B2B marketing is full of concepts, abbreviations and keywords. And it can get pretty confusing. That’s why we’ve decided to write a series of blogs, briefly looking at a few of the more bewildering buzz-words and setting the record straight with regards to what they actually mean. The first one of the series is account-based marketing, also known as ABM. Continue reading
When the CEO of all too many B2B companies sits down to decide on the three- or five-year strategy, a select group of executives are typically asked to front up with factual data and strategic opinions: The Chief Financial Officer, the Chief Commercial Officer and the Chief Operations Officer. Equipped with their inputs, the CEO usually feels he or she has enough information to formulate the strategy (perhaps supplemented with external advice). Then, and only then, the strategy is explained to the CMO. Continue reading
Standing in the center of the B2B marketing universe, you can be forgiven for having the distinct feeling that the job of the B2B marketer, already large and complex enough, is expanding at an alarming rate. Core skills and disciples, once easy enough to grasp and maintain, are moving further away from you at an accelerating rate, on their way, like the distant galaxies in Stephen Hawking’s famous Big Bang theory, to one day disappear completely from sight. Continue reading
In a previous post, I introduced several characteristics that define a Marketer CEO, as revealed in my study of marketing’s contribution to B2B company performance.
Continuing the discussion, I’ll explore more of these characteristics within themes of marketing performance and market strategy.
With so much discussion among marketers about marketing metrics, you may expect this to be top of mind with CEOs, too. Marketer CEOs do have strong expectations of how marketing should perform, but perhaps not in the way you’d expect. Continue reading
Offshore wind energy installation and service leader A2SEA takes a strategic approach to its integrated marketing communications, drawing upon tried-and-tested knowhow to arrive at its communication strategy. Part of that approach involves the use of “Must-win Initiatives”. Continue reading
How has one company installed over 60% of the world’s offshore wind turbines? The difference is knowhow – but something had to be done to make sure the market truly recognized and valued that difference. Continue reading
Conversation is more than a social media strategy. While all the attention these days seems to be on online marketing – and, sure, that’s where the excitement is, there are still plenty of B2B executives getting results from good ol’ fashioned face-to-face networking and word-of-mouth exchanges. By and large, we are social beings, and most of us still value the opinions of people in our personal networks and trusted business connections more than rather tenuous Twitter and LinkedIn connections. But what is word-of-mouth marketing worth in B2B? Find out below and find three tips for making your clients become your biggest advocates. Continue reading
I recently attended an event where Jeff Gravenhorst, Chief Executive Officer of ISS, a massive facility services provider (www.issworld.com) with around 500,000 employees around the world, spoke about the challenge of leading a company of that size and how it attempts to maintain its impressive growth record. Continue reading
Many B2B companies focus their activities on that most holy of events, the product launch. The entire company tends to run like mad toward each launch just as small boys playing football all swarm around the ball, leaving the remainder of the playing field practically empty. It’s a costly affair, and one upon which the company’s sales and organizational energy can be highly dependent. But this kind of traditional, explosive product launch is quickly becoming a dinosaur.
