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	<title>Velocity Partners &#187; B2B lead generation</title>
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	<description>B2B Marketing, Content Marketing and Technology Marketing</description>
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		<title>Starting with an earthquake and building to a climax</title>
		<link>http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/2012/02/07/starting-with-an-earthquake-and-building-to-a-climax/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=starting-with-an-earthquake-and-building-to-a-climax</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:25:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Stan Woods</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Our Blog]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[B2B agency]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[B2B content marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[B2B lead generation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[B2B marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[B2B Marketing Automation]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[B2B technology marketing]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Content Marketing]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/?p=4196</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Sam Goldwyn, legendary Hollywood film producer  (famous for malapropisms, paradoxes and errors of speech) once said: "We want a story that starts out with an earthquake and works its way up to a climax". I'm not sure we quite achieved that at Velocity's first live Marketing Masters one-hour-long interview with John Watton from Expedia. ]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a title="Sam Goldwyn" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Goldwyn">Sam Goldwyn</a>, legendary Hollywood film producer  (famous for malapropisms, paradoxes and errors of speech) once said: &#8220;We want a story that starts out with an earthquake and works its way up to a climax&#8221;.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m not sure we quite achieved that at Velocity&#8217;s first live (streamed on Ustream) Marketing Masters one-hour-long interview with John Watton,  Director Global Brand &amp; Marketing at Expedia Affiliate Network. But it was tremendous fun and John was terrific. As Goldwyn also said &#8220;we spared no expense to save money on this one&#8221;, but, despite that, the session seemed to work well.  (You guys can be the judges on that since we intend to make most of the discussion available over the next few weeks, broken up into chapters covering the subjects we talked about.)</p>
<p>So what did we discuss? A bunch of stuff:</p>
<p>&#8211;like the changing role of the CMO in B2B tech (John&#8217;s qualified to talk on that one having had senior marketing roles at Oracle, Microsoft, Ariba and others as well as EAN.);</p>
<p>&#8211;the shape and skills  for in-house teams in the digital B2B world;</p>
<p>&#8211;the importance of marketing automation and how to get the most out of it (answer: start small, use common sense and don&#8217;t try to overreach);</p>
<p>&#8211;why it&#8217;s important to experiment with social media, even if you&#8217;re the most senior marketer in the room (as John says, social is not going away anytime soon, so senior marketers have to understand it in order to deploy it);</p>
<p>&#8211;content marketing strategy (mainly what content works best where and for whom)</p>
<p>&#8211;and marketing&#8217;s changing relationshipe with the sales force.</p>
<p>An hour spins past quickly when you&#8217;re having fun, but I wish we&#8217;d spent more time talking about the last of these. We meet lots of sales driven companies as part of the business development process here at Velocity. A lot of them are really dis-satisfied with marketing and have had two or sometimes three senior heads of marketing in the recent past. When we talk to them, it&#8217;s often really clear why. Sales is looking for compliant marketing, marketing that just does what its told and more often than not marketing that&#8217;s locked in the 20th Century. They haven&#8217;t realised that buyers don&#8217;t buy like they used to and competitors don&#8217;t compete like they used to. And that the best sales people don&#8217;t sell as they used to.</p>
<p>John was the first user of Marketo in Europe back in 2008, when he was at Shipserv. A big achievement there was his transformation of the role and position of the marketing department. Because he was able to apply marketing thinking and strategy to the company&#8217;s web site, digital campaigns and content, he was able  to turn marketing &#8211; which until then had been seen as just a service to sales &#8211; into the organ that owned and filled the sales funnel. Because he delivered the leads that the direct sales force needed, marketing became the force that it should be. Marketing transformed from simply making the arrangements into making the rain.</p>
<p>Anyway, you&#8217;ll be able to see the discussion over the next few weeks. We declare the initial experiment a success and we plan to do more. If you have suggestions about B2B marketers we should invite, please send them to us. If you see ways we can make the output even better, feel free to let us know. But remember we are all acolytes of  Goldwyn at Velocity: &#8220;I don&#8217;t want any yes-men around me. I want everybody to tell me the truth even if it costs them their job.&#8221;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<hr />
<p><small>&copy; stan@velocitypartners.co.uk for <a href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk">Velocity Partners</a>, 2012. |
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Post tags: <a href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/tag/b2b-agency/" rel="tag">B2B agency</a>, <a href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/tag/b2b-content-marketing/" rel="tag">B2B content marketing</a>, <a href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/tag/b2b-lead-generation/" rel="tag">B2B lead generation</a>, <a href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/tag/b2b-marketing/" rel="tag">B2B marketing</a>, <a href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/tag/b2b-marketing-automation/" rel="tag">B2B Marketing Automation</a>, <a href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/tag/b2b-social-media/" rel="tag">B2B social media</a>, <a href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/tag/b2b-technology-marketing/" rel="tag">B2B technology marketing</a>, <a href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/tag/bb-marketing/" rel="tag">B@B marketing</a>, <a href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/tag/content/" rel="tag">Content</a>, <a href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/tag/content-marketing/" rel="tag">Content Marketing</a><br/>
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		<title>B2B content marketing: when target audiences clash</title>
		<link>http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/2011/11/23/b2b-content-marketing-target-audience-clash/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=b2b-content-marketing-target-audience-clash</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 23 Nov 2011 17:56:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Doug Kessler</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Featured Blog Post]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Our Blog]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[B2B content marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[B2B lead generation]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Thought Leadership]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/?p=3727</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p>Marketers are instinctively inclusive. Our default is to set our crop-sprayer on the widest possible setting, covering the largest possible audience for everything we do.</p>
<p>But <strong>content marketing is different</strong>. The best content marketing tends to be <strong>narrowly targeted</strong>, focusing&#8230;</p>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Marketers are instinctively inclusive. Our default is to set our crop-sprayer on the widest possible setting, covering the largest possible audience for everything we do.</p>
<p>But <strong>content marketing is different</strong>. The best content marketing tends to be <strong>narrowly targeted</strong>, focusing on a very specific audience. That&#8217;s how we maximise relevance, earn downloads and reward engagement.</p>
<p>Of course, there&#8217;s no need to be<strong> too</strong> narrow. and if a single piece of content can cover more than one target audience, why not go for it? It saves time and money and raises your <strong>Return on Content</strong>. Unfortunately, it&#8217;s not always a good idea to try to kill two birds with one content stone. In fact it&#8217;s <strong>rarely</strong> a good idea. Here&#8217;s why:</p>
<p><strong>Different people ALWAYS have different perspectives, agendas and issues<br />
</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>A board member has a different view of the world than a junior manager (where <em>seniority</em> is the dimension of differentiation)</li>
<li>A test engineer has a different set of challenges than a sales director (the target&#8217;s <em>discipline</em> is the dimension)</li>
<li>A hospital administrator cares about different things than a high school administrator (<em>market sector</em>)</li>
<li>An existing customer has a different view of you than a cold prospect (<em>degree of familiarity</em> with your company)</li>
<li>A Chinese manufacturer has different concerns than a French one (<em>region</em>)</li>
</ul>
<p>Pick almost any meaningful dimension and you&#8217;ll find your prospect base starts to divide itself up along that spectrum.</p>
<p>The key questions are:</p>
<p><strong>&#8211; How important are these differences in the context of the story you want to tell? </strong></p>
<p>-<strong>- What are the penalties for addressing more than one target audience in the same piece?</strong></p>
<p><strong></strong>Let&#8217;s go to the whiteboard please, Janice.</p>
<p><strong>Here are two targets – Persona A and Persona B.</strong><br />
They have some things in common but lots that are not shared:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Screen-shot-2011-11-03-at-15.52.48.png" rel="shadowbox[sbpost-3727];player=img;"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3732" title="B2B content marketing: audience clash" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Screen-shot-2011-11-03-at-15.52.48.png" alt="targeting two audiences in B2B content marketing" width="550" height="280" /></a></p>
<p>You&#8217;ve got a few options for targeting A and B with content:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Aim for the common ground</strong>– keeping your story in the lavender zone; this is good if that zone is still compelling enough to both A and B. The downside: you&#8217;re often forced to leave out really good parts of your A story or your B story<strong>.</strong></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Tip:</strong> Signal the scope of the piece in the title and the introduction, then tell people up front who it&#8217;s for and why: &#8220;This piece is for A and B &#8212; we know you&#8217;ve got a lot of differences but here&#8217;s what you have in common and why this piece is great for you.&#8221;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Try to tell the whole A + B story</strong>– signalling to the reader that &#8216;this bit applies to A&#8217; and &#8216;this bit applies to B&#8217;. The downside: B people get bored during the A bits and vice gets bored during the versa.<strong></strong></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Tip:</strong> Sidebars that clearly signal &#8220;Hey Mr A! Read this bit!&#8221; can help you balance your agenda without boring the pants of of one target or the other.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Do a piece of content for A and another for B</strong>– This lets you tell your best story to each audience. The downside: it costs more and takes more time.<strong></strong></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Tip:</strong> Use broader, more generic content to buy time while you develop your targeted, persona-specific stuff.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Of course, it&#8217;s great if your target audiences have a lot more in common, so the middle ground contains most of your goodies:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Screen-shot-2011-11-03-at-15.42.05.png" rel="shadowbox[sbpost-3727];player=img;"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3733" title="B2B target audiences overlap" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Screen-shot-2011-11-03-at-15.42.05.png" alt="B2B content marketing audience clash" width="504" height="292" /></a></p>
<p>But sometimes, you cant fake it. Your two targets have so little in common that almost every paragraph contains a fork in the road and every sentence needs a conditional:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Screen-shot-2011-11-03-at-15.41.45.png" rel="shadowbox[sbpost-3727];player=img;"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3734" title="B2B content marketing clash" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Screen-shot-2011-11-03-at-15.41.45.png" alt="Content marketing audience clash" width="551" height="316" /></a></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>B2B Content Relevance &amp; Alienation</strong><br />
There are two tests to help determine if the piece you&#8217;re developing really ought to be two pieces:</p>
<p><strong>The Relevance Test</strong> – lumping two audiences together means each will have to wade through things that are not relevant – that&#8217;s a negative experience and can lose readers.</p>
<p><em>How much of your content is actually irrelevant to A or B? Can you make it relevant by explicitly building bridges? If a third of your content has no relevance or resonance for one target or the other, it&#8217;s probably time to split the piece.<br />
</em></p>
<p><strong>The Alienation Test</strong> – Even if there&#8217;s lots of common ground, a single message that&#8217;s gold dust for A can be a major turn-off for B. One example: when marketing some kind of media (trade show, magazine&#8230;) one audience (the exhibitor or advertiser) is selling to the other (the visitor or reader). In this case, talking all about how the former will enjoy a &#8216;captive audience for your sales team&#8217; will be perfume to A and skunk juice to B.</p>
<p><em>Is there any important message to one audience that will actually alienate the other?</em> These need to be managed carefully &#8212; and lumping both targets together is rarely the answer.</p>
<p>Of course, sometimes &#8212; like on the home page – you have to address the issue and find <strong>the most compelling common ground</strong>. But if there are significant relevance or alienation issues, you want to stream people off of that common ground home page as quickly as possible so you can look them in the eyes and sell to them without fear.</p>
<p><strong>Why this matters</strong><br />
As a reader, you know when you&#8217;re reading a great piece of content: it seems to almost have your name on it. It&#8217;s aimed at a spot right in the middle of your forehead. It uses the language you use to describe the challenges you face in terms you recognise.</p>
<p>You also know when a piece is not quite aimed at you. It uses unfamiliar language; is pitched at the wrong level (too techie, not techie enough); talks about problems you haven&#8217;t experienced and skips over ones you have.</p>
<p><strong>The penalties of badly targeted B2B content marketing</strong><br />
Making a piece to target two different audiences forces some bad things to happen:</p>
<p>&#8211;<strong> You&#8217;re forced to use generic language</strong> – instead of language that&#8217;s specific to one of the audiences.</p>
<p>To a hospital administrator, &#8220;increase asset utilisation&#8221; is a bore, but &#8220;double your operating room throughput&#8221; resonates. But you can&#8217;t say that if you&#8217;re also targeting high school administrators with the same piece.</p>
<p>&#8211; <strong>You talk about abstract ideas </strong>– instead of concrete realities.</p>
<p>To a marketing director, &#8216;improve process efficiencies&#8217; is ho-hum jargon while &#8216;get more campaigns to market faster&#8217; is lean-forward stuff.</p>
<p>&#8211; <strong>You&#8217;re forced to &#8216;couch&#8217; your killer messages </strong>– instead of letting them fly.</p>
<p>&#8216;For people like A, this widget halves costs and for people like B it&#8217;s doubles revenue.&#8217;<br />
&#8216;Finance guys love it because it saves money; engineers love it because it improves performance.&#8217;</p>
<p>Yuk.</p>
<p><strong>The Bottom Line</strong><br />
(because all lines have bottoms have and all bottoms, alas, have their lines):</p>
<p><strong>Non-specific, abstract, couchy talk sucks.</strong> While specific, concrete and direct talk moves mountains and blows away molehills.</p>
<p><strong>&#8216;All things to all people&#8217; results in boring work.</strong> While relevant points told in familiar language feels &#8216;just for me&#8217;.</p>
<p><strong>Great content hits people between the eyes.</strong> And mediocre content falls at their feet with a pffffttt.</p>
<p>The time to discover which of the two piles your next piece of content marketing  falls into is <em>at the outline stage</em> &#8211; where the problem will leap off the page and kiss you full on the lips (but in a bad way).  That&#8217;s reason enough to always do an outline stage.</p>
<p><strong>The Reco:</strong> do occasional broad-brush content marketing but, as a rule, do more pieces and make each one highly targeted, with a persona so clear you can talk to it.</p>
<p>How about your own experiences? Any pieces you wish you had split into two or three? Any that spanned different audiences but worked just fine?<br />
We&#8217;d love to hear about it.</p>
<hr />
<p><small>&copy; Doug Kessler for <a href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk">Velocity Partners</a>, 2011. |
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		<title>On first impressions and landing pages</title>
		<link>http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/2011/04/11/on-first-impressions-and-landing-pages/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=on-first-impressions-and-landing-pages</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 11 Apr 2011 09:56:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Ryan Skinner</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Advertising]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[B2B lead generation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Demand Generation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[design]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Landing pages]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lead Generation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web Marketing]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/?p=3029</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p>[This article derives from another blog post, called "First Impressions: On landing pages and landing in general"].</p>
<p>Taking the theme &#8220;you never get a second chance to make a first impression&#8221; to heart, let&#8217;s talk first impressions: Landing pages. For&#8230;</p>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>[This article derives from another blog post, called "<a title="First impressions: On landing pages and landing in general" href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/2011/04/11/first-impressions-on-landing-pages-and-landing-in-general" target="_blank">First Impressions: On landing pages and landing in general</a>"].</p>
<p>Taking the theme &#8220;you never get a second chance to make a first impression&#8221; to heart, let&#8217;s talk first impressions: Landing pages. For many of your potential leads, they&#8217;re the first meeting with your company. Either you win enough trust to introduce yourself properly, or they&#8217;ll bounce right out.</p>
<p>This 11-slide presentation is all about first impressions: Some of the best product landing pages in the business.*</p>
<p>After the slideshow, look for the list of resources. In the slideshow, either use the arrows at the bottom to navigate or simply press right-arrow on your keyboard.</p>

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<a href='http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/kissmetrics.com_rev1.jpg' rel='shadowbox[sbalbum-3029];player=img;' title='kissmetrics.com_rev'><img width="150" height="88" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/kissmetrics.com_rev1.jpg" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="kissmetrics.com_rev" title="kissmetrics.com_rev" /></a>
<a href='http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/kaleidoscopeapp.com_rev1.jpg' rel='shadowbox[sbalbum-3029];player=img;' title='kaleidoscopeapp.com_rev'><img width="150" height="105" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/kaleidoscopeapp.com_rev1.jpg" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="kaleidoscopeapp.com_rev" title="kaleidoscopeapp.com_rev" /></a>
<a href='http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/flowtown.com_rev1.jpg' rel='shadowbox[sbalbum-3029];player=img;' title='flowtown.com_rev'><img width="150" height="87" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/flowtown.com_rev1.jpg" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="flowtown.com_rev" title="flowtown.com_rev" /></a>
<a href='http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Evernote.com_rev1.jpg' rel='shadowbox[sbalbum-3029];player=img;' title='Evernote.com_rev'><img width="150" height="91" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Evernote.com_rev1.jpg" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="Evernote.com_rev" title="Evernote.com_rev" /></a>
<a href='http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Enstore.com_rev1.jpg' rel='shadowbox[sbalbum-3029];player=img;' title='Enstore.com_rev'><img width="150" height="101" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Enstore.com_rev1.jpg" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="Enstore.com_rev" title="Enstore.com_rev" /></a>

<h3>The Landing Page Resource List</h3>
<p>♦ Google tells you how to ensure lightning quick landing pages: <a title="Google: How can I improve my landing page's load time?" href="https://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&amp;answer=93116" target="_blank">How can I improve my landing page’s load time?</a></p>
<p>♦ Landing pages should have a strong, clear and easy call to action. Check out Smashing Magazine for <a title="Best Practice in call to action buttons and examples" href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/10/13/call-to-action-buttons-examples-and-best-practices/" target="_blank">best practice in design of call to action buttons</a>. For copy, Quora tells you <a title="Quora: What kind of text works best in a general call to action?" href="http://www.quora.com/What-kind-of-text-copy-works-best-for-a-general-call-to-action?q=call+to+action" target="_blank">what kind of text works best</a>.</p>
<p>♦ Michael from SAP’s Integrated Marketing tells you <a title="Michael Brenner on how to shorten the B2B buyer cycle with landing pages" href="http://www.b2bmarketinginsider.com/strategy/how-to-shorten-the-b2b-buyer-cycle-with-landing-pages" target="_blank">how to shorten the B2B buyer cycle with landing pages</a>.</p>
<p>♦ Brendan tells you just <a title="How to create a secondary call to action" href="http://www.grokdotcom.com/2010/05/24/secondary-calls-to-action-unsung-heroes-of-persuasion/" target="_blank">how to create a secondary call to action</a>.</p>
<p>♦ Stan and Doug nailed it in <a title="The B2B Content Marketing Workbook" href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/2009/06/09/the-b2b-content-marketing-workbook/" target="_blank">the Content Marketing Workbook</a>: You need to make yourself useful. A good landing page screams utility.</p>
<p>♦ Landing pages should be regularly experimented with using A/B testing. Try <a title="Google Website Optimizer" href="https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=websiteoptimizer&amp;continue=http://www.google.com/analytics/siteopt/%3Fhl%3Den&amp;hl=en" target="_blank">Google Website Optimizer</a> for an easy way to do this.</p>
<p>♦ Landing pages often make a simple, sharp and absurdly ambitious promise. Many combine imperatives (“go here”, “do this”, “start that”) with a bold claim in <a title="The New Naive style" href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/the-new-naive-style" target="_blank">the new naive style</a>.</p>
<p>♦ Oli of Unbounce, the landing page specialists, provides a gorgeous <a title="Unbounce landing page blog: 12-step landing page rehab" href="http://unbounce.com/landing-pages/landing-page-rehab/" target="_blank">12-part landing page rehab program</a>.</p>
<p>♦ If you like spending money on A/B testing (that is, if you want help to get it right), <a title="Visual Website Optimizer" href="http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/" target="_blank">Visual Website Analyzer</a> is a smart place to put it.</p>
<p>*The landing pages used as examples in this tutorial were pre-selected by <a title="Quora's Interactive Design topic" href="http://www.quora.com/Interaction-Design" target="_blank">the legendary UX (user interaction) community at Quora</a>. The pages were offered as &#8220;<a title="What are some products with killer landing pages?" href="http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-products-with-killer-landing-pages" target="_blank">killer landing pages for products</a>&#8220;. As most are B2C, they may need tweaking for B2B purposes, but the principles abide.</p>
<p>What&#8217;s your take on the 11 landing pages? Drop a comment.</p>
<hr />
<p><small>&copy; Ryan Skinner for <a href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk">Velocity Partners</a>, 2011. |
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		<title>First Impressions: On landing pages and landing in general</title>
		<link>http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/2011/04/11/first-impressions-on-landing-pages-and-landing-in-general/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=first-impressions-on-landing-pages-and-landing-in-general</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 11 Apr 2011 09:56:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Ryan Skinner</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Our Blog]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Advertising]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[B2B lead generation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Demand Generation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[design]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Landing pages]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lead Generation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web Marketing]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/?p=2984</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p>I&#8217;m the new guy, freshly landed at Velocity Partners, and this is the new guy post. Taking the theme &#8220;you never get a second chance to make a first impression&#8221; to heart, let&#8217;s talk first impressions: Landing pages. For many&#8230;</p>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I&#8217;m the new guy, freshly landed at Velocity Partners, and this is the new guy post. Taking the theme &#8220;you never get a second chance to make a first impression&#8221; to heart, let&#8217;s talk first impressions: Landing pages. For many of your potential leads, they&#8217;re the first meeting with your company. Either you win enough trust to introduce yourself properly, or they&#8217;ll bounce right out.</p>
<p>This 22-slide presentation is all about first impressions: Some of the best product landing pages in the business*, and a somewhat slanted visual introduction to me &#8211; all paint pretty arresting pictures. If one topic doesn&#8217;t churn your butter, maybe the other will.</p>
<p>After the slideshow, look for the list of resources. Just click on the thumbnail below and away you go; either use the arrows at the bottom to navigate or simply press right-arrow on your keyboard.</p>

<a href='http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/nike_rev.jpg' rel='shadowbox[sbalbum-2984];player=img;' title='nike_rev'><img width="150" height="56" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/nike_rev.jpg" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="nike_rev" title="nike_rev" /></a>
<a href='http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/dropbox.com_rev.jpg' rel='shadowbox[sbalbum-2984];player=img;' title='dropbox.com_rev'><img width="150" height="95" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/dropbox.com_rev.jpg" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="dropbox.com_rev" title="dropbox.com_rev" /></a>
<a href='http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Atlanta_rev.jpg' rel='shadowbox[sbalbum-2984];player=img;' title='Atlanta_rev'><img width="150" height="128" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Atlanta_rev.jpg" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="Atlanta_rev" title="Atlanta_rev" /></a>
<a href='http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/benthebodyguard.com_rev.jpg' rel='shadowbox[sbalbum-2984];player=img;' title='benthebodyguard.com_rev'><img width="150" height="90" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/benthebodyguard.com_rev.jpg" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="benthebodyguard.com_rev" title="benthebodyguard.com_rev" /></a>
<a href='http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/surfers_rev.jpg' rel='shadowbox[sbalbum-2984];player=img;' title='surfers_rev'><img width="150" height="102" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/surfers_rev.jpg" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="surfers_rev" title="surfers_rev" /></a>
<a href='http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/unbounce.com_rev.jpg' rel='shadowbox[sbalbum-2984];player=img;' title='unbounce.com_rev'><img width="150" height="91" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/unbounce.com_rev.jpg" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="unbounce.com_rev" title="unbounce.com_rev" /></a>
<a href='http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/eagle-scout_rev.jpg' rel='shadowbox[sbalbum-2984];player=img;' title='eagle scout_rev'><img width="150" height="80" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/eagle-scout_rev.jpg" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="eagle scout_rev" title="eagle scout_rev" /></a>
<a href='http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/squareup.com_rev.jpg' rel='shadowbox[sbalbum-2984];player=img;' title='squareup.com_rev'><img width="150" height="74" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/squareup.com_rev.jpg" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="squareup.com_rev" title="squareup.com_rev" /></a>
<a href='http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/duke_rev2.jpg' rel='shadowbox[sbalbum-2984];player=img;' title='duke_rev2'><img width="150" height="141" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/duke_rev2.jpg" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="duke_rev2" title="duke_rev2" /></a>
<a href='http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/qwiki.com_rev.jpg' rel='shadowbox[sbalbum-2984];player=img;' title='qwiki.com_rev'><img width="150" height="82" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/qwiki.com_rev.jpg" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="qwiki.com_rev" title="qwiki.com_rev" /></a>
<a href='http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/moskus_rev.jpg' rel='shadowbox[sbalbum-2984];player=img;' title='moskus_rev'><img width="150" height="91" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/moskus_rev.jpg" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="moskus_rev" title="moskus_rev" /></a>
<a href='http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/pungle.org_rev.jpg' rel='shadowbox[sbalbum-2984];player=img;' title='pungle.org_rev'><img width="150" height="99" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/pungle.org_rev.jpg" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="pungle.org_rev" title="pungle.org_rev" /></a>
<a href='http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/jester_rev.jpg' rel='shadowbox[sbalbum-2984];player=img;' title='Mardi Gras World jester'><img width="150" height="139" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/jester_rev.jpg" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="Mardi Gras World jester" title="Mardi Gras World jester" /></a>
<a href='http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/kissmetrics.com_rev.jpg' rel='shadowbox[sbalbum-2984];player=img;' title='kissmetrics.com_rev'><img width="150" height="88" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/kissmetrics.com_rev.jpg" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="kissmetrics.com_rev" title="kissmetrics.com_rev" /></a>
<a href='http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/cricket_rev.jpg' rel='shadowbox[sbalbum-2984];player=img;' title='cricket_rev'><img width="150" height="74" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/cricket_rev.jpg" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="cricket_rev" title="cricket_rev" /></a>
<a href='http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/kaleidoscopeapp.com_rev.jpg' rel='shadowbox[sbalbum-2984];player=img;' title='kaleidoscopeapp.com_rev'><img width="150" height="105" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/kaleidoscopeapp.com_rev.jpg" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="kaleidoscopeapp.com_rev" title="kaleidoscopeapp.com_rev" /></a>
<a href='http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/benkler_rev.jpg' rel='shadowbox[sbalbum-2984];player=img;' title='benkler_rev'><img width="150" height="81" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/benkler_rev.jpg" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="benkler_rev" title="benkler_rev" /></a>
<a href='http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/flowtown.com_rev.jpg' rel='shadowbox[sbalbum-2984];player=img;' title='flowtown.com_rev'><img width="150" height="87" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/flowtown.com_rev.jpg" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="flowtown.com_rev" title="flowtown.com_rev" /></a>
<a href='http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/shipcrunch_rev.jpg' rel='shadowbox[sbalbum-2984];player=img;' title='shipcrunch_rev'><img width="150" height="42" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/shipcrunch_rev.jpg" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="shipcrunch_rev" title="shipcrunch_rev" /></a>
<a href='http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Evernote.com_rev.jpg' rel='shadowbox[sbalbum-2984];player=img;' title='Evernote.com_rev'><img width="150" height="91" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Evernote.com_rev.jpg" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="Evernote.com_rev" title="Evernote.com_rev" /></a>
<a href='http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/jess3_rev.jpg' rel='shadowbox[sbalbum-2984];player=img;' title='jess3_rev'><img width="150" height="69" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/jess3_rev.jpg" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="jess3_rev" title="jess3_rev" /></a>
<a href='http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Enstore.com_rev.jpg' rel='shadowbox[sbalbum-2984];player=img;' title='Enstore.com_rev'><img width="150" height="101" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Enstore.com_rev.jpg" class="attachment-thumbnail" alt="Enstore.com_rev" title="Enstore.com_rev" /></a>

<h3>The Landing Page Resource List</h3>
<p>♦ Google tells you how to ensure lightning quick landing pages: <a title="Google: How can I improve my landing page's load time?" href="https://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&amp;answer=93116" target="_blank">How can I improve my landing page’s load time?</a></p>
<p>♦ Landing pages should have a strong, clear and easy call to action. Check out Smashing Magazine for <a title="Best Practice in call to action buttons and examples" href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/10/13/call-to-action-buttons-examples-and-best-practices/" target="_blank">best practice in design of call to action buttons</a>. For copy, Quora tells you <a title="Quora: What kind of text works best in a general call to action?" href="http://www.quora.com/What-kind-of-text-copy-works-best-for-a-general-call-to-action?q=call+to+action" target="_blank">what kind of text works best</a>.</p>
<p>♦ Michael from SAP’s Integrated Marketing tells you <a title="Michael Brenner on how to shorten the B2B buyer cycle with landing pages" href="http://www.b2bmarketinginsider.com/strategy/how-to-shorten-the-b2b-buyer-cycle-with-landing-pages" target="_blank">how to shorten the B2B buyer cycle with landing pages</a>.</p>
<p>♦ Brendan tells you just <a title="How to create a secondary call to action" href="http://www.grokdotcom.com/2010/05/24/secondary-calls-to-action-unsung-heroes-of-persuasion/" target="_blank">how to create a secondary call to action</a>.</p>
<p>♦ Stan and Doug nailed it in <a title="The B2B Content Marketing Workbook" href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/2009/06/09/the-b2b-content-marketing-workbook/" target="_blank">the Content Marketing Workbook</a>: You need to make yourself useful. A good landing page screams utility.</p>
<p>♦ Landing pages should be regularly experimented with using A/B testing. Try <a title="Google Website Optimizer" href="https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=websiteoptimizer&amp;continue=http://www.google.com/analytics/siteopt/%3Fhl%3Den&amp;hl=en" target="_blank">Google Website Optimizer</a> for an easy way to do this.</p>
<p>♦ Landing pages often make a simple, sharp and absurdly ambitious promise. Many combine imperatives (“go here”, “do this”, “start that”) with a bold claim in <a title="The new naive style" href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/the-new-naive-style" target="_blank">the new naive style</a>.</p>
<p>♦ Oli of Unbounce, the landing page specialists, provides a gorgeous <a title="Unbounce landing page blog: 12-step landing page rehab" href="http://unbounce.com/landing-pages/landing-page-rehab/" target="_blank">12-part landing page rehab program</a>.</p>
<p>♦ If you like spending money on A/B testing (that is, if you want help to get it right), <a title="Visual Website Optimizer website" href="http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/" target="_blank">Visual Website Analyzer</a> is a smart place to put it.</p>
<p>* The landing pages used as examples in this tutorial were pre-selected by <a title="Quora's Interactive Design topic" href="http://www.quora.com/Interaction-Design" target="_blank">the legendary UX (user interaction) community at Quora</a>. The pages were offered as &#8220;<a title="What are some products with killer landing pages?" href="http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-products-with-killer-landing-pages" target="_blank">killer landing pages for products</a>&#8220;. As most are B2C, they may need tweaking for B2B purposes, but the principles abide.</p>
<p>If you want to share the landing page content, but not the Ryan Skinner content, I won’t hold it against you. Here’s <a title="On Landing Pages" href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/2011/04/11/on-first-impressions-and-landing-pages/" target="_blank">the landing-page only content</a>.</p>
<p>Got your own observations on these landing pages, or landing pages in general? Drop a comment. Or leave your guesses about the location of that big chicken&#8230;.</p>
<hr />
<p><small>&copy; Ryan Skinner for <a href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk">Velocity Partners</a>, 2011. |
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		<title>B2B content marketing around buying triggers</title>
		<link>http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/2011/03/10/b2b-contentmarketing-buying-triggers/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=b2b-contentmarketing-buying-triggers</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 10 Mar 2011 15:18:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Doug Kessler</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Our Blog]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[B2B content marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[B2B lead generation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[B2B social media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lead nurturing]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/?p=2895</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[There are lots of ways to build your content marketing strategy -- around personas, products, organisational structure... We'd like to suggest a new way to go: build your content around your most important buying triggers.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Screen-shot-2011-03-10-at-15.03.59.png" rel="shadowbox[sbpost-2895];player=img;"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2901" title="B2B Buying Triggers" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Screen-shot-2011-03-10-at-15.03.59.png" alt="Trigger Marketing in B2B" width="340" height="341" /></a></p>
<p>There are lots of ways to build your content marketing strategy:</p>
<p><strong>Around personas </strong>– with content for each type of buyer.</p>
<p><strong> Around the stages of the buying journey </strong>– with early stage videos, mid-stage ebooks and late-stage case studies.</p>
<p><strong>Around your product portfolio –</strong> making sure each product has its content support<strong>.<br />
</strong></p>
<p><strong>Around organisational structure </strong>– with each division having its own content stream.</p>
<p><strong>Around media types</strong> – balancing videos, slideshares, ebooks, infographics, microsites, white papers&#8230;</p>
<p>We&#8217;ve seen all of these approaches and more. But I&#8217;d like to suggest another way to go: build your content around your most important buying triggers.</p>
<p><strong>What&#8217;s a buying trigger?</strong><br />
A buying trigger is an event in the life of a prospect that suddenly makes them receptive to your story.</p>
<ul>
<li>For a client that makes enterprise middleware, one of the big buying triggers was a merger or acquisition. When a bank buys another bank it needs to integrate the IT as smoothly as possible. The right middleware can help.</li>
<li>For <a title="application compatibility software" href="http://app-dna.com/" target="_blank">App-DNA (the daddy of all application compatibility tools</a>), a big enterprise&#8217;s decision to migrate to Windows 7 is a major buying trigger.</li>
<li>For Reevoo, <a title="social commerce software" href="http://www.reevoo.com/b2b/" target="_blank">the social commerce experts</a>, a prospect&#8217;s change of ecommerce platform is a great trigger for reconsidering the ratings &amp; reviews system.</li>
<li>For PressRun, <a title="ipad magazine publishing" href="http://pressrun.com/blog/ces-tablet-a-go-go/" target="_blank">the tablet publishing platform</a>, a magazine&#8217;s decision to develop an iPad edition is a massive trigger.</li>
</ul>
<p>Notice that all of these triggers are discrete events; they&#8217;re all in the buyer&#8217;s world, not the vendor&#8217;s; and they all involve the abrupt opening of a window of opportunity. <em>Trigger moments put the prospect into a period of change.</em> That makes them a bit uncomfortable with the status quo and a lot hungrier for information. Perfect.</p>
<p>Clear buying triggers are an important part of a B2B company&#8217;s success. We&#8217;ve seen dozens and dozens of technology players with great products but very fuzzy buying triggers. It&#8217;s hard to market this kind of solution. You have to wait for the prospect to recognise the need and hope they can find you at that moment.</p>
<p><strong>So how can you exploit buying triggers?</strong><br />
Buying triggers are a natural dimension to build your B2B content marketing strategy around. Using the above examples:</p>
<ul>
<li>The middleware guys should do content around the IT challenges of mergers &amp; acquisitions.</li>
<li>App-DNA should do stuff around Windows 7 migrations. Like this <a title="Windows 7 Migration" href="http://app-dna.com/application-migration-resource-store/ebooks/windows-7-migration-checklist" target="_blank">Windows 7 Migration Checklist</a>.</li>
<li>Reevoo should do ebooks around ecommerce platform change. (Watch this space).</li>
<li>PressRun needs content on tablet magazine publishing. In fact, they dedicate<a title="PressRun B2B blog" href="http://pressrun.com/blog/ces-tablet-a-go-go/" target="_blank"> a whole blog</a> and newsletter to it.</li>
</ul>
<p>Sometimes the buying triggers don&#8217;t feel very central to your story. That doesn&#8217;t matter. If it&#8217;s a real buying trigger, there&#8217;s a real opportunity to create some good content around it.</p>
<p><strong>Some Trigger Marketing content tips<br />
</strong>Marketing that targets specific buying triggers is not much different from good content marketing. But there are some things to keep in mind:</p>
<ol>
<li><strong>Target one trigger at a time </strong>– it&#8217;s tempting to combine the minor ones but it defeats the purpose.</li>
<li><strong>Nail the implications of the trigger event </strong>– a trigger event raises new issues for prospects. Master these issues.</li>
<li><strong>Draw a direct line from the trigger to your door</strong> – don&#8217;t be shy about this. Tell people exactly why someone in their new situation needs your solution.</li>
<li><strong>Think about how the triggered prospect searches</strong> – keyword research around triggers is of prime importance. Many triggered prospects aren&#8217;t on your lists yet. You need to make it easy for them to find you.</li>
<li><strong>Get those trigger keywords in your titles</strong> – you need this content to rank on the trigger terms.</li>
<li><strong>Be open to new media and channels </strong>– trigger marketing often takes you to new websites, social media groups and marketing partners. Embrace that.</li>
<li><strong>Create content clusters </strong>– a single ebook on a trigger topic may not be enough to rank on the engines. An ebook, white paper and video hanging off a blog on a microsite (all SEO optimised) will multiply the value.</li>
</ol>
<p>Done right, Trigger Marketing (hey, I coined a phrase!) can be the most powerful Huskie in your B2B marketing dogsled.</p>
<p>Today, everyone does personas. Tomorrow, we&#8217;ll all be doing Trigger Maps, too.</p>
<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;-</p>
<p>Photo: flickr creative commons by .void</p>
<hr />
<p><small>&copy; Doug Kessler for <a href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk">Velocity Partners</a>, 2011. |
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		<title>B2B Marketing Agency campaign in a scribble</title>
		<link>http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/2010/10/22/b2b-marketing-agency-campaign-in-a-scribble/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=b2b-marketing-agency-campaign-in-a-scribble</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 22 Oct 2010 20:20:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Doug Kessler</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Our Blog]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[B2B agency]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/?p=2495</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[We were mapping out the B2B Marketing Manifesto campaign on a sheet of A4 lined paper and this is what was left behind on the meeting table. Pretty much all there.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/B2B-Marketign-Funnel.png" rel="shadowbox[sbpost-2495];player=img;"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2501" title="B2B Marketing Funnel" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/B2B-Marketign-Funnel.png" alt="B2B Marketing Agency campaign funnel" width="551" height="332" /></a></p>
<p>Birth of a B2B Campaign.</p>
<div id="attachment_2497" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 466px"><a href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/B2B-Campaign-Scribble.png" rel="shadowbox[sbpost-2495];player=img;"><img class="size-full wp-image-2497" title="B2B Campaign Scribble" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/B2B-Campaign-Scribble.png" alt="B2B Campaign Plan in a scribble" width="456" height="654" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">The B2B Marketing Manifesto campaign map, kind of</p></div>
<hr />
<p><small>&copy; Doug Kessler for <a href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk">Velocity Partners</a>, 2010. |
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		<title>The B2B Marketing Manifesto: hot off the press</title>
		<link>http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/2010/09/21/the-b2b-marketing-manifesto-hot-off-the-press/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-b2b-marketing-manifesto-hot-off-the-press</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 21 Sep 2010 15:29:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Doug Kessler</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Featured Blog Post]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/?p=2137</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p></p>
<p>&#8220;This is without a doubt the most exciting time in history to be a B2B marketer. It&#8217;s also the scariest.&#8221; That&#8217;s how our new eBook, The B2B Marketing Manifesto begins. It&#8217;s a lunatic rant, a call to arms and&#8230;</p>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/B2BManifesto_03.jpg" rel="shadowbox[sbpost-2137];player=img;"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-2177" title="B2BManifesto_03" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/B2BManifesto_03.jpg" alt="The New B2B Marketing Manifesto" width="673" height="445" /></a></p>
<p>&#8220;This is without a doubt the most exciting time in history to be a B2B marketer. It&#8217;s also the scariest.&#8221; That&#8217;s how our new eBook, <a title="The B2B Marketing Manifesto" href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/2010/09/20/b2b-marketing-manifesto-ebook/" target="_blank">The B2B Marketing Manifesto</a> begins. It&#8217;s a lunatic rant, a call to arms and a plea for ambition in B2B marketing &#8212; with eleven specific recommendations for rising to the new challenges we all face.</p>
<p>The eBook is our attempt to make sense of a whole range of disruptions to the once-cozy world of B2B. Clearly, we&#8217;re no longer in the business of making brochures and exhibition graphics. We&#8217;re now in the business of filling sales funnels and we&#8217;re more accountable for it than ever before. Which is either a really, really good thing (if you&#8217;re confident and ambitious) or a really, really bad thing (if you just want a quiet life).</p>
<p><strong>Now here&#8217;s what we&#8217;d love you to do:</strong> download the eBook; read it; then <strong>come back and comment</strong>, ideally <a title="The B2B Marketing Manifesto" href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/2010/09/20/b2b-marketing-manifesto-ebook/" target="_blank">on the landing page</a> (though you can use the comment form below if you prefer). The end of the Manifesto makes clear why we&#8217;re asking.  So thank you in advance for that.</p>
<p>We&#8217;ll be blogging about the progress of our new baby in a living case study called &#8216;Project Open Kimono&#8217; over the coming weeks and months, including sharing our goals, the tactics we&#8217;re using and the results (warts, winces and all), based on Neil&#8217;s ace analytics. So do come back.</p>
<p>We&#8217;re also happy to guest blog, speak or contribute to webinars on the topics raised in the Manifesto. Just ask!</p>
<hr />
<p><small>&copy; Doug Kessler for <a href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk">Velocity Partners</a>, 2010. |
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		<title>Ten Tips for Cross-Promoting your Content, Part II</title>
		<link>http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/2010/08/02/ten-tips-for-cross-promoting-your-content-part-ii/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=ten-tips-for-cross-promoting-your-content-part-ii</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 02 Aug 2010 09:03:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Doug Kessler</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Our Blog]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[As B2B marketing content libraries start to grow, we all need to think about how we cross-promote our content to people who have already engaged with us.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Vuvuzela.png" rel="shadowbox[sbpost-1923];player=img;"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1929" title="B2B Marketing Vuvuzela" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Vuvuzela.png" alt="B2B Marketing Vuvuzela" width="493" height="300" /></a></p>
<p>Here&#8217;s Part II of the <a href="http://www.b2bbloggers.com/blog/ten-tips-for-cross-promoting-your-content-part-i/">post I started on B2B Bloggers</a>, the excellent resource run by Jeremy Victor:</p>
<p><strong>The story so far:</strong></p>
<p>We learned about the importance of cross-promoting your content to the people who have already engaged with you in some way or other. And we saw how using auto-responders, web &#8216;Thank You&#8217; pages, outbound email and a personal touch can be really effective. <a href="http://www.b2bbloggers.com/blog/ten-tips-for-cross-promoting-your-content-part-i/">Read the whole story here.</a></p>
<p>Now here are the next five tips and one BONUS TIP as a reward for wading through the other ten:</p>
<p><strong>6) Use your email footers<br />
</strong>You&#8217;ve got lots of people throughout your company sending out lots of emails to a whole range of stakeholders. I&#8217;m always surprised how many companies waste this opportunity or simply use it to broadcast a general message.</p>
<p>Email footers can be as targeted as any other kind of communication and one great use is to cross-promote your back catalog.  Different departments can get different promotional footers that reflect their audiences.</p>
<p><strong>7) Do a Round-Up blog post<br />
</strong>Every quarter or so, do a blog post that gives readers a guide to your entire back catalog of content or the pieces you produced since the last round-up.</p>
<p>We all forget how perishable our posts really are. Once they&#8217;re in the Archive folder, they rarely see the light of day. Forget the risk of repeating yourself (a risk that most marketers are <em>far</em> too sensitive too) and drag out that great content again.</p>
<p><strong>8 ) Exploit your web forms<br />
</strong>Most forms need to be focused on one desired action (see Tip 1). But others are fine for cross-promoting content that is relevant to the form&#8217;s purpose.</p>
<p>So a simple tick-box at the bottom saying, &#8220;Please also send me the Nine Rules of Rope-Making&#8221; can&#8217;t hurt can it? And it just might inspire a new generation of rope-makers.</p>
<p><strong>9) Go back and revise your web copy!<br />
</strong>I am always amazed how infrequently this is practiced: You publish a great new eBook on The Future of Left-Handed Security Software and you promote the hell out of it.  But you never go back to the nine web pages on your site that talk all about Security Software and Left-Handedness and revise them to cross-promote the new content.</p>
<p>We used to have a term for this back in the &#8216;hood: &#8216;Dummy-head&#8217;.  Don&#8217;t be one.</p>
<p><strong>10) End your webinars with a commercial<br />
</strong>Webinars attract your most engaged prospects. And the <em>end</em> of a webinar is where the really committed can be found.  Over 90% of webinars end with a single URL (see Dummy-head above). You should end each webinar with a quick summary of the great pieces of content waiting for your audience to download.</p>
<p><strong>Bonus Tip 11) Cross-promote <em>within </em>your new content.<br />
</strong>The best place of all to cross-promote content is inside your latest content. Our <a title="B2B Content Marketing Workbook" href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/2009/06/09/the-b2b-content-marketing-workbook/">Content Marketing Workbook</a> plugs our <a title="The Holy Trinity! You mean you haven't read it?" href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/2007/11/05/the-holy-trinity-of-technology-marketing-answering-the-three-questions-that-will-earn-you-the-right-to-sell/">Holy Trinity of B2B Marketing</a> (as does this sentence).</p>
<p>We end every new eBook or white paper with a Resources section that cross-promotes our other goodies and any other resources we feel are relevant. This is a service to your reader not a crass exercise in pimping (well, maybe a bit of both).</p>
<p>So there you go. Ten tips plus a bonus. You&#8217;ve come this far, so now do two things for me: drop some comment love below to share your own thoughts on this arcane art; and start practicing some of the ten tips tomorrow.</p>
<p>&#8212;&#8211;</p>
<p>Photo: Flickr Creative Commons: sl-fotografie<strong><a title="Link to sl-fotografie's photostream" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/donlorello/"><strong></strong></a></strong></p>
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<p><small>&copy; Doug Kessler for <a href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk">Velocity Partners</a>, 2010. |
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		<title>The power of B2B Lead Nurturing</title>
		<link>http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/2010/02/17/the-power-of-b2b-lead-nurturing/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-power-of-b2b-lead-nurturing</link>
		<comments>http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/2010/02/17/the-power-of-b2b-lead-nurturing/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 17 Feb 2010 15:34:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Doug Kessler</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Our Blog]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[B2B lead generation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[B2B marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[B2B technology marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lead Generation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lead nurturing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lead scoring]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/?p=1362</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The sales team owns the sales funnel.
But as a B2B marketer, you feed the top of their funnel.
So you own your company’s revenue pipe.
The success or failure of your company depends entirely&#8230;</p>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p class="MsoNormal">
<p class="MsoNormal"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1371" title="Sales funnel" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/picture-7.png" alt="Sales funnel" width="485" height="321" /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The sales team owns the sales funnel.<br />
But as a B2B marketer, you feed the top of their funnel.<br />
So you own your company’s revenue pipe.<br />
The success or failure of your company depends entirely on the quality and quantity of opportunities you generate.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This isn&#8217;t about how many business cards your team collected from the latest trade show. It&#8217;s about how many<em> sales-ready leads</em> you can generate. That&#8217;s where Lead Nurturing comes in.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We&#8217;re huge fans of Lead Nurturing because it:</p>
<ul>
<li>Closes the gap between marketing and sales – connecting us directly to revenue</li>
<li>Never wastes a lead &#8211; moving the cold ones forward while acting on the hot ones</li>
<li>Creates opportunities that the sales team really values – stopping them from cold calling (or ignoring undifferentiated leads)</li>
<li>Makes it easy to treat people differently – based on their demographics (job title, industry) and their behaviours (web visits, downloads, email opens&#8230;)</li>
<li>Automates a lot of boring tasks – like creating landing pages and linking them to emails and analytics</li>
</ul>
<p class="MsoNormal">Brian Carrol, CEO of<a title="InTouch" href="http://www.startwithalead.com/" target="_blank"> InTouch</a> has a great 5-step way of thinking about lead nurturing:</p>
<ol>
<li><strong>Refine</strong> – work with the sales team to hone a definition of what  a &#8216;sales-ready&#8217; lead really means. This entails lead scoring and prioritization (50 points if they download White Paper X; 100 points if they visit us at an event&#8230;).</li>
<li><strong>Qualify</strong> – centralise all data about leads, offline and online.  Then decide who&#8217;s worth the effort. (Authority, Time Frame, Need, Budget). There&#8217;s often a non-automated, human aspect here (remember the phone?). But do it right and sales conversion rates double.</li>
<li><strong>Nuture </strong> –work the early stage leads until they&#8217;re sales-ready; drip feed them emails, content &amp; contacts and score their behaviours; It&#8217;s about a relevant ongoing dialog with potential customers regardless of their timing to buy.</li>
<li><strong>Define</strong> – create a defined hand-off process for moving leads from marketing to sales; CRM integration of your lead nurturing system will help.</li>
<li><strong>Close the loop </strong>– via monthly sales/marketing meetings; get their feedback on the leads you&#8217;ve delivered; discuss what&#8217;s working and what&#8217;s not&#8230;</li>
</ol>
<p>The upshot of all this: more effective selling time for your sales people, focused on people with a real business need – and more revenue for the business.</p>
<p>With lead nurturing process like this, you can track Cost per Opportunity (the ones the sales force is actively working on) instead of the clunkier, less enlightening metric, Cost per Lead.</p>
<p>There are an increasing number of Lead Nurturing systems that support this kind of process and automate a lot of the activities that go into it.  We&#8217;re getting up to speed on <a title="Marketo" href="http://www.marketo.com/index.php" target="_blank">Marketo </a>(pioneered in Europe by John Watton, CMO of ShipServ) and think you should be too.  This is where B2B marketing is going: actually generating business instead of undifferentiated names and email addresses.</p>
<p>(photo credit: Bram Reinders, Creative Commons)</p>
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<p><small>&copy; Doug Kessler for <a href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk">Velocity Partners</a>, 2010. |
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Post tags: <a href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/tag/b2b-lead-generation/" rel="tag">B2B lead generation</a>, <a href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/tag/b2b-marketing/" rel="tag">B2B marketing</a>, <a href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/tag/b2b-technology-marketing/" rel="tag">B2B technology marketing</a>, <a href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/tag/lead-generation/" rel="tag">Lead Generation</a>, <a href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/tag/lead-nurturing/" rel="tag">lead nurturing</a>, <a href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/tag/lead-scoring/" rel="tag">lead scoring</a><br/>
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		<title>B2B web marketing: the platform battle</title>
		<link>http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/2010/02/08/b2b-web-marketing-the-platform-battle/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=b2b-web-marketing-the-platform-battle</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:28:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Doug Kessler</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Our Blog]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[B2B lead generation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[B2B marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[B2B technology marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[digital marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Technology Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web Marketing]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[As B2B web marketing comes of age, a battle is brewing between some pretty big players (and a few upstarts) over who will become the primary dashboard for marketers.  The three combatants: CRM, CMS and marketing automation vendors.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1352" title="robot" src="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/robot.jpg" alt="robot" width="500" height="375" /></p>
<p>As B2B web marketing comes of age, a battle is brewing between some pretty big players (and a few upstarts) over who will become the primary dashboard for marketers.  The three combatants:</p>
<p><strong>CRM </strong>– the first app to automate some of what marketers do (and a lot more of what salespeople do).</p>
<p><strong>Content Management Systems</strong> – the coal face of web marketing and, increasingly, the platform for all kinds of digital campaigns.</p>
<p><strong>Marketing Automation tools</strong> – email, lead nurturing, analytics, campaign management, digital asset management&#8230; each with its own dashboard and workflow.</p>
<p>As B2B marketers get more sophisticated, the tools they use are starting to merge.  CRM is adding rudimentary marketing automation.  CMSs are adding campaign and automation.  And the automation apps are filling out into proper &#8216;suites&#8217;.</p>
<p>Who will win?  Well, all three will be around for a long time but for my money, the CMS is the best place for marketing functionality &#8212; as long as the CMS vendors can get their acts together and realise they&#8217;re not just in the web editing business.*</p>
<p>More and more B2B marketers are learning to plan, execute and analyse their own campaigns with very little help from the techies.  Part of this will always be generating emails and landing pages; designing the campaign logic that strings them together; and analysing the results to keep improving.</p>
<p>The natural home for CRM is really the sales department. And, however valuable its contribution to the whole revenue cycle, CRM doesn&#8217;t really DO anything. It just holds all the information so others can do things better.</p>
<p>Marketing  automation tools are preferable now because they can each focus on one discipline and do it better than any generalist.  But as the platform players watch and learn, they&#8217;ll be able to replicate almost anything the automators can do (after all, it&#8217;s not rocket science). Then, the benefit sof integration will outweigh even &#8216;best of breed&#8217; tools.</p>
<p>The CMS will always be central to the marketing department.  It&#8217;s easily extended with modules and plug-ins (especially if it&#8217;s based on an open platform). And it actually lets the market DO things like build landing pages, HTML emails and whole campaigns.</p>
<p>Agree?  Disagree?</p>
<p>* We know one CMS vendors that&#8217;s way out in front on this stuff but they&#8217;re a client so we can&#8217;t ethically mention their name here.  Oh bugger it: <a title="A marketing CMS" href="http://www.episerver.com/" target="_blank">EPiServer</a>.</p>
<p>(photo by chandlerparker, flickr creative commons)</p>
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<p><small>&copy; Doug Kessler for <a href="http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk">Velocity Partners</a>, 2010. |
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