3 Reasons Why you should be hosting webinars

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One of the most common questions we get asked is “Why should we do webinars?!” The premise behind the question is that they’re already doing other activities and they do not necessarily have time, or resources, to add more to their sales and marketing mix. It’s a fair question. If you’ve attended any webinars, you’ll know, and appreciate, that many companies do webinars really, really bad.  Let’s be honest – have you ever left a webinar minutes into it because you were falling asleep, or it just wasn’t giving you any value-add? We understand.  These types of experiences can leave you not wanting to produce something if you can’t do it well. Doing something well takes time, and that’s often the one thing we’re all in short supply of.
How about we let the facts speak for themselves when it comes to why you should be doing webinars? In a recent study conducted by MarketingProfs, the following facts were uncovered, based on the 46% of companies that were actively doing webinars:
Why does your company conduct webinars?
  • 69%    Generate Leads
  • 69%    Increase brand awareness
  • 57%    Build loyalty
  • 40%    Drive website visits
  • 37%    Build in-house database
  • 28%    Drive offline business
Do you find webinars effective for:
  • 50%    Generating cost effective leads
  • 47%    Generating quality leads
  • 38%    Producing large volumes of inquiries
So there you have it — point #2 above gives you the answer to the question raised in our headline. If you have time, continue reading this blog because we’re going to take it to the next level.
What’s really interesting about this research is that it doesn’t even address how webinars can be repurposed for numerous additional pieces of content. This is critical! Understand that a webinar is typically a live event. Once its broadcast, everything said on that broadcast is now part of the public domain.  That means you can use this content to quickly and easily produce additional content without seeking any additional approvals. Let me repeat this – you can use this content without seeking any additional permissions. Examples of this additional content would include:
  • Podcasts
  • Transcripts
  • Quotes
  • Case Studies
  • Whitepapers
  • Press Releases
  • Blog Posts
What other piece of content can you produce that can be as easily, and affordably, repurposed? The answer is – nothing.
Why do you want to create additional content? Because now you can use this content in your lead nurturing programs, in your social media outreach, in your sales objection handling, and in your website Call To Action banners.  All of this content, and utilization, starts with a simple webinar.
Let’s look at it from a different perspective.  Let’s be really pragmatic about this. You’re busy. You don’t have time to call all of your target prospects, let alone your existing clients. You’re busy delivering on client commitments. Yet, despite all of this, you understand you need to be regularly communicating with your target audience if you want to keep feeding the sales pipeline. Even more frustrating is the fact that you often spend cycles with email, social media, or on the phone explaining the same concepts over and over again to your clients and prospects.  You’re not working efficiently or effectively.  When we talk to our clients, they readily admit this truth. They also acknowledge they’re frustrated.
With a webinar, you can reach your entire audience – customers and prospects and partners – for an investment of approximately one hour of your time. Best of all, the content is archived and then becomes available on-demand, suddenly freeing you up from explaining concepts over and over again in the future. Now you simply send them a link to the content and then follow up to see if they have any questions.
Webinars are not a cost. They are an investment that generates substantial ROI. You can measure it in increased sales and marketing productivity, or increased lead flow, or increase sales volume, or increased revenue.
It’s time to letter your on-air personality out. See you on the airwaves.

Do you really need Marketing Automation?

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If you're reading this blog, there is a good chance that you have a vested interest in generating more sales leads for your business.  Perhaps you're tasked with it, or measured by the leads you create, or are being constantly pressured to fill the pipe to overcome the challenges of an ineffective sales team. There are many reasons why we need sales leads, beyond keeping the lights on, but typically we're challenged by resources and budgets in our execution.  Therefore, the promise of automated lead generation facilitated by marketing automation is very attractive.  Could it be as simple as "set it and forget it" as I watch the leads come in? Certainly that is what is promised by many vendors. I can assure you it's more involved than that.  The reality is that many businesses not only lack resources, but they also lack budget.  Without budget, marketing automation can never be implemented simply because you can't afford it.  With budget, you may still not be able to implement it because you lack resources to maintain and develop it. It's a classic chicken-and-egg scenario.  Give me more people and more money and I'll make you more leads. Unfortunatley, management often responds by saying you'll get more money and more resources when you bring in more leads to pay for them.  What's a marketer to do?
The answer is simple - take it one step at a time. Then, repeat if necessary. Let me explain.
Auto Responders and Email Marketing
For many of our clients in this situation, we simply suggest you start with tools like
Campaign Monitor or Constant Contact. These tools rock for their ability to create online forms which can be embedded in your web site. Once a form is completed (because you had a kick-butt Call To Action), a series of emails can be sent to the opt-in subscriber on a periodic basis.  It's the simplest form of lead nurturing.  There truly is minimal, to no, intelligence such as lead scoring, or complex branching logic, or persona segmentations to dynamically adjust and nurture the new prospect.  That said, it does do a great job of engaging them softly over a period of days or weeks or months such that you can ultimately follow up with a phone call and anticipate a somewhat warm reception. As a Marketer, you can control the messaging and monitor the reports to see how they're engaging with you. It's a nice start, and it's very cheap to implement.
Inbound Marketing
Once you've gotten some ROI from the auto-responders, you can move onto Inbound Marketing. Vendors like
HubSpot have pioneered this space. It's definitely more expensive than the auto-responders, and it's essentially on-par, cost-wise, with some of the very low-end marketing automation providers, however it gives you so much.  The essence of Inbound Marketing is that it does what the auto-responders do, plus gives you some basic lead scoring, plus gives you incredible insight into the leads that complete your forms.  Beyond that, the secret sauce behind Inbound Marketing is that it will help you get found by your target audience using tools such as social media, search engine optimization, landing pages, etc.  It's a great tool for non-technical marketers who need to quickly and efficiently drive traffic to their site without the expense of telemarketing, or direct marketing, and in a way that is credible and develops a firm's thought leadership. We have a quick little video you can watch at this page to learn more.
Marketing Automation
Finally you've had success with the above two tactics, and you now have the budget to really invest in a deluxe implementation of marketing automation. Congratulations.  Of course, now your decision is whether to go low-end, middle of the road, or high-end with your vendor selection. Tools from
Act-On, to LeadLife, to Pardot, to Genius, to Marketo, to Eloquawill span the spectrum of both budget and capabilties. The only immediate advice I'd offer here is to balance your wants with your needs with your budget.  Always remember - it's not a linear equation.  When you double your monthly spend on a marketing automation vendor, you're not doubling your feature list or your ROI.  Also recall that the more complex a tool is, the more maintenance and oversight is required on your end.  Accordingly, the costs are not contained just to the service subscription but also to the associated staffing to maintain and leverage your investment.
Aim for the moon, start with a single orbit
Okay, it may be a corny analogy but the space race was not won with the first project.  They built on their successes and ultimately achieved their goal, using the lessons learned from each incremental step and effort. This is a great strategy and one you should seriously consider.

Is your lead generation aligned with your customer's expectations?

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Recently I attended a webinar put on by HubSpot for their value-added resellers.  The intent of the event was to help resellers retain, or grow, their client engagements by using the HubSpot reporting features.  In short, the lesson was to review the continually improving progress reported by HubSpot with your client.  If you do this, the client will see the value the reseller provides and will continue to engage them or broaden their scope. It's excellent advice and something that most of us forget to do.  Let me explain.
A customer can be someone who pays you for your services, or a customer can be an internal person or team. Whenever I was hired as CMO, or as VP of Marketing, the first thing I would do is go to the VP of Sales, and the VP of Professional Services, and the CEO, and individually say to them "You're my customer. My job is to get you what you need to be successful. What do you need?". I made sure to instruct my teams to treat the internal departments the same way.  When we did that, we immediately changed the conversation from being adversarial, or competitive, to one of co-operation.  That lead to establishing alignment.  If the VP of Sales wanted more leads then I would ask them to define a lead.  If I didn't do this, I might think my team was delivering leads but Sales might think we're delivering unqualified suspects. That's a disconnect.  Hence, the customer approach lead to a defining of what the customer wants which lead to a discussion of how the deliverable is defined which ultimately leads to how it is measured.  Once you have alignment on that, you're effectively left to run your own show and focus on delivering results.  After all, that's all a customer wants is results.  Often they only care about how you achieve them if you are not delivering them.  Since I want my team to focus on executing, and not on playing customer politics, it's in my best interest to ensure alignment and successful execution of our mandate.
Why is this so critical? The
2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report from MarketingSherpa asked the question "Which of the following marketing challenges are currently most pertinent to your organization?". The number one response, almost double the second highest ranked result, was "Generating high quality leads". It scored a value of 78%, which was 9% higher than the previous year. Understand, however, that this report neither defines "high quality" or "lead".  Talk about a huge opportunity for a disconnect between Marketing and their customers.
So here are some questions as it relates to your lead generation activities activities:
  • Do you know who your customer is?
  • Do you know what they expect you to deliver?
  • Do you have documented agreement and definition on that deliverable?
  • Can that deliverable be measured?
  • Does your customer agree with the method of measurement?
  • Do you routinely report to your customer your progress against achieving that deliverable?
  • Do you have regularly scheduled discussions to review, refine, and improve the progress?
  • Does your customer understand your challenges and constraints?  Do you understand theirs?
  • Are you making an effort to over deliver, such that they see you are commited to mutual success?
Lead generation is not about the programs you run.  We here at My Lead Agency do not think of ourselves as a telemarketing firm, or a website shop, or an SEO specialist, or an email house, or a strategy and branding agency; rather, we think of ourselves as specialists in delivering B2B sales - AKA lead generation - to our clients regardless of how we do it or what tactics we employ. Why does this matter? Because, in the end, your client doesn't want you to advocate a specific tactic all of the time. The cliche goes that when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.  That's a recipe for failure.  Your customer wants you to help them succeed using every tool in your tool belt. Your customer wants you to be "in the trenches" with them.
Stay focused on what your customer wants and success will follow. Get alignment. Measure the results. Collaborate with your customer on how to adjust and adapt.

When does the sales cycle begin in lead generation?

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Let's change up today's blog post and stand back a bit. Often, in these posts, we talk about the issues and tactics involved in demand generation. Closely involved in that process is the technology. However, today, I'd like to stand back much further and ask the question "When does the sales process really begin?"
I'm going to set it up, initially, and declare it begins two-fold: once involves getting found, and the other involves getting respect.
Let's start with getting found, as this is somewhat of an obvious insight based on the hot topics and trends around inbound marketing and marketing automation. If an individual has a pain, they will inevitably turn to Google to find ways of dealing with that pain.  They may also turn to forums, communities, or web sites dedicated to specific issues or industries, but that is always secondary.  Google is the go-to place for most people to start their journey. So what does that mean? That means you need to be found by the search engines. How does one get found? One develops and publishes an ongoing collection of marketing content (videos, podcasts, whitepapers, case studies, blogs, etc.) about the subject, or topics, related to the issue the prospect is researching.  You pick out your keywords, and your key phrases, and you ensure they are continually and liberally part of each piece of content you develop. The search engines will reward your ongoing new content, they'll recognize your continued reference to these keywords, they'll discern that you're being published and referenced across the various online mediums, and they'll rank you higher in the search results.  This means you're more likely to come up higher on the search results when the individual is beginning to research how to fix their issue.  Ideally, that will result on them clicking on the referenced link provided by the search engine which should directly, or indirectly, send them to you and your website. That's Part 1 of the process. You'll rarely get to Part 2 if you don't do Part 1. No excuses.  You gotta do it.
Okay, so let's discuss Part 2 of the process, because I think this is the most forgotten aspect. I also consider this equal to, and sometimes more important than, Part 1. What is it? It's the first impression you make! That's when the sales cycle truly begins. If you don't make a good first impression then you're never going to hit your sales revenue targets. Let me share an analogy I use with customers.
Have you ever shopped online for something? Of course the answer is almost always yes. Great. Now lets assume you find 3 websites that provide the exact same product at the exact same price at the exact same shipping fees. Which site to you buy from? The answer is simple as you think about it.  You buy from the site that appears most aesthetically pleasing, that appears to offer great supporting content such as product reviews, or video demonstrations, or user forums, etc. Do you agree? You should, because studies have proven it over and over again to be true. So why do we do that?
We are conditioned from a very early age to eliminate risk. Therefore, the site that looks the most slick, the most complete, the most travelled by other shoppers, the most insightful, and offers the most service MUST BE the best vendor. Right?! Of course, we both know that's not always the case however that's what we think. It's psychological.
It's about
eliminating risk by establishing credibility and trust with the prospect.
So let me ask you this question. What level of risk would I perceive if I went to your website right now? One more thing - if you're suddenly feeling exposed, check out this recent webinar on
how to make great content for your website. It's a great way to fix the credibliity problem you may not have even known you have.

How do you select your outsourced marketing vendor?

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Every organization, at some point, outsources part of their B2B sales or marketing activities. Sometimes it's just for a specific deliverable.  Other times, it's for a more sustained engagement such as lead generation,web design, inbound marketing, etc. For those of us who have been there, the selection of the vendor can rest on many variables. Are they the cheapest? Are they local? Were they referred by a peer whom I trust? Do they have the skills? Do I trust them? Can I work with them?
In my experience, it's the last two questions that are the most relevant: do I trust them, and can I work with them.
Let's be honest with one another.  We're always going to want, and negotiate for, the best price and the fastest delivery. Most of us don't mind paying a small premium for good service. After all, we're all business people and we understand nothing is free. The best phrase a vendor ever shared with me was " Your options are you can have it good, fast, or cheap. Pick two!" I think that sums up nicely the tradeoffs that always come with working with vendors. That being said, most marketers are constantly having their budget, and their effectiveness, scrutinized. As a result, you want to make the right vendor selection.
With that said, let's assume you'll negotiate for a reasonable price with a reasonable delivery. If the vendor can't do that then they clearly don't want your business.
So what does that leave to influence your vendor selection? Ah yes - the peer referral or the vendor location. Let's start with peer referrals. I love referrals. Most of my friends, professional and personal, understand my idiosyncracies. They appreciate that I have high expectations and that I don't always have patience. They value my single-minded focus on lead generation and measurable results. As such, when they refer me to someone, I can usually assume they believe the vendor's approach and personality will match my own. In turn, I can assume they've done work together and my peer truly has experienced great things from this vendor. My peer's very integrity rests on the results this vendor will deliver to me. I may be somewhat overstating it, but not by much. This is why word-of-mouth remains the most powerful lead generation tactic today; because we trust our peers.
But should a referral be your number one influencer in your decision making process?
Finally, the last thing to consider is location. Is the vendor local? Are they on the same time zone? Do they speak the same language? In the age we live in, telecommuting is the norm and long-distance project teams are typical. With that said, nothing beats a face-to-face meeting between client and vendor. It's one thing for me to say something to my vendor, but it's another thing for them to see my body language. It takes the relationship to the next level. It creates alignment.
So is location a prominent influencer on your vendor selection?
Alright - let me cut to the chase. I'll tell you what I've learned to be true. I've learned price is critical. I've learned integrity is paramount. I've learned referrals are a good way to short-list vendors. And I've learned to never sacrifice success to save a few bucks on my vendor.
But most of all, I've learned that my vendor selection comes down to trust and relationships. Do I trust this vendor? Can I work with this vendor? Does my gut tell me that I'll be successful with this vendor? Do I believe this vendor is earnest and engaged? Do they understand me and my requirements? Can I be brutally honest with them? And will I be okay if they are brutally honest with me?
The truth is that every sale starts and ends with trust and relationship. Look at your own sales cycles and you'll see these issues often play the largest role in why your customers choose you or your products or services. Everything else is important, but secondary.
So. Do you agree? Go ahead. Be brutally honest with me.