To convince them more easily, offer a search engine optimized link back to their site, or add a lead generation form to share the leads. Content creation is essential for your lead nurturing and social media strategies. But it’s very time-consuming to write all the content that you need. This post suggests some shortcuts: rather than writing an article, you can also use different media, such as audio or video. It’s also helpful to ask other people to contribute content. Guest Post. Ask them if they want to write a guest post for your blog. Thought Leadership Interview. MORE >>

This is something we cover in depth in the Demand Generation section of the Connected Marketer. Yesterday, I had the opportunity to co-present on a webinar with Amanda Batista, from DemandGen Report and Chris Parisi, from Bulldog Solutions, on the State of Marketing Automation in 2011. This was based on a report that Amanda had recently compiled for DemandGen Report. This event was great for me, because it forced me to reflect back on where the industry was just a few years ago and how aggressively it’s matured. In the past two years, adoption has increased by 4x among B2B companies. MORE >>

Tags: Marketing Terms best practices acquisition cost demand generation genius.com. MORE >>

Email Marketing Genius.com Lead Scoring Lead nurturing Marketing Automation Marketing Terms Metrics Reformed marketing demand generation inbound marketing sales and marketing alignment social marketing automation social mediaAs Craig Rosenberg summarizes in this infographic  [link] , the marketing automation space is o n fire. The infographic highlights that growth will be even faster over the next few years with adoption hitting 50% and there are currently over 100 MA vendors and it hasn’t stopped there.  Marketers are literally flooded with options for marketing automation.  Digg this! MORE >>

best practices demand generation marketingIt’s amazing how a role can be redefined in just over a decade.  Take the role of Chief Marketing Officer.  When I was first hired as the CMO of WebEx in 1998, there was a pretty vague mandate to “build the brand&# and “support sales&#. In those days, that meant hire a PR firm and an ad agency and pump out press releases, print ads and glossy slicks for the sales guys. Then the Internet bubble burst and marketing had to show its impact on the sales pipeline.  Web analytics, email marketing, and content management). Sound familiar? MORE >>