B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®

B2B Marketing views, news and interviews.

Is Your Content Marketing Designed for the New Customer Journey?

Thanks to the rise of the internet, the explosion of social media and the development of mobile technologies to feed these two innovations, the customer buying journey has become much more self-directed. According to a Forrester, 74% of business buyers say they conduct more than half of their research online before making an offline purchase.

As a result, content marketing has emerged as an incredibly effective way to arm consumers with the information they seek and need, increase brand awareness, enhance engagement, and ultimately inspire action and conversions.

But content marketing isn’t about creating and sharing as much content as possible. It’s about creating quality content that allows you to be the best answer, whenever and wherever your audience is searching. And understanding today’s customer journey will be paramount to your content marketing success. Below is a great illustration from Forrester on the many intricacies that journey can entail. As you can see, it’s not an easy, neat sales funnel these days.


Is Your Content Marketing Designed for the New Customer Journey?

20 Talented Brand Marketers to Follow on LinkedIn

Marketers are always looking for new ways to inform, engage and inspire action from our target audiences, often looking to both established and well-known brands for motivation and creativity.

Thankfully, behind many of our favorite brands there are bright and talented marketing experts whom we can learn from and be inspired by.

With that said, below are some gifted brand marketers you should be checking out, connecting with or following on LinkedIn.

1. Jason Miller

Group Manager of Global Content and Social Media Marketing, LinkedIn

As the leader of global content and social media marketing for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, Jason Miller is dedicated to helping marketers understand how to take advantage of digital advertising and content marketing opportunities on the professional social network.


20 Talented Brand Marketers to Follow on LinkedIn

6 Ways to Celebrate the Holiday Season in Your Social Media Marketing

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“On every world, wherever people are, in the deepest part of the winter, at the exact midpoint, everybody stops, and turns, and hugs, as if to say ’Well done. Well done, everyone! We’re halfway out of the dark.’” -Doctor Who

Last night, I drove home from work in the dark. I hadn’t stayed late putting the finishing touches on another devastatingly brilliant blog post. It was just that, after the long Thanksgiving weekend, the darkness has finally caught up with the end of the work day. And there’s plenty more dark to go before the days get longer.

On the bright side, that means the holiday season is here. There are at least four major holidays and plenty of minor ones to go around.


6 Ways to Celebrate the Holiday Season in Your Social Media Marketing

10 Kick-Ass Cyber Monday & Holiday Deals for Digital Marketers

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Digital marketers everywhere—especially our friends in the B2C marketing world—have spent the last weeks and months perfecting their marketing strategies for the holiday season. Now that the most wonderful time of the year is officially here, we want to make sure our fellow marketers don’t miss out on deals that can help them perfect their craft.

So, in the spirit of the holiday season, we’ve put together this handy list of Cyber Monday and holiday deals that any marketer would absolutely love to scoop up. From books and conference tickets to free tool trials, you’ll find a variety of great deals.

Digital Advertising

#1- $100 Bing Advertising Credit

Bing Ads Cyber Monday Deal


10 Kick-Ass Cyber Monday & Holiday Deals for Digital Marketers

Get the Marketing Budget You Need in 2 Steps

Leila De La Fuente
Leila De La Fuente
B2B Marketing, B2C Marketing

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It’s November 10th and my Christmas lights are up. To be honest, I hung them November 1st, but don’t tell anyone.

The end of the fiscal year is fast approaching, and for us marketers, it’s more than holiday parties and eggnog; that means it’s time to stake our claim of 2017 budgets.

In the review of any digital marketing budget proposal, executives are going to look for the answer to these two questions:

  1. What did you do drive business this year?
  2. How do you plan to drive business next year?

Your budget proposal presentation should hand these answers on a shiny silver platter to those responsible for approval. I have had the opportunity to work with hundreds of marketing professionals as they prepare for this big moment, and there are two important elements that prove to be most effective at earning budgets year after year: proving your ROI, and mapping potential to dollars.


Get the Marketing Budget You Need in 2 Steps

The One Thing You Must Have for B2B Marketing Success: Be the Best Answer

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While B2B companies are investing in content for marketing, making more content is not creating the windfall of leads that many senior business marketing executives had hoped for. The problem? A lack of insight about what makes better content.

I believe that finding a solution to the “more” vs. “better” challenge starts with customer empathy.

Steve RaysonAs an example, Steve Rayson, director at BuzzSumo and Anders Pink, explained: “The primary motivation of B2B customers is to do their jobs better. Thus, at BuzzSumo we spend a lot of time trying to understand the questions our customers are asking and the issues they are struggling with. We then try to produce helpful content which addresses these concerns.”


The One Thing You Must Have for B2B Marketing Success: Be the Best Answer

“Make Good Choices!” And Other Reasons Why We Celebrate Ann Handley

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Ever so often, you come across someone that inspires and motivates you to be better, to reach for more. Sometimes this will be someone that you know, but often, it’s someone that you admire from afar. For me (and many other marketers), that person is MarketingProfs’ Chief Content Officer, Ann Handley.

In addition to being an incredibly talented and brilliant B2B marketer, Ann is a wonderful person. Her wit, charm and friendly demeanor will wrap you up in a ball of marketing love and make you feel like you’ve known her your whole life.

Our team has had the distinct pleasure of partnering with with Ann on several projects. As busy as Ann is making B2B marketing magic, she is a fantastic collaborator and co-creator. I have been given the opportunity to work with her on several ocassions and have reveled in every minute of it.


“Make Good Choices!” And Other Reasons Why We Celebrate Ann Handley

Content Marketing: 10 Daily Habits to Create More Powerful Content

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Marketing is a game of inches. We tweak a headline to get fifty more clicks. Add visual interest for ten more subscriptions. Change the button on the landing page to get five more conversions. All the little gains add up over time to generate real results.

Writing more effective copy is a game of inches, too. You don’t write Twilight one week and Moby Dick the next. Instead, every day you can work to be a little bit better than the day before.

The tricky part is if you’re not steadily improving your writing, you’re actively moving backward. There’s no such thing as maintaining the status quo—it’s self-improvement or bust.

The following ten daily habits can help you make steady incremental improvement. Try as many as you can for 28 days, and be amazed at how those daily inches add up.


Content Marketing: 10 Daily Habits to Create More Powerful Content

7 Spookily Successful Digital Marketing Campaigns for Halloween

Ashley Zeckman
Ashley Zeckman
B2B Marketing, B2C Marketing

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Q: What’s the ratio of a pumpkin’s circumference to its diameter?
A: Pumpkin Pi

All jokes aside, Halloween presents a huge sales opportunity for B2C (and even some B2B) brands. In fact, Halloween is only second to Christmas as the most commercially successful holiday. And a recent survey found that Halloween spending is estimated to reach $8.4 billion dollars this year, the highest in survey history.

Depending on your line of business, this presents an enormous opportunity for marketing departments to help generate a ton of cash over a short amount of time. However, the bar is incredibly high and competition is stiff, which means that consumers are looking for clever, creative and memorable marketing campaigns. The seven spooktacular campaigns below made their mark this year.   


7 Spookily Successful Digital Marketing Campaigns for Halloween

20 Jokes Only a Marketer Could Love

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It’s well past time for marketers to get serious about comedy. The best way to connect with an audience is by authentically appealing to them on a human level. Adding humor to marketing is one of the most powerful ways to make that appeal.

Telling a joke does more than provide a moment’s diversion. When people share in a joke, it creates a sense of belonging. If you’ve ever sat around trading in-jokes with your friends, you know what I mean.

Humor can be a way to draw a circle around a group and pull them in—to say, “If you understand this joke, we’re in the same tribe. You get me and I get you.” That’s a powerful message to send to your potential customers. And it’s a good way to get the less relevant folks to opt out, too.


20 Jokes Only a Marketer Could Love