B2B Lead Generation Blog

B2B Lead Generation Blog

B2B Marketing: Playbook for sales and marketing alignment Be honest. How does Sales perceive the leads Marketing produces? They love them "“ couldn't be happier! They complain about lead quality. They complain about lead volume. The say leads, what leads? Marketing gives us leads? If you chose answer... ...» How to Generate Leads Using Search and Social Media webinar Join me for a complimentary live webinar with MarketingSherpa's Todd Lebo and Jen Doyle on "How to Generate Leads Using Search and Social Media"� Here's a chart of how Marketers are currently using Social Media. You're probably hearing the words... ...» B2B Marketing: What are your biggest challenges and opportunities in the year ahead? B2B marketers have been hit hard in recent years and have faced enormous challenges. One of the greatest challenges marketers continue to face is converting leads to pipeline revenue which could actually be the result of a bigger problem "”... ...» Marketing Leader’s Perspective: No cogs allowed in social media and content marketing If you lead a team of marketers, you likely have a creative bunch. People who, ideally, have a lot of passion about what they do "“ the key ingredient for successful social media and content marketing. But that natural passion... ...» Learn the New Rules for Selling to Crazy-Busy Prospects For those of us in marketing and sales, our jobs are even tougher thanks to the busy lives of the decision makers we're trying to reach. Overwhelmed, impossible deadlines, crazy busy - these are just some of the words today's... ...» BtoB 2010 Lead Generation Guide just published BtoB Magazine just published their 2010 Lead Generation Guide. The guide contains information about trends, expert columns, market statistics and vendor lists. Here's a few of the articles that I found relevant in the guide: Social media tips for demand... ...» Thoughts on how the human touch impacts marketing performance Improving marketing performance is not just about implementing the right technology (i.e. marketing automation, lead scoring, nurturing etc.); it's also about creating a strategic process to involve people in the process of lead nurturing and qualification. You may have the... ...» 5 Steps To Creating A Lead Gen Machine & The Predictable Revenue That CEOs Love In a recent post I talked about the most important B2B marketing metrics to CEO's or what I believe CEO's should be measuring. All too often Marketing is measuring one thing while the CEO's are asking a question those measurements... ...» 100 Tips for Trade Show Lead Generation Lead generation remains the top reason most companies exhibit at events and tradeshows. And B2B marketers are constantly looking for ideas they can use to drive more ROI from their events budget. I came across this helpful post by Mike... ...» LinkedIn B2B Lead Generation Roundtable Group Turns One Last year, I launched the B2B Lead Gen Roundtable Group on LinkedIn. It started with a simple goal: to create a group to discuss and share ideas that focus on the many aspects of B2B lead generation such as lead... ...» Lead Generation 2.0 Critical Success Factor #9 Effectiveness I recently wrote about the 8 critical success factors for lead generation 2.0. Then #9 came to mind "“ effectiveness. Simply put, make the most of what you have. Its too easy to fall into the trap of selling everything... ...» 8 Critical Success Factors for Lead Generation 2.0 The single biggest issue for B2B marketers is effective lead generation. I wrote an eight part series on building an effective lead generation program a while back. To help readers who missed the series, I pulled all the posts together... ...» Call for speakers: MarketingSherpa’s B2B Marketing Summit It's that time of the year again "“ MarketingSherpa is sending out a call for speakers for their 7th annual B2B Marketing Summit, which will take place in October in both Boston and San Francisco. This year's Summit is focused... ...» 5 dials to tune in your lead generation process It's important to think of lead generation as a process, rather than an isolated event, or a series of campaigns. A process can be continually improved through ongoing testing and refinement and will generate higher quality results more cost effectively... ...» Lead scoring thoughts to share Recently, I've been having more conversations with marketers about lead scoring and how they can use it as a part of the overall lead qualification and nurturing process. The question "what is lead scoring?" also came up during the "Broad... ...» Webinar: Beyond Lead Generation - Helping Sales Drive Revenue with Jeff Thull The purpose of B2B marketing and lead generation is to help the sales team sell; however marketers can often get so wrapped up in driving campaign activity they seem to forget it's about driving sales conversion and helping the sales... ...» Most important B2B Marketing Metrics For CEOs Today CEOs expect marketers to provide metrics and to be accountable to meeting their numbers just like sales people. They do have a bunch of activity metrics and some squishy metrics like brand recognition. At the same time, most CEOs... ...» Online Lead Generation: How to optimize forms to convert “window shoppersâ€� into leads webinar by Flint McGlaughlin As I've written before, when dealing with the complex sale, most people aren't coming to your website to buy; they're coming to your site for information. And people are hesitant about giving up too much info on forms before you've... ...» Lead Generation via Search: Comparing Quantity and Quality Have you wondered about where you should put your online lead generation budget into search engine optimization or paid search? Check out this new chart by MarketingSherpa, "Comparing the Quantity and Quality of B2B Search-Generated Leads": (click chart to expand)... ...» 8 Lead Nurturing Thoughts to Share Here's few thoughts that I've had on lead nurturing that I'd like to share and get your input on: Lead nurturing supports the conversation of the customer before, during and after their buying process. Sowing + Nurturing = Reaping. As... ...» The Best 20 CRM Blogs of 2009 Forecasting Clouds ranked the top 20 CRM blogs based on their content, readability and frequency of posting. As I read over the list of blogs, I discovered some new ones worth reading along with a number of others I already... ...» LinkedIn for lead generation - Are You the Missing Link? It takes time and commitment, but LinkedIn has become ideal venue to nurture relationships and generate new leads, especially for sales people involved in a complex sale. On that topic, I wrote an guest article for MarketingProfs, titled "10 Tips... ...» Targeting for better Lead Generation results and ROI Effective lead generation really depends on how much you know about your target audience and how well you use that information to tailor a relevant messages and conversations.I thought this post by Carolyn Goodman for Target Marketing Magazine was a... ...» Lead Generation tips for Tradeshows Conferences Tradeshows and events are still being used consistently by B2B marketers for lead generation. With that in mind, Roger Lewis has some useful tips on how to improve your lead management strategy with from tradeshows. Lewis emphasizes how vital lead... ...» Lead re-engagement is lead nurturing to rejuvenate old leads The January sales push well on it's way and most B2B marketers I know are looking more ways to generate leads faster. But here's a question to ponder... Do you have a process have a process for handing leads (from... ...» Best Books of the Decade for Marketing and Selling Services Rain Today, a great resource for those who market and sell services, selected their Best Book s of the Decade for marketing and selling professional services. I was humbled to see that they picked my book, Lead Generation for the... ...» Lead Generation Check list – Part 8: Lead nurturing for lead development To help you start the New Year, I'd like to wrap up my Lead Generation Checklist Series with the secret to successful lead generation "“ and, for that matter, marketing in today's B2B space: lead nurturing. At it's core, B2B... ...» MarketingSherpa's Email Summit Here's the summary from MarketingSherpa Email Summit event: Following MarketingSherpa's 2010 Email Marketing Summit last week, we sat down with copious notes to pick out the most important themes from three days of workshops, panel discussions and presentations. Read on... ...» Lead Generation Check list – Part 7: Effective lead management My checklist for optimizing the lead generation process so far has included six steps: the mindset of not pushing; repairing the rift between sales and marketing; creating the ideal customer profile (and the un-ideal customer profile as well); agreeing upon... ...» How to improve lead generation with prospecting 2.0 Cold calling. Feel a shiver move up your spine? Too bad. It's a shame that you, like many others, choose to dismiss cold calling as a lead generation tool (there's that shiver again). I'm not saying that its reputation hasn't... ...» Thoughts on how to follow-up on website leads when you use marketing automation A few months ago, at the MarketingSherpa B2B Marketing summit in Boston, I was asked on how best to follow-up on leads generated via the web by Richard Hill. Richard writes over at the Idea Exchange blog on marketing automation... ...» How to Get the Twitter Username You've Always Wanted (even if it's taken) Don't forget to secure your Twitter name! I signed up for twitter a year an half ago but that wasn't soon enough to get my hands on my company's Twitter name of choice of @intouch. So if you were late... ...» How to Design Lead Nurturing Programs that Drive Sales webinar with Ardath Albee You've probably seen a lot of discussions regarding lead nurturing lately. People want to know: How can I create enough content with my organization's limited resources? How can we develop a nurturing program that actually builds our pipeline? What measurements... ...» 50 Most Influential People in Lead Management The Sales Lead Management Association posted their list of the 50 most influential people in lead management. I was humbled to see that I was included on the list along with a lot of of people I really like and... ...» Lead Generation Check list – Part 6: A Multi-modal lead generation approach This is the sixth in an eight-part series I'm calling the "˜Lead Generation Checklist.' I wanted to provide a checklist that helps organizations optimize their lead generation process. My first post was on the mindset we should have "“ one... ...» Steps for creating a true lead nurturing program Sometimes in an attempt to vamp up lead nurturing efforts, misguided and well-meaning organizations simply start sending out more emails. When email is misused in this manner, companies are really just training prospects to ignore or delete their messages. See... ...» A multi-modal approach to lead nurturing To be successful at lead nurturing marketers can't rely on one specific channel but rather they need to leverage a multi-modal portfolio of channels especially when you have a complex sale. Why? The goal of lead nurturing is to maintain... ...» Seven prospecting rules that produce leads The phone is still a powerful and effective lead generation tool. It is inarguably the human touch of a lead nurturing program. That's why every opportunity - including cold calling - should be treated with great respect. Each time you... ...» Effective Lead Management: converting more leads into sales We had a great turn out for our recent B2B Lead Generation Rountable Webinar "Effective Lead Management: Learn How to Convert Marketing Leads into Sales Pipeline."� In case you missed the live presentation, there are still two ways you can... ...» Lead generation metrics should emphasize opportunities not just leads I was asked to write a response to this question, "In what ways have metrics evolved with the increase in digital B2B marketing? Suggest one ROI metric that you have found to be very effective." Read ClickInsights: What ROI metric... ...»