Attendee Only Content - Not Shared Via Social

In 2008 I found a conference that seemed just right. It was an SEO conference called ScarySEO, and had all the attributes I thought were important from a large show, but with the intimacy only a small event can provide. It featured some of the biggest thought leaders in search at the time, but only had about 150 attendees so you could actually get questions answered and network with those you engaged with in social media. I was so impressed that in 2009 I watched their entire 2nd conference (IM Spring Break) via a livestream (because I was unable to travel to the event). These events were reborn in 2010 as Blueglass LA, and this week I am attending the encore, Blueglass LA 2012.

Blueglass is doing a great job covering a lot of content presented at the event, but what I thought I would share are some tips I captured from the actual logistics of the event, giving everyone some event best practices to take home with them:

• Most notably, this event was highlighted as an experience – not a conference. While this may seem like semantics, I believe the event coordinators really considered this through all of their planning, looking at the entire event from the attendees’ perspective instead of just doing the event norm.
• Second, this event has attendee only content. The event literally had a sign that would be put up when attendees were being given the inside scoop – asking the attendees not to share socially. This means that attendees received benefits that those keeping track via social would never be able to share in. This also meant that there were times when speakers could be exceptionally candid, sharing their exact thoughts, not just the ones that were considered publically acceptable.
• Two-sided nametags (names on both sides) were used at the event. A small detail? Yes. But I am awful at names so always being able to see the name of the person next to me was super useful. The thoughtful details continued with power being available for charging computers and laptops via a power strip at every table.

Chris Brogan and Brian Clark (Copyblogger) at BlueGlass LA 2012

• This event also featured a hybrid of presentations and panel sessions. In this model, a panel of three speakers was brought up for each topic. Each presenter focused on a few slides in the presentation, but then Q&A was shared between the panel members. This was extremely efficient, as the attendees had the ability to learn from multiple people on a topic, without sacrificing networking time and without having to choose between different breakout sessions.
• Another detail that helped was that there were agendas on every table that summarized each session. Each summary included an avatar of the presenters, so at any time you could check out the sheet to see who was speaking. Typically during panel sessions I am left trying to remember the name of each person on stage, but with the avatars available I could easily know who was presenting at any given moment just by matching the avatar with the speaker.
• And finally, instead of spending the whole time taking notes, I was able to just watch the presentations because Blueglass did a blog summary of every session at the event (sans the special attendee only content).

As event marketers and event attendees know, a successful conference goes far beyond the content. This one did a great job educating and delighting – a powerful mix. Can you think of other events that have taken a unique approach or have additional tips that could make a conference like this event better?

So how do you make sure every email delivers a relevant message when you’ve got multiple going out each week? There are four things all marketers must be doing in their content marketing strategy to ensure maximum results:

1. Create interesting content. There is no market for content for content’s sake. In order to stand a chance in this economy, you must deliver relevant content that exceeds expectations. In other words, you must make your information more valuable (even if just in perception) than that of your competitors.
2. Vary content mediums. Delivering your content using one medium only is like fishing using a single lure; you might catch one fish but you can catch so many more by using a variety of lures. Not only do people gravitate to different types of content depending on their consumption preferences, they tend to seek out certain content types depending on where they are in the buying cycle. The key is to present your information via numerous means, including articles, blog posts, eBooks, targeted email, FAQs, infographics, podcasts, reference guides, video demos, webinars, white papers, and workbooks, to name a few. And to catch the attention of the most people possible, you need to take advantage of many content mediums.
3. Ensure that your content can be easily found. You want prospects to find you when they are conducting their searches; that is, when they are in active research and buying mode. This is accomplished through inbound marketing strategies such as social media marketing, SEO, and SEM, in addition to PPC, paid social advertising, content syndication, remarketing, easy to navigate websites, and more.
4. Promote content using segmentation, personalization, and customization. It’s critical that you make your content relevant to each and every recipient. Otherwise, your message will reach many but entice few, if any. What’s important to note is that this is not the content, but the promotions about the content, otherwise, your potential reader may never dive into your thought leadership.

Need more help? We’ve recruited Cari Aves, our very own Senior Product Marketing Manager, in conjunction with Anne Holland of Which Test Won? and Maria Pergolino, Sr. Director of Marketing, to teach you everything you need to know about delivering relevant content. It all goes down in a webinar on Tuesday, March 27th, and will include:

• How to develop content that engages
• How to ensure that your content is found by your prospects
• Why it is important to promote the right message to each of your audiences and personas
• How to customize and segment content messages to ensure your readers feel engaged

Register here: Right Audience, Right Message: Increasing the Return on Your Content Marketing.

Outbound marketing is any paid marketing – both online and offline – used to acquire new leads. It includes everything from trade shows to pay-per-click marketing and is critical to growing inbound marketing. Why? Well, when a new piece of content is launched, inbound marketing supports that content, for example, by sharing it in social media channels, making it faster and easier for your content to be found. The paid advertisement or site sponsorship of an outbound marketing campaign helps you further spread the word about the content, ultimately multiplying the number of new views you generate, which in turn will increase the number of shares, thus further increasing the number of potential customers viewing your content. I call this the Inbound Marketing Multiplier and it’s critical in getting the most out of your inbound marketing efforts.

In addition to generating more views, marketers can realize the following benefits through a combined inbound/outbound mix:

• Create Brand Recognition – and Business: The greater the number of outbound campaigns you execute in combination with inbound programs, the more likely that people will recognize and get to know your brand. The more they know and trust your brand, the more likely they will be to respond to your inbound marketing, and ultimately, become a customer.
• Make Prospects Speak your Language: When you run paid promotions, you choose the language used to describe your product or service. Prospects who repeatedly see these paid promotions are likely to pick up on the terms you use and plug those in when they are searching for a solution. As a result, you are more likely to appear high in the search engine results because you have optimized for these terms.
• Capture Your Target: Knowing and appealing to your target audience is one thing, reaching them is another. Let’s say your target market is Fortune 1000 companies. Through outbound marketing, you can target this group exclusively by purchasing lead-generation programs where you only pay for leads that satisfy your criteria. This makes your campaigns very efficient and keeps your database clear of names that will never purchase from you. In inbound marketing you can target specific groups in your content, but you can’t do anything to ensure that the content reaches and is consumed by your target audience.
• The Personal Touch: When you meet a prospect face-to-face, or even talk to them on the phone, you establish a relationship that can be far more powerful than one developed via any email or tweet. With outbound marketing you can build the one-on-one relationships that are not possible to develop with inbound marketing.

The bottom line is for companies to take advantage of all ways of reaching and connecting with prospective buyers by incorporating inbound marketing into a larger group of marketing tactics. Doing so will lead to much better overall results across all of your campaigns and complement the marketing strategies you already have in place.

Ready to start doing some marketing campaigns to promote your inbound marketing content? Check out this paper on How to Amplify Your Inbound Marketing Impact. Want to explore the marketing executive’s role in shaping a successful inbound marketing strategy? Check out the CMO Guide to Inbound Marketing.

And it appears we are not alone. Organizations are putting more and more resources into inbound marketing, so I wasn’t shocked to see the chart below from The CMO Club that shows that these skills are the most coveted by marketing execs.

But what qualities are key in an inbound or social media expert? The ideal inbound marketing manager should be an analytical, socially savvy “digital native” who gets search engine optimization and has experience with social media and a strong understanding of the fundamentals of content marketing. Ideally, she or he has demonstrate this by building a strong personal presence online via a personal blog, Twitter account, etc.

Your ideal candidate should also understand that at the end of the day inbound marketing is not just about producing flashy content but about generating leads and revenue. Below you will find the job description I used for the role (posted here for others to use as it is no longer up in our careers section). But what I found is that it takes much more than social know-how to be a great inbound marketing pro including:

• A caring individual. Often customers will use social media as an outlet when frustrated. We love this feedback and pass it on to the appropriate teams to resolve issues, but it’s best to put someone who genuinely cares about customer satisfaction into the position to ensure customers are delighted.
• Time management skills. Some people may be great at engaging on Twitter, or a super star at writing blog posts, but if they get lost in lower value activities online or can’t find the proper mix of time to spend on different social and creative projects, you may be wasting resources.
• A thick skin. Our competitors, like many, often spread FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) about our product. Sometimes though they even make remarks about our team members (with comments almost always untrue). For this we need team members with a thick skin.

You’ll also notice that our inbound marketing roles are called Social Media Managers, not Inbound Managers. Why? Well, one big reason is that there aren’t that many people searching for inbound marketing manager positions. If you look at the chart below you will see that searches for “social media manager” (blue line) is growing, while searches for “inbound marketing manager” (red line) and “content marketing manager” (red line) are almost nonexistent. I see similar results when searching job banks like Monster or LinkedIn. When posting your role you want to make sure that those qualified find it. For us that means posting it under the title Social Media.

What are the characteristics that you look for when hiring inbound marketing talent? Or if you’re an inbound pro, what do you think of the roles we look to fill?

Feel free to copy, edit, and reuse the description below in the search for your inbound marketer.

Program Manager, Social Media & Content Marketing

With over 1,500 worldwide customers, Marketo is a leader in cloud software and one of Silicon Valley’s fastest-growing companies. In fact, we were recently rated as #1 on the Silicon Valley Business Journal’s Fastest Growing Private Companies list for 2011! In addition to growing like crazy, we are delighting our customers and hiring some of the best minds in the industry. Our Marketing team is experiencing rapid growth and therefore we are looking for a Social Media & Content Marketing Manager to execute on all elements of the social media plan to drive awareness and acquire customers through marketing programs. You will work closely with the marketing team, as well as key decision makers throughout the company.

Key Responsibilities:

• You have a passion for creating and managing social media and content marketing strategies, including the ability to orchestrate every detail and then measure results
• You have knowledge of how to leverage social networks to enhance campaign performance and nurture current prospects 
• You want to serve as a thought leader, sharing your ideas by creating content for Marketo’s blog, resource center and community
• Your content expertise goes far beyond white papers and blogs, and includes the ability to manage video and webinar programs
• You have lots of energy and get excited by being a revenue champion for the organization

Qualifications:

Marketo is a high-energy, hard-charging, high-performance company! Our Social Media Manager is a strategic thinker with a creative mindset. You have a strong attention to detail, are well organized and can manage multiple projects simultaneously. You thrive in a fast-paced entrepreneurial environment.

Required experience and skills include:

• Bachelor’s degree required.
• A minimum of two years social media experience with B2B organizations
• An established track record of developing successful working relationships with bloggers and other social press
• Experience developing a content marketing strategy including podcasts, webcasts, video, mobile and social media (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Slideshare, etc)Experience with social media monitoring tools (Radian 6, Visible Technologies, etc.); familiarity with salesforce.com is a plus
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills, including excellent writing skills
• Proven track record of success setting and achieving ambitious goals
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office – Excel, PowerPoint, Access

This position is based in San Mateo, CA. We offer competitive salaries, great benefits, a high-energy environment and lots of room for personal and professional growth. If this sounds like you, we’d like to talk with you. Please send a cover letter and resume to marketingjobs@marketo.com.

To many, developing a program mix seems like simply buying a bunch of leads, though true demand generation managers know that this takes a lot of skill to get the proper mix of programs right. Some of the key factors I use when developing my program mix include:

1. Target Line of Business: Many companies sell to multiple lines of business, with sales efforts dedicated to enterprise clients, mid-market clients, and small business clients (and potentially many segments in between). Super star demand gen managers know how to create the proper mix of demand by each line of business to ensure happy sales teams.
2. Target Role: The roles you sell to is often critical, as each may participate in different types of programs or desire different types of content. At Marketo we sell to the C-Suite, Marketing Executives, Sales Management, and Marketing practitioners. If all of our programs were dedicated to just one of these roles we would alienate a huge chunk of our prospects and see overall less successful results.
3. Types of Programs: Let’s say you could reach your sales lead objectives by running webinars all day every day. Why not? Well, you may have the budget to create these, and they may drive the right leads, but they may also only drive certain types of prospects and you may not have enough time to develop all the content. Instead, you must have a mix of programs from webinars to direct mail to trade shows to display advertising to ensure you reach everyone in your target market while making maximum use of resources.
4. Offers: Using the same offers over and over again in your programs may cause weak results, but trying to create a new offer for every program can be exhausting. Demand Gen pros know how to get the most out of the content they have, without oversending the same offers to their target demographic.
5. Time of month or quarter: Let’s say your company works on quarterly budgeting and planning cycles. This means you could spend all your budget and drive all your leads in the last few days of that cycle and still hit your targets. Unfortunately, this approach will not sustain proper lead flow for your sales team. Ensuring a consistent flow of campaigns is mandatory for program mix success.
6. Billing terms: Many companies are very conscious of the amount of money they have in the bank at any time. Because of this, many demand gen managers must go beyond negotiating on price, and also negotiate payment terms. Working with vendors that are flexible with these payment terms may be something a demand generation manager must keep in mind when creating their program mix.
7. New, nurture or upsell: Some programs will create new leads, while others will nurture leads or cause current customers to buy more. Putting a campaign mix together that maximizes all of these is critical for long term demand generation success.
8. Long tail effect of program: Some programs will end the day you stop paying for the program (like pay-per-lead programs), while others will continue to acquire more leads post event (like when you post a recording of a webinar up on your website).
9. How fast the programs will create revenue: When we run a demo or test drive campaigns, leads turn quickly to opportunities, but when we acquire leads through virtual events or social media they take much longer. Top demand gen pros ensure their mix is filled with fast movers and slower leads to ensure their sales team has the right opportunities at the right time.

I’d like to reiterate here that without paying attention to most (if not all) of these elements you are likely not getting the most out of your programs. Further, if these are important elements, but you are not taking the time to document your planning, things are probably falling through the cracks. I truly believe that a lot of demand generation success comes from experience and common sense, but this only brings you part of the way.

For me personally, I use a simple document that notes each of these program mix components. At the end of the period, I compare the actual results to the plan to ensure we achieved what we expect (using Marketo program functionality). I also share the results with vendors so they know how we performed. This may all sound pretty basic, but I couldn’t find any other blog posts, white papers, or webinars that share how an organization develops their program strategy. What do you think? Is this how you do it, or do you have a different process?

A study by Accenture found that while B2Bs lag in integrating social media into marketing plans, they are realizing the value of social media use. Nearly two thirds of marketing execs questioned said they believe social media is an important way to reach customers.

Even though there hasn’t been a huge explosion in social use with B2Bs, the trend toward using the channels more actively proves that marketers will need to acquire tools and technology to successfully leverage a social media strategy.

For those B2B marketers trying to find their footing on the social landscape, there a number of sign posts showing why B2Bs should be turning to social for lead generation success.

1. The Top 4 Social Channels Are Getting B2B Action

A 2011 Worldcom Public Relations Group study showed B2Bs are extending their reach to the major social media channels. The numbers show how the top channels fared:

• Twitter 85%
• Facebook 74%
• LinkedIn 72%
• Youtube 69%
• Corporate Blogs 60%

83% of those surveyed said they use social media to communicate with target audiences and while B2Cs use social to generate sales, not surprisingly, B2Bs focus on lead generation.

2. B2B Use of Social Media Will Grow In 2012

Nearly 90% of the execs surveyed in the Worldcom study said they believe social media will be increasingly valuable to their companies in the coming year and almost 60% called that value significant.

The thing to watch in the next 12 months is how well B2B marketers create a holistic approach combining their new social tactics with the tried and true strategies of SEO.

3. Small And Large B2Bs Are More Social

The Worldcom study also unearthed some interesting statistics on which B2Bs are leveraging social more. 88% of large companies (over $1 billion) and 80% of smaller B2Bs (under $50 million) engage in social media and while 68% of all companies intend to increase their social spending, only 46% of mid-sized businesses plan to follow suit.

Overall these numbers show that B2B marketers are figuring out how social can build their marketing effectiveness but many still have to overcome lack of management support and clarify which strategic combinations work best when it comes to merely having a social presence versus pursuing customer engagement and integrating paid media.

Does your usage of social align with the survey results? Need help with your B2B social strategy? Download the Definitive Guide to B2B Social Media.

When it comes to social networking and social media marketing, what can you learn from this extremely accomplished scientist?

• Become an expert and be recognized as an expert. In his field, Hawking is recognized as the expert on space and physics. He is currently Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge. When NASA held its 50th anniversary celebration in 2008, Hawking gave the keynote speech. As part of your social media strategy, incorporate tactics that position you and your company as the expert.
• Speak and travel. Hawking is almost 100% paralysed; he has ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). Not only can he not move, but he can only speak with the assistance of a specially programmed computer that offers a synthesized voice. Yet despite these difficulties, he travels widely in order to give speeches. It’s an old school tactic but speaking in front of groups in your space remains an effective way to reinforce your social media presence.
• Overcome all obstacles. Despite his debilitating ALS, Hawking leads an extremely productive life. In addition to speaking, he appears on television, writes, has a family life (he’s written several books with his daughter Lucy), and continues his extensive research. So there’s absolutely no excuse for anyone to feel they are not executing a social media marketing strategy because they have hurdles in the way. Hawking is living proof that we can all deal with any obstacles.
• Be published. Hawking’s books include The Nature of Space and Time, the aforementioned A Brief History of Time, and The Grand Design. Publishing a book (or books) remains one of the most powerful and potent social media weapons. As an added bonus, the content can be repurposed for other marketing uses. And if you’re not a writer or you don’t have the time to write a book – or, like Hawking, you’re paralysed and you have to write using a special device – you can collaborate or hire a writer. Hawking has worked with co-authors on many of his books. If your book isn’t quite ready, then start a blog.
• Get on screen. Hawking is quietly a media star. He has played himself in many television shows including Star Trek: The Next Generation. And yes—he’s been on The Simpsons and there’s even a Stephen Hawking action figure. While you might not have an action figure made of you and your animated doppelganger might not be designed by Matt Groening, you can still “appear” on TV by filming short videos and posting them on your website, blog and video sharing sites like YouTube.

If you’re a physicist and you’re interested in space and time, then you’ll find Stephen Hawking’s work vital. But if you’re “just” a business person striving to expand your social media marketing reach, then Hawking could provide plenty of inspiration to help your brand reach the stars.

Who gives you inspiration? We want to know. Share your story of inspiration below.

Where is social media in your B2B marketing budget?

Before you write off social media as a consumer-only marketing strategy, here are 3 reasons many B2B marketers overlook the importance of social media in their 2012 budgets.

• Weak U.S. economy drives use of tried and true marketing strategies. The continued frail U.S. economy has made marketers reticent to use more experimental formats. It’s safer and easier to use the marketing strategies that worked best historically and provide an indicator of performance potential. As a result, there’s less perceived risk.
• Marketers overlook the cost of social media. If social media has no cost, then there’s no reason to include it in your budget. Of course, this is a fallacy because social media marketing requires brand monitoring to track the conversation, content marketing to feed social media engagement, and headcount to participate on social media platforms.
• Social media has weak or limited metrics. Across the board, marketers are challenged when it comes to measuring hard results from social media in terms of lead generation and sales. Last year, research from SmartBrief for Social Media and Summus Limited found that only one third of firms tracked social media marketing ROI after three years. Exacerbating this problem is the fact that some marketers don’t include a clear call-to-action and unique tracking code within social.

If you’re a B2B who does NOT overlook social media, but has yet to effectively incorporate social into your marketing strategy, here are 5 suggestions to get you started with social leveraging existing marketing strategies. If implemented effectively, your social media marketing can enhance other areas of your marketing budget.

• Use social media to support your search optimization efforts (SEO). To this end, create a blog and integrate it with your website. Where appropriate, link to products on your website. When done well, these two marketing strategies support each other. Incorporate improved organic search rankings into your tracking metrics.
• Create relevant content marketing. When implementing a social media marketing strategy, develop appropriate content. To ensure that you have sufficient content, plan your editorial calendar to include both unique and repurposed content with a new twist within social channels. Understand that using the same boring product information everywhere won’t cut it!
• Incorporate contextually relevant call-to-action and related unique tracking codes. The bottom line is that it’s difficult to make a case for social media if you can’t show business results. To this end, it’s important to develop metrics that relate back to your business objectives at the point when you’re developing your overall marketing plans. Otherwise, you’ll have to make do with whatever you’re able to collect after the fact and the challenge is that social media can have an impact on soft issues that are outside of your regular tracking.
• Add social sharing to your content. Cost-effectively extend the reach of your marketing by including social sharing buttons and related calls-to-action on your content. Use the dominant formats, namely Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ and StumbleUpon. The aim is to increase your reach via earned impressions.
• Support your social media marketing efforts with internal or owned media. Social media doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It requires marketing to drive readers and engagement. To this end, leverage your internal media, namely your website, emailings, business cards and email signature files to promote your social media executions. While a special targeted marketing promotion isn’t needed, it does need to be marketed.

Social media should have a place in your B2B marketing plans and budget. While you may want to believe that social media is free, it requires support both human and financial as well as senior management buy-in. Further, social media marketing must be integrated into your overall strategy to maximize its effectiveness and ensure that it’s cross-promoted and tracked appropriately.

Where is social media marketing fit into your plans for 2012?

Before the arrival of digital marketing tools, direct marketers measured response through unique phone numbers, coupon redemption, sales from a specific promotion, and other means. Today’s digital environment makes it significantly easier to test and thus push resources away from tactics that fail and push resources to tactics that produce a significant ROI. This can have massive impact on lead generation.

Inspired by Galileo, here are five lead generation experimentation ideas for your B2B marketing.

1. Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC). PPC works extremely well for some companies but it requires courage, patience, resources, and expertise. It’s highly measurable, and by monitoring results, marketers can effectively identify top performing campaigns (as well as low performing) and reallocate ad spend accordingly.

2. Multivariate Testing. Galileo’s investigations collected what modern scientists would call “experiment” and a “control” data. The two sets of information are very similar, except the experimental group has key variables changed to see how the differences affect outcomes. Marketers should similarly test landing page elements. Testing combinations of headlines, body copy, photos, and even colors can dramatically affect your results.

3. Try Different Offers. Everyone likes a great deal—whether it’s a trial, exclusive offer or a discount. Test the offer. For example, if interest is lead generation and you’re in the B2B environment, test free information (a white paper or special report) against a free initial consultation. Which offer gets the most leads and which one provides the highest quality of lead?

4. Bring New Media to the Old School. Marketers using mail pieces or other collateral should bring these traditional media into the 21st century by including them in your social marketing strategy. Include your Twitter handle in the contact information section or ask them to “Like” your brand page on Facebook. This can also apply to radio, television and other “ancient” lead generation methods.

5. Try a New Approach to Social Media. Much of Galileo’s work included observation and taking measurements: The brightness of stars, the speed of falling objects, the weight of objects. If he were a modern day B2B marketer, he would no doubt be happily measuring social media ROI. Social media can be a powerful lead generation method. Experiment with a new approach to social media based around key metrics. For example, examine the quantity and quality of traffic you receive from a specific social channel. Are you finding that visitors from Google+ are converting at a higher rate on your site? Might be time to increase activity in that social destination.

Two final pieces of lead generation experimentation advice of note. First, measure everything. Second, know the average lifetime value of a customer. The latter will help you determine return on investment for your lead generation and lead management experiments.

Ready for more ideas? For tips and best practices, visit our lead generation resources page.

While many B2C connections are made during this month, B2B marketing professionals are challenged to get their content noticed, since the bottom line is their target audience doesn’t have the time, bandwidth or desire to pay attention.

Here are five suggestions to create break through information to get your marketing content read and used.

To maximize the utility of this marketing, create evergreen content that can be used on a regular basis. Also, use this opportunity to test new ways to extend your content offering, like how-tos and patterns that provide other entryways to your website.

When creating marketing content for the holidays, don’t forget the following five elements.

• Incorporate your branding. While this sounds like a no brainer, it’s important to adapt your branding so that it’s appropriate to the content. Further branding encompasses more than just a logo. It’s the presentation, typeface, voice and other attributes.

• Optimize content for your search keywords. Don’t stuff your content with keywords. Make sure people, as well as search engines, can read your marketing content.

• Include a contextually relevant call-to-action. Remember customers may not take any action if you don’t ask them to do anything, especially in this harried time of year.

• Encourage social sharing. Supply the appropriate social sharing buttons for your target market. Don’t assume that they’ll distribute your content if it isn’t made easy for them. Also, ensure that it’s easy to print out and use in the real world.

• Incorporate a unique trackable promotional code. It’s difficult to determine if content was effective without any way of measuring it.

Even though your prospects and customers are busy with the holidays, knowing how they spend their time can help you to develop targeted content marketing that gets their attention. Once you’ve created useful information, don’t stop there: It’s important to maximize your content’s effectiveness with branding, search optimization, call-to-action, social sharing and unique promotional codes. With these tips in mind, you will be well on your way to breaking through the “holiday barrier” with content marketing.

Do you have any other types of content marketing that you’d add to this list? If so, what would you suggest?

That’s where a pitch letter comes in. Similar to how a cover letter complements a resume, the purpose of a pitch letter is to attract a blogger or other publisher’s interest to your blog post. Pitch letters don’t need to be complex or verbose, but the most successful ones entice bloggers into wanting to learn more about what you have to say.

What should you include in a pitch letter for the maximum marketing effectiveness for your guest blog post idea? Follow these guidelines.

1. Determine your target. Find respected, well-connected bloggers that write on subjects related to your topic. It doesn’t make any sense to pitch your post about beauty tips to a blogger that focuses on do-it-yourself home repair.
2. Get to the point. Don’t “bury the lead.” In the first sentence, hook the reader. Then, don’t bore them by going on and on about it, your post should speak for itself. If your e-mail has more than 10 full lines of text, you’re asking for it to not be read in its entirety.
3. Answer the major questions. Just like a news story, address the who, what, when, where, how and why this story is worth consideration. Any blogger you address has a specific audience to keep in mind. Why will their readers care? Having a compelling answer to this can make or break your chances of guest posting.
4. Connect the dots. State if the blog or blogger has covered similar subjects in the past and describe what additional information your story offers to readers or what makes it different. Convey to your contact why it’s a story worthy of being pursued.
5. Stroke their ego. Not all bloggers are the same. Increase your marketing effectiveness by crafting your pitch letters to inform each individual contact about how your story idea is relevant to their readers. Customizing your pitch letters will increase the chances of guest posting.
6. Check the basics. Before sending your pitch letter, check it for spelling and grammar errors. Ensure your sentences are clear and concise, that names are spelled properly and punctuation is in place. Don’t use an abundance of formatting, such as bolding, caps lock or hyperlinks because it can send your e-mail to the spam folder.
7. Follow Up. Bloggers can be very busy people and often receive lots of e-mails. Sometimes even the most interesting story ideas can slip by the wayside. If you haven’t received a response, a follow-up e-mail to make sure they received the first one can increase your chances of getting attention.

Pitch letters are excellent tools for getting your blog post published as a guest on a blog other than your own and increasing your blog’s marketing effectiveness. Pitch letters can help brands to gain attention from the blogs and bloggers who’s audience closely aligns with their target customers. Just remember to keep the letters short, to the point and show how your story can appeal to an audience.

Visit our resource page for more tips on improving marketing effectiveness and increasing marketing ROI.

The concepts of algebra, analytics and automation can work together and be applied to enhance a marketing mix. By utilizing math, bigger ideas can be reduced into smaller equations. Once you have a better idea of the big picture, one can improve results.

• Algebra: It might not seem intuitive immediately, but there is a lot of algebra going into marketing in general, particularly in social media. It even has a name: Relationship algebra. One of the most basic rules of algebra is the rule of symmetry. One examples of this is “If a = b, then b = a.” Simply put, if “a” is your marketing campaign, “b” is what you can expect from your customers. A second rule is the rule of zero, i.e. X + 0 = X. Zero added to any number means the number does not change. If you add nothing to your campaign, what you can expect from it won’t change. A third rule is the property of negation. In this example, Experience * -1 = -Experience. What can be learned from this is a positive outcome can be turned negative with just one bad experience.
• Analytics: Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data as it applies to web page usage. Most of this is measured in numbers and percentages: of users that visit a page, what pages are the most popular, what links are clicked, what pages seem to inspire the purchase of products or services and from which pages visitors take their exit. Its primary function is to assist with the understanding of how visitors use the website and how to optimize its contents for the best results. The information gained through web analytics can be converted into similar algebraic relationships as listed above, as they apply to website usage, social media interaction and marketing ROI.
• Automation: In order to be able to track online, content and social media campaigns, vital statistics need to be compiled, such as Facebook likes, Twitter follows, click-throughs, mentions, positive and negative sentiments. Automation can help web marketing professionals compile many of these measurements, as well as the stats and equations listed above and more. With this information at hand, a marketer can calculate online marketing ROI and optimize strategy to enhance it.

Algebra, analytics and automation. After reading all of that, it might seem like you’re in school again or like you will have to learn a lot of equations to optimize your online campaigns and marketing ROI. Fear not, as online marketing software can help.

Game theory is a method for analyzing calculated circumstances, such as in games, where a person’s success is based upon choices. Gamification is the use of game design dynamics and mechanics to solve problems and engage people involved in non-game activities.

With those two short, sweet definitions, it should be easy to see how game theory could be applied to B2B marketing, particularly through the use of marketing automation. Interactive, B2B and content marketers can use game theory and gamification to motivate action and drive engagement with prospects, customers, partners, sales and more through automated marketing channels.

Game theory in advertising campaigns begins with motivation: Incentives are what trigger people’s interest in playing the game. Motivations drive actions that are fulfilled by fun challenges, elevation of social status, recognition from peers, feedback from the community and more. These rewards give customers (players) a sense of achievement. This feeling is what reinforces motivation to keep them interested in the game.

Some places to start with the gamification of a marketing campaign include:

• Entertain. Many styles of video games tell a story as people work their way through them. Content marketing can be used to create a story line to pique consumer interest and curiosity to find out how the story unfolds.
• Challenge. People that tackle a challenge feel a sense of accomplishment that keeps them engaged. Gamification trials should tie back to rewards as well as achievement of levels that become increasingly difficult. To keep people coming back, there should be short-term and long-term goals to be reached.
• Reward. Rewards should match level of difficulty so target users gain a sense of accomplishment with their achievements. Incentives can have a monetary value, but doesn’t have to. Non-monetary rewards could include exclusive information, access or acknowledgment.
• Status. Leaderboards can be great helps for displaying status for marketing gamification. Leaderboards provide a recognition mechanism, while simultaneously ranking prospective leads.  An automated marketing analytics platform can be configured to support reward systems.
• Community. The problem with solitaire is even if you win, you only proved you reigned supreme over a deck of inanimate cards. Social interaction is a key component of true gamification. Players (customers) should be able to connect, share and reach out to other people.

B2B marketers can really use game theory and gamification to enhance their advertising campaigns. These ideas can be used to motivate action and drive engagement through automated marketing channels like no other technique. Now, it is time to put on your game face and prepare the marketing field for play!

Facts and statistics are always really helpful when it comes to making decisions about what to pursue in a marketing mix. We could tell you that B2B social media marketing has proved itself in many ways to be valuable and its potential for growth seems to grow everyday as social media user bases expand. But don’t take our word for it, here are some of the vital statistics to keep in mind when considering B2B social media marketing.

• Facebook: 800 million users. More than 75% of users are from outside of the United States. Three spikes in Facebook activity tend to occur on weekdays at 11:00 a.m., 3:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m., however posts published in the morning seem to do the best.
• Twitter: 300 million users. A majority of Twitter users are between the ages of 18 and 29. More than 50% of users are female and about 15% of users identify themselves as marketers. Minority internet users are more than twice as likely to use Twitter as are Caucasian internet users. Peak usage seems to occur between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m.
• LinkedIn: 116 million users. Many of the people at LinkedIn are professionals, business owners or other talented individuals. More than half are international users. Peak activity occurs between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m.
• Google+: 60 million users. Its user base tends to skew male, with most prominent occupations being in software engineering and development. They also tend to be between the ages of 25 to 34.

Does anything here surprise you? Do any of these statistics influence your B2B marketing strategy moving forward? Let us know in the comments!

Even so, various companies treat their SEO efforts very differently when it comes to how much they spend on it. Online content marketing makes up most of the advertising budgets of some organizations. Others are stingy with how much money they are willing to spend on SEO.

MarketingSherpa, a research firm specializing in tracking what is effective in all aspects of marketing, wanted to learn more about how organizations allocate budgets to maximize high-quality lead generation from SEO. They surveyed more than 1,500 marketers about their SEO budgets and displayed the results in one of their weekly charts.

The results were divided into companies that have no process or guidelines for including SEO in their marketing plans, companies that have an informal process, and organizations that  have a strategic, formal and integrated SEO practice in their advertising efforts. Of those groups:

• Companies with no SEO process:  About 26% plan on increasing their SEO budget, with 21% saying they will expand spending on this technique by 20% or more. Of these more casual users, just 5% said they would spend less on SEO.
• Companies with an informal SEO process:  About 42% of these businesses will raise SEO budgets in 2012, with 14% planning to spend 20% more on it. Almost no companies in this category expressed any desire to spend less on SEO.
• Companies with a strategic SEO process: About 41% will increase their SEO budgets, with 18% saying theirs will rise 20% to 50% and nearly 10% of these top users saying their SEO budgets will increase by more than 50%. Just 5% plan to scale back their SEO efforts, likely because their programs have developed to a point they can spend less while sustaining quality results.

Organizations that are relatively new at SEO are still investing money into it. Companies that have dived head-first into SEO strategy plan on increasing their budgets to a greater degree than organizations less versed in SEO. Although budget increases are expected for most of the companies, a greater percentage of organizations in the earlier phases of SEO implementation are expected to keep budgets the same.

Marketing departments that truly understand SEO want to spend more on it. This should be of some siginificance to organizations that are still struggling with their SEO online marketing efforts. If these companies take the time to implement a planned strategy and carry it out for a period of a few weeks or months, the results they would likely discover could encourage them to invest more in SEO, too.

How much do you expect your organization’s SEO budget to change in 2012?

Solution: Integrate your marketing automation process for use with social networking.

Unlike more traditional types of campaigns, social media marketing requires a bit more attention to truly cultivate the type of following that produces real marketing ROI. Some marketers believe the answer lies simply in software that automatically replies a generic message anytime they are addressed via Twitter, Facebook, etc. The truly advanced and knowledgeable invest in marketing automation tools to manage their social media accounts when a brand representative is unavailable for interaction.

Sounds interesting, what can this type of software do?

Auto Response: Though some purists are not fans of auto responders, new social media marketing automation tools can trigger responses from channels such as Twitter or Facebook to visitors to your website, depending on which social network they are using at the time.

Enhanced Analytics: Marketing automation software has enhanced reporting and analytic tools capable of tracking how effective programs are and what they can expect to generate.

Lead Scoring: Social listening platforms can score potential sales leads based on the social activity of a certain customer. Know what your target is doing on your site, tweak your content to suit their preferences and convert them into sales.

One Tool: Social media marketing automation software can help grow brand recognition, customer base and online interaction – not to mention time and money. It’s important to note, however, that entire campaigns cannot be automated. Without a real person interacting with followers and monitoring engagement, it is easy to lose listeners. With the right balance, marketing automation software can greatly enhance your social media efforts.

What are your thoughts and experiences? How are you integrating marketing automation into your social marketing campaigns?

Online B2B marketing efforts don’t have to be convoluted and complicated. When it comes down to it, some of the ideas behind website marketing are actually really simple. So simple, they can be explained in a series of “math” problems that we have depicted below. Do you know the answers? Make sure you check your work to see if your answers match the ones below.

• Website + SEO = Good

You have a website and it is search engine optimized. This is a good place to start because you have a base. However, it doesn’t help much because a website with SEO is static: It doesn’t do anything, so people and search engines will likely have a hard time finding it.

• Website + SEO + Content Marketing = Better

The trifecta. As the equation demonstrates, having a search engine optimized website while utilizing content is a better strategy when it comes to lead generation. Content marketing can occur through blogs, online articles, forums, e-mail marketing campaigns and more. This strategy is more active because adding new information to your website tells search engines to crawl it more often, update records as to what can be found there and increase its placement in the search rankings. The higher up it ranks, the easier it is for customers to find you.

• Website + SEO + Content Marketing + Analytic Analysis = Even Better

When you have the three items listed in the previous equation, you’re really cooking, but there is room for improvement yet. Analytic analysis added to the calculation can not only improve lead generation, it helps with lead scoring. Website analytics track where users entered the site, what pages they visited, what products or services they spent the most time looking at and when they left the site, with or without making a purchase. Knowing all of this information can help funnel that prospect into a sales lead with real potential.

• Website + SEO + Content Marketing + Analytic Analysis + Social Media = Best

The best we saved for last. The first three equations laid a great foundation. Social media is like the icing on the cake that can help all of your web-related b2b marketing efforts. Messages sent via social media platforms can be used to direct people to your website, are indexed by search engines based on their key words, contribute to your library of content marketing, and can be tracked through analytic analysis to discover what posts were the most successful. Each social media account opens up a whole new world of prospective leads that could be funneled to your website and through your sales process.

Again, B2B marketing online doesn’t have to be complicated. But as displayed here, there is more to a successful campaign than simply developing a webpage with excellent SEO properties. The equations above are obviously quite simplified, but could apply to any business seeking to increase awareness of their brand online. The percentages of how much time you apply to each element of the equations are up to you, though. Some brands find using social media more gives them a better uptick in business, while others find regularly uploading new content is their ticket to success. Its up to you to find the individual calculations that works best for your brand.

What is your formula for B2B online marketing success? Share in a comment below!

No doubt the scope of the Internet holds thousands of potential leads but you’ve got to be smart to find them. Ask these 5 questions to determine whether you’re covering all your social media bases and you’ll uncover the “social media-demand generation” mystery:

1. Am I Utilizing My Keywords?
Keyword optimization is the vital link to the chain of social media connection.  Your keywords are the unique footprints prospects can follow to your brand.

Be sure you’re incorporating your keywords into all your content.  However, go another step further and determine if the keywords you’ve chosen are the best to draw people to your business.

2. Am I Over/Under Sharing?
Give us too much information and we might want to turn away.  Give us too little and we may lose interest.  There is a fine balance between the two.  The average social media activity of Forbes 100 companies in 2010 showed a consistent weekly effort (InsideView).  Take some inspiration from these major players and try your sharing in these combinations:

• Post between 3-4 times weekly on Facebook
• Tweet 25-30 times per week
• Update your blog 7 times monthly
• Upload 5-10 videos per month

Remember, keep an active presence so followers are interested (not inundated) by the content you share.

3. What’s The Best Timing For My Content?
You wouldn’t pop over to your neighbor’s house at 3 in the morning and you shouldn’t be updating your social media at that time either.  Your posts, shares and tweets should fit into the rhythm of your followers’ days.

Start the day with your blog updates on your website or RSS feed before 10 a.m.  This gives followers a fresh look at your content and beats all the noise they’ll hear throughout the day.

Your Facebook posts can be posted midmorning, midafternoon and evening.  However, morning posts are best as people often check in to get updated earlier in the day.

Share your tweets throughout the day.  Be sure to stay on top of articles and content that you find interesting that can be retweeted.

4. Who Do I Really Want To Reach?
Don’t waste the impact of your content on audiences who aren’t interested.  Determine who makes up your target market and then mold your content to do these 4 things:

• Educate them on your industry and products
• Inform them about new trends and industry updates
• Find out what needs they have
• Find solutions to their problems

Remember, your job is to build a relationship with your prospects.  People are more motivated to buy from sources they know and trust, so the better you understand your audience, the more likely you’ll be to establish a credible presence.

5. Have I Tapped All Potential Channels?
If you’ve only leveraged the big four (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube) then you’re most likely giving your marketing efforts short shrift.  The Internet is loaded with niche sites where the people you really want to reach are hanging out.

Try browsing sites using various keywords.  This will not only help you broaden your scope of channels, it will also give you a different perspective on the keywords you should be using that you haven’t considered in the past.

It’s easy to get lost in the vastness of the Internet.  While you may be eager to share your message with everyone, remember, it’s the buyer looking for your product whom you most want to reach.  Don’t waste your time with people looking for orange juice when you own an apple orchard.

Continue to evolve your demand generation efforts by downloading “Demand Generation, Marketo’s Secret Sauce”.

The era of mobile access is here. Our lifestyle has become mobile, thanks to nearly universal hand-held devices. How people consume media has been fundamentally changed and with it, so must B2B marketing and business practices. But it can be difficult without the right apps. Here is a list of some of the best mobile apps that can turn your smartphone or tablet into an indispensable business tool.

Mobile Payroll
Intuit’s Online Payroll or Quickbooks Online Payroll now offers small business subscribers the option to manage employee payroll from a mobile device. The app can handle both hourly and salaried employees in three easy steps. After it calculates tax withholdings and deductions, it can set up a direct deposit or display the amount to write on a check. Mobile payroll through Intuit or Quickbooks is available now for iOS and Android phones.

Seesmic Social
Seesmic makes mobile social media marketing a snap. Seesmic is a Web, desktop and mobile interface that allows people to manage multiple Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social media accounts on the go. Seesmic also supports most popular video and photo sites, like Flickr or YouTube. The free app is currently available for Android and Honeycomb-based tablets.

Soonr Workplace
Soonr Workplace is a mobile project collaboration and document management system with file syncing and online backup, all wrapped up into one neat platform for Android or Honeycomb-based tablets. It allows for the remote editing of Microsoft Office Excel, and PowerPoint files to improve mobile collaboration. Edits are backed up, stored and synced, and can easily be shared with the entire team. Soonr Workplace’s cloud basis means virtual device interoperability. The Workplace app is free, but premium plans are available for a fee.

ShoutOUT
ShoutOUT is a full-featured messaging app with voice dictation. A user simply has to speak a Facebook or Twitter status to their iPhone and voila – it is updated! ShoutOUT allows people to send and receive text messages easily when they don’t have two hands free for typing. Especially useful for people on the go, there’s no faster way to create and send messages than with ShoutOUT!

Interested in improving mobile marketing results? Learn tips on making your emails readable on a smartphone in this Marketo Mobile Email Marketing whitepaper.

Here are some of the demographics we score that you might not normally consider:

Bad data. Sometimes people will fill out a form with a first name of 111 or a first name of asdf, causing a mess in your database. How do we mark these leads as bad names? We take off points for the following:

• First Name contains: 1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 6; 7; 8; 9 (Most of us don’t have a number in our name.)
• First Name does not contain: a; e; i; o; u; y (You typically have a vowel in the first name, right?) Note: we don’t want to miss people that have abbreviated first names so we don’t take points off if the names are: J.T.; JT; JD; J.D.; RJ; R.J.; JR; J.R.; T.J.; TJ; DJ; D.J.; BJ; B.J.; CJ; C.J., J.J.; JJ; K.T.; KT; P.J.; PJ
• First Name starts with or contains: abc; asdf; qwer; sadf; aaa; sss; qqq; xyz; ?; !
• We have similar rules for last names, but don’t take points off if the last name is Ng (since it’s a valid last name that does not contain a consonant)

Those that aren’t going to buy. Some people just aren’t the right target for our product because they won’t have the buying ability, like an independent contractor or a student. Company names and titles we reduce points for include:

• Company Name includes: Unemployed; Self; N/A; Agency; Marketing; freelance; In Transition; Marketeer
• Job title includes: Intern; Consultant; Assistant; Professor; Owner; Recruiter; Student; Educator; Unemployed; TBA; Actively Seeking; Actively Looking; no name; TBD; No Name decided; No name decided yet; Individual; Entrepreneur

Domains indicating that someone isn’t getting ready to buy. We have consistently found that when someone is in early stages of researching a company they will use a personal email address, and then when they are closer to purchase they will use a corporate email address. Because of this we lower the lead score if the email domain includes:

• @gmail.com; @mac.com; @yahoo.com; @hotmail.com; @sbcglobal.net; @earthlink.net; @att.net; @aol.com; @comcast.com; @comcast.net; @me.com; @ymail.com; @googlemail.com; @163.com

Leads that can be found in an external database. If you were considering a social media job candidate, you would have concern if you couldn’t find their Twitter account, right? Well, this scoring approach is similar. We give extra points for leads we can match with external databases, like data.com or InsideView. By doing this, we can ensure we are getting those that are definitely real people. Note: these people may also get additional points when the match is made because we are scoring on other information that the external database can provide like company size, revenue, number of employees, industry, location, etc.

Big score reduction for competitors. Simply stated, they aren’t likely to buy.

There are many other lead scoring rules to consider, but these are great ways to tweak your current campaigns. Let me know if you have any others that are a little out of the norm that should have made my list so we can learn from each other.

For an even deeper dive into lead scoring best practices, take a gander at our Definitive Guide to Lead Scoring, designed for both novice and experienced practitioners, offers advice, best practices and techniques to help you get the most out of every lead that enters your database.

It is not enough for a company to want to increase leads. To be successful, a brand’s leaders must develop a comprehensive plan to win more sales. In other words, businesses need a lead management strategy that kicks arse!

At its most basic level, lead management is a game with winners and losers. Many companies simply play the game in order to grow their bottom line. When another player wins all of their customers, they don’t understand why. They didn’t invest enough time or thought into planning an unbeatable lead management strategy, so they were left in the dust by brands with a better idea of the game. If more time and energy is invested into a solid plan, a brand’s chances for success can be increased, while reducing its risk of failure.

Winners don’t just offer a product or service: They create brands that add value to the lives of their customers. They cultivate their specialties until their competitors’ brands naturally seem inferior. Implementing a “capabilities-driven strategy” that gets to the core of what the company does best, leads to brand awareness, measurable performance, increased leads and more closed sales.

In the book The Essential Advantage: How to Win with a Capabilities-Driven Strategy, Paul Leinwand and Cesare R. Mainardi argue that many leaders need to rethink the way they develop marketing strategy. Their philosophy for winning the game requires identifying the company’s differentiating capabilities, and building a strategy around those. They believe that losing companies, on the other hand, chase opportunities outside their core areas of expertise and capabilities at their peril. According to the authors, most memorable, successful and effective Fortune 500 companies share three clearly defined characteristics:

• Way to Play: They don’t just roll the dice or rely on chance. They make deliberate choices about how to add value in the market. Then they plot their course to delivering it in the most efficient and effective manner.
• Capabilities System: They evaluate their strengths and build a set of three to six capabilities that work well together as a system and allow them to deliver on their promises. For example, real customer insight, agile design teams and rapid manufacturing capacity means feedback can be received, alterations can be made and better products can be delivered to the market more quickly than if one of those capabilities were not in place.
• Product and Service Portfolio: They choose products and services that not only are well suited to their target customers, but compliment the company’s distinctive aptitude and resources. They avoid adding products, services or markets that require the development of new or unrelated lead management capabilities.

Though it may seem like a good idea to try to be everything to everyone, it can lead very quickly to a company being spread too thin. Leaders must guide their team to choose a defined area of expertise and stay loyal to it. It’s not easy and there are always temptations to try and jump on someone else’s bandwagon for a quick buck. But focus, and a clearly defined brand identity and capabilities can help you play to win.

Now, keep in mind that for most of these you need to be a professional marketer. Each site should share what qualifications are required to receive the freebie.

Free Marketing Magazines:
Call me old school, but I still read marketing magazines to stay up-to-date on the latest marketing news. I can’t imagine a flight without two or three of these in my bag to ensure an interesting trip.

• Chief Content Marketer Magazine
• Website Magazine
• Target Marketing Magazine
• DMNews Magazine
• BtoB Magazine
• Chief Marketer Magazine

Free College Type Courses and/or Certifications:
Marketing courses can be expensive, but they look impressive on your resume. Here are some free ones to stay up-to-date and keep your resume filled with relevant marketing education.

• 6 Week Course in Branding by About.com
• Google Training via Google Certification program – All training is free, and to get a certification it’s only $50
• Marketing 101 by Kutztown University
• Conducting a Marketing Analysis by Kutztown University
• Fundamentals of Business Analysis by University of California
• Inbound Marketing University by Hubspot including certification

Free Survey Tools:
Just getting started with surveys in your marketing programs? These are a few to get you going without risk- since they are free for your first 100 respondents.

• Survey Monkey
• Zoomerang

Free Marketing Associations:
Marketing Associations can be pricey.

• Sales Lead Management Association
• Association of Strategic Marketing

Free Kindle Books:
I think this is one of the best deals ever- having your Kindle filled with Marketing books at no cost. I did a blog post with a bunch of free marketing books a few months ago, but here are a few that I missed.

• Brand Like a Rockstar
• Zero Moment of Truth
• Email Etiquette
• Unselling: Sell Less to Win More

Free Events:
Marketing events are great ways to stay up-to-date and make great contacts. For marketers looking to network, here are some A+ opportunties.

• Revenue Rockstar Roadshows – these are free events we hold throughout the country to help marketers improve their skills
• OMMA Global – free conference held by OMMA each year in San Francisco
• BtoB Net-Marketing Breakfasts – this link is for their upcoming San Francisco event, but check the events section for one in a city near you
• Plus lots of virtual conferences (just look for these wherever you get your latest marketing news or on our Events page)

Free Press Releases:
Mashable has created this list of 20 free press release distribution services which are great for any companies trying to get the word out, or improve SEO.

This is just what I found in my list of favorites, so I’m sure there are many more. What are some of your favorite marketing freebies? I’d love a few more!

The OLD Process for EVERY webinar:

• Schedule the webinar in the webinar platform
• Create and launch a landing page
• Create and deploy the email invite (plus a second and third if doing multiple mailings)
• Create and deploy reminder emails
• Export the leads from the webinar platform and import into the marketing automation or email system
• Create and deploy follow-up emails

Plus, it’s really hard to tell when using multiple systems why people registered for your webinar, and then if those that attended turned to customers.

You may be thinking- well, duh. This is how webinars are done.

But there is a new, BETTER way.

What if by simply clicking copy on the last webinar you’ve run and filling in the event’s unique details it could be created? Yes, all the emails, landing pages, and follow-ups with just updating the new information like the date of the event, description, and email banner. Better, the webinar is created right from the marketing automation system which talks to the webinar platform, and then as part of the ‘conversation’, receives back the leads that attended and didn’t attend without even one extra click immediately after the webinar concludes.

Now, if the word integration sounds scary or you are using another marketing automation system and have needed to go through a 120-step integration process in the past, don’t be worried. Marketo is leading the way in integration, making this possible in just a few clicks.

Oh, and why this blog post today? Marketo is announcing our integration to GoToWebinar. While we have had integrations to other webinar platforms, like Webex, Adobe Connect, and On24, GoToWebinar just released their API to make this integration possible today. If you are a Marketo customer, you will receive instructions via email and in our community tomorrow. If you are interested in learning more, you can see our press release or sign up for a GoToWebinar and Marketo demo.

Consider some of these statistics:

A recent 2011 Robert Half Technology study interviewed 1400 CIOs (chief information officers) of companies with over 100 employees.

As a follow-up to their 2009 survey, they found the following results with regard to using social networking sites at work:

• 31% of companies prohibit all access (down from 54% in 2009)
• 51% of companies permit access for business purposes only (up from 19% in 2009)
• 14% of companies permit access for limited personal use (down from 16% in 2009)
• 4% of companies permit any access for personal use (down from 10% in 2009)

However, there are still good reasons to allow employees to utilize social media and one site in particular, is a perfect example.

Foursquare, the geo-location check-in site, has 4 million members and is growing at a rapid clip.  It links users and their friends together quickly and easily, and has the potential of being a B2B social media channel that can boost your brand.

So, while it may not be an approved practice for your employees to use general social media at work, Check out these 5 reasons you might want to encourage your employees and your clients to use Foursquare:

Promote Company Events

Continual comments about event planning help create an excitement level around the upcoming occasion.  The employees responsible for the event can give unique and varied viewpoints and create conversations – great pre-event buzz.

This can spill over to tradeshows and conventions, also.  Don’t limit the posts to before the event, giving a summary of how things went afterward keeps clients engaged throughout the process and helps build interest for subsequent activities.

Build Your Brand

The flow of updates by your employees at work shows clients your company has a high level of energy and enthusiasm.  One great way to inspire employees to check-in often and with creative comments is to reward the Mayor of the week (the person who has checked in most often).

Clients will get a better sense of the unique spirit and personalities behind your brand.  And for those not in your area, they’ll get a better sense of your community, as well.

Collect Information On Your Target Market

One of the best aspects of Foursquare are the reams of information available to businesses from user interaction.

When you collect a wide group of potential and current customers as Foursquare friends, you can examine their behavior patterns, their likes and even understand their individual personalities (through the “add a comment” feature)

Nothing helps marketers fine-tune content better than really knowing who makes up their audience.

Give A Nod To Your Clients

Check into meetings with clients to let others know you are active and engaged.  There’s nothing like a buzz of activity to ignite sparks of interest.

Using Foursquare as a continual connection to the people in your network is one more link in the relationship chain.  Clients who feel connected to you are more likely to recommend you to others.

Boost Sales Team Productivity

The continuing challenge to increase sales productivity is one that often centers on friendly competition.  You need to find ways to keep your sales team enthusiastic in between those sales meetings.

Use Foursquare to create competitions between reps on the road.  Reward those with the most check-ins.  Provide special incentives to the Mayors who are spreading your brand name the most.

Not only will team members stay more connected with each other and you, they’ll be more likely to use Foursquare to build their own networks.

Foursquare also offers custom versions to limit information for outside viewers so the competition can’t follow your sales tracks.

B2B social media channels and tools that build both marketing and sales practices are ones that shouldn’t be overlooked.  Any new way to keep both employees and clients engaged is one that can take your business to the next level.

It makes sense to keep your approach to social media an ever-changing practice. You may find that Foursquare and other unique social media sites might be just the boost needed to elevate marketing efforts and increase sales leads.

This scenario isn’t unusual, sometimes leads fall through cracks or systems fail, but the important thing is to identify the weak links in your lead generation chain and avoid the blame game between opposite ends of the office.

If you are finding issues in your lead generation process, check these 5 reasons why you may be losing opportunities and what you can do to fix it:

1. Your Lead Scoring Is Off The Mark

The work you do on the front end has a huge impact on the back end of your sales process.  Nowhere is this more evident than in your lead scoring system.  If you don’t have a complete profile on who your ideal sales lead is, you’re basically throwing proverbial pasta against the lead generation wall and hoping it sticks.

Encourage regular meetings between sales and marketing to grade and adjust how your lead scoring is performing.  Make this a consistent part of your planning and you’ll not only stay on top of your fine-tuning, you’ll foster a stronger relationship between sales and marketing, as well.

2. Your Lead Nurturing Is Spotty

Once those prospects are in your sales funnel, they should be integrated into a well-timed, regular touch program.  If those leads you thought were hot are cooling down too often, then it’s time to examine how well you are continuing the conversation that started when they agreed to give you their email addresses.

Be sure you are covering these aspects of reaching out to prospects:

• Contact them within 5 minutes of when they subscribe
• Engage in at least 4 reach-outs to keep them interested
• Don’t have your sales department contact leads before they are sales-ready

The process of lead nurturing puts a spotlight on the communication between marketing and sales.  If prospects sense a disconnect within the system, they’ll be less likely to put their trust (and their dollars) in your business.

3. Your Message Doesn’t Compel

The ideal content marketing message is one that provides relevant information, educates and compels readers to act.  That thread must weave through every piece of content, whether on your website and social media channels, in your blog or throughout your email marketing.  Without a consistent message, prospects will look elsewhere.

Above all else, decide what it is you want prospects to do.  Do you want them to download a whitepaper or sign up for your newsletter?  Tell them!  While there is a fine line between pushing and motivating, there is no substitution for a call to action.

4. You Don’t Understand How Your Buyers Think

You may be skilled at collecting names but a stuffed top of the funnel does not equate to the same amount of sales.  Your dwindling results may be due to the fact that you don’t understand how buyers think.

You need to understand the differences between latent and active buyers.  Some come in as hot leads and flow through the funnel quickly to sale but leads that need more time must be followed up with differently.

This goes back to lead scoring.  Do you know if your lead is a primary buyer or a contributor?  What is the culture in their company that may keep them from pulling the trigger?  The myriad of details that go into your buyer’s decision making should be top of your mind as well, so you can create a message that brings them value and a series of reach outs that fit their schedule.

5. You’re Not Keeping Track Of The Numbers

Industry stats indicate that 40% of prospects become leads.  But as we know, not all leads are created equal.  If you don’t know why your conversion rates are less than impressive, maybe it’s because you haven’t really looked at the numbers closely (or often) enough.

Your metrics should take into account conversion rates over time by type.  For example, do trade show leads perform better than pay-per-click (PPC)?  PPC leads may cost more but if they convert more quickly they may end up costing less per customer.

Throughout the sales process, the foundation to success is sales and marketing alignment. When marketing understands the prospects they need to find and sales gives feedback to which prospects became the best leads, then both can benefit from future forecasting based upon on-going results.

If you are experiencing cracks in your sales funnel mortar, go back to the basics and get both sides of the office on the same page.  You’ll see conversion rates and ROI that prove collaboration is key.