Today we publish our e-book – the B2B leads research guide.

A quick look at how to find the name of the right person at the business you want to pitch.  Using both free and paid-for resources, we illustrate good websites to use and the tools they offer new business development professionals who are trying to start conversations with prospects.

Enjoy and download your own copy here.

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Hubspot is the integrated online marketing suite for small and medium sized busiensses.  There’s been a lot of buzz about its services and many new customers are using it.

We were invited to watch a demo with a client and took advantage of the opportunity to make our own critique of the Hubspot service.

Read our slides which show the Hubspot pitch, and give the Creative Agency Secrets commentary about the service and where the pitfalls could be for your business.  Hubspot demo critique – download pdf

Hubspot demo pros and cons

View more presentations from Rebecca Caroe.

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On behalf of a client we're hiring a Business Development Assistant position.  Ideal first job for someone wanting a career in sales /biz dev for marketing agencies.  The job will start with three months training and mentoring with me, Rebecca Caroe and then a permanent post will be offered if the training has been successful.

Job Details:

Location: West London

Salary:  £20-£30,000 including sales bonus of 5%

Job spec: New business development including database management, online and offline PR, collateral development, sales pipeline management, prospect research and sales.

Personal profile: Graduate with any degree discipline. Mature student preferred. Experience in a creative / media / advertising industry e.g. work placement / holiday job may be helpful.

Starting: 21 September 2009

Applications: CV and cover letter
Send applications to: my christian name at my surname dot com 

Applications close 15 August, 2009

In your covering letter please include details of:

• an event / party / meeting you organised and how you persuaded people to come, how many came, what it cost
• A club / society / organisation that you have run or organised and what you did to improve it
• Include information about any freebies / sponsorships you swagged and how you got them.   

And please click the share this icon to spread the word

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A case study showing how to find new prospects for your service using social media.

Here's a nice example of Twitter working for me.

I wrote a blog post about creative agencies not using marketing tools for their own marketing

I put it up on Twitter

It was picked up by people who read my Twitter stream www.twitter.com/rebeccacaroe

They valued it enough to "amplify" its message by "re-tweeting" it to their followers.  I.e. they repeated my message and republished the link to the blog. 

Result: their followers read my stuff, if they like it they'll follow me increasing my audience.

Moral: write interesting stuff and an audience who is interested in your area of specialism will eventually get to know about you.  I expect more people will follow me as a restul. 

  The image is a screenshot from TweetDeck showing the people who repeated my message [RT is shorthand for re-tweet]. Tweetdeck is the tool I use to read my Twitter feeds – it helps me filter into groups, replies to my tweets, sort those that reference my twitter ID and shortens URLs.  Handy.

Thanks to all of you!

Aside…. one of the RTs came from [twHIVE] Where it says

"twHIVEs are twitter accounts created to collect posts with a special content. This one is for webmaniacs."

Interesting… must investigate further.  Seems its Frank Tentler playing around….

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Agencies in the UK don't use Web 2.0 for their own marketing.  I started writing on this subject in 2007.  Actually very instructive going back through my archive for references.  Here are the main ones that I found.  Read the research paper exec summary if you do nothing else…

Web adoption rates for agencies (March 2007)

Web 2.0 tools used by agencies research (May 2007) and a copy of the research paper I wrote How agencies are using web 2.0 Research findings

The marketing industry is BAD at marketing itself (October 2007)

This has been re-surveyed by eMarketer (in August 2008) in a new survey with data from 2007 that pretty much bears out my own findings.  Although they only surveyed online marketers not all agencies….

So pretty dire.

But it just reinforces what I wrote yesterday about what clients and brand managers want to see from their agencies – They WANT you using this stuff and showing off your skills.

P.S. A confession.  I found this post in my drafts folder from back in the summer … and ooh, how little has changed.  It's just there is even more data to support my POV now.

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I wrote a piece back in May about an event hosted by Channel 4 and Sport England on how to use social media for grass roots sport communication. 

The Image by Leo Reynolds via Flickr and so I am re-linking to the article in case you want an update.

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I Twittered this, but thought it so important that I have put it up here as well.

Chris Brogan linked to this Constructing Social site.

Constructing Social is a project begun by Colin Browning to provide a resource to those that are constructing and architecting social media sites.

There is a list of categories under which you can register including

• Agency
• Architects
• Community
• Consultant
• Facebook
• Moderation
• Planning
• ROI
• Social Media
• White Papers

And the resources page for social media ROI info is worth a visit in its own right.

There are 32 listings and 39 members at the time of writing.

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From time to time I get work with a mergers and acquisitions company and today I've had an email from them asking for my help. 

If you ever come across, or know of, a small brand/packaging focused company, or unit, or team, who would be up for a discussion do let me know. I have a client who wants to bring such a unit into his company.

Small units in the sector are going to find it tough going this year and next as the economy worsens and projects get cancelled or delayed so there may be a mutuality of interest here. Anyway, as I said, probably a long shot but do keep in mind in your travels round the industry.  

And so here's the challenge.  Can we, using social media tools, find the perfect team for him?

Firstly - get in touch if you are a team who want a conversation about being acquired 

Secondly - spread the word.  Tweet, Jaiku, blog, email and ole fashioned phone.  Let's use the network to find the perfect team for this job. If you can keep track of the chain of connections, that'll help me illustrate the power of the network later on.

P.S. any replies are strictly confidential.  I reserve the right to write a future blog post about how this progresses but you can remain anonymous if you choose. 

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Many thanks to Mireira Fontbernat from Qik who has uploaded video of the three speakers this morning (and a little bit of me doing introductions).

Bloggers reactions: FreshNetworks' Helen Trim 

Charlie Robertson of Red Spider 

Quentin Boyes of Honeycomb Software  

Sadly the one of Andrew Howells of Zype didn't come out…. darn phone reception. 

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Thanks to Nico Macdonald for inviting me to chair two sessions at his Media Futures Conference next week.

I am going to be up there with Alex McKie and the guys from Plot…. Wicked! 

11.00:    Research in the real world – Alex McKie

11:30:      Meet the people formerly known as… users – Gill Wildman and Nick Durrant, Plot

He twittered it here 

Really looking forward to this. 

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