It’s that time of year again. In about 7 weeks we will be hosting our Online ROI Summit for about 300 marketers in Burlingame, California who want new insights on what’s working and what isn’t online - You can apply at www.TechTargetSummit.com.

However, before I plan the agenda for these conferences I make sure to check in with the marketers themselves about what they want us to cover — what is plaguing them the most when it comes to their online campaigns. And, no surprise, what keeps coming up is their need to know the latest best practices around “tightly” managing lead gen efforts and follow-up.

We all know “scrutiny” and “prove ROI” are the expectations du jour for the technology marketer and as economic times have tightened up focus on these aspects of their job have as well…

In rolling up trial and error stories from our actual technology customers what stands out is something that could appear as a huge contradiction but in reality makes sense, and that is the reality that the smaller the company, most likely, the tighter or “closed” is the process they have to stay on top of the leads they generate. The bigger, and often times more bureaucratic the company, the more complex it becomes. And so what we are left with is to figure out how do it the best regardless of company size. No easy feat but one we and our marketer participants will take on.

Check out the link to our Summit www.TechTargetSummit.com and if you want to hear what we all have to say please join us…  October 27th is only a blink away…

A recent MarketingProfs survey, Marketing ROI & Performance Evaluation Study determined that 60% of marketers have lead quality objectives and 40% of marketers objectives are defined around lead quantity. Why do we have to think of quality and quantity as mutually exclusive? 

When discussing potential media buys, some clients say “I need the lowest cost per lead and largest number of leads you can deliver” or “I need highly qualified leads, who are further along in the purchase cycle and want to hear from our sales team”. In my opinion, one reason for these separate goals is to either satisfy senior management (quantity, low cost) or sales (quality). My advice is to work with your publishers and create campaigns that have both goals in mind.

Here are some tips to drive quantity AND quality from your lead gen campaigns:

• When determining metrics of success for your campaign, select both a primary and secondary goal. As an example, we recently had a client request a primarily lead guarantee based on a targeted named account list (quality). In addition they requested a secondary goal of a high volume of leads to fill their pipeline. They gave us assets positioned for both goals, we created two different promotional plans based on the different target audiences and delivered a low CPL along with a bucket of highly qualified leads.

• Your choice to use qualification questions will impact the quantity of leads and subsequently your CPL. Our recent Google/TechTarget research reveals that 61% of users are willing to provide contact information and qualification data once they are ready for purchase. Therefore, when you launch a campaign, it may be advantageous to utilize pre-populated demographic questions and remove qualification questions to increase the quantity of the respondents. As a result we see conversion rates grow 25% and CPLS decrease 25%.

• Take advantage of automated re-messaging capabilities. To maintain growth in quality of leads, always create (or take advantage of) some sort of nurturing program. When you are launching a campaign, it’s the start of a relationship. As our research states, users will not want to hear from you until they are ready. Therefore, it’s important to build their trust through re-messaging and personalization. Furthermore, while you re-message, append additional qualification questions such as time to purchase or being contacted by the vendor. The stronger the relationship, the more apt the user will be to provide qualification data.

• Have content available that drives both quantity and quality of leads. Be sure to syndication and promote content types that require lower level engagement (white papers, webcasts, videos) to satisfy your need to drive high volume of leads while also syndicating trials, demos that attract those further along in the purchase cycle. This also allows for seamless integration of a re-messaging strategy. Always pay close attention to the distribution of your media mix as it should always be determined by the maturity of your particular market.

• Segment your lead delivery. When using a publisher, request your leads be delivered or uploaded based on whether they satisfy your quality or quantity requirements. Request segmented spreadsheets on a daily or weekly basis. Also be sure to request reporting that highlights multi-touch leads. Delivering leads effectively and efficiently is half the battle when trying to prove ROI.

I’m curious.  Anecdotally, is your success judged by quantity or quality of leads?

In light of the economy, more and more marketers are concerned with late-stage leads. These are the leads that are almost ready-to-buy and are far more likely to provide an immediate ROI. While marketers know that leads in other stages may become useful down the line, they often don’t know what to do with those leads in the meantime and count them as “bad leads.” What many of them don’t realize is that it is critical to nurture those leads now, so they add to the ROI of a program down the road.

While many marketers won’t discount these leads entirely, they will stop messaging them on the theory that they are too early on in the sales cycle and should be contacted again later on. This is a huge mistake. By the time these leads are contacted again they may have already decided on another vendor.

Alternatively, other marketers may continue to pressure a lead who is not yet ready to buy. This can result in frustration by a lead who is still in the awareness or consideration phase of the buying cycle and may discount this vendor when it comes to making a short-list.

The key is to consistently message these leads with relevant content in order to move them along the buying cycle. The exact method of re-messaging will vary from company to company and from lead to lead, so it’s extremely important for marketers to take their company’s buying cycle into account, along with different ways of re-messaging to different types of leads. This means getting rid of the one-size-fits-all emails being sent each month to all potential leads.

Nurturing a lead may happen in many different ways - it may involve phone calls, emails, printed mail, or invitations to events. The key is to figure out the process that makes sense for your product/solution and to make sure that leads are being targeted not just consistently, but correctly. Ideally, the communications should feel like resources and help leads as they move through the process.

At times this process may be frustrating, and there will always be leads that are never converted, but it’s important as a marketer to never lose a sale because you gave up halfway through the battle.

As marketers, we all realize the importance of continuing to fill the sales pipeline - but it becomes especially important during times of economic downturn. It also makes it that much more difficult. Every sale matters and every marketing dollar must be spent wisely in order to yield the highest return.

If budgets are tightening across the board, they are definitely tightening for marketers in smaller businesses as well. I came across a recent blog post from Marketing Studio which takes a look at how smaller businesses have been impacted, and it found that 60% of the respondents stated webinars, case studies/article and blogs are the most difficult lead generation tactics to execute.

I think it is safe to say that executing such lead generation tactics during this recession is a tough job for small/mid-sized/enterprise businesses alike. However, I would think it hasty to move lead generation resources away from “difficult to execute” tools such as webinars/webcasts and case studies.

TechTarget recently conducted its 2009 Media Consumption Report which observes how IT pros are consuming media during the recession. The following slide highlights the report’s findings showing that webinars/webcast & case studies are of use to IT pros during both the consideration to decision phases of their buying process.

Key findings from this report also concluded that given the recession, IT pros need content which will:

• • CUT TO THE CHASE - Be efficient - tell them what they need to know, in order to help make their research process faster.
• • SHOW OFF SUCCESS - Highlight content showing the proven product success or case study/vendor comparisons.
• • BE ON THE SHELF - Maintaining presence is key given search is one constant medium which IT pros rely on throughout ALL phases of their buying cycle.

While marketers may find it more difficult to execute on lead generation tools such as webinars/webcasts and case studies - I would have to agree that they can be very effective tools during a recession. In fact, I have noticed an increase in the use of case studies in technology-focused lead generation campaigns. Often times in the form of syndication or as offers incorporated into display advertising.

What are your thoughts? How are you currently highlighting your organization’s success stories?

A few weeks ago, I was reading the New York Times (the online version, of course) and came across an article that made me say “Huh?” This article, “Put Ad on the Web. Count Clicks. Revise,” showcased advertising agencies that are bringing former Wall Street analysts over to Madison Avenue to help them track ROI on their marketing campaigns.

Now I don’t know about you, but I feel like this is something Online Marketers have had to prove for some time. In my role as an ROI Consultant, I know I feel pressure from clients to help show initial ROI on a regular basis. This is especially true this year, as marketing budgets have withered away and we have had to produce more results with less money. In fact, we’ve tasked ourselves with helping clients achieve ROI for some time, as evidenced by TechTarget’s foray into responding to this pain point.

Aside from congratulating ourselves on how far ahead of the curve we are, what’s next for Online Marketers? You are being asked to innovate and do more with less. As an industry, we have progressed far past click thru rates, conversions and demographics; far past traditional ROI. We need to prove more, see how our lead generation efforts are working; actually watch what our target audience is doing so we can craft content appropriately. Learn what they aren’t telling us by way of registration questions.

One way we are doing this at TechTarget is by transitioning into behavior-based email messaging. As users interact with editorial pieces, vendor-sponsored content, websites and apply for conferences, we watch them to see where they spend their time. That helps us tailor our outbound messaging based on what is important to them now. The response is incredible-but what is most interesting is what we can ascertain from this intelligence.

We are now able to identify “hyper-active” leads and show exactly what they’re touching on our network. With this information we can show “mass activity” around topics so you can be present to influence our users, make recommendations on how to reposition your next program based on hot topics, and identify leads who might be more inclined to purchase based on their activity level.

Armed with this type of information, we push past ROI and into new territory that the New York Times can report on in 2 years.

An old boss once told me that success happens when preparation and opportunity meet. This also holds true for targeting an audience with your marketing campaigns. I’ve been thinking about the evolution of targeting and how it has and, in some cases, has not progressed. As marketers, we often default to the basics of a targeted audience’s make up: title, industry, role, technical characteristics and so on. Why not first think of project, responsibility on the buying team, interest level, purchasing stage…  Because targeting is not just about capturing the right audience at the right time, it is also about the investment you make and passing on the most likely opportunities for sales to engage and close. Helping sales save time, effort and hard costs and focusing efforts on the opportunities that really matter could move those opportunities along faster as well as save budget and resources.

So, how do we do this? Employ a targeting strategy that takes into account activity, content and context at least as much as demographics. Finding an active, interested, engaged audience can help your marketing campaign by providing a better starting point for your qualification and selling efforts. How you use the intelligence from the activity, content and context can also better shape the follow-up approach to lead qualification. Think in context of the enterprise technology buying team. All the leads that you capture may not have ultimate authority or the need may be latent, but knowing their role can help with qualification by determining the type of questioning and relationship that sales would want to build. This type of strategy can help you identify the urgent, actionable leads that inside sales and field sales can jump on quickly and can put the proper emphasis on the leads that matter.

Marketers spend a lot of time on content creation, really thinking through what they want to offer the audience to educate them on products or services. More time goes into a catchy or succinct title and promotional copy that will act as the hook to reel the leads in. Everything in place, great content, strong title, informative copy and then…there is the “Registration” page. It can be a marketer’s best friend or worst enemy.

Demographic questions are typical and most respondents are used to providing answers to them in return for content. In addition, many sites have pre-populated registration pages for return users. But what is your strategy with additional qualification questions? On the one hand, qualification questions can give marketers a large amount of information about their prospects. It can help them bucket the leads for their sales teams - offering the hottest ones first and highlighting leads that need more nurturing. However, it’s important that you have a sound strategy behind each question asked.

In our experience, people collect qualification data in several ways. Some options include:

• • Make questions mandatory
• • Make questions voluntary
• • Ask questions in steps, as prospects download more information, ask more questions
• • Don’t ask any questions until your sales team or telesales contacts them

If making questions mandatory, make sure that the question asked is deemed important for qualifying leads for sales. Having mandatory questions increases the rate of abandonment, so the quantity of leads will decrease, but valid responses can lead to a quicker sales cycle. Keep in mind that our recent Google/TechTarget study revealed that only 30 - 40% of respondents provide valid information. They are more likely to share valid qualification data the further along they are in the buying process. Bottom line, be sure you are asking the questions for the right reasons and have a sales strategy in place that will make the most use out of this information. Do not use registration questions as a survey or if the lead is going to be called on regardless of the answers.

Making qualification questions voluntary is an effective way of collecting reliable information with decent conversion rates. In this Pardot blog there is a case study of a company who tested this option and had some surprising results.

Asking questions in steps, as Adam Blitzer of Pardot outlines in his blog, can help build a greater trust between the marketer and the prospect. Also called “progressive profiling” this strategy allows an interaction or relationship to build between the vendor and the lead. Prospects feel they are offering their information, but also getting something in return be it a white paper, webcast, case study, etc.

Another option is to not ask any qualification questions. This option would increase conversion rates and would use a lead nurturing strategy to truly qualify the leads further.

Therein lies the question - Do you put a strategy in place in which marketing and sales work together to define what is a “HOT” lead or if a lead is a lead is a lead, do you collect as many leads as you can and call them all?

Using Twitter for Online B-to-B Technology Marketing

We’ve all heard so much buzz about Twitter over the past few months, and with good reason.  Recent Twitter growth statistics were quoted in a blog posting last week on Godfrey.com - “Twitter’s Value to B-to-B Marketers“

According to statistics from Nielson NetView, there were 7,038,000 Twitter users in February 2009, an increase of 1,381%, up from 475,000 the previous year.  Even higher figures were seen from Compete, who reported over 14,000,000 unique users in March 2009.

One may think that Twitter is primarily a vehicle people use for updating “followers” with their most up-to-the minute “tweets” - all in 140 characters or less.  But what is the value of Twitter to B-to-B marketers, and how should it be used?

Twitter is about connecting with people and sharing information.  Online B-to-B marketers should look at Twitter as a vehicle for listening, sharing, and responding.  Not only can marketers gain insight on how people think and feel about their products, marketers can also use Twitter to solicit feedback and conduct research.  Twitter can also be used for marketers to share news on product releases or even announce event (such as webcast) updates. Lastly, Twitter may even be used as a method marketers can use to respond to customers.

The beauty of Twitter is its real-time delivery of updates people care about, instantly.  Marketers can deliver timely responses, address or answer complaints, build/nurture relationships, and engage with customers, at all different stages in the buying cycle.

Can Twitter be incorporated within a media campaign?  It sure can!  In fact, there is one program I am currently managing that is mainly comprised of syndication of client content, custom Microsite creation, and sponsorships within our IT Knowledge Exchange (ITKE) IT user community.  We’ve included an additional component involving the creation of a Twitter account on behalf of the client, giving the client the ability to promote their Twitter community within the ITKE community as well as within their own user community. “Tweets” may be posted on behalf of the client, at a frequency of 3-4 tweets per week.  Updates could be broadcasted on a multitude of things, like new videocasts recorded, recent blog postings published, upcoming webcasts available, as well as fresh content made available on the Microsite itself. 

This approach is a great next step for staying visible in front of active followers, and is also a great way to dip your toes into the next realm of social media!

I recently sat down for an interview with Stephanie Tilton from Savvy B2B Marketing. In our discussion, we addressed TechTarget’s latest IT Media Consumption and Google/TechTarget research studies. Both technology marketing studies point to IT buyers’ preference for specific content based on their buying stage, which further suggests IT marketers need to align their media types, content strategy, and keyword buys to these IT buying stages.

To read more about our marketing reports, and how TechTarget is helping marketers take advantage of these key findings, read Stephanie’s blog at: http://www.savvyb2bmarketing.com/blog/entry/84801/qa-with-marilou-barsam-of-techtarget-a-top-b2b-advertising-venue--

You can also follow her on Twitter: http://twitter.com/StephanieTilton

Today’s economic climate is definitely impacting how IT marketers are measuring their online marketing programs.  There is so much pressure to deliver qualified leads in a timely fashion that will ultimately convert into opportunities.  I know that in my conversations with my information security clients, this is definitely top of mind for them.  However, it seems to me that because of this pressure by senior management, marketers are losing sight of the basic fundamentals of a successful online program.

As I’m sure you’ve all heard before the old saying that ‘content is king’ and the foundation to a successful program.  Now, that is truer than ever.  I was recently talking to one of my security SIM vendors  about the challenges they were facing - trying to establish themselves in their technology market, make a name for themselves and differentiate themselves from their competition - in addition to generating qualified leads that they could pass along to their sales team all while proving ROI in a timely manner.

Not an easy task… However, what I’m discovering is my clients want to reach these end stage decision makers - who doesn’t - but are utilizing content assets that are in the early phases of the buying cycle and attracting users that are in the research mode.  This really gets back to mapping content to the stages of the buying cycle.  If you utilize content that is educating people about a technology, you are bound to attract users that are trying to educate themselves and aren’t close to creating a short list much less make a purchase.  It’s very important to stay in front of people that are creating their short list of vendors with the appropriate content but if you want to reach the end stage buyers, you must give them the content that will appeal to them.

Our Google research provided tremendous insight into how users are searching when they are in the end stage of the buying cycle utilizing comparative phrases to learn more about the vendors’ solutions that are on their short list.  Creating content that compares your solution to your competition is easy to do and simple ways to reach the prospects that are either researching your solution or your competitions’ solutions!  So, if your marketing objectives include researching these end stage prospects - and I’m sure that includes all IT marketers - be sure to create content that speaks to this audience.