B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®

B2B Marketing views, news and interviews.

Optimize for B2B Marketing Success with an Influencer Marketing Strategy Checklist

B2B Influencer Marketing Strategy Checklist

Did you know? 48% of B2B marketers say their top challenge with influencer marketing is a lack of a documented strategy. And no wonder: 53% of B2B marketers either do not have an influencer marketing strategy or it’s not documented. (2022 State of B2B Influencer Marketing Report)

While influencer marketing for B2B brands has gained momentum and popularity, a lack of strategy is recipe for disaster. Of course no company can have all the answers right away, but working with influencers in a way that creates a positive impact on the business requires a unique approach.

If there is an expectation that partnering with influencers will advance marketing and business goals, key questions need to be answered.

  • Who are the right influencers?

Optimize for B2B Marketing Success with an Influencer Marketing Strategy Checklist

Survey Says: 2022 B2B Marketing Insight From Social Media Polls

Lane Ellis
Lane Ellis on Apr 6th, 2022
B2B Marketing

B2B marketing insight from social media polls image

What are the key areas in the B2B marketing industry where professionals see a need to adapt to meet new challenges?

One straightforward way to gauge the pulse of the industry is by asking, and social media polls can offer a uniquely helpful look into the concerns of B2B marketers.

We’ve tapped into our own social media audience poll data to see the outlook B2B marketing professionals have when it comes to important marketing issues including tactics, platforms, events, and more.

For nearly three years we’ve run regular social media polls on our Twitter and LinkedIn* pages, and the insight shared with us has offered insight into what’s new, what’s ahead, what’s changed, and what’s gone for good in B2B marketing. While the sample size may sometimes be small, the outlook provided by the B2B marketing professionals taking our polls can be invaluable.


Survey Says: 2022 B2B Marketing Insight From Social Media Polls

Does B2B Influencer Marketing REALLY Work?

Joshua Nite
Joshua Nite on Apr 4th, 2022
B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing, Online Marketing

Does B2B influencer marketing really work image

B2B marketers are always being told to borrow tactics from B2C. But imagine if B2B companies practiced influencer marketing the way B2C brands do. You pick a star with a huge following on social media, pay them to promote your product, and get a ton of reach…

Spoof ad with Taylor Swift promoting cloud storage solutions

…and I’ll write your name.

It’s easy to see why this tactic wouldn’t work. No offense to Ms. Swift, but only a sliver of her followers are likely to be in the market for a new SaaS solution. More to the point, Taylor’s audience doesn’t come to her for business suggestions. She has the reach, but not the relevance.

So, can influencer marketing work for B2B? 


Does B2B Influencer Marketing REALLY Work?

Virtual Vision: 5 New LinkedIn Features & How B2B Marketers Can Use Them To Succeed

Lane Ellis
Lane Ellis on Mar 30th, 2022
B2B Marketing, LinkedIn

5 new LinkedIn features for B2B marketers closeup image of eyes.

What are the newest features on LinkedIn*, and how can B2B marketers best use them to attract, engage, and convert business professionals?

As the world’s leading business social platform, Microsoft’s LinkedIn has released a surprising array of innovative new ways for B2B marketers and brands to build new connections and forge even stronger existing relationships.

LinkedIn has undoubtedly witnessed numerous social platforms adding elements to attract B2B marketers, yet it remains the dominant player in the massive business sector. An important factor in LinkedIn’s continuing dominance and growth has been its steadfast determination to innovate with an abundance of new features.

75 percent of enterprise content marketers have said that LinkedIn produced the best results among social media platforms over the past year, followed by Facebook with 42 percent and Instagram with 32 percent.


Virtual Vision: 5 New LinkedIn Features & How B2B Marketers Can Use Them To Succeed

Fast-Forward: 4 Business Problems Solved by B2B Content Marketing

Joshua Nite
Joshua Nite on Mar 28th, 2022
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

B2B marketer putting together pieces of the content marketing puzzle image.

For B2B business, the pandemic was a magnifying glass pointing out the cracks in systems. We discovered just how fast digital transformation can be when our livelihoods are on the line. We found that global supply chains aren’t as resilient as we thought. We found that remote work is far more viable an option than we’d been led to believe.

None of these realizations were brand new — we were just able to see them clearly for the first time. 

The same is true of B2B buyer behavior. When we talk about how the pandemic changed B2B sales and marketing, what we mean is that we can finally see what we have missed before.


Fast-Forward: 4 Business Problems Solved by B2B Content Marketing

B2B Marketers on the Move: Springing Forward With Fresh Leadership Opportunities

Lane Ellis
Lane Ellis on Mar 23rd, 2022
B2B Marketing

Celebrating B2B marketers on the move in new leadership roles in 2022

The B2B marketing landscape consists of rapid-fire changes, accompanies by growth that often happens so fast that it can sometimes be difficult to fully appreciate.

For more than 20 years TopRank Marketing has been honored to help a wide array of the world’s top B2B marketers and brands elevate and go beyond merely being competitive, to standing out from the crowd with a variety of creative, award-winning successes. In this spirit, we regularly take the time to congratulate and honor business marketers, thought leaders, industry influencers as well as our own talented team members who have recently advanced in their careers.


B2B Marketers on the Move: Springing Forward With Fresh Leadership Opportunities

5 Ways to Build B2B Content That Resonates With Your Audience, and Why They Work

Harry Mackin
Harry Mackin on Mar 18th, 2022
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

Building B2B content that resonates woman with violin image.

B2B marketing has a content problem: there’s more of it all the time… and the people we actually want reading it have started tuning it all out. We can’t exactly stop the content deluge (look, we’re even contributing to it right now!), so instead we’ve got to figure out:

  1. Why are decision makers tuning out content?
  2. How can we keep them from tuning out ours?

Why isn’t B2B content resonating?

LinkedIn-Edelman helped answer this first question in their 2021 B2B Thought Leadership Impact Study. Their conclusions aren’t really all that surprising.

Decision makers can really appreciate good thought leadership content (64% said it was a better basis for assessing a potential vendor than marketing materials or product sheets), but…. only if it isn’t boring.


5 Ways to Build B2B Content That Resonates With Your Audience, and Why They Work

Ongoing Optimization: Strategic SEO Tips For B2B Marketers In 2022

Lane Ellis
Lane Ellis on Mar 16th, 2022
B2B Marketing, SEO Tips

Strategic SEO tips for B2B marketers in 2022 image

How can B2B marketers improve their search engine optimization (SEO) strategies and focus in the fast and furious digital landscape of 2022?

The search marketing arena has always been one of swift changes, and keeping up-to-date with ever-shifting SEO machinations and technical search intricacies can be more than a handful even for top B2B optimization professionals.

Don’t let the complexities that SEO efforts sometimes entail deter you, however, as there are still bountiful and easy-to-achieve benefits for the B2B marketer in many aspects of optimization.

Let’s jump right in and take a look at some of the SEO tactics B2B marketers can apply and benefit from today.


Ongoing Optimization: Strategic SEO Tips For B2B Marketers In 2022

Winning B2B Calls to Action That Get Responses & Convert Browsers into Buyers

Nick Nelson
Nick Nelson on Mar 11th, 2022
B2B Marketing

Male Marketer in Suit Shouting at Camera to as Call to Action

Calls to action (CTAs) are often treated as an afterthought in content creation, which is odd since they are arguably the most consequential element.

Digital marketers and their campaigns are evaluated through a great many factors, which are growing more deep and nuanced as analytics evolve, but conversions are still the name of the game. It’s the easiest thing to measure and the surest sign that your content made an impact.

With this in mind, it’s probably worth taking a step back and rethinking your CTA strategy. If you’re cruising on autopilot and running a generic “Download guide” or “Request demo” at the end of every content piece, you are probably leaving opportunities on the table to better engage (and convert!) your audience.


Winning B2B Calls to Action That Get Responses & Convert Browsers into Buyers

The Gated Content Dilemma in B2B Marketing: Here Are the Best Practices

Joshua Nite
Joshua Nite on Mar 9th, 2022
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

Gated Content Best Practices

Q: How many lead gen marketers does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: Please fill out the form below and we will email you the punchline.

The great gate debate continues to rage throughout the B2B marketing world. What once was a landscape full of sparse landing pages with lead gen forms has become an ocean of content. But still, there’s little consensus about how to get the most value out of what we marketers create.

Does ungating content devalue it? Does gating content make it inaccessible to the audience you’re most trying to reach? We all agree that getting people’s contact information is a value exchange. The debate is whether we offer the value first, or we demand that the reader do so.


The Gated Content Dilemma in B2B Marketing: Here Are the Best Practices

Free The Story: How B2B Marketers Can Use Digital Storytelling To Bring Content Alive In New Ways

Lane Ellis
Lane Ellis on Mar 7th, 2022
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

Horizontal futuristic digital woman B2B marketer image

How does digital storytelling help B2B marketers bring content to life in powerful new ways?

With more B2B buying research and ongoing customer engagement than ever taking place online over the past two years, there have never been as many opportunities to benefit from digital storytelling, yet greater competition has made it vital to create content that truly stands out and engages.

Let’s take a look at how well-crafted digital storytelling can propel B2B content to new successes, and how B2B marketers can breathe new life into content in a variety of digital formats.


Free The Story: How B2B Marketers Can Use Digital Storytelling To Bring Content Alive In New Ways

B2B Marketing News: Marketers Prevent World War III, Podcasts Are Booming, The State of Influencer Marketing

B2B Content Types Bar Graph

What types of content would B2B marketers create with more resources? Research from Parse.ly reports that two-thirds of the marketers surveyed say they have created more content over the past year and 48% of respondents say they would like to produce a little more content than they currently create. Top formats include videos, infographics, ebooks, reports, white papers, events/webinars, case studies, email newsletters, social media posts and blog posts. . MarketingCharts

The Client: Ukraine. The Brief: Prevent World War III. A group of agency professionals and freelancers from Ukraine’s creative industry has issued a weighty brief to the global creative community: help prevent a third world war. AdWeek


B2B Marketing News: Marketers Prevent World War III, Podcasts Are Booming, The State of Influencer Marketing