Merlin Francis

Think about it-  The corporate website is the digital face of your company through which you engage with your audience, tell them who you are, what you stand for and share with them your expertise and experience.  Now go back and check your website and see if your content is in line with this definition- especially the point about ‘engaging’ with your ‘audience’. The trouble with us marketers is that we love talking about our products and their myriad features, how they are ‘cutting edge’ and can ‘make a difference’. But website visitors on the other hand are looking for specific solutions to their immediate needs and if they don’t find that information right away, they’ll hit the back button even before you can say CONTENT!  So, even if you have great content, if it is not talking to your target audience, in a way that will appeal to them, it will miss the mark. ... (more)

5 Ways - B2B Companies Can Use Social Media for Lead Generation & Lead Nurturing

  The relevancy of social media for Business to Business (B2B) companies is a much debated subject. While B2B companies are opening up to the idea of participating in social media, by creating social profiles, writing blogs and engaging in micro-blogging etc. a lot is desired when it comes to using social media as an effective tool to forward their business interests or for securing, and nurturing quality leads. Having worked with both B2C and B2B companies in the social media space, I strongly feel that the approach for both have to be significantly different - at least at th... (more)

Build Lead Personas For Better Lead Nurturing

Lead nurturing is an important aspect of B2B marketing and plays a pivotal role in the conversion of leads into qualified leads and qualified leads into customers. Lead nurturing is best known as the process of educating and interacting with your leads consistently, building trust and gaining mindshare in the process till they are ready to buy from you. But despite the best of intents, many lead nurturing programs fail to deliver the desired results, simply because they become nothing more than monthly email blasts to a list of leads in your database. So what is it that really d... (more)

5 Ways - B2B Companies Can Use Social Media for Lead Generation & Lead Nurturing

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What’s the Marketing Objective – Lead Generation or Brand Awareness?

Marketing is a very broad term and includes a lot of different activities and channels, like advertising, PR, Social Media engagements, SEO, SEM, etc.  These activities achieve two objectives for any company - Brand awareness and/or Lead generation. Since, achieving both these objectives entail similar set of activities, disappointment is often inevitable when a certain marketing activity does not yield desired results. A major reason for this could be the failure to understand what results to expect from each activity. For results to match expectations - they should first fulf... (more)