Best Practices in B2B Demand Generation - demandblog

The Irony of Using Social Media to Monitor Social Media

by Jason Stewart

I'm pulling together an email to go out to the people who visited our booth at the B2B Online Digital Edge "virtual" trade show last week. It was a really great event with some really good speakers, especially the keynote from David Meerman Scott (author of World Wide Rave and The New Rules of Marketing and PR). All of the talks are recorded and can still be accessed by going here and registering to enter the event.

Anyway, I thought I would share some of the best tweets I could find about the event so went to Twitter Search and typed in #b2bedge to see what I could find. After a few minutes I was struck by how many of the tweets were about social media, and justifying the use of social media as a marketing tool in B2B.

90% of the tweets seemed to be about tweeting. 

That's when I realized that one of the most enduring topics touched upon by BtoB marketing Twitterati is the perpetual need to justify their own tweeting. Hence, most of the tweets from the event included the phrase "social media" or were about ways to get started with (or justify the return on) a social network marketing strategy. 

Is social network marketing really the hottest topic in BtoB marketing right now? What about lead nurturing? What about email marketing? Web analytics? SEO? Event marketing?

Is Twitter all that people want to learn more about right now? Or does it just seem that way because that's what the people who are on Twitter are tweeting about?

David Meerman Scott spoke more about relinquishing control of your brand in general, and not being afraid to let people talk about you (or even provide a forum for them to do it) which seems so much more brave and important than simply creating a Facebook page or Twitter account and monitoring what people say about you. It seems like Twitter and Facebook are the trees that people are fixating on, while truly allowing your company and brand to be OUT THERE and approachable and unafraid to let people say whatever they want about you is the way to truly create a social marketing "forest."

Top 5 Takeaways From the Marketing Sherpa B2B Lead Generation Summit

by Jason Stewart

Last week Demandbase participated as a sponsor at the Marketing Sherpa B2B Lead Generation Summit in San Francisco. The Boston edition is coming up on October 5th and 6th.

While we spent most of the time speaking directly with customers and prospects sharing information about our B2B lead generation solutions, we also took notes from the various sessions and did a little digging into Twitter and the blogs to document tips and trends worth sharing. It is interesting to note that the top three "tweeted" tips from the Sherpa summit were, interestingly enough, a return to the basics. An emphasis on the bread-and-butter topics that Sherpa has always done really well, and that keep coming back year after year.

• e-Newsletters: Email marketing ranks highest for topics that were tweeted and retweeted at the show, proving it’s still the top tool for B2B marketers in reaching prospects and customers at every stage of the buying cycle. Consistency, relevancy, and quality content make all the difference in your email ROI. Check out the Demandbase on-demand All Star Email Marketing Webinar for more tips focused on email marketing for B2B.
• Landing Pages: Second on the tweet list is tips on building better landing pages. Probably no surprise considering that Marketing Experiments, the kings of landing page optimization, are the parent company of Marketing Sherpa and Dr. Flint McGlaughlin gave an outstanding opening presentation. The key is to make it obvious what you want them to do and why they should do it - everything else is a distraction.On a side note, the Marketing Experiments folks took a look at one of our landing pages and said it was "one of the best they'd seen all day" but offered a few tips as well as the advice that we should share more information about benefits of the offer. Much better than last year's evaluation - it's always nice to hear you're on the right track...
• Quality Content: It's not enough to write a white paper. You need to write a white paper that people will be interested in regardless of whether they become your customer or not. Whether it’s a video, an on-demand webcast, or that ubiquitous white paper it’s likely the cornerstone of most of your campaigns - or at least the ones designed to generate new leads. According to Bob Johnson from IDG, if you get customers to engage with 2 pieces of content you’ve got a 25% chance getting them into your pipeline.

The other two takeaways fall into the "buzzworthy" category...

• Buying Personas: This is a topic that seems to be gaining a lot of traction in B2B marketing, and I have heard people speak about it at several events this year including the Inbound Marketing Summit. Fujitsu and Bulldog Solutions said they increased sales pipeline by creating "buyer personas" – and people took note. You may recall the having heard about "Personas" during the last election when campaign strategists spoke about crafting messages that would appeal to the “soccer moms” ... B2B marketers are getting into the game and are finding groups with common wants and needs around their products and creating "buyer personas" to keep their team on track when developing website content, email copy, and white papers that cater to specifically to those personas. You can get started by getting sales and marketing in a roomto discuss a few current prospects in each stage of your pipeline and talk about their demographics, peers, what they’re measured on, what they need right now, and what they have in common.
• Social Media: While the topic still fills a room, it's a lot easier to find seats at the back than it was at this time last year. There does seem to be a growing backlash as there has been a shortage of fresh content out there for a while. As a matter of fact, we got a bump in traffic in the exhibit hall during the social media sessions with visitors citing "burnout" on the topic. And the top questions about of social network marketing still focus on ROI. Social media does tie in very nicely with the concept of "buying personas" though, as when you create the buying persona you should definitely factor in where your buyers are spending their time on the web (online forums or communities, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, et al.). Social networking marketing tactics are great for extending the life of your well developed content, your email campaigns, your word of mouth and keeping tabs on customer sentiment and can be worth the time and investment - but are still not likely to replace more traditional B2B marketing methods any time soon. Small and medium sized businesses, especially, often have resource challenges and have difficulty launching a significant presence in social media while still managing to do all the other things that they are expected to do. This is not to say that one "Tweet" can't make a difference - clearly it can - but managing a growing brand online, monitoring your competitors, finding the trending topics in your space and continually finding relevant content to share can suck up resources very quickly. That's where the ROI questions come into play. No one denies that there is opportunity to build pipeline out there, the questions center on the cost in time and resources.

Finally, the message we took away and encourage our customers to consider is simple: once you’ve got the basics down for a quality campaign the business is yours to lose. Pay attention to what your prospects and customers are telling you by their clicks, downloads, pageviews and tweets and then nurture them based on the behavior will directly affect your pipeline and your bottom line.

See you next year Sherpas!

Event Marketing 101: 4 More Things You Need to Do

by Jason Stewart

Has event marketing been on your mind, but with the expense of live events -- not to mention the time involved, travel commitments and questionable ROI -- has it been a hard sell? Then take a look at this post from Janine Popick at the Vertical Response blog, How to Work a Trade Show. Janine says:

"Recently I visited a marketing trade show here in the Bay Area. I always get excited to learn about new marketing technologies that help businesses grow so off the exhibit floor I went. What I found was kind of lame. It seemed like none of the companies exhibiting knew how to market their company and none of the people working at these booths knew the first thing about working a trade show. It's more than wearing a company shirt."

Wow, she really nailed it. I attended the (unnamed) show she is referring to and I need to say...it was one of the saddest exhibit floors I have ever seen. I went to one booth that had hundreds of "branded" stuffed toys all stacked up and on display. Having kids, I asked for one. The booth folks said "sure!" and handed me one...and then went back to talking with each other without asking me for anything in return. I was shocked. And I still don't know what that company does.

Booth after booth I stood and looked at the displays and collateral, more often than not trying to decipher the corporate gobbledygook to figure out what these companies actually did. Should I try to learn more? Can they help me? Booth after booth the personnel working it saw me -- and didn't approach me.

It was really sort of sad, as I couldn't help but imagine the subsequent conference debrief with sales and marketing management, where the booth staff complains about the poor results of the show -- when the reality was they just didn't want to be there so they didn't do their jobs properly.

I'm sorry if I sound harsh, but I have been to three events this quarter (two of them local, one of the perks of working in San Francisco) and time after time I found myself standing outside the booth looking in at the staff waiting for me to make the first move. They weren't talking to other prospects, they weren't running demos -- they were quite literally staring back at me waiting to see what I was going to do. Sad.

More often than not, I couldn't figure out what a company did so I moved on to the next booth.

So, with that in mind, Janine came up with 5 great recommendations on how to work a trade show. I've written four more:

1. Only send people who want to be there. If someone doesn't want to be there, it will show in their performance. Trade shows are too expensive to man the booth with people who are not going to do the job properly.
2. Don't ever assume your collateral clearly explains what you do. You're too close to it, and more often than not the "official" description that had to be approved by a committee of ten people is just generic enough that it doesn't actually say what your customers use your products to do. Don't leave it to chance, approach every last person who looks confused and make sure they leave understanding exactly what you do. They might not need you now, but when they do they will remember you.
3. Live in the present. Take turns being 100% dedicated to the show if you have to with the other people in the booth. This means no email, no cell phone, nothing but personally connecting with as many people as you possibly can. That is why you are there. If you cannot give the show 100% than you don't belong on the floor. It is too expensive an investment to screw around with this.
4. Understand the schedule. Breaks, meals, and cocktail receptions are when people cruise the floor. Make sure you are always fully staffed during these periods.

I can't help but wonder how much money has been wasted on trade shows by companies treating booth duty as a chore. If you man the booth with people who are afraid to approach prospects with a pre-loaded question, or who are afraid to scan a badge or ask for a business card, then you will never achieve a positive ROI on what can be the single biggest investment your marketing department makes this year. If you don't treat the trade show floor with respect, you will not get what you want out of the event.

Webinar: Post-Click Marketing

We're doing our first webinar in ages: Post Click Marketing: Pick Up Where Search Leaves Off.

Wed, Dec 3, 2008 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM PST
Register here.

Trying a few different ways of promoting it. Will keep you posted, but in the meantime here is the abstract:

Are you converting less than 5% of your web site traffic and ignoring the other 95%? Learn how to follow up with your “silent majority” on December 3rd.

This webinar will introduce you to the practice of Post-Click Marketing enabling you to generate more selling opportunities from the clicks you have already paid for from Google, Email, Social Media, SEO, or PR programs.

In less than 30 minutes, Demandbase executives Christopher Golec, CEO and Founder, and Dave Lieberman, VP of Business Development and former Yahoo executive, will share how your company can:

• Assess the potential impact of post click marketing at your company
• Learn how to find out which businesses are on your site right now – for free!
• Turn passive web visits into actionable sales leads
• Discuss best practices in the emerging “post click marketing” field

Wed, Dec 3, 2008 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM PST
Register here.

Top Three Best Changes at Dreamforce 2008

Dreamforce has always been a fantastic event, but there were three things this year that set it apart and made it quite simply the best event of its kind. None of these three things have to do with the first-rate content of the "break-out" sessions (I plan on writing about some of the content tomorrow) or the big announcements which were, as usual, artfully unveiled with all the bells, whistles and flourishes we have come to expect from Marc Benioff and his stellar marketing team. What made Dreamforce really great this year was the level of attention they paid to the comfort and convenience of their attendees.

Dreamforce 2008 was the most user-friendly event that I have ever attended.

The reality of attending events these days is that more often than not, the people attending them are still expected to fit their regular work responsibilities in while leveraging their attendance at the event for learning, networking, and finding the tools to help them do their jobs better. Locals are stretched particularly thin, as they are often expected to hit the office either on their way to or from an event like this.

Salesforce.com took this to heart and made three changes that really illustrate their understanding of the needs of their customers and the on-demand workplace.

1) Completely Open WiFi Internet Access
This may sound like a no-brainer, but I have been to many events over the past year where this is far from a reality. I went to one event where WiFi was available for free...if you happened to be a guest of the hotel that the event was held at. A steep fee was required if you were not. Other events make you hunt down a password. Some allow it in the common areas, but not in the session rooms. Still others offer some cut-rate version that doesn't allow secure VPN access to your corporate networks. At Dreamforce I could log in no matter where I was, with no password required. Awesome.

2) The Attendee Portal
Sorting through all of the breakout sessions, finding the ones you like, and then applying them to an event calendar so you know exactly where you want to be and when. You could also schedule time to go and see any specific vendors you might be interested in. It was simple to use, convenient and a tremendous help in making sure I got to see everything I wanted to see. Because there was a TON of great stuff to see.

3) The "Cloud Dine" Lounge
I harped on the need for an area for attendees to comfortably sit, work, meet and unwind last year, and was so happy to see it executed. Lounge is a grossly inaccurate term for what it was, though -- basically, they left a huge area set up with hundreds of tables and chairs and left it open throughout the conference (rather than just at lunch time). Dreamforcers were able to comfortably sit and work, or meet with colleagues whenever they had down-time or simply needed to get caught up on email or voicemail. Gone were the days of wall-to-wall people trying to find an open patch of carpet at Moscone to get some work done, or trying to find a quiet corner to have a meeting or make some phone calls.

As much as many event planners would like to believe that their event is the most important and impactful thing on their attendees lives while they are there, the reality is that the event itself is just one of many things competing for attention. By taking these three simple steps to acknowledge that the other stuff is important too, Salesforce.com made it possible for people to remain at the show rather than waste valuable workday time dashing back and forth from hotel, office and event. It's like Salesforce.com took the best practices of its own software to heart, creating a sticky, friendly, easy to work in environment that does everything that it possibly can to make sure that you have no need to leave. Well done.

Dreamforce 2008: Notes from the Keynote

There’s a full house today for Marc Benioff’s keynote at Dreamforce 2008, the Salesforce.com annual user and developer conference in San Franciso. Considering the fate of most event marketing budgets during tough economic times I am hoping that it is a sign that things are not so bad, rather than the possibility that the market crashed after the final date to get a refund came and went.

Software as a Service and “Cloud Computing” (the utilization of servers and services hosted by third parties to handle your business needs) proponents will no doubt claim it is a direct reaction to a struggling economy, and they could be right. Some of the first words out of Mr. Benioff’s mouth were “There has never been a better time for cloud computing!...” And, of course, he could be right on the money.

Big Announcement One:
Force.com Sites. Salesforce.com customers can now host their websites on the Force.com platform. Existing Salesforce.com customers (Group Edition or higher) have generous page allowances for this service included in their subscription price.

Big Announcement Two:
Force.com integration with Facebook. "A new class of Business apps that leverage the social graph." Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg joined Benioff on stage to share how this is going to work...more and more businesses looking to understand and utilize social network marketing. Creation of Facebook Apps on the Force.com platform could be a great introduction to this, and a great way to capture info from those apps and quickly and easily get it into your Salesforce.com instance. The example the shared was a recruiting app that works on Facebook and sends the captured information into a Salesforce.com recruiting object. They also shared the example of Starbucks pushing their "My Starbucks Idea" site to Facebook, using Force.com. Slick.

Big Announcement Three
Integration/partnership with Amazon Web Services. Applications built and hosted on Amazon can be displayed on Force.com sites with easy integration into Salesforce.com. The example they used was an application called "Card Lasso" which allows you to take a picture of a business card, upload it at a Force.com site where it gets processed on an Amazon Web Services back end, and then the text from the business card gets populated into your Salesforce.com instance where you can actually use it.

Big Announcement Four:
A little anticlimactic, but still interesting...more and more companies running their businesses exclusively from the "Cloud" -- CRM, HR, ERP, Financials, Email, Office Productivity, etc. etc.

Rock legend Neil Young then took the stage to talk about...electric cars. Neil is involved with a company called LincVolt, which apparently has its website running on Force.com. For the big finish, they rolled out Neil Young's vintage Lincoln Continental which has been converted to run on 100% electric power with a very long range. It was a thing of beauty.

For the rest of the conference I’ll be looking for B2B marketing tips and best practices to share from the breakout sessions, and of course I'll be sharing details from any interesting partners and vendors with marketing functionality. I will share my personal favorite keynote moment, though - waiting for the speeches to begin, watching the dancing “NO SOFTWARE” button working the stage like a deranged college mascot, staring at the back of Scoble’s head two rows in front of me.

Marketing Sherpa Summit San Francisco: Highlights from the Keynote

Attended the first half of the Marketing Sherpa B2B Demand Generation Summit this morning in San Francisco. Stefan Tornquist, the Research Director for Marketing Sherpa shared some findings from recent research...lots of good information here, but what really struck me was that according to Sherpa Research, the only two areas where B2B marketers plan to expand budget in this economic climate are:

1) Email Marketing to their house list 
2) Social Network Marketing

Social Network Marketing looks like a big topic this year. It's the new Viral.

Stefan went on to point out the top 5 things that need to be "all the rage" in B2B marketing.
1) Optimize existing traffic (yay! check out Demandbase Stream)
2) Focus on customer retention (keep those subscribers happy!)
3) Focus on house lists (they already know your brand, now close them!)
4) Spend on SEO (if you build it *properly* they will come)
5) Spend on Email (especially to your house lists!)

He also stated that smaller companies (less than 1000 employees) are actually more likely to increase marketing spend in this economic crisis, but more importantly executives at larger companies are saying that marketing budgets are not the easy target for cuts that they used to be...I wonder if it is because of all the advances in B2B marketing and the ability to track ROI at the campaign level?

Dreamforce 2008 Partner Preview: ActevaRSVP

I was treated to a sneak preview last week for ActevaRSVP 2.0, an event management tool from Acteva built specifically for Salesforce.com  and available on the AppExchange. Although ActevaRSVP has been around for a couple of years now, they are debuting this new version at Dreamforce on November 3rd, and I strongly recommend a visit to their booth for a demo while you are there -- especially if you have anything to do with events, meetings, webinars or corporate training.

Traditionally, if I have an event or webinar I use either my email vendor or my Salesforce.com email tools to handle the notification duties, and RSVP tracking would be done manually. This is not a complicated process, but it is time consuming and prone to error, which could be especially problematic if I needed to monitor attendance due to limitations of the meeting space, webinar tool, or food ordering requirements. I ask people to "please reply to this email if you would like to attend" and then file the responses into a folder in my Outlook for tracking.

Subsequent emails would ask people to "please RSVP if you have not already" but I invariably receive multiple notes from people I have already heard from, requiring me to go through each reply individually. And if I asked any questions in the email, even something as simple as "Do you want chicken or fish?" I would also need to tally that individually. And then there are the emails where people mention they will be bringing four of their colleagues. And they want two chickens, one fish and one macrobiotic vegan meal that wasn't on the menu.

I suppose I could use a survey tool, but that would involve setting up the survey in addition to the email - and then putting the details in the email, and tracking the results at multiple locations, and then updating my Salesforce.com campaign to make sure costs and ROI are being monitored, and on and on. In short, a real pain in the neck.

Acteva has been working on a really elegant solution to take the pain out of managing your event follow-up. It lives in your Salesforce.com instance, and has the tools in place to not only create and email the invitations to your webinar or event, but also to:

• Track RSVP's
• Create surveys and track results
• Synch and update any corresponding salesforce.com campaigns
• Easily segment responses for follow-up emails
• Track capacities and limitations of Event venues
• Build and host stand-alone web pages for event registration

That last piece has me very excited, as here at Demandbase we plan to much more aggressively market webinars over the next few quarters. I plan to link to ActevaRSVP event registration pages not only from our website, but also from any email campaigns I will be running in order to capture new leads and monitor registrations and RSVP's for these events. ActevaRSVP offers email delivery for their invitations, but with these stand-alone pages you can use different tools for email delivery -- such as lead nurturers like Marketo or Eloqua or Manticore (note: a reader in the comments section indicated Eloqua has demonstrated some good event management capabilities). I can simply insert the link for the registration page into the email and still get the benefits these tools offer. Double dipping at its finest!

Here at Demandbase we use Marketo for lead management, which has email delivery capabilities in addition to the lead scoring and nurturing that led us to them. Vertical Response has been an email service that I have personally used for years, at multiple companies. None of these tools give me what ActevaRSVP does, and the RSVP tool has evolved into something that not only works very well on its own but also complements these other tools I already use. In short, if you do events, you need ActevaRSVP. Pricing is reasonable at $65 per month for 5 event organizers/users and unlimited invitations, events and registrations (which should be plenty of room for most companies).

This is looking like the must-have application for event managers or corporate training teams using Salesforce.com. If you are going to Dreamforce, you should make a special trip to their booth for a demo.

Event Time Is Here - A Song For You

I was riding the bus in to work this morning, thinking about the Marketing Sherpa event I am going to next week, and the Salesforce.com event I am speaking at the week after, and I was inspired to write this song for you....sung to the tune of "Christmas Time is Here" from the Charlie Brown Christmas Special.

Events time is here
Giveaways and gear
Fun for all
But marketers call
Their hardest time of year

Commerce in the air
Booth babes everywhere
Demo times And clever rhymes
To prompt prospects to share

ROI just fair
And proving it’s a bear
Sales are rare, Marketers glare
Was it really worth the fare?

Events time is here
Expo's end is near
We wish that we could simply see
If our budget’s blown this year…

Do You Know What Would Make Dreamforce Better?

Well, if you do, Salesforce.com would like to hear about it.

The SFDC IdeaExchange, has been up and running for a long time now. It's a place customers can share their ideas for feature requests with the community to solicit feedback and votes in order to try and get them higher up on the developmental "to-do" list. It's really interesting to have this kind of visibility into their feature request world, and the amount of detail and work some of their customers put into the feature requests that they post is pretty impressive.

SFDC has created a Dreamforce portion in the Idea Exchange, in order to solicit input from the community on content at this November's event. If you are a Salesforce.com customer you can vote on the presentations you would like to see, or if you have an idea for a presentation you want to deliver (that is not simply an advertisement for your product or services) you can out it up there and see if anyone votes for it.

One idea I particularly like was Salesforce Marketing for Small Businesses, although I think it is something that deserves an entire track as opposed to a single session. I actually wrote a bit about just that after the last Dreamforce, part of my Five Things to Make Dreamforce Better post. Here's an excerpt:

"Create a new track: Guerilla Salesforce.com -- Bigger does not necessarily mean more interesting. At the keynotes, at the awards, and in the breakout sessions the customer references and case studies are overwhelmingly dominated by big customers. I understand -- big customers are cool. But last time I checked, the vast majority of customers (heck, the vast majority of partners) all have less than 100 employees. I was in one marketing track where the speaker asked how many attendees worked in marketing departments with less than five people in them. Most of the room raised their hands. Here's what you do. Create a track dedicated to best practices and creative ways to use Salesforce.com without a lot of extra development, and without a single App off the AppExchange that you can't download for free....and create an Appy Award that a customer with less than 100 seats has a shot at winning. "Most Creative Use of Salesforce.com Without Spending a Penny."