Introduction to B2B Demand Generation

INTRODUCTION TO

Demand Generation

“Our customers do not decide to start
searching for solutions to their problems
because we decided to run a campaign.
Demand is ‘always on’, 24 hours a day,
7 days a week. So why shouldn’t your
marketing be?”
Michael Brenner - Director Online/Social Marketing SAP

BACKGROUND

No longer tactical ->
Now strategic

Lead Generation and
‘awareness building’ out,
holistic approach - guiding the
buyer to buy, in.

BACKGROUND

Automation - Responds to the buyer’s cycle
- interest level
- area of interest
- timing

Individual buyer - 1-to-1
Marketing Automation is key.
Continuous engagement.

1. Focusing on the Buyer
2. Adopting an operations
mindset

We engage on the
buyer’s terms

Redesign programs from the ground-up,
starting with their journey.

A committee.
The SWAT team of buying a unit of people.

So, we pull,
not push.
And scale one to one
interactions.

We redefine our activities
in terms of their contribution to
revenue, not leads or brand.

We have a new architecture
for campaigns and processes.

And we have continuity
in touch points.
We align with the buyer’s phases,
use the buyer’s triggers,
focus on sequenced engagement that is
right place, right time.

Nurtured leads have
2x bid-win ratio.
Nurtured leads have a
47% higher average order value.

Closed loop (more on that later)
B2B companies have
+146% profit in 2 years...
poor measurement organizations
have -23.4% profit.

Every program must start with a
targeted buyer, and rationalize
content and pacing of nurturing in
reference to the buyer’s decision
making process.

Advanced B2B organizations have shared
objectives with Sales and Marketing, and
common lead stage definitions.

This is now the minimum
requirement to run Marketo and
SFDC successfully.

B2B organizations:
44% use last touch point
21% split across multiple
11% use market testing
3% use modeling
The latter 2 are the most
insightful.

Only 50% have analytics.
Very few are forecasting.
Even fewer are reporting through
to revenue.

This sounds like
a lot of work.

It is.
But it’s work that creates an
engine, rather than work that
creates a one-time impact.
So we get compounding benefits.

Acknowledgement: This is simpliﬁed and optimistic.

Only 1/3 organizations have go-to
market based on a target market.

MESSAGING
80% of ‘unique benefits’ are not
unique or valued by customers.

SEGMENTATION
What sets good from great.
Industry - good
Buyer’s timing (stage) great segmentation.

Because 2/3 of all buyers will
make a decision in more than

1mth/1qtr

(short/long buying cycle)

Our new focus is to maximize
lifetime customer value.
No longer are we campaigning to
create MQLs, or even to close sales.

Because a happy customer...
Will buy again, and again,
in the future.

One day,
we will measure our success by
customer lifetime value.

Why aren’t we doing
this already?

B2B marketing has been on the
wrong track for a while.
B2C marketing is a large influence
and comes from the ‘Mad Men’ era
that had product-focused messaging.

So, we’ll all agree that
we are B2B marketers.
And that is very unrelated to
B2C marketing.

Buyers come first, with their rational,
complex business needs.
Relationships matter greatly,
not transactions.

The B2B buyer is searching
for solutions to
specific business challenges.
(Their pain points)

We will support their buying process,

one to one.

Because a successful B2B Marketing and Sales
group builds customer relationships that support
and drive additional purchases
over the long time horizon.

Marketing and Sales
will anticipate and address the
diverse set of B2B buyer’s concerns
throughout the buying process.

1/3 of companies are now linking
revenue to marketing.
That is what is needed to succeed in this new
world of Buying 2.0 and B2B marketing.

Top of funnel
Interruptive
Product centric
Collateral heavy
Messaging without regard to buying cycle
Siloed channels

The old tactics won’t work anymore.
We will be a unified team, cross channel and
focused on the buyer.

It won’t be without challenges.
B2B contributes more than 50% of
economic activity.
But total marketing and
advertising spend is just 35% of
the total.

The buying group
has also shrunk.
So there are less
actual buyers now.

Our campaign mentality led us to measure
number of emails sent, number opened,
number of event attendees, number of
web page visitors, number of media hits.

We need to measure deals
won, or net increase in
revenue to know if we’re
successful.

To build and manage a new set of
integrated B2B demand generation
programs that can consistently and
repeatably convert prospects into
lifetime customers.

2005 was the year of
incubating leads from
INQ to MQL
2010 saw a shift to
INQ to WON

We have some
catching up to do.

Think in terms of how our
contributino align to moving
buyers down an integrated
(Marketing and Sales) B2B
demand generation funnel.

The best in class
Have granular knowledge of the buyer and
their needs throughout the buying process

Understand the key buyer personas:
- Demographic and behavioural characteristics
that define these buyers
- Big hairy business problems these buyers face

Plus the best have a complete portfolio
of content developed to address
targeted buyer persona needs at every stage
of their buying process.

Universal Lead Definition
Common Sales and Marketing language
Definition of a sales ready lead for each persona
Plus SLAs that clearly govern the rules of
marketing and sales in moving the buyer down
from INQ to Closed/WON

Closed Loop

Marketing in connected to the transactional register so
marketing can be linked directly to revenue.

- Marketing has a clear revenue target for
demand generation activities.
- Analysis is done to link content to closed sales.
- Conversion rates through each stage are
analyzed to fin dopportunities for imporvement
to the system efficiency.

One last detail
Sarbanes-Oxley - a law that sets standards for
how public company boards, management and
public accounting makes decisions.
It means more people involved, more diligence.
This changed B2B buying ~10 years ago.

Have more access to information
Have more white noise
Have more required validation
Have more colleagues in the process
There’s less buyers in total

72% of the time, the motivation for purchase is
“fit for a specific need at a specific time”

The No. 1 driver for elevated buying activity:
“A business problem has created a need to
research and find a solution”

Our target audience is constantly changing, and
made up of individuals with different interests
and motivations.

An end user may surface a new idea,
build a business case, but the purchasing
decision and negotiation are owned by a
completely different person.

Online content is no longer tactical.
It is strategic.
That’s because Buyer 2.0 engages with content
not just for awareness, but to leverage sources
to make serious and substantive decisions.

The result of their research determines
- potential candidates
- comparison criteria
- formalizes a purchase plan

During research, 42% of buyers
evaluate 4 or more suppliers.
But only 26% source quotes from 4 or more.

That’s why generating awareness, and trying to
get names of prospects no longer works.
We manage a substantial one to one content
based dialogue with B2B buyers in the demand
generation process, to win more deals and book
more revenue.

B2B Marketers engage prospects too late.
Before thinking of buying, customers are trying to sense
the next issue or problem they will face.
They research, read thought leaders, talk to people, look
for examples that will help clarify their next move. They
are researchers looking for content. Marketers need to
get involved at this stage.

Long before an RFP.

B2B Marketers need to become educators
and facilitators.
Actively helping customers articulate a need
they may not have known they had.
Only when a buyer has identified a need and
wishes to make a purchase can marketing
move into lead generation mode.

Only 5% of research is done close to a
purchase decision.

Buyers seek intelligence they can trust to
support their decision making process.

Buyers have moved online for research.
They rate Online/Virtual Tradeshows and
Search Engines as top of the tools they use.

Buyers are using online content, and online
word of mouth tools like social media.

We must know our specific buyer, and the
best fit for our B2B demand generation
programs and content, to win.

The Buyer’s Critical Path
The assembly of coherent engagement of
buying-stage issues, content and channels
that constitute true value, substantive
dialogue with the prospective buyer.

The Buyer’s Questions
Buyer 2.0 may have moved online, but still
asks the same questions and has the same
stages as 20 years ago.
We can learn from consultative and
challenger selling methods.
This is our foundation.

Buying stages
Our buyer only spends 5% of his time in
Satisfaction.
He may spend up to 79% of his time in
Acknowledgement. Here, he is open to our
messaging.

Buying stages
But in Acknowledgement, he is on the fence.
Demand Generation needs to move this
buyer from Acknowledgement to Decision.

The Traditional Buying Process
Is actually just Criteria -> Selection.

The Buying Process
Needs don’t ultimately determine
the buying process.
Real problems do.

Education
Therefore, education can help to frame an
approach to Buyer 2.0’s problem, and in
doing so, move him to a final decision.

A note on Inbound Sales Calls
These guys are already at ‘Investigation’.
They have moved past Decision, Criteria and
Measurement!

Changing our attention
No more selling. No more interruptions.
Education and assistance.

- Shift attention to MOFU
- Focus on continuity of buyer’s journey
- Building relationship (one content offer at
a time).
- Staying in constant (appropriate) nurturing
contact
- Processes for handoffs and qualification
- Systems that drive continuous, efficient,
sustainable demand generation processes

Buyer 2.0’s Agenda
Is self-driven education, to solve business
problems - to find solutions.

Content and campaigns must add value to
the buyer’s own process and engage him
where and when he is in his buying process.

Content must be highly
relevant to his pain points
and truly valuable.

Engagement

Lead with pain points,
not products

Critical Path

Focus on personas and their
content consumption process

Dialogue

Develop content that is
substantive, that
engages buyers

Nurturing

Construct automated campaigns
that are one to one, driven by
buyer pull, not vendor push

Organic Campaign
Structure

Integrate content and campaigns
across inbound and outbound
channels, and make demand
generation more organic, less
interruptive.

B2B Marketing, especially
technology markets, has long
been dominated by a ‘product
marketing’ mindset.

So, insights are critical to
identifying and capitalizing on
scale opportunities in consumer
markets - which may be a scope
far beyond the mere product or
service being offered.

B2B Buyers buy to solve problems.
Not merely to meet needs.
Understanding and addressing a buyer’s
most painful problems is integral to getting
Buyer 2.0 off the fence.

Our B2B Demand Generation program
starts with our buyer’s pain points, then
addresses these pain points.
Then we map them to the
ultimate delivery of a solution.
This is the core of our go to market strategy.

Focusing on pain points enables us to very
granularly analyze the process our
targeted buyer will go through to
address his/her problem.
This helps us design high targetd programs
for engagement, acquisition and nurturing.

We connect the dots between pain points
and an eventual purchase through our
demand generation programs.
This means we analyze, understand and
leverage the process that B2B buyers go
through when they connect the dots
themselves.

The Critical Path is a set of predictable and
repeatable buyer journeys that we can
position our demand generation programs to
facilitate, and that can serve as the
foundation for a successful, scalable and
sustainable business.

We need to understand
- The Buyer Personas that constitute the
differentiated but parallel critical paths.
- The content consumption process of each
of these personas (the steps on the path).

Product Marketers have one idea of what a
‘persona’ is. Often this is about product use,
in a particular situation. These may be used
by UI or UX folks.
We want Buyer Personas.
Demographics matter, but we want to
know the well trodden paths of buyers as
they consume content and go through
their buyer education process.

- What content did they read?
- What mediums did they use
to consume content?

We will have more answers when
we analyze the performance of
our own marketing programs.
What is the engagement with
our inbound and outbound
content?

The ‘New Rule’ for
Buyer Persona Creation

Understanding not only who your buyer
personas are but also how they engage in
the buying cycle (and how the buying
process is defined) is a ‘new rule’ for the
creation of buyer personas.

- We have a lower volume of prospects and
customers than consumer marketing
- It is easier to define specific persona
segments!

Some math:
x personas
y buying stages for each persona
z content steps for each buying stage
(i industry segment - may not be required)
xyz(i) = a lot of content.
So we want to focus on 3 primary
personas.

NEXT STEP
We carefully analyze the buying process
of each of the personas and specifically
analyze the content each tends to
consume, and the questions each tends to
ask, at each of the stages.
This is the basis for our content marketing
program, our nurturing and our scoring
models.

Let’s reframe our thinking to focus on
our customers’ buying process,
rather than our selling process.

The lifetime of our programs is much, much
longer than traditional, calendar-based
campaigns.
We will deliver results over years, not just
months or weeks.
And we can refine it all along the way.

Sometimes, our persona analysis will reveal
additional personas. Procurement managers,
or Lead Developers, for example.
We need to account for Phase-Specific
Buyer Personas.

ROI Characteristics of Marketing
will shift dramatically.
The long-tail of the program will far offset
the initial investment, so it will yield ROI that
is many times what’s been expected from
B2B Marketing in the past.

With internet-based dialogue, our content
may account for up to 95% of
the Buyer’s Journey.
(SiriusDecisions estimates the average
B2B buyer is 70% through their journey
when they first speak to someone in Sales.)

Demand Generation
content must:
- Cover critical information is on the buyer’s mind, at each
stage of the buying process
- Convey insights on specific topics and issue aligned to the
buyer’s pain points
- Carry the buying process forward
- Be delivered via the right channel, at the right time and in
the right voice
- Be closely aligned to each persona’s buying cycle and
content consumption process

Lead Nurturing 101
1. Know something about our buyer (based on
‘listening’ to his/her needs, pain points or timing).
2. Tee up an appropriate content offer
targeted at addressing what you believe are
the buyer’s content needs at that moment.
3. Gauge how the buyer reacts, and based
on that reaction, tee up the next offer.

We learn about the buyer every
time we offer something.
And we progress buyers
through their journey with
what we offer.

Initial Human
Contact

Initial Buyer
Interest

Sales Follow
Up

Sales
Nurturing

Collect Buyer
Insights &
Route

Follow up with
Content Offer

Marketing
Nurturing

More Buyer Intrest and Action

Inbound Marketing

Outbound Marketing

Our new buyer-pull
architecture consists of a
matrix of these nurturing loops.
When mapped out, it looks like an
operational flowchart, built around a pattern
of if/then statements.

Moving nurturing to a
buyer-pull architecture
- Lauching campaigns via a buyer trigger, not a mass push
- Serving up campaign content to match where the buyer
is in his/her buying process
- Segmenting campaigns by buyer persona
- Using each phase of engagement with a buyer to do
progressive profiling
- Driving each next touchpoint in a campaign via lead
scoring and routing logic

Demand Generation
campaigns are different

They have an
organic campaign structure.
This means that content and campaigns across
inbound and outbound channels are integrated.

This makes demand generation
less interruptive.

Inbound and Outbound
both have their place.
Different channels are preferred at
different stages of the buying process.
Plus, the proportion of B2B leads via
inbound is increasing.

A typical B2B buyer is operating
on a massively multichannel basis.
They consume content in parallel
across multiple channels.

Four Implications for our B2B
Demand Gen approach

1. The need for a holistic strategy
2. The need for orchestration
3. The importance of catalyst
content
4. The importance of ‘getting found’

Holistic Strategy
Our strategy addresses a total
dialogue with each buyer, across
inbound and outbound channels.
ie if a buyer tends to engage with blogs when they are first
understanding their problem, then we need early-stage
content, in the blog medium.

Currently, more than half of all
new inquiries are generated
through the Web.
In 12 months, it will be nearly
75%.

Don’t be fooled by our impressions
of a certain medium.
It is about what our buyers prefer.
For example, 32% of IT decision makers said email is
the best way to communicate with them.
But only 20% of marketers thought that.

We must re-orient our outbound
to engage when most
appropriate.
Email marketing - less effective for
front-end engagement/lead
acquisition, but more important and
effective for lead nurturing.

What about the ‘From’?
Research shows that early stage email content
should come from trusted resources and
thought leaders (not a sales team member).
Later in the process, an email coming from a
sales team member makes more sense,
especially after there has been an initial
engagement.

Outbound channels require a
pre-existing relationship with a buyer,
thus are more effective downstream for
nurturing, not upstream at the
engagement stage.

2. Orchestration
We have a total view of a buyer’s interactions
across both inbound and outbound.
From early stage, to final nurture before
a sales-ready lead is handed off.
We tie all our activity to a final revenue
outcome, so that we can measure these
interactions and tune our content and
campaigns over time.

The buyer always has a next logical
step in the form of a content offer.

Progressive Profiling
We capture critical insights about the
buyer via a pattern of progressive
profiling that we use to target
subsequent content offers and better
score/qualify the lead.

Research suggests there is a 50:1 ratio
on a download, no form:form.
The key is to differentiate broad-level
engagement of anonymous buyers from
targeted nurturing of specific, identified buyers.
And we ask a little more of a buyer each time we
interact with them. That’s progressive profiling.

The middle layer - the critical layer - of
content in B2B Demand Gen is
catalyst content.
This is the bridge between engagement
and nurturing.
Between anonymous and known.

Catalyst content is our keystone.

What content has the unique ability
to not only get B2B buyers to give up
core contact information,
but also to be open to (and really want)
follow-up content delivered via
nurturing?

For Buyer 2.0,
he won’t make the leap between
unstructured/anonymous/inbound
interactions to
structured/known/outbound
interactions without a catalyst.

Examples of Catalyst Content
- Highest value White Paper
This content represents our answers to Buyer
2.0’s questions about buying process and pain
points, which we center all our content around.
- Or it may be the jewel of a very well planned
outbound campaign that centers on the central
pain point that is the optimal point of interaction
with a potential buyer.

Buyer 2.0 should make his way
to this content.
Because it is a line in the sand.
It is also the focal point in planning
both upstream engagement activities
and downstream nurturing activities.
Everything must tie into our catalyst
content in some way.

The content of our programs must
be truly substantive and helpful
to the buyer.
And our programs must immediately
respond once the buyer initiates
outreach.

We have an always-on demand
strategy that utilizes an effective
inbound marketing approach.
- Optimized Website
- Consistent Paid Search
- Drip Nurture Programs
- Marketing Automation

“The cost of going in and out of the
marketplace with time-bound
campaigns often cannot compare to an
effective always-on campaign.”
- Michael Brenner

Adopting an Operations
Mindset

Leads have too-often equated with net-new
email addresses.
There has been little follow-through after
initial lead acquisition.
B2B Marketers have historically been
focused at the top of the funnel - generating
‘awareness’ with interruptions.

We need to constantly monitor
and proactively manage leads at
all stages of maturity.
We approach both the continuous education of
buyers, and the qualification of them as leads
(powered by marketing automation) as literally a
factory-like operation.

And we use the operations
mindset of continuous
improvement.
Yep, just like Toyota.

With this mindset, we use
operations best practices like
understanding process flow,
interdependencies, throughput,
cycle times and bottlenecks, as
the basis for how we optimize
our operation.

The 5 Strategic
Building Blocks

1. Outputs
2. Framework
3. Process
4. Performance
5. Continuous management

1. Outputs
Identify our objectives - both in
terms of revenues and our
definition of a qualified lead.

2. Framework
Work backwards through the
qualification stages that are
required to get to our outputs clearly defining what must occur
at each stage and the role of
sales and marketing.

3. Process
Map out the flows of content
offers, buyer profiling, lead
scoring and nurturing that will
move a buyer through our
qualification stages.

4. Performance
Run the ‘reverse funnel math’ - ie
the total lead throughput and
conversion rates throughout our
demand generation program,
that will repeatably deliver
against our objectives.

5. Continuous management
Building and operating our
demand generation program that
is designed to be run in a
continuous, always-on state,
24/7.

Outputs
First, we want to know the end revenue
objectives we intend to enable.
Second, we want to know what a
qualified lead looks like. ie, the one that
will have the highest potential to turn
into revenue.

Clear hand-off
- Who is our ideal prospect?
- What stage are they typically at in their buying
process?
- What are their questions?
- What education have they done, and what do
they need to do next?
- What does their organization look like, and what
is their role in that organization?
- What is their budget, authority, timing and needs?

We answer these questions for each of
our key personas.

The anchor of our B2B Demand
Generation system is being able to say
to generate X revenue, we need Y
sales-ready leads (at our current win
rate), that have Z characteristics.

Qualification characteristics
1. Give us a better sense of the differences between
larger populations of prospects, vs those buyers that are
ready to puchase.
2. Help us better manage middle of funnel (MOFU)
interactions by establishing nuances to the stages of
interaction.
3. Help us be more prescriptive in identifying operational
bottlenecks and/or underperformance at any point in our
Demand Gen system.

We map out the flows of content
offers, buyer profiling, lead scoring
and nurturing that will move a buyer
through our qualification stages.

Content Offers
Discrete points of engagement with
buyers, which may occur via email,
Web or other mechanism.
“Dialogue” with our buyer.

Buyer Profiling
Each content offer should garner a more
complete picture of a buyer’s profile and thus
support further lead qualification.
This occurs via form data and contentbased behaviours, such as ‘clicking through’
or downloading content.
We want to capture and use this to do ongoing,
continuous profiling.

Lead Scoring (Logic)
This is the model we use to decide where our
buyer is in his/her journey (to becoming a
qualified lead).
Based on a combination of factors - explicit
information about the buyer, and implicit
information based on their behaviours.

Nurturing Logic
The threading, routing and looping of our buyer
- depending on their interactions with our
demand generation system.
This is the overall organization of our flowchart.

We’re building a repeatable,
automatable system.

One that we can measure with
performance metrics, and
baselines.
This way we can better understand how the
flow through our stages of buyer interactions
will consistently lead to the right volume and
quality of sales-ready leads.

Starting with the volume of sales we need, at a given
sale amount, we consider the win rate, the work the
math back upwards, to figure out how many sales
opportunities had to be created, how many leads
existed at each conversion stage before that, and given
the conversion rate at each stage, how many inbound
and outbound impressions per time period must be
generated at the top of the funnel.
(This usually results in a ridiculously large number)

We can check our progress against
industry benchmarks from
SiriusDecisions.

Our 3 Benefits
1. Our numbers are grounded. TOFU and BOFU.
2. We have a basis for reviewing and
benchmarking.
3. We have a basis for diagnosing opportunities
to improve performance at specific stages.

The Major Leap Forward
Moving from a push/time-based mindset for
campaigns to the idea of B2B Demand
Generation as a continuously-operating (and
continuously refined) process.
It is a living, breathing system - a lead factor.

We continually monitor
buyers’ progress
A live, real-time dashboard does this.
With 2 views:
- Visibility into buyer personas’ critical paths
and how they are performing
- Monitoring of back-office metrics for our lead
management process - especially real-time
performance of lead stage conversions.

This enables us to tune our
content offers, our nurturing logic
and our lead scoring model.
Daily, Weekly, Monthly.
We make incremental and continuous tweaks to
improve system performance.

This is a big change for a
marketing team.

New Frameworks to balance
our Demand Equation

We adopt and ingrain new,
sophisticated management frameworks
- ones that can help us achieve our dual
objectives and weave them together, so
that we are scalable, effective and
integrated.

1. Content Marketing
The core of our engine.
The goal is to orchestrate the
delivery of the right content to the
right buyer in the right place, at the
right time.

We use buyer insights, to create
categories, topics and themes, then
integrate multiple touchpoints in
different mediums.
Content marketing is the buyerfacing framework.

2. Lead Management
This is the ‘back office’ framework.
It governs the roles and actions of marketing and
sales team members throughout the lead
qualification process.
It helps us deliver leads that are 100% aligned
with sales’ expectations.
Its core is the Lead Qualification model, which
defines stages, definitions and criteria (and is
common to sales and marketing).

3. Demand Process Integration
This is the weaving that brings content
marketing together with lead management
to integrate a pattern of content offers on
one hand, with buyer profiling and lead
qualification on the other hand.
This is the routing, the scoring and the
nurturing models.

4 Elements of Content Marketing
1. Defining Buyer Personas and their
influence in the buying process
2. Mapping core buying process steps and
associated content consumption
3. Building a content marketing plan
4. Managing content marketing
performance

An influence process diagram can helps us
visualize the flow of content and the path of
influence through a given B2B buying
decision-making process.

But we want to dig deeper.
What are the key pain points and
motivations for this persona to engage in a
purchase process?
How does this buyer go about finding
answers to key questions at critical stages?
Which other personas is this one aligned to,
or very similar to?

For secondary personas, we will use
segmenting to deliver slightly altered
messaging.

Mapping core buying process steps and
associated content consumption
We take our insights into the buying
influence process, and our primary
personas, and dig into the formal process
each goes through in the evolution from
pain point to deciding on a final solution.
We want granular, specific, defined.

Our buyer personas need to be complete
with how they consume their information
online and offline.
Psychographic and demographic
information are just the starting point.

We generate diagrams that show our
hypothesis for how we will align content
consumption to the core buying process.
This will show channels, and types of
content that matter in each stage in the B2B
buying process.
ie When do targets use search and social?
When will they respond to email?

Our content will be engaged and
substantive, for a narrowly-defined
set of needs that is 100% aligned
with accelerating the
B2B buying process.

Draft working plan
We bake our mapping of the B2B buying
process and associated content consumption
process and create our first working plan.
It covers the content items, themes and
programs we believe will address Buyer 2.0’s
needs, via specific channels, at specific points
in the buying process.

We must answer the real questions
our customers are asking.

Maybe it’s lifetime value.
Maybe it’s total price.
Maybe they want to know how the
products makes them a hero/
famous/lean/popular.

Helping Buyer 2.0
How can we help him do his job better?
How can we anticipate and meet his
needs so he sees us as a trusted source of
information?
We need to give his purchases a content.

Above all else
We are educating and establishing trust as
part of our goal: to sell something to our
buyer.
So the framework and context we supply
is not only helpful, but also helps the buyer
see the solution from our point of view.

We want the buyer to realize/draw the
conclusion that our solution is the best.
But to get there, we go through the
buyer’s pain points, the buyer’s needs and
the buyer’s process.
That way, we build a trusted relationship.

That’s a very simple version of a Content
Marketing Plan matrix.
The working document needs to include
details on net-new content pieces to be
produced.

Every one of our content offers
(a content piece and nurturing email, for
example)
It must not only answer questions, it must drive the
nurturing dialogue forward with the target buyer.
Thus, the dialogue thread in the Matrix should go
from initial pain point through to teeing the buyer up
for the ‘ask’ (ready to ask more about our product/
service and wanting to engage with our sales team)

The Nuances
- How can content align with our progressive profiling
questions and content behavioural tracking/scoring to
drive our nurturing and scoring logic?
- How will we handle segmentation against primary vs
secondary personas? What needs separate content, and
where can we use dynamic content?
- Are we set up to engage with a buyer who is further
down the path in his buying process but goes looking for
content like ours? Will we be found? Can we bring him
into our core program?

Managing Content Marketing
Performance
- We monitor basic performance with typical metrics
(sends, opens, etc) plus;
- Prospect Acquisition - How predictive are certain
content items of successful prospect acquisition?
- Lead stage conversion rates - How successful are
content items at getting the buyer to take the next step?
- Revenue - How predictive of revenue outcomes are
certain content items? And in what sequence?

Lead management is
‘listening’ to our buyer.
It complements our
content marketing.

It tells us how well our buyers are
moving through our programs.

Lead management also helps to
specify the roles and responsibilities
for sales and marketing in the B2B
Demand Generation process.

And how do we know we’re moving
along with a buyer at an
appropriate pace?
Our program should only move as
quickly as the buyer.

Lead Management is the ‘back
office’ view of what is happening.

The 4 Elements of Lead
Management
1. Aligning Marketing and Sales around common
objectives
2. Defining a qualified lead
3. Establishing an integrated lead qualification
process
4. Managing Lead Management performance

1. Alignment
Qualitative objective Ideal Buyer Target
Quantitative objective Revenue Targets

We also need to review our lead
management definitions and
processes that are already in place.

So we will ‘SWOT’ our existing lead
management definitions, and
processes.
Identifying gaps will create a
common basis for understanding
why we need to evolve.

2. Defining a qualified lead
What is the ideal state when a buyer will be
ready to engage with a sales team member?
How far should Marketing take the buyer, before
passing it along to the sales team?
It is this specific point that is the core.

MQL vs SAL
SiriusDecisions, in their Demand Waterfall,
show that alignment between Sales and
Marketing sticks when sales has to confirm that
a lead meets the qualification criteria.
This is an SAL or SRL.

Ultimately, our planning here must be
guided by how Buyer 2.0 wants to engage.
We can’t force an artificial qualification
point if it doesn’t suit our buyer.
Sales should not engage before the buyer
wants to move to this stage (unless a buyer is
saying ‘contact me’).

Successful lead management yields a lower
quantity of leads.

Successful lead management
yields a lower quantity of leads.

2 Parts of Qualification
1. Firm-determined - demographic/
firmographic factors - role, authority, industry,
size of company.
What’s the minimum level of information we
need about him?
Who are the various influencers that should
be part of the dialogue?
Who do we NOT want?

2 Parts of Qualification
2. Buyer-determined - behavioural factors
Content behaviours - number of
engagements, engagement with specific
content pieces, web pages?
Online search strings change?
Recency or frequency of visit?
Critical path of content that indicates
progression in buying journey?

BANT
BANT is not a separate criteria.
Needs to be embedded in qualified lead
definition - in both demographic and
behavioural level.
Remember, that buyers will be self-reporting
this data when engaging with marketing, so
certain data may not be shared.
‘Timing’ should be inferred by behaviour.

3. Establishing an Integration
Lead Qualification Process
A process that both Sales and
Marketing participate in.
Both parties are involved in
delivering to one set of objectives.

We design a process with clear
objectives at each stage, defined
roles for marketing and sales in the
process, and clear SLAs between
both.

- What occurs before a lead becomes qualified?
(Marketing’s domain)
- What happens after a lead becomes qualified?
(Sales’ domain)

Why SiriusDecisions?
Because they’ve been doing this for a decade.

Only some leads go to sales.
Some will even come back from sales.
There is always clear separation between
marketing’s and sales’ roles.
SLAs cover things like a lead can be returned to
marketing, and sales must act on an MQL within
a set timeframe.

Overall, we should pay attention to Buyer 2.0
patterns, to determine if he is qualified.
Content offers should be closely tied to what is
being vetted at each stage of the lead
qualification process.
Lead qualification happens in a number of
granular steps.

4. Managing Lead Management
Performance

What percentage of quarterly sales revenue (in
terms of leads) is marketing responsible?
how many leads does sales need to ensure they
hit revenue targets?
How many overall responses need to be
generated in order to arrive at the required
number of qualified leads?
What are the organizations conversion rates?
(reponse to lead and leads to sale)

Metrics to measure
Prospect Acquisition Performance (TOFU)

Number of prospects per channel, cost of prospects per
channel, cost per revenue per channel

Lead stage conversion rates (MOFU)

Rates between lead stages, total rate of conversion initial lead
to closed revenue.

Demand Generation Program ROI

Number of prospects acquired, number of Sales Qualified
Leads/Sales Opportunities created, total value of current
Sales Qualified Leads/Sales Opportunities at any point in time,
and ROI investment ratios.

Framework 3:
Demand Process Integration

We translate our content marketing and
lead management strategy into the right
language - a process management
language - to make the most of our
marketing automation.

This is the bridge between
“Focusing on the Buyer” and
“Adopting an Operations Mindset”

We accomplish 2 things
1. Weaving - make content marketing and lead
management work as one - we provide value to the
buyer and simultaneously systematically move the
buyer through our lead qualification.
We go beyond using content-offer feedback, we
also use demographic and behavioural lead
qualification criteria to score, qualify and route our
lead. This drives a two way content-based
‘dialogue’ that delivers offers, and profiles the buyer.

We accomplish 2 things
2. Operationalizing - we have clearly defined steps
and decision points. Our goal is to construct a
continuous B2B demand generation system that
constantly transforms raw buyer interest into
qualified leads.
No more military ‘campaigns’ - our programs have
many potential, buyer-driven options.

Models that ground Demand Process
Integration
- The Engagement, Acquisition and
Nurturing sequence

The first step is how to start the dialogue
with substantive content assets based on
whatever issue is on the mind of the buyer,
upstream in his buying process.
Then we get the buyer to opt in to nurturing.
But an email address is not a lead, unless
they’ve bought in.

Integration
- Hierachical, rationalized nurturing layers

When building nurture tracks, there should
always be a clear sense of demand
generation route that a given buyer should
go down under ideal circumstances.
If not ideal circumstances, there should be
a different clear path, and another.
Every buyer should be in a nurture track.

3 Primary Layers
- The Buying Cycle Content Track
- The Promotional Content Track
- The Drop Content Track

Buying Cycle Track
The most ideal path, with all the answers.
Promotional Track
Dynamic layer - ever changing set of
content offers to re-engage buyers or
onramp prospects
Drip Nurture Track
For when buyers go cold. Stay top of mind.

Integration
- Operations theory best practices

The continuum of process analysis,
management and optimization.

Achieving Demand Process Integration
3 steps in the lifecycle:
- Demand process analysis
- Demand process logic
- Demand process execution and
optimization

Process Analysis
Buyer persona segmentation - main tracks and
related tracks
Dialogue thread planning - 3-10 conceptual
steps to go from ‘dating’ to ‘marriage’
Lead production planning - Tie dialogue points
to desired outcomes of lead management.
Modeling of how personas flow through the
system to lead to revenue outcomes

Process Logic
Nurturing Logic - Define discrete buying cycle
steps, tied together in a sequence. Align steps
to the lead qualification stages. Then align
Promo Content steps as second-chance offers.
Adjusting timing and volume of follow up. If it’s
a bottleneck, add more PC steps to it.
Also set up on ramps (discrete outbound offers,
sales-launches nurtures to net new buyers).
Build drip track with time-based touch points.

Process Logic
Lead Scoring Logic - Connect the dots between
lead nurturing and revenue outcomes.
Align to lead qualification stages. Use demoand behavioural. Identify progressive profiling.
Set up score thresholds. Increasing order of
magnitude. Scoring to drive buyer through
nurturing logic. Separate scoring by persona.
Keep it simple enough to manage.

Process Logic
Routing and assignment Logic - Enter/exit
programs, accelerate through a program.
Reroute to appropriate track (from progressive
profiling result).
Buyers who want to talk asap (escape hatches).
Late stage buyer - catch up questions and
content.
Hand off of leads to sales.

Process Logic
Acquisition Logic - Bridge between engagement
and nurturing.
Think about all channels you engage the buyer.
How to funnel all of that cross channel
engagement toward entry into our core buying
cycle content nurture track?
Also do quantitative modeling to show number
of leads per channel and % contribution vs all
TOFU sources.

Process Execution
We must intervene to improve the performance
dynamics of the overall system.
We establish a regular cadence for reviewing
the performance of our programs.
We start with a few contacts, ramp up and then
get our ‘steady state’ live and running.

Process Execution
We always want to check the efficiency and
integrity of the entire, closed-loop system.
How effectively is our system helping us
convert raw buyer engagement into sales
ready, qualified leads?

Analysis
- Demand Process Capacity
- Demand Process Velocity
- System Balance
- Integrity of nurturing logic
- Ongoing conversion rates at each
(Ideal) Content offer/Promo Content step
- Lead scoring accuracy
- Routing/assignment errors

- New roles as B2B Marketers
- New skills
- Reorganizing our team
- Changing the nature of engagement with sales
- New (documented) processes and (closed
loop) systems to support programs
- Rethinking marketing investments
- Committing to change

Our new, nuanced role, upstream from our sales
teams, is to engage, acquire, and nurture
prospective buyers through their buying
process, participating in a value-added fashion.
Then it is to remain ‘in the loop’, monitoring the
performance of qualified leads downstream and
providing additional nurturing support as our
sales-team partners deem necessary.

Introduction to B2B Demand Generation

Introduction to B2B Demand Generation

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