Nearly 1/2 of BtoB Marketers will increase spend in 2013, according to BtoB marketing study

January 28, 2013 Leave a Comment
marketing blvd_solution way

The economy may be struggling but BtoB companies are investing more in BtoB marketing, according to BtoB’s “2013 Outlook: Marketing Priorities and Plans” special report.

The annual report, now in its 10th year, was based on an online survey of 366 b2b marketers, conducted between Nov. 12 and Nov. 30, 2012.

Demand generation (acquiring new customers) is the top priority, with almost 7 out of 10 saying it is their #1 priority.  That means a good year for marketing automation firms like Marketo and for my company, the revenue marketing connection firm Find New Customers. Both firms fit squarely in the BtoB demand generation space – Marketo’s great software matched with Find New Customers services.Btob marketing

“According to the Outlook survey, 67.2% of marketers plan to increase their spending on digital marketing this year. Within digital marketing, the top spending areas will be website development (with 70.1% of marketers planning increases this year), email marketing (61.9%), social media (56.0%), online video (55.8%) and search (52.5%).

Mobile is also growing in importance for b2b marketers, with 32.7% of respondents now using mobile as part of their marketing strategy, and 35.5% planning to increase their spending on mobile marketing this year.” (Also, check out mobile marketing expert CK Kerley on Marketing Made Simple TV.)

There are a few clear take-aways for BtoB companies today:

  1. You need to start the Revenue Marketing Journey right away, if you’ve not already done so.
  2. Content marketing is more important than ever and needs investment.
  3. Are you nurturing leads and scoring behaviors? If not, you will be left in the dust.

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

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Sponsors Wanted: Popular Online Show Marketing Made Simple TV asks for your help

January 23, 2013 Leave a Comment
Family_watching_television_1958

Marketing Made Simple TV, the popular weekly marketing show hosted by Jeff Ogden, is looking for sponsors. Learn more here.

Why sponsor the show?

  • If you sell to marketing and sales leaders, as well a CEOs, you’ll want consider it, because reaches over one million people each week.Harpo Studios
  • If you need some awesome video content for your website, you should consider sponsoring the show. (If you want famous guests on your site.)
  • And if you want your logo all over the internet, you want to sponsor the show.

Marketing Made Simple TV is a weekly show running every Thursday at noon ET, with an encore show every Sunday.. And we’re rapidly syndicating the show – more sites means more eyeballs and more exposure for your brand. (Over one million people today!) Why? Think Oprah and Harpo Productions.

Oprah syndicated her show, so if you wanted to reach all the women all over the USA who tune in, you dealt with Harpo Productions and paid their advertising rates. As a result, Oprah became a very rich woman. This is the model we use for Marketing Made Simple TV

Learn about sponsoring the show here

The show has awesome guests too – people like Mitch Joel, Mac McConnell, Don Peppers, Joe Pulizzi, Laura Patterson, Christina CK Kerley and more. And in 2013, our guests are bigger than ever – including the popular speaker and author, Chris Brogan and New York Times/Wall Street Journal best-selling author, Dan Pink!

Learn about sponsoring the show here

One final point. We are accepting sponsors — but only one per category, so there is no channel conflict. For instance, we’ll take just one sponsor per category below:

Marketing Automation Software

All in One Marketing Software

Data

Social Media firms

  • Facebook (They sure could use some good press), Hootsuite, Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

Marketing Firms

Email Firms
Professional Servies Firms
  • CapGemini, Accenture, PWC

Learn about sponsoring the show here

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

 

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Visual Gold! The New Revolution of Content Marketing [Infographic]

December 29, 2012 Leave a Comment
buyer personas drive content

Thanks to our friends at Marketo for sharing this awesome infographic on content marketing.

Your prospects are drinking from a fire-hose of information – with far more information than they can possibly absorb. In the book, The Impact Equation, authors Chris Brogan and Julien Smith wrote:

“You get about 200 or more emails a day. You have a few hundred friends and connections on Facebook — some of whom post updates quite often. You have a Twitter account where all the other people you follow post even more updates. You read a bunch of blogs and online news services. You watch videos on YouTube, TED, Vimeo and Hulu.

Be honest. There’s so much going on that your even losing track of the people who matter most to you.  You’re skipping half the newsletters you subscribe to. You’re not even keeping up with email.”

(Editor’s note: Chris Brogan is an upcoming guest on Marketing Made Simple TV)

In this din, the marketer needs to break through the noise. Brevity and differentiation matter. Content needs to evolve from words to visual. To learn more, check out this great infographic by Marketo.

Visual-Gold-Infographic

Jeff Ogden, President of Find New Customers and Creator and Host of Marketing Made Simple TV is an award-winning B2B marketing expert. On January 2, 2012, he will join the world’s largest revenue marketing firm, The Pedowitz Group to head their largest global client. He also holds a degree in Marketing from the University of Notre Dame, who will play Alabama for the national championship on January 7th at 8:00pm on ESPN.

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The Awesome Power of Marketing Made Simple TV is………syndication in advertising

December 12, 2012 Leave a Comment
syndication

Syndication in advertising, plain and simple

A TV show depends on ratings – number of viewers. The recent Notre Dame-USC game got great ratings.  (Please note that Jeff Ogden, President of the lead generation company Find New Customers is a Notre Dame graduate.)  TV companies use ratings to win advertisers. Advertisers flock to shows with great ratings, as that’s how they reach their audience.

Marketing Made Simple TV reaches a massive audience, thanks to syndication.Marketing made simple tv logo

Notre Dame vs. USC earns fifth-highest college football rating in two decades

Sports Media Watch | Nov. 29, 2012 2:20 p.m.

Sports Media Watch reports that last Saturday’s contest between top-ranked Notre Dame and USC, with a berth in the BCS National Championship Game on the line for the Irish, was the fifth-highest-rated college football telecast since 1991. In all, 16.1 million viewers tuned in and the game earned a 9.4 overnight rating, representing a 141% increase over the Notre Dame-Stanford match-up in Week 13 last year.

When you have a show on the web, how do you garner large numbers of eyebalsl, so as to get great ratings and deliver a lot of value to sponsors/advertisers.

The Answer: Syndication in advertising!

Because Marketing Made Simple TV is carried (syndicated) by so many popular websites, it reaches an audience of over one million people each week.

Marketing Made Simple TV delivers a million people to you each week – for less than the cost of a new employee!

Because the show goes to great sites like Social Media Today, DigitalEthos, Business2Community and CMO.com, we deliver great eyeballs to you. And we work continuously to add new syndication sites to the list.

  • Digital Ethos – 15,000 views per month
  • Fearless Competitor – 11,000 views per month
  • Social Media Today – est. 350,000 views per month
  • Business2Community – 600,000 views per month
  • CMO.com – 14,000 marketing leaders and weekly newsletter
  • BMA Buzz – 9,600 BtoB marketing leaders
  • YouTube – 11,000 views per show
  • RainToday – TBD
  • DMNews.com – TBD
  • Slideshare.net – TBD

Plus, each of our guests promotes the show extensively!

A demonstration of syndication

Also, Vimeo, YouTube, CMO.com and more added all the time.

This is where the real power of Marketing Made Simple TV lies for sponsors and advertisers – syndication for advertising.  A non-syndicated show would offer vastly less value to advertisers. Case in point, the show I used to host, Mad Marketing TV, for the nice folks at Act-On Software, only published to YouTube and the Act-On Software blog.  So it reaches a tiny fraction of what Marketing Made Simple TV reaches today.

If you target senior sales and marketing professionals for your company’s products and services, then Marketing Made Simple TV is THE show for you!

To learn more about sponsoring Marketing Made Simple TV, visit our Sponsor page or send an email to host at marketingmadesimple.tv.

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How to Dramatically Improve Business Results – Simplify the Home Page!

December 2, 2012 Leave a Comment
ExecutivesHappyBanner

Paul Dunay, an award winning B2B marketer recently told me on Marketing Made Simple TV that the model of home pages for B2B sellers is woefully out of date. Paul told me that model of choices, hero image and a lot of options no longer works. I agree with Paul and think a big change is in order if we want to improve results in sales lead management and grow revenue – improving business results.

B2B sellers need to dramatically simplify their home pages!

The need to simplify is borne out by an important concept in marketing called the “Paradox of Choice”  - there’s a book and TED video by that name by Barry Schwartz – more choices delivers worse results. Here is the description of the book from Amazon:

“In the spirit of Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock, a social critique of our obsession with choice, and how it contributes to anxiety, dissatisfaction and regret. This paperback (of The Paradox of Choice) includes a new P.S. section with author interviews, insights, features, suggested readings, and more.

Whether we’re buying a pair of jeans, ordering a cup of coffee, selecting a long-distance carrier, applying to college, choosing a doctor, or setting up a 401(k), everyday decisions–both big and small–have become increasingly complex due to the overwhelming abundance of choice with which we are presented.

We assume that more choice means better options and greater satisfaction. But beware of excessive choice: choice overload can make you question the decisions you make before you even make them, it can set you up for unrealistically high expectations, and it can make you blame yourself for any and all failures. In the long run, this can lead to decision-making paralysis, anxiety, and perpetual stress. And, in a culture that tells us that there is no excuse for falling short of perfection when your options are limitless, too much choice can lead to clinical depression.”

B2B Sellers Home Pages are way too complex. Simplifying your home page will deliver improved business results for you.

With those ideas in mind, let’s look at a typical B2B seller.  Look at this home page (belonging to Cisco. We could have used any number of firms, so we are not picking on Cisco.) See the choices across the top – Products & Services, Support, How to Buy, etc?  Below that you have the hero image and below that you have many choices? This violates everything in The Paradox of Choice. In B2B marketing, less is truly more.

Sorry Cisco, but in today’s world of mobile access and attention starved buyers, this model need to change to deliver improved business results. This is my manifesto! Will you join me?

What is my model of the future? I believe your home page needs to engage prospective buyers in a simple, quick way. It needs to answer just three questions from the point of view of the visitor:

  1. What problem of mine do you solve?
  2. What am I here? Are you worthy?
  3. What is our next step? What are you asking me to do?

The brilliant “right brain” marketers at Marketing Experiments also said the same thing on a recent webinar, contrasting the complex page at Yahoo.com with the spartan elegance at Google.com. Which is the more successful company?

I don’t just talk about this, I lived it. And my results confirm my ideas. We delivered improved business results from our change.

I slashed the number of words at www.findnewcustomers.com (when we were using our old marketing automation software) from 550 words down to just 28.  A month later we found that registrations and downloads of our flagship white paper, How to Find New Customers, had shot up by 500%! Think of what a 500% increase would deliver for your sales lead generation programs.

The Home Page of the Future

Here’s what I believe you should do:

  1. Limit yourself to 50 or fewer words on the home page. (This is going to be really hard!)
  2. Include a very brief (less than a minute) video with a Call to Action of your best content.
  3. Use this as a gateway to future content if desired.

That home page will load quickly on mobile devices (with or without 4G), and visitors will grasp the value almost instantly. Engagement will shoot up and your business growth will accellerate!

What do you think? We love comments (and read them all) and appreciate those who share our posts on social media.

Check out my upcoming webinar too!

Nurture Leads and Sell More: How to Earn Buyers’ Trust and Grow Your Revenue 
with Jeff Ogden, Dec. 4, 2012, at 2 p.m. ET

Jeff Ogden, President of Find New Customers is an award-winning B2B marketing expert and a great speaker. He was named a top 25 Sales Influencer for 2012 by OpenView Labs. He was also named one of the Top 50 Most Influential in Sales Lead Management by the Sales Lead Management Association. And this blog was named the top B2B blog of 2012 by BuyerZone. He also holds a degree in Marketing from the University of Notre Dame, who will play Alabama in the BCS Championship on January 7th, 2013!

 

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SEO, Influencers or Quality: What is Your Trump Card in Content Marketing?

November 29, 2012 Leave a Comment
ContentMarketingObjectives

Social Media Today Presents: SEO, Influencers or Quality: What’s Your Trump Card in Content Marketing?

SEO, Influencers, or Quality – What’s Your Trump Card in Content Marketing? — Webinar Transcript

Moderated by Paul Dunay, Global VP of Marketing at Maxymizer and featuring Wendy Lea of Get Satisfaction, Lee Odden of Top Rank Marketing and Jeff Ogden of Find New Customers.

  • 2. Brought to you by & 2
  • 3. Join the Conversation… 3
  • 4. About the ModeratorPaul Dunay is an award-winning B2B marketing expert with more than 20 years’success in generating demand and creating buzz for leading technology, consumerproducts, financial services and professional services organizations. Paul is theGlobal Vice President of Marketing for Maxymiser, a leader in web optimization andanalytics, and author of five “Dummies” books: Facebook Marketing for Dummies(Wiley 2009), Social Media and the Contact Center for Dummies (Wiley CustomPublishing 2010), Facebook Advertising for Dummies (Wiley 2010), FacebookMarketing for Dummies 2nd Edition (Wiley 2011) and Facebook Marketing forDummies 3rd Edition (Wiley 2012). @PaulDunay 4 #smtlive
  • 5. Our Speakers Jeff Ogden, @fearlesscomp President of Find New Customers is an award-winning B2B marketing expert. He was named a top 25 Sales Influencer for 2012 by OpenView Labs. He was also named one of the Top 50 Most Influential in Sales Lead Management by the Sales Lead Management Association. And his blog was named the top B2B blog of 2012 by BuyerZone. His is also the Creator and Host of the popular show Marketing Made Simple TV. He holds a degree in Marketing from the University of Notre Dame. Wendy Lea is the CEO of Get Satisfaction. Wendy founded The Chatham Group, where she currently serves as an angel investor, strategic advisor and board member for a long list of startup companies. She also serves on the board of Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund (SV2.org). Wendy has been recognized as a Top 100 Woman of Influence in Silicon Valley and a 2012 Watermark Woman Who Has Made Her Mark. @WendySLea Lee Odden is the author of Optimize: How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media and Content Marketing. He is also the CEO of TopRank Online Marketing, a digital marketing and online PR agency that specializes in a 360 degree approach to growing new business and enriching both brand and community engagement online. He is an active international speaker and publishes one of the most popular marketing blogs on the web. @LeeOdden 5 #SMTlive#smtlive
  • 6. Thanks to Our Sponsor Create a vibrant customer community: https://getsatisfaction.com//#smtlive 6
  • 7. Driving Revenue From Your Social Strategy Wendy Lea · CEO, Get Satisfaction · @wendyslea 7#smtlive
  • 8. Social engagement is the new marketing Existing McKinsey: Discover Consumers “social media Word-of-Mouth Ads & Branding is an accepted growth strategy” Advocate Evaluate Customer Loyalty Programs Engagement Promotions Management Bond Buy Service/Support Help Content 80% Potential of US Internet users Consumers are on Facebook Experience#smtlive 8 8
  • 9. The Solution: Communities as engagement engines Discoverability Persistence Content in ContextConsumer-facingexperiences Internal Communities processes Social Media Marketing Management & CRM Community Moderation Brand Managers & Consumer Relations#smtlive 9 9
  • 10. A marketing case study the The Situation solution Outcomes Social post permanence ▸ Employees lacked More Employee a social media Interactions presence with customers ▸ Desire to easily facilitate customer Discoverable discussions conversations Social Praise leveraged in marketing content ▸ Needed a mechanism to Embedded advocate content operationalize customer Customer endorsements Advocates can self-identify#smtlive 10 10
  • 11. An eCommerce case study the The Situation Outcomes solution ▸ High levels of embedded conversations cart abandonment 8% drop in cart abandonment ▸ Low search-driven site traffic volume 5% gain in search-driven site traffic ▸ Desire to harness ▸ Product-specific word of mouth to WOM content drive conversions ▸ Community 30% drop drives in one-to-one interactions ▸ Customers couldn’t discussions ask product-specific questions during ▸ Widgets throughout purchase flow purchase flow 63% gain in first call resolution rate 11#smtlive 11
  • 12. Goals of Marketing Made Simple TV
  • 13. The Awesome Power of Syndication
  • 14. The set of the show
  • 15. A Call to Action – Paul Dunay show sponsored by Eloqua.
  • 16. #smtlive16 16
  • 17. The power of a guest. A story of Awesome Joshie
  • 18. Integrated SEO, Social Media & Content Marketing @LeeOdden TopRankMarketing.com OptimizeBook.com 18#smtlive
  • 19. 17 Billion comScore: Core Searches August 201263%eMarketer: Daily Search Users 89% Fleishman-Hillard: Search to Purchase $23 Billion SEMPO: 2012 State of SEM Report 19
  • 20. What Is Your Customer’s Journey? Newsletter Social Ads PPC Reviews Community Forum Social Networks Email Blog Website Blog Online Ads Media awareness consideration purchase retention advocacy Email Store FAQ Word of Mouth Promotions Knowledge BaseP EcommerceR Radio TV Print 20#smtlive
  • 21. Customer Optimization Trilogy 21#smtlive
  • 22. 22
  • 23. Discover – Consume – Engage Discover Consume EngageSocial Networks PDF ContributeDirect social messages Slideshare DownloadEmail Long form interviews SubscribeBlog Single images ShareSearch Attend Conference 23
  • 24. One Clever Question: Youre a secret agent on a mission and youre having a rendezvous with your agency contact after pulling a dangerous undercover operation. You now have a coveted secret. A content marketing secret. What secret for achieving success with content marketing will you share? The content marketing world depends on it! 24#smtlive
  • 25. 25
  • 26. 26#smtlive
  • 27. All Content & Promotions Consider:  “Findability”  “Engagement”  “Shareability” 27#smtlive
  • 28. Results in 6 Days – 100% Organic43,000+ views on Slideshare1,000+ PDF downloads5000+ visits of interviews3,300+ Retweets200 “likes”130 G+100+ inbound linksDominates Google for target phrases#smtlive 28
  • 29. Thanks for Joining Us Connect with our panelists on TwitterShare your thoughts with us: webinar_info@socialmediatoday.com 29
  • 30. Announcing Our Latest Achievement Our Best Thinkers Webinar series has recently won a SNCR Excellence in New Communications Award. The prestigious awards program honors individuals and organizations that are pioneering the use of social media and Internet communications technologies
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How to Find New Customers – Get this great white paper on B2B demand generation today!

November 29, 2012 Leave a Comment
How to Find New Customers

“So much has been written about B2B demand generation, but Jeff Ogden of Find New Customers makes it simple in How to Find New Customers, which makes this white paper a must-read.”

The Funnelholic

Considered by many to be the go-to guide for B2B demand generation, this white paper is a comprehensive yet easy to-understand guide so that YOU can create your own best practices B2B demand generation program. Originally sponsored by Marketo, we no longer have to share leads with them, so your information is protected. And a very popular sales expert and author was the editor of this, so the quality is superb. (She was a very tough task-master when I was writing it.)

Undoubtedly, you’ll want to grab at and read it at your earliest convenience.

How can you get this great white paper, so you can learn how to create your own best practices b2b demand generation program?  There are two ways to get it:

  1. Sign up for this webinar sponsored by Rain Today. “Nurture Leads and Sell More: How to Earn Buyers’ Trust and Grow Your How to Find New CustomersRevenue with Jeff Ogden, Dec. 4, 2012, at 2 p.m. ET Even if you cannot attend live, sign up and get it on demand.
  2. Register and download it from Find New Customers today.

No matter which way you choose, download and read this white paper today. You’ll be glad you did.

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

Jeff Ogden, President of Find New Customers is an award-winning B2B marketing expert and a great speaker. He was named a top 25 Sales Influencer for 2012 by OpenView Labs. He was also named one of the Top 50 Most Influential in Sales Lead Management by the Sales Lead Management Association. And this blog was named the top B2B blog of 2012 by BuyerZone. He also holds a degree in Marketing from the University of Notre Dame.
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How to Do Great Marketing with (Almost) Zero Money – Jeff Ogden

November 28, 2012 Leave a Comment
marketing blvd_solution way

I wrote this popular post for Sanera last year, but the advice is still spot on today. It does not take a lot of money to do great marketing today.

___

You are in for a treat! Welcome to the 2nd in a series of marketing specific posts for small business owners called March Marketing Madness. My guest expert today is Jeff Ogden, President of Find New Customers. I met Jeff virtually on Twitter via #B2BChat (I suggest you follow that Twitter conversation Thursday nights) and was impressed with his insights. The more I got to know Jeff, the more impressed I became. He has won awards from Marketing Sherpa and HubSpot and is an in-demand keynote speaker. The best news? He’s a small business owner who has proven success in making marketing work.

Jeff, welcome to Sanera!

Can you really market a business without a lot of money?

Many small companies and startups are afflicted with a serious problem – they have little spare cash. But they are looking to sell their product and services. With limited funds, they cannot do outbound marketing – buy ads on radio, in newspapers or on TV. They cannot buy booths at trade shows. These approaches have been primary means of attracting customers in the past.

Without deep pockets can they really market their businesses and get new sales opportunities? Have times really changed that much? If so, how can they marry those two – a lack of funds and the need to win new business?

The recession impacted businesses hard. But we can also look at today in a ‘glass is half full’ mind-set. In many ways, you’re lucky today. Technology and the advent of high speed connection and social networks means the world has changed dramatically. Brian Halligan, President of the inbound marketing software company, HubSpot (one of the fastest growing companies in the USA) says “It used to be that businesses competed on the width of their wallets. Today, they compete on the width of their brains.”

If we take Brian at his word, that means if you are smart, you can compete with the big boys – even if you lack the millions of dollars some companies spend on marketing. Let’s look at how this is done. Here are six action items you can do today – for little money:

1. Know your prospective customers – deeply (Cost: Near zero)

You want to know everything. What do they care about? Where do they turn for information? What kinds of events trigger a decision? Whom do they trust? Where do they look for answers – friends, social networks, Google, Trade Associations? Spend some time doing the research. Pick up the phone and call a few. Ask questions on LinkedIn. Create a survey (SurveyMonkey) and send it out. The better you know prospective customers, the more effective your marketing, so take your time and do it well. Document your customer map.

2. Create great content. (Cost: not more than $200)

Now that you really know what makes buyers tick. one of the best ways to demonstrate knowledge is tostart writing a blog. Sign up for a blogging platform like WordPress, Blogger or Typepad. Then write and publish articles. Add images from sources like Flickr and iStockPhoto. (Look for Creative Commons licensing by doing an advanced search.)

3. Distribute your content on social networks (Cost: Zero)

Make it really easy for prospective customers to find by posting to social networks like LinkedIn, Twitter,Facebook as well as Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, SlideShare (presentations), YouTube (video). Also, when you post your content, add your search marketing keywords so that search engines can index it.

4. Create a simple to understand website (Cost: A few hundred dollars)

You need a good home to post your content. Make sure it is simple and easy to navigate. Add registration forms for them to sign up and download your content. (I suggest you give away some with no registration – especially simple tools and documents, while putting more in-depth content behind a gate. (Don’t ask for too much either. Name and email is a good start. People hate long and complex forms.)

5. Re-imagine your content (Cost: Not more than a couple of hundred dollars)

This is where the power comes in. Take your existing content and turn it into something different. Maybe a text interview of a thought leader can become a YouTube video. In our case, we turned a popular blog article, 7 Keys to Successful Lead Nurturing into a very slick looking Cheat Sheet. Cost for the graphics work – $100. You can also take an ebook for instance, and create a PowerPoint presentation. Upload it to Slideshare, and add a YouTube video or audio to your presentation. Again, use your keywords when you upload it.

6. Give to Get (Cost: Zero)

Become active online. Follow interesting industry people on Twitter. Check out fan pages on Facebook. Read their blogs. Once you’ve become really familiar with them, start posting thoughtful and careful comments. Do a lot of commenting on industry blogs. People really read those.

Once you’ve done those six things, keep it up. It is a marathon – not a sprint. Keep publishing, listening, posting. Over time, you will get more and more traction. Over many months, your traction will grow and grow. You will find more and more people interested in your services.

At Find New Customers, we’ve embraced this approach. In the last few weeks, we’ve had prospective customers sign up and download content and subscribe to our blog. We co-hosted a big marketing summit. We’ve been featured in two books. We were featured in a white paper on B2B blogging. We were a guest on HubspotTV recently. And we’re a young and small business with very shallow pockets.

It CAN be done. You can do it.

Who Is Jeff Ogden? Jeff is the president of Find New Customers, a demand generation consulting company with the theme “Lead Generation Made Simple” and the goal to transform the world of B2B marketing.   Jeff is also known in the B2B demand generation world for his blog The Fearless Competitor.

He’s won numerous awards from entities such as MarketingSherpa and Hubspot; has been quoted by social media marketing expert Paul Gillin in the new book Social Marketing to the Business Customer; and is a highly sought-out speaker – a certified speaker for the CEO group Vistage and presenting at the CMO Thought Leadership Conference. Jeff previously worked as VP of Sales & Marketing at Greenlight LTD in London and as Global Leader for GE for Business Objects Americas. He’s a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, where he earned a degree in Marketing.

You can connect with Jeff via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, his website, by phone at (516) 495-9350 or via email at jeff.ogden@findnewcustomers.com.

Filed Under: Self Education Tagged With: , , ,

How to Turn Your New White Paper into a Great Lead Generation Campaign

November 28, 2012 2 Comments
business_-_team_working

You have a new white paper you want to use in your B2B lead generation programs. But how do you get the most out of it.

In this post, we explain Crafting White Paper 2.0how to turn that great new white paper into a superb b2b 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?

We’ve penned great white papers – all are free at Find New Customers.

  1. lead generation - How to Find New Customers
  2. b2b sales – Definitive Guide to Making Quota and
  3. CMO issues – The CMO’s Guide to the Crazy New World of Marketing (Silverpop)

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

  • Video interview of the white paper author (post it YouTube)
  • Create a webinar and give the white paper away to attendees.
  • Slide presentations with audio from the author (upload to SlideShare and narrate it)
  • Small bite-sized summaries, like our new cheat sheet 7 Keys to Successful Lead Nurturing (Content marketing)
  • Create a blog series about topics from the white paper.

Post that content everywhere with a call to action for the landing page. Notice that we created 5 pieces of content from one white paper? It takes a lot of great content to create a great B2B lead generation program.

Check out Ardath Albee’s post on the Content Marketing Rule of 5.

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

What do you think? We love comments and those who share on social media. We’re always looking for show sponsors too. If you want to reach up to a million viewers every week, including top marketing leaders, check out our sponsorship page here.

Jeff Ogden, President of Find New Customers is an award-winning B2B marketing expert and a great speaker. He was named a top 25 Sales Influencer for 2012 by OpenView Labs. He was also named one of the Top 50 Most Influential in Sales Lead Management by the Sales Lead Management Association. And this blog was named the top B2B blog of 2012 by BuyerZone. He also holds a degree in Marketing from the University of Notre Dame.

 

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10 Questions to Decide Whether to Hire In-House or Outsource to a lead generation company

November 27, 2012 Leave a Comment
outsource

The CEO of a software company in the Midwest asked me to help him conduct his interviews of in-house marketing folks. He’s trying to decide whether to hire in-house or outsource to a lead generation company, Find New Customers.  (Interestingly, the CEO wants to outsource, but one Board member wants him to hire in-house.)

After I wrote a list of 10 interview questions for this CEO,  I thought “These questions would be valuable to a lot of companies.”  So I turned the email into a blog article which I share below.

Update: Here’s the email I got from that CEO:

Hey Jeff,

I wanted to say thank you for the questions! I really appreciate the guidance. We are going through the questions with quite a few people and we will see what the outcome is. I will let you guys both know shortly how it works out. Thanks again!

Regards,

Paul

Should you hire marketing in-house or outsource to a lead generation company?

If your internal candidates are unable to answer these questions adequately, you’re a good candidate for lead generation companies like PointClear, The Pedowitz Group or even Find New Customers.

10 Questions to Ask an Interviewee for a Marketing Role (Answers follow each question):

  1. How do you recommend one conducts Buyer Persona interviews? (Are they familiar with the 5 Rings of Insight from BuyerPersona.com?)
  2. What are the keys to creating effective content? What role does content play? (Content needs to move buyers through the buying process. It “greases the skids,” so to speak.)
  3. Please define Progressive Profiling? What is it? (Progressive Profiling is asking for a little bit of info every time someone visits your website. For instance, if we have name and email, we might ask for job title. It’s a way to gently get info.)
  4. Blogging is important to us. How long have you been blogging and how often is your blog updated? What recognition has your blog received? (We’ve been blogging here for seven years, our blog publishes every day and BuyerZone named us the top B2B blog for 2012)
  5. What marketing awards have you won? Where can I see them? (Jeff Ogden of Find New Customers is a Top 50 Influencer in Sales Lead Management award winner)demand generation knowledge
  6. Do you have a documented demand generation process? Can you share it with me? (Find New Customers offers the SCORE demand generation program)
  7. How does one go about creating a lead nurturing process? What do you recommend? (Lead nurturing is the process of sharing valuable content (to them) over time to earn their trust. Nurturing campaigns need to be mapped to buying processes.)
  8. What are the keys to creating an effective lead scoring program? (Talk to Sales and ask them how you can be certain they will follow up and which page(s) they visit makes a big difference. A product demo is more valuable that a Careers page.)
  9. Show me examples of the white papers, eBooks and webinars you have done. (Find New Customers has written several white papers including How to Find New Customers, eBooks and led multiple webinars.)
  10. Metrics are the key to tuning marketing for optimal results. Give me a couple of metrics you like to use. (There are a lot of choices here, but focus on metrics based on outcomes, like win rates and deal velocity.  Twitter followers and website traffic is nice, but not particularly useful.)

What do you think? Do these help you decide whether to hire in-house or outsource? We love comments and those who share on social media.

Jeff Ogden, President of Find New Customers is an award-winning B2B marketing expert with deep knowledge of B2B demand generation. He was named a top 25 Sales Influencer for 2012 by OpenView Labs. He was also named one of the Top 50 Most Influential in Sales Lead Management by the Sales Lead Management Association. And this blog was named the top B2B blog of 2012 by BuyerZone. He also holds a degree in Marketing from the University of Notre Dame.

 

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