{"id":329,"date":"2013-11-06T20:30:31","date_gmt":"2013-11-06T20:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/socialagendamedia.com\/digital-pr-blog\/?p=329"},"modified":"2013-12-09T16:32:36","modified_gmt":"2013-12-09T16:32:36","slug":"how-to-create-sales-ready-leads-plan-implement-test-measure-content-creation-social-engagement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/socialagendamedia.com\/digital-pr-blog\/how-to-create-sales-ready-leads-plan-implement-test-measure-content-creation-social-engagement\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Create Sales-Ready Leads with Style: Plan, Implement, Test, & Measure Content Creation & Social Engagement With Grace"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marketers value all the insights that we gather and publish, yet this article is one of the invaluable ones. Experts we invited to this conversation offer their most interesting strategies for creating a high volume of sales-ready leads, share how they execute and measure demand generation campaigns, reveal their approaches to lead nurturing and how they plan, implement, document, test and measure content creation. And they said you couldn\u2019t have it all. This article is our Holiday gift to you\u2026 Happy All Year! \ud83d\ude42 We invite you to\u00a0check the\u00a0integrated demand generation process flow<\/a>\u00a0we’ve designed for you and download the presentation to learn about our\u00a0LeadGen Journalism<\/a>…\u00a0<\/strong>and then enjoy the article.<\/p>\n

The expert elves are:<\/p>\n

Miles Barry<\/b>, Head of Marketing\u00a0at\u00a0MDSL<\/a>, creator of world-leading expense and lifecycle management solutions.<\/p>\n

Alice Lankester<\/b>, CMO\u00a0at\u00a0Friend2Friend<\/a>, a company engaging fans with brands on social since 2007.<\/p>\n

Marcia Kadanoff<\/b>, CMO at\u00a0Bislr<\/a>, pronounced \u201cBiz-ler\u201d \u2013 provider of the intelligent marketing OS for marketing automation, content management, and real-time analytics.<\/p>\n

Jim Van Meer<\/b>, Creative Director, Global Industry Services at the American Petroleum Institute<\/a>. API Global represents all of America\u2019s oil and natural gas industry.<\/p>\n

SocialAgenda Media:<\/span> What are the most interesting strategies you have seen implemented by other marketers or applied in your own organization for creating a high volume of sales-ready leads?<\/span>\u00a0<\/i><\/h3>\n

Alice Lankester: <\/b><\/p>\n

Our company is focused on deploying engagement apps (digital experiences that invite consumers — and their friends — into a social relationship with a brand) on social platforms, primarily LinkedIn and Facebook. So the strategies we see work well involve a focus on deep social integration.<\/p>\n

Creating leads through social requires that brands offer fans and followers decent incentives to \u2018opt in\u2019 — and that means offering something of real value in the experience. \u00a0Such as: traditional contests\/sweepstakes; voting on interesting content; offering personalized, engaging, and entertaining content and experiences based on the visitor\u2019s social profile; inviting visitors to contribute brand-related shareable content; and offering access to unique and exclusive offers not found elsewhere. \u00a0Further qualification can come through asking visitors to answer questions to refine their answers, and so contribute to a deeper level of insight into the visitor\u2019s area of interest, but caution should be applied to make all experiences quick, simple and friction-free.<\/p>\n

Finally, all these social experiences must be accompanied by social sharing mechanisms that encourage visitors to share their action, and invite connections in their own network to participate too. \u00a0This helps amplify the reach of a deployment through earned media. Ideally, the sharing experiences should reflect positively on the participant \u2014 to further encourage the sharing \u2014 giving visitors something to \u2018say\u2019 that informs and\/or entertains their personal network.<\/p>\n

Marcia Kadanoff: <\/b><\/p>\n

We are working with more and more organizations that sell software as service and\/or mobile applications and need a way to monetize the installed base of trial customers. \u00a0These are companies that do not need to build or buy a database of potential buyers \u2013 they already have a sizeable database. \u00a0What they often lack is the ability to tie relevant trial behaviors \u2013 say that happen in the cloud or on the mobile device inside an application \u2013 to lead nurturing. Also social intelligence that tells them something about their customers in trial \u2013 outside the narrow confines of the trial experience at their company, so they have a better idea of the psychographics \/ interests of their customers.<\/p>\n

Some of the most interesting strategies we are seeing are marketers who are asking the question \u2013 if I have 3-5 free trial accounts at a company email address… how can I leverage into a business-to-business sale without having to sell to each individual as a prosumer. \u00a0The difference in the types of revenues you can command can be dramatic. \u00a0Prosumers are willing to pay $4 \u2013 19\/month when buying for themselves at work. Business-to-business buyers \u2013 on the other hand \u2013 are willing to pay much more than this. \u00a0This puts a new twist on the idea of \u201caccount based selling.\u201d It\u2019s not only for companies that sell on an enterprise model. \u00a0A strategy where you roll up accounts and aggregate them at the account level can be a valuable augment for any and all customers that sell on a SaaS model.<\/p>\n

Miles Barry: <\/b><\/p>\n

Our website (currently under reconstruction, so don\u2019t judge us by it) remains a primary source of new business enquiries, supported by an active SEO program against nominated keywords.<\/p>\n

A central part of this rests on adding new content in order to drive return visits and boost our profile in the search engines. This takes the form of an active news release program and a growing blog readership, supported by our presence on Twitter and LinkedIn. As a pure B2B player, we have a presence on Facebook but do not actively promote it.<\/p>\n

We drive additional sales leads through our webinar program, promoted primarily through direct email marketing, which has the twin benefits of attracting new prospects and\u00a0providing new content for the website.<\/p>\n

We put significant effort into tracking visitor traffic across our website and capturing details of visitors downloading or accessing content (such as past webinars), in order to provide prospects for the sales teams and future email marketing campaigns.<\/p>\n

Our analyst program also plays a major part in our business development program.<\/p>\n

Jim Van Meer: <\/b><\/p>\n

The top strategy I employ in our marketing communications is striking an emotional nerve. My job is to get leads to stop, look, listen and buy. That’s accomplished by taking what is usually technical and mundane information and turning it into arresting copy and design. We are all, in one way or another, driven by our emotions. If\u00a0I\u00a0can get a person to invest their emotional self into the benefits of our product lines,\u00a0I\u00a0have acquired not only a customer, but an ally as well.<\/p>\n

SocialAgenda Media: What qualitative and quantitative insights can you offer to advanced marketers in terms of executing demand generation campaigns, calculating ROI and measuring the impact of sophisticated nurturing sequences? What best practices are you planning to implement next year to enhance your lead nurturing programs?\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/h3>\n

Marcia Kadanoff:<\/b><\/p>\n

First, know what your baseline programs are \u2013 those that generate the lion\u2019s share of your opportunities, not leads. \u00a0Work backwards from opportunities created, not leads.<\/p>\n

Second, set up testing on top of these baseline opportunities. \u00a0To hijack the immortal words of Alex Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross\u00a0\u2013 always be testing \u2013 or ABT. \u00a0Always be testing some new form of lead generation that looks promising and may deliver incremental value over the old. Again, you are going to want to measure the results in terms of the opportunities that are created, not the number of leads generated nor the cost-per-lead, metrics that are becoming increasingly irrelevant. \u00a0Not all leads are equally likely to result in an opportunity \u2013 as your sales force defines it \u2013 and to stay aligned with sales you must look at your marketing activity through an opportunity lens.<\/p>\n

This year, we are seeing a lot of interest among B2B marketers in Twitter lead cards and LinkedIn sponsored posts, both of which can deliver more opportunities at a lower cost-per-lead than Google Adwords. \u00a0If I was sitting at Google, I\u2019d be afraid, very afraid. \u00a0B2B marketers spend more on lead generation than almost any other audience, with the possible exception of ecommerce buyers.<\/p>\n

Third, make a resolution to make 2014 the year you link your marketing activities to actual revenue by putting in place programs to calculate ROI, cLTV, and Customer Satisfaction for each opportunity that ends up closing. To link this back to marketing activities, you need to make a decision on attribution models and our customers tell us that the boat has already sailed on this issue \u2026 in favor of position-based attribution models. With this kind of attribution, you give the first touch 40% credit for revenue, the last touch 40% and everything in between 20%. \u00a0This works out well in practice \u2013 because you can answer commonsensical questions like:<\/p>\n