Lee Odden

B2B Marketing Fitness: 16 B2B Experts Share Top Tips for Optimized Performance #mpb2b

Lee Odden on Oct 9th, 2019     B2B Marketing, MarketingProfs B2B Forum

B2B Marketing Fitness

In a world where shiny object marketing and weight loss fads equally distract from reaching our potential, there are many parallels between improving physical health and optimizing B2B marketing effectiveness.

Just like world class athletes, top B2B marketers focus on key areas for improvement starting with goals and including the right mix of data insights, tactical best practices and ongoing performance optimization.

To help B2B marketers achieve record breaking levels of marketing fitness, we’ve tapped some of the top B2B experts from brands like MarketingProfs, LinkedIn, Content Marketing Institute, SAP Ariba, Dell Technologies, Facebook, Skyword, Arm Treasure Data, & Engagio.

B2B Marketing Experts

We also collaborated with B2B marketing influencers like Ann Handley, Pam Didner, Michele Linn, Christopher Penn, Ashley Zeckman, Keith Reynold Jennings, and Kathleen Booth for their best advice to help marketers on their fitness journey.


B2B Marketing Fitness: 16 B2B Experts Share Top Tips for Optimized Performance #mpb2b
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Lane Ellis

17 Revealing B2B Marketing Insights From Poll Data

Lane Ellis on Oct 8th, 2019     B2B Marketing, Reader Polls

17 Poll Insights Purple Tech Background Image

The revelations people provide when they respond to online marketing polls include a wealth of industry information. Poll data shows what marketers are thinking about in a variety of important subjects, ranging from everyday tasks to far-reaching future trends.

Over the past four months, we’ve utilized our TopRank Marketing Twitter channel to publish a weekly poll, asking a range of questions to B2B marketers. Today, we share some of the data we’ve collected throughout this series of 17 polls.

Social Media Polls

Our first two polls asked B2B marketing about social media, and the responses can help us gauge the pulse of marketers on the social platform front.


17 Revealing B2B Marketing Insights From Poll Data
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Nick Nelson

Content Marketing Lessons from Music Icon Lizzo

Nick Nelson on Oct 7th, 2019     B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

Content Marketing Lessons from Lizzo

Here in Minnesota, home of TopRank Marketing and birthplace of yours truly, we tend to take great (excessive?) pride in famous figures who carry the “one of us” label. When you encounter a Minnesotan in the wild, you’re very likely to overhear some level of boasting about Prince, or Bob Dylan, or F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Why is this? Maybe it’s driven by an inferiority complex, stemming from our reputation as “flyover country.” Or maybe it’s just a natural extension of the “Minnesota nice” disposition. Whatever the case, we love to brag about our locally-sourced successes, and lately, that means showing lots of love for Lizzo.


Content Marketing Lessons from Music Icon Lizzo
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Lee Odden

B2B Marketing Spotlight: Neen James on How to Make Attention Pay #mpb2b

Lee Odden on Oct 3rd, 2019     B2B Marketing, Interviews, MarketingProfs B2B Forum

Neen James Interview

Neen James is the author of Folding Time™ and her most recent book, Attention Pays™. She is frequently named one of the top 30 Leadership Speakers by Global Guru because of her work with companies like Viacom, Comcast, Cisco, Virgin, Pfizer, BMW, and the FBI, among others.

Neen is a leadership expert who delivers high-energy keynotes that challenge audiences to leverage their focus and pay attention to what matters most at work and in life.

She’s also originally from Australia but now lives in Florida. Neen and I are both members of a secret or not so secret society of speakers and although we have never met until today, the energy she shares through her digital communications makes me feel like we’ve known each other for years.


B2B Marketing Spotlight: Neen James on How to Make Attention Pay #mpb2b
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Anne Leuman

Get Your Priorities Straight: How to Prioritize to Optimize Your Marketing Workflow

Anne Leuman on Oct 2nd, 2019     B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

How to Prioritize to Optimize Your Marketing Workflow

Here’s what marketers look like when everything is a priority:

via GIPHY

And here’s what marketers look like when everything gets prioritized:

via GIPHY

I think you can all guess which scenario is more efficient, effective, and less stressful. 

Throughout my marketing career, I’ve taken on roles that have challenged me to be a jack of all trades as well as a specialist—yet every role has required the ability to identify, assess, and tackle the tasks at hand in a way that makes sense for my clients, organization, team, and myself. Simply put, every marketing practitioner and leader needs to be able to prioritize and deprioritize work to be lean, mean marketing machine that drives results.


Get Your Priorities Straight: How to Prioritize to Optimize Your Marketing Workflow
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Nick Nelson

Return to Sender: Email Marketing Is NOT Dead, But It Needs Rejuvenation

Nick Nelson on Oct 1st, 2019     B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Email Marketing

Email Marketing Is Not Dead

Oh, look. Another death of email marketing headline. All too often, we see posts that lead with this provocative clickbait proclamation, while keeping the contradicting nuances under the surface.

Ironically, this kind of practice is exactly WHY email marketing has seen its reputation tarnished. The focus has shifted too far toward style at the expense of substance. Marketers became so singularly obsessed with compelling opens and clicks, through irresistible subject lines and poppy CTAs, that many of us lost touch with the core value of this digital channel: direct, one-on-one engagement.

I’m here to tell you that this value still exists, and might be more essential today than ever, in spite of (maybe even because of) the waters becoming so muddied. Recipients will welcome a little freshness and clarity in their inbox, from those brands and influencers that are willing to buck the trend.


Return to Sender: Email Marketing Is NOT Dead, But It Needs Rejuvenation
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Lane Ellis

Q3 Wrap-Up: What’s Changed For B2B Marketers & What’s Ahead in 2020?

Lane Ellis on Sep 30th, 2019     B2B Marketing, Digital Marketing

QQ Digital Marketing Recap Standing Businesspeople Image

We’ve now reached the end of the third quarter of 2019, one filled with many significant B2B marketing changes and several surprising twists and turns that will combine to affect how the industry moves forward as we enter Q4 and push forward to 2020.

Q3 saw numerous exciting shifts in new directions, and a few seemingly slight changes in course that are nonetheless poised to make big impacts in 2020.

We’re always working to bring you the most relevant B2B marketing news, including over 180 weekly industry news videos, hosted by Tiffani Allen, Joshua Nite and others here on our blog and on our TopRank Marketing YouTube channel.

Each quarter we reflect on what’s happened in digital marketing and look ahead with key trends. Let’s examine both the challenges and opportunities the quarter’s top B2B marketing news has brought our industry.


Q3 Wrap-Up: What’s Changed For B2B Marketers & What’s Ahead in 2020?
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Lee Odden

B2B Marketing Spotlight: Ty Heath on Optimizing ABM & Social Sales with LinkedIn #mpb2b

Lee Odden on Sep 26th, 2019     B2B Marketing, Interviews, MarketingProfs B2B Forum

Ty Heath Interview B2B Marketing

Ty Heath is one of those people whose reputation precedes them. I had heard of Ty as a marketing industry speaker and force for change working at LinkedIn before finally meeting her in person. The IRL Ty experience did not disappoint. Each time I meet with Ty, ideas pop like popcorn – who needs coffee with such inspiration around what’s possible?

Currently Ty is Global Lead of The B2B Institute at LinkedIn where she is responsible for scaling education on LinkedIn’s Marketing Solutions product globally. She has previously worked for major brands including IBM, Nestle and over 7 years at Google – plus she’s had her own consultancy.


B2B Marketing Spotlight: Ty Heath on Optimizing ABM & Social Sales with LinkedIn #mpb2b
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Lane Ellis

5 Top B2B Brands Delivering Exemplary Twitter Engagement

Lane Ellis on Sep 25th, 2019     B2B Marketing, Twitter

Four happy businesspeople jumping above cityscape.

With more than 139 million active daily users and available in over 40 languages, Twitter has increasingly grown as a platform for both B2B and direct-to-consumer brands looking to creatively and effectively showcase products and services.

Twitter has kept up a steady pace of new feature roll-outs over the past few years that have helped it make significant gains as a social media platform not just for consumers, but also for more professional business users than ever.

It’s also increasingly become a destination for all manner and size of brands, and the users who frequent Twitter expect an experience markedly different from that offered by LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. As the following chart from MarketingCharts shows, over the last year Twitter has seen increasing satisfaction among social media users.


5 Top B2B Brands Delivering Exemplary Twitter Engagement
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Joshua Nite

5 Unexpected Content Marketing Benefits of B2B Podcasting

Joshua Nite on Sep 24th, 2019     B2B Marketing

The Content Marketing Benefits of B2B Podcasting

We all know by now that podcasting is a fantastic content marketing tactic, right?  To review: 

  • Over 81 million people listen to podcasts (Edison Research)
  • 80% finish the majority of every episode on their favorite podcasts (Edison Research)
  • Most people who listen to one podcast are likely to pick up more (Edison Research)

In other words, there’s an enormous audience out there, ready to spend multiple hours with your quality content. And now they can get your episodes right on the Google results page.

So, since you’re ready to start your podcast anyway, how can you use it to elevate the rest of your content marketing efforts?


5 Unexpected Content Marketing Benefits of B2B Podcasting
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Nick Nelson

What’s Missing In Your B2B Marketing Strategy? 5 Key Elements You Don’t Want to Overlook

Nick Nelson on Sep 23rd, 2019     B2B Marketing

A car engine without a water pump. A baseball team without a shortstop. A guitar without a D string.

All it takes is one missing piece to prevent something from working as it should. Your B2B marketing strategy might excel in certain areas, but a single overlooked element can cause results to stall out. 

I’m not talking about tactics here, because those can vary on a case-by-case basis. But there are specific considerations and focal points that ought to exist in pretty much every marketing strategy, and if we fail to account for them we are doing ourselves a disservice.

This isn’t a matter of covering bases or checking boxes. This is about thinking through your marketing approach holistically to set it up for sustainable growth. If any of the following aspects are amiss for your team at a strategic level, I highly recommend addressing them.


What’s Missing In Your B2B Marketing Strategy? 5 Key Elements You Don’t Want to Overlook
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Lee Odden

B2B Marketing Spotlight: Jay Baer on Employee Generated Content #mpb2b

Lee Odden on Sep 19th, 2019     B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Interviews, MarketingProfs B2B Forum

Jay Baer Interview B2B Marketing

It was back in 2010 at SXSWi that I was in the blogger lounge networking with other social media savvy content creators and thought leaders like Brian Solis, Chris Heuer, Amber Naslund, Chris Brogan and Rohit Bhargava, when I met a fellow marketer who shared a metal bottle opener as his business card.

What a brilliant idea! Package your identity around something useful to trigger conversations.

Fast forward to 2019 and Jay Baer has continued to carry that message of utility, talk triggers and clever marketing savvy to his online media empire of Convince & Convert that includes an award winning blog, a network of podcasts, professional speaking, training and consulting.


B2B Marketing Spotlight: Jay Baer on Employee Generated Content #mpb2b
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