I attended a really impressive SiriusDecisions Summit about a year or so ago. At the time, I remember being baffled that the respected analysts advised B2B marketers to budget for trade shows in their Corporate brand awareness bucket instead of in Field demand generation because trade show leads just didn’t generate high ROI. I had always considered advertising and SEO to be key to brand awareness whereas trade shows were all about the leads.

Don’t get me wrong, I have become increasingly disillusioned with the quality of leads produced at most of the broad industry events. But, there are always very focused, high quality trade shows that produce very lucrative leads.

Late last year, Sirius posted the results of a survey of over 1,000 buyers and, once again, they rated trade show marketing as the least effective way of engaging with B2B buyers. Yet another Sirius report from last year indicated that trade show leads were among the costliest and least effective of all marketing tactics. Yet, new research shows that B2B Marketers are dividing their Field marketing budget as follows:

• Tradeshows: 16%
• Tele-prospecting: 13%
• Email: 13%
• Live events / seminars: 10%
• Webinars: 9%
• PPC Search Marketing: 5%
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): 4%
• Other (direct mail, associations, online, etc.): 30%

What this says to me is that Trade Shows have become a “necessary evil” for B2B Marketers. While none of us look forward to being on our feet for 3 solid days of insanity, we feel like we must have a presence at these events to keep visibility high and be there for those buyers who are shopping. And, there is nothing like a trade show to generate geographically targeted leads for the squeaky wheels who feel their Sales territory is in need of an influx. It keeps Sales happy whether or not the leads ever turn into revenue.

Unfortunately, with research data that shows Sales ignores as much as 74% of all leads from B2B Marketing and only follows up on 10% of trade show leads, this is an enormous waste of time and money. So how can B2B Marketers make the most of good trade show leads, or confidently say “no” to an event that may or may not produce qualified leads?

Making trade shows work in the marketing mix requires a commitment to actively engaging trade show attendees, encouraging word of mouth, capturing contact information, and systematically processing each and every qualified lead generated at these events. And, that means tenacious phone follow-up to identify other members of the B2B buying cycle.

Most importantly, it requires B2B Marketers to track the ROI of each event over the course of time. Only with objective evidence of trade show KPI, can Marketers invest their budget wisely and defend their decisions to exhibit or not to exhibit.

MarketingSherpa just posted the results of ad:tech’s Fifth Annual survey of ad:tech attendees. They surveyed 421 Internet marketers on the online Marketing tactics that worked and those that didn’t work over the past 12 months.

Good news for ReachForce Customers: ad:tech found that “House lists top paid search: More marketers reported success with house email lists than paid search ads — a reversal from a year earlier.” That’s a good indicator that B2B Marketers should keep their house database clean and continue to invest in demand generation programs targeting those lists.

Other important findings include:

• SEO is generating high ROI
• Paid search continues to perform, but is down steeply from 2006 possibly due to intense PPC competition.
• Viral marketing is still popular as 93% of marketers said agencies recommend either an increase in spending or begin spending on viral video.
• 87% plan to increase viral marketing on social networking sites.

In my last post, I shared a few of the metrics I track each week to assess the performance of my social media programs. In this week’s post, I focus on the tools I use to track results. Because I’m a metrics-aholic, I have racked up a rather expensive habit over the years. But, I have found the insight these products provide is well worth the investment.

Here are a just a few of the products I use to track social media and traditional marketing program results:

Website Traffic: Google Analytics helps me track web analytics basics. And, it costs nothing!

Top Referrers: Once again, Google Analytics has my vote for the best info at the best price.

Unsolicited Inbound Leads: I use a combination of salesforce.com and Eloqua to track inbound leads. Eloqua, while one of the most expensive tools in my tool chest, actually gives me details on a one-off basis so can monitor the click stream of a user from our blog to our web to a lead form. And, it helps me automate lead processing which can come in handy when you have a viral marketing success. I have been able to identify enough leads that came from our blog and converted to closed deals to more than justify it’s expense (including the salary of my full-time blogger).

Blog Rankings: Technorati posts blog rankings and authority ratings. Once again, the price is right: Free.

Conversions from Blog to Website: Google Analytics shows me the conversion rate from our blog to our website.

RSS Subscriptions: If you use Feedburner for RSS you can easily get this data for free.

Inbound Links to Website and Blog and Link Value: I use a wonderful SAAS service from Hub Spot to provide this data and more. And, it’s not really that expensive.

Google Page One Listings and Weighted SEO Exposure: This is a tricky area because web traffic data can often lie. But I’ve found another somewhat expensive offering that gives me a good idea of our company’s weighted search engine exposure –both paid and organic– on the keywords that matter. The service is called CIRadar. Compete.com can also give you an idea of your web site traffic trends compared to the competition provided you have enough volume to show up on their radar.

I’m also intrigued by the possibilities of other tools that help measure share of voice and analyze the value of coverage. Products like Meltwater and Factiva. Have any experience with these products? Are they worth the price? Would love to hear from readers about their value for the small and medium size business B2B marketer.

It is interesting that we continue to see a proliferation of “marketing automation tools and technologies” emerge every month. Marketers have their choice from Eloqua, Aprimo, Marketo, Vtrenz, Market2Lead, Manticore and the open source option, Loopfuse. And while each has great benefits, I can’t help but think that no matter how much the engine (Marketing Automation System) is perfected, it will not run well if the fuel (the DATA) is sewage.

Are we still, in 2008, renting “sewage lists” and them pumping them though these marketing automation processes? Most list vendors sell or rent title-based B2B contact lists. The problem is that a person’s title is only an appellation of rank, it has very little to do with the person’s roles and responsibilities in an organization. Say the buyer of your product is typically a Director of IT. Someone comes to your site and accurately fills out a form that they are the Director of IT. Hooray, you got ‘em. But wait, at IBM there could be 150 directors of IT; how do you know this is the one responsible for network security and has budget authority?

Just yesterday, I was on a call with the VP of Marketing who had been at a few of the Marketing Automation vendors and she could not believe what ReachForce is doing. At several past positions she set up her own inside telemarketing team to do contact discovery because she knew that title-based lists produces abysmal response rates. While this tactic had success, it was cost prohibitive to scale, manage and build. In her case, she thought that there was no option but to do that as she did not want to use the sewage and be in 99% inaccuracy land.

Marketing Automation is a necessary tool for all marketers, but any one of these tools is only as good as the data put into it.

My point is that marketing automation is important but getting quality data or fuel to put into it is PRICELESS!!

I have a confession to share with you. And, to most readers of The B2B Lead, this will come as no surprise. I am a metric-aholic! My professional life is ruled by metrics. Metrics help me plan my day. They buy my credibility and expedite decision-making. They inspire my competitive spirit and drive me to produce more. They help me justify the purchase of $30,000 worth of t-shirts without a song and dance. Best of all, they empower me to utter the dreaded “No” when asked to use resources unwisely.

So, when it comes to B2B marketing techniques, I rarely invest in programs that do not result in a demonstrated return. Leigh Anne recently posted that she struggled with social media and its effect on lead generation and asked the question “Is social media like traditional PR? You have to do it but there is no way to measure results?”

Well, Leigh Anne, I’m happy to tell you that you can track and measure the results of social media. My post on viral video marketing provides a real world case study of those metrics in action. But the post did not include all of the metrics I track. Nor did it include the tools I use to track these results, some of which may break the average startup budget. In this week’s post, I’ll share a few metrics for determining if your Web Site, blog and social media marketing techniques are working for you.

Here are a just a few of the metrics I track weekly:

Website Traffic: Ensure unique visitor trending is “up and to the right.”

Top Referrers: Monitor the sites that are contributing the most traffic to my Website. Hopefully, your blog is in the top 5.

Unsolicited Inbound Leads: Provided you use Salesforce.com, track the source of all inbound leads using Salesforce.com web-to-lead tracking codes. This will give you insight into your campaign results. Track all leads without a campaign separately and monitor the trend. You can attribute growth in these leads to a combination of PR and social media.

Blog Rankings: Monitor your Technorati ranking and authority rating. This will enable you to monitor your position in the blogosphere.

Conversions from Blog to Website: Is your blog converting readers to your Website? This is critical. If you are providing valuable, relevant, and actionable content on your blog, you should see a high rate of conversion to your website. If you are tracking web-based lead growth, you should be able to make some correlation between an increase in blog conversions and inbound leads.

RSS Subscriptions: Monitor your Feedburner stats to see how many people are signing up to receive your RSS feeds. Once again, make sure that number is growing and experiment with promoting your feed to fuel growth.

Inbound Links to Website and Blog and Link Value: Social media is a wonderful tool for search engine optimization (SEO). And, when it comes to SEO, there is nothing better than a large number of high value optimized inbound links. So make sure you are tracking an increase in inbound links that use the proper anchor text.

Google Page One Listings and Weighted SEO Exposure: Sadly, page one search engine listings don’t just happen with a call to Google. Monitor and measure performance of target keywords and your exposure for both search engine marketing (SEM) and SEO.

That’s probably enough to get started. In my next post on The B2B Lead, I’ll share insight on a few of the tools I use to track these metrics and assess the value of NetQoS search engine marketing and new media programs.

Here is a great blog post from Opinionated Marketers I found today about social media and leveraging it for lead generation.

I struggle with this issue on a daily basis. As a B2B marketer at a small start-up, I have to use my budget wisely, which for me means all of my activities need to generate leads in one way or another. Social media is so prevalent that I feel as though I have to be a part of the movement, but is it ultimately doing anything for the bottom line?

Is social media like traditional PR? You have to do it, but there is no way to measure the results. You spend time and money trying to get something out of it but it is hard to see the ROI. I keep trying to master having a blog, creating a presence in the right Facebook groups and leveraging twitter, but how do I keep my job if none of this ever results in real leads?

Stock photos are generally a great resource for high quality images that don’t have the high cost of a custom photo shoot. The problem is that you are not the only one with access to them. At ReachForce, we recently changed our whole look and feel and no longer use any stock photos of people. Boy am I glad we did. I was recently driving down the freeway and saw a billboard using the same stock photo as our old homepage banner. The worst part was, it was for a church. Shame on them for not even using their own members for their ad. And last week I opened up my alumni newsletter only to see another one of our old stock photos but this time it was photoshopped so one woman was wearing my school colors. With as much money as my alma mater (The University of Texas) has, I would think they could at least get some real alumni for a picture.

My recommendation is to use real people. Take photos at your user group conference or use your own employees. It is obvious when a stock photo is being used (especially if the reader has used it themselves!) If the quality isn’t perfect, that’s ok. It adds to the realism. And if you can’t get photos you like, an abstract image can convey meaning better than two people shaking hands.

When I overhauled and launched a new ReachForce website, I wasn’t sure what kind of impact it would have on the company. Using Google Analytics, I could get some data but had no idea how easy it was to navigate and if the new copy really got our point and value proposition across. I was lucky and strategic in launching the new site the same day as we announced our Series B Funding so I did see a significant jump in traffic.

I guess if you put enough out there it will come back to you eventually. I strongly suggest, if you haven’t already, setting up Google Alerts for you company name. This will help you find out what people are saying about your company. You might even set up alerts for common key words for your industry or competitor names. Anyway, I got this link to KillerStartups in my Google Alerts. Check it out to see how they independently surveyed our site and interpreted our value prop on their own. Be sure to vote at the bottom as to what you think the future of ReachForce is. This was a great way to receive unexpected and unbiased feedback.