B2B Marketing Archives - Page 2 of 46 - Online Marketing Blog

5 Steps for a More Powerful B2B Content Marketing Strategy

Lee Odden on Aug 24th, 2020
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

Content Marketing continues to be a driving force behind meaningful B2B marketing that powers marketing and business growth. According to research by HubSpot, 70% of marketers actively investing in content marketing and there’s no sign of a slowdown, especially as SEMrush research has found, marketers are focused on using content to generate more quality leads (75%), attract more traffic to their website (71%), improve brand reputation (56%), and improve customer engagement and loyalty (45%).

The problem is, many of those marketers are not creating best answer content experiences. Creating useful content by itself is not an effective strategy in a world of brand distrust, content attention deficit and the distractions brought by a global pandemic. Being the best answer for your customers means being found and also delivering on expectations. Creating findable, credible content that is also useful and experiential is at the center of what being the best answer means for marketers.

5 Steps for a More Powerful B2B Content Marketing Strategy

7 B2B Content Marketing Tactics For Long Term Success

Anne Leuman on Aug 20th, 2020
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

I have an important question for you:

Athlete A runs a marathon in under 3 hours. Athlete B runs a 40-yard dash in under 5 seconds. Which athlete is more impressive to you?

Athlete A can run the distance, but Athlete B is explosive. ?

via GIPHY

If you’re anything like me, you answered that they’re both very impressive. And you’d be right. Having both endurance and power are extremely important. So, why am I asking this question on a blog all about marketing? Well, the most successful content marketing strategies have tactics that cover those two qualities: endurance and power. AKA long-term and short-term tactics.

7 B2B Content Marketing Tactics For Long Term Success

5 Tips For Finding Your Authentic Marketing Identity

Lane Ellis on Aug 19th, 2020
B2B Marketing

What do you think of when you see a person’s business title, and how do the role assumptions we all inevitably bring to the table affect our ability to market authentically?

Can we find our own more effective and authentic marketing identity and build greater business communication opportunities by ditching preconceived role beliefs?

Marketing has seen dwindling levels of trust in recent years, and as our CEO Lee Odden observed in his recent “In Search of Trust: How Authentic Content Drives Customer Experience,” building great customer experiences is an uphill battle if customers don’t trust brand communications.

86 percent of customers have said that authenticity is important when deciding what brands they like and support, which ought to make marketing that resonates with truth a key goal among forward-thinking B2B marketers.

5 Tips For Finding Your Authentic Marketing Identity

Planning for Change: How to Set Your 2021 Marketing Budget

Alexis Hall on Aug 18th, 2020
B2B Marketing

If you would have told me in March that I would be sitting at my kitchen table writing a blog post about 2021 marketing budgets in August, I might have invested in a comfier office chair sooner. Many of the decisions we made personally and as marketers in the days and weeks following the declaration of a pandemic were made with limited information.

As an agency, we focused on how to adapt our own day-to-day operations and plans, while helping our clients shift theirs. As time has gone by, and we start to understand more the potential long-term impacts this crisis could have, we are still adapting. However, now is the opportunity — not to be reactive — but to continue to invest in the future.

Planning for Change: How to Set Your 2021 Marketing Budget

How to Nurture B2B Influencer Relationships During the Pandemic

Joshua Nite on Aug 11th, 2020
B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing

I’m so glad that I went to B2BMX this past February.

For one thing, we did some amazing interviews with some very smart marketers. The very idea of these interviews seems weird now — we were just sitting! Three feet apart! With no masks! At a giant marketing conference at a hotel!

The cancellation of in-person events means I’ll miss one or two conferences this year. But for folks who make a living as keynote speakers and thought leaders, it’s a massive adjustment. And that includes a sizable subset of B2B influencers — those who are primarily keynote speakers and in-person consultants.

As an agency, we’re true believers in B2B influencer marketing (see our latest report to learn why). But we have had to adjust our strategy as influencers’ needs change. Like everything else in 2020, influencer relationship-building takes a different approach than you might be used to.

How to Nurture B2B Influencer Relationships During the Pandemic

For Successful B2B Marketers The Engine of Influence is Always On #B2BIMReport

Lee Odden on Aug 5th, 2020
B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing

As the need for B2B brands to reach and connect authentically with customers rises, B2B influencer marketers are evolving from transactional and intermittent campaigns to more relationship driven, Always-On Influencer engagement programs as our research from the 2020 State of B2B Influencer Marketing report found:

19% are piloting
25% run periodic campaigns
34% use an Always-On approach

Transactional campaign approaches are hard pressed to develop brand loyalty and advocacy. That’s why, with 84% of B2B marketers focused on building brand awareness with their influencer marketing efforts, that ongoing influencer engagement has become essential for creating vested relationships that inspire more qualitative activations and brand advocacy.

For Successful B2B Marketers The Engine of Influence is Always On #B2BIMReport

6 New Rules for B2B Marketing in the COVID-19 Era

Joshua Nite on Aug 4th, 2020
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Influencer Marketing

I was supposed to go to an Alanis Morissette concert this July. When the pandemic hit hard in March, I wasn’t ready to cancel my ticket yet. Surely, surely we would have it sorted in time for an outdoor concert four months from now. I held out hope. Then, in June, she rescheduled for July, 2021. And now I’m wondering if that will be enough time.

Isn’t it ironic?

Don’t you think?

All of which to say: This pandemic has been around for longer than we thought it would, and is looking to linger far longer than we would like. What seemed like a brief, surreal interlude to be gotten through has now become a reality to live with, at least for the time being.

6 New Rules for B2B Marketing in the COVID-19 Era

20 B2B Influencer Marketing Pros to Follow from Top Brands

Lee Odden on Aug 3rd, 2020
B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing

Recently we published the 2020 State of B2B Influencer Marketing report after surveying hundreds of B2B marketers about their experiences, best practices, tools, budgets and plans for the future.

In an environment where B2B marketing is decidedly digital and marketers are hard pressed to squeeze more productivity out of fewer resources, credible information about marketing best practices, operations and trends for the future are in high demand. Judging by the response we’ve had to The State of B2B Influencer Marketing Report so far, we’re definitely meeting a need.

There is both optimism and an unrealized opportunity with influencer marketing for B2B companies. For evidence, check out these stats from the report:

78% of B2B marketers believe prospects rely on advice from influencers

20 B2B Influencer Marketing Pros to Follow from Top Brands

Boosting and Deepening Engagement through Empathy in B2B Marketing

Nick Nelson on Jul 30th, 2020
B2B Marketing

Empathy is more than a buzzword. It’s not a box to be checked, or an added finishing touch for content. If B2B marketers want to successfully engage human audiences and break free from the deluge of irrelevant messages swirling around today’s customers, empathy needs to be at the center of all strategic initiatives from start to finish.

What Does Empathy Mean in B2B Marketing?

Empathy is defined simply as the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. But I’m not sure that characterization fully does it justice in the context of modern marketing.

I rather like the way Zen Media CEO Shama Hyder described empathy in the better creative teamwork guide we helped our clients at monday.com put together:

Boosting and Deepening Engagement through Empathy in B2B Marketing

5 Unheralded SEO Tools for Content Marketers

Lane Ellis on Jul 29th, 2020
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, SEO

Are you using the latest search engine optimization (SEO) tools to help with your content marketing efforts?

Don’t worry, as we’ve got you covered with a look at some of the most helpful SEO tools to help you refine and augment your content marketing plans.

Sorting through lists of the seemingly endless number of available SEO tools 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 SEO tools you can use today to help you create amazing content marketing stories.

Let’s jump in with our collection of fresh SEO tools to boost your content marketing experiences.

1 — Google Lighthouse

5 Unheralded SEO Tools for Content Marketers