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As a B2B marketer, your job is to diversify the lead generation offers available on your blog so they apply to these different personas. These offers will fall into two main categories.

If someone is visiting your site for the first time, it's likely they aren't ready for a ton of product-focused information. Instead, they probably want to learn more about your business and, more importantly, your expertise. The best way to convey industry expertise is through some type of premium content.

Warm leads need a different type of offer. They already know that you have expertise, possibly because they have read one of your premium content pieces or because they have already talked to a sales rep. These leads want more product-focused information.  They want detail, a discount or a free trail.

If you look at the data from the survey, you will see that marketers believe their website is the leading source of leads and that 80% of marketers believe they are NOT maximizing their efforts there.As I like to say:  “you got them into the store (aka website), now what?”  The next step for marketers who are doing the right things with inbound marketing, lead nurturing, and such as optimize conversion when they get them to the website.

I am shocked that in this day and age: 27% have 8 or more fields.

Ardath: In your opinion, what is the biggest reason that B2B websites fail to generate demand?Craig: There are two reasons.The first is the propensity for creating brochureware.   Many websites are still boring, corporate, sterile, etc.  In today’s world, content needs to be arresting and provide buyers with something they actually want to read.  As well, design and usability is very important to the user experience.The second is conversion, plain and simple.  You have to decide what you want your website visitors to do on a particular page, etc.  If it is to register for something, then optimize the experience for the registration.   Most websites are not the great at that.

As covered extensively over the last few months, the buying experience is becoming a predominant factor in the buyer’s relationship.  In fact, it is fair to say that the buyer will view the value of their relationships with sellers based on a high percentage of their experiences with the selling company.  Today, B2B companies will need to catch up to B2C advancements in this area if they are to have a future in buyer relationships.  Carefully examining new social technologies that enhance the buying experience.

Social Expert NetworksThe social buyer persona that is emerging this decade is placing tremendous value in social expert networks.  I see this trend as having two distinct components.  The first being that the social buyer persona is looking to avail him or herself to expert knowledge that creates more confidence in decision-making.  The second being, and we are seeing this more today, social buyers are seeking to position themselves as experts in their respective fields and seek to contribute content socially.

Suspects are looking for companies to share what they know as an organization — not what they sell. So the content marketer’s goal at this stage is to get content to spread from person to person in the hopes that the more people it reaches, the better the chance that it will reach a potential prospect.

content marketers to avoid using forms when communicating with Suspects, as anything that interrupts consumers’ ability to view your content is a surefire way to blunt its spread at this stage of the marketing game.

What information they want: In general, Prospects are looking for content that feeds their professional interests and provides a service, whether it be helping them solve a problem, giving them some targeted business tips, or arming them with information that can help them get buy-in from team decision-makers.

To improve sales pro­duc­tiv­ity mar­keters must pro­vide rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion to sup­port the needs of both key deci­sion mak­ers, as well as the buy­ing influ­encers. Effec­tive lead nur­tur­ing cam­paigns are highly depen­dent upon the avail­abil­ity of rel­e­vant con­tent, for each key touch­point through­out the buy­ing cycle. B2B mar­ket­ing automa­tion experts like Elo­qua and Mar­keto say that this con­tent should be rel­e­vant to the buyer’s role and key busi­ness issues, not just to the appli­ca­tion or solu­tion under consideration.

45% of CMOs sur­veyed say they are faced with “mar­ket­ing to a grow­ing num­ber of peo­ple involved in the buy­ing process,”

A buyer per­sona is a detailed pro­file of an exam­ple buyer that rep­re­sents the real audi­ence — an arche­type of the tar­get buyer. Mar­keters can use buyer per­sonas to clar­ify the goals, con­cerns, pref­er­ences and deci­sion process that are most rel­e­vant to their cus­tomers. Imag­ine how effec­tive mar­keters could be if we would all stop mak­ing stuff up and start align­ing our mes­sages and pro­grams with the way real peo­ple think.

By year-end 2013, B2B organizations using social CRM applications will represent 25 percent of all projects worldwide, which is an increase from fewer than 10 percent in 2011.

To be successful with social CRM, organizations need to be much less focused on how an organization can manage the customer, and much more focused on how the customer can manage the relationship. Without any benefit for the customer to participate, communities and social networks die resulting in no benefits to the organization using the social CRM applications.

One tool that can help create this “vivid picture of your customer” is research-based personas.

Most companies have customers that fall into one of a series of “value buckets” or segments. Typically, the top 20 percent will deliver the lion’s share of profit, just as the bottom 20 percent will consistently cost you more to serve than the profit you can make on them.

Eighty-seven percent of business-to-business (B2B) marketers now spread their message through social media, according to a new report from the Content Marketing Institute (CMI).

Immediately orient visitors. "You'd better make sure people can figure out what your company does, why they're staring at your webpage and what they should do/get—and do it fast," Albee advises. Dump the jargon and get to your core information. Speak directly to them. Tell them what's in it for them. "Make sure your content speaks directly to them about stuff they care about—high-priority stuff," she says. Provide 'interest pathways' for them. To accommodate a range of prospects, offer unique pathways that appeal to individual interests—such as, "if X is your priority, then click here for all the resources you need about that topic." Answer their questions. Access your own site from the Internet, navigate it and see what questions come to mind as a visitor. This exercise can help you identify information gaps. Get them to do something. "What event can they sign up for that relates to their interests?" Albee asks. "What white paper or eBook can they download? Do you have related blog posts they might be interested in?" Invite them to follow you on Twitter.

Also, not enough branded content’s end goal is audience participation. Without enabling your customers to advocate on your behalf, your fancy-pants web video is stuck in paid/owned territory and has missed the boat on all that sweet earned media potential.

Many brands aren’t taking the time to map their content to buyer roles, personas and objections,

Sometimes brands overlook that the biggest audience that may need education is their employees. Don’t assume that because your education goes to the outside world that your employees are following along. Knowledgeable employees are an important part of maintaining that consistency.

While testing content is nothing new—in fact, most marketers and agencies perform some sort of testing on creative content before publication—the formalization of such processes has become a priority at many b2b companies.

We've learned that simplicity is the key—easily scanned, brief content, appropriate imagery and a value-based call to action.” For example, after simplifying a registration form for a particular call to action, SAP.com saw a 96% increase in the number of registrations.

“We have to look at what is the downside to SAP in removing a field, such as taking away "industry.' We have industry-specific sales teams, so for each field we take away to get an increased conversion, there is a downside—now we have to do more work on the back end [to learn this information].”

Though 88% of B2B companies say they understand their target audiences at least moderately well, they still struggle to translate that understanding into new business leads via their corporate websites, according to a new study by Demandbase and Focus.

Corporate websites are a critical channel for B2B companies. After personal connections and referrals (41%), websites are the leading source of leads (23%) among surveyed B2B professionals, outpacing email (14%), online advertising (7%), and social media (3%).

Social media is about relationships, so it requires you to engage in two-way conversations and participate consistently. Social media is real time, so you need to be monitoring the conversations and taking action on them in real time. Social media enhances and amplifies other channels, so it cannot be used in a silo.

To generate demand from these conversations, you want the engine to identify those people who are potential buyers in the discover phase of their customer life-cycle so that you have already started a relationship with them and created brand preference when they enter the explore phase.

More than three-quarters (77%) of social media users say websites should offer social login—i.e., using a social media identity to log in at a website—as an alternative to traditional account creation or logging in as a guest, up from the 66% who said so a year earlier, according to a study by Janrain.

Many socially networked consumers leave false information when asked to register: 88% admit to having given incorrect information or leaving forms incomplete when creating a new account on a website, up from 76% who said so a year earlier.

With social login, consumers are given the choice to have a more personalized experience when they visit a website without needing to re-enter preferences.

  Social media participants contribute very little to conversations. Research from the Online Community Research Network shows that fewer than 10% of people in online communities ever say anything. And fewer than 2% take a leadership role in starting conversations. Therefore, if you want compelling and relevant content – it’s critical to have a content leader or practice who can think like a publisher and develop a strong editorial calendar.

  ITSMA research shows that 66% of buyers seek information themselves rather than waiting to hear from providers. They seek that information through search. 79% of C-level executives do at least three searches per day. They are more likely to encounter your content through search than through the social media channels themselves.

The bottom line: Organizations (and B2B marketers) need to focus on content, thought leadership and engaging B2B tech buyers in channels where they go to consume information.