Each time we begin the process of change with a new software, IT services or MSP client we are faced with the same dilemma: which prospect customers to target and which messages to offer them.
The change process we are starting with them is one of moving their lead generation online.
In most cases our new clients have had ever-diminishing returns from traditional lead generation methods such as direct mail, trade shows, cold calling and even email blasts.
They have usually seen what some of our other technology clients are achieving online (thousands of new visitors every month and a 4% conversion rate to lead) and want to change how they do their marketing to get the same results. (more…)
I have just discovered Think With Google.
The quotation below comes from their featured insights section on the customer journey.
“Online marketing is a cost-effective marketing driver of offline sales.”
In Brightfire’s segment of B2B technology marketing, most of the software and services companies we serve have an offline sales model.
Increasingly they are offering their customers a ‘ROPO’ model: research online, purchase offline. So how do they know what their customers want to research online?
There is some evidence of a shift in online legal marketing from the firm to the individual lawyer, driven by the increasing adoption of social media. Placing lawyers centre stage is a departure for most legal practices, who have traditionally opted for the easier and safer option of promoting the firm brand.
A couple of good articles on the topic we recently came across make a case for the adoption of individual lawyer marketing techniques, executed through the use of social media tools. (more…)
“Traditional marketing — including advertising, public relations, branding and corporate communications — is dead. Many people in traditional marketing roles and organizations may not realize they’re operating within a dead paradigm. But they are,” wrote Bill Lee in the Harvard Business Review. Within an hour of being published, the article was trending on the professional social network LinkedIn. (more…)
Since “tweet” and “woot” entered the Oxford English Dictionary, there’s been no doubt that technology has a strong impact on language. But before a tech term reaches dictionary status, its popularity can be tested by the degree to which it has permeated spoken language. We have seen how common network-specific jargon turns into verbs (think “to facebook”, “to +1”, to name a few). Now the proliferation of multiple screens is giving rise to yet another hyped verb – “to multiscreen”.
There has been talk of second and third-screen experiences so it’s not surprising that “multiscreening” has dominated almost all major digital events in the past year. At Internet World 2012, which we attended at the end of April, we learnt that 24% of users “multiscreen” more than once a day and that 51% of tablet owners use their handheld devices while watching television – a fact which, in turn, raises questions about how marketers can tap into the potential of all these screens to reach their ever-migrating (and disruptive) audiences. (more…)
I’ve always found the use of “digital tribes” to describe online communities a bit controversial. Although I do get its “shared values” connotations, I’ve seen it as an example of arbitrary, overhyped marketing speech, reducing brand fans to little more than individuals who happen to share the same interest and religiously (and uncritically) follow a brand. Say you are an Apple fan– I’m sure you’d much rather be treated as ‘you’ as opposed to simply someone who’s part of the “Apple tribe”. (more…)
Businesses are transforming their marketing efforts to focus more on inbound programmes that allow customers to find them, and as they do so more aggressively, they are acquiring more customers. These are the key findings of the 2012 State of Inbound Marketing report released this week. But which of the HubSpot annual report’s outcomes are most relevant to technology-focused B2B companies? (more…)
