B2B Marketing Archives - Page 49 of 66 - B2B Marketing Blog

4 Tips for an Out-Of-This-World B2B Marketing Agency Partnership

Elizabeth Williams
B2B Marketing, Integrated Marketing

Who was the first person to set foot on the moon? Of course the answer is Neil Armstrong — who else?

But, actually, the question really is “who else?” In order for Armstrong to walk the moon, there were innumerable individuals who contributed something large or small to get him there. His mom and dad, Mission Control, fellow astronaut and crew member Buzz Aldrin, a nation of taxpayers — and the list goes on.

What’s the point? Simply put, there’s no doubt that Armstrong was an amazing pioneer, but he didn’t get to the moon — or back home — alone. It took a team.

Being a marketing pioneer in the B2B technology space is no different. You need to have skills and ambition of your own, but you also need an amazing team by your side.

4 Tips for an Out-Of-This-World B2B Marketing Agency Partnership

4 Spooky Marketing Lessons from Classic Halloween Monsters

Joshua Nite
B2B Marketing, B2C Marketing

Halloween is objectively the best holiday of the fall-winter season. You don’t have to go broke buying people gifts. You don’t have to cook an enormous meal (then pass out after gorging on turkey). The only obligations for Halloween are to play dress up and eat candy!

Not to mention I’m somewhat partial to the holiday’s aesthetic. Give me skulls and bats over tinsel and garland any day of the week, and twice on Friday the 13^th.

Sure, there’s a horror/scary element to Halloween. But it’s a fun, safe kind of scary. If you’ve spent an hour on social media recently, you know there are scarier things than ghoulies and ghosties.

But Halloween isn’t just fun. It’s educational, too! I realized this year that some of my favorite Halloween monsters are hiding valuable lessons for marketers. For example…

4 Spooky Marketing Lessons from Classic Halloween Monsters

B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks: How We All Can Do Better

Joshua Nite
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

B2B content marketing is having a moment—a moment that’s rapidly becoming a movement. We’re finally breaking free of the idea that “professional” means “boring.” Transparency and authenticity are becoming more than just buzzwords. Unique, emotionally compelling content used to be the outlier; soon it will be the norm.

It’s thrilling to see B2B content marketers find a new groove. As a creative, comedic weirdo myself, it’s a great time to be in the business. However, these industry-wide changes do come with significant challenges. As B2B marketing evolves, we need to continually adapt our procedures, KPIs, even our philosophy of marketing.

The whip-smart marketers at Kapost just published their 2017 B2B Content Strategy & Operations Benchmark. They surveyed hundreds of B2B marketers in diverse industries, from small businesses to enterprise organizations. Here are the challenges their research identified, and how B2B marketers can adapt to thrive.

B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks: How We All Can Do Better

Why to ROI: Proving the Value of B2B Influencer Marketing with Lee Odden

Alexis Hall
B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing, MarketingProfs B2B Forum

Last week at Marketing Profs B2B Forum it was pretty clear B2B marketers are more interested in influencer marketing than ever before.

Lee Odden’s session – Why to ROI: B2B Marketing Case Studies for Success– promises to deliver not only why influencer marketing is something we should all be talking about, but also how to use ongoing influencer marketing to deliver ROI to your business.

Some of us may still be thinking about influencer marketing as a B2C tactic. A Kardashian on Instagram touting the newest vitamin.

This isn’t exactly relevant to those of us in the B2B space.

Why to ROI: Proving the Value of B2B Influencer Marketing with Lee Odden

Must-See Sessions & Top Tips for Finding Your Squad at #MPB2B

Ashley Zeckman
B2B Marketing, MarketingProfs B2B Forum

For some people the happiest place on earth is Disneyland, for me, it’s the annual MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum in Boston.

Last week, I ran a poll on Twitter to see what people were looking forward to most at the B2B Marketing Forum, and while many are interested in learning new B2B tactics and meeting other smart marketers (smarketers?), the vast majority are excited to see what Ann Handley has in store for this year’s conference.

There are two things that make this conference one of my favorites:

The content is amazing.
The people are amazing.

Must-See Sessions & Top Tips for Finding Your Squad at #MPB2B

50 Top B2B Marketing Influencers 2017

Lee Odden
B2B Marketing

B2B Marketing Influencers

It’s October and you know what that means? Its B2B Marketing influencer speaker list time again.

One of my all-time favorite conferences is MarketingProfs B2B Forum in Boston and for the past few years I’ve had some fun listing out a top list of speakers ranked by influence around the topic of “B2B marketing”.

As usual, I used the influencer marketing platform Traackr to import the list of speakers from #mpb2b 2017 and rank them according to a combination of topical resonance and relevance as well as network reach related to “b2b marketing”. Of course, use of their platform in this way is like 1% of what Traackr can do. I imagine they cringe every time I use their robust tool for such a simple list – but hey, they provide me with access and I use the tool as I see fit.

50 Top B2B Marketing Influencers 2017

Funny Content, Serious Business: How to Use Humor in Content Marketing

Joshua Nite
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

Everyone likes a good joke. Everyone wants to be entertained. But when it comes to using humor in content marketing, people still hesitate. We are, after all, not here purely to entertain. Our content needs to serve a business purpose, inspire action, and rack up the sweet, sweet conversions.

Can potential buyers really take your brand seriously if you make them laugh?

I call this the Roger Rabbit/Goodfellas conundrum, best expressed by these two quotes:

How do you get the Roger Rabbit benefits of making people laugh, without becoming a Joe Pesci-esque laughingstock?

It can be done. You can still be funny and do serious business. The question is not whether to use humor in your content, but how you use it.

Funny Content, Serious Business: How to Use Humor in Content Marketing

LinkedIn Native Video: What Works, What Doesn’t, What Marketers Need to Know

Joshua Nite
B2B Marketing, Video

Video content is eating the internet. It started with video-specific platforms like YouTube and Vimeo. Then Twitter and Facebook added support for live and pre-recorded video. Now these insatiable moving pictures are becoming serious business: LinkedIn now supports native video.

What would compel a buttoned-down, professional networking site like LinkedIn to embrace video? Simply put, people—even businesspeople—want to watch. Fifty-nine percent of executives say that if text and video are available on the same topic, they’re more likely to choose video.

There’s no denying that marketers should embrace video content as a general rule. If your audience wants video, it’s wise for your brand to be the one supplying it. But why publish natively on LinkedIn?

Here are the upsides, downsides, and what-you-need-to-know-sides.

LinkedIn Native Video: What Works, What Doesn’t, What Marketers Need to Know

6 Quick & Dirty SEO Research Tips for B2B Content Planning

Caitlin Burgess
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, SEO

When it comes to crafting compelling content that informs, engages and inspires action, seasoned B2B digital and content marketers know our content needs to captivate both humans and search engines to be effective. After all, 81% of B2B decision makers conduct research before reaching out to a vendor, so we know our content needs to meet them whenever and wherever they’re searching.

As a result, striking that “perfect balance” between SEO and user experience is a must—and that perfect balance is rooted in the content planning stage.

“SEO needs to be baked into the process early so that the optimization is as natural as possible,” Kevin Cotch, TopRank Marketing SEO analyst, says. “It can’t be treated as an afterthought. It’s not only more efficient to do your research up front, but it also enhances the content by helping you touch on the specific phrases your audience is using to search to solve their pain points or answer their questions.”

6 Quick & Dirty SEO Research Tips for B2B Content Planning

How 6 B2B Brands Climbed to New Heights with Content Marketing

Anne Leuman
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

Eighty percent of the fastest growing B2B companies employ content marketing, according to data from Mattermark and Drift.com. But not all B2B marketers are seeing fast results.

In fact, the Content Marketing Institute surveyed B2B marketers and found that only 34% of them believe their content marketing strategies were effective or extremely effective. The remaining 66% of B2B marketers feel their content marketing efforts are unsuccessful.

If you’re among those 66 percent-ers, it’s okay. After all, failure is just a stepping stone on the path to success. To help you recalibrate your content strategy for high-flying results, we’ve highlighted how six B2B brands use content marketing to fuel their business and what you can learn from each one.

#1 – Cisco

How 6 B2B Brands Climbed to New Heights with Content Marketing

New Report: 5 Statistics You Need to Know on How Content Influences Purchases

Caitlin Burgess
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

These days there’s no question that great content is a foundational element of any marketing strategy—especially in B2B. In fact, according to Content Marketing Institute’s (CMI) 2017 benchmarking report, 89% of B2B marketers use content marketing to “attract and retain a clearly defined audience—and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”

And thanks to yet another insightful report from CMI—the latter objective is our focus today.

Last week, CMI and SmartBrief released their How Content Influences the Purchasing Process report, featuring data and insights collected from 1,200 SmartBrief subscribers. The aim of the report was to dig into the minds of those who are actually consuming content, and uncover what types of content are most influential, how decision-makers perceive vendor content, and more.

New Report: 5 Statistics You Need to Know on How Content Influences Purchases