I was reading an interesting survey "B2B Marketing Budgets, Strategies, Tactics and Trends" (download a copy here) which looks at the changes in the marketing mix for companies.

The survey looks at tactics for both lead generation and brand awareness for B2B companies.

From a lead generation perspective, the top tactics in terms of effectiveness are:

1) Inside sales and telemarketing are considered the most effective tactic for lead generation (47.6% rated them "highly effective")

2) Trade shows and conferences are the next most effective (moving up to 2nd place from 3rd in the previous year's survey)

3) Executive breakfasts and events fell from 1st place to 3rd place in the survey.

Another thing that stood out to me is that marketers from large companies consistently rated inside sales and telemarketing as highly effective in generating leads whilst smaller companies are more likely to use lower-cost digital tactics for lead generation (search marketing, websites, podcasts) even though "these tactics are not among those they rate most effective"

Is it me or does that not make any sense?

Why use less effective tactics if they don't work as well?

Well, the more you dig into the report you realise that it's mainly an issue of budgets being squeezed and marketers trying to get more from less.

And, on top of that, it's these low-cost digital channels that are seeing the greatest increase in spend.

According to the report, the most widely used digital tactics are company websites (95.4%, which makes me wonder who are the 4.6% of B2B companies that don't have a website) and email marketing (87.7%).

Social networks and blogging continue to see increases in budget spend but also continue to rank lowly in terms of effectiveness for lead generation (they rank higher for "brand awareness")

So, how do you square those stats?

People are spending more money on marketing tactics that are less effective for lead generation compared with proven tactics that consistently deliver?

Has everyone just lost all business sense or is there a different story under the headline figures.

Crucially, it comes down to budget.

Some of the most effective marketing tactics require a larger investment. Trade shows are not cheap. Running a high-touch telemarketing campaign over several months also requires considerable investment.

Sending out 1000 emails however is very low cost. Whether it delivers the number and quality of leads needed to keep your pipeline full is a different story.

Looking at budget size the survey shows that smaller companies have smaller budgets (duh?) and that companies that only sell B2B with a direct sales model (ie: their own salespeople rather than through resellers and channel partners) have the smallest budgets of all.

Even more of a reason not to waste money on in-effective tactics, I say.

Which is why we always work with clients on fee models that are part fixed and part paid on delivering results. For our fixed fees we do things including telemarketing, email marketing, event/trade-show support, etc (basically stuff that we know "works") and then we link the balance of our fees to results, such as a % of revenue generated.

It's a model that works for our clients and, we believe, ensures that we don't waste our time (or your money) doing stuff that isn't linked to tangible revenue growth.

Labels: b2b email marketing, b2b lead generation, b2b marketing, b2b telemarketing, inside sales, sales lead generation

In a recent report by B2B Marketing Today, respondents said their two top priorities for lead generation were "Reaching the right decision makers" (46%) and "Improving lead quality" (43%).

When I read those statistics in The New Formula for Generating High Quality Leads in 2011, I just thought, "Duh?"

And whilst there's some interesting stuff in the white paper, the shock headline that improving lead quality is about "Quality over Quantity" just made me wonder why that was such a revelation?

Maybe it's because it's something that I've been banging on about for such a long time (see my post from 12 months ago as an example, Lead generation is the engine... sales is where the rubber meets the road) that I find it so surprising that this should be anything other than obvious.

After all, targeting and qualification are not exactly anything new in terms of lead generation.

The reality is that B2B marketing has been focused on the growth of online and it's ability to produce tons of leads at a lower cost-per-lead than more traditional channels.

And, if you think that this is something that been building over the last 3-4 years in B2B channels, then it's not surprising that the emphasis has been on getting systems set-up, generating traffic and getting leads.

But there's definitely been a trend over the last 12 months or so to focus on lead scoring, lead quality, etc.

I suspect that fingers are now being pointed at most marketing departments. And, if quality is on the agenda then sales are doing the pointing.

Lead quality and qualification sits between marketing and sales. It's the interface where leads are handed over (and handed back).

Once you've been through the loop of generating leads, qualifying them and tracking through to conversion you always start looking at lead quality. Which inevitably comes down to targeting, qualification and timing.

And one thing is for sure, when you do this the quantity of leads will always significantly decrease.

Labels: b2b lead generation, lead qualification, lead quality

In a recent report on SME Marketing Channel Preferences, Circle Research looked at SME's ranging from one-man-bands through to larger SME's (50-249 employees) to determine which marketing channels they rated as their preference for being effective in reaching them.

These findings can be useful when deciding on lead generation tactics to engage this market.

A word of warning, though, the preferences of your prospect doesn't always mean that it's the most effective channel in terms of ROI, but it can be a good indication.

A couple of key findings for me, and ones that correlate with our direct experience running campaigns into this sector, are:

Telemarketing is not ideal for smaller SME's - I think it's a combination of over use, time-poor decision makers and high number of gatekeepers (everyone in a small business treats the boss as god, in fact, you've more chance of pitching the almighty that the MD of a small business).

When you combine the difficulty of getting the message through with typical lower sales values (because smaller companies have smaller budgets) it makes targeting SME's with telemarketing almost unworkable. I say almost because, if you've got some clout (ie: calling with some authority and a highly targeted relevant proposition) then it can work.

The research also indicates that telemarketing becomes more effective for the larger SME's. This is typically because you're pitching a functional decision maker so can be more targeted and relevant. Plus, the potential sales value goes up, making a positive ROI more likely.

Prioritise Digital Channels - search and email are both proven and preferred channels for engaging SME's. In terms of outreach, we've used email effectively for SME lead generation campaigns. Also, an integrated telemarketing and email campaign can be even more effective in this market.

Search should be a no-brainer channel but, in our experience, it's not always the holy grail in terms of ROI. For many B2B companies selling services, keywords can be too broad and, in terms of PPC, too expensive to deliver a compelling ROI.

In summary, if you need to target smaller SME's then ignore stand-alone telemarketing and prioritise digital channels or integrate telemarketing with an email campaign.

For medium to large SME's (and even more so with mid-sector and large companies) then telemarketing still remains and effective channel but, as always, make sure any lead generation campaign is both targeted and relevant to get maximum ROI for your budget.

Labels: b2b email marketing, b2b lead generation, b2b telemarketing

Another email lands in my inbox from B2B Marketing promising to show me How to use Twitter to generate and nurture leads.

At last, I think, rubbing my hands, someone's finally cracked it and can show me how to actually generate real leads from Twitter.

Unfortunately, it's much more of a list of "best practice" which really only means "what everyone else is doing".

What really made me laugh was point 9) "Make a Sale", which says:

At this stage, hopefully your target has followed you back, accessed lots of valuable information via your Tweets, answered a few questions in return and as a result built up an ongoing relationship with your brand. They are now better informed and in regular contact with you – when you pass on their details to the sales team they should be in a great position to buy.

Call me a salty old sales cynic but as soon as I read "hopefully" I knew we were in trouble.

To me, that one word "hopefully" sums up the strategy of using twitter for lead generation.

Of course, I tweet myself occasionally, and have implemented most of the points covered in the article. And I'd agree that there's a large slice of "hopefully" in my strategy for doing so.

Does it take much of my time? No.

Could it potentially generate some leads? Hopefully, some day.

Would I forget about other tried and tested (but less sexy) lead generation tactics? No way!

Twitter is still new and, sure, people are still trying to work out what it's good for in terms of the B2B marketing mix. Unfortunately, I think that there are a lot of people who are making money out of telling people how to generate leads from Twitter when they really don't know themselves.

Earlier today I was chatting with a marketing consultant who was telling me that she tweeted on behalf of clients and helped them set up and manage their Twitter accounts. She was telling me how long it took to do it all and, sure, it sounded like a nice little earner.

But, when I asked her how much business it has generated for her clients it all went very quiet.

Labels: b2b lead generation, social media

If you read the IDM's latest Barometer Report you've be forgiven for thinking that telemarketing had been dropped completely as a B2B marketing tactic.

Going through the 30-page report there's not one mention of telemarketing, a proven corner-stone tactic for every b2b marketing organisation.

Why the omission? Has it really been dropped completely or is this just another example of telemarketing being B2B's Dirty Little Secret.

Considering the report cites "lead generation" as the top issue (25% of respondents) for B2B client-side marketers it seems unbelievable that telemarketing isn't mentioned.

No doubt it's just been lumped in with other direct marketing tactics.

Of the agencies involved in the report a whopping 59% were either described as "integrated marketing" or "direct marketing". Hmmm, you're not telling me that they've completely chopped telemarketing out of their service mix are you?

To me, this is another example of how telemarketing just doesn't cut it with the B2B media.

Sure, it's not sexy and it doesn't win awards. But, as proven tactic to reach targeted prospects it still remains a key part of any B2B marketer's plan.

Labels: b2b lead generation, b2b marketing, b2b telemarketing

I suppose it was only a matter of time.

I noticed today a Twitter Sales Lead Tool which searches tweets for keywords relative to your business. It seems to filter tweets based on intent words (such as "need" or "looking for") and then delivers you a list of sales-ready leads which you can communicate directly with via the tool.

All very neat stuff.

It's something you can already do manually with a search string or advance search form and then saving the search. But, the search tool is free and looks to make organising the results easier so maybe it's worth a punt.

However, my real question is whether you really can get sales ready leads off twitter.

You see, as I've posted before Are social networks just a waste of time for B2B lead generation?, I wonder whether they really generate qualified sales leads or just a lot of time wasting noise.

Let's take our business as an example.

I'm looking for prospects who want telemarketing, right? (Well, not exactly, but lets follow this route). If I run a search on twitter for "telemarketing" I get a whole mixed bag a people complaining about telemarketing, looking for a telemarketing job, people looking for hire someone for a telemarketing job, it goes on.

OK, so I filter it by using a search string to remove the word "job" and to only look for people asking a question. What do I get? Well, in this instance, just one tweet and it's someone looking to hire someone.

But let's assume I actually get more. What next?

Well, for it to a qualified "sales-ready" lead I need to tick a few boxes. Basic stuff like budget, target market, timescales, etc. Whatever the filters are that you need to decide whether it's a qualified lead.

My point is that, when you really drill into these things, for b2b lead generation twitter doesn't seem to deliver. Of course, if you're selling something that has less qualification criteria and/or a large universe of people looking, then it could be a goldmine.

But for my business (and for pretty much all of my clients) I don't think so.

The more I look, the more I see that most of the buzz comes from people selling training or tools to use social media for lead generation. Everyone's jumped on the Sales 2.0 bandwagon and are making hay.

Don't get me wrong, social networking platforms can be useful for sales lead generation. Identifying and researching prospects are two key areas where we use them every day.

And, I don't rule out that as they develop and adoption grows within business, we won't find serious buyers tweeting their intent or starting discussions on LinkedIn groups whereas they used to wander around an exhibition hall looking for solutions.

But right now, for b2b sales lead generation, I think you're still better off investing your time, money and energy in more proven tactics.

Bottom line is that we're interested in delivering results. Whilst it might be sexy to talk with clients about social media the reality is that we can't guarantee it'll deliver qualified sales-ready opportunities.

Labels: b2b lead generation, sales lead generation, social media

If you believe the hype, social networks are the place to be for lead generation.

Read up on a few "case studies" of people in this space (usually LinkedIn "experts") and they'll tell you that cold calling is dead and in the future you'll get all your leads from twitter or social networks.

Hmmm...

Sounds a bit like what everyone was punting on ecademy several years back before it just got full of spam.

Anyway, what prompted me to post this is that I'm a member of a lot of groups on LinkedIn and I've noticed a bit of a trend.

Firstly, someone posts a discussion saying "I'm looking for lead generation".

Next you get hundreds of comments from vendors saying "we do X, we'd love to speak with you".

There's one running on one group like this that has 298 comments!

Now, firstly, the initial post rarely has any detail or level of qualification.

Lead generation? Are you talking about online, email, telemarketing? B2B, B2C? How about budget? Basic qualification information really.

If someone rang me and asked for "lead generation" I'd need to know a lot more before I knew whether it was something I could help them with.

On top of that there are hundreds of people responding to this "enquiry" on the forum.

Put aside the fact that this means you're potentially up against hundreds of competitors, the question I'm asking is "who's in this group?".

Apparently, it's loads of people like you trying to find leads!

Anyone who has been to a real world "networking" event will know that most of the people there are only interested in selling you something.

Now, that's not to say that there are some quality groups on social networking sites, just as in the real world. But, realistically, there's a lot of rubbish out there.

All the "popular" groups on LinkedIn have 1000's of people posting so much stuff that it just overwhelms you. If you posted a discussion on these groups it'll be swept off the front page in minutes.

You see, as I've posted here many times before, the thing with anything online is that it gets to a saturation point very quickly.

Maybe I'll post a discussion about what ROI anyone has had from these groups and see how many responses I get to that.

Labels: b2b lead generation, social networking sites

I usually collect phases from episodes of The Simpsons, so it was great to hear my latest favourite on a Demand Gen Report webinar "5 Baby Steps to Lead Nurturing Success".

Referring to today's various marketing automation tools to track visitors, score their activities based on what they're doing online and then send leads to your hungry pool of inside sales people, one of the speakers came out with the phrase:

"Observe and Serve, don't Track and Attack"

Unsurprisingly, prospects get a little freaked out when they click on a link for a whitepaper and get a heavy breathing salesperson calling them within seconds.

I experienced this first hand a few weeks ago when I followed a company on Twitter (they run networking events for Directors within specific business functions) and within a minute the phone rings and some sales guy is trying to sell me a ticket to his latest event.

Now, in some cases this may work but, on other cases you are more likely to scare the day-lights out of them and send them running to the hills. Is that really the start of a long-lasting relationship?

Particularly when it comes to higher-value business-to-business (B2B) marketing, you need to react quickly but, let's be honest, decision making cycles are much longer than with consumers.

In the instance I gave as an example, it would have been better if they guy had called me within 24-48 hours. This would have been quick enough to be seen as responsive (bearing in mind I wasn't filling out a contact form, simply following the company on Twitter).

In addition, if he had waited just a few more nanoseconds to really read my website (which is where he got my contact details from) he would have realised that I wasn't his core market. At best, as I explained, I could have referred some clients to his company.

Just pausing to think about why I would be interested, and then leaving a little breathing space before calling me, would have made for a completely different experience.

And that's from someone who doesn't mind being called by a salesperson!

Labels: b2b lead generation, demand generation

According to TACK's Buyers Survey 2010, "Email now dominates as an acceptable channel for salespeople to make contact to arrange a first appointment with 84% saying email is acceptable, followed by a telephone call and then by letter."

The 2010 survey reports on the views of buyers from FTSE 100 companies to SMEs within manufacturing, retail, B2B, financial services and business services sectors across Europe, Asia and the US.

Remember that this survey looks at buyer's "preferences", which doesn't necessarily mean "effectiveness" of the channel to generate appointments.

This seems to run counter-intuitive to B2B marketing's perception of email for new business prospecting. With the increase in SPAM you'd expect email to be declining as a channel.

Again, let's not confuse effectiveness with buyer's preference.

It may well be that buyers prefer an approach via email since it's easier to reject or ignore than having something breathing down the phone at you.

Also, we shouldn't confuse a hand-crafted email specific to a person with bulk B2B email.

The latter is certainly viewed as SPAM and has increasing low pull rates for new customer acquisition. The former, we find, can be very effective at securing appointments without ever speaking with the prospect.

From a trend perspective it looks like, as well as email, telephone is marginally up on previous surveys, as is snail mail (we are seeing a lot of prospects requesting info by post, and generally direct mail is having a resurgence in B2B circles).

Fax is down (shock news!) and amazingly face-to-face cold calling is up.

Finally, LinkedIn has made an appearance as a preferred channel. Let's see how long it takes before that gets wrecked.

Judging but the amount of consultants selling "Sales 2.0: get sales leads through LinkedIn" as the new magic bullet, I'd say not long.

Labels: appointment making, appointment setting, b2b lead generation, sales lead generation

It's a great image, and one that I snatched from Velocity's excellent B2B Marketing Manifesto.

In this they assert that whilst on the "old days" the sales department saw themselves as the engine room, today's B2B marketer needs to realise that they are in fact the engine that drives sales and that sales are the tires, the "rubber hitting the road".

Their thoughts on the role of "marcom" managers equally made me smile:

"Marcom people provide a valuable service to their companies. Because that’s exactly what they provide: service & support for the sales team. When sales needs a new data sheet or case study: you’re the dude. You handle the trade show stands and e-newsletters. You own the brochures and the website. That’s a valuable function. But it’s not marketing. Not any more."

That makes me smile because, originally coming from sales not marketing, I've always believed it.

B2B marketing should be about one thing - generating qualified sales leads.

The reason that things have changed is that today's digital media now engages prospects much earlier in the sales cycle and in a way that if completely different to the old days.

Think of it like this, you don't have to go too far back to remember when B2B marketing was all about exhibitions, adverts in the trade press and postcards send by direct mail. These all generated sales leads but significantly, the leads usually went straight to the sales team and marketing were told the numbers afterwards (if they were lucky).

Roll forward to today and not only has search and social media brought more people into the funnel earlier in their decision making process (during the research phase when they were previously sat back reading an article in the trade press or wandering the halls of the NEC picking up brochures) but today it's all much more measurable and the first contact point is often now the marketing team.

And this latter point is a key one. Most of these leads are not yet-sales ready.

In the old days these "leads" would be junked by sales.

Someone wanders onto a stand, asks a few questions and the salesperson realises that they're a just a tire-kicker... do you think they filled out their little blue slip for them? Yeah, right!

If you look what's hot in the B2B marketing media it's all about lead nurturing and lead scoring.

Demand generation has basically created a new headache for marketing because it's now having to deal with "leads" which they previously never saw, either because the information was given out without collecting details (think of an article in a magazine rather than a downloaded whitepaper) or the leads never made the cut through the natural selection process of the sales team.

The reality is (which is something a lot in marketing seldom admit) that lead generation is a wasteful process. Almost regardless of the metrics you choose, the number of leads that actually convert to real sales is always a low percentage.

If you run a direct mail campaign and get a 2% pull, you're not able to see the number who opened the mail but didn't read, or maybe put the letter to one side and got distracted by more pressing issues. Obviously, you can throw in a PURL today and track response online, but you're still only able to see so much of what happens.

As soon as you start to get deeper analytics someone's got to manage them. Someone's got to tweak them, measure them and report on them.

Sure, this can be about optimising campaigns to get better results but it can also be about creating extra work that doesn't really impact sales (although, maybe it justifies the marketing spend to get more budget to do more work?)

I'll give you an example.

I was reading a blog recently that went into the intricacies of a particular B2B marketing campaign. When is came to the metrics and ROI it was all about increased traffic for keywords, numbers of downloads, back links, etc over a given period of time (in this case 6 months). Finally, we got down to where the rubber meets the road.

After all this, and a £30,000 budget, they expected to deliver 2 new prospect meetings. 2 meetings for £30,000!

Now I'm not saying that there isn't any value in the other metrics and arguably downloads are just longer term prospects that will convert with a little lead nurturing. But, equally, they could just be more tire-kickers who are draining your resources when you should be concentrating on leads that are going to convert this quarter.

Perhaps, what will eventually happen is that B2B marketers will start to think like sales people.

What started as the dream of measuring every interaction with early-stage suspects has quickly moved on to information overload.

The response? Marketing automation; score everything and automate the lead nurturing process with lots of drip messages so that the cream rises to the top.

In other words, only real sales-ready leads are passed on to sales.

Sounds a lot like my old Sales Director when he handed me my first batch on fresh hot leads: "Now your job is to make most of these go away"

Welcome to the new world of B2B marketing.

Labels: b2b lead generation, b2b marketing, lead nurturing, sales lead generation

I've always been a fan of John Doerr's articles and recently came across Top 10 Lead Generation Mistakes Made By Professional Services Firms.

Apart from the fact I love any article that starts with a quote from Glengarry Glenn Ross, John's top 10 lead generation mistakes had me nodding all the way through.

Many of them echo my thoughts in my article 7 Critical Success Factors for New Business Development, and are equally valid for firms across the broad business services landscape.

"Relying on one tactic only" and "Not integrating various marketing tactics well" are both key ones for me; integrated lead generation across multiple channels is essential for today's B2B marketing.

Also, "Dropping leads and failing to nurture leads" is right up there for me too. It's what we call pipeline management and is key to maximising ROI for lead generation.

For me, multi-touch marketing is exactly what lead generation is all about for professional and business services firms. It enables you to build a relationship and trust with prospective clients before there's an opportunity.

Think about it, if the first time you contact a prospect is when they are looking "right now" then you're probably (at best) an also-ran for any significant piece of work.

Most clients typically only go out to firms that they already, know which means you had better already be on their radar beforehand.

We have a number of strategies to help our clients open doors and engage prospective clients in a way that clearly positions their firm.

When this is built into a lead nurturing process it becomes a powerful way to develop new business opportunities within potentially major accounts.

Labels: b2b lead generation, integrated b2b marketing, lead nurturing, new business development, pipeline management, professional services, prospect marketing