MarketingSherpa Blog

This week marks the launch of MarketingSherpa’s 2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Survey, which gathers data from members of the B2B marketing community to benchmark their latest best practices, tactics and results.

If you’re involved in B2B marketing, please take the next 5 to 15 minutes to share data and insights:

Click here to take the survey now.

As a thank you for your participation, you will receive an offer for a free copy of the Executive Summary of the 2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report, which will include highlights and key findings from the study.

We’re excited to see how your responses illuminate what’s working in B2B marketing today. The B2B community has been humbled by the recent recession and has been forced to operate with limited resources — while producing a higher level of quality leads than ever before.

The organizations that have persevered through budget cuts and increased expectations are the ones that could apply the most efficient marketing tactics for every stage of the buying cycle — and in the process, improve the overall efficiency of their marketing and sales departments.

The greatest challenge for B2B marketers is generating high-quality leads to deliver to their sales teams. Because of this challenge, marketing automation, lead nurturing and lead scoring have become critical tactics for B2B organizations.

In order to optimize the efficiency of marketing and sales departments, walls between these teams are coming down to enable more collaboration. Sales and marketing are working together to identify various stages of the buying cycle for the complex sale, and to determine what marketing collateral or level of sales contact is appropriate for each stage. Through this process, marketing’s role has changed from just generating leads to generating and nurturing leads to the point that they are qualified, and ready for sales involvement.

The next year will be pivotal to the success of these organizations. With signs of an improving economy, the B2B marketing community is feeling more optimistic and reacting with the greatest budget increases we have seen since before the recession. It is critical that these organizations take the lessons they have learned during the recession and apply them efficiently with their now-increasing marketing budgets.

MarketingSherpa’s 2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Survey will focus on organizations’ best practices, tactics and results in the key areas of marketing automation, lead nurturing, lead scoring and managing the complex sale.

Please feel free to tweet or post the following invitation:

B2B marketers share your insights. Take the 2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Survey http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/341299/8gnpw @MarketingSherpa

Thank you!

If you’re still on the fence about the importance of a company blog, consider this trend: Many B2B marketers report that their team’s blog — not the company homepage — is now the most popular entry point for online visitors.

While judging our Viral and Social Marketing Hall of Fame entries earlier this month, I reviewed several strong entries from B2B marketers that cited impressive statistics for their company blogs. Thanks to a solid blogging strategy and the inherent SEO benefits of blog content, these marketers reported that their blogs were now outpacing their company homepages for key metrics such as:
o Total visits
o Time spent on site
o Number of pages viewed

For example, the team from the ESP Delivra (who just missed the cut for our Viral and Social Hall of Fame honors but nonetheless had a strong entry) reported that their company blog and social networking activity have become the primary ways they get thought-leadership content in front of prospects.

Carissa Newton, Director, Marketing, Delivra, shared these stats:

– They now see 4x more blog traffic than website traffic.

– Visitors are now staying 3x-4x longer to read blog content and website links included in that blog.

“In previous years, visitors went straight to our website,” says Newton. “With social media and blogging, it’s kind of changing that dynamic.”

Two factors are at work here: Blog content that is frequently updated and loaded with your team’s most important keywords lead to greater visibility on search engines. Plus, social sharing tools now enable your readers to share that content with their extended networks, further extending your reach and visibility.

In fact, Delivra has jumped more than 20 pages in Google search results for key phrases such as “email marketing” since starting its concerted blogging and social media effort. And since last October, the team has seen a 70% increase in inbound leads.

So if you’re not yet using a company blog for your own marketing efforts, now is the time to develop a strategy. To make the most of that tool, Newton offers these three tips:

Tip #1. Recruit multiple bloggers

Effective blogs are updated frequently. But many small marketing teams struggle to find the time to continually feed the beast. Newton’s team uses nine or 10 regular contributors from within the company, as well as three to four frequent guest bloggers, including customers.

Having multiple contributors ensures your blog will be a compilation of multiple viewpoints and relevant expertise that attracts a variety of readers. Plus, each blogger’s writing style will incorporate keywords in different ways to attract search engines.

Tip #2. Enforce regular posting

Maintaining a consistent schedule is essential to a successful blogging strategy. Newton’s team posts at least once a day during the work week.

How did they enforce that rule? They got the company CEO, Neil Berman, on board, and he made it a requirement that the blog be updated five days a week. He also leads by example: Berman contributes to the blog each Monday.

Tip #3. Share metrics and reward success

Newton also recommends using carrots alongside the stick of mandatory blog posts to keep bloggers motivated.

In the early days of their blogging effort, she ran internal contests to single out the blogger whose post was shared the most. She also used gift cards as rewards for the most successful posts.

Now, she simply shares the metrics from the team’s blogging and social efforts to show the rest of the company how important their contributions are.

“By sharing results, such as traffic increases, people’s eyes get opened differently.”

Since the beginning of this year, I’ve noticed a recurring theme in my conversations with B2B marketers: This is the year to get serious about lead management and lead nurturing.

It’s not that lead management is a new concept – in fact, many marketers I talk to already have some kind of nurturing and scoring process in place. But many of those same marketers admit they haven’t fully realized all the benefits of their system and need to optimize it.

And now, a range factors are coming together to push those teams to get more out of their lead management systems – while pushing teams that haven’t adopted lead nurturing or scoring to create a system of their own.

Here are a few of the factors I’ve seen:

– Lead nurturing can address some of the biggest challenges B2B marketers reported facing in our 2009-2010 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report:
• Generating high-quality leads
• Marketing to lengthening sales cycle
• Marketing to a growing number of people in the buying process

– Staff and budget cuts brought on by the recession are forcing teams to streamline and automate more of their marketing processes. Things like automated drip-email nurturing campaigns look more like a “must-have” when your staff and budget for campaign execution shrinks.

– On a more positive note, optimism about an economic recovery has some teams thinking about future growth. They realize that the manual systems they use now won’t scale when their volume of leads and sales activity picks up again.

Any of those factors would be a good reason for you to revisit how you manage your own lead flow and qualification process. I have to note that, unfortunately, there’s no quick and easy route to lead nurturing nirvana.

The process requires a lot of work – collaboration between sales and marketing, planning and development of automated campaigns, monitoring and analysis of data, and routine testing and modification of your process, among other tasks.

On Thursday, June 10, I’ll be conducting a free webinar with Jennifer Horton, Best Practice Consultant, Eloqua, that provides research data and case study results to address some of the key challenges in optimizing lead management. (Here’s the registration form with more information.)

But if you’re ready to put in the effort, you can transform the way your marketing team operates, improve your relationship with sales, and make an even bigger contribution to your company’s revenue.

Want to share your B2B marketing expertise with hundreds of your marketing peers, or recount a particularly successful campaign?

We’re looking for speakers to take the stage at our 7th-annual B2B Marketing Summit this fall. This year’s event takes place Oct. 4-5 in San Francisco and Oct. 25-26 in Boston. During those two days, we’ll be featuring a mix of research, hands-on training, panel discussions, case studies and how-to presentations that will help you optimize your lead generation process.

To be considered for a spot on that agenda, share the details of your speaking proposal here.

We’re looking for presentations that provide practical, actionable advice for B2B marketers based on measurable results and real-world experiences. Think about your own success stories in the following areas:
o Lead generation
o Lead nurturing
o Lead scoring
o International demand generation
o Email marketing
o Paid search advertising and SEO
o Content development
o Social media marketing
o Metrics and analytics

Once again, please use this form to provide details of your proposed session.
(Deadline: Wednesday, May 12)

And stay tuned to this blog, the MarketingSherpa home page, and our B2B marketing newsletter for more details on the Summit as we develop the program.

Thanks!

As a reporter, I will contact a company through any means necessary. I prefer using a phone number or an email address for a specific person — but sometimes I’m stuck filling out a ‘contact us’ form.

I’ve filled out more contact forms than I’d like to admit. I really dislike them. About a quarter of them do not work, and I’m never sure if my messages reach my intended audience: the marketing department.

Some common problems I’ve seen:
o Errors after clicking ‘submit’
o Tiny message length limits (such as 200 characters)
o Bounced emails in response
o Claims of ‘improper formatting’

Even worse is after receiving an error, you can lose your entire message. I learned long ago to write messages in a separate program and to copy-and-paste them into forms, in case I need to resubmit.

I’m just a reporter trying to get a marketer on the phone — can you imagine if I was a dissatisfied customer? My frustration level would skyrocket. If I was a potential business lead, I’d likely leave and never return.

‘Contact us’ forms are similar to social media in that they provide a way to receive customer feedback — which is very valuable. Broken ‘contact us’ forms send a clear message: “we don’t care about your feedback. Don’t contact us.”

But I’m sure that’s not true. You must care about your customers’ feedback. Their satisfaction keeps you in business.

So if you have a minute, check your website’s contact forms. Make sure they’re flexible, easy to use, and most importantly, that they work. A small effort can go a long way in preventing customers from walking away for good.

Not every marketer’s audience is waiting on Facebook or Twitter, especially marketers in B2B manufacturing. Tim Madel, Manger, Global Ebusiness, Kennametal, is one of these marketers, and his team experiments with social channels anyway.

“We know our current customers might not be using Twitter and Facebook, but we know that the next generation is, and we want to be there and ready for it,” he says.

One way Madel’s team is preparing for a new generation of metal workers is by using Lyris to add buttons to Kennametal’s emails to share content on social bookmarking sites and networks. Although the quick, low-cost tactic does not drive much traffic to Kennametal’s site (referrals from social networks are below 1%), the team hopes the buttons:

– Bring content to correct customers

Many of the team’s email subscribers are purchasing officers, who’re not their target audience. The team adds the buttons so emails can more easily reach people who use Kennametal’s tools.

– Help current and future customers

Customers who prefer to bookmark using Delicious or iGoogle have the option. And if more customers start moving to Twitter, the team will be comfortable sharing its content on the network having experimented. Other buttons the team includes are for:
o Digg
o Reddit
o Newsvine
o LinkedIn
o StumbleUpon

In a sample of two emails, the buttons captured between 40 and 50 clicks each in each email. This is a very low percentage of all emails sent, but the team is undaunted.

“You’re not looking at high percentages, but in our world, that’s a great number to start with,” says Jennifer Altimore, Site Content Manager, Global E-Customer, Kennametal.

This week we’re looking back on MarketingSherpa’s fifth annual Email Marketing Summit and what we learned from the over 600 marketers who came to Miami.

Take a look at our full wrap-up report with seven takeaways. It’s perfect for attendees who want to revisit key themes, and for those who couldn’t make it this year. We also published an article featuring Summit keynote speaker Joseph Jaffe, Chief Interrupter, Powered Inc. Jaffe launched his new book, “Flip the Funnel,” at the Summit.

Personally, I thought the Summit was a fantastic event loaded with cutting edge thought leadership and advice for running outstanding email marketing campaigns.

One interesting bit I noticed came from two back-to-back consumer marketing sessions where speakers mentioned the dreaded “list blasting” tactic. The broadcast tactic of sending a single email to an un-segmented list is thought to be an ineffective approach left behind years ago.

“Blast does horrible things to our industry in perception,” said Loren McDonald, VP, Industry Relations, Silverpop in a panel discussion. “But no matter how sophisticated you are, there is still some broadcasting.”

Although segmenting and sending targeted messages is a superior strategy, sending an occasional blast email to subscribers is acceptable — but it must be very occasional. The superiority of segmenting and targeting over broadcasting was emphasized by a session immediately following McDonald’s panel.

Joy Cropper, Director, Internet Strategy, Williams Randall Marketing described how her team transformed a blast-based email program for the Indiana Office of Tourism Development into a successful segmented program, dramatically improving results.

Cropper’s team surveyed their list with a $100 gas card contest as an incentive and used the responses to find segmentation opportunities. They then created three new newsletters and asked everyone on the list to re-opt-in.

They went from sending one email 10 times a year to three emails 12 times a year — increasing frequency. The result? The cut their list in half and increased their number of clickthroughs 10-fold.

Last week, I sat in on a webinar presented by HubSpot and MarketingSherpa that discussed the importance of inbound marketing tactics for B2B lead generation. Sherpa’s research director, Stefan Tornquist, and Rick Burnes, Inbound Marketing Manager, HubSpot, shared data and real-life examples of how the combination of relevant content, social media and search engine optimization is helping marketers reach out to prospects and engage them in their nurturing funnels.

But as in many webinars, it was something from Q&A segment that really caught my ear.

One attendee asked how to get executive buy-in for a serious content development and social media marketing strategy. It seems this attendee’s boss, like some other C-level executives, isn’t convinced that content like videos, podcasts, tweets and blog posts really count as marketing — or that social networks are where marketers need to spend their time.

Here’s the advice that Stefan and Rick offered (with a bit of my own thoughts) to help explain the value of social media to C-level executives:

Tactic #1. Ask your bosses where they get their information

A simple conversation with executives can open their eyes to how much they use social media every day. Do they read blogs? Do they interact with their peers on social networks like LinkedIn?

You can point out that your team needs to create the same kind of content and features that attract them to these information sources.

Tactic #2. Show them the case studies

Most executives can relate to proven results, so provide examples of other companies that have achieved strong results from social media or inbound marketing. I’ve talked to several marketers who have numbers to demonstrate their success, such as:

– The team at Acoustics By Design, who created a company blog that now accounts for 53% of natural search visits to their site.

– The team at BreakingPoint systems, whose big push into blogging, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other channels helped increase unique Web visitors 155%. As a result, inbound Web visitors accounted for 55% of their leads, and 75% of their marketing-influenced pipeline.

Or just look at HubSpot’s own results: Rick Burnes said his team’s SEO leads have grown 12% since July 2008, and social media leads are up 72% in that same period.

– Tactic #3. Quietly launch a pilot program to prove the concept

If you’re able to operate with a lot of freedom, Rick Burnes suggested launching a small pilot program, like a blog or social network discussion group. Testing tactics and measuring the results you achieve on this small scale can give you the data you need to lobby for a broader push.

Our recent case study about Level 3 Communications’ video eBook highlighted a great tactic for getting non-marketing colleagues to help create marketing content. It can be hard to convince a busy VP or engineering-type to write something for you, but they’ll often agree to be interviewed on a subject for a video or audio piece.

Interviews are a great way to let knowledgeable staff members share their expertise in a low-pressure, low-commitment way:
o You can give them questions in advance so they can gather their thoughts
o The process can take as little as 15 or 20 minutes
o A little post-production editing can highlight the best bits, even if they ramble a little.

But you have to choose the right people to interview and manage the process carefully to ensure the content is trustworthy and relevant to your prospects. Here are a couple more tips on getting the best out of your subject matter experts:

– Avoid using salespeople for lead-gen interviews.

Nothing against salespeople – they are great at what they do, and know your products’ features and benefits inside and out. But using a salesperson may send the wrong message to prospects.

The vast majority of the audience for your video or podcast isn’t yet ready to talk to a salesperson. Instead, you should feature an authoritative voice from within your organization, such as a technical expert or product manager, who can project an educational, authoritative tone. Save the sales team’s role for negotiating with leads once they’ve been qualified through your marketing process.

– Don’t let subjects read their answers.

People reading off a script almost never sound natural. You want the content to be conversational, not scripted.

If the interview subject is working off of notes and it’s not sounding great, ask them to try it again without reading their notes. Tell them to focus on talking to the interviewer as if it were a one-on-one conversation — not a presentation.

And remember, editing is your friend. You can always delete pauses, “ums” and “ahs” or repetitive statements after the fact.

Getting your target audience to have a positive experience with your brand is, of course, beneficial. However, not enough marketers are providing real value to their audiences, says Steve Rubel, SVP and Director of Insights, Edelman Digital. More marketers should strive to create a positive and useful experience in a branded context, he says.

Rubel is responsible for keeping Edelman Digital and its clients “ahead of the curve” with the latest ways to effectively manage public relations and marketing. He is also the author of the popular Micro Persuasion blog and maintains a personal Twitter feed with over 27,000 followers. Edelman is the largest independent PR firm in the world with 3,300 employees in 50 offices worldwide, Rubel says.

Rubel cited two companies that are providing useful, branded experiences via the iPhone:

1. Kraft’s iFood Assistant – this app sells for $0.99 in Apple’s iPhone store. It has the following features:
o Recipe browsing
o Recipe of the day
o Shopping lists
o Directions to nearby markets
o How-to cooking videos

2. Tylenol PM’s Sleep Tracker – this app is free and has the following features:
o Log your sleep hours and moods
o View your sleep and mood history over time
o Create a sleep journal
o Get tips for better sleeping

Of course, the iPhone is not the only channel for providing a valuable, branded experience. I am currently working on a Sherpa article that describes how marketers for a cable television channel created a series of SMS alerts that provided valuable, relevant tips alongside a reminder to tune in to a weekly show. The team was able to take a weekly reminder and make it more attractive by adding useful information.