In a recent article, “Traffic Building Tip: Use White Papers” (Feb. 27th) author Jonathan Kantor points to publishers like TechTarget that are fully leveraging the powerful pull of a well-written white paper.

He challenges a recent report that gives white papers a lukewarm ranking as a means to drive traffic to websites, and then proceeds to enumerate on the many applications of white papers. He poses the question as to whether we agree with this report ranking.

From our experience it is a combination of good SEO strategies coupled with the posting of a relevant white paper that will pull traffic to a website. White paper titles and abstracts need to have choice keywords embedded in them so to attract traffic to download the white paper in the first place and to earn high search results rankings.

In terms of lead generation highly relevant white papers pull the largest mass of leads-hands down. Anyone experience anything differently when it comes to white papers?

Lead Management includes data collection, lead qualification, nurturing, distributing and analyzing leads.
The result? To increase the likelihood that a lead will convert to a qualified opportunity.
A recent study, “CMO Advisory Best Practices Series: Marketing Lead Management Process”, states only a few Tech Companies surveyed were able to demonstrate their impact on the sales pipeline. Failure points include: data collection, lead qualification, sales hand off, lead nurturing and performance measurement.
Here at TechTarget, we provide our customers with a unique lead management tool. The tools provides reporting metrics detailing each user’s interaction with the specific content – such are time spent with a document, pages views and pages printed. This data combined with customized questions helps better identify quality leads for sales. Do you currently utilize a lead management tool? If so, how advanced is the tool?

Based on conversations I have had with clients and reviewing some recent marketing survey results, it obvious that proving ROI is still one of the biggest challenges for B2B marketers. In his blog, Eric Kintz of HP provided some great insight into the need for initial investment in Marketing Resource Management (MRM) in order to prove ROI. According to Kintz, HP adopted a MRM strategy and process to help prove ROI for their global marketing initiatives. I would assume that this is not only the first step in proving ROI but also the most difficult to get funding for. I came across an article on Chief Marketer that highlights not only some potential vendors of MRM solutions but how effective it could be in streamlining your marketing initiatives and strategies.

Does anyone have some insights into researching MRM solutions or real world examples of how it has helped prove ROI?

This past week, SearchCRM.com interviewed marketing guru Seth Godin in its recurring Voices of CRM podcast series. One of the main things discussed was the concept of a flatter world – meaning that marketers no longer wield all encompassing power. This is a concept I wholeheartedly agree with. Customers/consumers now have a much stronger voice and choice for that matter – in fact, according to Seth, over 80 million people now have blogs. Aligning marketing efforts with this new voice may make new media seem an obvious choice, but it really has nothing to do with it. To understand a successful marketing approach is to understand that your customers now have the ability and choice to tell you when and how they want to engage you – and as Seth says, don’t use marketing data to help your bottom line, use it to help your customers.