December 4, 2009
BtoB Online
Demandbase Professional for Publishers Debuts

December 1, 2009
DemandGen Report
Leading Demand Gen Solution Providers Connect To Form “The Marketing Cloud”

November, 2009
DestinationCRM
Climbing to New Heights of Lead Generation

November, 2009
Harvard Business Review
Paths to Revenue: Mid-Market CEOs Share Best Practices

October 12, 2009
DemandGen Report
Demandbase Adds Analytics To Provide Deeper Insights Into Lead Sources, Behavior

October 6, 2009
BtoB Online
Demandbase Enhances Customer Acquisition Solution

September, 2009
Business Week
To Generate Sales Leads, Develop an Inbound Marketing Strategy

Demandbase In the News

Jason Stewart

Mr. Stewart leads demand generation programs for Demandbase and is a recognized thought leader in the B2B lead generation and lead management space. He founded and leads the Salesforce.com user group in Salesforce.com’s headquarters location (San Francisco) and was one of the first 500 people to complete the Salesforce.com Certified Administrator process. He has spent 10+ years in B2B telesales, demand generation, lead management and marketing operations with a variety of businesses including Maxager Technology, MarketLive, and Inference Corporation. Mr. Stewart has advised emerging software companies including Spoke and Kieden (acquired by Salesforce.com). He earned his BA in English from Rutgers University.

View Jason Stewart's profile on LinkedIn


Chris Golec

Mr. Golec is CEO of Demandbase – a provider of On Demand Software and Services to improve demand generation at B2B companies. Prior to founding the company in 2005, he co-founded Supplybase in the mid-90’s. Supplybase was a successful supply chain software company that created significant customer value before being acquired by i2 Technologies in 2000 as part of the largest software merger in history. Before entering the software industry, Mr. Golec spent the previous 10 years of his career with GM, DuPont, and GE serving in engineering, sales and marketing roles. He holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and an M.B.A.

B2B Marketing Content From Dreamforce

by Jason Stewart

A friend alerted me to the fact that all of the breakout sessions from Salesforce.com's Dreamforce event are now up for viewing on Youtube. Haven't heard much about through "official" SFDC channels, so thought I would share.

I was involved with two sessions:

Search Engine Marketing Junkies
Learn from a panel of B2B search engine marketing junkies how to take your search marketing to the next level, including SEM tips and tricks, landing page strategies, Web site analytics, and more. Speakers: Sean Whiteley, salesforce.com; Howard Brown, Demand Results, LLC; Jason Stewart, Demandbase; Terry Whalen, CPC Search and Lauren Vacarrello from salesforce.com.

Advanced Campaign Management: Lead Nurturing and Campaign ROI
Learn more about salesforce.com's lead nurturing and campaign ROI functionality, and you'll walk away with practical tips on how to build automation and measure results to improve your marketing effectiveness. Featuring speakers John Kucera from Salesforce.com and Jason Stewart from Demandbase.

"Junkies" was a panel that jumped right into the discussion, and "Campaign Managment" featured John Kucera from Salesforce.com doing a demo of how to create a lead nurturing campaign in Salesforce.com without a marketing automation system. I jump in at the 15 minute mark to show how to implement and utilize the campaign influence functionality in Salesforce.com.

All 198 sessions can be found here. Lots of stellar discussion, regardless to whether you are a Salesforce.com customer or not.

The Irony of Using Social Media to Monitor Social Media

by Jason Stewart

I'm pulling together an email to go out to the people who visited our booth at the B2B Online Digital Edge "virtual" trade show last week. It was a really great event with some really good speakers, especially the keynote from David Meerman Scott (author of World Wide Rave and The New Rules of Marketing and PR). All of the talks are recorded and can still be accessed by going here and registering to enter the event.

Anyway, I thought I would share some of the best tweets I could find about the event so went to Twitter Search and typed in #b2bedge to see what I could find. After a few minutes I was struck by how many of the tweets were about social media, and justifying the use of social media as a marketing tool in B2B.

90% of the tweets seemed to be about tweeting. 

That's when I realized that one of the most enduring topics touched upon by BtoB marketing Twitterati is the perpetual need to justify their own tweeting. Hence, most of the tweets from the event included the phrase "social media" or were about ways to get started with (or justify the return on) a social network marketing strategy. 

Is social network marketing really the hottest topic in BtoB marketing right now? What about lead nurturing? What about email marketing? Web analytics? SEO? Event marketing?

Is Twitter all that people want to learn more about right now? Or does it just seem that way because that's what the people who are on Twitter are tweeting about?

David Meerman Scott spoke more about relinquishing control of your brand in general, and not being afraid to let people talk about you (or even provide a forum for them to do it) which seems so much more brave and important than simply creating a Facebook page or Twitter account and monitoring what people say about you. It seems like Twitter and Facebook are the trees that people are fixating on, while truly allowing your company and brand to be OUT THERE and approachable and unafraid to let people say whatever they want about you is the way to truly create a social marketing "forest."

10 B2B Demand Generation Strategies for 2010

by Jason Stewart

I did a dry run of our Wednesday (12/2/2009) webinar, Top 10 B2B Demand Generation Success Strategies for 2010 with Howard Sewell from Connect Direct this morning. I have to tell you that he has put together some outstanding recommendations and tips for BtoB companies in 2010. A recording will be made available if you can't join us live, but as the Q&A at the end of the webinar could be the best part of the discussion so you should join us if you can.

The full description and registration form is available here.

You'll get a copy of Howard's High-Tech Direct Marketing Handbook just for registering, a collection of more than 65 tips and techniques on demand generation strategy, offers, creative, media and more, compiled from CDI’s 15+ years of developing successful marketing strategies for B2B clients. Hope you can join us!

Dreamforce 2009: Thoughts From the Keynote

by Jason Stewart

Just a very quick report, from the "trenches" as it were, about the announcements revealed yesterday morning at the Dreamforce 2009 keynote speech, delivered to 10,000 people in Moscone center. Seriously, there were a lot of people there. Biggest Dreamforce ever, highlighted with some very well received improvements that will have significant impact on how the power users are doing their jobs every day.

Usability improvements were the key, as upgraded (and rebranded) sales and service functionality were unveiled as Service Cloud 2 and Sales Cloud 2. Cloud Scheduler (cross-platform calendering), one-screen report building (which is a departure from the multi-screen report wizard) and the official introduction of Salesforce for Twitter were all greeted with enthusiasm. On the service side there was also some knowledgebase and "crowdsourcing" functionality to help reps answer questions (or help your customers find answers themselves online) ... think Yahoo Answers managed out of your Salesforce.com instance, with the ability to create solutions for your knowledgebase from solutions provided by your customers.

These announcements were very well received, and Salesforce for Twitter really seems to be gaining some ground. For example, Marketo announced an integration with Salesforce for Twitter on November 16th looking to capitalize on information gathered from Tweets about your company (or even just the fact that you'll know which prospects are active in Social Media) as triggers for marketing campaigns. Maria Pergolino from Marketo (blog.marketo.com) even suggested attaching known Twitter users to a campaign dedicated to recording which of your prospects and customers are active in social media, and using tools like the "Campaign Influence Report" in Salesforce.com to see how many of your selling opportunities may have been influenced by Social Media. Good stuff!

The next BIG announcement was actually met with more of a luke-warm reception than the simple improvements to the usability of the product (or a super brief sneak peak into the new UI coming out next year)...after much hoopla and chest thumping we learned that the next big CLOUD would be the "Collaboration Cloud." Salesforce.com Chatter is here, a social networking tool for businesses, borne from the fact that we typically know more about the movie that our third cousin saw last night than we do about what our co-workers are doing. Real-time updates about what your co-workers are doing, alerts when content is updated or changed, alerts from your Apps and vendors if there are updates or changes to software you have installed, all powered for your company by Salesforce.com and the Force.com platform.

It should be interesting to see how this plays out, as the "Chatter" pulse on the floor of the event is actually quite subdued. One customer I spoke to expressed concerns about a "Chatter" feed getting so bogged down with noise that it could ultimately become distracting, while others were genuinely excited about the collaborative (and secure) potential of the product.

Another announcement coming today from a few Salesforce.com partners revolves around the missing link in the "Cloud" equation .. the Marketing Cloud. From the press release  ... "Leading marketing-oriented technology companies today announced the formation of the Marketing Cloud™, a set of open, interoperable and secure services that make internal marketing operations more efficient and external marketing programs more effective. Founded as an alliance between Alfresco, Demandbase, Hoovers (a D&B company), Marketo, Jigsaw, ON24 and PivotLink, the Marketing Cloud delivers the fastest, easiest and most cost-effective way for marketers to integrate data silos, automate processes, foster collaboration and develop actionable marketing insights."

The really exciting thing about the Marketing Cloud is that it is aspiring to be more than just an alliance of complementary Cloud-based marketing solutions, but also a community of like-minded B2B marketing professionals focused on sharing best practices and improving their craft. Check it out at www.marketing-cloud.com.

A Busy Week in the B2B Marketing Cloud

by Jason Stewart

Dreamforce, Salesforce.com's annual "global gathering" starts tomorrow - and Demandbase is going to be there. Complete details about how to find us, including some great B2B Marketing breakout sessions, can be found here:

Demandbase at Dreamforce 2009

And if you're a B2B marketer and you plan on being in San Francisco on Thursday night (11/19) join us at booth 204, or in the Marketing Cloud for the Marketing Party of the Year at Dreamforce 2009.

There will be continued coverage of the event all week. Here's a recap of last year's event:

Session Recording: Secrets to Email Campaign Success

Session Recording: Lead Management 101

Top Three Best Changes at Dreamforce 2008

Dreamforce 2008: Notes from the Keynote

Anatomy of a Marketing Automation Manager

Great post over at the LeadSloth blog....Why Are Marketing Automation Managers So Hard to Find?

With tight marketing budgets and marketers wearing more hats it's especially interesting to see a  marketing automation job description laid out like this. A great description to pull together your job requirements for the position that is opening up, or a great blueprint on what you need to learn how to do to make yourself more valuable. Great discussion in the comments area as well, especially about the science of marketing automation vs. the art, because while it is one thing to know how to launch a campaign and track the results, it is still another to be able to write the copy or create the offer that people will respond to.

Nice post, Jep!