Merlin Francis

Marketing Automation is a fairly known concept ; in fact many B2B companies today realize the immense potential of this multi-dimensional tool.

In a world where every day hundreds of ideas, products and business solutions take shape and hundreds more make a beeline for our fleeting attention, it is essential to know which of these merit the time and resources spent in exploring their worthiness and their relevance in our organization’s scheme of priorities.

This post is an effort to put down the kind of problems the marketing automation tool is capable of addressing and the kind of organizations who should opt for this solution, if it is in alignment with their overall objectives and budget constraints.

Does your organization struggle to generate leads?

Keeping a healthy sales pipeline is a desired objective of every organization, also the only way firms can sustain themselves in the marketplace. But then finding good business leads is...

Demand Generation and Lead Generation, can be easily voted as the most used words in the B2B Marketing space. I think marketers have an affinity for these words because they tend to sound more complicated and sophisticated than your regular marketing buzz words.

Many a times I have seen marketers use the above words interchangeably often leaving the listener/reader confused on the real purpose of each of these activities.

I am often asked by clients on what is the difference between Demand Generation and Lead Generation when the end goal for both activities is to increase sales and revenue for a company. A valid observation.

In this post, I make an attempt to explain the various factors that differentiate Demand Generation from Lead Generation, and why one is important for the other to succeed

A Google search for Demand Generation Vs Lead Generation, will lead you to some really interesting posts which explain in detail how Demand Generation covers all...

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 differentiates a lead nurturing activity from your regular email marketing activity?

Well the answer lies in your approach and how well you try to address the needs of your leads, having a basic understanding of your leads and their needs is critical to a successful lead nurturing program.

If you...

Our last post 4 Proven Ways For Generating Leads on LinkedIn got a lot of positive feedback, with readers telling us that the data provided in the post validated their own experiences using the LinkedIn platform. There were others who felt, that despite having profiles on LinkedIn, they have not seen the kind of results, as many of their other counterparts on the professional networking site.

To make things simpler for all who use the LinkedIn platform, we decided to put together a simple info-graphic, which shows the various ways, individuals, marketers and companies can use LinkedIn as an effective B2B marketing platform.

If you can just work on the areas – a,b,d,f and g, mentioned in the info-graphic below, you will see a lot of difference in the quantity and quality of Leads coming from LinkedIn.