Jeff Ogden

According to the Wall St. Journal today:

Google Inc. is offering to add a twist to Web searches, in a bold offensive to prevent Facebook Inc. and other social-networking companies from gaining an upper hand on Web innovation and potential advertising dollars.

The Internet search giant said it would allow users to recommend useful search results to friends and potentially reorder the way sites are ranked based on what they and their friends like or find useful.

The “social search” effort, dubbed “+1″ or “plus one,” could change the way that some people use Google’s search engine.

This holds massive ramifications for the B2B marketer and Chief Marketing Officers. Google always in the past was all about inbound links – producing great content so that people build web links to it. But this world is changing so fast today.Today, people share recommendations and links on...

for 2011 and 92% raised quotas. CSO Insights asked “How confident are you you can achieve those higher quotas?”

Only 6.5% were very confident. The lowest ever!

That’s the lesson from CSO Insights webinar “Selling More Effectively for the Rest of 2011″ yesterday.

The conclusion of CSO Insights study of over 2,000 companies revealed:

Companies want to win new customers, and quotas are up, but they do not have the systems and processes in place to succeed.

CSO Insights was clear. Things need to change.

• Sales lead definitions much be agreed.
• Lead nurturing needs to be put in place.
• Lead scoring must be agreed and...

If there was just one thing I could do to improve the quality of sales leads, what is it?

That question is at the top of many minds and I’ve given it a lot of thought. In fact, a study by MarketingSherpa found lack of quality leads was the #1 problem for 8 out of 10 CMOs.

What’s the answer?

B2B lead generation is a science — and thus cannot be distilled down to a single

answer.  How

ever, there is one glaring problem in B2B Demand Generation that I want to shout from the roof-tops.

The biggest mistake I see in B2B Demand Generation is the lack of a:

Deep understanding of target customers

Case in point, I’m talking with the President of a PPC search marketing company.   His company is very successful — with many clients and lots of articles.  His co-founder has even written two books.  So why is his business struggling?

If you...

Provide the right content to the right person at the right time in the right media

That’s the essence of lead generation programs – B2B lead generation in a nutshell, if you will. And as this chart shows, sales lead generation addresses the top challenge of Chief Marketing Officers today.

But that statement has profound questions:

1. How can we know we are producing the “right” content?
2. How do we know who is the right person?
3. When is the right time?
4. Which media do we use?

It also starts with good marketing research. The better you know your buyers, the better you can communicate with them. You also need to learn...