Smashmouth B2B Blog: Sales & Marketing Demand Gen

Lead Gen Experts Should Take "Campaign" Out of Their Vocabulary

Last week, I was out with the team at Focus.com and enjoying "bourbon and proteins" with Craig Rosenberg (The Funnelholic)  when the subject of campaigns came up from his point in a recent post to "forget campaigns, build a factory."  We agreed completely that marketers that think in the world of "campaigns" are shortchanging their results.

Marketing programs need

• Consistency
• Momentum
• Staying power
• Adjustment

It may be that campaigns seem normal because our needs change, strategies are modified or budgets are handed out piecemeal, but the most successful clients both Craig and I work with all treat marketing programs as ongoing efforts.

• Budget for ongoing activity - Treat it like headcount. Would you hire good talent and then shut them off 60 days later?
• Remain committed to the effort - Most common example here is when a marketer gets gung-ho to start blogging to boost inbound marketing and then stops publishing regularly.
• Results take time - In the world of B2B, sales cycles can be long. Don't try to measure pipeline results in just months. Give it time and commitment.
• Measure what you can measure - If you can't wait a year to measure revenue impact, measure tangible results: Did the introductory meeting result in a second meeting? Did the email sent result in a clickthrough?
• React - Make that adjustment -- but adjust, don't start and stop.  If you see something that needs a tweak, stay productive while you are tweaking or have your vendor/team work on something complementary to the project while you make that quick adjustment.
• Conserve Costs - Lastly, consider the cost impact of starting, stopping and switching gears.  There always are considerable startup and adjustment efforts and ramp-up costs.  Optimize your budget by creating programs with power. 
  

Focus.com is Creating Knowledge and Content and Running First Class Webinars

I've been participating with Focus.com as one of their contributing Focus Experts.  The site is a community destination for business leaders to find and produce industry information, research, whitepapers and webinars.  The content value is huge, and the knowledge generated is phenomenal and growing daily.  If content syndication and webinars are part of your demand gen mix, you should explore Focus in more detail.

What's' behind the curtain?  I'm conducting a webinar for them this week, The 10 Pillars of an Ideal B2B Demand Gen Platform, and having done many webinars -- and being a demand gen marketer myself -- I've been utterly impressed with the process and the team putting the event together.  

I've shared webinar tips before in Lead Gen Tips: How To Produce A Successful Webinar, but one thing Focus added to the agenda for preparation was to run through the mechanics of the webinar-hosting software.  We did a practice session where each presenter used the platform to push slides to the audience, comment between moderators, and deal with Q&A.  I've done enough webinars to have seen most of these functions before, but the simple task of reviewing them for 15 minutes beforehand was helpful. 

Also, kudos to the ON24 staff for sharing best practices.  My favorite: Use the mute button as a caugh button only; don't stay on mute as you may forget to unmute yourself when it's time to talk. I've fallen victim to that before.

Join me and Craig Rosenberg, the Funnelholic, Tuesday March 2, at 10AM PST / 1PM EST.  You can register here: The 10 Pillars of an Ideal B2B Demand Gen Platform.