The Funnelholic

Everyone and their mom has been following Michael Phelps’ quest for and achievement of eight gold medals. Speaking of Phelps and social media: Paul Dunay just Twittered that Phelps has 7,500 Facebook friend requests and will have to shut his account down. Welcome to social networking Michael. Anyway, the real story for anyone involved in swimming is the Speedo LZR swimsuit. Since its introduction, somewhere around 50 to 60 world records have fallen. Without getting into why (read here if you want to know more), the bottom line is that the suit is a massive breakthrough. Speedo says that the suit reduces drag by 10 percent and “oxygen efficiency” by 5 percent. At the Olympic Trials, other swimsuit vendors like Nike Inc. and TYR Sport Inc. had to let their swimmers swim in the LZR or risk having their swimmers lose. Wow.

So why in the heck would I bring this up? Marketing automation is the marketing/lead-generation program’s Speedo. Here are the four reasons why:

1. Marketing automation is a legal, breakthrough technology that will make your business a world-class operation.
2. If you don’t use it, your competitors will leave you in their wake.
3. Marketing automation makes your company better, but it is just “shelf-ware” if you don’t have effective marketing and marketing execution. In other words, the worst swimmer won’t actually be much faster — the real upside is to make outstanding swimmers break world records.
4. You will look like a hero.

Marketing automation will save us all … embrace it.

Written by Craig Rosenberg - The Funnelholic
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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.

Written by Craig Rosenberg - The Funnelholic
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Well, as a blogger, you need to love yourself…but I didn’t love myself enough to publicize my own webinar. HA. I am speaking today at 10AM PST with Leo Manson from Microsoft. The goal is to give marketers the ability to kick start an effective lead generation platform leveraging their current CRM system. Check me out. PS if you cant make it today, Ill send an archived version.

I’d love to hear feedback as I refine my outward messaging.

Written by Craig Rosenberg - The Funnelholic
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I just spent some time with one of my favorite customers who will remain nameless. Our contact there, who is a 25 year old wunderkind, has set up a rock solid lead development process and organization. Let me just give you a number of the elements:

1. Hyper aggressive, focused lead development team. This is a team of Sales Development Reps whose job it is to get every lead on the phone and pass the qualified ones directly to the field. Now, every industry is different, but this is an SMB focused on-demand product. Their SDRS pass 20 QUALIFIED LEADS a day

2. Lead Scoring. All leads as they enter the queue are scored. Scores dictate the type and amount of action taken by the Sales Development Team.

3. Email is controlled by marketing and is constantly analyzed and optimized for effectiveness. Effectiveness meaning being able to qualify leads faster and more efficiently.

4. Reporting and optimization. Metrics help guide changes in messaging and process.

Here is what I have seen: High conversion rates and ROI against ALL lead sources. Lead sources that I have heard the worst things about, they are turning into sales opportunities. It is truly amazing and the way things should be done. Without a doubt, there are lead sources that will not work for you. On the other hand, there are many factors that affect the success of lead sources and thus my title, “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.” It is like clock-work, organizations who don’t work with 1 lead source don’t work with ANY. Does that make sense? Companies that can convert lead sources, can convert a large number of them. If your organization keeps throwing lead sources out and can’t settle on one, look in the mirror. Oh and by the way, Google adwords and leads that go to your website don’t count, I am talking about your ability to go our and buy leads online or offline.

Written by Craig Rosenberg - The Funnelholic
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Want to connect directly? Email me at craig AT funnelholic.com<