Open and Enjoy—Compliments of the Season
It’s a busy time of the year…everyone is scrambling to get a zillion projects done before the holidays. To be honest, I think the whole year 2012 has been a busy one. With all the changes we have seen in the global economic scenario, the digital media landscape, consolidation and growth in key industry sectors—all of these factors have kept us marketers on our toes. I find it very encouraging and quite incredible when my clients, specially senior executives, CEOs and the like comment about or discuss my blog posts. I know for a fact that many of these individuals are sometimes too busy to even read an email, so I really value their readership on my blog. It’s time to say thank you to all of you who read my blog, share my posts, leave your comments and even discuss them with me in person, over the phone or via social media channels. So THANK YOU to all my readers and I look forward to your support and encouragement in 2013 and beyond!
Because you are all so busy, I thought you may find it worthwhile to have one single post that you can bookmark as a guide to B2B lead generation. Below is a succinct summary of tips, tricks, trends and insights that I have offered through my blog in 2012 along with links to the respective blog posts which you can read in more detail at your leisure:
1. 13 B2B Lead Generation Mistakes You’ve Made—So What Can You Do Now?
Despite all the prevalent industry best practices, success stories of best-in-class organizations and good advice from well-wishers, we make some common mistakes in the B2B lead generation world. In this post I listed 13 B2B lead generation mistakes many marketers have made at some point or are likely to make. In addition, I’ve offered you my thoughts based on having helped client organizations for many years on what you can do to turn things around.
2. 6 Key Factors Influencing B2B Marketing in the New Digital Economy
How is your B2B organization preparing to face the challenges posed by the new digital economy? What measures do you have in place to ensure that growth is not negatively impacted by players from emerging markets stepping into what was once your stronghold?
3. Social Media is So “Freaking Hard”! Welcome to the Wild, Wild West of B2B Social Media Marketing
I literally hold my head in my hands when I see survey findings that say 90% of B2B companies are actively using social media, 85% of these organizations are managing social media activities in-house, 56% will maintain their 2012 social media budget in 2013 while 41% will increase their budget…AND…only 10% are satisfied with their social media program. Duh! What gives? Is anyone taming this social media beast?
What can cloud do for B2B marketing? What about cloud will get your B2B organization’s CEO excited? In this post I offered a quick list of the top 5 benefits of cloud for B2B in my opinion.
5. Questions to Ask Your Social Media Consultant—And the answers you don’t want to hear!
If you are looking to hire a social media consultant for B2B, here are 5 key questions I would recommend you ask. You may find yourself relieved of the battle over what your consultant wants you to do and what you believe will drive value to customers and prospects.
When I hear companies get excited about being ‘innovative’ by putting their CEO on Twitter or building a Pinterest page for their new product line, I can’t help but think that they are excited for all the wrong reasons. Nothing wrong with trying a new social media platform because “we have never tried this one before”—but don’t fool yourself into thinking you are being innovative with your marketing. You are just adding new marketing channels and platforms to the mix. You need to deliver value and build engagement—creative, relevant content marketing can help you do that.
7. The Top Ten CMO Profile Types—Which One Is Your CMO?
Here’s a list I came up with for the most commonly encountered CMO personality profiles. Do you see your CMO (or yourself) here?
8. What’s all this Hocus-Pocus about Social Media? Where Are the REAL Marketers?
We hanker after glitzy, glamorous, sexy tactical approaches like social media campaigns. Sales and marketing continue to function in silos in a majority of B2B organizations. In the absence of aligned demand generation strategy, quantity rather than quality of leads becomes the notorious goal. This has got to stop. Can we afford to lose marketing focus in the hocus-pocus of social media?
9. Highly Effective B2B Lead Generation Habits
How can your B2B organization nurture lead generation best practices? In this post I talked about Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and how they can be applied to B2B lead generation.
“On average, 57% of a purchase decision is complete before a customer contacts a supplier.” These are statistics from a Marketing Leadership Council research study. So how can B2B marketers fill that 43% gap to complete the purchase decision? Read my 10 rules…and I would love to hear what has worked for you so we can add to this list.
11. Is Your LinkedIn Marketing Strategy Generating Business Leads or Just More Noise?
Among all the different social media tools and channels available out there, I definitely think LinkedIn is a powerful one for B2B and should be a part of your social media marketing plays. Forging relationships, striking new alliances, engaging prospects in relevant online conversations, are all very useful deliverables of LinkedIn. Keep in mind, however, that LinkedIn will not put leads on a platter before you, but it will open up means of communication so you can plant quality seeds and watch them grow.
12. Let’s Put Social Media in Its “Place”…Remember that it cannot “Replace” Sales:
Social media cannot “replace” the flesh and blood and mind of sales people!It’s time to put social media in its place—and it’s an important place—right in the middle of an integrated marketing and lead generation approach. The place where sales and marketing are united under one umbrella and traditional B2B lead generation methods are used along with newer, more nimble processes.
Don’t forget to bookmark this post! Questions, comments, ideas? Please email or call me, Louis Foong, at (905) 709-3827.
Images used under licence from Shutterstock.
