Ok, so technically we are a few days into Dreamforce. Starting Sunday evening with a busy welcome reception, the VR team spent a few hours greeting customers and attendees from all over the world (as the small sample below photo can attest).
I personally spent my first full conference day on Monday at Dreamforce with the beginner marketing crowd. It was no surprise here that while the keynote demonstrations were inspiring (and I want to learn how to build one of the cool event registration sites for VerticalResponse's Spring User Conference) most of the start-ups and smaller companies are here to learn from one another and share fresh ideas for a challenging economy! Today's emerging companies want to know what they can do with very limited budgets and challenged resources.
Tricia Reilly's Marketing for Small Business session was just what this crowd of hot start-ups and first time Dreamforce attendees needed. She brought it right down to her Top 10 list, and here are 3 ideas that I think are important to recap:
1) Before you even plan your first campaign, get a web to lead form online. It doesn't have to be complicated and it should be linked from EVERY page of your website, not buried under "about us". Why? Fresh inbound leads in the hands of hungry sales reps and a growing list of opt-in members will make you a marketing hero.
2) What's the best source for creating content to use in lead gen campaigns? Your customers! Tricia says for company's of all sizes, surveying your install base on hot topics and turning their responses into a report on industry trends is a guaranteed lead generation winner. Prospects just can't help wanting to know what their peers are thinking and doing.
3) Email Newsletter's of course! I know it seems self-serving, but the majority of the Q&A discussion came from people wanting more specifics on open rates, email delivery, and how to nurture old prospects back to life.
Thanks to Trish for mentioning VerticalResponse as a great email service provider and for the lead-in about the upcoming release of our Survey product! We continued this discussion at the Birds of Feather Marketing lunch. My table consisted of a few non-profits, a VR customer that offers sales training programs, and a growing educational firm. We talked about using case studies and customer references, and how to leverage your content into effective marketing programs. We also discussed how to use a web to lead form or a survey to capture the stories online and turn their positive feedback into email newsletter content, website content, offers, and blog posts. I pointed out how effective Salesforce is at turning their customers into heroes here at Dreamforce. I shared how we implemented our own VR Superstar program and received amazing customer success stories complete with metrics and background information.
Off to learn more about lead generation 101....more to come!
Comments