Weekly Marketing Blogosphere Recap: Creating a Lead Generation Program, Social Media and the Buying Cycle, and More!

April 23, 2012 | by | Category:

In our blogosphere recap we examine four blog posts from last week that discussed how to create an effective lead generation program, ways social media can accelerate the buying cycle and greater marketing & media integration within B2B marketers, and SEO news from Bing. Below are some of the highlights from these articles:

Creating an Effective Lead Generation Program

iMedia Connection | Dinesh Boaz | 4-17-2012

Online lead generation, an effective and growing digital marketing solution for brand advertisers, has seen some recent media coverage with the acquisition of the preeminent lead generation conference, LeadsCon to Access Intelligence last week.  With online lead generation registering an impressive 20% growth rate in 2011 and continuing to grow in 2012 according to an IAB/PwC study, lead generation is a great way for brand advertisers to acquire new customers or build a database.

Key Takeaways:

  • It is important to establish a comprehensive plan that ties in sales and marketing goals and then establish goals for the lead generation campaign.
  • Identify the acquisition channels that best match your campaign’s core demographics and target audience.
  • Use landing page to convert interest into leads. Therefore it is important to make sure that your landing page provides a clear answer to your consumers’ needs.

B2B Marketers Report Greater Marketing, Media Integration

eMarketer | Staff | 4-17-2012

“Integration” is a marketing buzzword of late, no doubt in part due to increased media fragmentation—and growing pressure from executives to master new channels and formats to create a cohesive brand message. But November 2011 findings from the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) showed US B2B companies may have a leg up on their B2C counterparts when it comes to integrating marketing communications across channels and blending digital and traditional marketing campaigns. B2Cs, however, appeared to be more comfortable in their use of newer media channels such as social and mobile.

Key Takeaways:

  • More than half (56%) of B2B marketers said they already had strong alignment between their marketing communications and business goals, compared to just 44% of B2C respondents.
  • B2B marketers also reported a greater desire to develop integrated marketing communication plans for every marketing project (33% vs. 25%, respectively).
  • Fewer B2C marketers felt their digital and traditional marketing programs were well integrated compared to their B2B peers (36% vs. 26%).

How Social Media Can Accelerate the Buying Cycle

ClickZ | Andrea Fishman |4-18-2012

For many marketers, the problems stems from trying to force social media to fit within the construct of how they have traditionally viewed a customer lifecycle, rather than trying to update their customer interaction model. The other problem is that most organizations are only looking at social media as an outbound channel – not a two-way communications vehicle. Most businesses have a well-documented, refined customer acquisition and retention model that has been built based on years of data and market research.

Key Takeaways:

  • Social media can provide the external validation that paid media cannot.
  • Take a step back and assess all they ways your audience may be impacted by social media – and develop new content, offers, and experiences that take advantage of the disruption.
  • Use the two-way nature of social media to engage in conversations that accelerate the buying cycle. Create “social only” offers that take advantage of the immediacy of the Internet.

Bing SEO alert: Microsoft can’t handle content pagination as well as Google

Brafton | Staff | 4-20-12

On a blog post, Bing recently detailed its methodology for ranking links to paginated content. While the company has worked to make improvements, it has not reached the capability of Google. Essentially, the search giant is working to deliver users the first page of an article or a “view all” page even if their queries matches a term or phrase that appears deeper within the content.

Key Takeaways:

  • Like Google, Bing has added the “rel=next” and “rel=prev” tags, so webmasters can ensure that Bing’s search crawler understands that a website page is part of a series, but the feature is not as advanced.
  • As Bing’s search crawlers begin to understand paginated content more accurately, Forrester said that the company will likely be able to offer users a higher-quality experience.
  • Despite the adjustments from Bing in terms of paginated content, it still lags heavily behind Google in terms of popularity.