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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.

An SLA between Marketing and Sales is an agreement where Marketing promises to produce a certain quantity and quality of leads for Sales over a given time period. The SLA is tracked on a daily basis, typically in the form of a chart or graph that maps the progress against a cumulative goal

next time Sales complains (and if you’re on track), all you have to do is tell them to take a look at the SLA -- the proof is in the data!

In your SLA, you should get credit for the quantity, but also more importantly, the quality of the leads you hand over to Sales.

Cloud wary, yet hopeful. Buyers see cloud computing as a major disruptive technology wave with many benefits, forcing them to re-think their IT landscape

Self-reliant, yet dependent. Buyers are pushing salespeople out of the early stages of the buying process with search, industry influencers, their peers, and social media, yet they demand strong relationships

Short on time, yet content hungry. Time-constrained buyers maintain a robust appetite for relevant content, but they want it packaged and delivered on their terms

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].”

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.

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.

26% of average marketing budget is spent on content marketing, with 3.5 dollars spent on distribution for each dollar spent on creation.  Do the math and that means 5.8% of the average marketing budget is spent on creating content.

To put all this in perspective, license fees for marketing automation software are usually 1% to 2% of the total marketing budget.  In other words, content will cost several times more than software when most companies deploy a marketing automation system (and distribution costs will outweigh them both).

Research from Forrester, CSO Insights, Brian Carroll – as well as Marketo’s own research –demonstrates the ROI of lead nurturing. In particular, companies that excel at lead nurturing: Decrease the percent of marketing-generated leads that are ignored by sales (from as high as 80% to as low as 25%). Raise win rates on marketing-generated leads (7% points higher) and reduce “no decisions” (6% lower). Have more sales representatives that make quota (9% higher) and a shorter ramp up time for new reps (10% decrease).

Increased frequency of blogging correlates with increased customer acquisition, according to [pdf] an e-book released in February 2012 by HubSpot. 92% of of blog users who posted multiple times a day acquired a customer through their blog, a figure that decreased to 66% for those who blogged monthly and 43% for those who posted less than monthly. Overall, 60% of the survey respondents indicated that they blog weekly, while 10% post daily and 30% either monthly or less.

By contrast, among B2B companies, LinkedIn was the most effective, with 65% of these respondents having acquired a customer through the professional network. Company blogs (60%), Facebook (43%), and Twitter (40%) followed.

Facebook has generated leads for 73% of B2C marketers, ahead of Twitter (40%) and LinkedIn (12%), it takes second rank for B2B marketers. Of those, 44.6% say LinkedIn has been effective in generating lead flow, with Facebook in second (35.1%), and Twitter (31.6%) in third.

Marketers must produce marketing automation campaigns that are even more personalized, pertinent and timely.

Rather than measuring page views and click rates, marketers are starting to focus on numbers that relate directly to revenue

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.