Whitepaper downloads on LinkedIn? Leads you’re willing to pay for?
Wednesday, June 24th, 2009LinkedIn seems to be the most commonly used social network amongst most B2B Marketers. Or at least the one where people seem to be seeing real results. Today we’re able to participate in groups with those we have things in common with, answer questions, and look up contacts/prospects and see how many connections away we are. To date there has been no real way for Marketers to collect leads in a systematic way. Well, it looks like this is changing.
Yesterday, LinkedIn CEO sent out a tweet saying he just downloaded his first whitepaper from LinkedIn.
This new feature doesn’t seem to be available to everyone yet but here’s what we do know:
- There will be a form to collect info. from those that download
- Looks like costs will range from $40 - $100 per lead
- LinkedIn users will not have to pay for whitepapers
- Whitepaper ads will can be targeted by title and industry
- Content is still king here. People are only going to download interesting content that provides value.
- Whitepaper titles are going to be even more important. It’s what’s going to catch your target’s eye.
- When someone downloads a form, they are basically opting in for follow up communications.
- In addition to the targeted advertising, there will be a whitepaper directory for LinkedIn members to search for relevant content.
Here’s another example of how B2B Marketers are able to mix their social media with direct lead generation. Once this is rolled out, I think we’ll give it a try. How about you?
Retweeting to Build Your Following and Your Brand - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #245
Tuesday, June 9th, 2009Notice: If you are a professional Twitter user, you probably already know this tip so please take a minute to share your favorite Twitter tip with The B2B Lead followers.
Now for those just getting started on Twitter, here’s a simple tip on retweeting.
When you are just getting started on Twitter, building your following and having quality tweets are two of the biggest challenges. A great way to solve both is retweeting. See a great tweet? See something interesting worthy of sharing? Think that your followers would be interested in it, retweet it!
Proper Twitter etiquette dictates that you begin your tweet with RT followed by the original tweeters handle. Example: RT @ReachForce: Building a Sales Enablement Playbook Part 1 - http://tinyurl.com/qotz4f.
When you retweet someone else, they are likely to start following you and there is a good chance they will retweet you in the future. When you are retweeted, your message is now seen by a new audience also creating a situation where you could gain more followers and build your personal brand.
Looking for a specific topic to tweet about? Try searching for it on Twitter first. If it is a hot topic, you might see a few people with similar tweets. Be selective about who you retweet when building your lead generation Twitter brand. Think thought leaders in your industry, prospective customers, customers and partners. This will help with general awareness as well as help demostrate your participation and thoughts on the topic.
Tips for Follow-up on B2B Content Offers - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #244
Thursday, June 4th, 2009Here 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.
Time for Summer School – Learn How to Move Leads Through the Funnel Faster
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009June 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.
Repurposing Lead Generation Content You Already Have – Sales, This is a TIP for you too! - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #242
Monday, June 1st, 2009Creating 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.
Sales Playbook Part 1 - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #240
Wednesday, May 27th, 20092009 is looking up and we’ve been very busy event planning, getting ready for a new webinar with Math Marketing (if you haven’t signed up, you can right here), and still working on our sales playbooks. Here’s where we’re at so far:
Current Issues Identified:
- The Sales team has too much information available to them and aren’t sure to how to use it
- Support materials not aligned with selling situations and buyer roles
- The sales process was not clearly defined causing missed opportunities
- New sales people need help with triggers that move prospects through the funnel
Next we assembled our playbook team and determined our mission to be:
Our sales playbook is going to ensure our sales team is armed and ready to have valuable conversations that help prospective buyers move through the sales funnel as fast and efficiently as possible.
Ok, now we are ready. We started with a list of questions and asked each sales person on the playbook team to think about some of their success stories and start by filling out the list of questions below.
Understanding the Buying Roles and their goals
- Who did you make initial contact with and how?
- Who else was involved in the buying decision?
- Who was the ultimate decision maker?
- What are they being measured on?
- What does success look like to them?
Understanding the pain
- What was their pain?
- What were they doing before connecting with ReachForce?
- What solutions were offered to solve their pain?
Understanding their environment
- What industry are they in?
- What do they sell? Average Selling Price?
- How long is their sales cycle?
Delivering Value
- What value proposition resonated with them? and Why?
- What were the buyer’s information needs at each stage of their problem-solving process?
- What tools and supporting materials were used and when?
- What would have been helpful during the sales process? Supporting materials needed? Presentation needed? Customer Case studies?
- What objections were overcome?
- Who else/What else were they considering?
And the ultimate question… Why did they choose ReachForce?
Next meeting is tomorrow. From here we plan to discuss key moves that converted the prospective buyers into customers and I’ll be busy trying to understand how to align our marketing support (what we have and what’s needed) with each trigger.
Stay tuned for next steps…
Game Changing Alert: Sales Enablement Playbooks - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #238
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009This past week I was fortunate enough to join a couple hundred of the smartest marketers at the annual SiriusDecisions event in Scottsdale, AZ. This is the second one I’ve been to and both times I come back feeling revived and optimistic of the new changes I plan to roll out based on what I learned. For those of you who weren’t able to attend, no worries, in my next couple of posts I’ll share with you the highlights.
This year I went hoping for something to help our marketing team better align with and drive more productive sales activity. I feel like we’re working harder than we ever have but maybe not as smart as we should be.
Here’s my first golden nugget from this year’s event– sales enablement strategies, sales playbooks to be more specific. Do you have them? If so, are they working for you? I’m not talking about your sales portal with every piece of collateral, PR and case study you’ve ever written. Instead, I’m talking about situation based scenarios that your sales team has run into before and won. How did they do it? What supportive materials did they need? Were there pieces missing?
Here’s 3 steps to help you started on your Sales playbooks, compliments of Alden Cushman, Research Director at SiriusDecisions. Remember, you’re not creating these alone. Get product marketing, field marketing and sales involved.
- Identify Situational Elements –things like Organization Size and Structure, Vertical/Sub-Vertical Industries, Geographic Characteristics, Individual Roles and Responsibilities
- Collect and Position Content, Knowledge
- Products/Solutions - Features, advantages, benefits
- Pricing - Competitive info, volume discount
- Partners - Channel Positioning OEMs, VARs
- Market Forces - Complete market landscape and trends
- Objection Handling - Sticking points and best responses
- Run a Controlled Pilot – here is Alden’s example
- Situational elements
- CIO in a hierarchical insurance company, in education phase, with budget and need for an easy to use but sophisticated business intelligence offering
- Relevant available content and knowledge
- Phase-based BI implementation case study (education, active buying and closing)
- Archived Webcast of the return on and merits of BI solutions
- Web-based demo of new SaaS-based BI solution
- SaaS-based BI product features and function spec sheet
- Order of potentially appropriate sales plays
- Email industry white paper
- Three days later, send phase-based case study (tailored to CXO audience)
- One day later, call to discover unique pain points, invite to upcoming Webcast
- Email after Webcast and set up call for Web-based demo with SME
- Set up face-to-face meeting, bring positioning and value literature
- Ask for RFP, respond with detailed proposal
I plan on getting started on our sales playbook really soon. I know this will be a big project that will take a lot of thought and a lot of support from our sales team and product marketing team but the end result will change our business. As we get started on this journey, I welcome any ideas or feedback you may have. Please share what you learned putting these together and don’t leave out the parts that didn’t work.
10 signs your in-house database needs help BEFORE you launch another program - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #236
Wednesday, May 13th, 2009Part of my job here at ReachForce is helping our customers with a quick analysis of their marketing database and then helping them update and repair the company and contact information needed for their lead generation programs. Here’s a list of 10 things I see in almost every marketing and sales database I’ve looked at:
- Names are mis-mashed up with erroneous information. Examples:
- Web-to-Lead forms have left you with a lot of trash. Examples:
- Your Customers are still listed as your prospects.
- You have multiple copies of any one person.
- Employees of your company are listed as prospects.
- You have records created with companies someone wants to target but no contacts, instead of holding a valid contact your CRM is being used as a place holder. OR, you have holey records, pieces and parts of a contact but no whole contact.
- Phone numbers are missing digits and/or area codes.
- Bad or Blank email addresses.
- Invalid or incomplete mailing addresses – maybe you don’t do direct mail, but chances are you need this for something…
- You have no way to segment your data. Do you have information on these companies in a standardized format, for instance all tech companies have some kind of tag, or all operations contacts have a specific designation? If not, how are you segmenting your data? Wouldn’t it be easier if everything had the same system of tagging applied to it?
John “No Longer There” Smith
Jenny (female) Jones
Byron (buy-ron) Doe (Dough)
First Name Last Name Email Company
Test Test test@test.com None
None of Your absc@asklfjsl.com Business
Examples:
First Name Last Name Email Company
Find Name In Hoovers na@na.com Microsoft
IT Dept Mgr na@na.com Exxon
Amy H. ???@reachforce.com ReachForce
L. Wallace ???@Reachforce.com ReachForce
Is is not the most exciting or the most glamorous part of campaign planning but getting your database in order will have a huge affect on the success your marketing programs.
Get Your Questions Answered on Twitter - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #234
Thursday, May 7th, 2009Ever wonder what your prospects or customers are talking about on Twitter? Or are you looking for a way to build your Twitter following with people that have similar interests? Well, here’s a few places to get out there and ask some questions.
First, a shout out - Thanks again to Mashable for finding and compiling these kinds of lists, 5 Ways to Get Your Questions Answered on Twitter by Stan Schroeder. Its great information and we want to be sure our B2B Lead readers know this stuff is out there.
- IKnowTweet.com - This simple site searches Twitter for phrases such as “does anyone know?” and “why does?” and collects them all at one place.
- ToAnswer - By far the most elegant of the sites listed here, ToAnswer lets you ask questions on Twitter by simply prefixing them with @toask. The answers are displayed in a nice Twitter-like interface, and questions are asked through a lightbox-style window that opens with your Twitter account. Looks like this site is down right now but they’ve put up a funny video until they get more server space.
- TwttrStrm - TwttrStrm is an interesting and slightly more complex service that combines Twitter with Squidoo and its “lens” approach to answering questions. Basically, you ask a question on Twitter, but instead of merely getting short answers, Squidoo will create a brand new Lens with a bunch of information on the topic you’ve asked about.
- Twtpoll - There are many ways to ask a question; a poll is one of them, and twtpoll lets you create polls on Twitter. You ask a poll question, add some answer options (you can choose if it’s a one answer or multiple answers type of poll) and you’re done. You can share the poll via Twitter, email or Facebook.
- twitQA - twitQA is a very new site that lets you ask questions in different categories such as sports, travel, health, business & finance, cars and the like. Instead of using hashtags, twitQA recognizes questions and fetches them directly from the Twitter feed, which makes populating the question database easier.
You’ll definitely want to check out Stan’s thoughts on each of these. Once you try them out, come back and let us know what you think.
P.S. B2B Lead readers – if you don’t have Mashable in your Google Reader, add it today.
Jump Start 2009 Marketing Programs, Now - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #233
Wednesday, May 6th, 2009Ready, Set, Go! It’s a short year, 8 months to go and 12 months of results to deliver.
Planning since last Fall has been a challenge, chances are you’ve been holding off (or have ratcheted down) on your spending hoping the bad news would stop and you would be able to get to work as normal. Well it looks like that time has come. The economy seems to be coming back and now you’ve got to make up for lost time. Here’s a few ideas to jumpstart your lead generation initiatives:
- Check out those web logs or unknown visitor reports, this is a great opportunity for you to start reaching out to companies who have already been checking you out. Once you’ve identified the companies, make sure you have the right targeted leads to market to. This is key to your program success.
- Think and be positive/upbeat — get new content (that’s not talking about the recession). Make sure it’s everywhere – your social networks, your website, as a possible link in your email signatures, offered on your blog, your email programs and don’t forget to share it with your customers, this could be used in the introduction you need help with.
- Dust off your old whitepapers, add some images and turn them into a new eBook. Use this refreshed content for your nurture marketing and email programs.
- Put together a news release schedule, remember to include your keywords. Press drives website visitors. Make sure you have your Google Alerts set up so you know when someone picks up your news and don’t forget to check those weblogs and unknown visitor reports so you can market back to those checking you out.
- Don’t forget your customers, they are your greatest asset. Talk to them. Ask them what they need from you. Ask them how you can better deliver your product or service and don’t forget to ask them for a referral or two. There’s no time better than the present to kick off a customer referral program.
The point is to get the most out of what you already have, be everywhere your prospects and customers are, and stay positive.
