22 Nov |
The Challenges that B2B Marketers Find the Most Difficult to Overcome |
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In my post last week, I promised to share some interesting “sound bytes” from the MarketingSherpa 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report. These are comments from B2B marketers about the barriers they find the most difficult to overcome. I picked a few that are very commonly experienced by B2B marketing companies. The Challenges for B2B Marketers “Lack of ability to stop executing and think strategically is the biggest barrier.” I find that typical of B2B marketing organizations that get so caught up in tactical plays and spike marketing. In the absence of a defined strategy
Read more...10 Nov |
Lead Conversion—the Biggest Challenge in the Marketing-Sales Funnel |
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A couple of weeks ago we purchased the comprehensive, 200 page MarketingSherpa 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report. This veritable source of marketing insights is a reminder of the B2B marketing industry’s key challenges and ways in which organizations are struggling to overcome them. Over the next few posts on my blog, I thought it may be worthwhile to focus on certain aspects of this report and how marketers can apply this intelligence to enhance lead generation strategies and processes. The study analyses how B2B organizations plan, execute and measure business activities such as lead
Read more...02 Nov |
The Many Faces of “Lead Generation” – Trick or Treat? |
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Halloween has come and gone again and each year one marvels at the ingenuity and creativity of costumes, masks and disguises. The trick-or-treaters come around no matter what the weather with their bags open and outstretched for candy. Not to forget the adults who dress up and grab their share of fun at work or with friends and family. For some players in the lead generation industry, Halloween is gradually becoming a year-round event. You can see all kinds of tools, techniques and tactics disguised as “lead generation strategies” to fool indiscriminate marketers. Just like those
Read more...18 Oct |
B2B Marketing and Lead Generation Challenges – “The Q Continuum” |
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One of my all-time favourite television shows was Star Trek – the whole gamut of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Star Trek: Voyager. For those of you who didn’t fancy it or can’t remember trivial details like I do (am not ashamed to admit it!), let me remind you about the Q Continuum – an extra-dimensional plane of existence inhabited by a race of extremely powerful, hyper-intelligent beings known as the Q. They typically display indifference to most non-Q beings but have a deep interest in the development and progress of humanity. The Q character,
Read more...21 Jun |
Things they said at the B2B Demand Generation Summit… |
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Throughout the SiriusDecisions Summit this year, the message of “sales and marketing alignment” resonated loud and clear. That, in fact, was the theme – B-to-B Sales and Marketing: Forging a New Alliance. If you’ve been following closely, this theme has been a recurring one on my blog as well. Last summer, I wrote about connecting the dots between lead generation, sales and CRM. Around the same time, I offered a quick summary of inbound marketing trends and adoption of best practices for lead generation. Coming back to the Summit, speakers, John Neeson (co-founder of
Read more...15 Jun |
Inbound Web Conversion |
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- The land of opportunity for the B2B demand generator Jay Gaines (Twitter: @izjay), a Service Director with SiriusDecisions spoke about Website Conversion on Day 2 of the SiriusDecisions Summit this year. He talked about a big step up in website goals from merely disseminating information to “perpetual demand creation”. Conversion optimization is the way to create a steady stream of leads with the “4 critical elements” being: Content Website ownership Technology Program integration While a big part of demand generation traditionally has been “education”, i.e.
Read more...19 Apr |
Do People Provide False Contact Information Online? 69% of the time! |
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It’s true! Landing pages and web forms can bring inaccurate information into your database. Landing pages are increasingly gaining ground as a popular online marketing tactic. Organizations include a strategically designed landing page in their package of marketing tools because it offers them the opportunity to ask for visitor information. From downloading a whitepaper in exchange for an email address to requesting a free trial by providing more detailed contact information, individuals do respond to a compelling call-to-action in a landing page that catches their attention. I read an
Read more...03 Feb |
To Spike, or Not to Spike: that is the question |
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I’m feeling inspired by Shakespeare here but unlike Hamlet, it’s not a question I would ponder. Rather, it is a rhetorical question and my answer would always be “don’t spike”. I agree; a challenging economy and value-conscious customers are making it increasingly difficult for organizations to stay afloat, let alone meet sales targets. Added to that is the pressure of getting to customers before your competitors do. A “quick fix” might seem like the ideal solution. Enter a spike marketer who may be able to deliver the quick boost you’re looking for to improve your sales.
Read more...06 Jan |
New Year’s Resolutions for 2011 |
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Happy New Year to all of you! Hope everyone enjoyed a wonderful holiday season. It’s always hard coming back after the short but action-packed few days of festivity and joyous celebration. Maybe that’s the reason why many of us try to find our focus by making New Year resolutions. Of course, we know that these are the most commonly broken set of promises we make to ourselves! I was reading a comic strip in a local newspaper recently where a teenager asks his Dad if he had made a list of New Year’s resolutions for 2011. The man replies “Yes” and points to a dusty diary. The son
Read more...22 Dec |
Recipes from the World’s Best Chef – My Christmas Gift to You! |
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In case you’re wondering about the title of this blog post, let me tell you at the outset that I am neither a chef, nor am I the world’s best. BUT, I am very excited that my niece, Stacey Lee Chan is indeed the world’s best chef! Stacey won the gold at the prestigious “Chaines des Rotisseurs Jeunes Chef Rotisseurs” 2010 world final in Helsinki, an annual highly regarded competition in the culinary world. Go Stacey! Stuck for holiday meal ideas? Now you know about the world’s best chef — this is my special Christmas gift to you! Check out Stacey’s Blog for her favourite
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