SiriusDecisions on the Challenge of Inbound

Good discussion starting on the SiriusDecisions blog about the challenge of tracking inbound activity. This is not an academic matter, as inbound becomes increasingly important and yet marketers are struggling to track inbound through to revenue.

Join the discussion here.

Analyst Jonathan Block notes (boldface added), "In our experience, there is a technology and process gap in populating records with inbound activity, particularly social. Most organizations track the lead source and, if they're lucky, the interaction that closed the deal. Consequently, few have a handle on their existing marketing mix, to say nothing of adding inbound to the mix. It's definitely a combination of all the technologies you mentioned; however, few organizations have the right tools and processes in place so it's more manual and requires marketers to roll up their sleeves and get analytical."

My personal wish list is case studies on companies that are doing this well.

A Practical Take on Starting a Content Assessment

As Bulldog Content Strategist Chris Yeich and I give some thought to his upcoming turn in "Unforgettable: Creating Memorable Content that Drives Demand," we got to chatting with some other experts in the space about the nuts and bolts of building the foundation for a content strategy.

I asked Adam Metz of Metz Consulting for his thoughts on some of the key questions that arise when we talk about content strategy. Metz is the author of a forthcoming book, The Social Customer.

Here is his take.

The Metrics Your CMO Wants: Presentation from MarketingProfs Forum

We got some great feedback on Bulldog VP of Best Practices and Strategy Terry Flaherty's presentation yesterday at the MarketingProfs forum in Boston.
For those who weren't there, here's the promised copy of the slide deck for "How to Deliver the Right Metrics to Your CMO and Earn More Recnogition for Marketing."
Terry was joined by Jon Vlock, Director of Client Marketing for UBM TechWeb. Jon gave a very straightforward answer to the question, What do C-level Execs Expect and Value?

• More revenue.
• Less sass.
• Total agreement with everything I say.
• More credit given to the CFO and me.

Get Employees Involved in Social Media

This is the bane of many  marketers' existence: How to get employees, from the ranks to management, involved in social media. Not reluctantly retweeting. Not submitting a once-a-year blog post. And alas, for many companies, not hiring someone full-time to focus on social-platform friendly content. Really engaged and involved in a way that shines through and benefits the organization.

I like this post on Chris Koch's B2B marketing blog about getting employees involved. And I think he makes a very good point (although it's not his primary point) about backing up social media activity with official support.

He says, "Many companies take it a step farther by making idea development part of employees’ annual goals. The high-end consulting firms like McKinsey have done this for years. Ideas are baked into the culture. To rise in the firm, consultants know they need to come up with good ideas and try to get them published."

Make it part of people's goals, and it will get done. This is not rocket science: I think Pavlov figured it out a long time ago.

Along these same lines, we worked with our partners at Netprospex to create an easy-to-use briefing to help make your sales team social (last item on the page). It was written for our sales team, but really, the quick-start steps are applicable to anyone.  Worth checking out.

Marketing Watchdog Journal: Better Email Deliverability Right Now

Not in the mood to hear Eloqua Chief Deliverability and Privacy Officer Dennis Dayman's EEC podcast about email practices? 
Read the print version, part of the EEC List Growth and Engagement podcast.
Find it in the May Marketing Watchdog Journal. Great, actionable advice on:

• Understanding and maintaining your sender score (and why it matters for deliverability)
• Watching email trends over time rather than once or twice post-campaign
• Better segmentation. "We're talking about giving prospects what they really want based on their clickthrough behaviors. And if they are getting what they want, they are less likely to hit the spam button and your reputation will increase as a result."
   

Marketing Watchdog Journal: What's It Really Like to be a Bulldog?

In the May issue of Marketing Watchdog Journal (find it here):

• SiriusDecisions' John Neeson on the biggest mistakes marketers make.
• What it's like to be a Bulldog, from marketing automation consultant Brian Shea.
• Eloqua's Dennis Dayman, via the Email Experience Council, on improving email deliverability.

Are You Our Next Marketing Automation Genius (like Brian)?
We're looking for qualified marketing automation experts to join our team. Read the marketing automation job descriptions, then submit your résumé directly to the hiring manager.

SiriusDecisions' John Neeson on the Impact of Misaligned Sales and Marketing

Not aligning with Sales is one of the biggest mistakes BtoB marketers make, according to SiriusDecisions' John Neeson (and confirmed time and again by marketing teams who waste time and effort on p

SiriusDecisions' John Neeson on the Value of Collaboration

Online marketing offers so  many advantages. It's scalable, trackable, measurable, cost effective.

Bulldog CEO Rob Solomon’s Interview on DemandGen Report’s Podcast Series

In this podcast interview, Rob talks about Bulldog’s recent partnership with SalesLab DemandGen to provide integrated, revenue-driving demand-generation programs for BtoB companies in Europe, and what it means for companies with a global presence that marketing automation adoption is spreading globally.
Listen to his interview.

New Podcast on List Growth and Engagement

The Email Experience Council's List Growth and Engagement Roundtable has launched a new podcast with in-the-trenches interviews with some of the thought leaders in the space.

Hear from:

• Scott Cohen, VP, Managed Services, Inbox Group
• Matt Annerino, Director, Database Marketing,LiveNation
• Dennis Dayman, Chief Deliverability & Privacy Officer, Eloqua
• Natalie Bass, Digital Marketing Manager, Houlihan's
• Andrew Kordek, Chief Strategist, Trendline Interactive

Listen here.

Bulldog Makes BtoB's Top Agencies List

We're pleased to be listed on BtoB Online's Top Agencies for 2011. See the article here.
It's been a high-growth year for us, as it has for the "top agency" winners this year. And 2011 shows no signs of slowing down. We've picked up three Stevie awards, bolstered our management team significantly, won recognition as one of the fastest growing private companies in our region and in the U.S., and added a host of significant, demanding clients.
Read more news here.
 

A Smattering of Favorite Quotes from SXSW

Individual accounts of "favorites" from South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi), the interactive conference that just wrapped up in Austin, are by nature very skewed. The individual can only be in one place at a time, obviously (look for a solution to this one-place-at-one-time issue coming out of SXSWi 2014, though!)
That said, here are some quotes I found resonant from this year's event.

• Don't trust anyone without calluses on their hands. I love this statement from Eloqua's Joe Chernov (@jchernov)-moderated panel, "The Message is the Messenger."
• Ranking is NOT A METRIC. What matters is conversions. Thank you, Duane Forrester from Bing and Matt Cutts from Google, for the tough love on obsession over search rankings.
• The new gatekeeper is time. People are accessible, you can reach almost anyone now. But they will have limited bandwidth to engage, so be sure you have something to say. That was from "Ditching the Book: Running a Business YOUR Way." 
• Why are those llamas standing in front of the door? To decipher this one, check out the pictures from the Bulldog Solutions/Eloqua "The Good, The Bad and The Thirsty" party and "Like" our page for future event updates.

Bulldog Joins the Marketing Cloud

We are really pleased to be the newest member of the Marketing Cloud^TM consortium of cloud-based marketing services providers focused on transforming and improving the way companies manage and execute end-to-end marketing campaigns.

Read our announcement

.This group of like-minded marketers is focused on applying proven best practices to online marketing.

Sales and Marketing: Building a Two-Way Street

If the sales playbook helps transfer accumulated knowledge from Marketing to Sales, how do you see the knowledge that Sales gains from its customers making its way back to Marketing for revitalizing and improving marketing assets? How do you institutionalize this two-way street?

This was one of the most compelling questions we received in our recent Webinar, "The Essential Sales Playbook." Here's  how experts Bill Golder of Miller Heiman and Christian Patrik of Bulldog Solutions responded.

Marketing Cloud Webinar on the Power of Precision Marketing

Join Bulldog Solutions and the Marketing Cloud for "How Top-Performing B2B Companies Harness the Power of Precision Marketing. Marketers looking to be more effective with the dollars they spend on demand generation will benefit from this event.

The Webinar, scheduled for March 24 at 1 PM Central, will feature Jeff Zabin, research director at Gleanster and author of the business bestseller Precision Marketing, will share his perspective on best practices in B2B Precision Marketing, based on the experiences of more than 300 companies. You’ll also hear success stories from David Cliche, former VP of Global Marketing (now SVP of Alliances) at Aon Corporation.

Register.

See more about the Marketing Cloud.

Marketing Watchdog Journal: Sales Playbook and Social Media for CMOs

In this issue of the monthly Sales and Marketing newsletter from Bulldog Solutions: A briefing on how to build a sales playbook that increases the likelihood of a closed deal; plus, a new guide to social media for CMOs.

• See the full February issue. 
• The Essential Sales Playbook: Helping Sales Close the Deal. Download.
• Institutionalizing a Two-Way Street (And Other Tips for Making Playbooks Work). Read.
• The Good, the Bad and the Thirsty: An Eloqua and Bulldog Solutions event at SXSWi. RSVP on Facebook.

.

Behind the Scenes: Making of the Bulldog "Have a Cliche Holiday" Card 2010

Q&A: Finding that Elusive Marketing Automation Budget

In a recent live Webinar, Finding That Elusive “Marketing Automation Budget,” Alex Shootman, chief revenue officer at Eloqua, and Todd Davison, president of Bulldog Solutions, discussed ways to validate revenue-driving strategies in order to secure budget for marketing automation in 2011.You can view the on-demand Webinar here.
Alex and Todd answered some audience questions during after the event. Their responses are below.

Get the Budget You Need in 2011

The fact that budgets are tight is not news to BtoB marketers; however, there are ways to secure budget for revenue-generating programs and strategic initiatives such as marketing automation.

Our 2010 Halloween Theme: Bueller? Bueller?

This afternoon, Bulldog Solutions officially issued invitations to our 2010 Halloween Ball. The Halloween Ball dates back to the founding of our company and is our marquee event each year, taking the place of the more traditional holiday parties most companies throw themselves in December.

Bulldog Solutions Makes the Business Journal's "FAST 50" Once Again

We're ending Q3 with some great news around here. Word came down yesterday that Bulldog Solutions has been recognized by the Austin Business Journal as one of the fastest-growing private companies in our region. The FAST 50 announcement comes on the heels of our recognition last month by the Inc. 5000 as one of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S.

Message Map Example

During our live Webinar on August 24, “How to Enable (and Impress) Your BtoB Sales Team with Content that Matters,” we mentioned an example of a message map used to coordinate content with buyer persona and buying cycle.

Bulldog named to Inc. 5000

Bulldog Solutions was named to the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing U.S. private companies for 2010. This isn't our first time on the Inc. list: We were on the Inc. 500 in 2007 and the Inc. 5000 in 2009. Given the bumpy ride we've all taken during the time period that was considered for the recognition (2006 to 2009), our persistence in the list is a testimonial to the need for our solution.
Full announcement is here.

List Engagement Survey from the EEC

The Email Experience Council is asking marketers to participate in a brief list engagement survey created by the List Growth and Engagement Roundtable to help identify and address list growth pain points (and who doesn't have those?)
It takes less than 10 minutes. All individual results from the survey will be kept confidential. Aggregate results will be available in the future via the eec Web site and rountable members' blogs. Take it now.

The Real State of Modern B2B Demand Generation Technology

On his Propelling Brands blog, Silverpop's Director of Field Marketing Adam Needles today points out the potential danger in the disconnect between enabling technology and actual, repeatable implementation.
"Clearly the adoption of technology – particularly marketing automation and CRM – among B2B marketing organizations is on the rise.  Yet within organizations that have adopted the technology, we too often see a consistent pattern of doing what it takes to initially implement the technology – creating minimal definitions and scoring models to get going – but falling far short of a complete overhaul of our core processes and roles.  So we never fully leverage this technology."
Data from the Bulldog Solutions/Frost & Sullivan Executive Benchmark Assessment highlight that disconnect. Read more.

Texas Early Birds Get 15% Online Marketing Summit Discount

Online Marketing Summit is offering a 15% discount on the OMS in Texas this summer. Use the code EARLY BIRD to register. Bulldog will offer a Demand Acceleration Lab at the Austin event on July 21.

Demand Generation Survey Results from BtoB LeadingEdge

We participated June 22 in the BtoB LeadingEdge Virtual Trade Show, where we offered our booth visitors a short demand-generation survey on key areas critical to effective demand generation. Here are some of the results, along with some comparisons to recommended best practices in these areas. We'll publish the full results in the July issue of Marketing Watchdog Journal.

Join Bulldog at the Online Marketing Summit in Austin

Bulldog Solutions will offer a Demand Acceleration Lab at the Online Marketing Summit in Austin on July 21. We're excited to be part of OMS again this year. We'll offer 15-minute consultations reviewing the results of the Executive Benchmark Assessment, a tool we created with partner Frost & Sullivan to help BtoB marketers see how they compare to high performers in demand generation.
Register for the Online Marketing Summit
Take the EBA
And later this year look for an update on new benchmark data from the EBA. We'll look at the benchmarks on key areas of demand gen and compare how they've changed since we released the first set of data last year.

How One Marketer Moved from Twitter Skeptic to Advocate

In this month's Marketing Watchdog Journal:
The rewards of marketing automation are earned by effort and planning.
Build a strong process and your people and technology investments can fall into place. Read more "truths" about marketing automation and take the Executive Benchmark Assessment to see how you measure up. Also in this issue:

Q&A: CRM, Search and Content Concerns for Marketing Automation Implementation

In this Q&A excerpt from the recent Webinar "Six Truths About Marketing Automation," Manticore Technology VP of Marketing Christopher Doran and Bulldog Solutions Director of Field Marketing Amy Bills answer some audience questions about how to put marketing processes in place to ensure success in marketing automation implementation.
 See more Q&A on platform implementation and making the case for taking the plunge.
View the entire Webinar.

Q&A: Laying the Process Groundwork for Successful Marketing Automation Implementation

In this Q&A excerpt from the recent Webinar "Six Truths About Marketing Automation," Manticore Technology VP of Marketing Christopher Doran and Bulldog Solutions Director of Field Marketing Amy Bills answer some audience questions about how to put marketing processes in place to ensure success in marketing automation implementation.

See more Q&A on platform implementation.

View the entire Webinar.

A CMO Who Works with CMOs Shares Traits of Successful CMOs (got that?)

Eloqua CMO Brian Kardon shares Five Traits of Successful CMOs in this recent observation.

Give the Sales Team the Right Tools

In order to equip your sales team for success, examine how your organization prepares for and executes the dying art of one-on-one sales conversations. Is your sales team winging it, or are they equipped to optimize each and every conversation?
Read this excerpt from the ShadeTree Technology white paper, "Engaging in Effective One-on-One Sales Conversations," or download the complete white paper. 

Dear Sales Reps…Love, Media Strategist.

 An Open Letter to the Digital Media Sales Reps of the World:

I’m relatively new to the digital media game—just over two years fresh. During my short tenure in your space, I’ve been surprised to learn just how difficult it can be to buy from you! I have budget, I want to give it to you—but many times, you end up losing my business to someone who makes my buying experience a simple and painless one.
 
Here are some simple tips to make it as easy as possible for your agency partners to give you a piece of their pie, and to make sure they come back for more:

Inviting the Cool Kids to the Table: How to Integrate Social Media Tactics with Lead-Generation Webinars

Content-sharing continues to migrate from traditional tactics like e-mail forwarding to a more robust social experience. So it’s increasingly important to make it a no-brainer for your audience to spread the message. 

How to Cheat at Jenga: Using Naming Conventions to Maintain Structure

Managing a large/long-term project can often involve multiple owners accessing and altering an array of files on an ongoing basis. Avoiding complete collapse requires pulling and replacing just the right pieces, at the right time, in the right way. And adhering to file naming conventions can help provide your team this level of precision.

EEC Rountables: Contacts, Content and Insight

The EEC member roundtables offer good payback for the time commitment. As the new co-chair of the List Growth & Engagement Roundtable, I encourage members of our Bulldog Community to look into becoming part of a rountable that speaks to their area of interest.

New Video: Building Blocks for World-Class Demand Generation

When the "elevator speech" for what your company does starts to require a skyscraper, it's time to find a visual way to describe what you do.
 

The Bulldog Holiday Card Is Out the (Virtual) Door

Sending holiday cards to our friends and family at home has become so logistically overwhelming, to say nothing of the carbon footprint of all that card stock, I've stopped doing it. Most of our social network is kept well up to date via our family blog, Facebook and smartphones.
But the Bulldog Solutions holiday card, well, that's another story. That's a labor of love that's not negotiable. It's an important part of our culture and an opportunity to showcase creativity, whether that's Flash development, video concepting or post-production work.
So without further fanfare, we're pleased to present this year's "collaborative" holiday greeting.
View here.

Power Down and Meet Up: Using Online Social Communities to Create Real-Life Interaction

I went to the “Austin Area Scrapbookers” meetup not too long ago and met a fellow twenty-something scrapbooking junkie who happened to live literally a block away.

Bulldog Solutions, Frost & Sullivan Partnership Will Offer End-to-End Demand Generation

We announced today an incredibly exciting partnership with Frost & Sullivan, the global research firm with which we developed the Executive Benchmark Assessment.

The Reality of Virtual Trade Shows

In a landscape with declining budgets and blossoming technology, it makes sense that Virtual Trade Shows are coming of age. Virtual events are a great opportunity to showcase your company as a thought/technology leader and reach new (and financially restricted) audiences, but consider the following before diving in head-first.

Campaigns, Not Events: A Recap of the MarketingProfs Mixer Session

Bulldog President Todd Davison was joined by two of our clients: Hoover's Michael Hickey and Humana's Jen Moeller, at the MarketingProfs Digital Marketing Mixer in Chicago on October 21.

MarketingSherpa's Real-time "Whiteboard" Now Available

MarketingSherpa has made the "whiteboard" from this year's B2B Marketing Summit available to their entire audience. But I'm not sure the whiteboard has as much value for non-attendees as it does for those who attended. It's like borrowing someone's class notes.

Curing the Content Headache

Earlier this week I attended MarketingSherpa's B2B Marketing conference in Boston, where the challenge of creating adequate content to drive lead generation and lead nurturing activities was one of

Read This: Your "Video Guy" Will Thank You

Along with an information-sharing mentality, Web 2.0 has brought on an onslaught of upstart codecs, compressors, file formats, channels, etc. for online video distribution. For better or worse, there is generally lax standardization when it comes to video on the Web. So the good news is: There are lots of options. The bad news is: There are lots of options.

A Hit List for Social Media Promotion

Asking your speakers to participate in promoting an event is a no-brainer. I've done it many times myself.

Fight Club Explains Personal Finance

If you are like me - the thought of personal finance makes my face twitch and my head hurt!!! With all the data out there it is hard to determine what is what.

Hump Day Humor: Make Accounts Payable Thrilling Again

Preface: So today we had our first blog meeting and I was trying to come up with ideas for my very first blog post.  I thought about writing about swine flu (I will write about swine flu).

CRM Names Eloqua a Market Leader

Our marketing automation partner Eloqua was named Market Leader for the third year in a row by CRM Magazine, this time for Marketing Solutions.

A Multimedia Gallery with Substance and Flash

Building a multimedia gallery to house multimedia projects is a lot like cooking dinner for a friend who is a four-star chef.

How Facebook Can Get You Fired

Buzz Marketing Blogger Paul Dunay (and sometime Bulldog Content Network contributor) has some sage and funny insight into ways Facebook can get you in trouble.

Message Testing Wisdom from Behind the Scenes

Tom Pearson, Bulldog senior marcom specialist, republished in a recent Marketing Mirrors edition of the Business Marketing Association of Colorado's newsletter.

Powerhouse Marketing Panel to Speak on New Benchmark Data

Which is more disturbing: That only 28% of BtoB marketers in a recent survey say they're generating enough demand to satisfy their sales team...

Survey Re-enforces Need for Content to Drive Marketing Automation Success

Ah, content. The headache that keeps on giving.

Bulldog, Fujitsu to Speak at MarketingSherpa

Bulldog Solutions' Senior Director of Strategic Planning Ahmed Taleb will be joined by Michael Rapp, director of eMedia for Fujistu Network Communications, at two MarketingSherpa events this fall.

What Do You Look Like When the Tide Goes Out?

“It’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked.”
I love that quote from Warren Buffett. 

Writing the Lead Scoring Rules

How great it would be if you could unwrap a brand-new box of marketing automation or CRM technology, plug in a few cables, hit "Start" and have your demand generation dreams come tru

Content Creation a Big Headache? Here's Your Aspirin.

 The question of content creation rears its ugly head about halfway through almost every discussion about building integrated on

Get Out of the Danger Zone and Get Better at Marketing Automation

Marketing automation puts much-needed science behind the art of marketing.

Declining E-mail Response Rates? Five Tips for Better Results

 I've been hearing a familiar complaint lately from the marketers I work with: "My e-mail response rates have been dropping

Marketing to the Masses: Four Steps to Finding Your Social Influencers

Excerpt from "Defining Social Influencers" White Paper, Part 1 of 4 of the New Approaches to Email Marketing White Paper Series 

Scarcity Breeds Industry: Where Should You Be Putting Your Marketing Dollars in 2009?

 While Your Competitors Are Hunkering Down, It's Time to Step It Up 

How to Tell If Your Web Site Sucks

Three words I wouldn't mind not hearing again for about a year or so. 

Can Fear-Based Messaging Backfire? (And Other Burning Questions About Calls to Action)

 This Q&A is from a live event that took place on January 28, 2009, Three Steps to Developing Effective Calls to Action.

Five Ways to Gain a Competitive Advantage—While Everyone Else Is Panicking

Apply Extraordinary Urgency for Exceptional Results in 2009 

Surveys and Reports on the Internet: They must be true!

It’s 2009. The media and blogosphere are abuzz with posts reflecting on the previous year and predicting the upcoming one.

There Are 2 Types of People in the World...

Well, actually, there may be 3 or 4, according to Roy H. Williams, author of the Wizard of Ads books.

Holiday e-cards: The good and the ugly

The e-cards started landing in my inbox last week and I have to say, there’s quite a range of quality. I love that online marketers have backed away from wasteful paper cards.

Persona Pugilism

Is it me or does the marketing war between Apple and Microsoft give you high school flashbacks? I would have loved to be a fly on the wall when advertising giant TBWA came up with the Mac and PC characters for Apple’s “Get a Mac” ad campaign.

Straightforward vs. Boring

Target marketing has a solid article this week with some common-sense advice on subject lines. This is an easily-ignored area for a lot of e-mail marketers, and it shouldn’t be. All the great planning in the world won’t help the conversion rate of your e-mail asset if nobody bothers to open it.

E-mail Is Dead. No...Wait!

In this month’s Marketing Watchdog Journal we took a little stroll down memory lane to review the findings from our BullData feature throughout the year. In each issue of Marketing Watchdog Journal, we share selected results from polls and surveys we conduct among the Bulldog community. Marcom specialist Tom Pearson laid them all out and took a look.

A Quick Lesson in E-mail Marketing from the Moody Blues and Elvis

In 1972, the Moody Blues’ saccharine “Nights in White Satin” was knocked off the pop music charts by Elvis Presley’s “Burning Love.”

Think about this dethroning the next time you write a B2B marketing e-mail. Is your copy self-important, over-the-top, and fluffy, or is it a simple, to-the-point message?

Radio listeners in 1972 opted for Elvis’ concise, vibrant message over long-winded bombast.

Your readers will make the same choice when it comes to reading e-mail messaging.

Gone in 51 Seconds

I recently saw a blurb on EmailStatCenter.com that usability guru Jakob Nielsen said that readers only allot 51 seconds to e-mail newsletters.

51 seconds?

51 seconds is an eternity.

You Nurture Your Relationship with Your Spouse, Don't You?

If ever there is an overused analogy when it comes to marketing, it’s got to be the dating analogy: you don’t ask someone to marry you the first time you meet them, you ne

Are your Sales & Marketing Functions in Harmony or Discord?

Sales and Marketing Functions must work in harmony to create and retain lead marketing balance. When they don’t and work in silos, many departments are impacted; sales, marketing, corporate communications, finance and business operations. Compare lead marketing to an ecosystem. An ecosystem is defined as an interactive system established between a group of living creatures and their environment in which they live in. You are constantly interacting with systems and groups of people.

Craft the E-mail that Gets'em in the Seats

Long ago* at Bulldog, when we were a company that focused primarily on planning and execution of Webinars, we’d refer jokingly to the process of audience creation as “getting butts in seats.” This was virtual butts in virtual seats, but the point was the same. Reaching the right people and generating enough interest to get them to commit to spending some time with you is both an art and a science. More a science with every passing day.

You mean I can track individual RSS subscribers?

RSS has been around for what seems like an eternity now, but truly since the late 1990s. If you are not familiar with RSS, here is a great video that gives a simple explanation.

Social Media Is Not Community

There’s a good post over on The Social Organization blog titled Social Media Is Not Community. How could I not love a post with a title like that? Rachel Happe writes:

Lead Scoring: Simple or Complex?

Lead scoring is a hot topic these days, and there are some awfully sharp minds trying to figure it out.

A clash of cultures

Marketing Watchdog Journal: Video in BtoB and Minimizing “Collateral” Damage (June 2008, Issue 52)

In this issue: Getting the best of both worlds with a video white paper and taking a fresh look at your marketing messaging. Get it now.

CMO Council Webinar on Improving Customer Connections

The American Marketing Association will host Mark Clemente, senior VP of strategy and development for the CMO Council, for a July 9 live Webinar covering key findings from the CMO Council&#

Beware the Zealot

Some good info, although a surprisingly low-tech setup, at yesterday’s Interactive Austin 2008. Great observation came from Bill Leake, CEO of Apogee Search.

Specific B2B marketing initiatives to use during a challenging economy

There have been a number of articles and blog posts in past few months on B2B marketing in a recession. What I wanted to do in this post is discuss specific initiatives marketers can undertake, I’ll likely follow-up with a series that includes the following:

IT Marketing Challenges: Let Us Know

Marketing to the IT buyer is the topic of a Webinar we’ll participate in on June 18 (you can register here) with BtoB Online.

Hey marketers, want to hear a secret about salespeople?

First off, I am not a professional blogger, I am a sales guy, which means I have no real discernible skill. However, for the good of sales and marketing alignment everywhere, I feel compelled to let marketers behind the velvet sales rope to be briefed on one of the closest held secrets of the sales fraternity. I will probably need to go into the witness protection program after this post, because there will be salespeople around every corner that will want my head shot on more than a PowerPoint presentation.

E-mail Marketing=PR for Efficacy. How Can This Be?

BtoB Online’s special issue Lead Generation Guide 2008 is a really nice overview of our space. (Warning: “Space” is one of those cliche business terms I began using a few years ago to mock business-speak, and somehow it’s become part of my regular business lexicon. I can’t seem to shake it. Be careful what you mock!)

Social Media and Political Telephony

I was at a dinner on Saturday night, and one of the fellows at my table was one of the co-founders of Broadnet. We asked him for the elevator pitch as to what the company did.

Trying to answer Robert Scoble's "sixth question companies ask about social media"

The question Robert was asked about social media is “how will this help my sales”

Is Your Resume a 2.0?

Bulldog HR Director Kim Haynes spoke to the San Francisco Chronicle about how the resume is getting an upgrade.

The Gift that Keeps Giving

Eyeing Marketing posted some observations on our successful Refer a Colleague program for Marketing Watchdog Journal.

The Pitch Can Be a Bitch

As a copywriter, there’s a certain amount of salesmanship that goes along with getting your words approved by the client. While I think it’s a mark of a good writer to be able to instantly jettison your copy (and ego) and start from scratch, I think it’s also important to be able to pitch your ideas skillfully (and defend your messaging, if you feel like it’s rock solid).

Making Your Content Work Overtime

Content is king. I think we can agree: No matter how well planned and well financed, your lead marketing efforts fall flat if you aren’t saying something that the right people want to hear.

Improving response and sales interactions with multidimensional lead scoring

Tim wrote a white paper a little before I started working at Bulldog Solutions on multidimensional lead scoring. There’s now a quick videoof him explaining lead scoring as well. One thing that can be challenging is how to specifically take advantage of this approach.

Is Gen Y Really All That Different

For a few years I’ve been reading up on and dealing with Gen Y. I’m probably a borderline Gen Y’er based on some definitions but have had a team that was half gen-yers in the past so I thought I’d share some thoughts. This article by Sarah Parez got me thinking about how Gen Y and specifically:

Insert Pun Using “Flip” Here

One of my favorite supermoms pulled out her Flip camera to show off at a recent birthday party, and I admit I nudged a small child out of the way to get a better look. Our home video camera is pretty cool, and the equipment we use here at Bulldog and at our studio partners is, of course, very cool. But none of it fits in my purse or my pocket.

Oh, the Many Layers of Lead Qualification

We sponsored a webinar put on by Hoover’s yesterday called Fusing Field Marketing and Sales (the archive of the event will be available soon).

Online Community Best Practices: Measuring ROI around Web 2.0

I attended the Online Community Best Practices: Measuring ROI and Web 2.0 webinar put on by Awareness today.

Web Analytics Technology: Strawberries, Oranges, and Piña Coladas

If you are using Google Analytics, then you’ve seen this message on a recent login:

System Message: Analytics Processing Delay from April 30th to May 5th

How to build a business in the rise of social media

The subject of this post is the same as a presentation Sam Decker, CMO of Bazaarvoice, finished up at 1:00 today.

Save the Date: Marketing News Radio

Listen live to Tim Wilson, Bulldog’s VP, Services, interviewed on Marketing News Radio May 21 at 11:00 AM Central. Tim will speak on “Putting the Customer at the Center of Your Lead Scoring.”

Social Media Measurement: A Practitioner's Guide

Connie Bensen has a great post on Social Media Measurement.

Do We Really Want “One Sexy Graphic?”

Rohit Bhargava’s post, OSG: The Secret Metric for Measurement Every Marketer Wants, has been bugging me ever since I first read it a couple of days ago. And it’s not just the redundancy of “metric for measurement” (as opposed to a “metric for yodeling?”).

Fusing Field Marketing with Sales

Tony Jaros, VP of Research with SiriusDecisions, will be featured May 22 on a Hoover’s Webinar covering the topic of “Fusing Field Ma

Still Working on those Last Miles

If you take Internet access into account while planning your summer vacation, you’ll enjoy this post from Paul Dunay, blogger and BearingPoint Global Director of Integrated Marketing, about hi

OpenID for BtoB? Not So Sure…Yet

OpenID is gaining more momentum these days. As a leader in IT at Bulldog Solutions, I find it an exciting prospect on many levels.

Video of Sold Out Web 2.0 Panel

Bulldog CEO Rob Solomon participated last night in a panel sponsored by the Austin Chamber of Commerce on “Today’s New Marketing Tools,” namely, Web 2.0 tactics such as blogs, video, LinkedIn, Twitter and the like.

The “Action Dashboard” — More than Just a Lot of Data

Avinash Kaushik (aka, My Analytics Hero) has a great post today on The “Action Dashboard” (An Alternative To Crappy Dashboards). In his typically tangible, engaging way, Avinash has mounted one of my all-time favorite soapboxes — it is a grand misconception to see “using data” as primarily an exercise of capturing data and then making that data accessible.

Working Smarter on Webinars

I’m quoted in a DemandGenReport article today, “B2B Marketers Test New Web Seminar Formats to Maintain Registrant Numbers.” It’s a good snapshot of key trends in Webinars right now: The need to work harder in order to keep attendance numbers steady; the move toward rich media; experimentation with different formats and lengths.

Welcome to the New Bullblog!

Welcome to our new and improved blog platform! We pride ourselves on our internal experimentation, in that our Marketing department is our R&D lab. In hindsight, our previous blog platform was a bit of a failed experiment.

The Bulldog Reengagement Program

I did a presentation to the Austin Eloqua user group meeting this afternoon, and there was enough interest in the material that it seemed worth sharing more broadly.The presentation (PowerPoint) was intended to show how, at Bulldog, we’ve used Eloqua to deploy a perpetual nurturing program geared towards the dormant leads in our database — providing them with valuable content in an automated fashion on an on-going basis. The two objectives of the program were:

The Big Takeover

Lately I’ve been noticing an unlikely contender for New Business Buzz Word: around. Like a bodysnatcher, this little word has been subtly taking the place of most other prepositions.

Bulldog in Publishing Executive

Bulldog is featured in this month’s Publishing Executive in an article called “Webinars: Gaining Traction with Your Advertisers and Your Audience.”

Buying cycles

Q: Got this very interesting question from someone at E&Y Australia: “I have understood the buying process to be a number of steps in a journey from a buyer being unaware of a problem to engaging and buying again. My question relates to whether you think the steps in the journey have evolved over the last 20 years and what specifically has caused this.”

A: I don’t think the buying process has changed much. Whether it is AIDA AIDAC, AIDAS, CAB, Dagmar, etc. They basically are all saying the same thing.

Pissing Off a Blogger

A descriptive post from Rohit Bhargava’s session on “10 Easy Ways to Piss Off a Blogger,” part of the series of Core Conversations held at this week.

Quantum physics and persuasion

Seth’s post today http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/2123/26770596 ends with “the thing that persuades you is unlikely to be the thing that persuades the next guy

Made me think about Quantum Physics

Chicken and egg

I picked up a recent tweet from Jeremiah Owyang. About what it is “the definition of marketing”. And ‘what was first product or marketing?”. Seems like the AMA opened a can of worms recently by rewriting the definition of the word.

One of the responses I came across wrote about “marketing” finaly “leading” the product development function. And social media being a great example of that. Not sure whether I’m adding value. Still wanted to share my thoughts. I have thoughts:

Something’s missing

In Europe webinars are less popular than in the US. Although I continue to see more and more pick up. American B2B marketers with global responsibility always ask me about this. For me this is about cultural differences. It has to do with the way people seek information. One of the most eye opening articles that talks about this issue can be found here: http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/issue1/hermeking.html

How to Get Clients to Love Your Brand

During a live Webinar last week, we asked hundreds of attendees to indicate what, if any, measures they’re planning to take to address recessionary pressure. Close to 60% said they planned to shift to “more lead generation, less branding.” The underlying message there is “more things I can measure, less I can’t.”

The new Rolodex? iphones and LinkedIn

Engagement marketing…..online or offline…convergence. For all those with an iPhone; check out this post on LinkedIn’s blog: http://blog.linkedin.com/

Great example on how to accelerate engagements in offline mode. Cool stuff. I uploaded it already.

The Rolodex Syndrome

Cobbling together a name, the person’s title and a phone number isn’t going to cut it. Yet…guess in how many organizations this is what is called ‘lead’-generation!

All I can say that it ‘leads’ to the modern day cold call - “a lead” who has not interest in what you’re selling. As as result he may opt out of your universe. Try to get back on the radar screen then!

Understanding when to message, and what to message to the right audience is something totally different than populating a rolodex with just names.

Are You Increasing Probability with Every Client Touch?

Your potential client universe is alive and changing with each day. It is imperative to use metrics to do two things:

1. Increase the probability that you’re talking to tomorrow’s clients.
2. Decrease the probability that you’re wasting valuable resources on people that will never become a client.

Are you?

Hope and Cynicism

I read this on Seth Godin’s blog this morning: “It’s too easy to criticize hope and in the end cynicism is a lousy strategy” http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/02/its-too-easy-to.html

I had a good laugh; Seth Godin restating Rick Page’s famous quote. From a philosophical angle you’re right, Seth. If you don’t try you’ll never know.

Technorati

Technorati Profile

Nurturing and Maturation

Lately a lot of attention is going to concepts like nurturing and maturation. Whenever I’m reading about it I get the sense that not everybody is interpreting these concepts the same way. For example, “nurturing” is defined as the activity that takes places after that tactic was executed.

Imho that is not really doing justice to the definition of nurturing. What was just described simply is called a “post event (multi) touch”. Why is the difference so important? And why is nurturing more than a post event follow up touch?

Core Conversations

Austin is gearing up for the SXSW festivals next month (check out the blogroll, left). One addition to SXSW Interactive, new for 2008, that I’m intrigued by is the Core Conversations.

Meatball Sundae Looking Pretty Good, I Guess

As someone who carries around 14 different “Get 10 Stamps and Get Your Next Cup Free” cards from various coffee shops (none of which I ever hope to fill), I don’t need to be convinced of the appeal of even the smallest freebie.

Yet I’m always interested in research into the kinds of freebies that appeal to people, specifically, to the BtoB marketers in our Bulldog Community. And, to take it a step further, research into whether giveaways are mainly about quantity or quality of leads.

A Roomful of Nodes

Writer and blogger (mainly in the consumer space) Sheila Scarborough joined our company meeting today to talk about her experiences as a freelance writer and fledgling blogger. Sheila is a former U.S. Navy commander, so we were on our best behavior.

Magic Lead Machine

A sea change is upon us!

This is probably the most interesting article I’ve read so far this year: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/49c55232-cda2-11dc-9e4e-000077b07658.html

Words From the Wise

We made the cut for MarketingSherpa’s “Marketing Wisdom for 2008″ report with a story about experimentation with the design for Marketing Watchdog Journal. MarketingSherpa solicited stories from readers about lessons learned from 2007 marketing.

Know Someone that Could Be Our Next Event Manager?

Interested and qualified applicants, please send resume to: khaynes@bulldogsolutions.com

Responsibilities:

Social Media: Where Should BtoB Marketers Start?

I’m really thrilled to host Laura Ramos, Vice President, Principal Analyst for the research firm Forrester, as the featured speaker for a live Webinar we’re planning for January 15.

Holiday Card Mania

A few truisms about the company holiday e-card:

Update on iPod Incentive

An update to my post in October on the Power of the iPod. I reported on an incentive in which we offered newsletter subscribers entry into a drawing for an iPod nano in exchange for their referral of colleagues to the newsletter. The colleagues had to subscribe in order to get their friend entered in the drawing.

It’s Easier Than You Think

Couldn’t agree more with this recent post on Anything Goes Marketing.

Standardized Email Statistics

Hello all!

You Can’t “Control” the Message

Paul Dunay, the fantastic speaker from our recent Webinar on Making Sense of Social Media for BtoB Marketing, proved himself slightly more fantastic by taking time post-event to answer some of the questi

New Home for InTouch

We’re fans here of Brian Carroll, the CEO of InTouch and an award winning BtoB marketing blogger who has a lot of very valid views on our business.

So we’re reading with much interest his announcement that InTouch has been acquired by MECLABS, parent company of MarketingSherpa. Interested to see what this partnership will bring.

The Power of the Pod

Using Industry Standards

I was just handed an article written by the Email Diva (it was hard copy, otherwise I would have the link).

Summarizing, the author stated that since there was no standardization in email metrics (citing EEC Whitepaper), one should seek out benchmarks from their Email Service Provider, or Marketing Sherpa, which is close to apples to apples.

Why benchmark?

Hello all!

I just got back from presenting at Innotech. There was a common theme I kept hearing in every presentation: metrics, metrics, metrics. Surprisingly though, there was little discussion of benchmarks (except for my talk). So, why do I seem to harp on this issue so much? Well, simply put, you can measure all you want, but if you have nothing to compare your measurements to, than it really will give you little information.

Most rules in B2B social media haven

Most rules in B2B social media haven’t been written yet. There is no general best practice, except but maybe one: be honest, be yourself, post frequently, communicate, reach out, avoid selling (sounds familiar this last one?), add some flair of altruism.

People sometimes are connected in the strangest ways. The internet is not any different than real life. Think about “LinkedIn”. It’s based on the 5 degrees of separation which claims that via 5 hops you can reach everyone in the world. So we basically all start out on the same foot.

Are My Marketing and Sales Data Communicating?

I just finished reading two interesting research briefs from Sirius Decisions. The first brief focused on Field Marketing Variable Compensation while the second brief focused on the “Brave New Demand Creation World.” Both briefs are highly informative and although stand out on their own, they also have some commonalities. Two common threads that stood out for me was having metrics, and the needed interplay between Marketing and Sales. In an analyst terms, what this means is not only do your people have to communicate with each other, so does your data.

Behind Every Good Webinar…

What’s that saying? Behind every good Webinar there’s a great Webinar company? Something like that?

Got It? Use It!

MarketingSherpa has a great case study today on podcasting for lead generation–specifically, leveraging existing content (in this case, a trade show speech) for a podcast. It seems like such a simple concept: Take the hard work you’ve already committed to developing a major industry speech, and make the most of it by going multimodal, turning the content into another mode of communication to reach your prospects.

New Opportunities in a Changing Landscape

And as promised, here’s our new briefing document, Media Planning for Lead Generation: New Opportunities in a Changing Landscape.

Motive-ated

Our Marketing Watchdog Journal newsletter gets kudos this week in MotiveLab’s marketing blog. And you’ll hear more from MotiveLab and Bulldog next week when we launch a new briefing document, sponsored by Bulldog and written by MotiveLab co-founder Joel Granoff, a former Bulldog himself.

No Benchwarmers on This Panel

Earlier this week Bulldog CEO Rob Solomon participated in a live panel on the topic of streaming in health care. Rob joined six other panelists in a group moderated by Ben Chodor, president of rich media developer Stream57 and the host of the event. You can view it on demand here.

It SOUNDS like a good idea, but…

Bulldog Solutions recently produced a Webinar titled, “The Art and Science of Forming Online Communities.” It was a great event, and something we’re involved in, support, and evangelize. During the event, we received the following question:

Social Media: Leave No Industry Behind

It’s not as if we needed proof that the topic of social media is resonating strongly with marketers today.

Let the Word Go Forth

Not content to limit our blogging to our own space, BullBloggers will spread the word as guest bloggers on several industry blogs in the coming months. Look for postings from BullBloggers on the following blogs:

5 Creative Ways to Promote Your Event

You’ve sent invitations to your in-house database, put a link on your website and even made a post on your company blog. That’s plenty of promotion for your upcoming event, right?

Not anymore! Lately, I’ve seen clients become increasingly creative in how they promote their events, here are 5 of my favorites:

1. Email Signature

Update your email signature to include a blurb and a link to the event (especially effective for the sales and marketing folks)

Statistics that speak for themselves

Sirius Decisions’ latest newsletter included some interesting stats re: perceived effectiveness of lead gen tactics.

Call for Entries: Top 10 Creative Uses of LinkedIn?

Has it really been two-and-a-half years since I set up my LinkedIn profile? How well I recall those days, earnestly inviting contacts from previous jobs and checking my contacts list to see if I’d finally hit double digits.

Copywriter: Heal Thyself

Read this terrific article by marketing consultant Kristin Zhivago on creating effective marketing copy.

RSS, Marketing, and The Matrix

I recently came across a great article on The Future of RSS by Alek Iskold http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_future_of_rss.php. Alek discusses the possibility of adding more items to the standard RSS format in order to deliver a lot more information. Comments to his blog range from “I hope it happens to RSS” to “RSS was never intended for this level of information.”

Recommended Rant: Social Media Metrics

Chris Kenton, CEO of MotiveLab, writes (well, rants) in a recent guest blog posting for Unica:

Clean Windows at What Price?

We hosted a live Webinar today to kick off a series based on our 5Ms framework for demand generation. Todd Davison, our president, was the speaker, and we had some fantastic audience questions and an overall engaging presentation.

7 Deadly Sins

Digital Web Magazine brings us the “7 Deadly Sins of Email Marketing”. All of them are worth noting, but a big shout out to number 2 “Failing to spam-check the email copy before sending.”

Taking the Next Step

Bulldog Solutions recently announced that we have raised $5 million in investments from SSM Partners, to fuel Bulldog Solutions growth and emergence in the marketplace. This is an exciting transition point for us. When we started the company, we focused very hard on building upon our early successes, re-investing our revenue into growth, and building the company out of cash flow.

About the 4Ps

I found this on 1to1 blog: http://www.1to1media.com/weblog/marketing/

I share the opinion of those that say that the 4Ps are of all times. Customer centric thinking, accelerated by new Internet driven models does not replace this. I agree that old school product centric business management is over and out.

The Double Edge of Accountability

Bulldog Solutions is right in the mix with many of the mega trends that are reshaping the landscape of marketing and lead generation. Billions are flowing into online marketing, with more of the wallet share and higher spends in marketing creating a whirlwind of activity and growth in online marketing. The sophistication and evolution of these practices is still in its early stages, and the game is changing again. Web 2.0, social media, RSS - are all re-defining the rules of who sees what, when.

ThoughtCasting #2

Came across this interesting report today in emarketer Daily:

We are in lead gen and not advertisement you say? Good catch! But that’s not my point. The point is that various industry sources agree that this mode will substantially grow in terms of adoption. Even though the same sources also notice today that frequent usage is not consistent (yet), marketers should start taking this mode more serious, also in the B2B space.

Permission based lead generation

How many B2B marketers today really have implemented a permission based communication strategy? Btw: how do you interpret permission based marketing? Is your definition one of stating: “It’s about sending information to people that have given their explicit consent to receive information from you?” Or do you define permission marketing as the discipline that tries to reach a contact at the most appropriate time? e.g. at the best possible times during the prospect life cycle? I think consent is a necessary but not sufficient condition.

The Child and the Bath Water

Amazing to see how several industry sources are talking about the need to get serious about systematizing B2B marketing and sales alignment. This is good news because it supports directly our mission statement as well.

Thoughtcasting

It’s becoming a recurring theme in this blog. Any lead generation tactic is about trying to establish a conversation between a solution provider and his target audience.

From the Inside Out

One of the coolest things about working at Bulldog is the opportunity to really see and feel the seismic shifts in business, culture and strategies that are being fueled by the an evolution of tools and processes that’s happening so fast it boggles your mind.

YouTube and web 2.0

I just came across an awesome video:

Is there a relationship with B2B lead generation, you ask?

Sales and Marketing Alignment

Welcome!

Let’s start off with a thought provoker. We have ERP for the administrative processes. SFA/CRM for the sales process. And (finally?) we’re also starting to see (enterprise) marketing automation and management software (EMM) entering the B2B space.