B2B Marketing Agency campaign in a scribble

First of all, guys, I love everything you’ve ever written on this blog. You are clear, cogent and funny. If I wasn’t grown up, I’d want to be you when I grow up. Your web site makes me laugh, think and say “aha.”

But…

You knew there’d be a “but.”

I wonder if you ran out of paper. Is there A5 in Britain?

Somehow, the beautiful chaos that you organized at the top and the middle of the funnel went from Leads -> Contact -> New Biz! at the end.

It reminded me of this cartoon I would often show in presentations: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/wp-content/uploads/then-a-miracle-occurs-cartoon.png

I’m CERTAIN I missed something, an explanation that this was just top of the funnel activity, that this didn’t take into account all the nurturing, buying paths, and time it takes to develop leads into sales-ready opportunities.

I just didn’t want anyone else to get the impression that that’s all there is to it. Anyone who has read any of your other stuff would know that. You guys are just that good.

And your penmanship! I could go on …

Hi Steve,

Love the miracle cartoon – it’s spot on. And no argument with your summary.

The diagram isn’t really supposed to be super-scientific. It’s really just a visual insight into ALL the things that we’re doing as part of the campaign, rather than break any one of them into lots of detail.

You could describe it a bit like an average Subway map – all the stations are on it, but it’s not to scale.

By creating the B2B Marketing Manifesto, there by sharing your intellectual property with the world, have you seen a change in the length of your Sales cycle? My gut says the Sales cycle would increase because people have more information to connect with. On the other hand, maybe leads pre-qualify themselves by being engaged with your content. I’d be interested in your thoughts.

@steve: You’re right of course, the funnel hides a lot of activity. That ‘Lead Nurturing’ down the right hand side is an attempt to sweep that under the carpet…

@holly: If anything, our content marketing is shortening sales cycles — sometimes dramatically (we got one nice piece of new business straight from the Manifesto already and some more in the pipeline. There’s definitely some pre-qualification value (our kind of marketer likes the Manifesto and we want them to approach us). And we’re getting people into a sales cycle that would never have even started.

The Manifesto and associated campaign has all sorts of interesting effects (our Project Open Kimono on the blog shares many of them). But by any measure, it out-performs the alternative: holding back our expertise and keeping it to ourselves!

Thanks both for the comments!