This document discusses developing an effective B2B content marketing and lead management program. It recommends defining buyer personas and aligning content to their needs at different stages of the buying process. A lead management process is outlined involving lead qualification, nurturing, and passing qualified leads to sales. Content should be distributed across channels and automated using the 4Rs - Reach, Response, Relationship, and Revenue. The goals are to engage prospects, move them through the funnel, and connect marketing and sales.

1. B2B Content Marketing Programmes
Keith Feighery

2. B2B Lead Management / Content Marketing

3. Terms and References

4. Attraction Marketing
• Inbound Marketing with intent – pull marketing versus push
marketing
• Using your content to build engagement with purpose, targeted
at your specific audience
• When you create content that pulls prospects, you are
differentiating your brand
– Customers recognise the value and follow trail back to your base
(website) to engage with you
– To ensure this works – create contagious content
• Your content will move buyers along in their buying process to
become a live sales opportunity in time

5. Sales Vs Buyer Process

6. Sales Process
• Prospecting
• Pre-qualifying
• Presenting
• Needs analysis
• Defining the solution
• Building Rapport
• Proposing
• Closing
• Negotiation
The ASG Group

7. Buyer Process
• The business case / rationale / justifying the expenditure
• Getting the purchase / budget sanctioned
• Following internal processes/procedures
• Getting buy-in from other managers /depts
• The competitive process
• Getting maximum value for money
• Defining requirements accurately
• Evaluating alternatives / alternative solutions
• Managing risk
• Making the right decision

8. Buyer Process Cont..
• Ensuring that all purchases fit with strategy, systems, etc.
• Change management / ensuring successful implementation
• Ensuring success post purchase / implementation
• Doing more for less
• Selecting the right technology
• Selecting the right vendor
• The contract and negotiation
• Post purchase project and vendor reviews

9. The Sales Funnel

10. Traditional Funnel

17. The Buyer Vs Sales Conundrum

18. The Problem
• Buyers engaging with sales further down the funnel as they
research more online
• Leads are not properly qualified by the marketing team before
they are handed over to sales
• There is no way of identifying accurately when a lead is ready to
be passed to sales as no clear definition of a lead
• There is no systematic process in place for managing and scoring
leads
• When a lead is disqualified by sales it does not go into a lead
nurturing programme
• There is no visibility in where exactly leads fall out of the funnel
• There is no connection between leads and converted sales

19. The solution
Lead Management

20. The 7 Key Rules for Connected Marketer
1. Develop Buyer Personas
– Understand your prospects, based on who they are, how they
behave, and where they interact in the sales cycle
1. Align content with buyers
– Determine what types of information your prospects will need,
based on who they are, how they behave and where they are in
their buying process
1. Consistency across channels
– Leverage as many channels as possible to get your message out –
and keep messages consistent
1. Let experts do the talking
– Solve problems – find experts who can articulate and discuss
problems and solutions

21. The 7 Key Rules for Connected Marketer
5. Multi-channel distributions
– Buyers have different preferences for consuming information –
you need to make sure content is accessible from all these
channels (Blogs, website, rss, twitter, facebook, business portals)
5. Automate the process (4 Rs)
– Reach: Use social media to engage with a broad audience (track all
interactions)
– Response: measure all response and their nature
– Relationship: Build relationship by delivering timely and
personalised message based on behaviour and profile
– Revenue: Lead nurturing must feed sales
5. Get Connected
– Make yourself a valuable resource for your prospects

22. Lead Management Process

23. Preparational Considerations
• Characteristics of best customers
– Who typically buys from you, who are least demading customers,
characteristics of easily and profitable closed sales
• Understanding the “Buyer Journey”
– Where did best leads come from, how do leads advance along the
funnel, which activities do your deals participate in (webinars,
demos etc..)
– How can you identify if a prospect has stalled
• Lead Qualification
– What are the specific characteristics of a marketing qualified lead
– What MQL (marekting qualified leads) typically convert
– What are the characteristics of leads that typcially need to go
through a nurturing programme

24. Key lessons to implement lead
management

25. Integrated Content Marketing Programme
• Always provide relevant information to buyers – not huge
amounts of it
– Through segmentation and testing you can target relevant
information to specific personas
• Cultivate an engaging and conversation voice in all buyer related
collateral
– Be frank and direct and focus content on the bottom line for buyers
(get to the nub of the issue upfront and the explain)
• Converse rather than intrude with prospectives
– Provide segmented targetted information on an opt-in basis (notify
prospects of upcoming webinars, new research, collaborative
reports etc..) – that they will find valuable

26. Relevant B2B Content

27. Advantages of Lead Management
• Optimises marketing impact on sales
– Gives marketers better visibility into the sales pipeline, helps
marketing deliver better ready-to-buy leads to sales,
– reduces cost of acquistion to generate sales, enables more efficient
sales force
• Ties sales and marketing closer together
– Ties marketing process directly to the bottom line - # of marketing
qualified leads to converted sales, connects online buyer behaviour
with readiness to buy
• Helps marketing treat customer relationships like corporate
assets
– Extend lead management to live customers
– Foster and nurture closer customer relationships, develop an
engaged community, create customer advocates

28. Content Programme

29. Content Strategy B2B
• Listen and Understand your audience and their behaviour
patterns
• Map out all the stages of your buyer cycles
• Create specific personas for your prospects and clients
• Identify specific needs for each of your buyer personas along the
buyer cycle
• Develop content for each buyer stage
• Develop a content development schedule
• Allocate resources or identify third parties to produce specific
content
• Develop a clear voice and personality for your content
• Solicit feedback from your prospects, customers and community

30. B2B content marketing
• Create valuable content that is of real interest to your customers,
community or prospects
• Prospective customers engage with sales teams later in the
funnel due to online information
• Providing content that pre-identified types and roles of
customers want and need
• Providing content that maps directly to the different stages of the
buyer cycle
• Producing and sharing content that your community and
prospective customers need, value and will potentially share
• Distributing content where your customers and prospects
coalesce online

31. Business to Business Case Studies

32. Eloqua

33. Genius

34. Marketo

35. Alterian

36. Pardot

37. Salesforce.com

38. B2B Business Solutions

39. Intuit Business Services

40. Hubspot

41. American Express

42. Altimeter Group

43. Realex Payment