Top B2B Industry Veterans Talk Lead Generation in Today’s Digital Landscape

The Brandon Agency’s B2B Category Leader, Cary Murphy recently caught up with two other marketing-industry veterans to talk about leads, along with best practices for capturing and cultivating them. Their engaging and informative conversation is summarized below. (Some of the names have been changed, but the people and the content are 100% real.)

Before we dive in, let’s introduce the pundits:

• “Austin” is a VP of Marketing for an $11 billion global industrial equipment manufacturer and boasts over 20 years in the business.
• “Rick” is currently a Marketing Director managing a $500 million portfolio of brands. He has over two decades of marketing-industry experience, including time spent with several Fortune 500 companies, primarily in the B2B sector.
• Cary is a Regional President and B2B category leader at The Brandon Agency. He is closing in on 30 years of marketing experience and has worked with dozens of B2B companies of all sizes and across different industries.

Question: Why are leads important in B2B?

Austin: Our equipment can be expensive and can represent a large capital expense, so as a result, our sales process can be very long. From a marketing standpoint, we always need to be filling the funnel. But to that point, what is a lead? Where are they in the funnel? Have we intercepted them halfway through their journey, or are they just starting to research? Segmentation tools are invaluable to us. Our Sales people are really looking for the bottom-of-the-funnel leads.

Rick: Leads are really the lifeblood of the (sales and marketing) organization. Our marketing efforts are different than in B2C — it’s much more specific in B2B, and our customers digest information differently. Leads matter to marketing because they are often the metric we use to measure success, helping us to better direct our efforts.

Cary: Leads are almost always the goal with our B2B clients. Every business is different, and our approach to increasing leads is never exactly the same — but leads are usually the end game. As Rick says, it’s the KPI that we’re keeping the closest eye on. Beyond that, what we’re really after are high-quality leads, but we’re about to get into that …

 

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Shark Tank Veterans Finding Success With The Brandon Agency in Driving DTC Sales

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Here, we’ll take a look at the current housing market and identify three trends in community amenities that have shifted over the past two decades. Read on to learn how some of the community features that helped sell the neighborhoods of the past have evolved when it comes to creating a stronger sense of community and drawing in the homebuyer of today...

 

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