Earlier this week, we featured a post on Genius.com, which takes a unique, “Sales 2.0” approach to email marketing and marketing automation.  In fact, David Thompson, CEO and co-founder at Genius.com and former CMO at WebEx, helped launch the whole Sales 2.0 phenomenon, first by founding the Sales 2.0 conference and then by authoring Sales 2.0 for Dummies, the first book about Sales 2.0.  This past spring, David updated Sales 2.0 for Dummies in an executive edition that broadened the focus from Sales to look at Sales and Marketing alignment.

This eBook goes in-depth to define the new technology-based sales and marketing process to help shorten sales cycles, increase revenue and foster Marketing/Sales alignment.

Here’s a short excerpt to wet your whistle:
When Sales and Marketing are aligned, prospects move seamlessly from hearing about you in an online article to browsing your Web site or joining a Webinar to educate themselves to engaging with Sales when they are ready to learn more — and hopefully take the next step toward a purchase. Internally, when Sales and Marketing are aligned, they function like a professional NBA team, where players pass the ball (the Lead) back and forth, dribble down the court (qualifying and following up) until they make the basket (deal closed), and if they miss the basket, Marketing gets the rebound, and the process starts again (remarketing to prospects).

I love this basketball analogy.  I say it again and again. Marketing cannot just throw leads over the wall never to touch them again thinking, “now they are Sales’ problem.”  It has to be a closed loop process where Sales is able to return leads back to Marketing for further nurturing and Marketing is able to push back to Sales once the lead is sales-ready.

David also defines the new funnel:
The Sales 2.0 Funnel (see Figure below) updates traditional sales and marketing cycles by identifying each stage of the Sales 2.0 process and providing you with a sampling of new Web-based technologies that enable you to approach each step in a faster, more cost effective, and measurable way.

Sales 2.0 for Dummies really outlines all of the technologies needed to streamline the funnel and to effectively align Marketing and Sales.  The end of the eBook also gives you a checklist to see how well you have shifted to Sales 2.0 and to help you recognize areas for improvement.

Be sure to download your own copy of Sales 2.0 for Dummies to learn how to put the right technologies in place today to improve your marketing and sales results.

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 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.

We are big fans of Mr. Scott and his eBook, The New Rules of Viral Marketing, which gives tips on how to spread your ideas for free using word-of-mouse. Or in other words, “one person sends it to another, then that person sends it to yet another, and on and on.” With the internet, it is now easier than ever to start a viral campaign, but “marketers need to learn how to harness the amazing power of word-of-mouse.”

This eBook is full of case studies and other “people’s success so you can apply some of their ideas and lessons in your own word-of-mouse efforts.” Most of this is at the beginning, so if you are short on time I would start on page 14 for the real meat.

David’s formula for success:

“A combination of some great-and free-Web content (a video, blog entry, interactive tool, or e-book) that provides valuable information (or is groundbreaking or amazing or hilarious or involves a celebrity), plus a network of people to light the fire and links that make your content very easy to share.”

To help achieve this success, David provides specific advice on how to launch a viral campaign using YouTube videos, e-books and other techniques. I’ll pick out some points I thought interesting (or that I haven’t thought about before) and list them here, but make sure you go back and read the eBook for all the tips.

How to help your eBook get shared:

• Present you eBook in a landscape format, rather than the white paper’s typical portrait format. This makes it easier to read and signals to the reader that the content is interesting.
• Consider writing in a lighter, more conversational style than you would in a whitepaper, marketing brochure, or Web page. Think of the writing in an eBook as you would write for a blog.
• eBooks should always be free and should never have a registration requirement.  (This has been hotly debated for a while now on how to balance capturing leads and distributing content.  What do you think?)
• Put a Creative Commons license on the content so people know they can freely share your copyrighted material.
• Create a landing page from which people can download your eBook. (All of our eBooks and whitepapers have landing pages set up on the ReachForce Resources page on the website.)
• To drive viral marketing, (you have to read the eBook for the rest of this great tip)!

9 tips for using YouTube (here are a few)

1. Your video should be no longer than three minutes. (Come on, who has time to just sit and watch a 10 minute video…unless it is really funny or something). If you have a lot to say, consider creating a series of posts.
2. Don’t attempt “stealth” fake customer insertions. Be authentic and don’t try to sneak in company promotion where you can. (YouTube itself can catch unauthenic video and that might cause harm to a brand).
3. Make sure bloggers know about the video. The best way to do this is when you are reading and commenting on blogs in your space, next time you comment link to your video (if it makes sense to).

Other tips he mentioned:

• Use interactive tools (like Hubspot’s Website Grader)
• Don’t break the bank with expensive advertising
• Don’t beg mainstream media to write about you

I have left some really great tips and specific advice out, so go back and read what all David has to say about viral campaigns. Have you had success with viral campaigns? What did you do?

David Meerman Scott is an online thought leadership and viral marketing strategist. The programs he has developed have won numerous awards and are responsible for selling over $1 billion in products and services worldwide.

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).

HubSpot’s ebook, Get Found Online, is right on the money. Today’s marketing is changing from outbound to inbound, and “consumers are going to the Internet to start their purchasing process.” For businesses to remain competitive, their websites need to be found online through search engines, the blogosphere and social media sites.

Luckily, this eBook gives detailed steps on how to be found on each of these inbound marketing techniques. Here is a short outline which should entice you to read the eBook for all the great how to tips (pages 5-9) to get found online.

How to get found on search engines:

1. Find Keywords – choose keywords that your target market is using
2. On-Page SEO – place keywords in the page title, URL, headings and page text
3. Off-Page SEO – build more links
4. Measure & Analyze

How to get found on blogs:

1. Read – other industry blogs
2. Comment – join in on the conversation (even link back to your own blog)
3. Write – find the right blog software, blog weekly and promote your blog
4. Measure & Analyze

How to get found on social media:

1. Guidelines for Engagement – join communities and provide useful information, don’t just sell your company
2. Publish, Share, and Network – everyone can publish and share anything, everyone can network with anyone (through content placement sites, linking to others an online communities)
3. Measure & Analysis

I manage all the online media for ReachForce, and found these tips extremely useful. It is really cool to see how many people go to our website from our blog and social media sites. Think of any other useful tips while reading Get Found Online? Please share!

HubSpot is an inbound marketing system that helps your small or medium sized business get found on the Internet by the right prospects and convert more of them into leads and customers.

No book club next week for Thanksgiving (you have an extra week to read)! Look for us on Thursday, December 4th talking about Marketo’s Best Practices in Lead Nurturing…enjoy!

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.

I know you are all on pins and needles wanting to know our next eBook for the ReachForce Book Club.  We have chosen Brian Carroll’s Start With A Lead: Eight critical success factors for lead generation.  In this eBook, Carroll highlights ways to improve demand generation programs including aligning sales and marketing efforts to optimize the number of leads, avoiding lulls in the sales cycle, building, maintaining, & growing your database and multimodal lead nurturing (all things we like to talk about on The B2B Lead).  Be sure to join in the Book Club discussion on Thursday led by Amy Hawthorne.

In this inspiring and award-winning eBook, Dianna Huff lays out five strategies that all B2B Marketers should be employing and, as the title suggests, will help drive sales and ultimately revenue.  During these uncertain times, marketers need to prove their worth and tie their activities directly to increasing the bottom line.

DISCLAIMER: This blog post in no way replaces actually reading the eBook.  This is a great one, completely devoid of self-promotion and full of great tips.  Not to mention, it is a quick read.

I don’t want to dilute or regurgitate what Dianna wrote, but I do want to highlight some of the best tips.

“Strategy #2: Determine Your Campaign Objectives Before You Start Writing.”  I have always been a planner and someone who thinks a project through to the end before starting.  I often have to ask other members of my team, “Why are we doing this?  What is the ultimate goal?”  The course of action you take to update your collateral, re-do your website or create a new email campaign should be dramatically influenced by your goals.  Your boss may be pushing you to get it out the door as fast as possible but without planning and execution tied to specific objectives, results will suffer.  Check out pages 7 and 8 for questions to ask before you start.

“Strategy #5: Focus on Your Customer, Not on Your Company.”  Dianna is not the first and definitely not the last to say this.  However, it is amazing how few companies actually employ this strategy.  No one likes talking to someone who only talks about themselves, so why do companies think that their buyers want to read about the company’s latest award, product release features or “unmatched customer service?”  Every buyer wants to know, “What’s in it for me?,” so tell them.  Dianna gives great tips on what you should be telling your buyers on pages 16 and 17.

I am not giving away anymore, but I hope I have given you enough of a taste to entice you to read the entire eBook. And if you don’t trust me, Five B2B MarCom Strategies to Increase Sales Now just won a platinum award from the MarCom Creative Awards

Dianna Huff is principal of DH Communications, Inc. and is the author of the B2B MarCom Writer Blog.

We started the ReachForce Book Club as a way to continue our relationship with our current customers and foster our community of smart B2B marketers. In today’s online world there are many more options for B2B Marketers to stay connected to their customers like through social networks and online communities.

At ReachForce, we decided to mix a little old school with some new school and start a book club with a twist. Instead of meeting at a local coffee shop to discuss the book, we will be discussing it here on The B2B Lead.  Usually we send out a hardcover book to all of our customers but this time around we are going to cover some of the great B2B Marketing eBooks out there.  So many smart marketers are putting great content out there and we want to be sure to cover it.

Our first eBook is Five B2B MarCom Strategies to Increase Sales Now by Dianna Huff, author of the MarCom Writer Blog. It promises to deliver “five proven B2B marketing communications strategies you need to help increase leads and sales.”  Dianna has a great blog full of worthwhile B2B Marketing tips, so I am really looking forward to discussing this eBook next week.

Each Thursday, Amy and I will share our perspectives to get the conversation started but will rely on you to join in to share your thoughts, opinions and ideas. We will begin the conversation next week in order to give everyone a little time to get started.

Happy reading!