In a Marketing Sherpa Case Study  The Complex Sale: Lead scoring effort increases conversion 79%  (click the link for the full case study) But we summarize here. It was found that almost 3 out of 4 leads (73%) being passed to sales are not sales-read y. This is a massive waste of time and money. Find New Customers needs to share this with top executives in B2B companies. By implementing Lead Scoring , the number of leads went down and revenues went up. Fewer leads means higher revenue. Lead scoring needs to be part of your marketing strategy. RESULTS. Converted leads increased 79%. MORE >>

Image via Wikipedia. In my most recent article, Boost Demand Generation Using Target Ready Buyer Models , a comment was posted by the ever thoughtful Eric Wittlake, author of the blog B2B Digital Marketing and a member of the team at the Integrated B2B Marketing Agency – Babcock and Jenkins.  Here is a portion of what he said:  “As more buyers wait to engage with sales and as more companies, in order to attract potential buyers, open up their content, the need to meet your audience’s needs before you know who they are is likely going to be one of the next revolutions we see.”. MORE >>

Last week's post took a horse race approach to data from our newly available B2B Marketing Automation Vendor Selection Tool (VEST): who’s ahead, who’s behind, and who is coming on strong. But that’s more important to industry insiders than the marketers who actually use these systems. Real marketers care about what the systems can do. The VEST survey, covering nearly 200 items per vendor, answers that question in glorious detail. You need to examine the report itself to see answers for individual products. Let’s start with the basics. Remember, though: more features is not always better. MORE >>

Julie Meredith is a Community Engagement Specialist at Radian6 with a focus on social strategy as it relates to financial services. had a chance to engage in a Q&A with her on the topic of  measurement in B2B and financial services. You concentrate on financial services at Radian6 and there’s been so much discussion about the role social media plays in that industry. Most stories present the industry as social media laggards — is that a myth that’s been created or do you find that financial services firms are still learning? Slowly. Are you ready for a real-time B2B world? MORE >>

There was a recent exchange on twitter where a prominent, intelligent and well-respected analyst predicted that content marketing will destroy social media. mean “Whoa!”…The ”…The power of content marketing! The suggestion was that content marketing will result in the rapid erosion of the sacred trust we all have in the established media. certainly do not agree with these statements, but I do think  this topic deserves a healthy dialogue and discussion… Some of the relevant questions this raises for me include: what is the definition of content marketing? MORE >>