B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®

B2B Marketing views, news and interviews.

Break Free B2B Marketing: Oliver Christie on Making Life Better With AI

Susan Misukanis
Susan Misukanis on Jan 14th, 2021
B2B Marketing, Video Interviews

Oliver Christie of PertexaHealthTech Image

Just what is a B2B influencer, and what do they actually look like?

In our third season of Break Free B2B Marketing video interviews we’re having in-depth conversations with an impressive array of top B2B influencers, exploring the important issues that each expert is influential about.

Successful B2B influencers have a rare mix of the 5 Ps — proficiency, personality, publishing, promotion, and popularity — as our CEO Lee Odden has carefully outlined in “5 Key Traits of the Best B2B Influencers.”

Offering up all of those boxes and more is Oliver Christie, chief artificial intelligence (AI) officer at PertexaHealthTech, who we’re delighted to be profiling today.


Break Free B2B Marketing: Oliver Christie on Making Life Better With AI

5 Unconventional Sources of Customer Feedback for B2B Marketers

Lane Ellis
Lane Ellis on Jan 13th, 2021
B2B Marketing

Busy business-people climbing stairs image.

Are you wondering whether you’re missing valuable customer feedback because you’re just not looking in the right places?

Our digital landscape today offers a wide array of well-used standard methods for B2B marketers to collect customer feedback, with just a few including:

  • Monitoring Social Media Activity
  • Customer Experience Surveys
  • Feedback Forms
  • Website Data Analysis
  • Customer Reviews & Other User Generated Content
  • Direct Interviews
  • Testimonials
  • Usability Test Data
  • Sales & Customer Service Team Data

There are many other traditional ways as well, and each method excels in its own specific way, holding the promise of providing insightful information about customers or prospective customers.


5 Unconventional Sources of Customer Feedback for B2B Marketers

How the Most Successful B2B Marketers Approach Influencer Marketing in 2021

Keys to Success B2B Influencer Marketing 2021

According to the 2020 State of B2B Influencer Marketing Report, 96% of B2B marketers that engage influencers consider their program to be successful and 90% expect their budget for influencer marketing to increase or stay the same over the next 12 months.

Why the confidence? 77% of marketers say their prospective customers rely on advice from industry experts with 84% engaging influencers to create brand awareness and 69% counting on influencers for lead generation.

Influence plays a role across the entire B2B customer lifecycle from awareness to advocacy and with B2B marketing going decidedly digital during the pandemic and uncertainty of 2020, the importance of peer, expert and influencer recommendations through social and digital media are more important than ever.


How the Most Successful B2B Marketers Approach Influencer Marketing in 2021

How B2B Marketers Can Get Closer to Their Customers

Joshua Nite
Joshua Nite on Jan 7th, 2021
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Online Marketing

Professional with cellphone and laptops image.

Last year I finished up my fifth full year as a B2B marketer. A lot has changed in that half decade.

When I started, there was a growing movement: “B2B marketing doesn’t have to be boring.” 

Now we’ve finally moved on to, “B2B marketing can’t afford to be boring.” We’ve finally acknowledged that B2B buyers are people — they want useful information, they want to be entertained, and they’re just as bored by corporate-speak-laden white papers as everyone else.

To our credit, I think marketers already knew this. We just had to convince the rest of the organization. 

For the most part,  we marketers have more leeway to choose the best way to reach our audience. And, of course, with that freedom comes responsibility. 


How B2B Marketers Can Get Closer to Their Customers

5 More Handy Tools For 2021’s Busy B2B Marketers

Lane Ellis
Lane Ellis on Jan 6th, 2021
B2B Marketing

Happy businesswoman using multiple devices image.

Most B2B marketers in 2021 are busier than ever due to the pandemic, remote work challenges, and increased expectations to show results.

Thankfully, keeping pace with the swift changes marketers face today are a whole slew of tools tasked with streamlining busy marketing efforts.

We’ll take a look at some of these helpful tools for busy marketers, and several new social media platforms that are poised to rise during the year ahead, all to help refine and augment your B2B marketing strategy.

Sorting through lists of the seemingly endless number of available marketing tools and platforms can be frustrating as well as a hit and miss proposition, however we’ve put this collection together so that you can skip the search and get right into tools you can use today to help you create unforgettable B2B marketing stories.


5 More Handy Tools For 2021’s Busy B2B Marketers

45 B2B Influencer Marketing Statistics to Optimize Your 2021 Marketing

B2B influencer marketing statistics
We’ve finally turned the corner to 2021 and like many other marketers in the B2B world, I am ready to make this year better than ever. One source of inspiration I’ve found effective are the insights from industry research. That’s one of the main reasons we conducted the first research survey around B2B influencer marketing.

Having watched the growth of influence in marketing for B2B companies closely over the past 9 years, 2021 represents a significant opportunity for marketers to connect with the trusted voices in their industry to co-create content, inspire meaningful engagement and community, motivate authentic brand advocacy and boost influence of brand executives and subject matter experts as well as the brand itself.

The data for B2B influencer marketing are compelling:


45 B2B Influencer Marketing Statistics to Optimize Your 2021 Marketing

50 Influential Women in B2B Marketing Who Rocked in 2020

Lee Odden
Lee Odden on Dec 30th, 2020
B2B Marketing

2020 Influential Women in B2B Marketing

If there was a year in need of inspiration, 2020 was it. Luckily, we’re continuing our long tradition of highlighting inspirational marketers who are also influential.

Over the past 10 years we’ve honored hundreds of women in marketing doing great work, creating and sharing content, and making a difference in the industry including last year’s 50 Women CMOs Who Rock in Marketing.

In this, the 11th year of publishing the TopRank Blog List of Women Who Rock in Marketing, we’ve taking a more B2B approach. The vast majority of honorees in the 2020 edition of our list work for B2B brands or have a B2B marketing function within a B2C or B2B/B2C brand.


50 Influential Women in B2B Marketing Who Rocked in 2020

Inside Influence 13: Tim Williams from Onalytica on Optimizing B2B Influencer Experiences

Tim Williams Onalytica

In this final 13th episode of Inside Influence where I talk with B2B marketing insiders about what’s working and what’s not in the world of influencer marketing, our perspective has shifted from B2B brands to the influencers themselves.

At TopRank Marketing, we conducted the first in-depth research into B2B influencer marketing which inspired this series and Onalytica recently conducted the first research study of B2B influencers to better understand influencer marketing from their perspective.

Any B2B marketer that wants a complete picture for success with B2B influencer marketing going into 2021 and beyond will benefit greatly from both reports:


Inside Influence 13: Tim Williams from Onalytica on Optimizing B2B Influencer Experiences

Happy Holidays from the Team at TopRank Marketing

2020 has been a uniquely challenging year for marketers the world over, yet the difficulties have served to bring us together in new ways, and as we enter the holiday season all of us at TopRank Marketing bring you special wishes for health and happiness.

For all of us this has been one of the most challenging years in history, and as each of us works hard to meet the hurdles that 2020 has thrown in our path, we can take pride in what we’ve accomplished despite the difficulties that none of us could have envisioned a year ago.

The trust our new and long-time clients have continued to place in us has allowed us to reach record levels of client retention, and for this we are very thankful.


Happy Holidays from the Team at TopRank Marketing

Top B2B Marketers Share their Content Marketing Predictions for 2021

Nick Nelson
Nick Nelson on Dec 22nd, 2020
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

B2B Content Marketing Predictions 2021

Even in the steadiest of times, content marketing can be a difficult field to project forward. The craft is fluid and fast-changing by nature. When customer preferences and behaviors are evolving, which is always, so too must the ways we reach and engage them.

Needless to say, predicting what lies ahead for content marketing is especially tough right now, as we wrap up a chaotic year of 2020 and stare into the uncertainty of 2021.

That doesn’t mean we won’t try!

As organizations lay out plans and strategies for the coming year, it’s vital to get a bead on trends and threadlines that will shape the terrain. Where should content marketers and strategists be setting their sights? Which challenges and opportunities stand out? What will be the keys to success?


Top B2B Marketers Share their Content Marketing Predictions for 2021

Inside Influence 12: Paul Dobson from Citrix on The Secret Sauce of B2B Influence: Authenticity

Paul Dobson Citrix

As with most marketing, there is no silver bullet to B2B influencer marketing but there are some essential best practices and strategies that have been proven time and time again. To uncover that secret sauce of working with B2B influencers, Episode 12 of the Inside Influence Show features Paul Dobson, Senior Director, Social and Influencer Marketing at Citrix.

In addition to a few highlights from the 2020 State of B2B Influencer Marketing report, we discussed Paul’s experience working with influencers at Citrix as well as:

  • Where influencer marketing fits in the mix at Citrix
  • Tips on being great at influencer marketing for a B2B technology brand
  • Influencer Marketing vs. Influencer Relations
  • The impact of influencer marketing on customer experience

Inside Influence 12: Paul Dobson from Citrix on The Secret Sauce of B2B Influence: Authenticity

Best Of Social Media Marketing: Fuel Your 2021 With Our Top 10 SMM Posts

Lane Ellis
Lane Ellis on Dec 16th, 2020
B2B Marketing, Social Media

Business professionals around table from above image.

In 2020 B2B marketers continued to find new and creative uses of social media marketing during a pandemic year unlike any other, and we’ve been fortunate to feature many excellent articles on our blog over the year that explore how marketers are pushing social media marketing to fuel new levels of success.

We’re lucky to have a wealth of talented B2B marketing professionals contributing to the TopRank Marketing blog — which will celebrate its 18th year in 2021 — including our CEO Lee Odden, Joshua Nite, Elizabeth Williams, Anne Leuman, Nick Nelson, Debbie Friez, Birdie Zepeda, the author of this post, and Alexis Hall, among others.


Best Of Social Media Marketing: Fuel Your 2021 With Our Top 10 SMM Posts

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