Social Media in B2B Marketing: The Importance of the Periphery

The rising interest in social media in B2B marketing leads to an interesting and challenging question; what is the role of social media in lead scoring? We’ve talked a lot about lead scoring and how to approach it successfully, but the relevance of social media should be addressed. The challenging aspect of leveraging social media in your lead scoring is that you do not control the main sites of social media, such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. This makes it impossible to track the Digital Body Language of your buyers on those sites.

However, it is important not to underestimate the periphery – the point at which a person in the realm of social media enters a web property within your web presence.

This point of handoff, the referring URL, has been trackable for a long time, and can be seen in most web analysis tools. Its relevance in understanding your buyer’s digital body language though, needs to be fully understood. The referring URL shows you exactly where a person came from when they came to your site. Importantly, it includes valuable information on the context of why they ended up on your web site. There are three key aspects to look at in understanding the context of their visit:


- What site they came from
- What other information can be gleaned from the URL
- Where they landed

The first of these is the easiest. Understanding whether they came in to your site from Google, LinkedIn, a community support portal, an industry Blog, or Twitter can give you some context as to why they are on your site and what they are looking for. For example if they are visiting your site from an industry blog, the themes of that site will likely relate to the interest of the visitor. For example, blogs focusing on advances in mathematical modeling, insurance in the pharmaceutical industry, or employment opportunities in the Dallas area may all refer visitors to an insurance company’s site, but with very different contexts for their visit.

With certain sites the more relevant information is contained within other aspects of the URL. Search is the best example of this, as the exact phrase that was used is presented in the query string of the referring URL. Knowing the search query can give you very relevant and actionable insight into where in their buying process a visitor is, as we saw with Sourcefire’s use of query strings to understand buying cycle stage.

The third important piece of information to be gleaned from the periphery is the page to which the visitor was referred. If this page is not the main home page this destination URL can provide extremely valuable insights into what the context of the link was. If, for example, the visitor followed a link to your site shared on Twitter that led to a deeply technical specifications page, that is more likely to be a technical buyer who followed a link from Twitter to a case study.

Understanding what this periphery can tell us about why the visitor found something interesting in the realm of social media, and has chosen to visit our site is key in guiding our communication with them from that point forward. As we score them as a lead, or begin to nurture them over time, this insight is extremely valuable in understanding them as a buyer. Read More...

What Exactly IS Digital Body Language?

I've been using the term "Digital Body Language" on this blog quite a lot for obvious reasons. However, I have not really taken a moment to define the term, as I realized recently after a presentation on the topic. An audience member came up to me and very hesitantly asked "I think I get the overall concept, but what exactly IS digital body language." It was a very fair reminder to me to not get so caught up in a topic that the basic concepts are overlooked.

So what is it?

What we are referring to when we talk about Digital Body Language is the aggregate of all the digital activity you see from an individual. Each email that is opened or clicked, each web visit, each form, each search on Google, each referral from a social media property, and each webinar attended are part of the prospect's digital body language.

In the same way that body language, as read by a sales person managing a deal, is an amalgamation of facial expressions, body posture, eye motions, and many other small details, digital body language is the amalgamation of all digital touchpoints.

The best physical representation of digital body language that I can think of is as seen through Eloqua's Prospect Profiler tool (pictured), which shows the spikes and valleys of activity, across all digital media, from web and email to search and forms. You can see how a perspective of what is happening with that individual can be gained from seeing this amalgamated digital insight.

However, the raw information that digital body language provides is often only the foundation. Much as each facial muscle contributes to our reading of a person's body language, the raw digital information is mainly of use when looked at through the lens of lead scoring to understand whether an individual is ready for sales, or what buyer role they play in the process.

Hopefully this clarifies what Digital Body Language is. As always, I welcome your questions or comments. Read More...

5 steps to a more honest view of buyer interests

I was talking with Stefan Tornquist the other day while we got ready for a video webcast with On24 (see the webcast here). We spent some time discussing one of the results from an interesting survey that MarketingSherpa did on buyer transparency.



Sherpa had asked the question "How often do you provide accurate information during registration?" of 2,700 technology buyers, in the context of events such as webinars and virtual events. The results were very interesting.

Data such as name and email were generally provided in an accurate manner, with around 70% of respondants always providing accurate information and another 20% sometimes providing it. However, beyond that, the prospects' likelihood of submitting accurate information plummetted. For Job Title, only 53% said they always submitted it accurately, and for company size it dropped further to only 40%. Although information such as readiness to buy, or main area of interest, was not studied in this survey, most marketers would intuitively suspect that it would be significantly less accurate than even Job Title and Company Size.



This challenge underscores the importance of observing what prospective buyers do, rather than just what they say, in understanding them as a buyer.

1. Map your buyer's buying process and understand how each buyer progresses from education through to vendor discovery, validation, and purchase.
2. Understand your marketing assets, and map each of your marketing assets into the "buyer's toolkit" so you can understand where each is applicable in the buying process.
3. Define areas of your website that also map into this buyer's toolkit, allowing you to understand how web activity best maps to buying stage and area of interest.
4. Add in search activity to give you an even more refined view of buyer interest and intent. Understanding what questions each prospective buyer is asking gives you a much more accurate view of their stage in the buying process.
5. Present the information on each prospect's true area of interest, or stage in the buying process to your Sales team in the environment that they are most comfortable in - their CRM system.

There is no way to guarantee that your insights into buyers' roles, interests, and industries are accurate. However, if you look at their digital body language to see what they do, and what they show interest in, and use that information to augment what they fill out on web forms, you will have a clearer picture of their interests than through web forms alone. Read More...

What Obama's Campaign Can Teach about B2B Marketing

The folks over at the Jaffe Juice blog had an interesting post regarding Stephen Geer, Obama's lead email marketing strategist's presentation at the Email Insiders summit. It got me thinking about the similarity between their highly effective strategy for a Presidential campaign, and the approach required to be a highly effective B2B marketer.

See the full blog post here: http://www.jaffejuice.com/2008/12/keynonte-at-email-insider-conference-stephen-geer-obama-email-director.html


They used a "3 M's" strategy, Messaging, Mobilization, and Money. I think their approach has some great lessons for us B2B marketers looking to connect with an audience.


The order of the Ms is important, and Money is the last M. First is Messaging; follow all the messaging threads and discussions that are going on, whether in the media, blogs, Twitter, etc. This is as important for B2B marketers as it is for political campaigns, as it is the best way to understand how to connect with the audience (by listening) and then establish a connection in whatever arena (blogs, Twitter, events, etc) makes sense for your audience. No money at this point, it's far too early for the sales pitch, just a focus on establishing a connection.


The next M is Mobilization; getting the audience engaged, interacting, organizing, voting. This is a step that is often under-invested in in many organizations. Use your web presence to "mobilize" in a way that makes sense for your audience. Attending events, downloading whitepapers, coming out to breakfast seminars, and joining webinars, are great ways to engage with your audience.


Only then do you get to the last M - Money. If you ask for the sale from someone you have not connected with and truly engaged, you will likely be wasting your time and frustrating them. Make it easy for them to raise their hand to say that they are ready to buy, as Obama's campaign did with "Donate" buttons in emails, but don't push hard for the sale until you are sure they are ready. Obama's campaign used forms, surveys and behavior to identify the right influencers, in the same way that we B2B marketers can use our prospects' Digital Body Language and lead scoring. Read More...

6 Ways to Get Sales to Adopt CRM Systems

As refined as today's CRM systems are, they suffer from an age-old problem; sales rep adoption. They have come a long way in terms of usability, configurability, and universal access, but the problem still remains. The good news is that we as marketers can help to tackle that problem, and in doing so, gain a lot of goodwill with the folks over in sales management.

The thing that we as marketers bring to the table is on the "carrot" rather than "stick" side of the equation. Rather than enforcing adoption through techniques such as commision hold-backs or managerial review, we have the unique opportunity to encourage adoption by making a CRM system (whether Siebel On Demand, Salesforce.com, or Dynamics CRM) into a place where sales people receive enough value to want to adopt it.

How can you do that?

1. All lead flow should be directly into your CRM system. If you have done your work on scoring and qualifying leads to the point that they are truly sales ready, then sales will be eager to receive these leads. See comments on lead scoring here for more: http://digitalbodylanguage.blogspot.com/2008/12/dimensions-of-lead-scoring.html


2. Show how you're marketing to them. Sales wants to know what messages their prospects have received in order to prepare for conversations with them. Ensure your outbound communications are logged against the recipient record in your CRM system


3. Show what each prospect is interested in. What emails did they read? What did they see on the website? What searches did they do? What forms did they submit? Sales can be more prepared for a call if they know what prospect hot buttons are.


4. Show both the explicit (who they are) and implicit (how interested are they) score in the prospect's record in your CRM system. It gives a good quick perspective as to whether they are worth putting in a call to.
   
   
5. Show them their Territory visually. For each rep, show them their accounts, rolled up by Activities and Implicit Score over the past few weeks in order to give them a prioritized calling list in Red/Yellow/Green highlights.


6. Give them an out - expose one or two nurture marketing programs or lead-rewarming programs to them that allow them to drop cold leads in and have them kept warm by your marketing programs until they are ready to buy. More on that here http://digitalbodylanguage.blogspot.com/2008/12/giving-sales-out.html

Getting sales to successful and eagerly adopt your CRM system is a good thing for more than just the sales team. If you are looking to better understand your marketing campaigns through to pipeline and revenue, you need strong sales adoption of CRM throughout the pipeline. By giving them reasons to adopt you not only strengthen your relationship with sales management, but you help out your own ability to analyze marketing efforts.

Read More...