B2B Lead Generation Blog

On Lead Qualification: Steps to Convert Inquiries into Viable Sales Leads

A common lead generation practice using B2B inbound marketing includes offering white papers, demos, trial software, or other content assets in exchange for registration information. The problem is that many marketers immediately turn these form registrations (aka web inquiries) over to the sales team as "leads."

If your sales team perceives the majority of "leads" passed to them are no good, they're unlikely to spend time tracking prospects down.

I’ve already written about why lead quality should be emphasized over quantity. But, how do you weed through all those web inquiries to get to those that are truly ready for the sales team to engage so you can nurture the rest?

Here's a lead qualification process that may help you turn your web inquiries into viable sales leads: 

Step 1 - Create a marketing funnel.

The purpose of the marketing funnel is to bring inquiries (aka leads) into one spot and qualify them. The marketing funnel creates sales-ready leads and nurtures the leads that aren’t sales ready. Lead qualification must first classify leads according to their "sales readiness" and business fit; and second, to manage all the incoming leads effectively.

B2B Lead Generation Roundtable Group on LinkedIn

A few weeks ago I wrote a post called 5 steps for using LinkedIn as a lead generation tool and step number five was ‘create your own LinkedIn group and share relevant content.’

Well, last Thursday I launched the B2B Lead Gen Roundtable Group on LinkedIn. I wanted to create a group to discuss and share ideas that focus on the many aspects of B2B lead generation such as lead nurturing, lead management, teleprospecting and more.
 
I’m jazzed at how fast the group is growing and even more excited about the discussions that are already taking place.

My first question to the group was if lead distribution should be fair or optimized? What do you do? Do you invest your hard won leads on your top performers or do you try to help your weaker sales people? In this economy should we take a Darwinian view of lead generation and focus on helping the strong sales people get stronger?

What’s your take on lead distribution? I’d love to hear what you have to say.

Join the B2B Lead Gen Roundtable group and let me know your thoughts.

Losing Leads and Sales With Bad Search Marketing Decisions

There are so many tools that help marketers with their search marketing but marketers have to know how to use the analytics in order to focus on the right things to generate leads and sales.

So often I find that marketers are only looking at conversion rates of how specific phrases or banners perform and are ignoring other valuable information. While conversion rate is one way to measure the effectiveness a search phrase, it can be extremely misleading.

I came across an interesting article by B2B Internet marketing consultant Todd Miechiels, and I liked what he had to say about those B2B marketers that make bad decisions based on “solid analytics data.”

Marketers need to look at more than the quantity of conversions. Quality is just as important. If you look solely at what phrases convert a higher percentage of whitepaper downloads, for example, you could be missing the fact that another phrase brought in 2 or 3 of your top prospects, which in the long run, could be better for your company.

Todd goes on to say: “If you are spending thousands of dollars per month on search marketing and not capturing visiting organizations (both those that convert and the many more that don't), you are shutting down phrases and scaling back campaigns by using only half the truth. Equally as dangerous, you are likely routing dollars toward phrases and ad creative that appear to perform better but in reality are merely clogging the marketing database and sales pipeline.”

According to Todd, there are three things you should remember:

• Make sure you're capturing and reporting on visiting organizations referred by specific search phrases.
• Factor in the number of legitimate organizations you've captured when assessing the effectiveness of your search terms and campaigns.
• Don't fall into the trap of optimizing campaigns based solely on quantitative conversion data.

 Don’t clog the pipeline. Take Todd's advice and take the broader view.

Here's some related posts:

Web analytics for b2b lead gen
Tracking ROI for web generated leads

MarketingExperiments B2B Landing Page Web Clinic Contest

I will be hosting a MarketingExperiments Web Clinic along with MECLABS Sciences Group Director, Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, this Wednesday, February 25 at 4 pm EST. This clinic is special because it will feature an interactive contest. Ten B2B landing pages will be selected to vie for a grand prize: a free landing page assessment (worth $5,000). Attendees of the clinic will be voting for who they think most deserves the makeover.

You don’t have to submit something in order to participate in the clinic. And, get this: you can win prizes by just making contributions to the discussion.

Visit the MarketingExperiments Blog to see 5 recent B2B Landing Pages that were submitted and analyzed by the MEx Sciences Team.

Watch the clinic on demand now

Read the summary

Looking for a little marketing wisdom?

Well, I’ve got, oh about a hundred suggestions for you all courtesy of MarketingSherpa’s latest Wisdom Report.

Sherpa’s free report is filled with mini-stories from our colleagues in the marketing world who have learned through trial and error. The topics of this year’s report touched on just about every aspect of marketing out there – from tradtional tactics to Web 2.0 and mobile marketing.

According to the editors at Sherpa, there were three main trends represented in this year’s edition:
1.    Email  - It’s clear from this book that email isn’t dead. In fact, it’s far from it. Sherpa editors noticed that marketers are looking for ways to tweak their email correspondence. Marketers are personalizing messages more than ever, segmenting their lists to create the most focused targets possible, and are testing to the hilt. You could learn a lot from the stories included in the email section.

2. Build Social Networks - Marketers are starting to see the value of building relationships using LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and blogs. There are some interesting “Case Studies” that will hit home for marketers investigating ways to integrate social media marketing into their 2009 plan.

 3. Search Engine Optimization - It seems that more and more marketers are focusing on making their websites search-engine friendly.  Marketers give advice on everything from making PPC more affordable to concentrating on niche keywords. One marketer shares how 2008 was the turning point that made him realize that after 25 years in the business he had to get with the program.

Download a copy here today

Can a social media like Twitter boost your lead generation results?

Yes.

I came across a blog this weekend that reinforced my thoughts. This post, written by Christian Fea, CEO of Synertegic, Inc., started off with a this statistic that he found on compete.com: Twitter had around 3 million people visiting the site in 2008, and it grew 640% between November 2007 and November 2008.

Ok, so how do we harness all of social media’s potential and use it to build a lead generation system?

Well, I’ve started to use my Twitter account a lot more, and I’ve found some productive uses for the application:

• Sent mini survey question and got answers quickly
• Promoted new blog posts and upcoming webinars
• Shared articles, resources, and blog posts that I found interesting
• Learned what topics my network finds interesting faster
• Discovered some useful blog posts and resources by using tweetscan

There are lots of great resources out there if you want to learn more about how to use Twitter to generate leads, and I’ve include links to several of them at the end of this posting.

B2B Marketing Testing to Optimize Lead Generation Results

Discovering and knowing what really works and what doesn’t for lead generation is essential for every marketer. The best way to discover this is through the process of testing.

Personally, I’ve met only a handful of B2B marketers who are consistently testing their offers to optimize them and generate leads more effectively. I think this is due to two things: the first is time (because marketers want to get their campaigns out there), and the second is knowledge of testing methods.

I was glad to see Jon Miller who writes Marketo's blog, Modern B2B Marketing, recently interview Hunter Boyle, Managing Editor for MarketingExperiments on Testing B2b Marketing. In the interview, Hunter shares best practices for increasing conversion via testing , building a universal definition of a lead, and using testing to discover what works.

Read: Testing Your B2B Marketing: Thought Leadership with Hunter Boyle
Related post: MarketingExperiments: Better tests, better results -- here's how

Why Writing Blogs Just for SEO Will Inevitably Fail

Search engine optimization (SEO) remains critically important for B2B marketers doing lead generation online. And it's pretty common advice to hear: launch a blog because the relevant content will attract links and improve your search engine visibility.

Blogs can offer little-known companies name recognition, and the chance to boost traffic and generate leads well beyond what they'd get if they were simply offering a list of goods and services for sale on their website.

But should you write a blog exclusively for search engine visibility?

Some what say yes but not me. I think a frequently updated, well written and relevant blog by an author who has passion for the subject will out perform others that were only for SEO.

Lee Odden over at the Online Marketing Blog shares a useful perspective on why blogs written solely for SEO objectives will inevitably fail. If you're thinking of blogging for SEO it's definitely worth checking out.

Link: Online Marketing Blog: 3 Reasons Why Blogs for SEO Fail

Lead nurturing putting the human touch into action with video and email

I had a great time doing my webinar on putting the human touch into lead generation sponsored by Citrix Online and we had almost 1600 people register. Wow!

In my presentation I emphasized how lead nurturing is about timing, consistency and relevance.

Today (which happens to be my 38th birthday) I got this email with a personal video from Gary Anderson, CEO of NetBriefings. I wanted to share this with you because I think it is a great example of lead nurturing by combining the human touch and timing in a personal way that connected with their business value proposition.

Brian, I heard it was your Birthday today! Here is my personal Birthday Video Greeting!

http://proclaim.netbriefings.com/flv/nb/nsux9/nbnsux9101573/   

Have a Great Day!!!!  You deserve it!!

Gary W. Anderson

The video is 29 seconds but it made my day and I must confess that it caused me to think about his company (which is the point). Please note: it's not a polished or pretty video but he put in some effort to be personal and that's what made it stand out. That said, I don't think this would work for everybody.  Let me know what you think.

A five-step playbook that will optimize lead generation programs

Companies that adopt closed-loop lead management processes report higher return on marketing investment (ROMI) than those that do not, making this a key investment for B2B marketers. The challenge that many organizations face is that their lead management process is a black hole.

I’ll address this proverbial black hole between your company’s sales and marketing efforts during a MarketingExperiments’ Web Clinic on Wednesday, September 24 at 4 p.m. EST. I’ll outline ways to build an operational ‘playbook’ with your sales department to better manage and nurture the leads you generate.

By using this approach I will share how we helped one client increase their sales-ready leads by 375% and increase their lead-to-sales pipeline conversion rate by 200%. I’ll be answering your lead-gen questions as well.

 

Watch the presentation on demand including slides and audio.

If you don't have time to watch here's a summary

Lead generation playbook: 5 steps to a 375% conversion lift by Hunter Boyle