The raw number of searches being performed gives a good indication of the upper limit of your success with active awareness efforts such as search engine marketing or search engine optimization. If a term is performing poorly, either an investment in search engine marketing against that term, or a focus on content around that term may improve your chances of being actively discovered by buyers seeking information on that term Deeper Searches As looked at earlier, however, the way in which buyers seek information is changing. Are you Being Discovered? MORE >>

Steve Kellogg at Astadia raised the question very aptly in his Endless Lead Loop post, and it's a question we all face as we wrestle with the business process of lead scoring and handing leads from marketing to sales. Tags: Lead scoring CRM Integration sales and marketing alignment lead ranking Should we allow sales to cherry pick leads that, based on lead scoring, we have deemed not to be ready for sales? Let me start by saying that there is no right answer here, and businesses that have consciously decided to allow cherry picking are not necessarily doing anything wrong. MORE >>

The market for marketing automation software is doing very well these days. This has lead to an unprecedented variety of options for marketers to choose from, and the range of options can be dizzying. As a big believer in the economics of smart buyers , I wanted to share ten question areas that are key to dive into when evaluating a marketing automation investment. Having sales buy in to your definition is crucial, but reaching agreement between marketing and sales on the definition of a qualified lead is not as easy as it seems. What mistakes can be avoided? MORE >>

Marketing automation is becoming a vital tool in today’s B2B space, as more marketers need to gain a better understanding of their customers’ buying cycles and increase their ROI from every campaign. However, many marketers become enamored with the latest technology and jump into marketing automation without considering the human investment and business processes needed to make their efforts successful. Whether you’re considering marketing automation or have already begun the process, you must understand exactly what you can – and can’t – achieve with the software. MORE >>

Recently, I’ve been playing around with foursquare to get a better understanding of it, and think about how it might have a significant impact on B2B marketers. suspect, however, that this way of using foursquare in a B2B marketing environment is temporary at best, and will quickly pass. As a B2B marketer, especially one selling to very small businesses that are owner-run and not adopters of technology, this (theoretically) makes available a highly targeted data set. Tags: Social media data management B2B Marketing The motivation to do this is startlingly small. MORE >>