Written by Steven Woods, CTO of Eloqua and the author of the recent book Digital Body Language.

Amy was kind enough to ask me to write a post to the B2B Lead audience to answer a question that frequently comes up.  What is the relationship between Demand Generation/Marketing Automation, such as what we provide at Eloqua, and Targeted Contact Discovery, such as ReachForce’s service.

It’s a great question, and the answer touches on a number of areas.

The key relationship is the critical importance of understanding your target audience.  The cost of raw, untargeted data continues to drop.  With various social or data scraping services in the market today, the cost of a raw name, even a name with title information attached, has been reduced to pennies.

However, this has led to a market dynamic where untargeted marketing messages are prevalent, and the ability to precisely target the right buyer with the right message at the right time is the most important differentiator.

Role-based contact discovery is a crucial step in understanding who is a potential buyer of your product or services.  Going beyond title to discover actual functional role allows you to precisely identify the individual who would, when the time is right, progress through a buying cycle and purchase your product or services.

And this is where demand generation, such as the platform we provide at Eloqua, comes in.

The key synergy is that by using a demand generation platform to understand the digital body language of our buyers, we can identify the critical second piece of the equation – where each buyer is in their buying cycle.  By understanding the stages of a buying process for your product or service, and then using scoring to map each potential buyer to the stage of the buying process he or she is at, you can see whether they are at the education and awareness stage, are discovering potential vendors, or are validating a vendor as their final choice.

With a clear understanding of the “who” (based on role-based discovery) and the “how interested” (based on reading their digital body language), targeting the right message to the right person at the right time becomes possible.

However, there is another crucial link.  Even though the differentiated value of understanding role, vs just title, is clear to most marketers, the difference may be lost on the CFO.  Demand generation processes allow you to paint a much clearer picture of the value of one name over another.

With Eloqua, you can rethink your marketing analysis around the full buying funnel.  By taking a top-down view of your marketing analysis, you can begin to get a clear picture of where each buyer is in their buying process.  As you do this, you can begin to push your analysis of the value of a name further down the buying funnel.  Determining, through using lead scoring, which source of names actually turns into Marketing Qualified Leads and revenue opportunities allows you to view the value of the incoming names more clearly.  If a targeted name costs more by a factor of 5, but converts into revenue opportunities at 10X the rate of untargeted names, it is clearly more valuable.  Demand generation allows you to prove that value further down the buying funnel.

A third critical link is in sales understanding.  Sales needs to engage with individual buyers in individual conversations.  The only way to do this is for them to understand the interests of each buyer.  Targeted discovery allows you to provide your sales team with insights into what the potential buyer’s role and major focus areas are, while Eloqua allows you to provide your sales team with insight into their area and level of interest through giving them insights into the buyer’s digital body language.

With these approaches in place, it is even possible to reverse the standard approach of seeking, through targeted lead discovery, folks in the right roles, followed by using lead nurturing to cultivate and generate interest.  Interest may already exist, and can be identified through seeing individuals from ideal target companies anonymously visiting your website. In this case, these companies, where interest has already been seen, can be passed automatically to Reachforce for targeted lead discovery.  This provides you with an immediate win, as you have a person in the right role, at a company that is already showing interest in your product or solution.

Together, targeted lead discovery through Reachforce and demand generation through Eloqua form a powerful combination that allows you to find the right person, at the right company, showing the right level of buying interest.  For your sales team, there can be no better lead than that.

Trying to handle Search Engine Optimization in-house can be a challenge for many B2B marketers.  I handle all of the web design/content/SEO here at ReachForce with zero formal training on the subject (granted I do have a wonderful developer but he basically just executes on my plans).  I recently came across an article I had earmarked a while back that I wanted to share with anyone out there who is also trying there best to get this whole SEO thing right.  In “Six Mistakes B2B Marketers Continue To Make With Organic Search,” Galen DeYoung outlines where many B2B marketers are falling down:

Inadequate site architecture

To be found for a specific keyword, there needs to be an optimized landing page on the website that revolves around that search term. Simply put, this means you need to review your business and ensure your site has at least one page that promotes each specific revenue stream. However, the complexities of B2B keyword strategy—which include the lack of shared lexicons in most B2B verticals—mean that you may have to create and incorporate several landing pages for each revenue stream. For instance, an accounting firm promoting litigation support services may have a page on expert witness services, but it may do well to also consider having a page on forensic accounting.

Simply put, most B2B websites need more content, both to respond to likely organic search and to be seen as being by the search engines as an authoritative site on a given topic.

If you are having difficulties creating this content, try looking for it other place.  Take a look at your whitepapers, past articles, press releases, and blog posts.  You might find content that just needs a little tweaking to work for the website.

Lousy meta descriptions

When B2B marketers actually specify the meta descriptions for site pages, they often write from an internal standpoint, using corporate and internal lingo that doesn’t speak to the searcher. (Unfortunately this is often true for the actual content as well. ) Typically, B2C marketers are much better at writing meta descriptions that promote click-through. When you write meta descriptions for B2B, think about what will entice the searcher (your prospect) to click on your search result versus all the others on the page. While you can write as much as you want, Google will only display about 165 characters. Make sure you use those characters wisely to create a keyword-rich, compelling message. You’ve only got a few seconds before searchers decide on which results they will click.

Not analyzing organic landing pages

Many B2B marketers don’t bother to evaluate, let alone manage, organic landing pages. Test your organic landing pages for all significant, ranking keywords. You may rank highly in the search results for a given search phrase. You may even have a meta description that drives click-through. But is the page searchers land on the page you want them to land on? If not, optimize a different landing page or make changes to the content at the current landing page.

Not monitoring analytics

The analytics associated with PPC landing pages are often scrutinized in great detail. Bounce rates are analyzed. Alternate landing page versions are tested. Ad copy is tweaked. Yet organic landing pages rarely see the same rigor, despite the fact that B2B purchasers tend to first look at and click on organic results almost twice as often as they do paid search results. So, dive into your analytics and do the same for your organic visitors. Isolate your organic traffic. Look at the organic landing pages. Analyze the bounce rates. Adjust landing page content. Tweak meta descriptions. You’ll be glad you did.

Failing to optimize printed marketing assets before converting them to the web

B2B marketers are frequently guilty of mindlessly posting lots of print marketing communications to their websites, often in lieu of html content. Hundreds of hours and great sums of money have been spent creating these pieces, yet most people won’t spend even an hour to optimize these pieces before posting them to the web. These often include PDFs of brochures, case studies, technical or white papers, and product and spec sheets. While these represent valuable, influential information, if you don’t optimize them, they won’t show up in the search results; the only people that will find them are those who actually visit your site. Why not make sure searchers can find them, too.

Duplicate title tags and meta descriptions

B2B sites are often rife with duplicate title tags and duplicate meta descriptions. In addition to decreasing the chances that more of your site’s pages will rank well, this practice will likely lead to less of your site’s pages being indexed by the search engine. Moreover, it’s a clear sign that you haven’t optimized your site for searchers. Title tags and meta descriptions help determine whether a searcher is actually going to click on your search result. Today, there’s really no excuse for this. You can easily check for duplicate title tags and meta descriptions using Diagnostics>Content Analysis in Google Webmaster Tools.

Be sure to check out the full article for all of Galen’s tips.

Looking for more Online Marketing Tips? Download 30 Online Marketing Tips from The B2B Lead

One of my favorite social media news sites, Mashable, had a great post a couple of weeks ago worthy of sharing with our readers.   Sharlyn Lauby, the post author and president of Internal Talent Management (ITM) put together a list of 10 things to consider when creating a social media policy.

Leigh Anne and I try to stay pretty active out in the new social world and we often get asked if we have a social media policy here at ReachForce.  We don’t have one, but as we continue to grow our team we might consider it in the future.

Sharlyn says, “Whether you’re writing your social media policy from the get-go, or letting it develop organically in reaction to situations as they arise, here are 10 things you should definitely consider. These 10 tips will help you steer clear of pitfalls and allow you to focus on what’s important: engaging the customer.”

1. Introduce the purpose of social media for your organization- focus on the things that employees CAN DO rather than what they can’t do.  it’s all about leveraging the positive to get people to engage and bring value to your social media efforts.
2. Be responsible for what you write – Your team needs to take responsibility for what they write, and exercise good judgment and common sense. You’d think this is obvious, but better safe than sorry, right?
3. Be authentic – Include your name and, when appropriate, your company name and your title. People want to interact with other people in the social world, not business (aka sales people).  Here at ReachForce, when we’re participating in the social world, instead of including our ReachForce URL, we include a link back here, to the The B2B Lead.  We figure it’s more comfortable and gives our audience and followers a better snapshot of who we are personally.
4. Consider your audience -When you’re out and about remember that your readers could include current customers, potential customers, as well as current/past/future employees, your boss, your board members, and of course your mom. Consider that before you publish and make sure you aren’t alienating any of those groups.
5. Exercise good judgment – Refrain from comments that can be interpreted as slurs, demeaning, inflammatory, etc.  You’d think this was obvious too but remember if it ends up on the internet someone will find it.
6. Understand the concept of community – The essence of community is the idea that it exists so that you can support others and they, in turn, can support you. You need to learn how to balance personal and professional information, and the important role that transparency plays in building a community.
7. Respect copyrights and fair use – This should be a no-brainer, but just in case: always give people proper credit for their work, and make sure you have the right to use something with attribution before you publish.  i.e. These tips come from Sharlyn Lauby via Mashable.
8. Remember to protect confidential & proprietary info - Transparency doesn’t give employees free rein to share just anything. Common sense here please, it could cost you your job.
   
9. Bring value – share relevant activities or news with your community, fellow bloggers and other social media followers.  Do your customers really care what you had for lunch?  I doubt it.
   
10. Productivity matters – But, your social media usage won’t get you very far if you don’t execute on the core competencies of your business. Remember that in order for your social media endeavors to be successful, you need to find the right balance between social media and other work.

Looking for a sample policy?  IBM has published their social media guidelines publicly for anyone to read. It’s a great policy, though rather long.

Lead Scoring is hot right now and for good reason. As marketers, we finally have the technology tools available to enable us to score and qualify leads before passing them off to sales.  What a lot of people are talking about is activity based or implicit lead scoring. This means scoring a lead based on the actions they are taking like downloading an eBook or attending a demo.  There is another side to lead scoring, explicit or attribute based lead scoring.  This is a way of scoring a lead based on things like title, geography or industry.

Here are some actions to consider for implicit lead scoring:

• content download
• email open/click-through
• website visit
  • number of pages visited
  • time on site
  • time spent on product pages
  • time spent on careers page
• event attendance
• viewed webinar
• viewed product demo

When you are scoring a lead based on their actions, remember that some actions will actually lower a lead’s score.  You might consider taking points off for those leads that are visiting your careers page.  Also remember to track inactivity.  A lead that was hot six months ago but has had no activity in the past six months should probably lose points and be downgraded from hot lead status until they re-engage.

Here are some attributes to consider for explicit lead scoring:

• title
• department
• industry
• budget
• propensity to purchase
• role in the decision making unit

If you don’t have all of this information about your leads you can gather it through your web lead forms or through surveys.  We have found internally that our sales team prefers to know more about a lead’s explicit attributes rather that their actions.

The best lead scoring programs will have both explicit and implicit components.  Talk to your sales team to find out what they value most.  They will also have insight into what types of leads convert.  Look back to see where your current customers came from.  Did they download a certain whitepaper?  Did they click through a specific email?  Did they attend a webinar?  Determine your ideal buyer profile.  Are they VP level?  What industry are they in?

Once you have your lead scoring program in place, don’t forget to educate your sales team on what that means.  Make sure they know how the lead attained the score.  Also be sure to allow sales to turn those leads back to you if inactivity warrants further nurturing.  No matter how well you research ahead of time to score the leads the most approriately this is still a learning process. Ask for feedback from your sales team to make sure you really are passing over hot leads and adjust your programs as necessary.  Happy scoring!

I am always looking for ideas on how to stand out in the crowd, so when I saw this idea on two different blogs, I had to share it.  In case you missed Dianna Huff or Drew McLellan sharing this interesting direct mail they received themselves, both were sent a FedEx package with chocolate covered grasshoppers inside.

The package said, “You’re a risk-taker, a dream-realizer. What’s left to do that you haven’t already done? Eat a grasshopper. They’re farm raised, covered in chocolate and rich in protein. So, not only will you be breaking boundaries, but you’ll be eating healthy, too.”  A note was attached with the real promotion, “Entrepreneurs can change the world. Join the movement now! grasshopper.com/idea”

According to a Fox News video, a company in Needham, MA sent the grasshoppers to 5,000 “of the most influential people in the U.S.” in the hopes that these people would then talk about the company and its campaign.

Drew and Dianna seemed to have different takes on the success of the campaign.

Drew loved the campaign – Bottom line — it worked.  3-D mailings may cost a little more money — but they deliver big results when they are done well.

The folks at Grasshopper.com decided to send out 5,000 of the attention-hopping packages to entrepreneurs, bloggers, celebrities, journalists and customers.  They spent 3 months assembling the list and made sure the packaging and cross promotion (Twitter, YouTube, bloggers, their website, etc.) were all in order.

This was a very well thought out and executed campaign.  Bravo to the Grasshopper gang.

While Dianna seems to have mixed thoughts – So, the company got me and lots of other people to write about its campaign — which according to the Fox News video, was the company’s objective.  But, it didn’t get me to buy — or even consider its service. Is the campaign a failure or success?

To me, 5,000 doesn’t seem to be a particularly targeted audience but it did seem to get the company the coverage they were looking for.  After all, I didn’t even get the chocolate covered grasshoppers, and I am writing about them.

Obviously this campaign worked best because the name of the company is Grasshopper but the idea of a bold direct mail piece is possible for anyone.  Something else to learn from the campaign is to not just focus direct mail on prospects.  You might get more bang for your buck with bloggers and thought leaders.

Photo credit: Drew’s Marketing Minute

I came across a great post by Ann Handley on Mashable, “Everything I Need to Know About Twitter I Learned in J School.”  She goes over 8 mantras she learned in journalism school and how they apply to Twitter:

1. Make every word count

In traditional news journalism, and on Twitter, you only have so much space. On Twitter, of course, it’s a mere 140 characters. As I learned in journalism school, writing short is a lot harder than it looks. It’s a lot more work to choose your words wisely, and be concise, than it is to ramble on luxuriously.
Keeping a tweet really short – like close to 85-100 characters – also makes your tweet more “Retweet Friendly,” since it allows a little wiggle room for forwarding.

2. Keep it simple

The best news reporters tell a story simply and clearly. Similarly, don’t try to cram too much information into a single tweet. On Twitter, less is often more.
Also: Link directly to blogs or other online sources, and always link to the full story, rather than trying to juice up page views by, for example, linking to the home page. Shorten URLs through bit.ly or similar services. Most Twitter clients will usually condense your links, but I like bit.ly’s rich click-through and retweet stats.
Finally, avoid the temptation to fit more into a tweet by the liberal use of abbreviations. Such shorthand might maximize your character count, but they make your tweet read like a teenager’s text message.

3. Provide context

News reporters do this by plugging in some of the back story on any given news item. On Twitter, offer context by using keywords and hashtags, when appropriate, so that readers can more easily get the gist of a conversation, thread, or topic.

4. Lead with the good stuff

In journalism, the “inverted pyramid” style places the most important information at the top of any story, and then the ensuing narrative explains and expands on it. In other words, the first paragraph should contain enough information to give the reader a solid overview of the entire story. Approach sharing links or information on Twitter in a similar manner, giving the strongest and most compelling bit in the tweet, and then link to the rest of the story elsewhere.

5. Write killer headlines

Headlines “sell” a news story or a blog post much like a great tweet invites a reader to click. Author tweets that are short, punchy, and are compelling, either because they tell the reader precisely what you’re offering (”How to…” or “27 Ways…”) or because they’re clever or funny.

This applies to so much for B2B marketers – subject lines, blog posts titles, Press Release headlines, etc.

6. Graphics expand on the story

A good image or graphic complements a news story. Similarly, a picture on Twitter tells a story with far more impact.

7. People make things interesting

News reporters often focus on how people are affected by a given situation or event. On Twitter, it’s also the people that keep it interesting. That means talking to (or “@ing”) folks liberally, as well as adopting a conversational tone and community spirit.

And this applies even when you are representing a brand. This can be hard for B2B Marketers to remember but never forget that people buy from people. Personal outreach from your brand makes people feel like they are really connecting to someone.

8. Consider the reader

Journalists spend a lot of time coming up with the right angle for a story. On Twitter, be similarly thoughtful in your approach. The immediacy of Twitter might tempt you to dash off a tweet with little forethought. But if you respect your audience of followers similar to the way journalists consider their readers, you’ll spend more time thinking about what to tweet, than you will actually doing it. Believe me, your followers will appreciate your efforts.

A good question to ask yourself before you tweet – “Will anyone care?”  If it is what you ate for lunch, probably not.  If you ate the best buger of your life, maybe so, of course not if all of your followers are vegitarian.

For examples of each mantra be sure to check out the full article.

Here at ReachForce we use a lot of best practice type content offers as part of our multi-touch outbound marketing programs.  I’ve heard my sales team say more than a couple of times that they don’t seem to get a lot of traction with people from the content downloads.  Even with prompt follow up, nothing.

After giving it some thought, I came to the conclusion that either people downloading content are in an education phase and aren’t ready to speak to a sales rep.  or that these people consume information in a way that does not involve interaction…yet.  Neither of these conclusions provided a solution though.

Then I ran across this blog post, Forgettable Follow-up on B2B Content Offers, from Ardath Albee at The Customer Collective.  This one is a MUST read for all sales and marketing teams.  Here are some of the highlights:

Here are some examples of how B2B follow-up becomes forgettable:

Example:
[Company] Hello, This is Sam from [Company]. I noticed you downloaded our paper on whiz bang issue 57 and I’m interested in helping learn more about how we can help solve your problem.
[Prospect] I’m just researching.
[Company] Well, do you have a project planned that we can discuss?
[Prospect] No, I’m just doing some research. [I knew I shouldn't have answered the phone.]
[Company] Okay, I’m going to send you some product information so you’ll have it on file for when you need it.
[Prospect] Thanks. You have a nice day. [click, buzz, delete]

Example:
Email follow-up message – Thank you for requesting the [Recognizable Name] white paper. As you may know, [Our Company] is a leader in [whiz bang whatever] and we sponsored the white paper. I’d look forward to learning what initiatives you’re working on to see if [Our Solution] is a fit. I’d like to schedule a fifteen minute call to discuss your goals in [whiz bang whatever]. Please let me know when is a convenient time to talk.

This is such a waste of time. Approaches like these do absolutely nothing to elevate your company’s trust level or credibility. Instead, you’re seen as self-serving and, ultimately, forgettable.

Now you need to give them a reason for continued involvement. Here are some ideas on how to improve the response to your follow-up:

• Have a business reason for the follow-up. Just touching base isn’t good enough.

• Have an additional offer ready that builds on their expressed interest. An exclusive report, an article not publicly available, an invitation to a webinar on a related topic, etc.

• Know exactly what they downloaded and be specific to help them make the connection. People are busy. They download a lot of things. Expecting them to remember yours when you call/email out of the blue is just silly. If your follow-up is in relation to content you sponsored, they likely downloaded it because of the source, not you. So have something compelling to say if you want their interest to transfer to you.

• Follow-up promptly.  Waiting a month means you’re likely forgotten and someone else now has their attention.

DO NOT:

• Ask them to educate you.

• Put them on the spot.

• Be ignorant of the interaction that prompted the follow-up.

• Push product information on them. Lead with “blah, blah, blah” about your company

• Use buzz words and jargon in the description of your company.

• Forget to use a value proposition for the communication that’s all about them, not you.  The key is to get the prospect to take another step with you because you’ve got something valuable to say or share that they need to know.

After reading Ardath’s post (which I again recommend reading the entire thing, there are more examples and tips) I immediately forwarded it to my sales team and I’m joining their weekly meeting today to make sure everyone “gets it”.

We write new content for many reasons but our #1 reason is to support lead generation programs that convert leads.  Hopefully this helps and we see more content download leads in our opportunity funnel.

June is a big month. School is coming to an end, it’s the beginning of summer and vacation season is in full swing. For many businesses, June marks the end of the first half of the year and a slow couple of upcoming months.

With all of the summer distractions lead generation teams must have a plan to stand out in the crowd and be able to demonstrate value clearly and quickly. To help you jumpstart your thinking about your marketing and sales aligned programs and initiatives we’ve got 2 upcoming events you won’t want to miss.

June 4th, 3pm EDT – Join ReachForce and MathMarketing for a webinar to learn 3 strategies to better align Marketing and Sales teams to create a funnel that delivers.

We’ll also share a few surprising do’s and don’ts that debunk the classic understanding of the roles of Sales and Marketing. Things like: DON’T measure salespeople on proposals closed. Surprised? We were too.

Join us on June 4th at 3pm EDT to find out why successful companies DON’T use this as a metric and have increased growth as a result. Register Now

Then we’ll be in San Mateo on June 23rd -24th with Hugh Macfarlane, author of The Leaky Funnel, for a 2-day Funnel Academy. This 2-day in-person event will explore the following topics:

• Selecting a strategy based on the way your markets buy
• Aligning and allocating resources for multiple markets
• The buyer’s journey – understanding how buy and creating your strategy around your buyers
• How to build a model funnel and resolve disconnects
• How to plan campaigns that move buyers

Click here to learn more and to register.

For many businesses, the upcoming summer months can feel like they drag on forever. This summer use this time to set up for bigger success in 2009.

According to SiriusDecisions, “The Company that markets with a healthy data-cleansing routine can realize nearly 70% more revenue than an ‘average’ organization, based purely on data quality.”  Whether you love it or hate it, we all have a marketing database filled with web leads, customers and trade show lists.

If kept up to date, this database is invaluable to the success of our marketing campaigns.  If it is used as a general repository of contacts and never cleaned up, your email bouncebacks/mail returns will be through the roof and your response rates will be abysmal.  According to MarketingSherpa, 2.1% of contact data goes bad every month. This means each year almost 25% of your contact data gets dirty.  Do you know which 25%?

Based on these stats, ReachForce has created a dirty data calculator to show you just how much of your data is dirty.  See how dirty your data is now.

Creating new content on a regular basis is tough and very time consuming.  Here at ReachForce with almost everything we create we create a plan on how we are going to make use of the content in as many places as possible.  Things like converting eBooks or whitepapers into blog posts and vice versa or using surveys for lead information gathering as well as trend mapping.

Well, nurture marketers and sales teams out there here’s a GREAT idea!  I got an email from an Account Executive at MarketBright (see his picture below) that simply invited me to visit the MarketBright blog.  Then he went on to list a few of the most popular posts.  I thought this was brilliant.  He wasn’t trying to sell me anything, well maybe he was in the last paragraph but it was subtle.  He was just letting me know they had a resource I may be interested in.  No customization was needed, just a simple introduction and a list of the resources.  Easy as pie.

Here’s what the email looked like –

Ok, I must admit I think the picture is a little cheesy.  But it did make me giggle so I guess it worked, it caught my attention.  But otherwise, his hook worked.  Now I’m sure with the MarketBright email tracking, Jon was able to tell what I was interested in and now he knows what to follow up with next.

If you have a blog, steal some content from there.  Big change your prospects missed it the first time it went out.  If you don’t have a blog, pull out highlights from eBooks, whitepapers, webcasts, basically anything else you have and put together an email that links back to each of these.

I’m stealing this idea and going to do something like this for our pipeline nurturing program.  No selling from me, just trying to be resourceful for our decision makers and help encourage further interaction.  Jon, your email worked.  You caught my attention and I acted.  Thank you for the great idea.