The Funnelholic

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 :)”

Written by Craig Rosenberg - The Funnelholic
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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.

Written by Craig Rosenberg - The Funnelholic
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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.

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Written by Craig Rosenberg - The Funnelholic
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Can the B2B lead generation world accept whitepapers without reg forms?

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Written by Craig Rosenberg - The Funnelholic
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