In the recent issue of BtoB Magazines lead generation guide Laura Ramos, a Vice President and principal analyst at Forrester Research, provides some great insight to the current and future state of lead generation activities.
CMO’s at all technology companies are challenged to drive quarterly leads through a variety of traditional and digital marketing efforts. Laura points out that traditional efforts like trade shows, branding efforts, direct mail and public relations are marketing tools often relied on because they are comfortable and familiar vehicles that senior executives understand. So, when selling new marketing efforts to senior leadership, suggesting these traditional tools can eliminate the barriers to quick implementation.
Let’s face it many senior executives still do not fully understand the various new media options and to sell them on it can be a lot more rigorous. Overall both traditional and digital tactics have a place in the marketing mix, but need to be evaluated based on their effectiveness to drive leads not because your CEO understands how they work.
When you examine lead generation, these are four questions marketers need to ask themselves:
- What is your ability to get demand in the door?
- How do you assess and score those leads?
- What do you do with the lead who isn’t ready to buy right now?
- How do you close the loop with sales?
You can read Laura’s thoughts against these questions here.
I believe marketers are addressing these questions in a variety of ways with marketing automation tools, better lead generation measurements and aligning marketing and sales teams. But once again I take it back to the basics. Your lead generation efforts should be a component of an over all lead nurturing strategy. The tech buyers out there are open to marketing efforts that provide information sharing and open dialogues. Your content needs to be patterned after the buyers known exploration behaviors on-line and offline. Most important your content must be relevant to their needs.
Your overall marketing strategy should include the right media mix to drive demand, measure the effectiveness and profile your leads, nurture the market and ensure your sales team is actively participating in your follow up activities.
