Marketing technology firm Software Advice has released a new report on online B2B buyer behavior, detailing business implications for inside sales professionals in 2014 and beyond. The folks at Software Advice run a highly tuned sales machine where fast phone followups are part of the model, so they know what they’re talking about when it comes to getting visitors to move down the conversion funnel. And for the hungry B2B marketer, there are a few pointers worth noticing.
Mark Hanley, president of Massachusetts-based consulting house I.T. Strategies, recently asked me for my opinion on the state of the market for printed brochures. Do printed sales materials have a future or are they on their way out? It’s a great question, and one which is brought up time and time again by marketers in meetings I attend.
A new thought leadership platform encouraging stakeholder engagement and subject matter expertise has been launched by a global B2B technology company. Continue reading
I recently read an article titled “Why Branding is an Artifact of the Past” which I think touches on a point that should be carefully considered by any B2B marketing professional – Is branding really all that important for your business? Continue reading
Once again, I was recently reminded of the complexity of B2B marketing in today’s connected world. I was speaking at a seminar for a group of sales representatives from Cotes, a manufacturer of industrial dehumidifiers, and in a discussion about targeting stakeholders, someone astutely pointed out that the right people to target might be in any number of different companies throughout the value chain. A seemingly simple observation that has a huge impact on a marketing plan!
Welcome to the very first post in what Michael Best, David Hoskin and I are hoping will be the first of a long line of knowledge-sharing, inspiring and at times mildly amusing insights, opinions and the like.
We’re calling the blog IntegratedB2B to reflect a gap we see in the literature – namely, that most of the attention is focused on online marketing where the real battle, in our minds, is on helping marketing and communication people to see the Big Picture, which for B2B (should) almost always involve integrating online and offline activities in a meaningful way.
IntegratedB2B is born from countless conversations my co-bloggers and I have with both professional colleagues and our B2B clients about how to close a steadily widening gap between the way they communicate with their B2B audiences and the way those same audiences want to be communicated to. And about how to use both offline and online tools in a tightly integrated way to do it.
Things have changed amazingly quickly in B2B marketing and communication. Yet it seems that many marketing and communication managers haven’t realized it. Nor have they realized how much they need to change what they’re doing to reflect a world in which the traditional B2B buyer is fast dying out. That lack of knowledge may sound unbelievable – and I risk stepping on some toes – but I’ve spoken with enough corporate marketers and communicators to know it’s largely the truth.
So that’s the first problem this blog will tackle in the months to come: helping B2B companies to understand the new breed of B2B buyer now ruling their world. The second is figuring out what to do about it. I’d like to welcome you on this journey, hoping that you will find inspiration and motivation in my own writings, those of my regular co-bloggers and others who have been advising B2B companies for many years. And I also hope that your participation and feedback will help to keep IntegratedB2B relevant and useful for years to come.
Glad to have you aboard!