From the category archives:

Lead Generation

10 Marketing Trends for 2011

The meaning of marketing continues to evolve and how that changes the way we engage with our customers. Trends are emerging in customer engagement, how we integrate data, how we leverage marketing analytics. As marketers, we are also seeing social media usage mature, changes in mobile marketing and increased conversation about customer privacy. Customer touchpoint becomes a priority and understanding how all of these trends can work together will be the key to marketing success in 2011.

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The Social Media Bandwagon Has Become a Supersonic Jet.

As a Social Media marketer with SIGMA Marketing Group, I am still amazed when I meet business savvy folks who have not yet adopted social media usage in any way, shape or form. There are varying degrees of usage and unique formulas for different business types and vertical markets, but I don’t care who you are… Social Media is here to stay, and will continue to evolve rapidly. I recently wrote an article on social media usage by industry, which focused primarily on B2B Social Media, but it provided some interesting insights about what industries have adopted social.

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Can Lead Generation Become More than “Frosting and Cherries?”

I recently called on a client and he described his vision of lead generation as “frosting and cherries.”  Let me explain.  His view is that the current state of lead generation is dead.  Salespeople in the “Internet world” have relied on leads from marketing which are neither good nor productive.  In his opinion, salespeople need [...]

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Understanding B2B Campaign Responses – Building a Methodology

SIGMA Marketing Group has recently completed an analysis of past B2B campaigns and we have discovered some important findings that are now guiding our campaign designs. We discovered that prospects respond at a significantly lower rate than customers. It’s also clear that response rates vary by the methodology used to conduct the marketing touch, with email prospecting consistently performing at the lowest response rate. We found that prospect response rates vary depending on the relationship the company has with the prospect, for example if the prospect is a past customer they are more likely to respond then other prospects.

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Leverage your groups on linked by sharing blog content and answering questions that your connections may be seeking information to. Groups are an excellent way to uncover prospects who may be in dire need of the services you provide. Groups can also provide some insight into who else is working in the same space you are for the same types of clients.

Cookie Cutter B2B Sales Methodologies Don’t Work.

No sales cycle should ever be looked at from a cookie cutter approach, but this is especially true and examining the B2B sales process. In B2B transactions, there is no way to fully predict the decision making hierarchy, as every organization has a different marketing or purchasing structure with unique buyer types. This can make your B2B marketing messaging a challenge.

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Call Center Optimization Through Better Marketing Analytics

In this case study, among the available prospect data records, only half were contacted each month, leaving the other half of the prospect data records untouched. The initial list selection was based on annual sales/revenue, which succeeded in eliminating the poorest performing prospects. However, those prospective customers were not further prioritized for their call center representatives to focus on the best prospects.

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Using Analytics to Drive Your Tweet Strategy

But even smarter than that – use your Web analytics to help you further define your microblogging strategy. Find out what keyterms are converting on your Web site and/or blog. Uncover which pages are generating the most leads and tap into those by building links through your microblogging activity. Monitor which Tweeters are sending traffic to your Web site or blog and through which keywords. Develop your strategies around your top influencers and top performing keywords.

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The Secret Sauce for Successful Marketing Campaigns

As the practice of marketing analytics is making a name for itself, and businesses are starting to catch on that they’ve been capturing all this great customer information. These same businesses are now starting to realize they should consider using it! If you are using predictive analytics to target your marketing campaigns, you should be seeing improvement in response rate from versus older campaigns where no predictive analytics were available. It is still common practice to send email campaigns or direct mail pieces to every contact in your list, hoping that mass distribution will lead to higher volume of responses.

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5 Ideas and More to Improve B2B Marketing Strategy

In the complex and competitive B2B marketplace, numerous strategies need to be deployed and coordinated to exceed revenue growth objectives. B2B Marketing Analytics should be considered as a foundation strategy to sales enablement and on-going opportunity qualification and sales funnel development.

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