Business data degrades at the rate of 3% to 6% per month. Translation: One third of your information on business buyers and prospects may be inaccurate and ineffectual for sales and marketing use by the end of every year. These statistics from D&B are further indicators of the volatility of business data:• A new business opens every minute.• A new business files for bankruptcy every 8 minutes.• A business closes every 3 minutes.• A CEO changes every minute.• A company name change occurs every 2 minutes.Add to this the additional complexities of a B-to-B database, where not only do you need basic information like postal address, phone and email addresses, but data on multiple contacts within a company -- purchase decision makers, influencers, purchasing agents etc., company site information, not just an headquarters address and more. And this doesn’t account for other valuable data such as purchase history, competitive product installed etc. Your customer and prospect lists are the foundation of your marketing efforts. 50-70% of your marketing campaign success is dependent upon your list quality. How can you be sure you have good quality customer and prospect data? Read More »

The following is a guest post from Brian Carroll. Brian is CEO of InTouch Inc. and author of the popular book, Lead Generation for the Complex Sale and the B2B Lead Generation Blog. Brian just spoke to our Cisco partner community on how to develop effective lead generation and nurturing campaigns. Read his post below for more insights and actions you can take today to build your nurturing programs.Get out your walking shoes. This ain’t no walk in the park. Lead generation can take you on a long hike. The one thing I can guarantee you about the journey is that more is not better if you don’t know how to nurture. I define lead nurturing as that consistent and meaningful communication with viable prospects (those that are “a fit” for your solution) regardless of their timing to buy. It’s NOT “following-up” every few months to find out if a prospect is “ready to buy yet.” True nurturing involves a sometimes long and circuitous path but along the way you you’ll be building long, meaningful and trust-filled relationships with the right people. A recent study of business-to-business buyers shows that sales people who become trusted advisors and understand the needs of economic buyers are 69% more likely to come away with a sale! So, the first step on that path to success is to start thinking like a customer.Step 1: Walk IN your potential customers’ shoes. Consider the questions that customers have in mind before they make a buying decision: • How will this product/service help my company? • We’re doing okay, why do we need it? • Is there another company out there that is better? • Will their solution really work? Can they prove it? • Is the company credible? • Can we afford it? Help prospects find the answers to these questions, and you’ll remind them of the benefits of working with you. You’re creating value by giving them useful information in digestible, bite sized chunks. Read More »

Lead generation and lead nurturing are top of mind for me this week. Ok… this is usually where my head is at anyway, but this week is different. This week, we have Brian Carroll, CEO of InTouch, and author of “Lead Generation for the Complex Sale” and the B2B Lead Generation Blog, presenting to our partners on how to develop high quality lead generation and nurturing campaigns. Why is this so exciting? Well… Let’s take a look at what lead nurturing can do for your business.According to a CSO Insights report, companies with good lead generation and nurturing programs have:• 7% higher win rates• 9.3% more sales reps making quota• 16% better conversion from lead to first meeting• 62% have shorter sales cycles versus 42% of other companies• 10% shorter sales ramp up timeNow that’s something to get excited about. But keep in mind that good lead generation and nurturing requires some time and effort… not to mention a list of prospects to nurture. Read More »

It’s always interesting to hear what analysts have to say about new trends in marketing and think about how our own marketing strategies have or need to evolve. A few weeks ago, Forrester released its five year forecast on marketing spending showing social media ahead of all other forms of interactive marketing spending with a CAGR of 34%. Mobile marketing is the second fastest growing budget item. Email and display advertising are expected to grow more slowly. Check out the chart below for details. Forrester will issue the full report later this Spring. Until then, what are your thoughts on this evolution of marketing?

Last week, I spent two days at the Inbound Marketing Summit , an event focused exclusively on online marketing and social media. Chaired by Chris Brogan, David Meerman Scott, Paul Gillin, and Justin Levy -- some of the best known thought leaders on social media -- the event was a rapid fire series of 20 to 30 minute presentations. Made my brain hurt, but in a good way! There was so much information presented at this event that I am still trying to digest it and put it in some context to help Cisco partners market more effectively. Here is a small sample of the things that resonated most with me:The Value of Social Media:“Every marketer is now a publisher. Every publisher is now a marketer. Every consumer is now both. To succeed, companies must leverage digital media to start and join conversations.” (John Battelle, Federated Media Publishing)For those of you that think that engaging in social media is a risky endeavor, consider this: “Social media didn’t invent criticism, it was happening anyway and people ask, what’s the value of social media? So, what’s the value of taking someone out to play golf? It’s about building relationships” (Amber Naslund, Radian6). Think about that for a minute. Criticism is going to happen. Social media allows you to address any criticism directly and potentially turn a negative perception into a positive one; to develop a relationship with a potential customer. That’s incredibly powerful. Read More »

In-person events are one of the most, if not the most, popular marketing tactic within the Cisco partner community. Although, we’ve been talking a lot about social media marketing in this blog, it’s important to note that social media and traditional marketing can live side-by-side and effectively complement each other. And let’s face it -- our sales teams love to be in front of customers. So, I wanted to take a minute and suggest an event format idea that I hope you find interesting and valuable. We all recognize the value in creating customer success stories whether in print, video or podcast format. What if you could take customer successes and turn them into something more? What if your customers could become true ambassadors for you in the sales process? Read More »

The inimitable and immortal words of Shel Silverstein say it best:”Sandra’s seen a leprechaun,Eddie touched a troll,Laurie danced with witches once,Charlie found some goblins’ gold.Donald heard a mermaid sing,Susy spied an elf,But all the magic I have knownI’ve had to make myself”Nowhere is this more true than when you are talking about obtaining a list of high quality prospects (This is also more evidence that all I need to know I learned in kindergarten ). Lists are the heart of your direct marketing efforts and it takes work to effectively develop and manage your direct marketing list. In an earlier post about list procurement, I offered up 13 rules for working with lists. As a follow up to this, I wanted to provide some very tactical recommendations and ideas specifically around how to build your own list. In B2B marketing, the very best mailing lists are the ones you build yourself. Self-compiled mailing lists are created by combing through public sources, like trade association member directories, web sites, industry directories and your own company’s prospect databases. Read More »

Internet marketing, online marketing, eMarketing, social media marketing -- whatever you call it, it’s still marketing. It’s still the art and science of crafting and delivering a message that influences the recipient’s behavior. (Ok… that may be oversimplified, but there is truth in that statement). After all, the end goal of marketing is to be an equal contributor to sales in driving revenue for our company or clients. The Internet and social media don’t change this goal. What has changed are the rules and strategies for achieving it.Many marketers are attracted to online marketing and social media because of the reduced costs. Your decision to leverage the Internet and social media in your marketing mix should not be based just on cost. It also shouldn’t be about being cool. Sure blogging, podcasts, twitter etc. are cool, but if what you’re really trying to do is drive more revenue, you have to take the coolness factor out of it.So take a step back and consider the following:Internet + Social Media Tools = Increased Customer Interaction -- Think about how you can leverage every single interaction to increase the value of your product, brand, or company in the eyes of your customers and prospects. Where are Your Customers? -- Do your research. Find out where your customers are online and what social media they are using. The traditional marketer in you may want to find the demographics on each social media tool, but you can do it another way: Look at a random sample of your customer base and find them, via email address, on the different sites. Determine which have a significant presence of your target customers, and invest your time and energy on those platforms. Content Trumps Awareness -- Content is the raw material that makes it possible for your target customers to use the Internet and social media tools to objectively research, evaluate and compare your product, company, and services. The quality, range, and availability of your content is now the most important deciding factor in putting what you are selling in front of prospects interested in buying. This now becomes the most important consideration for marketing. Augment; Don’t Replace -- Social media and the Internet are not a panacea. Don’t forego more traditional marketing channels. Think about how you can leverage what you are currently doing in an online manner -- even if it’s just promoting an event in a Twitter stream or creating customer testimonial videos and posting to YouTube. Evaluate your library of content and extend its reach by posting in online forums. Take small steps.Which Tools are Right for Your Business? -- Chris Brogan has a great post up today on evaluating what social media tools can do and how to better integrate them into your marketing strategy. He offers the formula Possibilities + Function as a way to evaluate these tools. His insight is great.. seriously.. go read it.

We’ve recently been talking a lot about how we measure marketing within the Channels Marketing team here at Cisco. The present challenging economy we’re in keeps this top of mind. We all need to do more, better, smarter marketing with less. Aren’t we all in that same boat? My take on marketing measurement is that this is something that we should be doing all the time. Sure we may be more motivated now than ever before to show how marketing positively impacts the business, but… really… tying our marketing to business goals, measuring our efforts and being accountable should be part of our DNA as marketers. So let’s use this motivation to learn why, what and how to measure our marketing. Laura Patterson, President and co-founder of VisionEdge Marketing , a leading metrics-based strategic marketing firm spoke at our Cisco Partner Velocity event in February and our internal marketing boot camp session last week about this very topic. I highly recommend that you check out her “The Measure of Marketing” presentation she did during Velocity. This outlines the development of a marketing metrics framework from tactics (activity based) through strategic (predictive) measurement. Rather than jump right into how you get to the more strategic measurements, I thought I’d start at a more tactical level with intent to do subsequent posts on this topic and the hope that we all can evolve to more predictive measurements over time. Most of us are probably doing at least some basic activity-based level reporting e.g. event registrations versus attendees, appointments scheduled via a telemarketing campaign etc. (If you’re not doing this, then we need to chat live…). Can we take this kind of measurement up a notch? I think it’s possible. Instead of measuring only the small results details e.g. a telemarketing campaign to 150 contacts -- received 4 scheduled appointments, try to bring these results in line with your true objective which is to drive your business and get a decent return on your marketing expenditure. Here are some suggestions for other measurements that you can apply start to apply to your marketing activities and campaigns. Cost Per Lead -- Total marketing costs divided by the number of leads meeting your target customer profile and sales readiness criteria. For example if you spent $10,000 on a telemarketing campaign which netted 100 leads your cost per lead would be approximately $100. See my earlier blog post on sales leads for details on lead definitions. Conversion Rate -- Number of qualified opportunities divided by the number of leads. If those 100 leads above net 15 qualified opportunities, you would have a conversion rate of 15%. Pipeline -- Sales pipeline created by the activity or campaign. If you total the opportunity size for those 15 leads you would have your pipeline number.Return on Investment (ROI) -- In its most simplistic form ROI is revenue generated from your marketing efforts minus your total marketing expense. My recommendation is not to try to measure ROI immediately. It takes time for leads to be nurtured, opportunities to materialize and deals to be closed. True ROI measurement is longer term in scope. There is a standard marketing ROI calculation included in the “How to Create a Flawless Marketing Plan” presentation from Velocity which gives you a better idea of how to “forecast” a potential ROI from your marketing efforts. One last thought -- Never underestimate the power of a good CRM system. Measuring marketing requires the ability to track leads. Your CRM system is of paramount importance to this effort. The Business Marketing Institute has an interesting eBook -- “On Demand CRM and the New Marketing Model” that may help you identify how you can leverage your CRM system to make your marketing more effective and increasingly measurable.

Video is not a fad. It’s fast becoming an important mechansim for message delivery in the corporate world. Why? Video effectivley conveys information and emotion in a single package. And whether we like to admit it or not, there is typically a certain amount of emotion involved in purchasing decisions.Public relations has shifted away from its traditional laser focus on the media with the rise of the Internet and new media options. Opportunities to bring PR into marketing campaigns abound. Plus, most experts now agree that PR is one of the most cost-effective ways to promote your company. At the recent Cisco Partner Velocity event I spent a good deal of time in the skills clinic speaking to partners about using video within their marketing mix. One element we did not discuss directly at Velocity is the use of video as part of your PR efforts. Thought I’d address this now.How can video bolster your PR efforts? Video, and images for that matter, can get you better attention from search engines when they are thoughtfully and purposefully aligned with your PR efforts. You still have to make your story interesting, relevant and newsworthy. Adding video to a poorly written release riddled with gobbledyguck and hyperbole isn’t going to do you any good. Assuming you have an interesting, relevant and newsworthy press release, here are some quick pointers on how to integrate video into your PR effort and possibly increase your exposure. • Make sure your video reinforces the core message of your press release. You’re video needs to be clearly related to the release. Incongruent content reduces the overall impact.• Your video must be easy to share. In a Web 2.0 world anything you create in support of your company must be easy for your customers, prospects and other interested parties to passy on to their own networks.• The video must be compelling. Even amateurs can create high-quality, highly engaging videos. Anything less won’t be passed along. Your “supporters” won’t pass along anything that could put their own reputation at risk.• Don’t forget keywords. Add a keyword to the video title when you upload it to the Web. Write a short paragrpah describing what’s in the video. This adds significantly more search engine content. Keywords are the trick.PR is one of the most effective and affordable ways to promote your company or build your brand This is especially true with online press release services that are available. Adding video can extend the reach of your PR efforts. Do you already have video assets that you can leverage as part of your PR efforts? If not, what can you do to change that? Look at the Velocity Skills Clinic content for some ideas. If you need assistance with crafting a compelling press release, review the 60 Minute Guide to Writing Your First Online Press Release from PRWeb.

Social media marketing is still very new, especially in a B2B context. We want to jump on the social media train, but struggle with determining the business value (this IS getting easier), we don’t know where or how to start etc. Social media does not necessarily replace the kind of marketing you do now. It can augment, support, and enhance your existing marketing efforts. The trick is finding the right synergies between what you do now and social media marketing elements. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an area that many of you have embraced already. You have a website and you are constantly working to find ways to drive more traffic. Can social media help you do this? My answer is “yes”. I would even go so far as to say that social media and SEO are inevitably linked and in the future …if not now… it will be impossible to separate the two. Where are the synergies between SEO and social media? Here’s what I see:Content -- If you take nothing else away from this blog post, make sure you take note of the importance of content. In a Web 2.0 world content is king. Content on your site must be relevant to your target audience. Social media and SEO analytics can tell you what content is most important to your audience. This is data you can use to create content for your end customer. Content on your site needs to meaningful, relevant and useful. Great content is rewarded by search engine rankings. David Meerman Scott’s recent post “SEO and your crap filled site” candidly speaks to the importance of content. Links -- In order to rank well in search engines, your site needs lots of relevant, trusted links from a variety of sources. Social media can help you build links to your site, ultimately increasing the flow of traffic to your site. Let’s assume you have a blog. You can submit your blog content to sites like Digg, Reddit, Technorati. If enough people find your content valuable, your link could “go viral” resulting in much more traffic to your site. Things to keep in mind: 1) If you have a blog or other social media content, make sure it is hosted on your own domain. Ultimately, you want to drive traffic to your own domain. 2) Always link to others. Link building is a two-way street Search Queries -- Social media can create some increased “buzz” for you and helps to drive more people to search for your relevant keywords, building general awareness and exposing your brand, company, products, services etc, to a broader audience, ultimately increasing your site traffic. The links between SEO and social media are one example of ways that social media can supplement some of the marketing approaches you are already taking. My advice to you is look at your current marketing mix. Find the places where social media can logically support these efforts. Most importantly, be patient and keep trying.

The more I think about it, the more I think listening is the foundation for a solid social media strategy. We can get all fired up about blogging, facebook pages, twitter etc., but if we don’t put a strategy behind our social media efforts and actions, then what can we reasonably hope to achieve?One of the key tenets of a Web 2.0 world is developing relationships with your customers and prospects. Being a good listener is key to every relationship in the real world and in the digital world. The beauty of a Web 2.0 world is transperancy. Blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social media tools make your customers and prospects extremely influential. Conversations, whether good or bad, can spread like wild fire. We know that customers are more likely to trust online reviews from peers than a company’s marketing messages (see my earlier blog post on Social Media and IT Decision Makers) According to a recent report by Forrester Research, more than 75% of the US is participating in social media in some way.21% = Creators -- Publish blogs, web site, video etc.37% = Critics -- Post product ratings, blog comments, contribute to online forums etc.19% = Collectors -- Subscribe to RSS feeds, add tags to web sites, phots etc.35% = Joiners -- Maintain profiles on or visit social networking sites69% = Spectators -- Read blogs, listen to podcasts, watch videos from other user etc.25% = Inactive -- Do none of the above.Suffice to say, there is a lot of information out there. Listening to these conversations can be invaluable in helping you determine your strategy -- where can you add value, how can you enage, and ultimately where are the opportunities?Many companies monitor their brand within the digitial world to identify trends and check the competitive landscape. But there is so much more that can be done beyond brand monitoring… Positioning -- What are people saying about your company, products etc? Is this in line with how you want to be perceived? Do you need to adjust your messaging and competitive differentiation?Sentiment Analysis -- Tracking sentiment changes in online conversations overtime can be a key performance indicator. This tells you how people feel about your company, products and services. As you evolve your business, sentiment analysis can help ensure that your customer base remains satisfied.Customer Segmentation -- Customer segmentation analysis can help you find disgrunteled customers of your competition that you can convert, identify groups that your competitor does not have a strong foothold in, identify advocates within the digital community that can influence others and at a basic level interact with positive customers.So how can you listen? There are many companies that have solutions for brand monitoring and analytics -- basically listening to conversations/comments relevant to your business online and in some case offline. These companies include Nielsen-Online, Dow Jones Insight, Visible Technologies, TNS Cymfony, and more.Many of us may not be ready to commit to a firm social media strategy and/or to one of these third party solutions. If that’s the case, there is much that can be done with “guerilla” tactics. Chris Brogan’s blog post -- Grow Bigger Ears in 10 Minutes gives you a step by step on how to use social media tools to listen as part of your business communications strategy. Check it out. It’s worth the read.

In my quest to uncover how we can use social media tools to reach technology purchase decision makers, I came across a series of interesting studies done by ITtoolbox and PJA.In June 2007, ITtoolbox and PJA conducted an inaugural Social Media Index Survey to assess the impact of emerging media and online communities on the technology purchase process. They subsequently executed two additional surveys in November 2007 and August 2008. The goal -- To determine the influence of social media tools through distinct stages of the purchase process and assess the credibility of online communities as an extension of personal networks. Here’s what they found:• IT decision-maker and influencer audiences spend more time consuming or participating in social media than they do consuming editorial media or vendor content.• Executive decision-makers spend nearly 4 hours per week consuming or participating in social media -- the highest usage profile.• IT decision-makers and influencers spend more time with and increasingly consider online communities -- discussion groups, peer-to-peer networks, social networks -- as extensions of their existing network of personal contacts.• More than half of IT decision makers and influencers consider it important/valuable to reach out beyond personal contacts to peers.• When utilizing social media for technology purchasing decisions, search is the most important information source during the early (awareness) stages of the buying cycle.• When utilizing social media for technology purchasing decisions, topic-based networks and personal networks are the most important sources of information in the consideration and evaluation stages.• IT decision-makers rated topic-based communities as the most important social media source of information throughout all stages of the purchase cycle.• There is an unmet need and significant opportunity for online social networks. All categories of IT decision-makers and influencers expressed a need for more online networking communities.Clearly, it is possible to reach IT decision makers in the digital world. Knowing this, I think the discussion now centers around where is your ideal customer footprint online and how can you get in front of them? I’ll be looking into this next. Complete detail from these surveys is available online at:ITtoolbox/PJA November 2007 Survey Results and ITtoolbox/PJA August 2008 Survey Results .

There’s all this buzz about using Web 2.0 technologies and social media marketing. Now more than ever, since these tactics are less expensive than traditional marketing campaigns. I’m sure you’re hearing about it. But in a B2B world there is confusion around the relevance of social media . Should we care? Should we care enough to think about how we can leverage social media in our marketing mix? So I went looking for information that could help make a business case for social media in general. Here’s what I found: Read More »

List procurement is top of mind for me. Not only because I’ve recently been working with a few partners on purchasing lists to support their direct marketing campaigns. Mostly because lists are a representation of your target audience. No matter how good your product or service is, if you are marketing to the wrong individuals you will fail. Identifying the correct target audience for your marketing campaigns is the most important thing you can do to make sure your campaign succeeds. Some say that 50-70% of your campaign success is dependent upon your list. The challenge is acquiring a list that will help you meet your demand generation goals. Unfortunately, list procurement is not an exact science. There’s no magic bullet… no database that specifically houses contacts that exactly match your target audience. So what can you do? Here are some practical tips from “The Complete Guide to Direct Marketing” by Chet Meisner.13 Rules for Working with Lists:1. Know whom you want to reach, not just what address. Addresses or companies don’t buy products. People do. Addresses can give you information about the characteristics of your target audience, but you will need to have a good idea of the characteristics of the individual person you are trying to reach. Your marketing will be viewed by a person, not an address or a company.2. The more you know the better. Collect as much information as you can about your targeted individual. There are mountains of information available on both consumers and businesses. Much of it is in different places and you will probably have to look around to collect and compile what you want. Read More »