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.

Yield Software is offering its new free e-book, The Link Economy and Why It Matters to Small & Growing Businesses (no registration required).

(Full disclosure: Yield is my client and I helped put the book together.)

The 70-page e-book explains why small and medium-sized businesses need to sit up and pay attention to the Link Economy.

As authors Matt Malden and Derek Gordon state in the book, it’s no longer enough to simply have a website.

These days, you must understand and employ the Link Economy — which means you must create content that other site owners will want to link to and in turn, you must link out to other content.

The Link Economy concept is something I knew about based on my own business and how people find me but I didn’t connect the dots in a big picture way until I began working on the book.

What hit home for me: links don’t just happen between website and website.

They happen when someone includes a link to your blog post via a Tweet, another blog post, a news article, a Facebook or LinkedIn comment, or an e-newsletter article.

They happen in iPhone apps, in YouTube videos, and within e-books like this one.

And they happen when someone comments on your blog and you comment on theirs.

In short, we are a Linked Economy and the sooner you as a business owner or marketer understand this — and take advantage of it — the further ahead you’ll be.

A Silicon Valley start-up, Yield Software offers its Yield Software Web Marketing Suite.

The software enables small and mid-sized businesses to automatically perform multivariate testing for SEO, PPC, and landing page optimization across all three search engines — and then serves up the best performing pages automatically in real time.

Based on my own experience working with small companies, this type of software is desperately needed as many small mom and pop shops are losing their shirts on PPC campaigns and have no clue to how to maximize SEO and landing page tactics.

Be sure to download the e-book (it’s chockablock full of Web marketing info) and do check out Yield Software.

You can test drive the software via a risk-free, no obligation demo.

Rebekah E. Donaldson and Cris L. Rominger, of Business Communications Group, recently published an e-book, “The New Rules of Outsourcing B2B Marketing: What Marketing Directors Need In a B2B Marketing Consultant Today.”

You can download it for free — no registration required.

Rebekah and Cris lay out the 10 questions you can use to help you rank consulting candidates; they then use the rest of the e-book to explain what a B2B marketing consultant should bring to the table.

I really like their ideas. They make the case that a B2B marketing consultant needs to be well-rounded — meaning that he or she needs to understand marketing as a whole and how the various pieces fit together.

The authors also go into detail about why inbound marketing skills are crucial: it’s because B2B buyers are “empowered and savvy” and they go online looking for the products and services they need.

If your B2B marketing consultant has no clue how the Web works — or what types of Web content play a role in the various stages of the sales cycle — then you’re going to miss out on an important piece of the marketing mix.

According to Rebekah and Cris, a B2B marketing consultant also needs to understand the importance of integrating all major marketing disciplines — from search engine marketing and email to social media and trade shows.

The authors conclude with a discussion about measuring ROI. In fact, they advocate asking potential consultants how they’ll measure ROI and how they’ll report the findings back to you.

All in all, a really great resource — whether you’re looking for a B2B marketing consultant or you are one.

Five B2B MarCom Strategies to Increase Sales Now – You can download this e-book now. No registration required!

YouTube. Twitter. Blogs. Podcasts. White Papers. Search. Direct Mail. Trade shows. Webinars. Networking. TV commercials. Prints ads. LinkedIn. Facebook. Digg.

Some days I want to scream, “STOP!”

To say that marketing today is fractured and fragmented is a total understatement.

Where are people (our customers and prospects) congregating? How do we reach them? What works? What doesn’t?

Does it make sense to run ads in trade publications? No wait, maybe we should dump all our money into search. But wait, some gurus are still advocating direct mail and white papers.

What’s a marketing professional to do?

My new e-book, Five B2B MarCom Strategies to Increase Sales Now, won’t help you decide the best channel for disseminating your messages.

But, it will help you with strategy. That’s because no matter what the communication channel, the strategies for developing messages and campaigns that resonate with buyers and customers have remained the same:

1. Understand your target market

2. Determine your campaign objectives before you start writing

3. Integrate online and offline tactics

4. Build your Website around what Buyers and Prospects want

5. Focus on your Customer, not on your company

These strategies aren’t rocket science but in today’s fragmented marketing world, they’re often forgotten in the rush to get a campaign out the door.

You can download this e-book without having to register, provide your name, nada, nothing.

I hope you enjoy it. I enjoyed putting it together!