B2B Marketing Blog

B2B Marketing News: B2B Marketers’ Biggest Buyer Challenges, LinkedIn’s New Articles For Pages, Instagram Gets Montage Feature, & YouTube Updates Analytics

Lane Ellis on Sep 17th, 2021
Online Marketing News

LinkedIn Rolls Out Articles for Pages
Microsoft-owned LinkedIn (client) has launched a new feature that gives pages the ability to share long-form content on the professional social platform, an addition that comes amidst an array of other new features including an enhanced LinkedIn Live Events experience for creating more robust virtual events, the company recently announced. Adweek

Instagram is Developing a New ‘Montage’ Feature to Convert Stories to Reels, New ‘Favorites’ Listing
Facebook-owned Instagram has been testing a new option intended to make it easy for digital marketers to convert existing Instagram Stories content into brief Reels video clips, including automatically synced audio. New tool options for signaling favorite audience selections have also recently undergone testing on the platform — both changes that could eventually enhance how marketers use Instagram. Social Media Today

B2B Marketing News: B2B Marketers’ Biggest Buyer Challenges, LinkedIn’s New Articles For Pages, Instagram Gets Montage Feature, & YouTube Updates Analytics

Unite with Might: 12 Top Ways Successful B2B Influencers Are Building Powerful Marketing Collaborations

Lane Ellis on Sep 15th, 2021
B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing

How can B2B marketers build powerful and enduring collaborations using influencers?

There are more tactics available today than ever for influencer collaboration in the B2B space, but how can marketers find those that are actually achieving ongoing success?

We’ve been fortunate to feature top influencers from a number of industries in our third season of the Break Free B2B Marketing series of video interviews, and we wanted to share their top tactics for both being an influencer in the B2B space, and for improving collaboration.

Let’s dig in and learn how 12 subject matter experts are creating powerful collaborations between influencers and brands, with insightful tactics you can implement in your own marketing efforts as we head toward 2022.

Ramon Ray of Smart Hustle Media

@ramonray
Founder, Smart Hustle Media

Unite with Might: 12 Top Ways Successful B2B Influencers Are Building Powerful Marketing Collaborations

Inside B2B Influence: Sarita Rao of AT&T on Growing B2B Executive Influence with Social Media

Lee Odden on Sep 13th, 2021
B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing

Inside B2B Influence is a podcast and video series that goes behind the scenes of B2B marketing and highlights insights with top business executives on marketing for B2B companies. We’re doing our best here at TopRank Marketing Blog to elevate the practice of growing influence within and outside of B2B brands to drive thought leadership, create demand and grow revenue.

Episode 16 of Inside B2B Influence features a discussion with Sarita Rao (@saritasayso), who is President, Integrated and Partner Solutions at AT&T. Sarita contributed her expertise to the State of B2B Influencer Marketing Report last year and I have been following her closely (and learning) on LinkedIn and Twitter ever since.

Inside B2B Influence: Sarita Rao of AT&T on Growing B2B Executive Influence with Social Media

B2B Marketing News: 95:5 Rule in B2B, Social Media Trends, TikTok Overtakes YouTube, CMOs Need to Focus on CX

Lee Odden on Sep 10th, 2021
B2B Marketing, Online Marketing News

New Report Looks at Social Media Usage Trends Over the Past Decade, and Where Things are Now Headed
App Annie’s ‘Evolution of Social Apps’ report looks at how social media usage trends have evolved over the last decade, highlighting the rise of live-streaming, the increasing focus on social commerce, the growth of TikTok and Snapchat with the biggest highlight being the rise in consumer spending within social apps, with cumulative spend already at $3.2 billion in the first half of 2021 – up 50% year-over-year.
Social Media Today

B2B Marketing News: 95:5 Rule in B2B, Social Media Trends, TikTok Overtakes YouTube, CMOs Need to Focus on CX

5 Tips for Promoting B2B Content Co-Created with Influencers

Debbie Friez on Sep 8th, 2021
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Influencer Marketing

Working with influencers creates an amazing opportunity to co-create and co-promote content for B2B brands. The brand can promote the influencer and vice versa. It’s a win-win.

Along with the win comes a responsibility to promote your B2B marketing content in a way that captures attention. It’s social media marketing after-all. To help you get the most out of your investment in content collaborations with influencers, here are 5 tips to spice up your social media posts. Follow this advice and the valuable content your influencers have helped you create will better reach, engage and inspire your customers.

5 Tips for Promoting B2B Content Co-Created with Influencers

B2B Marketing News: B2B Digital Ad Spend Soars, Digital Engagement Changes, LinkedIn Scraps Stories, Google Pays Apple $15Bn

Lee Odden on Sep 3rd, 2021
B2B Marketing, Online Marketing News

Marketers’ Use of Digital Engagement Tactics
A new report from Salesforce shows that 9 in 10 marketing leaders believe that their digital engagement strategy has completely (48%) or somewhat (42%) changed since before the pandemic. Which tactics are they using? Social media (91%), digital ads (91%), digital content (88%), website and apps (86%), email (76%) and mobile (69%). MarketingCharts

The Hybrid Future: How B2B Events Are Evolving
Most marketers say hybrid B2B events, which incorporate both online and in-person elements, will become more common in the coming years, according to recent research from ON24. 79% of B2B marketers say hybrid events provide more data than purely in-person events. MarketingProfs

B2B Marketing News: B2B Digital Ad Spend Soars, Digital Engagement Changes, LinkedIn Scraps Stories, Google Pays Apple $15Bn

Fuel Your Passion for B2B Marketing with These Famous Baseball Quotes

Nick Nelson on Sep 1st, 2021
B2B Marketing

A few weeks ago, Major League Baseball enjoyed a historic moment with its Field of Dreams Game, played at the cornfield-surrounded site in Iowa where the legendary movie was based.

Naturally, this event brought on waves of nostalgia among those who cherish the 1989 classic and its many memorable quotes.

“If you build it, he will come.”

“Hey dad, you wanna have a catch?”

“This field, this game: it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good and it could be again.”

via GIPHY

Baseball is a complex and strategically sophisticated game that has evoked many wise and thought-provoking words over the years — often with applicability beyond the ballpark. I’ve noted in the past baseball’s parallels to marketing: methodical and rhythmic pursuits driven by patience, sequencing, and learning from failure.

Fuel Your Passion for B2B Marketing with These Famous Baseball Quotes

How to Elevate Post Pandemic B2B Marketing with Always-On Influence

Lee Odden on Aug 30th, 2021
B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing

As we collect data for the new State of B2B Influencer Marketing Report, it remains to be seen whether last year’s 96% of B2B marketers feeling confident about influencer marketing will come out, especially after the effects of the pandemic. With the shift in B2B go to market models towards digital first, influencer engagement has increased for many marketers as an alternative to spending on field marketing, real-world events and trade shows.

As B2B buyers increasingly rely on digital sources of information, stats like 74% of B2B marketers say influencer marketing impacts customer and prospect experience, become even more important. While that confidence before and since the pandemic has opened doors to many more B2B brands experimenting with, piloting and becoming more familiar with influencer engagement, that increase in activity has increased competition. So how can B2B brands raise the bar on their influencer marketing efforts?

How to Elevate Post Pandemic B2B Marketing with Always-On Influence

B2B Marketing News: Why B2B Marketers Thrive On LinkedIn, More Advertisers Applying Brand Values, Reddit Talk Rolls Out, & Ad Market Expands 43%

Lane Ellis on Aug 27th, 2021
B2B Marketing, Online Marketing News

Why B2B Marketers Build on LinkedIn [Infographic]
96 percent of B2B marketers distribute content on LinkedIn (client), which has surpassed the 774 million member mark, including the presence of 97 percent of all Fortune 500 firms — two of numerous statistics of interest to digital marketers contained in newly-released infographic data. Social Media Today

CMO-CIO Relationship Needs Tightening To Improve Performance: CMO Council Report
Just 23 percent of firms rate their CMO-CIO working relationships as very effective, while 60 percent of CMOs who have very effective relationships with IT say that they utilize multi-year strategic planning, according to recently-released survey data of interest to online marketers. MediaPost

B2B Marketing News: Why B2B Marketers Thrive On LinkedIn, More Advertisers Applying Brand Values, Reddit Talk Rolls Out, & Ad Market Expands 43%

In-Person & Hybrid Learning: Autumn B2B Marketing Conferences to Elevate & Inform Your Strategy

Lane Ellis on Aug 25th, 2021
B2B Marketing

What are some of the top autumn B2B marketing conferences that will take place both in-person and in hybrid fashion?

As we move ever closer to 2022, more physical marketing events are on tap than were available last year, although most either offer a hybrid online option or are still entirely digital experiences.

To help you sort out the B2B marketing conference options available this fall through the end of the year, we’ve compiled our latest list of the top B2B marketing events to elevate and inform your business strategy.

Marketing conferences undoubtedly offer a wealth of benefits to marketers seeking new learning, networking opportunities, and the latest industry research and insight to increase brand awareness, but finding events that match your business and B2B marketing needs can be a challenge.

In-Person & Hybrid Learning: Autumn B2B Marketing Conferences to Elevate & Inform Your Strategy

Three Use Cases That Connect the Dots Between Influence and B2B Marketing Results

Lee Odden on Aug 23rd, 2021
B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing

Last week I talked about where B2B Marketers are seeing the most impact from influencer marketing efforts based on the research done with hundreds of marketers for the State of B2B Influencer Marketing Report. Three of those specific areas where influence can help B2B brands optimize for greater marketing impact include brand, growing the influence of key executives and driving leads / sales.

While just about everyone in B2B Marketing is aware of how working with influencers can add relevance, reach and engagement to content, not everyone makes the connection between their particular business problem and the influence solution. Here are three examples from many that can help you connect the dots.

Build Credible Awareness of Your Brand with Customers

Business Problem: The industry is not aware of your brand, solution or your category.

Three Use Cases That Connect the Dots Between Influence and B2B Marketing Results

B2B Marketing News: New B2B Intent Data Research, More Marketers Changing Digital Strategy, & LinkedIn’s New Video Meetings & Profile Ratings

Lane Ellis on Aug 20th, 2021
Online Marketing News

Almost Half of B2B Orgs Say It’s Become More Difficult to Close Deals
Finalizing B2B deals has become more difficult since the pandemic began, with some 46 percent of B2B organizations citing buying decisions being placed on hold as the primary cause, while 43 percent said that their organization viewed buyer re-prioritization as the top reason, followed by budget cutting, according to recently-released survey data. MarketingCharts

Marketing’s Tech-tonic Shift: 90% Have Changed Their Digital Strategies [Salesforce Study]
66 percent of marketing leaders expect revenue growth in the coming 12 to 18 months, with the top portions of B2B marketing budgets being spent on advertising, tools and technology, account based marketing (ABM), content, and staffing, according to newly-released survey data of interest to digital marketers. MediaPost

B2B Marketing News: New B2B Intent Data Research, More Marketers Changing Digital Strategy, & LinkedIn’s New Video Meetings & Profile Ratings