How To Avoid the Biggest Pitfall of Progressive Profiling

Questionaire from Focus GroupAccording to Google, progressive profiling is “a method of asking questions incrementally, gathering more information about a prospect over time.”

With progressive profiling, instead of putting a 15 field form in front of your next potential prospect, use progressive profiling and only ask for the first couple pieces of information. Then, as they come back over time, continue to gather a little bit more.

And then it all falls apart. [Read more…]

The Real Reasons Programmatic Ad Buys Fail in B2B Marketing

Fail Road SignProgrammatic buying, driven by real-time bidding (RTB), is the fastest growing segment of digital marketing today. But it isn’t ready yet for today’s enterprise B2B marketer.

Time and time again, B2B marketers fall prey to a wonderful sounding sales pitch for their demand generation plan that goes something like this:

“We use 100’s of data points and sophisticated technology that optimizes every single impression in your campaign. Through our connections to every major exchange, we evaluate billions of impressions across millions of sites every day to find the exact audience and inventory you need at a fraction of the cost you would otherwise pay.”

Wow, sign me up, right? Cost-effective, constantly optimized, highly targeted. Get this program live, I’m taking a vacation!

And then you see the results. [Read more…]

9 Crippling Mistakes B2B Search Marketers Make

Google Display Network is not Search!“Paid search is slowly failing B2B marketers.”

I never expected to say that. For years paid search has been one of the most cost-effective media channels for B2B lead generation. But over the last year, I have seen or heard case after case of B2B marketers struggling to make paid search, and Google AdWords in particular, cost-effective. [Read more…]

5 Steps To Improve B2B Lead Generation Program Results

B2B Lead Generation StepsYou are easily spending thousands on lead generation media programs each month. You have carefully chosen your partners, negotiated an effective cost per lead and are diligently measuring your results.

But you are still leaving money on the table. You can increase the value you get by changing how you run each of your programs.

From content to process to branding, here are five steps you can take to improve the results from your publisher lead generation programs. [Read more…]

4 Metrics You Need To Track In B2B Lead Generation Programs

Measure Your Marketing InvestmentEnterprise B2B marketers face a conundrum. Businesses needs to drive growth and lead generation is a key way the business expects marketing to contribute.

However, sales cycles are long. It can take months, even years, before marketing is able to prove the value of lead generation efforts with revenue. And you can’t afford to wait that long to optimize your investment and show results.

The first article in this series on publisher lead generation programs looked at the cost of lead generation programs. Here we will look at how to measure and optimize your program effectively in the face of long sales cycles. [Read more…]

B2B Lead Generation: The Cost of Publisher Programs

B2B Lead Generation Cost [Infographic Thumbnail]Need leads? It will cost you. Between $35 and $65 per registration according to statistics recently published by Madison Logic. And that is if you are just targeting a broad function, like “marketing” or “technology.”

Do you want a specific industry? Level of seniority? Geography? The more targeting you need, the more expensive those leads become. That’s a safe rule of thumb, and the data from Madison Logic bears it out (stats in the infographic below).

Over a series of three articles on B2B lead generation, we will look at types of programs or providers, how to measure the success of publisher lead generation programs and things you can do to improve the results from your programs. [Read more…]

The Biggest Missed Opportunity in B2B Lead Generation

Lead Generation Opportunity: All Other Sources Are More Important for Lead GenerationWhen the success of your business is less important than the success of your marketing, something is seriously wrong.

Yet this is exactly how most B2B marketers approach lead generation today! You don’t care about the number of leads your sales team has. Instead you care about the number of marketing sourced leads.

We all know B2B marketing measurement is imperfect, yet we momentarily suspend all reservations in order to judge our effectiveness based on results attributed to our efforts instead of the results for our business!

This is crazy folks! [Read more…]

B2B Marketing’s Measurement Problem

New B2B Buying ProcessNo one makes a million dollar decision based on one white paper, one email or one Google search.

The buying process may take 12 to 18 months. 20 different people may be involved in the decision. Peers, consultants and analysts will provide their input.

It is called a complex sale for a reason, but B2B marketers keep trying to fit it into a simplistic measurement framework: where did we get that lead? [Read more…]

Getting Out of the B2B Lead Generation Trap

TrapsMost B2B marketing organizations miss the biggest opportunities to impact their business because they have not identified the right goals.

Why isn’t business coming out of your ears?

Dig into that question, ask why of every answer or assumption you come up with, and you will eventually get to the root challenge and the basis for goals that can move your business forward.

It is easier said than done. [Read more…]

B2B Marketing Has a Perception Problem

Do you care if potential prospects see your services as high value or a complete rip-off? Of course you do.

This is about the perception each individual has about you. This is about your brand.

Perceptions are created by experience with your products, service and people, through what other people say about you (even competitors) and through your own marketing.

No one buys from a company they distrust or pays a premium for a solution they see as a low cost provider.

However, in B2B, the value of perceptions have been set aside, in favor of the new holy grail of B2B marketing: lead generation. [Read more…]