The New B2B Lead Generation Calculus

Business-to-Business marketers fall into two camps!?

#1) There are the people who believe in email registrations for things like white papers to drive leads. This group believes that with a gate, value comes from capturing an email address of each person downloading the content because they become sales leads. There is very little sharing of content on social media with a gate because people do not want to expose those in their social networks to possible spam.

#2) Then there are those who believe in making content like white papers totally free without registration in order to spread the information as far as possible. For these folks, value comes from many more people being exposed to the content and more spreading the free content via social networks. My research suggests that between 20 times and 50 times more people download free content. But you get zero traditional “leads”.

Like religion, nobody is right and neither of these approaches are the best way.

Gated content with squeeze page calculus: ?? 10,000 people initially exposed to the white paper content offer?x 5% register their email address to download the white paper?+ Nobody shares on social networks ?RESULT = 500 email addresses captured from people who want to read the white paper. No sharing and no inbound links created.

Totally free content calculus: ?(Tons of sharing / zero traditional “leads” )?10,000 people initially exposed to the no registration white paper content offer?x 50% download the no registration white paper?+ 10% of those who read it share on social networks?= an additional 5,000 people download the free content ?RESULT = 10,000 total people download the white paper. Inbound links created from social networks. Zero email addresses captured so zero traditional “leads”

New lead generation calculus

Best-Selling Author of Real-Time Marketing & PR, David Meerman Scott offers an alternative – a new lead generation calculus that takes both religious views into account. It’s essentially a hybrid model.

David Meerman Scott suggests the first offer be totally free (such as a white paper). Then within the white paper, include a secondary offer that requires registration that you can use to capture leads. A secondary offer might be a Webinar that is related to the content in the white paper and educates people even more on the topic.

Hybrid model with initially free content then a secondary offer: ?(Tons of sharing / lots of inbound links / bonus = lots of traditional “leads”!) ?10,000 people initially exposed to the no registration white paper content offer?x 50% download the no registration white paper?+ 10% of those who read it share on social networks?= an additional 5,000 people download the free content ?RESULT #1 = 10,000 total people download the white paper. Inbound links created from social networks. ?+ Secondary offer within the white paper offers a registration required Webinar?x 5% of those who download the free white paper register for the webinar?

ADDITIONAL RESULT = 500 emails captured from people who aim to attend the Webinar

All leads are not equal.

An added benefit of this hybrid new lead generation calculus approach is the difference in leads. The Gated content approach simply generates email addresses from people who want a white paper.

The hybrid approach generates email addresses from people who have already read the white paper and now want more information about your company and its products and services and are eager to attend the webinar. With most lead scoring systems, the hybrid model leads are hot and the white paper leads not.

Want more tips on how to real-time marketing or do business online? David Meerman Scott’s book The New Rules of Marketing & PR opened people’s eyes to the new realities of marketing and public relations on the Web. Six months on the BusinessWeek bestseller list and published in 26 languages from Bulgarian to Vietnamese, New Rules, now in its second edition, is a modern business classic.

His newest book Real-Time Marketing & PR: How to Instantly Engage Your Market, Connect with Customers, and Create Products that Grow Your Business Now was released in November 2010. It achieved #2 on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list and #3 on the USA Today’s bestseller list.

His books are available for sale online via our business education partner – The Growth Faculty website. Simply click on the following link to purchase now:
thegrowfaculty.com.au/business-coaching

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