Download this free e-book now: The Top 10 B2B Marketing Mistakes . . . and How to Avoid Them, a Crowdsourced E-book compiled by Dianna Huff

My colleague, Mac McIntosh, and I asked our respective networks to send us the top ten B2B marketing mistakes they see other marketers making. From email to social media, people expressed their opinions — and often quite passionately.

The Top Three Mistakes?
1. No marketing strategy
2. Website not optimized
3. Wasting lead opportunities

Are the results surprising? Yes and no. You can find reams of blog posts, reports, articles, etc. full of how-to-do-it-right information. Yet, despite all of this information, you can still find many B2B Websites that aren’t optimized and companies that throw their unqualified “leads” at sales.

The remaining seven mistakes include:
4. Wrong messaging
5. No offer
6. Not testing
7. Jargon
8. Not paying attention to details
9. Not taking advantage of how people process information
10. Not marketing the Website

I included a description of each mistake as well as information from top marketers on how to avoid each one. And since it’s a crowdsourced e-book, you’ll find many of the survey responses on each page. It was a fun book to compile and write — I hope you enjoy it. If you like it, please be sure to tell your social network about it.

Thank you to following contributors who filled out the survey or sent in email:

Ardath Albee
Bob Bly
C. Edward Brice
Katie Brown
Meghan Carmody
Kirstie Colledge
Sarah Farrer
Ed Gandia
Mark Gibson
Matt Heinz
Anne Holland
Adam Jacobson
Russell M. Kern
Rob Leavitt
Michele Linn
Jim Loadholt
Kim Cornwall Malseed
Barry D. Martin
Mac McIntosh
Raymond Ng
Mike Ortner
Ken Poray
John Rasco
Erica K. Rice
Geraldine Roy
Steven Sessions
Mark Schaefer
David Meerman Scott
Altaf Shaikh
Jim Somers
Kate Spiers
Jeremy Victor
Kurt Weisenberger
Ralf Weiser

Edited to add:
No stock photography was used in the development of this e-book (Mistake #8). The people you see are actual contributors. I originally wanted to use an image of a “crowd” on each page, but didn’t want to use a stock photograph. The designer tried to custom make one out of people’s Twitter photos, but they were too low res.

I tried connecting the mistakes with each contributor, but that was becoming time-consuming and not everyone sent me a photo. So, the designer and I made the executive decision to post pictures of contributors through out to illustrate that “real people” were used in the making of the e-book (i.e. “crowdsourced”).

If someone was quoted on particular page, he or she is placed on that page — i.e. Ardath Albee or Michele Linn. The result may seem confusing — as someone just emailed me said, “Who are these people?” But I believe it’s a small trade-off for pictures of real people. What do you think?

The e-book was designed by Sonora DesignWorks (for those of you who want to know).

Nice e-book from Schenkel / Stegman Communications Design, written by Stephanie Tilton of Savvy B2B Marketing fame, and sponsored by AG SalesWorks: Gear Up for Success: 8 Steps to Get Sales and Marketing Cranking in Unison.

As the title states, the e-book covers how to get sales and marketing to work together in order to “sell the way buyers want to buy.” As we all know, the Internet has completely upended how companies sell to other companies — and it’s more important than ever that companies’ sales and marketing teams be on the same page with regard to defining, attracting and nurturing leads.

Stephanie culled insights from blog posts and articles online, and interviewed leading experts for ideas and recommendations you can put into play today. Strategies include:

1. Identifying your ideal customer
2. Defining a qualified lead and processes for generating and nurturing them
3. Developing messaging and executing a more comprehensive yet targeted marketing strategy
4. Creating content that attracts, engages, and nurtures
5. Connecting where prospects spend time
6. Implementing an inside sales/teleprospecting strategy for lead follow-up and qualification
7. Handing leads off to sales
8. Closing the loop, measuring the results, and refining your strategy and tactics

Even if you’re an advanced marketer, you’ll find lots of nuggets in this e-book. I especially like the tip from Brian Halligan, CEO of HubSpot. “Every time a lead enters your system,” he says, “automatically find the lead’s Twitter and LinkedIn profile, so the sales person can see what is on the lead’s mind (by following them on Twitter) and who is most closely connected to them (by looking at the LinkedIn info).”

In addition, your CRM system should incorporate the various feeds from social media platforms for each lead. With this information inside the system, sales people and teleprospectors doesn’t have to do time consuming research to see what each prospect is thinking / talking about. It’s all right there in the lead’s record.

Whether you’re a small or mid-sized B2B marketer, you’ll get a great deal of information from Gear Up for Success. You can download your copy without having to register for it.

If you’re going to write an e-book that tells B2B marketers how to gain the attention of people in their target markets, you had better damn well illustrate how to do this yourself.

Velocity, a UK-based B2B technology marketing agency, nailed it with their new e-book, “The New B2B marketing Manifesto: Five imperatives and six staples you need to win the battle of attention.”

It’s not that the writers used irreverent phrases you don’t normally see in B2B marketing literature — stuff like “naked, desirable drunk person” and “social media ninjas” (all of which I adore).

It’s that they took a really complex topic, whacked away the hype and got right down to the challenge: in today’s over-hyped, media saturated, micro slivered world, you have just a few nano seconds to gain someone’s attention.

In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve all become hyper vigilant about how marketers / sales people can contact us.

Caller ID, Facebook privacy settings, email accounts set up just for spam unsolicited email, Do Not Call registry, ad blockers, the mute button on the remote, TV via the Internet (Hulu, Netflix), etc. etc. etc. — all of these wonderful tools and applications make it really easy to filter out unwanted marketing and advertising.

To get someone’s attention, you have to earn it. And you do it through engaging content that explains why you do what you do, is genuine, fresh and insightful (versus being warmed over and dull), and that goes beyond digital — as in, it ties together the offline and online worlds we all inhabit.

(Think uploading your personal life via photos and status updates to Facebook.)

If you’re in B2B marketing or marketing communications, and you’re struggling with how your world has changed (as Velocity states in its e-book, one day we were living in the black and white world of print ads and trade shows and the next day we opened the door to a Technicolor Oz of social media and iPads), you need to read this e-book.

Fill out the short form to get your copy — and once you’re done reading it, leave a comment at the Velocity blog.

In a December 2009 CNN article, Pete Cashmore, CEO of Mashable, stated that content curation would be one of the top Web trends to watch in 2010.

“The Web’s biggest challenge of recent years,” Cashmore, states, “is that content creation is outpacing our ability to consume it: ‘Information overload’ has become an increasingly common complaint.”

Indeed, if you’re like me, you read a dozen or more blogs, you follow hundreds of people on Twitter, and you participate on LinkedIn and/or Facebook. In addition, you may read books, newspapers, and magazines.

I have some days where I feel like my brain is so crammed with information that I can’t squeeze in another fact.

Yet, to be successful online, B2B companies must continually create new content and constantly promote content others produce.

HiveFire is a new company that offers an automated content curation service — and they just produced their first e-book: Content Curation: Taming the Flood in B2B Social Media.

The e-book outlines three steps for successful content curation:

• Identify — Search and filter information
• Organize — Tag, summarize and rank content
• Share — Publish information consistently and frequently

The e-book authors also explain why B2B needs to pay attention to and practice consistent content curation coupled with content creation:

You draw prospects in with third-party curated content and then expose these people to your ideas via your original content. You do this through blogs, e-newsletters, a Learning Center, Webinars, etc.

The e-book is available via free download — meaning you don’t have to register for it. Read it and pass it on!

Ok, I love the title of this new series of content from Marketo — The Definitive Guide to B2B Social Media. Anything “definitive” means my reading list has been reduced significantly (a good thing, if you’re a student of Tim Ferris, author of The Four Hour Work Week).

And while it’s not a free e-guide, meaning you will have to register for the series, you do get four meaty guides that explain what is social media and why your business needs it.

Parts One, Two and Three are now available for download:

• What is Social Media and Why Does My Business Need It?
• Laying the Foundation [for Social Media]
• B2B Social Media Tactics and Metrics

Part 4 & 5, Incorporating Social Media at Every Stage of the Revenue Cycle & The Return on Investment of Social Media, will be available March 16, 2010.

One thing I like about this content is that it’s in the Zmags Viewer so that you can flip through it as if you’re reading a magazine. I also like how Marketo emails a link to the guide as well as inviting prospects to a one-hour Webinar on social media via the download landing page. (I also like how the blog page remembers you’ve registered, so it’s easy to download the parts in the series without having to re-register.)

Giving B2B prospects information in different formats — i.e. online content, Webinar, and a blog post, helps them make those crucial buying decisions as pointed out in my post on Monday about GlobalSpec’s report on “How to Align Your Marketing with Your Customers’ Buying Process.

Leigh Anne Reynolds, in her ReachForce blog post, “Set Your Content Free for More Clickthroughs” writes:

I will be the first to admit that I have been very skeptical about “setting my content free” (not using forms in front of eBooks and whitepapers.) I feel like if my job is lead generation then I have to capture those downloading.

She goes on to state that after much consideration, she decided to follow David Meerman Scott’s advice and make her e-book, 101 B2B Online Marketing Tips, registration free.

Although she didn’t do a strict A/B split test, she did see a 1600% increase in downloads. Yep! “Be free, content, be free!”

Herewith, this week’s only featured e-book:

101 B2B Marketing and Sales Lead Tips, Volume 1, an e-book by ReachForce (no registration required).

Today, online marketing is vital to any integrated marketing program. With so many new avenues for reaching prospective buyers, B2B Marketers have to think outside of the box to stand out in the crowd. From significant improvements in marketing program metrics to greater efficiencies in your sales funnel, employing new online marketing tactics can create immediate benefits, if done right.

In Volume 1 of this e-book, you’ll find the first 30 online marketing tips from The B2B Lead, including information on the basics of SEO, optimizing your video for the web, boosting your blog using twitter, how to measure your online successes and much more.

Lots of great content for B2B marketers was published in the last couple of weeks — including white papers. I had to make a decision: should I include white papers in my E-Book Central posts or stick with e-books?

Companies posting white papers usually do so to generate leads — and they can post their white papers on syndication sites which are designed to help them get these leads.

An e-book, however, is different. It’s usually registration-free, it’s easier to read, and the company presenting the content is sharing ideas with industry influencers and ultimately purchasers.

Because I have yet to find a resource that lists the viral e-books being published for marketers, I decided to stick with posting new ones each Friday (I’m also going to include guides and industry reports based on research).

After spending a good hour researching various white papers and e-books, I have a few tips for you to aid your readers when they try to download your content:

1. Make a dedicated landing page or write a blog post for the e-book. On this landing page, give a brief abstract of the e-book and how the information in it pertains to your audience. Be sure to ask your readers to pass your content along to others.

2. Make the free content *really* free. A couple of the e-books I considered and ultimately declined posting here wanted me to log into various sites or programs in order to view the content. A simple PDF link to the e-book ensures that people can easily download your e-book and share it with others.

3. Include a “hero shot” of the cover. Most bloggers will include the cover of your e-book when they write about it — if you provide one for them. When I write content for myself and my clients, I have my designer make a small jpg of the report, e-book or white paper cover just for this purpose.

If you’re unclear on the concept of how an e-book differs from a white paper, be sure to read David Meerman Scott’s, “The New Rules of Viral Marketing” e-book where he covers what an e-book is and how to market it.

Herewith, this week’s featured E-book downloads.

1. Increase Sales Productivity: Sales Tools and the path to productivity gains, an e-book by Nancy Nardin, Smart Selling Tools (no registration required).

This 103-page report sets out to answer the most important question of all — “How do you get sales people to sell more?” How do get from where your sales are now to where you want them to be in the future? You can follow many paths — but the real key is to provide reps with tools that will help them meet or exceed demands through the use of productivity tools. This is a great book even if you’re not in sales, as Nancy covers productivity and presentation tools marketers can use, too. It also gives you great insight into the sales job. (To download the e-book, look for the link in the sidebar of Nancy’s blog.)

2. Social Media and Content Marketing Predictions for 2010, an e-book by Junta42 (no registration required).

This 75-page e-book covers over 100 social media and content marketing predictions for 2010 from the most influential marketers in the world.

3. Design Nurturing Programs to Drive Sales, a guide by Ardath Albee, Marketing Interactions (no registration required).

With longer buying cycles, unprecedented information availability and buyers delaying sales conversations it’s imperative to continuously evolve your lead nurturing programs to parallel their needs. In this guide you’ll learn how lead nurturing differs from lead generation, the 7 Stages of the buying process and how to address them, and the three types of content that influence buying decisions — plus lots more.

4. Gaijin Male Model: A Case Study in Conflict-Driven Business Writing, an e-book by David Meerman Scott (no registration required).

Sadly, very few marketers and business writers introduce conflict in their writing. We all see tons of this stuff instead: “Here’s our product. It is great. Here are customers who say it is great. Now buy some of our product.” In this e-book, David gives an example of conflict-based writing in the hopes of getting you to think about how to introduce conflict into your own writing.

When Seth Godin released his viral e-book last week, “What Matters Now,” he invited people to spread the word about the e-book and post their own inspirational riffs.

The e-book download (3 MB file) is registration-free. Read it, get inspired by it, and pass it on.

Herewith, my riff.

Time

Who forces time is pushed back by time; who yields to time finds time on his side. ~The Talmud

“I don’t have the time.”

That’s the phrase that has run through my head for years. A destructive thought pattern, it’s kept me from starting projects, finishing projects, writing a book, taking big leaps of faith, exercising regularly, getting enough sleep, taking really long walks with the dogs, stopping work when I’m exhausted, and just about anything else you can imagine.

It’s easy to blame technology for our lack of time. Smart phones keep us connected all day and all night. TVs blare their incessant noise in airports, restaurants, and the gym — clamoring for our attention. Computers, which were supposed to save us time, require even more time to get work done.

We sit in traffic fuming yet life rushes by at a hundred miles an hour. Just yesterday it was January 1, now it’s December 25. Where did the time go? What did you accomplish this year? No time to think about it — it’s time to plan out 2010.

We plan our time, organize our time, and try to manipulate time . . . but no matter what we do or how far we advance technologically, we still have a finite amount of time.

60 seconds in a minute.
60 minutes in an hour.
24 hours in a day.
168 hours in a week.
8760 hours in a year.
86+ years in a lifetime (if we’re fortunate).

When God made time, He made enough of it. ~ Celtic Saying

For me, how I allocate my time has come down to learning how to say “no” — no to projects I don’t want, no to time vampires who want to suck the life out of me, no to old rules, and no to other people’s agendas.

Saying “no” means I can say “yes” to what is important:

Being the kind of mom who cooks dinner every night, makes French toast every Sunday morning, and has time to listen to my son when he talks.

Reading, reading, reading.

Working out at the gym five days a week.

Getting eight hours of sleep every night.

Breaking the ingrained rule that says that to be successful, you must work more hours.

Having deep relationships with my clients.

Developing the courage and discipline to follow through on the “big” ideas that come to me in the quiet nothingness of time.

Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save. ~ Will Rogers

How will you spend your time this year? What’s important to you? How will you make your time count — not in the big important save-the-world sense, but in the little minutes of time where grace happens?

Will you be so full of yourself that you can’t hear your own voice?

My challenge for you: turn off the phone, the TV, the laptop. Don’t worry about being “behind.” Create spaces of quiet nothingness where you can hear your heart.

What is your heart saying — and how will you honor it?

Lots of information packed e-books and reports for B2B marketers this week.

All B2B marketers should read the report from The Lead Dogs, “The Truth Behind Web Inquiry Management.”

According to this report, Web inquiries represent a whopping 43% of the total inbound inquiries surveyed companies receive — and with the growth of social media, this will only go higher.

Web inquiry best practices indicate that the odds of calling and connecting with a Web lead decrease by over 10 times in the first hour — yet the average response time to Web leads is a whopping 31 hours!

Call ‘em or lose ‘em people.

Herewith, this week’s reports and e-books.

1. The Truth Behind Web Inquiry Management, a benchmark report from The Lead Dogs (registration required).

Finding the perfect formula to get leads into, and move leads through the funnel, to improve your bottom line is a challenge that takes discipline and structure, and starts with strategies focused at the top level of the funnel. This benchmark study contains key industry stats and best practices to help companies improve their odds of converting inquiries to qualified leads.

2. Enterprise Video Basics — Ten Preproduction Tips, a report from Qumu (no registration required).

Preproduction is the most important step in the video development process — and could be described as, “solid planning and preparation.” In this report, you’ll find 10 tips for planning your enterprise video, including determining your audience, purpose, and timeline.

3. Facebook Advertising Provides Precise Targeting for Less, a report from Get on the Map (no registration required).

Search engine advertising allows your ads to be displayed when a user performs a search that relates to your predefined keywords — displaying your ad at the exact moment a user is looking for something. The problem, however, is that this approach is completely reactive. With Facebook, you don’t have to wait for a customer to look for you; Facebook finds your customers for you. In this report, you’ll learn how to set up a successful Facebook advertising campaign.

4. 2009 Email Benchmarking Report, a report from returnity (registration required)

July 2008 to June 2009 was a very difficult time for marketers, advertisers, publishers and the marketing services industry. During this period, however, digital marketing seemed to enjoy a second renaissance. returnity, an email service provider, saw a 200% increase in email volumes and while most of the volume increase was associated with consumer marketing, B2B marketers showed the strongest growth rate at 210% year-over-year.

5. Social Media Best Practices, a report from Business.com (registration required).

In this business social media best practices report, Business.com identifies opportunities to grow your business by participating in business question-and-answer (Q&A) forums. You’ll learn the best practices you need to improve your business social media results. Based on insights from over 900 participants in Business.com’s 2009 Business Social Media Benchmarking Study.

6. Building Effective Landing Pages, an e-book by Marketo (no registration required).

Ok, people. I’ve had to download about a dozen e-books and reports for this post and last week’s. Some companies don’t include a cover of the e-book or report, which means I have to create one. Other companies have funky registration processes: returnity, I really didn’t want to subscribe to your e-newsletter in order to see your report.

I’m including a link to Marketo’s landing page e-book because one, Marketo puts out some pretty good information and two, we all could use a refresher in developing landing pages that convert.

Remember, if you want people like me to promote your content, make it easy for us to do so.

Even better, if you do require registration, include a “comments” field on the form so that I can tell you not to have your salesperson call me 10 minutes after I download the report.

And while we’re on the topic, check out this blog post about why e-books should be a core component of your content marketing strategy (hat tip to Edin Shaba).

Happy Friday!

One idea I’ve had on the backburner for months now is featuring an in-depth review of a B2B marketing e-book or report every Friday. Of course, I never “found” the time to do this.

(As Ardath Albee will confirm, I confessed to her about having a notebook full of blog ideas. Her incredulous response? “Start posting them, honey!”)

On top of that, I have become overwhelmed with the sheer breadth of information presented on Twitter. Quite frankly, I can’t keep up with it all and wondered, “Isn’t there one place where I can find e-books and reports pertaining to B2B marketing?”

I couldn’t find one, so herewith, my new blog feature that you’ll see every Friday: a roundup of the week’s newly published B2B marketing books and reports — all in one place! I can’t guarantee that I’ll have read them all, but you can read them and leave comments and let others know what you think.

1. The Art of the Social Sale
An e-book by The Customer Collective (registration required).

Sales are not often traditionally thought of as a social process. But the behavior of the modern customer is changing. Customers today can increasingly be described as “social customers,” prompting the contemporary sales organization and even the individual salesperson to rethink how they sell. And that can be daunting for many reasons. In this e-book, The Customer Collective has recruited top corporate leadership and thought leaders who sell in a variety of industry sectors to guide you through this change.

2. Social Media in the 2009 Inc. 500: New Tools & New Trends
A report by the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (no registration required).

The Center for Marketing Research recently conducted a new in-depth and statistically significant study on the usage of social media in fast-growing corporations. This new study revisits the Center’s study of Inc. 500 social media usage for the third consecutive year, making it a valuable and rare longitudinal study of corporate use of these new technologies.

3. Social Media Time Management
An e-book by Amber Naslund (no registration required).

Although not strictly for B2B, I thought B2B marketers would appreciate this e-book as the one plaintive cry I frequently hear is, “How do we find the time for social media?!” Amber wrote this e-book based on her blog series about social media time Management plus a presentation she did earlier in the year at BlogWorld Expo.

4. Engaging Small Business Decision Makers Through Social Media
A report from Business.com (registration required).

In the latest report from its Business Social Media Benchmarking Study research, Business.com addresses a key question on the minds of companies marketing to small business: What are the best social media channels for reaching and engaging with small business decision makers? Report covers B2B and B2C.

5. Deal or No Deal: Sales Mistakes That Turn Buyers Away
A e-book by RainToday (no registration required).

I read this e-book earlier in the week and learned to my horror that I’m making a few of the sales mistakes outlined. So I’m including it as a public service.

To help demystify the purchasing process, RainToday surveyed more than 200 business buyers of professional services. In this special report, they share insights on the most costly sales mistakes you are making—according to your buyers—and tips you can use to improve your selling skills.

Did I miss a B2B report or e-book? Please let me know and I’ll feature it next week.