As many B2B Fishbowl readers probably already know, I’m a big advocate of content marketing. Providing customers and prospects compelling, actionable, unbiased content that will help them do their jobs better is a surefire way to build credibility for your brand, position yourself as a thought leader and generate leads.

I think hosting webinars are an excellent way to use content marketing to accomplish your goals. Here’s why:

1. Webinars are engaging: Rather than offering a static article to audiences that they have to read through on their own, webinars allow you to walk them through a concept or presentation while entertaining them.
2. They’re interactive: Webinars allow you to request input and answer questions from your audience in real time, so you can provide them with customized information right on the spot.
3. You can show and tell: If you need to demo a software application or other step-by-step process, webinars let you do so in a straightforward way.
4. Your content can live on: Best of all, if your registrants miss the live webinar, you can archive the content for future viewing. This also allows prospects to share your webinar with others in their organization.

I recently hosted a series of webinars for Loop Demand Gen, which can be viewed at this link. Please take a look at these and let me know what you think in the comments section.

Are you taking advantage of webinars to educate your target audiences, or for training purposes? Why do you think webinars are ideal for B2B marketers?

In B2B marketing and sales, the question, “What is the exact definition of a lead?” inevitably comes up. I believe the definition is constantly evolving, but it can be defined or categorized relative to its stage in your funnel. Here’s a description of the lead stages I use when developing sales and marketing alignment programs for clients.

1. Raw Leads: These are raw inquiries that enter the funnel (web form submissions, trade show leads, business cards, purchased lists, etc.).
2. Viable Leads: Once it’s determined that a raw inquiry is not a prospective employee, vendor or competitor, and they have some or all BANT (or SCOTSMAN) criteria, they are viable.
3. Nurtured Leads: These leads have received communications from your company, or been touched with marcom materials or telephone contacts.
4. Active Leads: Active leads have responded favorably to nurturing activities, such as clicking on e-mail links, attending webinars, etc.
5. Marketing Qualified Leads: MQL meet sufficient criteria to deliver to sales, usually via a company’s CRM solution.
6. Sales Accepted Leads: These leads have been passed onto sales, and they haven’t been rejected.
7. Opportunities: Leads become opportunities when sales has made contact and designated the lead as a likely sales opportunity.
8. Closed/Won: When sales has completed a transaction and a lead becomes a customer!

Does your business use other categories? What’s your company’s definition of a ‘lead?’ What does your funnel look like?

Webinars provide a convenient, fast and cost-effective way for B2B marketers to reach prospective customers. So you might be wondering, what is the best way to coordinate and execute your own webinar series?

It may seem daunting at first, but it’s not! We’re currently working on a series of webinars for Loop Demand Gen, and we have found GoToWebinar® to be the most user-friendly site for our web events.

With GoToWebinar, you can set up your presentations online, send e-mail communications to drive attendance, handle registration, and present and engage with the audience live—all under one roof. The only thing you need to do is put together the presentation, the rest is automated. GoToWebinar does a great job of simplifying the process. It ensures that your audience receives e-mail reminders so no attendees slip through the cracks.

So what happens after the webinar? Archive your webinars online so that others can download and view the presentations. This will increase the power of your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) once web crawlers locate content.

Go ahead and take a stab at it, I think you will be pleasantly surprised!

Today the International Olympic Committee (IOC) chooses the city that will host the 2016 Summer Olympics. Chicago, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo are all vying for the games. What does this have to do with B2B you ask? Let’s see…planning ahead, investing substantially in your brand and making a 45-minute presentation that will globally impact millions…ah, now it sounds familiar. (Okay, maybe the worldwide remark was a little much.) Ultimately, it’s all about marketing and sales working together to seal the deal.

The direct marketing programs Canyon helps our clients develop and implement are designed to support and drive sales efforts, so they can uncover the golden ticket. However, no matter how compelling the offer and how on-target the messaging is, it’s all about the quality of your distribution list.

Whether you’re building and maintaining your own database, or outsourcing your lead generation and nurturing, it’s important to ensure your records are organized, up-to-date and accurate. Otherwise you’re wasting valuable marketing dollars on dead-end data.

Unearth leads that are as good as gold, by allocating the proper resources to build or enhance your database.

Had any luck discovering a gold-nugget opportunity within your database? What host city do you think the IOC will select?