Convince & Convert

AUGUST 9, 2011

Google optimization is based on the premise that the more people that like to your website, the more valuable it must be and the higher ranking it deserves in search results. And almost two decades since it was devised, beneath the sophisticated mathematics, the hordes of MIT grads swallowed into the research and development department, and hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue lies a simple principle: Google optimization works.

Ad Building 167

Ad Building Digg Ideal Customer Profiles Advertising Agencies 167

markempa

AUGUST 30, 2011

Tweet Longer selling cycles and stalled deals are impeding sales funnels everywhere. Use these three practices to convert more leads into revenue: Use Funnel-Specific Market Research. If you really want to understand what’s happening with customers at a particular point in your funnel, then you have to ask them while the last interaction with you is relatively fresh in their minds.

Sales Management 248

Sales Management Top of Funnel Ideal Customer Profiles Lead Scoring 248

Customer Experience Matrix

AUGUST 29, 2011

Summary: Eloqua's registration statement offers new and interesting details about its business. My analysis is below. Hopefully it's accurate -- I think that SEC rules prevent them from commenting if it's not. Eloqua last week filed for an initial public offering of its stock. The registration statements accompanying these filings are like a striptease: often more interesting for what they hide than what they reveal.

Eloqua 156

Eloqua Marketing Automation Services Terms and Conditions Paid Search Agency 156

ViewPoint

AUGUST 29, 2011

Jim Dickie is the Managing Partner with CSO Insights ; a research firm that specializes in benchmarking how companies are leveraging people, process, and technology to optimize the way they market to, sell to, and service customers. CSO Insights recently completed our 7 th annual Lead Management Optimization study , gathering data on over 65 metrics from over 600 companies.

Acquisitions 170

Acquisitions Allocation Lead Scoring Lead Ranking 170

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Webinar Metrics

Marketing Craftmanship

AUGUST 31, 2011

Self-serving Press Release Content Has Killed PR. The origins of the press release are unclear, but in the not too distant past, this communication tool was called a “News Release.” And its sole purpose was to provide the press with information likely to be of interest to the public; containing what journalists still call “news value.”. Prior to popularization of fax machines in the 1980s, news releases were delivered by human messengers to major wire services such as AP, UPI and Dow Jones, whic

Public Relations 147

Public Relations Press PR Content 147

Convince & Convert

AUGUST 7, 2011

Social media measurement causes unsavory (and ineffective) marketing behavior because unlike the rest of our marketing key performance indicators, social media metrics are out there for anyone to see. Was it a surprise last week when Presidential wannabe Newt Gingrich was (allegedly) busted for having 1.3 million followers on Twitter, most of which were bots and fake accounts ?

Social Media 164

Social Media Media Twitter Click Rate 164

markempa

AUGUST 22, 2011

Tweet The graph at right, published in MarketingSherpa’s 2011 Benchmark Report , provides a snapshot of what marketers care about most. And it’s very telling, especially now. As we approach the fourth quarter, I am acutely aware of why marketers believe generating better leads is a higher priority than generating more leads. In an economy that’s more precarious than ever, there’s simply no room to waste time, budget or resources.

Sales Qualified Leads 188

Sales Qualified Leads Sales Cycle Top of Funnel Webinar Metrics 188

Customer Experience Matrix

AUGUST 22, 2011

I spent several hours this morning at the Affiliate Summit East in New York. This is a corner of the direct marketing industry I haven't examined in depth although it overlaps with lead generation, online advertising, and performance measurement segments I know well. The exhibit hall was enticingly crammed with unfamiliar vendors, although I saw enough to identify a few general categories: offer aggregators who bring together products for affiliates to sell; network providers who assemble audien

Churn Rate 139

Churn Rate Paid Search Agency Ethics Aggregators 139

ViewPoint

AUGUST 22, 2011

Jay Hidalgo is the President of The Annuitas Group, a firm that specializes in helping B2B companies develop a process-based approach to lead management. To learn more about The Annuitas Group and their proprietary methodology, the Lead Management Framework™ , go to [link]. Well, we’re in the dog days of August. For many, the planning for 2012 starts next month, right after Labor Day.

Marketing Automation Services 171

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation Buy Automation 171

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Tony Zambito

AUGUST 31, 2011

Cover via Amazon. I have been thinking about this question for some time.  I have been thinking that there is something wrong with all the titles I see that begin with Reach and Engage for numerous articles and blog posts.  To me at least, it seems that in the social age the terms Reach and Engage cancel each other out.  One can make an educated argument that reach belongs in the push column of marketing.  Whereby engage can be placed in the pull column.

Social Media 154

Social Media Amazon Social Networks Paid Search Agency 154

ANNUITAS

AUGUST 30, 2011

Well, we’re in the dog days of August. However, for many B2B marketers, 2012 planning is right around the corner and usually starts right after Labor Day. And for many of you, one of your goals will be to finally implement a marketing automation tool. Unfortunately, too many marketers begin this process with the question, “Which automation tools should we look at?

Marketing Automation Services 141

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation Buy Automation 141

Convince & Convert

AUGUST 28, 2011

Simple isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Social media is unique in that it is the only medium yet conceived where companies are playing in the exact same sandbox as we’re playing personally. Your employees and customers aren’t making TV ads on the weekend. Nor are they making their own magazine ads for fun at night, while watching Real Housewives of Omaha (a new show where everyone is sensible and nobody wears makeup).

Social Media 155

Social Media Media Marketing Automation Services Advertising Mediums 155

markempa

AUGUST 15, 2011

Tweet Too many marketers think that their inside sales teams are alchemists. They dump data that’s absolute garbage into the top of the sales funnel and expect sales lead gold to come out the other side. This came to mind when my teleprospecting team was struggling with one of our lead-generation clients. They had promised us a “high-quality list” from their database: tens of thousands of names of c-suite executives who were in their target-market sweet spot.

Top of Funnel 208

Top of Funnel Practices Lead Generation Contact Marketing 208

Speaker: Kristin Hess - Senior Product Marketing Manager, Drift; Will Lyon - Head of Vertical Marketing, 6sense

The past three years have forced nearly every industry to rethink their prospect and customer engagement strategy. But while we’ve all been thrust into digital transformation, we haven’t all made the transition efficiently. Now that we know digital selling is the new norm, how can we ensure our website is doing as much of the leg work as possible for us - even in the midst of economic challenges?

Work Management

Customer Experience Matrix

AUGUST 16, 2011

I’ve long believed that B2B marketing automation is just a passing phase: that, ultimately, B2B marketing automation systems will be absorbed into CRM systems instead of operating independently. It’s a view I discuss sparingly in public, since so many of my friends in the marketing automation industry have a vested interest to the contrary. But there are also a few vendors who have bet in favor of merged systems, so it wouldn’t be fair to ignore their view entirely.

Marketing Automation Services 192

Marketing Automation Services Enterprise Management Work Management Marketing Automation 192

ViewPoint

AUGUST 17, 2011

This article has been selected for DeFinis Communications’ “Sales Coaching: Top Tips for Increased Productivity” Blog Carnival. You can enjoy even more posts from other exceptional bloggers at their website. Sales managers have six basic jobs—hire, compensate, train, deploy, monitor and manage, and coach and counsel—and they generally fail at the last three.

Work Management 163

Work Management Verticals Training Sales Qualified Leads 163

Digital B2B Marketing

AUGUST 30, 2011

Woozle's live in the hearts and minds of Pooh and his friends. And most importantly, woozle's change behavior in the Hundred Acre Wood. Like woozles, your brand lives in the hearts and minds of your audience. It impacts deals, but you can't create it today in the traditional ways.

B2B Marketing 100

B2B Marketing B2B Marketing Brand Identity 100

ANNUITAS

AUGUST 30, 2011

The Annuitas Group and Harte-Hanks Announce Strategic Alliance. Relationship expands end-to-end demand generation and lead management service offerings for clients. Grand Rapids, MI – August 30, 2011 – The Annuitas Group, an expert provider of lead management process services, today announced that it has formalized an alliance with Harte-Hanks, Inc.

Demand Generation Agencies 100

Demand Generation Agencies Marketing Management Demand Generation Marketing Automation Services 100

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Thinkers360, the world’s premier B2B thought leader and influencer community, has released its 2022 B2B Thought Leadership Outlook Research Report conducted in association with the British Computer Society (BCS). The purpose of the research was to better understand current and future trends with regard to both thought leadership creators – such as individuals, agencies and brands – and thought leadership consumers and their plans for 2022.

B2B Thought Leadership

Convince & Convert

AUGUST 4, 2011

This is the first of what I hope will be a regular series of Webinines: short Webinars of 9 minutes or fewer. Because it’s seemingly 150 degrees throughout most of the country, I went with a cool weather holiday theme on this one. Your Content Should Be Centralized and Decentralized. The default state for most content marketing initiatives is to focus on content that we OWN, that resides on web properties we control.

Content Marketing 147

Content Marketing Content Opt-in Paper 147

Marketing Insider Group

AUGUST 30, 2011

I am bummed that I will not be able to attend Content Marketing World next week, so I’ve been reading all the great content coming out from the amazing team over at the Content Marketing Institute. If you missed the posts, some of my favorites include an overview of the technology that excites the speakers , their 12 Content Marketing Predictions For 2010 , and my favorite one is where Content Marketers Reveal Their Toughest Challenges.

Content Marketing 162

Content Marketing Content Paid Search Agency Template 162

Writing on the Web

AUGUST 30, 2011

This is a little story I share with new blogging clients who get hung up about keywords. One client in particular (let’s call him Ted) had written about 10 blog posts which were saved as drafts because he was worried about keywords. Let me say that there’s a learning curve involved in writing for your blog, and there’s no way around it.

Keywords 153

Keywords SEO Stats Education 153

ViewPoint

AUGUST 15, 2011

James Obermayer, Executive Director and CEO of the Sales Lead Management Association and President of Sales Leakage Consulting is a regular guest blogger with ViewPoint. From a recent survey of new members to the Sales Lead Management Association, we found that generating qualified leads is the biggest issue facing the new members. More than just new inquiries, or managing inquiries or working with sales management on follow-up or even proving ROI, qualified leads are king.

Sales Qualified Leads 168

Sales Qualified Leads High Quality Lead Generation Leads 168

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Why are buyer-facing teams struggling and what can be done about it? Today’s buying experience is extremely challenging to navigate––with a plethora of choices, easy access to research, and competing (often contradictory) voices chiming in. Buyers struggle with being overwhelmed, indecision, and trusting the information that’s presented to them. For a buyer-facing team, the struggle is also real.

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Digital B2B Marketing

AUGUST 30, 2011

The role of brand in enterprise B2B marketing can be a subject of debate (my friend Maureen Blandford even wrote a book “ Branding Doesn’t Work in B2B “). With complex buying processes, multiple stakeholders, and a high touch sales process, how important is a brand? And what does that have to do with a woozle? Woozle’s live in the hearts and minds of Pooh and his friends.

B2B Marketing 112

B2B Marketing Peer-to-peer B2B Touchpoints 112

B2B Marketing Traction

AUGUST 29, 2011

Tweet. Now is the time for B2B Marketers to invest small amounts in marketing programs - by doing research to find new or validate existing market opportunities, confirming or updating marketing messaging, or identifying new marketing technologies and media that might offer better or more cost-effective results. I read a great HBR blog post by Stephen Wunker, Five Rules for Innovating in a Shaky Economy.

Buy 115

Buy B2B Marketing B2B Television marketing 115

Convince & Convert

AUGUST 23, 2011

Content curation is the art and science of finding and sharing quality content on a specific topic. Curation helps you build an audience. You then have a larger group of people with whom to share your own content, and who can spread the word. Many among the Twitterati have built their followings in large part through content curation. Jason Falls of Social Media Explorer publicly states his Twitter strategy is “find good shit and share it.

Curation 147

Curation Top of Funnel Content Blogger 147

Webbiquity

AUGUST 29, 2011

What’s the best web content management system (CMS) for your small business? Should you look at something beyond a CMS—a web marketing system (WMS), that provides additional functions like customer relationship management (CRM) and email? There’s no shortage of options, and the decision is an important one: you’ll be “married&# to the platform you choose for as long as your current site is up.

CMS Development 148

CMS Development Small Business Marketing Work Management Marketing Automation Services 148

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NuSpark Consulting

AUGUST 26, 2011

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the unique mix of art and science with the ultimate goal to showcase your firm on Google’s first page when users query a term that your firm provides as an answer to that query. However, from a lead generation standpoint, the mechanisms of lead capture for SEO are different from pay per click. Here’s the difference: Tactic Theme Destination Key.

SEO 144

SEO Content Marketing Lead Scoring Lead Ranking 144

ANNUITAS

AUGUST 26, 2011

My younger brother once had the rare opportunity to spend time with Bono, the lead singer for the Irish rock band U2. Bono seemed genuinely interested and to quote my brother, “He didn’t break eye contact and his demeanor showed that he was genuinely interested in learning about me.”. The same dynamic applies in the buyer and seller world. I often find it ironic when buyers are shocked when a seller seems genuinely interested in them.

Contacts 100

Contacts Spending Leads Lead 100

The Effective Marketer

AUGUST 26, 2011

With Steve Jobs stepping down from the CEO post at Apple, is inevitable we look back at the history of such an iconic company. Marketing, at Apple, has always been a differentiating point and key to their eventual dominance of the electronics consumer market and their resurrection in the personal computer industry. While Brand Republic’s post “ Appointment to view: Apple’s History of Marketing ” takes us back to the early days of Apple advertising the Apple-1 in 1976 until today’s iPad commercia

Paid Search Agency 100

Paid Search Agency Marketing Budget Work Management Differentiation 100