'Sales and marketing is the same thing,' Mark Hunter begins, 'and the two need to work on bringing the quality of the list together - I can give you a phonebook too!'

We're on day 2 of the B2B Marketing Expo and Hunter's reaction to the sound and space issues that have been plaguing the theatres is to be the loudest. It makes sense too considering the topic of his talk, 'Lead Generation Strategies for Today’s Complex, Noisy Environment'....

He argues that businesses shouldn't wholly rely on social media, as it means building your house on land you don't own. LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and so on, change the rules of their game every so often. 'Your best media platform is your own - you can't invest enough money on your own URL. Or better yet, URLs!'

Every page on your website should answer the customer's question 'what is this going to do for me?' - with particular attention paid to the FAQs. Marketing and sales teams need to decide what the top 10 questions are that they get asked, and answer them. Hunter believes you can't underestimate the power of FAQs when it comes to closing a deal.

Engage 'ME' in 'My World'

'You can't use the same strategy in two different industries', Hunter says, if Coca Cola knows they have to do that, so do every other businesses.

His tips include:

• nurture your mailing list and to send them one of your FAQs out each week - which will in turn generate more questions and better leads.
• Your job, as a marketer is to put out tentacles in as many platforms as possible, as your prospects aren't going to be on just one network. 
• However, don't do it if you can't do it properly
• Design your website for mobile - makes sense if you're engaging in email campaigns too...
• Be social on social media, share content that is authentic and valuable, don't pound your contacts with advertisement.
• Use social media to find out who your customer's customer is. It's a great research tool.
• Have a social media policy in your company. Once your content is on the web, it's there forever.