Social Media, Demand Generation, and the Evolution of Marketing

The relationship between Social Media and Demand Generation is a hot topic these days. Most B2B marketers are thinking about how Social Media fits into their strategies, what works, and how to measure it.

To help with that discussion, Mike Volpe (@mvolpe) from Hubspot, Craig Rosenberg (@funnelholic) from The Funnelholic, and I got together on a web cast to discuss the topic. It's a wide ranging discussion on how Social Media and Demand Generation coincide in today's B2B marketing world.








(if the above does not load when clicked, click here for Social Media, Demand Generation, and the Evolution of Marketing)

Craig, Mike, and I cover topics from the shift in buyer behavior to how social media can be used in a thought leadership, service, brand, or revenue generation capacity. I hope you enjoy viewing the webinar as much as we enjoyed the discussion.

Marketing Automation for SMB Organizations

Marketing in a smaller business can be challenging. You wear many hats, from strategist, to copy-writer, to campaign manager. It can often be hard to find the quick wins that will give you more free time in your day while making you a hero with your management team and your sales team.

In this quick (4 minute) video, Heather Foeh (@heatherfoeh) talks about some of the things you can focus on that are fast, will free up your time, and will get you the most bang for your buck.

Heather knows what she's talking about, as she heads up our SMB customer success team. Her team works with the largest and fastest growing community of SMB customers in the marketing automation space.




(If this video doesn't load, click here to watch Heather's Marketing Automation for SMB Organizations video)

Heather looks at a number of areas that are key to marketing automation success for SMB organizations:

- Auto-responders on web forms
- Simple lead nurturing
- Real-time alerts for your sales team
- Tradeshow follow-up
- Webinar marketing

And with each one, she provides actionable information on how time-strapped and resource-constrained marketers in smaller organizations can quickly implement marketing techniques that free them from ongoing work, while delivering ongoing value.

Renewal Marketing and Social CRM

Much of our discussion to date on this blog has focused around the new purchase scenario. However, in today’s world, the focus on existing business is often equally or more important. I’m not even referring specifically to the economic climate, although that enhances the focus. I’m referring to the general shift towards both a market-controlled reputation through social media, and a shift towards recurring revenue models in many industries.

As social media gives everyone in the market a voice, brand reputation becomes more and more in the control of the market. This reputation guides future purchase decisions of your prospective buyers, as it is usually both more prevalent and more trusted than the messages that your own marketing department can communicate.

As I’ve worked with clients in many industries, there is an increasing emphasis placed on marketing communications that target existing customers. The motivators vary from industry to industry, but regardless of whether it is an information subscription in the publishing industry, or a software purchase from a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) vendor, the general reasons are as follows:

- Initial Engagement: Get the customer initially engaged in the product, and up the deployment/first use curve as quickly as possible in order to maintain the momentum of their initial purchase and ensure that successful usage of the service takes place.

- Success/Depth: Engage the customer in progressively deeper and more advanced capabilities or usage patterns in order to ensure they are receiving (and recognizing) maximum value from the service.

- Stickiness: Drive adoption patterns within an organization, or integration points within a set of corporate systems that both add value and increase “stickiness” on renewal by making the solution a more integral part of the business.

- Community: Introduce the customer to other customers in the community to share experiences, ideas, and best practices, both with each other, and also back to the vendor in order to enhance understanding of where the solution needs to evolve towards.

The marketing communications to drive customers through these phases of success are one element, but likewise, so is the Social CRM platforms that allow the customer community to interact with each other, and with you.

Next week (Tuesday, September 15th, 1 EST), I’m honored to be on a panel to discuss the evolution of Social CRM with none other than Geoffrey Moore from the Chasm Group. In a panel put together by Helpstream, I’ll discuss the evolution of Social CRM, and whether it has crossed the chasm to the mainstream with Treb Ryan, CEO of OpSource, and Brent Potts, Vice President of Hewlett-Packard:

http://info.helpstream.biz/Crossing-the-Chasm-to-Social-CRM.html

I hope you can join me as it should prove to be a very interesting discussion.

Best Practices for Webinars and Online Events

Online events, such as webinars, are one of the top techniques used by B2B marketers focused on demand generation. The reasons are clear:

• they are effective at generating interest and attendance
• they are not expensive, compared to in-person events or tradeshows
• a recorded webinar can be re-used as a content asset for many months
• thought leadership can be established through events that feature in-house or industry experts
• prospects appreciate the ability to attend from their desk and drop off if the content is not of interest

However, there is a difference between doing online events, and doing them well. In this video, Rhonda Wunderlin discusses the best practices for promoting the event, minimizing the registrant/attendee drop-off rate, and maximizing the effectiveness through great follow-up.




(if this does not load, please click here for the best practices for webinars and online events video)

Online events and webinars are great for lead nurturing, as they are generally non-salesy, and thus more appropriate in the early stages of a buying process. Registration and attendance also for key indicators of interest and are often used as components of lead scoring programs.

Flying Cars, Wall Flowers, and Red-headed Stepchildren; 3 Types of Marketing Challenges

One of the most common questions I get with marketing audiences is where in the funnel to focus on to get the best return on their investment. The answer depends on what your marketing challenge is. I categorize them into three basic types of challenge.



The Flying Car: You are able to solve a problem that most of the world is unaware can be solved. Given that they are unaware that a way of solving the problem exists, potential buyers continue to do things as they always have, even if inefficient, and are not looking for your solution.



The Wallflower: The problem that you solve is known, but you are not a vendor that comes to mind when prospective buyers are looking for vendor options.



The Red-Headed Stepchild: The problem you solve is known, and you are a vendor who is evaluated when potential buyers are looking for solutions, but you are not selected.





Obviously these categorizations are very broad, but most marketing organizations are able to categorize their main marketing challenge loosely as one of these three. Once you have done so, you can begin to focus in on marketing options that best tackle each of these problems.

If you are challenged with a Flying Car marketing issue, focusing on awareness and education efforts is key. Educating the market through news, press, and analysts, or directly as Exeros did are great initiatives. Similarly, viral marketing initiatives can succeed in getting the right message to the right audience if done well.

If the main challenge you face is the Wallflower marketing issue, focusing on search engine optimization, search engine marketing, webinars, and events to build awareness of your solution in that category. In tackling this challenge you are mainly looking to grow traffic and inquiries (with the right audience), so the techniques and metrics are well established.

If, however, you face a Red-Headed Stepchild issue, you must focus on efforts that build your credibility and reputation as a vendor and guide the prospective buyer to consider factors in their decision that highlight your strengths. You can do this through great lead nurturing, working with key bloggers and influencers, or even opening up your internal processes to your buying audience as Kadient did to build buyer trust.

By defining what type of marketing challenge you face, you allow your team to better focus on the techniques and communication vehicles that best tackle those challenges.

Four Practices to Increase Webinar Effectiveness

Are you using webinars as a lead-generation tactic in your marketing efforts? According to MarketingSherpa, webinars are "one of the top two lead-generation tactics for B-to-B technology marketing". Couple that with the current economic climate and you have a few great reasons to include webinars in your 2009 marketing strategy.

If you're not sure where to start, or if you're already running webinars and want to improve upon your current strategy, consider these 4 best practice tips that we've learned through over 10,000 webinar event registration programs.

Tip 1: Compelling and Simple Email Copy

Provide Value: When putting together your event email copy, always remember that your email is about the webinar and not your product. No one is going to want to attend your webinar if all they are going to get is a sales pitch, and your email copy will set the tone. Provide your audience with compelling benefit based information on why they should attend your webinar.

Keep it Clear and Simple: Be sure to include all key event points, so that your audience can easily identify if your webinar will be of value to them. Your webinar invitation should clearly indicate the following key points:

• The Topic
• Speakers
• Date and Time
• Why You Should Attend?
• How to Register

Don't Forget About Structure: The structure of your email is also very important, again making sure that your audience can find the information that they need as quickly as possible.
When constructing your invitation ensure that:

• The call to action for registration is clear, and is located 'above the fold' in the email
  


• Use a custom header in your email to showcase the event details AND link to the registration page. This is a great way to capture your audiences' attention.
  



• Always include a TEXT link for the call to action located above 'the fold', for recipients who do not allow images to appear in their email client.

Tip 2: Multi-Touch, Multi-Channel, Automated Promotion to Boost Registration

Use multi-touch, multi-channel promotion to help drive event attendance. Leverage automation to develop an effective and automated event promotion program. Follow this sample Best Practice Registration Workflow, as a starting point to building your program. When building your program, keep in mind these four tactics that help boost registration numbers:

1. Add additional channels to your promotion mix. Doing so has seen the following increases in registration:
2. Company.com links lift registration 3% - 15%
3. Partner Banner Ads and Email Sending lift registration 1% - 4%
4. Send follow-up emails to those who have not registered after the first invitation. This tactic has resulted in increases in registration from 30-45%
5. Use Batch Signatures to increase response rates. Sending emails on behalf of the sales agent (who owns the lead), using Batch Signatures, has resulted in increased open rates of 10-15% and click-through rates of 2-4%. See here for details on how to do this in Eloqua.
6. Leverage offline channels. Recent success has been seen using 'text-to-voice' functionality. Sending a recorded voice message at the same time as the 2nd invitation, or in a day-before reminder, helps to increase registration and attendance. See here for details.

Tip 3: Make Sure You Convert Webinar Registrants into Webinar Attendees

Today webinar attendance rates are at 25-35% for a well run webinar. That means up to 75% of the people who actually registered don't get the value of the live event! Of course, you want your registrants to attend, to warm up prospects, and educate customers, so it's critical you do all that you can to ensure those registrants attend.

Some quick tips to turn your registrants into attendees:

1. Include an ICS calendar object in your webinar confirmation email. This effective tactic has resulted in increases in attendance from 10-20%. See here for details on how to do this in Eloqua.
2. Send timely webinar reminders. Send a webinar reminder email to registrants 1-2 hours before the webinar, instead of a day before. This practice has increased attendance by 10-15%.
3. Use telemarketing (for large webinars) or call-on-demand to remind registrants about the upcoming webinar, and increase attendance up to 20%.

Tip 4: Ensure Timely Follow-up to Generate Qualified Leads

So if the majority of people are not actually attending the live webinar – how do you maximize lead generation for all of those registrants? It is well known that follow-up connection rates drop significantly if you wait more than 24 hours, so it is critical to quickly assess who attended and who did not attend, and then send a targeted communication to both groups.

Here is what we recommend:

1. Split follow-up communications into those who attended, and those who did not attend
2. Follow-up no later than 24 hours after the webinar
3. Ensure you provide access to a recorded version of the webinar to BOTH groups
4. Provide an additional call-to-action for more value-add content
5. Monitor activity and pass on qualified leads to sales for follow-up

Like other marketing processes, driving webinar ROI is becoming more of a well thought out science. There are key tactics and strategies to follow to ensure your webinar is a success. Once you've implemented your first webinar program don't forget the importance of measuring your success and keeping your program up to date. Why not add in some testing – test subject lines or sender names, monitor what resonates best with your audience, and continue to improve your promotional plan.