Laura Ramos of Forrester recently published the 2010 B2B Marketing Budgets and Mix Trends Research. 49% are active with corporate blogging (up from 32% in 2008). In fact, she says that, on average, fewer than one in five say social media has been highly effective for branding and lead generation. Forrester’s 2010 study did show that e-mail, search marketing, and inside sales were the only tactics to show steady upward trends in both branding and lead generation. Social media is on the tip of most every B2B marketer’s tongue these days. MORE >>

CSO Insights recently found that quota achievement was at its lowest rate ever, lead generation budgets were flat or cut, and quotas were being raised.  Thanks for leading off with a question about B2B Sales! In a complex selling environment, marketing needs to feed direct, actionable, and real-time behavioral information directly to the sales team at the moment the lead score or other specific prospect behavior indicates it’s time for a real person to engage. How can a robust online presence help generate leads? What’s my best offer? MORE >>

Is Your Demand Generation Plan as good as it can be? We’re also partners with Marketo, as they sponsored two of the white papers at Find New Customers , the business to business lead generation company, including the popular and highly acclaimed How to Find New Customers. Jon Miller at Marketo wrote an interesting post (“ Demand Generation Quiz: How Good Are You ?”) Jon’s piece got me thinking about not just marketing automation but demand generation in general. Do you have specific, quantitative demand generation objectives to meet every quarter? MORE >>

How do you know if your demand generation is good enough or when it's time to take your lead management processes to the next level? Ask these questions to yourself, your boss, your direct reports, your head of sales, and any other stakeholders in your demand generation process. Lead Generation. Are you happy with the number of leads in your pipeline? How many more qualified sales leads could you generate if you had the ability to nurture relationships with qualified prospects and automatically identify when someone is ready to engage with sales? MORE >>

» August 04, 2008 Back Story as foundation for your content marketing plan Youre coming up on a new project launch, or maybe re-evaluating your marketing goals for the upcoming 4th quarter, and you need content to get the word out and generate interest and, well, deals. It includes all the things you need to consider before you can begin to generate a content marketing plan, or the content youll need for execution. The goal of a # of leads to give to sales is too broad. Why will those leads be worthy of monopolizing a salespersons time? Please try again. MORE >>