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Marketing plans

Generating B2B sales leads

in General marketing, Marketing plans, Telemarketing

Generate B2B Sales Leads

If you’re a B2B marketer, the main focus of your job is probably generating leads for your sales team. Often B2B marketers of small to mid-size companies struggle to produce qualified sales leads because they don’t have a strong understanding of the nuances of selling B2B products and services.

The more complex the sale, the more difficult it becomes to generate solid leads. Sophisticated marketers now use a variety of social media content to keep business buyers engaged throughout the sales cycle. But it’s common for less savvy marketers to  resort to  simple tricks to obtain names (instead of qualified leads) in order to show campaign results.

Effective B2B lead generation campaigns are designed to handle the front end of the selling process—to engage potential buyers and build value so a sales rep can pick up the lead without having to start from scratch.

Elements of a Good B2B Lead Generation Campaign

Every experienced marketer knows the basics of a good campaign:

  • The List (the most important determinant of campaign success)
  • The Offer (must be relevant and compelling)
  • The Medium (must reach the target audience in a format of their preference)
  • Fulfillment

In a down economy, people are busier—it seems we’re all handling twice as much work as in years past. This makes it more difficult to get marketing messages heard. Most single touch campaigns (such as a free white paper download) are losing effectiveness. Sales reps aren’t excited about calling someone who simply downloaded a piece of information and has no idea about the company’s product or service. That’s not a lead; it’s just a name.

To improve the effectiveness of your B2B lead generation campaigns, focus on three elements:

  1. Create a campaign with multiple touches.
  2. Make your offer compelling.
  3. Include a human touch in your campaign.

Create a Campaign with Multiple Touches

How many times have you flagged an interesting email invitation, only to lose track of it in your massive follow-up list?

Try using an integrated media campaign to get the attention of your sales targets, focusing on touching your audience multiple times through multiple channels:

  • Send a direct mail postcard.
  • Follow up with two emails.
  • Telemarket to those who don’t respond.

Your multiple touches will build upon each other, hitting your targets from different angles to make sure your offer is heard. It’s more expensive than a single touch, but far more effective.

Make Your Offer Compelling

Since we’re all busy, it’s important for your offer to stand out. That’s not as easy as it seems, and it takes some creativity.

As you start brainstorming about ideas to grab the attention of your target audience, be sure that you know what your leads are worth so you know how much you can spend to acquire them.

To stand out from the noise, get creative and spend budget to entice your market to take action. Gift cards, Amazon Kindles, and free iPads are popular giveaways that many companies are using to grab the attention of their buyers. Don’t feel sheepish about “bribing” your audience to take action; sales managers use these incentives all the time to motivate reps. Just make sure you understand your numbers: If you’re giving away $5,000 worth of iPads, treat it as a campaign cost, and make sure your ROI is positive. Just be sure to give them only to qualified prospects undertaking a defined step in your sales process.

For ideas, check out this free B2B lead generation guide that outlines specific campaigns proven in the field.

Also, don’t skimp on the quality of the creative. B2B marketers often fail to spend as much time and effort on creative as they should. Looking good is important and still helps to differentiate. Emotion does play a role in B2B sales, and people prefer attractive design over the stodgy, dated designs many businesses still insist on using.

Include a Human Touch in Your Campaign

Finally, be sure to include telemarketing. Why? The heyday of telemarketing is long gone, but as people grow wary of digital marketing, the human touch is becoming more and more effective when used as one element in a larger, integrated campaign.

Focusing on cold calling IT directors to get the solution selling process started for a high-dollar enterprise software sale isn’t going to be effective. But placing a short, succinct phone call to a VP- level IT executive, to follow up on a compelling offer (such as attending a free event or receiving a free IT analysis), is a very effective way to generate B2B leads.

Finally, work with your sales team as you’re designing your campaign, to ensure you’re all following a single process. The more Sales is involved, the less likely they are to ignore the leads generated by your efforts, and the more likely you are to generate qualified leads that produce customers.

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How to design an integrated marketing campaign

in General marketing, How-To Articles, Marketing plans

How to Design an Integrated Marketing CampaignThe New Year brings a fresh start for many marketing departments. It’s a great time to review which campaigns worked well in 2009 and generate new ideas for 2010.

For those small to midsize B2B companies that typically use only a single medium for marketing campaigns (or, worse yet, use only their sales team), here’s a challenge for 2010: Combine multiple media sources to create an integrated marketing campaign.

Integrated marketing campaigns use a more holistic approach than those using a single marketing medium. They’re more interesting, more impactful, and they typically have higher response rates and generate more leads.

Anatomy of a Single Medium Campaign

Before we jump into an example of how to design an integrated campaign, let’s take a look at a common scenario in many B2B small to midsize businesses (SMBs).

ABC Software sells — you guessed it – software! Their software manages a very specific design function for automobile part manufacturers. The ABC marketing team needs to generate 100 qualified leads for the sales team in Q1 2010.  They have a large prospect base, so they send out an email blast to the database in January promoting a New Year’s discount, to generate a quick batch of leads to satisfy the sales team.

Next, to satisfy their own creative juices, they send out a special direct mail piece in February–a rubber stress ball with the company name printed on it. It’s expensive, but the marketers think their prospects will enjoy it, and it will keep their brand top-of-mind.

In March they’ll run a full page ad in the industry trade-show journal highlighting the features of their latest software version. And throughout the quarter, they’re running pay-per-click advertising on Google offering a free demo by the sales team.

Not bad. They’ve spent their budget, and they believe they’ll generate their lead target based on historical conversion rates.

Use Multiple Media Sources to Create an Integrated Marketing Campaign

Single media campaigns often fail to convert interested prospects because many people may not have time to take action on the first touch. Others may file for later review but never get to it. Most of us are busy and often manage by focusing on the hottest fires; if you don’t land at the top of the list, you are forgotten.

To draw in their attention, deliver a strong message using multiple media sources. Repetition gives you more chances at conversion.  Hitting prospects through different channels builds a stronger awareness.

For example, if you receive an interesting email offer that you flag for later review (and of course never get to) and then receive a direct mail piece one week later, you may recall the email offer and finally be compelled to take action; or you might not recall the email offer, but you might think, “I remember hearing about this somewhere.” The Web and mobile devices have inundated us with so much information that this is becoming more and more common.

To the point, here’s how to apply this convention to ABC Software:  Instead of using email, direct mail, print advertising and search marketing with 4 separate offers, tie them all together into one or two offers.

For example, the marketing team could create a webinar in early February to highlight the features of the new software. The marketing mix might look like this:

  • Invite existing database to sign up via email, sending out three separate messages to the list, strategically spaced over time as the event approaches.
  • Send a direct mail piece—perhaps less expensive than the stress balls–to the same list, promoting the webinar.
  • Use telemarketing to call the list and sign up interested prospects right over the phone.
  • Use pay-per-click on Google to advertise the webinar to new prospects.

The more enticing the offer, the better the response, so the team might decide to offer two contest prizes: a drawing for a free $500 airline voucher, and a drawing for a free one-year software support contract.

After the webinar, the marketing team will upload a recording of the event to their blog and email the link to their entire list, using the opportunity to announce the winners of the prizes. They will also send a postcard with the URL and have the sales team place follow-up phone calls to all attendees to start the sales cycle.

By creating an integrated marketing campaign centered around an event, the marketing team spends the same budget but generates 175 leads, exceeding their lead quota by 75 percent.

Marketing Campaign Media Types

If you’re deciding what type of marketing media to use to match your business goals, check out our Marketing Campaign Strategy tool below. It gives an overview and outlines the pros and cons of many different media types for 10 different business goals:

  1. Generating new leads
  2. Qualifying leads
  3. Nurturing existing leads
  4. Direct selling
  5. Branding
  6. Cross-selling to existing customers
  7. Up-selling to existing customers
  8. Nurturing existing customers
  9. Generating referrals
  10. Training

If you like this tool, you can access hundreds more like it in Growth Panel, our marketing planning and management application. Or, contact us if you’d like to have us design and execute an integrated marketing campaign for you.

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Marketing for small business: The basics can yield big results!

in General marketing, Marketing plans

Marketing pros at big companies know how to design and deliver integrated campaigns that produce revenue. But for most small businesses, this is a struggle – many focus on one marketing tactic at a time, trying different approaches and hoping something works. 

Small businesses usually don’t have the budget or the sophistication to design and manage integrated campaigns, but they probably have a greater need for them than do their big-revenue counterparts. 

It’s a catch-22 that most small businesses struggle with. 

Stacey Ackerman, Director of Marketing for Small Business Builders, knows this well. Small Business Builders provides professional marketing advice and planning for “mom-and-pop” retailers and small B2B companies. 

For most clients, Stacey and her team produce a written marketing plan and meet face-to-face each month to keep the plan on track, and they create quarterly action plans and action item calendars. 

Producing results with small marketing budgets is tricky. Many of Stacey’s clients don’t have the funds to invest in profitable campaigns, and they don’t have the time to manage them.  Frequently, they push marketing to the bottom of the pile when more urgent business concerns arise. 

Simple Marketing Concepts Can Win Big

The bright side is that, for many small businesses, tying together some basic marketing concepts with campaigns can often yield big results. Stacey’s approach is to initially apply bigger business marketing thinking and strategy, and then pare it down and simplify it so her clients can manage it (and afford it) with minimal guidance. 

One of Stacey’s recent clients was a start-up commercial construction company that opened for business in the terrible current economic climate. Since most of their competitors chased business “the standard way ” — waiting for and bidding on the same RFPs — Stacey’s team recommended that the client differentiate their company by showcasing their work and using outbound campaigns to dig up new business opportunities. 

Here’s what Small Business Builders recommended: 

  • Designing a new website featuring continually updated project showcases
  • Creating a presentation portfolio that builds with each completed job
  • Featuring completed project case studies in email marketing campaigns
  • Focusing quarterly advertising campaigns toward associations
  • Training company owners how to convert sales leads to projects 

While the market continued to tank, Stacey’s client did not, and they hit their Year One revenue goal of $1,000,000. Stacey’s plan was pretty basic for most mid-level marketing managers: two sales tools, two marketing campaigns, and a little sales training. 

The basics made a big difference for this company.  Delivered properly, they can make a big difference for your small business, too.

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It's time to add online advertising to your mix

Recently the IAB reported that internet advertising grew 10% in 2008. While search advertising dominated (with 45% of the total internet advertising market), rich media and video advertising also grew at the same rate (roughly 20% courtesy of TechCrunch.)
Internet marketing growth continues to outpace traditional media, and many SMEs (small to midsize entities) are finally [...]

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Create a "back of the napkin" marketing plan

It’s the New Year–time to review last year’s marketing efforts and determine what worked and what didn’t–and set your goals for 2009.
Most small to midsize companies have a marketing budget but no formal marketing plan. If that’s you, turn over a new leaf and outline your plan. You have a far greater chance to reach [...]

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