NetProspex study finds Almost 2 out of 3 B2B Marketers Use Unreliable Data

sales lead generation data quality

The State of Data Quality in B2B Companies Today is Abysmal, nearly killing their sales lead generation programs.

Almost all B2B companies suffer from contact databases that are “unreliable” (64%) or “questionable” (34%), according to [download page] a new study from NetProspex. Data quality is a major problem which hampers your sales lead generation programs.

NetProspex ran over 100M records through the NetProspex Data Healthcheck program evaluating database health across 4 best practice areas – record duplication, record completeness, email deliverability, and phone connectability. Using standardized scores for each component, the study arrives at a data health scale, with 98% of companies scoring on the lower end of the scale, and just 2% having “functional” databases.

It’s also interesting to see some of the findings:

  • Phone connectivity scored only a 1.5 out of 5 which is deemed “risky.”  Fewer than 1 out of 2 records were reachable by phone.
  • The average score for email deliverability was just 2.8, which means that 30-40% of emails sent did not reach the intended recipient.
  • The average score for record completeness was just 2.5, putting this area in the “unreliable” category, where only 50-65% of records are complete.

It seems clear that data cleanliness and accuracy is a massive problem for B2B sellers today. Lack of data quality is a major obstacle in B2B sales lead generation programs.

Jeff Ogden of Find New Customers is an award-winning BtoB marketer and President of the sales lead generation company Find New Customers. He’s a two time winner of Top 50 Influencer in Sales Lead Management and his company helps BtoB sellers make the connection between Marketing and Revenue. Contact Find New Customers by calling 516-495-9250 or send an email to jeff dot ogden at findnewcustomers.com.

Summary of this week’s posts from the sales lead generation company Find New Customers

digital marketing

sales lead generationHere is the summary of the posts from this week from the sales lead generation company Find New Customers. If you missed any this week, it’s a good chance to catch up.

Top 10 Reasons NOT to Contact the sales lead generation company Find New Customers

3 Reasons Why You Need to Check Out Marketing Made Simple TV

Social Media Marketing becoming Mainstream in BtoB, though most still can’t measure it

Please stop talking. And start listening. Sales lead generation works a lot better.

Awash in an Ocean of Content, Companies with the best Buyer Insights win the digital marketing battle

The Definitive Guide to BtoB Demand Generation - How to Find New Customers

In addition, Marketing Made Simple TV premiered a new show this week.

“Keys to Human Centric Leadership” - @tedcoine on Marketing Made Simple TV

We hope y0u find this weekly summary helpful. We realized that since this blog posts every day, you may have missed some. So this is a service for you.

Please let us know what you think in the notes. This blog is for you, so we really care what you think.

Buyer Insights are the Foundation of Great BtoB Digital Marketing

buyer personas in digital marketing

“Companies in the future will compete primarily on the quality of their insights on buyers” Jeff Ogden, President of Find New Customers

With 9 out of 10 companies doing content marketing in 2013 (MarketingProfs), and, according to Velocity Partners UK “That otherBuyer Personas in digital marketing one is doing nothing and won’t be bothering anyone,” it’s clear to me that relevance is key. The more relevant your content is for buyers, the more likely they are to digest it fully.

But how do you create content that is truly relevant for buyers today? How do you find the right words and messages to use in your digital marketing programs?

In order to create relevant content, you need true buyer insights. That means you need to interview your buyers, both for won and lost deals, in order to gather insights to drive digital marketing campaigns and sales enablement programs.

The problem is that almost no company on Earth has the in-house skills and experience to gather the kind of insights you truly need.  For instance, there are two parts to a buyer persona (Thanks to the Buyer Persona Institute, who owns the rights to this.)

  1. Core buyer persona
    This is the people information that is typically found in persona development. It stays the same for all buying decisions.
  2. Product, Service or Solution Connection
    This is information specific to a particular buying decision. These insights are not obvious and are a major source of competitive advantage.

But some are tempted to take short-cuts:

Isn’t there an easier way? Can’t we just email out a survey?

Some may be tempted to take a short cut, trying to get insights from focus groups or surveys. Resist this temptation.

  • Surveys are useful when you know what the question is.

  • Focus groups can get people to choose the best of three alternatives.

But these techniques can only confirm the best answer from a list of pre-selected options — validating what you already know.

The buyer persona interview process goes deeper to identify the questions you don’t know. It’s the way to get at non-obvious insights that allow you to redefine the competitive playing field.

 (Adele Revella, The Buyer Persona Institute)

Since most companies lack the in-house skills and experience to do this in-house, we suggest you check out the Buyer Persona Service from Find New Customers.

Check out my About.me profile

Jeff  Ogden

Jeff Ogden

B2B Marketing Expert & Professional Writer/Speaker/TV Host

I'm an award-winning B2B marketing expert. as well as a professional speaker, writer and TV show host. I'm a Notre Dame grad with a marketing degree. And I'm the Creator and Host of Marketing Made Simple TV, where i interview the brilliant and famous, like New York Times best-selling author Daniel Pink, Chris Brogan of Human Business Works and Guy Kawasaki of Garage Technology Ventures. (@guykawaski has over 1.65 million Twitter rollowers!) Thanks to broad syndication, it reaches an audience of over 2 million people each week. I have a wife and three boys and was born and raised in a small town in southern Indiana - Madison, where the entire downtown is on the National Register of Historic Places. Big fan of blues rock too, and of college sports too, especially football. Professional writer, speaker and TV host/producer. Author of 4 white papers, ebooks, etc. B2B Marketing and Sales expert known as the Fearless Competitor. Author of the top rated B2B marketing blog Fearless Competitor. Professional writer (author of four white papers) and speaker (national speaker for the Business Marketing Association). Profiled in the book, Get Back to Work Faster. Dad, husband and sports geek. Proud graduate of the University of Notre Dame - holds degree in marketing from the #1 undergraduate business school in the USA. Born and raised in a small town in Southern Indiana. Lives outside NYC with my wife and three boys. Contact me at jeff dot ogden at findnewcustomers.com or call (516) 495-9350.

The Definitive Guide to BtoB Demand Generation - How to Find New Customers

How to Find New Customers

Need to craft a best-practices sales lead generation program? Check out the Definitive Guide to BtoB Demand Generation: How to Find New Customers

In a recent meeting at my former employer,an Atlanta-based revenue marketing company, some folks from Marketo spoke about the series of content called “The Definitive Guide to…”  They joked that so many “definitive guides” have come out, that the next one might be named “The Definitive Guide to Definitive Guides.”

Those definitive guides from Marketo are terrific content, but Find New Customers has our own “definitive guide.” Our’s is The Definitive Guide to BtoB Demand Generation: How to Find New Customers.

BtoB sellers are struggling to create enough qualified sales opportunities.  In fact, a recent study by MarketingSherpa found that the challenge of Generating High Quality Leads was the big problem faced by BtoB companies, with 3 out of 4 naming it number one.B2B Marketing Challenges growing in pertinence

This great white paper is a superb guide to help companies like your create best practices sales lead generation programs. That is a great guide to fixing the key problem that vexes most BtoB sellers today - the lack of enough qualified sales opportunities.

In order to learn how to implement a best-practices sales lead generation in your company, just click the image below.

 

How to Find New Customers

How to Find New Customers

How to Find New Customers is “The Definitive Guide to BtoB Demand Generation”

The author of How to Find New Customers, Jeff Ogden, is a an award-winning BtoB marketing expert in sales lead generation and the President of Find New Customers.

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Awash in an Ocean of Content, Companies with the best Buyer Insights win the digital marketing battle

Digital Marketing

ship2-fixedBuyer Insights are what separate the best marketers in their digital marketing campaigns

I suggest you leave buyer insights to the pros.

According to MarketingProfs, 9 out of 10 companies are doing content marketing in 2013.  It seems everyone is doing it, but almost no one is any good at it. In fact, my friends at Velocity Partners UK issued an e-book entitled Crap - We’re About to Be Buried in It. It starts off with “9 out of 10 companies are doing content marketing today…..and one our of 10 is doing nothing and won’t be bothering anyone.”

“The problem is that everyone is doing content and no one has the people to create quality content today - so we’re about to be buried in an ocean of crappy content, and your digital marketing program will suffer greatly.”

So what are B2B sellers to do?

Everyone seems to advise you to slow down and create more compelling content.  But what is compelling content?  Think about it. When was the last time YOU found something compelling?

Chances are it was something that specifically related to YOU - your experiences, your passions or your family.  As you can see, Relevance is all in the eye of the beholder. And for BtoB sellers today, the beholder is the customer.

If customers hold the keys to relevance, more and more BtoB sellers will differentiate themselves based on buyer insights - what you know about those customers. Companies with the best buyer insights will win.

Companies who do the BEST jobs of uncovering key buyer issues and pains will create truly relevant content for their digital marketing programs. This is why buyer persona services are the single most important thing you can do in 2013. And please note, creating a survey and sending out is NOT buyer personas. Buyer Personas are all about discovering new information.

As one who has completed the Buyer Persona Master Class, I can tell you that these are not trivial or easy to understand processes.  Just like you hire plumbers and electricians to work on your house, I strongly advise you to bring in professional to collect and collate your buyer personas for your digital marketing programs.  Only the pros know exactly what needs to be done - using industry best practices.

But some are tempted to take short-cuts:

Isn’t there an easier way? Can’t we just email out a survey?

Some may be tempted to take a short cut, trying to get insights from focus groups or surveys. Resist this temptation.

  • Surveys are useful when you know what the question is.

  • Focus groups can get people to choose the best of three alternatives.

But these techniques can only confirm the best answer from a list of pre-selected options — validating what you already know.

The buyer persona interview process goes deeper to identify the questions you don’t know. It’s the way to get at non-obvious insights that allow you to redefine the competitive playing field.

 (Adele Revella, The Buyer Persona Institute)

We suggest you check out the Buyer Persona Service from Find New Customers today.

What do you think? We love to get comments and appreciate those who share on social media.

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Please stop talking. And start listening. Sales lead generation works a lot better.

sales lead generation

sales lead generationTo be successful in sales lead generation, stop talking and start listening.

There’s a very nice lady who has no idea why she is no longer involved with Marketing Made Simpler TV. Here’s the real reason why she was dismissed from the show:

She simply talks way too much.

A friend of my wife, a very nice lady as well, talks and talks and talks. While both of them are nice ladies and they are good social friends, they have no place in business.

Excessive talking does not work in business! In business, it’s the ability to ask great questions and listen attentively to the other person’s point of view that works.  Look the person in the eye and listen closely.

The fastest way to turn off a prospect is to talk too much. In fact, if you want your sales lead generation programs to work, stop talking and start listening.

In fact, many things are counter-intuitive in sales lead generation, such as:

  1. Talk less and you will sell more
  2. Give more and you will earn trust
  3. Share ideas and get back value

In fact, I recently got a call from a women’s accessory store in the area. The owner of the store said “I’m so impressed with your great content and approach. It’s amazing.” Gee thank you.  But all we ever try to do is help others. Case in point, when this small store called me, they complained that advertising was not working. Do I work with businesses like their’s? No. Retail stores are not the BtoB market Find New Customers serves. (We focus on mid-sized companies who sell complex products to other businesses.)

I need money too, but instead of trying to book business, I suggested they start blogging and share ideas that women could use - like selecting the right colors. I explained how they could use WordPress.com and how Mike Vaynerchuk of Wine Library grew his business by sharing helpful information. They LOVED my advice, but I did not make one dime. I didn’t care. If I can help one small business be more successful, my day is complete.

It seems clear to me: The more people talk, the more it comes back to hurt them. In fact, the lady I discussed earlier was on a business conference call with me. I had clear objectives for the call.  But she kept talking and talking, so I was unable to accomplish what I needed to do on the call.

It’s clear. Talking does not work in sales lead generation.

What do you think?  Have you worked with people who talked too much? We love comments and those who share on social media.

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3 Reasons Why You Need to Check Out Marketing Made Simple TV

Chris Brogan

Marketing Made Simple TV is the weekly online TV show, created last year by Jeff Ogden of Find New Customers. Each week it shares the most brilliant people in business today.

But why would YOU want to check it out?

This just in: Video is the #2 most effective form of marketing content, right behind feature articles.  Marketing Made Simple TV is “TV on the Web” weekly video content.

Content Effectiveness

Here are three reasons you ought to watch Marketing Made Simple TV:

  1. Truly incredible guests
    Marketing Made Simple TV features incredible guests, like Beth Comstock, CMO of GE, Jeffrey Hayzlett, the Celebrity CMO, Daniel Pink, New York Times best-selling author, Chris Brogan of Human Business Works and Guy Kawasaki, author of Enchantment (one of my all-time favorite books.) Follow them all on Twitter here. (Marketing Made Simple TV guest Twitter list)

    Daniel Pink

    Dan Pink

    Jeffrey Hayzlett

    Jeffrey Hayzlett

    Chris Brogan

    Beth Comstock

    Beth Comstock

    Chris Brogan

  2. Very entertaining and engaging format
    Marketing Made Simple TV is NOT a web show. It’s a TV-show - that lives on the web. TV shows feature camera changes (switch from interview to guest), B-Roll content (the stuff that appears over the shoulder of the speaker) and an off-screen “green room.” That’s exactly how Marketing Made Simple TV works. This is why Marketing Made Simple TV is “TV on the Web.”
  3. It gets better all the time
    Marketing Made Simple TV never rests. We’re always working to increase syndication, improve quality and add additional formats. One example is at South by Southwest - we’re shooting live shows there, with Basil Puglisi as our guest host. If you saw Marketing Made Simple TV back last Spring and Early Summer, it looks very different today. And we’re excited that our platform provider Watchitoo is working on enlarging the video window and more improvements.

    Guy Kawaski

    Guy Kawasaki

Where can you find Marketing Made Simple TV?

New shows premiere every Thursday at noon ET/9 AM PT at these sites:

  • Fearless Competitor (this blog)
  • Marketing Made Simple TV (the main show site)
  • Digital Ethos
  • Social Media Today
  • Business2Community
  • CMO.com (sometimes)
  • BMA Buzz (sometimes)
  • YouTube
  • Vimeo
  • Slideshare

The Remarkable Power of Syndication with Calls to Action:

Because Marketing Made Simple TV is a highly syndicated show, it reaches an audience of over 2 million people each week.  And since it offers a Call to Action (an offer with a clickable link in the show) it offers incredible value for prospective show sponsors.  (People who watch the show can click the offer at any point to go to a landing page.)

Companies who target senior business executives can use Marketing Made Simple TV to spread their messages far and wide. As I told one prospective sponsor looking to get their messages out - “Think of Marketing Made Simple TV as the world’s biggest megaphone!” (They are signing up soon.)

Companies wishing to learn more about the value of sponsorship should visit Sponsorship/Advertising Opportunities on Marketing Made Simple TV.

 

Top 10 Reasons NOT to Contact the sales lead generation company Find New Customers

Top 10

Let’s have a bit of fun! This is one of my favorite posts - teasing my own sales lead generation company.

We present our Top 10 List - Ten reasons NOT to contact the sales lead generation company Find New Customers.

Jeff Ogden, President of the sales lead generation company Find New Customers shares a witty look at 10 reasons NOT to talk to Find New Customers. One of the favorite sayings of Jeff Ogden, Creator and Host of Marketing Made Simple TV is “Let Your Freak Flag Fly.” Business ought to be fun.

In fact, with the recent data that 9 out 10 companies are doing content marketing in 2013, you need to differentiate yourself in your sales lead generation programs. So relax and have fun.

He’s also the host of the popular TV show, Marketing Made Simple TV - the very popular and syndicated show in which he interviews the world’s smartest business thinkers.  In fact, one of the guests on the show, Mac McConnell of Bluebird Strategies, talked about the need for fun, engaging, irreverent content in your sales lead generation programs - hence we aresales lead generation bring this back.

This is one of our most popular blog posts ever! Why? While everyone else says why they are great, we do the opposite. And we make it fun.

Why don’t you try this approach in your business too?

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Ten Questions to Sharpen Your Competitive Differentiation - Guest post by Laura Patterson

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Ten Questions to Sharpen Your Competitive Differentiation

A guest post By Laura Patterson, VisionEdge Marketing

Laura Patterson

Laura Patterson

Companies need to make a myriad of strategic and tactical decisions on how they will operate in the market and engage with customers.  One of the most important tasks for digital marketing is to differentiate the company and its products from the competition.  Differentiation entails clearly distinguishing your product and/or company to make it more attractive and compelling to a particular target market.  Companies who do this well create a competitive advantage.

Differentiation plays an important role in gaining customer consideration and preference, two important steps in the customer buying process. So when was the last time you and your team took time to consider how your rivals operate, or might operate based on the decisions you make? For example, if you brought a new product or service to market:

  • Are they likely to discount their prices?
  • Provide incentives to their partners in an effort to tie up the channel?
  • Extend offers to customers that will dissuade trial of and switching to your offer?

As part of developing a go-to-market plan for innovations and/or demand generation strategies we consider technology, functionality, customer segments and requirements, channels and partners, pricing and promotion.  Our competitors are doing the same.  Therefore, thinking about these questions and areas from the perspective of your competition might provide some insight into their potential opportunities and possible responses. Taking the time to answering the following ten questions from your competitors’ perspective may enable you to better anticipate and counteract their moves:

  1. What technologies or features might a competitor include to make its product/service more compelling to your target customers?
  2. How much technological lead must each competitor need in their next generation product or service in order to leapfrog the current products in the market?
  3. How much more will customers be willing to pay for a competitor’s technological or experience improvements?
  4. What partnerships could the competitor establish that would affect our ability to gain traction and penetration in the market?
  5. What customer segments could competitors tap to accelerate their growth and category share?
  6. In what segments will price competition be the fiercest and how big are these segments?  What position does the competition have in each of these segments?
  7. How can the competition adapt any of their existing products to differentiate them further?
  8. Which markets/geographies/customers will the competition focus on to protect their current share?  In bringing a new offer to market?  To grow their category position?
  9. How will the competition position new products/services and bring these to market?
  10. What barriers to entry can the competition create or develop that could delay our ability to respond?

These ten questions will probably spark more questions for you and your team to address.  Reflecting on these questions will help you sharpen your thinking when it comes to innovation and market entry strategies.

Laura Patterson I @LauraVEM

President and Founder, VisionEdge Marketing

Want to prove and improve the value of your marketing? For 20+ years, Laura has been helping CEOs and Marketing Executives at companies such as Cisco, Elsevier Health Science, ING, Intel, Kennametal, and Southwest Airlines do just that. She was an early advocate of using marketing data, processes, automation, and dashboards to link marketing initiatives and investments to business outcomes. Laura has authored three books on marketing performance management, including the most recent: Metrics in Action: Creating a Performance Driven Marketing Organization, and is frequently interviewed for Marketing Made Simple TV.

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CMOs to Rein in Traditional Ad Spend, Press on With Digital Marketing

digital marketing

Digital Marketing growth

Life is pretty bleak for TV, Newspaper and all off-line advertising. Digital Marketing is the future. (Source: MarketingCharts)

(Since I no longer work for The Pedowitz Group, I have restarted Saturday posts. What do you think?

And do you really truly understand your buyers? If not, check out the Buyer Persona Service from Find New Customers.)

Despite consumer and marketer beliefs that traditional media advertising on the whole is more effective than online advertising, marketers continue to shift budgets away from traditional media and towards digital marketing channels, finds Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business in its latest installment of The CMO Survey.

In this latest survey, CMOs forecast a 2.7% decline in traditional advertising spend over the next 12 months, after predicting a 1.9% decrease in August 2012, an 0.8% decrease in February 2012, and a 1.3% increase in August 2011. So the drop is accelerating.

By contrast, digital marketing spending is forecast to grow by 10.2%, a slower rate than the 11.5% increase forecast in August 2012, but a healthy rate nonetheless. I look for continued growth in digital marketing in the months and years to come.

Segregating responses by type of company, the study finds that B2C service firms will pull back on traditional advertising the most (-5.4%), with B2B product companies (-4.1%) also curtailing spending. B2B services (-2.2%) and B2C product (-0.6%) companies will keep their budgets relatively flat. Each company type is projecting a double-digit increase in digital marketing spend, save for B2B product companies (+8.2%). So the increase in spend on digital marketing in B2B companies is substantial, if not quite double digits.

Meanwhile, CMOs are projecting increased budgets across a number of other areas, though they’re less bullish than in the August 2012 survey. They’re expecting to spend more on new product (8%, down from 9.4% in August 2012) and service (5.8%, down from 6.5%) introductions, while also forecasting an 8.1% increase in budgets devoted to customer relationship management (down from 9%), and 6.8% more spending on brand building (down from 7.5%).

Overall marketing spending is expected to grow by 6.1% over the next 12 months, slightly slower than the 6.4% growth forecast from August 2012. Currently, marketing budgets are reported to account for an average of 10.6% of firm budgets, down from 11.4% in August 2012. (In my opinion, reducing the marketing budget is cutting off your nose to spite your face.)

About the Data: The CMO Survey is conducted online twice a year. The latest survey was fielded from January 22 to February 8, 2013. 468 CMOs responded to the survey, of which 95% were VP level or above.

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