Revenue Strategies

The new technologies and processes being implemented by leading BtoB companies means marketing and sales are more reliant than ever on content. However, in one of the closing keynote sessions at the recent SiriusDecisions Summit, Jay Gaines, Service Director for Demand Creation Strategies at SiriusDecisions, pointed out that most BtoB companies are lacking accountability, strategy and measurement when it comes to content.

“If content is king, then people treat that king pretty badly,” Gaines said during a session titled, Content: The Heart of Effective Demand Creation. Illustrating his point, Gaines conducted a poll of the audience that found 76% of attendees cited content as critical to their demand creation efforts. However, responding to a follow-up question, 41% of attendees said lack of budget and resources or the lack of a content strategy provided significant hurdles to their efforts.

At the recent SiriusDecisions conference in Arizon, DemandGen Report sat down with David Lewis, founder and CEO of DemandGen International, one of the leading automation and consultancies in the industry. A pioneer in the space, Lewis was one of the early adopters of marketing automation during his days as a marketing executive, and has helped guide the successful rollout of these tools and processes and a number of large enterprises.

During the discussion, Lewis shared insights into the changing use cases for marketing automation, as companies are now going deeper into lead management to track marketing performance and the “cold to close” impact of marketing on revenue and closed business.  Tune in to this 7-minute discussion for keen insights into the changing landscape of marketing operations and lead management from one of the top thought leaders in the industry.

The annual SiriusDecisions Summit has become the bellwether event to track the progress and maturation of demand generation practices in the BtoB sector. And based on the presentations from this year’s event, held last week in Scottsdale, AZ, major BtoB companies are now realizing significant payoffs from their investments in sales and marketing alignment and lead management tools and processes. 

The event provided three days of best practices, benchmarks, case studies and proof points, all demonstrating how Bb-to-B b companies that have made investments in integrated lead development, demand management and measurement are outperforming their competitors.

Creating content for nurturing campaigns is a challenge even for season marketers, therefore any case studies outlining success in this area a hot commodity. A recent webinar, hosted by the B2B Lead Roundtable blog featured ECI Telecom’s Associate VP of Marketing Programs Michelle Mogelson Levy, sharing a great nurturing roadmap for marketers.

The webinar, titled “How ECI Telecom Developed a Content-Marketing Program from Concept to Completion and the Surprising Results,” explored the success the company had it with its lead nurturing campaign.

While ECI was already having success marketing to its targeted database of prospects, Levy pointed out that the company was looking to generate more leads in new markets for its broader base of technology solutions. 

In a buyer-drive marketplace, even the biggest brands are increasingly turning to technology to understand the critical importance of forecasting customer needs and demands more effectively.

According to the IBM 2010 Global CEO Study, 95% of top performing organizations identified getting closer to customers as their most important strategic initiative over the next five years. This is especially true for IBM, as the company’s approach to value creation required an extraordinarily deep knowledge of customer business processes that can only built upon intimate, trusted relationships.