SESSIONS

Core Sessions

Building the Strategic Plan for Successful Lead Generation

The B2B marketer is often judged on one metric: The number of qualified leads generated.  Developing your demand generation plan is your first step to demand generation success. The key to developing a truly effective plan is to understand the best practices and tactics from your peers so you can build a strategy designed to win.  This session will start you on your path of successful lead generation by laying out what you need to know to cost effectively fill the sales funnel, drive revenue for the organization, and have the sales team asking for more.

• Define your target buyer personas – First, we must answer: “Who do we want to sell to?”
• Understand the buyer journey – The next step is to answer: “How do my buyers buy?”
• Create a strategic plan – Once we understand who we sell to, we lay out the blueprint
• Build content and offers  --  The steps to developing remarkable content offers designed to convert
• Develop metrics – The metrics that help you understand the success and ROI of the program
• Optimize – Once the plan is built and moving forward, optimization will drive higher ROI

CRAIG ROSENBERG
Vice President, Sales and Marketing
Focus.com

Craig is the Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Focus.com and a well-known and respected thought leader on marketing and sales topics with an emphasis on demand generation. Many in the industry also know him as The Funnelholic. On his popular blog, Craig waxes poetic on topics of interest to those who live and work at the top end of the B2B funnel: lead generation, online media, B2B sales and marketing, and lead nurturing. He spent many years as a consultant for SalesRamp, where he designed, built and managed lead generation and inside sales strategies and processes for high-tech startups. During that time, Craig built lead generation machines at over 25 different companies in a variety of different high-tech verticals ranging from business applications to IT infrastructure.

The Keys to Identifying More Sales-Ready Leads: Lead Qualification and Scoring

If you need to identify more qualified, sales-ready leads for your salespeople, reps, resellers or distributors to follow up and turn into sales, you can’t afford to miss this information-packed, one-hour session. This session includes specific examples, ranging from simple to sophisticated, of lead qualification and scoring methodologies successfully used by small, medium and large companies to get the job done right.

By attending, you’ll learn:

• The four major sets of criteria you should use for determining if leads are qualified or sales-ready:  Firmographics, demographics, behavior, and answers to qualification questions
• What BANTS means, and how it applies to lead qualification
• How to get agreement between sales and marketing on what defines a sales-ready, qualified lead
• How to develop a simple, yet flexible, numerical scoring system that assures that your leads are properly managed until they are determined to be qualified, sales-ready leads
• Plus you’ll get access to Mac’s Lead Qualification and Scoring Spreadsheet, and sample list of qualification questions to help you get you started

M. H. (MAC) MCINTOSH
President
Mac McIntosh, Inc.

Mac is President and Principal Consultant of B2B Sales Lead Management Consulting Firm Mac McIntosh Incorporated, and Founding Partner of B2B marketing automation services agency AquireB2B, Mac specializes in helping companies generate more high-quality B2B sales leads, nurture, qualify and convert them into sales, track and measure results, and prove a favorable return on investment.

Mac’s clients include small, medium and large companies in USA and Canada as well as some of the largest, global enterprises, such as Epson, Intel, GlobalSpec, Microsoft, NEC, NSK, Siemens and Sigma-Aldrich.  Mac is also a highly regarded speaker on B2B marketing, lead generation and sales subjects. He's the Publisher of Sales™Lead Report®and B2BMarketing Technology Insights™ e-newsletters with over 20,000 B2B marketing, lead generation and sales professionals as subscribers, and Sales Lead Insights®, his award-winning blog. Mac has been included in Sales Lead Management Association's "Top 50" for three years in a row.

Lead Nurturing - How to Be There When the Buyer is Ready to Buy

As many as 70% of the leads pursued by sales people are not really ready to buy.  But 80% of prospects who respond to marketing campaigns do buy eventually, within 24 months. So it’s absolutely imperative for marketers to establish a process for staying in touch with unqualified leads until they are ready to engage with a sales person. This is the job of the critically important marketing function called lead nurturing.

In this session, you will learn:

• How companies that use lead nurturing experience higher revenues, better campaign response rates and larger average order sizes
• The business case for lead nurturing
• How changing B2B buying behavior makes lead nurturing more important than ever
• How to decide who should be in charge of the nurturing function at your company
• The 5 steps involved in successful lead nurturing programs
• How to determine which leads need nurturing
• Segmenting your nurturing program for maximum relevance
• Examples of productive nurturing programs that quadruple lead generation campaign results
• The importance of marketing automation to successful lead nurturing today
• The top nurturing tactics, and how to build a nurturing communications flow
• 3 best practices that will take your nurturing program to the next level

RUTH STEVENS
President
eMarketing Strategy

Ruth consults on customer acquisition and retention, teaches marketing at Columbia Business School and is a guest blogger at HBR.org and Biznology.  She is past Chair of The DMA Business-to-Business Council, and past President of The Direct Marketing Club of New York. Crain’s BtoB Magazine named Ruth one of The 100 Most Influential People in Business Marketing.  She is the author of Maximizing Lead Generation: The Complete Guide for B2B Marketers, and Trade Show and Event Marketing.  Ruth serves as a Director of Edmund Optics, Inc., and The Business Information Industry Association.   She has held senior marketing positions at Time Warner, Ziff-Davis, and IBM and holds an MBA from Columbia University. 

Content Marketing to Enhance Lead Generation

Because buyers are researching services and products through online channels, they are entering the sales funnel further down into the buying process than ever before. The challenge to marketers is how to engage these buyers with content that captures their attention at all stages of the buying cycle.

• Content through the buying lifecycle—a quick history and how it’s changing
• Understanding your audience—the key to building great content
  • What do you know about your audience’s information needs, content preferences, favorite influencers? And—how to find out what you don’t know.
  • How to conduct a content audit and correct any gaps
  • How to determine what content sources would work best for your audience—not what content sources are trendiest
• How to build your audience with inbound and outbound content
• Develop prospect profiles from content choices
• Content registration best practices
• Overview of metrics that make sense

Michele Crockett
Vice President, Content Services
Penton Media

Michele is a B2B content expert who has led publishing teams in the transition from print-centric to all-media formats. She’s been a driving force in developing innovative custom publishing programs that position targeted, high-quality content to fuel effective lead-generation programs. She constantly looks for ways to help companies talk to their target customers in a meaningful way. Known as a business-oriented content expert among her colleagues at Penton Media, Michele has served in both editorial and publisher roles at Penton Media and has spearheaded the launch of several new content-driven revenue streams.

Elective Sessions

Measuring Lead Generation Marketing Effectiveness

Measuring the contribution of lead generation marketing can be challenging based on multi-touch marketing, the lack of closed loop reporting from the sales organization and long sales cycles. Marketing effectiveness and ROI improves with measured insights that help generate high quality leads more likely to convert at higher revenue levels.

This session will present measurement techniques to assess the incremental contribution of marketing initiatives along with analytics to identify areas for performance improvement. This includes techniques to measure, manage and deliver lead quality and lead nurturing programs.

Key topics include:

• Understanding the key drivers of Lead Gen ROI
• Choosing lead gen measurement techniques from basic to advanced
• Assessing lead quality vs. quantity
• Aligning marketing and sales through the purchase funnel
• Defining and assessing key funnel metrics
• Measuring content marketing and lead nurturing programs

Jim Lenskold
President
Lenskold Group

Jim is an international speaker and recognized marketing expert and author of the award-winning book Marketing ROI, The Path to Campaign, Customer and Corporate Profitability (McGraw Hill). Jim has published articles and presented internationally on the topic of applying marketing ROI and measurements to guide strategies and tactical planning. Jim’s career began at AT&T where developed the key measurement models for AT&T’s retention marketing programs and developed innovative approaches to maximize corporate profits in marketing investments. Between AT&T and Lenskold Group, Jim helped found a start-up technology company as the position of Executive Vice President of Sales & Marketing.

How to Optimize Websites and Landing Pages for Effective Engagement and Conversion

A website is a critical channel of communication between a B2B organization and its prospects and customers. This class will teach you best practices and proven ways to optimize a website and create landing pages that effectively attract, engage and convert visitors to leads and customers.

You will learn:

• Key elements of a website to capture leads and provide a great user experience
• Creating web forms that convert through use of impactful calls to action
• Optimizing website for search
• Using analytics to track website goals and visitor actions
• Creating, tracking and testing landing pages for highest conversion rates
• Choosing a content management system to create and manage web and landing pages

ANNA BARCELOS
Director of Client Solutions
ten24 Web Solutions

Anna is the Director of Client Solutions at ten24 Web Solutions, a MA-based single source provider of digital strategy, development and design that works with mid to large-sized clients to achieve the best results from their online initiatives. She has 18 years of integrated marketing communications experience spanning traditional, digital and social media. Anna has spent the last 10 years in online marketing helping B2B organizations integrate digital channels (web, search, email and social media) for prospect/customer engagement and lead generation. You can reach Anna on Twitter, LinkedIn , Google+ and email.

Now What Do I Do: Getting the Most out of Your Marketing Automation System

So, you’ve taken the next step toward owning and dominating your marketing programs – nice work. While there are so many different things you can do now to make your campaigns more effective and efficient, there are a few quick wins that will send you on your way toward becoming a Marketing Rockstar. This session will cover five essential items you can quickly and easily implement that will help you become more efficient, effective marketers. Before you know it, you will be off and running with marketing automation and ready for more!

KIM ROMAN
Senior Marketing Automation Consultant
Astadia

Kim has spent the last 10 years in marketing, over half of which has been heavily focused on demand generation and marketing automation. Working with companies to refine their marketing strategies to streamline activities and maximize assets, Kim is always on the cutting edge of marketing technology. Currently the Senior Marketing Automation Consultant at Astadia, Kim works with a variety of clients to get them set up with marketing automation software, improve upon their current MA programs and processes, and implement new, advanced strategies and techniques to improve output.

Business-to-Business Social Media Marketing - Really!

Across the corporate landscape, businesses ranging from banks to high-tech firms to plumbing supplies are successfully applying social media tools to connect with customers, channel partners and suppliers. And as they grow more confident with the tools, they're experimenting with sophisticated applications like social networks and customer co-creation.

Many B2B companies today have dozens of employees connecting with their markets through blogs, podcasts, Twitter and video. Some companies have thousands. These initiatives don't get the publicity of flashier consumer campaigns, but they deliver results in the form of reduced costs, improved lead quality, repeat business and enhance customer and partner relations.

In this online training session, you’ll learn:

• How to choose platforms for B2B social media marketing
• Tips for selling the program to internal stakeholders
• Organizing for social marketing success
• How to integrate multiple platforms to multiply message reach
• ROI and metrics for B2B social media

PAUL GILLIN
Writer, speaker and online marketing consultant

Paul is a writer, speaker and online marketing consultant. He specializes in helping business-to-business marketers use social media and quality content to reach customers. His books include The New Influencers (2007), Secrets of Social Media Marketing (2008), The Joy of Geocaching (co-authored with wife Dana in 2010) and Social Marketing to the Business Customer (co-authored with Eric Schwartzman).

Marketing and Sales Alignment: Building a Powerful, Predictable Revenue Machine

Companies that synchronize marketing and sales reap huge competitive and financial benefits.  Any business that wants to increase revenue and profitability must align marketing and sales to create a seamless end-to-end process.  The result: accelerated effectiveness and improved company value.    

• Defining the steps in the process: from identifying customers’ problems - to recognizing the gaps in your company - to providing the best solutions.
• How to align to improve lead management to fill the sales pipeline, reduce the cost of customer acquisition and maximize ROI.
• Improve the predictability of your quarterly lead and revenue plan.
• How to use efficient lead management to fill the sales pipeline.
• Choosing the most effective and profitable sales model.
• How to quantify the exact contribution of the marketing and sales departments.
• How to transform sales and marketing conflict into a winning partnership.

Christopher Ryan
CEO
Fusion Marketing Partners

Chris is CEO and founder of Fusion Marketing Partners and is a widely known expert in B2B marketing, sales strategy, systems, and processes.  As both a services provider and in-house marketing executive, Chris has played a transformative role in driving marketing and sales programs that achieve the desired results and create alignment and synergy between the sales and marketing operations. Chris has also written four books on marketing and information technology, including How to Create an Unstoppable Marketing and Sales Machine.