Pitching a new idea to an untapped market is no small task, especially for startup companies with little or no brand power. These “disruptive innovations” have the power to change the landscape of the existing market, but to do that, you have to create the demand necessary to bring your product into the public eye.

When IBM pioneered a method of qualifying sales leads based on Budget, Authority, Need and Timeline — commonly known as BANT qualification — the world was a very different place. These were the days before the Internet and before potential customers could conduct extensive research on their own. Any customer wanting information on your goods or services had to work through your sales department. Either your sales staff made rounds and called on likely candidates or your telemarketing department did a bit of pre-screening before handing leads off to sales. Occasionally, a potential client would call in response to a print ad or flyer. In short, virtually all sales leads were generated by outbound sales methods that involved your company pushing its message to possible buyers.

Outbound marketing still has its place, but the digital age has shifted the "balance of power." Today, the emphasis is on inbound marketing, which is essentially getting the customer to contact you. Sales funnels are no longer straight, logical progressions that can be managed in a linear manner, so you might have little information regarding just where a buyer is in his journey when he calls you for the first time.

This makes BANT qualification process unwieldy when used as it was originally designed. 

Content marketing isn’t just a tactic used in B2C circles to bring in one-time buyers with enticing sales and promotions. As a B2B marketer, it’s important that you understand the need for content marketing in generating demand and leads to further the growth of your business.

“We've implemented as we would any other online channel.”

“yes and no.”

“Not completely; no!”

“No, not really.”

If you responded to the question with one of the above statements, you’re not alone.

Most people think of LinkedIn as a great place for networking, researching contacts and searching the job market, but its true value as a lead generation tool has yet to be fully realized. If LinkedIn is where a big chunk of your target audience reside, and you’re not yet using LinkedIn for Lead Generation, here’s your opportunity to get started today with using LinkedIn for lead generation. All it takes is 10 minutes a day of your time.

In the past, the AIDA marketing model of attract, interest, desire and action was what most businesses used to acquire customers. While this strategy worked well for years, the Internet age has brought about significant changes. With online marketing being an integral part of most business’s campaigns, the AIDA model has become outdated and making proper adjustments is important for sustaining success.  

Have you tried asking your smartphone a question lately? Today smartphone virtual assistants do a lot more than dial up phone numbers in your address book.  Apple’s Siri, for example, can look up anything on the Web – as well as send a text or email and get directions – to let you know where is the best place to find deep-dish Chicago style pizza in your neighborhood or where a movie is showing.

As convenient and easy as voice controlled natural language interfaces are to use, Google is taking them to the next level with its newest search algorithm called Hummingbird. With Hummingbird, Google not only understands what you have asked; it also understands the follow-up questions to add to the original search.  A Hummingbird search would go something like this, click your smartphone’s microphone and say: “Empire State Building.” Google will search for some information about the Empire State building – maybe how many floors it has – and read it back to you. Then you could ask “when was it built.” Google will return a relevant site with information about the construction of the Empire State Building.” If you ask about visitor hours, Google will take you to the ‘visitor information’ page on the Empire State Building website.

On more than one occasion, I have asked clients what the main purpose of their homepage is and their response has been “to get the visitor interested in my site” which usually elicits a shudder from me. While generating interest is important, it shouldn’t be the end-all-be-all goal of a homepage. After all, while grabbing the visitor’s interest is fine, you still need to do something with it. The function of a homepage shouldn’t be just to provide a jazzy table of content for your site, nor is it to be a media explosion; the purpose of your homepage should be to appeal to your target personas and then to guide them to the appropriate path through your website.  

Navigating the Forest of Your Website

One of the key elements of inbound marketing are personas, which are fictional representations of your target demographics. Your personas are the ones that you really want to help through your website, which means that the site itself needs to be constructed with them in mind. Now imagine that your website is a forest and each one of your personas needs to end up in a different spot on the other side of it. Without a proper path, those personas will wander around and have a much harder time getting to where they need to be. With the paths in place, it becomes pretty easy. The problem then becomes, how do the personas know which path to take?