Customer Experience Matrix

MARCH 8, 2011

Summary: HubSpot announced a $32 million investment yesterday by Sequoia Partners, Google and Salesforce.com. This could be a real game-changer in the small business marketing automation landscape. If you heard a loud thud late Tuesday afternoon, it was the sound of two shoes dropping. Salesforce.com and Google announced their long-anticipated entry into the marketing automation industry, in the baby-step form of investments in HubSpot.

Salesforce.com 180

Salesforce.com Enterprise Management Hubspot Marketing Automation Services 180

Marketing Insider Group

MARCH 8, 2011

You know what they say, “there’s no such thing as bad PR.” But for marketers, there is nothing better than good press coverage in a respected trade publication. Recently I saw that one of my Twitter friends Rachel Macik ( @RachelMacik ) scored a huge win for her company Atos Origin with this article coverage in the highly-coveted CIO.com media property: “ Killing Email Softly – How One Company Is Planning Its Demise.&#.

Press 171

Press Social Media PR Media 171

Buzz Marketing for Technology

MARCH 9, 2011

Many BtoB organizations these days are spending time and money to listen to the conversations that are happening about their brand, which is a basic essential for any brand. It’s good to be able to see those conversations and have some indication whether they are positive, negative or neutral so you have your finger on the “pulse” of what is being said socially about your brand.

Social Media 170

Social Media Media Marketing Management BtoB 170

ViewPoint

MARCH 8, 2011

Strategic account management and marketing automation: a marriage made in heaven or oil and water? I had the good fortune to discuss how SAM and marketing automation intersect with Bob Thompson, CEO of CustomerThink, during a recent interview about my new book, The Truth About Leads. While marketing automation, like CRM during its gold rush days, promises huge returns across the board, I shared with Bob my concerns about relying too heavily on marketing automation when engaging target prospects

Marketing Automation 170

Marketing Automation Automation Lead Qualification Leads 170

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Writing on the Web

MARCH 7, 2011

What are the most important SEO tips for your blog to get good search results? It may be easier than you think to start getting onto the first page for keyword searches. Most of what I’ve learned about search engine optimization techniques I learned from Scribe SEO Content Optimizer. This honey of a software tool tells me how well a post is going to be understood by those search robots.

SEO 148

SEO Tips Digg Blogger 148

Customer Experience Matrix

MARCH 9, 2011

Summary : Act-On Software’s revised system offers a reasonable mix of features in an easy-to-use interface. At $500 per month with no annual contract, it’s priced to make it easy to get started with marketing automation. I started last week to write a review of Act-On Software’s latest release but got distracted by the larger and sexier question of Act-On’s business strategy.

Act-On 146

Act-On Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Management 146

B2B Memes

MARCH 11, 2011

Maureen Alley: Never tweet what you wouldn't say in person. In preparation for my talk in an ASBPE webinar on ethic s next week, I’ve been speaking with B2B editors about how they use social media. Though it’s true that the trade press in general is decidedly behind the curve in this respect, there are notable exceptions. One is BNA Tax Management editor and former ASBPE president Steven Roll, with whom I spoke last week (you can hear some of our conversation on his latest blog post ).

Ethics 135

Ethics Social Media Media B2B 135

Webbiquity

MARCH 10, 2011

Guest post by Thomas Morrison. Social media is no longer simply about allowing your friends to see what you are thinking or for posting photos of your family vacation to Aruba. Social media has quickly become the most influential factors in grassroots socio-political organization. The January 25 revolution in Egypt gained a major foothold as a result of social media tools like Facebook and Twitter.

Social Media 135

Social Media Effectiveness Media Transparency 135

The Point

MARCH 9, 2011

According to various industry statistics, a large percentage of consumer search activity is related to location. By one account , more than 97 percent of all consumers use the Internet when researching products or services in their local area, of whom 90 percent use search engines. If, like me, you’re one of those consumers who googles anything and everything, you’ll be intimately familiar with search results on Google Maps (image at right), generated whenever your search query includes a locati

Google 133

Google Business Mobile Advertising Search Marketing 133

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In the B2B marketing toolkit, white papers can be a powerful option for reaching decision-makers and experts, presenting them with interesting information that improves their perception of your organization's competence and thought leadership. That said, a poorly executed whitepaper will not only be unable to influence your desired audience but will also come with significant costs that other assets won't incur.

Paper

Customer Experience Matrix

MARCH 8, 2011

This Friday I'll be presenting a 45 minute free Webinar, sponsored by Focus.com and hosted by the ever-popular Adam Needles, on preparing for a successful marketing automation deployment. You can register here. Details below: Friday, March 11, 2011 10:00AM PST / 1:00PM EST There’s plenty of information on why you need to buy marketing automation and, as statistics show, many marketing organizations (big and small) are jumping on board.

Marketing Automation 139

Marketing Automation Webinar Metrics Automation Purchase 139

Smashmouth Marketing

MARCH 10, 2011

There are a lot of great sources for telemarketing and teleprospecting calling tips out there, and just several weeks ago we brought you some great outbound calling tips from the best BDR's our management team has ever worked with. That being said, there are some bad tips out there that need to be put to rest. They just don't work any longer and they're not helping anybody succeed at generating quality b2b leads.

Lead Gen 131

Lead Gen Lead Scoring Lead Ranking Telemarketing 131

ANNUITAS

MARCH 10, 2011

The continuing growth of B2B marketing and marketing automation is indeed good news for those of us in the B2B marketplace. Despite the claim by some that automation is “floundering”, marketing automation is clearly gaining steam and poised for even more growth in 2011. Just recently, Gartner stated that “SaaS within the CRM industry could top $4 billion in revenue by 2014. and the segment with the strongest growth is marketing automation.

Work Management 130

Work Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation Services Lead Qualification 130

Writing on the Web

MARCH 10, 2011

How’s your content marketing with blogs ? Are you brilliantly blogging several times a week? There comes a time when we all run out of things to say (or at least most of us!). The blog must be fed anyway. Treat your blog like a prized chihuahua… feed it well and it will do wonders to attract readers… But if you don’t feed it and take care of it, it will turn nasty, and bark and growl for attention.

Digg 130

Digg Buzz Blogger Stats 130

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Social Media

B2B Memes

MARCH 9, 2011

Are profits and social media compatible? Does making money from a friendship make it less social? The path to monetization is full of perils, and inevitably changes your relationship with your audience. For B2B professionals, mixing social media and business requires a delicate balance of giving and selling, sharing and monetizing. Too much giving and you’re out of business; too much selling and you’re out of friends.

Social Media 125

Social Media RSS Media Wikipedia 125

Convince & Convert

MARCH 8, 2011

There are more than 150 million blogs, according to Technorati’s “State of the Blogosphere&# report. Given competition of that magnitude, why should people spend time reading yours? As a frequent blog consultant, I find the success impediment isn’t really the effort required, but rather a planning deficit. Most blogs fail not due to quality, but due to randomness.

Top of Funnel 148

Top of Funnel Sample Cross-Selling Validation 148

The Effective Marketer

MARCH 10, 2011

The Effective Marketer Effectiveness is a discipline and it can be learned Home About the Effective Marketer Books Speaking How Everybody Wins with HubSpot’s Funding As everyone in the marketing industry surely knows by now, HubSpot raised $32 million in additional funding. This means that is time to update my previous charts on marketing automation funding (see below) and the funding timeline, because HubSpot just surpassed Marketo as the highest funded marketing software vendor to date.

Work Management 108

Work Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation Services Hubspot 108

Biznology

MARCH 10, 2011

Image via CrunchBase. by Frank Reed. I feel like every Friday I am spending time griping about Google in some way as it relates to the local search market. Well, it seems that way because I am actually doing that. The only reason I rant is because Google supplies fresh reasons all the time.

Google 104

Google Search Marketing Spending Internet Marketing 104

Speaker: Jeff Tarran, COO, Gunderson Direct & Margaret Pepe, Executive Director of Product Management, U.S. Postal Service

Learn the secrets to direct mail success for growth marketers! Industry veterans Jeff Tarran and Margaret Pepe are here to delve into how direct mail has completely evolved in recent years, and has rightfully earned a seat at the table alongside the email and digital marketing plans of SMBs, enterprise companies, and agencies as they look into strategy for 2024 and beyond.

Planning

B2B Marketing Traction

MARCH 11, 2011

Tweet. Sometimes I hear several similar messages in a row and know I am meant to understand something at a new level. That was the case at the last Confab, the conference for consultants by consultants , where I took an optional workshop by Tom Drews on how to create compelling virtual presentations. In the workshop Tom mentioned that the number of inside sales people hires in recent years exceeded the number of external sales people.

Buy 102

Buy Planning B2B Marketing Consulting 102

Convince & Convert

MARCH 9, 2011

Sure, the instantaneous nature of the social Web can create business crises faster than you can say “Tiger Blood&# and “Kenneth Cole is an Oaf&#. But, that rapidity also creates unprecedented opportunities for marketers with their antenna up, scanning the real-time horizon for a chance to make a difference. George Jordan, the General Manager at Hotel Felix in Chicago is all about the antenna.

Forecasting 143

Forecasting Social Media Paid Search Agency PR 143

Paul Gillin

MARCH 10, 2011

Have you checked out LinkedIn lately? If you thought the world’s largest professional network was little more than a place to post your resume, you owe yourself another visit. LinkedIn is set to eclipse the 100 million member mark sometime this spring, and it is quickly becoming the social network of choice for B2B professionals. LinkedIn gets none of the buzz of Facebook, and no one’s going to make a movie about it.

Social Networks 99

Social Networks Enterprise Management Peer-to-peer Work Management 99

Biznology

MARCH 9, 2011

Image by National Library NZ on The Commons via Flickr by Tim Peter. For years, technology providers have sold marketers on the notion of "one-to-one" marketing. "Just imagine," they say, "being able to deliver the right message, to the right customer, at the right time to guarantee your message will get through. " And, for the most part, we bought it.

Twitter 101

Twitter Facebook Google Practices 101

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B2B Marketing Traction

MARCH 11, 2011

Tweet. Sometimes I hear several similar messages in a row and know I am meant to understand something at a new level. That was the case at the last Confab, the conference for consultants by consultants , where I took an optional workshop by Tom Drews on how to create compelling virtual presentations. In the workshop Tom mentioned that the number of inside sales people hires in recent years exceeded the number of external sales people.

Buy 100

Buy Planning B2B Marketing Consulting 100

Convince & Convert

MARCH 10, 2011

Guest post by David Murton, a professional writer specializing in the fields of social media and marketing. He is also an avid piano and accordion player, with a particular interest in the music of the Classical era. In the pantheon of big ideas, the concept of the noosphere ranks right up there with the best of them. Developed most famously by Teilhard de Chardin , the 20th century Jesuit scientist and philosopher, the concept of the noosphere holds that there emerges among us a sphere of inter

Social Media 122

Social Media Skype Internet Marketing Broadcasting 122

Adobe Experience Cloud Blog

MARCH 8, 2011

by Phil Fernandez On this blog, I have written frequently about how digital communications and especially social media have sparked a growing revolution in the sales and marketing process. The widespread embrace of social media has put even more information – and ultimately power – in the hands of the buyer, and that has drastically altered the jobs of the salesperson and the marketing professional.

Consulting 98

Consulting Paid Search Agency Barriers Marketing & Strategy 98

Biznology

MARCH 8, 2011

Image via CrunchBase. I met a great group of people last night at the Boston SEO Meetup, but I was surprised at the level of worry in their faces. They were all very concerned about Google's new war on content farms. I don't think any of these people were black hat SEO types (those people know so much that they have nothing to learn from me), but these folks were very unsure about whether what they are doing is still OK.

Content 101

Content SEO Google Organization 101

Speaker: Paul Slack, Vende Digital CEO

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B2B Marketing

Industrial Marketing Today

MARCH 8, 2011

Building a thriving online community around your social media strategy takes a lot of hard work. Sometimes it feels like you are operating in a vacuum where nobody seems to be listening or responding to your initiatives. It is heartening then to read about an industrial company’s success in building an engineering community, which in turn generates leads, produces sales and increases the company’s awareness among its target audience.

Communities 74

Communities Peer-to-peer BtoB Sales Qualified Leads 74

MLT Creative

MARCH 7, 2011

I keep seeing QR codes popping up all over in the B2C community – on transit station posters, fast food tray liners, contests and billboards. They seem to be the latest thing in print media and a good way to increase customer involvement. A recent post on Mobile Commerce Daily said QR scanning in North America increased 1,200 percent in the last six months.

B2B Marketing 73

B2B Marketing Advertising Agencies B to B Planning 73

Adobe Experience Cloud Blog

MARCH 7, 2011

by Bill Binch To create the best lead generation process, you’ve got to keep sales and marketing on the same page. There is a continuing challenge for marketing to fill the sales lead coffers. But before marketing can bring in the right leads for sales to close, both need to agree on what constitutes a qualified sales lead. There are three truths behind sales and marketing agreements that must be recognized for effective alignment: 1.

Top of Funnel 80

Top of Funnel Lead Scoring Lead Ranking Marketing Management 80