Marketingsherpa Blog

Several weeks ago, my B2B newsletter article — Public Relations: Getting corporate data out of subject matter experts heads and into quarterly trend reports increased media coverage 261% — was a case study featuring Commtouch, an Internet security services company based in Israel.

Commtouch’s marketing team was able to leverage its internal subject matter experts — in this case, data analysts — to create valuable content and grab the attention of traditional media and influential bloggers in its field.

Like many MarketingSherpa interviews, I had more good information than could fit into the article. The source for the article, Rebecca Steinberg Herson, Vice President, Marketing, Commtouch, provided five excellent tactics for getting your content marketing material out into the wild.

Without further ado, here are Rebecca’s very actionable tactics:

Tactic #1. Coordination

“Coordinating the effort of getting one of these reports out is complicated, involving lots of people outside the marketing team. It’s important to get them on board, motivating them by explaining the importance of providing high-quality data in a timely fashion. We also made an effort to circle back to the data sources with great press coverage or at the very least a thank you. This meant they were more willing to help the next time.”

Tactic #2. Consistency

“Consistency is important. The quarterly nature of the reports meant that we have become a reliable source for high-quality information that journalists (and our partners) look forward to receiving. If we are a little bit late putting a report out one quarter, sometimes people ask us, to make sure they haven’t missed it.”

Tactic #3.  Targeting

“It helps when we target our efforts to particular journalists or bloggers, rather than simply ‘spray and pray.’ When we set a particular influential blogger in our sights and craft the pitches specifically for him, eventually the team at our agency was even able to wear him down. He featured us twice within a week.”

Tactic #4. Timing and translation for press releases

“It’s difficult to time translations to go out at exactly the same time as the original English version. It’s really an art to knowing when to ‘freeze’ the draft and send it for translation, even though you know it will undergo some additional changes before it gets released. We try to keep the time lapse between distributing the English and other language versions to a minimum, but sometimes it is inevitable.”

“We have found that certain publications will simply take the English version and publish it in English even though their publication is in a foreign language, and some would take the trouble to create their own translation.

“But the best coverage we achieve in foreign languages is from the translations we send out ourselves to targeted journalists, so it is worth it to make the effort.”

Tactic #5. Spread the message beyond the obvious outlets

“As the world goes mobile, the types of threats across devices are significantly increasing. Our data is increasingly of value to consumer tech media, as well, so our agency is beginning to regularly communicate with those media to further reinforce our brand.”

Related Resources:

B2B Marketing newsletter – Weekly demand generation and lead nurturing case studies

Content Marketing: Four tactics that led to $2.5 million in annual contracts

Content Marketing: Inbound strategy pulls in 25% more revenue, 70% more leads

Content Marketing: Analytics drive relevant content, 26,000 new monthly visits to blog

Public Relations: 5 interview mistakes that drive journalists crazy (and how to avoid them)

Content Marketing: Web-based tool to help email marketers

Blandvertising: How you can overcome writing headlines and copy that don’t say anything

K2 Global Communications – Commtouch’s media outreach agency

The MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2012 audience was treated to Brian Solis, author of The End of Business as Usual: Rewire the way you work to succeed in the customer revolution.

He opened with the idea that the real marketing challenge is the culture of the organization, and he provided a phrase he uses to describe this:

“Digital Darwinism is the evolution of consumer behavior when society and technology evolve faster than your ability to adapt.”

Another big idea he offered was “social media is the new normal.” He continued that, “Social media is different than other media channels before it. Here, it’s about relationships, recognition, engagement, value and help.”

As you might guess from this set-up, the intro of Brian’s talk focused on social media and the mobile experience, and he offered many data points, such as:

• More than 350 million Facebook users access the platform via mobile devices
• Daily mobile social networking grew 58% in 2011
• Accessing social platforms via mobile browser is up 25%
• Accessing social platforms via mobile apps is up 126%

And given these numbers, Brian offered a chart that illustrates that the “connected consumer” isn’t limited to a certain age group:

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Brian said, “My mother uses Facebook more than I could ever hope to use it. I may have to opt out of her feed.”

The mobile and social introduction led into the main theme of the keynote: integrating all the channels including social, mobile and email.

Read more…

Day one of the MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2012 opened with Sergio Balegno, Director of Research, MECLABS, and Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, CEO and Managing Director, MECLABS, the parent company of MarketingExperiments, with an emphasis that this is a research-based event driven by the 2012 Email Marketing Benchmark Report, featuring W. Jeffrey Rice, Senior Research Analyst, as the lead author.

The afternoon kicked off with two sets of breakout sessions featuring both direct sale and complex sale tracks.

I was able to catch a complex sale presentation, “Mobile Marketing Panel: Integrating mobile campaigns for the complex sale.”

The panel was moderated by Meghan Lockwood, Research Analyst, MECLABS, and featured these presenters:

• Josh Herman, VP of Product Strategy, Acxiom Corporation
• Kate Williams, Independent Consultant, currently consulting for T-Mobile
• R.J. Talyor, Director of Product Marketing, ExactTarget
• Nick Fuller, Director of Strategy and Analytics, eDialog

Attendees were presented with a few data points to set the stage:

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All four panelists provided the audience with case studies. I will highlight one of those here.

Josh offered a case study on mobile advertising and the mobile CRM handshake.

  Read more…

Yesterday’s blog post featured the thoughts of Larry Drebes, founder and CEO of Janrain, a social user Web management platform, on the social media channel and marketing over the next six to 12 months.

Today we have insight and advice from Loren McDonald, Vice President of Industry Relations, Silverpop, an email and marketing automation vendor.

Loren will be joining us next week at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas for the MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2012, and will participate in the innovation panel Wednesday afternoon, February 8^th.

Social media marketing is an important channel for both B2B and B2C marketers, and Loren offers up a valuable perspective on the topic and some actionable takeaways to maximize that channel over the rest of this year.

This chart illustrates Silverpop research on where all marketers are utilizing social media:

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Here are Loren’s thoughts on social media marketing:

  Read more…

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a popular blog post on using social media profiles for login on third-party websites rather than the more traditional form field registration. The post featured research from Janrain, a social Web user management platform, and some additional commentary from Larry Drebes, founder and CEO of Janrain.

That topic was very specific and applies to one marketing issue — gathering data from website visitors.

Janrain’s research found that Facebook is the clear favorite for social login at 42%, followed by Google at 29% and Yahoo! at 11%.

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In preparation for the innovation panel Wednesday afternoon, February 8^th, at next week’s MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2012, I also had the chance to speak with Larry about the social channel in more general terms, and to get his take on where it is heading and what marketers should be thinking about over the next six to 12 months.

Tomorrow’s blog post will feature the thoughts of panelist Loren McDonald, Vice President Industry Relations, Silverpop.

Here is the result of my conversation with Larry:

  Read more…

In last week’s blog post, I looked at the importance of lead nurturing. Some readers wanted more, so this week, I’ll dive even deeper into the complex B2B sale with a few data points and some very actionable tips on lead scoring.

First, let’s look a few data points from the 2012 MarketingSherpa B2B Benchmark Report, featuring Jen Doyle, Senior Research Manager, MarketingSherpa, as the lead author.

This chart shows the value of scoring leads based on a survey of CMOs:

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Here is commentary on this chart from the report (italic emphasis is mine in the quote):

Once organizations establish lead qualification practices and define the criteria for a qualified, sales-ready lead, they need lead scoring methodologies to accurately and precisely identify qualified leads. Lead scoring is the process of adding and subtracting points to a lead’s value over time based on various lead attributes or demographics, and behaviors.

Lead scoring is one essential component of an overall funnel optimization strategy; however, the above chart analyzes one of the key benefits of only implementing this one feature. On average, organizations that currently use lead scoring experience a 77% lift in lead generation ROI, over organizations that do not currently use lead scoring.

Okay, so lead scoring is clearly a good B2B marketing practice, but the next data point isn’t so positive. Our research, through a survey of 1,745 marketers, found that 79% of B2B marketers are not engaging in lead scoring.

This week’s B2B newsletter article – “The Complex Sale: Lead scoring effort increases conversion 79%” – is a look at how Bersin & Associates, a human resources and learning professionals research and consulting firm, implemented an entirely new lead scoring program over 2011.

I interviewed Paula Reinman, Senior Vice President Marketing, Bersin, to learn the process Marketing and Sales at the company went through to create and implement a lead scoring program that fit in with the existing marketing automation software and CRM environment.

I think if you take the time to read the case study, you will take away a solid sense of implementing lead scoring, but as they say in New Orleans, this week I’m offering some lagniappe, a little something extra from Paula in the form of six lead scoring tips.

Hopefully these will help either improve your lead scoring activities, or even spur you to set up a program of your own if you aren’t currently engaging in lead scoring.

Here are Paula’s lead scoring tips:

  Read more…

While gathering presentation material for the upcoming MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2012 (February 7-10 at Caesars Palace Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas), I had the chance to reach out to Jen Doyle, Senior Research Manager, MarketingSherpa, to get some additional background on lead re-engagement and nurturing.

Jen was the lead author of the 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report, and was very helpful in finding a couple of relevant charts for me, providing some additional comments on what this research means for B2B marketers.

73% of all B2B leads are not sales-ready

The first lesson Jen offers is almost three quarters of all B2B leads are not sales-ready. This means Marketing needs to engage with those leads in some fashion to move them down the buying funnel. This also means it’s possible for leads to “go cold” somewhere between entering the funnel and becoming sales-ready. Those are the leads Marketing needs to reengage with.

Here is the first chart of MarketingSherpa research Jen provided:

Chart: Average percentage of total lead volume that is sales-ready

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And here is Jen’s commentary:

The above chart is the demonstration of why all leads cannot go directly to Sales.

At the time of original lead conversion, an average of 27% of those leads will be qualified to the point where they are ready and willing to engage with Sales.

The remaining 73% are not there yet. When these leads are prematurely sent over to Sales, they are not receiving the experience they desire and will look elsewhere for it.

Besides, do you really want your Sales team spinning their wheels making dial after dial where nearly three-quarters of those leads are not ready?

So, a large majority of B2B leads are not ready for Sales. This is where lead nurturing campaigns come into play.

The usual touch point for lead nurturing is email. These campaigns are greatly enhanced by utilizing marketing automation software to track and score those leads, and send triggered email based on demographic, firmographic, and probably most importantly as the lead moves closer to be becoming sales-ready, behavioral information. Behavioral information would include website visits, whitepaper downloads, webinar participation, and similar activities that indicate the lead is getting ready to buy the product or service.

With that in mind, this second chart is not good news for many B2B marketers:

Read more…

Janrain, a social Web user management platform provider, recently released its Social Identity study with the research conducted by Blue Research.

The study involved a final sample size of 616, with respondents recruited by email and screened to ensure they either purchased a product online within the past 30 days, or read articles or watched video from major media outlets in the past 30 days.

A key element of the survey was finding out how respondents felt about using a social login — Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. — instead of having to register individually at multiple websites.

Some of the results were very interesting:

• 86% of respondents reported being bothered by the need to create new accounts at websites and said they would actually change their behavior:

–        54% might leave the site and not return

–        26% would go to a different site if possible

–        6% would just simply leave or avoid the site

–        14% would not complete the registration

• 88% admitted to supplying incorrect information or leaving form fields incomplete (this result should come as no surprise to marketers). This figure is up from 76% in last year’s study
• 90% admitted to leaving a website if they couldn’t remember their login details rather than taking the time to recover their login information. This figure is up from 45% in 2010

The study also found that even though website visitors are becoming more frustrated with traditional marketing, they are becoming more open to using social identities for website registration.

In fact, 77% responded that social login is “a good solution that should be offered,” with 41% preferring social login over creating a new user account or using a guest account.

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Among that 77%:

• 78% of social login fans have posted a comment or message to their social networks about a product or service they liked or thought others should know more about
• 83% reported being influenced to consider buying new products or services based on positive social media comments
• 69% report positive reviews might increase their likelihood to purchase a product or service
• 82% seek out, or avoid, companies based on social media reviews

That’s a lot of pretty numbers, but what do they mean for marketers?

To help put this research into a marketing context, I had the chance to interview Larry Drebes, CEO, Janrain. Here is the result of that interview:

  Read more…

This week’s consumer marketing newsletter article wrapped up 2011, and featured four B2C trends to watch in 2012: the mobile marketing channel, local search, online privacy and the new features in pay-per-click advertising.

These choices were based on the 80 (give or take a few) interviews with consumer marketers that my reporting colleague, Adam T. Sutton, and I conducted over the past year. One B2C trend that received serious consideration, but didn’t make it into the article, is content marketing.

Sure, content has its place in any overall marketing strategy, but I’ll bet when many marketers hear “content marketing” as a channel, they think B2B – whitepapers, lead nurturing campaigns, third-party validations within specialized industries, etc.

In fact, content is becoming an important part of consumer marketing efforts.

I’m going to present several case studies and how-to articles from this past year that illustrate just how important it truly is. (Note: MarketingSherpa articles often feature numbered tactics. In this blog post, I’ll call out several specific tactics within linked articles.)

  Read more…

In the B2B marketer’s toolbox, marketing automation software is more like industrial equipment than a simple screwdriver. It’s a capital investment, and it does some serious heavy lifting.

There are many automation vendors out there with a wide range of price points and features to fit the needs of marketers of all size of prospect list and complexity of sale. One thing that remains the same across all these options is there are some key elements to fitting marketing automation into any sales cycle that every marketer should keep in mind.

Jason Striker, Digital Marketing Manager, ICM Document Solutions, presented “Marketing Automation for Misers – Strategies for implementing an effective automation program on a tight budget” to the audience at the recent MarketingSherpa B2B Summit 2011 in San Francisco, and he offered a solid blueprint for doing just that for marketers with any budget size .

Here are seven tactics Jason gave our Summit attendees that I’d like to share with you:

  Read more…