Best Practices in B2B Demand Generation - demandblog

Oh, Sweet Irony....An Email From Microsoft

by Jason Stewart

So I got a "Happy Holidays" email just now from Microsoft adCenter, and was immediately struck by the irony of the fact that a Microsoft product prevented me from reading an email from Microsoft. Click on the image below to enlarge, and always remember to make sure your email templates don't rely too heavily on images. I have no incentive to view the images, so emails like this usually wind up in the trash...

Post Click Marketing On-Demand Webinar, Tips, Tricks

by Jason Stewart

Demandbase had its first webinar last week, an analysis of Post Click Marketing. Even the best and most successful marketing campaigns convert only about 5% of the clicks. What about the other 95%? Demandbase helps to focus on the "silent majority" as you can see by viewing the recording of the webinar here, but I also compiled some additional Resources and Best Practices from a variety of sources for you to help you with your Post-Click Marketing initiatives.

Landing Page Best Practices

There is a lot of content available regarding fine-tuning your landing pages. Here are five of the most interesting tips regarding landing pages (and web forms in general):

1. Make sure the offer on your landing page matches the offer they clicked on. Are they seeing what they expect to see?
2. Put your form and all relevant content "above the fold" - they need to see everything you need them to see, without scrolling down the page.
3. Position the one thing you want them to do as the most obvious call to action on the page - don't overwhelm them with links or actions.
4. Use "hidden" fields on your web forms to capture relevant information about lead source or to attach the lead to a specific marketing campaign.
5. Streamline all forms for easy conversion, eliminate unnecessary questions and focus on only the information you need to qualify a prospect as "qualified."

Here are links to some great content on best practices, with more detailed information:

How to Get Valid Phone Numbers From B-to-B Prospects
by Anne Holland, former content director at Marketing Sherpa

Lead Scoring Should Influence Your Web Forms
by Jason Stewart, Senior Online Marketing Manager, Demandbase  

Hot Tips to Increase Landing Page Conversions
Marketing Sherpa/Marketo co-presentation teleseminar with downloadable slide deck and audio file.

Getting started with Salesforce CRM for Google Adwords
This is a recorded session from Dreamforce 2008 featuring Sean Whiteley from Salesforce.com and marketing analytics guru Dave deBronkart from TimeTrade. Lots of good post-click marketing tips on tracking ROI of your clicks, landing page discussion starts at about 18:55.

Lead Management Vendor Selection

Rather than reinvent the wheel here, I discovered two really great resources digging in to this very subject that I can share. Full disclosure - Demandbase is a Marketo customer...

Selection of a Marketing Automation Vendor - Part 1
Selection of a Marketing Automation Vendor - Part 2
Inbound Marketer Blog

Raab Guide to Demand Generation Systems
Independent analysts at Raab Associates provide detailed, objective analysis of products from leading demand generation vendors. It is not free, but you can download a free excerpt here.