If you’ve ever struggled to find the right numbers, gain consensus from team members or make your marketing budget process more like a discipline and less like a guessing game, then this week’s “Best of the web” is for you.

The Harvard Business Review shares three quick tips for creating a realistic budget.

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Every Friday, Seen+Heard presents a link to some of the best B2B marketing thinking on the web. Have a great B2B article to share or a topic you’d like to see? Tweet me @ThinkSpringMktg or contact me.

This week’s “Best of the web” contains one of the best descriptions of a QR code: a doorway to something hidden and special. So how do you incent your audience to find and open that door—then stay engaged with your content?

Mashable’s “5 steps for a successful QR code marketing campaign” puts the facts in plain language.

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Every Friday, Seen+Heard presents a link to some of the best B2B marketing thinking on the web. Have a great B2B article to share or a topic you’d like to see? Tweet me @ThinkSpringMktg or contact me.

As the marketing automation trend sweeps B2B, BtoB magazine offers interviews with key platform providers on what it takes to effectively implement this lead nurturing and analytics technology.

Their bottom line is not new but definitely worth repeating: software alone won’t solve inherent business process or communications issues, so successful roll outs must start with “a different way of thinking” long before the first operational change occurs.

“Marketing automation … has essentially changed marketing from a right-brain to a left-brain profession… leaving behind the ‘art’ that has been stock in trade for [a role] that is intensively scientific and analytical,” the report explains.

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Every Friday, Seen+Heard presents a link to some of the best B2B marketing thinking on the web. Have a great B2B article to share or a topic you’d like to see? Tweet me @ThinkSpringMktg or contact me.

How do you measure the value of your online marketing and social media activities? News flash: it’s not about how many “likes” or followers your program generates. A truly effective program needs to convert your fans to loyal, paying customers.

In this week’s “Best of the Web,” Chief Content Officer magazine tackles “The Myths of Measurement.” The article presents practical formulas to measure online success and recommendations to optimize the conversion process.  

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Every Friday, Seen+Heard presents a link to some of the best B2B marketing thinking on the web. Have a great B2B article to share or a topic you’d like to see? Tweet me @ThinkSpringMktg or contact me.

For those who put stock in surveys and statistics, a recent study of B2B buyers shows impact to the bottom line drives current purchasing practices. Of the 400+ B2B decision-makers surveyed, initial purchase price was the dominant factor (versus total cost of owership or lifetime value) in recent decisions.

The study also ranked the relevance of marketing and sales tools in the purchase process, with “online technial data sheets” leading in effectiveness.

Read the summary.>>

View the full report.>>

Every Friday, Seen+Heard presents a link to some of the best B2B marketing thinking on the web. Have a great B2B article to share or a topic you’d like to see? Tweet me @ThinkSpringMktg or contact me.

This week’s “Best of the Web” from the Harvard Business Review brings up a speaking faux pas I find myself guilty of: using unnecessary language that may confuse the audience and strip the presenter of his/her expertise.

In this case, ending your content with questions such as “Does this make sense?”

Judging from the hundreds of comments on this post, it’s a topic of interest to many.

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Every Friday, Seen+Heard presents a link to some of the best B2B marketing thinking on the web. Have a great B2B article to share or a topic you’d like to see? Tweet me @ThinkSpringMktg or contact me.

Capacity planning isn’t a topic we typically associate with marketing—but it should be. When it comes time to create your next campaign or build your next budget, don’t rely on guesswork to determine the number of leads that sales will need to reach quota or the size of lead generation programs to support corporate goals.

Effective, strategic marketing can move with calculated precision. All it takes is a little legwork and a few equations.

Direct marketer Ruth Stevens shares the details in her article “Lead Flow Planning: How Many Leads are Really Enough for Your Sales Team?”.

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Every Friday, Seen+Heard presents a link to some of the best B2B marketing thinking on the web. Have a great B2B article to share or a topic you’d like to see? Tweet me @ThinkSpringMktg or contact me.

As a lifelong writer and avid reader, too often I fall into the trap of falling in love with the printed word, to the exclusion of other media.

This week’s “Best of the Web” reminds us of the value of great visual expression to capture attention, distill an idea to its essence and give your message a viral appeal.

Business 2 Community presents a primer on infographics, with their post “What the heck is an infographic?”

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Every Friday, Seen+Heard presents a link to some of the best B2B marketing thinking on the web. Have a great B2B article to share or a topic you’d like to see? Tweet me @ThinkSpringMktg or contact me.

Those who know me know I’m a big Pragmatic Marketing groupie and love their straightforward instruction on how to effectively market technology. (If only we could get everyone to adopt these rules!)

This week’s “Best of the Web” shares Pragmatic’s “Six secrets of a winning product launch.” While it’s written with tech startups in mind, there’s plenty of sound advice for B2B companies at all stages.

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Every Friday, Seen+Heard presents a link to some of the best B2B marketing thinking on the web. Have a great B2B article to share or a topic you’d like to see? Tweet me @ThinkSpringMktg or contact me.

Does your company produce great resources—but keep them more hidden and secure than the gold at Fort Knox?

Or are you driving tremendous online traffic to content that’s not resonating with the clients and prospects who matter?

We’re all looking for the next viral sensation in our interactive efforts–but finding the right formula for effective online and social media content can be tricky without a plan of attack.

This week’s “Best of the Web” from the Content Marketing Institute provides a practical checklist to help you create content that’s:

• Findable
• Readable
• Understandable
• Actionable
• Shareable

Check it out. >>

Every Friday, Seen+Heard presents a link to some of the best B2B marketing thinking on the web. Have a great B2B article to share or a topic you’d like to see? Tweet me @ThinkSpringMktg or contact me.