Demand Gen Demands Focus

Lead gen (scattered) differs from demand gen (focused).

Demand gen identifies your best prospects, hooks them with content, and converts them into buyers.

It takes focus to pull it off, says Michael Brenner, CEO of Marketing Insider Group.

Here's Brenner's formula:

Step 1. Target your prospects and offer them premium content and giveaways through a variety of channels. Test e-books, white papers, infographics, videos, podcasts, free trials, and free apps. Test influencer marketing at this stage, as well. "With every download, sign-up or other customer action, you’ll gain insight and have a better idea of which segments are interested in what and why," Brenner says.

Step 2. Help prospects form an intimate connection with your brand. For this, try Webinars, contests, and events. "This tactic serves to invite the customer into a more committed brand-customer relationship."

Step 3. Now that you’ve identified your best quality leads, customize your marketing communications. "Hopefully, you’ve managed to collect some extra customer info along the way with survey questions and feedback requests to help firmly establish your buyer personas and clearly understand each segment’s pain points," Brenner says.

Step 4. Keep the customized content flowing. "It is the tailored, worthwhile content that will convince your vetted leads to follow you along until a purchase is made." Don't forget the continue testing different offers.

Step 5. Engage and delight your new customers through social media and email. Make sure they know about your new products, promotions, and content. "Meanwhile, your inbound marketing is working on gathering your next pool of prospects, ready to be identified, evaluated, thinned, and segmented."

Concentration is key.

"This approach does require a concentrated, ongoing effort to stay focused on your quality leads and customer retention," Brenner says. "But, as the nurturing process continues, relationships build, bonds thicken, and your pool of the highly qualified swells."

How to Refine Your Retargeting

Retargeting yields B2B marketers stronger results when linked to precise goals, says Demand Gen Report.

Retargeting experts insist the technique should not be considered a marketing channel unto itself, but a tactic that can reinforce other channels such as social, email, direct mail, telemarketing, and face-to-face.

An account-based approach to retargeting (limiting your ad targets to a list of prospects at specific companies) also boosts results.

"With an account-based approach, companies can identify the accounts that can have the biggest impact on their business and focus retargeting on those companies," says Peter Isaacson, CMO, Demandbase. 

That approach lets marketers personalize retargeted ads based demographics like industry and company size, and on product interests.

Retargeting should also be linked to speedy follow-up by salespeople.

"Too often, marketers focus on ads only," Isaacson says. "But to drive business metrics, you want to make sure there is triggering sales activity. This includes triggers to bring in sales development reps and account development reps to get involved and tie these initiatives to potential bottom line revenue."

The 3-Minute Machiavelli

Master these techniques and rule the world.

Ad hominem. Attacking your opponent, as opposed to his position.

Ad nauseam. Attempting to persuade by endlessly repeating an idea.

Appeal to authority. Citing prominent people to support your position.

Appeal to fear. Creating unwarranted anxieties to support your position.

Appeal to prejudice. Using emotive terms to associate moral goodness with your position.

Bandwagon. Attempting to persuade by arguing "everybody shares my position."

Beautiful people. Attempting to persuade by claiming attractive people share your position.

Big Lie. Attempting to persuade by repeating a fiction. 

Black-and-white fallacy. Attempting to persuade by oversimplifying possibilities.

Cherry picking. Attempting to persuade by selectively telling the truth.

Common man. Attempting to persuade by claiming "plain folks" agree with your position.

Cult of personality. Attempting to persuade by flattering yourself.

Demonizing. Attempting to persuade by painting your opponent as a monster.

Disinformation. Attempting to persuade by forgery or by deleting official records.

Euphemism. Attempting to persuade by disguising unpleasantries with innocuous words.

Euphoria. Leveraging morale-boosting spectacles, holidays or handouts to persuade.

Exaggeration. Attempting to persuade through hyperboles.

Fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD). Attempting to persuade by disseminating mis- or disinformation that undermines your opponent.

Flag-waving. Attempting to persuade by proclaiming your patriotism.

Framing. Attempting to persuade by artfully controlling public narrative.

Gaslighting. Attempting to persuade by sowing doubt, denying facts, or misdirecting your audience.

Gallopbombing. Attempting to persuade by asking an opponent difficult questions in rapid fire, making them look uninformed.

Glittering generalities. Attempting to persuade by using emotionally appealing words without substance.

Guilt by association (reductio ad Hitlerum). Attempting to persuade by suggesting an opponent's position resembles that of someone we despise.

Intentional vagueness. Attempting to persuade by remaining fuzzy.

Labeling. Attempting to diminish your opponent by using a single word or phrase.

Loaded language. Attempting to persuade by using strongly emotional words.

Lying. Attempting to persuade through deceptions.

Managing the news. Attempting to persuade by "staying on message."

Minimization. Attempting to persuade by denying the implications of a fact.

Name calling. Attempting to persuade through bad names.

Non sequitur. Attempting to persuade with illogical arguments.

Obfuscation. Attempting to persuade with confusing generalities and undefined words and phrases.

Oversimplification. Attempting to persuade with simple answers to complex questions.

Pensée unique. Attempting to persuade with a single overly simplistic phrase.

Quotes out of context. Attempting to persuade by editing your opponent's statements.

Rationalization. Attempting to persuade by sugar-coating your own questionable acts and beliefs.

Red herring. Attempting to persuade by citing a compelling, but irrelevant, fact, and claiming it validates your position.

Repetition. Attempting to persuade by repeating a slogan.

Scapegoating. Attempting to persuade by assigning blame to an individual or group.

Slogan. Attempting to persuade with a striking phrase.

Stereotyping. Attempting to persuade by labeling an opponent and her followers in ways that arouse prejudice.

Straw man. Attempting to persuade by misrepresenting, and refuting, your opponent's position.

Testimonial. Attempting to persuade with others' glowing statements about you.

Third-party technique. Attempting to persuade by asking your followers to accept as authoritative the opinions of others, such as celebrities, soldiers, preachers, journalists, and scientists.

Thought-terminating cliché. Attempting to persuade with an over-used folk wisdom.

Transfer. Attempting to persuade by superimposing one or more images on others.

Unstated assumption. Attempting to persuade by avoiding disclosure of your ridiculously incredible assumption.

Virtue words. Attempting to persuade with high-minded, flowery words.

Windfall for Event Organizers

Event organizers can expect a windfall as companies boost their spending on face-to-face, according to Reuters.

The windfall comes at the expense of publishers reliant for revenues on companies' ad dollars.

"Organizers of conferences and trade shows are benefiting from a shift in the way marketing budgets are allocated, with companies spending less on advertising and more on events," write reporters Esha Vaish and Noor Zainab Hussain.

Research firm Outsell pegs the spend for B2B events by US companies this year at $28 billion, a 4% increase over 2016. US companies will spend $35 billion on ads this year, a 6% decrease.

"While the battle between traditional and online media outlets has grabbed headlines, companies are often skeptical that advertising with either translates into sales," write Vaish and Hussain. "Hence the shift towards events."

While conferences' and trade shows' prospects are closely linked to the economic health of the industries they serve, the shift of marketers' dollars to events offsets revenue losses due to other factors, such as government-imposed travel bans.

Kettle Logic

President Trump this week told The New York Times he made no money from business dealings with Russians, but would fire special counsel Robert Mueller were he to try to confirm that.

"I mean, it’s possible there’s a condo or something," Trump said. "So, you know, I sell a lot of condo units, and somebody from Russia buys a condo, who knows? I don’t make money from Russia. In fact, I put out a letter saying that I don’t make—from one of the most highly respected law firms, accounting firms. I don’t have buildings in Russia. They said I own buildings in Russia. I don’t. They said I made money from Russia. I don’t. It’s not my thing. I don’t, I don’t do that. Over the years, I’ve looked at maybe doing a deal in Russia, but I never did one. Other than I held the Miss Universe pageant there eight, nine years."

Translation: I never make money from Russians, except when I do.

"Look, this [investigation] is about Russia," Trump continued. "So I think if he wants to go, my finances are extremely good, my company is an unbelievably successful company. And actually, when I do my filings, peoples say, 'Man!' People have no idea how successful this is. It’s a great company. But I don’t even think about the company anymore. I think about this, because one thing, when you do this, companies seem very trivial. O.K.? I really mean that. They seem very trivial. But I have no income from Russia. I don’t do business with Russia. The gentleman that you mentioned, with his son, two nice people. But basically, they brought the Miss Universe pageant to Russia to open up, you know, one of their jobs. Perhaps the convention center where it was held. It was a nice evening, and I left. I left, you know, I left Moscow. It wasn’t Moscow, it was outside of Moscow."

Translation: Were he to examine my finances, Mueller would discover I make tons of money from Russians, despite what I say. But I never think about the money, so the whole matter is actually unimportant.

A masterful display of kettle logic.

Kettle logic is a form of rhetoric through which you use several arguments to defend yourself with no concern for inconsistencies. Using kettle logic, you string together contradictory statements to make your case, presenting them as if the contradictions don't exist.

French philosopher Jacques Derrida named the form of argument after a story told by Sigmund Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams:

A man is accused by his neighbor of damaging a borrowed kettle. The man defends himself by claiming that he returned the kettle undamaged; that it was already damaged when he borrowed it; and that he never borrowed it in the first place.

The inconsistencies between and among the different arguments, Freud said, aren't apparent to the dreamer, because the logic of dreams allows contradictory things to be admitted simultaneously.

Wake up, Mr. President.