B2B Marketing Blog

B2B Marketing News: Top B2B Pain Points, Influencer Types Survey, Zoom’s New Events Platform, & The KPIs That Matter

Lane Ellis on May 21st, 2021
Online Marketing News

B2B Marketer Pain Points, Performance, and Priorities for the Year Ahead: B2B Marketing Monitor
54 percent of B2B brands face difficulty connecting with customers on the emotional level needed to increase brand engagement, while only 22 percent of B2B enterprises say they excel when it comes to customer experience (CX) — two of several findings of interest to digital marketers in recently-released survey data. MarketingProfs

Micro Influencers Still À La Mode in 2021
From micro and macro to mega, non-paid, affiliate and celebrity, the influencer types that enterprise marketers prefer working with runs the gamut, however the overwhelming majority — some 90 percent — want to work with micro-influencers who have between five and 100,000 followers, up from 77 percent in 2020, according to newly-released study data. [Survey]MarketingCharts

B2B Marketing News: Top B2B Pain Points, Influencer Types Survey, Zoom’s New Events Platform, & The KPIs That Matter

10 Ways to Drive Revenue through Content Marketing by Joe Pulizzi

Lee Odden on May 20th, 2021
Content Marketing, Guest Posts

Huge congratulations to Joe Pulizzi on the release of the completely updated and expanded edition of Content Inc. Also thanks to Joe for contributing one of the handful of guest posts we’ve ever accepted here at TopRank’s B2B Marketing Blog. Along with thousands of other marketers, I’ve learned a lot from Joe and you will too.

Read on to discover 10 ways you can drive revenue for your business through content marketing from the Godfather of Content Marketing himself:

Whether you are a marketing professional, content entrepreneur or a media executive, driving revenue from an audience is always the same. Once you build a loyal and trusting audience through your content marketing or media strategy, there are 10 different ways to generate revenue: six direct sources and four indirect sources.

10 Ways to Drive Revenue through Content Marketing by Joe Pulizzi

Steady As She Goes: Why Consistency Builds Better Long-Term B2B Marketing

Lane Ellis on May 19th, 2021
B2B Marketing

How can B2B marketers build better and more sustainable long-term marketing efforts?

88 percent of global marketers said that achieving brand consistency was crucial, in dentsu international’s recent whitepaper survey, “2021: The year of Brand Consistency, Efficiency and Agility.”

Consistency is an element that’s sometimes overlooked in B2B marketing, however, so we wanted to explore some of the ways that top marketers are incorporating consistency into their efforts.

Let’s get started and dig in with five ways that consistency creates better long-term B2B marketing.

Consistency Case #1 — Content Creation Persistence

For digital futurist and keynote speaker Brian Fanzo, consistency is everything when it comes to successful content creation.

“Consistency. Consistency. Consistency. When it comes to content creation and growing within the #CreatorEconomy, consistency is everything,” Fanzo recently noted.

Steady As She Goes: Why Consistency Builds Better Long-Term B2B Marketing

Content Marketing Optimization Audits – Find Where SEO Can Boost Content Marketing Success

Lee Odden on May 17th, 2021
Content Marketing, SEO

SEO and content marketing intersect in more ways than optimizing web pages with keywords.

Answering the question, “How does SEO and content marketing strategy interact?” starts with understanding customers, behaviors and preferences for information discovery, consumption and sharing. Knowing what customers care about and how those concerns and interests manifest as search keywords and social topics folds very well into the keyword research practiced by professional SEOs.

Keyword Glossaries and Editorial Plans can be valuable tools for marketers to aid in creating relevant content that is inherently optimized for customers and target audiences alike. Specific keyword optimization is appropriate as well, but the end content product becomes much easier to find, consume and share if an understanding of customer questions is translated into topics and keywords from the start. This is the core of how brands can become the best answer for what customers are looking for.

Content Marketing Optimization Audits – Find Where SEO Can Boost Content Marketing Success

B2B Marketing News: Optimizing CX Study, AI Disrupts B2B Sales, B2B Influencer Marketing on the Rise

Lee Odden on May 14th, 2021
B2B Marketing

Digital Customer Experience Optimization

Website Optimization A Key Upcoming Focus for Customer Experience Design
60% of B2C and B2B marketers believe that designing an effective customer experience is very important in gaining a competitive advantage in their market according to research by Ascend2. A high level of customer experience has a demonstrable impact on customer loyalty behaviors. As such, delivering a better customer experience is one of the top priorities of CEOs across the globe in the next few years. MarketingCharts

Forrester Report: B2B Marketers Need to Lead, Not Support
For B2B marketers, it’s no longer enough to define and protect the brand, help generate leads, and support sales. Going forward, B2B marketing leaders also need to be leaders within their organizations. Rather than supporting other functions and stakeholders, marketing needs to “become the architect of organizational success,” according to the forthcoming “The Future of B2B Marketing” report from Forrester. Chief Marketer

B2B Marketing News: Optimizing CX Study, AI Disrupts B2B Sales, B2B Influencer Marketing on the Rise

How to Accelerate Reach and Engagement of B2B Content Through Co-Creation

Nick Nelson on May 12th, 2021
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

“Look, I made this!”

Sharing things we create is a human compulsion that traces back to childhood. Whether you’re showing your mom a drawing so she can pin it up on the fridge, or linking social media followers to your latest blog post, it’s natural for people of all ages to proudly broadcast their creative output.

Therein lies the power of co-creation for content amplification. “If you want your content reach to be great, ask your community to participate.”

Let’s explore this approach to content collaboration from a B2B marketing perspective.

Why Co-create Content for B2B Marketing?

There are many benefits to collaborative content creation. TopRank Marketing CEO Lee Odden covered several in his writeup last year on winning at B2B influence with the magic of content co-creation. Among them:

How to Accelerate Reach and Engagement of B2B Content Through Co-Creation

The Real Thing: 5 Ways Authenticity Inspires Vibrant B2B Marketing

Lane Ellis on May 10th, 2021
B2B Marketing

What does authenticity bring to the table for B2B marketers looking to create better customer experiences?

Authenticity is a vital factor when it comes to making B2B marketing that’s top-notch, with the inherent trust it builds powering campaigns that stand apart from the common crowd.

Here are 5 vibrant takes on the potent power authenticity holds in the best B2B marketing, from some of the top innovators in marketing and beyond, to help inspire your marketing today and to prepare for the eventually post-pandemic business landscape.

Take #1 — Authenticity Embraces Humanity

For Alicia Tillman, executive vice president and global chief marketing officer at SAP*, building a community of brand advocates requires not only authenticity but accountability.

The Real Thing: 5 Ways Authenticity Inspires Vibrant B2B Marketing

B2B Marketing News: B2B Brand Affinity, What B2B Website Visitors Want, Twitter Gets Bigger Images, & Business Video Benchmarks

Lane Ellis on May 7th, 2021
Online Marketing News

2021 May 7 MarketingCharts Chart

Raising The Hood On B2B: Brands Say It’s Difficult To Measure Content Marketing Impact
53 percent of B2B marketers say that analytics tools are the most important, followed by 38 percent who see customer relationship management (CRM) as their top tool, and 34 percent who see system marketing automation as their most important tool — three of several statistics of interest to digital marketers contained in recently-released survey data. MediaPost

What Drives Brand Affinity for B2B Companies?
23 percent of B2B executives said that brand trust and customer service were the top brand affinity forces, followed by 14 percent who saw price as the leading force, and 11 percent who said they considered innovation the top driver, according to newly-released survey data. MarketingCharts

B2B Marketing News: B2B Brand Affinity, What B2B Website Visitors Want, Twitter Gets Bigger Images, & Business Video Benchmarks

Break Free B2B Marketing: Dez Blanchfield of Sociaall on Joining the Conversation

Susan Misukanis on May 6th, 2021
B2B Marketing

When it comes to B2B influencer marketing, it’s natural to wonder just what an industry influencer actually looks like?

Our third season of Break Free B2B Marketing video interviews feature conversations with top B2B influencers, looking closely at the issues that each expert is influential about in their industry.

For more than a decade our team at TopRank Marketing has fostered a strong community of leading influencers, developing close relationships with subject matter experts in many industries.

Running a successful business is the art of juggling a thousand different things in a thousand different ways. It can be challenging to know which of these things to truly focus on and which balls are okay to drop for the sake of company growth. With so many new technologies at the forefront: cloud, machine learning, IoT, big data, virtualization, cybersecurity, and dozens of others – how do you know where to focus? How do you know which business best practices are the right one for your company vs. others?

Break Free B2B Marketing: Dez Blanchfield of Sociaall on Joining the Conversation

Trust and the Search for Answers: How Influence Optimizes SEO Performance

Lee Odden on May 3rd, 2021
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, SEO

According to the annual Global Digital Overview Report from We Are Social and Hootsuite, 81% of internet users search online for a product or service to buy and 74% have purchased online. Without question, digital engagement and commerce is the new normal and is as relevant for B2B companies as it has been for B2C.

During the pandemic, search engines have become even more important as B2B brands and buyers alike digital transform to virtual engagement for information discovery, consumption and interaction. As a result, many companies have invested more in search engine optimization in order to capture the fast-growing opportunities to be the best answer for customers at the moment of need – when actively searching for solutions.

Best practices for SEO abound on the web including this list from SEMrush:

Trust and the Search for Answers: How Influence Optimizes SEO Performance

B2B Marketing News: Influencer Ad Budgets Rise, B2B Buyer Report, Stellar US Ad Market Spending Increase, Zoom’s Immersive View, & LinkedIn’s LXP

Lane Ellis on Apr 30th, 2021
Online Marketing News

What B2B Buyers Say Sellers Can Do to Influence Their Purchase Decisions [Report]
71 percent of B2B buyers see client desires and needs as the leading influences on purchase decisions, while 68 consider showing what’s possible or how to solve a problem as being the biggest influence — two of several statistics of interest to B2B marketers in recently-released survey data. MarketingCharts

U.S. Ad Market Turns In Best March Ever: Up 25% Vs. 2020, 7% Vs. 2019
March saw the U.S. ad market grow nearly 25 percent since the same time last year, and even managed to increase 7.2 percent from pre-pandemic March 2019 levels, according to newly-released Standard Media Index (SMI) data. MediaPost

B2B Marketing News: Influencer Ad Budgets Rise, B2B Buyer Report, Stellar US Ad Market Spending Increase, Zoom’s Immersive View, & LinkedIn’s LXP