As writers, we have all experienced that moment when we think to ourselves, why the heck am I writing this if no one is going to read it? And if your marketing department has been focused on content for basic demand generation, then your marketers have probably experienced that same thing. They’ve put a lot of time and energy into creating content with the hope of turning MQLs into SQLs, but unless the right people are finding it, all of that work goes down the drain.
Continue reading
B2B companies are rushing to transform their current sales and marketing approach to an Account-based Marketing (ABM) approach before the next financial crisis. Learn what ABM is, how it can boost your chances in a tough marketplace and where to get started.
Continue reading
B2B marketers are facing the biggest driver of change since the arrival of inbound marketing: the transformation caused by Account-Based Marketing (ABM). For those who may not know the term, the general principle of ABM is, to loosely quote ad giant David Ogilvy, no longer counting the people you reach, but instead, reaching the people who count.
Continue reading
It’s either a CMO’s dream scenario or his/her worst nightmare: The entire marketing department gathered in a workshop and told they should put all their branding ideas on the table – and that every idea is welcome. But how do you extract really useful concepts from it all while ensuring everyone feels their input is valued? How do you get results from a branding workshop?
Whether it’s your cup of tea or not, British comedian John Cleese owes a small part of his fame to the phrase: “Don’t mention the war”. And I’m reminded of that phrase every time I hear a B2B marketing or communication department agonizing over what should or shouldn’t be said in the public arena.
Company magazines continue to consume a significant proportion of many B2B marketing budgets. Understandably so, as magazines can be a great way to profile the company’s achievements, internally and externally. But many companies have a long way to go before their content can easily be found and consumed online – that is, read, watched, listened to, or clicked on. No wonder it’s easy to question the business case for a magazine. Is it worth applying so much time and budget to a magazine if its long-term reach and impact is limited? Continue reading
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.
Considering the rate at which technology is advancing, it’s a fool’s errand to try to stay in front of the latest developments. Most marketers are more concerned with staying on board with the latest, but that can be pretty confusing too when there are so many concerns on the table. A vocabulary rich in buzzwords won’t get the job done, nor will a whole suite of sophisticated marketing tools that nobody knows how to use properly.
So, for the small- to medium-size business with limited marketing resources, what are some concerns to focus on? Continue reading
Effective content marketing is based on a genuine desire to help potential customers – and can, when implemented, lead to fundamental change in company culture. But old wine is old wine…
If your company has established a blog, a few social media accounts or perhaps an independent thought leadership platform, then you have a group of employees contributing content on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. To keep the content flowing, they need to be supported as best they can. Continue reading