quotas in 2011.)
We cannot count on an improving economy to save us (or to provide jobs for salespeople or sales leaders who are dismissed because they failed to make quota.)
Product advantages are no longer adequate. (Face facts, you’ve just been commoditized.)

Their key point is that decisions you make today in your business will impact how well you’re able to make quota in 2012.

CSO Insights advised business leaders to ask three key questions:

Is our revenue target valid?
(What are quotas based on - Last year plus X or analysis of the market? Is quota made up or based on realistic numbers?)
Do we know who our best prospects are?
(The more focused we are, the more success we become. Segmentation is critical.)
Is our lead management optimized?
(Buyer personas, Content marketing, SEO, lead nurturing, lead scoring, metrics, sales enablement.)

The keys I believe you need to focus on for the balance of the year include:

Tightly targeting your market
Formalizing your lead generation progression
Fixing the responsibility for lead generation (in marketing, not sales)
Automating lead generation with marketing automation software like Eloqua, Marketo, Silverpop or Act-On Software.
Using both outbound and inbound approaches. (Not only share content and do organic search, but call target companies and invite them to visit your content too.)

Focusing on those few imperatives as the year wins down is one of the most important things business leaders can do today.

Find New Customers can help. Services like our Lead Generation Assessment Service as well as Lead Generation and Scoring Service are exactly what companies need today.

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

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Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is the President of the B2B lead generation consultancy Find New Customers. Find New Customers helps companies dramatically improve revenue results by transforming the way 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.

“If more companies listened to (Find New Customers) a lot more would be sold.” Dan McDade, Pointclear.

12 Marketing-Takeways from the B2B Marketing Manifesto

Posted by Jeff Ogden on September 28, 2011

B2B Demand Generation | 12 Marketing Take-Aways

One of our favorite content marketing firms is Velocity Partners in London, creators of a 42 page “rant” called the B2B Marketing Manifesto.

Doug Kessler, an American living over there, recently participated in a webinar with Bob Apollo, Inflexion-Point Strategy Partners and John Sweeney of DemandGen in which he shared lessons learned from marketing that content.

I’d like to share Doug’s lessons with our fans.

First Doug and his team combined great content with marketing automation (Marketo). Having both is critical, because the great content is bait and marketing automation becomes the way of measuring and monitoring what’s happening.

Now that the project is finished, Doug was able to share 12 key marketing-takeaways:

Target just one persona
Don’t try to be all things to all people. Be very specific.
Give influencers a preview
Reach out to thought leaders with an earlier release of the content. Get their input and support. (They support, advise and promote it.) Doug said this was critical. He also said it is the step most businesses miss.
Create spin-offs
The B2B Marketing Manifesto became a Playbook, blog posts, etc. Take one piece of content and re-imagine it. Include “shameless plugs” and share on Docstoc, Scribd, Slideshare, YouTube, Linkedin, and Blogs.
Guest blog
Writing articles for other blogs generates tons of good things, like traffic, backlinks Googlejuice. (This is why Find New Customers also writes for SandHill.com, PostclickMarketingBlog, CustomerCollective, blogs for Marketo, Eloqua, Hubspot, etc.)
Test, test, test
Should you have a form or not? Should you use Auto Direct Messages in Twitter? Should emails be text or HTML? Don’t guess! Do an A/B test.
Set up analytics first
Think it through before you start. Create trackable tagged URL’s. Think of what you will want to track so you can include it in Google Analytics.
Include the search keyphrase in the title
They could have called it the Content Marketing Manifesto, but one of the keyphrases they wanted to use was “B2B Marketing,” so it became the B2B Marketing Manifesto.
Set targets before you begin
Document all the things you want to measure before you begin. #downloads, conversion rates, inbound links created, all the way to prospect meetings set. If you don’t have firm goal, just make an educated guess.
Add a survey question to your form
By adding “The hardest part of B2B Marketing is….” they were shocked at the number of people who answered it.
Get personal
They make a point of responding personally to every comment and contact. They found that people appreciated the personal touch and responded in kind.
Capture and share learnings
As you move through the process, you will learn a lot. Write things down and discuss them. Writing them down is very important.
Put in your whole head and heart
It works best if you are truly committed and believe in what you are doing. Velocity believed in their content. You should too.

What do you think? We love your comments and appreciate it when you share our content on social networks.
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“If more companies listened to (Find New Customers) a lot more would be sold.” Dan McDade, Pointclear.

5 Ways to Improve Your Landing Pages for Better Conversions

Posted by Jeff Ogden on September 26, 2011

B2B Lead Generation | 5 Ways to Improve Your Landing Pages

Great post at the Content Marketing Institute by Rachel Foster. I summarize Rachel’s post below, but you can read the full post at 5 Ways to Improve Your Landing Pages for Better Conversions.

Her bio appears below. Thank you, Rachel.

_______

As a content marketer, you put a lot of effort into getting your target audience to visit your website and opt in for your white papers, videos and reports. However, if your landing pages don’t entice people to request your content, a lot of your hard work will be lost.

That’s why I wanted to provide advice on how to improve your landing pages. For this article, I’m focusing on tips that will get people to download your free content, as the techniques for selling premium content can be different.
Here are 5 ways to increase your landing pages’ conversion rates:

Keep your most important content above the fold.
That’s where the eyes go.

Limit your visitors’ options.
Keep it simple, stupid.

Show the benefits.
Give me a good reason to fill out your form.

Create a sense of urgency.
Why should I fill out your form? Give me a reason.

Appeal to skimmers.
Short paragraphs, bullets, etc.

Also, be sure to test your landing pages to determine which copy and graphics give you the best results.
For instance:

Try running an A/B split test where you create two versions of your landing page and split your traffic between both pages.
Experiment with different headlines, calls to action and other elements until you learn which page brings you the highest conversion rate.

What about you? What techniques do you use to make your landing pages more effective? Feel free to share your thoughts below.

Author: Rachel Foster

Rachel Foster is an award-winning B2B copywriter who helps technology marketers create content that drives action. She works with clients to increase their online conversion rates, shorten their sales cycles and fill their events. Register for her upcoming free webinar Breakthroughs in B2B Marketing: 3 Hot Trends that Will Help You Generate High-Quality Leads and Increase Your Revenue at www.copywritertoronto.com/b2btrends. You can follow her on Twitter @CopywriterTO.

Why don’t you check out the B2B Lead Generation Assessment Service from Find New Customers?

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“If more companies listened to (Find New Customers) a lot more would be sold.” Dan McDade, Pointclear.

Buying software is easy. Fixing Lead Generation is hard.

Posted by Jeff Ogden on September 24, 2011

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

If you want to make sales quota in 2012, get started today! Right now! Immediately!

SaaS marketing automation 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. Too many companies believe purchasing software fixes B2B lead generation. It does not.

Fixing your B2B lead generation challenges is a lot like losing weight. Most everyone wants to do it but promises don’t match reality.

Look at this image. “Scientists discover rare weight loss ‘Wonder Herb.‘” That sounds like the sales pitch of software vendors, promising all that ROI the comes from their software. (That ROI is possible - just like weight loss is possible - if done right.)

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, Aprimo, and Pardot. They are all 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? Then complete these ten steps.

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 first appears 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.

We invite you to check out the Lead Nurturing and Scoring service from Find New Customers.

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

“If more companies listened to (Find New Customers) a lot more would be sold.” Dan McDade, Pointclear.

How to Turn a Good White Paper into a GREAT Lead Generation asset

Posted by Jeff Ogden on September 20, 2011

B2B Lead Generation: Is a White Paper just great content or a great lead generation tool. What’s the difference?

In this post, we explain how to turn that great new white paper you just published into a superb lead generation tool — using the best-practice approach of one of our favorite companies, Kinaxis.

Do you want a trickle of leads or a flood? What are current best practices on white paper marketing?

Our white paper experience

We’ve penned 3 great white papers to date - all are free at Find New Customers.

Lead generation - How to Find New Customers (Marketo)
B2B sales - Definitive Guide to Making Quota (self) and
Email marketing - Moving from Transactional to Conversational Email Marketing (Genius.com)

- so we know lots about this topic.

To illustrate, let’s look at an example of how to turn a nice white paper into a great lead generation program:

We craft a great white paper, like our highly acclaimed white paper on B2b lead generation How to Find New Customers, sponsored by Marketo. Then what do you do with it?

How to Find New Customers

You post it. You tweet about it. You blog about it. What happens?

A handful of leads trickle in and you get some decent leads.

Is there a better way? There sure is.

In fact, the company that was awarded the BtoB Marketing Idea of the Year award from Find New Customers uses this best practices approach.

Let’s look at the Kinaxis best practices approach. Use your keywords and everything points to the landing page:

Write and post the white paper to a landing page, then do these five additional things:

Record and post a video interview of the author (YouTube)
Record and post an audio summary with the author (iTunes)
Commission a transcript of the video interview (blog articles)
Build a slide presentations with audio from the author (SlideShare)
Produce multiple small bite-sized summaries, like our new cheat sheet 7 Keys to Successful Lead Nurturing (Content marketing)

Post that content everywhere - such as Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Docstoc, Slideshare, etc. — each with a Call to Action for the landing page. (Like an offer.)

Use this approach with your next white paper and watch that trickle turn into a fast flowing stream of leads.

Do you have other tips on how to market a white paper? We love your comments (and respond to every one) and appreciate those who share.

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Jeff Ogden (@fearlesscomp) is President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers. Find New Customers helps companies dramatically improve revenue results by transforming how 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.

Why Sales needs Content Marketing and Marketing Automation

Posted by Jeff Ogden on September 20, 2011

B2B Demand Generation | The Benefit to Sales

If you’re in BtoB Sales, you may be thinking that this great content stuff and demand generation talk belongs in marketing. After all, you need to close deals! “This mumbo-jumbo’s not for me. I need to be out there talking to prospective customers.”

I think the problem is us. We’ve been talking about the marketing point of view for a long time. Now let’s talk about your world in Sales.

Let’s examine a Sales scenario to illustrate the power of content marketing and marketing automation software. The point we want to make clear is this:

The primary beneficiary of content marketing and marketing automation is Sales.

Sales Scenario 1: Without content marketing and marketing automation

Sally Smith, a Sales rep for us, calls target customer and leaves a message. Sally waits a few days and leaves another voice-mail message. Sally sends an email. After a few weeks, after more voice-mails and e-mails - with no response, Sally gives up.

Sales Scenario 2: With content marketing and marketing automation

Sally calls prospect and leaves a message. Prospect visits website and checks out the company. Though he did not fill out a form, Sally knows who it is and edits the anonymous visitor record with the contact name and company.

Seeing what the prospect did, Sally calls again and leaves a personalized message. Prospect visits again and downloads a white paper - completing a form. (And since she edited the record, both visits are captured. The prospect is automatically added into lead nurturing - and valuable information is shared over time. Because we’ve implemented lead scoring we’re able us to see exactly when they are sales-ready - ready to talk to Sales.

45 days later, Sally is notified that she has a new lead. She calls the prospect and the prospect answers. “Sally, great to hear from you. I’ve been getting so much great information from your company and I’m convinced you can help me. I look forward to meeting you.”

I hope you can now see how content marketing and marketing automation actually benefits Sales.

If you’re in B2B Sales and you feel you’re not getting the quality leads you really need, please share this post with your Vice President of Sales.

What do you think? We love comments and those who share. And we’re proud to be syndicated by many services like CustomerCollective, B2C, and many others.

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“If more companies listened to (Find New Customers) a lot more would be sold.” Dan McDade, Pointclear.

3 Reasons Qlikview is killing Microstrategy

Posted by Jeff Ogden on September 20, 2011

B2B Demand Generation | Why an upstart is killing the incumbent

I recently met with Microstrategy and their marketing leadership expressed concerns about a new competitor, Qlikview. I thought it might be helpful if I analyzed the justification for their concerns.

Microstrategy is a big, established player in business intelligence, but lately a company called Qlikview has been growing much, much faster. Why is this happening?

I believe there are 3 reasons why this is happening:

Qlikview has no internal challenges.
Microstrategy has an in-house developed CRM, (no compatibility with other applications), no marketing automation and no content marketing. Building B2B demand generation from scratch is tough. Qlikview had none of those obstacles.
Qlikview has savvy, aggressive marketing leadership.Microstrategy does not. While they have new marketing leadership, not much seems to be happening there.Qlikview won the Marketo Revenue Performance Excellence Award for Global Revenue Performance Excellence. They are also expanding globally very quickly.(Here is the definition of Most Successful Global RPM Execution):Honors an organization with successful Marketo implementations across multiple countries or regions, as well as unprecedented results within those deployments, including increased revenue, marketing ROI, global alignment and overall business impact.)
Qlikview is a modern marketing firm
They are big into B2B demand generation, including social, content marketing, lead nurturing, lead scoring, etc. Microstrategy is doing none of those to any degree that I can see.

What do you think? Why do you think savvy young companies damage established players so much? We love comments and those who share.

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“If more companies listened to (Find New Customers) a lot more would be sold.” Dan McDade, Pointclear.

Why “We’re the Leading Provider of” is NOT!

Posted by Jeff Ogden on September 19, 2011

Lead Generation Companies | Why “We’re the leading provider of” is a BIG Mistake

As an experiment, I did a Google search on “Leading Provider of”

Wow! Lots and lots of hits.

Here’s an example:

Olive Software - the leading provider of digital edition & digital …

A click on their website takes me to their “value proposition.” Here’s how they say it.

Olive Software is the leading provider of digital edition and digital archiving solutions for the publishing industry. Our solutions enable newspapers, magazines and other content publishers to cut printing and distribution costs, boost online traffic, and create new markets and revenue streams.

There’s one small problem. It is chest-thumping and prospective buyers hate chest-thumping. It’s a disaster.

Let’s re-write it for them.

Olive Software helps publishers (like newspapers, magazines and other content publishers) to cut printing and distribution costs, boost online traffic, and create new markets and revenue streams using digital technology.

What’s different about my rewrite? It focuses on the prospective buyer and the benefits they get - not what the company sells. Show it to any prospective customer. Betcha they will prefer my version to the company’s version.

Stop chest-thumping and instead focus on the buyer. The operative word is “You.” We want to talk directly to the prospect using simple language and share how they benefit from working with us. (My favorite marketing slogan of all time? “You’re going to like the way you look. I guarantee it.” “George Zimmer, Men’s Wearhouse” - It’s about you - how you will look, and not about clothing.)

What do you think? Do you have other examples to share? We love comments and those who share.

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“If more companies listened to (Find New Customers) a lot more would be sold.” Dan McDade, Pointclear.