(Please note that Aprimo is a client of Find New Customers. Though we strive for independence and honesty, we feel it important that our readers be aware of any fiscal relationship. In addition, the Fearless Competitor is taking a few days off, so this is the only post of this week.)

Recently, I wrote a post describing mobile as “the most intimate of communications devices.” That post received rave reviews. But now a marketing automation software company, Aprimo, has introduced an exciting new product titled Aprimo Mobile Studio. It does justice to that intimate device.

Aprimo Mobile Studio addresses three main challenges.  These are situations where work typically cannot be done. Sure, you can call people and send/receive emails, but you cannot look at a marketing calendar, approve a campaign, etc.

1. Making use of downtime (waiting for a flight, in a hotel room, etc.)
2. Marketing campaigns stop while awaiting approvals
3. Sales is unable to access relevant content and profiles when on the road.

Aprimo Mobile Studio is unique in it enables marketers and salespeople to do every function while on the road that they could do in the office. But also notice the simple and elegant interface, expressly designed for the mobile device.

From the mobile device a user can do many functions, including

1. Approvals – Approve content for a marketing campaign
2. Tasks – Complete the work assigned to me
3. Activities – Search for open activities
4. Digital Assets – View the content in your marketing library
5. Visitor Monitoring – Who is on your website? What are they doing?
6. Send Marketing emails – Send a note using the standard company format
7. Digital Profile – Before a meeting, look at the entire history of the person you are to meet with
8. Reports
9. Global Search

One of the smartest things Aprimo did was to design a new interface which runs in a mobile browser. This makes it extremely fast, simple, and platform independent. If your company has a mix of Blackberries, Androids and iPhones, every single person can use this interface despite the different operating systems. Had they designed it as an iPhone app, it would only work with the iPhone.

Let’s also touch on the ability to send marketing emails from the mobile device. One of the biggest challenges of marketing is ensuring consistent quality. But using the standard email formatting, you can ensure standards are enforced.

Looking for an enterprise level marketing solution for larger firms? Want to make everyone more productive? Check out Aprimo. Great company and great products.

What do you think? Do you need a mobile platform? We love comments and provide simple buttons for sharing.

Companies today need a Chief Content Officer. Looking for the simple guide to B2B Marketing? Download How to Find New Customers. And check out our hot new white paper, Moving from Transactional to Conversational Email

Join us every Thursday at 8pm ET/5pm PT for Twitter chat about b2b demand generation. Just go to http://tweetchat.com/ and enter hashtag #b2bchat.

Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor, is President of Find New Customers, a top lead generation company. “Lead Generation Made Simple.” He’s an expert in demand generation who helps companies increase the flow of qualified sales leads.  He’s also the author of three highly acclaimed lead generation and sales white papers, How to Find New Customers and Definitive Guide to Making Quota, and Moving from Transactional to Conversational Email, as well the e-book, Prospect Driven Marketing and holds a BBA in Marketing from the University of Notre Dame.

Our regular Friday show.

Companies today need a Chief Content Officer. Looking for the simple guide to B2B Marketing? Download How to Find New Customers or any of our other highly acclaimed white papers and ebooks.

Join us every Thursday at 8pm ET/5pm PT for Twitter chat about b2b demand generation. Just go to http://tweetchat.com/ and enter hashtag #b2bchat.

Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor, is President of Find New Customers, a top lead generation company. “Lead Generation Made Simple.” He’s an expert in demand generation who helps companies increase the flow of qualified sales leads.  He’s also the author of three highly acclaimed lead generation and sales white papers, How to Find New Customers and Definitive Guide to Making Quota, and Moving from Transactional to Conversational Email, as well the e-book, Prospect Driven Marketing and holds a BBA in Marketing from the University of Notre Dame.

Fearless Competitor returns Monday, August 2, 2010.

Companies today need a Chief Content Officer. Looking for the simple guide to B2B Marketing? Download How to Find New Customers.

Join us every Thursday at 8pm ET/5pm PT for Twitter chat about b2b demand generation. Just go to http://tweetchat.com/ and enter hashtag #b2bchat.

Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor, is President of Find New Customers, a top lead generation company. “Lead Generation Made Simple.” He’s an expert in demand generation who helps companies increase the flow of qualified sales leads.  He’s also the author of three highly acclaimed lead generation and sales white papers, How to Find New Customers and Definitive Guide to Making Quota, and Moving from Transactional to Conversational Email, as well the e-book, Prospect Driven Marketing and holds a BBA in Marketing from the University of Notre Dame.

Today Find New Customers hosted a webinar today featuring Jon Miller, VP, Marketing at Marketo.  Jon shared his "secret sauce" for lead generation. It was an excellent webinar for all of our Insiders at Find New Customers. One of the key principals he shared was the process of mapping content to the way your customers buy.  Here's an excellent ebook from www.junta42.com clickpredictions2010[1] by Click Documents, sponsored by Marketo. One of the … Read More

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Moving from Transactional to Conversational Email: New ways to engage prospective buyers and win business.

Sponsored by Genius.com and featuring insights from leading minds from Acxiom, e-Dialog, ExactTarget, Visible Technologies and Radian6, this new and free white paper is filled with great ideas and insights on this important marketing channel for engaging sales leads.

Even with the rapid growth of social networks, email marketing remains the lynchpin of communications. We hope you enjoy this new paper and take full advantage of the retweet link on every page. You can download it now for free by clicking Email White Paper.

What do you think? Do you like the new white paper – or do you hate it? We love comments and provide buttons for sharing.

Companies today need a Chief Content Officer. Looking for the simple guide to B2B Marketing? Download How to Find New Customers.

Join us every Thursday at 8pm ET/5pm PT for Twitter chat about b2b demand generation. Just go to http://tweetchat.com/ and enter hashtag #b2bchat.

Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor, is President of Find New Customers, a top lead generation company. “Lead Generation Made Simple.” He’s an expert in demand generation who helps companies increase the flow of qualified sales leads.  He’s also the author of three highly acclaimed lead generation and sales white papers, How to Find New Customers and Definitive Guide to Making Quota, and a new one on email marketing, as well the e-book, Prospect Driven Marketing and holds a BBA in Marketing from the University of Notre Dame.

As a result, online video is an important channel for business to business marketing. But we want to make sure you do it the right way.

Here are things to consider at the start when considering a video marketing initiative.

1. Start with your goals – what you hope to accomplish.
   Are you looking to drive awareness (knowledge of your company) or engagement too? (trust and communications)
   Are you using it to drive leads?
   How will you measure your results?
2. Plan it carefully
   Use outside talent or company resources?
   How long will each video be?
   How will you get the word out?
   Are we aiming for humor, surprise or knowledge of speaker?
3. Provide strong leadership
   It’s not a part-time job for a lower level employee. Find experienced pros like the folks at Find New Customers. (my company)

Here are some recommendations to make it work effectively.

1. Make the video fun and interesting. Twists and turns help. Provocative script. Keep it short — 2 minutes or less.
   Here’s an interesting video that shows the creative use of graphics, but is way too long at over 4 minutes.
2. Use social networks to share links to your video. Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, etc.
3. After they watch your video, give them something to do. (Like visiting a landing page for more.)
   You want them to stay awhile and engage with you. Play a game, get useful information, or watch a related video.
4. Using interesting speakers. If  your viewers recognize the person, they are more likely to watch. You can use industry experts, thought leaders or celebrities.
   Third party speakers also credibility your employees could never get.

What do you think? Are you using online video? What results are you getting? We love comments and provide easy buttons for sharing.

Companies today need a Chief Content Officer. Looking for the simple guide to B2B Marketing? Download How to Find New Customers.

Join us every Thursday at 8pm ET/5pm PT for Twitter chat about b2b demand generation. Just go to http://tweetchat.com/ and enter hashtag #b2bchat.

Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor, is President of Find New Customers, a top lead generation company. “Lead Generation Made Simple.” He’s an expert in demand generation who helps companies increase the flow of qualified sales leads.  He’s also the author of three highly acclaimed lead generation and sales white papers, How to Find New Customers and Definitive Guide to Making Quota, and Moving from Transactional to Conversational Email, as well the e-book, Prospect Driven Marketing and holds a BBA in Marketing from the University of Notre Dame.

I’m excited about this interview. This time we interviewed a sharp guy in marketing — Jep Castelein, better known as LeadSloth, “Smart Ideas for Lazy Marketers”
We help increase marketing’s impact on the bottom line.

If you like what Jep has to say, just visit him at LeadSloth, follow jepc on Twitter or send an email to jep at leadsloth.com.  I wish to thank Jep for his contributions to Fearless Competitor.

Many more thought leaders are coming soon, so stay tuned. We’re on a mission to bring our readers the very best.

1. CSO Insights recently found that quota achievement was at its lowest rate ever, lead generation budgets were flat or cut, and quotas were being raised.  Jim Dickie sees this as the Perfect Storm. Jim Dickey said it is like raising the high jump bar, when we could not clear the last height.  As a marketing expert, what are you observing in B2B sales?

When I look at the challenges in B2B sales and marketing, my main conclusion is that we need to get more value out of our existing leads. If we can’t spend extra money on lead generation, we need to spend more time with our existing leads to turn them into sales-ready leads. I sometimes compare it with having a goldmine: instead of buying a new goldmine to easily find new gold nuggets, you now need to deploy advanced methods to get every last crumb of gold out of your existing mine. And to translate that to B2B Marketing: leverage state-of-the-art lead management practices, supported by marketing automation technology.

2. The economic challenges of today are a major problem for B2B sellers.  Blogs and content sharing are critical elements like websites and the LeadSloth blog is very popular. How can a robust online presence help generate leads? Can you share the lessons you’ve learned with our readers?

What I’ve learned is that a content marketing strategy really takes off once you’ve discovered what your ideal clients are interested in. You can then start creating content and blog posts that match their interests which makes you a valuable and trusted resource. In contrast, if you only write about your company or your products, people will lose interest. For every piece of content that you create, ask yourself why your audience should care.

3. Changing of the internal status quo is a major impediment to progress. Companies tend to do what they did in the past, but marketing has been transformed.  How can marketing and sales leaders implement change without incurring undue risk?

Marketing’s job now goes beyond generating raw leads and also includes lead nurturing until the leads are sales-ready. This obviously creates a gray area where both sales and marketing may be communicating with the same leads. It is management’s job to align and integrate the activities of sales and marketing, to avoid any conflicts. This is not an overnight change. Ultimately, marketing needs to be able to show the results of this approach, so a metrics-driven culture is essential.

4. Today it’s more critical than ever that marketers can measure the impact of options.  They need to know what’s working, what’s not, and what to change.  What do you recommend they do?

The first step to be more metrics-driven is the definition of a marketing funnel. In sales it’s very common to look at stages for sales opportunities. In a similar way, marketers should assign quality ratings to leads to create a marketing funnel. That way you can see how fast leads move through the funnel and optimize your processes to turn more inquiries into qualified leads, faster. Marketing Automation systems are a great enabler for creating a marketing funnel, because their lead scoring functionality can be used to assess lead quality.

5. Content is more important than ever.  Buyers look for content at every stage of the buying process.  What do marketers need to know about content and what actions do you recommend they take?

The main issue is still that organizations like to write about themselves and their products. Potential clients will quickly lose interest if companies only talk about themselves. As part of my 7-step methodology, I recommend you segment your audience, develop a detailed persona for each segment, and then create compelling content for each of these segments. This content should be primarily educational, but it can be mixed with promotional offers in the same way that advertisements are mixed with editorial content in newspapers and magazines.

6. If a CMO were to ask you today – What are the 3 most important takeaways that I need to know? What would they be?

My top 3 tips for CMOs to find untapped revenue in their existing lead database are:

- Assign a budget to nurturing of existing leads and customers

- Focus on content creation and stick to issues that matter to your audience

- Foster a collaborative culture between sales & marketing

Companies today need a Chief Content Officer. Looking for the simple guide to B2B Marketing? Download How to Find New Customers.

Join us every Thursday at 8pm ET/5pm PT for Twitter chat about b2b demand generation. Just go to http://tweetchat.com/ and enter hashtag #b2bchat.

Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor, is President of Find New Customers, a top lead generation company. “Lead Generation Made Simple.” He’s an expert in demand generation who helps companies increase the flow of qualified sales leads.  He’s also the author of three highly acclaimed lead generation and sales white papers, How to Find New Customers and Definitive Guide to Making Quota, and Moving from Transactional to Conversational Email, as well the e-book, Prospect Driven Marketing and holds a BBA in Marketing from the University of Notre Dame.

In writing my new white paper, the Definitive Guide to Making Quota, I had the good fortune to interview five of top sales experts:

1. Jill Konrath of Selling to Big Companies

2. Kendra Lee of The KLA Group

3. Kevin Temple of Enterprise Selling

4. Jim Dickie of CSO Insights

5. Dave Stein of ES Research

One conclusion became clear from my research.  Companies are doing a terrible job of selecting salespeople — … Read More

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I assure you that “60 Seconds with the Fearless Competitor”will return next week.

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Companies today need a Chief Content Officer. Looking for the simple guide to B2B Marketing? Download How to Find New Customers.

Join us every Thursday at 8pm ET/5pm PT for Twitter chat about b2b demand generation. Just go to http://tweetchat.com/ and enter hashtag #b2bchat.

Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor, is President of Find New Customers, a top lead generation company. “Lead Generation Made Simple.” He’s an expert in demand generation who helps companies increase the flow of qualified sales leads.  He’s also the author of three highly acclaimed lead generation and sales white papers, How to Find New Customers and Definitive Guide to Making Quota, and a new one on email marketing, as well the e-book, Prospect Driven Marketing and holds a BBA in Marketing from the University of Notre Dame.

I cannot walk the streets of Manhattan without seeing people walking while typing on their Blackberry or iPhone.

One thing becomes crystal clear to me.

The marketer that best embraces my most intimate of devices wins my undying loyalty.

But what does that really mean? My undying loyalty does not come cheap.

• Don’t disrespect me – and send me messages during dinner or while sleeping. Have the good sense to personalize it for my time zone.
• Don’t bore me – and send me lengthy messages that are hard to read.
• Don’t make it hard for me – to follow-up on what you are asking.
• Don’t annoy me – by sending me email after email.

On the other hand

• Do make it interesting. Surprise me.
• Do make it fun.
• Do respect me. Make  it easy to change my preferences.
• Do make it just for me. Customize it by what you know about me.

The next great battle in marketing will be fought over these small, intimate devices. What’s your strategy?

What do you think? Do you agree or think I’m all wrong? We love comments and we also provide these cool little buttons so you can share what you like with others.

Companies today need a Chief Content Officer. Looking for the simple guide to B2B Marketing? Download How to Find New Customers.

Join us every Thursday at 8pm ET/5pm PT for Twitter chat about b2b demand generation. Just go to http://tweetchat.com/ and enter hashtag #b2bchat.

Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor, is President of Find New Customers, a top lead generation company. “Lead Generation Made Simple.” He’s an expert in demand generation who helps companies increase the flow of qualified sales leads.  He’s also the author of three highly acclaimed lead generation and sales white papers, How to Find New Customers and Definitive Guide to Making Quota, and a new one on email marketing, as well the e-book, Prospect Driven Marketing and holds a BBA in Marketing from the University of Notre Dame.