B2B Lead Generation Blog

Lead Generation via Search: Comparing Quantity and Quality

Have you wondered about where you should put your online lead generation budget into search engine optimization or paid search?  Check out this new chart by MarketingSherpa, "Comparing the Quantity and Quality of B2B Search-Generated Leads":

(click chart to expand) According to Sherpa, "While paid search gives marketers more control, natural search page rankings driven higher by search engine optimization tactics generate as many high-quality leads as all paid search sources combined."

What do you think? Do these findings match up with your experience with using search for lead generation?

Related Posts:

Tracking ROI From Web Generated Leads
Website Landing Pages impact Lead Generation results
Optimizing webforms to generate more leads through your website
Why Most B2B Sites Fail to Convert Sales Leads

LinkedIn for lead generation - Are You the Missing Link?

It takes time and commitment, but LinkedIn has become ideal venue to nurture relationships and generate new leads, especially for sales people involved in a complex sale.

On that topic, I wrote an guest article for MarketingProfs, titled "10 Tips for Using LinkedIn to Generate Leads." MarketingProfs decided to make it a "premium article" so it's available only to paid subscribers.

You can read some of the ideas I shared in this summary article published by MarketingProfs.

Here's just a few of the ideas I share:

1. Create a polished and personally branded profile on LinkedIn.
2. Join LinkedIn groups where your clients/customers gather and participate.
3. Target groups by activity level (relevance), not just by size
4. Post relevant content on groups.
5. Answer questions posted on LinkedIn.
6. Create your own LinkedIn group and share relevant content.

Read Are You the Missing Link?

Related Posts:

Lessons on Using LinkedIn for Lead Generation 
5 steps for using LinkedIn as lead generation tool

Also, if you're interested in connecting on lead generation topics and use LinkedIn, consider joining me and  the 4,200 members of the LinkedIn B2B Lead Generation Roundtable Group.

Targeting for better Lead Generation results and ROI

Effective lead generation really depends on how much you know about your target audience and how well you use that information to tailor a relevant messages and conversations.

I thought this post by Carolyn Goodman for Target Marketing Magazine was a good reminder of how we can improve our lead-gen results by being more targeted with our messages.

I know this is a basic idea and many of you do this this already but knowing something and actually doing it are two different things. This article prompted me to make really make sure I'm doing this consistently. Hopefully, it will prompt you too.

Here's a quick summary of Goodman's 6 steps: 

1. Do Your Homework.
2. Find Prospects That Look Like Your Target.
3. Determine Your Target's Pain Points.
4. Gather Sales Support Assets.
5. Create a Destination of Information.

Read Target Your B-to-B Lead-Gen Efforts by Vertical and Job Title

I wouldn't stop at targeting by vertical and job title. There's many additional ways you can can segment and target messages including; Stage in the buying process, Company size, job function, trigger events, role in buying process and more. 

Related Posts:
5 Lead nurturing tips to create relevant and engaging emails
Develop and intensify your Ideal Customer Profile

Lead Generation tips for Tradeshows Conferences

Tradeshows and events are still being used consistently by B2B marketers for lead generation. With that in mind, Roger Lewis has some useful tips on how to improve your lead management strategy with from tradeshows. Lewis emphasizes how vital lead capture is to the lead management process.

He writes:

Without the continuity of using one lead management solution across all your yearly events, your company is often left with:

• Inconsistent data fields that are difficult to import into CRM systems;
• Unnecessary or missing data;
• Different formats that need to be painstakingly modified;
• No ability to capture lead qualification survey data; and most importantly,
• Missed sales opportunities because the sales group is forced to cull through a list of unqualified contacts.

I agree. I believe a key aspect is developing a process that emphasizes lead quality over lead quantity. Well meaning marketers can ruin their lead generation results by rushing an unqualified list of tradeshow attendees to their sales team.  Early stage leads - those who are not ready to speak to a sales person yet - are great candidates for an effective lead nurturing program.

After doing numerous lead qualification programs at InTouch, we have found only 5% to 10% of trade show inquiries are truly sales ready leads; so don't pass marketing driven inquiries to your sales people until they're more rigorously qualified as sales ready leads. 

We must realize that the extreme time pressure salespeople face—especially those with a complex sale—requires them to ignore what is not immediately relevant and highly likely to produce revenue. Why? They are not paid to do anything else. And that makes quality more important than quantity to them. 

Related posts:

Clear and Universal Lead Definition
Podcast on Tradeshow and Event Marketing with Ruth Stevens

Lead re-engagement is lead nurturing to rejuvenate old leads

The January sales push well on it's way and most B2B marketers I know are looking more ways to generate leads faster. But here's a question to ponder...

Do you have a process have a process for handing leads (from sales) back to marketing when they are not sales ready? If not, I recommend you consider at re-engaging the leads you already have in your database and pay special attention to the leads your sales team didn't convert last year.

I'd like to share what we learned from a lead re-engagement test we just completed for a large communications company. We tested a lead nurturing program to re-engage the following types of "old" leads:

1. Leads that were "open" but not touched by a sales person in 90+ days
2. Leads worked by sales but marked as "closed - lost" meaning they didn't buy

We started with a simple multi-touch lead nurturing program that included: a 3 touch email track, the emails connected to educational articles, and our teleprospecting team made follow-up calls (based on email engagement replies, clicks and opens).

Lead Generation Check list – Part 8: Lead nurturing for lead development

To help you start the New Year, I’d like to wrap up my Lead Generation Checklist Series with the secret to successful lead generation – and, for that matter, marketing in today’s B2B space: lead nurturing. 

At it's core, B2B lead generation is about building relationships. In today’s commoditized business climate, the one thing that sets apart companies with a complex sale is how well they build and nurture long-term leads.

Throughout this series, I’ve discussed many aspects of lead generation and emphasized how organizations can optimize the process. I’ve talked about creating the right mindset, and how to repair the rift between sales and marketing; I’ve discussed how to create the ideal customer profile (and the un-ideal customer profile as well) and how a universal lead definition that fits your company’s goals and culture can help organizations zone in on their sweet spot as well as the importance of a well maintained database; I’ve outlined a multi modal approach and emphasized its role in effective lead generation, as well as the aspects of an effective lead management process. Today, I’d like to talk about the part of the process that fundamentally stops viable leads from leaking out of your marketing funnel. Lead nurturing: It’s the one thing that will make all your hard work come together – or the one thing that could make your whole process fall apart….

While lead generation initiates and perpetuates dialogue with the right people in the right companies in the quest for opportunities that are relatively imminent, lead nurturing keeps the conversation going over time, building solid relationships. It allows the creation of interest in products and services while bringing the leads to sales-ready states when the buying opportunity presents itself.

To ensure successful lead nurturing you must:

• Have a lead development process in place to cultivate marketing leads into sales ready leads.
• Employ methods to motivate sales people for consistent contact with prospects who may not yet be ready to buy.
• Have a process for ensuring that your Sales team hands back inactive leads for further nurturing by marketing. That centralized database that I keep emphasizing will come in handy now. Sales can make notes as to why they are not going to use the leads and give feedback to Marketing at this point.
• Capture future opportunities that are being currently missed and nurture them into viable sales. This is where Marketing can take many opportunities that are being ignored and keep them warm for Sales.
• Leverage content to position sales people as trusted advisors. A carefully crafted lead nurturing program anticipates the prospect’s questions and responds with timely answers. This inspires awareness that you are creating value by providing useful information. Relevancy is the key.
• Aid in positioning sales people as trusted advisors. By consistently offering relevant content in the context of lead nurturing, the potential customer’s inner dialogue should be: something like this: “You and I have been talking for quite a while, and I feel that you understand me, my company and my industry. You have given me useful and pertinent ideas on this issue, and you have helped me sell the idea to my colleagues and they understand and accept it. It’s a challenging project, but I think you can do it. Let’s get going.”

Lead Generation Check list – Part 7: Effective lead management

My checklist for optimizing the lead generation process so far has included six steps: the mindset of not pushing; repairing the rift between sales and marketing; creating the ideal customer profile (and the un-ideal customer profile as well); agreeing upon a universal lead definition that fits your company’s goals and culture; importance of a well maintained database; and, in step 6, I outlined a multi-modal approach and discussed its importance in the lead gen process. Today I’d like to discuss the aspects of an effective lead management process.

I’m not sure why many organizations think it’s acceptable to only get a return on about 20% of their leads when an optimized lead management process can tremendously help to convert more of those hard earned leads in the sales pipeline.

The role of effective lead management is to watch and direct the conversion of sales leads into customers, and to track milestones and touch points. Some will describe lead management as the process of going from "first contact to close.” 

Lead management is the bridge between sales and marketing that connects the beginning and middle of the customer acquisition process. (Download the marketing sales funnel graphic as a PDF)

How to improve lead generation with prospecting 2.0

Cold calling. Feel a shiver move up your spine?

Too bad. It’s a shame that you, like many others, choose to dismiss cold calling as a lead generation tool (there’s that shiver again). I’m not saying that its reputation hasn’t been earned.  I just think everybody is going about it all wrong.

I love this analogy from Mike Schultz, Publisher of RainToday.com:

Fail at something enough, and it's easy to dismiss the whole tactic. (No matter how many times I try, I just can't hit a Jonathan Papelbon fastball. Swinging a bat at a baseball must not work!)

Cold calling works…you’ve probably just never been shown the right way to do it.

If you’re interested in exploring how you can improve your teleprospecting, or if you just aren’t convinced it can work for you, check out B2B Lead Gen Roundtable’s next complimentary webinar featuring Josiane Feignon. She’s author of Smart Selling on the Phone and Online as well as the founder and CEO of TeleSmart Communications.  Josiane provides consulting and coaching for Fortune 1000 companies, and she knows what it takes to find the power buyers.

Join us for this live webinar on “How to Improve Lead Generation with Prospecting 2.0." Josiane is going to show you her latest ideas on prospecting 2.0 including email and voice mail trends and how to outline a winning qualification criteria and more. As a bonus, Josiane will be giving away copies of Smart Selling on the Phone Online to three attendees. I hope you can join us!

View recorded webinar now and download the slides here

You may just warm up to the idea of cold calling when you understand how to use it properly.

Lead Generation Check list – Part 6: A Multi-modal lead generation approach

This is the sixth in an eight-part series I’m calling the ‘Lead Generation Checklist.' I wanted to provide a checklist that helps organizations optimize their lead generation process.  My first post was on the mindset we should have – one that involves “pulling” not pushing; in the second installment, was on how to drive sales and marketing as one time; thirdly, I outlined steps for creating an ideal customer profile in addition to an un-Ideal customer profile. We should be smart with our time and learn to recognize the signs that tell us when not to pursue a lead. In my fourth installment I outlined how create a universal lead definition that drive sales. My fifth step was on treating your marketing database as a valued asset. Now for the sixth step on developing a multi-modal lead generation portfolio. 

To be successful at generating leads for a complex sale, marketers can't rely on one specific tactic but rather they need to leverage a portfolio of channels. To illustrate, I created a mind map of what multi-modal lead generation looks like (click image to enlarge).

It begins with a mindset that sees lead generation as an ongoing conversation - with human beings - that's both multi-modal and iterative. This isn't about doing random acts of marketing hoping something sticks.

Here are a few tips for creating a multi-modal lead generation approach that will positively affect your bottom line:

View your Lead Generation Program as you would your financial portfolio. If you can’t measure channels or programs in terms of return on investment to the organization (leads generated, business closed, opportunities in the funnel) then the company should not be expected to invest in them. Maintain an assortment of researched and/or proven best-fit channels that can be drawn upon whenever needed.

A multi-modal approach to lead nurturing

To be successful at lead nurturing marketers can't rely on one specific channel but rather they need to leverage a multi-modal portfolio of channels especially when you have a complex sale. 

Why? The goal of lead nurturing is to maintain a relevant and consistent dialog with viable future customers - regardless of their timing to buy. In short, it’s about relationships.

To help illustrate, I created a mind map of what multi-modal lead nurturing looks like (click image to enlarge).

Are there any lead nurturing channels/modalities that I'm missing?

Download Multi-Modal_Lead_Nurturing

If you keep the idea about that nurturing is about building relationships top of mind, the way you nurture leads will naturally go beyond a single channel like e-mail. You’ll start thinking about how you and your sales people can be a relevant resource. When you do that, you don’t have to sell to people. They will come to you first when they are ready.

Related posts:
What IS and ISN’T Lead Nurturing
How lead nurturing improves lead generation ROI
5 Lead nurturing tips to create relevant and engaging emails