B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®

B2B Marketing views, news and interviews.

Debbie Friez

Why There’s a Need for Creative Storytelling in B2B Tech and How Influencer Marketing Can Accelerate Results

Debbie Friez
Debbie Friez on Dec 21st, 2021
B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing

Group of B2B marketing business people working in office image.

Today’s B2B marketers have more challenges than ever, making it hard to cut through the noise and deliver results for their companies. In all of their efforts they must maintain a focus on connecting with new audiences, expanding their reach, and building relationships founded on a sense of mutual trust.

Here are a few examples of some of the biggest challenges today’s B2B marketers are facing:

  • Finding ways to boost marketing efficiency: Marketers are often expected to achieve greater results with fewer resources, so finding ways to maximize efficiency is critical to achieve success within budgetary parameters.
  • Increasing marketing impact: Marketers are expected to deliver a higher return on investment (ROI) on their marketing efforts.

Why There’s a Need for Creative Storytelling in B2B Tech and How Influencer Marketing Can Accelerate Results

5 Tips for Promoting B2B Content Co-Created with Influencers

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

5 Tips Promote B2B Influencer Content

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

How B2B Marketing Influencers Are Finding Success On New Social Channels

Debbie Friez
Debbie Friez on Mar 23rd, 2021
B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing

Woman showing phone screen image.

In the world of social media, the only constant is change. Each platform continues to update and add new features, and new channels appear on a regular basis. With this change comes opportunities for B2B marketing influencers to share their thought leadership in new ways and have their voices heard.

I tapped top B2B influencers and thought leaders to see where they are finding successes on some of the newer social channels. Come along and let’s explore the social media maze with them.

Finding Business in the Clubhouse

If you are jumping on trends, don’t miss getting an invite to the audio-only Clubhouse app. TopRank Marketing CEO Lee Odden noted “audio and voice will continue to be a trend for information discovery, consumption and engagement in 2021.”


How B2B Marketing Influencers Are Finding Success On New Social Channels

B2B Influencer Marketing Advice from 9 Top B2B Influencers

Debbie Friez
Debbie Friez on Jul 23rd, 2020
B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing

Human Figures Showing Influence Image

Top marketers understand the value of integrating influencer marketing into their marketing strategy. In fact, 55% of marketers believe they get better customers from influencer marketing according to an Influencer Marketing Hub survey. For B2B brands, influencer marketing is a way to partner with industry experts who can add value to the brand’s content.

As a brand, how can you provide mutual value and a great experience for the thought leaders you engage?

I went straight to some of my top sources to ask their thoughts on the best way for B2B brands to collaborate with them. What stood out to me, was the way their key points aligned with how a brand might develop a marketing strategy.


B2B Influencer Marketing Advice from 9 Top B2B Influencers

Active Social Media Listening: Tips for a New Era of COVID-19

Debbie Friez
Debbie Friez on Apr 7th, 2020
Social Media, Social Media Smarts

Active social media listening

If you want to have a good business meeting, you want all the participants to actively listen. This requires participants go beyond hearing, and engage and analyze to form an actionable plan. It’s the same with social media listening. It requires marketers to move beyond monitoring to analyzing the full situation, which can often be a moving target.

Social media listening is an important first step when starting a new campaign or addressing a situation. When the current situation is heightened with a national emergency, marketers need to key in on their audience at a new level.

COVID-19 has changed the lives of folks around the world, including their social media habits. Facebook reports messaging increased more than 50% in March. According to Twitter, COVID-19 related Tweets are being shared every 45 milliseconds and #coronavirus is now the second most used hashtag of 2020.


Active Social Media Listening: Tips for a New Era of COVID-19

Margaret Shepard Shares How Mayo Clinic Built its Facebook Live Broadcast Strategy #DSMPLS

The Mayo Clinic, one of our nation’s most renowned hospitals, believes in being social. More than 100 years ago, the Mayo brothers got the social ball rolling by inviting other surgeons to come to its facility in Rochester, MN to talk and learn from one another.

Today, that sharing and learning principle continues through social media, particularly Facebook Live.

With the hopes of helping patients learn more about their health care options, Mayo Clinic knew that research showed that word-of-mouth and expert insight could make an impact. With that in mind, it began its foray into live video on social media with Periscope and eventually moved to Facebook Live.

The hook of the broadcast? Leveraging the expert insights of experienced physicians.


Margaret Shepard Shares How Mayo Clinic Built its Facebook Live Broadcast Strategy #DSMPLS

TopRank Marketing’s Ashley Zeckman Shares How to Build Consumer Trust with Influencers #DSMPLS

Ashley Zeckman Speaking at Digital Summit

In a world of consumer distrust, especially when it comes to marketing messages, it can sometimes feel like you’re living in the “Upside Down.” Everything that you thought was true about marketing and how you engage with customers and buyers is now different. In fact, sometimes nothing seems to make sense anymore.

In fact, Edelman found that less than 50% of U.S. consumers trust brands. In her Stranger Things-themed presentation at Digital Summit Minneapolis, TopRank Marketing’s Ashley Zeckman addressed the current state of marketing affairs and offered insight into ways that brands can improve trust and connect with their buying audience.

What’s her advice on changing the narrative and winning back the hearts and minds of customers? Partner with influencers to create credible content that can change the day and save the world. Stranger Things have happened, right?


TopRank Marketing’s Ashley Zeckman Shares How to Build Consumer Trust with Influencers #DSMPLS

Spotlighting Organic Social Media Video Success: Your Guide to Metrics and Specs

Debbie Friez
Debbie Friez
Social Media, Video

Social Media Video

Native social media video is a marketing darling, with emerging new formats and increasing availability across platforms. Mainstays like Facebook prioritize native video posts over other content types. But how can marketers showcase the impact of native video tactics to clients? With variable analytics available for the different platforms, setting a benchmark for reporting in advance is smart but complicated.

Today we’re giving you the ultimate native video guide to set you up for success. Let’s look at the primary social media channels, outline the specs for your video, and list the available metrics for measurement.


Spotlighting Organic Social Media Video Success: Your Guide to Metrics and Specs

A Taste of Social and Influencer Marketing: What B2B Can Learn from B2C #SMBMSP

B2B Influencer Marketing Takeways from B2C Influencers

B2C brands pioneered the use of influential voices to boost their brand appeal, sales, and campaigns. And as more and more B2B brands and marketers dive into the world of influencer marketing, the question is: How can we leverage the knowledge, insights and tips B2C marketers have to share for our marketing efforts?

Last week, a panel of foodie influencers and bloggers provided some insights that can help answer that question. My TopRank Marketing colleague Jack Fitzpatrick and I attended Social Media Breakfast – Minneapolis St. Paul’s (SMBMSP) panel moderated by Michele Phillips, a food blogger, writer, photographer and content creator, which included food personality Lindsay Greene, tweeting BBQ enthusiast The Product Poet, and Eat.Drink.Dish MPLS founder Golnaz Yamoutpour.


A Taste of Social and Influencer Marketing: What B2B Can Learn from B2C #SMBMSP

Building Better Influencer Relationships: 7 Cues Marketers Can Take from Sales

Influencer marketing is booming with B2B and B2C brands big and small dipping their toes in the water. And it’s certainly not hard to see why. From declining consumer trust to content overload to near-dead organic reach on social channels, working with influencers enables brands to build credibility, authority with existing and new audiences, as well as connect with thoughtful industry experts.

And, of course, partnering with influencers can help drive marketing results. In fact, according to a Linqia survey, 94% of marketers who use influencer marketing find it an effective practice that can generate up to 11-times the ROI of traditional advertising.


Building Better Influencer Relationships: 7 Cues Marketers Can Take from Sales

Break All the Social Rules: Advice from Spredfast VP of Strategy Spike Jones

Debbie Friez
Debbie Friez
MIMA Seminars, Social Media

In this era of social media, brands need to look at their social outreach in a different light. Which means that sometimes, you have to break the social media rules. Spike Jones, Vice President Strategy at Spredfast outlined a new type of social success at the September Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA) event.

As Spike shared in his presentation:

“When it comes to social media, sometimes you need to follow the breadcrumbs.”

Why? Because you never know who you might find. Below are some of the top insights and takeaways from Spike’s presentation.

It’s not about the brand.

As marketers, we are often taught to include our brand’s logo, messaging tagline and any other branding we might have on everything we produce and influence.


Break All the Social Rules: Advice from Spredfast VP of Strategy Spike Jones

Principles and Books for Looking into the Digital Future from Lee Aase

When asked to share digital trends and predictions to kick-off the inaugural Minnesota PRSA Digital Skills Workshop, Lee Aase, Director, Mayo Clinic Social Media Network, took an alternative approach.

I’ll share the trends that I’ve observed, and the books that I have read or heard at least two times, but generally more. And link you to the Audible store, while the future I cannot foretell these principles will serve you well.

Digital media is changing fast, so Aase, a leader in utilizing social media, shared insights for getting your mind moving in new directions. Along the way, he shared some of his favorite audio books, and  joked if you subscribe to the one book per month plan on Audible, you will be set for the next year. (Note – one book is free.)


Principles and Books for Looking into the Digital Future from Lee Aase