MarketingSherpa Blog

Originally published on B2B LeadBlog

If there is a chance to network and build relationships, there is opportunity to generate and nurture leads. Trade shows, workshops and webinars are gold mines for obtaining information. It’s fair to say 98% of attendees likely have an interest in your solution, and that is enough to begin the nurturing process.

Of course, it is very important to capture attendees’ contact information and product interests at that point of high interest, and then act on that interest before it fades.

Generating and nurturing trade show leads

In this particular test, conducted by Craig Mullenbach, Program Manager, MECLABS, and his team, an industrial testing equipment manufacturer wanted MECLABS to follow up on leads generated through campaigns and trade shows.

The goal was to determine

• if following up on trade show contact information would translate into leads,
• when calling should cease, and
• if analyzing this process would allow us to optimize similar contracts in the future.

Answers came screaming through the data we tested.

The test found that 90% of successful lead follow-ups occurred within 28 days of first contact; 60% of those leads were actualized on the first day of calling. Halfway into the calling (day 15) proved to be the last point at which 1% of conversions occurred. The graph below displays our findings.

Interest degradation

From my experience, the interest of a prospect drops off significantly over time after they leave an event or attend a webinar. The half-life is likely only a few days, and once you reach 20 days out, people can barely remember they attended the event, let alone remember a specific product.

During this test, the last conversion occurred on the 343^rd day. At some point when running an experiment, you must determine the point when the diminishing returns make further data collection no longer worth your while.

What can you learn for your own lead generation and nurturing efforts?

For every company and every product, the correct calling procedures will vary. Say the product of interest is worth thousands of dollars. In that case, continuing to call into that 41^st day may be worth your while — it just depends.

It’s all about maximizing the potential profit in the least amount of time. Beyond the specific results of this test, I think the biggest takeaway that will help you is this: Start testing your own lead programs if you aren’t already.

You can test different approaches and timeframes to see which brings your company the highest ROI. You’ll learn what works, what doesn’t work and what value you can identify from analyzing this entire process. We found immense success, and we continue to refine it to better the data and practices we employ in this specific follow-up situation.

Creating a successful lead program is an iterative process

Each trade show, webinar, and/or workshop is an opportunity bursting with potential leads. Setting up a repeatable, iterative process that you can learn from and continuously optimize will help you get the biggest return for your investment:

• Create a plan of action before the event — How will we turn this information into leads? What can we analyze and test from this information gathered?

• Capture important information — Obviously, contact information is important. But, thinking beyond the basics will help your follow-up efforts. Why are they there? What information most appeals to them? What solutions most interest them?

• Follow up promptly — As you can see from this test, follow-up should often occur within 30 days, if not sooner. But remember, it is important to determine the most successful timeframe for your own efforts …

• Test your follow up efforts — Which timeframe is most successful? Which follow-up methods work best (e.g., email and a call, or just a call)? Which offers resonate the most? Which areas do we want to learn more about? And, ultimately, what will bring us the greatest results?

• Take what you learned and build off it for next time — How can we improve? What elements can we optimize and test further? How can we implement this new strategy?

Related Resources:

To Call or Email? That is the Question

Nine Simple Tactics to Drive a Higher Return on Trade Show Investment

Lead Generation: Phone calls turn first-time webinar into million-dollar leads

Organizations target quality, but they don’t pay for it. That is one of the latest discoveries from the MarketingSherpa 2012 Lead Generation Benchmark Report (free 10-page excerpt at this link). Let’s take a look …

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“In the past, it may have been acceptable to assume that if an organization can lower their upfront cost-per-lead, they will also increase lead generation, improve ROI and drive revenue,” said Jen Doyle, Senior Research Manager, MECLABS.

“This makes sense when calculated on a spreadsheet, but when rolled out in an evolved marketplace with an empowered buyer, it’s going to take a lot more than simply lowering the cost-per-lead to achieve the goals of today’s CMO.”

So how can you balance cost and quality of leads?

  Read more…

Back in 1992, if you wanted to find information about a company or its products, you had two choices:

1. Spend hours at the library poring over periodicals, annual and industry reports, and magazine and newspaper clippings. (Do you remember microfiche?)
2. Meet with a salesperson.

Life was simpler then: You could reach quota by sending some direct mail, making a few phone calls, and scheduling a few meetings. After all, the customer had very few alternatives to inform themselves. You could succeed without a solid strategy; all that really mattered was the size of your Rolodex. Lead generation as we know it today didn’t exist. Frankly, it really didn’t have to.

Those days are long gone, yet too many organizations are still selling like it’s 1992.

How do I know?

All it takes is a quick review of MarketingSherpa’s 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report (free excerpt at that link). Of the 1,745 B2B organizations that participated, 61%  still have that big-Rolodex mindset – they send any lead that responds to a marketing campaign directly to sales. Furthermore, check out the chart at the right: The vast majority has not applied strategy to any aspect of lead generation.

These statistics are just a reflection of the day-to-day behaviors and attitudes that keep sales and marketing organizations stuck in a time warp. Here are five of them:

  Read more…

Originally published on B2B LeadBlog

When I first started making test calls with MECLABS (publisher of the B2B Lead Roundtable Blog), I was unsuccessful, to say the least. I was unaware of the real goal of the call, lacked an effective strategy, and was generally unprepared. After about 900 calls, my results were disappointing — I only had one lead!

Since I was unsuccessful, I lacked confidence in my ability, and that feeling came through on each call. After receiving both informal and formal training, as well as making the choice to dive into the task at hand, my results grew to six leads after only 575 calls. That was an 839% improvement.

Although I did not realize I was following a defined outline at the time, after completing MarketingSherpa’s B2B Marketing Advanced Practices Online Course, I was able to see the improvements I made broken down into three basic principles for effective teleprospecting:

• Be human
• Build a relationship
• Be knowledgeable

Of course, it’s difficult to translate these blanket statements into applicable action. I learned the translation must start with the individual who is making the call, because teleprospecting leads starts with a one-on-one phone conversation.

Be human

“We believe that people buy from people, that people don’t buy from companies, from stores or from websites; people buy from people,” said Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, Managing Director, MECLABS.

To be human, on an individual basis, phone call by phone call, one must be completely mentally present. This means, concentrating on each call, focusing on each decision maker, and determining the qualification of each company.

The most difficult aspect in being present during calls is leaving any anxieties unrelated to work outside of the workplace. Teleprospecting can be a highly stressful, tedious and monotonous task, but mistakes can be prevented by giving the proper energy to each call and leaving unrelated issues aside. I discovered that by creating a healthy work-life balance, I could decrease the inevitable potential for anxiety that often comes along with the position.

Along with focused energy, starting fresh with every call is essential in teleprospecting. Carrying any mistakes, assumptions or a bad attitude from one call to another is a sure way to miss out on opportunities for qualified sales leads. Whatever was done or said by one decision maker should not affect the next company’s opportunity to have a pleasant, unbiased conversation.

In any case, you must continue to optimize your approach to the call, notes on the call and call style by finding the best method through tested means and with applicable feedback from mentors and managers. In teleprospecting, you must always be open to constructive criticism. With the use of analytics in the marketing world growing, there is a ton of data supporting methods and ways to optimize.

Build a relationship

The phone call must be between two humans, and not between a human and a “salesperson” focusing on the universal lead definition (ULD). The great rule in sales is to ask open-ended questions. This allows for less questioning and a better flow during the conversation. It also gives the decision maker a chance to supply complete information about the company’s issues and solutions.

Another essential element to teleprospecting is conversing by the 80/20 rule: Listen for 80% and talk for 20% of the conversation. The universal lead definition configures the notes, but attentive listening provides the information. Avoid interrogating the lead; instead, engage in a conversation.

Be knowledgeable

First, be knowledgeable by creating good habits for a good call. This includes not only knowing how to build a relationship and starting every call fresh, but it also includes remembering the goal of the call: qualifying sales-ready leads.

Many think this will be automatic, but it’s easy to get sidetracked in other action results for a call. For example, good habits include trail closing even if you “think” there is no interest, and avoiding using actions that could be considered a crutch, like scheduling a callback time or sending an email.

Other actions besides the goal of the call are sometimes beneficial, but this is only after a conversation and/or close have been attempted. It is important to remember these are not substitutes for the true goal of the call: qualified, sales-ready leads.

Second, be knowledgeable by knowing your product or service. Be aware of the company’s value proposition by clearly defining the unique benefit to the customer over the competition. It’s a good practice to be able to summarize this in a sentence or two. Know common objectives and competition to your product or service so you can be prepared.

Overall, don’t get bombarded with facts, tactics and questions; keep it simple. As Dr. McGlaughlin has also said, “Clarity trumps persuasion.”

Related Resources:

Webinar Replay: Teleprospecting that Drives Sales-Ready Leads

Nine Reasons Why B2B Marketing Should Own the Teleprospecting Function

B2B Lead Generation: 300% ROI from email and teleprospecting combo to house list (via MarketingSherpa)

B2B Lead Generation: 4 ways to use teleprospecting in your next pilot (and 2 ways to measure it) (via MarketingSherpa Blog)

Optimization Summit 2012 wrapped up two weeks ago in Denver, and Amanda F. Batista, Managing Editor, DemandGen Report, sent along a few questions to get some information from the Summit to help marketers involved in the complex sale.

So, I grabbed Dave Green, Director, Best Practices, MECLABS, for his B2B view of Optimization Summit …

If you’d like to jump ahead to a specific spot in the video, you can use the links below:

00:25 – What are the most important metrics for B2B marketers to consider in today’s buyer-driven landscape?

2:04 – What are some of the key trends and imperatives in testing to optimize campaigns?

3:18 – Are there any particular case studies or anecdotal use cases that stood out at the conference this week?

Related Resources:

Gaining Business Leader Buy-in: 7 CEO personas

Event Recap: Notes from the Optimization Summit 2012 roundtable sessions

Lead Gen Apprentice Panel At Marketing Sherpa B2B Summit Puts Experts On The Firing Line (via DemandGen Report)

MECLABS Methodology (includes the MECLABS Conversion Sequence heuristic)

Marketers rank webinars among email newsletters, Sales calls, whitepapers and thought leadership articles as top lead generation tools, according to the chart at right from the just-released MarketingSherpa 2012 Lead Generation Benchmark Report (free excerpt at that link).

But Jeanne Hopkins, Executive Vice President, Smartbear Software, advises that if you’re new to webinars, proceed with care.

“Unfortunately, most people think that having a webinar is easy,” she says. “That’s because they don’t prepare enough. Webinars are very resource intensive if you want to produce results.”

And, if anyone knows, it’s Jeanne.

She was most recently vice president of Marketing for HubSpot where, under her leadership, the organization held webinars that attracted 25,000 sign-ups, 10,000 attendees and 3,500 new leads. She’s been a marketing executive since well before webinars came into existence, and leveraged their predecessor, the teleconference.

She draws from this experience to inform her three most important tips for novice webinar producers.

  Read more…

Originally published on B2B LeadBlog

I just arrived at the Pre-Optimization Summit workshop in Denver and caught the end of Dr. Flint McGlaughlin’s Value Proposition Session.

In this Landing Page Optimization Workshop, Dr. McGlaughlin, Managing Director, MECLABS, taught the live audience here at the Denver Marriott Tech Center about a simple case study drawn from the MarketingExperiments research library.

In the case study, Dr. McGlaughlin revealed how one company clarified the value proposition of a landing page for a 201% increase in captured leads.

Here are the details of that case study:

The Background:

The company in the case study was a B2B company (anonymized for its protection) selling data and mailing lists to other businesses. The goal of the page was to capture a lead.

The Control:

Here’s a screenshot of the control.

Click to enlarge

The Treatment:

Here is a screenshot of the competing treatment.

Click to enlarge

The Results:

And here are the results.

The winning treatment generated a 201% increase in captured leads by clarifying the value proposition of the page.

So, how can you, a B2B marketer, replicate the success of this case study? Throughout his presentation, Dr. McGlaughlin drew out some principles we could apply to our own pages.

PRINCIPLE #1: Frame your value proposition with customer logic

The first principle Dr. McGlaughlin mentioned is this:

“The value proposition must be framed with customer logic rather than company logic.”

The primary question we must answer to determine the value proposition of a page is in the first person: “If I am the ideal customer, why should I purchase from you rather than any of your competitors?”

By answering this question in the first person, we are able to view the message through the customer’s eyes. This is helpful because we most often view the message through our own “marketing” eyes.

PRINCIPLE #2: Determine the necessary derivative value propositions

“Customer logic demands an obvious connection between the company, its various products and its different prospects.”

While your company likely has a primary value proposition, your landing page may not be the best place for it. A landing page may have its own value proposition, while a PPC (pay-per-click) ad may have another one. All of these, however, are derived from the primary value proposition.

Dr. McGlaughlin grouped these derivative value propositions into four main categories:

• Primary Level: the overall value proposition of a company
• Product Level: the value proposition of an individual product
• Prospect Level: the value proposition for an individual prospect type
• Process Level: the value proposition for a specific step in a process

PRINCIPLE #3: Map the micro-yes pathway for each product- and prospect-level value proposition

“For every product value prop, and for every prospect value prop, there is a micro-yes pathway up the side of the inverted funnel.”

When you are determining the product- or prospect-level value proposition, you must understand that your customer must make a series of micro-yeses before you can get to the ultimate yes, which is the conversion you are after. These yeses occur on the side of an imaginary inverted funnel.

To effectively communicate the value proposition on our lead capture pages, we must be able to map every micro-yes on the inverted funnel.

PRINCIPLE #4: Use the process-level value proposition to achieve each micro-yes

“For every micro-yes pathway there are a series of process-level value props.”

The last principle Dr. McGlaughlin mentioned ties everything together. To achieve the necessary series of micro-yeses, you must use process-level value propositions at each step.

In other words, every step in the process must answer this critical question:

“If I am the ideal customer, why should I take this next step rather than end the process?”

Related Resources:

Customer Value: The 4 essential levels of value propositions

How to Test Your Value Proposition Using a PPC Ad

Conversion Rate Optimization: Building to the Ultimate Yes

Landing Page Optimization: Value-focused revamp leads to 188% lead gen boost, increase in personal interaction

In our most recent episode of Marketing Research in Action, I discussed how lead nurturing could help your B2B marketing efforts with Jen Doyle, Senior Research Manager, MECLABS, based on data from her 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report (free excerpt here).

Here is a look at some of the research Jen and I discussed with direct links to that part of the video.

0:38 – Organizations that are engaged in lead nurturing realize higher ROIs on their lead generation efforts.

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2:01 – Top tactics for creating engaging lead nurturing content

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5:40 – Frequency of lead nurturing touches

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Related Resources

Email Marketing: The importance of lead nurturing in the complex B2B sale

Lead Nurturing: Pilot campaign increases conversion 32.6% with automated emails

Lead Nurturing: You could be losing as much as 80% of your sales; here’s how you keep them

MarketingSherpa Webinar Replay — 5 Key Components for Establishing and Optimizing Lead Nurturing Campaigns

Bluewolf is a professional services company that provides consulting on enterprise agility. A campaign designed to promote its employee knowledge through social media with a gamification element to encourage participation — “B2B Social Media: Gamification effort increases Web traffic 100%, employee collaboration 57%” — was featured in last week’s B2B newsletter.

Bluewolf’s very innovative usage of Pinterest did not fit into the case study, so I wanted to use this blog post to show what you can learn from its efforts.

Pinterest is one of the hottest social channels right now. Here are two data points from a Shareaholic.com study and information that Pinterest is publicly sharing:

• Pinterest’s user base is only 7% of Twitter’s, but the platform sends more total referral traffic than Twitter
• With a mere 1% of Facebook’s user count, Pinterest sends 13% of the traffic that Facebook does

At the moment, consumer marketers are making more use of this platform than B2B marketers. However, Bluewolf offers a great blueprint on how B2B marketers can take advantage of Pinterest.

Bluewolf’s main Pinterest page shows the variety of boards the company is sharing on the platform.

Corinne Sklar, VP of Marketing, Bluewolf, says the company found a natural home with Pinterest because the platform is very visual and is also suited to sharing content, two areas where Bluewolf’s marketing is very invested. She adds that Pinterest also encourages viral sharing of that content. Read more…

According to MarketingSherpa’s 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report, the most effective social marketing tactic you can implement is to build one-to-one relationships with social influencers.

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What I found to be truly interesting about this chart is the third most effective tactic: posting content on company branded/managed blogs. In other words, the time I’m using to write this blog post would actually be better spent building one-to-one relationships with social influencers in our space.

Of course, because we believe so much in delivering true value to our readers, I’m sticking this one out.

But the chart does leave us asking a question:If building one-to-one relationships with social influencers is so important to a social marketing strategy, how do we do it?

  Read more…