• Nine out of ten B2B marketers are using some form of content marketing.
• The top content marketing tactics (by usage) are articles (79% of respondents), social media other than blogs (74%), blogs (65%), e-Newsletters (63%), and case studies (58%).
• Comparing 2011 to 2010, the use of blogs and videos both increased by 27% and the use of white papers grew by 19%.
• Companies are spending about 26% of their marketing budgets on content marketing efforts, and 60% of respondents said they will increase spending on content marketing in 2012.

Although more time and money is being allocated toward content marketing and management there is still a long way to go before most business professionals fully understand the true potential of proper content management. For example, only 39% of survey respondents identified lead management and lead nurturing as a primary content marketing goal. This could mean that marketers are focusing on brand more often.  Being on the pulse of lead generation activity for our clients Mercury pays particular attention to identifying where the prospect is at in the buying cycle.  Consistent lift in conversion rates result in catching buyers in early research phases of an intended purchase.  We’ve identified many different steps in the prospect lifecycle. Different, compelling content needs to be generated for each stage to nurture your sales leads and convert them into clients. Mercury Leads increases your opportunities by bringing you qualified sales leads through our developed content management strategies.

B2B Content Marketing: 2012 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends Released! is a post from: Lead Generation Strategies: No Longer A One-Hit Wonder!

As an example, technology is outlined in the book as a barrier to entry. After receiving an e-mail your potential prospect has several options:

1. Read it and reply (highly unlikely)
2. Read it and discard it
3. Dismiss it as spam
4. Dismiss it as spam and block future e-mails from your address

More often than not the prospect will dismiss your e-mail as spam or simply ignore it The “Circle of Leverage“ is designed to help you to surpass this and other barriers, allowing you to get in the door.

So what is the Circle of Leverage? The circle of leverage system is a top down sales lead strategy that gives detailed steps on how to cause your potential customer to ‘want’ to let you in the door. According to the author this can be accomplished by activating one of your targets four ‘Key Engagers.’ The four key engagers are; your prospects fears, insecurities, competitiveness, or desires what Mercury Leads refers to as the “pain or gain” factor. For example, if your target fears what might happen if you aren’t let in the door, (missed opportunity) what will motivate them to give you the chance to present your ideas? Acting upon one or more of these key engagers will enable you to get your foot in the door with a highly qualified sales lead.

In total, the system includes 15 steps. There are ten preparation steps designed to expand your knowledge base of your potential client and five execution steps. After reading through all the steps of the Circle of Leverage system it is easy to envision a cohesive business development process. While this lead generation system is not guaranteed it does seem to be a sound concept. The real question is does it work. For Mercury Leads, it is a sales lead system that definitely seems to present good ideas on how to get in. At the same time, many of the ideas presented in the book seem redundant. Preparing and executing follow up steps have been a part of the sales lead process forever. The tactics that sets this book apart is what happens behind the scenes. Using several ‘leverage points’ the lead generation system is designed to cause your targets to be talking about you or your product before you even talk to them in person. This is where the aforementioned key engagers become essential in your pursuit of a sale. One example Boylan gives in the book outlines letters that he sends out to several targets in a business that trigger the competitiveness engager. In these letters he describes how he is already talking to several of their competitors about his product. Boylan believes the targets are much more likely to let you in the door because their competitive instincts compel them to learn what their competitors already know about you and your product.

This book describes a system that, on the surface, seems to be a bulletproof idea. However, this system seems a bit coercive at some points and, if placed the wrong hands, I could see how people could make some wrong turns. Nonetheless there are several good ideas presented in the book and was definitely a good read.  We give the book a thumbs up.

The Fifteen Steps:

Preparation:

1. Define what you need vs. what you want
2. Do your homework
3. Develop a prospect profile
4. Understand your prospect’s nature; key drivers such as competitiveness or opportunity for gain.
5. Crystallize the net benefits of your offer
6. Know your competitors net benefits and your key points of difference
7. Reality Check: Why do you deserve to get in?
8. Crystallize the net benefits of granting you access
9. Take stock of your firepower
10. Check your attitude

Execution

1. Prepare your initial communication and put it in play
2. Flush out your prospect
3. Dance, Sponge, and Reiterate
4. Align and champion your offer
5. Open their door

Book Review – The Power To Get In, by Michael Boylan is a post from: Lead Generation Strategies: No Longer A One-Hit Wonder!

The study examined 3 years of sales lead data across 6 companies that generate and respond to web leads, from over 15,000 sales leads and over 100,000 call attempts.  The behavioural study revealed when sales representatives had success around calling web generated B2B sales leads. To find these facts, we looked at sales leads that were captured through a web form, and attempted or called at least one time. Summarized below are some of the more interesting findings related to speed and timing when responding to web generated leads:

1. BEST DAYS TO CONTACT & QUALITY SALES LEADS – Wednesdays and Thursdays are the best days to call in order to contact (by 49.7% over the worst day) and qualify (by 24.9% over the worst day) leads.  Thursday is the best day to contact a lead in order to qualify that lead (by 19.1% better than the worst day).
2. BEST TIMES OF THE DAY TO CONTACT & QUALIFY SALES LEADS – 4-6 p.m. is the best time to call to make contact with a lead (by 114% over the worst time block). 8‐9 a.m. and 4‐5 p.m. are the best times to call to qualify a lead (by 164% better 1‐2pm, the worst time of the day).  4‐5p.m. is the best time to contact a lead to qualify over 11‐12 a.m. by 109%).
3. DIMINISHING ODDS – The odds of calling to contact a lead decrease by over 10 times in the 1st hour. The odds of calling to qualify a lead decrease by over 6 times in the 1st hour.

 Some say that much of life is timing.  I guess it is,…

Is it Important to Follow Up on Leads Promptly? You betcha! is a post from: Lead Generation Strategies: No Longer A One-Hit Wonder!

Our clients include health care, technology, software, telecommunications, wholesale distribution, business services and retail trade.  Requirements include a minimum of 5 years of professional sales experience, advanced computing skills, self motivation with discipline to reach established and agreed upon dialing and management reporting objectives, the ability to overcome objections and steer a prospect to program objectives. IT or Manufacturing Sales experience is a plus. This is a part time to full time hire opportunity that starts at $40,000 a year with bonus opportunities that can help you reach your personal financial objectives.  The position is a virtual work from home opportunity. Interested applicants please send a resume and references to pplvan@mercuryleads.com.

Contractor must execute a NDA-Non Compete upon interview invitation.

As an independent contractor responsibilities and duties include:

• Senior-level sales background.
• Referenceable Career Path (We call references)
• Confident of your ability to motivate our client prospects over the phone.
• Grasps technology products, and can quickly adapt to product knowledge in a variety of industries
• Can articulate the value proposition of our client’s products and overcome objections to same.
• Can Self Manage, Program Administration and meet program goals.
• Willing to and can contribute to the strategic direction of our programs.
• 15-25 contacts reached per hour production capability for a single project.
• Success metrics of 1-10 leads per 100 outbound call attempts depending on complexity of the campaign.
• Daily reporting of activity, totals of call attempts and lead reporting via spreadsheet
• Will execute email follow ups to prospects and set appointments using Google Calendar
• Can interface with various SFA software (Salesforce, ACT, Microsoft CRM, Sage CRM)

Mercury Leads, Inc. is an equal opportunity employer.

Business Development Professional Needed For Integrated Marketing Agency is a post from: Lead Generation Strategies: No Longer A One-Hit Wonder!

• 44% of all mobile users checked their mobile in the last 30 minutes.
• 86% are between 18-44 years old & 54% make over $50k a year.
• 68% own a smartphone.
• 45% say that when they wake up checking their smartphone is the first or second thing they do (smartphone was 2nd to going to the bathroom.

Even more compelling, average purchase intent of mobile marketing is 5x of online marketing.  Simply stated people use their mobile to “save time” or to “kill time”, and they can do this anywhere or anytime, giving the media instant dominance over online marketing.  So how can you use Mobile Marketing to enhance your B2B marketing?  The following are ideas for ways in which Mobile can be utilized as part of a B2B marketing/communication strategy:

1. Lead Generation – Offer something of value in exchange for signing up to your ‘opt-in’ list; provide potential customers a link to a white-paper, a special discount, a video, or other standard B2B strategic tools in exchange for adding themselves to your prospect list via Mobile opt-in.
2. News/Updates – Important and time-sensitive customer updates can be sent directly to your opted-in clients using SMS (text) messaging. Further, people like being ahead of the crowd and being among “the first” to know something; send your customers updates about product launches, product updates or upcoming events.
3. Emergency Notification – SMS (text) messaging is a great way to notify your employees or customers quickly. Send critical updates of last-minute event location changes or just before your company’s important meetings.
4. Special Promotions – Communicate with your customers, distributors or franchises via SMS with the details about special promotions they can offer to customers.
5. Employee Assignments – Improve your customer service and dispatch employees to their next customer location via text messaging.
6. Presentations – Communicate with your audience during in-person or webinar presentations, conduct polling.
7. Customer Service – Many companies offer customer support and problem resolution via text messaging. This can save you money and help you channel problem tickets more effectively.
8. Events – Implement a text messaging marketing strategy to promote weekly meetups or networking events for members, or remind employees about upcoming meetings. Send out key logistic information like changes of venue or detailed parking instructions. You can even take event registration information via text!
9. Customer Payments – Use mobile technology to allow your field-service reps to take customer payments via mobile; get immediate payment, encrypt customers credit card information, and manage payments risk-free!
10. Trade Shows – Use Mobile at trade shows to exchange information with prospects; allow them to enter contests, request and receive company information,  or see a video about your product or service.  Send text alerts to attendees about your next presentation so they’ll have time to get there before it starts!

As you can see there is a lot that you can do as B2B marketers to use mobile marketing in your communications mix.  As we know, B2B marketing involves multiple touch points with well though out lead cultivation process incorporated.  Mobile can be one of the tactics deployed to make you a thought leader in your industry and this leads to more business.  What are you waiting for?

Is B2B Ready for Mobile Marketing? is a post from: Lead Generation Strategies: No Longer A One-Hit Wonder!

The difficulty for business is to find a purpose to communicate and then spend the time (the currency of our day), into a viable business strategy. It’s simply not useful for a business owner to tweet about news that isn’t inherently interesting outside the company because it’s self-serving and self-aggrandising.  The followers are almost always competitors or free-loaders rather than actual viable customers.  This last point is most crucial, because it provides the key to understanding the real power of Twitter.  Successful tweets are those that get retweeted by other users.  Most productive business people are too busy to respond to your tweet as opposed to more viable mediums such as direct B2B telemarketing, a virtual event, or primary research in the form of a whitepaper that helps your prospect evaluate your solution from arms length. In these examples a small business will struggle to produce anything that meets these criteria. And if that’s the case, the business must ask itself whether or not Twitter is a waste of its time and/or money.

Twitter is a Waste for B2B Lead Generation is a post from: Lead Generation Strategies: No Longer A One-Hit Wonder!

b2b lead generation

1. Create a Game Plan:
The big reason why most lead generation marketing strategies fail is lack of planning. All too often ideas get implemented into action without the proper foresight to know if the idea is tangible or not. Carefully plan out a lead generation strategy from beginning to end and try to come up with possible problems that might arise. Before you start any of that, you need to clearly define your b2b lead generation goal. What do you want SEO to do for your company? Generate leads? Increase your online presence? Create sales?

2. Evaluate Your Resources Honestly:
Before you being your search engine optimization marketing quest, you need to honestly evaluate if your company has the capabilities to perform the task. Many times companies will sign up for the whole package only to find that SEO is an ongoing and arduous process. Ask yourself if you have the personnel to manage the job or if you will need to outsource the project. This involves content developers, programmers, competitive researchers and technical personnel to handle code and server issues. After your site is properly optimized it is going to take an ongoing team to promote the site, keep it current with fresh content and build a network through backlinking. Is your team knowledgeable with all aspects of SEO? Once you have determined that you have the necessary personnel and you have a good plan, you need to figure out if you have the budget to accomplish the task. Do you have the long-term budget to do search engine optimization marketing correctly?

3. Establishing Metrics:
After your goals have been set you need to see if your lead generation strategies are working. Different companies will have different goals for their search engine optimization marketing campaigns. Before you start your campaign you should implement analytics software into your websites code to track your progress. A lot of companies view an SEO campaign as a success by the amount of #1 rankings they achieve. This way of looking at things is irrelevant to the success of a lead generation campaign. Search results can be radically different depending on what computer you’re logged on to, if you’re currently in your Google Account or by the location of the searcher (Geotracking). You should be looking for keyword rankings over a period of time, the number of people coming to your site based upon keywords and most importantly conversions. It doesn’t matter if you bring 2,000,000 people to your site. If they don’t pick up the phone or fill out that form you are ultimately wasting your b2b lead generation efforts.

4. Ongoing Promotion:
Search engine optimization marketing is not a “One and Done” strategy. Search engines view websites almost like living creatures in the sense if they don’t grow and evolve they will not be ranked as important as other sites. Once you have chosen the right keywords, that fit your business, are ranked highly and have low competition, then you must implement those keywords into your content. Content is King! It is not enough anymore to simply stuff your website with keywords. Your lead generation team needs to produce regular content, promote the site through social networks using micro sites and landing pages as well as building an extensive backlinking network.

5. Establishing a Long-Lasting Image
Search engine optimization marketing is just one tool your company can use in this new age of digital media. SEO should be integrated with social media, video, podcasts, webinars, lead nurturing, email marketing, directory listings, affiliate marketing, mobile and sms marketing, pay per click and teleprospecting. All of these b2b lead generation tools put together, along with traditional marketing efforts, should create a long-lasting brand for your company that creates excitement for your customers. Coordination between public relations, brand managers, the creative team, sales and the website team takes a lot of effort but only through teamwork will your marketing campaigns pay off.

To Your Success,

John Clifford

Five Tips To Establish Successful Search Engine Optimization Marketing Campaigns For Your Business In 2010 is a post from: Lead Generation Strategies: No Longer A One-Hit Wonder!

When you stand back and look at what really makes a consumer buy something it boils down to trust. Sure the features, the packaging, the warranty, the status symbol, the logo, the brand history and a whole host of other factors come into play when determining if a product will be accepted by the general public, but do they trust the product enough to solve their needs? Does your product or service convey enough trust to make the consumer take a chance and spend their budget with your internet marketing company? What about B2B Buyers? B2B Buyers are not simply risking their personal money but the company’s money, as well as their reputation in the corporation. Are you, the sales lead generation company, doing enough to establish trust with your prospects? In this article I will discuss some direct marketing strategies you can do to establish trust with your prospects.

Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither is trust. You, as an internet marketing company, have to establish a reputation as a trustworthy and creditable organization. The best way to go about doing this is to build rapport with your prospects through ongoing direct marketing such as email or direct mail communications. Nobody likes to be bombarded with spam so give your prospects something. Through direct marketing you can give them something that will pique their interest such as an article you would like to share, a podcast, a webinar invite or helpful tips that make their job easier. The longer you are in communication with your prospects, the shorter the time it will take your prospects to learn to trust you.

When it comes to establishing trust it is nice to have proof of your creditability from an unbiased 3rd party organization. We recommend joining various respected sales lead generation or direct marketing trade associations or groups. One of the best things any company can do is join the Better Business Bureau. Once you have joined these organizations feel free to use their logos on your website and on any direct marketing communications you use on a regular basis. Another good idea is to freely share testimonials of other clients as well as client case examples. Attach some actual numbers as proof to show your prospects exactly how much your internet marketing company increased revenue or cut costs. Prospects will immediately feel more at ease with you as an internet marketing company, knowing others have been down the same path where they are about to go.

Another sales lead generation strategy you can use to immediately establish trust with your prospects is to create a guarantee program. If you are able, offer a no questions asked guarantee vs. a guarantee that has stipulations or hidden clauses. The more open you are with your guarantee the better. The guarantee, especially important in sales lead generation, acts like a safety net against B2B buyer’s remorse. The guarantee will help put the prospect as ease and they will be more willing to buy from your company now instead of doing more research or going with a competitor.

One of the biggest mistakes we as sales lead generation professionals see every day with clients is that their content is focused on them instead of the prospect. When a prospect reaches out to you, the internet marketing company, they are looking to fulfill a certain need they have. It is your job as a direct marketing organization to uncover that need and solve their specific problem. If you spend your time bragging about how long you have been in business for or that you offer quality products and service you will be pretty much wasting the prospects time. B2B Buyers have heard it all before. They are looking for tangible solutions to their unique problems from a fair and decent internet marketing company at an honest price. Spend the majority of your efforts focused on their needs not yours.

Lastly, learn to be patient. The majority of B2B Buyers are not ready to buy today. It takes diligence and commitment to win the hearts and minds of B2B Buyers. If you can stick it out for the long haul and really work on establishing relationships with your prospects; eventually those prospects will turn into life long clients.

Good Selling,

Paul J. Plvan
Mercury Leads, Inc.

Simple Direct Marketing Strategies to Establish Trust with Your Prospects is a post from: Lead Generation Strategies: No Longer A One-Hit Wonder!

There are two main components to any undertaking, marketing related or not, that determine if the endeavor will be successful: Research and Testing.  All too often we see b2b lead generation campaigns falter because someone jumped the gun or failed to refine their processes until they were running at optimal efficiency. Today, I’m going to talk about the importance of marketing testing and how you can immediately improve your marketing campaigns through simple tests.

Sales lead generation is one of the more interesting sub-industries simply because things are constantly changing. New ideas, processes and technology make b2b lead generation an evolving science. It is because things are changing that, we as sales lead generation professionals, must constantly test our work to make sure we are getting the best possible gains from our efforts. Marketing testing is a great concept but is wasted if you don’t have tangible methods of testing.

Marketing testing protocol contains 6 major parts: the question, testing variables, metrics, validation, results and interpretation. You should establish a plan for these six components before any actual marketing test takes place. The question, pertains to what you hope to answer i.e. what conversion beckon will produce a better click through rate? Ask yourself what you are hoping to achieve to come up with a primary or secondary market research question.

In the testing variables phase you want to clearly describe what you are specifically going to test. Make sure to include what will become your variables as well as establish a control sample. For example if you are testing a new landing page to see which design works better, you need to establish various options to test. Option one could be a large table with details on the offer. Option 2 could be a small table with less detail. Option 3 could contain no table and only an offer and a form to fill out. The key is to test each one against one another and establish a clear winner.

The third marketing testing protocol is metrics. Metrics are considered the, “what” phase in a marketing test. You need to determine specifically what you are going to measure in your sales lead generation tests. This could be a number of different things from click through rate, conversion rate, number of times a whitepaper has been downloaded or the number of clicks on a flash piece to an a special offer. It really is up to you what you are going to test and what type of b2b lead generation strategy you are using.

The fourth testing phase is called validation. In the validation phase you are going to determine various factors regarding the actual marketing test itself. Such factors include the sample size needed to perform an accurate test, the time frame required to gather a sizeable test sample, the length of the test itself and any outside influences that might be a factor during a sales lead generation test. Some outside factors to take note of are selection effect (a biased sample), using skewed analytics software (using analytics software which interferes with the code of a website thus making the webpage display incorrectly) and the timing effect (running a b2b lead generation test during peak months or slow months or running a test on a weekend vs. a weekday.)

The fifth phase in marketing testing is the results phase. The results phase is fairly straightforward, it is important to keep accurate data throughout the duration of the test. The last phase of testing is interpretation. It is during the interpretation phase of a test where the most insight can be gained; not only for the specific marketing test but also for future tests. Notes and comments should be filed away so that you can learn from your experiment and build upon it at a later time.

One of the important aspects to keep in mind regarding testing in sales lead generation is to never stop testing. A common mistake b2b lead generation professionals make is to test once and then run with the results. Once you run a marketing test and achieve optimal results you should take your best results and see if you can top them. Many times if you run a marketing test three or four different times you will see better results than you previously thought you would. With some practice in testing you will start to see better results with your marketing campaigns.

To Your Success,

Michael Cordova

The Importance of Testing is a post from: Lead Generation Strategies: No Longer A One-Hit Wonder!

World renowned telemarketing guru Jeff Gitomer once said, “You don’t get great selling in a day. You get great selling day by day.” This statement really personifies what it takes to be a great telemarketer. Sales is not a once and done process. In today’s business world, information is everywhere and is easily accessible. Companies looking to buy, now have options for them that were once unavailable. However, that doesn’t mean that C-Level executives won’t entertain a phone call from a professional b2b sales lead generation company. Even an expert telemarketer must now play by a new set of sales rules. I’ve outlined 10 steps to making an effective telemarketing call in today’s economy.

1.    Attitude – Before you pick up that phone your thoughts and emotional state have already determined if you will be successful or not. If you, the telemarketer, don’t have a good attitude, followed by expert knowledge and a true sense of passion the prospect is going to bail at the first opportunity. Be exceptionally well prepared with your product, script and b2b sales offer.  Prior to making that telemarketing call do something that puts you in the right frame of mind. Think of this time as warming up. Even Michael Jordan took practice shots before a game.

2.    The Opener – Once you have identified that you are communicating to the right person, present your value proposition in the first 30 seconds of the b2b sales call. Before the telemarketing call, craft an attention getter, typically referred to as the Value Proposition (Value Prop) or Unique Selling Proposition (USP).  This is the #1 reason that your prospect should remain on the telemarketing call with you.

3.    Find the Pain, Sell the Opportunity – In today’s business environment managers are increasingly being held accountable for costs and/or generating a profit. As a b2b sales lead generation expert your job is to identify the unpublished point of pain and explain  how your solution fills the void. Conversely, if your solution can increase unrealized sales or profitability, you, the telemarketer, are smart to present these opportunities quickly and succinctly.

4.    Interact – There’s nothing worse than a one-way conversation. Your prospect will soon exit the call.  An expert in teleprospecting lead generation is prepared prior to the call and probes the prospect for an opening to present their solution.    They do their homework and know the prospect, the company, and have a solid profile in hand prior to making the call.  They also have anticipated objections and can counter these with meaningful expert dialog enabling them to achieve their objectives for the call.

5.    People Buy From Experts – There is really only one reason b2b sales people thrive, they have more knowledge than the buyer. The professional telemarketer brings experience via their solutions that the buyer needs and doesn’t have. Telemarketing is the easiest and most efficient way to present these solutions to the decision maker and open the door to the demonstration.

6.    Focus on Maintaining – Your power questions should help guide the prospect to share what dissatisfies them most about their corporate situation. One tactic during a telemarketing call is to tell the prospect how you’ll stabilize their profits, safeguard against industry trends, overcome fear and abolish their worries. Prospects are just as motivated to maintain what they have as they are to buy something new.

7.    Practice Makes Perfect – Role Play. Rehearse in the mirror if you have to. Take the time to come up with a good script designed for teleprospecting lead generation and rehearse it until you don’t need the script. Then take it to the next level, pitch it without benefit of the telemarketing script.  If you’re the expert your product knowledge should allow you to succeed with the prospect pitch.

8.    Close – You’re saying this a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised at the number of telemarketing professionals that don’t have a defined path. You’re in charge of the call and need to stay in that position. Lead the prospect to where you envision and you will realize the predefined goals and objectives of your teleprospecting call.

9.    Cultivate the other 95% – In B2B sales it is may take to 5, 6, 7 or more telemarketing phone calls, webinars or face-to-face conferences to close the deal. During that time you need to build trust and credibility.  Position yourself and your organization as industry and thought leaders with articles, whitepapers, graphs, webinars, podcasts, testimonials and client case examples. Learn to read your prospect and present solutions to their objections. When the time is right don’t be afraid to ask for the sale. In telemarketing, persistence pays off. Each teleprospecting lead generation professional has their own style, learn which style works best for you then learn to refine it.

10.    Review – Take the time after each telemarketing call to review what you could have done better and then learn from those mistakes.

It takes a lot of time to become a great b2b sales lead generation expert. Remember, you will be rejected. You only fail when you quit. Don’t ever doubt yourself; with practice anyone can be a darn good telemarketer. To quote legendary teleprospecting connoisseur Red Motley, “Nothing happens until a sale is made.”

Good Selling,

Paul J. Plvan
Mercury Leads, Inc.

The Art of the B2B Sales Call is a post from: Lead Generation Strategies: No Longer A One-Hit Wonder!