TL;DR: Don’t use lead gen forms to abuse potential customers. Don’t sacrifice reach for low-quality leads. And a few other tidbits.

An intriguing ebook title zipped by in my Twitter feed today. The landing page described the wondrous information in this piece of content. All I had to do was provide a little info:

This is madness.

All that information to get an ebook. Not a Gartner Magic Quadrant. Not even a free Kit Kat.

An ebook.

Brands don’t get it. They build lead gen forms that demand an absurd amount of information for scraps of content. Then they wonder why those forms don’t work. And so, my rant, in eight parts:

1: Lead Gen Forms Are Not Surveys

Surveys collect data. Lead forms collect potential customers. Don’t get cute and try to combine them.

The nutjob form above, for example, asked me “What is my biggest challenge?”

My biggest challenge is getting used to progressive lenses and answering inane questions when I’m trying to download your ebook.

MY POINT being that the rules below do not apply to surveys.

2: Most Leads Don’t Like You (Yet)

They didn’t want to fill out that form. They had to. They don’t want to hear from you. They’ve set up separate spam collection email accounts to trap and ignore your follow-ups. Most site visitors just want whatever’s on the other side of that form.

Best case, you can change them from detractors to fans. To do it, the content you provide had better induce a state of trembling euphoria.

Or, you can make it easier for a visitor to get your content.

Require less. Deliver more.

3. More Fields Mean Fewer Leads

Every field you add to a form cuts the number of leads by 25%.

That’s my pseudo-datapoint for this post. It’s based purely on instinct and anecdotal evidence. Please don’t start throwing it around in meetings.

Marketing and sales teams will say, “Yeah, but those leads are better qualified.”

Nope. Incorrect. False. Faulty. Untrue. Erroneous.

On to #4.

4. Extraction Does Not Equal Qualification

“Qualified” means “likely to buy.” It does not mean “survived excruciating data extraction.”

That tedious form just set my teeth on edge. I’m not more qualified; I’m uncomfortable. I feel like a sucker.

How many qualified leads did you lose because they wouldn’t fill out that ridiculous form? Lots.

Also, see #2. See #5.

5. Don’t Sacrifice Reach For Lousy Leads

Detailed lead gen forms sound great, but you’re trading reach for leads. Be mindful of that. Every person who sees your content and likes it is a potential customer, but they’re more than that—they’re a prospective salesperson. They may pass your ebook or whatever along.

They might talk about it. Or tweet it.

They’re more likely to do that than reply to your inevitable follow-up email.

Note: I am not frolicking in the happy fields of brand building. Lead gen forms are a great way to capture leads, but they’re not the only way. Every reader is a potential lead. Want leads? Get more readers.

6. Open-Ended Questions Suck

The “contact us” form on Portent’s site has an optional, qualitative question: “How can we help?”

I just checked the data. In the last thirty-six hours, thirty-five people have completed the form.

• Five of them used the “How can we help?” field.
• Four of them asked if they could write a guest post on our blog.
• One talked about biological acts using language I wouldn’t repeat on the subway.

Open-ended questions are lousy lead gen tools. If you must have one, make it optional.

7. Enrich, Don’t Demand

Be patient. Instead of demanding a ton of information up front, enrich it over time.

Start by giving me something useful in exchange for my name and email address. Now I like and trust you.

Next time, ask me for a little more: My company and my title, for example. In exchange, give me something even better.

Then offer me personal contact for even more information. Provide a free consultation in exchange for my phone number, the size of my team and my budget. Provide access to a private Slack channel, or a subscription to an exclusive newsletter.

Please make me a fan, not a lead. I’ll love you for it.

8. Other Rules

Keep these in mind:

1. If you check the “Please send me information” box by default, you deserve a special place in Hell. Belay that. You deserve a whole separate hell. Just for you.
2. For every breathlessly, ridiculously obvious statement you make in your content, remove one field from your form. If you say “Today, in [industry][thing] matters more than ever,” ungate your content and back away slowly. Please don’t take this personally. I’m as guilty as you are.
3. If I hit [TAB], I’d better advance to the next field.

That’s It

I tried to come up with a pithy conclusion. I finally developed one using ten years’ data across 3,000 customers. If you want to hear more, please fill out this form…

The post 8 Rules For Lead Gen Forms: A Rant appeared first on Portent.

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The influencer identification, validation, and recruitment process is time consuming, resource intensive, and high stakes. Without the right mix of influencers to drive awareness, intrigue, conversation, and action, your marketing initiatives will miss the mark with your audience and fall short of expectations.

But how? How do you artfully and strategically find, vet, and entice industry experts to partner with you?

You need to do your homework—and fortunately, insights from several seasoned B2B influencer marketing experts can provide some great guidance.

Read on to get perspectives and advice from leaders serving a range of B2B brands, as well as some of our own resident experts.

#1 – Set the bar for quality—not quantity of audience reach.

Analyzing an influencer’s social reach and following is certainly par for the influencer identification and qualification course. Amplification and reaching new audiences are primary objectives for most marketers’ influencer marketing efforts.

But seasoned B2B influencer marketing leaders have some words of caution: Don’t let large follower counts be a distraction or the only means of qualification.

via GIPHY

It’s critical to dig deeper to truly gain an understanding of who an influencer is, what they can offer your audience and brand, what they’re talking about, the kind of content they’re sharing, and the list goes on.

“Go beyond what the numbers are and see what that data really means,” Amisha Gandhi, Vice President of Influencer Marketing and Communications for SAP Ariba, shared with us. “Look at who influencers are engaging with, how many comments they receive and how long they’ve been engaging.”

[bctt tweet= »When identifying and qualifying influencers, go beyond what the numbers are and see what that data really means. – @AmishaGandhi » username= »toprank »]

And as Martin Jones, Senior Marketing Manager at Cox Communications shared: “Selection of the right influencers for your campaign will be one of the single most significant factors in its success or failure. It’s easy to get excited about a big name or an influencer with a large following, but neither of those will necessarily translate to your ultimate goal of delivering results to your organization.”

[bctt tweet= »It’s easy to get excited about a big name or an influencer with a large following, but neither of those will necessarily translate to your ultimate goal of delivering results to your organization. @martinjonesaz » username= »toprank »]

#2 – Keep relevance at the forefront.

Relevance is a key success driver for any marketing initiative. Relevance breeds resonance, which is key to connecting with buyers at every stage of the funnel and building trust. Working with influencers who don’t topically align or lack the right expertise simply won’t produce fruitful results for either party—or your audience.

As Ashley Zeckman, TopRank Marketing’s Senior Director of Digital Strategy, has said: “First, you’re going to want to identify the topics that are most important to your audience and how they align with the topics you want to be known for. Then, you’ll need to determine what types of influencers (aligned with your target topics) will be the best fit based on your objectives. Each influencer type holds a different value for your audience and your brand.”

Here’s an example of a topical alignment score Ashley shared. (See if you can guess the « client. »)

[bctt tweet= »Identify the topics that are most important to your audience and how they align with the topics you want to be known for. Then identify the right types of relevant influencers. @azeckman » username= »toprank »]

Influencer types include brandividuals—those recognizable experts who have an extensive network size—as well as up-and-comers, niche and internal experts, and current customers and prospects.

One great way to ensure relevance is to do some old-fashioned crowd sourcing, according to Lucy Moran, now the Senior Vice President of Brand, Digital, and BU Marketing at Dun & Bradstreet.

“Ask your customers who they follow or read,” she said. “They are your target audience and you want to be where they are.”

Finally, finding the right fit also comes down to shared values, according to Abobe’s Head of Social Influencer Enablement, Rani Mani.

“My main tip is to make the upfront investment to ensure the influencer is the right cultural fit for your brand,” she told us. “Ultimately, ask yourself pretty much the same questions as you would if you were going to hire this individual because, at the end of the day, they will be representing your brand.”

[bctt tweet= »Make the upfront investment to ensure the influencer is the right cultural fit for your brand. At the end of the day, they’ll be representing your brand. – @ranimani0707″ username= »toprank »]

Read: Creating Content Connections: 10 Lessons in Resonance from Content Marketing Pros

#3 – Take an always-on approach to vetting existing and prospective influencers.

As TopRank Marketing CEO Lee Odden is often quoted as saying: “Everyone is influential about something.” This means that there’s always opportunities to connect and work with relevant thought leaders—and you should be looking at those opportunities on a regular basis.

[bctt tweet= »Everyone is influential about something. @leeodden  » username= »toprank »]

Perhaps one of the biggest opportunities in this arena is identifying and nurturing up-and-coming experts. As Lee also says: “Work with an influencer, you’re friends for a day. Help someone become influential and they’re a friend for life.”

But from an even more practical perspective, regularly vetting your influencer partners and prospects helps ensure you’re keeping your eye on relevance.

“A sophisticated influencer program doesn’t rely on a single identification method or one-time vetting process to start and maintain a relationship with an influencer, but rather develops a scorecard that gets constantly reviewed and, most importantly, evolves as this emerging field matures,” Dr. Konstanze Alex, Head of Corporate Influencer Relations at Dell, so eloquently said.

[bctt tweet= »A sophisticated influencer program doesn’t rely on a single identification method or one-time vetting process to start and maintain a relationship with an influencer. @Konstanze » username= »toprank »]

#4 – Aim to build long-term relationships, not one-time transactions.

At its core, influencer marketing is all about brands engaging and developing relationships with individuals—individuals who have relevant topical expertise, reach, and resonance that aligns with the goals of the brand. But strong, lasting relationships aren’t built in a day.

We’re big believers in growing partnerships long before you make your first collaboration ask. But the linchpin of this approach is showing influencers the value a partnership with your brand can bring.

“We’ve scaled back the scope of our engagement activities to focus on developing collaborative relationships with fewer individuals,” Angela Lipscomb, Influencer Relations Manager for SAS, shared.  “That means that sometimes we focus on influencers who may not have the largest reach, but have greater engagement and subject-matter authority and the ability to inspire.”

“I want to get to know what makes that person tick, and how SAS can be of help to the influencer, and not just how they can be of value to us,” she added.

[bctt tweet= »We focus on influencers who may not have the largest reach, but have greater engagement and subject-matter authority and the ability to inspire. @angelalipscomb » username= »toprank »]

Read: Why Always-On Is Always Better for Driving B2B Influencer Marketing Success

Do Your Homework, B2B Marketers

Your brand, industry, product or service, and audience are undeniably unique—and influence varies. Furthermore, it may be easier than ever to give the perception of influence. (Here’s looking at you fake follower counts.)

As a result, you need to look beyond metrics to qualitative indicators to get to know prospective influencer partners. You need to keep relevance top of mind. You need to consistently be vetting and refining your list of partners and prospects. And you need to put effort into building relationships, rather than engaging in a one-time transactions if you want to scale.

Want more B2B influencer marketing insights? Get inspiration and insight on Influencer Marketing 2.0 from our own Lee Odden.

The post Do Your Homework: Selecting the Right Influencers for Your B2B Brand With Tips from the Experts appeared first on Online Marketing Blog – TopRank®.

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