This past week I spoke at and attended the annual Online Marketing Summit event (Twitter: #oms11, @OMSummit), which was held February 7-11 in San Diego, along with a number of others from the Left Brain team. (Full disclosure: Left Brain also was a sponsor of the event.)
Continuing a trend I saw at Dreamforce in December, I got a strong glimpse of a real maturation that is starting to occur in online marketing, and particularly in B2B demand generation. And I saw the next wave of marketers – beyond the early adopters – in attendance and starting to absorb new techniques and practices. All good signs that B2B marketers are increasingly understanding and responding to the modern challenges of engaging with the an empowered B2B buyer in a Web 2.0 world.
And an important change. At far too many other B2B marketing and marketing technology conferences over the last two years, I’ve felt much of the dialogue around B2B demand generation has unfortunately remained very basic, and frankly immature. (Sorry, not naming names of any of the bad ones; however, I will call out the SiriusDecisions Summit as an All-star, which has also been advancing the dialogue in a positive way, so there have been some other stand-outs.)
In the past I’ve seen far too many examples of: social media as the ‘shiny new thing’ (with so-called ‘gurus’ everywhere), the persistent mythology that marketing automation technology is easy to use (it’s not) and can improve your lead management with minimal effort (sorry, requires a lot of process change too) and B2B marketers continuing to try to leverage legacy, interruptive, mass-marketing techniques to engage a clearly-disinterested Buyer 2.0 (and they wonder why their email campaign got a 1-2% click rate).
Fortunately, the dialogue has been shifting over the last six-plus months, and the number-one thing I took away from OMS 2011 is strong evidence of the maturation occurring in B2B demand generation. A (r)evolution is occurring in how we engage, acquire and nurture buyers through the holistic demand generation process, and marketing practice is starting to catch up with the challenges and opportunities that Web 2.0 has brought us.
So what was different about OMS 2011?
Aaron Kahlow (Twitter: @AaronKahlow) put together a top-notch educational program with strong speakers and panelists who are driving real forward thinking in modern online marketing.
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Source: Left Brain
There was acknowledgement in the presentations and sessions at OMS of the evolving role social media is playing in the buying process, including displacing first-generation search in some cases. There was focus on how adoption of new marketing technology must be accompanied by new process evolution. There was emphasis on how revenue, not merely program activity, must become marketing’s success metric. And I heard discussion about ‘what’s next’ – things like HTML5, which will impact the next phase in the evolution of the social Web.
I also heard presentations at OMS by B2B marketing organizations that are emerging as the true ‘poster children’ of what it takes to succeed with modern demand generation. One such firm is Taleo, which impressed the heck out of me. Taleo presented a case study on the evolution of its demand generation program, both from the standpoints of implementing Eloqua and of building out all of the processes and content necessary to drive successful programs (and to fully leverage the technology). The evolution of their demand generation efforts is impressive; however, what is most impressive was hearing the company report a 64% increase in sales-qualified leads, a 58% increase in the ability of the company to do successful, outbound prospecting and a nearly 90% acceptance rate of leads passed to sales. Now that’s sales and marketing alignment!
My own day-one presentation, titled “The Key Elements of a Successful, Modern Demand Generation Program,” focused on the fundamentals that underlie such a successful program. I noted in my presentation that two keys to focusing your B2B demand generation efforts are: 1.) thinking and operating in a “buyer-centric” fashion and 2.) adopting an “operational, process mindset.” And I was pleased to see that these themes also were highlighted in comments and statements from other presenters and panelists at various points throughout the event.
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Source: Left Brain
So what were my top B2B demand generation insights from OMS 2011? Below are points that really resonated with me.
Managing buyer dialogue in B2B demand generation requires balancing the buyer’s needs with the seller’s goals.
This is (and has always been) a major challenge in B2B demand generation, but it has become more acute in a Web 2.0 environment. How do we give the buyer what (s)he wants to support the buying education process while not losing site of our eventual transactional goals?
“Content marketing can be a bit shy. A lot of the content that is out there is relatively shy about asking people about the next step,” called out Ion Interactive CTO Scott Brinker (Twitter: @chiefmartec) in his session on “Conversion Content Marketing.”
The challenge is that Buyer 2.0 is in the driver’s seat when it comes to finding information to support his/her buying process. So while we want to get to the ‘ask,’ we also don’t want transactional goals to stand in the way of productive, engaged, pre-sale content dialogue with buyers. Christelle Flahaux (Twitter: @mktgstella), a field marketer with Taleo (the case study I highlighted above), noted of her own firm’s approach, “We’re not trying to sell them the first time they come to the site. We’re building interest throughout the sales cycle.”
Brinker’s subsequent call-out was that content marketing and conversion optimization lie at the extremes of a spectrum: “Content marketing drifts towards ‘free love,’ and conversion optimization drifts towards ‘used car salesman.’”
Brinker presented his own “five principles” for balancing the two: 1.) content is king, 2.) conversion is always optional, 3.) always be testing, 4.) form shouldn’t be formulaic and 5.) produce copiously. (Click here to view his full presentation.)
Another call-out is to work collaboratively between marketing and sales to determine what should and should not be ‘gated.’ “We need to constantly work with our Web team and our Inside Sales team to not let our routing rules overly dictate the information prospects can get access to,” noted Flahaux. She said her goal is to support effective nurturing but also to not make it difficult for buyers to get the information that they need in their buying process.
Finally, a key point I made in my presentation is that it’s truly not either/or – a big part of it is thinking through the role different types of content play in the buying process and integrating ‘organic,’ inbound content that is about engagement and getting found with outbound content that is focused on nurturing and getting to a ‘close,’ so that the two work seamlessly together – in tandem with the buyer’s own education process.
Engaging with the modern B2B buyer requires listening to your buyer, staying in the moment and being relevant and timely with your demand generation efforts.
This is an important call-out. Much of the insight we need to succeed with modern B2B demand generation simply requires us to gather and process the insights buyers already provide to us. “The social media conversations are happening, whether we participate or not,” noted marketing consultant Pelin Thorogood (Twitter: @pelint), who moderated the demand generation panel.
Listening to the buyer was a theme called out by several marketers at OMS. “Make sure you are listening, before you are speaking, in your marketing,” commented Jen Brady (Twitter: @jenbrady) with marketing consultancy FRED on the demand generation panel. And an Intel marketer commented on the day-one closing panel, “Listening helps identify the forums. You want to go where the conversations are.”
Another call-out was that connecting with the buyer increasingly also is about being on the right device, in the right way. One member of the “Conversion Testing” panel commented, “Devices … that’s a new spin on segmentation.”
So what can we do? The keys to engaging our buyer via content are a.) recognizing that content is not merely tactical, it is strategic and is the basis for dialogue with our buyers throughout ~95% of their process – a point I made in my own presentation – and b.) keeping that content fresh and ‘in the moment.’ “Content marketing tells us a lot more can be gained by creating new content, rather than just testing and iterating,” commented Brinker. “Keep getting new content experiences out there.”
Optimizing B2B demand generation requires getting a complete and continuous picture of your buyer’s journey; using scoring and routing to engage buyers in the right place, at the right time; and constantly tuning your demand generation model against revenue results.
This really gets to balancing the two principles that were at the core of my own presentation – again making sure your B2B demand generation is both “buyer-centric” and has at its core an “operational, process mindset.” And it’s clear from many of the other presentations at OMS that the nexus of these two is where really great B2B demand generation occurs.
A Hoovers marketing executive commented on the demand generation panel: “We can actually trace unique visitors, click-throughs … We can actually trace 80% from gross lead to close.” An integration of programs and infrastructure that is impressive.
Flahaux with Taleo said that their team regularly analyzes the performance of their demand generation programs against their buyer’s journey. Taleo takes “… deals that have recently closed [and examines] what that account has done on our Website from the day they first came to us to the day they closed.”
Walking through the efficiency of your demand generation efforts and making improvements against your baselines is critical to really impacting downstream results. Somehow we too often are complacent about our conversion efficiency as marketers. Yet, as another member of the conversion testing panel noted, “The deeper in the funnel, the more valuable every click a buyer makes.”
Not only do we want to optimize our content offers to buyers, we also want to triage them at every step of engagement via lead scoring and routing. “The only way you know how to separate the wheat from the chaff in your leads is to score leads,” commented Genoo President Kim Albee (Twitter: @kimalbee) on the demand generation panel. “Who is your ideal customer profile? Do that. Score that.”
Albee also pointed out that “[l]ead scoring is never, ever done.” This was echoed by Brady, who commented, “If you have your lead scoring modeled out, make sure you have it optimized and up to date as much as possible.”
“It’s not set it and forget it,” reminded Flahaux of demand generation programs.
I noted in the wrap-up of my own presentation, successful demand generation is: 1.) organic, always-on, 24/7, 2.) buyer-driven, 3.) a living, breathing ‘system’ that must be managed and 4.) optimized against revenue performance.
Flahaux echoed this last point: “It’s about revenue. It’s not about leads or inquiries anymore.”
So, overall, a great event with some really strong B2B demand generation insights this year. Thanks to Aaron Kahlow and the rest of the team at Online Marketing Connect for putting on a top-notch educational event and for inviting me to speak. And I look forward to participating in the upcoming OMS event in London as the event series moves from its annual event to the road show. See you there!