Good one Zak. I especially like the 1st two as you are really talking to demandgen best practices regardless of how you automate. I've seen good form by some who only are using Aweber and good auto-responders. Your advice points to lack of an overall game plan/strategy that leads to these sorts of mistakes. #1 seems to be driven by a quantity mindset when it comes to filling the top of the funnel. The batch and blast is the single biggest Marketing 1.0 habit that B2B marketers and their bosses can't seem to let go of. Keep up the good work here as you are making some great points on best vs worst practices.

Thanks Ardath. I agree totally with Nigel. If you put qualified ops in sales' hands that close (that they would not get on their own), they will be marketing's best friend. you need to create wins with key members of the sales team in order to get buy-in to continue with lead management programs that take much monger to show quantitative results. Regarding @heinzmarketing question, I would put them in the same group if the sales process is online with no F2F interaction with prospects. I am seeing this more and more with SaaS companies, especially for start-ups. They are focused on getting the sales and marketing cost model right from the outset. What i have seen is a role called a Lead Development Rep (LDR) who is part of the lead qualification process who passes MQLs to Account Development Reps (ADR), who then work specific opportunities.

Wow Vinnie. Very impressive. SOunds like a must read. Can't wait for further updates. Henry

Great stuff Ardath. For the past few years, I have been using the Sirius Decisions model for mapping content to buyer types, demand types and buyer process/cycle. Your guide goes a bit deeper. Guess I have to get and read your book. Your other posts the past few weeks are spot on the topic of the state of lead nurturing practices. I starting blogging on this last month and talked about it with Andrew Gaffney for an article he did in December for the DemandGen Report. The common complaint i hear for not developing a solid lead nurturing program strategy is, "We don't have enough content". When you break things down as you have done in the guide, you find that in fact much of the content required exits, but not in the format or context to answer the question the way the buyer is thinking of the problem at that stage of the buying process. I find that a little re-purposing of existing content into shorter pieces that are matched up to the questions as you have them for the Buyer Stage Q&A can go a long way. Often times you can launch a very effective and successful lead nurturing campaign that can take a company though 4-6 months of campaign executions before significant "new" content is needed. I agree with your point about the 12 touches needed to gain attention, which means the same or similar content needs to be delivered multiple times and through multiple channels before engagement begins. This is especially true in the first 2-3 stages of the buyer process. Most of my clients tend to be sitting on a large library or content that was developed over the past 2-4 years. Much of the content and arguments are relevant for their target audience when delivered at the right time and in the right context and length for efficient buyer/reader consumption. Again, very impressive piece of work that i intend to share with my readers and target audience.