The Funnelholic

The webinar is fast becoming an extremely important element to one’s marketing mix.  In my generation, guys grew up watching television.  They hated reading.  From Happy Days to Laverne and Shirley to the Cosby Show to the Simpsons: They did not pick up a book.  P.S. they also were, bar-none, the biggest consumers of Cliff Notes. The moral of the story is: Have a variety of mediums you use to reach prospects.  If you have read my blog, you know I believe in whitepapers but you can’t JUST do whitepapers and you can’t just do emails.

It is my belief the webinar is a nice “quadruple whammy”.  A vehicle where you can get your money’s worth.  Remember: 4 reasons.  When you think of you webinars don’t just think of lead minimums and cpl, think of the entire package.

Note:  I know training is a major factor in the webinar market, but is not of use to me especially as part of the marketing mix.

The 4 main reasons to have webinars be part of your marketing mix:

Brand Awareness

There are many parts to the branding exercise:
1.    From Marketing Sherpa: “Multiple touches are the killer branding app…Every effort to generate the audience is an opportunity to promote the brand.”.  Think of it this way, the promotion of the webinar whether they go to the event or not involves thousands of emails, banners, websites, and newsletter postings.  When you work with a third party credible media site or research organization, you gain even more cachet.”
2.    Webinars for product launches are a great call as well.

Thought Leadership

Doesn’t this go without saying?  You spend a lot of time and money (I hope) on working analysts, ghost writing blogs, and PR trying to create thought leadership and put simply, conveying that you are smart.  What better place than in the webinar.  Education is really a key element to getting people to both sign up and attend webinars…so your topic should be educational in the first place.  Now realize: Your organization and specifically your assigned spokesman has the chance to look really smart.

Lead Generation

Quantifiable results.  “Hi boss, we ran a launch webinar.  We rolled-out the new product to an online audience of XXX.  Thank you for my promotion”

Drip/Nurture

“…the trend we see in the marketplace is clients using webinars more and more for lead nurturing (i.e. as follow-up offer to an existing database)” Howard Sewell, President of Direct Connect.  This we see more and more.  ONE MESSAGE: GET THE MOST BANG FOR YOUR BUCK.  Run the event and market it to your database.  Net-new + another touch is a win-win for your marketing organization.

OK, I am not timely…but I just found out that Jigsaw is giving away company data for free.  If you don’t know Jigsaw, they are a large user-generated contact database.  Users can trade contacts; that is, upload their contacts into the database in order to receive contacts that are already there.  If one’s contact information is incorrect, you can return the name.  (Which in turn, helps Jigsaw constantly update their database).  Many people don’t actually trade, but just buy the lists directly from Jigsaw.  (like me, no uploading for me).  Jigsaw is a service I and many of my marketing colleagues use for list building.  When people ask me today: “Do you know a good list broker?”, I typically reply with “Yeah, Jigsaw.”

Jigsaw announced their company info give-away via an extremely dorky but memorable video with their two co-founders:   They went with a “data independence day” promotion.

I think this is a great idea.  A needed and good service that it will get people to their site and signed up as members…Just a quick note: This is not real philanthropy, but a smart business move.  The money for Jigsaw is in the selling of contacts. Coincidentally, the contacts and their contact information are ultimately the largest value to their user base.  In sum, a great move for everyone.  Props to you Jigsaw.

Two reasons for the title:

1. “Buy registrations” — My colleagues have started to harass me for not talking more about how to deal with online B2B lead generation

2. “Cook em in a pot like Gumbo” – I had to get a line from an old Ice Cube song into my blog

Back to business, I realized that my experience in the front of the funnel is not limited to the role of the Lead Qualification/Inside Sales teams nor is it limited to Linkedin posts, but rather I created the blog to discuss all aspects of B2b lead generation. I have a lot to say.

The current online B2B lead generation market is dominated by registration-collection: whitepaper downloads, co-reg, webinar registrations, etc. Sales Reps are not really enamored by the majority of these leads and as a marketer, you hear their clamoring. The truth is, in most cases, the Sales Reps are right…the vast majority of these leads are for the marketing funnel, not the sales funnel. I realize sales want leads they can work on NOW and that will always be our fight, but that does not mean that online registrations are not of value. You just have to know how to use them.

Some of the best marketers today but as many online registrations they can afford. They put these leads in their marketing database and go to work on them. You have to weed out the typical competitors, “John Doe’s”, and students. (By the way, you should have your online vendor do that for you…don’t pay for those). The nurture game is one of the most important facets of today’s marketing organization. Your marketing campaign to an individual lead or contact starts with some declaration of interest on the part of the prospect. They may have downloaded a third-party research report, your whitepaper, attended a webinar. Whatever it may be, you now know that it is time to spend some money on them.

“Cook em in a pot like Gumbo” – Overtime, you will realize ROI for your lead costs. This won’t help you with the bean counters 30 days into your initial buy, but it is the reality of the business. Just keep them away from sales until they are sales ready.

Here is what I suggest:

1. Buy Online Leads (from relevant sources. Just make sure that the site you are buying them from or the offer that you are using drives the RIGHT person)

2. Run them through some type of Lead Qualification Process preferably a team

a. The most telling metric of the sales-readiness of the leads you are buying should be leads-to-opportunities or simple sales acceptance (sales saying that was worth their time). Don’t get caught in trying to get immediate close rates off leads

b. ROI – plead, lobby, etc to get everyone to understand that lead ROI should be over the course of time.

3. Send the Sales Ready leads to sales and put the rest in the Marketing Pipeline, and by the way, do this gladly – do NOT be ashamed

4. Nurture the rest back to the top.

This happens to me every time when I blog. Because I am doing research, I end up finding more articles as I go along. I have to say this article: About.com: Laura Lake’s Drip Marketing: Is it Effective?, did not add to much.. but there were two things I found interesting that we should address>

1. The origin of DRIP — Laura’s take:

“It was developed in response to the “Law of 29″ in which many marketers believe that an average “prospect” will not turn into a client until they’ve viewed their marketing message at least 29 times. While I do not necessarily agree with the Law of 29, I do believe in the need to stay in touch with your current and prospective clients in order for them to purchase from you. ”

The law of 29 is crazy. I look forward to finding someone who actually follows that motto in B2B. Go ahead and go with the law of 7 for now. Anyway, interesting…

2. Her four-stop DRIP Marketing plan:

• Step 1: Develop your Plan (Plan something EVERY month)
• Step 2: Strategize the Execution of Your Plan
• Step 3: Decide who your Target is.
• Step 4: Create consistency by developing your slogan or phrase. Then place it on every promotional and marketing piece.

So nothing earth-shattering…but worth noting.