LeadsCon Coverage: B2B Lead Generation in a B2C World
I was really looking forward to this session at LeadsCon 2010 and wasn’t alone as the session was over two-thirds full. Jesse Pujji, Ampush Media Co-Founder, moderated a panel consisting of Jay Hallberg, Co-Founder & VP Marketing for Spicework and Thomas Koletas, Senior Vice President of Advertising Sales for Madison Logic.
After brief introductions panelists were asked to share one big vertical in the B2B lead generation space. Jay Hallberg said that global information technologies are a market section with a $45 billion marketing budget that has plenty of room to grow.
Tom Koletas agreed with Mr. Hallberg, but he also saw the technology vertical as a large opportunity in the B2B space this year. He felt that technology is such a strong vertical because affiliates have been promoting it for years and years. He also shared that he thought “white papers” were the primary means by which people generate leads.
Mr. Pujji asked each panelist for what they thought were the biggest differences between B2B and B2C in lead generation. Mr. Hallberg’s response was the community of IT professionals and their ability to drive huge volume. In contrast, he felt B2C volume was relatively low, citing 20,000 page views a month as the measure of success in B2C.
Mr. Koletas said he felt B2B was a more collaborative buying process where content producers are outstanding lead generators. He also mentioned construction as a vertical to watch. He used VOIP as an example of a more commodity-based vertical typical of B2B lead generation. Additionally, he felt that B2C forms are short with only a couple of “points” (i.e. name and email, to fill out the form) while B2C typically requires 18 points. Database, management software, and CRM were a couple examples he used to support the long form typically found in B2B lead generation marketing.
Mr. Koletas felt that, “B2B lead generation has a greater shelf life than B2C.” He also felt that the leads are typically more qualified in B2B. He used an example of working with CDW, if they were into data mining, and said he could get in contact with the guy buying leads for Liberty Mutual – that would be a great lead.
When posed the question, “What kind of advice would you give from B2C to B2B?” Koletas felt B2C lead gen was really good at distribution, but that the industry needed to learn how to scale. He also liked the innovative ways B2C lead gen marketers used social media to get offers in front of consumers.
Learning to save time in innovation and training are some key pointers B2C marketers could take away from the B2B industry according to Mr. Hallberg. He also referenced communication and networking, that IT professionals were ahead of Twitter in terms of finding ways to find each other and share information.
Mr. Koletas stated that he expects to see a more diverse scope of verticals including construction, lead gen, plastics, and manufacturing emerging in 2010. He also emphasized that data is really important—that the way we collect leads is permission based.
The session ended with each panelist sharing where they would invest if they had $1 million to play with right now. Mr. Hallberg stated that he sees an affinity between IT and maintenance operations and he also sees an opportunity in sales training and education. While Mr. Koletas felt finance might also make a big comeback this year.
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http://ifbyphone.com Ilya Bodner
