Adios Marketo. It was fun!

Marketo will always have a special place here at Find New Customers - they got us started. But like your first girlfriend, sometimes you have to say good-bye.

We said good-bye to Marketo recently, and a strange thing happened. Business took off.Good-bye

For almost three years, we delivered leads to them. Our white paper, How to Find New Customers, (which they sponsored) delivered a small but steady stream of leads. These were delivered every month and a small check from Marketo came in the mail every month. It wasn’t a lot of money, but it was found money, which was nice.

Update: Marketo opens the wallet and pays BIG bucks for leads (They’re paying $1,000 a lead now. They paid me $65 per lead. Something looks really fishy.)

One day Maria Pergolino called me and said that we’re not delivering the volume of leads they need. (Note: I think they could have done vastly more to promote me and the white paper to greatly up the volume of leads, yet despite the brilliant marketers that they are - they never asked for my ideas (despite the fact they are documented in my blog article: How to Turn a Good White Paper into a Great Lead Generation Piece) - or listened when I tried to present them.) Frankly, they did a very poor job of marketing that white paper.

Maria killed the program. The weekly email reports stopped coming.

Then something strange happened for us. Business exploded. I found a world out there — ripe for the taking - new clients, new partners and new opportunities.

The most exciting is our new weekly B2B marketing show, Mad Marketing TV, sponsored by Act-On Software - a young and aggressive Marketo competitor. As the host of the show, I interview top marketing experts every week - some of the most famous marketers on Earth. It’s terrific exposure for Act-On and Find New Customers.

My allegiance is now with Act-On Software and their VP of Marketing, David Appelbaum.

Life moves on, allegiances change and new partners emerge.  I don’t wish ill will on Marketo, but after being dumped my first long-term girlfriend, I find lots of very pretty and smart girls out there - girls I never noticed before.

What do you think? Have you been dumped by a partner? What happened? We love comments and those who share.

Jeff Ogden is the President of the B2B demand generation company, Find New Customers. He was recently named a “Top 50 expert in Sales Lead Management” and he’s the host of Mad Marketing TV, sponsored by Act-On Software.

  • Anonymous

    Hi Jeff, congrats on your new life outside of Marketo.

    • http://www.findnewcustomers.com Jeff Ogden

      Thanks. Life is good.

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