The New SiriusDecisions Waterfall (and New B2B Marketing Acronyms)

If you measure or benchmark B2B demand generation activity across sales and marketing, one of the best benchmark resources just received a major facelift and a number of improvements.

Yesterday SiriusDecisions unveiled their new demand waterfall at the annual SiriusDecisions Summit. The new waterfall (or funnel, to most of us) provides a framework for measuring and benchmarking demand generation from initial inquiry to close and across sales and marketing. [Read more…]

B2B Marketers Are Turning Away Prospects

Staircase and Way Out SignAccording to recent research from IDC, lead generation is a top B2B marketing priority, and in the next four years Sirius Decisions predicts 75% of all registrations will be captured online. (Sirius Decisions actually labels this as inbound marketing, however I use a more limited definition of inbound marketing.)

One of the primary ways B2B marketers capture leads online is asking prospects to register for content. Doing it effectively requires creating content prospects want in a format that is easy to engage with while capturing the information you need.

However, based on recent research from DemandGen Report, marketers are turning away prospects [Read more…]

Just Say No to Marketing Advice

All Marketing Advice Should Include a Disclaimer

Your strategy is your direction; it should never be prescriptive. The strategy you develop should be unique to your business, an outgrowth of the challenge or opportunity you are facing and the environment surrounding your target audience.

The problem is, marketing advice is prescriptive. It may sound important and be delivered with authority, but it is still prescriptive. Here are examples of marketing advice I have recently come across (or even written): [Read more…]

The Hidden Message from SiriusDecisions: Serve Your Audience

SiriusDecisions’ B2B Sales and Marketing: Forging a New Alliance was an impressive event last week, and I was glad to have the opportunity to attend. Between companies sharing their own cases on sales and marketing alignment and the planning frameworks, examples and data from SiriusDecisions analysts, it was a three day information firehouse.

Underlying the content I saw a common thread: sales and marketing needs to serve prospective customers. Here is my view on how a service attitude towards prospective customers underlies three of the key messages from SiriusDecisions. [Read more…]

Why B2B Marketing Is Not Social: An Unexpected Insight from SiriusDecisions

The most important thing I learned at this week’s SiriusDecisions Roundtable in Portland was not something Jonathon Block or Jay Gaines shared, and it wasn’t from a conversation with another attendee. It was the silence of Twitter

Mind you, this was an event about social media and website optimization. Half of the content was focused on how to use social media throughout the sales cycle and the increase in demand this drives. [Read more…]