B2B Marketing Blog

Marketing automation is now increasingly demanded by the manufacturers and services companies in the Oil and Gas sector.  Of particular note are the small to medium sized businesses (SMBs) with North American, or even global, aspirations.  These companies are uniquely suited to exploit online marketing and automation solutions as finding potential customers, and then nurturing them through the sales cycle, greatly enhances their ability to grow. This is done with online software tools that maximize their professional marketing and sales resources.  In particular, reducing wasted effort through better targeting/qualifying of potential customers.  With these solutions, these companies can cost effectively market to potential customers worldwide.

Download and read this whitepaper to help get answers for the following:

• How does online marketing help energy services providers?
• How to convert web visitors into sales leads using marketing automation?
• How to engage leads until they are ready to buy using lead nurturing and sales intelligence?

The celebrated catchphrase for the classic TV cop show Dragnet, “Just the facts , ma’am,” might as well be the description for ActiveConversion’s new AC-ProspectAlert.  This module allows sales people to access their alerts and other sales lead information without having to log into the full ActiveConversion system.  It was recently introduced with the new UI (user interface) for ActiveConversion and was designed to provide sales reps with what they want as fast as possible.

Previously sales people could access this information via a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) account like Salesforce.com but for greater flexibility and for those businesses that haven’t deployed Salesforce.com to their sales team, AC-ProspectAlert is just the ticket.

• Laser focused view: It optimizes sales time and allows sales reps to concentrate on engaging prospects and closing business instead of navigating through a maze of menus to get the information they need.
• Sales leads: For those organizations that use Jigsaw’s contact data, this has been seamlessly integrated into AC-ProspectAlert so that sales reps can access this data conveniently.
• Easy to use: Because it shares the same slick new UI as the full ActiveConversion services, sales reps can quickly and easily find the information they need.
• Track Key Indicators: The new dashboard has been designed specifically for the sales rep in a hurry.

As the man said, “Just the facts, ma’am.”

It is customary at this time of year for pundits to make predictions about the coming year. For many technology vendors this results in prophecies about product developments and such. I’d like to offer up a change in pace and modestly suggest some customer trends. Up until 2010, adoption of B2B marketing automation has been substantially driven by tech-savvy early adopters. In 2010 B2B marketers sustained traditional marketing practices like email campaigns and continued experimenting with social media, content marketing and thought leadership. In many campaigns the data was encouraging but the challenge for B2B marketers was connecting marketing results (in the form of increased traffic) to sales results (increased leads and revenue).

As online marketers searched high and low to meet this challenge, interest soon focused on marketing automation as marketers increasingly saw that early adopters were using this technology. In 2011, I expect this trend will significantly increase and adoption of marketing automation will spread beyond this group as word spreads within individual markets.

For example, the use of content marketing has grown and as a result, online marketers are beginning to understand that content must be tailored to where the customer is in the purchase cycle. This goes hand in hand with lead scoring and lead nurturing and points to marketing automation as a way to exploit this new way of developing customers. Although early adopters have a significant profit motive, it is this pragmatism that propels a technology thorough early adoption and even into adoption by the early majority. I can’t wait for 2011.

On Dec 16^th 2010, Top Sales World a global sales community hosted their first live annual top sales awards ceremony. ActiveConversion was the proud Silver Medal winner of the Top Sales Tool. ActiveConversion would like to thank everyone who voted for us, including the judges who contributed 50% towards the vote. We also congratulate Jonathan Farrington who hosted and spearheaded the awards show. These shows not only give the opportunity for companies to showcase their tools, but also give the audience the chance to share and vote for their best.

This was a very competitive award category where there were some great tools contending for the top 3 awards. Some of them who received the Top Sales Tool award recognition were GoldMail and Revegy.

The show was wonderfully done with a lineup of world class sales experts and they made this event even more valuable and worthwhile. This year’s lineup included “Wendy Weiss, Joanne Black, Jill Konrath, Kevin Eikenberry, Nigel Edelshain, Dave Kurlan, Dr. Tony Alessandra, Dan Waldschmidt, Dave Stein, Paul McCord, Art Sobszak and Linda Richardson.”

For those who missed the show, can download or view the recorded show from their website topsalesworld.com. Thanks again to everyone who contributed and voted for ActiveConversion, and also to the Top Sales World team for hosting this great event.

Recently ActiveConversion users experienced firsthand the elegance and power of a new graphical user interface that was intended to provide them with the power of knowing more while doing less.  The new user interface provides relevant information with a laser focused view of what they would like to see on a day to day basis.  It also provides users the ability to navigate to the right place as easily as possible.

New and improved dashboard: Featuring a daily trending graph for Companies, Prospects and Qualified Leads. Comparing the above mentioned categories versus your long term average.

The dashboard now has a sophisticated look and an intuitive interface that measures inbound lead activity and marketing campaigns. This is designed for the busy sales and marketing manager wanting to get an executive summary of how their demand generation and marketing campaigns are performing.

New navigation based on personas and subject areas:
With the new persona based navigation and the hover style menu, it now takes just a few mouse clicks for the users to find what they need quickly and easily. Our design & UI team wanted the flow of information to be as smooth as possible and this was a top priority item during product development.

For ActiveConversion, the mission is to get the right information to the sales reps at the right time. And now with the advent of new UI, sales can easily find companies that are visiting and distill the qualified leads from the identified prospects. For marketing, it is now easier to focus on tasks that they care most about; from a single source where they can dive in and get the information they want to measure their campaigns and calculate the ROI effectively.

This new UI release was spearheaded by Jeff Rouse, VP Development, ActiveConversion who stated, “This release represents Active Conversion’s move to a more modern and powerful interface, that will set the stage for future enhancements”. In parallel, our AC-ProspectAlert module has also been upgraded to this new UI to make it even easier for sales reps to get alerts, lead trends and lead information. Stay tuned for our next blog on details around AC-Prospect Alert.

Top Sales World a global sales community is hosting their  first live annual top sales awards ceremony on Thursday December 16th from 12 Noon Eastern.

ActiveConversion is a proud nominee of the prestigious 2010 Top Sales Tool. ActiveConversion is a sales tool and the primary resource for many sales professionals across various industries to generate and manage their sales leads.  ActiveConversion is an intuitive sales product and sold as a SaaS (Software as a Service) product.  Sales and marketing executives wanting to stay on top of their leads and actively converting them into qualified prospects  use ActiveConversion. Daily alerts via lead reports, Jigsaw integration, and Salesforce.com integration are some of components, for which ActiveConversion is known for.

We encourage our readers and supporters to share the love and vote for us. Voters may return and vote again every 24 hours, if that is their desire.

The public polls, which open on Wednesday November 24th, will represent 50% of the total votes, the other 50% will be provided by a panel of three experts in each category. The public polls will close at midnight Eastern on Monday December 13th.

CEO and Co-founder of ActiveConversion Fred Yee will be on SLMA Radio Talk Show with host Will Crist for a live 25 minute interview sharing his management philosophy and discussing topics on sales lead management that is scheduled for September 9, 2010.

The SLMA radio show is an interview with industry leaders and presents their opinions about current industry trends.  The industry leaders share their management philosophy and their approach on topics such as sales lead management, lead generation and marketing automation.

You can listen to the entire broadcast live at 5 PM PST Time on http://www.octalkradio.net/ on SLMA Radio.

Previous guests have been  B2B experts such as Mac MacIntosh and Marketo CEO, Phil Fernandez. Future guests include author Jill Konrath (Selling to Big Companies), and Carlos Hidalgo, CEO of the Annunitas Group.

SLMA Radio is a 50 minute internet radio show produced four times each month.  It broadcasts live at 5 PM PST, in the United States from OC Talk Radio. The host is talk-show commentator Will Crist.  The second host is James Obermayer, CEO of the Sales Lead Management Association.

For more information on ActiveConversion, please visit http://www.activeconversion.com and follow us on Twitter twitter.com/ActiveConv & Facebook www.facebook.com/pages/ActiveConversion/37964683575

Nancy Nardin over at SmartSellingTools.com wrote a great blog post last week, entitled ‘99% of Businesses are Being Stiffed! And You’re Probably One of Them’ that is highly relevant to sales and marketing tools for small to medium size business (SMBs).

The essence of the post is that most SMBs are either overpaying for the software they’re using or using software that is built for mid-to-large companies but that is crippled for SMBs. What is more telling, is that the companies selling it to us are saying their ‘primary’ market is larger business but that the software is applicable for smaller companies too.

How can this be true? How can your under 100 employee firm have the same support, feature needs, and budget as a 500+ employee company that has a marketing department and a sales team of 40? Or how you the same as 50 person hi-tech venture capital backed startup that lives and breathes social media?  All the features those companies will insist upon can become a burden for you to use (or not even be a good fit altogether), not to mention the manpower and support issues you will have trying to keep it running smoothly. It’s no wonder that a lot of software becomes ‘shelfware’ after the vendor has sold the customer on all the whiz bang features 6 months previously.

We haven’t even gotten to budget! Some vendors will discount their software to give you a ‘great deal’, without ensuring you are a ‘great fit’. Or sell a ‘lite’ version or give a free version so that you will invest your time on their platform, so they can upsell you later. Again, will it fit your company is not their primary concern. What you pay today may not be what you pay when you renew, or have taken into consideration implementation costs.

As Trish Bertuzzi (a well-known expert on sales strategies) comments on the post, ‘Our advice to all our clients, don’t talk to vendors or do any research on marketing automation until you have defined your requirements. Then, once you have defined them, sit back and take a long hard look at what it will cost you in time, effort and energy to implement.’

So don’t get stiffed. Don’t buy a tool that is built for large companies and get short changed later. Buy what you need  – you can always upgrade later (if you need to) if it’s a monthly software-as-a-service (SaaS) product which most are. Gone are the days of buying all you will ever need, because its no longer a one-time license purchase.

Most importantly, choose based on what your requirements are, not based on what some large companies requirements are. There’s many reasons why SAP and Oracle ERP software don’t fit SMBs, and Intuit accounting software doesn’t fit large companies.

The 2010 mediaFresh awards hosted by Digital Alberta are dedicated to the recognition of those Alberta Digital Media Professionals and Post-Secondary students who have created outstanding project and programs between September 2008 and November 2009.

Category: Best Entrepreneur Award for creative/business/technology entries will be judged on

• 40% Marketing Strategy
• 30% Commercial viability
• 30% Uniqueness of technology

Winning entries will be featured in a full color catalogue that will be published and distributed following the awards ceremony. Each winner will receive a complimentary copy of the catalogue for their portfolio. Additional copies of the mediaFresh 2010 will be distributed to promote digital media production in Alberta and around the world.

Fred Yee, CEO of Foundpages/ActiveConversion, is one of the nominees. We think Fred and the product / services fit the ranking criteria very well.