Recently I asked my blog readers to share opinions about the great "quality vs. volume" debate. That is, if you had your choice between a high volume of leads and high-quality leads, which would you prefer? Here's the feedback I received from readers -- 71% chose quality, while 29% chose volume.
Why do B2B marketers invest in producing blog posts, white papers, reports, articles, and videos? The general aim is to attract an audience to their website so they can engage them and (hopefully) turn them into customers over time.
As I wrote last week, I believe that marketers often don’t consider ROI tools and value calculators when planning their content marketing mix, and I think this is a missed opportunity. If marketers want a high volumes of well-qualified leads, then my view is that value calculators and ROI tools can often pack a much bigger punch than other forms of digital content.
Content marketing is a term that gets a lot of buzz these days, but the basic concept of capturing prospects and buyers through stories has been around for generations.
This video put together by Content Marketing World shows a full timeline of the history of content marketing, including examples. According to the video, the term “content marketing” emerged only around 2001, but the concept itself started over a century ago. The earliest example they cite is John Deere’s magazine, The Furrow, launched in 1895. (This magazine is still around, with a circulation of 1.5 million in 40 countries and 12 different languages.) The video also calls out “The Michelin Guides” put forth by tire manufacturer Michelin back in 1900 to help drivers maintain their cars and find good inns and hotels while traveling.
Each year InsideSales.com conducts an audit of lead-response patterns among 14,000 companies to see how quickly and effectively they respond to Web-based inquiries. (They define response time as “the period between the submission of a Web lead and the first contact attempt by a company representative.”)
