Here’s 3 important reasons marketers need to figure out how to track Social Media lead generation : Social Media is not free. Social Media drives high quality leads. Check out this short on-demand demo showing how a B2B Marketer tracks lead generation from social media. The demo is not behind a form, but you can sign up to get access to additional demos, including showing the progress of a social media lead into the lead management process. B2B marketers are still getting their arms around measuring the impact of Social Media. MORE >>

The heart of my presentation on Wednesday ended up as a list of 37 “best practices” for marketing automation / demand generation programs. leads, promotions, responses, orders: these are the traditional data sources used in most marketing systems. Best practices would link actual orders back to the individual leads, and do accurate customer data integration. More information allows more accurate targeting and better lead scoring. This builds a richer customer profile and avoids annoying the lead by asking the same question twice. But I digress. MORE >>

Demand GenerationLauren Carlson of Marketing Automation Software Advice  shared this whiteboard presentation by Carlos Hildago ( @cahildago ) of  The Annuitas Group  and she invited me to share it on this blog and comment about it. She asked that Jeff Ogden, President of  Find New Customers  (and the host of Mad Marketing TV ) share his insights. Could not agree more with you, Carlos. Marketing automation is a great tool, but it is just a tool. Content, plans, process and more are needed too. MORE >>

Summary: Net-Results is simpler to use than comparable demand generation systems because it applies the same features to many tasks. But on reflection I realized that Net-Results offers a full set of demand generation functions. Email campaigns are targeted at segments; Web visitors are classified into segments; behavior alerts are triggered by segments; lead scores are assigned to segments; leads are sent to the sales system based on segments; reports are run against segments. This allows leads to follow different paths within the same campaign. MORE >>

Lack of clarity and erroneous assumptions about demand generation, lead management and marketing automation are effectively addressed in two recent Software Advice whiteboard videos by Carlos Hidalgo, CEO, Annuitas Group , and Executive Director, Marketing Automation Institute. In part one , Carlos differentiates between demand generation strategies and lead management processes. When these qualified leads start to leak out of the sales funnel, it’s usually because an effective lead management process is missing. MORE >>