Online Marketing Blog

10 Wise Quotes To Inspire Your Influencer Marketing

Lane Ellis on Aug 27th, 2020
B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing

What will successful B2B influencer marketing look like in a post-pandemic world, and what can marketers do today to be ready?

Here are 10 quotes from some of the best in the B2B influencer marketing business to inspire your marketing today and to prepare for the eventual post-pandemic landscape.

1 — Rani Mani of Adobe

For Rani Mani, head of social influencer enablement at Adobe*, reaching out to uncover the heartfelt motivations, challenges, and aspirations of B2B influencers can be a great way to start building a long-lasting marketing relationship. She shares additional insight in our recently-released 2020 State of B2B Influencer Marketing Research Report.

10 Wise Quotes To Inspire Your Influencer Marketing

5 Refreshing Examples of Imaginative B2B Marketing To Inspire You in 2021

Lane Ellis on Aug 26th, 2020
B2B Marketing

What will it take in 2021 for B2B marketers to break through the mundane and reach the sublime?

Post-pandemic success isn’t likely to come for those who settle for the same old B2B marketing efforts, even if some do have a lengthy track-record.

Looking ahead to an as-yet unknown new B2B marketing landscape can be a bit of a guessing game, however examining powerful award-winning marketing efforts can at least offer us a glimpse of how imaginative storytelling on a global scale is likely to play a greater role in what eventually emerges.

Let’s jump right in and take a look at five examples of the type of imaginative and refreshing marketing efforts that may play a greater role in the future of B2B marketing.

5 Refreshing Examples of Imaginative B2B Marketing To Inspire You in 2021

Marketing Lessons from Lockdown: What My 3-year-old Has Taught Me

Elizabeth Williams on Aug 25th, 2020
B2B Marketing

“Our children can be our greatest teachers if we are humble enough to receive their lessons.” Wise words from author Bryant McGill.

These last few months of lockdown, while challenging, have brought forth some very inspiring lessons from my almost 3 year old that I hope can inspire you: His fearless attitude, his openness to learning, his inquisitive nature and his no-yielding passion for everything he does.

Be Fearless

Unless we’re talking about cooked carrots, my little guy is about as fearless as they come. Whether he’s full-speed sprint-vaulting (without success) over two storage bins, or sticking his entire face into the pool water, only to come up coughing, nothing deters him from the next obstacle.

Marketing Lessons from Lockdown: What My 3-year-old Has Taught Me

5 Steps for a More Powerful B2B Content Marketing Strategy

Lee Odden on Aug 24th, 2020
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

Content Marketing continues to be a driving force behind meaningful B2B marketing that powers marketing and business growth. According to research by HubSpot, 70% of marketers actively investing in content marketing and there’s no sign of a slowdown, especially as SEMrush research has found, marketers are focused on using content to generate more quality leads (75%), attract more traffic to their website (71%), improve brand reputation (56%), and improve customer engagement and loyalty (45%).

The problem is, many of those marketers are not creating best answer content experiences. Creating useful content by itself is not an effective strategy in a world of brand distrust, content attention deficit and the distractions brought by a global pandemic. Being the best answer for your customers means being found and also delivering on expectations. Creating findable, credible content that is also useful and experiential is at the center of what being the best answer means for marketers.

5 Steps for a More Powerful B2B Content Marketing Strategy

B2B Marketing News: Top B2B Brand-Building Challenges, Online Engagement Gets Just 2 Seconds, Facebook’s New Paid Event Options, & Google’s Shared Ad Budgeting

Lane Ellis on Aug 21st, 2020
Online Marketing News

The Most Significant Challenges to B2B Brand-Building
Unclear strategy, performance measurement unsurety, low priority brand-building and foggy messaging are the leading brand reach amplification challenges faced by B2B marketers, according to recently-released survey data of interest to digital marketers. MarketingProfs

‘You get 2 seconds to engage consumers online’: Mars neuroscientist shares key findings
Digital marketers have just two seconds to capture consumers’ attention and five to make an impact, according to newly-released neuroscience study data, also showing that memory encoding is key as duration time has dropped. The Drum

Facebook Adds New Paid Events Options for Businesses and Creators
Facebook has made direct in-stream purchase options available for eligible Facebook business pages in 20 countries including the U.S., offering digital marketers new monetization and event marketing options, the social media giant recently announced. Social Media Today

B2B Marketing News: Top B2B Brand-Building Challenges, Online Engagement Gets Just 2 Seconds, Facebook’s New Paid Event Options, & Google’s Shared Ad Budgeting

7 B2B Content Marketing Tactics For Long Term Success

Anne Leuman on Aug 20th, 2020
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

I have an important question for you:

Athlete A runs a marathon in under 3 hours. Athlete B runs a 40-yard dash in under 5 seconds. Which athlete is more impressive to you?

Athlete A can run the distance, but Athlete B is explosive. ?

via GIPHY

If you’re anything like me, you answered that they’re both very impressive. And you’d be right. Having both endurance and power are extremely important. So, why am I asking this question on a blog all about marketing? Well, the most successful content marketing strategies have tactics that cover those two qualities: endurance and power. AKA long-term and short-term tactics.

7 B2B Content Marketing Tactics For Long Term Success

5 Tips For Finding Your Authentic Marketing Identity

Lane Ellis on Aug 19th, 2020
B2B Marketing

What do you think of when you see a person’s business title, and how do the role assumptions we all inevitably bring to the table affect our ability to market authentically?

Can we find our own more effective and authentic marketing identity and build greater business communication opportunities by ditching preconceived role beliefs?

Marketing has seen dwindling levels of trust in recent years, and as our CEO Lee Odden observed in his recent “In Search of Trust: How Authentic Content Drives Customer Experience,” building great customer experiences is an uphill battle if customers don’t trust brand communications.

86 percent of customers have said that authenticity is important when deciding what brands they like and support, which ought to make marketing that resonates with truth a key goal among forward-thinking B2B marketers.

5 Tips For Finding Your Authentic Marketing Identity

Planning for Change: How to Set Your 2021 Marketing Budget

Alexis Hall on Aug 18th, 2020
B2B Marketing

If you would have told me in March that I would be sitting at my kitchen table writing a blog post about 2021 marketing budgets in August, I might have invested in a comfier office chair sooner. Many of the decisions we made personally and as marketers in the days and weeks following the declaration of a pandemic were made with limited information.

As an agency, we focused on how to adapt our own day-to-day operations and plans, while helping our clients shift theirs. As time has gone by, and we start to understand more the potential long-term impacts this crisis could have, we are still adapting. However, now is the opportunity — not to be reactive — but to continue to invest in the future.

Planning for Change: How to Set Your 2021 Marketing Budget

How to Optimize Original B2B Research Content For Credibility and Impact

Lee Odden on Aug 17th, 2020
Content Marketing

For many in the B2B marketing world, original research provides an effective way to build thought leadership and drive content for owned and earned media.

Unfortunately, many research reports from B2B companies are dry, uninspired and focus solely on pontifications from the brand point of view. Such unremarkable content isn’t helping customers, especially if they never see it due to information overload or they don’t trust it.

“With more information, options and people involved in a buying process, buyers are paralyzed when trying to move forward.” Gartner

Fortunately, there’s a better way.

More often than not, B2B research reports have marketing objectives focused on building brand thought leadership, attracting new names for nurturing and to serve as a resource for sales. Since most B2B brands don’t have the credibility and distribution to reach their marketing goals on their own with such reports, they rely on advertising and PR to attract attention.

How to Optimize Original B2B Research Content For Credibility and Impact

B2B Marketing News: B2B Ad Spending Soars, Google’s New Audio Ad Features, Facebook’s Partnership Group Ads, & Top B2B Buyer Challenges

Lane Ellis on Aug 14th, 2020
Online Marketing News

B2B Buyers’ Top Challenges With Their Current Vendors
51 percent of B2B buyers have changed their vendor preferences during the global health crisis, and they find that slow and inefficient inquiry responses from vendors is their biggest challenge — two of several findings of interest to B2B marketers in recently-released survey data. MarketingProfs

Facebook Adds New Sponsored Post Options for Groups
Facebook has launched a new option for digital marketers allowing paid partnership posts in Facebook Groups, giving admins new branded post advertising opportunities, the social media giant recently announced. Social Media Today

eMarketer: US B2B digital ad spend soars 22.6%
Bucking the overall pandemic ad spending trend, 2020 B2B digital ad spend in the U.S. is expected to rise over 22 percent from 2019 figures, a significantly better performance outlook than the 1.7 percent forecast increase in overall U.S. digital ad spend, according to newly-released B2B ad spending findings. The Drum

B2B Marketing News: B2B Ad Spending Soars, Google’s New Audio Ad Features, Facebook’s Partnership Group Ads, & Top B2B Buyer Challenges

A Day in the Life of a Content Marketer During the Pandemic: Challenges and Tips

Nick Nelson on Aug 13th, 2020
Content Marketing

I’ll never forget the night that everything really changed.

It was my wife’s birthday, March 11th. I took her out for dinner at a lovely restaurant in South Minneapolis, and for a couple of blissful hours, over exotic cocktails and delicious food, we unplugged from the loudening noise of a worrisome outside world.

After we walked out of that restaurant, there would be no more tuning out.

Stepping out from the darkly lit building, I looked down at my phone, and tried to process the sudden rush of stunning headlines:

WHO declares global pandemic. NBA suspends season. Trump addresses the nation. Tom Hanks has coronavirus. Tom Hanks!

A Day in the Life of a Content Marketer During the Pandemic: Challenges and Tips