If you had asked me a few years ago whether the traditional marketing campaign had any place in social media I would have scoffed. would have had only slightly less disdain for the audience for these campaigns. If all you do is run contests and campaigns on Facebook, how can you expect to hold onto prospects over the long term? But then I see something like HP Technology Services (HPTS)’ “Where’s the Humanity in Your Technology” campaign, or Hitachi Data Services ( HDS )’ Social Media Buzz campaign. You can read synopses of the programs here and here.) MORE >>

by Jesse Noyes | Tweet this Today’s blog post comes courtesy of Carmen Hill, of Babcock & Jenkins, an Eloqua partner and B2B marketing integrated agency focused on demand generation and pipeline acceleration. When mapping and developing content for your demand gen campaigns, consider how it can be shared beyond your direct list of contacts. Create inbound “content pathways” that lead to your demand gen hub, whether that’s a corporate website, long-lived microsite or blog. Early Stage: Drive traffic to demand gen content via social media. MORE >>

Marketing automation / demand generation software enables marketers to build microsites and use content marketing to capture leads and nurture them through the buying process. Companies evaluating established providers such as Marketo , Eloqua , Silverpop’s B2B Engage and HubSpot would be well-advised to check out a relatively new contender as well— Genoo Marketing Automation. downloading a file, clicking a link in an email) to provide relevant content; No limit on the size or number of visits permitted to microsites. per 1,000 emails sent. per month. MORE >>

This is harder than monitoring since it requires linking social identities to marketing leads and connecting to the social system’s API. This contrasts sharply with mature categories like email, landing pages, and nurture campaigns, where dozens of features are shared by most systems. Social media is arguably overhyped as a marketing trend: it gets well under 10% of marketing budgets (different surveys have figures from 3% to 8%) and results are questionable (it was rated the least effective content marketing tactic in a recent MarketingProfs study ). MORE >>

One of the biggest challenges b2b marketers face is what to do with all of those “names&# that come into your system that aren’t really “leads&# yet; contacts collected from white paper downloads, webinar registrations, trade shows and other activities. How do you separate hot leads from long-term leads from tire-kickers? “Software-that-helps-turn-raw-names-into-qualified-leads-by-delivering-the-right-content-at-the-right-time-and-monitoring-response&# would be most accurate, but kind of a mouthful. Many marketers are starting to get this. MORE >>