Last week we held our fourth, semi-annual Online ROI Summit, and, judging by the comments from attendees, this was one of our best ones yet. It was obvious to me that the impact of the recession has marketers even more focused on how to accelerate their online marketing activities, especially those related to  lead generation.

Over 245 technology marketers in attendance heard from marketers at HP, Tableau Software and VersionOne on how they track there lead generation efforts, along with the latest research from Google on how search is used during the IT buying process. We also had some great workshops focusing on email conversion Best Practices and measuring the ROI of social media.

And speaking of social media, we’re seeing some great posts out in the blogosphere from some of the attendees. Elizabeth McCann from Intuit recapped her takeaways from the Summit, What I Learned at the TechTarget Summit. Ronnie Ray from MarketPlane also wrote a wrap-up on the event, Notes from the TechTarget Online ROI Summit. John Bennett on BE Strategic recapped the key findings from the Google/TechTarget research presentation, Content is Still King in IT Marketing. Along with blogs, we also say a lot of traffic via Twitter, with more than 30 attendees tweeting, such as cappypopp and InboundMarketer.

Here are some of the highlights that we tweeted during the show www.twitter.com/ITAgenda:

• Welcome IT buyers from ING, BJs Wholesale, American Bible Society to TechTarget Online ROI Summit - event opens 8am tmw #TechTargetSummit

• A look at new Google research on search habits during IT buying process- presented during TechTarget Online ROI Summit tmw #TechTargetSummit

• #TechTargetSummit updates- tech marketing presentations from Google, HP covering IT buyer lead generation, compliance, social media

• Tech buyer is “hyperactive” researcher - 40+ editorial 10+ vendor touches over 6+ months of research - competition is fierce #TTGTSummit

• Publisher’s lead profiling - IT marketers demand more info from media partners - popular article and whitepaper titles #TTGTSummit

• Heard from HP, Tableau Software, VersionOne on ROI tracked from lead generation to revenue #TTGTSummit

• Lead generation is main focus of online advertising, syndication/SEM changed everything and social media is rapidly emerging #TTGTSummit

• There are 4 major recession-proof areas of IT spending - Business Intelligence/BPM, Compliance, Disaster Recovery, Consolidation #TTGTSummit

• Purchase Intentions study - data deduplication and disaster recovery have momentum this year, significant opportunity #TTGTSummit

• SearchCIO.com study - 29% of companies increased IT budgets in 2009 with IT security & compliance receiving largest portion #TTGTSummit

• 49% of IT organizations have 1+ SOA underway and majority are deemed “very important” to the business #TTGTSummit

• Email conversion - level of investment required for your offer will determine email copy length #TTGTSummit

• Social media - measure current conversations - free online tools, then join existing communities of customers and experts #TTGTSummit

• Lead activity - 69% of leads interact with competitive vendor content during a 3 month period #TTGTSummit

• IT buyers search using literal terms “comparison”, “compare” and “review” near the end of purchase process, per Google #TTGTSummit

• 67% of IT buyers willing to click the link of a manufacturer that they are not familiar with when searching, per Google #TTGTsummit

• Online media complexity creates opportunity - examine metrics carefully and see how media plan improves SEM/SEO strategy #TTGTSummit

• Consider the purchase journey and work closely with media partners to understand your prospects better #TTGTSummit

• #TTGTSummit all presentations and reports at www.techtarget.com/formarketers

You can download all the Summit presentations and our latest Google and Media Consumption reports at www.TechTarget.com/ForMarketers. Thanks again to all our speakers and panelists for a wonderful event!

A whopping 84% of users like receiving Email from companies in which they register and close to 60% of marketers plan to grow their traditional Email marketing spend in 2009. With these great stats, why is there a perception that Email marketing is not as effective as it used to be? Email is still one of the most effective marketing tools of today. However, I’m not confident that we are all optimizing our Email campaigns for optimal performance and conversion.

After investigating further, it seems that you, the IT marketer, are looking for tips and recommendations on how to not only make your marketing dollar go further, but also make your Email marketing dollar go further. As a result, my colleague Chris Olive and I were asked to run a workshop titled “Best Tips and Common Mistakes to Avoid for Improved Email Conversion” at this month’s TechTarget Online ROI Summit. The goal of this workshop is to go back and re-visit “your roots”. Specifically revisit the roots of your Email strategy. During this workshop, we will provide insight into steps to follow to get the best performance, review real-world examples of how to increase Email performance 2X, and discuss new strategies to assist in making the most of your Email lists.

How is your Email performance? Do you think it could be better? If not, what are your strategies?

If you can’t join us live at the Online ROI Summit, be sure to come back and visit MyEducatedGuess for a recap of the session.

Looking at how the recession has impacted businesses, specifically how businesses are making decisions, I’ve decided to look at common mistakes IT marketers need to avoid during a recession.

A misaligned ROI program can aim you in the wrong direction causing bad decisions. Placing too much emphasis on the end game or revenue of an ROI measurement program can cause you to miss revenue opportunities and shorten sales cycles that would have ultimately improved ROI. Online marketing enables you to define and track conversion rates to improve ROI for faster payback. Knowing which target segments are most responsive, which offers generate the greatest interest, and, most importantly, which conversion rates are exceeding benchmarks help you make better decisions, faster and improve program performance. Conversion rates can include: clicks to leads, leads to Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs), MQLs to Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs), SQLs to meetings, meetings to pipeline… through to sales and revenue. Employ a re-messaging and nurturing program to prospects and early stage leads so you can identify the most interested prospects faster, while moving prospects to SQLs sooner.

Prioritizing program efforts on existing prospect lists can cause you to miss the active projects being researched right now. IT buyers are searching online for your solutions right now. 97% of all IT pros start with search to identify the solutions for their short lists. Online marketing offers scalability to reach the buying team when “they” are ready. The most significant trend in IT professional online usage patterns shows search engines and publisher websites are consistently the starting point for any research. IT buyers use search to locate the information they need, but rely on IT publishers to have the resources on specific topics, including editorial content, analyst research, whitepapers, webcasts, videos, blogs and trial downloads. This helps you attract net new buyers, including existing customers, to maintain and grow pipelines, giving you a better opportunity to penetrate and capture multiple members of the enterprise buying team. Use your content to extend your message to where the IT buyers are searching online.

As we move forward into this economic downturn and marketers struggle with their budgets, branding must remain a factor in advertising programs. However, traditional branding campaigns must adapt to new marketing initiatives as companies focus on lead generation and the need to track ROI. I once saw an ad that said, “Your brand is your lifeboat and you never abandon your lifeboat.” This was further collaborated by a blog post on Publicity Works I recently read discussing branding in a down economy. By proactively marketing and staying in front of your customers or potential customers, it sends a message that your organization is strong in this economy. While other marketers may go dark with advertising, organizations that continue their messaging have the ability to stand out and become market leaders.

While there is no doubt about the importance of branding, how can marketers track ROI when all advertising dollars are being closely monitored and sales departments fight for their need for lead generation programs? It is crucial for marketers to invest in programs that provide branding, lead generation and measure ROI.  

So what type of programs work to meet both marketing and sales objectives? Looking at some of the campaigns I’ve managed lately, I find that those that are focused on interactive marketing tools provide a number of benefits. For example, a client of mine created a microsite program, which unlike their corporate website provided a custom environment where marketing controlled the content. The purpose of this was to brand all their business units under one umbrella while of course generating leads, but how do you track ROI for branding?

For the microsite program, we teamed up with Dynamic Logic to show ROI, and the client saw 90% significance in aided-brand awareness, online ad awareness and messaging association. The significance is the index of all campaigns surveyed and how these programs weigh against the norm. A 90% significance means it outperformed the industry norm, which were great results for the client.

My educated guess says that branding and lead generation programs will continue to become entwined rather than stand alone initiatives. What are your thoughts? Please share any branding programs in which you were able to track ROI.

Forrester’s much awaited study on B-to-B Social Media participation released this week, giving key insight into just how active IT Buyers are in using social technology. According to the results, 91% of these users are at least “Spectators”, meaning they actively read blogs, watch videos, listen to podcasts, and visit ratings/review forums. 69% of these users indicate they view social media for business purposes. More importantly, 58% (37% business use) are “Critics”, meaning they post comments in blogs, leave ratings/reviews of products, contribute to wikis, etc. Not only are they viewing social media, they are highly active participants. Now that we have covered the statistics, let’s get to the crux of the issue:  If you are a marketer targeting IT Buyers, it is clear that YOU MUST consider social outlets as part of your marketing mix.

So why does most research point to slow adoption of social media among marketers? In working with many clients in the space, we have found that adoption is slow due to a number of reasons, most importantly being lack of insight into prospect’s social behavior, and measurement/ROI.

Forrester’s study provides the insight into social behavior, but embracing social media means adjusting your traditional view on marketing ROI. It is not about generating “leads” or “pageviews” but about ROMO - Return on Marketing Objectives. Before embarking on a social initiative you need to decide as an organization what you are looking to get out of it. Is it thought leadership, is it gaining customer insight/creating a direct pipeline to your customers or prospects, is it monitoring conversations around your brand? Regardless, according to Forrester, you need to start with the audience and not the technology. In other words, don’t just launch a blog, wiki, or forum because you want to get into social media - like traditional media, you need to go where your audience is.

How are you integrating social media into your marketing efforts? If you’re not, what are your main hesitations?

Budgets are tight, the need for measuring ROI of your marketing investment has never been greater, and as a technology marketer, we can use all the help we can get. With the mantra of “Doing more with less,” we need to have an approach that can not only get us through these tough times but can put us in a better position than our competition when we get to the other side. Here are a series of tips for IT marketers to help market successfully in this tough economy:

10. Monitor the competition and the market. If your competition is cutting back, consider adjusting your marketing budget and attacking the market with your message. This will provide a great opportunity to capture - and retain - market share. A recent post on the MarketingProfs blog refers to a study of 600 b-to-b companies by McGraw-Hill Research.

In this study, they found that businesses that maintained or increased their advertising expenditures during the 1981-1982 recession, averaged higher sales growth during the recession and in the three years following. By 1985, sales of aggressive recession advertisers (those that either maintained or increased spending) had risen 256% over those that cut-back on advertising. In 2001, another study found that aggressive recession advertisers increased market share 2 ½ times the average for all businesses in the post-recession economy.

Thinking post-recession maybe hard to imagine now but companies that do will reap the benefits. I found some good information from StrategicOxygen’s blog on this topic that you might find useful.

9. Focus on lead generation efforts with direct-response techniques. In email and online campaigns, use hard-hitting copy with simple benefit-oriented, convincing language, an informational offer relevant to the prospect’s topic interest, and a strong call to action. Focus on the problems that you solve for your customers and how you uniquely address them.

Lead generation is where the rubber meets the road and with this economic situation, you need to focus on the basics of the audience, your message, offer and the call to action. Getting focused so you have the right audience responding in the right way to the right offer taking the right steps will help your efficiency as well as effectiveness of your program and get you the results you want.

I found an interesting recent post on the emergencemarketing blog today summarizing online advertising measurement research published by McKinsey.  For me, the most important finding is that marketers who measure the impact of their online media are significantly more satisfied with their digital marketing than those who don’t. This makes perfect sense, so why is it that only 50% of marketers use basic measurement like CTR?

Are they/we really not accountable for results – as EM suggests?  Do we need better measurement techniques – as McKinsey concludes?  Or is it something more?

Providing leads to the right person at the right time is what opportunity management is all about. You can categorize leads according to territory, product, lead source, level of urgency, or new vs. existing customers. Leads can also be escalated if, for example, they have a short timeframe in which to make a decision, or a ready-approved budget, or if they have a particular urgency or a high value associated with them. With the right technology infrastructure, companies can automate the distribution of leads according to predetermined criteria. This removes the burden from the support staff, and ensures that leads really do reach the right person at the right time.

Best Practices for Opportunity Management include:

•  Marketing should continue to engage with Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) - The marketing process does not end with the hand off to sales.
•  Define the level of ownership, responsibility and accountability when Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) transition to SQLs.
•  Connect the marketing system used for tracking and reporting in Inquiry Management and Prospect Management with the sales forecast system to establish seamless closed loop tracking and reporting for deals closed and revenue realized.
•  Document the process from marketing to sales and sales activities post transition.
•  Consistent follow-up by marketing with sales on leads passed and status within the process.
•  Must resolve the timeframe issue of the handoff of MQLs to sales acceptance of SQLs; one solution could be to automatically populate the MQL to the sales forecast system after a defined period of time, for example 3-7 days.
•  MQLs rejected by sales go back into the nurturing process until they are identified as MQLs.

Track, Measure and Improve - Key to Long Term

Disciplined, constant analysis and reporting while a program is live is the key to demonstrating success, or perhaps identifying what needs to be improved while a program is live. With Sales and Marketing going through a planning process at the beginning of a program, everyone should understand what is being measured, the milestones, and the key success metrics. This information should be tracked, measured and benchmarked against other campaigns. When the ROI at each stage from each campaign is accurately reported, trends and patterns start to emerge to help develop future programs and improve the overall lead management process.

Insights for marketers on how to better align keywords and online media to the IT purchase process 

Over the past month, we have visited five cities throughout the United States to roll out the results of the Google/TechTarget Research Project. The research was based on a collaborative study between TechTarget and Google, where we interviewed over 2,200 IT decision-makers worldwide.  Accompanying me on the roadshow were Mark Martel, Senior Industry Marketing Manager of Technology Markets at Google, and Jeff Ramminger, Senior Vice President of Product Management at TechTarget. With a total of nearly 600 IT marketers and media buyers in attendance, we discussed our latest research findings that explained the relationship of IT buyers’ search and online media consumption practices to their actual purchase process within their respective enterprises.

Attendees from the roadshow took away a detailed view of the journey IT pros go through during their purchase process and specific search queries they use during the various stages. A revelation was the importance “comparison and review” queries have to IT pros and the implied importance of marketers providing content assets with “comparative” focus. In fact, during our Cambridge event, Harry Gold, CEO of Overdrive Interactive, was busy Tweeting some of these key takeaways: http://www.clickz.com/3631617

The focus of the Google/TechTarget Research Project Roadshow was to give marketers the tools to make smarter and cheaper keyword and content choices for their 2009 online marketing plan. Along with gaining detailed insights on how IT buyers move through the purchase process and the specific keywords they use during each of the research stages, attendees also discovered the buyers’ attitudes toward registration forms and other lead generation efforts and the relationship between online search and branding. Another hot topic from the roadshow was the buyer’s utilization of new media; such as mobile devices, video and RSS feeds. Needless to say video is hot, and the length of the video greatly impacts its success.

For those who were not able to attend the event, we now have the full research report and the video of the roadshow presentation available online.

I am hearing from many technology marketers that — in a time in which marketing activities need to deliver tangible results within a tighter timeframe — it is imperative that marketers allocate a portion of their budget dollars toward campaigns which capture more late-stage, actionable leads.

To accomplish this, marketers often use pay-per-click programs that point towards product trials and online product demonstrations.  While these types of programs result in marketers competing for a relatively small pool of leads, they do generate significant results because they reach potential buyers in the late stages of the research and purchase process - the “ready-to-buy” prospect.  

Recent TechTarget market research indicates that “try-before-you-buy” programs are particularly effective in the Application Development software space, because the developer community is immersed in the types of tools and products that they are encountering or implementing on a daily basis.  In the developer community, we see that implementers have a high degree of influence on the IT purchase decision.  The “try-before-you-buy” method is very important in building their loyalty and trust, and provides the IT marketer with an opportunity to demonstrate both the quality of the product, and, in many cases, showcase the quality of the customer service supporting the product.

Also, because the developer community places a high value on peer feedback and product recommendations, marketers can leverage social media to reach this group by providing a platform for experts within their organization to engage prospects in discussions about market trends, not just to gain exposure for their product, but build a rapport with — and establish a degree of trust within — the community.

Finally, although there is a significant benefit to offering downloads and trial versions of software to generate leads from prospects in the final stages of the research and purchase process, it is important that this not be the sole focus of your marketing efforts to the detriment of campaign elements supporting your branding efforts or reaching potential clients at the early and mid-stages of the research and purchase process.  You still need to maintain program elements to generate leads that will generate sales over an extended period of time.

While there is no “silver bullet” formula for what percentage of your marketing budget should focus on long-term or short-term leads, it is important that your plans include a mix of elements - like topical whitepapers to reach IT professionals at the very start of the research process, Webcasts and Webinars to reach mid-stage prospects, and virtual tradeshows to facilitate direct contact with prospective buyers.