Increasing B2B Lead Management ROI: 4 Key Performance Indicators

Although the findings are not news to me or my clients, a recent research study about increasing B2B sales lead management ROI is worth mentioning.

Why? Because it validates some of what I’ve been recommending to my clients for years.

The Forrester research study and white paper about sales lead management, commissioned by Silverpop, reports that when it comes to increasing the ROI from B2B sales lead management, there are four key performance indicators (KPIs) that pay off in more qualified leads and sales.

The numbered items below are the four KPIs from the white paper, but the comments about each are mine:
 

1. Profiling and targeting. By understanding your customers and using them as a model for the right prospects to target with your lead generation activities, and by targeting those right prospects, you will get a better ROI.
2. Lead scoring. This is the latest name for the process of determining which leads are qualified leads that meet the minimum definition of a “sales-ready lead.” Lead scoring provides us with the criteria for determining which leads need further development and which are ready for sales follow-up.
3. Content. Developing and offering information that meets the needs of your prospects, particularly as they move from awareness to inquiry to consideration and on to purchase, is essential both for getting prospects to identify themselves to you and for helping move your prospects forward in their buying process.
4. Nurture early-stage buyers. B2B research about sales leads repeatedly shows that the B2B buyers who are still in the early stages of their buying process represent three out of four of the total sales opportunities you will net from your leads. Only one in four sales opportunities comes from those prospects who are already at the later stages of their buying process.

Want a quick summary of how to take advantage of these four KPIs? Read my short post titled B2B Sales Lead Generation Is Easy: Four Rights Will Get You There.

What are your thoughts about the four KPIs that increase the ROI from B2B sales lead management?

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B2B Marketing University 2010 Kicks Off March 3 in Washington, DC

If you are a B2B marketer or are responsible for B2B lead generation, do not miss this half-day seminar on March 3, 2010 at the Westin Grand Hotel in Washington, DC.

This all-new-for-2010 session of B2B Marketing University is focused on helping you stay ahead of the curve and excel in the changing B2B marketing environment.

Join us and take your marketing and lead generation to the next level.

As one of the presenters, I can promise you that you and your fellow attendees will get expert insights into the latest strategies and innovation you can deploy today to get better results and a higher ROI from your marketing.

Your attendance is free, compliments of B2B Marketing University’s sponsor, Silverpop.

The best part is that B2B Marketing University is 100% pure education for serious B2B marketers. No product pitches. Just learning. Register today.

Why attend B2B Marketing University?

Today is a challenging time—and an exciting time—to be a B2B marketer. The impetus for B2B marketers to generate leads, drive sales and support customer lifetime value has never been stronger. Yet change is everywhere. Major forces are provoking evolution in how B2B marketers operate. Meanwhile, significant innovation has brought new tools and capabilities to B2B marketers’ arsenals.

Ask yourself:

• Are you on top of the latest strategies and tactics for lead management, marketing automation and inbound marketing?
• Are you leveraging dynamic campaigns, lead scoring and social media to improve engagement with buyers?
• Do you have what it takes to excel in the new B2B marketing environment?

If you are not sure—or you are looking for additional ideas you can put to work driving more leads and sales with your marketing—B2B Marketing University is where you can get answers and take your game to the next level.

Attendees will learn more about what is working best today from top B2B marketing experts including: Carlos and Jay Hidalgo with The Annuitas Group, Adam Needles with Silverpop, (yours truly) Mac McIntosh, and the end-of-day roundtable of additional B2B marketing experts.

Your attendance is free, so why not join us at B2B Marketing University in Washington, DC, on March 3?

Use this link to learn more or reserve your seat for B2B Marketing University: http://tinyurl.com/ybwscmv

The Top 10 Silly Marketing Mistakes B2B Marketers Make: Your Input Wanted (and Rewarded)!

We can’t promise to make you famous, but if you share your top 10 list of silly mistakes that B2B marketers make, we’ll include you in our upcoming e-book.

My good friend, fellow blogger and B2B marcom consultant Dianna Huff and I are putting together an e-book on the top 10 silly B2B marketing mistakes — and we want you to be part of it! Here’s how:

Use our special survey link to tell us what you think are the top 10 B2B marketing mistakes that others make.

These can be anything from email or PPC ad campaign no-nos and social media blunders to “old school” marketing snafus involving trade shows, print ads, etc.

We will accept your submissions through February 12, 2010 at midnight EST/GMT-5.

Next, we will study the submissions to determine what you, our fellow B2B marketers, think are the top 10 B2B marketing mistakes that other less-enlightened marketers are making.

Then you and others who submitted their lists of silly marketing mistakes will get your names listed in the e-book along with a live link to your blog, Website, or LinkedIn profile.

So what are you waiting for? Submit your top 10 B2B marketing mistakes list right now.

Please share this with your B2B marketing peers. For Retweeting purposes, the Bitly URL is: http://bit.ly/9fsKNr

B2B Ads From the Past

I always find it interesting to take a look at the work done by our predecessors in B2B marketing.

In post in Jackie West’s UK Industrial Marketing Blog, she mentions Richard Stone’s Insights into PR and Online Marketing blog post where he links to The Vintage Ad Browser.

Simply click on one of the categories in the Vintage Ad Browser, or type something into the search window, and you will get to see some of the advertising work done by those B2B marketers that came before us in what then was called “industrial advertising.” 

Speaking of B2B advertising from the past, one ad that never grows old for me is this one from McGraw-Hill:

The copy reads:

“I don’t know who you are.
I don’t know your company.
I don’t know your company’s product.
I don’t know what your company stands for.
I don’t know your company’s customers.
I don’t know your company’s record.
I don’t know your company’s reputation.
Now—what was it you wanted to sell me?”

I believe McGraw-Hill was right, and still is. When prospects are reading your ads, emails, or any other of your marketing communications, this is what they are thinking.

You’ll need to address these issues before your prospects will be in a position to buy your product or service.

B-to-B Lead generation: What Enterprise-size Companies Should be Doing Differently in 2010

If you are responsible for business-to-business lead generation at a large company, don’t miss this webcast!

Lead Gen in 2010: Learn What is Working Best Right Now

January 27, 2010 at 11:00 am PST (2:00 pm EST)

This one-hour webinar will cover:

• The latest trends in B-to-B lead generation, and how you can leverage them;
• Which lead gen strategies and tactics are working best, and which no longer work for enterprise companies like yours;
• The pros and cons of various marketing media for generating, nurturing, and qualifying leads.

Why not register right now?

The webcast will be moderated by Mike Wallen, CEO of the Lead Dogs and presented by Albert Springall, Senior Marketing Manager at Microsoft and B-to-B lead generation expert (yours truly) M. H. (Mac) McIntosh.

The good news is that as the economy recovers and the new year begins, business spending is starting to increase. However, as a result of the recent downturn, business buyers are being cautious. So to generate more business your lead generation strategies must clearly communicate value while differentiating your products and services from the competition and resonating personally with your prospective customers. We will show you how best to accomplish this, and more.

So be sure to join us online on January 27th at 2:00 EST (11:00 am PST), as we share proven ways for enterprise companies like yours to uncover qualified sales leads, highlight real life success stories, discuss best practices, and show you how to maximize your B-to-B lead gen ROI in 2010.

To register to attend the webcast, or to learn more about it, please use this link: https://cc.readytalk.com/r/db51uw0s9ooo

B2B Marketing Strategies for Small Companies: An Interview with Dianna Huff

This is one of a series of occasional interviews with top practitioners on topics of interest to business-to-business lead generation, marketing and new business development professionals.

My guest today is Dianna Huff of DH Communications. Dianna helps businesses with their B2B marketing communications content strategy and implementation.

Dianna, what are some of the marketing mistakes you see smaller companies making with regard to B2B marketing communications strategy, and what should smart marketers do instead?

Mac, that’s a good question. I see companies frequently making these two common mistakes:

First, not having a strategy. For example, someone from a small company will call to say, “We want to send out an e-newsletter,” but the marketer or business owner hasn’t thought through the purpose of the newsletter (except for the generic “We want to send people to our website”). Usually the person doesn’t know what the newsletter content will or should be, the publishing frequency, whether or not he or she wants to use segmented lists, etc., etc.

Smart marketers will sit down and plan out strategy based on a stated objective, whether it’s to increase sales, bring in more leads, better nurture the leads they have, lower their costs (i.e., move from a print newsletter to an e-newsletter), gain more industry exposure, market an e-book, etc., and then plan out the tactics for implementing the strategy from start to finish based on the objective.

Second, strategy doesn’t match the objective. By this, I mean that a marketer or business owner will have a stated objective – i.e., “We want more leads” – and the strategy for getting those leads might be something like writing articles for trade publications or developing a blog. Writing articles and developing a blog are both good marketing tactics for accomplishing such objectives as branding and awareness, but I wouldn’t use them to get leads in the door.

As you know, Mac, smart marketers use other methods, both online and off, to generate leads. For example, marketers would be better off using an integrated campaign that includes e-mail, direct mail and pay-per-click advertising to make offers (white papers, reports, e-books) specifically designed to generate leads.

I know you focus a lot on improving your clients’ websites. Dianna, what are the most common mistakes that small businesses are making with their websites, and what should they be doing better?

The biggest mistake small businesses make is to think of their websites as their “online brochures.” A website and a brochure are two completely different animals.

The other mistake I see is that many small businesses (and large ones too) have absolutely no clue about website marketing and search engine optimization. So they’ll spend a boatload of money to make their site look good graphically, then wonder why they still have no visitors.

To be successful online, companies must develop a strategy for getting traffic to their websites. For example, the site, or rather each of its pages, must be optimized in order to get found by the search engines.

Dianna, what do you think B2B marketers at small companies should be doing differently than their peers at big companies?

Actually, small companies usually already do things differently than their peers at large companies: because they are small, they can implement new ideas quickly. That’s one reason why savvy small-business marketers have flocked to SEO, social media, blogs, etc. It can take a large company months to make a decision on something as simple as optimizing a site, starting a blog or opening a Twitter account.

Small businesses do and should use this “nimbleness” to their advantage – and use the latest online marketing tools to build an Internet presence that rivals that of the “big boys.” As the HubSpot founders say in their book, Inbound Marketing, “On the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog.” For example, prospects often think that my company is larger than it is, due to my strong presence on the Internet.

I noticed on Twitter that you said your #1-read blog post is the one about marketing communications job descriptions. Dianna, why do you think so many people are interested in that topic?

I think people are reading my marcom job description post because they’re looking for a job and/or they need to write a job description. The post is near the top of the search results in Google for “marcom job description” – that tells you the power of SEO and blogs – which is probably why I’m getting so much traffic to it.

My understanding is that you think marcom professionals – and those who hire them – focus too much on managing projects and copywriting. Please tell me more about that.

As you know, Mac, lots has been written about the negative consequences of the “disconnect” between marketing and sales. In fact, I still remember that wonderful cats and dogs presentation on the subject of integrating marketing and sales you gave at a conference last year.

In my opinion, the marketing/sales disconnect starts with the marcom job description. Just last week I was shown a marcom job description – and again, the company wanted someone who could write well and manage multiple projects. The job description did not address the most important fact: that marketing’s job is to help sales do their job – i.e., get results!

A marcom professional should know how to communicate well, of course, but this person needs to understand a whole other set of skills – as you and others pointed out in your follow-up post to my post.

So, until a company’s leaders start demanding more from its marketing communications practitioners, this disconnect will continue to exist and marketing and sales will continue to fight like cats and dogs.

You mentioned that more companies are asking you about social media marketing. What is your perspective on social media, Dianna? Is it something B2B marketers need to pay attention to?

Social media is definately something B2B marketers need to pay attention to. Why? Because as a Fortune 500 client said to me recently, “Although most of our customers are 50-year-old white men, it won’t be that way forever. Younger people are moving up the ranks – and they are social media savvy.”

Dianna, do you have any last thoughts on the subject of small company B2B marketing you want to share with our readers?

Marketing is changing – literally. It can be difficult to keep up with all that is new, and for that reason, a small-business owner may elect to simply “opt out.” After all, he or she reasons, “My customers have found me in the past via word of mouth, so I’ll keep doing that.”

Word of mouth will continue to work, but it has become what author David Meerman Scott calls “word of mouse.” So it really pays to ensure that you know how to use the Internet to effectively market your business. You simply cannot afford to ignore it.

Dianna, thanks for sharing your expertise with our readers.

Thank you, Mac, for the opportunity.

Readers, what are your thoughts on the subject of B2B marketing for small businesses?

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