As reported by MarketingProfs on September 23rd, 2020 by Colleen Martell.

Forget B2B and B2C: It’s a B2P World Now

Once upon a time, defining whom you were selling to guided everything, from how you priced and distributed your products to how you marketed them.

The starting line for just about any company’s go-to-market strategy was to figure out whether it’s a business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C), or business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) firm.

You may have noticed the use of the past tense there. Like nearly everything else about life right now, business has undergone a transformation because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is forcing a re-evaluation of all kinds of systems we used to assume made sense.

And now, regardless of whether your company slots into the B2B, B2C, or B2B2C category, the truth is that you’re actually in the B2P—business-to-people—business.

It’s time to understand what that means—and how to act on it.

“Those who engage in B2P marketing approach their business customers not as mere organizations, but as individual people with unique wants, expectations, and tastes,” according to Marketing-Schools.org.

Similarly, an article in MediaPost explains: “B2P marketing is the recognition that businesses aren’t actually buying what you’re trying to sell. Individual decision makers—people—are making the decisions for their companies, not impersonal disengaged companies as a whole.”

We work at home and live at work

Think of how quickly the pandemic dissolved the barriers between the “business persona” and “at-home persona.” Working together in an office has given way to working from home and “zooming” from the living room, spare bedroom, or kitchen table. The person approving a $100,000 enterprise software purchase is likely the same person approving her family’s streaming movie rental that same day. And she might do both from the same room in her house, probably wearing the same casual clothes.

Though it was always true that real people were responsible for purchase decisions, it used to be easier to compartmentalize how we thought of those people: either as a person representing a business or as a consumer representing himself or his family. And we treated those purchase decisions differently.

With those distinctions now in flux, how do you navigate the new B2P world?

Don’t just change your tone—rewrite the song

“Earlier in the pandemic, mission-based or cause-related marketing messages were surging, according to March 2020 polling from the IAB [Interactive Advertising Bureau],” reports an article in The Drum. “But as the months wane on and societal divisiveness on everything from mask wearing to social justice percolates, #InThisTogether platitudes don’t resonate as they did at the start of the pandemic.”

So, skip the platitudes and investigate for yourself how your customers, prospects, partners, and coworkers are dealing with the current challenges. In other words, focus on the people rather than their roles, or your previous images of what they represented.

Find out what your customers crave

As Liz Hayward of Amito writes: “Think human to human, over B2B. People are craving connection in lockdown. Now’s the time for marketers to dig deep into the expert brains in the business, to create the technical content that can make a difference to your audience right now. Take the time to understand what’s needed and bring solutions to those knotty problems and overwhelming challenges your customers are facing.”

Instead of spending time crafting clever sound bites about how much you care about your customers in “these difficult times,” find out what they really need from you. Have actual conversations with them. Ask them questions. And listen—really listen—to what they say.

Only by listening deeply to your customers’ real-world, in-the-moment needs can you devise new strategies that address the specific challenges people are experiencing.

Sell less, give more

“Many of your best target customers aren’t buying right now. Budgets are frozen, cash is being conserved…. Invest in your relationships, lean in on building value, give generously,” Matt Heinz, president of Heinz Marketing, advises in an Engagio article.

And communicate—sincerely, strategically, and at a pace that makes sense for your audiences.

“Our communications since coronavirus began have had more immediacy,” writes The Marketing Practice’s CMO David van Schaick. “We all seem to be a bit more down-to-earth and I hope we keep hold of this. If it’s acceptable to have your child interrupt your video call, it’s acceptable to say it like it is, without bombast.”

Be real

“I think we are putting aside the concept of thought leadership, which now seems somewhat pompous in its ambition,” van Schaick continues. “We have replaced it with helpfulness, utility, connecting with people, offering them something of value, entertaining them. This is liberating for anyone in the communications game. Suddenly it’s OK not to have a didactic ‘message’ in every communication; it’s enough for it to be useful, or empathetic, or just fun.”

In other words, focus your communication on real, living, breathing, people. They’re the ones who need your help right now.

Do you believe that we live in a B2P world now?

A good place to start would be a marketing assessment. We can help you identify your target audience or develop a B2P strategy.

Additional B2P Resources

B2P Marketing (Marketing-Schools.org)

Forget About B2B and B2C – Technology Enables B2P Marketing (MediaPost)

Business-to-People Marketing: Customer Engagement Strategies that Actually Work (Business 2 Community)

The post What is B2P Marketing? appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

As reported by Crayon in Guide to Competitive Battlecards.

What are Battlecards?

A battlecard is a piece of enablement collateral aimed at helping salespeople overcome competitive threats at any point in the sales process. They are typically created by the team responsible for gathering and analyzing Competitive Intelligence, or by a sales enablement team in conjunction with CI or product marketing team. Here is an example of a battlecard from HubSpot.

What Battlecards Are Not

Most product marketing, competitive intelligence, and sales enablement teams are familiar with competitor profiles, industry/competitive matrices, and other competitive materials. It is important to understand that anything other than a battlecard is typically too in-depth for consumption by sales team.

Why Create Battlecards?

Battlecards can boost competitive win rates by 50-60% (and sometimes more). If that number seems exaggerate, that is because most companies do not take the right approach when they create battlecards. Most sales teams fail to properly adopt battlecards because they are stale, difficult to consume, don’t contain the right intel, or are unhelpful. The best battlecards are not easy to create and maintain, but the results they produce are much more significant.

Steps to Get Started

Identify with competitors to focus on for your first few battlecards

It is important to understand who you are creating battlecards for before beginning creation. You can extend your battlecards to the other teams after you have created a foundation. Then, break down your competitive landscape into tiers of competitors. Start by focusing on one to three of your direct competitors.

Ensure you have the proper mechanisms in place to allow you to measure the impact of your new battlecards once they are in place

Before creating battlecards, make sure you have the proper mechanisms in place to measure their impact. The first step is adding opportunity fields in your CRM that allow sales reps to identify which competitor is present in a deal. Then, add a “loss reason” field as well to ensure you can zero in on deals that were lost to a competitor. Once you have established a competitive win rate benchmark, you will be ready to roll out your battlecards and what your win rate (hopefully) increase.

Begin the process of aggregating any existing intel you already have before embarking on the onerous process of digging up new intel

If your organization has already produced competitor analyses/comparisons/matrices, you are in good shape. If you are not so fortunate, then sales opportunities in your CRM is a good place to start accumulating some competitive intel. Check notes for qualitative information and any checkbox/dropdown fields with present win/loss codes or any similar data. Interviewing a handful of salespeople is also a good way to build a foundation of competitor information.

Creating Battlecards

Battlecards do not need to look flashy as they are an internally-facing piece of collateral.

Sourcing New Intel

There are endless sources from which you can pull valuable competitive insights.

Your competitors’ websites are a great source of information and are valuable sources to track over time. Make sure to read through the content on their website, especially any case studies.

Review sites are another excellent source of information. Positive and negative reviews offer insight into competitors’’ strengths and weaknesses.

Online forms can offer communities focused on topics related to your industry. Search for any mentions of your competition on these sites, as customers tend to be more candid here than other sources of information.

Topics to Include

1. General competitor information (location, employees, etc.)
2. Kill points: list of short statements that will help disqualify competitors early on in deals
3. Landmines: Questions that customers might ask that put your company at a competitive disadvantage
4. Success stories

Now that your battlecard is created, it is time to put it in use. Throughout the process, maintenance, extension across the funnel, and measurement of battlecards ensure continued success. Remember, to keep your battlecard up to date.

The post Battlecards – Key Tool for Improved Win Rates appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

Continue reading or consider checking out our lead generation or sales enablement services to grow your pipeline and get a marketing assessment to analyze your current workflows.

1. Page View

What are some of the key pages on your website and what do they tell you about your visitors? You can brainstorm “topic areas” you have on your website and send visitors unique, triggered emails based on their specific interests. Some topic area examples include:

• Industry (ex: manufacturing, distribution, etc.)
• Product content (ex: a specific software you offer, or a certain functionality)
• Prospect validation (ex: viewing your case studies, testimonials, etc.)

After you define some of your key topic areas, you can create a series of emails targeted to those visitors and establish a workflow to send them those emails. Targeted/segmented emails such as below have, on average, a 14.32% higher open rate and a 100.95% higher click rate than non-segment campaigns (WordStream).

In the example below, we are enrolling visitors to our ‘Distribution industry’ page in a workflow that contains a series of 4 emails:

• Email 1 – Do you have any questions? A simple, text-based email asking the visitor if they have any questions on our distribution offering and offering some additional resources.
• Email 2 – A link to a read a distribution blog on our site.
• Email 3 – A link to download a distribution whitepaper on our site.
• Email 4 – A link to a distribution case study on the website with a invitation to request a demo or consultation.

Bonus: you can update contact properties (ex: industry) based on page views too!

2. Downloads or Form Submissions

This workflow uses similar logic to the ‘Page View’ one above. If a visitor downloads something on your website like a guide or whitepaper, demo, attends a webcast, etc., you can establish a series of highly-targeted emails that continues to nurture them with additional content or promotion for future events.

In the example below, the visitor has downloaded our “Guide to Financial Management for CFOs”. From this download, we can make two assumptions about the prospect: 1) they are a CFO or in a finance position, and 2) they are interested in financial management topics/improving their existing finance processes.

• Email 1 – Thank you email. A simple, text-based email asking the visitor if they have any questions on the download, a link to access the download at any time, and offering some additional resources
• Email 2 – An email with a link to an article: 10 Tips For Automating Your Financial Management Processes
• Email 3 – A link to another whitepaper on the site: 2020 Trends all CFOs Need to Know
• Email 4 – A link to a financial management case study on the website with a brief product overview and invitation to request a demo or consultation.

We send the thank you email on a very slight delay, and then delay emails 2-4 for at least 7 days each.

You can take the example above and apply it to nearly any industry, application, or topic. The key is to make the content extremely relevant to the original download!

Now, HubSpot does allow you to setup or schedule follow-up emails directly within the form editor. Within the forms tool, you can schedule up to three follow-up emails (with delays) for a specific form. However, these will all be simple, text-based emails without the full functionality available within the HubSpot drag and drop editor. A couple of other downsides to establishing follow-ups via the form is you won’t have the option to set goals, and therefore, conversions, and add any final automated steps to the end of the email series like updating contact properties.

3. Form Abandonment

Don’t let a form stop your prospects from downloading or consuming your content. After all, you already have their contact information!

If one of your contacts views a page with a form, but does not submit it – you can setup a workflow to email them the content “un-gated”. Be sure to monitor the prospects activity to see if they DO consume the content after being sent the un-gated version.

In the example below, the prospect has viewed our on-demand demo video page but did not fill out the form. We would love for them to watch the demo to move them further down the funnel and don’t want the “intimidating” form to discourage them. Therefore, we sent them an email that contains a link to watch it directly. Even better, you can use an ‘If/Then’ branch to send a followup email based on the action they take (ex: watching/engaging with the content vs. not).

• Email 1 – A simple, text-based email with content similar to: I saw you had interest in a demo.. You can watch it directly at this link: ___.
• Email 2 – A thank you message/followup email sent to those that watch the demo: “Thanks for watching the demo.. if you have any questions, or would like to setup a custom demo..” with a link to some additional resources.

Bonus: enroll a contact in one of your nurture workflows, or update their lifecycle stage based on an action taken in this workflow!

4. Assigning Leads to Your Sales Team for New Contacts

This workflow will vary depending on the size of your sales staff, your qualification process, sales team segmentation, and other factors. The good news is that this workflow is very flexible and can accommodate nearly any sales process. Check out some of the different use cases below to update the contact’s owner automatically.

If you have a 1-person sale team, you can simply assign the lead to that person. Alternatively, we have come across clients where 1 person on the team does the qualification and assignment of new leads. In that scenario, you can also simply assign the lead to that contact, who can then reassign it after they go through their qualification process:

If you have a larger sales team, you may want to rotate the leads between your team members. This workflow will allow you to evenly distribute assignments amongst a team or specific owners. In the example below, we are rotating the leads evenly between our US-based team:

Please note, this functionality will require you to have a Sales Hub Professional or Enterprise or Service Hub Professional or Enterprise account.

And finally, you may want to use some of the information about the prospect to assign to your proper sales team member. For example, if the prospect is located in Illinois, you would want to assign to your sales rep that covers that geographic area. Or, if they are interested in a specific product, you would want to assign it to the sales rep for that product. And so on. Be sure to add a small delay after enrollment to make sure that HubSpot has updated the appropriate field before the if/then branches start working.

5. Setting Lead Status

When someone fills out a form on your website, their lead status is left blank by default. However, the lead status can be such a useful field for segmentation down the line that we would recommend leveraging it. If used correctly, you can ensure your team is contacting new leads or following up on leads that are in progress.

Here is how to set the lead status to “New”:

Now, you can update that lead status to “In Progress” after your sales team has engaged with the lead. This workflow will update the lead status after any activity (email, call, meeting, or note) has occurred on the contact record.

6. Changing Lifecycle Stage

We work with many clients who handle moving contacts through lifecycle stages in HubSpot manually based on their unique sales process. For example, they will move a prospect from ‘Qualify’ to ‘Develop’ after a phone or email conversation takes place. 

However, sometimes larger clients with a larger volume of leads need to handle this automatically in order to ensure their sales team is focusing on the most important leads. In order to achieve this you can use Lead Scoring. In short, lead scoring is when you automatically assign values (scores) to leads based on the actions they take on your website like the amount of times they’ve visited your website, form submissions, number of page views, engagement with emails, and so much more. Stay tuned for our blog post on more tips for setting up lead scoring in HubSpot. 

You can see how some of the actions described previously can indicate how “interested” or “warm” a lead is. Therefore, it is a great metric for moving prospects to a new lifecycle stage or even assigning to a different team.

In the example below, we have switched the lifecycle stage from a marketing qualified lead (MQL) to a sales qualified lead (SQL) after they reach a lead score of 20. Also, we switched the contact owner from a member of the ‘Marketing’ team to the ‘Sales’ team.

7. Nurturing Prospects

In between “lead generation” and closing the sale lies the critical middle ground – where lead nurturing is required to move prospects through the funnel:

• 66% of buyers indicate that “consistent and relevant communication provided by both sales and marketing organizations” is a key influence in choosing a solution provider (Genuis.com)
• 80% of new leads never translate into sales and companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales ready leads at a 33% lower cost (Invesp)

And depending on your category (ex: enterprise software, government, etc.) the sales cycle may be longer and require even more touches, making nurturing your leads even more critical. HubSpot can help your team automate this in many ways – check out just two ideas below.

Lifecycle Stage

As part of your nurture strategy, it is important to tailor your content and communications to where prospects are at in your funnel (or their lifecycle stage in HubSpot). Your mission should be to use your content to guide your prospects toward eventual conversion. Intuitively, you can infer what some of those content buckets might look life:

• Top of the funnel (subscriber, lead, marketing qualified lead): educational content like blogs, webinars, guides, videos, etc.
• Middle of the funnel (sales qualified lead): educational content + validation content like case studies, demo videos, product descriptions or data sheets
• Bottom of the funnel (opportunity): educational content + validation content + value proposition content like product-specific information, testimonials, reviews, etc.

In the example below, we are leveraging a HubSpot workflow to automatically enroll contacts in an email series when they move from a MQL to a SQL. There are 10 emails in total, that deliver every 3 weeks. This will ensure they receive a consistent stream of content relevant to their position in the funnel with the aim of moving them to the next stage.

Be sure to update your Unenrollment and suppression settings if you use this type of workflow. In the example above, I would want to remove them from my previous stage workflow (MQL) to ensure they don’t receive emails in that workflow any longer.

Vertical Workflows

Using the same idea or logic as above, you can offer even MORE tailored content to your prospects to move them through your funnel. One great example of this is industry. If you sell a product/software that has multiple industry applications – send them content relevant to their industry!

Like above, we are leveraging a HubSpot workflow to automatically enroll contacts in an email series when they move from a MQL to a SQL. However, we are adding another enrollment criteria – their industry. Again, we created here 10 emails in total, that deliver every 3 weeks. Now, the emails we are sending are not only specific to their position in the funnel but their industry as well. So when we email them about a blog – the topic of the blog is specific to the distribution industry, the case study we send them is specific to the distribution industry, etc.

Make sure to set a goal for these (and all) workflows! In this specific example, my goal would be for the contact property ‘Lifecycle Stage’ to move from SQL to the next stage.

Some other ideas for further segmenting prospects beyond lifecycle stage or industry include:

• Company size
• Job title
• Product line they are interested in

8. Engage Neglected Prospects

Don’t let prospects fall through the cracks! You can create a workflow to remind your sales team to reach out to a contact if it has been a certain amount of time since they’ve last been contacted.

In the example below, we have created a task for a sales team member for them to check in with a prospect if it has been more than 12 weeks since they’ve last been contacted. To ensure the sales team is focusing on “higher priority” leads, we’ve also added additional criteria to ensure the prospects meet our qualification minimums.

Similarly, you could attempt to re-engage inactive contacts with an email about an exclusive offer or discount you are offering. For this, you could use a variety of enrollment criteria such as:

• The length of time since their last website visit (ex: more than 6 months)
• The length of time since their last email click/open
• Etc.

9. Important Internal Notifications/Tasks

Is your sales team using the HubSpot activity feed? If so, they may be already getting a wealth of information like when their prospects perform specific activities like opening/clicking an email, visiting your website, filling out a form, etc. With this (potential) overload of information, it may be possible to miss something.

You can use workflows to setup a notification or create a task when a prospect visits a key page or takes a key action. This can ensure your sales team follows up immediately and doesn’t miss anything.

• Create a task for a HubSpot user
• Send an internal SMS to a HubSpot user
• Send notification (in-app alert or mobile push) to teams or users
• Send internal email

In the example below, we have set up an email notification when a prospect views the demo page:

Be sure that the internal notification email template contains as much important information about the lead as possible to make it even easier for the sales team to follow up – at minimum their first name, last name, company name, phone number, last conversion, and a link to the full contact record.

10. New Customer

When someone moves from a lead to an official customer there are a ton of processes that will now need to start. You can use workflows to handle some of that busy work. Here are some common ones we use:

Add them to your customer list – We like doing this for a couple of reasons. First, data hygiene is critical and it is important to have an updated list of your customers. We use this specific customer list to send important company updates like closures, product updates, and more. Second, we suppress the customer list on a lot of our marketing communications. This is a quick and simple way to ensure customers don’t receive the wrong message.

Update Lead Status – Once a contact becomes a customer you can update their lead status to ‘Closed’ to ensure no other sales people try to follow up.

Update Contact Owner – Now that the sales process is complete you may want to move the owner of the account from the sales person to a member of your customer service team. You can do that using a workflow like below:

Send emails – When a contact becomes a customer a number of processes now need to take place. Depending on your product/service, you may want to send a contract, onboarding email, a series of training emails, or even try to upsell a customer at a later point. All of these scenarios are a possibility with HubSpot workflows – you can send an email (or a series of emails) when a contact becomes a customer.

In the example below, a customer success teams sends an email 6 months after the contact becomes a customer soliciting a testimonial and to provide a satisfaction survey. Then, at the 1 year mark, they send an “anniversary” email thanking them for being a customer, etc.

There you have it! These are just 10 workflows that can set your sales team up for success, while saving time. To measure the success of your workflows, make sure you set a goal for every single one! A workflow goal is the ultimate objective of your contact-based workflow. When an enrolled contact meets the workflow goal criteria, they are automatically unenrolled from the workflow.

Looking for More Leads?

If you need help developing content to support these robust workflows, or optimizing your HubSpot for lead generation or sales, contact us. Or register for a free marketing assessment. Your custom consultation includes a complete marketing assessment, in-depth Website/SEO analysis, and marketing plan recommendations that will help you dramatically increase website traffic quality and quantity, leverage a systematic process for identifying marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and converting to sales qualified leads (SQLs), and more.

The post 10 HubSpot Workflows Every Sales Team Needs appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

So what is lead generation, and how can you improve or maximize lead generation?

Great questions! To answer, Modern Marketing Partners (MMP) will share a Definition of Lead Generation, along with some insight into the differences between Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs), and Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs). Then, per the title, MMP will provide a list of 25 Lead Generation Types, along with corresponding tips that you can apply to achieve maximum lead generation effectiveness.

Lead Generation Definition

Fundamentally, Lead Generation is defined as the action or process of identifying and cultivating prospective customers (prospects) for a business’s products or services. There are some related terms including Demand Generation and Customer Acquisition that may have some differences, but for now lets drill deeper into two key Lead Generation sub-categories:  Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs), and Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs).   

Marketing Qualified Leads or MQLs are defined as individual contacts that can be identified, and that fit a profile or persona of the ideal prospect. For B2B scenarios, MQLs might be industry, company size (revenue or employees), title or department, and geographic location. For B2C scenarios, MQLs might be demographic or psychographic profiles or personas (age, gender, interests, geographic, etc.) 

In contrast, Sales Qualified Leads or SQLs or Opportunities begin as MQLs and are converted to SQLs with some type or level of qualification. A popular sales qualification is BANT, an acronym for Budget, Authority, Need, and Timing. Intuitively, BANT qualification requires a conversation, interview, or meetings with the “MQL” (prospect) to determine SQL status.

SQLs of course are closer to becoming customers, and are more valuable than MQLs. Typically, marketers identify and measure conversion rates of MQLs to SQLs, and ultimately, SQL conversions to sales or closed deals. For more information on conversion rate, check our our Lead Conversion Rates blog here. Marketing Automation tools or software measure conversion rates and/or “score” leads based on actions or qualifications, which “trigger” different communications, e.g. nurture email campaigns. 

So without further ado, following are 25 Lead Generation Types and Tips! (listed from most basic to advanced)

25 Lead Generation Types and Tips

1. Inbound telephone calls: make your telephone number prominent in website header and footer; use a toll-free number with memorable word references (e.g. 800-Law-Easy)
2. Outbound Telemarketing: no question telemarketing might be less effective than before; but opportunities are plentiful including calling lost or dormant customers, identifying and calling other customer locations, identifying and calling multiple decision-makers at a particular company (dialing for dollars)
3. LinkedIn Connections: connecting with relevant contacts on LinkedIn is an easy way to start a conversation; once connected you can obtain the contacts email address from their profile’s Contact Info
4. LinkedIn Sales Navigator: for a modest monthly fee, upgrade your free LinkedIn profile to Sales Navigator, a tool that allows more robust searches, list exports, and other lead generation features
5. LinkedIn Groups: join/start/manage a specialized LinkedIn Group to access group member contact info; participate in Group discussions with offers and links
6. Website Contact Information: make Contact information (telephone, email, Contact page) prominent including website header and footer
7. Website Registration Forms: use website forms liberally, balance required information fields and optional information fields to minimize form abandonment, use email privacy statements and Captcha, integrate with CRM systems when applicable
8. Website Gated Content: offer valuable, educational resources with the aforementioned registration forms in front of including guides, white papers, how-to-manuals, e-books, podcasts, etc. 
9. Website Resources Page: offer Resources in primary navigation with videos, guides, white papers, training tools with the aforementioned registration forms
10. Use Calls-To-Action (CTAs): use multiple offers or calls-to-action throughout your website, emails, blogs, and related assets; CTA examples include email registrations, educational content, event registrations, and promotional offers
11. Publish Case Studies: case studies are a magnet for prospects, so apply liberally; we recommend not gating case studies, with other calls-to-action to capture MQLs
12. Publish a Study: conduct a survey or study, and create a professional report that can be gated and added to the aforementioned Resources page, offered as a download, and promoted across channels; data-mine survey respondents for our next tactic
13. Email Lists:  in the USA email is still a great lead generation tactic, so internally build email lists via inbound calls, website registrations, the aforementioned LinkedIn options, along with ongoing research and data-mining; externally use databases like Hoovers and D&B, identify list brokers, member associations, trade show lists; use www.emailverifier.com to verify email addresses
14. Email Campaign Best Practices: most brands target multiple profiles or personas, likewise emails should target specific profiles (one-size-does-not-fit-all); next personalize emails with the recipient’s and/or company name; optimize subject lines via short, provocative “hooks”, with a strong sense of urgency, e.g. Register Today; (experiment with a free tool:  www.subjectline.com); email design should include 1-3 topics with brief summaries and “Read More” links or buttons, along with specific CTAs with buttons that go to your website for tracking purposes; resend emails to non-opens with a slightly different subject line
15. Email Follow-Up:  all email service providers (ESPs), Marketing Automation or CRM systems have great email campaign metrics including Opens and Click-Thru reports; MMP recommends telephoning email recipients that had multiple opens or click-thrus as a fast way to identifying SQLs
16. Webcasts: produce a webcast on an interesting subject; get a high-profile customer to be a panelist to attract other customers; promote via PR, blog, social, even PPC; record the webcast to use as on-demand video; data-mine webcast registrants to add to email lists or telemarketing
17. Trade Show Contest: when attending or exhibiting at a live event or trade show, use contests to gather sales leads; something as simple as a fishbowl business card drop to receive a premium or “Tchotchke”; or games (putting contest, roulette wheel, etc.) to participate in a daily drawing for something valuable (drones are big now)
18. Referral program: establish a referral program with new or top customers, business partners, even employees; offer incentives for referrals including gift cards or commissions, if applicable
19. Website Optimization (WO): make sure your website is mobile/responsive, secure (SSL/HTTPS), with “trust” features including Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions, Cookies Policy, ad GDPR and trust certifications, if applicable
20. Search Engine Optimization (SEO): lead generation is a fraction of website traffic, and traffic is influenced by SEO (and many other tactics); so perfect SEO with available and mostly free tools including the MMP SEO Guide, Google My Business and other Local Citations 
21. Chatbots or Live Chat: we highly recommend adding to all websites, assign staff to follow-up questions quickly, or employ AI answers; check out Live Chat comparisons
22. IP tracking: there are several solutions that can identify the high percentage of anonymous visitors to your website via thru identification of company IP addresses, and corresponding contact information for key titles or roles; check out Resources below for more information on IP Tracking
23. Offer a Free Tool: depending on your business, offer a Free Assessment, a Cost Calculator, or a report to qualified prospects in exchange for registration information; for example, check out our tool: MMP Free Website Audit
24. Paid Advertising: digital advertising or paid search includes pay-per-click (PPC) including Google AdWords, Remarketing, and display advertising; Social Media Advertising includes Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads, and more
25. Syndicated Content: many industries have content syndicators that will publish your guide, ebook, blog, etc., for a fee or even free; payers then receive corresponding registrations or sales leads; see Relevant Resources below for a list of content syndication platforms

Lead Generation Should be a Primary Objective of All Marketing Efforts

No question these 25 Lead Generation Types are just the tip of the iceberg. Check out the Resources below for more. If you have Lead Generation Type or Tip, please share via the Comment tool below.

In the end, Lead Generation is the primary objective of marketing, and ultimately supports sales, contracts, and new customer acquisition. Lead Generation is also the bridge between marketing and sales. And is often accompanied by other tools like Customer Relationship management (CRM) software, Marketing Automation software, or Lead Management software. 

You are likely implementing many of these Lead Generation tactics. Consider adding some other tactics, and don’t forget to measure and report MQLs, SQLs, and the golden ring, sales conversions.  

Relevant Lead Generation Resources 

61 B2B Lead Generation Strategies and Tactics for 2019

Lead Conversion Rates for Software

16 Content Syndication Networks and Platforms That You Need to Know in 2018

Align Marketing and Sales Initiatives to Drive Success

Lead Generation Through Landing Page Development

IP Lead Tracking – Just the Facts

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ABM is likely the exact opposite of approaches you’re currently taking; where you cast a wide net to drive multiple leads, hoping that a few truly workout and are a good fit for your products or services. Most of your marketing focus is being spent on top funnel activities to get noticed and generate some interest in your brand.

With ABM, your focus starts by bringing sales and marketing together. You will jointly determine your goals, select the accounts or companies you want to work with, delegate roles and accountability and start researching. The ABM strategy is a good thing for your sales and marketing teams as 70 percent of ABM users report their teams are mostly or completely aligned compared to 50 percent of non-ABM users.

Through a joint effort you are better able to address the needs of your B2B buyer today. A buyer that is usually not just an individual, but also part of a group of people comprising a company committee tasked with the purchasing decision. Purchasing teams that continue to be growing, according to a Harvard Business Review report that found the number of people involved in B2B solutions purchases has climbed from an average of 5.4 two years ago to 6.8 today.

Dig Deep with Data

Now you need to start getting to know your audience through data. This can be pulled from CRM system records, marketing automation tools, business directories, and numerous online sources. LinkedIn, Google Alerts and Google News can be useful tools. To effectively launch an ABM strategy you need to gather company facts such as: key decision makers contact information, number of employees, location(s), products or services, current customers, technology use, pain points, etc.

Social media analytics can also support ABM. How? By “social listening” to your target companies and individuals, and engaging with both via social networks including LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.  Your targets social content will give you insights into their interests, which then can be used in your ABM communications and campaigns.

The foundation of ABM is a customer database or profile with detailed information on the company, individuals, and a history of interactions and communications. Profiles are updated and used by all team members for real-time information.

Create and Deliver Personalized Content and Events

It’s time to determine the ABM tactics you’ll use to engage decision-makers, or the buying committee at target accounts. This involves creating personalized content and figuring out how best to deliver it. Every organization will need to determine what makes sense for them. Here are four key tactics for engaging B2B buyers:

Educational Content

Well-executed white papers, blog posts, infographics, webinars, etc. can gain your target’s trust while demonstrating your expertise. You may have existing content that you can repurpose by including a personalized introduction and conclusion. If your company has good data from a recent study that’s been conducted, slice and dice the data whether by industry or business size and repackage the stats specific for your target.

Remember, video content works well for this tactic too. Like blogs, if you have or want to develop a library of videos that address key questions or needs that can then be communicated via a nurturing process.

 Social media can be used to communicate with companies or individuals. You’re working toward making the target more receptive to your future ABM tactics and ultimately a purchase.  

Email Gets Personal

ABM replaces mass emails, with personalized emails. Think in terms of targeted emails to small lists, or a single decision-maker based on roles, personas, titles, or related. Cadence or frequency is important. You want your target to think you are the subject matter expert for your product/service. And you want to guide them through the purchasing process, from initial information gathering, to final decision making. The purchasing cycle (your sales cycle) is different for every product/service or industry. Your communications timing and frequency should, ideally, dovetail with target information requirements.

Direct Mail

Best used once a target is showing a high degree of engagement with your company. It’s an oldie, but a goody. It gives you the opportunity to send a personalized offer and note designed with the idea that you’d like to schedule time to help them solve their current problem. This is content that marketing should produce and hand off to sales to execute. If you know enough about your specific prospect, a small, interesting, and sometimes humorous gift will help you remain on your target buyer’s mind.

In-person Events

The power of a face-to-face encounter still prevails. Many B2B sales cycles are six to nine months long, strategize how to establish an in-person relationship during that time. Industry events work well if you are an exhibitor; consider hosting a special live event for your ABM contacts. Creating a genuine connection helps humanize your brand very quickly.

Measure ABM ROI

Marketers will need to determine the best ABM tactics for their businesses, as there are many worth implementing to create the necessary hyper-focused, highly personalized approach. You will be devoting a good deal of resources to a select few targets v. stretching your lead budget to reach as many as prospects as possible. That’s the beauty of how ABM works — it pays in stronger leads that convert at a higher rate and result in better ROI. Be sure to measure and report sales conversions, and ideally, calculate return on marketing investment (ROMI).

Relevant ABM Resources:

The Ultimate Guide to Account-Based Marketing: 6 Key Steps

The Fundamentals of ABM You Can’t Live Without

Align Marketing and Sales Initiatives to Drive Success

Micro-Vertical Marketing Guide

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The Internet offers customers new and numerous ways to gather information. Social media now has its influence in the buying process along with other digital channels too. Customers are inundated with products and services, making the marketplace highly complex to navigate.

This is especially true of the B2B market today, where buyers believe it’s their responsibility to understand all the available solutions before they talk with a sales person. Findings support this statement as 71 percent of customers prefer to conduct research on their own and only 12 percent want to meet in-person with a sales representative.

A recent study by Televerde further highlights this aspect of the customer journey. The study asked sales professionals to identify what they need from marketing professionals to be more successful. What could marketing do to help them win more deals? The number one response was Better Messaging.

Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and LinkedIn set out to further understand the impact of content marketing and sales alignment in current organizations. Content marketers acknowledged that less than half of them (46%) work in organizations with highly aligned marketing and sales teams. Additionally, of those in less aligned teams only 35 percent expected their content marketing budget to increase in 2018, compared to 61 percent from highly aligned teams. It appears that highly aligned teams are better able to prove their value and point to a successful ROI for their collaboration efforts.

It’s interesting to note though that the study found most everyone (97%) to be in agreement that revenue had the potential to increase if marketing and sales teams worked together. The biggest challenge between highly aligned content marketing and sales team participants and less aligned teams was a company culture that supported meetings, which resulted in less aligned companies experiencing a gap in knowing how and when to use the content provided.

Furthermore, the American Marketing Association suggests that marketers need to tailor content that helps sales to generate revenue. They offer five ways that content needs to be customized to meet sales teams’ needs. Here’s a quick recap of the tactics:

Speak in Specifics. Try to stay away from meaningless descriptions. Provide a description of what the product does or how it is better than the competitive alternatives. So stay away from words like “help,” easy to use,” and “seamless.”       

Focus on Function. Customers want to know what they can accomplish because of your product. If your product is fast, don’t say “very” fast. Prospects need to be able to compare your product’s claims to the claims of competitors. Say how fast it is in a specific situation. Remember, the question is not about the value of your product, but the value of your differential. 

Don’t Make Empty Claims. Offer quality evidence, which will complement a salesperson’s ability to provide creditability to your competitive advantage and customer value. A message backed by evidence is more compelling.

No Uncertain Terms. As we mentioned earlier, shopping has become a journey that customers take alone until they’re ready to purchase. Brands have to make clear how they compare to competitors with quantifiable measurements and specifications that are familiar and meaningful.

Don’t Mix Messages. The complexity of the selling messages provided to the sales channels have to be aligned with the time and skill available in that channel.

If companies want to be high performing, revenue-generating organizations, they need a cohesive marketing and sales team. They need content that differentiates their product and services in a crowded marketplace. And companies need to create a culture of collaboration between marketing and sales to foster communication that leads to successful lead generation and growth.

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