Author Archives: Jason Stegent

The purpose of any top-notch marketing strategy is to continue building brand awareness and consumer engagement, with the ultimate goal of bringing on new clients and growing within your current customer base.

According to an IDG report, “59% of marketers are making lead gen their top priority in content marketing.” However, the outcome is only as good as the content provided; you get what you give. Appealing to diverse companies and industries in one piece of content can be daunting, especially when you’re at different levels in the relationships; from strangers to loyal customers.

Dana Rothman, Marketo, says “today’s consumers don’t respond well to self-promotion. They don’t want to be sold to; they want to be educated.” With that in mind, here are different types of content to get in front of your prospects at different stages of the buying cycle.

Content to boost recognition

Content to use: blogs, social media, keywords, press releases, web page, webinars

The prospect has no knowledge of your company, what it does, or who can use its products or services. On average, a person will only glance at a post for two seconds before they decide to click or keep scrolling. This makes the subject/topic of content crucial in order to grab and hold attention, enticing your target audience to engage.

Content to drive consideration and ‘sales ready’ leads

Content to use: eBooks, webinars, reports, whitepapers, guides, short videos

You’ve grabbed their attention. Great, now what?! Now you need to relate to where that prospect is in their buying journey. Show them that you understand the pains and challenges that they’re faced with, and that you look at solutions for those pains/challenges through a different lens than your competitors, ultimately separating yourself from the competition and helping your prospect understand why your approach is the way forward. This is a vital component in gaining prospects’ trust. And now more than ever, people buy from people that they trust.

Content to accelerate opportunities through the pipeline

Content to use: webinars, longer videos, podcasts, case studies, subscriptions, assessments

At this stage, you’re beginning to drill down into your business case. You’ve attracted the prospect and peaked their interest, so keep building. Dive deeper into how your products and services can help them with the challenges that they are faced with, ultimately allowing them to see ROI on the back-end.

This is a very important piece of the process. Unfortunately, too many marketers think that once they get to this point their work is done, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Having the right piece of content at this stage could be the difference between an opportunity getting stuck in the pipeline or one that crosses the goal line and becomes a win.

Content to up-sell your customer base

Content to use: virtual events, webinars, trials, demos, consultations, estimates/quotes, appointments, coupons and promo specials, emails

The most strategic B2B marketers today put a big emphasis on increasing relevance within existing accounts. Many times, your best prospect is already a client and unfortunately, too many B2B marketers forget that and miss out on an opportunity to substantially grow revenue.

If you’re currently driving value for your customers, they’ll be excited to hear about your next big idea. For instance, webcasts and virtual events have proven to be great platforms to touch your customer base in a more cost effective, measurable way, introduce them to the latest and greatest of what’s going on in your organization, ultimately creating new opportunities for your business in the process.

Sometimes the best opportunities are staring you right in the face. You just need to know how to market to them effectively!

Virtual Events are popping up more and more often, and it’s no wonder why; cutting costs, extending reach, and less stress in planning make the virtual world appealing to businesses of all sizes. So how can we compare the success of virtual environments to the traditional in-person event?

There are the obvious ways to measure success, like number of attendees and leads acquired. While these are quick and easy ways to assess events, these points alone do not show the full picture and therefore, the hosting organization misses essential information to measure the success of the event and what to build on for the next one. In order to fully understand how well an event has been implemented, we need to ask ourselves questions which analyze the event on a deeper level.

1. Did the attendees and presenters interact?
   A large portion of those attending an event do so for the networking aspect. Some may assume that the virtual world lacks this sort of person-to-person interaction, but there are actually more opportunities to communicate with one another. Attendees have the ability to engage in multiple conversations at once and feel more comfortable asking questions. They can also revisit these conversations after the event! Make sure to utilize and promote these features before, during, and after the event.

2. What percent of registered users actually logged on to the event?
   Whether someone forgets about the event or has a conflicting schedule, having 100% attendance is difficult at any event; so it is understandable that virtual events would have similar obstacles. Providing teasers and reminders will help keep the prospective attendees’ interest, but follow-up is just as important. Just like a good car, if it operates well and gets the job done, customers will return. Keeping updated, open communication pre and post- event will generate better outcome in attendance.

3. How long did the attendees stay at the event?
   Although attendance is a tried and true way of measuring event success, it doesn’t give an idea of how many attendees actually used the interface once they logged in. Generally, if attendees stay online for at least 90 minutes, they get a good feel for the materials and information provided. Interactive features and live communication engages the audience, prolonging their visit and allowing them to learn more.

4. How many people visited the On-Demand archive post-event?
   It’s always exciting to see the analysis after an event. The data says a lot about the success of the hard work put in, but don’t forget to add in the revisiting data at the conclusion of the archive period. This detail is easy to overlook but gives a broader idea of how your event was perceived.

5. Were there common trends in questions and suggestions?
   If there is a question or suggestion from the attendees that appears to be a theme, it may be useful to make this a section in future events. Listen to your audience. It will not only save time in the future but will also improve the quality of your attendees’ experience!

6. What was said about the event?
   Formal measuring tactics like surveys are always useful, but they only cover a limited area of the information. Monitoring social media platforms and comments left on forums can give an idea of the audience’s true feelings after they’ve had time to think about and review the experience. Responding to posts, whether it’s positive feedback or constructive criticism, will show that your organization values the feedback as well as provides another form of open communication.

Conclusion

There is no clear cut, right or wrong way to analyze the success of an event. The key is to collect as much information as possible to understand what works and what does not to build on in the future, as well as maintaining communication with the audience from beginning to end.

How do YOU measure event success? Let us know!

The fun and fireworks over the holiday weekend may have left some of us with a “case of the Mondays,” but who says the excitement can’t continue? We’re only halfway through the year and halfway to our goals. As you can tell, we’re a half glass full kind of company. So grab a cup of coffee and the leftovers from the break room, pull up your pipeline report and make it happen!
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Lead generation…lead generation…lead generation. In terms of what’s on marketer’s minds, it’s numero uno. And if it’s not, it should be. In terms of a strategic lead generation program, there are basic components that have to work together seamlessly. If one of these components is broken, it can cause the whole campaign to fail. Let’s look at three main reasons why lead-gen programs fail:
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If webcasts are a whole new frontier for you, there’s a chance you’re feeling overwhelmed with the details. If you’ve executed them before – most B2B marketers are today – and you didn’t feel you received the ROI you were looking for, there’s a chance you didn’t give yourself the best opportunity for success by having the right process in place. Stick to this 11 step guide and you’ll experience less stress, more audience engagement and a better list of qualified leads for your sales force to attack. Ready….Go!!!
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I’ll be honest, there are a lot of bad webcasts/webinars out there. I mean, A LOT. And the thing is, it’s completely avoidable. For you marketers out there trying to create best practices for your webcasting strategy in 2015, don’t do the following:
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“Our current efforts aren’t creating enough qualified ‘sales ready’ leads.” This is the number one challenge facing marketing and demand generation experts right now. It was probably the number one challenge they were faced with 10-15 years ago as well. The only difference is, with so many tools at your disposal, it should be less of a challenge today but for some reason it isn’t. It can be difficult to sort through the clutter, but here is what I believe should be the plan to drive more qualified leads and accelerate revenues for your business in the new year.
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Based off of a recent study that we just completed surveying over 500 demand generation and marketing practitioners, results showed that 64% of the respondents said they were looking to increase their webcast spend in 2015. Well my thought process is, if you’re going to allocate more spend to your webcast strategy, make sure you promote them and execute them the right way. Here are four guidelines to abide by to help drive more traffic to your webcasts in the New Year
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We just recently completed a survey on the state of Demand Generation in 2014 (be on the lookout for the executive brief summarizing the results in the next 30 days or so). The goal of the survey was to get feedback from B2B demand-gen practitioners – people whose main purpose is to drive qualified leads for their sales force to pursue – to determine what they’re doing now and what challenges they face when trying to accelerate revenue for their business. The overwhelming majority of these folks said their biggest challenge right now is that they’re not driving enough qualified, ‘sales ready’ leads. They have plenty of ‘marketing’ leads, but they have to kiss a lot of frogs before they find their prince. Considering lead generation is the biggest component of what they do every day, if they don’t find a way to rectify this they’ll be on the unemployment line soon.
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In today’s market place, webcasts are turning in to one of, if not the most effective demand generation tools in a company’s tool box. They allow you to extend your reach in a more cost effective, measurable way and position your company as subject matter experts, while at the same time driving awareness and demand for your solutions and services. An effective webcast on the frontend of your sales process can be the difference between won and lost business. Here are four steps that will give you the best chance of success.
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If you’ve been in the sales game long enough, you’ve undoubtedly been put through the sales training ringer. Week long immersion courses, training workshops, quarterly ride-alongs or visits from the corporate sales managers for 1-2 day sessions. The list goes on and on. Most of these tactics are still being used today and sales leaders wonder why, more often than not, these training techniques aren’t creating better reps and driving accelerated revenues for their business.

The main reason is reinforcement! Once this type of training is over, it’s over. Most of the time there’s no takeaways from these training techniques that allow the sales professional to take what they learned and make it an integrated piece of their sales strategy moving forward. Sure, they might apply what they learned for a few months, but without having 24/7 access to the right training material, eventually what they learned will fall by the wayside and you’ll end up with training investment wasted.

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