Caitlin Burgess

Caitlin Burgess

The Experience Factor: It’s Time for Content Marketers to ‘Flip the Switch’

Caitlin Burgess     B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

Flipping the Content Experience Switch

I’d love to tell you everything. But in the spirit of brevity and relevance, I’ll cut to the moment it all clicked.

While enjoying a lovely dinner with an old family friend last week, he relayed his version of a classic Maya Angelou quote to me:

“You know, you meet so many people throughout your life. And you never really remember what they said or what they did, but you always remember the way they made you feel.”

via GIPHY

For decades, content marketers have been tasked with meeting buyers along their journey, striving to create best-answer content that satisfies curiosity, encourages brand engagements, and paints their product or service as the solution buyers are looking for.


The Experience Factor: It’s Time for Content Marketers to ‘Flip the Switch’
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Caitlin Burgess

Maintaining Your Focus: What B2B Marketers Can Learn From My Home Improvement Snafu

Caitlin Burgess     B2B Marketing

B2B marketing lessons from home improvement (1)

The sweet smell of fresh cedar is wafting in the breeze around my homestead this week—along with hint of marketing inspiration. Let me explain …

Best-Laid Plans

To take advantage of a long holiday weekend and a string of dry-weather days, my darling husband and I embarked on a “small” home improvement project: Sanding and staining our recently built 16-by-16 deck—plus an intricate one-story staircase.

She was such a beauty following her construction last fall.

But as is tradition, a delightfully heinous Minnesota winter set in. When spring arrived, she looked weary and weathered.

For months, we prepared to offer ourselves up to the cause once warmer weather came. And with the help of how-to YouTube videos and a lot of strategic Googling, our confidence and can-do attitudes were on the rise.


Maintaining Your Focus: What B2B Marketers Can Learn From My Home Improvement Snafu
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Caitlin Burgess

Sowing the Seeds of Success: 3 Elements of Strong B2B Influencer Relationships

Caitlin Burgess     Online Marketing

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Effective B2B influencer marketing is rooted in building lasting relationships.

The premise is simple: When brands invest time, effort, care, and money (when it makes sense) to cultivate partnerships rather than one-time or “on-my-terms” engagements, industry influencers and experts are far more apt to do the same. Oh, and the outcomes of influencer/brand engagements (i.e. reach, engagement, thought leadership, increased share of voice, etc.) are more fruitful for all parties, too.

But as we’ve also said before, building the right relationships is critical—and time consuming.

The right relationships aren’t sowed solely based on social network size nor are they grown without proving mutual value. In fact, there are several must-have characteristics of influencer/brand relationships. What are they? Let’s discuss three of them and hear what a few seasoned experts have to say on the subject.


Sowing the Seeds of Success: 3 Elements of Strong B2B Influencer Relationships
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Caitlin Burgess

How to Intertwine Online & Offline Tactics to Cultivate B2B Influencer Relationships

Caitlin Burgess     B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing, Online Marketing

Effective B2B influencer marketing is rooted in brands developing and nurturing relationships—relationships with individuals who have the relevant topical expertise, reach, and resonance to align with the goals of the brand.

Of course, those relationships are often cultivated in the digital realm via social media, email, and audio or video conferencing. And that’s OK. We’ve all gone digital.

But there’s simply no replacement for face-to-face communication—and B2B marketers may have more chances than they know to proactively facilitate interactions or take advantage of in-person opportunities as they arise.

It’s time to bridge the digital divide. How? When? Where? Let’s dive in.


How to Intertwine Online & Offline Tactics to Cultivate B2B Influencer Relationships
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Caitlin Burgess

Content Curation Inspiration: Types, Examples, & Use Cases for B2B Marketers

Caitlin Burgess     B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

Content Curation Inspiration for B2B Marketers

If you create and share content, curation is part of your B2B marketing strategy. From seasoning a blog post with key third-party statistics to sharing an interesting article from an industry publication or influencer across your social channels, you’re curating.

But content curation has a place beyond adding an insight or two to your content.

With large volumes of information available today and short attention spans, curation allows content marketers to create more convenient, valuable content experiences for their target audience, while growing thought leadership, bolstering their content calendar, and increasing production efficiency.

What types of curation exist? How are B2B brands doing curation? When does it make sense to do curation? Let’s dive in.


Content Curation Inspiration: Types, Examples, & Use Cases for B2B Marketers
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Caitlin Burgess

Do Your Homework: Selecting the Right Influencers for Your B2B Brand With Tips from the Experts

Caitlin Burgess     B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing

Selecting B2B Influencers

The influencer identification, validation, and recruitment process is time consuming, resource intensive, and high stakes. Without the right mix of influencers to drive awareness, intrigue, conversation, and action, your marketing initiatives will miss the mark with your audience and fall short of expectations.

But how? How do you artfully and strategically find, vet, and entice industry experts to partner with you?

You need to do your homework—and fortunately, insights from several seasoned B2B influencer marketing experts can provide some great guidance.

Read on to get perspectives and advice from leaders serving a range of B2B brands, as well as some of our own resident experts.


Do Your Homework: Selecting the Right Influencers for Your B2B Brand With Tips from the Experts
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Caitlin Burgess

B2B Social Media Shakeup: 4 Developments That Have Caught Our Eye

Caitlin Burgess     B2B Marketing, Social Media

B2B Social Media Shakeup

Following scandal, criticism, and calls for more privacy and relevancy, social media giants are working hard to recapture their original allure as safe communities and conversation destinations.

And while platforms are ardently focused on heightening the everyday user’s experience, the movements we’ve seen so far in 2019 signals that B2B brands will still have some things to look forward to.

This is a teeny sampling of the social media headlines we saw in the first quarter of 2019 alone:


B2B Social Media Shakeup: 4 Developments That Have Caught Our Eye
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Caitlin Burgess

Q1’s a Wrap, B2B Marketers: Where We’ve Been & What’s Next in 2019

Caitlin Burgess     B2B Marketing, Digital Marketing

Q1 Digital Marketing Recap

We made it, B2B marketers. Spring is finally in the air and Quarter 1 is officially a wrap. Take a moment to bask in your individual, team, and business successes—you earned it.

As is tradition, in just a few short months the digital marketing industry has experienced some newsworthy shifts—from a big Google algorithm update in March to a host of new targeting and advertising features across several platforms.

To build on the Q1 successes we just celebrated—and take full advantage of new opportunities—let’s take a look back at what 2019 has gifted us so far.

What’s new and worth paying attention to? What opportunities and challenges have arisen? And what do we all need to keep in mind as we move into and beyond Q2? Let’s dive in.


Q1’s a Wrap, B2B Marketers: Where We’ve Been & What’s Next in 2019
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Caitlin Burgess

Once Upon a Time: Storytelling in Today’s B2B Content Marketing Landscape

Caitlin Burgess     B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

Everything—no matter how innocuous or dated—had its use. It was a mantra he lived by. Born in 1946 to an Irish immigrant father and an American mother of French-Canadian descent, his parents’ coming of age was marked by the Great Depression plus decades of war.

Unsurprisingly, this meant that his parents, Pat and Stella, were more than practical when it came to purchases and investments. They were intentional. They were frugal. It was “waste not, want not.” And they never threw anything away—a way of life that he held on to long into adulthood.

But one day, Pat and Stella’s hoarding and his resulting belief that everything was useful, changed my life.


Once Upon a Time: Storytelling in Today’s B2B Content Marketing Landscape
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Caitlin Burgess

The Intersection of SEO & Influencer Marketing: What B2B Marketers Need to Know

Caitlin Burgess     B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing, SEO

The Intersection of SEO & Influence

Peanut butter and jelly.

Milk and cookies.

Steak and potatoes.

Wine and cheese.

Bread and butter.

SEO and influencer marketing.

via GIPHY

All of these exceptional pairings have something special in common: They work together.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. And I get it. From red or white to pungent or salty, there are several incredibly important variables to consider when crafting the perfect wine and cheese combo.

via GIPHY

For real, though. Integration is key for B2B content marketing success. But some tactics and strategies seem like natural fits, while others seem a bit mismatched. If you feel like SEO and influencer marketing fall into the latter category, it might be time to flip your thinking.


The Intersection of SEO & Influencer Marketing: What B2B Marketers Need to Know
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Caitlin Burgess

The Real Value of Martech & Automation? The Humanization Potential, According to Liz Cope

Caitlin Burgess     B2B Marketing, Marketing PR Conferences

Liz Cope at B2BMX

Standing before a room of eager-to-learn marketers at B2B Marketing Exchange, Liz Cope, Director of Marketing Technology and Operations at Ingersoll Rand, was an open, honest, vulnerable … human.

“This is so embarrassing,” she said, admitting that some fundamental marketing functions were missing the mark at her multi-billion-dollar company.

Liz’s candor helped audience members feel right at home and not alone. After all, we’ve all been disappointed to learn that one of our core marketing functions or strategies needed to be reworked, rebooted, or reimagined entirely. Her candid approach also tied well into her session’s theme: Martech, Process and People: Humanizing the Journey to Channel Transformation.

Liz’s presentation was robust, detailing key technologies, processes, and the organizational structure she and her team have put in place to transform their channel marketing strategy. But her message was simple: Automate to humanize.


The Real Value of Martech & Automation? The Humanization Potential, According to Liz Cope
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Caitlin Burgess

Sales & Marketing Alignment: Shahid Javed Shares How to Go from Hate to Love in 60 Days

Caitlin Burgess     B2B Marketing, Marketing & PR Industry

It’s a tale as old as time. The marketing team is hyper-focused on awareness campaigns, events, and driving more leads to fill the funnel. Meanwhile, the sales team is hyper-focused on meeting sales and revenue goals, and nurturing relationships to empty the funnel.

These two teams occupy two very different functional areas within a company. They’re moving at completely different speeds. They’re operating under their own rules. And as a result, there’s tension, misunderstanding, and even … hate.

But according to Shahid Javed, Director of Enterprise Marketing for Hughes Network Systems, B2B marketers can be change agents here. They can give and get love from their sales teams. And they can do it in as little as 60 days.


Sales & Marketing Alignment: Shahid Javed Shares How to Go from Hate to Love in 60 Days
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