Wiki-gate Aftermath: Anvil Media speaks

July 31, 2008 by 3 Comments

Well, this is fun. The Funnelholic is now becoming a real journalist. So here is the deal. My post, The Funnelholic “How-to” guide to getting jacked by Wikipedia, was not only overall a good post, but also a conversation stirrer. A lot of my friends sent me emails liking the post and finding the whole situation fascinating. So, here is what we did…we went out and interviewed Kent Lewis from Anvil Media who runs the agency that lead the Wiki-gate. Kent has been really open and cool about the whole situation. Anvil Media, Inc. is a SEM agency doing SEO, PPC, SEM PR,ORM, and SMM.

So first do this:

1. Read my previous post: The Funnelholic “How-to” guide to getting jacked by Wikipedia
2. Make sure you read the Marketing Sherpa article: How to Use Wikipedia Entries for Lead Gen – 6 Steps to 18% Higher Conversion Rate
3. Then read this interview with Kent.

Funnelholic: Do you think that cooperating with the Marketing Sherpa story was a bad idea?
Kent Lewis: Extremely bad idea. Doing good work and sharing it with others as a learning experience applies everywhere but the blogosphere and wikisphere from what I can tell.

Funnelholic: Are community-based sites like Wikipedia worth investing in from a marketing point of view until the community evolves to accept commercial contributions?
Kent Lewis: If you can get in there, I’d say it’s worth doing…the Attensa case study speaks for itself, even if it’s the first and last of its kind.

Funnelholic: Did anyone really think there’d be no Wiki backlash when it was learned that PR people were writing content?
Kent Lewis: Nobody thought about it…I’m old school and have seen it all, but I really don’t spend much timing thinking about the 1% of the tech population that edits, but the 99% that value the content.

Funnelholic: Is there a more community-based approach to doing this – seeding the site with entries and encouraging customers and partners to add information, for instance?
Kent Lewis: Probably…we’ll encourage everyone to explore it while we’re in the Wikipedia doghouse. Hopefully the rules will evolve with technology and human behavior so that people and companies can share information and clear up inaccuracies in a timely manner.

Funnelholic: If, as a real expert, I contribute real valuable content to Wikipedia, regardless of a commercial or non-commercial tone, how can I make sure that it isn’t bastardized by either someone gaming the system or a rival or an idiot?
Kent Lewis: I would recommend monitoring any and all relevant pages/posts (perhaps via RSS) to catch any gaming, ineptitude or libel. Also, developing a relationship with editors is probably a good idea…I’ve learned Wikipedia is built on respect, which has to be earned, and sharing our story was disrespectful more than it was dishonest.

Funnelholic: Now that you have gone through the process, can you provide any insight on how to draw the fine line between ‘gaming’ the system and getting booted or providing valuable information that will stay up? Kent Lewis: Sorry, can’t help you there. Ask the Wikipedia editors. As far as I can tell, the only difference between gaming the system, providing valuable content and getting booted is whether or not you get caught. There’s a ton of crap/useless/inaccurate information on Wikipedia as much as there has been a ton of verifiable, factual, helpful, unique and unbiased content removed. If Wikipedia editors got beyond the grudge match power-tripping, they might find they’ve robbed their own visitors & fans of good content.

Funnelholic: Does the combination of Wikipedia and it’s automatic top-level-Google-search-result have too much power in this world where search is king?
Kent Lewis: Absolutely. I wouldn’t be upset if KNOL upset the balance with Wikipedia, as much as Cuil challenges Google. I’m not betting on either happening though.

Funnelholic: Now that you have been through this, any regrets?
Kent Lewis: Yes, not what we did, but simply that we talked about it. Fortunately, it has only generated fantastic new business opportunities, and we won’t stop telling our stories, just not about Wikipedia.

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

Filed Under: b2b Marketing, Lead/Inquiry Generation

The Funnelholic “How-to” guide to getting jacked by Wikipedia

July 30, 2008 by 9 Comments
WikipediaImage via Wikipedia

First allow me to describe my morning timeline lead-in to this post:

9:00 AM: Buy Blue Bottle Coffee (yes, it is very trendy…but completely legit coffee)
9:15AM: Read my morning email newsletters
9:20 AM: Excitedly but suspiciously open the Marketing Sherpa newsletter email entitled “Wikipedia as Lead Gen” (really excited, I love that kind of stuff…still worried its some bait)
9:21 AM: Bated breath, open How to Use Wikipedia Entries for Lead Gen – 6 Steps to 18% Higher Conversion Rate. Love the title man, I have hope that this going to be a great article.
9:21 AM: Begin reading the article, it is legit.  The story of how a technology company, Attensa, in conjunction with its Agency, Anvil Media, was able to use Wikipedia for b2b lead generation.  It is a classic Marketing Sherpa study, with the whole scenario set up and real quotes from the Director of Marketing and his agency.  The Results were exciting:

  • 4% increase in site traffic
  • 4% increase in leads overall
  • 65 leads per month on average from Wikipedia
  • 18% higher conversion rate for Wikipedia traffic

9: 25 AM: I read it and am excited.  This is something new I can blog about…really cool innovative stuff.
9:27 AM: I hit the SEO experts I know:

  • Funnel: “I have got something you guys have never been able to hit, Wikipedia.”
  • Top SEO guy: “No you don’t”
  • Funnel: “I’ll send it”
  • Top SEO: “Do it, and I bet you $100 it doesn’t work”
  • Funnel: “Done”
  • Ten Minutes later, TOP SEO via email: “Number One: go look for them on Wikipedia and number two: $100 via Paypal”

9:37 AM: I realize that in my wild excitement, I never checked to see if it was still up on Wikipedia – it isn’t.  Then I start to read the comments…comment number 1: Jul 23, 2008 – Gregory Kohs of MyWikiBiz.com says:
“Good luck with future success, now that you’ve exposed yourself and the Anvil Media agency. I have a lot of experience observing what you tried to do here, and I guaran-damn-tee you, this isn’t going to end pretty. Wikipedia is going to decimate your efforts. It’s a shame, of course, but them’s the facts. More discussion on this article at: http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=19391”
9:38 AM: Then see comment number 2: Jul 23, 2008 – Gregory Kohs of MyWikiBiz.com says: “You all realize, I presume, that this article led to the complete roll-back of everything Anvil Media and Attensa had accomplished on Wikipedia?”
9:39 AM: I feel bad for Attensa and their agency Anvil Media.

The simple two-step how-two guide to getting slammed by the Wikipedia police:

Step 1: Try to game Wikipedia – Wikipedia is policed heavily to keep spammers out of their kingdom and while I know Attensa would not consider what they did spam, it is to the  Wiki-world.  And they are watching…

Step 2:  If you manage to successfully game them, then publish your strategy and results on the internet – Writing an article on Marketing Sherpa is essentially goading the Wiki-police into putting a match to anything you have done.  See Attensa.

The moral can be summed up by the final comment on the article page:

Jul 28, 2008 – Peter of Entra Marketing Ltd. says: “Memo to self – spend more time improving my business, traffic, conversions, and less time telling people (and especially highly trafficked marketing information websites) how I do it :) ”

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

Filed Under: b2b Marketing, Lead/Inquiry Generation Tagged With: , ,

Al Gore’s 4 reasons direct mail is dying

July 24, 2008 by 1 Comment
Al gore giving his global warming talk in Moun...Image via Wikipedia

It’s amazing, it seems like every week I run into a Direct Mail is not dead seminar or blog post or article. I just read the Go-to-Market Strategies article ‘Is Direct Mail Dead?‘ Typically I have stopped reading these last pleas to keep a dinosaur alive, but decided to read it today. This is my favorite quote: “The DMA study released in June 2008 shows that 75% of marketers still use direct mail and that direct mail still surpasses email in the most important result of all–revenue generation.” Look that does say direct mail is not dead, it still doesn’t mean it is not dying.

The Al Gore “Four”: The slow and painful death of direct mail.

1. The Incovenient Truth– Come on people…read the freaking news….you are killing the environment for a couple leads.
-Basically in the direct mail process you did the following:

  1. Killed a tree
  2. Used up expensive crude oil/gas (and funded terrorism)
  3. There is probably a bunch of other environmental offenses you have done as well.

2. Al Gore, the ‘inventor’ of this little thing called the internet – Please join us in the millennium. Yes, marketing on the internet takes work. I still have some people I talk to who say the internet for lead generation does not work…those people clearly do not read my and other blogs and stories that the internet is a GREAT place to generate leads…you just need to have the right strategy to attack it. Commit to the internet for god’s sake, it’s time.

3. Al Gore’s reinvention to pure utter hipness – Guys, seriously, you just look bad with the client. If you are doing technology marketing and you send a piece of paper to an engineering guy, if he even gets it in his hand, he now hates you for sending him that. Seriously, in verticals like tech marketing you are HURTING yourself by sending them mail

4. Al Gore’s staff of people who read his mail – Look, your boy Al has a staff to read the mail, that’s right, they actually have a process for looking at it. The rest of us, file through the mail and look for the bills we have to pay, not to read a letter from you on Endpoint Security or VoIP.

The “Direct Mail is not dead” movement sounds is a conspiracy run by people who still broker addresses and do direct mail.

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Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

Filed Under: b2b Marketing, Lead/Inquiry Generation Tagged With: , , ,

The 4 main reasons webinars have to be part of your marketing mix

July 22, 2008 by Leave a Comment

The webinar is fast becoming an extremely important element to one’s marketing mix.  In my generation, guys grew up watching television.  They hated reading.  From Happy Days to Laverne and Shirley to the Cosby Show to the Simpsons: They did not pick up a book.  P.S. they also were, bar-none, the biggest consumers of Cliff Notes. The moral of the story is: Have a variety of mediums you use to reach prospects.  If you have read my blog, you know I believe in whitepapers but you can’t JUST do whitepapers and you can’t just do emails.

It is my belief the webinar is a nice “quadruple whammy”.  A vehicle where you can get your money’s worth.  Remember: 4 reasons.  When you think of you webinars don’t just think of lead minimums and cpl, think of the entire package.

Note:  I know training is a major factor in the webinar market, but is not of use to me especially as part of the marketing mix.

The 4 main reasons to have webinars be part of your marketing mix:

Brand Awareness

There are many parts to the branding exercise:
1.    From Marketing Sherpa: “Multiple touches are the killer branding app…Every effort to generate the audience is an opportunity to promote the brand.”.  Think of it this way, the promotion of the webinar whether they go to the event or not involves thousands of emails, banners, websites, and newsletter postings.  When you work with a third party credible media site or research organization, you gain even more cachet.”
2.    Webinars for product launches are a great call as well.

Thought Leadership

Doesn’t this go without saying?  You spend a lot of time and money (I hope) on working analysts, ghost writing blogs, and PR trying to create thought leadership and put simply, conveying that you are smart.  What better place than in the webinar.  Education is really a key element to getting people to both sign up and attend webinars…so your topic should be educational in the first place.  Now realize: Your organization and specifically your assigned spokesman has the chance to look really smart.

Lead Generation

Quantifiable results.  “Hi boss, we ran a launch webinar.  We rolled-out the new product to an online audience of XXX.  Thank you for my promotion”

Drip/Nurture

“…the trend we see in the marketplace is clients using webinars more and more for lead nurturing (i.e. as follow-up offer to an existing database)” Howard Sewell, President of Direct Connect.  This we see more and more.  ONE MESSAGE: GET THE MOST BANG FOR YOUR BUCK.  Run the event and market it to your database.  Net-new + another touch is a win-win for your marketing organization.

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

Filed Under: b2b Marketing, DRIP and Lead Nurturing, Funnels, Lead/Inquiry Generation Tagged With: ,

The Lead Gen Bellweather: Highway 101

July 17, 2008 by Leave a Comment

It’s very simple, when I used to drive to work, I could literally tell how the team would do that day based on freeway traffic.  Don’t say it is obvious, because I have never heard anyone else say that before.  When traffic was particularly gnarly, we killed it that day whether it was leads, inquiries, web traffic…

When traffic was light, we got destroyed, the team was bummed.  Of course, everything I have done in my B2B life has been focused on a scoreboard tallying people filling out internet forms,  connecting with a lead development rep or sales rep, watching a webinar.  For the last ten years, highway traffic is my proxy for the amount of business about to go down that day.  I don’t care about statistics on this one, I know what I know.  I’ll have to find out if what I have just written is what my journalist colleagues might call a “musing”.

Great example:, the other day I took 101 from San Jose (Guadalupe parkway) straight to SOMA in San Francisco.  The results from the lead team, 60% of production. One week before that, it took me an hour to go 20 minutes, lead team results= record breaking day

At that point, I had to write this post

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

Filed Under: b2b Marketing, Lead Qualification Tagged With: , , ,

Jigsaw is giving away company data and I didn’t know about it.

July 15, 2008 by Leave a Comment

OK, I am not timely…but I just found out that Jigsaw is giving away company data for free. If you don’t know Jigsaw, they are a large user-generated contact database. Users can trade contacts; that is, upload their contacts into the database in order to receive contacts that are already there. If one’s contact information is incorrect, you can return the name. (Which in turn, helps Jigsaw constantly update their database). Many people don’t actually trade, but just buy the lists directly from Jigsaw. (like me, no uploading for me). Jigsaw is a service I and many of my marketing colleagues use for list building. When people ask me today: “Do you know a good list broker?”, I typically reply with “Yeah, Jigsaw.”

Jigsaw announced their company info give-away via an extremely dorky but memorable video with their two co-founders: They went with a “data independence day” promotion.

I think this is a great idea. A needed and good service that will get people to their site and signed up as members…Just a quick note: This is not real philanthropy, but a smart business move. The money for Jigsaw is in the selling of contacts. Coincidentally, the contacts and their contact information are ultimately the largest value to their user base. In sum, a great move for everyone. Props to you Jigsaw.

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

Filed Under: b2b Marketing, DRIP and Lead Nurturing

B2B Lead Generation Blasphemy-Whitepapers without reg forms

July 10, 2008 by 3 Comments
men's public restroom symbolImage via Wikipedia

Can the B2B lead generation world accept whitepapers without reg forms?

Two pieces are talking about/with this company Docmetrics known better as the smart reg form:

1. Writing whitepapers blog article on smart pdfs
2. Podcast with Paul Dunay interviewing Vitrium Sytems CEO creator of docmeterics tool

The idea here is that these guys have created registration forms that are embedded in the PDF. Now, you don’t have to force prospects to fill out a reg form in order to access the whitepaper. Instead you can give the whitepaper and collect registration data as the reader begins to access the document. Docmetrics will tell you when the document is actually opened, how many pages were read, and how much time was spent on each page.

So now what?

First let me say, I love the massive innovations taking place today in the marketing world. This is an interesting idea that would seem to have tremendous benefits to marketers and, as such, I will watch closely.

Right now, the buyers potential frustration worries a bit:
1. Is this going to be a bad buyer experience? I mean, I personally will be really bummed having to fill out forms all the way along my reading experience, I wonder what buyers will say?
2. Whether it is eco-friendly or not…most people print the whitepaper and read it in the spare time including the toilet.

From the vendor point of view:
1. This concept is worth the test, primarily for sophisticated marketers who are doing dynamic lead scoring (ie scoring leads not merely when they enter your system but continually scoring after the lead has entered you system and has “interactions” with your various sales and marketing actions). Conceivably the disposition data you receive from docmetrics can be fed back into your marketing automation that will trigger the following:
a. A change to the dynamic score of the prospect.
b. An action like an email or a call

2. The concept that these leads are more sales-ready will lead to disappointment. This tool should be used to help a Lead Development/Inside Sales rep whose job it is to qualify leads before they go to bag-carrying reps. In other words, the “I don’t remember downloading it” or “I haven’t read it” issue may go away but another objection will arise. Lead Development reps overcome those types of objections, sales reps use them against the marketing folks. So YES this is a great tool, but NO this doesn’t open the flood gates to send white papers to sales reps.

3. On the other hand, what about using this as a post-contact tool for sales reps? That is, passing a docmetrics whitepaper for followup…Half the battle on the sales side is the connect and as part of the connect, figuring out where to spend your best time. If we know a guy read what you sent and when, that has real strategic value to both lead development and sales.

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Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

Filed Under: b2b Marketing, DRIP and Lead Nurturing, Lead/Inquiry Generation Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Social Media, shoestring marketing budgets, and water polo…

July 7, 2008 by 2 Comments
Official logo of the 2008 Summer Olympic GamesImage via Wikipedia

The irony here is I was about to post about how the Social Media revolution was over-hyped.  I had just gone out to lunch with an SMB b2b analyst and we talked about how no SMB buyers were on Second Life or LinkedIn. As a matter of fact, they weren’t not online that much at all. I had this big negative post all ready.

Then, something happened.

Our US Women’s Olympic water polo team has an exhibition match on July 10th against their arch-rival Australia before they head to the Olympics in Beijing.  The game is being played at Stanford which has a large pool venue. In the past (the Stone Ages…pre-facebook’s advance), we would do word-of-mouth…some email, etc.   The goal is to: 1.  Get people to the event 2.  Get people excited about the event so that they come ready to cheer.  In b2b lead generation terminology: both lead gen as well as education and branding.  Water polo is very tough as very rarely do people NOT involved in the sport go to its events so the key is to hit a very narrow target market: people involved in the sport, families with kids wanting to expose their kids to the Olympic movement, and people who used to play.  All of this on a meager budget.  Here is what we did:

Facebook:
There was a late decision to throw up a facebook page supporting the event: [here].  And POW, the page took off.  Kids started RSVP’ing, commenting, and inviting their friends.  Then something really cool happened: the national team players started RSVP’ing and commenting. All of this killer publicity: FOR FREE.  Everyone involved (all aged over 30 minimum) learned the power of Facebook over the last week as we watched the page take off. Facebook may have deals with the NBA and other big organizations but it’s a niche organization like ours hitting our target audience and becoming believers.

We also did some “comment spam” against a number of the water polo groups on Facebook.  Comment spam is the “art” of posting comments with leading links back to your page.  The term spam is inappropriate here  because it is a welcome notice as water polo events are typically few and far between.

We posted a video which we hope to have kids and others forward along.  See Below

YouTube
We still believe we could’ve done YouTube better but something was better than nothing.  We might get a small attendance spike from this, but as importantly we believed this would add enthusiasm for the event.  Watch the video here.  We don’t just email everyone and put fliers up at Jamba Juice, we put up a Facebook page and dropped a video on YouTube.  The local coaches are telling their kids to watch it and forward it to their friends.  We are posting out on Facebook and sending it to bloggers. See below.

Blog Outreach
We hit up the blogosphere. (if you are working online social media channels, you know the deal here) and got our site posted on theirs.  For example read this.

Net, the event hasn’t happened but we have already seen a large number of Facebook RSVPs from outside our core base of people and 10X the number of pre-ordered tickets.  In the next Olympic cycle, we will have online ticket purchasing so we can watch the effectiveness in real time.  The greatest part of this experiment is how we could reach a wider net of our extremely targeted audience fast and inexpensively.  I’ll have to save my negative social media article for later  (or never)…

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Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

Filed Under: b2b Marketing, Business Musings, Social Media Tagged With: , ,

Whitepapers – interesting!??

July 3, 2008 by 1 Comment

Believe it or not, some INTERESTING stats on white papers.

I found this great blog that I read ALL the time, Michael Stelzner’s Writing White Papers. As you can imagine, the premise of the blog is about the art of creating and marketing whitepapers which he calls the Educational Marketing Revolution. He is really smart and writes some great stuff. People ask me what I recommend all the time, and I for one still recommend whitepaper syndication. (By the way as part of a marketing mix along with webinars, etc).

One thing about whitepaper marketing is that it is actual a bit ‘old school”, its been around for awhile and whitepapers certainly continue to face new lead generation types such as webinar, video, etc. Nonetheless, marketing spend continues to support whitepapers. Stelzner’s blog excerpted a quote from Don Hawk of TechTarget: “The number of orders for white paper-related programs increased by over 60% in Q1 ‘08 versus the first quarter of last year. “

Does this surprise you? When I was in lead development and inside sales management, I HATED Bitpipe and Knowledgestorm whitepapers leads. Those were the old days. If you or your sales people are still complaining about whitepaper leads, it is likely because you are processing them wrong and/or under the wrong expectations for these types of leads. What you need to know is that the best technology companies in the world ALL spend millions annually on whitepapers for lead generation and awareness, and that nurture marketing programs and lead qualification processes have given these companies the confidence to invest in whitepaper programs heavily. If your sales guys complain about whitepaper leads it is because you are actually sending them straight to them instead of nurturing them – and that my friends, is the bottom line.

I grabbed some cool statistics off his site about whitepapers:

A study by KnowledgeStorm and MarketingSherpa found that users and marketing folks rank whitepapers as content they would register for. In fact, 79% of users said they will register for a white paper. That’s number #1 in the marketing mix according to the study.

Here is the breakdown. Nearly 2400 readers ranked their willingness to register for items as follows:

  • White paper (79%)
  • Case study (62%)
  • Analyst report (56%)
  • Product literature(45%)
  • Demo (38%)

Interesting but not surprising, 72% of users said they were lured by a detailed pre-reg summary of the paper. Only 25% of the marketing professionals agreed. (Hello disconnect. By the way, Mr. Marketer, that statistic better be equal next survey or that proves that whatever one thinks about you, you live in La-la land)

What does this mean? Whitepapers still work as a form of lead generation. So when you say a “program didn’t work for us”, I hope it is measured after having gone through the proper lead qualification/nurture processes.

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Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter

Filed Under: b2b Marketing, DRIP and Lead Nurturing, Lead/Inquiry Generation, Marketing Automation Tagged With: , , , , , ,