Category: B2B Lead Generation


Is Your Marketing and Sales Approach a Product of Weakest Links?

Filed Under: B2B Lead Generation, E-Marketing, Sales by Prairie Sky Group — Leave a comment
January 29, 2012

Marketing Lead Generation Minneapolis St Paul Minnesota AtlantaWould you show up on a first date by bringing an engagement ring and your parents along?  While this may be a custom in some countries, it could be interpreted as intrusive or presumptuous in our culture.  Courtship takes some finesse, and often requires a number of steps. Often the best approach is the product of each of these steps.  So why should it be any different with inbound and outbound marketing, or sales?

Recently, my son-in-law proudly informed me of his number one page ranking for his new furniture outlet business.  I was impressed and ran a quick Google search to confirm it.  Sure enough, he was number one.  However, I was more impressed with the number two search rank which had a value statement in the search response promising me I’d get the best design at an affordable price.  My son-in-law’s statement said he had 10,000 square feet of warehouse space.  I didn’t much care, because I wasn’t looking for a warehouse.   When I dutifully went back to my son-in-law’s number one ranking and clicked it, I was taken to his home page.  I’d been searching “sofas.”  This confused me a little.  When I did find what I was looking for, it took me four or five extra clicks.  Then there was no action I could take except to look at a picture of a sofa.  His competitor took me immediately to what I’d searched for and then offered me design help.

In the Prairie Sky Group business development model, there are three vertices to a strong prospect triangle.  One is inbound marketing, one is outbound marketing, and the other is sales.  All three are required for success.  But each individually is a product of a number of steps.  As you recall your grade school math, when you multiple a number or fraction between zero and one by another between zero and  one, the product is smaller.  It’s our job to get each of these steps as close to one as possible so the product is as high as possible.  This is very difficult.  It’s also why we need to test and retest in any campaign or sales approach.  Decrease the resistance.  Make each step an advance.  Incremental improvement in each of these steps leads to more qualified leads and greater close rates.

Did I mention that my son-in-law and daughter eloped?  That’s another story.

Do Great Things!

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

Tags: , , , ,
Comment

My 100th Blog Post! Should You Blog?

Filed Under: B2B Lead Generation, Clients, Marketing, Personal Marketing Skills by Prairie Sky Group — 1 Comment
January 6, 2012

Marketing and Lead Generation Minneapolis MinnesotaA lot of marketers and companies ask themselves if they should start blogging in order to generate leads.  It’s the new conventional wisdom.  So there are millions of business blogs.  And there are thousands of marketing blogs, some great, but most very dusty.

I started the Prairie Sky blog as an experiment.  I had some grandiose ideas, a few ulterior and selfish motives.  I wanted to see if I could create 25 posts with a small investment of time.  I wanted to test the conventional wisdom that you need a blog to generate traffic and leads.  As goals, these turned out to be important, yet not as important as I thought they would, so I keep asking myself, why I blog?

I thought my blog would be about the technical aspects of how to create leads.  I have a few posts on these subjects such as how to create a name based gender-assigning algorithm, or 30 tips for running a webinar, or how to create an automated marketing campaign or great landing page criteria.  I will expand some of these because I’m involved in the technical details of tools and trade every day.

But rather, it is the soft subjects of sales and marketing management, messaging, motivation, understanding clients and culture that I have gravitated toward.

One reason is that I see such a poor understanding of the fundamentals amongst my clients, especially at the management level, that the tools and technical discussion seems wasted.  For example, it doesn’t matter if you have a competitive keyword analyzer or generator if you haven’t thought your story through and written for humans.  It doesn’t matter if you can run an automated campaign or create a landing page if you don’t understand your prospects.  So I have leaned toward the basics.

This doesn’t answer the question of whether you should blog.  But if you are thinking of starting a blog for your company because it will make you famous, create a jillion leads, sell more product, it is just one step.

In some ways, I am surprised at reaching the 100 mark.  This is small in comparison to many, though more than most.  I’m not sure what I expected… perhaps a band and fireworks.

I’ve learned a lot.  In the end, the reason I blog is because it’s simply the right thing to do.  It allows me to connect and help other people, dialogue (internally and externally), test ideas, and serve our marketing community.  I am compelled to do it.  I recommend it.

I’m excited to see where it will lead next.  Thanks for your support.

Do Great Things!

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
Lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

Tags: , , ,
Comment

CEOs: Call Your Company – Access to Experts Part II

Filed Under: B2B Lead Generation by Prairie Sky Group — Leave a comment
November 14, 2011

Marketing and Lead Generation Minneapolis St Paul MinnesotaThe other day I needed to get a quote on a service costing tens of thousands of dollars.  I visited a website of a well known vendor, spent five minutes trying to find the information I needed, then looked for the “Contact Us” page.  The page had no phone number, only an email form.  Looking further, I finally found a number and called.

I got an automated phone system, listened to the endless array of options and pushed the number that sounded the most likely.  I was routed to India or Pakistan and immediately asked for my name and telephone number.  Patiently I gave the information and explained what I was looking for.  Twenty minutes later, after numerous checks with the attendant’s “supervisor,” I gave up.  The person on the phone had failed to understand my need.  That company was Equifax.

Five minute later I was talking to Trans Union.  I found the number quickly on the Internet, dialed and talked to a person who stuck with me, forwarded my request to a business sales person who called back within 30 minutes, and gave me a full quote.  The value of the transaction could be up to $65,000.

Of course you’re familiar with this phenomenon.  But my question is this.  If we are all familiar, and have experiences like this, then why does the difficulty of helping a prospect via the Internet or phone still persist?  VPs of Marketing, what will your CEO find when he calls his own company? Surf your own sites.  Call your own number.  You might be surprised.

Do great things.

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (cell 24×7)

Tags: , , , ,
Comment

Resistance is Futile

Filed Under: B2B Lead Generation, E-Marketing by Prairie Sky Group — Leave a comment
November 3, 2011

Landing Page ConversionsResistance is futile… and a factor in Marketing Experiments formula for landing page conversions.

Their formula: C=4m + 3v +2(i-f) -2a. (A brainstopper in itself.)

A summary: The number of conversions is equal to four times the motivation of the user, plus three times the clarity of the value proposition, plus twice the quantity of the incentive to take action minus the friction element, minus twice the anxiety of entering information.  A more detail explanation can be found here.

For those less analytical, the formula from the prospect viewpoint is:  “What I want, plus what you got, minus the hassle.”

But it got me to thinking that as marketers and sales people, not only do we need to focus on our segmentation and value proposition, but we need to avoid resistance.  Being a sort of curmudgeon, there are large number of things that create resistance for me:

  • The time of day
  • Your interruption
  • Your subject line
  • Your unearned sense of familiarity
  • Who you are
  • Your yakking on about yourself
  • Your failure to get to the point
  • Your lack of humor or elegance
  • The length of your email
  • The number of calls to action
  • The number of steps I have to take to find out more, if I am in your segment, and you do seem to have something of value.

This is why there are spam filters.  Like drug resistance for pathogens in evolutionary biology, resistance is evolving and increasing to the ways we market and sell.

There are ways to minimize these “resistances.”  But what if we eliminated them entirely?

What if we just provided easy to find, valuable information, for free when our prospects wanted it?  Would that be giving into the Borg?

Do Great Things.

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry with Qualified Leads
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

Tags: , ,
Comment

Help Wanted! Looking for a DARC Person.

Filed Under: B2B Lead Generation, E-Marketing, Personal Marketing Skills by Prairie Sky Group — Leave a comment
August 16, 2011

Marketing and Lead Generation Minneapolis Minnesota St Paul AtlantaA while ago, Hubspot wrote an interesting e-book called, “Hiring in the DARC Ages… Are the Right People on Your Marketing Team?  I recommend the e-book, and you can download it here.

The essence of the article is that the characteristics of successful inbound marketers are represented by the categories: Digital, Analytic, Reach and Content.  In other words, D= Hire Digital Citizens, A= Hire for Analytical Chops, R= Hire for Web Reach and C= Hire Content Creators.

My current client is looking for such a marketing person.  I’ve written the following introduction as well as a “test” for others to see how you stack up.  You can take the test online and apply here. Please feel free to rip off the intro or the test with credit if you find it useful.

The job introduction goes something like this:

Senior Inbound Digital Marketer

The old ways of marketing are dead.  Today 80% of our clients find us online.  And many prospects don’t buy from us immediately.  We have abandoned the marketing techniques of interruption and coercion.  Instead we are building trust with our prospects by providing useful information and content.  The tools we use are the web and social media.

The Burchfield Group is embarking on a tremendous growth initiative and is seeking a Senior Inbound Digital Marketer to join our team. This position will report to the Chief Marketing Officer.

The ideal candidate will possess a rare and unique combination of analytic and creative skills and has a demonstrated sense of curiosity and learning.  Your analytic skills come in two forms. The first is a working mastery of digital tools from html, to SEO, to Landing Page design, to database skills.  The second requires the ability to analyze inbound data for patterns, trends and actions.  The creative portion requires key content development, copy, and writing skills, as well as an eye for understanding what catches a prospects attention.

So you are part Spock, part Rembrandt and part Shakespeare.  Don’t measure up?  Don’t worry, no one does.  You use your sense of curiosity to learn the parts that you don’t have.  You also have the opportunity to work with seasoned marketing professionals (that’s me) who can help you understand our space.

Evaluate yourself by taking the test:

Skill or Familiarity Low Medium High
1. Content Development
a. Have written a novel or a short story
b. Have published your own technical article
c. Publish a professional blog
d. Publish a personal blog
e. Have read War and Peace
f.  Have lied about reading War and Peace
g. Have designed a professional website
h. Have designed a personal website
i.  Have produced a video
j.  Have other creative and content skills
2. Digital Citizenship and Skills
a.  Ability to do basic html code
b. Familiarity with a variety of content management systems
c.  Familiarity with Google Analytics, Web Trends etc
d.  Have done successful SEO
e.  Have completed a link strategy
f.   Have put up a professional Facebook account
g.  Have put up a professional LinkedIn account
i.   Have put up a blog
j.   Have established a channel on YouTube
k.  Have familiarity with Social Media
l. Experience with Direct Email and Landing Page systems such as Eloqua, Marketo, etal
m.  Created a lead scoring protocol
n.  Been blacklisted
o.  Used curation services
p.  Use of Photoshop
3.  Analytics
a.   Know your way around a pivot table
b.   Can do a VLookup
c.   Use Access
d.   Use common BI tools
e.   Set up a dashboard
f.    Used Google analytics or Web Trends
g.   Ability to analyze results and take action
h.   Been wrong more than once
i.    Been right at least twice
j.    Used data to stand up to power
4.  Marketing
a.  Developed a messaging / communications strategy
b.  Developed marketing ROI strategy
c.  Used Web PR services
d.  Command knowledge of a CRM or SFA
e.  Written a case study or video
f.   Developed a market or segment plan
g.  Managed a vendor relationship
h.  Defined personas
i.   Supported a sales team
j.  Created a sales PowerPoint presentation
k.  Asked why sales is still using presentations

Do Great Things

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

Tags: , , , ,
Comment