MarketingProfs B2B Forum just finished up.  Very well organized event, great network of colleagues as always, excellent keynotes, some good insights overall, but, honestly, I feel I only got some tangible value out of maybe half the presentations I attended (so, clearly, I did not choose wisely what sessions to go to).  My feedback for that: would it be possible for MarketingProfs to tag sessions with a bit more info so as to help people like me on what to attend (an example would be to call out the level of the sessions so as to be able to better know what to expect)?

Cinco de Mayo Fiesta.

In any case, it was time well spent in Boston and here are my key takeaways from the event!

Tue, May 4^th

Advanced Landing Pages that Improve Campaign ROI
Anna Telerico, ion interactive | Scott Brandt, SurePayroll | Michael Burgess, Moog

Advanced landing pages = part of plan, with specific goals & objectives, methodical (what/why), tested & optimized, managed

Results: 2-10x conversion rate increase, cost-per-acquisition decrease

Best practices:

• Segment landing pages to drive visitors (maybe different clicks or different tabs for visitors to self-segment)
• Consider asking specific questions (yes/no) before the lead capture form to engage visitors
• Consider 2-step landing page
• Provide assuring customer quote to establish trust
• Make sure you clearly direct visitors, don’t leave them with too many options to choose

Empirical data:

• Extra field in form asking visitors if they would like to subscribe to receive communications from vendor made no statistical difference in open rates or CTRs
• Test of two campaigns driving visitors to a landing page:
  - Roadblock ad: higher click-throughs to landing page, lower conversions
  - Text ad in newsletter: lower click-throughs to landing page, much higher conversions

Key points:

• Measure sales not just leads
• Innovate vs. iterate for landing page development
• Leverage existing content assets
• Remember: one size does not fit all
• Test, test, test
• Measure, measure, measure
• Be consistent: keep promises, don’t break them

Insights into 2010 B2B Marketing Budgets and Tactics Mix
Peter Burris, Forrester Research | Roy Young, MarketingProfs

#1 challenge in B2B marketing is still demand generation (top 3 challenges: generate more leads, reach decision makers, improve lead quality)

88% of business technology professionals are using social media to make decisions; 12% are not

Old marketing engagements:

 
New marketing engagements:

Advice:

• Shift demand from outbound campaigns to inbound dialogue creation
• Develop, not just generate demand
• Integrate physical and digital marketing
• Think POST = People => Objectives => Strategy => Tactics

Filing the Pipeline: Finding the Leads that Sales Needs
M.H. McIntosh, Mac McIntosh Inc. | Anne Marie Corbett, Globoforce

Use low-cost marketing activities at front of pipeline: acquire, nurture, qualify

Use high cost marketing activities at back of pipeline: demo, propose, close

The four “rights”:

1. Target the right prospects
2. Make the right offers
3. Use the right media
4. At the right timing

Marketing Challenge! Lead Management Automation Systems
Laura Ramos from Xerox (ex-Forrester) with Marketo, Eloqua, Genius.com, Neolane

Absolutely great session, but I did not keep notes

Wed, May 5^th

Why Email, CRM and Social Media have become the Tools of Modern B2B Marketing
Joel Book, ExactTarget | Sallie Anthony, Genworth Financial

Don’t think of email alone, think of email + CRM and of email + social media

66% of Fortune 100 companies use Twitter to engage their audience

Case study:

• Break email foundation, integrate with CRM, integrate with social media

Best practices:

• Send email from sales person’s address and include their photo to make more personable
• Create customized emails using dynamic content based on recipient profile (via email automation system and Salesforce.com) so as to consolidate different content offers into a single email

Results:

• 12% in sales with $420 investment
• Go from 4 to 2 marketers
• Enable advanced reporting within Salesforce.com

Lead Planning & Nurturing that Converts More Customers
Carlos Hidalgo, The Annuitas Group

Leads that are nurtured record 47% higher order value over those leads that were not nurtured (Aberdeen)

New leads: 15% are ready to buy, 15% have to be discarded, 70% need to nurture

Open rates for nurture email campaigns are twice that of one-off emails

Click rates for nurture email campaigns are three times that of one-off emails

We can have marketing nurture campaigns (for marketing qualified leads) and sales acceleration nurture campaigns (for sales qualified leads)

Key: involve sales in the process!

Also, check all the great tweets from the event, there are a lot of great lines there. Until next time, … A bientot!

MarketingProfs Digital Mixer 2009 just wrapped up. Great event overall, some sessions more insightful than others, no vendor pitches in the presentations, lots of powerful taglines (see #mpdm on Twitter), very good insights. Here’s my set of bulleted notes (note: B2B focus).

Oktoberfest dinner reception.

Effective Lead Generation with Webinars
Todd Davison, Bulldog Solutions | Michael Hickey, Hoovers (Dun & Bradstreet) | Jen Moeller, Human

• Webinars are a powerful tool for both thought leadership marketing and lead generation: they are trackable, measurable, scalable, and actionable.
• Segment your audience based on buyer personas for more targeted and engaged webinar events.
• Plan webinars along your yearly marketing events and plan for other marketing activities to keep up the conversation in-between webinars.
• Provide calls to action for the different buying cycle stages: Research (calls to action to gain permission to attract prospects) -> Evaluate (calls to action to overcome objections with “learn more” type of materials) -> Decide (calls to action to support decisions with testimonials, success stories, etc.)
• Apply lead scores to your registered leads (based on roles/personas/activity etc.) before passing them to sales (including leads from webinars).
• Are webinars more effective for new lead generation or for retention?

Using Video to Effectively Increase Marketing ROI
Ron Ploof, New Media Coach/Consultant | Michael Maxin, Divi Tree Media

• Do your videos in FLV.
• Video streaming service is important for end user experience.
• Closed captioning is not just for the hearing impaired, it also makes videos searchable.
• Educational videos can enable a company to reach more audiences than just the intended target one.
• Don’t make one-off videos, better make a series of videos in a dedicated video library.
• Video topic development? Email your sales rep for suggestions!
• Integrate videos to all marketing activities (online & offline, e.g. DVDs).
• Syndicate a few videos, but maintain links back to your video library.
• Make the videos easy to share, rate, forward (viral).
• How important is video quality for sharability?
• Social media is fully measurable, but are you willing to put in the effort to do it?
• “United breaks guitar” video: 5.7mn views and 22.6K comments in 4 months.
  Bob Taylor response video: 191K views and 311 comments in 3 months.
• How do people find your videos? Include text (search engines love text), use description fields, tag well & tag often, put a URL in a frame somewhere.

Social Media & Blogging: What’s Next?
Scott Rosenberg, author of Say Everything | Peter Shankman, HARO | Andy Sernovitz, author of Word of Mouth Marketing

• The two biggest mistakes companies make with social media: i) they broadcast, they don’t listen, and ii) they assign social media communications to their most junior employees.
• Our job is to create such great products and provide such great service that our customers do our PR for us.
• New media almost never kills old media; new media redefines old media.
• We are responsible for our own level of Twitter/blog mediocrity. The art of Twitter lies in the retweets, that is provide information that is worth forwarding.
• Determine what to tweet by asking yourself “Is this valuable to someone other than me?”
• If you are a better writer in social media than your competitor, you will win.

Social Media Measurement
Amber Naslund, Radian6

• It doesn’t matter what tool you use; there is no silver bullet in social media measurement. It needs hard work.
• Measurement is like laundry; it piles up the longer you wait to do it.
• Match your social media community to your salesforce database and see what the differences are. People in social media community but not in salesforce database = new opportunities to sell. People in salesforce database but not in social media community = new opportunities to engage.
• Social media provide great context to engage, so listen at the point of need to be relevant and useful!

Using Facebook to Increase Brand Recognition
Mari Smith, Relationship Marketing Specialist | Amy Porterfield, Social Media Strategy Consultant

• Set up vanity URLs.
• Successful Social Media Relationships = Quality Network + Quality Content + Consistency + Genuine, Authentic, Passionate Caring.
• Check out http://www.engagementdb.com that measures social media engagement by the Altimeter team.
• The POST method: What PEOPLE to target -> What is the primary OBJECTIVE -> What STRATEGIES to implement -> What TECHNOLOGIES to use (in that order).
• Use FBML to customize Facebook page look & feel and develop new apps/widgets.
• The Vin Diesel page on Facebook has more than 6.5mn fans! Interesting case story.

Integrating Social Media into your Marketing Strategy
Debra Ellis, Wilson & Ellis Consulting | Pam O’Neal, BreakingPoint Systems | Glenda Ervin, Lehman’s

• Market Intelligence -> Thought Leadership -> Demand Generation -> Sales Enablement.
• Listen first, then get noticed, then build relationships (transparency, quid pro quo, online & face-to-face), then cash in.
• Separate web visitors to new visitors vs. recurring visitors.
• Quality + Consistency = Loyalty.
• Social Media is not about you, it’s about your customers.

The State of Social Media Marketing
Roy Young, MarketingProfs | Tim McAtee, MarketingProfs

• Earned media (= social media) vs. paid media.
• Percent of companies using social media marketing similar for B2C vs. B2B companies.
• Main goal of Facebook marketing is to drive traffic to web site.
• Facebook applications work best for B2C, fan surveys work best for B2B.
• Free web measurement services (e.g. Googla Analytics) still most commonly used (75%) than paid tools. But they also score very high on effectiveness.
• Steady trend towards greater restriction in social media policies as company size increases.

Design for Behavior Change: Why Facebook & Twitter are Winning
Dr. BJ Fogg, Stanford University

• Motivation: pleasure/pain, hope/fear, social acceptance/rejection.
• Ability: facilitate by simplifying (not training) based on: time, money, physical effort, brain cycles, social deviance, non-routine.
• Trigger: hot vs cold.
• Behavior change as ritual: routine or reflex.

Advanced SEO Tips
Stephan Spencer, Netconcepts

• SEO = architecture + content + link building.
• http://www.seo-browser.com -> shows your page the way spiders see it.
• http://www.seomoz.org/linkscape -> approximates PageRank (mozRank) for your page.
• http://www.seoconsultants.com/tools/headers.asp -> checks redirect status (301 is good = passes PageRank).

More Stuff …
Also, check out Aneta Hall’s post with the best tweets from the event.