Two Keys to More Effective Marketing in 2014 - Part 1

Two years ago this month, I published a post here titled Five Ways to Improve Your Marketing in 2012. With the end of 2013 now only a month away, I thought it would be a good time to revisit this topic with 2014 in mind. How much of what I wrote in 2011 is still relevant, and what would I change about (or add to) my 2011 post.

In my earlier post, I made five recommendations:

• Develop a marketing strategy
• Shift primary responsibility for lead generation from sales to marketing
• Increase the number of leads you acquire via inbound marketing
• Develop and implement a sound lead management process
• Implement a content marketing strategy

These recommendations are as valid today as they were two years ago, although I believe that the number of B2B companies using some or all of these practices has increased substantially over the past two years.

So, what are the most critical actions that B2B marketers should take in 2014 to boost marketing performance? There are several plausible answers to this question, but I suggest that two actions stand out in importance. In this post, I'll discuss why technology has become all but essential for effective B2B marketing in 2014, and my next post will describe how marketing content must change in 2014.

Why Marketing Technology is Essential

I don't write frequently in this blog about marketing technology for a couple of reasons. First, there are many other good sources of information on that topic. In addition, the hype surrounding marketing technology can easily create the erroneous impression that technology is a "silver bullet" that will automatically improve marketing and sales performance.

It's clear, however, that marketing and technology are deeply entwined and that it's now practically impossible to build and execute effective marketing programs without the use of technology. For example, unless you're working with a very small number of prospects, it's extremely difficult and highly inefficient to run sophisticated lead nurturing programs without the right technology tools.

B2B marketing automation (aka lead management) software enables companies to execute personalized and behavior-driven lead nurturing programs. These technologies also typically enable extensive data collection regarding lead behavior and the use of automated lead scoring systems. B2B marketing automation solutions are typically integrated with CRM solutions, and this combination of technologies can significantly improve the effectiveness and efficiency of both marketing and sales efforts.

The good news is, both marketing automation solutions and CRM solutions are now widely available as hosted solutions, they are relatively easy to use, and they are affordable for most B2B companies. These factors, combined with the pressing need to improve marketing performance, have made B2B marketing automation software extremely popular. David Raab, a widely-respected marketing automation industry analyst, estimates that revenues from the sale of B2B marketing automation software will reach $750 million in 2013, and the market has been growing at about 50% per year for the past several years.

If you don't have the internal skills needed to successfully implement a marketing automation solution, you should consider working with a marketing services firm that can use these technologies to execute marketing programs on your behalf.

Marketing technology is not a panacea, but it will be essential for effective B2B marketing in 2014.

Read Part 2 of the series here.

Rethinking the Value of BANT (It's Not as Outdated as Some Suggest)

Last fall, I published a post here titled Why BANT No Longer Works for Qualifying Leads. In that post, I argued rather strongly that BANT (the acronym for Budget-Authority-Need-Timeframe) is no longer an effective way to qualify sales leads because of changes in how B2B buyers make purchase decisions.

My post was neither the first nor the last discussion of BANT to appear in the blogosphere. Here are a few of the blog articles that have been published this year.

• Why BANT is Bunk for Today's B2B Buyer by Ardath Albee
• Banning BANT:  Redefining Quality Lead Criteria and Handling Moot Objections by Allison Tetreault
• All Real Salespeople Love Sales Leads (but there is a tiny caveat) by James Obermayer
• BANT is Dead - Find the Authority by Mike Damphousse
• Lead Scoring:  Don't BANT On It by Sarah Hums
• BANT Isn't Enough Anymore:  A New Framework for Qualifying Prospects by Pete Caputa

As you can tell from these titles, the weight of opinion in the blogosphere is clearly anti-BANT.

While I stand by what I wrote last fall, I also now believe that my criticisms of BANT were probably too broad and that the BANT criteria are still relevant and useful for evaluating sales leads if they're used at the right times to answer the right questions. In the typical demand generation process, there are three major points at which you need to evaluate the quality of a sales lead.

Qualification of New Leads

The first is when you initially acquire a lead, and the issue is whether the lead should be added to your nurturing program. BANT criteria have little role to play in this decision. At this stage, the only information about the lead that you're likely to have is a name, a company affiliation, and a job title. Company affiliation and job title may allow you to infer something about potential need, financial ability to purchase, and buying authority, but that's it. For this decision, the primary criteria should be that the lead is affiliated with an organization that fits your company's target market and has a job title that indicates a reasonable connection with the products or services you sell.

Identification of Sales-Ready Leads

The next point at which you need to evaluate lead quality is when you are deciding whether a lead is ready to engage with a sales rep. A modified version of BANT should be part of the criteria you use to make this decision. For example:

• Need - A sales-ready lead will have acknowledged the existence of a need that your product or service can address.
• Authority - A sales-ready lead will be a member of the buying group that will make the purchase decision. The lead doesn't need to be the classic "economic buyer" or have sole buying authority, but he or she should be a member of the decision-making group.
• Timeframe - A sales-ready lead will be actively evaluating possible solutions for the recognized need. Your lead may not have a firm schedule for making a purchase decision, but he or she should have acknowledged that addressing the need has become a priority for his or her organization.
• Budget - A lead doesn't need to have an established budget to be considered sales ready. As I wrote in my earlier post, research by DemandGen Report has shown that between 70% and 80% of business buyers evaluate potential solutions, build a business case for immediate adoption, and then obtain spending approval. However, you should be fairly confident that the prospect organization has the financial wherewithal to purchase your product or service.

Identification of Sales Opportunities

The third point at which you need to evaluate lead quality is when you are determining whether you have a legitimate sales opportunity. By sales opportunity, I mean a potential deal that has progressed far enough to be included in your revenue forecast. For this decision, the focus of lead qualification is on the prospect organization rather than on an individual "lead" within the organization, and the BANT criteria are particularly relevant. For example:

• Need - To qualify as a sales opportunity, your sales rep should have confirmed that the prospect has a need that your product or service can address and that all members of the buying group have acknowledged the need.
• Authority - Your sales rep should have identified and established relationships will all members of the buying group. In addition, you sales rep must understand what process will be used to make the buying decision and what role each "buyer" plays in that process.
• Timeframe - To qualify as a sales opportunity, the buying process must have progressed to the point that the prospect is committed to making a purchase decision within a defined period of time.
• Budget - While it is not essential to have a specific budget line item for the proposed purchase, your sales rep should have confirmed that the prospect's buying group has access to sufficient funds to make the purchase and the ability to commit those funds when the purchase decision is made.

BANT should never be the only criteria used to qualify sales leads. As noted earlier, BANT is not appropriate for qualifying early-stage leads, and it provides only some of the criteria for identifying when a lead is sales ready. However, BANT is not nearly as useless or outdated as some of us may have thought.

B2B Marketers, Be Careful What You Ask For

For the past few years, B2B marketing thought leaders and practitioners have been advocating that marketing should play a larger role in the demand generation process. Proponents of this view argue that marketing should have the primary responsibility for acquiring new sales leads via inbound and outbound marketing programs and for nurturing and qualifying leads until they are ready to begin a meaningful engagement with a sales rep.

According to its advocates, this model of demand generation is more consistent with how today's business buyers learn about issues and possible solutions and make buying decisions, and it also uses a company's demand generation resources more effectively and efficiently.

While the arguments supporting this demand generation model are compelling, implementing it will constitute a major change for many B2B companies. To understand how just big the change is, we only need to look at where leads are coming from today.

The following table is based on the annual Sales Performance Optimization surveys conducted by CSO Insights and includes data from the survey results published in 2011, 2012, and 2013. The survey question asked respondents to specify what percentage of their sales leads are self-generated by sales reps, what percentage are generated by marketing, and what percentage originate from other sources. As the table shows, B2B companies are still relying on salespeople to generate almost half of all new sales leads.



 

The distribution of lead sources shown in the above table has been fairly stable now for several years. The following chart is also based on data from the Sales Performance Optimization surveys and shows the percentage of total leads generated by marketing from 2005 through 2013. As the chart shows, marketing has been producing between 24% and about 30% of total leads for the past seven years.



 

The CSO Insights data makes two important points. First, it clearly shows that B2B marketers will need to "step up their game" if they want marketing to take the lead in lead generation. They must be ready to demonstrate to senior company leaders that they have a strategy that will produce enough sales-ready leads to enable their company to achieve its revenue goals.

 

Perhaps more importantly, the CSO Insights data makes it clear that successful lead generation will require the involvement of both marketing and sales (and other business functions as well), at least for the foreseeable future. Even if marketing significantly increases its lead generation results, it is likely that, for the next few years anyway, between 40% and 50% of leads will still be produced by sales reps and other sources.

How to Avoid Lead Genocide

Several days ago, I came across a great blog post by Jill Konrath. If you're not familiar with Jill's work, she is a well-respected sales consultant/trainer and the author of SNAP Selling and Selling to Big Companies.

In her post, Jill describes an experience with a provider of CRM software. You can read Jill's post to get the full flavor of the experience, but I'll provide an abbreviated version.

Jill received an e-mail from the CRM provider offering an ebook on the social sales revolution. Jill registered to obtain the ebook because she was interested in the topic. She had zero interest in acquiring a new CRM solution.

Just a few minutes after downloading the ebook, Jill received an e-mail from the CRM provider suggesting a "brief 10 minute call" to answer questions and "explain how our different products and services could bring value. . ." This call would help "shorten your evaluation process" and provide "exactly the information you need to help make any comparisons or decisions."

Exactly 34 minutes after this message, Jill received a second e-mail. The second message indicated that the sales rep had been unable to reach Jill by telephone and asked Jill to "let me know if it makes sense to connect." Two minutes later, Jill received a third e-mail asking her to answer nine questions regarding her CRM environment, including what she wanted her CRM system to do for her business, how many users she would have, and what other solutions she was evaluating.

Jill's post provoked numerous comments, and many of the people who commented said they had experienced something similar. One person said that she called this kind of marketing lead genocide rather than lead generation. I've had several experiences similar to Jill's, and I suspect many of you have also.

Practices like this are the epitome of bad marketing. In some cases, these aggressive practices may be the result of an honest, but mistaken, belief that just because a prospect has downloaded one white paper or ebook or attended one webinar, he or she is actively evaluating a potential purchase and is ready for a sales-level engagement.

More often, though, these kinds of practices result from an erroneous belief by sellers that they can push or drive or advance prospects through the buying process. The reality is, prospects control the buying process, and they determine how quickly they will move through the cycle. As I wrote in an earlier post, the only way you can consistently accelerate the buying process is to eliminate the friction that slows prospects down. Anything else is, at best, wasted effort, and it will usually do more harm than good.

To avoid the kind of marketing malpractice described in Jill's post, resist the urge to treat a prospect's first interaction with your business as an invitation to begin a late-stage sales conversation. And remember that, while you can facilitate your prospects' decision-making process, they ultimately decide when and to what level they will engage with your business.

An Inconvenient Truth About B2B Demand Generation

If you're a B2B marketer, describing the major attributes of your lead-to-revenue funnel and measuring the dynamics of your funnel are critical to understanding how well your demand generation system is performing. Funnel metrics will help provide the answers to three basic questions:

• Volume - Are our marketing programs generating a sufficient number of raw leads (sometimes called responses or inquiries) to produce the revenues that marketing is responsible for?
• Conversion - What percentage of leads are "converting" from each lead stage to the next across the entire lead-to-revenue cycle?
• Velocity - How long is the overall revenue cycle? In other words, now much time does it take, on average, for an initial response or inquiry to result in a closed sale?

Many B2B companies use the Demand Waterfall model developed by SiriusDecisions to describe and measure the lead-to-revenue funnel. The graphic below shows the major stages in the Demand Waterfall and the conversion rates achieved by average B2B companies, according to SiriusDecisions. (Note:  SiriusDecisions recently revised the Demand Waterfall to add several lead stages, but the framework shown below is still widely used by B2B companies.)

Now for the inconvenient truth. Research strongly suggests that the demand generation system in many B2B companies is horribly inefficient. Based on the conversion rates identified by SiriusDecisions, the average B2B company needs to generate 351 inquires to acquire one new customer. That equates to an overall lead-to-revenue conversion rate of only 0.3% (4.4% x 66% x 49% x 20%).

Forrester Research has found similar levels of demand generation performance. According to Forrester, the average overall lead-to-revenue conversion rate is 0.75%. What makes this issue important is that your overall lead-to-revenue conversion rate has a big impact on your company's overall cost of sales, which obviously affects company profitability.

 

The good news is that companies can significantly improve the performance of their lead-to-revenue funnel. In addition to identifying the lead conversion rates achieved by the average B2B company, SiriusDecisions has also studied the conversion rates achieved by Best Practice companies, and their research shows that Best Practice companies perform substantially better across the board. The table below shows how the higher conversion rates achieved by Best Practice companies impact lead-to-revenue funnel performance.

 

 

 

As this table shows, Best Practice companies must generate only about 70 inquiries to acquire one new customer, while average firms need five times as many. Best Practice companies also achieve an overall lead-to-revenue conversion rate of 1.4%, which is about five times higher that the rate achieved by average firms.

The performance of your lead-to-revenue funnel will tell you a great deal about the effectiveness of your marketing and sales efforts. So, if you aren't currently using funnel metrics, now would be a good time to start.

Stop Thinking in Terms of Marketing Campaigns

For decades, marketers have thought in terms of campaigns when planning their marketing efforts. The campaign model provided a useful way to organize marketing activities and link those activities to specific marketing objectives. Today, however, effective B2B marketing requires new kinds of marketing tactics and methods that have an entirely different structure and rhythm from traditional marketing campaigns. Therefore, the campaign model no longer provides an effective paradigm for thinking about and planning all marketing efforts.

The word campaign was first used to describe a connected series of military operations intended to achieve a particular objective. Surprisingly, the online dictionary provided by the American Marketing Association doesn't include a definition of marketing campaign. However, the AMA dictionary does define an advertising campaign as a group of advertisements, commercials, and related promotional materials and activities that are designed to be used during the same period of time as part of a coordinated advertising plan to meet the specified advertising objectives of a client.

With a few changes, this definition can be applied to marketing campaigns, which we can define as:  A group of coordinated marketing activities (as opposed to a single activity) that are performed during a defined period of time and are designed to achieve a specified marketing objective.

As this definition indicates, the campaign model assumes that a marketing campaign has a fixed and defined lifespan. It begins, runs for the specified period of time, and ends. The problem is, many of today's most critical marketing tactics and methods don't fit the campaign model because they don't have predetermined lifespans. Many inbound marketing techniques fall into this category.

For example, if you want to have an effective company blog, you can't publish new content once a week for six months and then stop publishing for the next six months. That's one sure way to lose your audience. The same principle applies to other inbound marketing techniques, such as search engine optimization and most kinds of social media marketing. Once you begin these kinds of marketing activities, they will continue indefinitely and require more or less continuous attention. Therefore, the term blogging campaign is an oxymoron.

Lead nurturing is another critical B2B marketing activity that doesn't fit the campaign model. An effective lead nurturing program operates continuously. The timing and content of nurturing communications are either designed into the process or are triggered by the behavior of individual prospects. The nurturing process for an individual prospect will end under certain circumstances, but the nurturing program continues to operate as long as there are prospects to nurture. That's why the idea of a lead nurturing campaign doesn't really make sense.

As companies face the challenge of creating engagement with increasingly empowered and independent business buyers, the importance of always-on, continuously running marketing programs will continue to grow. These types of programs operate very differently from traditional marketing campaigns and require a different kind of thinking and planning.

Marketing campaigns won't completely disappear. The campaign model still works reasonably well for some kinds of outbound lead acquisition programs, but, it's time to ditch the campaign paradigm for a growing segment of B2B marketing.

Why Sales Enablement Matters More than Ever - Sales Enablement, Part 1

In most B2B companies, your success as a marketer depends to a significant extent on your ability to help the sales team sell. By no means is this a new development. For decades, many (perhaps most) B2B companies have been "sales driven," and the primary role of marketing in these organizations was to support the selling effort by creating collateral materials, managing trade show participation, and running occasional brand building and lead generation programs.

Today, marketing is playing a broader and more significant role in the demand generation process in many B2B companies. In particular, marketers are taking greater responsibility for nurturing potential buyers before passing those leads over to sales.

Notwithstanding all of the changes, sales is still a critical part of the demand generation process, and improving sales effectiveness is still an important business objective. If anything, the increased power and heightened expectations of business buyers are driving greater interest in the topic of sales enablement. For example, Forrester Research held its third annual sales enablement conference earlier this year, and other national research/analyst/consulting firms, including IDC, Gartner, and SiriusDecisions are also focusing on this topic.

In my next two posts, I'll discuss the two most important ways that marketing can support and enable the sales team. First, however, a little background information.

What is Sales Enablement?

Both Forrester and IDC have published "formal" definitions of sales enablement.

Forrester's definition:  Sales enablement is a strategic, ongoing process that equips all client-facing employees with the ability to consistently and systematically have a valuable conversation with the right set of customer stakeholders at each stage of the customer's problem-solving life cycle to optimize the return of investment of the selling system.

IDC's definition:  Getting the right information into the hands of the right sellers at the right time and place, and in the right format, to move a sales opportunity forward.

These definitions are very broad because both Forrester and IDC view sales enablement as a strategic business function. Under these definitions, for example, sales enablement would probably include sales training, sales process management, and technology solutions, and sales enablement would extend to all "client-facing" employees, not just salespeople. I don't disagree with this approach, but in my upcoming posts, I'll focus specifically on how marketing can help sales reps sell more effectively.

Why is Sales Enablement Important?

Sales enablement is important for three very simple reasons:

• Sales enablement is expensive - According to Forrester, companies on average are spending about $135,000 per year per sales rep on sales support people, activities, and processes.
• The selling process in most companies needs improvement - In research by IDC, 26% of business buyers said their sales reps were unprepared for the initial sales meeting, and 31% of buyers described the sales reps as somewhat prepared. Only 43% of buyers rated their sales reps as very or extremely prepared for the initial meeting. A recent Forrester survey found that only 15% of executives say that their meetings with sales reps meet expectations.
• Poor sales enablement is costly - According to IDC, a lack of good sales enablement results in $14 million of wasted sales and marketing expenses and $100 million in lost sales opportunities in a "typical" $1 billion company.

In my next post, I'll explain how marketers can support the sales team by developing the right kind of sales enablement content.

Read Part 2 of the sales enablement series here.

Read Part 3 of the sales enablement series here.

Four Key Ingredients in the Marketing/Sales Integration Recipe

In November of last year, I published a post here titled It's Time to Integrate Marketing and Sales. It's now the second most popular post at this blog, and it also created quite a stir at LinkedIn. In the Sales and Marketing Alignment group alone, the post had prompted 99 comments as of yesterday.

I was pleasantly surprised by the number of comments that supported the basic idea of integrating marketing and sales. The comments also revealed, however, that there are widely different views about what the "integration" of marketing and sales really means. To maximize the potential of integrating marketing and sales, company leaders must have a clear and detailed picture of what the end result should look like.

In my view, there are four key ingredients in the recipe for marketing and sales integration.

A Unified Go-to-Market Strategy and Plan

An integrated marketing/sales function must be based on a comprehensive go-to-market strategy and plan that has been jointly developed by marketing and sales. For integration purposes, the most important components of the go-to-market strategy/plan are:

• The value propositions that describe how your products and/or services create value for customers
• A definition (description) of the kinds of organizations that constitute your company's target market (an ideal customer profile)
• Profiles (personas) of the types of individuals who make or influence the decision to purchase the kinds of products or services that your company offers
• A description of the messages and content resources that will be used to communicate your value propositions to potential buyers
• A description of the lead stages that your company will use to categorize prospects and the criteria you company will use to qualify prospects. This will include a definition of what constitutes a "sales-ready" lead.

Integrated Demand Generation Processes

An integrated marketing/sales function is also based on a set of demand generation processes that collectively span the entire revenue generation cycle. Some of these processes will be performed exclusively by marketing, and others exclusively by sales. However, several critical demand generation processes, such as lead nurturing and lead qualification, will require the involvement of both marketing and sales. What's important here is the recognition that marketing processes and sales processes are components of a single revenue generation system and that they are often connected and interdependent.

Integrated Technology Systems

To maximize the results from marketing/sales integration, marketers and sales professionals must be working from the same data relating to prospects and customers. Therefore, it's important to integrate the information systems and technology tools used by marketing and sales. The most significant integration will typically involve the company's marketing automation/lead management software and its customer relationship management software.

Unified Leadership and Management

A fully integrated marketing/sales function will be led by a single C-level executive. The title of this executive may be Chief Customer Officer, Chief Revenue Officer, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, or something similar. Whatever title is used, the important point is that one senior executive is responsible for leading all of the company's revenue-generating activities.

Those are my key ingredients for a full integration of marketing and sales. What would you add to or remove from this list?

I'd also like to hear your views about whether fully integrating marketing and sales is always the best course of action. What circumstances make integration critical to success, and what circumstances make another approach the best solution? Please comment to share your views.

How Lead Development Reps Take Demand Generation to the Next Level

Effective lead management is now an essential component of a high-performing B2B demand generation system. Broadly speaking, lead management refers to demand generation activities that begin when a potential buyer identifies himself or herself to your company and expresses some interest in what you offer.

The two most important components of lead management are lead nurturing and lead qualification. Lead nurturing is designed to build relationships with prospects who are in your target market, but who aren't ready to have a productive sales conversation. Lead qualification refers to the activities and criteria you use to determine where a prospect is in his or her buying process.

Lead management is the weak link in the demand generation chain for many companies. One reason is that it hasn't typically been viewed as a top priority by either sales or marketing. In the conventional view, marketing's primary role is to acquire new leads, and the top priority of sales is to close short-term sales opportunities.

B2B marketing software provides powerful capabilities for automating content-based lead nurturing and some aspects of lead qualification. However, it is also becoming apparent that automated lead nurturing and lead scoring will not, in themselves, enable a company to optimize demand generation. A growing number of companies have recognized that person-to-person communication and human judgment are needed to produce maximum demand generation results.

This recognition is causing a growing number of companies to establish a lead management function that is responsible for coordinating lead management activities. The people who perform this function can have a variety of job titles. Some companies call them telemarketers or inside sales representatives, and others call them business development representatives.

I prefer to call these individuals lead development representatives because this title more accurately describes their actual function. The primary responsibilities of lead development representatives, or LDRs, are to orchestrate lead nurturing communications with specified leads and simultaneously qualify those prospects.

More specifically, LDRs will perform the following major activities:

• Make contact with leads who have indicated a defined level of interest. This would include both inbound leads and leads acquired via outbound lead generation programs.
• Ask the lead appropriate questions to determine his or her level of interest and place in the buying cycle.
• Place each lead in the appropriate lead nurturing track so that nurturing communications will be most effective.
• Document interactions with the lead in the company's CRM system.
• Identify leads who are ready to have a productive conversation with a salesperson and arrange an appointment.

The capabilities offered by B2B marketing software play a critical role in today's demand generation, but those capabilities need to be supplemented with person-to-person communications to achieve optimum results. Lead development representatives can take your demand generation to the next level.

How to Avoid Marketing Automation Failure

I don't write frequently here about B2B marketing automation, primarily because there's a wealth of information already available on the subject. The marketing automation vendors (Eloqua, Marketo, Pardot, and several others) do a great job of providing resources that discuss the capabilities, use, and benefits of B2B marketing automation technologies. Understandably, these firms don't put quite the same emphasis on describing the challenges that B2B marketers must address to maximize the benefits of these powerful technologies.

Learning how other companies have leveraged marketing automation technology to improve business performance is useful, but it can be equally valuable to learn why some companies were not successful with marketing automation. Thanks to Joby Blume with BrightCarbon, we have some valuable insights regarding what can go wrong.

Last year, Mr. Blume published a remarkable blog post that described why a previous employer failed with marketing automation. This post triggered a huge number of comments, and the "discussion" continued for about six months. If you're considering an investment in marketing automation technology, this material should be required reading.

Mr. Blume described a dozen reasons for the marketing automation failure. His former employer was a small company - 40 employees/less than $5 million in annual revenues - so some of these reasons are particularly applicable to small firms. However, companies of all sizes can learn important lessons from Mr. Blume's experience.

Here are some of the major reasons cited by Mr. Blume, along with a few comments by me.

Lack of clear objectives - Blume's company wanted to track and identify website visitors and know where inbound leads had come from. Beyond this, however, the company didn't have clear goals for marketing automation.

Lack of marketing processes - Mr. Blume said that his company lacked a clearly defined set of marketing processes. My take:  Marketing automation will make well-designed processes more efficient and enable processes that would be impossible to perform manually. However, even the most powerful marketing automation technologies cannot overcome poorly-designed or non-existent processes. In fact, marketing automation will probably make any flaws in your marketing system more glaring and more painful. Therefore, before you invest in a marketing automation solution, you need to make sure that your underlying marketing and lead management processes are sound.

Lack of leads - Mr. Blume indicated that his company's biggest demand generation problem was not having enough leads and that marketing automation didn't solve that problem. My take:  The real strength of most B2B marketing automation solutions is lead management (nurturing, scoring, etc.). If your company needs to generate a higher volume of leads, your first priority should be to boost your lead acquisition marketing efforts, and most B2B marketing automation solutions play a very limited role in lead acquisition.

Lack of content - Mr. Blume acknowledged that his company did not have (and was not able to create) enough of the kind of marketing content that is required to generate leads effectively. My take:  Content is the fuel for the marketing automation engine, and marketing automation "burns" a lot of content. If you don't keep the fuel topped off, your marketing automation system will stop functioning effectively. Therefore, I usually recommend that companies plan and create all of the content resources they will need for about three months before launching the marketing automation system.

B2B marketing automation is powerful technology, and it's becoming more and more essential for marketing success. As with many other technologies, however, the hard part is not learning how to use marketing automation software. The more difficult challenge is doing the other work that's required to enable marketing automation to perform up to its potential.

Think "Close and Deep" for Effective Demand Generation

During the Cold War, US Army leaders in Europe faced a disconcerting situation. Their mission was to defend NATO members in the event of an attack by the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. The problem was, US/NATO ground forces were substantially outnumbered. During this period, Soviet army doctrine was to throw wave after wave of forces at defenders until they were overcome. US military leaders were not confident they could win this kind of war of attrition.

To address this problem, the US Army developed a new warfighting doctrine, one that reintroduced the idea of depth to the battlefield. Under the new doctrine, US/NATO armies would extend the battlefield deep on the enemy's side of the front lines and attack rear-echelon forces (fighting deep), while simultaneously engaging front-line forces (fighting close). The objective was to break up the enemy's momentum and deplete enemy forces before they could get into the main fight. The principle of fighting close and deep at the same time remains a basic tenet of US Army operational doctrine.

Some of you may be wondering what military doctrine has to do with B2B demand generation. Quite a bit, actually. Especially for B2B companies with long and complex demand generation cycles. In these circumstances, maximizing demand generation results requires companies to use activities and programs that cover the full depth of the demand generation "battlefield." In other words, high-performing demand generation systems engage potential buyers both close and deep simultaneously.

The diagram below depicts the demand generation playing field and illustrates what I mean by close and deep demand generation engagement.

In military doctrine, close and deep describe the distance from the front lines of the battle. In demand generation, close and deep refer to where prospects are in the buying process and now near or far they are from making a purchase decision. As the diagram shows, personal selling is the primary close demand generation activity, while deep demand generation activities focus primarily on lead acquisition. Lead management activities such as lead nurturing and lead qualification occupy an intermediate tier. The diagram also shows that close activities are designed to produce short-term results, while deep activities produce results over a more extended period of time.

To maximize demand generation performance over time, it's critical to have the right balance of effective close and deep activities. When the balance is right, your demand generation system will perform at a consistent, high level. If you don't optimize close activities (personal selling), the negative consequences will be felt quickly. If you ignore or fail to optimize deep activities, the negative consequences can be just as bad, but it will talke longer for them to become visible.

Year-End Lessons From the Past

Early in my business career, I was privileged to have a great B2B sales mentor. I met William in 1988 and interacted with him frequently until his retirement in 1995.

William sold printing presses to commercial printing companies and businesses that had internal printing departments. The company that William worked for was (and is) highly respected within the printing industry, and William was a very successful salesperson.

Early in our relationship, William told me that one important key to his success was identifying which prospects in his territory were ready to engage in a serious evaluation process that would lead to a buying decision. William also told me that, at any given time, only about 10% of the prospects in his territory would fit this description. William realized that he could use his time more effectively and close more deals if he could consistently identify which prospects were ready to begin an "active buying cycle." So, William spent a significant amount of time "taking the pulse" of his prospects.

How did he do this? Well, he spent three or four days of almost every week visiting prospects. Sometimes, he would make appointments, but frequently, he would just drop in. In most cases, the business owner or another senior manager was willing to spend thirty minutes or an hour with William, even when he showed up unexpectedly.

During these visits, William and his prospects would discuss a range of topics - what was happening in the prospect's business and in the overall printing industry and, most importantly, any issues or problems the prospect was having with his equipment. Through these visits, William could get a pretty good idea of which prospects were ready to have a meaningful conversation about buying new equipment. When he identified these "sales-ready" prospects, William would move to a more focused selling process.

I frequently write in this blog about how B2B buyers have changed and why these changes require a new approach to demand generation. So, it would be easy for me to devote this post to a discussion of why William's approach won't work in today's environment. But, as I think about what William taught me, I'm struck more by what hasn't changed.

In 2013, as in 1990, B2B companies will need a way to determine which prospects are ready to begin a serious sales conversation . . . and which ones aren't.

In 2013, as in 1990, B2B companies will need to "stay in touch" with prospects who aren't ready to begin a serious buying process . . . because some day they probably will be ready.

In 2013, successful demand generation will be more about demonstrating value and providing prospects the information they need to make a sound buying decision than about "persuading" an unprepared or reluctant prospect to buy. And, this was largely true in 1990.

The B2B marketing and sales landscape has changed, and the new rules of B2B demand generation do require different tactics and methods. I don't believe that William's tactics will work as well today as they did in the 1980s and early 1990s, but his objectives are just as valid now as they were then.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Three Things To Do Before Hiring More Sales Reps

When B2B companies need to increase sales, managers will usually consider hiring more sales reps. This thinking is understandable because many B2B companies have long relied almost exclusively on their salespeople to find and win new business. Today, however, simply putting "more feet on the street" isn't likely to produce the volume of new sales that managers are looking for, and even if it does, the cost of those new sales is likely to be unacceptably high.

I've written before about why B2B companies should no longer rely exclusively on salespeople to generate new sales leads. Business buyers have fundamentally changed how they make buying decisions, and these changes require a new approach to B2B demand generation.

So, before you invest in more sales reps, there are three other steps you should take.

Step 1:  Improve Lead Acquisition Marketing

If your marketing programs aren't producing at least 40% - 50% of your qualified sales leads, it's likely that you aren't investing enough in lead acquisition marketing or your marketing programs aren't as effective as they need to be. Marketing must play a larger role in generating new sales leads because in the current environment, business buyers are less receptive to traditional sales prospecting techniques, making such  techniques far less effective and efficient.

For most B2B companies, effective lead acquisition marketing should include a mix of inbound and outbound marketing programs. In both cases, persistence is an important key to success. In today's environment, marketers must assume that multiple contacts will be required to entice a potential buyer to respond.

Step 2:  Implement a Sound Lead Management Process

Research continues to show that most new sales leads are not ready or willing to engage with a salesperson. We also know, however, that most "qualified but not ready to buy" prospects will eventually buy from someone. Once a new lead is acquired (meaning that the prospect has identified himself/herself and indicated some level of interest in your product or service), the big challenge for B2B companies is to build the relationship with the prospect until he or she is ready to make a buying decision.

A lead management process encompasses all of the marketing and sales activities that you use with prospects "from curiosity to close." The objective of a lead management process is to prevent valuable leads from "falling through the cracks" and out of the marketing/sales funnel. While a comprehensive lead management process includes many components, the three core elements are:

• A lead nurturing program that provides prospects relevant, primarily non-promotional information in multiple formats and through multiple channels. The primary objectives of a lead nurturing program are to support prospects throughout the buying process, establish and enhance your credibility, and maintain "mindshare" with prospects until they are ready to have a serious sales conversation.
• A lead qualification system that defines appropriate buying process stages and provides a mechanism for estimating where each prospect is in the buying process.
• A selling process that's designed to identify legitimate sales opportunities and convert those opportunities into closed deals.

Step 3:  Add a Lead Development Representative

Rather than adding more outside sales reps, hire one or more lead development representatives to support your demand generation efforts. Lead development representatives have two primary responsibilities:

• They provide the "human touch" components of your lead nurturing program. In this role, their objective is to use multiple conversations to build rapport with prospects in ways that automated, content-based lead nurturing cannot accomplish.
• They play a major role in the lead qualification process, and they can be primarily responsible for determining when a prospect meets the criteria to be considered a sales-ready lead. When that occurs, the LDR may also be responsible for arranging the first meeting between a prospect and your sales rep.

Lead development reps can perform these functions more efficiently that regular sales reps, and they enable your sales reps to devote more of their time to working with fully qualified prospects who are in the later stages of the buying process.

Hiring more sales reps may be necessary to achieve your growth objectives, but take these three steps first to ensure that you're getting the most out of your existing sales force.

Why You Shouldn't Rely on Cost-Per-Lead

About once a month, I'm publishing a post that shares insights I've discovered at another blog. This month, the insight comes from ViewPoint l The Truth About Lead Generation. The primary author of this blog is Dan McDade whose firm (PointClear) provides lead generation services to B2B companies.

Earlier this year, McCade wrote a series of three posts discussing The Cost-Per-Lead Fallacy in Measuring B2B Lead Generation Investments. Here are the links to the three posts:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

All of these posts contain excellent information, and I highly recommend them. Here are a few highlights.

McDade argues that it's a big mistake to use cost-per-lead as the primary basis for managing and measuring B2B lead generation investments. As he puts it, "This metric rewards the wrong behavior, delivers low-value sales leads, and fails to deliver the kind of business intelligence needed to drive marketing ROI now and in the future."

McDade goes on to identify several specific shortcomings of cost-per-lead as the primary lead generation metric.

• Emphasizing cost-per-lead encourages marketing to deliver high volumes of low quality sales leads.
• Cost-per-lead focuses on costs rather than on the value or ROI produced by marketing efforts.
• In most companies, cost-per-lead is used primarily to measure the cost of early-stage leads. Rarely is cost-per-lead used for late-stage leads such as "sales accepted" leads or "sales qualified" leads. When cost-per-lead is used only for early-stage leads, it is not an effective way to measure outcomes.

I completely agree with most of Dan McDade's criticisms of cost-per-lead, and I would add one of my own. There is nothing inherently wrong with measuring cost-per-lead, but problems will arise if cost-per-lead is misused or used in isolation.

In my last two posts (here and here), I discussed how to calculate the value of leads at every stage of the demand generation process. If you know the value of your leads at multiple stages, then measuring the cost of leads at those same stages can provide useful information about the performance of your lead generation activities and programs. If you don't know the value of your leads, measuring the cost of your leads is mostly a waste of time. The information you generate won't enable you to make better decisions, and it may lead you to make choices that will do more harm than good.

Why Lead Nurturing Needs a Human Touch

It's now clear that nurturing leads is critical for companies with long sales cycles. Several research studies from a couple of years ago revealed that only about 25% of new sales leads were ready to have a meaningful sales conversation. I suspect the percentage is even lower today. Several studies have also found that most of these prospects will eventually buy. Lead nurturing is the mechanism for maintaining a relationship with these "lukewarm" leads until they are ready to buy.

Until recently, most B2B companies relied on salespeople to handle lead nurturing. They expected their sales reps to manage prospects through the entire buying process. The problem is, this approach no longer works very well because today's buyers are self-educating, and they are avoiding interactions with salespeople until later in the buying process.

As a result of these changes in buyer behavior, many companies have shifted the responsibility for lead nurturing from salespeople to the marketing department. Many companies have also implemented B2B marketing automation/lead management technology solutions to automate the execution of lead nurturing programs.

I agree that marketing should have the primary responsibility for managing the lead nurturing process, and I recognize that B2B marketing automation technologies can enable highly sophisticated lead nurturing programs. However, I also believe that lead nurturing needs a human touch to achieve maximum results.

Marketing automation systems provide an impressive set of communication capabilities, but there is no real substitute for human-to-human communications. When you have a personal conversation with a prospect, you have the potential for a richer exchange of information. A personal conversation with a prospect provides three distinct advantages over automated lead nurturing communications.

• It enables you to accurately assess how interested a prospect is in your product or service and where the prospect is in the buying process. This produces more accurate prospect qualification than automated lead scoring systems can deliver on their own.
• It allows you to discover and then explore issues or topics that arise unexpectedly, and these unanticipated discussions can often provide insights that enable you to help the prospect move forward in the buying process in a more expedited fashion.
• It enables the seller's representative to establish a personal "connection" with the potential buyer and begin the human-to-human relationship that will be needed to produce a sale.

So, how do you add a human touch to your lead nurturing programs? The simple answer is, you design it in. When you map out your lead nurturing program, include an appropriate number of outreach calls by a designated outside salesperson or inside sales rep/business development person. Many marketing automation software systems enable you to include "non-automated" activities in your lead nurturing programs, so including outreach calls is not usually a major issue.

Automated lead nurturing programs are powerful marketing tools, but the best lead nurturing programs also include person-to-person communications that enable you to leverage human insight and human judgment.

Help Your Prospects Find the Rest of the Story

One nice thing about publishing a blog is that it allows me to share the insights of really smart people. I frequently use blog posts to point readers to books, research reports, and other content that I believe is valuable. There's also a great deal of value to be found in other blogs, and I realize that I haven't pointed readers to this kind of content as often as I should. So, I'm now planning to devote about one post each month to a discussion of content I've discovered at other blogs.

Ardath Albee and Eric Wittlake are two B2B marketing thought leaders and practitioners that I follow closely. Ardath publishes the Marketing Interactions blog, and she is also the author of eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale. Eric Wittlake publishes the B2B Digital Marketing blog, and he heads up the media practice at Babcock & Jenkins.

Both Ardath and Eric recently published blog posts that address the importance of making it easy for prospects to stay engaged with your marketing content.

In New Research:  B2B Content is a Dead End, Eric wrote that many B2B content assets fail to provide readers/viewers/listeners a path for continuing their research. He reviewed white papers published by 10 large B2B marketers and found that:

• Only two of the white papers provided a link to another content resource
• Only one of the papers included a link to a web page where more recent content might be found
• Five of the papers did not include links to a specific product/service page

Eric contends that by not including links to other resources in every content asset, marketers are missing the opportunity to keep prospects engaged with their content.

Ardath makes a similar point in Designing Calls to Action for B2B Marketing Content. She argues that a call to action should be a core component of every marketing content resource. It's important to understand, however, that a call to action doesn't only mean things like, "Have a salesperson call me," or "Schedule a demo now!" Ardath contends that most calls to action should be based on what will be helpful to prospective buyers. That usually means a link to other content resources that will take potential buyers to the next logical step in their decision making process.

Ardath and Eric are making an important point in these blog posts. We now know that most prospects prefer to learn about business problems and possible solutions in bite-sized chunks. For example, research by Eccolo Media and others shows that most buyers prefer white papers that are 4 to 8 pages long. I'm also seeing more and more 30-minute (as opposed to 1-hour) webinars. Delivering content in smaller "pieces" means that no single content resource will tell your prospects everything they need to know.

What you need to do is treat each content resource as one chapter of a novel or one episode of a TV miniseries. Always let your prospects know where to find the next chapter or the next episode.

Why You Need More Than Case Studies

Customer case studies are one of the most popular types of marketing content used by B2B companies. According to research by Eccolo Media, case studies are the fourth most widely consumed type of marketing collateral (behind product brochures, white papers, and video/multimedia files) and the second most influential type of marketing collateral (trailing only white papers). (Eccolo Media 2011 B2B Technology Collateral Report)

Case studies are potent marketing tools because they're good at performing several jobs.

• They help establish your credibility.
• They educate prospects about the benefits of your product or service.
• Most importantly, they can help lower a prospect's perception of the risk associated with purchasing your product or service.

Because case studies can do so many things well, it's easy (and tempting) to conclude that they're the only type of marketing content you need. That's understandable, but it's wrong.

To market effectively, you need content for all parts of your prospects' decision-making process. That's because the questions that your prospects need to answer change as they move through the buying process. The diagram below depicts the six steps of the B2B buying process suggested by marketing and sales research firm SiriusDecisions. These six steps can be grouped into three buying process phases - Discovery, Consideration, and Decision.

During the Discovery phase, a potential buyer becomes aware of a problem or need and recognizes that the negative effects of the status quo make change a priority. For this to happen, prospects need answers to several questions, including:

• Why should I change, and why should I change now?
• How is the problem or challenge adversely affecting my company and/or industry?
• What will happen if I don't change?
• What events or circumstances would force me to address this problem or challenge?

Once a potential buyer has committed to addressing a problem or need, he or she will conduct research to identify possible solutions. During this Consideration phase, one of the most important questions a prospect will have is:  How have companies like mine successfully dealt with this problem or challenge?

Customer case studies don't do a particularly good job of answering Discovery-phase questions, but they excel at answering one of the most critical questions that will arise during the Consideration phase of the buying process. This means that case studies can be great lead nurturing tools, but not necessarily great lead acquisition tools.

So, by all means, make sure that your company has several well-written and compelling case studies. But also keep in mind that you need other types of content (white papers, etc.) for effective lead acquisition.

What is the Right Mix of Inbound and Outbound Marketing?

Marketing pundits have been debating the merits of inbound vs. outbound marketing for the past few years. Advocates of inbound marketing contend that traditional outbound marketing tactics have become ineffective because of changes in buyer behavior. Some argue that companies should completely abandon outbound marketing and rely exclusively on inbound techniques. More traditional marketers acknowledge that inbound marketing is important, but they contend that most companies still need outbound marketing, and that it can still be effective, if it's done right.

There are persuasive arguments and convincing evidence on both sides of this debate. My focus is B2B marketing, and in my opinion, most B2B companies need both inbound and outbound marketing. The important question is not which type of marketing to use, but rather what mix of inbound and outbound marketing will produce the best results.

Marketing has four major functions in most B2B companies.

• Customer acquisition
• Customer retention
• Expanding customer relationships (cross-selling, etc.)
• Reactivating relationships with dormant or "lost" customers

The real issue for B2B marketers is how to combine the use of inbound and outbound marketing tactics to achieve the maximum results in all of these functions. The diagram below illustrates the relative importance of inbound and outbound marketing in performing each marketing function. (Note:  In B2B companies with long, complex sales cycles, customer acquisition marketing consists of two distinct components - lead acquisition and lead nurturing. Therefore, the diagram shows five functions rather than four.)

In today's B2B buying environment, the importance of inbound marketing can't be denied. Business buyers (whether prospects or customers) now expect companies to provide valuable information on a consistent basis in a variety of venues, including blogs and other inbound marketing channels. Therefore, inbound marketing is now playing an important role in all marketing functions.

What may raise a few eyebrows is my take on the relative importance of inbound and outbound marketing for lead acquisition. Outbound marketing and sales prospecting have traditionally been the dominant tactics for acquiring new leads in many B2B companies. The landscape, however, has changed. Today's business buyers have easy access to a wealth of information, and they've become convinced they can find whatever information they need, whenever they need it. So, they are far less likely to respond to outbound marketing and sales efforts from companies they don't know. The result is that outbound lead acquisition programs aren't nearly as effective as they once were.

These circumstances are driving a shift to inbound marketing for lead acquisition, and the shift will continue to grow. Research firm SiriusDecisions has said that 80% of new leads will come from inbound marketing by 2015.

The bottom line? Both inbound and outbound marketing are necessary components of an effective B2B marketing effort. Inbound marketing should be the primary tactic used for lead acquisition, if not immediately, then in the very near future. Outbound marketing (primarily in the form of behavior-driven e-mail content offers) should play the leading role in lead nurturing. For customer retention, customer expansion, and customer reactivation, inbound and outbound should be given nearly equal emphasis.

Do you agree? How are you balancing the use of inbound and outbound marketing?

Stop Trying to Measure Marketing ROI

For the past several years, CEO's and CFO's have been demanding greater accountability from the marketing function, and they have been pressing marketers to prove the value of their activities and programs. In this environment, return on investment (ROI) has become the "gold standard" for measuring marketing performance. In a recent study by IBM, 63% of CMO's said that marketing ROI will be the most important measure of their success by 2015.

Return on investment has been a widely-used business performance metric for at least eighty years. It's a concept that business executives are comfortable with, so it's understandable that CEO's, CFO's, and marketers want to use ROI to evaluate the performance of marketing investments. In addition, many marketing writers and pundits contend that it's possible to calculate the ROI of almost any marketing activity. Unfortunately, however, it's not always easy or even possible to determine an accurate ROI for some marketing activities or programs.

Some time ago, I wrote a series of posts that discussed some of the issues relating to the use of ROI to measure marketing performance. You can find those posts here, here, here, and here. The point I want to make in this post is that if you can't accurately attribute revenues to a marketing activity, you can't calculate an accurate ROI for that activity.

The "revenue attribution" issue is particularly challenging for B2B companies that have complex, multi-step marketing and sales processes and long demand generation cycles. The diagram below illustrates the problem. This type of diagram is known as a cause-and-effect (or a "fishbone") diagram. Cause-and-effect diagrams are used in process improvement work to identify all of the possible causes of a given problem. In this case, I'm using the diagram to identify all of the marketing and sales interactions that occurred between a company and a prospect who ultimately made a $100,000 purchase.

In this hypothetical situation, the prospect was sent six lead generation offers and responded to the last of these offers. The prospect also:

• Received and responded to several lead nurturing offers
• Visited the company's website and viewed or downloaded several content resources
• Participated in several meetings and other activities with the company's sales rep

The question is:  How do you attribute the $100,000 in revenue to the marketing and sales activities that played some role in the purchase decision? What percentage of the revenue do you attribute to the lead generation programs, to the lead nurturing program, to the website, and to the direct selling activities? In reality, there's no way to accurately and reliably attribute revenue in these kinds of circumstances. Even our hypothetical prospect probably couldn't tell us how much each marketing/sales interaction influenced his/her purchase decision.

In these circumstances, it can be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to determine the ROI of an individual marketing activity. Many marketing activities do not produce revenues on their own. They must be combined with other activities to generate revenues. When a marketing activity is one of several interdependent activities that are all required to entice prospects to buy, you can measure the ROI of the whole group of activities, but not of any one of those activities.

This does not mean that you can't measure the performance of individual marketing activities. For example, you can and should measure the performance of your lead nurturing program by comparing the conversion rates of prospects who are nurtured with those who aren't. There are many metrics that can be used to evaluate the performance of marketing activities and programs, but you can't always use ROI.

OK, the title of this post may be a little misleading. ROI should be used in marketing whenever and wherever it's appropriate. Just don't try to use it everywhere.

More Work is Needed to Maximize the Potential of Content Marketing

Last month, the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and MarketingProfs published B2B Content Marketing:  2012 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends. This report is based on an August 2011 survey of almost 1,100 marketers, and it provides a great snapshot of the current state of B2B content marketing. CMI and MarketingProfs performed a similar survey in 2010, so some year-to-year comparisons can be made.

In many ways, this survey confirms what we already knew - that content marketing is now a core component of an effective B2B marketing program. Consider just a few of the major survey findings:

• Nine out of ten B2B marketers are using some form of content marketing.
• The top content marketing tactics (by usage) are articles (79% of respondents), social media other than blogs (74%), blogs (65%), eNewsletters (63%), and case studies (58%).
• Comparing 2011 to 2010, the use of blogs and videos both increased by 27% and the use of white papers grew by 19%.
• Companies are spending about 26% of their marketing budgets on content marketing efforts, and 60% of respondents said they will increase spending on content marketing in 2012.

Overall, the survey results show just how vital content marketing has become for B2B companies. But some of the survey findings also reveal that B2B marketers still have work to do to realize content marketing's full potential.

For example, when survey participants were asked to identify their business goals for content marketing, 68% cited both brand awareness and customer acquisition, and 66% selected lead generation. Only 39% of survey respondents identified lead management and lead nurturing as a primary content marketing goal. In fact, lead management/nurturing was the lowest ranking goal identified by respondents. This result may be due in part to the characteristics of the survey respondents, but I suspect it is primarily due to the fact that many companies have not implemented lead nurturing programs. Therefore, many marketers don't fully appreciate the essential role that content plays in effective lead nurturing.

The CMI/MarketingProfs survey also reveals that more work is needed to make marketing content relevant to potential buyers. When asked about how they segment or tailor their content, 57% of respondents said they use profiles (job titles, personas, etc.) of decision makers, and 51% said they use company characteristics (size, industry, etc.). However, only 39% of respondents said they tailor content for specific stages of the buying process, and 12% of respondents do not tailor their content in any way.

For content to be truly compelling, it must answer the questions that are most important to buyers at a specific point in the decision-making process. And, those questions change as buyers move through the buying process. So, the most compelling content is designed for specific buying stages.

The use of stage-specific content is one defining characteristic of an effective content marketing program. The CMI/MarketingProfs survey asked participants to rate the effectiveness of their content marketing efforts on a scale of 1 to 5. Forty-five percent of those respondents who rated their efforts as "effective" or "very effective" (4 or 5) said they tailor content for specific buying stages. Only 29% of the respondents who rated their efforts as ineffective (1 or 2) said they use stage-specific content.

If you're thinking about beginning a content marketing program, this survey is a great resource for learning about what is working. If you're already using content marketing, this is a great tool for benchmarking your efforts.