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Marketo's Lead Management
Enables B2B Marketers
To Impact Bottom Line |
| Marketo Lead Management automates lead generation campaigns and lead management activities, including email marketing, lead nurturing, and lead scoring, to help marketers generate more sales-ready leads, demonstrate revenue impact, and earn the respect they deserve. Marketo’s products are easy to buy because they don’t require complex implementation or upfront fees, and easy to own because they don’t require IT support or significant training. |
| Click here to read the full report>> |
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SEMPO Report Shows
Plans To Find More Funds
For Search Engine Spending |
Marketers are finding more search dollars by poaching budget from print magazine spending, website development, direct mail and other marketing programs, according to the “2007 State of the Market” report recently released by SEMPO and Radar Research.
Search engine marketing spending exceeded anticipations in 2007 and, based on the survey responses by marketers and agencies, the search
marketing industry will continue to expand. The survey was completed by 867 search engine advertisers and SEM agencies. It was administered via IntelliSurvey, Inc. |
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Widen Reaches New Markets
By Tapping Into Targeted
Prospecting Database |
By Amanda Ferrante, Assistant Editor
Branching out into new markets can be a risky proposition for marketers, especially when spending money on marketing lists that could become obsolete or inaccurate. Madison, WI-based Widen Enterprises, a Software-as-a-Service provider of digital asset management solutions, was experiencing trouble with list information acquired through contact acquisition sources such as Jigsaw. By zeroing in on more targeted prospect lists, Widen’s sales cycle ultimately went from ten months to three months.
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New DMA Study Shows
B2B Marketers Branching
Out To Reach Influencers |
By Amanda Ferrante, Assistant Editor
The network of decision-makers influencing B-to-B purchases is expanding, according to a new study released by the Direct Marketing Association, and marketers are realizing they need a menu of options to reach the different the tiers of contacts. According to the study, “The B-To-B Sphere of Influence: Best Practices in Reaching the Right Person,” 65% of companies believe their clients have three to five people in the "sphere of influence."
The study also confirmed that more B-to-B marketers are employing several different types of media to reach a broader audience with separate, targeted messaging. For example, the report showed that 80% of marketers use information to tailor their messaging to each recipient, by value proposition, personalization, and relationship building. In addition, 60% of marketers rely on titles or reports from their sales force to tailor messaging and reach multiple mediums.
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SafeHarbor Hooks Big
Prospects By Outsourcing
Lead Management Ops |
By Amanda Ferante, Assistant Editor
Managing a large volume of leads can be challenging for a small sales team, even with a great CRM tool. For the team at SafeHarbor Technology Corporation, a Satsop, WA-based support solutions company, its efforts are focused on qualified leads. SafeHarbor’s marketing efforts generated a high quantity of leads, but the company still had to contact and qualify further, which was difficult due to the small size of the sales team, with six sales/account management team members.
SafeHarbor designs and deploys online support environments that transform and optimize customer support interactions for companies of all sizes and industries, like American Airlines, IBM, Cingular, and Washington Mutual.
The solutions are designed to integrate knowledge management with Web self-service and multi-channel support services, enabling companies to increase self-service rates and reduce interaction costs while continuously improving the customer experience. |
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Building A Lead Management Strategy
A Critical First Step For B2B Marketers |
| Analysts establishing best practices guidelines for early stage adopters |
Analysts establishing best practices guidelines for early stage adopters
For those organizations in the early phases of demand generation, the focus usually fast forwards to getting as many leads in the door as quickly as possible. Therefore, all too often companies rush into short-term fixes to fill up their sales funnel, without first building an over-arching demand generation strategy.
Industry analysts emphasize that the first step for companies, especially those with complex sales cycles, should be to establish process and strategies for lead management and demand generation. “The development of
an effective lead management strategy, including workflow, offer strategy, and associated e-mail and landing page creative is critical,” says Howard Sewell, president of Connect Direct (CDI) a full-service agency that specializes in demand generation for high-technology companies. |
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DGR Interview: Forrester’s Charlene Li
On Groundswell Impact of Social Media |
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Many organizations are still trying to develop a strategy to tap into the growing popularity of social media. Charlene Li, a VP and principal
analyst at Forrester, has been one of leading experts for the past decade on how smart companies are using technologies like blogs, social networks, RSS and Wikis to drive awareness and sales.
Li has teamed with fellow Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff on a new book titled Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, which will be released next month by Harvard Business School Press.
Demand Gen Report recently caught up with Li to get further insights into some of the best practices, case studies which are featured in Groundswell, including how these strategies can and should be adapted for B2B marketers. |
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B2B Marketers Test New Web Seminar
Formats To Maintain Registrant Numbers |
| Rich media, variations on hour-long format becoming more prevalent |
By Andrew Gaffney, Editor
With web seminars now a staple of most B2B lead generation campaigns, sophisticated marketers are looking at creative approaches to make their web events stand out from the crowded field and still draw a targeted base of attendees. Some marketers are incorporating rich media applications such as video and flash, while others are looking beyond the traditional hour-long format at both shorter and extended offerings.
According to a best practices report published by ON24, Inc. in January of 2007, the number of webcasts increased in 2006 grew by almost 50% over the prior year, reaching over 2,700 events. ON24, a leading provider of webcasting and rich media marketing solutions, found that registrants and attendees were growing at a similar rate during that period, climbing to over 1.5 million registrations and almost 900,000 attendees.
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Sales Accountability A Growing
Priority for Leading Companies |
| New tools provide visibility into pipeline stage progress |
By Andrew Gaffney, Editor
Now that most organizations have transformed their marketing departments to be focused on ROI and measurable results, many firms are now adopting a similar approach with their sales teams. To ensure that leads are followed up in a timely manner, companies are developing sales accountability systems which incorporate task management features and provide marketing with new visibility into the sales pipeline.
"Sales accountability is on the minds of a lot of marketers,” says Karen Heyward, CMO with Centerbeam, “Since we are putting so much time and money into generating leads, it only makes sense that there is the same urgency for the sales force to follow up on them and the get the suspect engaged at the height of their interest. Ultimately, these kinds of accountability and tracking processes will only help build alignment between sales and marketing and produce higher sales rates." |
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Searching For ROI? Insider Provides Tips
To Optimize Targeted Search Strategies |
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Andrew Gaffney, Editor
Given the consistent research showing the influential role search is playing in the early stages of the buying cycle for both B2B and B2C purchases, marketers are understandably dedicating a lot of time and budget to driving any and all relevant searches to their products and solutions.
However, some marketers are struggling with the ROI of search, especially in tech savvy industries where competition for keywords has driven bids through the roof. Another challenge for B2B marketers has been filtering through the volume of search results to identify the leads that are actually real prospect for their company’s offerings.
To spotlight potential solutions to optimize search marketing, Demand Gen Report recently spoke with Ben Kirshner, founder and CEO of Elite SEM, a New York-based search engine marketing company which has provided consulting services to members of our Editorial Advisory Board. Kirshner provided the following 5 suggestions marketers can follow to deliver more targeted and profitable results for their search marketing: |
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Sales Intelligence Apps Help Drive Later
Phases of The Funnel, ID Opportunities |
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By Andrew Gaffney, Editor
Most organizations have focused their pipeline optimization efforts on the front end of the sales funnel in recent years—optimizing lead generation and lead management—but many of the new demand generation solutions now hitting the market are aimed at providing better intelligence to the sales team at the bottom of the funnel.
Tapping into different types of online engagement—from social media to email campaigns to website visits—the new tools are offering sales-specific dashboards and alerts that help to identify opportunities by region, industry or company.
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Keep Prospects Engaged
Over Long Sales Cycles
With Drip Marketing |
By Geoff Rego, CEO, Market2Lead
If you sell a product over a long sales cycle it is essential for your marketing program to keep in touch with those prospects. You can’t let them forget about you or your competitor could easily win the sale. Case studies have shown that the best strategy to stay fresh in your prospects’ minds is with a carefully-crafted drip marketing campaign.
Drip marketing involves a series of marketing tactics that nurture a prospect from the initial contact until the prospect is ready to be engaged by an inside or outside sales representative. For example, a campaign might offer white papers, webinar invitations, free trials, etc., one at a time, over the course of your sales cycle. The success of such a campaign depends on several factors. Chief among them are obtaining the prospect’s permission to send email messages and enforcing strict cadence rules, so you don’t communicate too often or too infrequently.
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Four Simple Steps
To Jump
Start Your Lead Scoring System |
By Lisa Cramer, Chief Sales/Marketing Officer FirstWave Technologies
If your sales team loves your A, B, C lead ranking system because it really works, good for you. Stop reading and get back to generating leads.
However, if your Hot-Warm-Whatever system is leaving the sales team cold, there is a better way. Lead scoring helps maximize sales resources to deal with numerous leads, including those needing immediate action and those needing prolonged attention. |
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Top 5 Tips for Success
With Webinar Invitations |
By Howard J. Sewell, President of Connect Direct
It’s often said that one of the primary challenges of B2B demand generation is “breaking through the clutter.” Nowhere is this more painfully true than with Webinar invitations, at a time when the volume of such events has increased exponentially.
What does it take, therefore, for your event to stand out amongst a sea of generic, ordinary invitations? What it doesn’t take is gimmickry. Wacky creative concepts, outlandish graphic designs, and jaw-dropping incentives (“Register today and qualify to win a 52” Plasma TV!”) only have marginal impact on your campaign and may even cheapen your brand in the process.
No, what it takes is an adherence to basic direct marketing principles. Here are 5 guidelines to keep in mind when designing your next Webinar invitation:
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Pop Quiz: Time To Test
Your Company’s Lead
Effectiveness Quotient |
By Jeff Pedowitz, President & CEO, The Pedowitz Group
More leads, more leads, more leads. Every day B2B marketers are
continually under pressure to produce more leads to help the sales
organization meet its quota. But are more leads the right answer? In an ideal world, you would generate one lead that would convert to a
customer. While this may not be possible, generating a consistently
higher quality of leads will ensure that the sales team gets a better swing every at bat, and you won’t see those leads coming right back at you or just ignored.
To produce higher quality leads on a consistent basis, your company may need to implement a lead scoring system that can act as a filter between all the leads that you do generate and the ones that end up in the hands of the sales team. Those leads that are not ready to be passed over should be incubated in a lead nurturing program until they show signs of being ready to buy. |
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| Sales 2.0 Conference |
The first Sales 2.0 Conference will demonstrate how combining next-generation Web technologies such as web conferencing, social networking, prospect databases, and web site monitoring services with innovative sales processes can dramatically accelerate the sales cycle.
http://www.sales20conf.com/ |
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| SheEO Sales Shebang |
This unique event brings together women sellers and an All Star cast of female sales experts.
WHEN: Nov. 5 & 6, 2007
WHERE: Sheraton Bloomington Hotel, Minneapolis, MN
Conctact: Jill Konrath
http://salesshebang.com/index.jsp?top=20972 |
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