by Rob Bois | Tweet this Pick up any sales or marketing trade pub, and you’re likely to see that 2011 was the year of social.  While B2B companies have jumped on the bandwagon, demand generation marketers often struggle to find its value. It’s one thing to tweet about your company and build a Facebook page, but B2B firms are now looking to tie Social to measurable lead generation.  What many marketers lack are just some basic tools and a roadmap to help get started. Step 1: Build Awareness. And you don’t need to be an HTML jockey. MORE >>

Despite that trend, most marketing solution vendors aspire to be purveyors to big (or relatively big) enterprises. Although the fundamentals of marketing apply to all businesses regardless of size, specific processes and supporting automation solutions don’t always scale up or down. Enterprises have more dedicated marketing staff as well as well as dedicated subspecialists with deep expertise. By the same token, smaller businesses typically have people who are marketing generalists or who may wear many functional hats. Try one channel at a time. lead scoring. MORE >>

Let me start by saying that the 50% revenue increase I’m projecting for B2B marketing automation in 2013 is a very healthy one. What really got me thinking about this was prepping for a Webinar I’ll be giving next Wednesday on the future of marketing automation ( register here ). had figured to start off with my industry growth figures, but this led naturally to a question about long-term potential, which in turn leads to thoughts of market penetration rates. If true, these figures would actually be bad news for marketing automation vendors. MORE >>

B2B marketers are still getting their arms around measuring the impact of Social Media. Here’s 3 important reasons marketers need to figure out how to track Social Media lead generation : Social Media is not free. Check out this short on-demand demo showing how a B2B Marketer tracks lead generation from social media. Tags: Demand Generation_EG Genius.com Social Marketing Automation_EG demand generation social media Everyone’s doing it, but few are able to attach hard metrics. Digg this! MORE >>

Summary: the demand generation market will continue to grow in 2010, and it may attract some new, big competitors from outside the industry. But the real excitement will be features that expand the scope of demand generation products to support inbound marketing, better measurement, and more efficient content creation. 2009 was a year of tremendous growth for demand generation systems (a.k.a. business-to-business marketing automation. inbound marketing. What will 2010 bring? So much for the rear view mirror. MORE >>