B2B marketers with highly complex products and services have been given a gift in the last few years in the form of Social Media.

In my opinion, Social Media doesn’t easily equate to Lead Generation for the complex sale. For example a prospect reading a blog entry doesn’t mean they want to buy anything, but it does mean they have engaged with your brand. In fact the stats show that certain forms of Social Media even out perform more traditional ones when it comes to awareness and recall. For example, unaided awareness from podcasts were 68%, compared with 21% for streaming video and 10% for television. Now that’s great recall!

B2B marketers need to set aside collecting metrics like page views, clicks, conversion rates and start nurturing individual leads by using the gift of social media they were given. Social Media is great for consideration so why not use it that way? Don’t measure your teams on page views generated from a campaign. Measure them on how engaged they can get your leads with your content and turn them into sales.

Sales generated from your lead nurturing program are the only real measure of engagement with your campaigns!

In a post on my own blog yesterday, I wrote about how companies should not think about how to leverage social media as a new channel for doing marketing, but instead realize how social media has transformed the marketing game. I promised to expand on the topic and decided it made more sense to move the conversation to the marketing 2.0 community so we can continue this discussion until way after this post will have disappeared below the fold.

In yesterday’s post I said:

Social media is what transformed the rules of marketing. By providing a platform of participation to your employees, customers and prospects, social media has changed the fundamental pillars of the marketing game. Not only have the rules of game changed, so have the players, the scope, the tactics and the added values - to use the game theory elements of the game.

I further said that the end goal of marketing - creating a customer - had not changed.

Let’s take a quick look at the different elements of the marketing game and how they changed.

The New Rules

1. People do not want to hear from companies anymore
2. People want to hear from other people

Some people will argue that this has always been like that, and they are right. The problem is that prior to this platform of massive participation called social media becoming commonplace, you could not hear from other people in a scalable way - and so you had to listen to what companies were telling you.

The New Players

• Customers
• Employees
• Prospects

Except for competitors not being on the list, it sounds like the old players - doesn’t it?

The difference is what Clay Shirky calls “here comes everyone” in his latest book - which is a must read if you are in marketing. It is not just the employees that are in your direct line of command who are playing key roles in your decision making processes, it is all employees. And it is not just your largest customers, or those you pay to advise you, who will participate in your decisions - it is all of them, including people who have not yet bought from you.

The New Scope

The scope of marketing for many old school marketers was everything pre-sales. Many corporate marketing executives are not even in charge of product innovation - where you bring the voice of the customer back into the process of defining your next offer.

The new scope of marketing is everything pre-sales all the way to post sales customer support and new product innovation. And that for global tribes of people who talk to one another instead of just those who bought from you.

The New Tactics

• Business communities
• Social media & social networks
• People-speak and authenticity
• Speed of response

Those are big changes in how marketing departments will have to think and work in order to create new customers. No more corporate-speak, no more interrupt-based marketing programs, and no more targeting. It is now all about attracting customers, building relationships and trust by helping them and letting them help one another, and leveraging the tribal nature of people.

Is this how the marketing tactics should have been all along? Absolutely! But how many companies were doing that when they did not have to? Almost none.

Now they will have no choice if they are to survive.

The New Added Values.

• People’s attention
• People’s trust
• Talent in employees and customer champions
• Externalized business process that include employees, customers and prospects
• Retell-able stories to market with you customers instead of at them

So out are the switching costs, the better mousetraps, the big advertising budgets, marketshare and other added values that determined your marketing competitive value in the marketplace before social media shifted the power away from companies and into individual’s hands.

Summary

So while the end goal of marketing has not changed, the game you play to get to that end goal has forever been transformed. You can argue that whatever marketing 2.0 becomes is what marketing should have been all along, as I did before, but the reality is that for most companies it never was like that because they did not have to.

And the changes that need to happen are so fundamental that many will not make it.

This is my first post on Marketing 2.0 & I want to thank Francois for inviting me to blog here! I look forward to the conversations.

What is the purpose of your corporate website? Take a minute to look at as your customers see it:

• Is the site primarily a point of sale?
• What will attract customers to browse if they’re not there to purchase?
• If you offer trials are the download links easy to find?
• Can customers easily find resources & knowledge base articles?
• Can customers easily find contact information for customer service & tech support?
• If you host a community can customers easily find that?
• Do you have resources for your customers that provide them with value?
• Which pages would your customers link to that would increase your SEO?

When you go to a site as a customer what draws you in? and what is frustrating?

Many marketing teams are being asked by senior leaders in their organizations why they aren’t using the same cutting edge tactics as some of their competitors. When is it right to use cutting edge tactics? When is it right to use traditional tactics? When and how should you integrate the two?

To answer these questions, I interviewed Michael Mace of Rubicon Consulting. He runs a Web Marketing Boot Camp to help marketing teams come together, discuss these issues, and learn what Web marketing tactics link best to their corporate strategy.

Here is a taste of what Michael covers and what he thinks the future looks like for Web marketers.

About Michael

Michael is a principal at Rubicon Consulting, where they help tech companies solve tough strategy and marketing problems. Michael is a former Chief Competitive Officer and VP of Product Planning at Palm, VP of Strategic Marketing at PalmSource, and director of Mac Platform Marketing at Apple. He also has served in many other roles. For more info on him please visit his website.

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Personality Not Included – a podcast with Rohit Bhargava

What if you placed a call to GM and the CEO answered the phone?

You would think perhaps this company is too small to suit my needs. This is why the bigger a company gets the more faceless they become because they layer on infrastructure to foster a certain perception.

But new media changes that paradigm and enables every brand to have a voice. From the smallest of firms to the largest and from the most obscure products to the most complex services. This is something every brand manager in every company should be working on right now – opening up your brand to be more conversational!

Which is exactly why Rohit Bhargava wrote his new book entitled Personality not Included. It’s not just another book about social media – it’s a book about how to regain a brand personality.

I had a chance to catch up with Rohit and discuss questions I had after reading the book. I hope you enjoy my interview with him as much as I did.

About Rohit

Rohit is a founding member of the pioneering 360 Digital Influence team at Ogilvy, a leading agency, in helping clients navigate the social media universe. He publishes the Influential Marketing blog, ranked among the top 50 marketing blogs in the world, and is often featured as an expert in media including The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, and Fast Company.

Rohit is also the author of the newly released book, Personality Not Included, published internationally by McGraw-Hill. A guide for companies on how authenticity is the new standard that brands need live up to in the social media era, the book has received significant early praise and features a forward by bestselling author and entrepreneur, Guy Kawasaki.

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Right now, your customers are writing about your products on blogs and reediting your commercials on YouTube. They’re defining you on Wikipedia and ganging up on you on social networking sites like Facebook. These are all elements of a social phenomenon — the groundswell — that has created a permanent, long-lasting shift in the way the world works.

Most companies see the groundswell as a threat. But you can see it as an opportunity!

That’s the reason that Charlene Li and her Forrester Research colleague Josh Bernoff wrote their new, appropriately named book Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies.

In the book, they describe the strategies and stages every company needs to go through to listen to, talk to, energize and embrace the groundswell. I had a chance to catch up with Charlene to get some answers to questions that came to me as I read the book and compared my social strategy with their recommendations. So I hope you enjoy this podcast …

About Charlene

Charlene is one of the leading voices in the area of Social Computing and Web 2.0 through her work over the past nine years with the respected technology and market research company Forrester Research. She is one of Forrester’s most quoted analysts. An accomplished and frequently requested public speaker, she often appears at industry events and delivered the keynote speech at Forrester’s Consumer Forum in 2007.

Charlene analyzes how companies can use technologies — like blogs, social networks, RSS, tagging, and widgets — to meet business objectives. She started her own analyst blog in 2004 and is regularly cited as America’s most influential analyst blogger. She shares her blog with Josh Bernoff.

Previously, Charlene led the marketing and media research team at Forrester and ran its San Francisco office. She has also been publisher of interactive media for Community Newspaper Company, a group of newspapers in Massachusetts, and served on the board of directors for the Newspaper Association of America’s New Media Federation. Charlene has managed new-product development for the San Jose Mercury News and has also been a strategy consultant for Monitor Company. She holds an M.B.A from Harvard Business School.

Charlene lives in San Mateo, Calif., with her husband and two children, all of whom are happy, engaged members of the groundswell.

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 Riding the Groundswell of Social Media: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (16)

For years, classic brand strategy has always been about the creation of a single message that can be used with all of your constituents; investors, employees, senior management and customers about who you are and what value your company provides. Brand managers tend to write it up and paste it on every wall and train every new recruit in it. It’s a classic approach to command and control brand messaging which then gets deployed via all the traditional media and used in every communications channel.

But these days you hear a lot of discussions about the explosion of new media types and formats like RSS feeds, blogs, podcasts, video, communities, micro-blogging and other emerging forms of social media. And it is causing plenty of concern that this disruption of media is eroding the traditional command and control branding that has become such common place for marketers.

Well, I say hallelujah and good riddance!

I believe that there is a very compelling argument that media doesn’t have to be fragmented while at the same time the message need not be command and control anymore. It is only a matter of knowing how to orchestrate it.

One of the first instances of this to hit the marketplace was Ogivly & Mather’s Dove “The Campaign for Real Beauty” (ok yes it is B2C but sometimes we marketers can take inspiration from our B2C brethren) Which won the 2006 Grand EFFIE Award and for good reason, They did a great job finding a powerful attribute of their brand and made a very inviting campaign around it that engaged their key audiences into a conversation. Evidence this by the nearly 3000 blog entries about it on Tecnhorati, the 2,000,000 viewers of their video on YouTube and you will see that they got the blogosphere humming about an ad campaign. Now I am not professing you drop everything and just do some clever video with your ad campaign, I do applaud the use of video to make their campaign more viral. What can we learn from this as technology marketers? Take a look at my next example.

Now compare this to the “Greg the Architect” campaign from TIBCO. Here is a B2B example that took a very different approach to making their technology funny, and engaging. What they have done is told the TIBCO story through a series of episodic vignettes and allows the viral component to kick in. Viewers are bound to have an opinion on these videos and so is the blogosphere. Also they have given the audience something to react to for better or worse rather than say “we do SOA better than the next guy”. Also don’t forget about the reaction internally to these videos and how that helps give everyone in the organization a conversation starter for the next meeting.

So why is this good news for technology companies? Because for the first time ever, technology companies specifically in B2B can lead the way using technology tools to get their message out to the masses for very little money. Just one tactic like using a video on YouTube can reach 325,000 viewers and engage them with your brand but more importantly with a message that they have sought out. But how to you take something so tactical like a video and make it part of an overall approach to your brand?

Here is the secret.

First, the brand manager needs to architect a single theme that can be used across all media traditional or otherwise. Notice here I didn’t say command and control at all – just to create a theme that is broad enough to use across every aspect of your media plan and “invite” customers and prospects to “engage” with it.

Next, you need to give your customers and prospects the digital tools to comment, to interact, and to add to the conversation. Then you add in more traditional elements of a media plan that all point to the online conversation and you will end up supercharging your media plan!

The bottom line for technology firms is your customers and prospects are perhaps the most savvy engaged technology users of any buyer in any industry. You can’t expect to reach them with traditional media only any more, you need to deliver your message in a way that is targeted to their exact interests. So why not get out there where they talking about your product or service, and give them a conversation starter along with the permission to start a dialog with your brand!

The folks at Bulldog Solutions compiled the Q&A session from a live Webinar I did last week with them called “A Case Study: Improving Lead Quality and Quantity” with the American Marketing Association.

Lead nurturing is something I am very passionate about and feel marketers need to start embracing more. A recent Forrester study cited over 50% of B2B marketers rated Lead Quality as their TOP concern. The antidote to this stay awake issue is clearly a well defined process for nurturing those leads so no lead gets left behind. I hope you enjoy the Q&A session below and feel free to reach out or comment on a question you might have regarding lead nurturing.

Q: What would my first step in starting a lead nurturing process like the one described in the Webinar?

Paul: Sit down with Sales and explain what you are doing. Then hammer out a common definition of what it means to be a “Sales Ready Lead” and what the attributes of this lead would be, such as company size, geographic location, etc.
Rob: That alignment with Sales is critical, absolutely. If there is not agreement– preferably backed up with data from closed deals and current clients showing that everyone’s impressions of what makes a good lead are correct—then the entire exercise is just academic.

Q: How do you begin to get support and buy-in from your IT partners?

Paul: We didn’t use IT to bring this in. We bought an ASP software, and we brought it in through the interactive marketing group. They essentially are the caretaker of this system. Naturally there is an IT person that takes part in the interactive group, and they are aware of it, but they are not involved in the care and feeding of this in the way the interactive group is.

Rob: We see this a lot: When it becomes an IT initiative, it can get mucked up quickly because you begin to lose sight of what it’s for. This really needs to be a marketing initiative. What’s good about that is that the tools don’t necessarily require a lot of horsepower on the front end. I should also point out that when you do it right, there are a lot of dividends for everyone. Not just marketing and sales, but it makes the database management so much cleaner, it has spillover effects to IT.

Q: It seems to me that one of the difficult steps is getting your database in order. This seems to be the holly grail to build your nurturing processes.

Paul: And you are right, it totally is. I redid my database three times before I had it perfect. Put extra effort into this step. We started by grabbing every conceivable list of opt-in contacts we could find and putting them all in Excel. Then we de-duped and made sure company names were consistent (for example, Amex vs. American Express). Then we tagged them with the industry and the solution they expressed interest in before we attempted any remarketing efforts.

Q: What percentage of lead nurturing falls under Sales’ responsibility vs. Marketing’s?

Paul: In our organization, field marketing reports to sales, so it’s seen as 100% sales focused. But I’d say lead nurturing is a marketing responsibility versus a sales responsibility.

Q: How does Sales help in updating lead status? Do they literally go into the system and update?

Paul: It depends on where it is in the selling stage. When it’s in the marketing funnel we have the inside sales team go in and update the status after any contact. They also add any other feedback they might have. Once they find they have interest and they can set an appointment with the prospect, the contact is moved over to the sales person, and then it becomes the domain of the sales person.

Rob: Leads may move from hot to cold and back to hot again, and many of the technology tools have real-time notification that helps with the process of communicating with them at the right time. For example, if all of a sudden I see that someone has downloaded my white papers and is forwarding them to colleagues, it’s time for me to step back in and connect with them.

Q: What are some ways you would score if your call to action just brought them to a splash page enabling them to have a rep call them? Not all of us have the ability to offer up to 5-6 touches. Could you score by feedback rep received during follow-up call?

Paul: Absolutely! Keep in mind the “Gold Standard” of qualifying leads is still the phone. If you can afford to do that, please do. My flow is too much to qualify each one with the phone until they are done with enough “self qualification.”

Q: How do you assign “credit” to the channel that generated the sale when it’s likely that there were several activities that lead to the sale?

Paul: I am not foolish enough to believe that marketing is a straight shot – meaning you do one event and you have tons of qualified leads. In fact I think you need an average of five to nine touches (depending on the lead) before they are really qualified. But having said that, when you know which channel was the last touch (which we do) you can do that type of scoring. The magic there is you can start to look for “unique combinations,” which is something I am just beginning to do.

Q: How can one tell how long to hold onto a lead, and work it thoroughly, before giving up on it as unusable?

Paul: In this system, I’m not giving up on anybody unless they change jobs and I lose their e-mail contact. But I know the tolerance on the sales side is much less than that! Sales is quarterly driven, they have their own specific goals. But if you look at how many touches it takes to get through to a CEO, that number of touches is in the 15-20 zone. So if a sales person gives up after five, they’re only a third of the way there.

This type of system can help, because you’re passing something along to sales that’s already been qualified, and it behooves them to work it thoroughly.

Q: What should the expectations be for rejected/returned prospects?

Paul: Simply that we put them back into the funnel for more nurturing AND we know what the issue was, so perhaps we can evolve the system. Again, whatever your vision is for your own lead nurturing system, I guarantee it will change. So you must stay committed to constant improvement.

Over the past few years marketers have been working on tracking conversations about their brands on the Web (you are tracking and listening, aren’t you?). But once you have that in place, then what?

Strategies for understanding and dealing with the flow of all these conversations are the natural next step. As more and more conversations are coming online, you need to respond quickly. So knowing things like “sentiment,” who in your organization is on point to respond, and whether they have been doing so are becoming more important. It’s like being at a party and having several conversations going on that you want to participate in.

I met Michael Spataro a few weeks back as I was researching tools to help me with this exact problem. I think what I found out was important for you to hear as well. I hope you agree.

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About Mike

Mike is vice president with Visible Technologies, a leading provider of social media analytics and online reputation management services. An early pioneer of interactive marketing and PR, Mike has been devising and implementing digital communications and social media strategies for global brands for more than 10 years, including The Walt Disney Co., General Motors, Panasonic, Hewlett-Packard, MasterCard, Eastman Kodak, Verizon, Hanes, and the renowned “Got Milk?” campaign.

Prior to joining Visible, Mike led the interactive and new media divisions for Interpublic’s two largest PR agencies, Weber Shandwick and GolinHarris. He was the strategic force that established both agencies as leaders in digital communications and consumer-generated media services. During his nearly 10 years at Interpublic, Mike created and executed a variety of award-winning campaigns that blended traditional and new media ideas that produced outstanding business results for his clients.

Lots of brands are finding out the hard way that there are plenty of conversations taking place about them online. For good or bad.

Many brands choose to ignore this. But hope is not a strategy.

Since consumers rely heavily on the Web as an authoritative source of information, managing a brand’s online reputation has become a top priority for companies. Here are 5 tips that could help you avoid a major disaster and reduce the risk of a flogging in the blogosphere.

Tip 1: Monitor the New Conversational Terrain

You have to be listening. As Woody Allen said, “half of the battle is just showing up.” Create a custom feed based on keyword searches using tools like Technorati, Feedster, IceRocket and news.googlecom.

Tip 2: Measure

Agencies like Nielsen BuzzMetrics and TNS Cymfony (trackback to a podcast on how to measure the blogosphere) have more advanced tools for monitoring social networks, blogs and communities. They also can measure the volume of buzz, track the sources and gauge the emotion of the content, be it positive, negative or just sarcastic.

Tip 3: Engage

If you don’t join the conversation, you have no control. We’ll say it again: hope is not a strategy. Tools like BuzzLogic can give you a picture of a blogger, as well as the influencers that surround any given blog. Also sites like BlogInluence.net and SocialMeter.com can provide a snapshot of any blogger’s street cred.

Tip 4: Buy Keywords?

Yes. If you do end up with a firestorm surrounding your company or brand, why not buy keywords and get your story told? Jim Nail from Cymfony says “for a company to protect its brand, they should be buying keywords.” Consider Wal-Mart as the classic example. “Wal-Mart Sucks” yields negative results for the first 10 listings. So why not own those keywords as paid links to sites that put Wal-Mart in perspective, covering, among other things, the company’s substantial economic benefits to society?

Tip 5: Use PR to Strengthen Your Digital Footprint

Another obvious tactic would be to issue a series of press statements to address whatever the concerns are, and optimize them for the Web. Consider using a press release distribution company such as PRWeb, which sends releases to journalists’ email boxes and makes them Web ready. This will help increase the rankings in news engines such as Google News, as well as in the general search results. When a press release ranks high in a search engine, it’s just one more spot a negative listing won’t appear!

BONUS - why not take my Reputation Management for New Media survey which will give you a sense of how ready your organization is for a reputation disaster? If you leave me your email I will send the results back to you in about a month.