Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®

Lee Odden

Help Us Celebrate 15 Years of Blogging – TopRank Marketing Blog

15 years of marketing blogging

I think it’s safe to say that there are not many marketing blogs that have hit the 15 year mark.

However, I am happy to say that the class of 2003 includes an impressive cohort of marketing blogs including several that have become industry standards like Search Engine Roundtable by Barry Schwartz and Search Engine Journal founded by Loren Baker.

While TopRank’s Online Marketing blog started with a focus on search marketing, we’ve grown and evolved over the past 15 years just like the marketing industry has. Plus, instead of me writing 3-5 posts a week myself (over 2,400 total), I now have a great team that does most of the hard work.


Help Us Celebrate 15 Years of Blogging – TopRank Marketing Blog

B2B Marketers: Is Your Influencer Marketing Mechanical or Meaningful?

influencer marketing

If they don’t care, they won’t share.

With the need to scale and drive efficient performance, many B2B marketers work hard to operationalize their efforts. While process brings efficiency, a transactional approach to a relationship-centric discipline can reduce effectiveness significantly.

The effect of a mechanical vs. meaningful relationship is particularly impactful when it comes to influencer marketing. This is why many in the field call it influencer relations – it’s a relationship business, not just an advertising buy.

Now that is not to say that paying B2B influencers is out of the question. In fact, it makes sense to clearly outline the situations where payment is appropriate and where it is not. For example, if you ask an influencer to attend an event and emcee a track or co-author an ebook, payment for that expertise and time is definitely appropriate. If you invite an influencer to share a quote for an article or be a guest on a podcast, then payment is less likely to be involved.


B2B Marketers: Is Your Influencer Marketing Mechanical or Meaningful?

25 Influential Women in Digital Marketing Who Rocked and Inspired in 2018

Lee Odden
Lee Odden on Nov 28th, 2018
Digital Marketing

25 Women Digital Marketing

The digital marketing industry is like no other, and one of the great joys of publishing a top marketing blog is the opportunity to shine a light on top talent. People who are doing great work, inspiring others to do great work and making a difference in marketing.

Working in this industry over the past 20 years has provided numerous opportunities for me to connect with, learn from and be inspired by incredibly talented marketers. Many of them women.

And so, for the ninth year in a row, TopRank Marketing is publishing it’s annual influential women in digital marketing list.


25 Influential Women in Digital Marketing Who Rocked and Inspired in 2018

What B2B CMOs Need to Know About Successful Influencer Marketing

B2B Influencer Marketing for CMOs

65% of multinational brands will increase Influencer Marketing spending in the next 12 months reaching $10 billion over the next 5 years.

With so much at stake for marketing in our fast paced industry, senior marketers must be able to see both the forest and the trees when it comes to influencer marketing in the B2B world. Much of what the marketing industry knows about working with influencers is seen through a consumer marketing lens often with the self-anointed social celebrities publishing ads as content without real passion for the brands.

With so much of influencer marketing akin to “get rich quick” with a shiny marketing object, many B2B marketing leaders can acquire unrealistic expectations about what works and what doesn’t with influencers in the business world.


What B2B CMOs Need to Know About Successful Influencer Marketing

Three Ways Content Marketers Can Optimize Marketing Performance with Data

Lee Odden
Lee Odden on Nov 26th, 2018
Content Marketing

Optimize Content Marketing with Data

In 1984, a person saw an average 2,000 ads/day. By 2014, they saw around 5,000. (Media Dynamics)

There’s some irony to the fact that it’s due to data and information overload that consumers face on a daily basis (63gb of media per day in the US according to USC/ICT) that data has become even more important for marketers.

Successful marketing today isn’t just about creating useful content that informs buyers, it must be even easier to find in all the right places and deliver both utility and experience. Without data insights about customer preferences, it’s very difficult to deliver on that.


Three Ways Content Marketers Can Optimize Marketing Performance with Data

B2B Influencer Marketing Interview: Whitney Magnuson, IBM

Whitney Magnuson IBM

Our journey into the world of B2B influencer marketing continues this week with an interview featuring Whitney Magnuson, Global head of social and influencers at IBM Systems.

Overall, IBM has a long history working with influencers ranging from the Midsize Insider blogging program to the IBM Futurists. For her part at IBM Systems, Whitney has overseen the creation of a first-of-its-kind external influencer outreach program that has since become the model for IBM company-wide among many other accomplishments.

In this interview, Whitney talks about the differences between B2C and B2B influencer marketing, how influencer marketing is positioned within her company, a favorite influencer marketing campaign and tips on tools and measurement.

What brought you to the world of Influencer Marketing?


B2B Influencer Marketing Interview: Whitney Magnuson, IBM

B2B Influencer Marketing Interview: Rani Mani, Adobe

Rani Mani Adobe

For this week’s installment of B2B influencer marketing interviews, we get to meet Rani Mani, Head of Social Influencer Enablement at Adobe. Besides her accomplishments working with cross functional teams and developing strategies for cultivating and nurturing community engagement so that Adobe can be a community driven business, she has an amazing and inspiring personal story.

In this interview, Rani shares how working with B2B influencers can drive marketing results, how influencer engagement is organized at Adobe, tips on recruiting and engaging influencers, and some her favorite B2B influencers to work with.

What brought you to the world of Influencer Marketing?

I am passionate about community building and shining a light on the people doing amazing things in the world with our products and services. Influencer Relations is a perfect fit for that passion.


B2B Influencer Marketing Interview: Rani Mani, Adobe

Just Getting Started with Influencer Marketing? 6 Things You Should Know

Lee Odden
Lee Odden on Nov 1st, 2018
Influencer Marketing

Smarter Influencer Marketing
According to the World Federation of Advertisers, 65% of multinational brands will increase their influencer marketing spending in the next 12 months. Mediakix reports that influencer ad spending alone will increase from $5 billion to $10 billion in the next 5 years.

Clearly, more companies are moving into the world of influencer marketing. Recent research from Traackr and Brian Solis from Altimeter group offers evidence of this momentum with the number of companies moving from experimenting to implementing tactical influencer marketing programs increasing from 28% to 47%.

While there’s a lot of inertia towards influencer marketing, it’s still early days for many companies, especially in B2B industries. Fortunately, B2B influencer content is a speciality area for us and if you’re thinking about starting or evolving your business influencer engagement and content program, here are a few things to consider:


Just Getting Started with Influencer Marketing? 6 Things You Should Know

B2B Influencer Marketing Interview: Martin Jones, Cox Communications

Martin Jones

I’ve known Martin Jones casually through marketing conferences for several years. Martin occupies that unique position of being someone who manages influencer marketing programs for his brand and is also an influencer himself.

In fact, it is through an influencer engagement for IBM that both Martin and I were involved with that I had a chance to get to know him in earnest. His climb at Cox Communications is a classic American success story and at the same time, Martin is incredibly humble and one of the nicest people in the industry.

In this interview, Martin shares his journey into working with influencers, tips on identifying, recruiting and managing relationships with influencers as well as insights on measurement and his thoughts towards the future.


B2B Influencer Marketing Interview: Martin Jones, Cox Communications

From Basic to Advanced, the B2B Influencer Marketing Software You Need to Succeed

B2B influencer marketing software

A hot topic for every marketer today is working with influencers. But how do you find the right influencers? How do you manage those relationships and how do you scale programs?

Basically, what tools do you need when it comes to B2B influencer marketing?

Here is a collection of social media and influencer marketing tools you might find useful whether you’re a B2B or a B2C marketer. But definitely if you work in B2B.

Outside of the promotional tools you might use for the content marketing that goes along with most influencer marketing programs, there are three general areas of opportunity to scale with technology when it comes to working with influencers.

1- Identification, qualification and recruiting


From Basic to Advanced, the B2B Influencer Marketing Software You Need to Succeed

Pubcon Pro 2018 Search Marketing Conference Wrap-up

Chris Boggs, Barry Schwartz, Lee Odden, Brett Tabke, and Lane R. Ellis at Pubcon Las Vegas 2018

For those in the know and that go beyond clickbait headlines, Search Marketing delivers an incredible punch to a marketing mix. But it takes work, especially when you consider the hundreds of factors that go into ranking decisions for every one of the billion plus queries that Google tries to answer each month.

Part of that work is staying on top of search engine optimization and advertising best practices. For that, several members of the TopRank Marketing team recently attended the Pubcon Pro conference in Las Vegas.

After essentially getting my start in public speaking as a marketer at Pubcon many years ago, I have returned to the search marketing industry with my third speaking appearance in a row at a Pubcon event in the past 12 months.


Pubcon Pro 2018 Search Marketing Conference Wrap-up

Enterprise B2B Influencer Marketing Interview: Angela Lipscomb, SAS

Angela Lipscomb

One of the great things about social media is connecting with other professionals and Angela Lipscomb and I have been connected on multiple networks for several years. I appreciate her relationship focus towards PR and influencer relations because so much of what is being done in the name of influencer marketing is transactional.  As I like to say, it’s the meaningful not the mechanical connections you make that contribute to success.

As the Influencer Relations Manager for SAS (business analytics software and services), Angela developed their first influencer program back when her role was in corporate communications. Her work there and on to media relations were ideal prep for her current influencer relations role to identify, engage and manage influencer relationships.


Enterprise B2B Influencer Marketing Interview: Angela Lipscomb, SAS