Repeat after me: your marketing dollars should work harder

September 23, 11:08 PMTechie to Trendy ExaminerAsa Murphy

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What happens when you bring together a large group of marketers?  You hear the words conversion, lead generation, and brand promise as often as my black lab craves a snack during any given day.

And so it was today, at the Marketing Sherpa 6th annual B2B Marketing Summit in San Francisco. As with any industry-specific conference, buzzword repetition ran unchecked. At the same time, Marketing Sherpa presenters managed to offer insights and advice which you can put to work in your company. Brian Carroll, CEO of InTouch and an expert in lead generation, focused his presentation on a buzzword we don’t hear enough about: lead re-engagement; which is a fancy way of saying that your internal sales group will be calling the same old “cold” leads which have stagnated in a deep corner of your CRM freezer.

Let’s be honest: most nouns preceded by a “re” give off a vibe of something stale and discarded. Not so, according to Brian Carroll; his data indicates that 80% of leads generated by marketing organizations get lost somewhere along the handoff process to sales, before becoming fully qualified. Thus, the need to re-engage.

Mr. Carroll offered five simple steps to any company which, due to an inability to re-print the dollars already spent on marketing campaigns, is left with few choices besides re-engagement.

Step one: define the goals of your re-engagement campaign.
Two: Build the re-engagement list.
Three: Create relevant messaging.
Four: Contact your leads with content which is relevant to them.
Five: Keep an open dialog with potential customers until it’s time for Sales to take over and “convert” the leads (another buzzword, which simply means close a sale.)

Assuming you have a higher success rate calling on the same people the second time, you will do well to heed the advice of Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, Director of Marketing Experiments. Dr. McGlaughlin offered the top four impediments to lead conversion on a web landing page.

1.  Lack of clarity about what visitors can do on your page and why they should do it.

2. An undisciplined visitor eye path on the web page, usually caused by clutter, poor design, and poor color choices.

3. Insufficient explanation to your web visitors about the benefits of your offer.

4. A lengthy subscription form, which usually turns people off.

Marketing Sherpa’s B2B Summit runs through September 24 at the Westin San Francisco Market Street. Throughout the two days of the conference, attendees learn directly from internet marketing veterans, make valuable network connections, and of course, practice buzzword repetition.