As we kick off the New Year, we’re typically in an “out with the old, in with the new” mindset.  While that may be true for a lot of things, it doesn’t have to be the case for your marketing database. As we ponder in 2009 how to do more with less, think about what you can do with what you have.

Most Marketers are overwhelmed by a customer or prospect database with hundreds of thousands of duplicate entries, old data, inaccurate contact details and countless records in myriad states of completeness. This existing data has likely been gathered by many different individuals over multiple years.

Did you know?

• More than 30 million people out of the 138 million employed in the US will switch jobs in the next 12 months – Gartner Group

• In that same 12 months, some 2.5 million businesses will move, according to the U.S. Census Bureau

• “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.” – Sirius Decisions

Dirty data, whether purchased or collected from download offers hampers your lead generation results and drives up costs.  So sticking with the same theme from my last couple of posts, doing more with what you already have, consider this.

Before throwing out your dirty data and buying new or taking on a massive database clean up initiative, think relevance.

What lead data do you have in your database that is relevant to your target markets and buying roles today?  From there you can put together a repair program.  Here’s a starting point for determining what relevant data you already have at your fingertips.

1. What businesses you need to target?  Industries?  Vertical markets?
2. Who in those businesses are involved in the buying decision for your product or services?
3. What are you going to do with the data? (Email campaign, direct mail, telemarketing)

Now it is time to repair that relevant data.  Start with what’s missing.  Here’s a list of things to consider:
If you are doing segmented email programs, do you have the right buying roles within your target markets?

• Do you have all of the email addresses you need for each role in the decision making unit?
  If you are doing a direct mail program, do you have accurate mailing addresses for everyone you are targeting?
• Are there more companies out there that are in your target market that you currently don’t have in your marketing database?  If so, find these and add them.
• Is there data older than 6 months in your database that needs refreshing?  Remember how many people are moving around and how many companies are merging or going out of business on a monthly basis.  Consider refreshing this data.  **This does not have to be a manual solution.

Thousands, tens of thousands, or maybe even hundreds of thousands of records in your database, there’s bound to be gold there, you just have to uncover it and dust it off.

Here are a few resources for you to consider as you ponder your marketing initiatives in 2009 and the value of your current data.

Is Dirty Data Sabotaging your Marketing Results?
Dirty Data: Even More Expensive Than you Thought
Understanding the Role of Role

Hope you enjoyed this quarter’s Book Club series.  Just in case you missed an eBook or whitepaper we read and discussed, below are the links to them and what we had to say about each of them.

• Dianna Huff’s Five B2B MarCom Strategies to Increase Sales Now
• What we had to say…

• Brian Carroll’s Eight Critical Success Factors for Lead Generation
• What we had to say…

• HubSpots’s Get Found Online
• What we had to say…

• Marketo’s Best Practices in Lead Nurturing
• What we had to say…

• David Meerman Scott’s The New Rules of Viral Marketing
• What we had to say…

• ConnectDirect’s How to Choose your Carrot: Effective Lead Generation Offers for High-Technology Marketers
• What we had to say…

Happy Reading.  We look forward to sharing even more B2B Marketing and Sales tips with you in 2009.

This is the third post in a series on Deliberate Marketing. Be sure to check out the first post on Intention vs. Attention and the second post on Qualified Buyers vs. Leads.

Deliberate Marketing programs do not rely simply on prospect titles for targeting potential buyers.

For example, a B2B Marketer purchases a list or accesses a contact database and pulls a list of 1,000 Communications Analysts. How can that marketer be certain that the contacts who match those titles are involved with Network Communications instead of Corporate Communications?

Titles are simply a label of rank, not an indication of the actual role the prospect plays in the organization or in the buying decision. Instead, Deliberate Marketing programs are focused on “roles,” defined by Webster’s as: a function or part performed. They target communications based on organizational role and level in the DMU as well as stage of the buying cycle.

The average B2B marketing response rate is less than 3%, and it’s getting lower every year. It’s easy to see why title-based lists perform so poorly.

Consider a Fortune 500 company with 90,000 employees.
All told, this company has 500 IT staff.
Of those 500, 150 have a title of Manager, Director, and higher.
Only a handful of those 150 is in the right role to buy your product.

But what’s a marketer to do? Using current list technology, you can only get as specific as target title. So you have to market to all 150 people with ‘hot titles’, jamming the inboxes of the majority with an unwanted, off-topic solicitation. It’s simply not a cost-effective model.

This is the second post in a series on Deliberate Marketing. Be sure to check out the first post on Intention vs. Attention.

Sales teams are always clamoring for more leads but smart marketers know that what they really need to deliver are qualified buyers.  A lead status is often applied to anyone who fills out a form on your website or stops by your trade show booth.  Rather than tossing that list of names over to sales, marketers must nurture those leads and weed out the good from the bad, those with budget and need from those still in the education phase.

Deliberate Marketing ensures marketers can extract the most value from their marketing programs based on using the most cost-effective method to move prospects and buyers through the funnel. It is not focused on simply filling the marketing and sales funnel with contacts and expecting sales to follow-up on any lead that downloads a whitepaper.

Deliberate Marketing is about profiling the best possible buyers, recruiting more buyers that are just like them, and then executing the most effective techniques possible to move the prospect through each stage of the funnel.

This week we’re reading and talking about Connect Direct’s whitepaper – How to Choose Your Carrot: Effective Lead Generation Offers for High-Technology Marketers.  Author Howard Sewell opens with the 3 key elements of any campaign:

1. List
2. Offer
3. Creative

You know here at ReachForce we are all about data (lists) that fuels lead generation programs so it was great to see that at the top of the list.  He goes on to say that “creative still rules the roost” for most marketers.  I totally agree and don’t get how people spend so much time and effort on creative that will end up going to the wrong person.  But that’s another post all together…

Then there’s the offer – another piece many marketers have a hard time getting right.

“An offer is a reason to respond – the ‘carrot’ that gets the reader to take action.”

When deciding on your offer, remember to “Sell the Offer, not the Product”.  Howard goes on to say, “no matter how enticing your product or service sounds, you won’t generate leads unless people want what you’re offering”.  I totally agree.

Choosing the right offer – here comes the good stuff…

First, you must decide what the primary objective is for your campaign.  Is it to:

• Build awareness
• Build your in-house list
• Generate sales opportunities
• Drive prospects to a meeting immediately

For each of these, you’re offer would be different.  On page 4 of the whitepaper, check out Fig 1.  It is a great visual of different offers and what outcomes to expect with each.  The basic idea is the more you ask of someone, the more qualified they will be.  Doing a raffle for an iPod will drive responders but probably not the quality your sales team is looking for.

The remainder of the whitepaper goes on in detail about the pros and cons of different offers like free trials, webinars, whitepapers, surveys and sweepstakes.  If you haven’t already read this one, you want to.  “Select your offer carefully.  The choice between one offer and the next will have a dramatic effect on your response rate and the quality of the leads you generate.

About the Author
Howard J. Sewell is president and founder of Connect Direct. Prior to starting the company in
1990, he served as a marketing manager for software giant Oracle Corporation. Howard is a frequent speaker on direct marketing and regular contributor to print publications and online forums on topics that include lead generation, e-mail marketing, channel development and event promotion. He writes “Direct Connections,” a leading blog on best practices and strategies for B2B direct marketing.

Does your sales team ignore the majority of leads marketing passes on?  Marketers must develop a more intimate understanding of their target customer and the market that customer serves to generate qualified buyers that Sales won’t ignore. Marketers must align their efforts with the Sales organization and streamline the Marketing and Sales funnel to accelerate the rate at which leads move through their funnel.

Deliberate Marketing is a proven strategy for putting more qualified buyers directly into the Marketing and Sales funnel to generate faster ROI. It is especially effective in the B2B Marketing space which is characterized by defined target markets, long sales cycles and complex buyer-seller relationships. Over the next few weeks, I will be covering The 6 Principles of Deliberate Marketing in hopes of helping B2B Marketers start off the new year with a new approach to drive more successes.

Principle #1: Intention vs. Attention

Do you know if your marketing programs are gathering intention or attention?  Intention means you have hit the right audience with the right message and they have responded to your call to action.  Attention means they looked at your message but they may not have been your buyer and there was no call to action. By focusing on intention vs. attention, you may have fewer leads to pass onto sales but those leads will be more qualified.

Deliberate Marketing involves researching your customers in order to build insight into their pain points and the medium through which they respond best to marketing messages. This research enables Marketers to deliver laser-focused messages and programs that convert buyer interest to buyer intent. It is not about spreading high level marketing messages to a broad audience via advertising or public relations hoping to garner attention for a product or company.

Rather, Deliberate Marketing is focused on converting a targeted segment of prospects into qualified buyers with an interest in purchasing a product or service. This involves knowing far more about your target audience than any list buy, database or telemarketing firm can ever provide.

In this whitepaper, Marketo sets up a great analogy between Lead Nurturing and Dating that we can all learn from (lead nurturing that is, you’re in the wrong place if you are looking for dating tips).  I don’t want to regurgitate the whitepaper, so I will just expand on a few things that Marketo touches on.

Marketo talks about the introduction to your prospect or “date”.  If you are looking for a long term commitment, be sure you are looking for your type.  If you know your best dates are tall, dark, and handsome, then that is who you should be looking for.  Do you know your “type”  when it comes to prospects?  Do you know you are looking for high tech firms with 1000+ employees that are in the bay area or are you looking for healthcare companies with 20,000+ employees on the east coast?  You have to create a profile of your ideal “mate” or customer; after all you don’t want to flirt with (market to) everyone.

Marketo also says you should be where your potential dates or prospects are.  If you know you like tall, dark, and handsome, don’t travel to Sweden looking for your mate.  If you know your prospects prefer LinkedIn to Facebook, then that is where you should be too.  Don’t waste your time creating Facebook ads and pages – you are not trying to catch every fish in the sea.  Instead, create a group on LinkedIn and participate in LinkedIn Answers.

The whitepaper goes into a few ideas for building your thought leadership.  Whitepapers and eBooks are both great but again knowing your audience will pay off here as well.  The eBook may be the “hip and stylish younger sibling to the nerdy whitepaper,” David Meerman Scott, but if you are trying to reach a highly technical audience, a well written and detailed whitepaper may be a better fit.

I guess my point, once again, is know your customer.  For another analogy, you have to know what kind of fish you are going after so you can use the right bait (shrimp, worms, cheese) and hang your line in the right kind of water (fresh water, salt water).  Casting a wide net will get you a lot, but will it get what you are looking for?  Are you using the right bait to catch your next customer, ie whitepapers, eBooks, blogs?  Are you in the right kind of water, ie on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or in person tradeshows?

Be sure to read the whitepaper for the full analogy (they do a much better job than I).  For those of you who have read the whitepaper, what did you think?  I know I left out a lot.  What great lead nurturing tips (or heck, I’ll take dating tips at this point too – not for me though, I’m engaged) did you get out of it?

Marketo provides B2B marketing automation software that translates marketing spending into revenue. Their award-winning lead management software features email marketing, lead nurturing, lead scoring, and closed-loop reporting capabilities to help marketing and sales teams work together to generate and qualify sales leads, shorten sales cycles, and demonstrate marketing accountability.

Next Thursday, we will be chatting about David Meeman Scott’s eBook, The New Rules of Viral Marketing (no I am not stalking him, but yes I am a superfan).

Last year, we at ReachForce declared January 15th the “Oh $#%@!” Day in Marketing.

Here’s why:

Are you prepared to deliver sales-ready leads in January? December is typically a slower month for B2B Marketing teams, since most organizations slow down current marketing programs and instead spend their time preparing for the next year. Then, you leave for the holidays happy to have completed the painful process of planning and budgeting for the next year’s activities. But once the holiday haze clears, it’s January and everyone is ready to kick off the New Year with new customer wins. Your sales team wants to know, “Where are my leads? I’ve got a number to hit.”

The “Oh $#%@!” moment…

If you wait until you get back from the holidays to begin developing your marketing programs, when are you going to have leads to pass to sales? End of January? Beginning of February? Can your sales team land those deals by the end of Q1?

Instead, start developing your 2009 programs now and be ready to execute your first week back. Remember to go back and look at where you’ve been before getting started. With the economy on a roller coaster, we’re all being forced to do more with less. It’s more important than ever to analyze and target your lead generation initiatives at the right buyers in YOUR target market. I promise your sales team will thank you.

If you’ve been doing B2B Marketing for any length of time you know who Brian Carroll is.  If you don’t know who he is, you should.  His eBook, Eight Critical Success Factors for Lead Generation, is a must read for “lead generation specialists committed  to the long-term proposition that digging for leads, educating prospects, navigating the nuances of the complex sale and creating new, high-level return on investment is what has brought lead generation to the position it enjoys in the marketing hierarchy today”.

I read this eBook a couple of years ago but I was due a refresher.  While all 8 factors are important to lead generation success, I pulled out a few things we could all benefit from doing or ensuring on a more regular basis.  My summary and highlights by no means replaces reading the eBook.

• Remember you are creating conversations, not campaigns – “Companies don’t buy, people do.”  With each lead generation initiative we are developing an ongoing relationship with the prospect.  We are educating and providing value with each touch.  Or at least we should be.
• Be sure you have identified an Ideal Customer Profile before getting started – we’ve talked about personas many times on The B2B Lead. Building out the ideal customer profile makes everyone’s job easier.  Why wouldn’t you do it?
• Universal Lead Definition – it’s key that both Sales and Marketing agree on this.  “There is consensus that sales functionaries fail to act on nearly 80% of the leads they get, largely because most of the leads aren’t qualified, or because appropriate buyers haven’t been identified and targeted.”
• Your database – your most valuable marketing asset.  “The properly designed and well-maintained database is the hub of all lead generation activity and communication.”
• Lead nurturing – we all know it takes multiple touches to turn a contact to a lead and a lead to a real prospect.  “Lead nurturing is not a single marketing campaign, but rather a series of steps and communication tactics with the objective of developing and building a relationship with the potential customer.”  Automation tools make this easier than ever.  No more excuses to not nurturing.

This is only a few highlights from the eBook, now go read it yourself if you haven’t already.  If nothing else, the pictures/diagrams are worth your time.

Brian Carroll, CEO of InTouch, Inc. part of the MECLABS Group that owns MarketingExperiments and MarketingSherpa and author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale (McGraw-Hill 2006) and the B2B Lead Generation Blog with expertise related to B2B marketing, lead generation and complex sales.

Once you’re done with this one go ahead and download next week’s eBook – HubSpot’s Get Found Online.  We’ll be chatting about it next Thursday here on The B2B Lead.

Many B2B Marketers, along with most Americans, are wondering what is going on with our economy.  Now that we have elected a new President, will that help?  How long will this slump last?  How is this going to affect budgets and jobs and new sales opportunities?  While wondering all of the same things and how it will affect ReachForce, I decided to make a list of FREE things that we as Marketers can do in a recession.  Some lead generating tools and some awareness building tactics, but all things you can do at no cost.  Here’s what I came up with, please feel free to help add to the list.

Twitter – free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (AKA tweets), these text-based posts can contain up to 140 characters.  Feel free to share links to other good content in these micro posts too.
Here’s 10 tips for building a following a Twitter.

Commenting on other industry thought leader’s blog or other blogs related to your business – Get in on the conversation and get your view point out there.

Submit your best practice content to free sites – The content will be indexed by the search engines allowing people to find your article when searching for something related. Some examples are Scribd, Docstoc and WhitePapers.org.

Website Grader – Website Grader is a free seo tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective.

Email signatures – Set up a standard email signature for all company emails and include things like your blog, or events you’re attending or a customer testimonial video.  Easy to do and everyone that gets an email from someone at your company will also get your mini marketing message.

ReachForce Insight Lite -  Do you know your best customers? Can you easily identify your target market sweet spots – markets that you sell the most or the fastest? Are there other business buyers in your sweet spot that you should be targeting with your Marketing campaigns?  Download ReachForce Insight Lite on the Appexchange and see.

Re-purpose content you already have – or create a Top 10 list or a list of Top 5 things to Avoid.  People love lists and you probably already have all of this information at your finger tips.  At ReachForce, we’ve recently turned our best 101 blog posts into an eBook series.  We didn’t have to create anything new, we just pulled the best posts and put them together in an eBook format.  We’re currently using them for lead generation campaigns and getting GREAT results and feedback.  Also, it has increased our daily blog traffic.

LinkedIn – just sign up and start linking up.  LinkedIn is rolling out new applications and group features all the time, take advantage of these free networking tools.
Once you’ve set your profile up, check out LinkedIn Answers.

Facebook – Facebook is somewhat of a new thing for B2B Marketers, here at ReachForce we are still figuring out our strategy but know their endless opportunity out there.  Here’s a few tips on getting started and promoting your business via Facebook.

Google Analytics – why wouldn’t you use this?  Here’s a few more ideas on Tracking Tools.

ReachForce Convert 30 Day Trial – You are probably tracking web site visitors and your best PPC keywords, but are you capturing those visitors and turning them into actionable leads? Only 3% of web visitors fill out a form or announce themselves; what happens to the other 97%? ReachForce Convert, a software-as-a-service application, empowers Marketers to proactively target lead generation efforts at passive web visitors.  Why not try it, it’s free.

Press Release Grader –   “Press Release Grader rates a press release based on a checklist of criteria – from content and structure, to search optimization and link analysis. The free tool is designed to optimize a press release so it can be found more easily by media, bloggers, customers and prospects. Press Release Grader provides an analysis and recommendations that will help you improve the way your press release is structured.” It only takes a second and the recommendations for improvement are typically easy fixes.  Again, why wouldn’t you use this tool?

What FREE stuff are you using out there?  Please share with the rest of us.  Who knows, it could save your fellow Marketer’s job.