Collecting a few things we noticed recently that you might find useful.
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Brian Carroll gives a good introduction to lead scoring and explains how it's misperceived:
This is a great point and one worth keeping in mind if your sales managers object to lead scoring because "our sales people know which leads are valuable." That's probably true -- but automatic lead scoring can help prioritize which leads they should evaluate first.
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If you can't get leads to talk to you, you might want to take a look at this free report from Product180 and Jigsaw: It's Not Just About Leads: Sell More by Speaking Your Customer's Language.
You'll have to register to download the 4 page report, so you'll probably become a lead yourself. But the paper centers on speaking the customers' language can help you get your foot in the door, and it includes a helpful outline on how to create a story through research and customer interviews.
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This one leaves us scratching our heads. ZoomInfo points us to a recent study by the
SLMA that says 65% of B2B companies surveyed don't track ROI from their marketing programs.
65% of you are making decisions on where to spend your marketing dollars without solid numbers on what your return on investment is? Really? Yes, it's hard to measure marketing ROI compared to the ROI on other types of purchases, but there are plenty of helpful and informative resources out there to help. We'll be coming back to this in future posts.
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Finally, eMarketer pulled together forecasts from several research firms to conclude that there's optimism for the US online ad spend. Interesting to see numbers expected to rise across the board in 2010 -- including 7% for online lead generation -- but fall back a bit in 2011.
The 1.5% loss in US advertising spending in 2009 looks positively rosey next to the 14% decline in TV, 16% decline in radio, and 18% decline in newspaper advertising. No surprise there: the value per dollar spent online is obviously higher for many advertisers.
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Testing poll embedding:
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Brian Carroll gives a good introduction to lead scoring and explains how it's misperceived:
Lead scoring is not a substitute for human touch. Rather, it prioritizes where you need invest the human touch.
This is a great point and one worth keeping in mind if your sales managers object to lead scoring because "our sales people know which leads are valuable." That's probably true -- but automatic lead scoring can help prioritize which leads they should evaluate first.
*****
If you can't get leads to talk to you, you might want to take a look at this free report from Product180 and Jigsaw: It's Not Just About Leads: Sell More by Speaking Your Customer's Language.
You'll have to register to download the 4 page report, so you'll probably become a lead yourself. But the paper centers on speaking the customers' language can help you get your foot in the door, and it includes a helpful outline on how to create a story through research and customer interviews.
*****
This one leaves us scratching our heads. ZoomInfo points us to a recent study by the
SLMA that says 65% of B2B companies surveyed don't track ROI from their marketing programs.
65% of you are making decisions on where to spend your marketing dollars without solid numbers on what your return on investment is? Really? Yes, it's hard to measure marketing ROI compared to the ROI on other types of purchases, but there are plenty of helpful and informative resources out there to help. We'll be coming back to this in future posts.
*****
Finally, eMarketer pulled together forecasts from several research firms to conclude that there's optimism for the US online ad spend. Interesting to see numbers expected to rise across the board in 2010 -- including 7% for online lead generation -- but fall back a bit in 2011.
The 1.5% loss in US advertising spending in 2009 looks positively rosey next to the 14% decline in TV, 16% decline in radio, and 18% decline in newspaper advertising. No surprise there: the value per dollar spent online is obviously higher for many advertisers.
*****
Testing poll embedding:
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