Online Marketing Blog

31 DIY Marketing Tools To Create Remarkable Experiences

Lane Ellis on Feb 12th, 2020
B2B Marketing

Sifting through thousands of available tools is a hit and — more often than not — a miss proposition, but we’ve got you covered with 31 do-it-yourself marketing tools that are perfect for helping you create remarkable campaign experiences.

It can be overwhelming even deciding which new tools to start trying out to see if they’re helpful, so to jump-start your marketing efforts in 2020 we’ve gathered a varied selection of innovative and helpful tools that can significantly enhance your marketing efforts.

These tools come from a varying array of categories useful to digital marketers, from artificial intelligence (AI) content analysis bots and data manipulation utilities to video and image manipulation — a smorgasbord of helpful software that is unified in that each tool can provide immediate improvements to your marketing campaigns.

31 DIY Marketing Tools To Create Remarkable Experiences

25 B2B Influencer Marketing Campaign & Engagement Ideas for 2020

Lee Odden on Feb 11th, 2020
B2B Marketing, Influencer Marketing

In the business world, you don’t have to look far to see that the number of B2B companies engaged with influencer marketing is growing. As more companies are moving beyond experimentation to conducting pilots, sequential campaigns and always on programs, there is an increasing desire to expand how brands engage with business influencers.

To help B2B marketers solve that problem, I’m going to share a swipe file of sorts of different business influencer campaigns and engagement opportunities. Implementing just a few of these could help a company with a substantial amount of influencer program activity.

Of course just because you can, doesn’t mean you should! As with all effective marketing, it’s important to match up the campaign approach with the criteria for your customers and how they want to engage with influencer/brand content. Check out the list below and hopefully some good ideas will spark and ignite your 2020 B2B influencer marketing to new levels.

25 B2B Influencer Marketing Campaign & Engagement Ideas for 2020

Hungry for More: What B2B Marketers Need to Know About Episodic Content

Nick Nelson on Feb 10th, 2020
B2B Marketing

The cliffhanger is one of the greatest tools in entertainment. I’ll explain why later.

Seriously though, we’ve all experienced the cliffhanger: It’s that tension-building moment of uncertainty at the end of a chapter or installment that leaves the audience impatiently awaiting the next one. Some of my favorite binge-worthy TV shows and page-turning novels have been defined by this quality.

A perfect example from modern cinema is the conclusion of 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War. While I won’t give anything away, the movie ended with a shocking turn of events that seemed to leave little hope for the franchise’s heroic protagonists. In the 12 months that passed between Infinity War and its sequel, fans waited with rabid eagerness for answers and closure, reveling in theories and hyper-analysis.

Hungry for More: What B2B Marketers Need to Know About Episodic Content

Digital Marketing News: YouTube’s Robust Revenue, LinkedIn’s Record Engagement, Gen Z Brand Expectations, & Google’s Unified Messaging

Lane Ellis on Feb 7th, 2020
Online Marketing News

2020 February 7 MarketingCharts Chart

YouTube is a $15 billion-a-year business, Google reveals for the first time
For the first time in nearly 15 years YouTube has released its advertising revenue information, showing that the video platform annually accounted for some 10 percent of Google-parent Alphabet’s revenue, heftily topping Wall Street expectations, while Google Search accounted for $98.1 billion in 2019, the firm revealed. The Verge

By 2021, More than Half of Companies Will Use LinkedIn for Marketing
For the first time in its history, by 2021 the majority of U.S. marketers will use LinkedIn (client) for advertising, according to newly-released report data from eMarketer, which expects the Microsoft-owned professional social network to see a 49.6 percent marketer usage rate in 2020, up from 48.8 percent in 2019. eMarketer

Digital Marketing News: YouTube’s Robust Revenue, LinkedIn’s Record Engagement, Gen Z Brand Expectations, & Google’s Unified Messaging

Break Free B2B Season 1 Wrap Up: Top Insights from the Marketing Industry’s Best and Brightest

Caitlin Burgess on Feb 6th, 2020
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Video Interviews

Three different hosts, 19 jam-packed episodes, 20 incredible guests—countless amazing insights gained.

TopRank Marketing’s inaugural season of Break Free B2B, a video podcast series featuring the expertise, experiences, and advice of diverse marketing minds, is officially wrapped.

With the goal of delivering B2B marketers the encouragement and inspiration to break free of business-to-business norms to drive bigger, better, bolder results, we covered everything from change management to visual storytelling to what’s next in B2B influencer marketing. And of course, we’d be remiss if we didn’t take a moment to reflect and share some of our favorite tidbits from each of our incredible guests.

Throughout the season, there were a few key topical areas we honed in on:

Break Free B2B Season 1 Wrap Up: Top Insights from the Marketing Industry’s Best and Brightest

Authenticity and Great B2B Content Marketing Go Hand In Hand

Lane Ellis on Feb 5th, 2020
B2B Marketing

Are you using enough authenticity in your B2B marketing to build greater inherent trust into your brand purpose?

If you’re not sure, read on — and let’s examine how authenticity, influence, and trust go hand-in-hand to deliver great B2B content marketing.

Authenticity is a key factor in great B2B marketing, with the trust it builds powering campaigns that will stand apart from the crowd.

Influence plays two roles in authenticity, as those who have influence are seen as being authentic, and content built with authenticity creates its own inherent influence. This connection between influence and authenticity has a surprisingly lengthy history, as I explored in “10 Tips From Influencer Marketing’s Hidden 1,000-Year History.”

Authenticity and Great B2B Content Marketing Go Hand In Hand

What B2B Podcasters Need to Know About SEO

Joshua Nite on Feb 4th, 2020
B2B Marketing, Podcast Marketing, Podcasting

There are few things more satisfying than clicking “Publish” on a shiny new podcast. All the hours of planning and recording are done. You ran down your podcast launch checklist. Now it’s time for the world to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

You can sit back and watch the downloads roll in, right?

Well… it depends on whether people can find your podcast. While the podcast market isn’t oversaturated yet, it’s still a crowded playing field.

Post-launch, your podcast promotion plan will likely include a mix of paid promotion, influencer amplification, and social media marketing to help build your audience. But before you record a second of audio, your organic strategy can help ensure your podcast is found and treasured.

What B2B Podcasters Need to Know About SEO

The Science and Art of Best Answer B2B Marketing Content

Nick Nelson on Feb 3rd, 2020
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, SEO

As a marketer, I love experiencing the inner dynamics of our profession from the other side. Our agency talks so much about the value of delivering best answer content and fully satisfying a searcher’s curiosities; recently I experienced this value first-hand.

Let’s set the stage. A couple weeks ago I was mindlessly flipping through channels on cable TV and I came across an old favorite: Alien, the 1979 sci-fi horror flick from director Ridley Scott.

This classic film also had a classic tagline: “In space, no one can hear you scream.” In my boredom, I got to wondering about the validity of that statement, so I pulled up a Google search on my phone and typed in: is there sound in space.

The Science and Art of Best Answer B2B Marketing Content

Digital Marketing News: Google Rejiggers Results Design, Instagram’s Brand Mentions Feature, Octi AR Social Network, & CX Gets More Budget

Lane Ellis on Jan 31st, 2020
Online Marketing News

2020 January 31 Gartner Chart

Google Search Console launches new removals tool
Google has rolled out three sizable changes to its widely-used Search Console, including the ability to temporarily hide URLs, new filtering insights, and information on outdated content, the search giant recently announced. Search Engine Land

Instagram Is Adding a New Way to Find and Share Stories that Mention Your Profile
Instagram has launched an addition that allows brands to conveniently view all of their mentions in Instagram Stories, along with a slew of re-sharing options that bring digital marketers new brand insights, the Facebook-owned platform recently announced. Social Media Today

This New Facebook Tool Reveals How You Are Being Tracked Online
Social media giant Facebook has launched a tool for showing how users of the platform are being tracked through non-Facebook apps and websites, with its new Off-Facebook Activity utility offering additional tracking insight and opt-out options, the firm recently announced. Forbes

Digital Marketing News: Google Rejiggers Results Design, Instagram’s Brand Mentions Feature, Octi AR Social Network, & CX Gets More Budget

Break Free B2B Series: Margaret Magnarelli on the Psychology of Trust for Better Content Marketing

Caitlin Burgess on Jan 30th, 2020
B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Video Interviews

Trust in marketing—how to build it and how to wield it for good—needs to be top of mind for every modern marketer. Why? Because nearly every decision people make, especially when it comes to purchasing decisions, has an element of trust built in. And content marketers have the opportunity to become trusty guides.

“No one knows everything about everything,” Margaret Magnarelli, Executive Director of Digital Product Evolution and Growth Marketing at Morgan Stanley, shared with us in a recent Break Free B2B interview. “So, we have to be able to give our customers as much information as we can… and take them as close to the line of purchase—to the experience of purchase—as we can.”

Break Free B2B Series: Margaret Magnarelli on the Psychology of Trust for Better Content Marketing

The BIGLIST of 50 Top B2B Marketing Conferences in 2020

Lane Ellis on Jan 29th, 2020
B2B Marketing

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?

Over the past decade the number of conferences has skyrocketed, making it harder than ever to hone in on the ones that can best help build your business, boost your networking opportunities, and offer the most relevant new industry education from top speakers, especially when it comes to B2B marketing.

For 2020 we’ve gathered together no fewer than 50 events that place an emphasis on B2B marketing in all its facets, and we’re thrilled to present the list here, in chronological order.

The BIGLIST of 50 Top B2B Marketing Conferences in 2020

The Universal Translator: How Marketers Can Improve Communication with Internal Stakeholders

Joshua Nite on Jan 28th, 2020
B2B Marketing

Star Trek is one of my favorite franchises. It’s a beacon to guide humanity to a brighter future: One without wars and scarcity, dedicated to discovery and enlightenment.

(Can you tell I really loved the Picard series premiere?)

(He has a PIT BULL named NUMBER ONE.) Photo Credit: CBS

But the best tech in all of Star Trek isn’t the transporter, the replicator, or even the holodeck. It’s the universal translator, a gizmo that can process language in real-time and convey every nuance and idiom.

We have a similar technology right now, but… well, it could use some work.

“Shivers down my spine” turns into “chicken skin?” That kind of margin of error would cause some serious diplomatic crises in Starfleet.

The Universal Translator: How Marketers Can Improve Communication with Internal Stakeholders