I emailed you the other day about Michael Stelzner’s great videos about the power of white papers as a lead generation tactic.

New Audio Interview

Michael just interviewed me about how best to manage B2B sales leads for maximum results. I outlined the five critical steps, and gave lots of practical tips you can put to work at your company.

Please listen in at: “5 Critical Steps for Managing B2B Sales Leads - with Mac McIntosh”

In case you missed Michael’s white paper videos, you can view there here: Watch white paper videos

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The guy in this video did something that you, as a B2B marketer, need to pay attention to. What he’s talking about is directly to your job.

In this video he shows how it worked for big-name companies (and how he got 60,000+ leads for his own small business):

• Watch the video

What’s All the Excitement About?

1. Prospects literally line up, ready to purchase after experiencing this.
2. Using the strategy, businesses are becoming the thought leaders of their industries.
3. Once set in motion, the strategy keeps generating quality leads, literally for years.
4. Watch the video

Don’t Miss the Extra Videos He’s Launching

Here’s the cool part: He’s actually giving away a bunch of videos.

I’ve seen the videos, and they give lots of good marketing advice. You could actually take what you learn and put it to use in your marketing campaigns right away.

In his second video, he breaks out “Six Deadly Marketing Mistakes And A New Approach,” so don’t miss video #2.

Hope you find the videos useful. After you check them out, please come back and post a comment about what you think.

FYI, there’s nothing to buy at the site right now. All you have to do is follow this link and the video will begin playing in your browser:

• Watch the video

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If you’re choosing between remote or in-person, factor in the time needed to present the information, the needs of the customers or prospects you’re targeting, and the physical locations of attendees.

Live events can include:

• Executive briefings
• Breakfast meetings
• Lunch-and-learns
• Seminars

Pros of In-Person Events

• You can hold your audience’s attention longer. Remote events should last no more than an hour, but with a live seminar or briefing you can provide more in-depth information. Users or technical decision makers who want to dive deep into the details of your solution may want that extra time. Live events are also effective for prospective buyers who are further along in their purchase cycle–they’re more willing to commit the time to attend.

Cons of In-Person Events

• Live events can be more costly. Expenses for travel, meeting rooms, audiovisual equipment, attendee meals, and parking can add up quickly. You’ll also need personnel to staff registration tables, meet and greet guests, and oversee event logistics.
• They require a larger time commitment. Unless the event is being held at your site or your customer’s, you’ll both spend additional time traveling to and from the venue.

What factors do you consider? Please post a comment with any other pros and cons that have helped you decide to either hold a live event or “go virtual,” and I’ll let you know if I’ve got ideas on the topic.

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Focusing on leads and sales

Yes, brand image is important to your company’s success. But unless you can spend a half-million dollars or so on brand advertising, such efforts probably won’t move the sales needle much.

The good news: If you spend a fraction of that amount on marketing designed primarily to generate leads, you should see a big impact on sales. And responding quickly to inquiries while maintaining the quality of your website and marketing materials also helps enhance your company’s image.

Invest one-third of your budget on online marketing

Your website is probably the initial stop for prospects who are new to your products and services. Invest time and thought into improving the messages to prospects and clients who are currently visiting your website. Stay cost-effective by focusing your goal on moving prospects from awareness to inquiry to consideration to purchase. Don’t just aim to give it more window-dressing. Instead, communicate and convert.

Search engines are, of course, the first place many prospective customers go to research solutions to their business issues.

Consider search engine optimization (SEO) before investing in sponsored links on search results. According to findings by Enquiro Search Solutions Inc., a search engine marketing firm, the “organic” or “natural” search engine results typically receive nearly 75 percent of clicks, with sponsored links getting the rest. If you want to do SEO in-house, consider investing in Planet Ocean’s useful, and regularly updated, SEO resource package ($97 for a six-month subscription; go to www.searchenginehelp.com).

In many cases, fixing your website’s top 5 SEO problems makes a noticeable difference in your rankings. Perhaps not enough to unleash a torrent of traffic, but commit to continuous improvement and you’ll reap the rewards. If you don’t want to do the heavy lifting yourself, you can partner with a reputable SEO company.

Invest another third in database-driven direct marketing

Review your existing database, and identify the most profitable clients or customers. Create models for the best types to target with one-to-many marketing programs. Then acquire a database containing information on these kinds of companies through database marketing services.

Aim to communicate with your database contacts every month so you’re top-of- mind when they’re ready for solutions. But don’t rely solely on e-mail follow-ups; experts estimate that between 70 percent and 80 percent of opt-in messages are blocked from reaching the intended destination. If you don’t have e-mail addresses, or don’t have permission for e-mail contact, try contacting your best prospects via direct mail or by telephone.

(For specific tips, read my related posts Direct marketing tips: How to cut costs and get better response and B2B telemarketing: Wasting your money?.)

Provide multiple calls to action to reach prospects at their particular stage in the purchase process. Introductory materials such as brochures, white papers, and case studies are good for the early stages. Then more thorough checklists, how-to guides and invitations to live and Web-based briefings and other events will help answer remaining questions. And for those close to purchase, offer discounts, free phone consultations and custom quotes or proposals.

Invest the final third in “everything else”

Now support the investments you’ve made in the first two-thirds of your budget. You might use the money to:

• design, print and mail information kits, case studies or checklists
• create a monthly newsletter
• provide a series of webinars
• arrange in-person events
• keep improving your website’s conversion rate and resources
• invest in a few sales tools as well.

Would this approach work for you?

A number of marketers would take issue with my recommendation to put branding on the sidelines in favor of leads and sales. How would you divide the always-limited marketing budget?

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“Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”

On January 14, 2008 The American Marketing Association announced in a press release that this new definition “…will be used as the official definition in books, by marketing professionals and taught in university lecture halls nationwide.”

Sorry. Not by this marketing professional!

If it sounds like something created by a committee, it was. According to the press release,

“The committee formed in late 2006, under the leadership of Donald R. Lehmann, the George E. Warren Professor of Business at Columbia Business School in New York. The committee used qualitative insight generated through an evaluation of the 1985 and 2004 definitions of marketing to craft a new definition that better serves the constituents of the American Marketing Association. As part of this process, Association members (A second, much bigger committee?) were asked to provide input on what they liked best about the previous definition, and what they would change. Members were later asked to offer feedback on a draft of the revised definition. At the end of the revision process, the American Marketing Association found that more than 70 percent of their membership viewed the new definition as an improvement.”

I guess I am one of the 30 percent that think the AMA’s latest definition of marketing is worse than the one it replaces. And that one, announced in 2004, wasn’t great either:

“Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.”

Maybe George E. Warren and the others on the committee should try to explain this new definition of marketing to a couple of CEOs or CFOs. Do you really think the CEOs or CFOs will say, “I get it! Now I understand why we need to invest in marketing.” I doubt it.

I think that us B-to-B marketers have a tough enough job of convincing the folks in the C-suite that marketing is an important ingredient in the company’s success, without the AMA making it our job even harder by confusing people with their latest marketing definition.

If you are one of the AMA committee members that developed this new definition of marketing, please let us know if you are 100 percent satisfied with this new definition, and why so or why not?

And you, the person reading this right now: What are your thoughts? Does the current definition clearly communicate to you what marketing is? If not, do you have a better definition of marketing to share?

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Time to wage war on the offenders? I found a useful blog post listing “100 Tips to Defeat Content Thieves“. Some highlights:

• Set up Google Alerts for key phrases in your content — You’ll get regular emails with search results showing who else has your content on their site
• Add a message in your feeds asking people to email you if they are reading your content on someone else’s website.
• Put a spy image, a small image link, in the HTML, and watch your log files to see where it is being called from.
• CopyScape helps you find other sites with your content.

There’s lots more as well, including whether you have the rights to go for them and resources about how to go about it.

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