Lead generation is a term many B2B marketers are familiar with. However, the B2B buying process is shifting and just as sales and marketing funnels have shifted, so has the lead landscape. Lead generation is often broken into two areas: marketing, which generates leads, and sales, which follows up and closes with those same leads. This is where lead generation and demand generation differ. Demand generation involves multiple areas of marketing and is really an integrated suite of marketing programs coupled with a structured sales process. Eloqua found that an integrated demand generation program lead to 16.5% higher campaign response rates and conversion rates as well as a 50% decrease in the time it took to execute campaigns (Tweet this!). Dominating with demand generation requires two things: buyer-obsession and integrated marketing efforts.

Become Buyer-Obsessed

The first step in becoming buyer-obsessed is finding out who your buyers are and then getting your business and products/services in front of them. In this case, becoming buyer-obsessed means focusing more on the buyer than on your own product or business. Customers want to feel important, so place your priorities on making their experience and interactions with your business better. Here are 4 steps you can take to become more buyer-obsessed and more dominate with demand generation:

• Focus on the buyer network. You’ll want to ask yourself who is involved in the buying process? You want to reach the individual buyer and their network. Promote your products with new takes targeted to each person involved.
• Evaluate typical buyer behavior. What prompts your business’s average buyer to seek out information or make a purchase? Look for ways to reach the buyer during their decision making process with the right content based on their behaviors, industry and role within their company.
• Improve the buyer experience. Experience is everything. Customers who receive a bad experience will take their business elsewhere. Constantly be evaluating the experience you are providing customers and seek out ways to improve it.
• Accurately segment buyers. From email newsletters to sales follow-up calls, segment your buyers so that they are getting information that’s relevant and valuable. You also want to ensure that if a buyer is getting on the phone with someone from your business, your sales rep is the most qualified person to be speaking to this particular buyer.

Integrate Your Efforts

In order for your business to dominate with demand generation, you need to integrate your efforts. Paid media, owned media and earned media must be cohesive. Getting in front of the right audience is only part of what it takes to be successful with online marketing and demand generation. A cohesive and fluid customer experience is key!

• Paid Media – This includes forms of traditional and digital advertising such as online banner ads, pay-per-click search, advertorials, and sponsorships.
• Owned Media – This is corporate content owned by the business, including digital assets like websites, social media accounts and pages, branded blogs, and YouTube videos. Internal social marketing efforts fall in this category.
• Earned Media – This is content produced by users, including social media posts, product reviews, tweets, online communities, and media mentions.

A multi-channel marketing approach needs to be supported by analytics that can produce real-time data for sales and marketing to utilize in their real-time efforts. The indirect connections between these different channels and the platforms your business is active on can be better recognized and exploited for greater success. Integrating earned, paid and owned media will alter your customer acquisition cost, so be prepared to reallocate marketing budgets depending on which channels perform better.

B2B purchasing and marketing are transitioning from business focused to buyer focused. Those who want to be successful with their demand generation efforts need to recognize this and change their strategies. Becoming more buyer-obsessed and integrating marketing efforts have to be a focus for marketers who really want to make an impact and dominate with their demand generation efforts.

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Search marketing continues to evolve as search engines and algorithms become more customer-centric, focusing on what the individual searching is really after when they type a phrase or keyword into a search box. A recent study, the BrightEdge 2013 Search Marketer Survey, took a look at what trends are changing the strategies of search marketing professionals. In this post, we cover how data integration, mobile devices, social media and content are all impacting the efforts of search marketers.

Data Integration

Innovation in digital marketing platforms means B2B marketers are using a number of search and social media marketing platforms in order to be successful. Integrated marketing across multiple channels can help your business better understand the productivity of each channel as well as the interactions between each channel to drive conversions. 81% of participants in the BrightEdge survey responded that it will be more important to integrate marketing data across channels and measure cross-channel ROI than it was last year (Tweet this!). As marketers, we want to be able to measure all our efforts to prove what we’re doing has a purpose. Making data-driven decisions is crucial to a business’s success. Integrate your data across search engines, social media and online advertising to discover what is making an impact in branded search, keyword search and search marketing success overall.

• Takeaway: Big Data is a big word. While having a large amount of data to work with may seem like a big burden, integrating data across platforms is one project that must be tackled. Integrated data can help you determine the true value of each channel for more targeted decision making.

Mobile Devices and Smartphones

Smartphone and tablet use is on the rise, showing no signs of slowing. Optimizing a site for mobile/tablet search is becoming increasingly more important. Many businesses are finding that larger percentages of those coming to their page from search engines are on mobile devices. 52% of those polled responded that optimizing their site for mobile or tablet search will be much more important this year than last year (Tweet this!). Mobile optimization is a key aspect of effective marketing in 2013.

• Takeaway: Optimize your website for mobile devices now. Make sure you work with your tech team and design team so that the experience is a fluid, cohesive one for each and every customer. A mobile-friendly site will boost your mobile search performance.

Social Media

Search engines are beginning to rely on social channels to indicate whether or not the content a site is producing is valuable to consumers. Social signals, and social traction, influence how search engines decide to rank pages and sites. Because social sharing is influencing ranking, search marketers and social media teams need to work together. BrightEdge found that 80% of search marketers think the social sharing of content as a means to improve rank will be more important in 2013, compared to 2012. While goals differ from company, consider which networks you will be focusing on in 2013 and the topics trending on each of those – they won’t all be the same. In order to increase ranking, identify trending topics in social media and then look to drive social sharing for pages relevant to these same topics.

• Takeaway: Get active on social media and begin analyzing the trends to see how they directly correlate to your business, your products or services, and your audience. Social media trends can indicate the type of content your team should be sharing on social media at that moment and in the near future.

Content Marketing

Producing, sharing and managing content is a key priority for many in 2013 and moving forward. Content marketing is an inbound tactic that encourages businesses and brands to earn their customers. 41% of the BrightEdge respondents will spend much more time on content creation and management with another 42% saying they’ll spend more time than they did last year. The type of content that will benefit your business the most varies depending on your industry, but there is value in producing and managing more than one type. The types of content that will be most valuable are: social engagement (78%), blog article outreach (67%), infographics (43%) and thought leadership (43%). Content marketing builds brand awareness and encourages external linking from other sites, businesses and bloggers.

• Takeaway: While content marketing by nature is a form of inbound marketing, businesses that want to truly be successful with their content marketing efforts need to focus on creating content that is link-worthy. What types of content is your audience and the media most likely to link back to? Create that!

Full-Circle SEO

A successful SEO strategy includes a 360 degree analysis of what affects the rank of a page for targeted keywords. One of the biggest trends BrightEdge discovered in their survey is that 75% of search marketers think a page-based SEO approach (as opposed to a keyword-driven approach) will be more important in 2013 than in 2012. On-page and off-page parameters that affect linking need to be considered as business evaluate their search strategy for 2013. Internal linking structure and external link development are both important parts of any successful SEO strategy. Links help search engine bugs crawl pages for importance and navigation. Internal link analysis will be much more important to 30% of search marketers in 2013, compared to 2012 (Tweet this!). Marketers not only want to analyze their links, they want to know right away whether or not there is a problem with their page so they can take action faster.

• Takeaway: The linking structure of your business needs to be spot on. Invest in a consultant or SEO agency to help you ensure your site won’t be hit with penalties. SEO specialists and strategists need to pay attention to the entire linking structure, with internal and external links in mind.

Search is evolving as technological advancements take place. Social media and mobile devices, the emphasis on content, and a full-circle SEO and data approach are causing a shift in the search marketing landscape. Businesses need to appeal to search engines and the things that are being considered in their algorithms. Social signals, quality content, and internal and external links are all a part of that.

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Outbound marketing, where marketers and businesses push their content out to a wide audience, is no longer the most effective strategy – inbound marketing is on the rise. Inbound marketing is when a company essentially advertises themselves and engages their audience through content, such as white papers, newsletters and social media to earn their audience. HubSpot gives inbound marketing this definition:

Inbound marketing is a holistic, data-driven strategy that involves attracting and converting visitors into customers through personalized, relevant information and content –- not interruptive messages – and following them through the sales experience with ongoing engagement.

According to the HubSpot 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report, 65% of B2B companies report embracing inbound practices this year (Tweet this!). If your business is just getting started or is looking for new ways to improve its inbound marketing strategy, here are four insights that can help you evaluate and redefine your inbound strategies.

Measuring Inbound Marketing

Perhaps the most impactful insight worth noting is that of inbound marketing measurement. With their efforts to determine ROI, B2B marketing experts are struggling. B2B companies struggle to prove the ROI of inbound marketing much more than other companies, with 27% reporting this struggle versus the 21% average. Some marketers are unsure which of their tactics qualify as inbound marketing, and perhaps this is where part of their struggle in determining ROI lies. If you’re unsure about the metrics that matter the most to your executives, company revenue or customers/wins generated from inbound marketing is a great place to start. While marketers may be focusing on engagement more than ever before, it comes down to the numbers and according to this report, they’re not as clear as they could be.

Overcome Obstacles with Teamwork

Sales, marketing, IT and design all need to work together in order for a business to be successful with inbound marketing. Respondents from the study say that 26% of B2B IT groups impede inbound efforts. B2B firms likely struggle for IT resources because it’s harder to draw a direct line to ROI for lead generation efforts. B2B sales teams also lag in supporting B2B inbound efforts, with nearly 14% of responses. When it comes to allocating resources to support inbound efforts, only 11% of company executives and 17% of sales teams lend their full support. Testing inbound marketing, which requires an investment from your tech department, analysts and design team, is a team effort and companies who test are 75% more likely to show ROI for inbound marketing than those who don’t test. Get your team working together to test, execute, and measure your inbound marketing strategies.

Booming Inbound Marketing Budgets

Nearly 50% of all marketers are increasing their inbound marketing budgets in 2013. While determining ROI may be a difficult task, those who can do so are seeing success. When looking at budget ratings by business model, HubSpot found that success with inbound marketing nets a significant boost among B2B firms, with 45% indicating positive ROI as the reason to grow their inbound budgets (Tweet this!). Inbound marketing campaigns can generate new leads, incite new impressions, and build brand awareness. If you think lead generation is out of the question, consider the numbers. According to the HubSpot report, twice as many marketers say inbound delivers below average cost per lead vs. outbound strategies (Tweet this!). A white paper lead generation campaign is one example of inbound marketing perfect for B2B businesses.

Capitalize with Customer-Focused Initiatives

Content marketing isn’t news. Businesses need to tailor and personalize the content they’re sending out to prospects and leads. Inbound marketers need to focus on “content plus context” to truly add value to their audience and generate more business as the end result. According to HubSpot, “Customer-centric marketing directly works to meet and serve the needs of its customer base by offering them thought leadership content and educational material, rather than content that “pitches” your wares.” Customer-centric business will have less of a problem developing the best inbound content marketing strategies as they’ll understand the problems of their audience and should be able to provide solutions. 42% of customer-focused companies calculated positive ROI from inbound marketing compared to just 38% of sales-focused companies (Tweet this!)

Inbound marketing is growing. More businesses are adopting inbound strategies and directing larger portions of their budget towards these efforts. Inbound marketing is maturing as customers become more educated and involved before ever making a purchase. Make sure your business’s inbound efforts exceed expectations.

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This past we week, we had the opportunity to sit down with representatives from Google and Yahoo! to talk about trends in content marketing and online advertising campaigns. While there were several good takeaways from each of the sessions, one of the standouts came from our meeting with Google. They offer a Youtube playbook that outlines an approach for creating a video strategy to build and engage audiences. Even after reading through just the first few pages, I was confident that this would be educational for small and medium-sized business looking to build out their content marketing strategies and on-site content strategy. YouTube can serve as a great content platform for B2B marketers

YouTube as a Content Marketing Platform

The B2B Content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends — North America study from MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute found that video had the largest increase of any content marketing tactic in 2012, jumping by 70% from an already large 54% increase in 2011 (Tweet this!). A study from Searchmetrics can help explain this trend. They found that video appeared most frequently, being displayed in over 70% of all the content included in Google’s general results. It isn’t enough to have videos as a marketing tactic, however. We have to be able to measure the success of our efforts. If you don’t know much about the YouTube Creator Playbook, there is an abundance of features B2B marketers can utilize to determine whether or not they are successful in their strategy. Here are a few of my favorite features.

• Because Google understands the difference in clicks and watch-time, they’ve added “Captivate Your Audience” and “Channel Experience,” which provides you with tips and strategies to increase watch-time.
• The customer experience can and will impact a buyer’s behavior. “Channel Experience” allows users to build a cohesive channel experience for their viewers so they can build a loyal audience and drive subscriptions.
• We’re all looking for ways to rank higher in search engines. YouTube Analytics and the ability to create Metadata for each video will make it easier for you to optimize your videos for YouTube and search engine indexing.
• Paid advertising online and on social media sites is on the rise. The “Paid Promotion” section allows businesses to create promotional videos and use readily-available YouTube promotional tools to build a loyal audience.

Creating Effective B2B Video Content

Think video is a space only for B2C businesses? Think again. With the right purpose and strategy in mind, video marketing provides B2B companies with a great opportunity to generate new leads and continue nurturing current leads through the funnel. In fact, the CMI study also found that 58% of respondents believe video to be an effective form of B2B marketing (Tweet this!). While the target length of a video should be between 1 and three minutes, you shouldn’t feel limited by the topics you can create videos around. If you’re unsure of the type of videos that your audience is most interested in, you have a few budget-friendly options:

• Interviews – Have your content team interview experts within your business or answer common questions received from customers
• Presentations – Presentations can be repurposed into videos without too much trouble. Insert a voice over and some background music to add pizzazz.
• On-Location – B2B marketers spend a lot of time meeting with clients, partners and other businesses. Take these opportunities to showcase your employees at events.
• Product Demos – Just as you would perform a product demo in-person or over the phone, you can perform a demo in front of the camera or using a screen recording solution when applicabl.e
• Case Studies – Take a case study and turn it into a video with before and after shots, a voice over, charts, and more.

Our sessions with Google, Yahoo! and other partners in the Bay Area helped us gain new insight into digital marketing and demand generation trends for small and medium-sized enterprises. Because Business.com is focused on helping your business grow, we want to continue sharing our learnings from the tour with all of you. Stay tuned for more from the Business.com Growth Tour of America.

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We aim to bring you the latest tips, strategies, studies and reports when it comes to B2B marketing and sales. This Friday, we want to bring you some of the top marketing charts in recent weeks. A focus on optimizing strategies through personalization and targeted spending and marketing are just a few of the things on marketers’ minds.

The Adobe 2013 Digital Marketing Optimization Survey found that the majority of companies (53%) spend less than 5% of their total marketing budgets on optimization activities. In total, 86% of companies surveyed allocate 15% or less of their marketing budget to optimization activities, while at the other end of the scale only 3% of respondents allocate more than half of their marketing budget to optimization efforts. The data from this study shows that those who spend more on optimization are reaping the benefits in the form of higher conversion rates. Chart – What percentage of your total marketing budget is allocated to optimization activities (including agency fees, professional services, and technology)?

A new study from Accenture finds that digital marketing is going to get more of the overall marketing budget in upcoming years. Nearly 2 in 3 respondents said that they would be devoting at least 25% of their budgets to digital marketing next year (Tweet this!) and 23% indicated they would be assigning more than 50% of their budget to digital next year. However, many of the CMOs surveyed indicated that they feel more difficulty in improving the efficiency of their marketing operations and improving their workforce’s responsiveness to the consumer and digital shifts that are taking place. According to survey respondents, consumers’ experience expectations have the longest-term impact on marketing strategy (65%). Accenture found that CMOs in high-growth companies have found a less turbulent path by improving their digital focus.

Personalization is vital to the success of businesses, yet many companies are failing to deliver cross-channel personalized experiences to their customers. The Econsultancy/Monetate Realities of Personalisation Report finds that while 43% of companies currently deliver a personalized experience on desktops, this figure falls to just 14% on tablet and 13% on mobile. Product recommendations (42%) and on-site search results (40%) are the most common personalization tactics. Using the
data readily available, B2B businesses that can offer personalized experiences will find greater success. Chart – Which of the following channels are you using to deliver personalised experiences?

Ifbyphone’s 2013 State of Marketing Measurement Survey found that marketing analytics, in an effort to determine ROI more accurately, are on the rise. Software solutions, as well as in-house analysts, are just two of the changes businesses are making in an effort to measure their marketing efforts. Marketing tactics vary, i.e. they are online and offline, which causes obstacles to appear when it comes to measurement. When respondents were asked to rate a range of marketing tools for their effectiveness to generate sales leads the marketing channels that were rated most valuable were in-bound phone calls, in-person visits, and email inquiries followed by PPC clicks/website visits. With this mix of online and offline efforts, it makes sense that when asked about their marketing measurement investment priorities, respondents to the survey indicated a preference for investing future marketing budget dollars in emerging technologies that can contribute to a greater mix of online and offline marketing measurement. Chart – Most Effective Marketing Channels for Generating Sales Leads

The 2013 Online Advertising Performance Outlook from Nielsen and Vizu revealed a number of trends taking place in the digital marketing world. In 2013, 63% of marketers state they will increase their online brand advertising budgets, with 20% reporting that those budgets will grow by 20% or more (Tweet this!). Not only are ad budgets increasing, they are shifting to different channels at a greater pace. The report found that budgets are shifting as consumers move into and become more comfortable with the digital realm. 48% of brand marketers will shift dollars from television into online video and 70% will increase spend in both social media and mobile advertising (Tweet this!). Similar to the Ifbyphone study however, many marketers (45%) don’t feel adequately equipped to accurately measure their efforts.

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Last week, as part of the Business.com Growth Tour of America, I had the pleasure to participate in a design workshop with 30 user experience designers and product managers in downtown San Francisco. The workshop was hosted by Cooper, a design consulting company that serves both big and small companies in Silicon Valley. As a product manager and user experience designer, one of the questions that I’m constantly struggling with is how I can more effectively align teams to design and build better products for our audiences. This workshop provided me with lots of new ideas and practical tips that I can start putting to use in our own business. Here are a few quick takeaways that B2B marketers and user experience designers can benefit from.

Use Videos to Tell User Stories

With a little creativity, videos can be produced with very little labor and time. A picture is worth a thousand words and videos are more powerful than pictures. Building good products starts with building empathy with our target users. During the user research phase, user experience designers and product managers go out to the field or learn a lot about our users, but the bottleneck is how to communicate it back to the team and allow the bigger product team to be on the same page of who we are building the products for. Video can be very effective at this stage. In fact, a recent CMI study found that 60% of B2B marketers find videos to be an effective content marketing tactic and the use of video has risen from 52% in 2011 to 70% in 2012. People usually associate videos as labor intensive and expensive projects. They don’t have to be such an investment in order to be successful. Cooper shared a few methods to produce high quality videos with a microphone and simple PowerPoint.

Work like a Team, Share like Wildfire

Building user empathy is no easy task. Deeply involve users in the everyday business routine and in the entire product development cycle without losing focus is no easy task. One of the tactics the Cooper consultants shared with us is “working out loud,” which basically means that artifacts produced in the product design stage, such as personas, design prototypes, user stories, videos, snapshots, should be widely shared within the company. It gets people to be more familiar with the target audience and create an immersive user-centered environment. Team members with distinct business functions are moving towards the same goal: delight the customers.

Participation Leads to Buy-In

Decisions cannot be made in silos. No matter how glorious the product manager’s vision, or how great a user experience designer’s wireframe is, it won’t go anywhere if they are unable to build rapport within the company and get buy-in on that vision. Business buy-in and design decision making involves more people than ever before. Crain’s BtoB magazine found that the 81% of B2B marketers must contend with multiple decision-makers during the sales process. To get everyone involved, conduct workshops and ideation sessions that encourage contributions from different functional teams. Getting insight from different perspectives and departments is a good way to show that you are taking into consideration the opinions of all the business units in the development process. Hearing different perspectives and the rationale behind those opinions pulls the team toward a shared vision.

Think About the Entire Online Ecosystem

For online product offerings, thinking just about the landing page user experience isn’t enough. Marketers would be smart to take the entire online experience into consideration, beginning with where the users come from (SEO, SEM, referral, direct and etc.). You’ll want to ask yourself about the route someone took to get to your page as well as:

• What other touch points beyond your website – such as email, social media, display ads, and offline interaction – are available and is the prospect using?
• What kind of customer journey has the prospect been through and what stage are they at in that process?
• What needs are specific to their background, industry and position within a company?
• What needs are their more general needs that apply to others as well

Keeping all these questions and collaboration strategies in mind help us as user experience designers, marketers and product managers build a clear mind map on how and where our new offerings and solutions can make the biggest impact.

Stay up-to-date with the Business.com Growth Tour of America!

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Content marketing is on the rise for B2B businesses and nearly half of all B2B marketers plan to increase their content marketing spend over the next 12 months. Content Marketing Institute’s B2B Enterprise Content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends report found that 95% of B2B enterprises use content marketing and of those 78% use white papers. White papers range from a short, single page document to hundreds of pages, but they are generally just an authoritative, formal document on a non-fiction topic. If you have a blog and are present on social networks, but are looking for a way to expand your reach with content marketing, consider using whitepapers.

Why Create White Papers?

Building brand awareness is a top priority for B2B businesses of all sizes. 84% of the respondents in the CMI survey cited brand awareness as the number one goal of their content marketing efforts. Giving away a free white paper can build brand awareness and is an excellent way to reach a customer who may not have otherwise considered you.

Tailored content is going to be more successful than generic blog posts or email newsletters. 92% of B2B enterprise marketers tailor their content in at least one way, compared with 91% of their B2B peers overall. Whitepapers allow your marketing team to tailor downloadable content for greater success. If a prospect downloads a whitepaper, you’re getting an automatic signal of what that person is interested in and where they are in the buying process.

How Do I Create Great Content?

The most effective B2B marketers are able to tailor content to specific profiles/personas more frequently and whitepapers can aid a business in this process. If you get stuck creating fresh, relevant content, have no fear! Here are just a few examples of content you can incorporate into your white papers that help the sales team address the various issues buyers come across in each stage of the process:

• Provide a perspective on individual markets and solutions, such as tips for shipping and receiving items internationally
• Content written by subject matter experts that discusses benchmarks and best practices, including survey results
• Enable prospects to understand alternative solutions, like product comparisons, analyst reports
• Offer advice about making the decision, such as case studies for those in similar situations and ROI calculators
• Annotated content or case studies that call out relevant discussions and decision points they can use in their customer interactions

Where Can I Use My White Papers?

White papers can be featured on your site, in blog posts and weekly round-ups and shared on social media. However, if you’re looking for a way to get a new site of eyes on your company copy, there are more options you can consider. The new Business.com white paper content marketing solution delivers high-quality white paper leads to your business while placing your brand in front of a qualified audience of buyers actively researching solutions, products and services.

We connect advertisers with buyers in the discovery and comparison stages of the purchasing cycle utilizing our unique intention- and relevance-based targeting capabilities. Advertisers can effectively demonstrate thought leadership to this concentrated audience of business decision makers with our distribution of their whitepapers. Our content marketing program focuses on helping advertisers reach the buyer at the right place and the right time to close more sales. Exclusive white paper content marketing leads from Business.com and the unique audience provided by the Business.com network can be filtered by industry, location, company size, buyer’s title and more (priced accordingly). If you’re interested in connecting with buyers and reaching a new audience via the white paper offering from Business.com, email sales@business.com

If you’re looking to step up your content marketing strategy with new content and a new audience, consider white papers. You can target relevant demographics and engage with buyers, no matter where they are in the purchase process, with tailored content. Once you’ve created a captivating white paper, share and promote your white paper with partners and on social networks to generate qualified leads.

How does your business tailor its white paper content?

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Digital advertising revenues climbed to a high of $36.6 billion in 2012, according to the IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report for the full-year of 2012. That historic number marks a 15 percent rise over 2011’s full-year number, which itself had been the highest on record, at $31.7 billion. Digital advertising now surpasses newspapers and magazines and is bigger than any other media in the U.S. with the exception of broadcast TV, which hit $40 billion. Customers are moving to digital mediums at a greater pace than ever before and advertisers are taking note.

Display Advertising Makes a Dent

Display-related advertising revenues totaled $12 billion, up almost 9%. With display advertising, an advertiser pays an online company for space on one or more of the online company’s pages to display a static or linked banner or logo. Streaming digital video, one component of display-related advertising, continues to grow the breadth and quality of content online. As advertisers follow their customer to digital channels the increased spend on those channels should be expected. According to the IAB report, here’s how display advertising revenues break down.

• Display/Banner Ads (21% or $7.7 billion)
• Rich Media (3% or $1.1 billion)
• Digital Video (6% or $2.3 billion)
• Sponsorship (2% or $845 million).

The Leverage in Lead Generation

Lead generation is another area of the digital advertising sphere that is experiencing growth. IAB found that lead generation revenues accounted for 5% of FY 2012 revenues, or $1.7 billion, up 11% from the $1.5 billion (5% of total) reported in FY 2011. Lead generation is when fees are paid by advertisers to online companies that refer qualified potential customers or provide consumer information where the consumer opts in to being contacted by a marketer. These processes are priced on a performance basis (e.g., cost-per-action, -lead or –inquiry). Performance-based pricing is gaining interest from marketers. Approximately 66% of FY 2012 revenues were priced on a performance basis, up from the 65% reported in FY 2011. Another report, the 2012 Lead Generation Benchmark Report from Marketing Sherpa, discovered that the forms of online advertising used in correlation with lead generation are webinars, emails, search media, and whitepapers though most marketers are choosing to send their messages out across multiple channels. The top strategic priorities for lead generation in the next 12 months are:

• Achieving or increasing measurable ROI (52%)
• Optimizing the marketing-sales funnel (51%)
• Gaining greater insight of audience (51%)
• Maximizing the lifetime value of customers (47%)

Massive Mobile Moves

As mobile and tablet devices become more popular, they’ll continue to drive investment and strategies from businesses. Mobile marketing provides businesses with new ways to reach consumers IAB found that for the second year in a row, mobile achieved triple-digit growth year-over-year. The mobile category grew 111% to $3.4 billion and accounted for 9% of total internet ad revenue in 2012. Mobile app environment continues to grow and mature as business models develop and advertising budgets grow to support the market. From payment options to utilities and local services, the best apps are no longer concentrated to just one vertical. IAB suggests that the growth in mobile adversting comes from:

• Growth in device penetration (Smartphone and tablet), led by Apple and Google
• Faster connection speeds as infrastructure and device upgrades occur
• Improved screen resolutions that allow more ads onto the mobile screen
• Greater sophistication in incorporating ads into mobile apps and websites
• Social media consumed on mobile devices

Digital advertising budgets are shifting as the best places to find a customer does. Online marketing is a must for businesses looking to expand, reach new customers and cultivate current customer relationships. In the digital space, display advertising, mobile marketing and lead generation are three areas that continue to grow each year. Customers browse the web, are active on social networks and marketers want to reach them. As customers become more tech-savvy, businesses need to become more digital-friendly in their marketing strategies.

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In the midst of social media, email marketing and SEO, landing pages can get lost. Creating the best subject lines, attention-grabbing intros and fresh content are just a few of the tasks modern B2B marketers are tasked with. With all that going on, landing pages are sometimes forgetten about. However, they are crucial to the success of your website and business. In fact, HubSpot’s 2012 Marketing Benchmarks Report found that companies see a 55% increase in leads when increasing their number of landing pages from just 10 to 15. More landing pages provide your business more opportunities to deliver a connected and continuous experience to customers. In order to create the best landing pages for your business, consider these best practices.

Integrate the Source with the Page

Landing pages are often the first step in a lead nurturing campaign. Don’t confuse your prospect right off the bat by having broken continuity from a link to a landing page. You want to keep a consistent experience for the user, using similar language, design, etc. Integrate the source of the landing page with the page itself. If your landing page is for a link sent out on a social network, you’ve got to make sure you have a more information built out on your landing page, since a tweet or status update isn’t going to give those clicking through as much information as an email or newsletter snippet might. You also want to give the prospect a sense of continuation. They should feel the brand extending from your email or tweet to the landing page in terms of design, copy and offers.

Keep Social Media in Mind

In the past, marketing professionals have had the idea to create landing pages specifically for those accessing the page through their mobile device. While some companies may still continue along this route, marketers need to consider streamlining all landing pages to accommodate those visitors who may be coming in from a friend’s “forward,” a mobile search or a social media post. One example would be to reduce the number of form fields for those visiting a landing page on a mobile device versus a laptop. Eloqua found that there is a significant drop-off in overall conversion rates after both three and seven fields in a landing page form. You can nurture those leads and gradually collect more information by directing them to other content that requires minimal, but additional information to be accessed such as related whitepaper or case study.

When it comes to social media traffic,  the share-ability of your landing page is important to keep in mind to generate future traffic. Having social share buttons is a must – you could even include social proof once a page is successful. One example is eye glasses and lens provider ACLens which experienced a 41% increase in conversions and 58% increase in value per transaction after incorporating customer testimonials in their landing page.

Don’t Lose Out on Layout

The layout of your landing page matters. While the source may be a factor, it isn’t the only thing to keep in mind with layout formatting and design. According to MarketingSherpa’s Landing Page Optimization Benchmarks Report, page layout came out on top when analyzing which elements of a landing page had the greatest impact on overall website performance. The layout of a page can affect its load time,which can cause a business to lose conversions and customer satisfaction. According to the Aberdeen Group, a one-second delay in page-load time results in 11% fewer page views, a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction, and a 7% loss in conversions.

Different landing pages will be successful for different tests. The best practice your business can take is to ABT, or “Always Be Testing.” Test different layouts, form fields, and designs to determine what type of landing page will be the most successful for your business. Consider your customers and what they would be expecting when landing on a page. You want to leave a positive and lasting impact so that in the event a prospect chooses not to fill out a form, they keep your business in mind for when they are ready.

How many landing pages does your business currently optimize?

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From sponsored posts on Facebook and Twitter to display retargeting campaigns, businesses have to choose wisely in order to ensure positive ROI on their marketing campaigns. When there are a number of online advertising options available for businesses, it can be difficult to decide which is best. While some may be cautious about the potential impact of display advertising on their bottom line, a recent Harvard Business School study, found that display ads have a significant impact on search applications, as well as clicks, and search ads showed significant dynamic effects on search applications that made them very cost effective in the long run. Forrester expects interactive display marketing investment to grow at a compound annual rate of 17% in the United States between 2012 and 2017. Here’s how your display advertising campaigns can impact search.

Branded Search Queries

A small number of studies examine the interaction between paid search and display. However, these studies have found that display advertising has an overall positive impact on branded search queries. Online display advertising essentially spills over, leading to an increase in brand awareness and branded searches. For those businesses looking to build brand awareness, consider your current investment in display advertising. Have you seen any spikes in branded search terms that align with your display campaigns? You probably have, but here’s how display advertising can affect branded search queries by the numbers:

• A 2012 field experiment to explore the impact of display advertising on advertiser – and competitor – branded search queries found a 27%-45% lift in searches attributable to display advertising exposure within a very short time window (10 minutes).
• A recent study found keyword searches for the brand increased by an average of 94% for consumers exposed to a display ad compared with a group of similar consumers who were not exposed to display advertising.
• Another study found that combining display with search increases brand recall, by those who had been unaware of it before, by 6% and for aided brand recall, that rate jumped to 26% of participants.

Product Search Queries

Branded search queries aren’t the only searches impacted by display advertising. The combination of organic search plus display advertising leads to a lift in specific product search queries. If you’re launching a new product or set of products, display advertising can help generate buzz and boost searches for the release. Here’s how display advertising affects product search queries by the numbers:

• One study found that exposure to a display ad increases the number of relevant search queries submitted by 5-25% when conducting a field experiment to explore the impact of display exposure on search queries.
• A recent survey found that about 50% of all internet users react to a display ad by conducting a search related to the brand or product described in the ad and 14% of users make a purchase after conducting the search.
• Another study found a 14% change in search visits after a company activated its display advertising campaign. In the Harvard Business School’s, display ads improved search ad conversion by 15‐20%.

Search isn’t the only area impacted by display advertising.  Display advertising drives search applications through search impressions and clicks. The Harvard study found that display impressions move consumers through search media, whether it’s through search or direct click-throughs. Not only that, they discovered display ads have a significant impact on search applications, as well as clicks, though the majority of this spillover took effect after two weeks. Targeted display advertisers on Business.com experience average click-through rates that are over 250% of the industry average. These studies, as well as others, indicate that display advertising does affect search. For companies looking to increase the number of searches about their business or products they offer, display advertising is an option to consider.

What success has your business seen with display advertising? Is there something you would change in the display ad space?

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