B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®

B2B Marketing views, news and interviews.

Lee Odden

About Lee Odden

@LeeOdden is the CEO of TopRank Marketing and editor of TopRank's B2B Marketing Blog. Cited for his expertise by The Economist, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, he's the author of the book Optimize and presents internationally on B2B marketing topics including content, search, social media and influencer marketing. When not at conferences, consulting, or working with his talented team, he's likely running, traveling or cooking up something new.

How Influencers & Best Answer Content Help B2B Marketers Dominate in Search #CMWorld

Be the Best Answer with B2B Content

Great content isn’t so great if it’s not easy to find. And findable content isn’t so effective if it’s not trusted.

Content is the reason search engines began and yet many B2B content marketers are not taking full advantage of opportunities to attract customers that are actively looking. Instead, the content marketing function at many B2B companies is more about creating content and not so much about promoting it.

Where Has the Marketing in Content Marketing Gone?

The problem with content marketing that focuses mostly on content creation is that the marketing is missing. Sure, B2B brands can throw advertising at their new content to attract visitors – but do B2B buyers love clicking on ads?


How Influencers & Best Answer Content Help B2B Marketers Dominate in Search #CMWorld

Inside B2B Influence: Brian Solis of Salesforce on the Future of Influence in B2B Marketing

Brian Solis

If this is your first time, Inside B2B Influence is a podcast series that goes behind the scenes of B2B marketing and highlights insights with top business executives on influencer marketing for B2B companies. At TopRank Marketing we’re doing our best to connect readers and listeners with B2B marketing insiders on strategies, trends, tactics and the future to elevate the practice of growing influence within and outside of B2B brands.

In Episode 17 of Inside B2B Influence we have a returning guest who needs little introduction given his accomplishments and yet, we’d all be missing out if I did not mention that Brian Solis is Global Innovation Evangelist at Salesforce, an 8X best selling author, global keynote speaker, digital pioneer and has been a good friend for over 10 years.


Inside B2B Influence: Brian Solis of Salesforce on the Future of Influence in B2B Marketing

Inside B2B Influence: Sarita Rao of AT&T on Growing B2B Executive Influence with Social Media

Sarita Rao AT&T
Inside B2B Influence is a podcast and video series that goes behind the scenes of B2B marketing and highlights insights with top business executives on marketing for B2B companies. We’re doing our best here at TopRank Marketing Blog to elevate the practice of growing influence within and outside of B2B brands to drive thought leadership, create demand and grow revenue.

Episode 16 of Inside B2B Influence features a discussion with Sarita Rao (@saritasayso), who is President, Integrated and Partner Solutions at AT&T. Sarita contributed her expertise to the State of B2B Influencer Marketing Report last year and I have been following her closely (and learning) on LinkedIn and Twitter ever since.


Inside B2B Influence: Sarita Rao of AT&T on Growing B2B Executive Influence with Social Media

B2B Marketing News: 95:5 Rule in B2B, Social Media Trends, TikTok Overtakes YouTube, CMOs Need to Focus on CX

Top Social Entertainment Apps

New Report Looks at Social Media Usage Trends Over the Past Decade, and Where Things are Now Headed
App Annie’s ‘Evolution of Social Apps’ report looks at how social media usage trends have evolved over the last decade, highlighting the rise of live-streaming, the increasing focus on social commerce, the growth of TikTok and Snapchat with the biggest highlight being the rise in consumer spending within social apps, with cumulative spend already at $3.2 billion in the first half of 2021 – up 50% year-over-year.
Social Media Today


B2B Marketing News: 95:5 Rule in B2B, Social Media Trends, TikTok Overtakes YouTube, CMOs Need to Focus on CX

B2B Marketing News: B2B Digital Ad Spend Soars, Digital Engagement Changes, LinkedIn Scraps Stories, Google Pays Apple $15Bn

Salesforce Digital Engagement Tactics

Marketers’ Use of Digital Engagement Tactics
A new report from Salesforce shows that 9 in 10 marketing leaders believe that their digital engagement strategy has completely (48%) or somewhat (42%) changed since before the pandemic. Which tactics are they using? Social media (91%), digital ads (91%), digital content (88%), website and apps (86%), email (76%) and mobile (69%). MarketingCharts

The Hybrid Future: How B2B Events Are Evolving
Most marketers say hybrid B2B events, which incorporate both online and in-person elements, will become more common in the coming years, according to recent research from ON24. 79% of B2B marketers say hybrid events provide more data than purely in-person events. MarketingProfs


B2B Marketing News: B2B Digital Ad Spend Soars, Digital Engagement Changes, LinkedIn Scraps Stories, Google Pays Apple $15Bn

How to Elevate Post Pandemic B2B Marketing with Always-On Influence

Always-On B2B Influencer Marketing

As we collect data for the new State of B2B Influencer Marketing Report, it remains to be seen whether last year’s 96% of B2B marketers feeling confident about influencer marketing will come out, especially after the effects of the pandemic. With the shift in B2B go to market models towards digital first, influencer engagement has increased for many marketers as an alternative to spending on field marketing, real-world events and trade shows.

As B2B buyers increasingly rely on digital sources of information, stats like 74% of B2B marketers say influencer marketing impacts customer and prospect experience, become even more important. While that confidence before and since the pandemic has opened doors to many more B2B brands experimenting with, piloting and becoming more familiar with influencer engagement, that increase in activity has increased competition. So how can B2B brands raise the bar on their influencer marketing efforts?


How to Elevate Post Pandemic B2B Marketing with Always-On Influence

Three Use Cases That Connect the Dots Between Influence and B2B Marketing Results

Use Cases B2B Influencer Marketing

Last week I talked about where B2B Marketers are seeing the most impact from influencer marketing efforts based on the research done with hundreds of marketers for the State of B2B Influencer Marketing Report. Three of those specific areas where influence can help B2B brands optimize for greater marketing impact include brand, growing the influence of key executives and driving leads / sales.

While just about everyone in B2B Marketing is aware of how working with influencers can add relevance, reach and engagement to content, not everyone makes the connection between their particular business problem and the influence solution. Here are three examples from many that can help you connect the dots.

Build Credible Awareness of Your Brand with Customers

Business Problem: The industry is not aware of your brand, solution or your category.


Three Use Cases That Connect the Dots Between Influence and B2B Marketing Results

Where B2B Marketers See the Most Impact from Influencer Marketing

B2B Influencer Marketing ImpactSophisticated B2B marketers understand that the effectiveness of a given strategy or set of tactics is tied to goals.

When it comes to influence, there are applications across the customer lifecycle from increasing reach and attention from hard to connect with audiences to creating more credible and authentic content experiences to improving trust and inspiring decision making.

Of course, working with external influencers and improving the influence of internal experts is not a silver bullet across all marketing goals. However, in our research on influencer marketing for B2B brands, there are some outcomes where marketers are seeing greater impact.

Rather than simply provide a laundry list of the highest impact marketing outcomes, I’ve clustered similar goals together to provide more category level insight into where B2B marketers have seen the most success when working with influencers.


Where B2B Marketers See the Most Impact from Influencer Marketing

7 Questions B2B Marketers Need to Answer About Influencer Marketing

Essential B2B Influencer Marketing Questions

Diminishing organic social reach, distrust of brand marketing and information overload makes reaching and engaging today’s B2B buyer harder than ever. On top of that, the major changes brought by the pandemic have created new challenges and opportunities for B2B companies to better attract and engage customers in meaningful ways.

Out of the pandemic and the shift to digital first go-to-market approaches for B2B companies, Influencer Marketing has emerged as one of the most effective ways to connect with customers to create better experiences. Despite substantial growth in the discipline from best practices to software, many B2B brands are still experimenting or simply don’t know how to identify, engage and activate influencers.


7 Questions B2B Marketers Need to Answer About Influencer Marketing

6 Timeless SEO Tips Content Marketers Can Do Now

Lee Odden
Lee Odden on Jul 26th, 2021
Content Marketing, SEO

Timeless SEO Tips

Content is the research search began in the first place.

Learning about how to get customers to visit newly created websites is where my search engine optimization education began. In that journey from before there was a Google to today, many things have changed. What has stayed the same is the opportunity to grow business by connecting customers to content by being the best answer and inspiring those customers to take action.

The best SEO practitioners stay on top of what’s current, always experimenting and evaluating what works for topics in a particular industry for the websites and content they’re in charge of attracting customers to. At the same time, the best SEO advice isn’t worth much if it doesn’t get implemented. That’s why many marketers with long term SEO experience emphasize the fundamentals.


6 Timeless SEO Tips Content Marketers Can Do Now

Share Your Expertise in the 2021 State of B2B Influencer Marketing Survey

2021 B2B influencer marketing survey

The past year or more has taught B2B marketer many lessons, especially the importance of creating digital first experiences that are credible, authentic and relevant to specific buyers. As part of the digital transformation of marketing, many B2B companies have adjusted their go-to-market approach to satisfy the changing customer expectations that have evolved during the pandemic.

One of those adjustments in B2B marketing has been the increasing role of influence in delivering  credible, authentic and relevant digital experiences. Our initial B2B Influencer Marketing research from 2020 showed that going into the pandemic, confidence in working with B2B influencers was very high as were expectations of outcomes.

Despite the growing confidence in working with B2B influencers over the past year, today there are important questions to be answered as more B2B brands enter the realm of influence and grow more sophisticated with the practice.


Share Your Expertise in the 2021 State of B2B Influencer Marketing Survey

From Tech to Human: Three Post Pandemic B2B Marketing Trends

Lee Odden
Lee Odden on Jul 12th, 2021
B2B Marketing

Post Pandemic B2B Marketing Trends

For many, the past few months have opened up giving us a taste of “return to normal” but what does that mean?

When most people say normal, what they often mean is comfortable. In the business world pre-pandemic comfortable is a dangerous place to be.

Any company that did not adjust, adapt or pivot over the past year and a half probably isn’t in business or doing as much business as they should. There have been many changes during the pandemic from digital transformation across all aspects of business to evolving expectations of customers. Companies and their marketers must be in tune with all of these changes in order to survive and thrive in a post-pandemic business environment.


From Tech to Human: Three Post Pandemic B2B Marketing Trends