B2B Marketing Blog

Oil and gas service providers can implement a
marketing strategy to sell to customers worldwide in
a cost-effective and affordable manner. This
strategy leverages global trade shows supported by
a marketing automation solution. This approach
maximizes the Return on Investment (ROI) from
trade shows without requiring a substantial outlay.
Implementing this strategy will increase sales
beyond their local trade area while also reducing
costs in selling to local customers.

Following up on global leads from trade shows can be expensive, time consuming, and often fail to generate a sale.  Learn how to efficiently convert trade show leads into full fledged qualified prospects using online marketing and marketing automation.

Download this eGuide to learn the basics of:

• Using the internet to engage potential customers after a trade show
• Using conversion software to identify which leads are actually interested
• Maximizing time and cost efficiency with marketing automation
• Keeping prospects engaged until they are ready to buy

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?

Sales reps in the health care industry go through complex and resource intensive sales cycles.  Marketing automation and sales intelligence tools such as ActiveConversion facilitate sales to the health care industry by closely identifying prospects who are already interested and engaged buyers.  This results in much shorter sales cycles and much more qualified prospects.

Download this eGuide that demonstrates how ActiveConversion speaks to the health care industry.  The guide shows how our marketing automation system combined with sales intelligence, not only nurtures identified visits, but also identifies anonymous visits.  This intelligence combined with the knowledge of who is ready and when, increases sales effectiveness and enables sales reps to target prospects that are ready to buy.

Some of the key points covered in this eGuide:

• How online behaviour contributes to real time sales intelligence
• How important it is to get real time sales intelligence and what health care industry vendors can do to make the best use of it
• What to do about prospects that are not ready to buy.

Download this free whitepaper to learn how health care industry vendors can increase sales and revenue by adopting marketing automation.

Are you interested in achieving sales growth with existing resources? Businesses are increasingly turning into sales optimization and lead management which frees up time for sales representatives to focus on high yield activities like engaging qualified prospects and closing sales.  Download this ActiveConversion whitepaper which shows you how lead management can help you achieve best-in-class sales performance.

Industry surveys indicate that only 10 to 25 percent of all leads are sales-ready, meaning prospects are interested and ready to buy.  A similar percentage of leads are not qualified at all. This means 50 to 80 percent of all leads generated can result in wasted effort if handled inappropriately.

By implementing a lead management system, the quality of leads will increase while the quantity of leads will decrease. Marketing will see a higher percentage of leads being followed up and sales will see a gratifying increase in the quality of leads presented to them. Companies that have implemented these tools have experienced a 30% or higher lead to sales conversion rate.

A significant advantage introduced with marketing automation systems is the capability to alert the appropriate sales representative at the moment any lead becomes sales-ready. This further reduces the load on the sales force and increases their effectiveness.

B2B marketers have uncovered 3 key behavior changes that require today’s SMB to incorporate thought leadership in their marketing efforts. The good news it is neither as expensive nor as time consuming as it used to be.

Download this guide to thought leadership and learn how incorporating thought leadership marketing into your B2B marketing efforts can get you astounding results. In this dynamic social media driven world, it is more important than ever to utilize these strategies and techniques to successfully be a thought leader in your industry.

There is a sea change in the way buyers and vendors engage each other and that is being driven by three key developments in buyer behavior:

First, research is being conducted by chief executives themselves. According to a 2009 Report by Forbes Insights in association with Google, more than half of C-suite executives prefer to locate information themselves instead of delegating to subordinates.

Second, the internet has become the preferred means of business research. In the same Forbes report, executives declared the internet more valuable than any other source for gathering business information, surpassing even colleagues and personal networks.

Third, when executives go online, they first turn to mainstream search engines. This development levels the playing field for B2B companies. A firm’s appearance in search engine results does not require the substantial budget required for conventional advertising/branding campaigns.

Please comment and share your thoughts on our comment sections.

This is the sixth in the series of ActiveConversion’s very popular “eHow To” guides. This one deals with applying online marketing best practices to trade show marketing.  From the guide:

Business to business (B2B) trade shows can be a cost-effective means of gaining valuable face-to-face interaction with many qualified prospects. Most B2B companies have a reasonable expectation that sales revenue will result from participation at trade shows. Yet too often, experience has shown that for many leads from trade shows the timing is too early in the sales cycle. This experience may explain why business executives are constantly dismayed that so few leads are actually followed up by their sales departments. Trade show industry research indicates that 80-90 percent of all trade show leads are not followed up.

What the guide advocates is that in addition to using marketing automation in the promoting of attendance pre trade show, a trade show booth is analogous to a website for the large number of “inquiries” that exhibitors come home with:

• Most of these inquires are not ready to buy (95% according to the research)
• They have opted-in to receive more information (so they are ideal for email nurture campaigns)
• They need to be nurtured through a sales cycle so that in 3 or 6 or 9 months when/if they reach sales ready, the exhibitor is still top of mind
• They need sorting (scoring of their behavior) to weed out the ones who are, and who are not, worth inside/outside sales resources.

But also key is the takeaway that companies need to know who is visiting their website (marketing automation platforms like ActiveConversion identify anonymous company visits, as well as labelled individuals).  The traffic that visits a company’s website directly after a trade show is often a key indicator of whom at the trade show they got some level of engagement with, especially if there are multiple visits from different individuals from the same company.

To download this eHow To Guide on why marketing automation can increase your trade show ROI, click here or on the image!

This is the fifth in the series of ActiveConversion’s very popular “eHow To” guides. This one deals with aligning a company’s marketing and sales departments so that they can work together seamlessly. From the guide:

B2B marketing is about driving sales, yet a common complaint from the sales department is that “Marketing throws leads over the fence!” Too often experience has shown sales that few leads from marketing are qualified and even if they are; the timing is too early in the cycle. Meanwhile the marketing department is constantly dismayed that so few leads are actually followed up by the sales department.

According to the 2008 Miller Heiman Sales Best Practices Study, only 37% of respondents agreed that their sales and marketing organizations are aligned in what their customers want and need [source]. Since sales teams want to prioritize on the buyers that have a better chance of closing, it makes sense to use to:

• give marketing more of a role in the targeting and qualifying of prospects
• use marketing automation to nurture prospects that are not yet qualified for hand-off to sales
• give marketing the ability to auto-communicate to sales a lead’s activities and engagement level
• prioritize for sales a large volume of leads based on qualifiers like company size and engagement

To download this eHow To Guide on why marketing automation can get your Sales and Marketing teams aligned, click here or on the image!

This is the fourth of ActiveConversion’s very popular “eHow To” guides.  This one deals with using Marketing Automation to score the behavior of website visitors, and those who click through on emails, so that they can be automatically sorted for prioritization.  From the summary:

Identify online behaviors that indicate interest or sales-readiness

Not all leads are created equally. A lead scoring system acknowledges this by assigning values to leads based on objective criteria. The lead score determines the appropriate action for that lead.

In establishing your system you should;

• Identify online behaviors that indicate interest or sales-readiness
• Assign point values to each of those behaviors
• Establish a score that defines “Sales-Ready”

With a contemporary marketing automation solution like ActiveConversion, today’s B2B marketers can reduce costs and increase revenue through prioritization with lead scoring.

To download this eHow To Guide on why, when, and how to implement an automatic lead scoring plan for your business, click on the image!

In the third of their very popular “eHow To” guides, this guide explores how to effectively use Social Media for marketing.  While a lot of ink has been spilled on this topic, this guide approaches it from a layman’s perspective, and focuses on the business case and a pragmatic way to implement in a way that will succeed.

“The spectacular growth of social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter have taken B2B marketing by storm. B2B marketers recognized that they have access to hundreds of millions of people who have registered for and are using social networking sites.

More importantly, within those substantial groups B2B marketers can target their messages and advertising directly to the audience that will be the most receptive to their product or service, using the underlying technology inherent in social networking sites …

Social media differs from traditional media in that social media is where many individuals share information with each other rather than one source broadcasting to the masses. In Web 2.0 marketing language, it is many-to-many instead of one-to-many.”

Specifically it speaks to integrating Social Media efforts into wider eMarketing such as SEO/SEM and email marketing, all the while managing the flow of new referrals with proven marketing automation tools such as ActiveConversion.

Link to download page

ActiveConversion recently released another in their popular series of “eHow To” guides.  This one deals with using Marketing Automation to leverage B2B Blogging.  From the summary:

Lead nurturing is the process of communicating with prospects who are not yet ready to buy. B2B Blogging enables marketers to contact such prospects on an ongoing basis.

Only 10 to 25 percent of all leads are sales-ready. A similar percentage of leads are not qualified at all. This means 50 to 80 percent of all leads generated are potentially wasted if no appropriate action is taken.

With B2B Blogging marketers can realize significant benefits. Leads that are not sales-ready are not lost and significant online lead generation effort is not wasted. Automation of lead nurturing increases the ROI of all online marketing activities.

To download this whitepaper on implementing a blog for your business, click on the image!