The Funnelholic

I never do book reviews, but it is interesting how many times I get asked: “What should I be reading about b2b marketing?”    That is why I am writing today about Adam Needles’ book: Balancing the Demand Equation - it is worth passing along to everyone.

Asterisks:

1.  Adam Needles is a friend but we have no commercial relationships with each other.

2.  Would I write a frivolous blog post supporting  friend’s work? No, not really. I really enjoyed it and decided to write about it, but am definetly a little uncomfortable because I don’t really shill. (some people may disagree, but I don’t)

Truthfully, there aren’t very many books out there for b2b marketing or b2b demand generation. I always and will continue to recommend Ardath Albee (I am an unabashed reader of all-things Albee), Jill Konrath (easy to read and fun) and Digital Body Language (not easy to read but a pre-cursor to the Adam’s book in many ways).  Basically,  I have been taking BART into work which means I get to read, and I really dug into Adam’s book.  I am writing because I like it AND I think it’s important.  Why?  It’s a study in the creating a demand generation platform. No, not just technology, but a organizational process that delivers an  always-on, highly efficient, highly effective b2b demand generation platform.

He uses a lot of data points, something that a lot of us in the blogosphere DON’T do (me included).  That helps keep me interested.  If what I am reading is just another one of us shouting about the buyer changing than I am not interested, but providing unique data points I like and this book does a good job of providing that.  There are some real-world examples - another piece lacking in a lot of the b2b marketing blogosphere’s writing (me included) is examples.  There are examples in here written from the view point of the practitioner.  I enjoyed that, and frankly, wish Adam provided more.

The quote at the top of the post is from the book and I loved it.  So there you have it, add another one to your list.

I now start every blog post with “it’s been awhile”. I apologize to anyone who cares, but I had twins (yeah!), and I have been slammed with work at Focus.com. I was inspired to write by my co-worker Lauren Harper’s awesome post on community management — massive props to Lauren. Also, I have been back in the trenches so I am back to picking up real world tips and best practices that work or don’t work. I have been jotting down my ideas and have been waiting to blog on each individual point, but I am just going to bundle them up once in awhile instead.

Tips are below:

Use account-based marketing when selling and marketing expensive, enterprise class products – I participated in a roundtable with Lauren Goldstein, Lisa Horner, and Ardath Albee on b2b demand generation,  you can listen to the roundtable here.  There were a lot of great tips to the event, but here is one I locked in on:  For enterprise class demand generation, ie. demand generation focused on big ticket, 6-7 figure sales, Lauren suggested creating content campaigns tailored specifically for each individual accounts. If you are going to make a million bucks on the client, isn’t it worth it? We talk a lot about relevancy and how that rises you above the noise.  Well, tailoring your content for that big whale client is a prime example of uber-relevancy and I think an absolutely great idea.

To read about account-based marketing directly from Lauren, click here
For an example, read this about what her team did with Nuance

Be specific in your content – one thing the content explosion has created has been a lot of writing and talking about concept(s).  These  concepts are re-hashed over and over. In the marketing blogosphere EVERYONE is saying the same thing.  Does this sound familiar:  “The buyer has changed, they don’t come to you…lodi dodi, we like to party”.  Don’t get my wrong, I understand the change in buying behavior but a lot of us just want to get on with it and go tear it up.  So here is the deal: The way you create compelling content is today’s chaotic world of “blowhard-ism” is to offer up real-world, specific examples of how ideas are being executed. Here are some simple rules that I am trying to apply to my content:

1. Produce tangible, “ready to use” tips and best practices in your content (blog posts, white papers, webinars).  Example: see above

2. Back up your tips and best practices with real applications and examples. Example: see below

Here is an example of a blog post that has real tips and real data to back it up:  Jon Miller’s My Secret Methods for Turning Marketing Leads into Qualified Sales Leads. It is a valuable guide with real-world examples.  The examples are not just for credibility but help the reader visualize and understand what they need to go do.

Hope you enjoy.

Note to self: This is my first post on Revenue Performance Management (RPM) (and my first post in awhile).

Usually, when I write, I can just sit down and crank out a post. For whatever reason, organizing my feelings on RPM has been hard. That changed, after I sat on a panel on Revenue Performance Management (RPM) at Dreamforce with Bill Binch from Marketo and Jamie Mallinger from Athena Health. It was really a great presentation (embedded below) and by the way, I DON’T mean my part – I mean Jamie and Bill’s. We actually did it twice to packed houses which was fun and exhilarating, but the main reason I mention the preso: it helped me get my hands around some of my feelings on the topic. I was all over the place with RPM, and when I got to work with Jamie and Bill, I was able to simplify everything in my mind. That is not to say executing is simple, but wrapping your hands around the concept is easier for me and maybe I can help here

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Great infographic from Netprospex.  The Funnelholic is not going to become a repository for infographics but this infographic is not only informative but their are some lessons learned.

Look, lets face it, Netprospex is one of the leaders in selling contacts. Do you expect them to get PR via Huffington Post or Fox Business News? Well, they did and it’s because they have created a report with interesting, hot aka spicy data that the business community craves. In other words, great PR work. I love it. Good job guys.

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