This section highlight automation and enablement tools, features, functionality, tactics and strategies to optimize demand generation.
By Tony Tissot, Sr. Director of Marketing, eTrigue
An ever-larger slice of the billions spent on BtoB marketing is going to online marketing efforts; yet industry perspectives, including Raab Associates, assert that marketing automation adoption, while growing rapidly, still isn’t pervasive.
The Rock Annand Group, a BtoB marketing and sales consultancy, recently announced “The Ultimate ‘Live in 45’ Lead Nurturing Program,” a “guided implementation” for a lead nurturing campaign focused on the specific, practical steps to construct effective programs, beginning Nov. 1, 2011.
As BtoB marketers migrate to interactive strategies — including blogs, social, videos and webcasts — many struggle to bridge the gap between these efforts and actual lead generation. The missing link, according to Rock Annand President Henry Bruce, is a systematic, measurable approach that reliably generates leads, qualifies them and follows up with them in an appealing and effective fashion.
“Scattershot marketing brings little or no results,” Bruce said. “But if you line up all the right elements in a well-orchestrated program, you generate leads from the right audience, separate the unserious from the truly interested people and keep them engaged as you present them opportunities to buy. All along the way you’re watching and measuring so you get the greatest results not only this time, but in the future as well.”
By Michael Shanker, CEO & Director, Extraprise
In part two of our series we discussed how BtoB marketers are beginning to realize the value of customer intelligence and how it can provide actionable insight and optimize revenue, yet many continue to view the process as costly and complex.
By Michael Shanker, CEO & Director, Extraprise
Last week, in part one of our three part series, we examined how critical it is to understand your organization’s marketing maturity when it comes to creating an effective multi-channel marketing strategy.
Harte-Hanks, a direct marketing services provider, recently announced the commercial availability of The Demand Curve, a new insight-driven tool for technology markets. The solution builds on core areas including professional and business marketing data management, content development, digital and social conversations, and sales and marketing funnel management.
Extraprise, a provider of revenue optimization services for BtoB and BtoC enterprises, announced a 30% increase in revenue for its i2i demand generation services in the company’s fiscal year 2011.
The company reported that strong demand for high volume, complex multi-channel marketing campaigns drove average annual contract values higher by 16%.
During fiscal year 2011, Extraprise saw increased demand for its i2i marketing service offerings, particularly in marketing operations and lead generation and nurturing.
By Michael Shanker, CEO & Director, Extraprise
For many BtoB marketing organizations, implementing multi-channel marketing to optimize revenue at the right time in the customer life cycle is an imperative, but an elusive goal.
BtoB corporate web sites are vastly underperforming in terms of lead generation, new research shows. A vast majority (80%) of BtoB organizations surveyed indicated that their web sites are not performing to maximum lead generation potential, according to the 2011 Demandbase National Marketing and Sales Study, released today.
While more than half (60%) of respondents reported that they know and understand their prospects well, marketers are still struggling to understand how prospect behavior correlates to lead generation.
Demandbase partnered with Focus Expert Network to conduct the study via online channels in May 2011. Based on the results of the survey, corporate web sites remain the primary hub to harness customer interest driven by online marketing activities.
The Sales Development Representative (SDR) role in BtoB organizations is considered critical because these team members spend the most amount of time with prospects.
The skills required for inbound follow-up are different from targeted outbound prospecting, therefore splitting the SDR team, can help BtoB organizations “divide and conquer” efforts, according to Jason Hekl, Principal of Demand A Lot Marketing. Hekl shared key strategies for marketers looking to convert prospects into customers in a recent webinar hosted by True Influence titled, “DIY Demand Generation: Scrappy Marketing Strategies for Filling the Funnel Faster.”
According to Hekl, the success of demand generation hinges on the efficient allocation of inbound and outbound marketing responsibilities among team members.
