Forrester: - Making Leaders Successful Every Day

Event Overview

Social media, Web 2.0, and other technology changes make reaching decision-makers and measuring marketing's impact on business more challenging. Successful B2B marketing professionals set their social media strategies by understanding how prospects buy, whether they interact with Web 2.0 applications to do so, and by selecting campaign objectives that meet both company and community needs.

Top marketers combine lead management best practices with interactive channels to transform the human-intensive sales process to one that is more digital, measurable, and productive. By shifting their dollars to more direct and interactive tactics like email, direct mail, and online events they increase prospect engagement and deliver more qualified leads to sales. Aggressive adoption of quantitative methods to measure marketing activities also helps as they close the long-standing gap between marketing and sales.

This Workshop examines the changing nature of B2B marketing in light of the digital and social media shift and the groundswell of Social Computing. It provides guidance to integrate your marketing program; tap into communities, networks, and social activity; and show greater returns on marketing dollars spent. Learn how to drive demand, reduce acquisition costs, use data to target and qualify the best customers, integrate with sales, measure marketing's contribution to the business, leverage emerging social channels, and create a marketing technology infrastructure.

During this full day of presentations, hands-on exercises, and discussions, a Forrester analyst teaches you how to:

• Take an integrated approach to B2B marketing. Reaching decision-makers through traditional means is difficult, especially when trying to facilitate a long-term relationship as business buyers' multitask across conventional and emerging social media. Review the key elements and best practices for leveraging interactive and social tools, and then assess your firm's preparedness for an integrated approach to reaching your target market.
   
• Improve lead management maturity. B2B marketers with mature lead management practices are twice as productive at generating qualified demand and new business revenue, increasing visibility, and improving potential clients' attitudes toward future business development. Learn to use Forrester's Lead Management Maturity Model to evaluate your firm, and discuss ways to overcome barriers and mature your organization's lead management.
   
• Diagnose your firm's interactive marketing. The use of Social Computing in B2B marketing is growing, and there are certain skills that must be mastered to stay competitive. Learn which social technologies have the most promising returns, and decide which ones align with your customers' needs by discussing audience and objectives with Forrester analysts and your peers.
   
• Invest in key marketing technology. B2B marketers under invest in technology that helps streamline and automate marketing processes, especially when compared with their B2C counterparts. Learn why marketing-centric prospect databases, digital asset management, sales-oriented portals/dashboards, and lead management automation are key investment B2B marketers should consider.

Who Should Attend?

This workshop is relevant for corporate, field, and product marketers at all B2B companies, especially those in high-tech, manufacturing, business services, financial services, telecom, and IT consulting services industries.

Potential attendees include:

• Marketing team members responsible for interactive, social, or direct marketing at firms that sell primarily through a direct sales force.
• Marketing managers or directors at B2B companies who oversee marketing programs for demand generation and management.
• Marketing executives responsible for overall marketing strategy who want to understand how to put new social and digital tactics to work to increase customer engagement and improve marketing ROI.

Why Attend?

• Work closely with Forrester analysts — attendance is limited to maximize client-analyst interaction.
• Understand the trends, technologies, and proven best practices that matter most to your role.
• Complete hands-on exercises applying the same methodologies that Forrester analysts use in our research.
• Network with and learn from peers facing similar goals and challenges.
• Leave with assessments, action plans, and best practices that will help elevate marketing to a strategic role in your firm.