A new survey by Chief Marketer, says that 28% of B2B companies have no standards in place when it comes to lead qualification. For those companies that do have a standard in place, what metric are they using to determine success? According to the survey, nearly one quarter of all respondents say their firm sets goals based solely on the total number of leads generated; another third have goals based on the total number of leads which are qualified; and 22% use both qualified and unqualified leads.

I was surprised by the survey findings on the number of companies that don’t have standards and also those that use total number of leads as their metric for measuring success. In today’s economy, we know budgets are tight and people are stretched thin. However, doesn’t it make even more sense now to be smarter about lead generation and ensure they’re qualified? By doing this upfront work, you can determine the percentage of leads are deemed viable overall and truly identify “quality” leads; ultimately allowing you to determine your return on investment. It also helps save time for the sales team so they can focus on those top, quality leads to garner a better chance of making a sale. At the end of the day, if you want to hear that cash register ring, then proper steps need to be taken upfront to give everyone on the team a better chance of success on the back-end.

Karen Enriquez-Wagner | Post a Comment

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Industrial companies (primarily B2B) are continuing to shift their marketing resources by investing more dollars particularly in content marketing, which is the “creation and distribution of educational and/or compelling content in multiple formats to attract and/or retain customers.” For example, it can include tactics such as: articles, social media, blogs, case studies, white papers, etc.

The Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs conducted a study on 2012 B2B content marketing.

One area that they addressed was budgets. B2B marketers dedicated about 26 percent of their total budgets to content marketing initiatives last year. In 2012, that number is expected to increase with 60 percent of respondents indicating that they expect an uptick in spending. As more B2B companies are implementing content marketing and seeing its effectiveness, it allows marketers the ability and confidence to invest more dollars in this area. (more…)

Karen Enriquez-Wagner | Post a Comment

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There is a great deal of discussion about social media’s place in B2B marketing. Although collecting a group of Facebook likes is nice, it is easy to wonder what they are truly worth. Companies are often quick to judge the success or failure of a social media campaign based on measureable ROI. While analytics such as likes, links, conversations and leads is relatively easy to measure on a social media campaign, placing a value on them is much more challenging.

The truth is, if your social media campaign is well managed, over time it can produce highly qualified leads. To accomplish this, your program needs to do two things: provide value and encourage feedback. (more…)

Steve Staedler | Post a Comment

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The desire to generate measurable, qualified leads varies by business marketer as some distribute them to sales personnel and track results, while others use lead generation as a way to simply measure initial campaign tactical performance.

Leads are expensive no matter how they’re generated, issued or closed.  It’s gratifying to learn when a tradeshow promotion, Adwords campaign or direct response advertisement generated an acceptable number of qualified leads, especially when they are directed to distributor sales reps or issued to the internal sales team to work.  And even more gratifying when those leads turn into sales, as tracked by a CRM system.  (more…)

Dean LePoidevin | Post a Comment

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We just got back from the 2011 International Builders Show in Orlando. It was a great show for us with several good meetings and conversations.  The Orlando Sentinel reported total attendance figures to be 47,000. This is about 15 percent less than the 55,000 attendees the show organizers (NAHB) had projected, and significantly less than the peak attendance of 105,000 in 2006. 

While disappointing for the NAHB and likely many of the exhibitors, it turns out this isn’t all bad news.  One of our clients commented that booth traffic was definitely slower, but considerably more qualified. Booth visitors were walking up with specific direct questions and in some cases, actual building plans in hand, wanting to know exactly how to work the product into their designs.  These are people that are going to buy, rather than simply being causally interested or worse yet, looking to fill their bag with free pens and literature. (more…)

Judson Luke | Post a Comment

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As more and more companies (particularly on the B2B side) embrace social media and proactively look for ways to engage customers, it’s important to try to get your hands around what type of return you’re receiving. Especially in today’s economy, you have to be able to justify the resources you’re investing in a medium like Facebook. A fan base allows you to maintain an ongoing relationship with your customer or prospect, but how do you put a value to those fans in terms of ROI? (more…)

Karen Enriquez-Wagner | Post a Comment

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