Caitlin Burgess

How B2B Brands Can Break Into Interactive Content

Caitlin Burgess on Oct 16th, 2019
B2B Marketing, Interactive Marketing

Pop quiz, B2B marketers: When it comes to creating content that effectively reaches, informs, engages, and inspires buyers and buying committees, you should…

Embrace the “boring-to-boring” status quo. (Buyers and committees want the facts, not a spectacle!)
Push tradition aside and dip your marketing toes into interactive content waters. (Who says B2B content has to be boring?)

(Psst. Here’s a hint from TopRank Marketing CEO Lee Odden: “The sheer volume of information and media that confronts people in the business world is overwhelming and often pretty boring. Creating compelling experiences with interactive content is one way to stand out, differentiate, and optimize for effectiveness.”)

How B2B Brands Can Break Into Interactive Content

Ally or Adversary? How Our Marketing Fears Can Be Wielded for Good

Caitlin Burgess
B2B Marketing

B2B marketers are a special breed: We’re relentlessly self-improving.

We look to our industry peers and thought leaders for wisdom. We scour data for opportunities and insight. We keep tabs on rising trends and emerging tools. We tirelessly strive to adapt our strategies to the evolving needs of our customers and prospects.

Without a doubt, we’re ambitious. But despite that ambition, we’re only human. Fear can easily creep in—which can become a helpful tool or a crippling bad habit.

Fear Itself

Fear is the most natural human emotion in my opinion. The presence of fear in our marketing minds not only signals self- and spatial-awareness, but also benevolence. We deeply care about what we do and who (i.e. our brands, co-workers, and buyers) we serve, and we want to do our absolute best to drive results and offer solutions.

Ally or Adversary? How Our Marketing Fears Can Be Wielded for Good

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

Caitlin Burgess
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

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’

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

Caitlin Burgess
B2B Marketing

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

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

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

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

Caitlin Burgess
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

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

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

Caitlin Burgess
B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing

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

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

Caitlin Burgess
B2B Marketing, Digital Marketing

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

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

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

Caitlin Burgess
B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing, SEO

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