Articles About Leads

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Promotional Umbrellas... The practical gift for your business clients. Promotional advertising in one of the most successful and time tested methods for advertising and is being used with great accomplishment by leading businesses. It's high time that you too took your s... (09/07/08 09:00 AM)

The Secret of SEO to Effective Web Design. Webmasters who believe that there is no need to optimize web design are on a state of SEO confusion. This belief will lead to the failure of the overall search engine optimization process. It is impor... (09/06/08 09:00 AM)

Meet the Law Firm That Acts Like a Startup.

"I suspect we're hated," says John Quinn, flashing a small but satisfied smile. Quinn is exaggerating, but not by much. He's the lead partner at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges, an offbeat Los Angeles -- based law firm that has been stepping on a lot of white-shod toes in its ascent to -- some might say assault on -- the highest stratum of the elite corporate legal community. "It's sort of a mix of disdain and jealousy," says partner Patrick Shields.

(09/05/08 09:00 PM)

Could Sara Palin Become The Hottest Niche on eBay?. Skip McGrath’s Blog: When it comes to instant hot niches related to news stories and events, Cafe Press usually leads the way. Sara Palin is Hot on Cafe Press and becoming hot on eBay. After Sara Palin’s speech to the Republican convention, I went to Cafe Press, the site where independent online sellers create and sell merchandise [...]
(09/05/08 09:00 PM)

How to Attract New Customers. Generally, when a company is trying to generate sales leads, using only one tactic is not going to work. You need to mix it up ?" use traditional techniques like direct mailers along with electro... (09/04/08 09:00 PM)

Lookery is in Boulder Tonight.

The gang from Lookery is in Boulder tonight and having a publisher meetup from 6:30pm to 9:00pm in the TechStars Bunker at 1375 Walnut Street. I've started using Lookery on Feld Thoughts and am starting to collect a different set of analytics about you, oh blog reader.

Lookery is a user-targeting service and advertising network. They provide free analytics to promote to publishers, bringing them attention, organic traffic, sales leads, and partnership opportunities. They are looking for publishers who represent:

as much Facebook app and consumer Internet page volume as possible , preferably attached to big registration databases, and
as many online marketing services execs as possible.

Cool stuff - definitely worth hanging out and having a beer with them if you fit the description or think you might want to partner with them. Sign up on the Facebook page for the event.

(09/04/08 09:00 PM)

AutoTrader, Cars.com Yield Best Leads to Auto Dealers. AutoTrader.com ranks highest among online buying services in satisfying auto dealers with new-vehicle leads, while Cars.com ranks highest in satisfying dealers with used-vehicle leads, according to a...

(09/04/08 09:01 AM)

NebuAd Loses CEO, Pursues Less Controversial Pastures. Battered by bad press, recent Congressional probes and the loss of ISP clients, CEO Bob Dykes of NebuAd has decided to step down. Following his departure, President Kira Makagon was chosen to lead...

(09/04/08 09:01 AM)

The Hygienic Home. A quick look around your home might lead you to believe it’s clean, but there is a good chance you might be wrong. Homes are full of allergens and many other contaminates. The Hygienic Home is a green business which will come into a home and thoroughly clean it using only eco-friendly products. [...]
(09/03/08 09:00 PM)

How to Find Good Leads through Offset Printing. Whatever business you own, whether it is just starting or is already going strong, you still resort to many advertising tricks just so you will be able to land valuable leads. All your marketing strat... (09/02/08 09:01 AM)

Most Famous Tips On Lead Generation. The single biggest most important reason of any lead generation campaign is to build your mailing list. Internet marketers often say "the money is in the list", which is totally true. A list o... (08/28/08 09:00 PM)

Adjustable Rate Mortgages Are Housing Crisis’ Next Wave. NPR’s Morning Edition today commented on the fact that the mortgage crisis may just be warming up: There is growing concern that the home foreclosure crisis may worsen next year as lenders are hit by a new category of loans that haven’t caused much trouble. Bank analysts say they expect delinquency rates on so-called “option ARMs” [...] (08/28/08 09:00 PM)

QuickBooks Online Gives You More Mobile Mojo. MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – Aug. 25, 2008 – Intuit Inc. (Nasdaq: INTU) today announced both iPhone and BlackBerry integration with QuickBooks®Online, the leading Web-based small business accounting software. Now the more than 130,000 small businesses that subscribe to QuickBooks Online have even more freedom to manage their business anywhere, anytime - with or without a computer. [...]
(08/25/08 09:00 PM)

Google Extends Search Lead in July. Americans conducted 11.8 billion core searches in July (up 2 percent vs. June) as Google Sites slightly extended its lead in core search market share - by 0.4 percentage points - according to the...

(08/25/08 09:01 AM)

Demandbase Raises $8M, Launches Streaming Lead-Gen App. Startup firm Demandbase has garnered $8 million in venture funding in a round led by Sigma Partners. Past investors, like Adobe Systems and Altos Ventures, also participated. Demandbase will use the...

(08/25/08 09:01 AM)

5th Annual MarketingSherpa Demand Generation Summit 2008. You're invited to join me at MarketingSherpa's Demand Generation Summit at your choice of Boston (Oct 5-7) or San Francisco (Oct 26-28.) I'll be speaking on "Playbook for Effective Lead Management." This year's the summit will have 19 new case... (08/22/08 09:00 AM)

Meet the Law Firm That Acts Like a Startup.

(08/21/08 09:01 PM)

Building a Marketing Funnel and More Lead Management Tips. I was recently interviewed for an article on lead management by Chris Koch who works for ITSMA, the Information Technology Services Marketing Association. In the article titled, "Building a Marketing Funnel and Other Lead Management Tips," I give the following... (08/13/08 09:00 PM)

On Materialism, Living Simply, and Thrill-Seeking. Alpha Consumer’s Kimberly Palmer recently posted a telling interview with professor and materialism expert Tim Kasser. Here are my favorite excerpts: Kasser: (I found) that when people were especially focused on goals that pertained to money and possessions and wealth, they were less happy. A materialistic lifestyle tends to perpetuate feelings of insecurity, to lead people to [...] (08/13/08 09:00 AM)

EFCO Annual Give Back Event.

The Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado is having their first annual "give back" event on Saturday 8/16. If you are an employee of a company that is an EFCO member, you and your family are invited. EFCO is doing this in conjunction with the Intercambio-KGNU Friendship Fun Run. The logistics follow:

August 16 at Foothills Community Park (at Broadway and Violet, Boulder)
8 AM & 9:15 AM Adult 5K
8:45 AM Kids' 1K
11 AM to Noon - Intercambio Strategic Planning Session
Noon - Celebration Family Picnic

For some background on Intercambio, I asked Lee Shainis, the Executive Director, a few questions.

Who is Intercambio? We are an innovative, efficient and independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 2001 that works to build respectful communities and broaden opportunities for immigrants through language education, cultural exchange and friendship.
What does Intercambio do? We provide affordable and flexible English classes for over 1,000 adult immigrants each year, taught by over 350 trained volunteers at immigrants' homes, other nonprofit agencies, and at public buildings. We also offer community resource information and workshops as well as intercultural exchange through community social events such as potlucks, fiestas, camping trips and park clean-ups. Over 1,800 people attend our intercultural events each year.
Why is this important for our community? In recent years, immigration has sparked a great deal of fear and discomfort in our society. Immigrants are striving to feel more confident and successful in their surrounding communities, but language barriers, fear, and lack of cultural understanding are severe obstacles. Intercambio provides a sustainable solution to these challenges and addresses the root causes by bringing together individuals from different backgrounds for an ongoing period of time with the objectives of learning from each other, building understanding, and creating a more inclusive community in which people of all cultural backgrounds feel better able to communicate, participate, and contribute. We are transforming the way immigrants and non-immigrants are able to communicate with each other, while fostering intercultural friendships that lead to deeper cultural understanding.

Come join us for what should be a fun and interesting morning. Register for the fun run and - if you are interested in volunteering to help with the event - please email Brandon Rattiner.

(08/12/08 09:00 AM)

How TerraCycle Plans to Take Over the Garbage Industry.

Garbage in, garbage out? This old clich? may become obsolete as trash becomes the raw material of innovation and green business. Upcycling, or turning disposable items into new products, is becoming big business. The leading player in this growing industry is TerraCycle, which makes a variety of products from recycled material: fertilizers from worm poop, backpacks from juice pouches and reusable tote bags from plastic bags. Based in Trenton, New Jersey, the 60-person company had $8 million in sales last year and expects $15 million this year.

(08/11/08 09:00 PM)

Lead Nurturing Best Practices Research and Data. MarketingSherpa just published data on lead nurturing best practices based on a survey of 1,000 marketers. Sherpa's research focuses on the following nurturing best practices: Using multiple tactics rather than relying on email only Timing of teleprospecting response to web... (08/08/08 09:00 AM)

Building the New Marketing: Making Marketing Important to the Enterprise (Part 1). Marketers have become masters of segmentation inside our own organizations. We've segmented ourselves into Lead Generators. Message Makers. Brand Stewards. Useful, of course?in fact, indispensable. But indispensable the way facilities management is indispensable. Or travel management. Or any other organization that an enterprise relies on, but cannot be easily shown to have direct impact on revenue. And if you don't have direct impact on revenue, you don't directly impact profit. And if you don't do that, you're second in line for everything?except maybe workforce reductions. (08/05/08 09:01 AM)

How Venture Fund Economics Work.

Fred Wilson has an excellent post up today titled Venture Fund Economics. It appears to be the first of several posts he's planning to write on this topic.

"When I write about venture fund returns, there are always comments and questions that lead me to believe that the economics of a venture fund are not well understood. And since most of the readers and commenters on this blog are people who work in the startup ecosystem, I think its important that the economics are better understood. So I am planning on some posts on this topic in the coming weeks."

Everyone that is interested in venture capital in any way should read this post (and presumably the subsequent ones.) I'll try to remember to point them out when they appear.

(08/03/08 09:01 AM)

Software and Failure.

As Amy and run around like silly people packing up to head back to Boulder tonight, I stumbled upon two fantastic posts on the web. Consider this your daily reading if you read nothing else.

The first is titled Five Life-Changing Mistakes and How I Moved On by Julie Wainwright. Julie is now the co-founder of SmartNow.com but is infamous for being the CEO of Pets.com. Her post is personal and phenomenal. She identifies five mistakes she made leading up to and during the simultaneous failure of Pets.com and her marriage. She then describes - point by point - how she moved on. The mistakes follow; you'll need to click through to her article to see how she moved on. (Thanks Heidi).

Allowed others to define me.
I built my image of myself on two main supporting pillars. When those collapsed, I did too.
I stopped believing in myself.
I stopped taking care of myself.
Allowing my head to rule my heart.

The second is titled It's the Software, Not You in the NY Times by David Pogue. If you've been following along at home you know that I've been deeply immersed in human computer interaction (HCI) during the past year. Pogue gives several great examples and ends with "Why do software designers want their work to appear more complex instead of less? I just don't get why they don't get it. So the next time you're frustrated by software complexity, take heart; much of the time, it's not you. It's them. It's designers who have something on their mind other than software intelligence." Right on!

Both are worth reading and savoring.

(07/31/08 09:01 PM)

Networkers Who Purchase Leads R broke!. Purchasing Leads to grow a networking business does not work. Most of these leads (prospects) have no interest in a networking business. I speak from experience and thousand of dollars blown... (07/30/08 09:01 AM)

Rainmakers and Lead Generation. In professional services organizations the people who bring in the big revenue clients are often called rainmakers. They’re the one’s that make it all happen and become almost mythical in the process. In today’s challenging business climate, we could all... (07/29/08 09:00 PM)

25 Big Companies That Are Going Green. The average person might believe that the worldwide push to “go green” is coming solely from politicians and concerned citizens. In fact, this is not the case! In recent years, many big-name companies have realized their way towards more sustainable and eco-friendly business practices. Following are 25 well-known companies that are leading the green [...] (07/29/08 09:01 AM)

My podcast on lead generation with Dave Stein. I was was recently interviewed by Dave Stein, CEO and Founder of ES Research Group, and author of How Winners Sell (a great book by the way). During the interview we talk about the following topics: What works to get... (07/25/08 09:01 PM)

What causes webinar attendees to bail?. Webinars and webcasts are a key tactic in lead generation toolkit. The challenge with webinars is that if you don't do a super job, attendees will bail on you and they may never register one of your events again. That's... (07/23/08 09:01 PM)

I'm Speculating About The Speculation About Oil.

Having just finished reading George Soros's latest book The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crash of 2008 and What It Means my brain is now full of his theories around reflexivity. I have always instinctively agreed with Soros's philosophy even though I find it incredibly difficult and chewy to work my way through (but that's true of all philosophy for me.)

I'm a great fan of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle which, according to my friend Wikipedia, "is the statement that locating a particle in a small region of space makes the velocity of the particle uncertain; and conversely, that measuring the velocity of a particle precisely makes the position uncertain." Wikipedia suggests that this is often conflated with the Observer Effect (when you observe a phenomenon, you change it), but I think the intersection of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and Soros's Theory of Reflexivity reduce nicely in my brain to the Observer Effect.

That leads me to the real point of this post, which is the great short article in the New Yorker by James Surowiecki titled Oily Speculations (thanks Amy.) In the last month a new class of villain has emerged in the rapidly escalating price of oil - the "speculator." Surowiecki calls bullshit on this (not on the involvement of the speculator, but why this is both irrelevant and why the speculator is not the villain.)

The key sentence in the article is "Speculation has been a favorite target of politicians looking to mollify anxious voters since the time of ancient Greece, when the orator Lysias protested that wheat traders had reduced Athens to a state of siege.”

The conclusion, which Surowiecki bashes us (appropriately) over the head with is "The difficulty for Congress, of course, is that none of the problems that have driven up the price of oil lend themselves to a quick fix, and most, like the boom in global demand and the inaccessibility of certain oil fields, aren’t under our control at all. That’s what makes speculators a perfect target: by going after them, Congress can demonstrate to voters that it understands their pain, and at the same time avoid doing anything that might require real sacrifice from Americans. Our dependence on foreign oil, together with the fiscal fecklessness that has helped reduce the value of the dollar, means that there is no easy way out of where we are. But in an election year that’s hardly a message that anyone in Washington is going to deliver."

If you net it all out, it's the Observer Effect writ large.

(07/22/08 09:01 AM)

Execution is the key to go-to-market success. The biggest obstacle to go-to-market success (and lead generation ROI for that matter) is the lack of good execution. The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council's latest study, “Driving the Bottom Line from the Front Line,” assessed the go-to-market processes and... (07/08/08 09:00 PM)

I've Been Gnipped.

Earlier this year we made a seed investment in a new company called Gnip. Yesterday, Gnip launched their first service - a free centralized callback server that notifies data consumers (such as Plaxo) in real-time when there is new data about their users on various data producing sites (such as Flickr and Digg). I've written my version of the overview on the Foundry Group blog in my post titled Gnip is Ping Spelled Backwards, there are a couple of posts up already on the Gnip blog, and a number of people have already written about Gnip including TechCrunch, TechCrunchIT, ReadWriteWeb, VentureBeat, Dave Winer, and Joe Smarr (Plaxo's Chief Platform Architect). Rather than repeat what Gnip is here, I'm going to tell you how this investment came about.

It started in 2004. I got an IM out of the blue from someone named bpm140 (my IM addresses are easy to find - AIM/Y!: bfeld; Skype: bradfeld; MSN: brad@feld.com.) bpm140 asked me if I'd be willing to take a quick look at a business plan he had. I IM'ed back that he should email it to me - I got it 30 seconds later.

I took a look and scheduled a call. It was a plan for an educational game thing that I didn't really get but I was intrigued by some of the stuff in it. I talked to bpm140 (Eric Marcoullier) and gave him some feedback. After talking for a little while I told him it wasn't my thing, but he should feel free to holler if he thought I could be helpful.

Over the next few months I periodically got IMs from Eric. We'd have quick interactions - usually around a specific question - and he shared with me a new idea he was working on. He and his partner Todd Sampson (who I only knew through Eric's references to him) had this idea for a thingy (this was before little lines of javascript that you put on a blog were called widgets). You put this thingy on your blog and it gave you statistics of how many times someone clicked on a link. I'm a stats junky so I loved it. Eric said it would cost $3 / month. I told him it was stupid to charge for it, but I'd prepay for a year for $25. He took my money.

Over the next few months I gave him plenty of feedback on this new thing he was calling MyBlogLog. The UI of the stats service was hideous, but the popup link data on my blog was awesome and the stats were killer. By this point I had invested in FeedBurner, so I introduced Eric to Dick Costolo - FeedBurner's CEO. More feedback ensued.

One day, I got a familiar bpm140 IM saying something like "we came up this amazing idea to turn your blog into a social network." All I needed to do was put a little different piece of javascript on my blog. I did and the old version of the MyBlogLog widget - with names only and a really yucky font appeared on my blog. For those of you that remember it, it was one of those amazing widgets that you suddenly couldn't ever remember living without. Names were great, but soon little images appeared and the idea of seeing who had recently been on my blog was incredibly satisfying. MyBlogLog took off like a rocket.

Up to this point, Eric and his partner Todd hadn't raised any money. I remember the first "are you interested in investing call" happening in May 2006. Amy and I had rented and apartment in Paris for the month and I can remember the conference call with Eric and this new guy Scott Rafer who Eric and Todd had brought in to be CEO. They were considering putting together an angel round with the idea of going for a venture round in three or four months. I committed $25k on the spot, although I remember Scott saying he really didn't want investments of less than $50k.

MyBlogLog continued its torrid growth over the summer, appearing on virtually every blog I read. Fred Wilson - one of my co-investors in FeedBurner and another fan of MyBlogLog - and I started talking about doing a VC round. We came close to do a deal (the documents were a few days away from being signed) when Yahoo! acquired MyBlogLog shortly after getting excited about them after seeing them at the Web 2.0 conference in 2006. I had one awkward conversation with Eric where I quickly told him that while I was disappointed that I wouldn't be investing in MyBlogLog, I was psyched for him, Todd, and Scott and wished him luck. I also told him that I'd love to stay in touch and have another chance to work with him in the future.

I didn't expect Eric to stay at Yahoo! very long (he lasted about six months, although Todd is still there trying hard to keep the MyBlogLog flame alive.) True to my invitation, Eric and I stayed in touch, he and Todd were a big help at TechStars in 2007, and Eric started making occasional trips out to Boulder to see me.

I spent most of 2007 raising our first Foundry Group fund. By the fall we had finished raising our fund and had turned our focus towards making investments. It was in this context that Eric and I sat down on one of his trips in the fall of 2007. Over a couple of hours, Eric ran me through a half dozen ideas he had for a new business. He was hedging a little - struggling with whether to go deep on one business or try to start a few. I strongly encouraged him to focus on one. I told him that four of the six ideas were stupid, one wasn't for me, but one was awesome. It was the seed of what turned into Gnip.

During that trip, I dragged my partners Ryan and Seth into a conference room to sit with Eric and sketch out Gnip more. Eric was originally calling the idea Pingery but somewhere along the way Gnip popped out and it stuck ("meta-ping server" was a little awkward). Gnip fit perfectly in a new theme that Ryan, Seth, and my other Foundry partners were calling Glue and we told Eric that if he wanted to do Gnip as the exclusive thing he worked on, we'd be game to go after it with him.

I got a call from Eric a few weeks later that he'd decided to go all in with Gnip. We'd recently made an investment in Zynga and Eric had spent some time with Mark Pincus, the founder/CEO of Zynga. I think Mark's single-minded obsession with the business he was creating made a deep impression on Eric, especially since Mark is a multi-time successful entrepreneur who also has plenty of angel investments and can basically spend his time wherever he wants.

Part of Eric's success in MyBlogLog was his partnership with his technical co-founder Todd. I told Eric he needed either Todd, or a technical co-founder like Todd, as part of Gnip. Todd wasn't available as he was committed to staying at Yahoo! so we introduced Eric to a few people, including Jud Valeski. We'd known Jud for several years as he was a Netscape/AOL refugee that had settled in Boulder. Jud had recently left Me.dium and was working out of our offices as he contemplated his next gig. Jud and Eric hit it off immediately and started working together remotely (Eric in the bay area; Jud in Boulder) to both flesh out the idea behind Gnip as well as see if they could work together.

A few weeks later Eric and Jud gave their formal pitch to us for Gnip. It was a 10 page PowerPoint presentation that outlined the idea, opportunity, and how they would go about it. We committed to leading a seed investment of $1m on the spot - either by ourselves or with another VC firm. A few weeks later we closed a $1.1m round with SoftTechVC (Jeff Clavier) and First Round Capital (Josh Kopelman) and were off to the races (BTW - Josh has written a really clever post about Gnip titled The Story of Francis Bates.)

Eric, Jud, and Gnip have surpassed all of our expectations from our seed investment at the beginning of the year. They've totally nailed the concept we were kicking around when we first started talking about Gnip, have built a superb initial service in a remarkably short period of time with the help of Pivotal Labs, and have added a handful of awesome technical people to their team. They've managed to do this while still being split between the bay area (Eric, Tiffany, and Pivotal) and Boulder (Jud and the rest of the team).

It took a three year courtship, but Eric and I are now working together as partners. As my grandmother used to say, "My Gnip Runneth Over."

(07/03/08 09:00 AM)

Improve Lead Capture, Conversion: Replace Landing Pages with Personalized Microsites. You can improve lead-capture and sales-conversion rates by directing your prospective customers to special Web site landing pages. But you can enjoy even greater success by expanding your landing pages?turning them into microsites?and customizing the home pages and navigation menus of those microsites. (07/01/08 09:00 AM)

Geoffrey Moore "Provocative Selling" Presentation. Geoffrey Moore presented at Austin Texchange a couple weeks ago. It was a great event. A lot of buzz from 300 entrepreneurs and executives in attendance. His topic was "Provocative Selling: How to Break and Enter Markets...Even in a Downturn". The biggest takeaway for me was that 'leads' don't work when selling something new in a downturn. You have to have the warm introduction and participation from executives, and create a sense that something is missing in the prospect's business without your solution. Geoff gave me permission to link to his slides from our Austin Texchange site here. Also see pictures from the event. Incoming President Charley Dean (Silverton Ventures), Geoffrey Moore, and Sam Decker (outgoing Texchange President) (06/30/08 09:00 AM)

The Most Expensive Way to Grow a Business. There are really only four ways to grow a business – Get more leads, close more deals, increase your average transaction or add products and services to your offerings. Of the lot, trying to generate increasing numbers of leads is the most expensive. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that you drop your lead [...]

(06/27/08 09:00 AM)

Optimizing webforms to generate more leads through your website. After a talk on lead management, I spoke with several marketers from a company where one said, “We don’t need to qualify our leads because our web forms do the qualifying for us... then we send them to our sales... (06/26/08 09:00 PM)

Eight Ways to Integrate Webinars Into a B2B Marketing Plan. B2B sales happen over a period of several months as trust builds between the prospect and the seller. Webinars may be used not just to bring new leads in the door but also to move existing leads through the pipeline to a final contract. Rather than a one-hit approach, you need to determine where webinars fit into the overall sales cycle. (06/24/08 09:00 AM)

Four Keys to Marketing Operations Success. What does "best practices" in Marketing Operations look like, and how do industry-leading companies operate and integrate this highly valuable function? Marketing Operations Partners recently polled more than 80 marketing leaders to find out. (06/24/08 09:00 AM)

Amazon’s UGC Playground. Along with being one of the world’s biggest book stores, Amazon also offers some interesting user generated content avenues that could lead to a bit of exposure for small business owners who explore them. Amazon user profile - this is much like any social network profile and allows you to add a description of your business [...]
(06/19/08 09:00 AM)

Lead Scoring: A Leading Priority for Marketers. Today, leads flow to Marketing from ever-increasing online sources?email campaigns, the company Web site, Google AdWords and Google searches, webinars, online advertising, blogs, and virtual trade shows?as well as from traditional marketing activities. The sheer volume of leads, or "suspects," can be overwhelming. How does Marketing prioritize all these suspects? (06/10/08 09:00 PM)

Simplicity Is the Nature of Great Emails. The modern email inbox is a perpetual promotion machine of colors, styles, and sales pitches all fighting to be seen. In an attempt to break from the herd, many email marketers ironically adopt a herd mentality of more clutter, more content, more, more, more. This misguided pursuit of increased visibility merely leads to increased invisibility. Before joining the invisible ranks of the "clutter cult" of email marketers, consider that a huge body of marketing research demonstrates that the human mind is a sucker for simplicity and focus. The eye embraces that which can be easily digested. Less is more. (06/10/08 09:00 PM)

The Best Things In Life Are Free!. Have I got a deal for you! One of my strategic partners, InfusionSoft, has asked me to conduct a webinar Wednesday, June 18th at 3pm CDT called “Infusionsoft & Duct Tape Marketing Reveal The Must-Know Secrets of Small Business Growth” Infusionsoft makes marketing automation software that helps small businesses keep track of leads, lists, orders, opportunities and [...]
(06/04/08 09:00 PM)

Five Inexpensive Direct Mail Tools to Generate Sales Leads Fast. Isn't direct mail pricey? It can be. But don't think that you have to create big, flashy mailers. In fact, when your goal is to generate sales leads, simpler, cheaper formats often work better. Here are five basic direct mail tools that you can use to generate sales leads quickly and inexpensively. (06/03/08 09:00 AM)

The Human Touch of Lead Nurturing/Marketing Automation. I participated in a webcast and podcast combo on the adding the human touch to marketing automation as part of the Marketing Mastery Series sponsored by Eloqua, MarketingExperiments and ON24. You can watch the webinar recording here. Because the webinar... (05/28/08 09:00 PM)

BtoB 2008 Lead Generation Guide. B2B Marketers are increasingly emphasizing lead generation and as a result, BtoB Magazine just published their inaugural BtoB's Lead Generation Guide today. I highly recommend you check it out. It has a lot of resources studies, expert columns, market statistics... (05/28/08 09:00 AM)

Should lead generation ignore current customers?. ”We know more about our prospects (leads) than we know about our current customers” was shocking statement I heard from a client and it stuck with me. In fact, it's the impetus for this post. When you have a complex... (05/12/08 09:00 PM)

Web Analytics for B2B Lead Generation . In the complex sale, the length of the buying cycle makes the connection between on-the-web activity and the off-line decision to purchase much more difficult to trace. So the challenge is connecting our website log file data (analytics), with marketing... (05/02/08 09:01 PM)

Stop doing random acts of lead generation. I don’t know about you but I seldom meet a B2B marketer who time to think. And it seems that the pressure keeps building as more of us seek to do more with less. That said, it’s vital for us... (04/29/08 09:01 PM)

Lead-Generation Blueprints in 30 Minutes: How a Company Quadrupled Marketing ROI. Marketers must continually fight the temptation of executing random, disconnected lead-generation activities to prospects. Success today requires marketers to apply the discipline of campaign development in order to establish a relevant, timely dialog with the target audience. This is the key to higher conversion rates and even higher customer loyalty. (04/22/08 09:01 AM)

Podcast: How to Select and optimize Outsourced Teleprospecting. More companies than ever are outsourcing operational lead generation processes and teleprospecting functions, however there is very little information on how to select, engage, and measure these vendors who will add that essential human touch. I just interviewed Sridhar Ramanathan,... (04/16/08 09:00 AM)

Top Lead Generation Tips for New Sellers. The faster we can get new sales reps producing revenue the better. So what works? Jill Konrath shares 5 great tips for new sellers on her Selling to BIG Companies Blog and it’s definitely worth a read. I particularity liked... (04/14/08 09:00 PM)

Lead management software becoming a hot topic. What do you do with leads or inquires once you generate them? This basic question is overlooked by so many and yet it’s the leading cause of failure in what would otherwise be effective lead generation programs. The common-sense answer... (04/07/08 09:00 AM)

Push vs. Pull Marketing.

The push marketing vs. pull marketing discussion is still alive and well. Check out this article on Adotas. It's been pretty popular so it's pegged as the lead article on the site for the last week.

Success Is A Tug Of War, Push And Pull To Win

(04/04/08 09:00 PM)

Liberate Your Marketing By Setting Boundaries.

This is the article that I wrote this month for adotas. The idea here is that so often, marketers are consumed with all of the media and hype around them that we neglect to setup proper boundaries and filters for ourselves and for our teams to ensure that we're truly able to focus on our marketing mission, only letting that which will truly benefit our organization onto the marketing plan.

â??Donâ??t fence me inâ?? is the mindset of most marketers and creative members of your team. The last thing we typically want is to have boundaries on our time, creativity and choices. Boundaries, however, are what keep you and I focused on the business of marketing and others focused on sales and still others focused on finance and operations. The ability to set, express, and maintain boundaries is an essential part of any healthy marketing department. Boundaries build â??win-winâ?? relationships by making clarifying needs and limits, while opening the field on what options are available for meeting marketing objectives. More specifically, setting marketing boundaries around both new and legacy marketing tactics allow you to focus on those things that matter and only pursue those ideas that pass through your well-established marketing boundaries, ensuring a higher degree of success.

What do marketing boundaries look like, and how can you know where and how to set them?

Peter Block, author of Flawless Consulting, says that â??If you canâ??t say â??no,â?? your â??yesesâ?? donâ??t mean a thing.â?? Thatâ??s so absolutely true. In marketing, if we canâ??t say â??NOâ?? to those things that seem to beg at our budgets and demand our time, weâ??re hamstrung in trying to accomplish those things that weâ??ve already said â??yesâ?? to. In order to keep our yes and no categories in check, there are five key boundary setting techniques that I recommend for all marketers.

Learn to say The Positive â??NOâ??: Yes, you can say â??noâ?? positively. Knowing that your â??noâ?? answer leads to increased energy and focus on the â??yesesâ?? youâ??ve already committed to. To get a feel for this, look at where you should say â??NOâ?? right now. Sit down right now and identify the emerging demands on your marketing team, plan and budget. Identify 5-10 â??NOâ??sâ?? you need to say. Then, for each, ask yourself, â??What would I be willing to say â??Yesâ?? to in this case?â?? Choose wisely - only what you are willing to do, and can do with the same energy and focus that youâ??ve committed to apply to your existing â??yeses.â??

Establish â??gate criteriaâ?? for new marketing vehicles and ideas: Thereâ??s a tool used in product development called the â??Stage-Gateâ?? method that includes a set of predetermined steps from idea to launch. By implementing a similar set of procedural steps in reviewing new marketing ideas, tools, tactics and technologies you will gain a clear understanding of what you should allow into your marketing mix and whatâ??s destined for the â??NOâ?? pile. Just as you have a systematic process for evaluating candidates that you hire onto your marketing team, you need to establish rigor in what ideas make it onto the marketing plan.

Equip your team with boundary setting tools: The best boundary setting tools are of little benefit to an organization if all of the information and minute decisions are still run though the head of marketing. When working through the exercise on the â??positive NOâ?? and setting up your gate criteria, walk you team through the process and gather their input. When you get to the next iteration, walk through it with your team again and point out where their input is included. Repeat until complete.

Transfer ownership of boundaries to your team: Working through step 3, â??equip your team,â?? will set the stage for ownership transfer. Once youâ??ve settled on an initial â??NOâ?? list and have your gate criteria and process established, it should become part of everyoneâ??s job to ensure that everything is vetted through the new process and â??NOâ?? test before it comes up for discussion. This way youâ??ll have a team thatâ??s always focused on the securing the win for each of your committed â??yesesâ?? but that also knows how to spot a genuine opportunity when it comes along.

Keep your freedom to choose: When youâ??re not clear on what you should say no to, itâ??s equally challenging on what to say yes to. By setting marketing boundaries, youâ??ll free up your thoughts and energy to focus on what matters most in achieving your objectives, while simultaneously freeing yourself to make smart choices using your new â??power of NOâ?? and ideas evaluation methods.

Once youâ??ve established boundaries, a system and criteria for new marketing idea review and delegate boundary management to your team, youâ??ll find yourself with more focus, energy and initiative behind those decisions that you have committed to and will have a fool-proof system for staying in step with the newest marketing trends without feeling like youâ??re being carried away on a tidal wave of runaway marketing ideas.

(04/04/08 09:00 PM)

Purchase the Marketech '08 Marketing Technology Guide!.

$19.99

Marketech 08: Using Emerging Media in Marketing - eBook - $19.99

Today's service industry organizations depend on deeper and more relevant customer connections to drive loyalty, retention, referrals and reactivation within their coveted client base. These companies don't just need technology however, they need a systems perspective on how to integrate the ever changing world of social media, social networking and Web 2.0 into their core business infrastructure to meet their customers in their medium, now and in the future.

Purchase Now to Discover:

2008 Emerging Media Vehicles

How to Use New Media Vehicles to Your Advantage

The Latest Internet & Marketing Technologies that can Impact Your 2008 Marketing Plans

Your copy of the Marketech 08 Guide PDF will show you how to put these technologies to work for you.

This guide includes a service-organization perspective that will help you:

Utilize relevant marketing & customer service technologies that today's leading service organizations employ to connect with their customers. This includes an overview of tools from social networking via Facebook, organic corporate networks and customer community programs to communication vehicles like blogs, online video and podcasting.
Integrate with existing common customer loyalty, retention, referrals and reactivation initiatives.
Identify benefits and risks associated with these techniques and technologies such as lower cost to service and increased referrals vs. loss of central control and the increasing customer control of your brand reputation.
Discover who's doing this already examples and how is it working for them. We'll look at a myriad of case examples with learning's and action items than any organization can apply.

This eBook is available as an Instant Download in Adobe PDF *** Full disclosure: I wrote the e-book as part of a project for the AMA in late 2007 and retained the rights to publish. The response to the guide in my TechnoMarketing sessions and other speaking engagements has been so positive that I've decided to offer the item for sale.
(04/04/08 09:00 PM)

Mystery Solved!.

The other day, I wrote about some of the top websites that refer people to my site. One of those sites is the US House of Representatives, which has been sending people to my Guestbook page for quite some time. Well, yesterday I decided to try to find out where on the House site the link to my own site is listed.

It took me only a few seconds to find it using Google. I searched for "US House of Representatives government grants" and the first site listed on the search results was this one: Federal Funds Express - a site I'd never seen before. But apparently a lot of other people have.

Federal Funds Express may be a good place to start looking for government grants and other sources of funds, but it's not really an in-depth resource. However, there are some good links on the site (including mine, of course), which in turn can lead to other good resources. Links are listed under the following categories:

How to get and manage grants
Federal charitable and corporate sources of grants
Resources to help small businesses
State and local government funding, data resources and disaster assistance
Educational resources for students, schools and colleges
Property, surplus, donated and unclaimed
Family issues: health, housing and consumer protection

The website hasn't been updated since October 2007, but you may still find some good sources of information there. I checked a few of the links, but didn't have time to check them all.

I'm thinking about sending an e-mail to the Webmaster asking him or her to direct people to a page on my site other than my guestbook. But maybe it would be best to leave it as is.

(03/20/08 09:01 AM)

Fear not! Think like a savvy investor with lead generation. This morning I was talking to a marketing leader about his 2008 strategy and he brought up some concerns he had about the economy and its potential impact on him and others. Can you blame him? In years past, marketing... (03/13/08 09:00 PM)

Referrals From Great Sites.

Every once in a while I take a look at the Google Analytics reports for my website. These reports provide detailed statistics about the number and type of visitors to a site, where they came from, what pages they visited, etc. The reports contain a lot of data and take a while to review, which is why I only look at them occasionally.

But one of the reports I do like to look at is the Referring Sites Report, which indicates which sites referred people to my site via a link. And if you are interested in grants (both government and non-government grants), grantwriting, or grant research, you'll want to take a look at some of the websites that send the most visitors to Proposalwriter.com . Among my top 10 referring sites are:

The Grants Information Collection at the University of Wisconsin. This fabulous site has a wealth of information on grants, funding, and other related topics. I'm delighted to say that they link to my site on four different pages. They have consistently been my #1 referral site.
My #2 referral site is The Foundation Center, which sends visitors to my site via links on 3 of their many pages. If you want grant-related information from the nation's leading authority on non-profits, The Foundation Center's site is one of the first places you should investigate.
The third site that sends the most visitors to my site is the US House of Representatives. Somewhere among the its many pages there has been a link to my site for several years. Except I don't know where it is, and oddly enough the link is to my Guestbook. I've never taken the time to try to figure out how people get to my site from this site.
#9 on the list is the University of Michigan's Proposal Writing Help Page, which of course contains info and links on proposal writing.

In addition to Google Analytics, I use Google Webmaster Tools to find out how many other sites have links to mine. At present, Webmaster Tools shows that there are over 4,100 external links from other sites to the various pages on my site. But this number seems to include quite a few dupicates, so it's hard to tell what the real number is.

Nevertheless, I'm pretty satisfied.

(03/06/08 09:01 AM)

Why cost-per-lead budgets fail and fewer leads are better. A reader asked me to explain why fewer leads are better and why “cost-per-lead” budgets fail. These are two great questions that have the same fundamental answer: quality first then quantity. The truth is that sales people care very little... (03/05/08 09:01 PM)

Lead Nurturing is about Relationships, not e-mails . Carrying on the theme of my recent post on lead nurturing as trusted advisors with the human touch, I came across Mike Volpe's post over the HubSpot Marketing Blog. I thought he did a nice job of showing the human... (02/28/08 09:01 PM)

Learn Word of Mouth Marketing -- WOMM-U, May 8-9. This year the Word of Mouth Marketing Association is doing something completely different (disclosure: I'm on the board). It will be WOMM-U (Word of Mouth Marketing University), the first training-based conference full of case studies, operational cookbooks, and practical advice to make Word of Mouth Marketing work in your organization. The tracks will include topics on Managing a blog program Activating WOM in Social Networks Building a Sustained WOM Program Measurement: The ROI of Fans Selling into the CEO ...and much more. Keynote presenters includes my friend Joseph Jaffe (author of "Join the Conversation") and Jeffrey Graham, who leads research for NYTimes. Join me at this unique conference, May 8, 9 in Miami. Register here. (02/28/08 09:01 PM)

Making B2B lead generation messages more memorable . In B2B marketing, when you have many potential buyers who are involved in the buying process, how do you connect with these people in a memorable way? If you look at most lead generation messages, they often contain industry jargon... (02/27/08 09:01 AM)

Lead nurturing thoughts. It’s surprising how many marketers now say they do “lead nurturing” but in reality they are just sending monthly email campaigns or monthly newsletters with some call to action. If all you do is send generic email marketing messages to... (02/21/08 09:00 AM)

Lead Nurturing as trusted advisors with the Human Touch . In today’s commoditized business climate I think what sets companies apart with a complex sale is how well they build and cultivate relationships. Over the years, I’ve observed a truth; and this truth will requires many sales people to reconsider... (01/04/08 09:00 PM)

Prioritizing Marketers Top Priorities. This morning I got a research brief from Mediapost summarizing the findings from the Marketing Effectiveness Networking Group (MENG) and Anderson Aanlytics study. This study surveyed marketing executives to identify key trends and strategies of effective marketing. The subject line of the email said: "Marketing Execs Say Basics Are Most Important in 2008". By "basics" I thought they meant strategies such as becoming measurement-oriented, shifting ad portfolio, investing in email infrastructure, build operational data warehouse, and improve web site. However the 'basics' by definition from this study were more customer-centric and more concepts and objectives rather than strategies. And unfortunately for most companies, they're not all that 'basic' in achieving success. 60% of marketing executives said the following 'marketing basics' were important: Customer satisfaction Customer retention Segmentation Brand loyalty ROI I have a copy of the study. To be clear, the study asked marketing executives to choose from over 60 concepts or buzzwords (such as the 5 above) which were then categorized. Other categories, in order of votes, included: SEO (by itself) Personalization: concepts include Data mining, CRM, Lead Generation, Personalization, Ecommerce, Competitive Intelligence Green Marketing: Multicultural / Ethic issues. Breakdown of old media Innovative Branding Viral / WOM: concepts include viral, WOM, blogging New Media: concepts include Web 2.0, Mobile, CGM, Long Tail, Social Networking Macro Economics Tech Strategy Outsourcing Social Issues Other Now, as a marketer, if I participated in this study I may have answered the same way. After all, the 'marketing basics' are overarching objectives. What... (01/02/08 09:00 AM)

#1 Lesson from 2007: Using a Sense of Urgency in Marketing.

If there's one theme that keeps coming back to me from the past year, it's got the be the proper use (and the ease of misuse, if you're not careful) of a sense of urgency about doing business with you and your company. I'm not talking about the cheezy 'limited time offers' that you see over and over on TV (limited my ass...you mean, limited by your budget for spewing out shitty ads...) but genuine urgency created by inflection points in your business which moves the needle on buyer behavior.

Keep in mind here that I'm talking mostly about B2B, which, from my perspective, makes this even more exciting. B2C gets all the urgency in the mass media, and sometimes it's a rare day for most B2B organizations to be able to substantiate a genuine sense of urgency within the base of prospects.

That said, urgency is not for everyone. It's a powerful weapon that's not to be used without forethought and and crisp and clear understanding of not only the immediate implications, but also future consequences of the slippery slope that it can create, as discussed in a concise little bit about urgency in the Marketing Experiments blog.

So, what's this urgency thing all about and how do you create it?

I guess that this will be different for everyone, but frankly, the most successful levers that I've found are timing around pricing and production and availability, quotas and caps. I'm keen to hear more about what you think. Again, I'm talking sustainable things here - not just a 50% off sale or something....

Timing and production to create urgency:

This is the fun one. A great example is an impending price increase. If you've been doing a great deal of lead nurturing with your base of prospects, this is especially useful because the already know and trust you. On the other hand, if you don't have a base of prospects that you're nurturing, then you're just another average dude with a deal. Seriously, there's a lot of you out there...this type of urgency play almost has to come from a position of trust to be truly effective. Sure, you can impose urgency on a facelist list of prospects, but your conversion will suffer.

Proper planning improves urgency results:

Again, you can take this for what it's worth, but like everything I preach about when I talk about thought leadership marketing or 'altruism before capitalism', you can't just wake up one day and say "I need to create a sense of urgency and get more sales." Crap, what's first. Wrong way Charlie. Not going to work. You need to plan this. You need to understand what the next inflection point in your business will be (obsolescence of an old product, price increase across the board, new product design coming out, office move/clearing inventory...something that's almost 'external' to you yet internal at the same time) and work in a sense of urgency into your marketing to coincide with (or, preferably leading up to) the genuine, non "manufactured" inflection point.

Quotas, caps and limited availability:

Take a page from event marketers (if any of you are attending sold out football games as we near playoff time, you understand the acute sense of urgency that surrounds ticket prices and the limited availability in stadium seating) and keep an eye on your quota for items, or your geographical territories that are quickly filling up or the number of 'limited edition' items that you can produce in one quarter. From a services perspective, such as social media speaking or marketing consulting (things which I have some familiarity with) the best creator of urgency is the calendar and the limited number of dates you have available.

This is not the end of the story. There's so much more to this urgency thing (like neuromarketing and buyer behavior) but for now, that's enough.

Action Items:

What ideas do you have for creating urgency? Please share in comments!

(12/31/07 09:00 PM)

Future of Online Retailing -- Four Predictions. Forrester and Jupiter report that more than 70% of online shoppers seek out user reviews before making a purchase decision. MarketingSherpa reports that 84% of consumers prefer the opinion of other consumers vs. experts. Hundreds of retailers including WalMart, Best Buy, HP, and the Home Depot have followed Amazon’s lead by allowing their consumers to review products in the online channel. Consumers demand social commerce solutions and retailers are driving measurable results. As consumers are presented with increasing choices, channels, and messages, they will continue to turn to peers to discover, research, and make decisions about products and services. Retailers will need to utilize technology and best practices to provide authentic, relevant, and effective social commerce solutions to retain their customers into the future. 1) SOCIAL CONTENT IS GOING MULTI-CHANNEL The future of reviews and social content is going beyond the product page and into other channels such as mobile phones, kiosks, print collateral, online advertising, and social networks. It is clear that consumers rely on social content to make purchasing decision. They will expect to be able to access to this content regardless of channel in order to inform their purchasing process. The retailers that provide this multi-channel access will develop competitive advantages in their markets to attract and retain consumers. Additionally, more retailers will see the value of integrating social commerce with CRM and other “back-end” channels. Retailers will start to leverage social content as a key input into driving decisions in marketing, sales, advertising, customer support, and... (12/09/07 09:01 PM)

Marketech 08: Using Emerging Media in Marketing.

Marketech 08: Using Emerging Media in Marketing - AMA Members-Only Webcast
Today's service industry organizations depend on deeper and more relevant customer connections to drive loyalty, retention, referrals and reactivation within their coveted client base. These companies don't just need technology; however, they need a systems perspective on how to integrate the ever changing world of social media, social networking and Web 2.0 into their core business infrastructure to meet their customers in their medium, now and in the future.

Register now to discover:

2008 Emerging Media Vehicles
How to Use New Media Vehicles to Your Advantage
The Latest Internet & Marketing Technologies that can Impact Your 2008 Marketing Plans

You'll also receive a complimentary copy of the Marketech 08 Guide PDF that shows how to put these technologies to work for you.

This program includes a service-organization perspective that will help you:

Utilize relevant marketing & customer service technologies that today's leading service organizations employ to connect with their customers. This includes an overview of tools from social networking via Facebook, organic corporate networks and customer community programs to communication vehicles like blogs, online video and podcasting.
Integrate with existing common customer loyalty, retention, referrals and reactivation initiatives.
Identify benefits and risks associated with these techniques and technologies such as lower cost to service and increased referrals vs. loss of central control and the increasing customer control of your brand reputation.
Discover who's doing this already (examples) and how is it working for them. We'll look at a myriad of case examples with learning's and action items than any organization can apply.

Date: December 6, 2007

Times: Session 1 - 10am PST/ 11am MST/ 12pm CST/1pm EST or Session 2 - 12pm PST/1pm MST/2pm CST/3pm EST

Host: The American Marketing Association and Dana VanDen Heuvel, a highly recognized expert on blogging, podcasting, RSS and other interactive marketing trends and a frequent guest speaker at many AMA live training programs, including the recent premier Training Series: Technomarketing event.

Register Here for the Marketech 08 Webcast.
(12/05/07 09:01 PM)

It's Saturday, Do You Know Where Your Competitors Are?.

I'm doing a bit of CRM research this morning and found, what I think, is a nice little strategy that Salesforce.com is exploiting that I was unable to find any replication of in a quick search in a couple of other sectors. This is stone-simple, but no one's doing it. Trademark infringement? Not likely, at least under the current laws and legal precedent (GEICO vs. Google)

So, what is it? Have a look.. It's what I generically call the "Competitor vs. Salesforce.com" strategy. Here's an example of their AdWords ad based on a search for SugarCRM:

How cool! And, it leads to a proper landing page (of course, you knew it did!)

I know, simple, but effective. If you're involved in an AdWords campaign, why are you letting your competitors get their unfair share of all the clicks?

(11/10/07 09:00 PM)

InTouch Acquired by MECLABS Group, Parent Company of MarketingSherpa and MarketingExperiments. When I started the B2B Lead Generation blog back in 2003, my purpose was to have this blog be a launch pad for practical ideas, not commercials. So that’s why many of you probably don’t know what I do in... (11/07/07 09:00 PM)

Think more, do less . Are you too busy to think? Many of us feel that way at times. As simple as it seems, finding time to think effectively is vital to developing a solid sales, marketing and lead generation strategy. Without question, our mindsets... (10/23/07 09:00 PM)

New Social Media Presentation Released.

I'm just putting the finishing touches on a new Social Media/TechnoMarketing presentation that I'm pretty excited about. For those organizations that make the distinction between a 'client' (long term relationship) and 'customer' (transactional relationship), I've developed a program that illustrates how to put the latest tools & technologies in play for your service organization.

Want more info? Drop me a line!

Social Media for the Service Industry Enterprise

Today's service industry organizations depend on deeper and more relevant customer connections to drive loyalty, retention, referrals and reactivation within their coveted client base. These companies don't just need technology; however, they need a systems perspective on how to integrate the ever changing world of social media, social networking and Web 2.0 into their core business infrastructure to meet their customers in their medium, now and in the future.

This program will provide a focused, service-organization perspective on:

What are the relevant marketing & customer service technologies that today's leading service organizations employ to connect with their customers. This includes an overview of tools from social networking via Facebook, organic corporate networks, and customer community programs to communication vehicles like blogs, online video and podcasting.

How do these integrate with existing common customer loyalty, retention, referrals and reactivation initiatives?

What are the benefits and risks associated with these techniques and technologies such as lower cost to service and increased referrals vs. loss of central control and the increasing customer control of your brand reputation.

Who's doing this already (examples) and how is it working for them. We'll look at a myriad of case examples with learning's and action items than any organization can apply.

Want more info? Drop me a line!

Check out my marketing speaker page more info on my other marketing related speaking engagements & programs.

(10/11/07 09:00 AM)

Lead reengagement gives you more out of your investment. The year-end push is on and I know you may be wondering what else can I do to drive more revenue with little or no remaining budget? I've found the best way is to focus on the leads you already... (10/10/07 09:00 PM)

Choosing an on-demand lead generation solution. Link: Choosing an on-demand lead generation solution. Choosing an on-demand lead generation solution this article By Frank Vaculin, Spoke Software October 4th, 2007 An on-demand data prospect database can boost the success rates of lead generation campaigns and help marketers... (10/08/07 09:00 PM)

It's Been a While. A Few Updates.... Wow...am I overdue for writing on my blog or what!?. It's been busy since the last post. Lots of traveling, tradeshows, etc. We raised $8.8M at Bazaarvoice, after becoming a profitable company several months ago and launching in the UK. We launched several new capabilities and have been hiring (interviewing) like crazy. Some other things keep me busy such as leading Austin Texchange, the Board of WOMMA, contributing magazine columns, and being an advisor to a few companies. My first blog priority has been to our company blog at www.bazaarblog.com (around social commerce and word of mouth). My 4-year old Decker Marketing blog has suffered. But now, after completing our biggest tradeshow of the year and an overdue vacation, I'm feeling a bit refreshed... Rarely do I share a "personal update", but this is a big one...we're expecting our third child! In March we will have a 10 year old, 8 year old, and a newborn. It will be like starting over! My wife and I talked about it for two years and talked to a lot of families who had a big birth separation with no regrets. My friend, Thom Singer, is the youngest in a family of 8 kids (I think). He said it was a great growing up with older brothers and sisters, and reminded me that our older kids are built-in baby sitters. My wife and I were anxious at first (we'd lose our newly-gained freedom from baby care), but now we know what we're doing... (09/26/07 09:01 PM)

Lead management is far from an easy task. Companies that adopt effective lead management processes generate more revenue from their lead generation investment and have overall higher close rates on marketing generated leads than those that do not. But I've encountered very few companies that really do lead... (09/18/07 09:00 PM)

Practical Strategies for Generating Quality Leads Teleclass. I'm doing a bunch of in-person speaking events this Fall. If you're not able to make any of them, I wanted to let you know that I'm going to be a guest this Wednesday with Michael Stelzner as part of... (09/18/07 09:00 PM)

VCs Keep Throwing Money at Web 2.0 Startups. Dreams... Originally uploaded by noahwesley The numbers are out for how much money venture capitalists poured into Web 2.0 startups like Facebook, Zillow, and Netvibes during the first half of this year. Worldwide, counts Dow Jones VentureOne, VCs put $464 million into 101 deals. That’s up from 89 deals worth $432 million during the first half of 2006. (See the full-year 2006 figures here). Most of this increase comes from Europe, where early-stage investors are getting the Web 2.0 bug. Two thirds of those 101 deals were in the U.S., maintaining a steady pace with the activity during the same period last year. But the $357 million raised in U.S. venture deals represents a mere 1.6 percent up-tick from last year. And while Web 2.0 deals made up 30 percent of all “information services” deals, that’s actually down from 41 percent last year. With all the low-hanging fruit already well picked over in the U.S., VCs here are migrating to later-stage financings and funding startups focused on the enterprise, whereas consumer-oriented deals still dominate overseas. Sequoia Capital and Draper Fischer Jurvetson lead the charge in Web 2.0 financings, with six and five deals, respectively, But, for the first time, New England beat out the Bay Area in terms of money raised for Web 2.0 companies ($102 million vs. $90 million). Soon, it is going to stop making sense to count Web 2.0 deals separately from any other Internet deals. At this point, any Internet company worth its salt can claim... (09/17/07 09:00 AM)

MarketingSherpa Demand Generation Summit 2007. Click here now to buy a ticket to the Demand Gen Summit and get a copy of my new book: "Lead Generation for the Complex Sale"Register by 9/28 For a $100 Discount You're invited to join me at MarketingSherpa’s Demand... (09/04/07 09:01 PM)

The One Piece Of Advice You Can't Generate Leads Without. The staff at Raintoday approached a group of B2B lead generation experts with the following question: "What is the one piece of advice you simply cannot generate leads without?" The result was a special 36-page report with 10 all-new articles... (08/30/07 09:00 PM)

B2B Marketing and lead generation via Social networking . Have you dipped your toe in the water of social networking yet? And if not, should you start? That’s a question I know that a lot of very busy B2B marketers ask themselves which is why I found Tessa Wegert's... (08/29/07 09:00 PM)

Closed Loop Marketing Challenges for Lead Generation. I got a call earlier this week from a reader who was really frustrated with his closed loop marketing system and he was hoping to get some ideas on how to "fix it." He explained that his company had recently... (08/24/07 09:01 PM)

Webcast: Closed-Loop Lead Generation & Management. Join me for a complimentary webinar I'm giving on Wednesday, August 22nd, on how to Achieve a Closed-Loop System for Lead Generation and Management. In this webcast, sponsored by ON24 and hosted by the AMA, you will learn how to:... (08/20/07 09:00 AM)

Content ideas for lead nurturing and tactics to use. When it comes to lead nurturing, I find that many marketers get stuck because they lack enough good content to do it consistently. My advice (if you plan to do it) is to start accumulating content and building your lead... (08/17/07 09:00 PM)

7 Tips to Improve Sales Follow-up & Close More Leads. If you are like most B2B marketers, lead generation is at top of your priority list. But as you may already know, generating tons of “leads” doesn’t guarantee sales will follow. Does the sales team either ignore your hard-won leads... (08/01/07 09:01 PM)

9 1/2 Ways... to Generate and Follow Leads. Marketing writer David Ward shares 9 ½ techniques to generate leads without spending too much. I was interviewed for this short article along with Bob Bly, Tino Buntic and Guy Maser. If you're involved in a complex sale, I'm sure... (07/30/07 09:01 PM)

Inquiry management and search marketing strategy. BtoB Magazine's Carol Krol interviewed Kevin Lee, executive chairman of Did-it Search Marketing on Effective Search Strategies. I first met Kevin when we were both were speakers at MarketingSherpa's Lead Generation Summit in 2004. I liked what Kevin had to... (07/30/07 09:01 PM)

Early Stage Leads are too important for Sales People Alone. The management of sales leads is critical to generating Return on Marketing Investment. Sadly, sales leads often land on the scrap heap because marketers throw leads over the wall and then expect sales people to catch them. Last year, I... (07/09/07 09:01 PM)

Podcast: Interview with MarketingSherpa's Anne Holland. Are you a technology marketer who’d like to be inspired by fresh ideas for marketing and lead generation tactics? If so, MarketingSherpa just released their “Business Technology Marketing Benchmark Guide 2007-08” and I had the privilege to interview, Managing Editor... (06/29/07 09:00 PM)

Online Lead Generation and Management Strategies that Get Results. Back In 2005, I did an 11 City speaking tour sponsored by GlobalSpec to teach manufacturers how to become better at lead generation, lead management and lead nurturing. I traveled with Guy Maser VP of Marketing for GlobalSpec and I... (06/28/07 09:01 PM)

Being Good Can Be Great!. Here's an interesting post from Nick McCormick – author of Lead Well and Prosper: 15 Successful Strategies for Becoming a Good ManagerBeing Good Can Be Great! When it comes to leadership management training, there is no shortage of superlatives. The... (06/14/07 09:01 AM)

Using the Physics of Trigger Events to Generate More Sales Ready Leads . Most buyers aren't ready to buy when we're ready to sell. This trite but true observation has significant implications when it comes to lead generation. It means that we must continue to nurture viable prospects until they are ready to... (06/13/07 09:00 AM)

10 Lead Generation (Prospecting) Tips for Sales People . Sales people often lack the support of a dedicated marketing team that is able to execute lead generation programs on their behalf. This is particularity true in small companies. Still, those sales people succeed in spite of it all. They... (05/21/07 09:00 PM)

How Lead Nurturing Improves Lead Generation ROI. I know there's a lot of emphasis on lead generation (that's a good thing) but, getting a ton of leads doesn't guarantee that increased sales will follow. In a complex sale, my experience is, most of the selling actually happens... (05/14/07 09:00 AM)

The Difference Between ROI and Marketing Accountability. What's the difference difference between ROI and marketing accountability? My recent blog post, On B2B Demand Generation tools and Lead Generation Dashboards started an email exchange between me Jeffrey Eisenberg and then spawned an article by Bryan Eisenberg over at... (05/13/07 09:00 PM)

B2B Lead Generation Blog is today's TypePad Featured Blog. Greetings and welcome new readers! I'm honored that the B2B Lead Generation Blog was chosen as today's Typepad featured blog. I've been using Typepad to power my blog since October of 2003 and I think it's a super blogging tool.... (05/08/07 09:01 PM)

Live for the last time: 8 Critical Success Factors for Lead Generation. If you haven't heard my live presentation on the 8 Critical Success Factors for Lead Generation now is your last chance. I've got new plans so just like they do in sports, I’m retiring this presentation while it’s still on... (04/26/07 09:01 AM)

Looking for a "hot" date? . When it comes to lead generation, the dating analogy is nothing new. But I liked what Tom Myer at the tdog.blog said on the topic of lead nurturing in his post, If you don’t remember me on the second date,... (04/24/07 09:01 PM)

Podcast: Lead Generation via Podcasts: An Interview With Paul Dunay. Are you interested in podcasting to create demand and generate leads? I interviewed Paul Dunay, Director of Global Field Marketing for BearingPoint. Paul also writes the insightful Buzz Marketing for Technology Blog. This year, Paul is going to do over... (04/19/07 09:00 AM)

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