Forrester’s recent research (’How Managing Leads Pays Off In A Stronger, More Qualified Pipeline‘ – registration required) makes for interesting reading. Sponsored by marketing technology vendor Silverpop, the research is based on interviews with 15 senior B2B marketers in the US.

The interviewees paint a consistent and compelling picture of what lead management can deliver:

• Healthier pipelines (both better qualified and higher in volume as more leads are nurtured through to opportunities)
• More accountable marketing (consistently planned, measuring the right things and drawing out valuable intelligence)
• Greater efficiencies (more re-use of content, smarter contact strategies, less blanket comms)
• More appropriate communications (a better experience for customers and prospects)

What’s particularly refreshing (for a paper sponsored by a technology provider) is how much emphasis is given to getting the lead management and content creation process right before selecting the technology platform to use.

It’s exactly as we’ve seen across long term lead nurturing and relationship programmes – the technology is essential (whether that’s Salesforce or Siebel, Eloqua or Silverpop or even just Excel) but there are so many other factors that need to be considered first:

• Building the necessary alignment with sales
• Setting valid goals and designing the overall process
• Understanding the audience (to reach them, meet their needs, and score them)
• Creating the content that will make a difference to the audience
• Designing the campaign components to distribute the content (and mapping these into communication flows that take contacts on the right journey)
• Defining how issues like data quality and sales handover (in both directions) will be managed in the ongoing programme

After all of these (and there are several useful models to consider in the report), comes the right technology solution. There’s rarely just a single answer – far more often it comes down to the ability to integrate different platforms to make the desired process possible.

One major element that the report begins to highlight is the importance of the human factor. In our experience, there are very few processes that can be fully automated – this is where the ideal lead management process needs to account for things like efficiently handling inbound responses and making the most of opportunities for personal interaction like initial sales workshops. Above all,  it demands a new skill-set from B2B marketers to conceive, deliver and operate a lead management process.

Few people would argue about the power of ‘content marketing’ (or whatever you choose to call it): the importance of sharing the right insight, with the right people, in the right way, at the right time, for the right purpose.

A couple of recent blog posts shed some interesting light on why content marketing can be such a challenge – and, living up to the theory behind the approach, some of the conversations going on in blog comments are as interesting as the posts themselves.

Chris Koch has a great call to arms around the need for a marketing transformation – part of which is about building the ability to plan, create, disseminate and leverage truly insightful content.

Chris believes that there’s an element of fear that is preventing marketers from putting all their energy into making this the success it should be: “I think it’s fear that the hardest aspect of marketing, content development, is ascending to become marketing’s most important role, as advertising, traditional PR, and events shrink and fall away.”

I think there’s an argument that actually all successful marketing should now be thought of as ‘content marketing’. Yes, content can be some great research, or a video, or a podcast, or an interview with a customer, or a new model for understanding a complex problem… But I believe that exactly the same thinking is also at the heart of great events, for example. Like any other content, they need a story, detailed thought on what value they add to which audience, and how that audience best wants to receive that value.

When I made this point in a comment to Chris, he came back with the view that “Buyers aren’t interested in information anymore–they can get that anywhere. They are interested in insights.” I think this is the test we should be applying to all marketing activity – and whether we offer this insight at a face to face event, or online via twitter, it can all be part of a valid plan – but the core challenge of creating great content is still there. As Chris puts it, “Marketing departments are going to have to transform themselves into content development engines.”

So how do you go about building a content engine?

That’s one of the questions we wanted to answer (for the digital world, anyway) in our overview for planning great online content programmes. Paul Dunay also had some strong advice in a post I came across recently. Paul was talking about how important sharing great content is to building brands and relationships – and he raised the point that it’s essential to keep up the momentum once you start. In response to a comment asking how to create a plan for sustained content creation around a blog, he had 6 specific steps to offer:

“1) you need to start thinking like a publisher – what are you going to produce each month
2) once you have that in your mind – now make a publishing calendar out of it – so you have a plan
3) stop asking thought leaders to write stuff for you – get a writer and have the writer interview them and “suck it out of their head”
4) then send them the resulting paper for comments and approval
5) you write up the blog post and get the web page done
6) then launch blog post and send out the email to a data dip of those that have downloaded similar types of content

and bingo you have the makings of a content factory”

The point is that having big content ideas is all well and good – but these need to be supported by doing the basics well. We’ll have more on the different elements you can build into a ‘content factory’ – and how to sustain insightful conversations with customers – in some upcoming posts in the Marketing after the Watershed series…