SourceMedia Solutions Blog

By Adam Reinebach, EVP, Professional Services Group @ SourceMedia

About a week after we launched the first Big Data in Practice e-newsletter, a friend of mine questioned why our team at Information Management was jumping even further down the big data rabbit hole.   After all, the term has become so ubiquitous, so vaguely defined, that any additional content on mastering and leveraging data — no matter how legit — was destined for deletion. Google the term, and you get 850 million results, including multiple definitions, scores of articles and even a risqué music video about a faux product called “Big Data Shoes.”

To the questioner’s surprise, I told him I couldn’t agree more.  As a former technology head, I still get pummeled with calls from tech vendors offering their business intelligence software, and I killed my “big data” alerts a long time ago after being inundated.   So when we launched the newsletter, with a monthly frequency, we wanted our readers to feel less overwhelmed, not more so, by highlighting the best examples of big data in practice. 

So what was the end result?   Our open rate was almost 30%, which is almost unheard of for a launch newsletter.  Perhaps more remarkable was the fact that we received unsolicited, positive feedback after giving our audience more content.   

This is the same approach we take with Info-Mgmt.com, which, in my totally biased, unobjective opinion, is the best site available for news on topics like big data, analytics, governance and cloud computing.    Like our strategy with Big Data in Practice, the goal isn’t to slam you with story after story, but rather to cherry-pick the best blogs, provide insights on the topics everyone else is beating to death, and ultimately to spark thought and conversation.  

Equally important, we’re very cognizant of the fact that business leaders need to ensure that large, data-driven technology projects show tangible ROI.  Talk to the average BI sales rep or consultant-who-benefits-from-you-buying-a-big-data-platform, and by the end of the conversation you’ll be convinced your business is flirting with bankruptcy unless it invests in big data.  The truth, of course, is many companies fail in this regard, often because there’s a disconnect between the expectations of the CTO and the corner office.

The good news is that success is achievable.  How do I know this?  Because we’ve experienced it here at SourceMedia, the parent company of Information Management.   We’ve had an EDM initiative in place for more than a year now and have seen ROI within subscription sales, lead generation and marketing.   Our strategy is constantly evolving, of course — and we have a long ways to go — but at this point our salespeople and marketers are drinking the Kool-Aid … and keeping it down. 

In the next newsletter I’ll elaborate on our experience within subscriptions sales.   Until then, stay informed, not inundated.

Reinebach is EVP & Managing Director of SourceMedia's Professional Services Group, which includes Information Management as well as Health Data Management, Insurance Networking News, Financial Planning, Employee Benefit News, and Accounting Today. At SourceMedia, he has held positions managing sales, marketing, editorial and technology.

By Adam Reinebach, EVP, Marketing Solutions for SourceMedia

I owe my marriage to content marketing.

True, I probably won’t use that line when I’m toasting my wife at our upcoming anniversary dinner, but for the readers of this column, the story may help to explain why I’m so amped about the need for content within your marketing strategy. 

Before I had a dollar to my name, before I was a self-important blogger, my wife wouldn’t give me the time of day.   We were in school together, so I had ample opportunities to make my pitch, but for almost a year the deal book on Adam Reinebach went unread.  Then God smiled upon me and put us in a German class together.   Not only did this give me the opportunity to see her on a consistent basis, but it provided an excuse to connect that posed no immediate threat of romance.  I asked if she wanted some help studying.   Armed with my strong diction and what must have seemed like a ‘legit’ surname for the content we were covering, she conceded.  The rest, as they say, is history.

Whether that’s a cute story or not is debatable.   But it illustrates the important role that content plays in grabbing people’s attention.  Whether you’re trying to get a date or convince a private equity firm to hire your bank for its next deal, I’m not sure there is a better way to stay top of mind than providing useful and relevant content.  And at a time when people are blistered with marketing offers via email, social media and even in person—a financial advisor looking for clients recently knocked on my front door—traditional branding efforts simply aren’t enough.

If you’re brand new to content marketing, you may need some basic guidance on what forms of content will resonate with your audience.  Some of you are sold on content marketing; you just don’t know how to get a campaign in motion and may have concerns about cost or compliance.   Others have tried content marketing but haven’t seen enough ROI to justify continued investment in this channel.  

Here are a few recommendations that should be useful no matter where you fall on the content marketing spectrum:

Content should be easily found and searched.   If you’re blogging about a hot sector for M&A or writing client case studies that highlight your firm, make sure that content is optimized for search engines and isn’t hidden on your web site.   Leading with a timely blog that answers a business problem or comments on an industry trend is much more effective than drowning the viewer in product or service information.   Also, note that while Google changes its search algorithms constantly, one thing the search engine has rewarded consistently is relevant, original content.  

 It’s not a sin to ‘gate’ some of your content.   I don’t recommend requiring registration for a blog, but if you’re hosting a web seminar or did some extensive analysis in a lengthy white paper, there’s nothing wrong with asking for a few pieces of information from the reader.   We write and market hundreds of white papers every year, and we’re always impressed to see how even high-ranking executives in financial services are willing to provide their information to view relevant content.  More importantly, you’ll have actual leads that you can follow up with on an individualized basis, plus tangible ROI that you can track.

The best content answers a business need.  Too often marketers make the mistake of telling stories that give them a forum to talk about all of their wonderful attributes instead of providing content that responds to their audience’s hopes and fears.   Think about these two headlines that a lender might use in creating a case study:  A. “Bringing Global Capabilities to a Local Business” or B. “How a Small Retailer Went from Red to Black in Six Months.”    The first headline focuses on the marketer’s global capabilities, but the reader has to go further to determine whether the story even applies to him or her.  The second headline focuses on the client’s story vs. the marketer and provides more specificity on why the case study is notable.

Behavioral data should be complemented with firmographics

By Adam Reinebach, EVP, Marketing Solutions, SourceMedia

Talk to the average marketing executive, attend a digital marketing conference, and you're going to hear about advanced lead generation, which uses technology to score and nurture online leads. It's one of the hottest trends in marketing, and it explains why companies who provide these online services have scored such big wins in the capital markets. Back in May, for example, marketing automation software company Marketo raised $78 million in a highly successful initial public offering, and about six months earlier Eloqua was bought by Oracle for $871 million.

SourceMedia currently employs Marketo as part of the multi-million-dollar web seminar business we manage for our financial services clients. One of the things it helps us track is which registrants are most engaged with related content, which is important when determining how and when to approach leads. Intuitively, a customer who registers for a web seminar on disaster recovery software and then reads four stories on that topic is a better lead than the average registrant.

And while that behavioral data is incredibly valuable in scoring levels of engagement, the same marketers who have invested in automation software don't always identify whether their engaged prospects actually work at companies that are likely to buy. John Doe may be frantically reading articles on the same topic, but if his company is too small to afford your product, Mr. Doe isn't worth any dough.

So the question isn't whether demographic and behavioral data are important (they are), or whether advanced lead generation is a sustainable trend (it is). The question is whether you're half-committed to target marketing or whether you're fully committed to identifying all characteristics of your ideal customer. Yes, I'm talking about big data, but the point I want to drive home in this column is the value of account-based marketing.

Late last year, my team created a program for a large technology consultant that wanted to reach banks within a specific asset range. The consultant gave us its list of target clients, we looked at the email domains of banks that fit into its sweet spot and we developed a custom content marketing program sent only to those banks. The end result was a series of custom newsletters with decent open rates and exceptional click-through rates, driven in part by the specificity of the content.

So why don't more marketers incorporate account-based marketing? My view, which is influenced by marketers I've spoken to, is that it's still safer politically to focus on quantity over quality. Telling your boss that the web seminar you spent $15,000 on generated 800 leads sounds much better than saying it generated 35 leads from key prospects. The other problem is, the smaller your sample size, the more it may be scrutinized. Failing to convert any of those leads would be a double whammy.

But the reality is that most organizations can't readily handle 800 leads and work them effectively anyway. Marketers often complain to us that once they collect the leads, the sales reps simply can't get to all of them. In other cases, the client has conceded that "no one bothers calling the leads," but because they inflate the company's database, it plays well with the chief marketing officer.

Another reason marketers shy away from account-based marketing is that it requires a sizable investment of their time, and that time really isn't available.

Perhaps a full commitment to account-based marketing requires too many resources. If that's the case, don't be afraid to start small. If you're doing a generic effort for 10,000 names, create a specific campaign for 100 and see what your return on investment is. You might be surprised by the results.

By Adam Reinebach, EVP of Marketing Solutions at SourceMedia

[email protected]

As a father of three school-aged children who participate in extracurricular programs, I can appreciate the value of repetition. Whether it's the opening stretch routine at tae kwon do or performing scales during each piano lesson, those recurring activities develop muscle memory that allows the body and brain to perform on autopilot. The same holds true in education, where concepts like spaced repetition--a technique that increases intervals of time between reviews of previously learned material--to help a student master the information, are becoming ubiquitous.

For decades, repetition has been a widely employed tactic within marketing and advertising, as evidenced by that TV commercial shown 10 times during a football game, or the flyer I get in the mail every month about switching to Verizon Fios for my Internet, cable and phone. Marketing guru Dan Kennedy has long been a proponent of sequential marketing and recurring contact, based on the fact that people tend to have short attention spans and are forgetful. "Most business people 'miss the boat' by failing to maintain frequent contact with their customers," he blogged recently. "There is a need to stay on the top of your customer's consciousness--after all, out of sight; out of mind."

Nevertheless, when I talk with marketers in the financial services space, there's a lot of apprehension about sending recurring messages or conducting a lengthy marketing campaign. In the last six months, I've heard a dozen executives say, "We want to be careful not to harass people." Harassing people is indeed a poor marketing strategy. But some of this sentiment is an overreaction to digital marketing overload, which first became a real concern back in 2003 with the passage of the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act, or CAN-SPAM. While the law curbed some egregious practices, it couldn't restrain the volume of email marketing, which continues to grow exponentially. The Radicati Group, a research firm, forecasts that by 2016 the world's email machine will be cranking out 192 billion per day. Add in social media marketing, mobile ads and new, intrusive digital ad spots, and it's not surprising to see financial services companies investing more heavily in email-filtering.

Despite those challenges, repetitive marketing is still a viable approach, provided the content and the messaging are relevant. Here are a few examples that have worked for SourceMedia and our clients:

* Expert Video Series: Our 'Ask The Experts' video program has resonated with our audiences for two primary reasons: It is presented as a series, vs. a 'one and done' video; and the spots provide brief, targeted answers to questions our online readers are wrestling with vs. droning on about company values.

* E-newsletter Series: E-newsletters are one of the best tools SourceMedia employs to engage our audience. We recently launched a custom e-newsletter program on behalf of a client that polls the readership to determine which topic we'll cover in the next e-newsletter.

* Repetitive digital advertising coupled with thought leadership: Another trend is the growing dissatisfaction with online banner ads, based partly on the notion that they're so pervasive, the viewer doesn't really see them anymore. But more advertisers are realizing that getting a click-through isn't nearly as important as using the ad spot to create another level of commitment. That's why more of our clients are using digital ads to drive downloads of white papers and web seminar attendance. "Learn more" is more compelling than "Visit our site."

By Adam Reinebach, EVP, Marketing Solutions, SourceMedia

([email protected]; 212-803-6555)

Google the phrase "email marketing" and you get 62.2 million hits, with the first page of results offering an almost overwhelming list of email marketing services companies that claim to solve all of your problems for as little as 10 bucks a month. Every week, there's a self-proclaimed social media guru blogging about how to use Twitter or LinkedIn to get more business. And as customer relationship management software becomes ubiquitous, you can easily find hundreds of articles and web seminars that detail how to better leverage these tools to improve your close rate.

To be sure, all of this is great stuff, and the majority of it happens to be free. As a sales executive, I can't consume enough helpful hints. But somehow lost amid all this online advice is one factor that's no less important today than it was before the Internet: a strong verbal pitch.

During an average week, I receive 20 to 25 emails pitching products and services, with one-third of those salespeople following up via phone. With a very rare number of exceptions, the voice mails and phone interaction from these vendors ranges from forgettable to downright awful. This isn't an intelligence problem; in fact many of these people are probably smarter than me. The missing ingredient tends to be the ability to converse.

"People have gotten so used to email and text messaging, sometimes they can't think on their feet the way people had to in the past during a conversation," says Steve Richard, co-founder and chief content officer of Vorsight, a sales training consultant based in Arlington, Va. "The ability to lead a conversation in an effective way is a rare skill set."

(Before you jump to any conclusions, it's worth noting that Richard isn't some grizzled, old technophobe who cut his sales teeth during the "Mad Men" era, winning over clients with martini lunches and golf outings. He's in his early 30s and heavily endorses the use of LinkedIn, Salesforce and other technology within Vorsight's training curriculum.)

For many telemarketers and call centers, Richard is preaching to the choir. But for most field sales organizations, phone skills and techniques like verbal judo are either deprioritized or completely ignored. Part of that is because there's an assumption-often a wrong one-that the sales team already possesses these skills. "There's no real effort by many of these sales organizations to train their people on phone skills," Richard laments. "There's this perception that if these people are bringing in all the revenue, why are we paying for them to get better on the phone?"

So where are sales reps dropping the ball? Well, for one, Richard says, most people could use some work on their active listening skills, which are critical in determining what the customer is challenged with. Another common problem is an inability to ask questions clearly and effectively, citing the example of the rep that asks a question but provides multiple responses to select from-like a multiple choice quiz-rather than simply letting the customer reply with an unguided, sometimes more complete answer.

Richard says the best salespeople have the ability to pull information out of a customer, and that more and more clients expect insights and guidance from their vendors.

"There has to be a conduit in the buying and selling process," Richard says. "There will always be a role for someone who's smart enough and bold enough and creative enough to highlight a need the customer didn't know they had.... And the only way you can do that is to exchange ideas, which usually happens most effectively through conversation."

By Adam Reinebach, EVP, Marketing Solutions, SourceMedia ([email protected]; 212-803-6555)

Read these two statements and tell me which one you trust more:

1. If you drink coffee, you will live longer.

2. A study of more than 400,000 people, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, says drinking coffee reduces mortality rates.

As an avid coffee drinker and self-professed java snob, I have used the first sentence with family and friends on more than a few occasions. But it wasn't until last month, when I referenced an article about the aforementioned study, that my argument was no longer met with laughter. The fact that I could now reference an outside, presumably objective, study published in an esteemed journal not only silenced my critics, but actually spurred them to do some further investigating of their own. Research in industries like pharmaceuticals, retail, credit cards and insurance, is woven into the fabric of functions like product development and marketing.

But in other areas of financial services, research isn't always so well established. For some clients, a budget for research simply doesn't exist, and research projects are only approved as part of a larger product development effort. Other clients may have defined research budgets, but in some cases the owner of that budget or function has limited interaction with marketing.

Before we go further, let me clarify the focus of "research" for the purposes of this column. For most M&A pros, the first things they think about are analyst reports, valuation models and research on specific industries. While all of that is valuable stuff, the type of research I'm focusing on here is derived from polling a specific audience, with the ultimate goal of leveraging that research to help inform and influence product development and marketing. The spectrum of that research is wide, ranging from quick-hit surveys of mass audiences-think The Family Feud's top 100 people surveyed-to in-depth interviews with a handpicked group of experts. Almost every marketer has done the first type of survey, through tools like Zoomerang. Sometimes the results can provide a quick temperature check before delving into deeper product discussions.

The downside to those quick surveys, however, is that they are often put together by a marketer who isn't trained in proper questioning techniques. By asking the question in a certain way, the party conducting the survey may inadvertently push the results in a certain direction. Also, with this approach, the answers it produces are gut reactions, while the buying process for the product in question may be more lengthy and deliberate.

Conversely, by partnering with a company like SourceMedia, which is armed with an entire research team and led by a veteran research executive, you gain two important advantages: 1. Based on our expertise in markets like M&A, banking, insurance, etc., we can help you craft the right questions while employing best practices around conducting research. 2. As publishers of relevant, market-specific content, we already have a relationship with decision-makers in your industry. Thus, when they see a survey or a request for an in-depth phone interview coming from a trusted brand, they are much more likely to respond.

By Adam Reinebach, EVP, Marketing Solutions

If you're a small private equity firm or boutique investment bank, the phrase 'big data' might not mean anything to you. At a high level, big data refers to the challenges of managing enormous amounts of customer, employee and other data that companies possess. Healthcare companies might leverage big-data tools to predict the likelihood of disease, while a bank would want to analyze which age brackets and zip codes are most likely to download a mobile banking application.

For a middle-market private equity firm or investment bank, spending time and money on harnessing big data might feel like a 'nice to have' vs. a necessity. After all, the databases within this market typically aren't that sizable-both in terms of volume and depth of information. If your sweet spot is consumer goods companies with Ebitda of $10 million to $30 million, the universe of potential targets and their executives is only so large. Perhaps you're generating enough deal flow with a few analysts, some outbound email marketing and sending your key people to the right conferences.

But that doesn't mean it will last, so don't get too comfortable.

The dealmaking business is only going to become more competitive as time goes by, not less. And one of the reasons for that is because technology has made the competitive playing field more level-and more open to newcomers. Whether you're a new PE firm or a one-man boutique investment bank, the barriers to entry are lower than they've ever been. Nowadays, building a website takes weeks, not months, and a few bucks on Google AdWords will bring you some starter web traffic.

Today's Internet also provides several ways to research and seek out customers. The growth of social media networks, such as LinkedIn, means both companies and individuals are providing more information about themselves that can be searched easily. At SourceMedia, for example, my telesales team utilizes LinkedIn for Salesforce, which populates Salesforce with LinkedIn profiles that match the names and companies of the leads.

In addition, there are a host of online tactics and web analytics tools that allow for customer profiling. Some of these tools link IP addresses to specific firms and people, while others focus on user paths.

When you leverage such tools and tactics, your marketing activity becomes less art, and more science. The smaller your staff, the smaller your marketing team, the more important it is to get granular with your marketing. Not only is it more scientific, but it has the potential to save time by automating your marketing efforts.

Your sales organization should be an equal partner in this. Having a customer relationship management system is a must, but unless you give that staff access to metrics, analytics tools and data, your endeavors around big data will only be half as effective.

Here are a couple of examples of how big data can increase your efficiency and return on investment:

* Deal prospecting. Let's say you're an investment bank entering a new sector, and you want to introduce yourself to PE firms focused on that sector. Instead of casting the net widely in a mass e-mail to all the PE firms in your database, you can match that list against other data sets to determine which relevant firms possess contacts within your team's LinkedIn networks.

By Adam Reinebach, EVP, Marketing Solutions ([email protected])

Last December I found myself at an elementary school winter concert in somewhat of a Catch 22.   My daughter’s part in the program was over, I was ready for a nap, but due to social morays I was unable to leave my seat.   So I did what most us do when we’re trapped this way:  I checked e-mail and surfed the web on my i-Phone.

Over the course of five songs I probably read a half dozen promotional emails and saw an equal number of online ads pitching everything from financial services to holiday e-cards.   The good news for these marketers was that I wanted the distraction.  The bad news, however, is that I was in no position to act on those offers.  Once the concert was over, my wife and I collected our coats and kids and rushed to the car so we could beat the outgoing traffic.  Just as quickly as it entered my brain, that wonderfully crafted email on discounted gift baskets vanished into the exhaust smoke coming from my SUV.

The marketing message itself was effective, and as an executive in the market for client gifts, I was an appropriate target.   But once I caught the ball, so to speak, I couldn’t do anything with it—in part because when the message was delivered, it lacked the appropriate context.

Before I break this down, let me quickly clarify that this column is not about contextual online advertisements, which are selected and served by automated systems based on the user’s consumption of content.   While that falls within the concept of context, to me that’s a tactic vs. a marketing strategy.   (Quick example:  If you’ve ever read a story about the New York Jets and then later saw an ad for NFL jerseys, that was contextual, or behavioral, advertising.)

What I’m referring to is the importance of having the right strategy around context.  Here are three recommendations:

Timing is everything.  Think about the end user you’re trying to reach. Do they travel a lot, or are they in the office most of the time?  What time zones dominate your email marketing list?  When do your customers tend to read white papers or watch work-related videos?  A contact of mine who spent years marketing to IT professionals told me the best time to market to computer geeks is from 12-1 pm.  Why?  Because most of them eat lunch at their desks, are tied to their mobile devices and typically don’t have to put out as many fires at that hour.   That’s the type of information that can make or break your marketing efforts.

Warm up the audience with related content.  When you go to a taping of a TV show with a live audience, like ‘Late Night with David Letterman,’ a comedian usually performs to prep the crowd for laughter.    Marketers who warm up their audience through content typically get a better response when it’s time to contact customers one-on-one.  If nothing else, you can refer to that content in your messaging as a conversation starter.  And when you’re sponsoring an event, my advice is to warm up your audience through content, etc., before the show, as they gear up emotionally to attend, network and learn, as opposed to marketing to attendees soon after the conference, when they may feel fatigued and overloaded with information.  

Be sensitive when using current events in your marketing.

By Adam Reinebach, EVP, Marketing Solutions ([email protected])

For many of us in the Northeast, Hurricane Sandy was a major disruptor, displacing millions of people from offices, homes, schools and anything resembling their regular routines. At SourceMedia, we continued to publish news online, to respond to customer inquiries, but dozens of meetings were postponed and the majority of our employees were forced to work remotely. E-mail communication was fairly consistent, but more than half of my emails fell under the category of crisis management.

Not surprisingly, I still received a number of marketing offers electronically, and a good percentage of them featured some reference to Hurricane Sandy. I opened a couple of them, just for curiosity's sake, but the tie-ins to the hurricane were weak and at times seemed disrespectful in light of the devastation going on. It didn't take long before any non-news items with the word Sandy were immediately sent to my computer trash bin.

During my prior stint running technology at SourceMedia, I wound up on multiple prospect lists, which is why on average I receive eight to 10 email offers for technology systems every week. Those offers slowed down a bit after the hurricane, but not enough to dissuade one bold sales rep from a technology company in Austin, who was so impatient after I didn't respond to his first email pitch-received on Tues. Oct. 30, the second day of Sandy's destruction-that he sent two follow-up emails that showed how annoyed he was at my lack of response. I'm resisting the urge to call him out in this column.)

Maybe I'm venting a bit, but there's a marketing lesson to be learned here about the importance of context and timing, something that too many marketers fail to recognize even when the forecast is sunny and dry. Here are a couple observations:

*Use current events within your marketing message sparingly--and carefully. It's tempting and perhaps only natural to use something like the Super Bowl, a monster storm or a holiday within your campaigns. When done right, it can be effective, but too many times this approach distracts from the central pitch. And don't assume your Thanksgiving email makes you unique-it's likely that several marketers are doing the same thing.

*Do your homework before sending a message, whether personal or within a mass email. The vendor from Austin mentioned earlier in this column hurt his chances for a referral, simply because he didn't bother to check SourceMedia's zip code (we're in downtown Manhattan, a block from the Hudson River). Then he added insult to injury by sending a follow-up note during the same week, at a time when I was more concerned with getting gas for my generator than I was with considering his software. Pitching someone on Friday afternoon ahead of a holiday weekend may be less offensive but is usually equally ineffective.

*Provide something useful to your audience. This has quickly become a staple of marketing and applies to Sandy as well. After the hurricane made landfall, a handful of retailers sent email messages to announce they were open for business. Most were informational and easy to discount, but a few of them provided valuable tips on dealing with the post-storm, and another offered to charge phones and laptops. That strategy may not be as relevant to financial services, but there are other ways to offer something valuable-by providing content, research and free consultations.

Sales leads, online engagement and video views offer important insights

By Adam Reinebach - (212) 803-6555

Beyond the profit and loss statement, sales metrics are arguably the most critical numbers for a corporation to track. With the growing adoption of customer-relationship management software tools, it's become much easier to analyze everything from sales pipelines to close rates-even at smaller private equity firms.

Meanwhile, marketing metrics are starting to gain importance as well, with a wave of startups and established technology companies, such as IBM (NYSE: IBM) and SAS Institute Inc., creating new tools to leverage predictive analytics to monitor the success of marketing activities and, ultimately, to improve return on investment (ROI). Some of the better-known players in the marketing analytics space are Marketshare, backed by New York private equity firm Elevation Partners, and Entiera Inc., which was acquired by credit score giant FICO (NYSE: FICO) in May.

In a recent IBM survey of 1,700 chief marketing officers (CMOs), "data explosion" ranked as the most common area in which CMOs feel underprepared. While they appreciate the need for metrics, most CMOs are overwhelmed about how to harness them to drive results.

Another challenge is that the metrics du jour are constantly evolving and, in some cases, can turn on a dime. After completing the bulk of a nine-month thought-leadership campaign for a large telecom company that drove multiple interactions with customers via white papers, custom video and research, the client requested that we retool the program quickly in order to meet new internal requirements for reaching specific lead numbers. This begs the question: What marketing metrics are really important? Here are a few, along with some caveats.

1. Sales leads

Leads are vital to any sales organization, especially when you're targeting financial services companies, whose undivided attention is tough to secure at a time when they're contending with economic, regulatory and technological change. By engaging the customer through content that's relevant to their business, you become a valuable resource as opposed to another vendor.Caveat: A lead only matters if it results in a commitment from the customer. In a worst-case scenario, marketers will tell us their sales team didn't follow up with the leads. In other cases, sales and marketing don't communicate, and the ROI may be less than expected. My advice is to involve your sales team before the campaign starts. And if you don't have a sales team, SourceMedia has people who can follow up on those leads for you.

2. Online engagement

This refers to how much time potential customers spend on your site, how much content they view or download, and whether they are recurring visitors or "one and done." But don't expect any customer to keep visiting your site because it has modern fonts or it is optimized for search engines. You won't create any sustainable engagement without relevant, recurring content.Caveat: When assessing engagement, don't look at any number in isolation. Hundreds of social media shares, for example, aren't worth much, unless they bring people back to your content. But their value increases if they're part of a program that touches customers multiple times.

3. Video views

If given the opportunity, most of us would jump at the chance to sit down in front of a potential customer for a couple of minutes. While a video isn't as personal as a face-to-face meeting, it's arguably the next best thing online. As I've noted in this column, video consumption from C-suite executives continues to increase, so it's quickly becoming a must-have component of any integrated marketing campaign. Caveat: Not all videos are created equal, and some financial videos are downright awful-sometimes because of the "actors," but, more often, because of the content. The worst I've seen include three people from the same company having a 10-minute chat about how wonderful their products are. Conversely, videos that address a business problem or discuss a market trend in a short time frame tend to perform much better.

How changes in technology and customer behavior are redefining the sales rep

By Adam Reinebach - (212) 803-6555

"He's a good sales guy." During my career, I've heard that description used hundreds of times-by managers, recruiters, and even smart, high-priced consultants. While the exact definition of "good sales guy" will vary depending on who you ask, it generally encapsulates the outward-facing qualities that have always been valued in sales: high energy, confidence, strong communication skills, not physically unattractive, and of course, a firm handshake.

All of those are fine qualities, and any sales rep who lacks those traits faces an uphill battle. (I can't recall the last time I saw a low-energy rep beat his or her target.) But as our markets, products and services become more complex, and as technology changes customer-buying behavior, relying primarily on charm and personal relationships simply isn't enough.

At a recent sales conference I attended, a senior manager at one of the world's leading technology companies talked about how technology and the pervasiveness of the Internet has made customers much more informed about products. "We're at the point where the sales reps have to be smarter than the customers they're selling to," he said. And he was talking about the company's telemarketers, not their field reps. (See our August cover story, "Precision Sourcing," to read about how private equity firms are using their associates to prospect for deals.)

Indeed, there are entire user groups on LinkedIn dedicated to financial services products that offer unfiltered comments on everything from customer service to ease of use. Buyers can do a half hour of web research, jump on a conference call with the sales rep and end up driving the entire conversation. This is as much a possibility for an investment bank as it is for a provider of virtual data rooms.

Another dynamic that salespeople must contend with is an overall lack of time. On the TV show "Mad Men," every pitch to a client involves a face-to-face meeting with all the decision makers in the room, at the dinner table or standing at the bar. Today, two-hour martini lunches are a distant memory, and getting the decision maker to spend 15 minutes on a conference call is a tall order. What that means is, every time you have an interaction with a client, it needs to have value. Otherwise, you may be relegated to the unread inbox or, worse, you're deleted and forever ignored.

For existing clients, the challenge is keeping track of all the changes in their market and within their corporation. In the current economy, strategies can turn on a dime, and executives change roles and companies as frequently as pro athletes change teams. That's why maintaining your contact list through services like LinkedIn is so vital, because it helps you track job shifts and, more importantly, enables you to identify and establish secondary relationships to hedge that risk.

So what have I sold you in this column? Simply put, the true definition of a good sales guy in our markets, in 2012, is more complex than cool, more like Carter, Topher Grace's character in the movie, "In Good Company," than Don Draper from "Mad Men." Establishing a strong contact list isn't a destination; it's a never-ending journey. And leveraging technology is no longer a luxury; it's the price of admission.

Leveraging social media to straddle the line between personal and professional

By Adam Reinebach - (212) 803-6555

When I launched my Twitter account @adamreinebach back in 2009, my plan was to use it primarily for business reasons. And for the past few years, that's been the case: I share insights, I let people know what events I'm attending and, more times than not, I post links to SourceMedia content. On the rare day when I have the time, I check the stats on those messages to see how many clicks they produced.

But every once in a while, I can't resist tweeting about what's going on in my non-work life. Typically, this type of urge comes during a sporting event, a TV show, or while I'm impatiently waiting for yet another back-to-school night to mercifully end (with three kids ages five to 12, I've probably spent 20 hours of my life at these obligations). And while those tweets don't typically get re-tweeted and don't lead to any web traffic, it's usually those comments that people respond to.

While posting a link about private equity may be more relevant on paper than my analysis of the NBA Finals, the fact is that those personal tweets give people a glimpse of who we are, our preferences, what makes us tick, what gets us upset. That information-more than what news we like-makes followers feel like they know us and, perhaps, can trust us.

Good marketers will tell you that transparency and authenticity are necessary elements for any good public relations or marketing campaign. It's why Mitt Romney often wears jeans while campaigning, and why Domino's Pizza in 2010 did a TV ad campaign admitting their pizza didn't taste that great and then showing you what they did to fix it. Frankly, I'm not sure you can get away without some level of transparency in a culture where the web allows you to research products and people before committing to them.

But the real question is not whether to be transparent, or even to use social media, it's about how much to reveal within the context of your professional marketing efforts. Here are a few tips based on my own experience and from others:

1. Weave your personal into the professional, not vice versa. Don't lead with how much you love the Olympics when writing a blog about due diligence. Instead, inject bits and pieces of your preferences into the business-focused commentary. Perhaps there's a comment on global competition, and you tie it back to a quick story about your favorite Olympics.

2. Play it safe. I just revealed in this column that I have three children, I probably eat pizza and I don't enjoy attending Back to School night. Those are all relatively safe admissions, because they're not the types of things you'll like me or dislike me for. I also didn't tell you whether I'm pro-Romney (I just noticed his jeans), because that's not what this column is about, and I don't want to alienate either side of the political landscape while trying to make a point about social media marketing.

3. Be strategic. If you're attending a conference in New York during Fleet Week, it could be relevant to tweet about the ships you just saw. If a fellow attendee is following you on Twitter, the comment could be a conversation starter. Conversely, if you're posting on social media for business purposes, don't tell us about your diet or your ingrown toenails. That probably won't lead to deal flow.

No matter what's happening in the economy, networking events have always been a constant fixture in the middle market

By Adam Reinebach - (212) 803-6555

Any firm serious about picking up deal flow attends conferences. Last month we held our second annual M&A Symposium, and a quick look at ACG's calendar of chapter events shows no fewer than nine gatherings in June.

And that's just a slice of the event landscape. In addition to M&A and private equity conferences, many middle-market pros also spend time at events focused squarely on sectors like healthcare, manufacturing and technology, where they get a chance to rub shoulders with sector-specific intermediaries and companies who may be looking for a buyer. Throw in smaller events that you may plan yourself, and the calendar fills up quickly.

Let's assume your firm decided to sponsor or attend a networking event. If you're sponsoring, you've probably designated a person or two to handle the logistical details, and there's a list of people from your firm slated to attend. You'll attempt to set up meetings before the conference, you'll agonize over giveaways and the presentation of the booth, and you'll gauge the success of your efforts by metrics like the number of business cards in your fish bowl, visits to your booth, and ultimately how many follow-up meetings come out of those conversations. If you're lucky, all of that effort will lead to your next transaction.

But if you believe the old adage that luck is where preparation meets opportunity, it's worth pausing for a moment to take inventory of what you're doing-or not doing-to leverage your presence at events. Below are a few tips on how to maximize your conference participation, whether you're a sponsor or simply an attendee.

Recommendation #1: Don't send a junior to do a senior-level job. Too often I've seen companies delegate event participation to junior marketers and associates. While these folks do an admirable job of working the event, they simply aren't as likely to engage the important contacts you're ultimately trying to reach. Conversely, sending one or two senior people gives your firm a broader pool of experience and contacts to draw upon within a conversation, plus it communicates that those who work with your firm will get senior-level attention.

Recommendation #2: Tailor your marketing to the event itself. At a basic level, this means your pre-conference postcard has a specific call to action: "See us at Booth #23 and win an iPad." At a more sophisticated level, this means tying your firm's expertise to the title of the event, or to one of the panel discussion topics. If, for example, speed of execution is a recurring theme, consider replacing the 'standard' marketing collateral at the booth with actual case studies of deals that your firm streamlined. Distributing that case study within an e-newsletter or as an educational web seminar may also be worthwhile.

Recommendation #3: Establish a relationship, even a basic one, prior to the conference. Introducing yourself to target leads prior to the event will warm them up, even if there's no verbal or email conversation. If you've written a blog about the conference, sent an e-newsletter, or invited them to read one of your white papers on a topic relevant to the event, you have a foundation upon which to build.

Recommendation #4: If you're sitting on a panel, conduct some research ahead of the conference that you can present to the audience. We're seeing a growing number of our clients do this, and the results have been overwhelmingly positive. Whether it's a custom survey that gives you C-suite executive insights or a quantitative study that tells you the average growth in technology budgets, giving attendees some meat to chew on goes a long way.

YouTube isn't just for entertainment anymore. The middle market is embracing video

By Adam Reinebach - (212) 803-6555

For most of us, the video aggregation site Youtube is an invaluable resource for watching sports highlights, checking out music videos, fixing a leaky faucet or, more recently, watching an angry father shoot his daughter's laptop. But as more companies leverage online video as a marketing tool, we've seen a growing number of postings related to private equity and the middle market. In January, we launched a new video series on themiddlemarket.com, featuring interviews with high-profile dealmakers.

The trend isn't surprising when you consider recent statistics about online video. ComScore Inc., the digital analytics firm, reports that 181 million U.S. web users watched almost 37 billion content videos in March, and video ads eclipsed 8 billion for the first time ever. And it's not just teens or adult slackers who are watching them: A study released in March from Doremus and the Financial Times said that 76 percent of surveyed senior executives watch online videos, and 71% view webcasts.

The middle market PE firm The Riverside Co. has had a Youtube channel since 2009 and has uploaded 35 videos, with its most recent one posted in March of this year. Last I checked, there were only 30 subscribers to the channel and 34,154 views over a three-year period, so there's no danger of Riverside eclipsing Keyboard Cat. But when I typed "the Riverside Co." into Youtube's search box, the first video that came up was a Riverside-produced promotional video that featured seven of its executives and three portfolio company CEOs talking about what the firm brings to the table.

The four-minute video, entitled "The Riverside Company: Operating Expertise," had just 1,167 views, but if even one of the viewers was an investment bank or target company that ended up working with the firm, that's a win. It's also worth pointing out that videos help your search engine optimization, in part because videos tend to increase the time spent on your web site, leading to a lower bounce rate. Google likes this.

The risk of not participating in this trend may seem low, based on the wrong assumption that people don't go to Youtube for serious content. But on May 2, when I searched on the term 'private equity' I found a video from Robert Reich entitled "How Did Mitt Romney Get So Obscenely Rich?" Like much of the content around Romney and private equity, the piece slams private equity and had 126,000 views as of that date. On the flip side, the Private Equity Growth Council recently launched a web site, www.privateequityatwork.com, with videos highlighting how PE firms ultimately help companies.

Perhaps this all sounds great, but you don't have the internal bandwidth to produce one of these videos. SourceMedia, the publisher of Mergers & Acquisitions, has a full-service, state-of-the-art studio at our New York offices with videographers that capture and produce high-definition content. Our crews also go off-site, and most recently, we shot a number of interviews at ACG InterGrowth 2012, which you can view on our home page and on www.themiddlemarket.com/video. (One of the interviews was with Riverside chief operating officer Pam Hendrickson, who graces our cover this month.)

Private equity firms need to create websites that foster engagement and entice sellers

By Adam Reinebach - (212) 803-6555

Say the phrase 'proprietary deal flow' to most people in the private equity market, and you're likely to get a smirk, a raised eyebrow or maybe a wistful look that says, 'Wouldn't that be nice?' A smaller contingent-exclusively PE sponsors-will tell you about their unique deal-sourcing strategy that has afforded them spectacular opportunities, despite their strategic avoidance of any deals in which the seller's advisor is driving the process.

To be sure, not everyone's definition of proprietary deal flow is the same. Even in a standard auction, many PE firms believe having a prior relationship with the seller can influence their chances. That helps to explain why Trivest Partners' Jamie Elias said during Mergers & Acquisitions' April roundtable on private equity that his firm has a team of people contacting companies who may be looking to exit.

Trivest isn't alone. Some firms have telemarketers who spend all day cold-calling thousands of companies. Other funds are on the road constantly, attending trade events in targeted industries.

But despite these efforts, what's interesting to me is how little the PE community has done in order to drive potential sellers to its websites. Many of them have aesthetically pleasing websites with modern home pages, but too few of them appear to have architected or outfitted the house so the content is optimized for search engines. Sites have few entry points; the content is stale, typically updated only when a new deal is announced; and for the overwhelming majority of firms, there is no call to action on the site, outside of the passive 'contact us.' I'm equally surprised at how few PE sponsors-and their investment banking brethren, for that matter-leverage paid search-engine marketing.

Perhaps it's too much to expect a thinly-staffed PE firm to spend a lot of time and money on website architecture, or populate the site with timely content. But in 2012, when improving market conditions are prompting more and more boomer entrepreneurs to divest their businesses, the importance of a financial sponsor's online presence can't be overstated.

An increasing number of our clients understand this and are using their websites to build engagement. Visit Oracle's home page, and you'll see multiple calls to action, with phrases like "Learn. Watch. Join." Most of those links take you to a registration page for something informative that Oracle is hosting. Oracle gets your demographics, finds out what you're interested in and can send alerts. If Oracle seems like an unfair comparison, consider Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. LP, which now offers blogs, video, email alerts and RSS feeds.

Let me give you a real-life application. A 60-year-old founder of a chemicals company decides to exit his business. He decides he'll contact a few private equity firms to see how they would value his business, so his first move is to jump online. He goes to Google, inputs "private equity" and some terms from his industry and finds two private equity firm websites at the top of the search results. The first takes him to a nice-looking site with a list of the firm's recent investments. He does some quick research and concludes (wrongly) that his company is too small, relative to those companies. He decides not to contact this firm.

The second site features a white paper on recent trends in the chemical industry that looks interesting, as well as an RSS feed with updates from the firm. He registers for the white paper, answers a couple of specific questions on the form, and the next day gets a call from one of the general partners. They connect on LinkedIn and agree to talk in six months-all because the website had relevant content and a proper conversion architecture.