B2B Marketing Archives - Online Marketing Blog

24 Essential B2B Influencer Marketing Statistics

Lane Ellis on Feb 19th, 2020 B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing

How important is influencer marketing to businesses in 2020?

Influencer marketing will see global brand spending of up to $15 billion by 2022 (Business Insider Intelligence), and B2B marketers who haven’t yet experienced its many benefits now have more research data than ever to make the case for starting an influencer marketing program.

Even if you’ve already developed an influencer marketing strategy, the wealth of new information coming out about its power to build trust and inspire action is growing, which is why we wanted to share 24 significant B2B influencer marketing statistics that combine to tell a compelling story that will alter your future campaigns.

Let’s jump right in with a look at some of the latest influencer marketing statistics.

24 Essential B2B Influencer Marketing Statistics

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5 Key Traits of the Best B2B Influencers

Lee Odden on Feb 18th, 2020 B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing

Marketers are still asking, what is B2B influencer marketing? Here’s a definition I’ve been using over the past 5 years or so:

B2B influencer marketing is activating internal and external subject matter experts with engaged networks to advocate and co-create content of mutual value that drives measurable business goals.

As the groundswell around influencer marketing rises and becomes a normal part of the B2B marketing mix, the volume of information and misinformation on the topic also increases.

One of the most popular questions people also ask about B2B influencer marketing focuses on what makes a good business influencer? By now we all know that popularity alone does not make someone influential. It’s certainly important, it’s just not the only thing.

5 Key Traits of the Best B2B Influencers

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How Influence and SEO Can Drive Customer Experience

Lee Odden on Feb 17th, 2020 B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing

Influence and Customer Experience

We talk a lot here on Online Marketing Blog about influencer marketing and one of the benefits of incorporating the voices of influencers in brand content is not often covered: customer experience.

What’s the connection between CX and influence? A big part of customer experience is trust and many customers simply do not trust brands or advertising.

That’s where adding credible 3rd party voices to brand content comes into play. Brands that want to deliver the most relevant, engaging and actionable experience for their customers will often incorporate external experts that already have the attention of the audience that brands want to reach.

Partnering with relevant influencers to co-create content can open doors for brands trying to engage hard to reach and increasingly skeptical audiences. Those content collaborations can also help deliver an experience that is more credible and trusted than brand content alone.

How Influence and SEO Can Drive Customer Experience

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5 Ways to Humanize B2B Content Marketing

Joshua Nite on Feb 13th, 2020 B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

“You’ve really got to put yourself out there. Don’t be too stiff.”

“Be honest and sincere!”

“Be vulnerable and relatable… and it doesn’t hurt if you can make ‘em laugh.”

Is this advice for a middle-aged man trying online dating for the first time? Or is it advice for B2B marketers?

Given the proximity to Valentine’s Day, can’t it be both?

The point is, as good as this advice may be for marketers, it’s as vague as it is omnipresent. We talk about “person-to-person” marketing and “humanizing the brand.” But what does it really mean to humanize a brand?

Yes, these were the original Michelin Tire mascots.

In some cases, apparently, it means high-octane nightmare fuel. So, maybe don’t try and make an adorable mascot for your software-as-a-service solution.

5 Ways to Humanize B2B Content Marketing

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31 DIY Marketing Tools To Create Remarkable Experiences

Lane Ellis on Feb 12th, 2020 B2B Marketing

Sifting through thousands of available tools is a hit and — more often than not — a miss proposition, but we’ve got you covered with 31 do-it-yourself marketing tools that are perfect for helping you create remarkable campaign experiences.

It can be overwhelming even deciding which new tools to start trying out to see if they’re helpful, so to jump-start your marketing efforts in 2020 we’ve gathered a varied selection of innovative and helpful tools that can significantly enhance your marketing efforts.

These tools come from a varying array of categories useful to digital marketers, from artificial intelligence (AI) content analysis bots and data manipulation utilities to video and image manipulation — a smorgasbord of helpful software that is unified in that each tool can provide immediate improvements to your marketing campaigns.

31 DIY Marketing Tools To Create Remarkable Experiences

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25 B2B Influencer Marketing Campaign & Engagement Ideas for 2020

Lee Odden on Feb 11th, 2020 B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing

In the business world, you don’t have to look far to see that the number of B2B companies engaged with influencer marketing is growing. As more companies are moving beyond experimentation to conducting pilots, sequential campaigns and always on programs, there is an increasing desire to expand how brands engage with business influencers.

To help B2B marketers solve that problem, I’m going to share a swipe file of sorts of different business influencer campaigns and engagement opportunities. Implementing just a few of these could help a company with a substantial amount of influencer program activity.

Of course just because you can, doesn’t mean you should! As with all effective marketing, it’s important to match up the campaign approach with the criteria for your customers and how they want to engage with influencer/brand content. Check out the list below and hopefully some good ideas will spark and ignite your 2020 B2B influencer marketing to new levels.

25 B2B Influencer Marketing Campaign & Engagement Ideas for 2020

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Hungry for More: What B2B Marketers Need to Know About Episodic Content

Nick Nelson on Feb 10th, 2020 B2B Marketing

The cliffhanger is one of the greatest tools in entertainment. I’ll explain why later.

Seriously though, we’ve all experienced the cliffhanger: It’s that tension-building moment of uncertainty at the end of a chapter or installment that leaves the audience impatiently awaiting the next one. Some of my favorite binge-worthy TV shows and page-turning novels have been defined by this quality.

A perfect example from modern cinema is the conclusion of 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War. While I won’t give anything away, the movie ended with a shocking turn of events that seemed to leave little hope for the franchise’s heroic protagonists. In the 12 months that passed between Infinity War and its sequel, fans waited with rabid eagerness for answers and closure, reveling in theories and hyper-analysis.

Hungry for More: What B2B Marketers Need to Know About Episodic Content

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Break Free B2B Season 1 Wrap Up: Top Insights from the Marketing Industry’s Best and Brightest

Caitlin Burgess on Feb 6th, 2020 B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Video Interviews

Three different hosts, 19 jam-packed episodes, 20 incredible guests—countless amazing insights gained.

TopRank Marketing’s inaugural season of Break Free B2B, a video podcast series featuring the expertise, experiences, and advice of diverse marketing minds, is officially wrapped.

With the goal of delivering B2B marketers the encouragement and inspiration to break free of business-to-business norms to drive bigger, better, bolder results, we covered everything from change management to visual storytelling to what’s next in B2B influencer marketing. And of course, we’d be remiss if we didn’t take a moment to reflect and share some of our favorite tidbits from each of our incredible guests.

Throughout the season, there were a few key topical areas we honed in on:

Break Free B2B Season 1 Wrap Up: Top Insights from the Marketing Industry’s Best and Brightest

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Authenticity and Great B2B Content Marketing Go Hand In Hand

Lane Ellis on Feb 5th, 2020 B2B Marketing

Are you using enough authenticity in your B2B marketing to build greater inherent trust into your brand purpose?

If you’re not sure, read on — and let’s examine how authenticity, influence, and trust go hand-in-hand to deliver great B2B content marketing.

Authenticity is a key factor in great B2B marketing, with the trust it builds powering campaigns that will stand apart from the crowd.

Influence plays two roles in authenticity, as those who have influence are seen as being authentic, and content built with authenticity creates its own inherent influence. This connection between influence and authenticity has a surprisingly lengthy history, as I explored in “10 Tips From Influencer Marketing’s Hidden 1,000-Year History.”

Authenticity and Great B2B Content Marketing Go Hand In Hand

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What B2B Podcasters Need to Know About SEO

Joshua Nite on Feb 4th, 2020 B2B Marketing, Podcast Marketing, Podcasting

There are few things more satisfying than clicking “Publish” on a shiny new podcast. All the hours of planning and recording are done. You ran down your podcast launch checklist. Now it’s time for the world to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

You can sit back and watch the downloads roll in, right?

Well… it depends on whether people can find your podcast. While the podcast market isn’t oversaturated yet, it’s still a crowded playing field.

Post-launch, your podcast promotion plan will likely include a mix of paid promotion, influencer amplification, and social media marketing to help build your audience. But before you record a second of audio, your organic strategy can help ensure your podcast is found and treasured.

What B2B Podcasters Need to Know About SEO

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The Science and Art of Best Answer B2B Marketing Content

Nick Nelson on Feb 3rd, 2020 B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, SEO

As a marketer, I love experiencing the inner dynamics of our profession from the other side. Our agency talks so much about the value of delivering best answer content and fully satisfying a searcher’s curiosities; recently I experienced this value first-hand.

Let’s set the stage. A couple weeks ago I was mindlessly flipping through channels on cable TV and I came across an old favorite: Alien, the 1979 sci-fi horror flick from director Ridley Scott.

This classic film also had a classic tagline: “In space, no one can hear you scream.” In my boredom, I got to wondering about the validity of that statement, so I pulled up a Google search on my phone and typed in: is there sound in space.

The Science and Art of Best Answer B2B Marketing Content

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Break Free B2B Series: Margaret Magnarelli on the Psychology of Trust for Better Content Marketing

Caitlin Burgess on Jan 30th, 2020 B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Video Interviews

Trust in marketing—how to build it and how to wield it for good—needs to be top of mind for every modern marketer. Why? Because nearly every decision people make, especially when it comes to purchasing decisions, has an element of trust built in. And content marketers have the opportunity to become trusty guides.

“No one knows everything about everything,” Margaret Magnarelli, Executive Director of Digital Product Evolution and Growth Marketing at Morgan Stanley, shared with us in a recent Break Free B2B interview. “So, we have to be able to give our customers as much information as we can… and take them as close to the line of purchase—to the experience of purchase—as we can.”

Break Free B2B Series: Margaret Magnarelli on the Psychology of Trust for Better Content Marketing

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