Nurture The Leads In Your Sales Funnel – On Social Media

Filed under: B2B Social media, Lead Lifecycle Management, Lead Nurturing — Merlin Francis @ 4:12 AM

Today, in most B2B companies, the marketing departments engage in Lead nurturing programs. Lead nurturing in fact becomes an integral part of the Lead Management process for those companies which use Marketing Automation solutions. In both these scenarios, emails emerge as the most popular lead nurturing channel.

According to the November 2008 Aberdeen Group research report, “Lead Nurturing: The Secret to Successful Lead Generation,” the top three channels used are email (65%), telephone calls (44%) and direct mail (26%).

But if you are a marketer who is looking at unconventional ways to nurture your Leads, you can explore a more informal channel like social media for Lead nurturing.

Social media adds a whole new dimension to your Lead nurturing process. It allows you to connect with your Lead on a more informal ground and reach him at multiple locations rather than just in his inbox.

Let me clarify here, I am not talking about your social media marketing activities, where you reach out to your wider prospective customer base, informing them about your offerings, but about Leads which have already expressed some level of interest in your product, by visiting your website or by responding to your email and are already in your sales funnel.

Let us find out how we can nurture the Leads in our sales funnel on social media. For now I will restrict myself to Twitter and Linkedin, as both are quite popular in the B2B space.

If your company uses a marketing automation 2.0 solution like LeadForce1, you will find it easier to adopt social media for Lead nurturing. LeadForce1 tracks reverse IP address of Enterprise visitors to provide you with the visiting Enterprise’s identity. It also, adds probable names of individuals from the Enterprise who could have visited your website, which it decides by analyzing the intent of the visitor while he browsed the website.

Now that you have the initial set of data on your Lead – the company name and the names of some of the company executives who researched your site – start by researching the presence of your Lead on social media – Company profiles and profiles of the suggested executives. Once you have this data in place – you can do the following:

On Twitter

• Use your company’s corporate (Twitter) profile to follow the other company and the concerned executive’s Twitter profile. Just in case you are not able to find your Lead’s company on Twitter search, go to their company website and look for the ‘connect with us’ on Twitter tab.

• If the company is looking for a solution similar to yours, there is a high chance of getting a follow back, if you do, don’t forget to thank them by sending a direct message. If you don’t get a follow-back, don’t be disheartened, at least you can keep an eye on your Lead’s tweets and look out for opportunities where you can reply with relevant information or customize your other Lead Nurturing programs further, based on any info you find in your Lead’s tweet stream.

• If your marketing automation solution provider, provides data on the intent of the Enterprise visitor, then you can look within your lead nurturing resources (case studies, research paper, whitepaper etc.) and share the relevant link that matches the intent/interest expressed by  the Lead  on your site. For eg – ‘@Leadname – thought you might be interested in this information on ‘how to score your leads‘.’ You see a little bit of personalized messaging will get you noticed.

• Be nice, be courteous, now that you are following your lead, take the time to read their posts and share (Re-tweet) if you find something interesting. You will slowly be able to build an online camaraderie with your Lead.

P.S. – While you might be tempted to convey to your Lead that – ” I know, what you did on my website”, I would seriously advice you to keep aside your marketing instincts and just try adhering to the laws of social media sharing – ‘Stop being overtly promotional.’

On Linkedin

• Linkedin, now allows you to follow companies you want to, so go to the Corporate company profile of your Lead and start following them. Companies keep a tab on who is following them on this professional network.

• Next look out for the profiles of people whose names have been suggested by the marketing automation solution you use. If your provider does not facilitate this information, check out the Lead’s Linkedin company profile and see which employees fit the target audience criteria for your offerings, visit their profiles.

• Check if they are part of your extended network or if you both share any groups – If yes, you can either ask a common acquaintance to introduce you or if you share a group, you can send a direct request, asking them to join your network. If none of the above applies in your case, you might as well join a group which the Lead follows and then send a request.

• If your request gets accepted and the Lead adds you to his network, send a simple thank you email, and invite the Lead to join your group (specific to your product/solution space). Just leave it at that. Please, I repeat please don’t send a long email explaining what your company does or a sales pitch unless asked for by the Lead himself. Trust me such emails are quite a put off.

• Join a group or two which is common to your Lead and common to your space. Keep posting relevant. It is the easiest way to get noticed.

• Also keep looking out for any questions asked by your Lead on the Linkedin forum, don’t forget to answer if the query is relevant to your space.

P.S. – It is good to keep your Linkedin profile up to date, complete with professional details and references. Usually people look up a person’s profile before adding them to their professional network. You don’t want to be perceived as shady or not good enough!

Conditions Apply

Social media Lead Nurturing works best for those companies, which are already doing social media marketing and have established their authority across these forums. For you to get noticed by your Lead there are some social media must haves

- Have a Corporate Twitter account, which is actively updated and has a decent number of followers

- Own and drive a Linkedin Group, which is on the industry space you function in or on the niche technology you offer. Ensure, that there is enough buzz happening in this group

- Have a genuine and detailed Linkedin profile in place. Remember on social media people usually connect with your virtual persona, it is important to create an honest one

- Be quick with your responses

Lead nurturing as we all know is the process of helping our Leads understand our offering better in the research and decision making stage, so that our company figures in their list of  vendors when they finally get down to buying. While emails are a great tool for lead nurturing, considering the amount of junk we receive in our inbox, sometimes it is not as effective and goes unnoticed. Social Media fills that gap, giving us the opportunity to make the process of nurturing Leads informal, relevant and contextual.

Image Courtesy – Bestiario Gallery’s Flickr Photo stream

The Giants in the Marketing Technology Landscape

Filed under: Future trends, Leadership Views, Marketing Automation — Shreesha Ramdas @ 10:43 AM

IBM recently announced that it has entered an agreement to purchase Unica in a cash transaction worth approximately $480 million.

The multiple IBM is paying for Unica is very encouraging (IBM is offering $21 a share to Unica shareholders, more than double the share’s closing price on Thursday last week, on the Nasdaq Stock market and the highest level the stock has ever seen). Post acquisition, Unica’s software unit will work with IBM’s business analytics and optimization consulting organization – a team of 5,000 consultants and a network of analytics solution centers.

This is IBM’s 8th marketing and data related deal since 2008 – Cognos, iLog, Lombardi, Initiate, SPSS, Sterling Software, Coremetrics and Unica. IBM’s acquisition of Coremetrics, a leader in Web analytics software was just 2 weeks back and interestingly Coremetrics shares quite a few overlapping features with Unica.

Suresh Vittal and Joe Stanhope from Forrester in a recent blog post on this acquisition commented, that Unica’s purchase reinforces IBM’s assertion that they are committing to marketing solutions and the CMO. They feel that this acquisition is more about Unica’s marketing automation and operations solutions than about the Web analytics products.

IBM had mentioned earlier that Coremetrics will operate as a unit of IBM’s application and integration middleware division, essentially in Webspehere family of products as an analytics component. It seems IBM’s approach towards this space is to have its  application server as the central piece powering all the key functionalities on the website, while it continues to control the ecosystem and protect the interests of its stakeholders.

Now let us look at Adobe, who just added Day Software in July this year along with their last year’s Omniture acquisition. The Omniture acquisition in 2009 made  Adobe very strong on measurement of all engagement elements of the website – website itself, video, call to actions etc. With Day Software, Adobe adds Web content management (WCM), strong digital asset management (DAM) and social collaboration. So Adobe is moving in terms of making web authoring as central piece and continues to assemble components of the online customer engagement ecosystem.

Now these are just 2 among handful of other big players moving into this space – ECM (Oracle/Stellent, Open Text/Vignette), marketing software (Alterian/MediaSurface) and enterprise search (Autonomy/Interwoven).

Overall large companies moving into the marketing technology landscape makes this space interesting in terms of predicting where the overlap of strategies and approaches will happen next.

“Why B2B Leads from Social Media Are More like Joe Biden than Lady Gaga”

Filed under: B2B Social Media Marketing, Lead Qualification, Lead analytics, Opportunity Generation — Merlin Francis @ 4:03 AM

Did the unusual headline catch your attention and perk your curiosity? Quite out of place for a B2B blog post and even more for a B2B Webinar – which talks about qualifying and converting social media leads!

Well, there is no denying that Lady Gaga is taking the world by storm, she is everywhere – more than 10 million fans on Facebook and  5 million followers on twitter. For long she has reigned the trending topic space on twitter and is now being touted as one of the biggest phenomenons of our times. You may like her or hate her, you certainly  cannot ignore her.

And just like Lady Gaga, Social media has rocked the B2B World, there is enough that’s being written about it, strategies, methodologies, success stories, tips, measuring ROI. It doesn’t really matter, if you think social media is overrated and fails to meet the established definitions of B2B marketing, there is no way you can ignore it. According to most online marketers, analysts and soothsayers, it is the ‘it’ thing; If your are not on the social media boat yet, you probably don’t even deserve a mention.

Having said that, as companies who are accountable for every penny spent in the name of marketing, measuring it up against the returns it brings in, it is reasonable to question, if social media is really all the things it is projected to be? And if it is, how do you make sure, that as a company you too benefit from this phenomenal social revolution.

Several research and survey reports have established the fact that social media does help in creating brand awareness and in increasing the traffic to your website. Now if your company uses a sales opportunity tracking or Lead analytics solutions, you might be able to track the leads that come from referral sites (social media platforms). These leads can then undergo the regular process of lead scoring and lead nurturing depending on the interest and intent expressed by them on the site.

But then social media is not just about getting your potential customers to your website and then tracking them, its more about interacting with them on a neutral platform, engaging them and educating them about your company and its offerings, in a setting they are comfortable with and like to frequent.

In this context, social media takes a whole new meaning – a ‘like’ on Facebook fan page, a reweet or follow on twitter, a comment on the Linkedin group are all instances of your prospect showing some interest in your company and what it has to say. But can these small acts of liking and sharing be a reason enough to qualify a social media follower as a potential lead? Now that is a million dollar question and one that Neil Glassman, a digital and linear media marketing strategist, intends to answer in the upcoming LeadForce1 Webinar on August 19, 2010.

Apart from these signals of interest expressed on social media platforms there are also explicit requests for help, more information or suggestion, which if tracked can easily convert into sale opportunities.

In a post on his blog Buzz Marketing for Technology, Paul Dunay writes – “There are several types of conversations that you can encounter out on the social web anything from a complaint to a compliment to what I like to call the Expressed Need. The best way to watch for expressed needs is to look for keywords often used to describe those needs. People make known what they are doing and often ask the general public for advice when they are about to make a purchase. Both of these situations provide an opportunity to reach out with an offer of assistance, information, or even a free demo or sample. People appreciate when a company listens, and they don’t mind offers of assistance, especially when done in a helpful, friendly way.”

And mind you, your competitor is watching out for such expressed needs and responding to such leads on social media – to cite an example, a simple query on one of the groups in Linkedin about – “What program or company do you use to handle your e-mail marketing?” Garnered close to 500 responses, each respondent trying to push the product they use or promote.

So, while you might think social media is outlandish, difficult to measure and hard to keep track of, the truth is – social media today means serious business and a more healthy sales pipeline.

If you are still not convinced, register now for the LeadForce1 Webinar – “Why B2B Leads from Social Media Are More like Joe Biden than Lady Gaga” – Find out how to qualify and convert leads from social media.

Decode Your Online Leads

Filed under: Lead analytics — Merlin Francis @ 2:48 AM

Lead generation and Lead management programs are only as good as the rate of conversions they ensure for a company, and the most difficult part is, there is no set formula to guarantee conversions.

But, if you have a Lead management program, that takes into account the intent expressed by a Lead in the different phases of decision making, you might just be able to devise your customized formula for increasing the rate of conversions in your company.

Consciously or unconsciously, every visitor on your website leaves behind a set of clues, which if decoded, can easily convey a lot of information on the Lead and his intentions. This post tries to decode some of these clues, which provide greater insight on a visiting Lead.

Finding Visitor Type

Enterprise buying decisions are taken by multiple people, hence to understand the stage of decision making process an enterprise buyer is in, it is imperative to understand the roles of different people who participate in the decision making process. Enterprise visitors on any B2B website can be broadly divided into three types – The early researcher ( research analysts, managers etc.), the influencers (Senior managers, Directors) and the decision makers ( Vice Presidents, C-level executives).

Since the role of each of these visitors is different in the decision making process, looking at the kind of content researched and the time spent on the site can give an idea on the role of the visitors in decision making process and the stage of decision making their company could be in.

Understanding the buying cycle

Going further, all B2B buyers go through an elaborate buying cycle, before they finally purchase a product or service. Multiple visits from an enterprise, showcasing interest in different types of content on a website can clearly indicate the phase of the buying cycle the company is in. The different phases of a typical B2B buying cycle are, research, awareness, evaluation and purchase. Understanding the phase of decision making a visitor is in, is important because it helps you plan for timely nurturing, engagement or sales pitching.

Finding Intent

While browsing a website, enterprise visitors usually spend more time on content and information, that closely meets their intent. For eg: In the research stage - the person would spend time getting an overview of what the company is into, what are the solutions they offer, people behind the company, news coverages, customer testimonials etc., in the awareness stage, they spend more time understanding your product, by reading whitepapers, user guides etc.,  in the evaluation stage, the kind of information people look for is a free-trial, price lists, feature comparison charts etc., in the purchase stage, it is more about interacting with the sales representative of the company and finding out about any discounts, offers and closure and delivery details.

Analyzing the time spent by a visitor on different types of content on your website can show, how serious the buyer is and help you pursue the Lead more proactively.

Analyzing the Keywords

The keywords and hyperlinked text clicked by visitors to reach your website and on your website, are cues that can help determine the purpose of their visit. For example, an early researcher may use keywords such as ‘what is’, ‘about’ etc. whereas, someone who is more familiar with your products and is making a more conscious visit will use keywords such as ‘features’, ‘benefits’ etc. and someone who is ready to buy from you, will use words such as ‘buy’, ‘price’ etc.

By correlating all the above factors, it will be easy for you to decide on the ‘Lead Type’ of the visitors and the stage of decision making they are in. Based on this analysis you can decide on your next plan of action, whether to wait for the lead to come back and perform more activities on your website that shows their seriousness or if they are already at the later stage of decision making then to initiate contact and the lead nurturing process.

Putting a process together that helps the marketing guys to de-code your company’s online leads can be a great way of ensuring your company finds the intent of a lead and starts nurturing it in time for you to make an impact on the buyer and ensure a higher rate of conversion.

Also, analyzing your leads and their behavior on your site can help you re-evaluate your website and make it more intuitive for visitors, by grouping information searched by different Lead types in one place or by leading a visitor through different stages of information in such a way that it helps them progress to the next stage of the buying cycle.

Is offering Free Trial ‘Green’?

Filed under: B2B marketing, Lead Generation, Marketing Automation — Shreesha Ramdas @ 8:00 PM

When we talk of popular and effective ‘Call to Actions’, free trials have always, managed to make the list, in both the B2C and B2B industries.

Here are few questions and thoughts which are usually considered while offering “Free Trial” options on a corporate website -

- Placement effectiveness of ‘Free Trial’ call to action?

Free trial generally is the primary call to action and gets the top billing in terms of placement – above fold along with the key value proposition or image. Sometimes it is even repeated twice in a smaller print below the fold or on the top along with the login.

- Do ‘Free Trials’  give away too much?

Of Roaring Lions and Honest Marketers…

Filed under: B2B Marketing Online — Merlin Francis @ 12:15 PM

Early this week Shreesha, our COO, forwarded a story to the marketing team with a subject line ‘When to advertise’ – the  story read,

‘Said a tiger to a lion as they drank beside a pool, “Tell me, why do you roar like a fool?” “That’s not foolish,” replied the lion with a twinkle in his eyes. “They call me king of all the beasts because I advertise.”

A rabbit heard them talking and ran home like a streak. He thought he would try the lion’s plan, but his roar was a squeak. A fox came to investigate – and had his lunch in the woods.

The moral: When you advertise, be sure you’ve got the goods!’

The story made me realize – Irrespective of the years of work experience and expertise we may have as marketers, our success solely depends on how good the product/solution we are trying to market is!

The moral of the story gains greater significance in the case of start-ups and SMBs where  building a brand is usually governed by how innovative and out of the box the offering is.

Big brands have it a little easy, but to stay on top, even they have to continuously  challenge their previous achievements. For them leveraging previous product success to propel future launches might be easy, but in a fast evolving market their long term success will depend on the quality and efficiency of their latest product.

If we look back, before social media became a way of life for most people around the world – marketing was definitely easier, you needed to know your communication channels and have the money and the resources to weave a web of words and creatives to attract your end customer.

Since customer complaints and feedbacks were sent individually to a company, stories of incompetencies or mismatch in product value projections and customer expectations would hardly make news unless they were of significant proportions or concerned a large customer base.

Today building brands is a tough job, with almost anyone who has a voice having an open forum, to compliment and to slander  and everyone who matter to your business – competitors, prospects and other stakeholders watching you so closely , even the minutest slip can ruin years of efforts and your company’s success story.

We live in times where tweets and status updates decide the topics of discussion around the world – spreading information like fire, sans boundaries and nationalities, and putting up all our claims for scrutiny by hundreds and thousands, with or without our consent. Watching our words and sticking to facts, is a survival tip we all can use.

On a more positive note, I feel social media has made us marketers a honest lot and also quite creative. After all, we do manage to effectively describe our offerings in 140 characters – minus the exaggeration and loud make believe facts.

Social media has also multiplied our reach by providing us with a huge marketing force, which only expects a great customer experience for spreading the good word.

The truth is, as marketers times might be tough, when it comes to building and sustaining a brand, but we are lucky to do marketing in the era of Web 2.0, where we don’t need loads of money or the best advertising real estate to ensure, a lot of people talk about our brand. All it takes is a powerful and honest campaign that backs a product which promises a terrific user experience……

Image courtesy – http://home.disney.go.com/

Blog to Generate Leads

Filed under: B2B Marketing Online, Lead Generation — Merlin Francis @ 4:32 AM

The importance of Corporate blogging is known to all, but few companies are able to use this medium as a lead generation tool.

Yes, corporate blogs are an excellent resource for Lead generation. The advantages of Corporate blogging are far too many to be ignored by any b2b company which is trying to build visibility for its brand and its offerings or trying to attract prospects.

Talk of any online brand building exercise and Corporate blogs will emerge as the cheapest, most effective and easily manageable solution. Blogs help with Public Relations and SEO; Blogs are great when it comes to building thought leadership or as medium to inform your prospects about your offerings. Corporate Blogs if used by Company Heads can also become the voice of the company in many cases, with the blog content getting quoted in other forms of media.

Now isn’t that worth the effort of sharing your views on your industry, factors affecting it, technological advancements influencing it and your experiences functioning in this niche space?

However, before you implement this suggestion and decide to start your company blog – consider these tips, to ensure, your blog is not just a company mouthpiece but also a lead generation resource.

Name your blog

Having a distinct name for your blog is a good idea. It gives the blog a distinct identity. However, before you zero in on a name think through, the name will become a part of your company’s branding exercise, it cannot and should not be changed. Also the name should indicate the kind of content the blog will offer its readers, it helps in remaining focussed and getting across to your target audience.

Have a Blog Strategy

Like any other marketing initiative even blogs need a strategic approach. At the start itself you should be very clear on your blog’s end objective. If you function in a niche space it could be about educating your readers about your industry and the value it brings to its customers. Or it could be targeted at putting across how your offerings are different from similar products/services available in the industry. Having an objective helps in streamlining the content that goes on the blog. Revisiting the objective and revising it can be part of the plan, but having one at the start is essential.

Decide on who blogs

A blog needs regularly updated and original content, it needs to be fed. Ensure you have multiple writers to keep it updated if managing it single handedly on a regular basis is a problem. Also, it would be good to have some of your senior management contribute to the Company blog. Apart from the varied experience and expertise they bring on board, they also convert your blog into a place for media to pick up your company views and quotes on industry relevant issues.

SEO Optimize

Ensure you use keywords relevant to your space in your blog content and then link back these keywords to SEO optimized pages on your website. Search Engines give blog content more priority in search results, this could be because blogs usually have original content and are informative in nature.

Syndicate with other blog sites

Building a following for Blogs takes time, so to ensure, your content reaches a larger audience from the start – get your blogs on sites that syndicate content, like CustomerThink and Utilizer. This will ensure your content reaches a wider reader base who regularly follow content on these sites. These content syndications also help in improving you SEO rankings resulting in better search results

Popularize your content

Use social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin to promote your blog content. In a recent B2B social media report by LeadForce1 it was found that blogs topped the pages of interest for enterprise visitors who came in from social media sites Facebook and Twitter. However if you want other people to further share your content with their followers, ensure, it is not too promotional in nature and also there is a net-takeaway for the reader.

Respond to comments

If you have people leaving genuine comment on your blog, acknowledge and respond. It not only helps you connect with your readers and potential leads, but is also a great way to get feedback on the content you post and its usefulness to your target audience.

Now that you know how useful and easy it is to have a corporate blog, start soon and add one more Lead generation resource to your company’s marketing arsenal.

Image courtesy – LeadForce1 Martoons

For more marketing cartoons visit – http://www.leadforce1.com/martoons/

Why ‘Sales Ready’ is Important in Lead Generation Equation

Filed under: Lead Generation, Lead Lifecycle Management, Sales – Marketing Alignment — Shreesha Ramdas @ 11:59 PM

Ask Marketing folks what ’sales ready Leads’ really mean and you will find a smirk on their faces. Every marketing & sales guy has his own definition of what makes a Lead ’sales ready’.

Perhaps this is the single most important factor contributing to the great sales & marketing divide. Hence in a Lead generation process it is very important for marketing folks to pull in the sales team and establish the criteria for ’sales ready Leads’. They should even establish a metrics of sales accepted Leads to sales rejected leads and also put together a Lead nurturing process and research process to convert rejected leads to accepted Leads.

The number of sales ready Leads in a company’s Lead funnel is not only a measure of the company’s secure financial future but also a measure of how effective it’s marketing and Lead scoring processes are. Sales ready Leads do not fall from the sky and every company needs a multi-level strategy to ensure there is enough ‘production’ of sales ready Leads.

A sales-ready Lead can be defined as any prospect which is evaluating solution for a business problem, and you (your company) has a product/solution which fits this situation

There are several Lead generation tools available in the market today, which promise to keep your sales funnel flowing with Leads. The most popular of these are the ones which either focus on email campaigns or web visits with the key objective as converting websites into a source for generating Leads.

Are all the Leads identified by this approach ready to take a sales call? Most of the Leads might be still researching the space and will prompt your sales team to call them as either suspects or soft Leads.

There is often a disparity between the sales and marketing definitions of a sales ready Lead.

A sales person’s definition of a sales ready Lead: “A sales ready Lead is any prospect that has a business problem your company can solve at a price it can afford, now.”

A marketer’s definition: “A sales ready Lead is any prospect that has achieved sufficient lead rank over time, based on pre-defined criteria expressing his interest to buy now or in the future.”

It would help if both the sales and marketing teams can pre-define the criteria for qualifying the Leads which they would consider as sales ready. For example Leads which have achieved sufficient ranking over time and have expressed their interest to buy now, can be agreed upon by both teams as sales ready.

Both Sales and Marketing must also agree on the criteria that would indicate a Lead’s sale readiness. Each company has its own definition of what makes a sales ready Lead. Here are a few questions to help define a sales ready Lead for your company:

Authority - What is the job title of the inquirer or their department of responsibility? If you sell your products primarily to purchasing managers, it’s unlikely that a sales ready Lead would have the job title of administrative assistant. The Lead management system should be configured to screen out non-applicable job titles.

Timeline - How soon does this inquirer plan to buy the product? The sooner they plan to buy the hotter the Lead. The Lead management system should instantly distribute hot leads to the appropriate sales person.

Budget – Does the inquirer have budget money set aside for the purchase of this product? If not, the Lead may not be ready to go to a sales person. Instead, we recommend nurturing this Lead until they are ready to buy.

This is where Lead scoring becomes an integral part of Lead Management. It helps companies go after quality rather than quantity and optimize their resources and efforts in pursuing more qualified Leads, who have a higher chance of converting to sales.

Quality over quantity - However less the number of leads coming down their funnel, Companies should stick to pursuing only quality Leads, or else they may waste a lot of time pursuing leads which have no intention to buy, when they could have used the time and resources more productively.

Type of sales - Depending on the behavior and the interest expressed by a Lead, the company should be in a position to define how easy or complex the sale is going to be. This is to ensure they are ready with the right kind of information and resources which would be required to close a sale. Often the ability to misjudge the sale readiness of a Lead can lead to delays in sharing appropriate information, pushing the lead further away from a closure.

Re-defining the Lead Funnel – Marketing teams in most companies generate Leads and pass them to sales for prospecting. While it is important to have a steady flow of Leads from marketing to sales, what’s even more important is to ensure that these are “quality” Leads. Fewer, good quality, sales ready Leads result in better prospecting, higher lead conversion rates and ultimately a better marketing ROI.

Finding, nurturing and pursuing a sales ready Lead requires the joint efforts of the marketing and sales teams in any company. Using marketing automation software that includes an effective Lead scoring engine, marketing teams should identify leads that are not sales ready and retain them in the nurturing funnel and keep nurturing them till they become sales ready. In a similar fashion, sales teams, should send back the Leads that they perceive are not yet sales ready into the Lead nurturing funnel, so marketing can continue nurturing them till they are ready.

Today social media is fast emerging as a place for finding a number of sales ready Leads. All, companies need is a close ear on the buzz created on social media platforms. Customers and Clients are openly expressing their needs for specific solutions over public forums and social networking sites, following those who fit the BAT (budget, authority and Timeline) criteria and responding to them in time and with appropriate information can drive sale ready Leads down your lead funnel immediately. Leads which may not even need to undergo the nurturing process.

The point is how active the company is on these social media platforms which is frequented by its target customers and wether it has a plan in place to respond to such sale ready Leads in an open forum or to connect with them otherwise.

Facebook And Twitter Not For Generating B2B Leads!

Filed under: B2B Marketing Online, Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing — Merlin Francis @ 1:53 AM

Social Media is witnessing a phenomenal increase in the number of Enterprise users. B2B Companies are finally realizing the great potential offered by social media in closing the distance between them and their customers. It is no surprise then, to see companies incorporating at least some bit of social media activities into their overall marketing plans.

I personally believe, that social media’s exponential growth and the benefits it offers are hard to ignore, even for the most conservative marketers.

However the ROI for social media efforts by B2B companies strictly depends on how they use the medium. Being a social media evangelist, I  encourage clients to take up social media activities. Having worked with many B2B companies, assisting them with their social media efforts, I have come to believe that social media yields best results when it is used by B2B companies for nurturing Leads rather than for generating Leads. Especially the more popular channels like Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin.

A recent research report by LeadForce1, on how effective social media is, when it comes to generating leads, reaffirms my belief in this theory.  Lead here is defined as an enterprise visitor.

According to the report – of the 4,365,377 visitors to the 261 B2B websites that were part of the LeadForce1 research during Feb 2010 to April 2010 – 1,418,171 were enterprise visitors. Of these enterprise visitors to the sites, close to 14% were from social media sites.

Linkedin topped the list of social media sites – sending the maximum number of leads, Wikipedia came second followed by Twitter and then Facebook.

While the initial findings of the report established the popularity of these social media sites among enterprise visitors – it was the second part of  the report which really established the use case for these sites from a B2B perspective.

Here the research focussed on finding the intent of the enterprise visitors who came in from each of these 4 social media sites by analyzing the pages of interest once the visitors were on the site . [In the post I talk only of the 3 social networking sites (Linkedin, Facebook & Twitter) since, Wikepedia articles are not within a company's control and cannot be considered a definite marketing tool. Probably it is this non-promotional nature of its content which makes Wikipedia such great lead generation tool.]

People who came in from Linkedin – visited the contact us and management page the most, followed by careers – clearly indicating that they were interested in knowing more about the people behind the company rather than its offerings.

People who came in from Facebook – mostly visited the About us page and the Corporate blog.

People who came from Twitter like Facebook were most interested in the Corporate blog followed by the About us page, indicating that both Facebook and Twitter visitors were interested in the content the company had to offer and the people behind the content.

The research also found that the average percentage of single page visit was higher for Facebook and Twitter visitors, indicating that most visitors just visited the content link shared by the company on these networking sites.

The research establishes the fact that social media is a place, people mostly frequent for ‘CONTENT’. This is true, in fact all social media advocates never fail to emphasize the importance of good content for social media marketing success. The importance of blogs as a social media tool is known to all!

Quality content which answers queries and helps in taking informed decisions is also the backbone of the Lead nurturing process for any B2B vendor – which is why social media as an independent content sharing platform, with its list of credible influencers and promoters has become an important part of the research process for any B2B buyer.

Today when B2B companies are exploring various solutions like marketing automation platforms and social CRM applications – in a bid to influence their target customers in the early stages of their buying decisions – social media emerges as an excellent place to present a 360 degree view on a company’s offerings, services, and overall customer satisfaction shared informally on a neutral platform – away from the company’s home ground – its website.

However, social media success is relative to how well companies and marketers balance their content between providing company related information and third party neutral views, word of mouth endorsements and customer experiences.

The LeadForce1 research confirms that social media channels like Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter should be seen more as tools that assist marketing, sales and inside sales teams in B2B companies, gather more information on their prospects, to understand their motivations and to push unbiased content which helps their target customers, take informed decisions.

The problem with most marketers is that, the moment they find a new medium or a new channel which is popular with their target audience, they make it the epicenter of their promotional efforts.

But if you check – the most successful social media campaigns were those which stayed away from self promotion and offered value to their readers and followers in the form of rich content, research, experience or sheer entertainment.

Of Hunters and Farmers – Lead Cultivation Comes Of Age

Filed under: Lead Cultivation — Shreesha Ramdas @ 10:41 AM

It is interesting to note how two seemingly unrelated words, thrown together, will in due course often gain acceptance and acquire an industry’s stamp of approval.  I bring this up because I recently came across the term; “Lead Cultivation” and it got me thinking about the meaning of the phrase. I also recall a conversation with a friend who runs a Marketing Automation company about how they started the term ‘Lead Nurturing’ and how it was not well received early on because it reminded people of something else, but today it is an accepted industry term. Likewise, I believe “Lead Cultivation” is a term that will be accepted in the Marketing Automation space because it has so much going for it.

For starters, Lead Cultivation can mean much more than lead nurturing because it implies a ’seeding’ process as a precursor to the reaping of a bountiful harvest . In a way, the whole lead management process is like farming when you think about it.  Farming has worked as analogy for years as sales professionals have been termed as either Hunters or Farmers with their key characteristics being:

The Hunter is the one who always “hunts” for the new opportunities. Hunters tend to be great at finding leads & assessing opportunities in part because they are outgoing and consultative in nature. They are great networkers and use their personal and business networks to good effect. Hunters also tend to be poor at followup and follow through.

The Farmer on the other hand is good at nurturing deeper relationships. Farmers usually discover opportunities within an existing framework. They are good collaborators and leverage the loyalty of their existing network because they look to create mutual win-win relationships.

“Lead Cultivation” can be an umbrella term covering; identifying lead sources, initiating lead source activity, initiating opportunity discovery, planning nourishment, executing lead nurturing and finally, lead harvesting.