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Do Co-Branded Campaigns Really Work?

August 30th, 2011 | Cynthia Cooper

Many marketers are trying to achieve brand lift by executing co-branded campaigns with outside partners.  They spend time, energy and most of all dollars.  But does it work? How effective is it in increasing brand lift and if so, how?

I’ll cite a great example of a campaign that really did work.  TechTarget just partnered with a national nonprofit organization that provides IT services and training to nonprofits and young adults.  The goal was to create ‘branding awareness’ for this leading non-profit organization and for TechTarget to be positioned as a committed supporter of IT volunteerism.  We also tested ‘brand awareness’ of the Volunteerism space, all fully supported by various media types to stage a lead gen, branding, and social campaign.  We then ran a controlled vs. exposed study to examine the effectiveness of a ‘co-branded’ campaign for the sole purpose of increasing awareness and consideration intent for this organization and TechTarget related to the topic of IT Volunteerism.

We’ve discovered that through an interactive banner ad campaign consisting of assets such as a social community, video and marketing white papers were instrumental in achieving brand lift by 160% for TechTarget, 58% for Purchase Intent and a 24% aided brand awareness for this organization.  That leads us into the discussion of Brand Convergence, the hottest topic in the industry right now.  Marketers and their agencies are realizing that the new reality of online marketing requires your branding, social media, and demand generation efforts to be fully integrated.

At our first NYC TechTarget Online ROI Summit, we unraveled the importance and urgency of having your social, lead gen and branding efforts merge together to create the ultimate brand campaign and experience. We saw examples from top marketers and their agencies on how crucial having a social element is which will make or break a campaign, as well has having a direct impact on lead generation. So the bottom line is that you can’t have one without the other.  Lead Gen, Social and Branding go hand in hand.

As we enter our next TechTarget Online ROI Summit in September in San Francisco, we’ll hear from top Industry experts, including one of the most popular social media outlets, on how B2B marketers are using social to advance their lead generation efforts as well as how they are integrating social vehicles in their B2B initiatives.  Social Media is not just for your friends anymore…

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‘Like’ Me - The Era of Engagement

June 6th, 2011 | Pegah Kamal

A colleague of mine and I recently had the pleasure of presenting to the entire TechTarget client consulting team about how online advertising has changed over the last 2 decades- ‘Digital Media: 2 Decades of Change’.  The objective was to raise awareness and further educate the team about the evolution of online advertising, understand the various influences that impact the market’s direction and explore new paths of creativity.  Through my research we noticed a common theme or trigger that seemed to be part of the root cause of all these changes and developments of innovative ads and online tools/resources.  The driving force is the very same person reading this blog post.  That’s right, the consumer.

I’m sure you’re thinking, well duh.  But start digging deeper into all the new innovations and realize just how ‘under the consumer influence’ marketers have been and you will really appreciate how far digital media has come in just under 2 decades.   Another key point drawn from our research, is that as online ads continue to evolve at a rapid pace, that it’s important for us as digital marketers to remember that the ‘IT  Pro / Consumer Will Always Be One Step Ahead’.  This notion presents all marketers with the opportunity to push the digital media industry even further in every aspect, from innovative online ads to new online tracking applications (Hootsuite, TweetDeck, etc.) and social sharing abilities (Add This, Share This, etc.) or as one of my colleagues, Ben Bradley, refers to in his recent blog ‘Socializing’.

We’ve already seen adaption of new online tools, such as social widgets, that are used to consume and share information, which has further developed a new breed of digital consumers and brand evangelists. In a recent Wall Street Journal article about ‘Like’ Button Follow Web Users, these widgets not only make it easier “to share content with friends and help attract visitors”, these widgets are a “potentially powerful way to track internet users.”  We’ve gone from a time of CPM, Open Rates, CTR, CPC to the era of CPE, cost per engagement or what is also known as CPA cost per action.

These more robust engagement metrics have allowed marketers to gather what TechTarget identifies as Activity Intelligence and has influenced the way marketers communicate their message and get users to engage with their brand on a new level.  Now in my last blog post, The Power of Customer Intelligence, I discussed leveraging customer intelligence from a high level, so I think it’s time we take it a step further.  What happens when you take the core of customer intelligence (behavior, demographics and basic activity- clicks and downloads) and add it with all this robust rich media engagement activity (time in ad, % viewed, # of tweets or shares)?

You now get a more refined set of marketing programs that are purely focused on user engagement, which provides greater insight into the behaviors and thought processes of a potential buyer or prospect.

Already out in the digital space we are seeing these new programs come to fruition.  You can find examples in the ‘Digital Media: 2 Decades of Change’ presentation, in the Things Your Mother Doesn’t Even Know About section.  These examples showcase three different types of engagement ads that take users beyond the click and immerse them with an interactive brand experience.

Overall, the era of engagement is an exciting place for all marketers to be in.  We’ve already begun to see the influence this new breed of consumers has had on the digital ad space.  And with every innovative interactive ad, comes a new set of metrics that provides marketers with a more robust set of activity intelligence. The combination of the two is pushing marketers to look beyond the click and make us venture onto new paths of creativity.  This will sure be an amazing trip and something tells me we are just scratching the surface of what is yet to come.

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Posted in search, Lead-Gen Strategies, Integrated Media, Social media, Activity Intelligence | Post or View Comments (0)

The Lead Qualification Battle

March 29th, 2011 | Toby Cogan

When lead generation, lead qualification & nurturing and closing sales-ready leads are all in sync; life is great between Sales and Marketing. However, things can go bad quickly when one or all of these elements are no longer in perfect harmony. We’ve heard it all before, Marketing argues that Sales rejects their leads; Sales responds that the marketing leads are not qualified. Sales complains that they don’t get enough leads from Marketing, and Marketing complains that Sales doesn’t follow up on the leads they are given. The unfortunate consequence is that many lead generation campaigns ultimately fail because no one follows up on the good leads that are generated.

According to research by Forrester Research, only 8% of B2B companies surveyed said they have tight alignment between sales and marketing teams. In a perfect world, Marketing will send Sales the most qualified leads and Sales, in turn, will close every opportunity – perfect harmony. However, in reality, Sales often doesn’t follow up because the leads Marketing sends over were considered weak, saying it’s a waste of time.  

With 92% of companies not having strong alignment, how can organizations triumph this lead qualification battle and ultimately win the war? Identifying what a sales-ready lead is must be the first step. All this seems basic, but many companies lack a clear definition of how to define a qualified sales lead. Miscommunication leads to missed revenue targets, wasted budget dollars and possibly more distrust between Marketing and Sales. Companies that aren’t asking this essential question of BOTH their marketing AND sales teams will find that they are producing poor ROI from their lead generation efforts.  

Marketing is tasked to develop a well planned and executed lead generation campaign. Al l leads should be categorized or scored before sharing them with sales. All sales-ready leads must be segmented by Marketing and passed to Sales while they are still “hot.” The problem is that up to 95% of prospects are not yet ready to talk with a sales rep, according to research by Brian Carroll. The majority of these leads are still of high quality and have potential to be a valuable customer with a strong lead nurturing strategy in place. In the simplest definition, lead nurturing is about building solid relationships with the right people. It’s about having consistent and meaningful communication regardless of time to buy. Lead nurturing research has proven that early-stage leads, often ignored by Sales, represent 40 to 70 percent of potential sales.

Posted in Uncategorized, Research, Storage Marketing, Lead-Gen Strategies, List Rental, Lead quality 2447 | Post or View Comments (0)

The Power of Customer Intelligence

March 9th, 2011 | Pegah Kamal

With the abundance of information around consumer demographics and, more importantly, insight into consumer behavior, the world of database marketing is starting to change. Along with this new customer intelligence we have also seen a power shift influenced by the development and quick adoption of new social tools. From wikis to online rating systems to a simple tweet, these social tools have empowered the customer. The core of what traditional marketing tactics have been based on has changed, and just as consumers are evolving so must marketers.

The days of building lists, going through the cycle of acquiring new names and pushing your message no longer works. In a B2B Online interview with Forrester’s VP and Principal Analyst, Dave Frankland, when asked how customers are responding to these traditional methods, he states that “Customers won’t accept that. If I go into a bank today, I expect there to be institutional knowledge about me and for me to be treated differently as a result. This customer centric approach is not just desirable today; it’s expected.”

With that in mind, marketers need to start using their databases and add some new flavor to their old-school ways. Going beyond email and direct mail, incorporating customer intelligence provides marketers with richer customer knowledge, which can be leveraged as a means to “improve customer service, develop innovative products and heavily influence business operations and strategy” as Franklin points out.

This robust customer knowledge allows marketers to “identify customers that are of higher-value,” Franklin states, and follow their digital footprint. Marketers can then use this customer intelligence to create a more dynamic digital advertising plan and “might be happy even with a higher CPM” or CPL. Being able to understand the true value of this customer knowledge can lead to successful interactive marketing campaigns that incorporate this information to offer the “right content, to the right user, at the right time.”

As marketers it is our responsibility to understand the trends in database marketing, as well as the value of customer intelligence and how these 2 factors affect the way we go about communicating to our existing and potential customers.

To help reinvent your marketing campaigns, I’ve included some additional resources around how to leverage customer intelligence / knowledge below:

TechTarget Activity Intelligence: Redefining the Way Technology Audiences are Viewed and Influence by Technology Marketers

Forrester Case Study by Dave Frankland: ESPN Drives Fan Value through Customer Intelligence

Posted in Lead-Gen Strategies, Lead quality, Lead generation, Customer intelligence, Activity Intelligence | Post or View Comments (0)

Hyper-Activity: Deciphering what an IT buyer’s digital footprint can reveal

February 16th, 2011 | Jeri-Lynn Imperial

B-to-B Magazine’s recent report, “Outlook 2011: Marketing Priorities & Plans” discusses a revolutionary shift in the way marketers interact with business audiences: When we’re on the internet - whether on Facebook, LinkedIn or an iPad - we leave a digital footprint behind.

This concept of a digital footprint is the reality of consumer day-to-day interactions on the web. Think about all that you do on the internet - How many actions do you take on the web per day? How many messages are you exposed to seeing while you’re surfing from your desk or smartphone? And exactly what does your digital footprint say about you as an individual?

IT buyers are no exception to this shift. In fact, a recent study profiles use of the web by IT researchers as hyper-active, or in overdrive, due to their need to address pressing business issues. As they are researching and seeking out IT solutions online, their digital footprint can speak volumes about what is pertinent to them at this point in time. Savvy marketers are acknowledging this powerful shift, deciphering digital footprints and taking the opportunity to engage with their most active prospects based on their likes/interests.

When looking to decipher an IT buyer’s digital footprint, keep the 5Ws in mind:

• Who is taking action?
o Observe the types of individuals researching (i.e.) titles, company size. This uncovers who’s truly involved in the purchase decision for a solution, and who you can be catering your marketing message to.

• What are they interacting with?
o Keep an eye out for trends in topics. This can indicate what type of products/solutions IT buyers need or are responsible for.

• Where are they engaging information?
o Some IT buyers may prefer one medium over another. Others may lean more heavily on 3rd party, or peer-to-peer interactions. Be sure to cover off on all forms in order to keep your message present and available at all times.

• When are they taking action?
o Look for the frequency of activity. Increased activity could measure the urgency around the need for a product or solution.

• Why are they researching?
o Pay close attention to problem/issues their research solves. This can be telling of the types of solutions an IT buyer is in the market for.

By taking note of what an IT buyer’s digital footprint says about their current purchase interests, marketers are becoming even more successful at anticipating the buyers needs and providing only the most relevant solutions as a result.

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The Holy Grail of offering the “right content, to the right user, at the right time.”

August 27th, 2010 | Jeri-Lynn Imperial

Demand generation. It’s not just about filling the pipeline with a volume of leads - but maintaining a relationship with those leads as they move through the buying cycle. Yes, the extremely active, sales -ready leads should be escalated to the sales team, but what about everyone else?

B2B marketers are continually faced with the challenge of fine tuning, the lead nurturing strategy of their demand generation efforts. It’s an endless pursuit of the Holy Grail of offering the “right content, to the right user, at the right time.” In this recent article, “Marketing Automation - The Importance of Lead Scoring in B2B,” the author discusses ways in which marketers have been approaching lead nurturing. He states that “the simplest example of how to implement lead scoring is to start with a multi-step (email) campaign.” TechTarget responded to this need for multi-step nurturing as a base level strategy by implementing automated email remessaging feature, for all lead generation programs.

However, our B2B marketers have found when moving beyond the simplest form, building out an organization’s lead nurturing strategy becomes much more complex. The product’s purchase cycle, available content/resources, and the unique actions taken by each user all come into play. This is where it becomes a chase for the Holy Grail.

The following are some takeaways we’ve found useful when building out lead nurturing strategy:

Key Considerations when Developing Lead Nurturing Strategy:

• Right Content: Leverage your entire content arsenal - These days B2B Marketers have endless types of content to choose from to motivate and stay engaged: blogs, microsites, video, and demos.  The more content to utilize, the better results

• Right Users: Factor in your target profile users’ cumulative activities - Number of assets, what types of formats, whether they’re reviewing editorial content, blogs - As noted in Handling and identifying your sales-ready marketing leads it’s important for savvy IT marketers to look and see what additional information they may be able to obtain about their leads

• Right Time: Cover content for the entire buying cycle - According to TechTarget 2009 Media Consumption Report, IT buyers spend a majority of their time in the consideration phase. It is important to maintain an appropriate balance of user relevant content - i.e. Awareness 25%/Consideration  45%/Decision 30%

• Understand what you want to achieve before creating a lead nurturing system - Lead nurturing is most effective when the system is built with your organization’s clear objective, in mind

          • Goal: Establishing repeat positive contact with relevant content, across all leads (Multi-Level)

          • Goal: Movement of lead through pipeline based on customized score based on user profile & activity (Customized Activity Nurturing)

What are your thoughts on the need for implementing lead nurturing strategies? What other considerations have you had come into play when building out your strategy?

Posted in Lead-Gen Strategies, Best practices, lead nurturing | Post or View Comments (0)

Handling and identifying your sales-ready marketing leads

July 29th, 2010 | Karen Landis

While an influx of leads is always a good thing for marketers, many don’t have the resources to follow up on all of them as quickly as they would like. This can pose a serious problem as leads are followed up on in a random order and a hot lead can end up being called on last - by which point it may be too late and another vendor may already have been chosen.

This is why it’s so important for marketers to make sure that the hottest leads are being passed right along to sales, while leads that are still in an awareness phase or consideration phase receive more nurturing to get them to the point of being ready for a sales call. But sorting through these leads can pose another challenge. In order to implement an effective system, marketers must decide in advance what methods they will use to identify the hottest leads.

Three key factors for any marketer to take into account are:

  1. Number of their assets that the lead interacted with

  2. Whether the lead viewed editorial or vendor content

  3. What format the content was in (white paper, webcast, trial download, etc.)

Beyond this information, savvy IT marketers look to see what other information they may be able to obtain about their leads.  Beneficial information includes how these leads interacted with content outside a company’s own campaign. How many other assets on the same topic did a lead look at? Were they consuming a large percentage of vendor content, or was it mostly editorial? What formats were they looking at other content in?

With an increased amount of information about their leads, marketers can devise sophisticated scoring systems to ensure that they can prioritize their leads correctly and don’t lose out on an extremely active sales-ready leads simply because they ended up at the bottom of a sales list.

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Posted in Lead-Gen Strategies, Lead quality, Lead generation | Post or View Comments (1)

Coaching Your Inside Sales Team to Improve Online Lead Conversion

June 11th, 2010 | Dave Bailey

I don’t know of any marketer that doesn’t have improving lead conversion to sales high on their list of priorities these days, especially since marketers are so focused on revenue and getting the most out of their budget dollars. As marketers, you do the best you can to cultivate and prioritize leads so they are as “sales ready” as possible. But at a certain point, the leads get passed to the sales team and a question develops - “How do I get each sales rep to get the most out of the leads they are given?” A disconnect between marketing and sales at this crucial point, will limit the potential success of the campaign. Here are 5 tips. For more detail on each, download this paper Coaching Your Inside Sales Team to Improve Online Lead Conversion.

  1. Give inside sales detailed background on the lead’s origin - It is important to note that third-party online media-generated leads are different from what your reps may be familiar with, and this type of lead may be less aware of your product or they could be shopping you versus your competition, but because you don’t know which, it’s better to begin the conversion online and then based on response consider a phone call. Remember, the typical mindset of a person researching online is to communicate online, so there is a good chance they would be expecting email interaction vs. direct contact like a phone call.
  2. Use the type, topic, and title of the media asset effectively - Recommend that the sales person contacting the prospect knows what the content is and has viewed or read the piece before directly contacting the prospect. Make sure to mention the piece by title and the source of where it was downloaded from to help the prospect remember why they were interested in the first place.
  3. Use the lead’s actual activity to inform the conversation - The more you know about the mindset of the lead when they downloaded your content, like specific information that the lead took in and outside your program, will help both marketing and sales understand how to treat that lead. Activities to watch for include multiple content downloads, multiple contacts from the same account, content type, topic, site/blog, and additional background information on the individual lead, from LinkedIn for example.
  4. Optimize sales and marketing efforts with lead nurturing - It may become obvious that the leads you follow-up with are just not ready to talk to you about your product or solution. That does not mean they are not qualified leads. All leads have value. It may be only a timing issue. According to our Media Consumption Report, it typically takes 6-8 months for leads to work themselves through the awareness and consideration stages of their research process.
  5. Over-communicate to the entire sales team - Sales needs time to prepare for the impact and follow-up of any major campaign. They need time to get up to speed on the product or initiative, to work out a strategy if not a script for follow-up, to figure out what inside sales will do versus outside sales. You can develop “playbooks” that spell out a marketing campaign, its strategy, its components, and what the hand-off to sales will look like step-by-step. Or simply call meetings and issue action steps for each respective department.

Posted in Lead-Gen Strategies, Best practices | Post or View Comments (0)

New Evidence Shows the Rules for B2B Marketing are Changing

May 19th, 2010 | Matt Palmer

A new report reveals helpful insights on how the B2B marketing landscape is changing and how marketers should respond to better meet customer needs. The data supports much of the research TechTarget has done over the past several years, and is a good reminder to all B2B marketers that your customers are in the driver’s seat.

In the recently released study Inside the Mind of the New B2B Buyer (conducted by DemandGen Report and Genius.com), IT buyers give marketers a valuable glimpse into the buying process. You can also read one blogger’s analysis of the report.

One of the report’s findings is that the time and detail B2B buyers put into the purchasing process is changing. 48% say they are using more information sources than they used to - and doing so during different stages of their decision-making process.

TechTarget also found this in our 2009 Media Consumption Report: Closing the Gap. In our study, IT buyers said they consume content throughout their decision-making process, from identifying a need through consideration to a final purchase.

However, the type of content they consumed changed according to where they were in their process. For example, earlier stage leads were more likely to read white papers or eBooks while end stage leads sought out trial software demos or vendor comparisons.

This research underscores the need for B2B marketers to reach IT buyers in every stage of the buying process by offering a variety of content types, such as white papers, webcasts, and software downloads. Savvy IT buyers seek out different media types, giving advertisers the perfect opportunity to target them at each stage of their decision-making process with content that speaks to their needs at that time.

Another finding in the “Inside the Mind of the New B2B Buyer” report was that the way decisions on B2B purchases are made has changed, especially when it comes to budgeting. Less than 25% of respondents said their budget was allocated at the beginning of the year, and 23% said funds were allocated only after the ROI was proven. For B2B marketers, this means that you have an opportunity to influence IT buyers throughout the year. Taking your campaign offline can mean you miss crucial opportunities.

This also means that proving the ROI of your product or service is more important than ever. IT buyers are increasingly being asked to demonstrate the impact of the purchases they make. As a marketer, you can make their job easier (and influence them toward your solution) by providing content assets such as case studies and side-by-side comparisons of your solution versus your competitors’. Marketers who cannot clearly demonstrate their ROI will find themselves being left off the short-lists of IT buyers.

The report reveals many other findings and is worth a read. You can also access TechTarget’s research at the following links: Google/TechTarget Behavioral Research and 2009 Media Consumption Report: Closing the Gap.

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Posted in Research, Lead-Gen Strategies, Buying process, Content development | Post or View Comments (0)

Impacting Your Pipeline More Effectively

May 6th, 2010 | Dave Bailey

One of the challenges I often hear from online marketers is figuring out what to do with the hundreds of leads they generate from their online campaigns. Understanding the best way to identify the real opportunities for marketers and sales people can be found in the content they download, the stories they read, and the emails they respond to.  This can provide an unbiased profile of the prospect that reveals their true intent and gives valuable insight as to what’s important to them as they are researching their solution choices. The result is a clear identification of the most active and engaged prospects with topics related to the solutions that matter most to them. But how do you attract the prospects that can impact your pipeline now?

Specialized content helps drive activity

Attracting the serious technology buyer versus the “tire-kicker” often lies in the specific technology information that helps them in all phases of their research process. How this information is organized in topics, sub-topics, and sub-sub-topics is critical to the buyer to get them the answers they need sooner. The serious technology buyer looks for volume, depth and specialization of technology information from three perspectives: independent editorial, vendor information, and peer-to-peer communication. Capturing and analyzing the actions your prospects take can provide a deeper level of intelligence allowing you to communicate with them at “that” point of their research for an active project. However, making sense of what they are doing and pulling out the pearls of wisdom amongst the intelligence can be challenging.

What to do with the information and intelligence?

With almost infinite data available from the activities your prospects take online, it is challenging at best to figure out your target prospects, and decide who to contact first and what to talk to them about since your sales team is most interested in prospects with active projects. However, the actionable intelligence that you get from capturing your prospects activities can provide you with an understanding of their urgency and the information that is most relevant to them at that point.  As a marketer, this is so valuable since you can identify those prospects most likely to be in an active project, helping you to optimize your content, messages and communications. Once captured as a lead, this extends to active follow-up, where the intelligence can inform a nurturing program to be much more precise with the content and messaging that is more relevant to your prospect, and can assist sales to carry on a better, more meaningful discussion by meeting the prospect where they are in their buying process. Looking at a target audience’s activities online can provide you with more actionable sales leads and the information necessary to improve all aspects of lead generation, nurturing, and sales follow-up.

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