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Taking Advantage of Invitations to Discuss

November 29, 2012 by 2 Comments

I had some time to spend the other day so I thought I would venture over to LinkedIn and see if there were any discussions happening in the groups that I could jump into. I could not believe what I saw. Now a couple months ago, even a year ago, I saw this start happening. Those group members who creep into the discussion area to post a link to their blog or press release or whatever but don’t actually have an intent to discuss anything.

THIS IS NOT A DISCUSSION

Yes, I’m yelling. Why? Because I’m more than a little ticked off by our selfless promotion of all the glorious content we produce. Yes, we see your blog post. We get it, it’s awesome. But what about people, like me, that visit the groups hoping to discuss and collaborate with my peers?

It’s no longer serving the purpose.

Are group managers getting lazy?

I was one of two group managers for a group with over 100K subscribers for a few years. Let me tell you, it’s an undertaking! I dont think people realize what is involved – I mean, what is truly involved – in managing a group. Yes, it’s easy at first with your 10 members, but try managing 100K. It’s easy to get lazy. It’s easy to let the group run rampant and show up once in awhile to pick a manager’s choice post. If you want to be a manager, then please manage.

Why is LinkedIn enabling allowing  this?

For one thing, Im not sure if they care if we are discussing or not. Do they? I mean, even though discussion are not happening, that doesn’t mean I will un-register from the site. It doesn’t mean that I won’t continue to use LinkedIn to foster and nurture connections with my network. So maybe they don’t care. Perhaps they should rename the Discussions tab to something like ‘RSS Feed’.

Nobody is listening

I doubt that the people who are making all these posts really care if we tell them that links to a blog article or press release or webinar invite belongs in the ‘Promotions’ section of the group. And frankly, I can only spend so much of my time moving all of these ‘discussions’ over there myself – yes, I am the one that flagged you. We can hee haw all day long about the ‘rules’ and ‘best practices’ but if people aren’t listening, then they aren’t listening. Deal with it or split.

Can we even generate leads like this?

Hey, your inbound traffic from LinkedIn went up – woopee do! Did you get any leads? When I was managing programs for a small start-up, I had minimal (cough zero) budget so I found LinkedIn to be a huge lifesaver for me when it came to generating leads. Now this didnt happen because I posted links to my blog articles and website pages in the groups and got referral traffic. This happened because I provided value and when the audience considered me as a helpful resource, they began to trust my company and the inquiries started to come in. I just dont see how this is possible anymore in the current state.

I’m sickened. Truly sickened. I always considered LinkedIn as a group resource, a place to mingle and exchange ideas with like-minded marketers. I might as well read my RSS feed instead of spending any amount of time in the groups. At least there I know I have chosen to consume the content.

What about you? Does this annoy anyone else?

 

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Filed Under: Blog, Lead Generation, Social Media

Just Saying ‘No’ and Still Preserve the Relationship

September 10, 2012 by 7 Comments

I’m in a snag at the moment. A professional ‘link’ I have (I call her that because our primary connection is via LinkedIn) reached out to me to see if I would be interested in consulting her company on a go-to-market strategy. Now the primary reason you may think I have a snag is because I am presently employed and this may cause all types of non-compete trouble – not so. The company is consumer facing (B2C) and is in no way related to what I do in my ’9 to 5′ or the audience we target. My snag is because I don’t believe in the product they are developing.

Now this is interesting to me because I value my time at home in the evenings and on weekends and already have enough on my plate (look at my poor blog here so neglected) so one of the reasons I am hesitating is because I just don’t have the passion I feel is required to devote my precious personal time to her project and upcoming company.

Maybe she has something and I am completely off in my thoughts and opinions – that’s fine. My snag is not my decision, it’s what I am going to do with that decision. How am I going to communicate my thoughts in a way that preserves our relationship? I can’t exactly tell her that her idea has been thought of a million times before, that I saw a million and one flaws in a demo or that I don’t have the time (me? lie? no way!). So what do I do?

It’s Not Personal, It’s Business

Where the heck did this quote come from? Errr – too much time on that one. Moving on :) Think about it though; it’s not personal, it’s business. So true in so many ways and so relevant to my current snag. How do I say this and show this? Well I have a feeling I am not the only one that has been in this situation so I thought I would share some thoughts on how I’m going to approach this and let you help me – please!

1. Be brutally honest

So the conversation may go something like “thanks so much for the opportunity. I’ve taken careful consideration of your idea and the product and I just don’t feel it’s a good fit. While I am not one to back away from any challenge, I feel like you have a steep hill to climb. Your product does have some interesting innovations but I can name a few successful companies that have not only done what you are doing, they have claimed the space. You would need to develop something really different to get any market share. So at this time, I cannot accept. If you are going to move forward perhaps I can connect you with some great people.”

2. Overprice

This would simply consist of me accepting the role on certain conditions. These conditions of course could not be met by the company. I could overprice the heck out of my consulting and simply take myself out of the running. Again, referring to someone great that maybe could help.

3. Suck it up and take the opportunity

Would you do this? I’m thinking this is the last choice I would make because as you read above, I pretty much made my decision. But still, this may be a pretty cool opportunity. I mean, what if the company does make it? What if I can help position ourselves competitively to be ‘different’? What if…what if…what if…

What do you think? What would you do?

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Filed Under: Blog, Consumer Marketing, Lead Generation, Marketing

Should Content Be Branded or Vendor Agnostic?

July 11, 2012 by Leave a Comment

It’s an interesting question and I could go either way with this one (even though I preach constantly about brands not branding their content). Should your content be branded or vendor agnostic?

When we consider branded content, this would consist of:

- Case studies
- Product reviews
- Testimonials
- Product datasheets
- Product spec sheets
- Company PowerPoint decks
- Demo videos

Seeing the word ‘product’ here a lot right? Now while all of these forms of content are useful and genuinely helpful to customers and prospects, they are really selling something. A person needs to be really engaged with a brand or have raised their hand with a problem in order for any of these to be relevant. Sending one of these to someone in your first interaction is kind of like someone you meet for the first time at an event giving you their elevator pitch. Gross!

Now vendor agnostic content is a bit different because while it may be someone at your company that is writing and publishing the material, you are really not talking about your company at all. The purpose is to educate your audience on a topic you perceive yourself to be an expert at – and by ‘yourself’, I am talking about your brand/company. These would consist of:

- Best practices videos
- Whitepapers
- Analyst reports
- Webinars
- Blog posts
- eBooks
- Articles

What is right for you?

I don’t think the question is so much ‘what is right for you’ as it is ‘what is right for you right now and for this person’. Consider this for a moment. You need branded content and you need vendor agnostic content. You really cannot survive with one and not the other so don’t make that the question.

Make the question about the customer and where they are in the buying process and what is right for them at that moment.

Make the question about the medium and how you want to engage with an audience through a certain channel.

Make the question about your company goals – sell or convert?

Stop asking the ‘or’ question and start asking when.

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Filed Under: Blog, Content Marketing, Lead Generation, Marketing, Strategy

Content Marketers, Don’t Forget the People on the Phone

July 2, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I saw this post last month that was entitled ‘Lead-gen by phone: the ultimate content marketing’ and aside from the title making me want to click and read it immediately, I started thinking about marketing and whether we consider phone conversations as part of the content mix at all. This plays in very nicely with my recent post asking whether inside sales should report up to sales or marketing (if you missed it, click here).

The article suggests that in situations that involve a ‘complex sale’, people need to be involved early on, not just the content. We have seen and heard too many times to count that the buyer is now in control. We setup scoring methodologies that tell us when they are ready for us to call them. Maybe this doesn’t work in all situations. It’s a good question to ask yourself.

Integrating Call Campaigns with Inbound

Consider what happens after someone becomes a contact record in your system. Do they get an email? Are they routed to a nurturing program? Perhaps they are scored based on demographics and what types of content they downloaded or viewed on your website? Where does the personal touch play into this?

Nurturing prospects works – I know this – but it doesn’t work by itself. When we think about a ‘complex sale’ there are often multiple stakeholders involved. If you are scoring and nurturing people, you could miss the big picture. A CFO, for example, may not download anything on your site but they do play a role in the decision process. Someone needs to make the connection because this person is not going to raise their hand.

Consider how you can integrate a call campaign into your inbound strategy. Does it make a difference if someone calls a lead that converted today vs. tomorrow? How about if they call them every day this week? The chances for a connection to be made increase with each attempt.

Aside from the time and day to call or even how long after they follow-up, ensure your team on the phone has what they need. Do they have a script? Are they familiar with the piece of content the prospect downloaded? Do they know enough about the industry and the challenges your target market has? Give them everything they need to succeed.

Knowing What Will Work For You

I will walk you through an exercise I performed at a former company. The patterns I discovered helped us convert more leads into demo appointments and ultimately closed more deals.

First, I ran an exportable report from my CRM into an Excel spreadsheet I could manipulate. I extracted all the people who had converted in one way or another over the last 3 months (length of time for our sales cycle).

Next, I mapped out what the touches were for each of those contacts. So, running down the y axis were all the contacts sorted by conversion date and running on the x axis, I had every day for the 90 day period. I put an x in each day corresponding with each contact when there was a touchpoint (call or email).

After I had done this, I highlighted each row where we had won the deal.

I noticed some interesting things. For this particular company, the touchpoints for a closed won deal were considerably different from those of a closed lost deal. For those we won, we were calling and emailing a lot more in a shorter period of time. For those we lost, we let them sit there for a while and then tried to connect.

I shared this report and analysis with my VP of Sales & Marketing at the time and he was shocked (and a little excited too). We then shared it with the CEO and after we had buy-in, we initiated a program for the inside sales team that ensured their cooperation (they wanted to close more business too).

This probably took me about 2 hours to complete but led to numerous closed won deals. I was happy that my leads were converting into revenue and sales was happy with their commissions. I encourage each of you to try this and see what the formula is for your company. I think you will be surprised.

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Filed Under: Blog, Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing, Strategy

Don’t Play Games for Fun

June 26, 2012 by 7 Comments

We talked about gamification before and the idea that you have been gamed even if you didn’t realize it. But I want to discuss how you are using it yourself.

I managed a virtual trade show for my company last week and spent a good part of the day managing our booth. Now I started to observe a couple things that I hadn’t seen before. The first was the fact that a lot of people would come in to the booth and leave immediately. I had not even finished the sentence ‘Hi so and so, how are you?’ and they were gone. The second thing I saw was a lot of people asking to exchange v cards (the online version of business card exchange).

Now I realize that neither of these is really groundbreaking or profound in any manner but it had me wondering why the actions people were taking were so different than what I was accustomed to.

So I started snooping around the show and discovered the prize center. Now the prize center in past shows I have participating in was comprised of gifts that sponsors would donate and people would put their names in for a chance to win. In this show, the only chance for you to have a chance is if you accumulated points. And you had to have over 500 of them!

How do you get points?

Well, you visit booths and exchange v cards of course!

Now, I tossed out the question some time ago about whether you should scan badges at trade-shows regardless of engagement with your booth. It’s kind of the same thing except the show organizer’s disabled my control. The participants are being encouraged to get ‘scanned’ for a chance at an iPad. They don’t have interest in my company or connecting with me. They are simply performing the actions to get to a prize.

Gamification when used in this manner hurts us.

You may say no, it actually worked because now I have more leads due to the fact that people were entering the booth all day. And I would have to argue that these ‘leads’ are not genuine. These people all were planning on attending the show regardless – the point system was announced only after you entered. Do I have the opportunity to introduce my company to these people, educate and nurture them? Sure but it’s not going to be easy. And telling my sales team that the show yielded 1000s of leads doesn’t really help my credibility especially when they start calling and hearing things like ‘where are you calling from? Ive never heard of your company’. Ouch!

Like anything, there is a time and a place. I like what the show organizers were thinking when they built this idea, but it didnt do anything but make their show look really engaging. Picture the stats now: 85% of registrants visit a booth, 90% download a piece of content, 90% exchange v cards. Who wouldn’t want to sign up with them?

It’s not genuine. Using gamification for engagement is what we should be focused on. I love the idea of ‘playing’ with our audience. I don’t love the idea of gaming them.

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Filed Under: Blog, Lead Generation Tagged With: , ,

Who Should Inside Sales Report To?

June 20, 2012 by 3 Comments

I have seen it two different ways. Either inside sales is reporting to marketing or they are reporting to sales but which is more effective?

Let’s back up a bit and define the function of inside sales because you could go a couple different directions here. At smaller companies, the function of insides sales means the sales pros in the office making virtual sales – as in, they are not flying around the country and making office visits. Everything from initial conversation to closed, signed contract is done virtually.

No in larger companies, inside sales is still virtual in all regards but they are not the ones actually closing the deals. They are more likely to be qualifying leads before sales is spending time on them. This is the group that sits between marketing and sales. Marketing generates leads, inside sales calls upon/emails said leads and decides if they should be passed on, sales accepts or denies leads that are passed on. So it’s no wonder that both marketing and sales feel they should manage this function. I have my thoughts on the topic but let’s look at both scenarios.

Insides sales reporting to sales

Could this be a good thing? Inside sales is the group that decides if leads are really qualified. This group has a pretty intimate relationship with sales because sales needs them to deliver only those leads that will maximize their time. The two functions absolutely have to be aligned. Inside sales needs to know exactly what sales wants and how much.

If inside sales reports to sales, what is the risk to marketing? The most obvious risk is that these two groups align so much that they gang up on marketing. Leads that are qualified stop being called upon and the cherry picking commences. The onslaught is that marketing starts to look bad to the organization. If leads delivered are not accepted and carried through to the pipeline, the ROI is going to stink big time.

What about the benefits? If inside sales reports to sales, then marketing technically has one giant gorilla to deal with and it’s just called sales. All ‘sales’ functions under the same umbrella mean that conversation that involve both groups will be easier to manage. It also means that when tracking progress, we can clearly draw a line between what sales is doing as a function and what marketing is doing.

Inside sales reporting to marketing

Now on the flip, could this be a good thing? I will admit that I have worked in companies with both scenarios and I have seen this work better. Why? Couple reasons. Marketing is delivering leads which inside sales is responsible to act upon. If they don’t act upon them and they are reporting up to sales, marketing has their hands tightly bound. Now if they are accountable to the marketing group, then procedures can be put in place and appropriate courses of action exercised.

Marketing needs their leads to be qualified. The people that control whether they are qualified enough to become pipeline property are the inside sales folks.

If inside sales reports to marketing, is their a risk to sales? Yes and no. The risk is minimized because sales continues to get what they need. If anything were a risk, it would have a lot to do with volume. Typically when marketing is managing inside sales, the call lists are managed and activity is tracked very closely. The cause and effect of generating leads and converting them is easier to do because processes can be turned on and off quickly.

You can probably guess which camp I am in but I cannot stress enough how much communication is still required between the groups regardless of who inside sales reports to.

Who do you think inside sales should report to?

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Filed Under: Blog, Lead Generation, Strategy Tagged With: ,

Is Content Marketing and Paid Media an ‘Either/Or’ Conversation?

June 4, 2012 by 3 Comments

I feel the need to blog about this because I have been hearing some scary things from peers in the industry who may have misinterpreted or understood things incorrectly. Content marketing and paid media is NOT an either/or conversation. You cannot generate leads and survive 100% off of content marketing nor can you create an awesome paid media campaign without it.

When you consider paid media such as emails run via 3rd party, sponsored webinars, pay-per-click via  search engine, display campaigns, sponsored newsletters, etc., what would you advertise if not content? Wrong answer if you said something about your product datasheets, demos or anything to the like.

Now let’s consider all that great content you created. The whitepapers, the ebooks, the webinars, the blog posts. What exactly are you going to do with them to get them out there? Social media? Great! Does everyone know where to find and connect with you to get your stuff? Probably not and if they already do, chances are you are not generating any ‘net new’ names there.

So why do we think we can create content and people will naturally find us without us having to spend money? Why do we feel we can pay someone else to generate leads for us without having to create any compelling content to draw them in.

It’s not an either/or situation. It’s an and/and. You simply cannot be successful in one without the other.

There. That’s off my chest.

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Filed Under: Blog, Content Marketing, Lead Generation Tagged With:

Can Facebook Really Be Used for Lead Generation?

May 29, 2012 by 5 Comments

We all saw the major announcement that GM is pulling the plug on their paid Facebook display campaigns. First we wondered why, then we wondered if perhaps we should too. I know I did. While Ford had a different opinion, the decision by GM to focus more on their page and organically building a following of engaged fans seemed like a good course of action. On the other hand, why are some brands, such as Ford, benefiting so much from Facebook advertising?

First, let’s get over a couple things…

Facebook is for B2C, not B2B

Whether B2B, B2C or B2B2C, lead generation and customer acquisition is our goal. B2B’s have different channels and different means to reach their target audience same as B2C’s. I will say there are plenty of examples where Facebook advertising has worked for B2B’sbut you have to consider the goals of these companies. Typically the best use case for Facebook advertising when it comes to B2B, is to promote your fan page, lure the prospect in with your content and continue to engage with them – make it sticky!

Facebook is equivalent to Google PPC

Yes, it’s PPC (or you can choose CPM) but your ad is not displayed based on the fact that someone searched something relevant. The person must have raised their hand and said ‘hey, I like this thing or I am a member of this over here or I am interested in such and such.’ Just because someone searched “social media consultant” doesn’t mean anything – when it comes to connecting your ad with the inquirer anyways.

Facebook is not for me

It’s no secret that I m not a fan of Facebook – I just don’t like it. Ha! What I particularly don’t like is that unlike LinkedIn, you have to create your ads via your personal page. So you, yourself need to be active to use it for your business. Now there is a second part here and this is something I have talked about before. The whole idea of ‘I don’t like it so why would my audience?’ Get over yourself – I had to! If your audience is there, ready and willing, then you need to build a plan to reach and connect with them.

Now, back to the original question; can Facebook be used to generate leads? It’s a very good question and many jump and say yes and others are scratching their head and reading up on how to measure ROI. I will regurgitate and say that if your audience is on Facebook, then you should try it. Here are a couple tips from the Facebook ads team:

1. Use pictures of people (pets are even better). What do we do when we are on Facebook? Look at pictures of people. It’s no wonder these ads get more clicks. Just make sure your landing page is supporting the ad copy.

2. Use exclamations. We refrain from use exclamation points in emails and other pieces of content but they are highly encouraged on Facebook ads. So add them everywhere!!!

3. Tell them to do something. Don’t use up your precious characters describing your offer or why someone should like your page. Tell them to click here to like us – and don’t forget the exclamation mark!!

4. Image is most important, then header, then description. Put more thought into your image than your description. Should be simple enough.

Facebook ads can be effective at generating leads if your audience is there, if you are connecting with them the ‘right’ way, if your offer is compelling, if you track and measure everything you do.

What success – or not – are you seeing?

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Filed Under: Blog, Lead Generation, Social Media Tagged With: , ,

Is Your Goal Acquisition or Awareness?

May 24, 2012 by 2 Comments

Ok, who said both? I know someone said it somewhere. Truthfully speaking though, your strategy around a specific campaign cannot both. You are either acquiring leads and new business or you are building awareness about something. Now for those of you who still believe you can have both, I’m going to share a personal story and the inspiration for this post.

A vendor reached out to me the other day about paid programs. This said vendor is an online directory and we have the opportunity to pay for first placement in a category. As he was describing the proposed program, he said ‘this will help with brand awareness’. ‘A-ha,’ I said, ‘I am not seeking to build awareness, my focus is on acquisition. Let’s talk about how your site will help me generate leads.’

Now this individual could have said that the awareness would lead to leads but he did not. What he did was continue on about something else entirely and I never got an answer. I still don’t know how I will generate leads by buying media on this site. Why? Because his site is one that you meet your awareness goals but not one in which you can meet acquisition goals. He never will have an answer.

I often will see marketers who confuse awareness with acquisition. The intent is to reach one goal but they end up shooting for both or hitting the other. The two can absolutely be intermingled but not often. It’s very different to run an awareness campaign and an acquisition campaign.

Here are some key differences:

Measurement

With an acquisition-focused campaign, you are measuring how many leads you generate and, most importantly, how many are qualified.

With an awareness-focused campaign, you are measuring your brand’s voice and recognizability in the market

Placement

With an acquisition-focused campaign, you are purchasing media in strategic places that your target market frequents

With an awareness-focused campaign, you are placing your brand in strategic places to be found by the media and influencers in your space

Call to Action

With an acquisition-focused campaign, there is a clear action that you want your audience to perform (register, download, sign-up)

With an awareness-focused campaign, your action is not as loud. You may not have an action at all other than ‘we hope you recall our brand and message’

Strategy

With an acquisition-focused campaign, the strategy is often inter-twined with content marketing, product marketing and the direction of the company. The strategy’s length is dependent upon the sales cycle and how things progress through the funnel.

With an awareness-focused campaign, I have observed shorter strategic periods. When you are building awareness of something, it’s either a big announcement or a brand overall. One will remain pretty consistent and may fluctuate with actions of competitors but not often.

Do you think you can accomplish both acquisition and awareness at the same time using the same channels?

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Filed Under: Blog, Branding, Lead Generation, Strategy Tagged With: ,

If You’re Spending Money, You Better Be Tracking

May 13, 2012 by 1 Comment

I wrote last week asking why we were spending so much time tracking open rates, and it got me thinking about what we are and are not tracking and why it’s so important. Fact is, if you are spending money whether your own or your company’s, you better be tracking what is happening with it.

I know it gets complicated when we have long sales cycles and it takes us longer to digest data and track true return. I also know that return is something that doesn’t stop, it keeps going. And I also know how difficult it is to tie one specific piece of content, or one action from a sales person to a closed deal.

Let’s consider for a moment that you don’t track anything. You may look at open rates, and click-throughs and perhaps even how many people filled out a form and what those people looked like profile wise. But that’s all you are tracking. It stops there and doesn’t continue throughout the entire life-cycle of the lead.

You need to think about this differently. Something is broken with this scenario and it may be the tools you are using to track information. It may be the people and the thought process involved in digging into the data and looking at it in the right way. It may be you don’t care at all and if sales numbers are meeting forecast, then who the heck cares how they got there?

You should care. You need to care.

How do you make decisions without tracking? How do you know the vendors that you are working with and paying are giving you what you expected to get? How do you know if a certain topic is resonating with your audience while another is not so much?

Forget the end of the pipeline for a second, and focus on the top of the funnel. What you are putting in, should spit out at the bottom whether in a closed won deal or a closed lost opportunity. But in order for that to happen, you need to be tracking what you spend to fill the funnel because you are most likely spending money to do so.

Here are 4 things you can do today to either 1) see if you have tracking data or 2) take the steps necessary to start tracking:

1. Run reports. Sounds simple enough but you should be doing this either on a weekly, monthly and quarterly basis. Take every single tool you have in place and pull reports out of it. I haven’t met a software yet that didn’t have a reporting function, so run the data. See where the holes are. See what you are working with. What fields do you have available to you to track against? Turn it into a pivot table and toggle around with it.

2. Find out how everyone else is doing it. I take advantage of my time at industry events to see how everyone else is doing what I am either doing or know can be done but haven’t figured out how. You also notice if you follow me on Twitter that I ask questions a lot. I may already have the answer, but I want your answer. Often the responses I get back make me consider things differently and I have improved my processes over time.

3. Ask your executive team what information they would like to know. I would assume you, or someone at least, is reporting up to senior management. What are you sharing with them vs. what they would like to see? Do you have an answer for every single one of their questions? Or do they not ask any questions because you are providing them everything they wanted to know?

4. What questions do you have that you cannot answer? This has proven extremely effective for me. As an example, I often look at performance of my third party vendors. I want to know what I got back for the money I spent, is their audience the one I am trying to reach, do they have the programs that I want to run? If I cannot answer any of my own questions with the data I have access to, then I figure out how to gain access to it.

If you are spending money, then you better be tracking. Are you?

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Filed Under: Analytics, Blog, Lead Generation Tagged With: ,
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