B2B Marketing Blog

6 Eye-Opening B2B Content Marketing Statistics for 2021

Nick Nelson on Feb 16th, 2021
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

“You can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. Forty percent of all people know that.” – Homer Simpson

Homer might be right, generally speaking. But I still maintain that good, accurate, timely statistics from trusted sources can serve as vital guideposts and benchmarking tools, especially when it comes to business strategy.

This certainly applies in my own corner of the business world: the fast-changing and critically important field of B2B content marketing.

Trends in content marketing tend to reflect broader truths, since we’re talking about the ways in which companies and customers interact and communicate. Because of this, I like to keep a close eye on new research and data as it surfaces, filing away nuggets that strike me as especially telling.

6 Eye-Opening B2B Content Marketing Statistics for 2021

How to Scale B2B Influencer Marketing: Operations, Process and Technology

Lee Odden on Feb 15th, 2021
B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing

B2B Influencer Marketing Operations

As a relationship driven business, influencer marketing for B2B companies can be resource intensive and time consuming. To scale while maintaining quality, creating processes and using software are as essential for influencer identification as it is for managing ongoing communications and performance reporting.

In our research for the State of B2B Influencer Marketing Research Report, we found B2B marketers that document an influencer marketing strategy and engagement approach, define processes, use software and elevate their internal operational expertise are much better suited to scale a high quality and successful influencer marketing program.

This post will dig further into the findings from the State of B2B Influencer Marketing concerning influencer marketing operations on everything from top challenges to best practices and process to software.

How to Scale B2B Influencer Marketing: Operations, Process and Technology

B2B Marketing News: B2B Marketers Focus on Revenue, Top B2B Channel Strategies, LinkedIn’s Rising Engagement, & Google Ads’ Phrase Match Changes

Lane Ellis on Feb 12th, 2021
Online Marketing News

COVID-19’s Impact on B2B Tech Marketers’ Channel Strategies in 2021
Among B2B marketers, webinars, search engine optimization (SEO), email marketing and LinkedIn ads have grown in importance the most during the pandemic, according to recently-released survey data. The data also shows that the top challenges faced by B2B technology marketers in 2021 are balancing quantity with quality, digital fatique, and measuring the right key performance indicators (KPIs). MarketingProfs

LinkedIn Announces New Measures to Tackle Inherent Bias as Part of Black History Month
LinkedIn (client) has launched an array of new initiatives that are part of a push towards systemic change to increase the Microsoft-owned professional social platform’s value to people in underrepresented groups, the firm recently announced. Social Media Today

B2B Marketing News: B2B Marketers Focus on Revenue, Top B2B Channel Strategies, LinkedIn’s Rising Engagement, & Google Ads’ Phrase Match Changes

Break Free B2B Marketing: Liam McIvor Martin of Time Doctor on The Revolutionary Power of Remote Work

Susan Misukanis on Feb 11th, 2021
B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing, Video Interviews

For over a decade TopRank Marketing has fostered a community of influencers, developing close relationships with subject matter experts in a wide variety of industries.

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

In our third season of Break Free B2B Marketing video interviews we’re continuing in-depth conversations with a powerful selection of top B2B influencers, and exploring the issues that each expert is influential about.

All successful B2B influencers have a rare mix of the 5 Ps — proficiency, personality, publishing, promotion, and popularity — as our CEO Lee Odden has outlined in “5 Key Traits of the Best B2B Influencers.”

Incorporating all of these qualities and more is Liam McIvor Martin, co-founder of Time Doctor, who we’re thrilled to be profiling today.

Break Free B2B Marketing: Liam McIvor Martin of Time Doctor on The Revolutionary Power of Remote Work

The BIGLIST of 50 Top 2021 B2B Marketing Conferences

Lane Ellis on Feb 10th, 2021
B2B Marketing

When we published our BIGLIST of 50 top B2B marketing events a year ago, we had no way of knowing the disruption the pandemic would soon bring to in-person conferences.

A year later virtual events are still the norm, with the promise of physical meetings a wee glimmer of hope on the horizon. For 2021 we’ve compiled our latest BIGLIST of 50 top B2B marketing events to feature those being held virtually, in-person, or in hybrid formats.

Marketing conferences offer a wealth of benefits to marketers looking to learn, network, and increase brand awareness, but how do you go about finding events that match your business and B2B marketing needs?

The BIGLIST of 50 Top 2021 B2B Marketing Conferences

21 New Marketing Jokes for Unprecedented Times

Joshua Nite on Feb 9th, 2021
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

Why write jokes about marketing?

Why write, to be specific, 101 jokes about marketing over the last five years?

I came to marketing from the comedy world, and was genuinely surprised back then at how little personality there was in B2B content. Back in 2015, people were still asking whether B2B marketing could be funny — whether it would torpedo a serious brand to come out with humorous content.

Now we’ve finally admitted that B2B buyers like to laugh just like everyone else. And we’re seeing that humor can be a powerful way to bring people together. Used the right way, it can illustrate the shared human experiences that unite us all, showing that our trials and triumphs make us more alike than we are different.

21 New Marketing Jokes for Unprecedented Times

How Successful B2B Marketers Integrate Influence in the Marketing Mix

Lee Odden on Feb 8th, 2021
B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing

Influencer Marketing is a fast growing discipline for B2B marketers and while many brands view it as a stand alone tactic, mature marketers realize that influence can play a role across the customer lifecycle in virtually any business communication, content type or publishing channel.

There’s plenty of evidence to show that business customers do not limit their information discovery and consumption to single communication channels or content types. Neither should business marketers. That’s why savvy B2B marketers integrate influencer content across marketing disciplines from ABM to Public Relations to SEO to create the kinds of customer experiences that create credibility, reach and engagement.

How Successful B2B Marketers Integrate Influence in the Marketing Mix

B2B Marketing News: CMOs & Influencer Marketing See Pandemic Shifts, Virtual B2B Events Here To Stay, & New Social State of Digital Study

Lane Ellis on Feb 5th, 2021
Online Marketing News

Most CMOs expect role to change as a result of Covid-19, finds LinkedIn
Nearly 75 percent of chief marketing officers believe their role as CMO will change due to the pandemic, to include more branding and greater internal communications, according to recently-released survey data of interest to digital marketers. The Drum

6 Ways COVID-19 has Impacted B2B Influencer Marketing
During the pandemic social media users increased their engagement levels with content from industry influencers, lead by the technology industry, which saw a 440 percent increase from 2019 to 2020 — one of several findings of interest to online marketers in recently-released Onalytica report data. Onalytica

B2B Marketing News: CMOs & Influencer Marketing See Pandemic Shifts, Virtual B2B Events Here To Stay, & New Social State of Digital Study

Supercharge Your 2021 B2B Marketing With High-Octane Online Courses

Lane Ellis on Feb 3rd, 2021
B2B Marketing

How can B2B marketers strengthen their long-term strategy and hone existing marketing skills while learning new ones?

2021 offers the greatest wealth of online marketing-related courses the world has ever seen, thanks in part to the pandemic’s effects on how we learn.

With more than 70 percent of companies recognizing online learning as essential to long-term strategy (Digital Marketing Institute), now is the ideal time to explore the vast array of online courses available to B2B marketers, covering subjects from modern marketing writing and digital marketing strategy to marketing research and social media marketing.

No matter how much we already know, in 2021’s always-on B2B marketing landscape there’s always plenty more to learn.

Supercharge Your 2021 B2B Marketing With High-Octane Online Courses

How to Accelerate 2021 B2B Marketing Success with Influencer Optimized Content

Lee Odden on Feb 1st, 2021
B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing

According to the State of B2B Influencer Marketing Report, 96% of B2B marketers that engage influencers consider their program to be successful and 90% expect their budget for influencer marketing to increase or stay the same over the next 12 months.

Why the confidence? 77% of marketers say their prospective customers rely on advice from industry experts with 84% engaging influencers to create brand awareness and 69% counting on influencers for lead generation.

Influence plays a role across the entire B2B customer lifecycle from awareness to advocacy and with B2B marketing going decidedly digital during the pandemic and research showing few signs of reverting back to the old ways, the importance of peer, expert and influencer recommendations through social and digital media are more important than ever.

How to Accelerate 2021 B2B Marketing Success with Influencer Optimized Content

B2B Marketing News: Top B2B Video Marketing Challenges, Google Axing Teasers, Changing B2B ABM Objectives, & LinkedIn’s Strong Revenue Growth

Lane Ellis on Jan 29th, 2021
Online Marketing News

How the Pandemic Has Affected Account-Based Marketing
42 percent of B2B marketers say that the pandemic has changed their account-based marketing (ABM) business objectives, according to recently-released survey data, with 30 percent noting that their ABM budgets fell due to the global health crisis, while 26 percent saw their ABM spending increase. MarketingProfs

Despite In-Housing Trend, Clients Continue To Value Agency Relationships
Greater alignment with brand priorities brings increased value to agencies, according to newly-released Forrester report data of interest to digital marketers, which also showed that some 75 percent of brand decision makers were satisfied or very satisfied with their agency rosters. MediaPost

B2B Marketing News: Top B2B Video Marketing Challenges, Google Axing Teasers, Changing B2B ABM Objectives, & LinkedIn’s Strong Revenue Growth

5 Ways to Humanize Your B2B Content Marketing – And Why It Matters

Joshua Nite on Jan 27th, 2021
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

Never underestimate the corporate world’s ability to take something that should be intuitive, and make it weird by overthinking it.

Case in point: We used to say, “B2B doesn’t have to be boring.” Which indicates that for a long time, folks truly believed that B2B did have to be boring — that B2B buyers were a unique species of creature that operated without emotion and wanted the driest content possible.

Now we’re talking about how we need to “humanize” B2B content. And doesn’t that sound like some kind of filter you run your content through after you make it? I picture something that looks like a fax machine, where you load the content in the top, and push a big red button marked “HUMANIZE.”

5 Ways to Humanize Your B2B Content Marketing – And Why It Matters