After a couple of days out of the office I’m finally catching up on my Google Reader.  Mashable, one of my favorite sites, always comes through with great social media tips.  Twitter is definitely getting its fair share of airtime these days so for the Twitter obsessed, here’s a couple of options for searching Twitter to find what you need or want.

6 options for searching Twitter –

• TwitterSearch – this one seems to be the most common as it is hosted by Twitter. Results show the sender’s avatar, a link to the original tweet, and a link to Twitter.com to reply…

• Twazzup – this is Twitter Search on steroids. For any given query string, you can see results down the left column that are updated in real-time.

• Tweetzi – Perhaps the best element it has that neither of the above applications do, is the ability for real-time playing and pausing. See the blue “Play” button? If you click it, you can watch your trending topic gather steam; and you can hit Pause whenever you want.

• Tweefind - If you want a basic search utility, Tweefind is it.

• Twitterseach/Zeitbase – looking for something really simple, this is it!

• Flaptor – the key difference here is an RSS link, one click and you can get an RSS link of your results.

Of course you can find screen shots and more details of each of these on Mashable.  Thank you Mashable for the keeping us up-to-date and in the know on our ever changing world of social media!

Are you using any of these to help with your lead generation efforts?  If so, please share.

By now you know that there is more than one person involved in a B2B buying decision.  The DMU (decision making unit) typically consists of the end user, key influencers, management, a financial buyer and others that have their hands in the decision to buy or not to buy.

It’s pretty easy to find the management decision makers with just a little research, but what about the others?  Here’s a few tips to help you identify and build out lead generation programs for those other than the Cs and VPs.

1. Where have you been winning?  This is always a good place to start.  Hopefully your sales team helped you out a little here and included notes about everyone they talked to in the buying process.  If so, are you able to define their roles?  If not, don’t despair, you’re not alone and this is not the end of the road for you.
2. Profile your best customers – talk to your best customer implementation team, talk to the sales person that sold the deal and if possible interview a few customers to better understand who all was involved in the decision to buy.
3. Once you have your roles defined, do you have these people in your leads database?  Remember you are matching roles, not just titles.  If so, tag them with a role identity.  If you’re missing roles, call ReachForce, we can help you fill in the gaps.  (Sorry for the shameless promotion…sometimes it just happens…)
4. You’re finally ready to start marketing to these people.  You are now able to build out very targeted programs focusing on key influencer and end user issues.  Here’s an example –
   
5. Nurture – not all buyers are ready to buy at the same time so be sure you are nurturing all of your prospects as well as those involved in a sales cycle.  Here’s a few ideas for offers for your nurturing programs  -

• Email analyst reports supporting the pain and possible solutions
• Email customer case studies
• Invite to webcasts
• Be sure to share any new content you roll out (whitepapers, eBooks, etc.)

For best results, I recommend you engage with your sales team before launching your newly segmented programs and ensure they are onboard to provide guidance and feedback throughout the process.  To execute a healthy, ROI generating program it’s important to map out each step of the building process taking into consideration budget, timing and appropriate follow up.  Here’s a template if you need help.

Yesterday on The B2B Lead, we talked about how marketing’s job has changed over the last couple of years from generating general awareness to tracking leads from cold to close.  Gone are the days of dumping lists of random names into the top of the funnel for sales to sort out.  Well, guess what, it turns out they weren’t sorting them out.

According to SiriusDecisions, 79% of leads generated by marketing are not followed up on by sales teams.   Of the remaining 21%, 70% are disqualified by sales because of lack of budget, timing, or other reasons.   Furthermore, 70% of those disqualified leads go on to purchase the product or service from another vendor.

There’s a lot of talk about leaky funnels and marketing’s role in driving more leads to close but is this really possible if leads aren’t truly leaking out, they’re being rejected and kicked out by sales?

This makes me wonder.  Can better targeted lead generation programs be the answer to everyone’s woes?
I think so.

Here’s a few tips to think about before launching that next great program:

• Before you kick off the next quarter, make sure marketing and sales TOGETHER define what a lead is.  Marketing leads are different than sales leads.  Be certain everyone on both teams understands this and how you’re handling the 2 groups.

• Ask the sales team what is working for them.  Where are they winning? Who are the critical decision makers inside of these companies?  Make sure you are targeting the right companies and the right buyers inside.

• What programs deliver the best leads?  And not just the best leads but leads that convert to customers.  Does this align with what sales says?

• Don’t forget to take a look at who is already visiting you. This can be a goldmine.  Target your outreach efforts back at those visiting, don’t just sit and wait for them to come back and announce themselves.

• For those that are disqualified by sales for BANT reasons, make sure sales is able to pass those leads back for more nurturing.  Budgets and project timelines change all the time.  Because they don’t need you now doesn’t mean they won’t ever (just make sure you have the right buyer engaged, marketing to the right company with the wrong buyer won’t get you very far).

At ReachForce, marketing and sales are 1 team.  We know one can’t be successful without the other.

B2B Marketers have been going through big changes the last couple of years.  With marketing automation tools/platforms coming on strong, so are the questions of ROI and the effect marketing really has on the top line.

Our jobs have changed, we are no longer responsible for just general awareness and filling the top of the sales funnel.  Instead, we are tasked with moving leads from cold to close and building a closed loop feedback system with Sales along the way.

Eloqua, one of our partners, has a new whitepaper, The Springboard Effect, that does a great job of describing how our roles have changed and what is now expected of a best-in-class B2B Marketer.

Here’s a few interesting bites from The Springboard Effect:

• Jaap Favier, Vice President and Research Director for Forrester Research, emphasized that intelligence will be a key differentiator in the way companies survive a downturn.  “The name of the new marketing game: targeting.”

We love hearing this, it’s what we’re all about here at ReachForce.

• Aberdeen Group says that “companies with best-in-class lead prioritization and scoring systems have a 192% higher average lead qualification rate than those that do not.”

• According to SiriusDecisions, 79% of leads generated by marketing are not followed up on by sales teams.  Of the remaining, 70% of leads are disqualified by sales because of lack of budget, timing, or other reasons.

Ok – here’s the MOST INTERESTING part – SiriusDecisions goes on to say that 70% of those disqualified leads go on to purchase the product or service from another vendor.

WOW – look at all of the opportunity lost!

Interesting stuff here, be sure to check out the rest for yourself.

It seems like everyday I hear about a new social networking tool and read another article about how to increase my Twitter following or maximize my Facebook presence.  You can’t be everywhere but how in the world do you go about choosing the right networks to participate in? I have found there are 3 questions to ask myself when choosing where to spend my efforts online:

• What are these networks already talking about? - Most every social network has some sort of search tool. Plug in your keywords to see if your industry is already being talked about.  Sign up immediately and join the conversation if they are.  Don’t forget to include your Company name in the search.  Someone else may have already started the conversation about you.
• Where are your competitors? – If your competitors have a presence there, you should too. To find out where they are, go to their website or blog and look for links like “follow us on Twitter” or “join our LinkedIn Group”. You should also head to some of the post popular social networking sites and see if your competitors have created profiles/accounts/pages.  Be sure to check for activity in groups and discussion boards like in Facebook groups and in LinkedIn Answers.
• Where are your customers? – I think the best place to start is with your customers. Their activities should most closely mimic those of your prospects.  You can find out where they are by a quick survey to your customers.  Do you have a customer advisory board?  Use them to help you get started.  And there is always the hard way (not really all that hard but rather time consuming) which is to go out to different networks and search to see if your customers are already there.

Keep in mind that social networking is not right for every industry.  You definitely want to do your homework up front so you can be stategic in your social networking lead gneration.  If you feel like you are a little ahead of your time for your industry, I would start with something like LinkedIn.  It is the most professional of the networks out there and is kind of the gateway drug to other social networks.

Do you keep track of what is being said about your company online?   If you don’t, you should.  I am certain that the folks at Mzinga were shocked by what Jeremiah Owyang, Forrester Analyst, said about them in his post on Monday.  Thankfully they were monitoring and able to respond.  He chose one of the most public forums at his disposal to publicly bash the company.  He says, “Why this post? It’s my obligation to have my clients best interest in mind, and this is the fastest way for me to reach them, by using the tools where we’re already connected.”  I find that a little hard to believe.  My guess is that email is the fastest way to reach his clients, not a public blog post.

I have a real problem with anyone using a public forum to bash a company before actually speaking with someone at the company directly or at least reaching out to the company directly.  Why do we feel in this online world that we can post something to Twitter, LinkedIn, or our own blog about another company without ever having taken the time to find out if our accusation is true or to resolve conflict we may personally have.  Jeremiah obviously has connections to the folks at Mzinga. Why not pick up the phone and chat with them first to confirm or deny the rumors he has been hearing.  When they gave him the answer that they would be making a public announcement in a week (in response to his tweets, not his direct reaching out), why couldn’t he wait?  Or if he felt this was truly something his clients needed to know, why not inform them privately?  (Sorry if I have gone on a bit of a tangent, but I fell very strongly about this subject.)

Jeremiah did respond with an apology on his blog.  But like one commenter said, “After reading that “apology”, it wreaks of: ‘I have been asked by my employer to write something, but do not believe that I am in the wrong.’”  I have to agree.  Read the post and apology and decide for yourself.

Lessons learned:

• Track what others are saying about you online – Google alerts is not enough.  Make sure you are tracking what is being said on Twitter (set up an RSS feed of your company’s name on Twitter Search) and LinkedIn.
• Respond quickly and pleasantly to everyone, analyst/blogger/customer/prospect
  
• If you don’t have something nice to say you shouldn’t say anything at all – I think we could all use reminding of this wonderful phrase our mothers used to say to us.

For those of you conversing out in the Twittersphere on your company’s behalf, here’s a little tip to leverage your web site visitors to get the word out about you on Twitter.  Create a simple link on your home page that links to the following url:

http://twitter.com/home?status=[whatever+status+you+want]

Be sure to replace the [whatever+status+you+want] with, well, exactly that.  For example:

http://twitter.com/home?status=Checking+out+ReachForce

To be safe, you’ll want to use the “+” character in place of any spaces in your status text.  When someone clicks on your new Tweet This link, it will take them to their Twitter login page and then automatically populate the “What are you doing?” box with the text that you put after the “status=” part of the link.  Below is an example of what happens when clicking on the link above:

Now that you have researched your keywords and have a nice long list, it is time to optimize the pages of your website.  You want to optimize each page for up to 5 keywords.  I use HubSpot’s Keyword Grader to keep me on track to use keywords that have a good number of monthly searches and are not so competitive that I will never have a shot at ranking well.  For some of your interior pages, a long tail keyword strategy will work well to reach a targeted audience (but that is a post for another day).

I recommend making a list of each page on your site and then choosing what keywords you are going to optimize for on each.  Using a spreadsheet will help you keep track of all the changes you need to make.  Here is a list of all of the columns I would create:

• Page Description (optional) – this is only for you to describe the page you are optimizing
• Existing URL – the current URL
• New URL – Here is your first opportunity to tell the search engine the most important keywords.  company.com/productname is not as powerful as company.com/your-keyword-here.  Dashes help the search engine know when to break the words up.  Note: if your product name is something that is searched often then you may want to leave it in the URL but for most SMB’s this is not the case.  Be sure to keep it short, this is definitely not the place to keyword stuff.
• Page Title – This is the text that appears in the (typically) blue bar of your browser window (and in the tab for that page).  Here is another place to add keywords rather than just list your company anme and products.  Keep in mind, the fewer the keywords the more strength each has and Google gives more weight to the first keywords than to the last.  Also, remember that humans will be reading these too.This is also the bold text that appears on the search engine results page.  Make it compelling to click on and unique for each page on your site.
• <h1> tag – These will show up on the page as your heading but in the html need to be properly tagged as <h1>.  Again the fewer the words, the more weight each receives.  Use target keywords to tell the search engines and humans what the page is about.
• Meta Keywords – these are not seen on the web page itself, only in the html.  You can list 8-10 keywords separated by commas.You may consider including your target keywords plus common misspellings of those keywords.  Meta keywords are not of much importance to Google but are more important for Yahoo and Ask. I find this is also a good place to keep track of the keywords I want to use as I update the content on the page.
• Meta Description – This is a 1-2 sentence description of the content present on the page.It is also hidden on the page and only seen in the html.  However, this is the description under the page title used in search engine results.  Be sure to include target keywords because the keywords searched on will be bolded in the description.  There is a 150 character limit on what the search engines will show.

I cannot makes changes to my site on my own, so my web developer was extremely grateful that I had laid out all of my changes in a spreadsheet.  It really helped him as we redesigned the entire site.  You can also implement these strategies as small changes one by one especially if you have a content management system at your fingertips.  Be sure to resubmit your sitemap to Google as you may changes so it knows to crawl your site.

Special thanks to Karen Rubin at HubSpot for helping me with my own website optimization.  It goes live next week!

Are your tweets optimized for Twitter Search?  Last week, I attended the Eloqua User Group event in Austin.  Somehow the conversation ended up on Twitter.  One of the Eloqua folks asked the group, “are you using Twitter?”  I was shocked when only those of us from ReachForce and Eloqua raised their hands (but that rant is for another day).  Steve Woods, CTO and co-founder of Eloqua, was there speaking to us about his new book, Digital Body Language.  He said uses an almost SEO strategy for his tweets.  I would call it more of a TSO (Twitter Search Optimization) approach.

If you are following a large group of people, it is almost impossible to read every tweet in your feed.  More and more people have started using TweetDeck and RSS feeds from Twitter Search to stay up to date on what people are saying about their company or certain keywords.  Following that logic, it makes sense to try to include keywords in your tweets so they will actually be read by the right people.

If you want to employ this strategy, you need to know two things: what other people are tweeting about and keywords relevant to your business (hopefully, you already have this one figured out).  Play around on Twitter Search to see how often your keywords are used (this is also a good way to find new people to follow).  You will find that certain keywords are used more frequently and in a more relevant way.  Keep a running list so you can be sure to use those keywords in your tweets.

I would love to hear from anyone else about how to use Twitter more effectively.  And if you’re not already, be sure to follow all of us on The B2B Lead:

• @ahawthorne
• @LAWallace
• @ReachForce

We’ve been talking a lot about Twitter around here lately.  It seems it’s become our newest shiny object.  People are loving it, they’re dedicated to it so there’s got to be a way to leverage this very active audience, right?  Right.

As we were out and about reading about the new world that is Twitter, I came across this blog post from Joint Venture Marketing Strategist, Christian Fea – 6 Effective Ways to Use Twitter as a Lead Generation Tool.

Here’s the list of his 6 tips and a few of my thoughts.  Be sure to read his full post, it’s worth your time.

1. Target your market to follow the right people.
   We’re all about targeting here at ReachForce so I couldn’t agree more on this one being #1.  If you are going to use Twitter as a lead gen tool, it only makes sense to find the right audience.
2. Offer actionable advice
   Again, couldn’t agree more.  Please save us the details of your Chinese food lunch or that you are on the bus ride home.  Give us something useful, and please don’t waste  my time.  Just my 2 cents…
3. Use your 140 character wisely
   And don’t forget about tinyurls.  You can customize these too.
4. Your offer and call to action
   Christian recommends that you push people back to your own blog whenever you can.  This gives you an opportunity to interact with more than 140 characters.
5. Frequency of your tweets
   We REALLY struggle with this one.  It’s tough staying relevant and being as frequent as we should be.  We’re trying to share the responsibility here, we have a team of 3 that are each responsible for tweeting once a day.  This way our audience gets different personalities and not just one person is carrying the entire load.
6. Tracking your results
   Google Analytics will tell you if people are jumping from Twitter to you.  It’s free, why wouldn’t you use it?

All great and easy to implement tips, Thanks again Christian!

Are you using Twitter as a lead gen tool?  We’re giving it a shot, in fact, follow us @reachforce.  We’ll be sure to let you know when we land our first customer who found us on Twitter.