Best Practices in B2B Demand Generation - demandblog

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."

Top 5 Takeaways From the Marketing Sherpa B2B Lead Generation Summit

by Jason Stewart

Last week Demandbase participated as a sponsor at the Marketing Sherpa B2B Lead Generation Summit in San Francisco. The Boston edition is coming up on October 5th and 6th.

While we spent most of the time speaking directly with customers and prospects sharing information about our B2B lead generation solutions, we also took notes from the various sessions and did a little digging into Twitter and the blogs to document tips and trends worth sharing. It is interesting to note that the top three "tweeted" tips from the Sherpa summit were, interestingly enough, a return to the basics. An emphasis on the bread-and-butter topics that Sherpa has always done really well, and that keep coming back year after year.

• e-Newsletters: Email marketing ranks highest for topics that were tweeted and retweeted at the show, proving it’s still the top tool for B2B marketers in reaching prospects and customers at every stage of the buying cycle. Consistency, relevancy, and quality content make all the difference in your email ROI. Check out the Demandbase on-demand All Star Email Marketing Webinar for more tips focused on email marketing for B2B.
• Landing Pages: Second on the tweet list is tips on building better landing pages. Probably no surprise considering that Marketing Experiments, the kings of landing page optimization, are the parent company of Marketing Sherpa and Dr. Flint McGlaughlin gave an outstanding opening presentation. The key is to make it obvious what you want them to do and why they should do it - everything else is a distraction.On a side note, the Marketing Experiments folks took a look at one of our landing pages and said it was "one of the best they'd seen all day" but offered a few tips as well as the advice that we should share more information about benefits of the offer. Much better than last year's evaluation - it's always nice to hear you're on the right track...
• Quality Content: It's not enough to write a white paper. You need to write a white paper that people will be interested in regardless of whether they become your customer or not. Whether it’s a video, an on-demand webcast, or that ubiquitous white paper it’s likely the cornerstone of most of your campaigns - or at least the ones designed to generate new leads. According to Bob Johnson from IDG, if you get customers to engage with 2 pieces of content you’ve got a 25% chance getting them into your pipeline.

The other two takeaways fall into the "buzzworthy" category...

• Buying Personas: This is a topic that seems to be gaining a lot of traction in B2B marketing, and I have heard people speak about it at several events this year including the Inbound Marketing Summit. Fujitsu and Bulldog Solutions said they increased sales pipeline by creating "buyer personas" – and people took note. You may recall the having heard about "Personas" during the last election when campaign strategists spoke about crafting messages that would appeal to the “soccer moms” ... B2B marketers are getting into the game and are finding groups with common wants and needs around their products and creating "buyer personas" to keep their team on track when developing website content, email copy, and white papers that cater to specifically to those personas. You can get started by getting sales and marketing in a roomto discuss a few current prospects in each stage of your pipeline and talk about their demographics, peers, what they’re measured on, what they need right now, and what they have in common.
• Social Media: While the topic still fills a room, it's a lot easier to find seats at the back than it was at this time last year. There does seem to be a growing backlash as there has been a shortage of fresh content out there for a while. As a matter of fact, we got a bump in traffic in the exhibit hall during the social media sessions with visitors citing "burnout" on the topic. And the top questions about of social network marketing still focus on ROI. Social media does tie in very nicely with the concept of "buying personas" though, as when you create the buying persona you should definitely factor in where your buyers are spending their time on the web (online forums or communities, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, et al.). Social networking marketing tactics are great for extending the life of your well developed content, your email campaigns, your word of mouth and keeping tabs on customer sentiment and can be worth the time and investment - but are still not likely to replace more traditional B2B marketing methods any time soon. Small and medium sized businesses, especially, often have resource challenges and have difficulty launching a significant presence in social media while still managing to do all the other things that they are expected to do. This is not to say that one "Tweet" can't make a difference - clearly it can - but managing a growing brand online, monitoring your competitors, finding the trending topics in your space and continually finding relevant content to share can suck up resources very quickly. That's where the ROI questions come into play. No one denies that there is opportunity to build pipeline out there, the questions center on the cost in time and resources.

Finally, the message we took away and encourage our customers to consider is simple: once you’ve got the basics down for a quality campaign the business is yours to lose. Pay attention to what your prospects and customers are telling you by their clicks, downloads, pageviews and tweets and then nurture them based on the behavior will directly affect your pipeline and your bottom line.

See you next year Sherpas!

19 Things I Learned at the Inbound Marketing Summit

by Jason Stewart

Wrapping up a thwirlwind (if you're on Twitter or saw Tim Ferriss's presentation, you'll get it) two days of the Inbound Marketing Summit. Holy cow! What a great conference! Chris Brogan, president of New Marketing Labs organized a breakneck-paced non-stop buffet of new marketing information and best practices and general "deep thoughts." Easily one of the most informative and exhilarating conferences ever. Even the sponsor presentations were worth watching! Here are some highlights, followed by today's best tweets and a list of really cool links I heard about at the show...

1. Build detailed buyer personas for your social marketing efforts, then decide on appropriate messaging for those personas.Speak to them in their language, not yours.
2. Nobody cares about your product except you. They care about their problems. Don't worry about what your product does, worry about how it can help your buyers solve those problems.
3. Don't be afraid to relinquish control of your content or message. Think about how it helped The Grateful Dead.
4. The overwhelming fear regarding starting a community is: if I build it, will they come?
5. When you are building a community, focus on small groups and then expand outward.
6. Anybody can complain, but if the complaint is backed by constructive suggestions on how to make things better don't you want to hear them?
7. Make sure the things you measure match the goals you set.
8. Regarding your website...how do people find it, and how do they find what they are looking for when they get there?
9. My landing pages have too much "friction"
10. Outbound Marketing is not dead, it just needs to be really, really, really targeted and specific.
11. TweetDeck is not all that different from my Outlook inbox, when you think about it.
12. If you "suck" then people tell everyone. If you don't they will tell two people. You need to be there and be aware of people who say you "suck."
13. Simple recipe for driving organic web traffic: create unique content, make sure it is valuable, create it often, and make it available to people for free
14. Listen to your customers and feature requests, but always keep a few product innovations up your sleeve to be a "surprise"
15. Chris Brogan enjoys beer, scotch and Canadian Club.He also knows a TON about inbound marketing.
16. Not the end of the world if a blogger or user posts something negative, it's an opportunity!
17. The first step in building a social marketing strategy is deciding who you are as a company. Businesses need to find their humanity if they want to do social media properly.
18. Social media is big on tactics, short on strategy.
19. Jeans and a jacket are the official uniform of inbound marketing.

Cool links, viral videos and more:

• Top Gobbledygook phrases used in 2008 and how to avoid them
• Backtweets
• Dabbleboard
• Web Worker Daily
• Steak Out in Franklin, MA
• Say No To Dirt
• ExecTweets
• TweetVolume
• Tim Walker from Hoovers summary of the event

Tweets:

RT @eperry: "We're not really addicted to Facebook or Twitter, we're addicted to our friends." (In reference to GenY) @timyoung

RT @ShaRayRay: RT @WineDiverGirl Twitter: "Even normal ppl use it now"

@dharmesh says Digg is feast or famine, StumbleUpon has a truer, more consistent rate of return...

@TimeTradeBlog, @michaelpearsun IMHO a mediocre blog - not updated at least 1 per week, more pitch than "share", no clear goal

I like to hear from the non-profits, because they are often forced to find very creative solutions to common business problems

a mediocre blog is more of a liability than no blog

if you have a community, give your community the chance to defend you against detractors before you step in.

people need to trust the messenger before they trust the message

your marketing is only as good as your measurement. so true, Mr. Ferriss!

RT @eperry: Social Media is long on tactics, short on strategy – no method to the madness (S. Rice-Lincoln)

RT @ssblog: Listening is not the first step in creating a social media strategy - understanding yourself/your company is.

RT @GreenSmith: You don't need a million people to have a powerful movement, just a few passionate people that can make things move

LOL! Great one! I wish I wasn't guilty of this one... RT @LucidContent: I vote for a new 'gobbledygook' term. "Driving" business.

so true of any campaign, not just "new mktg" ones RT @smc90: (panel ims09) most effective campaigns are integrated, especially content ones

all marketers now need to be publishers

if you build a RELATIONSHIP (an actual relationship) with the influencers BEFORE you need them it will pay dividends later

leads come from being there before they need you and building a relationship

@chrisbrogan, new lead gen turn marketing into business conversations, storytelling not ads.

Inbound Marketing Summit 2009, Part Two

Here's part two from the Inbound Marketing Summit in San Francisco. I've got a bit more time so have sorted through my "tweets" and I'm sharing only the best ones.

It is certainly a strange way to participate in an event. There are screens on either side of the room, "tuned in" to live feeds showing tweets about the Summit. You'll often see your own thoughts and comments (or pictures of you) floating by on the screen, and almost everyone has either a laptop open or their smart phone in their hand, and the sound of typing is almost as loud as the people speaking.

Tomorrow I'll pull together one more post, with just the highlight tweets and a few overriding themes and thoughts pulled from the content (which is king, by the way...)

Anyway, here you go...

conversation at #ims09 reminds me of something @southwestair said re hiring for social marketing .. hire for attitude, train 4 the job

"why would anyone pay you to do this?" true of many many businesses, no? not just "internet" and social networking ones ... #ims09

RT @rebekah_king: Moderator asks panelists "why would anyone pay you to do this?" elephant in the room *exposed* #ims091 minute ago from TweetDeck by the end of the year, we'll probably be monitoring 100 times more content than we are today... #ims0911

RT @alyce: like comment from radian6 - social media didn't invent negative comments, but gives us a way to engage #ims0913

RT @JGuthmann: "have to treat corporate website like it's a magazine. Consider editorial calendars, etc." from @jasonfalls #ims091 minute ago from TweetDeck @chrisbrogan talking about beers and drinking. again. Maybe I'm just sensitive because I'm thirsty. :-) #ims092

RT @CCSeed: "Is it recent? Is it relevant? That drives search" @jasonfalls #ims0914

Want traffic? Simple. Create unique content, make sure it is valuable, create it often, and make it available to people for free. #ims0920

@loic builds on Adobe AIR because AIR rocks. plain and simple. and I am not just saying that because of Demandbase Stream. :-) #ims0943

@loic best presentation at #ims09 so far. Can I get your slides, please? Love the thoughts on what people want (all for free, etc)4

Not the end of the world if a blogger or user posts something negative, it's an opportunity! Why do they feel that way? R they right? #ims0913

RT @marcusnelson: Ship as soon as you can, even if it is far from being perfect - @loic #ims0916

It's funny....Seesmic is like "seismic" (as in change) but said with @Loic's French accent. #ims0918

#sms09 seesmic presentation...by "community" does he mean social network? Or your online corproate community?20

ok. recurring theme #ims09. build a community. I get it. Am I so wrong to think I'm not there yet even though I should? Am I alone?21

@eperry something I tweeted earlier...isn't tweetdeck acting more like an inbox every day? #ims09 -funny b/c she is sitting right next to me24

inbound marketing not the end of outbound. It will just change the way we do it. we drive people to content now rather than to offers #ims0933

@dmscott if I received a message via carrier pigeon I'll tell you one thing...I would open it! #ims0936

RT @JoeMannaLive: many companies who write press releases write for their boss, not their audience. This has to change #ims0940

so odd...I find myself paying more attention to the tweets about the speakers than to the speakers themselves #ims091 minute ago from TweetDeck @mobomedia I'm using TweetDeck to take my notes...print them out later #ims092

in reply to mobomedia interesting point at #ims09 Is TweetDeck really all that different from my inbox? I use them in very similar ways -"interruption" marketing5

#ims09 money quote from @chrisbrogan - adult industry and Wall Street Journal have same problem right now!14

#ims09 lesson from adult industry marketing...in order to compete against free stuff, your value-add needs to be a personal relationship20

#ims09 topic I've been waiting for - applying "adult industry" marketing best practices to traditional business. Bummer no slides though.29

RT @JoeMannaLive: C = 4m + 3v + 2(i-f) - 2a -- Copyrighted to Marketing Experiments. Formula on conversions. Wow. #ims0943

#ims09 wow wow wow. Marketing experiments conversion index. so much in such a straightforward formula.43

Inbound Marketing Summit 2009, Part One

Today I am out of the office, sitting in a conference room at the Marriott San Francisco listening to a bunch of experts speak at the Inbound Marketing Summit.

I have never been in a room with more people "tweeting" in my entire life.

Getting in the spirit of things, I have been using Twitter to take notes...so here is my stream of "Tweets" for the morning session of the Inbound Marketing Summit, in reverse chronological order. Follow me on Twitter @jasondemandbase, follow the conference by searching on Twitter for #ims09...

RT @jfouts Every company owes it to their employees to define their social media policy #ims09 @charleneli11 minutes ago

RT @GreenSmith: Awesome preso by @charleneli Slides up later at slideshare.net/charleneli #ims0911 minutes ago

RT @davemorse: #IMS09 David Meerman Scott - Don't talk about your products... publish relevant & valuable content to specific buyer personas11 minutes ago

RT @fromechosign Sales 2.0 Ultimate Resource Guide http://bit.ly/BKm6C ConnectAndSell Demandbase EchoSign InsideView LucidEra Xactly ...14 minutes ago

#ims09 "giving up control" shouldn't be scary, too many people underestimate their prospects' bulls!@# detectors.17 minutes ago

#ims09 - multiple speakers stressing "giving up control" and letting people talk about you on their terms. Why is that so scary?18 minutes ago

# @aargenz1 you're right, demandbase focuses on b2b - we can ID ISPs, but value is identifying an IP when it is associated to a business.23 minutes ago in reply to aargenz1

#ims09 educating your curmudgeon about social media, identify their passion, show what social media has to offer related to that passion28 minutes ago

#ims09 do you work with a curmudgeon? "It's too risky" - "Unproven ROI" - "It's a fad, it's a waste of time"30 minutes ago

#ims09 twitter question - if they limit our number of characters, why make us put a # in front of terms we want to highlight?34 minutes ago

#ims09 the only way to understand social media is to actually use it36 minutes ago

#ims09 biggest hurdle these community vendors need to overcome - amount of work to create something that people are terrified will fail?37 minutes ago

RT @paulswansen: Retweeting @Genuine: Always love when someone brings up Cluetrain in a marketing conference Bravo @rossmayfield #ims0941 minutes ago

#ims09 yay! 90 minutes in, our first mention of swine flu44 minutes ago

hilarious! RT @CommunispaceCEO: @tamicasey Kinda like "5 white men in jeans talk about community". :) #ims0944 minutes ago

#ims09 LOL I am wearing the right uniform for the event, according to @dmscott ... jeans and a jacketabout 1 hour ago

#ims09 advice for life and work, don't criticize unless you have a suggestion on how to make things better, present in a constructive way.about 1 hour ago

#ims09 interesting question...impact of twitter on online communities? Are people tweeting about you rather than going to your community?about 1 hour ago

#ims09 - online community - empowering people to bitch and moan. In a good way!about 1 hour ago

#ims09 @chrisbrogan has mentioned beer 6 times, and it's not even 10:30. We know where his head is at!about 1 hour ago

#ims09 @chrisbrogan "hide the broccoli in the mashed potatoes" - inbound marketing content publishing advice?about 1 hour ago

#ims09 huge fear in building an online community for your company..."if you build it, they might not come"about 1 hour ago

@dmscott says: nobody cares about your products except for you. they care about their problems.about 2 hours ago

#ims09 @dmscott on the internet, you are what you publishabout 2 hours ago

#ims09 think of the different visitor or buyer "personas" of the people visiting your website. Do you have all your bases covered? DMSabout 2 hours ago

@JoeMannaLive free wifi at #ims09 is cool, power outlets in first two rows. But it doesn't allow VPN access! Bummer! I hate webmail.about 2 hours ago in reply to JoeMannaLive

monitoring the #ims09 stream waiting for it to start, surrounded by marketing peeps. Nice!about 3 hours ago

Sitting and checking email, waiting for #ims09 to startabout 3 hours ago

Twitter to the Left of Me, Twitter to the Right

by Jason Stewart

Twitter has been all over the place lately, and it is one of those things I think I understand the basics - build up a network of friends or like-minded individuals who will tolerate the occasional bit of self-promotion as long as you share other interesting stuff too, and you don't become that insufferable clod at the party who does nothing but talk about himself. That's the easy part. I've always been sort of a wallflower anyway...but I still honestly feel like I must be missing something.

I'm on Twitter (@jasondemandbase) and posting occasionally, and replying and re-tweeting things of interest which is half the battle in and of itself, but I'm concerned that I should have a personal Twitter in addition to a work Twitter...which I don't. Demandbase has a "corporate" twitter account (@demandbase) but we only just set it up and I am sure we are not monitoring it closely enough. Can I monitor more than one Twitter account on a client like TweetDeck or twhirl? Which is better? What's the best Twitter tool for BlackBerry? iPhone? Have I been too indescriminate in who I follow? Is there a better way to stay on top of what's interesting and weed out the "I just ate a delicious sandwich" tweets? Why don't I love this as much as everyone tells me I should? Why does it seem so labor intensive to keep on top of it all, even if you are using RSS feeds to monitor the topics you are interested in?

It's not that I don't "get" it, because I think I do. I just don't know that I am doing all that I can to capitalize on everything Twitter has to offer. So, in an effort to better myself I have been diligently collecting articles on Twitter that I have every intention of reading, but that I simply haven't yet. Feedback welcome! Or add to the list....

• How to Measure Engagement on Twitter—and Savor the Tweet Smell of Success - MarketingProfs
• 5 Steps to Going Viral on Twitter - Copyblogger
• SEOptimise has been chock full of Twitter goodness in their "Twitter Friday" series
• • 15 Tools Lists, Twitter Business & Social Life Resources
  • Twitter SEO News
  • Spectacular Growth, Tools Proliferation and the Ethics of Tweeting
  • Twitter Search Craze

I really need to read the SEOptimise stuff, looks really good. Help me prioritize, people!

Oh, Cluetrain Sounding Louder...

by Jason Stewart

I happen to be the leader of the San Francisco Salesforce.com user group, and we had an absolutely fantastic meeting this morning on social network marketing. Clara Shih, author of the forthcoming book The Facebook Era, spoke to a room packed with close to 100 people interested in learning how to use social networks like Facebook or Twitter for business.

I'll try to pull some thoughts together on that and post it to my user group blog, but it reminded me of something my wife shared with me a few weeks back. She was listening to talk radio, and they were talking about marketing and modern business, as well as social networks - and the host kept referring to a book called The Cluetrain Manifesto.

Wikipedia defines The Cluetrain Manifesto as "...a set of 95 theses organized and put forward as a manifesto, or call to action, for all businesses operating within what is suggested to be a newly-connected marketplace." The entire book is available online, for free,  but there are a few of the 95 theses that really stand out in this context...

# 8 - In both internetworked markets and among intranetworked employees, people are speaking to each other in a powerful new way.

# 9 - These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.

#10 - As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked market changes people fundamentally.

#11 - People in networked markets have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from vendors. So much for corporate rhetoric about adding value to commoditized products.

Did I mention these were all written in 1999? Almost 10 years ago!

Good stuff, and again, the whole book is available for free here.