The Changing Face of Lead Generation
Posted on 17. Oct, 2011 by John Jantsch in Blog, Duct Tape Marketing, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
The Changing Face of Lead Generation
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
I’ve spent a great deal of time over the last few years professing the virtues of what I’ve been calling the lead generation trio made up of some combination or advertising, public relations and referrals.
GoDakshin via Flickr
The idea behind the trio concept is to acknowledge the need to spread your lead generation activities out and diversify them in a manner that allows prospects to experience your brand in different variations and from entirely different points of view.
The components of the lead generation trio are dependent upon one another to work. They support and compliment each other and the sum the effort is definitely greater than the parts.
Lead generation in general has changed dramatically over the last few years as traditional broadcast or outbound methods have grown increasingly ineffective.
This doesn’t mean, however, that marketers are left without proactive methods for generating leads.
The fundamental idea of the blended lead generation approach is still valid, but when choosing members of a lead generation trio, business owners must now take into the account the shifting online and social landscape.
While I still contend that advertising is a primary lead driver when employed correctly, I further believe that SEO, or the ability to be found, and social media, or the ability to create direct engagement, have become primary lead drivers and must be included in any discussion concerned with rounding out the new lead generation trio.
In fact, you could easily make the case that referrals have become a member of the social media family and that public relations is now a subset of SEO. I know this point of view won’t sit well with some PR practitioners, but here’s how I now see the major lead generation activities
Advertising – this includes online ads, offline ads, direct mail, pay per click and the all-important elements of ad testing, conversion and tracking.
I believe every business that focuses on promoting content using advertising tools and incorporates landing pages, including mobile landing pages, into their conversion process can still generate leads in a quasi outbound manner.
The thing that advertising has going for it that no other form of lead generation can match is control. This is the one vehicle that allows you to select who gets your message and when.
SEO – The area of SEO is really much bigger than page and search optimization. I use this term to incorporate the production and use of keyword rich content and the acquisition of links in ways that make it easy for prospects to find your business when they search globally, locally and mobily (I know that’s not a word, but perhaps it should be these days.)
Using this broader description of SEO makes it easy to incorporate a great deal of today’s public relations activity, a great deal of which is designed to create content, links and direct prospect contact under the banner of SEO.
Social media – I’ve been saying this for some time now, but social media behavior and tactics have simply become baked into marketing in general, and of late I’ve seen this behavior mature to the point where it’s become a stable aspect of the lead generation trio.
I know many people still cringe at the idea of social and sales being mentioned in the same sentence, but social platforms have now become such an integral part of content discovery and sharing that it is nearly impossible to effectively generate leads via any form of advertising without the integration of social and most forms of successful SEO now rely on social platforms as well.
In a way social media has become the ultimate referral vehicle. Throw ratings and reviews into the social mix and you’ve pretty much round out the new face of lead generation.
So, if you still view SEO as the art of search engine manipulation or social media as a tactic still struggling to produce ROI, think again. Advertising, SEO and social media are now the foundational elements of a solid lead generation program and like so many things that are meant to go together – you can’t have one without the others.
The 4 Types of Content Metrics That Matter
Posted on 18. Sep, 2011 by Jay Baer in Blog, content marketing, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media metrics, social media ROI
In a post last week, I talked about turning your content marketing upside down and focusing first on what behaviors you want your content consumers to perform.
Once you’ve done that and created content that you think will drive the desired actions, you can start measuring the efficacy of your content program. Content cannot be measured with a single metric, because no one data point can successfully or satisfactorily tell you whether your program is working. Instead, you need to create an array of metrics that are selected from four primary buckets:
1. Consumption Metrics
This is the most fundamental type of content metric, and is unfortunately also the place where many programs both start and end. It’s a critical data point, and is generally easy to derive through Google Analytics, YouTube insights, or similar. The key is to not stop your metrics train at this depot.
Key question answered: How many people consumed your content, measured as page views, downloads, or views?
2. Sharing Metrics
This is the metric type that probably gets too much love, because it’s often public which drives up the sexiness factor like cologne with bits of real panther. Here we’re measuring how successful your content is in getting consumers to share it with others, as determined by tweets, likes, Linkedin shares, Google + shares, Diggs, and the like.
Even though my blog includes public displays of affection like number of tweets (look at the top of this page), by far my favorite way to track sharing metrics is PostRank Analytics, which combines all the sharing behaviors into one jambalaya of data that’s easy to track and compare. Unfortunately, PostRank was bought by Google a few months ago, so you may not be able to sign up as a new user. My assumption, however, is that PostRank is being used as part of Google’s ranking algorithm for search and will eventually show up as a report in Google Analytics.
Key question answered: How often do consumers of your content share it with others?
(side note: you can impact this metric considerably by making social sharing easier and more obvious for your readers and watchers)
3. Lead Generation Metrics
Now we’re sniffing dollars, not just gathering eyeballs. Whether you require registration before allowing people to read/watch/download your content (which I usually don’t recommend), or whether you’re measuring leads generated after content is consumed, this is where we start determining whether the content marketing effort is making financial sense.
If you have an online lead form on your site, you can measure this by determining how many people went to the lead form immediately after consuming your content. You can also set a browser cookie and track when someone fills out that lead form after viewing your content, even if there is a 30 or 60-day interval between those events. If your leads are handled via phone, you can install a simple script that shows a different (trackable) phone number when people have first watched a video, downloaded a presentation, etc.
Key question answered: How often do content consumers turn into leads?
4. Sales Metrics
Holy grail time. If you’re using some sort of customer and prospect database (and you absolutely should be, even if it’s something simple like Highrise or Sugar CRM) you’ll want to note in the prospect record that the potential customer consumed content pieces X, Y, and Z. Then, when your crack sales team turns that prospect into a sale, determine the projected revenue and profit (lifetime value if you can) of that customer, and assign it to the content pieces.
Do not double up, however. You want to amortize your content value. If the customer consumed 3 pieces of content before buying and is worth $90,000 to your company, assign $30,000 to each content piece. Your major CRM and sales automation systems like Salesforce, Eloqua, Marketo and similar make this process automated and easy.
Key question answered: How often do content consumers turn into customers?
If you know the answers to all four of those key questions, you have a holistic content marketing measurement system that will help you efficiently and effectively judge content pieces and archetypes. You can also determine actual ROI on a per piece basis, as well as on your overall initiative. (for more on calculating ROI, see this post on how to calculate blogging ROI in 9 steps).
Content isn’t just about consumption, so don’t only track consumption. It’s also about sharing and leads and sales.
Why You Need to Turn Your Content Marketing Upside Down
Posted on 13. Sep, 2011 by Jay Baer in Blog, content marketing, content marketing world, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
All companies now find themselves in two industries: the business they are actually in, and the publishing business. The death of the information intermediary is upon us, and companies need to tell their own story with speed and aplomb.
But let’s not go overboard. Yes, you’re in the publishing business, but only as a means to an end. You should be using content as a way to generate new sales or maintain current customers. You do not benefit directly from content creation because you’re not in the eyeball accumulation ad advertising industry. You benefit from content creation indirectly.
This is widely misunderstood. The rise of content marketing has unfortunately spawned a side effect, which is content creation for content creation’s sake. It’s a colossal waste of company resources, and may become pervasive enough to trigger a widespread backlash against the proposition of content marketing.
Creating content that does not cause action is a fool’s errand, period. And that too often is the case.
It’s About Action, Not Eyeballs
My advice – as I discussed at last week’s outstanding Content Marketing World conference in Cleveland – is to identify what specific behavior(s) you want your content consumers to take post consumption, and build content that creates predilection toward those actions.
Essentially, you should be turning your content creation process upside down. Worry less about what content you can create and which stories you can tell, and worry more about how you want to turn content consumption into leads, sales, and advocacy. Once you have a handle on that optimal behavior funnel, THEN create content that makes that funnel a reality.
Work backwards to make your content marketing program a driver of revenue, not just page views.
Give to Get Appointments
Posted on 08. Sep, 2011 by John Jantsch in Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
Give to Get Appointments
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
One of the surest ways to build the trust required to do business these days is to be able to demonstrate your willingness to give, to add value, before you ever ask for anything in return.
Certainly you’ve seen this dynamic play out in the act of referrals. You’ve probably also seen or felt the impact of this mentality in the offering of free white papers, how to seminars and evaluation sessions.
But what about in a lead generation environment where you’re trying to create awareness and land an appointments? What about using this thinking in situations where you are essentially trying to get the attention of a prospect that doesn’t yet know you exist? Can the give first mentality be used to open doors and create enough trust to get you invited to tell your full story?
Here’s a simple campaign that I’ve seen do just that.
- Acquire a highly targeted mailing list from Hoovers, InfoUSA or Jigsaw.
- Send an email and postcard to a small number, say 100, using variable data printing on the postcard to display the prospect’s name big and bold.
- In the email use the prospect’s name only in the subject line.
- In the body of the email and for the postcard copy simply state that you have a few ideas on how they could get x (x = more clients, better return, few errors, more done, etc – it’s what you sell) – don’t add anything else about you or your solution, just keep it to that one line and add a link to a personalized landing page (using a pURL) from a service like SendPepper. (there are lots of services that can accomplish this, but I really like the features from SendPepper)
- The personalized link and page features the name of the prospect and provides five or six of your best recommendations or tips. Don’t hold back, give them some really good information and advice. The content of this page can be segmented for different variables, but for the most part the actual content will be generic, but still valuable with a personalized feel driven by the pURL technology.
- If you’re using an integrated tool like SendPepper, you’ll get notification when someone visits their page and you can then follow-up with even more great information and a call to action, such as an appointment, evaluation or presentation of more customized ideas.
A couple things to note:
This works at a far higher rate than simple bulk mailing because of the personalization and because you’re offering something of value that is easy for them to consume and simple to understand.
Too often we try to spell out multiple offers in hopes that something will stick – keep your message dead simple and intriguing and you’ll get far more response.
Keep the batches small so you’ll have plenty of time to follow-up immediately and analyze what’s working and what’s not. Most services allow some amount of split testing as well.
Give to Get Appointments
Posted on 08. Sep, 2011 by John Jantsch in Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
Give to Get Appointments
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
One of the surest ways to build the trust required to do business these days is to be able to demonstrate your willingness to give, to add value, before you ever ask for anything in return.
Certainly you’ve seen this dynamic play out in the act of referrals. You’ve probably also seen or felt the impact of this mentality in the offering of free white papers, how to seminars and evaluation sessions.
But what about in a lead generation environment where you’re trying to create awareness and land an appointments? What about using this thinking in situations where you are essentially trying to get the attention of a prospect that doesn’t yet know you exist? Can the give first mentality be used to open doors and create enough trust to get you invited to tell your full story?
Here’s a simple campaign that I’ve seen do just that.
- Acquire a highly targeted mailing list from Hoovers, InfoUSA or Jigsaw.
- Send an email and postcard to a small number, say 100, using variable data printing on the postcard to display the prospect’s name big and bold.
- In the email use the prospect’s name only in the subject line.
- In the body of the email and for the postcard copy simply state that you have a few ideas on how they could get x (x = more clients, better return, few errors, more done, etc – it’s what you sell) – don’t add anything else about you or your solution, just keep it to that one line and add a link to a personalized landing page (using a pURL) from a service like SendPepper. (there are lots of services that can accomplish this, but I really like the features from SendPepper)
- The personalized link and page features the name of the prospect and provides five or six of your best recommendations or tips. Don’t hold back, give them some really good information and advice. The content of this page can be segmented for different variables, but for the most part the actual content will be generic, but still valuable with a personalized feel driven by the pURL technology.
- If you’re using an integrated tool like SendPepper, you’ll get notification when someone visits their page and you can then follow-up with even more great information and a call to action, such as an appointment, evaluation or presentation of more customized ideas.
A couple things to note:
This works at a far higher rate than simple bulk mailing because of the personalization and because you’re offering something of value that is easy for them to consume and simple to understand.
Too often we try to spell out multiple offers in hopes that something will stick – keep your message dead simple and intriguing and you’ll get far more response.
Keep the batches small so you’ll have plenty of time to follow-up immediately and analyze what’s working and what’s not. Most services allow some amount of split testing as well.
More Cheese, Less Whiskers
Posted on 06. Sep, 2011 by John Jantsch in Blog, Podcast, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
More Cheese, Less Whiskers
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
Marketing podcast with Dean Jackson (Click to play or right click and “Save As” to download – Subscribe now via iTunes or subscribe via other RSS device (Google Listen)
Karl Palutke via Flickr
The human brain is very similar to that of the mouse. That’s why so much research is conducted using mice. Much like our brain, the mouse is wired for pretty much two things – get cheese, avoid cat.
When we attempt to sell something to a prospect we look very much like the cat, no matter what our intentions. Buyers are wired to view sellers as cats and even the greatest deal in the world may go unnoticed because of our whiskers are showing.
The job of the marketer is to offer cheese and build trust, not in a manipulative way, but in a way that allows the buyer to put down their guard long enough to understand that you do indeed have something that will benefit.
This approach takes a change in mind shift, but it can color the way you approach marketing entirely.
It requires you to have the client’s best interest first and foremost in mind. It requires you develop the ultimate customer experience first. It requires you to create ways for them to experience results without risk. It requires you to develop ways to show them how they can make money before they ever have to spend money.
See, everyone in every company has permission to bring money in, but generally only a select few have permission to spend money. In fact, some organizations have people that feel it’s their job to shield the boss from anyone trying to sell them something.
So, how can you position your product as a way to make money, not spend money?
In this week’s episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast I visit with copywriter and information marketer extraordinaire, Dean Jackson. Jackson is one of the most sought out marketers in the real estate world and is well-known for his “more cheese, less whiskers” take on lead generation.
In this episode he outlines several case studies in which he applies the customer’s best interest approach and produces incredible results where the sales only approach had failed miserably.
Let me add for emphasis, while I’m suggesting that the shift in thinking that Jackson presents is a powerful way to approach lead generation and conversion, it will only work if you have a product or service that truly does provide massive value – otherwise your cheese is just bait and switch.
Listen to this recording and Jackson’s simple approach several times. Don’t let the simplicity escape you, this is one of the most profound marketing lessons you’ll ever get, precisely because it is so simple.
Go to work on creating the ultimate customer experience, make your business whisker free and start generating greater results from your lead generation efforts.
You can hear Dean talk about it in even greater depth on the ILoveMarketing podcast.
You can listen to the show by subscribing the feed in iTunes or a variety of other free services such as Google Listen (Use this RSS feed) or you can buy the Duct Tape Marketing iPhone app. (iTunes link – Cost is $2.99) or
5 Ways Salespeople Can Use Social Media to Grow Leads
Posted on 25. Jul, 2011 by Lee Odden in B2B, Blog, salesforce, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media, social media marketing
One of the practical opportunities for companies that acquire and engage customers through a sales force, is through social media content and participation. In fact, many corporate marketing departments have found their field sales reps active on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and even YouTube before headquarters has. Such “rogue” social media activity might be proactive, but can also create issues without adherence to corporate standards and provide conflicting experiences for customers.
A salesforce that functions as educators, consultants and in some ways “subject matter experts”, can be a formidable asset for corporate social media efforts towards engagement and customer acquisition. Rather than shutting down individual sales reps blogs and Facebook accounts until corporate gets their social strategy in place, companies should consider how to coordinate and empower sales teams as social media ambassadors of the brand to their individual circles of influence and social networks.
Those same sales people are already maintaining contact with prospects and customers through other communication channels like email, phone, snail mail and newsletters. Why not social networking and media sites?
As business managers decide how to best leverage sales people for social media objectives, here are a few ideas on tactics they may decide to implement:
1. Create a Destination - Whether it’s a blog, tumblr, posterous site, YouTube or even Facebook Fan page, a destination for social participation can serve as the hub for a salesperson’s social media activity. This is where social content is published, aggregated and curated. It’s also where calls to action, offers and invitations to engage on a more business level can be posted. The social hub scan serve as a destination for other publishers and bloggers to link to and appear within search results.
2. Monitor for Leads & Engagement – As more consumer and B2B buyers participate on the social web during the discovery and consideration phases of the buying cycle, sales people can monitor for comments and conversations that indicate engagement opportunities. IBM’s Listen for Leads program has uncovered millions of dollars in sales by monitoring social media sites for keywords that indicate prospects with questions or in the search phase.
Simple tools like search.twitter.com, board reader or a variety of Facebook search engines can provide access to discussions. Free social search engines like socialmention.com or topsy can also be used along with Google Alerts. Ideally, a robust social media monitoring tool would be used that includes advanced filtering options. It takes some refinement of search queries to make this kind of monitoring work, but can be very effective at identifying prospect conversation opportunities at their greatest moment of need.
3. Create, Curate & Repurpose - Most Sales Reps, Account Executives and Business Development people that I know are pretty busy, so efficiency with social media and content is essential. With an understanding of relevant search keywords and social topics that matter to prospective customers, salespeople can create a content plan as a guide.
However, creating new content on a regular basis while maintaining high quality can become a challenge, so it’s important to think about where content can be repurposed.
For example, salespeople might each maintain their own blogs that they publish to once a week. But they might also share portions or customized versions of their blog posts with other industry blogs, online publications and industry newsletters. They could compile blog posts into ebooks or could be used within corporate content marketing materials.
An effective way to become a “go to destination” for information on a particular topic is to aggregate or curate news from different sources on the web to the salesperson’s hub. Subscribe to other industry news sites, newsletter and setup Google Alerts for topics of interest to collect news. Collect the most interesting and/or themed news of the week and add short comments. The same curation tactic can be used to create a newsletter. With some practice, the process of scanning headlines and putting together a weekly news roundup can be done in only a few minutes a day, resulting in one beefy blog post per week.
4. Participate - In the course of researching useful industry news to aggregate or to cite in original blog posts, salespeople will undoubtedly find other blogs and online publications that allow commenting. They’ll also find others discussing topics of interest on sites like LinkedIn, Groups & Forums, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and others. Searching or monitoring for prospects also reveals these kinds of interaction opportunities.
Answering questions, sharing useful resources and asking questions on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and Google+ helps communicate personal characteristics and thought leadership for the salesperson. Corporate marketing might be able to use their resources with social media monitoring tools to identify social channels, groups or individuals that are most influential and relevant. Salespeople could also use tools like Klout to find others with influence to engage with.
This can seem like a very time consuming task, but many salespeople who are the most productive with lead generation through social media make a consistent effort to participate on a frequent basis. Setup a recurring reminder in Outlook to spend 15 minutes each morning to ask/answer questions, collect, aggregate and share useful links. Spreading this activity over several days using a consistent amount of time is very productive. Schedule Tweets and Facebook updates during the day in advance using a tool like Hootsuite.
5. Collaborate - Corporate sales and marketing leadership can keep tabs on the most effective uses of social media and networking sites by their sales teams and create best practices for the benefit of all. Continuously improved processes, new social tool evaluations and tactics evolution can improve salesforce social media effectiveness and overall ability to create value and engage prospects.
In the end, it’s about empowerment, not control.
Companies can provide sales teams with templates, process and training plus regular internal networking opportunities to share best practices in order to help salesforce social media efforts succeed. It’s also important to provide ongoing education so salespeople know what it looks like to be overzealous and forward with their social participation efforts.
As with all social media marketing efforts, mileage varies according to the target audience, industry, resources and sales teams capabilities. There’s no doubt that strategy alone doesn’t sustain long term social media marketing success. Ongoing training and feedback mechanisms are essential to improve skills and identify both productive and non-productive behaviors.
Has your organization had to deal with “rogue sales reps” initiating social media marketing efforts? How did you handle them? Have you implemented or observed other companies effectively incorporating sales teams social media participation as part of corporate social strategy?
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Is Direct Mail Dead or New Uses for Old Tactics
Posted on 14. Jun, 2011 by John Jantsch in Blog, Direct Mail, inbound marketing, Lead Conversion, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
Is Direct Mail Dead or New Uses for Old Tactics
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
uzvards via Flickr
The first half of the title of this post is a question I get, in some variation, quite frequently these days. You could change the subject to email or face to face networking or press releases, but the implication is always that some long established marketing tactic has been supplanted by Twitter or Facebook.
My answer is always the same – nothing is dead – but the ways we use them have changed.
My take is that if you establish a strong marketing strategy, one that helps you build trust, and you fully understand the behavior and objectives of your ideal customer, then you can use almost any tactic to build your business.
In fact, some of the more “traditional” offline approaches have never been more effective when fused with technology and newer online approaches.
Digital has changed the customer communication environment fundamentally over the years and caused many to forgo the traditional broadcast tools.
But, smart marketers are discovering new ways to use old tools that are more in line with inbound marketing practices and are taking advantage of technology leaps to make a tactic like direct mail even more effective.
I return once again, as I do often, to my definition of marketing – getting someone who has a need to know, like and trust you – if you can find a way to use a tactic to do that, than no tactic is dead or even out of bounds.
Even the often maligned Twitter auto DM is fair game if you can find a way to use it to build trust – the fact is few can, but my point is there are no set rules or magic tactics in this game.
Here are a few examples of new uses for old tactics:
- Use variable data printing on demand printing to create highly personalized direct mail pieces with unique images, stories and calls to action based on your customer database. The technology is there to do this in small batches with hundreds of variations.
- Use technology to produce postcards that invite each recipient to a personal landing page that features information tailored to their interests and alerts a sales team to initiate a further contact.
- Use traditional broadcast and print advertising to drive prospects to a series of free online videos that educate, entertain and inform – oh, and build know, like and trust.
Reaching markets and creating buzz about our products and services still requires an integrated approach – that part won’t ever change, but before you drop a proven way to reach your prospects from the mix consider how you might use it build trust instead of move product.
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