Lee Odden

Inside Influence 6: Amisha Gandhi from SAP on the Power of Mutual Value in B2B Influencer Marketing

Lee Odden on Nov 9th, 2020
B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing

The latest edition of Inside Influence: What’s working and what’s not inside the world of B2B Influencer Marketing, features B2B Influencer Marketing “OG”, Amisha Gandhi, VP Influencer Marketing & Communications at SAP. At TopRank Marketing, we’ve had the pleasure of working with Amisha for several years on a variety of influencer marketing programs from the launch of SAP Leonardo to developing a virtual reality experience featuring influencers for use at tradeshows.

In this 6th episode of Inside Influence, I talk with Amisha about the power of how creating mutual value between B2B brands and influencers drives returns across the customer lifecycle. Of course we also hit a few highlights of the 2020 State of B2B Influencer Marketing Report.

In this 6th Episode of Inside Influence, we cover:

Inside Influence 6: Amisha Gandhi from SAP on the Power of Mutual Value in B2B Influencer Marketing

Inside Influence 5: Jen Holtvluwer from Spiron on Award Winning B2B Influencer Marketing

Lee Odden on Nov 2nd, 2020
B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing

When we conducted our research for the 2020 State of B2B Influencer Marketing Report, we found what the most successful B2B marketers have in common. They:

Have a Documented Influencer Marketing Strategy
Engage in Always-On Influencer Engagement
Have a Centralized Influencer Program
Use Software to Identify Influencers
Rely on Experts and Analysts
Use Blogs as Content Platforms
Create Interactive Content with Influencers

Learning from those who are already successful in a fast growing discipline is what the Inside Influence: What’s working and what’s not inside the world of B2B Influencer Marketing show is all about.

Inside Influence 5: Jen Holtvluwer from Spiron on Award Winning B2B Influencer Marketing

Inside Influence 4: Janine Wegner from Dell on Thought Leadership and Influencer Relations

Lee Odden on Oct 19th, 2020
B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing

Today marks the 4th installment in the Inside Influence: What’s working and what’s not inside the world of B2B Influencer Marketing, series. I want to thank everyone who has viewed the interviews, made comments and shared with their networks. This week we’re continuing our search to find out what’s working and what’s not within the world of B2B influencer marketing as well as further insights from the 2020 State of B2B Influencer Marketing Report.

Episode 4 of Inside Influence features guest insider, Janine Wegner, Global Thought Leadership Program and Activation Manager at Dell Technologies who our agency TopRank Marketing has the pleasure of working with on influencer content marketing programs like The Zettabyte World – Securing our Data-Rich Future.

Inside Influence 4: Janine Wegner from Dell on Thought Leadership and Influencer Relations

Inside Influence 3: Ursula Ringham from SAP on Influencer Marketing Operations

Lee Odden on Oct 12th, 2020
B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing

Welcome to the 3rd episode of Inside Influence: What’s working and what’s not inside the world of B2B Influencer Marketing. Each week we feature an interview with a B2B marketing insider on all things influence and a deeper dive into the insights found in the 2020 State of B2B Influencer Marketing Report.

In this 3rd episode of Inside Influence you are in for a treat: A discussion with the force of nature and client of TopRank Marketing that is Ursula Ringham, Head of Global Influencer Marketing at SAP.

Ursula leads the Global Influencer Marketing team at SAP in collaboration with the entire SAP product portfolio to create innovative content with trusted external voices to build brand awareness and create pipeline. She is also an accomplished storyteller, author, creator, influencer marketer, digital innovator, social media maven, champion of girls education, and self described “outdoor sports freak”.

Inside Influence 3: Ursula Ringham from SAP on Influencer Marketing Operations

B2B Marketing News: Demand Gen Adapts, B2B Buyers Taking Longer, Microsoft Digital Marketing Center Beta

Lee Odden on Oct 9th, 2020
Marketing & PR Industry

The Gartner Hype Cycle for Artificial Intelligence, 2020 – Chatbots are projected to see over a 100% increase in their adoption rates in the next two to five years and are the leading AI use cases in enterprises today. Forbes

Bing is now Microsoft Bing as the search engine gets a rebrand – Microsoft doesn’t go into detail about why it added the company’s name to the Bing brand, other than it reflecting “the continued integration of our search experiences across the Microsoft family. The Verge

68% of B2B buyers say the length of their purchase cycles has increased over last year – The COVID-19 pandemic has led many B2B firms to lengthen their purchase cycles and to expect more personalized attention from vendors, according to recent research from Demand Gen Report. MarketingProfs

B2B Marketing News: Demand Gen Adapts, B2B Buyers Taking Longer, Microsoft Digital Marketing Center Beta

Inside Influence 2: Garnor Morantes from LinkedIn on the Power of Always-On Influence

Lee Odden on Oct 5th, 2020
B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing

Welcome to the second episode of Inside Influence: Interviews with B2B Influencer Marketing Insiders. Each week we feature an interview with a B2B marketing insider on all things influence and a deeper dive into the insights found in the 2020 State of B2B Influencer Marketing Report.

This week, we’re talking to Garnor Morantes, Group Marketing Manager at LinkedIn. Our team at TopRank Marketing has been fortunate to work with Garnor on an award-winning, ongoing influencer marketing program for LinkedIn over several years and his leadership has been instrumental in its success.

Our conversation touches on:

What Always-On influencer marketing is and why its valuable for B2B brands
The challenges faced by campaign-focused influencer marketing efforts
Advice for B2B marketers considering influencer marketing

Inside Influence 2: Garnor Morantes from LinkedIn on the Power of Always-On Influence

Inside Influence 1: Rani Mani from Adobe on the B2B Influencer Marketing Advantage

Lee Odden on Sep 28th, 2020
B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing

On the heels of the release of the 2020 State of B2B Influencer Marketing Report and the announcement that several of our clients (LinkedIn and Alcatel Lucent Enterprise) have won awards for B2B influencer marketing campaigns, I am very happy to share the launch of a new video interview series: Inside Influence: Interviews with B2B Influencer Marketing Insiders.

What is Inside Influence?

This is a show that goes behind the scenes of B2B influencer marketing and showcases conversations with insiders from the world of B2B influencer marketing. We’ll be talking with practitioners at B2B brands of all kinds and sizes to answer the rising number of questions about working with influencers in a business context.

Inside Influence 1: Rani Mani from Adobe on the B2B Influencer Marketing Advantage

How to Win at B2B Influence With The Magic of Content Co-Creation

Lee Odden on Sep 7th, 2020
Content Marketing, Influencer Marketing

Today we live in an age of information overload where the speed of content discovery and the variety of options for media consumption across connected devices presents new challenges for B2B brands and buyers alike.

The natural response for buyers is to filter their choices and focus those few sources which are most trusted, credible and meaningful. For brands that want to differentiate and even dominate in their category, becoming known as “the best answer” for their domain of expertise will have enormous impact.

The challenge of increased digital sophistication brings an opportunity: businesses can differentiate and capture market attention by growing their authority and influence.

How to Win at B2B Influence With The Magic of Content Co-Creation

5 Case Studies on How to Optimize B2B Influencer Engagement on LinkedIn

Lee Odden on Aug 31st, 2020
B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing

With over 700 million community members in 200+ countries and territories, LinkedIn is without question the place for businesses to do business. With 91% of marketing executives using LinkedIn as a content source (SocialPilot) it’s easy to understand why 94% of B2B marketers using LinkedIn to distribute content (CMI). In fact, there’s been a 50% year over year increase in content shared on the LinkedIn platform (LinkedIn).

With many social network options, LinkedIn has proven to be an effective choice for B2B marketers. A study from HubSpot showed that traffic from LinkedIn generates the highest visitor to lead conversion rate, 277% higher than Facebook and Twitter.

5 Case Studies on How to Optimize B2B Influencer Engagement on LinkedIn

5 Steps for a More Powerful B2B Content Marketing Strategy

Lee Odden on Aug 24th, 2020
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

Content Marketing continues to be a driving force behind meaningful B2B marketing that powers marketing and business growth. According to research by HubSpot, 70% of marketers actively investing in content marketing and there’s no sign of a slowdown, especially as SEMrush research has found, marketers are focused on using content to generate more quality leads (75%), attract more traffic to their website (71%), improve brand reputation (56%), and improve customer engagement and loyalty (45%).

The problem is, many of those marketers are not creating best answer content experiences. Creating useful content by itself is not an effective strategy in a world of brand distrust, content attention deficit and the distractions brought by a global pandemic. Being the best answer for your customers means being found and also delivering on expectations. Creating findable, credible content that is also useful and experiential is at the center of what being the best answer means for marketers.

5 Steps for a More Powerful B2B Content Marketing Strategy

How to Optimize Original B2B Research Content For Credibility and Impact

Lee Odden on Aug 17th, 2020
Content Marketing

For many in the B2B marketing world, original research provides an effective way to build thought leadership and drive content for owned and earned media.

Unfortunately, many research reports from B2B companies are dry, uninspired and focus solely on pontifications from the brand point of view. Such unremarkable content isn’t helping customers, especially if they never see it due to information overload or they don’t trust it.

“With more information, options and people involved in a buying process, buyers are paralyzed when trying to move forward.” Gartner

Fortunately, there’s a better way.

More often than not, B2B research reports have marketing objectives focused on building brand thought leadership, attracting new names for nurturing and to serve as a resource for sales. Since most B2B brands don’t have the credibility and distribution to reach their marketing goals on their own with such reports, they rely on advertising and PR to attract attention.

How to Optimize Original B2B Research Content For Credibility and Impact

In Search of Trust: How Authentic Content Drives Customer Experience

Lee Odden on Aug 10th, 2020
Content Marketing

The experience customers have through marketing content can be one of the most important differentiators for brands today.

And yet 58% of B2B buyers don’t not believe claims made by the vendors they most recently bought from (TrustRadius).

It’s hard to create a great experience if customers don’t trust brand communications.

Trust is the gateway to influence perceptions, behaviors and actions and brands that want to succeed in the uncertain environment of today’s digital world need to double down on building trust with their customers. But how?

Today’s increasingly digital buyers have high expectations of the companies they do business with: buyers want personalized and relevant information, they want a consistent experience across channels, they want confidence in the brand as a company that cares about privacy, their customers and the community.

In Search of Trust: How Authentic Content Drives Customer Experience