Anything Goes Marketing

NOVEMBER 19, 2006

Are all of your sales reps exceeding their quota for this quarter? Ardath Albee has written a great e-book called Why Naked CRM Doesn't Work on how to "dress up" your CRM by providing better tools for sales and an improved process for sales and marketing. This focuses on the B2B sales process which is much longer then B2C.

CRM 100

CRM B2B Sales Sales Qualified Leads Touchpoints 100

Anything Goes Marketing

AUGUST 24, 2006

Whether you have some products on e-Bay , your own e-commerce site or a B2B business with real sales people, it's much easier to sell when your prospect says "where do I sign" or clicks the checkout button. Brian adds "don't pass white paper inquiries to your sales people until they're more rigorously qualified as sales-ready leads".

Buy 100

Buy Personalization Sales Qualified Leads Case Study 100

Anything Goes Marketing

FEBRUARY 18, 2009

If you're in sales you may also disagree as QBs typically get more of the glory but hear me out and you can have your own say if you don't agree. Running back : The players running with the ball on the ground are the inside sales/demand generation team (different companies give this group different names).

Lead Management 100

Lead Management Lead Scoring Lead Ranking Work Management 100

Anything Goes Marketing

MARCH 7, 2007

RainToday which is typically a pretty good source for small B2B companies looking to market professional services almost blew it with their new research report called " What's Working in Lead Generation ". I was "surprised" to read that those companies that have a stronger brand recognition generate more leads. Note the heavy sarcasm.

Lead Generation 100

Lead Generation Generation Lead Scoring Lead Ranking 100

Anything Goes Marketing

DECEMBER 21, 2009

Not having a defined social media strategy You would be surprised by the number of companies that say “yeah, social media is important but it’s not important to us at the moment”. If you’re company is just breaking ground in this area, at the very least make a commitment to listen to what people are saying about you.

Work Management 100

Work Management Marketing Automation Services Marketing Management Planning 100

Anything Goes Marketing

DECEMBER 9, 2007

Sales can incorporate these in their communication pieces to prospects. Have sales create short video intros that they can include in follow up and intro emails. This email may then be passed around the company so that everyone has a good sense of who the sales person is that they are dealing with.

Bulldog Solutions 100

Bulldog Solutions Tactics Video Marketing Youtube 100

Anything Goes Marketing

OCTOBER 3, 2006

Are people not hitting "Contact Sales" once they get to your site from a search ad? It basically explains that when people are at the beginning of the sales cycle, they're just looking for information so provide people a way to sign up for your newsletter or a link to a whitepaper. What do you do? Start small and build your way up.

Paid Search Agency 100

Paid Search Agency Lead Generation Generation Leads 100

Anything Goes Marketing

SEPTEMBER 29, 2007

If your company is generating enough leads already, please stop reading right there. For example, your call center or sales can track the number of engagements vs. the number of appointments. Still here? Here are some highlights: Suzanne Lowe includes some tactics on measuring the effectiveness of your lead generation efforts.

Generation 100

Generation Leads Lead Marketing Qualified Leads 100

Anything Goes Marketing

NOVEMBER 27, 2006

Go there right now and type in the name of your company and see what happens. SearchSpell Typo Search : Want to know if people search for your company or your products but make spelling errors? Yahoo CPC ROI tool : Calculate the ROI from your cost per clicks vs. sales generated. This stuff is gold!

Paid Search Agency 100

Paid Search Agency Online Marketing Cost Per Click Tools 100

Anything Goes Marketing

MARCH 18, 2007

The first item I would recommend is only ask for the basic information - name, email, company. You should be able to take the company name and find out this information yourself. For example, if the annual revenue of a company is below a 1 million, do not pass them on to sales or your call center to call directly.

Lead Qualification 100

Lead Qualification Landing Pages Sales Qualified Leads Lead Scoring 100

Anything Goes Marketing

APRIL 5, 2009

While some marketing teams are facing cut backs and spending freezes or reductions, they still need to hit their goals which may include generating X number of leads, Y amount of influenced pipeline and/or Z amount of influenced sales. This was an idea I brought up to my own company but it took Ed Henrich to remind me about it.

Trigger Marketing 100

Trigger Marketing Email Marketing B2B Marketing Autoresponders 100

Anything Goes Marketing

APRIL 7, 2010

If this is not done, there is a greater chance that leads will leak out of the sales and marketing funnel and may go to the competition. What is recommended is to map out the content that prospective buyers would be interested in at various stages of the sales process and automate the delivery of this communication.

Ad Frequency 100

Ad Frequency RSS Lead Nurturing Top of Funnel 100

Anything Goes Marketing

AUGUST 16, 2006

In an article that he wrote for Rain Today, Brian Carroll , an authority on how businesses can improve the lead generation process, sites evidence from Marketing Sherpa and the Nielsen Norman Group to outline why companies don't translate great web traffic into sales leads. This is what I have been recently advocating to my clients.

Marketing Websites 100

Marketing Websites B2B RSS Ideal Customer Profiles 100

Anything Goes Marketing

JULY 15, 2006

Working for a marketing software company that focuses on B2B, I find myself more and more talking about blogs. Besides having a purpose and objective for having a blog a company needs to dedicate resources and encourage the blog. In addition, ensure that they don't use too much marketing and sales terminology.

Business Blogging 100

Business Blogging Emarketing Business Blogger 100

Anything Goes Marketing

MARCH 11, 2007

Just plug in the audience size, your campaign costs (do this by holding and dragging your mouse up or down on the text field), the expected response (clickthrough rate) and conversion rate (number of sales in this case). For more complex sales, a more complex calculator is needed. You also need to know the average purchase price.

Forrester 100

Forrester Email Marketing Tools Clickthrough 100

Anything Goes Marketing

JULY 4, 2010

This hopefully results in more sales opportunities and closed business for your company and that nice bonus that you deserve. When you have the right data you can laser focus your marketing efforts and achieve a higher response from your marketing campaigns. Seasons change. People change.

Segmentation 100

Segmentation Tips Landing Pages Ideal Customer Profiles 100

Anything Goes Marketing

MAY 24, 2006

They want to get to know your company and not your marketing fluff and "salesy spin". Yet, a recent article on emarketer claims " Executives at top companies are slow to come to grips with recognizing [blogs'] importance in building a dialogue with customers and other stakeholders." Lets go people - get with it. Is that a bad thing?

Emarketing 100

Emarketing Tagging Traffic Business Blogging 100

Anything Goes Marketing

SEPTEMBER 16, 2007

It can even be something fun like a game - anything that reflect well on your company and/or brand. It also provides a plug for Daylife - the company that built this widget. Widgets demonstrate how companies are working together more to build on existing platforms and provide more useful applications.

Web 2.0 100

Web 2.0 Wikipedia Social Networks Tagging 100

Anything Goes Marketing

OCTOBER 1, 2006

They can be used to allow a company CEO communicate directly and more personally to the masses, demonstrate industry expertise, promote product/service launches etc. If they left their company name, do some research on the company and find out what is going on with that company. We all know it's about "who you know".

Lead Generation 100

Lead Generation Generation Tools Leads 100

Anything Goes Marketing

JANUARY 26, 2010

I have the pleasure of welcoming a new bunch of Eloqua team members who we start off with a boot camp here in Toronto so they get to know each other and the rest of the company. I’m going to outline some of the cool things our customers do but I’ll also provide a short intro on what I do in my day to day.

Marketing Automation Services 100

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation Email Marketing Automation 100

Anything Goes Marketing

NOVEMBER 19, 2006

Your sales team should always thank prospect for their time in a follow up email to a prospect meeting. Some companies add their sales rep's pictures to their email, why not customer service? You can take this concept further. You can even have them send a quick follow up email with a thanks and here's how to get a hold of me.

Blogger 100

Blogger Tagging Email Marketing Marketing Prospects 100

Anything Goes Marketing

MAY 26, 2007

Many B2B and B2C companies produce a newsletter or newsletters that are geared to a specific audience or audiences. There is no question that newsletters are a great way of keeping your company top of mind to your customers and prospects and increasing brand awareness as well the perception that your organization is the industry expert.

Newsletter 100

Newsletter Web 2.0 Lead Qualification Salesforce.com 100

Anything Goes Marketing

SEPTEMBER 13, 2009

Considering that a recent Aberdeen Research report clearly demonstrated that best in class companies are finding lead nurturing successful, adding in these types of metrics should be a no-brainer. How Email Contributes Further Down the Sales/Marketing Funnel. Therefore email opens as an example is not good enough.

Email Marketing 100

Email Marketing Advertising Benchmark SMS Autoresponders 100

Anything Goes Marketing

JULY 18, 2007

Many companies still have this option but most don't. Here is something to think about - include a picture of the sales rep for that person's regions on the email and also have it on the cover letter of the white paper that they will receive. Why did we stop doing this? Your online materials are also more easily measurable.

Online Marketing 100

Online Marketing Lead Qualification Top of Funnel Paper 100

Anything Goes Marketing

AUGUST 28, 2006

Brian Eisenberg at ClickZ found a great one by a company called Zaaz. It should be up to the company to not the user to sort out where the inquiry should go to. The more you put the onus on the web user to decide if their request is sales or support related, the less leads your website is going to generate for you.

Lead Generation 100

Lead Generation Contacts Generation Leads 100

Anything Goes Marketing

DECEMBER 3, 2006

It really works and I come away from the podcast with some better insight into the sales and marketing process. Educate potential buyers in the sales pipeline or existing customers on new offerings Generate new leads via a co-registration process. Interview a few people in your company regarding a new product that was developed.

Web 2.0 100

Web 2.0 RSS Webcast Business 100

Anything Goes Marketing

DECEMBER 13, 2007

when you can receive emails, what will be in them) and gives you a bit of the company's personality (which is boring by the way). Your marketing and sales team has fought to get them in your database and you want to keep them there. Check out how this is done on Delivery Monitor after you sign up for their newsletter.

Tips 100

Tips RSS Opt-out Landing Pages 100

Anything Goes Marketing

JUNE 22, 2008

B2C companies may only need email to begin the conversation but B2B companies typically collect company name and first and last name. It would be a good idea to ask subscribers for their annual income before having someone in sales call them back.

Landing Pages 100

Landing Pages Leads Lead Marketing Qualified Leads 100

Anything Goes Marketing

OCTOBER 21, 2007

Essentially, you take the typical manual lead qualification process that a sales rep or call center does over the phone to find the best leads and let technology do this for you. In both cases, companies are using technology to inform customers of other offers that they may be interested in based on past activity.

Lead Scoring 100

Lead Scoring Lead Ranking Sales Qualified Leads Lead Qualification 100

Anything Goes Marketing

AUGUST 19, 2006

At the bottom of the page (below the fold), make sure that you have a few paragraphs as to what your company does. Email your entire database (including those that have unsubscribed) as well as any random email addresses that you find with the same picture above and the text "You have been unsubscribed from [YOUR COMPANY].

Paid Search Agency 100

Paid Search Agency Planning Blast Campaigns Banner Ads 100

Anything Goes Marketing

AUGUST 26, 2006

How are B2B companies generating leads these days? There are many methods - trade shows , contact us forms, webinars , you name it. I found a great blog on of these lead generation methods that focuses on white papers.

Paper 100

Paper Lead Generation Generation Leads 100

Anything Goes Marketing

MARCH 9, 2008

As we move into a new week there are some interesting trends and technology enhancements that will start to change the way that B2B companies use email. Here's the truth - the blogletter will be arriving very soon and will revolutionize the way some companies can create and execute an email newsletter or any email campaign.

RSS 100

RSS Email Marketing Trends Planning 100

Anything Goes Marketing

MARCH 8, 2009

In today’s economy, many companies are limiting travel in order to save a few bucks. I then received a direct message (DM in Twitter lingo) via Twitter from a client in my segment in the Atlanta area asking me what my role at my company was and if I service clients in the area. Beautiful city! Now to get down to work.

Social Media 100

Social Media Web 2.0 Media Blogger 100

Anything Goes Marketing

FEBRUARY 19, 2007

Cutting Through the PR Crap - Blogs Can Help While Goodyear may be saying that it set a sales record in Q4 2006 , it's obvious that a 3 month strike that ended on December 28, 2006 really hurt the company in Q4 2006 and continues to do damage in the first quarter of 2007. Do you want to see beer shit associated with your company?

Press 100

Press PR Tagging Business Blogging 100

Anything Goes Marketing

JULY 23, 2006

I've evaluated a bunch of corporate blogs from fortune 500 companies and I've listed out the bottom 5 that I've found and why. Conclusions: Business blogs are about content and ratings that drive regular site traffic, brand awareness and sales. Shut this blog down ASAP as it's tarnishing your image. This is pure puke.

Click Rate 100

Click Rate Traffic Stats Business Blogging 100

Anything Goes Marketing

JANUARY 16, 2007

A blog is like a company in many ways. For a company, these are the early adopters or your first few customers. You can compare this to how a company treats its customers. Does the company take the customers for granted and just focus on new business (or more web traffic in a blog's case)? I digress.

Loyalty 100

Loyalty Traffic Web 2.0 Blogger 100

Anything Goes Marketing

FEBRUARY 21, 2009

Insert company logo here] Thanks for registering. Insert company logo here] Dear FirstName, Thanks for registering to receive [insert name of resource] from CompanyX. What this does is begin or continue the relationship between the prospect and sales rep. As an added tip, include a picture of the sales rep.

Autoresponders 100

Autoresponders Sales Management Email Marketing B2B Marketing 100