B2B Marketing Blog

How Influencers & Best Answer Content Help B2B Marketers Dominate in Search #CMWorld

Lee Odden on Sep 27th, 2021
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing World, SEO

Great content isn’t so great if it’s not easy to find. And findable content isn’t so effective if it’s not trusted.

Content is the reason search engines began and yet many B2B content marketers are not taking full advantage of opportunities to attract customers that are actively looking. Instead, the content marketing function at many B2B companies is more about creating content and not so much about promoting it.

Where Has the Marketing in Content Marketing Gone?

The problem with content marketing that focuses mostly on content creation is that the marketing is missing. Sure, B2B brands can throw advertising at their new content to attract visitors – but do B2B buyers love clicking on ads?

How Influencers & Best Answer Content Help B2B Marketers Dominate in Search #CMWorld

B2B Marketing News: Marketer Optimism Soars, LinkedIn’s Thought Leadership Impact Report, Google’s Newsletter Project, & Media Budget Trends

Lane Ellis on Sep 24th, 2021
Online Marketing News

What New Approaches Are B2B Execs Taking with Their Nurture Programs?
49 percent of B2B marketing sales and technology executives say they’ve started using content engagement data, with 44 percent having begun using account-based nurturing, while some 37 percent say that they’ve started using intent data, according to recently-released survey data exploring new approaches to B2B lead nurturing. MarketingCharts

Intuit confirms $12B deal to buy Mailchimp
Financial software firm Intuit will acquire marketing automation platform and email marketing service Mailchimp for some $12 billion, making Mailchimp a brand within Intuit’s portfolio and expanding its small business focus, Intuit recently announced. TechCrunch

B2B Marketing News: Marketer Optimism Soars, LinkedIn’s Thought Leadership Impact Report, Google’s Newsletter Project, & Media Budget Trends

Equilibrium: 10 Tips to Balance Creativity and Process in B2B Content Marketing

Joshua Nite on Sep 21st, 2021
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

Marketers have to continually earn and reward people’s attention. If we fail at that task, there are plenty of other content options out there. People — yes, even B2B buyers — want engaging, entertaining and valuable content.

That’s great news for those of us on the content side! It means we should be regularly exercising our creative muscles, breaking free of boring B2B, and coming up with new ways to delight our readers. How cool is it, for example, to make Ghostbusters references… for your job?

But as fun and creative as the work can be, there’s a cerebral and analytical side to marketing that we can’t neglect. If you came into marketing through creative writing, not the other way around, you may need to develop the left-brain part of the job:

Equilibrium: 10 Tips to Balance Creativity and Process in B2B Content Marketing

Inside B2B Influence: Brian Solis of Salesforce on the Future of Influence in B2B Marketing

Lee Odden on Sep 19th, 2021
B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing

If this is your first time, Inside B2B Influence is a podcast series that goes behind the scenes of B2B marketing and highlights insights with top business executives on influencer marketing for B2B companies. At TopRank Marketing we’re doing our best to connect readers and listeners with B2B marketing insiders on strategies, trends, tactics and the future to elevate the practice of growing influence within and outside of B2B brands.

In Episode 17 of Inside B2B Influence we have a returning guest who needs little introduction given his accomplishments and yet, we’d all be missing out if I did not mention that Brian Solis is Global Innovation Evangelist at Salesforce, an 8X best selling author, global keynote speaker, digital pioneer and has been a good friend for over 10 years.

Inside B2B Influence: Brian Solis of Salesforce on the Future of Influence in B2B Marketing

B2B Marketing News: B2B Marketers’ Biggest Buyer Challenges, LinkedIn’s New Articles For Pages, Instagram Gets Montage Feature, & YouTube Updates Analytics

Lane Ellis on Sep 17th, 2021
Online Marketing News

LinkedIn Rolls Out Articles for Pages
Microsoft-owned LinkedIn (client) has launched a new feature that gives pages the ability to share long-form content on the professional social platform, an addition that comes amidst an array of other new features including an enhanced LinkedIn Live Events experience for creating more robust virtual events, the company recently announced. Adweek

Instagram is Developing a New ‘Montage’ Feature to Convert Stories to Reels, New ‘Favorites’ Listing
Facebook-owned Instagram has been testing a new option intended to make it easy for digital marketers to convert existing Instagram Stories content into brief Reels video clips, including automatically synced audio. New tool options for signaling favorite audience selections have also recently undergone testing on the platform — both changes that could eventually enhance how marketers use Instagram. Social Media Today

B2B Marketing News: B2B Marketers’ Biggest Buyer Challenges, LinkedIn’s New Articles For Pages, Instagram Gets Montage Feature, & YouTube Updates Analytics

Unite with Might: 12 Top Ways Successful B2B Influencers Are Building Powerful Marketing Collaborations

Lane Ellis on Sep 15th, 2021
B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing

How can B2B marketers build powerful and enduring collaborations using influencers?

There are more tactics available today than ever for influencer collaboration in the B2B space, but how can marketers find those that are actually achieving ongoing success?

We’ve been fortunate to feature top influencers from a number of industries in our third season of the Break Free B2B Marketing series of video interviews, and we wanted to share their top tactics for both being an influencer in the B2B space, and for improving collaboration.

Let’s dig in and learn how 12 subject matter experts are creating powerful collaborations between influencers and brands, with insightful tactics you can implement in your own marketing efforts as we head toward 2022.

Ramon Ray of Smart Hustle Media

@ramonray
Founder, Smart Hustle Media

Unite with Might: 12 Top Ways Successful B2B Influencers Are Building Powerful Marketing Collaborations

Inside B2B Influence: Sarita Rao of AT&T on Growing B2B Executive Influence with Social Media

Lee Odden on Sep 13th, 2021
B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing

Inside B2B Influence is a podcast and video series that goes behind the scenes of B2B marketing and highlights insights with top business executives on marketing for B2B companies. We’re doing our best here at TopRank Marketing Blog to elevate the practice of growing influence within and outside of B2B brands to drive thought leadership, create demand and grow revenue.

Episode 16 of Inside B2B Influence features a discussion with Sarita Rao (@saritasayso), who is President, Integrated and Partner Solutions at AT&T. Sarita contributed her expertise to the State of B2B Influencer Marketing Report last year and I have been following her closely (and learning) on LinkedIn and Twitter ever since.

Inside B2B Influence: Sarita Rao of AT&T on Growing B2B Executive Influence with Social Media

B2B Marketing News: 95:5 Rule in B2B, Social Media Trends, TikTok Overtakes YouTube, CMOs Need to Focus on CX

Lee Odden on Sep 10th, 2021
B2B Marketing, Online Marketing News

New Report Looks at Social Media Usage Trends Over the Past Decade, and Where Things are Now Headed
App Annie’s ‘Evolution of Social Apps’ report looks at how social media usage trends have evolved over the last decade, highlighting the rise of live-streaming, the increasing focus on social commerce, the growth of TikTok and Snapchat with the biggest highlight being the rise in consumer spending within social apps, with cumulative spend already at $3.2 billion in the first half of 2021 – up 50% year-over-year.
Social Media Today

B2B Marketing News: 95:5 Rule in B2B, Social Media Trends, TikTok Overtakes YouTube, CMOs Need to Focus on CX

5 Tips for Promoting B2B Content Co-Created with Influencers

Debbie Friez on Sep 8th, 2021
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Influencer Marketing

Working with influencers creates an amazing opportunity to co-create and co-promote content for B2B brands. The brand can promote the influencer and vice versa. It’s a win-win.

Along with the win comes a responsibility to promote your B2B marketing content in a way that captures attention. It’s social media marketing after-all. To help you get the most out of your investment in content collaborations with influencers, here are 5 tips to spice up your social media posts. Follow this advice and the valuable content your influencers have helped you create will better reach, engage and inspire your customers.

5 Tips for Promoting B2B Content Co-Created with Influencers

B2B Marketing News: B2B Digital Ad Spend Soars, Digital Engagement Changes, LinkedIn Scraps Stories, Google Pays Apple $15Bn

Lee Odden on Sep 3rd, 2021
B2B Marketing, Online Marketing News

Marketers’ Use of Digital Engagement Tactics
A new report from Salesforce shows that 9 in 10 marketing leaders believe that their digital engagement strategy has completely (48%) or somewhat (42%) changed since before the pandemic. Which tactics are they using? Social media (91%), digital ads (91%), digital content (88%), website and apps (86%), email (76%) and mobile (69%). MarketingCharts

The Hybrid Future: How B2B Events Are Evolving
Most marketers say hybrid B2B events, which incorporate both online and in-person elements, will become more common in the coming years, according to recent research from ON24. 79% of B2B marketers say hybrid events provide more data than purely in-person events. MarketingProfs

B2B Marketing News: B2B Digital Ad Spend Soars, Digital Engagement Changes, LinkedIn Scraps Stories, Google Pays Apple $15Bn

Fuel Your Passion for B2B Marketing with These Famous Baseball Quotes

Nick Nelson on Sep 1st, 2021
B2B Marketing

A few weeks ago, Major League Baseball enjoyed a historic moment with its Field of Dreams Game, played at the cornfield-surrounded site in Iowa where the legendary movie was based.

Naturally, this event brought on waves of nostalgia among those who cherish the 1989 classic and its many memorable quotes.

“If you build it, he will come.”

“Hey dad, you wanna have a catch?”

“This field, this game: it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good and it could be again.”

via GIPHY

Baseball is a complex and strategically sophisticated game that has evoked many wise and thought-provoking words over the years — often with applicability beyond the ballpark. I’ve noted in the past baseball’s parallels to marketing: methodical and rhythmic pursuits driven by patience, sequencing, and learning from failure.

Fuel Your Passion for B2B Marketing with These Famous Baseball Quotes