Research consultancy Software Advice recently released the results of a five month-long investigation into which channels, content and offers business-to-business marketers find most successful. The poll also asked similar questions about content and offers, such as live demos, free trials, webinars, videos and more. Perceived Quality of Leads by Content or Offer. We asked marketers whether they would describe each content or offer as producing high, medium or low quality leads. Percentage of Marketers Using Each Content or Offer. EchoQuote™ Takeaway. MORE >>

Here’s the golden formula: RESPONSIVENESS = CONTENT + SPEED. Andy continues… Responsiveness is composed of two elements: content and speed. CONTENT - In a MarketingSherpa study of B2B buyers , the #1 piece of information they want in the first step of the buying cycle (”Awareness” phase) is budgetary pricing. The customer gets the exact content (budgetary pricing) they want faster than they ever imagined. I just finished reading Zero Time Selling by Andy Paul, which was selected as one of the top 3 sales and marketing books in 2011. MORE >>

It’s not enough to just create great content and hope people engage; you need an edge that reaches out and captures serious prospects when they land on your website or blog. Do you want to crush your 2011 sales or marketing objectives? If so, you’ll need a good dose of inbound marketing to augment your traditional outbound processes. Enter Bernie Borges, founder of FindAndConvert and an inbound marketing and social media expert. In this exclusive pre-recorded webinar hosted by Bernie, you’ll see first hand how to capitalize on your Social Media activities. Enjoy! MORE >>

Scarcity (#2) is an issue with the ubiquitous nature of the internet; make sure your content is not available via an easy Google search. All marketers are familiar with B2B Calls-to-Action (offers) used to motivate a prospect to take action. In the pre-internet era this usually manifested itself as a “Double your order by calling our 800 number now.”. The 800 number is certainly still in use today but is gradually being replaced with the more modern “Visit our Website”. However, once visitors arrive at the Corporate website the hard part begins; qualifying and converting the prospect. MORE >>

You can learn more about the buyer as they come back for more of your great content. This is a guest article by Don Fornes , CEO of SoftwareAdvice.com. You can find the entire post here: Why Won’t Anyone Return My !*#@$% Call? Want to know why B2B sales is getting tougher? Hint - the customer doesn’t feel they need a Sales person as early in the sales cycle as they used to.) Don gives a great description of why sales people are getting pushed out of the sales loop by the self-service nature of the Internet. Enjoy! This summer, that became my job. It’s not just cold calling. MORE >>