Given that 20% of a list decays over a year, marketers are well-served if data can be cleaned as a by-product of outbound marketing efforts. In my last post on outbound marketing, I discussed the use of outbound marketing in targeting five types of buyers - buyers who can only be reached and persuaded to consider your solution through outbound marketing. Outbound marketing or lead generation is used to directly contact 'cold' prospects through tactics such as direct mail, email, events and teleprospecting. This information can be leveraged for trigger marketing and solution selling. MORE >>

The production of relevant social media content requires this dedication and investment. Today I attended Forrester' s Webinar "Defining Your B2B Social Media Strategy" with Vice President and Principal Analyst, Laura Ramos, and Vice President of Tech Industry Consulting, Dan Klein. The seminar was chock full of interesting facts on social media usage by B2B marketers and by B2B decision-makers. For both B2B vendors and the buyers of those solutions, social media is considered a second tier marketing medium. Laura attributes part of this to using `warmed-over press releases` on blogs. MORE >>

Giles Crouch, Partner & CEO, MediaBadger / Blogger, Webconomist "Building Loyalty : Small biz can engage customers more directly, leading to product innovations and increased loyalty through conversations.". After my last posting on small business and social media, Chris Brogan was kind enough to tweet my blog and attract some savvy writers. At the same time, Ann Handley was a welcome visitor to ye old blog. surprise for me: all of the comments were positive and relevant (except for the guy trying to sell me on doing business on Costa Rica). Is this showing up in the data? MORE >>

According to article, the cost savings on crowdsourcing can evaporate when intellectual property such as product designs must be legally verified as to their ownership. Two diverse questions came to mind as I read an article on crowdsourcing: Is crowdsourcing losing its appeal? Is journalism threatened by Wikipedia? Recently, the Economist published an article on crowdsourcing that discussed the past and future of this social medium where idea generation is outsourced to online crowds. Next I turned to Wikipedia for their perspective on crowdsourcing. MORE >>

IDC forecasts deep to moderate cuts in branding, big tent events, marketing strategy and product marketing but moderate increases in lead management and qualification and sales enablement. Remember that Change is Opportunity - with your competitors shedding unprofitable product lines, cutting back on marketing spend, tarnishing their customer satisfaction levels and laying off valuable staff, now may be the time to seize the day. In response to a substantial drop in technology spending, B2B marketers will cut budgets and re-jig their media mix. MORE >>