Surveying buyers and B2B marketers about specific factors that motivate recipients to opt-in, open and engage with vendors, MarketingSherpa and IDG show that Social Media and blog content lag considerably behind other marketing tools, particularly promotional and education content, tutorials / demos, competitive comparisons and buying guides, free research reports and peer best practice / benchmarking tools. Frugalnomics in Full Effect: Forrester and Gartner. Forrester: Understand and Drive Outcomes for Sales. Forrester and IDC think Sales Enablement is a Big. MORE >>

So let’s review each stage of the process, how the current conditions are making the journey more difficult, and how B2B solution providers can optimize their content and engagement practices to help facilitate and shorten cycles. However, it is during this early phase that buyer’s indicate establishing strong provider preferences, with Forrester indicating that 65% of vendors who create the buying vision during these early phases of the journey getting the deal. However, continued economic uncertainty will make this desire hard to fulfill. MORE >>

The best way may be for IT solution providers to optimize their marketing content and sales engagement practices to help facilitate the buyer’s journey, working hand-in-hand with today’s more overloaded, skeptical and frugal buyer to break through the status-quo bias to identify and address important opportunities, justify investments and make valuable purchases. The final Decision is a best-value bake-off, where Forrester indicates that 35% of vendor selection decisions are made. growth forecasts. predictions. Source: Gartner Says Worldwide IT Spending to Grow 3.7 MORE >>

For example, this could include methodologies, presentations, white papers and assessment tools to help sales professionals identify and illuminate buyer issues, benchmark buyers versus competitors and best practice leaders, and create / drive solution roadmaps to help resolve the most pressing customer issues. According to SiriusDecision buyer studies, the most favored sources of content during the early stages of b-to-b decision-making are: White papers (64.4%); Peer referrals (51.1%); Webinars (48.9%); Trials or demos (42.2%); Analyst reports (37.8%). Powered by Blogge MORE >>

If a Lead becomes a Prospect after watching a product demo, that demo would receive revenue credit, even though a sales rep had nurtured the Lead in several other ways. Doesn’t account for the influence of subsequent touches– so insights are directional at best. This is called multi-touch attribution , and it is often best done with a simple even distribution – if there were five touches, each touch gets a 1/5 of the revenue. That’s why I believe it’s often best to weight all your touches equally. Why Measuring Marketing Programs is Hard. Multiple touches. MORE >>