In last week’s post, we discussed the first step in the creation and execution of a lead generation program: establishing the right mindset.  This week, we’ll cover an equally important step: building your roster of stakeholders in the lead generation program.

Unfortunately, it’s far too common that this step looks a lot like the following within small or mid-sized organizations:

[VP Marketing and CEO/CFO are wrapping up a marketing/budget meeting]

CEO: OK.  Things seem to be stabilizing.  You guys should have an additional 50k to spend on lead generation next quarter.

VP Marketing: Great.  I think we can do some impactful things with that money.

CEO: Excellent.  Like what?

VP Marketing: Good question.  Let me bring this back to my team, and we’ll identify a plan of attack.

CEO: OK.

[VP Marketing walks down the hall, stops by the cubicle of his Marketing Manager]

VP Marketing: So…good news.  Rick agreed to give us an additional 50k to spend on lead generation programs next quarter.

Marketing Manager: Great.  That will help a lot.

VP Marketing: Yeah, that’s what I said too.  Anyway, what do you think we should do with it?

Marketing Manager: Good question.  Let me call our pr agency and see if they have any ideas.  Oh, and I’ll check in with Ralph who handles our search engine marketing, see if he thinks he can expand the program with a larger budget.  And last but not least, I’ll check in with those guys from Socially Insane Marketing to see if they think some increased social media activity will drive some leads.

VP Marketing: Sounds good.  After you talk to those guys, let’s put together a 1-2 page plan and we’ll send it over to Rick, and we should be good to go.

Marketing Manager: Sounds like a plan.  I’m on it.  We should able to crush it with an additional 50k.

VP Marketing: Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking.  This is gonna be fun.

[VP Marketing wanders back to his office to see if today's press release is 1^st, 2^nd or 3^rd ranked in Google News when searching for the company's name.  Marketing Manager checks on the company's Facebook fan page and is pleasantly surprised to see that the company now has 37 fans, up from 33.]

OK.  So injected a little humor into that dialogue, but it’s not that far from the truth in some organizations.  The VP of Marketing and Marketing Manager are off to figure out what to do with their additional 50k in lead generation dollars, and the only stakeholder they’re worried about is the CEO.  Now, we’re all concerned about anything that ends up with CEO-level exposure, but this is NOT the right way to build your roster of stakeholders when creating a lead generation campaign.

Even though we’re just in the initial stages of this new endeavor, I am a big believer in over communication.  As the person that generally serves as the spokesperson for the marketing department, the VP Marketing ought to at least let the following types know about the potential of new lead generation programs:

• The CEO, if for no other reason than exposure to the fact that you’re moving on a new idea.

• The CFO/Controller, because he/she may be the one that signs the checks or at least authorizes them.

• The entire marketing team, because any good lead generation program is multi-faceted and ought to involve input from and integration with other efforts.

• The VP/Director of Sales, because leads are, well…kind of important to that person.

• The sales team that might be handling those leads, or at least the manager of that team, because they will need to adjust to new leads, leads from new sources, new qualification procedures, etc.

• The external agencies/consultants, because they’re typically more than willing to help brainstorm new ideas to spend more money.

There are other possible stakeholders, but I think you get the point.

I know what the VPs of Marketing out there are saying right now.  Mike, you want me to allow that many cooks into my kitchen?  That’s a disaster waiting to happen, and you’re insane.

That’s a fair statement, but that’s not what I am recommending.  I am recommending that you identify these people as stakeholders and share your initial goals and plans with them.  What’s the primary reason to do that?  So that they don’t become cooks in your kitchen later on!

Explain to these stakeholders that you are expanding the company’s lead generation program.  Explain the process you’re going to go through to create the plan.  Explain how you intend to execute on the plan.  Explain to these people the types of help/support you might need from them.  Explain to them how they can submit any ideas now, as opposed to later.  Explain to them the format you need those ideas submitted.  Explain how you intend to keep them in the loop throughout the process.

In other words, over communicate now so that you don’t have to later.

About the Author: Mike Sweeney is Managing Partner of Right Source Marketing. Don’t hesitate to drop Mike a comment on this post.  Follow Mike on Twitter for more marketing commentary.

This is the first in a series of posts that will address the creation and execution of a B2B lead generation program in a step-by-step manner.  We’ll post another tip each week, and when the series is complete we’ll compile all the tips into one document and distribute.

The first step to creating and executing a B2B lead generation program is to establish the right mindset.  Regardless of your level of expertise, it goes without saying that you need a positive attitude about what you’re about to create, or else the program will fail on the runway or earlier.

Assuming you’ve established this positive attitude, we typically recommend that you embrace the lead generation mindset that is illustrated in the visual above.  We call it the Marketing Wheel for obvious reasons.  Each circle on the outside of the wheel represents a marketing vehicle (we interchangeably call them “buckets”) that you may or may not be actively using to create, execute or manage your lead generation campaigns.  Regardless of whether you’re actively using each of these vehicles, the point we’re making is simple: there are A LOT of different vehicles to consider when launching a lead generation program.  Whether you like it or not, many of these vehicles can impact your lead generation program even if you’re ignoring them from a time and money standpoint.

So where do you start?  Simple.  Brainstorm your list of vehicles or buckets.  Consider every vehicle – direct mail, email, search marketing, website, social media…the list goes on and on.  Now you have your master list.

We’ll go further with what to do with the list in a future tip, because we’re still focused on establishing the right mindset first.   You have however, taken part of the first step in building a lead generation program – you’ve identified the potential lead generation vehicles.

That brings us to core part of the mindset, and this requires some long-term thinking.  Every lead generation program should include the following concrete steps:

• Identify the strategy and tactics
• Diversify the tactics
• Execute the tactics
• Track the tactics
• Reallocate time and money towards the tactics

If this were a class, many of you would be raising your hands screaming, “What about setting up metrics for the campaign?” or “In which step do we figure out who and how we respond to leads?”  Fair questions, all of which for the moment should be considered in the strategy phase, which will be discussed in the next tip.

For now though, embrace the mindset.  You’re creating a lead generation program that is not unlike a stock portfolio.  You need to put your time and money into a few vehicles in order to diversify, monitor performance and then decide at some regular interval where to reallocate.

About the Author: Mike Sweeney is Managing Partner of Right Source Marketing. Don’t hesitate to drop Mike a comment on this post.  Follow Mike on Twitter for more marketing commentary.

Whenever a conversation starts around the topic of social media, inevitably I find a number of people that immediately question the value and want to see some ROI numbers before getting involved.  We’ve talked about both sides of this discussion before in many posts, most notably Businesses: Stay Away From Social Media If You Meet The Following Criteria and Social Media: Justify Your Love With the Right ROI Approach.

Just today I came across this research in B to B magazine, which seems to once again prove some value to social media activity, particular as it relates to search

Social media searchers seek out ‘lower funnel’ terms

Internet users exposed to brands via social networks subsequently search for “lower funnel” terms associated with those brands, indicating a higher propensity to convert, according to new study.

The study, “The Influenced: Social Media, Search and the Interplay of Consideration and Consumption”-conducted by digital marketing company comScore and social media agency M80-found Internet users exposed to a brand in a social media setting were 1.7 times more likely to later search for that brand using keywords associated with a high level of loyalty and propensity to buy, compared with searchers not engaged with social media.

The study also showed a 50% increase in paid search click-through rates when Internet users were exposed first to social media mentioning a brand. The online survey, which drew 2,000 respondents, was conducted from May through July.

One of the basic tenets of branding is to build recognition and loyalty.  And, whether online or off, we’ve known for a long time now that building a strong brand can feed search engine success.  Social media is just one more place where that can happen, and as the study above proves, the payoff can be big.

So, what should you do about it?  I think there are 2 key takeaways:

1). If you have waited to develop a social media strategy until you have had the justification, this might just be it.

Note: Throwing it to the intern to figure out is not a strategy.  While that person may help you to execute on a strategy, the strategy itself shouldn’t come from someone rental companies don’t trust enough to rent a car to for four more years.  Social media should have a  role consistent with your overall marketing plan.

2). If your social media activities are generating more highly qualified searches, make sure you are maximizing your ability to be found there.

Do everything you can from a Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing perspective to ensure those highly qualified searchers will find you.  We know they will be out there looking and you need to maximize your opportunities to capture these high value searchers.

About the Author: Will Davis is Managing Partner of Right Source Marketing.  Don’t hesitate to drop Will a comment on this post.  If you liked this post, follow Will on Twitter for more commentary like this.

It should come as no surprise to any business executive that marketing dollars are shifting to the web at breakneck speed.  To give you an idea of just how significant this shift is, Forrester forecasts that interactive marketing spending will reach $61.3 billion in 2012, from $18.4 billion in 2007.

Every organization needs to address interactive marketing.  There are no exceptions, not anymore.  It doesn’t matter whether you’re small or large.  Or whether you’re selling products or services.  Or whether you’re growing rapidly or flat lining.  You cannot ignore interactive marketing.

That’s the easy part.  Most organizations know that interactive marketing needs to play a role in strategic planning.

Here’s the unknown part, at least for businesspeople that aren’t involved in marketing on a regular basis.  The average organization fails in their first attempts to execute an effective interactive marketing strategy.  There are many reasons for this failure, but the most common one we see is a lack of interactive marketing expertise.  In particular, this lack of interactive marketing expertise manifests itself in the planning stages, which then trickles down and impacts individual tactics.

In order to help organizations build a comprehensive interactive marketing audit and interactive marketing plan, today we launched Interactive Shift, a program designed to identify the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities in your organization’s internet marketing strategy.

I don’t want to regurgitate all the information you can find on the Interactive Shift page, but I do want to touch on the concept of timing your interactive marketing audit and planning.  I could make an argument that a marketing audit should be conducted every month, quarter and year.   And you should absolutely revisit your interactive marketing plan annually, if not more frequently.  That being said, there are some situations that lend themselves to conducting your audit and planning process:

• You are considering overhauling your web presence.
• Current interactive marketing programs are underperforming.
• You’re trying to determine budget allocations for interactive marketing.
• Your competition appears to be ahead of you in the interactive marketing category.
• You’re in the midst of developing a strategic marketing plan.

Regardless of when or how you handle this process, make sure you embrace the interactive audit and planning process.  If done right, it will expose significant opportunities for improvement, and in some cases spur a significant shift in thinking about how you’ll market your organization overall.