There are several ways lead nurturing can drive performance gains in your sales and marketing function. I’ll provide a few examples below as oversimplified and linear “cause -> effect” cases, with the obvious caveat that, in practice, there’s a fair amount of interplay between these causes and effects.
Craig Rosenberg, aka the Funnelholic, has compiled — with a few additional contributions from myself, Michael Schmeir, and Chris Jablonski – a great list of 210 B2B marketing tips. The Funnelholic routinely publishes blunt, sometimes irreverent stories from the “trenches” of B2B demand generation. His posts always offer a healthy balance of cheeky/punchy copy and practical insights/wisdom. Take a look at the tip list here. BTW, we’re working [read more...]
Jan 202010
Ambal Balakrishnan has put together this crowd-sourced eBook with contributions from thought leaders such as Doug Kessler, Jon Miller, Craig Rosenberg, Steven Woods, Ardath Albee, and 34 others. Aside from being a valuable collection of marketing prognostications, tips, and resources, the eBook is itself an innovative content delivery vehicle. Take note of the retweet feature on each page which helps contributors maximize their “return on contribution.”
Jan 162010
Over the past year, I’ve had the good fortune to speak with 80+ B2B marketers at leading U.S. companies. I’ve taken extensive notes during each of these discussions and have learned some interesting things. Here’s a few highlights: 1) In nearly all of those conversations, the topic of marketing automation and lead nurturing has come up. 2) About 50% of the marketers I’ve spoken with have already [read more...]
By most accounts, 2009 has been a breakout year for the marketing automation space. And while the category itself is not new, we now have a robust and growing ecosystem of vendor solutions, resellers, agencies, consultants, integrators, and marketers with deployment experience. However, as we discovered over the 10-year evolution of the Hosted CRM market, there are always hard knocks and lessons learned on the way to excellence. So as we head into 2010, let’s hear from those who’ve been there and done marketing automation: what are the key issues for marketers to prepare for (and overcome) when implementing a solution?
Dec 022009
Much has already been written and said about how B2B buyer behavior has forever changed the role of marketing and sales. But there are several emerging and interrelated trends that have a bearing on where we go from here. I’ll loosely classify these trends as follows: high unemployment, tight capital/credit markets, personal branding, social networking, and low-cost/free, self-service publishing platforms (Wordpress, etc). The confluence of these trends is creating an effect that I’m calling “mass expertization.”
I have observed that a lot of companies have embraced Cost per Lead as a key metric in the management of their marketing portfolio. This measure can be useful in comparing marketing programs (and/or vendors) against each other provided that the definition of a “lead” can be applied equally to all lead sources. But there’s the rub. Having a healthy, diverse portfolio of marketing tactics means that attracting buyers from different places, with different offers, and at different stages of the buying process. The fact that everyone filled out the same registration form on your web site (or that a vendor delivered a contact to you matching your lead capture requirements), does not account for this variety.
We have finally reached an age where the convergence of technology, capital investment, and skills available in the labor pool have combined to make the previously unknowable (e.g., what is really working in my marketing mix and what is not?) knowable.
Follow The Lord of the Leads