Lane Ellis

Digital Marketing News: B2B Trends Study, Facebook’s Topics to Watch, & What Consumers Really Think of Personalized Ads

Lane Ellis on Mar 8th, 2019     Online Marketing News

2019 March 8 Spiceworks Chart

B2B Tech Marketing in 2019: Budget, Content, and Strategy Trends
B2B marketers at technology firms largely expect budget allocation to increase or remain the same during 2019, and 44 percent expect to increase paid media spending, two of numerous findings in a new report from Spiceworks. MarketingProfs

Do People Actually Want Personalized Ads?
A high demand for personalized ads is tempered by increased wariness about the type of data collection that typically makes them possible, according to new data from eMarketer that examines several recent reports. eMarketer

Forrester: Digital marketing spend to reach $146B by 2023, but search landscape is changing
By 2023 U.S. digital marketing is expected to grow at a 9 percent compound annual growth rate, reaching $146B, with more spend moving to the growing voice search segment, according to new Forrester report data. Marketing Dive


Digital Marketing News: B2B Trends Study, Facebook’s Topics to Watch, & What Consumers Really Think of Personalized Ads
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Lee Odden

Brian Solis on Lifescale – How to Live a More Creative, Productive and Happy Life Plus Improve Your Marketing

Lee Odden on Mar 7th, 2019     Book Reviews, Interviews

Brian Solis Lifescale

Brian Solis is an award-winning author of 8 books and an internationally known keynote speaker. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Brian for many years and he has consistently been one of the most thoughtful, inspiring and intelligent people I know.

Not long ago Brian and I had a chance to catch up and he shared with me the news of his new book Lifescale – How to live a more creative, productive and happy life. That’s a pretty compelling title and being up to my neck in digital distractions, multi-tasking and a need to break free out of that chaos, the notion of Lifescale was immediately interesting to me both personally and as a way to better empathize with customers as a marketer.


Brian Solis on Lifescale – How to Live a More Creative, Productive and Happy Life Plus Improve Your Marketing
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Nick Nelson

What B2B Marketers Need to Know About Data Privacy Today

Nick Nelson on Mar 6th, 2019     B2B Marketing

Data Privacy in B2B Marketing

You enter a dim and shadowy room. Sitting before you is a wizened fortune teller, staring deeply into the mysterious glowing orb before her.

As her hands hover over the crystal ball, she notices your skeptical frown. So, in order to validate her mystical powers, the stranger begins reciting facts about you: your name, where you’re from, where you went to college, which restaurant you ate at last week.

“What is this sorcery?” you cry, your face growing pale.

She pauses, smirks, and turns around her orb for you to see within. Turns out it’s merely a computer display, with your personal online data aggregated and readily available. The fortune teller reaches up and pulls off her mask to reveal… she’s an advertiser! And suddenly she’s pitching you on accounting software!


What B2B Marketers Need to Know About Data Privacy Today
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Tiffani Allen

Want to Prove Content Marketing ROI? You Need an Actionable Marketing Dashboard

Tiffani Allen on Mar 5th, 2019     Content Marketing, Web Analytics

Why You Need an Actionable Content Marketing Dashboard

Content marketers are believers. We believe our content brings real value to our prospects, clients, and partners. We believe our content is essential for driving demand. And we believe that content marketing is essential for bolstering our company’s bottom line.

However, we’re also realistic; as it’s often said: Seeing is believing. So, we need to be able to show proof of content marketing ROI to get our key stakeholders to believe, too.

And to do this, we need a source of truth that artfully and easily shows how we’re performing against our benchmarks, goals, and key performance indicators (KPIs), as well as where we’ve identified opportunities to improve results. We need an actionable content marketing dashboard.


Want to Prove Content Marketing ROI? You Need an Actionable Marketing Dashboard
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Ashley Zeckman

That’s A Wrap: Top Takeaways From 2019’s B2B Marketing Exchange

Ashley Zeckman on Mar 4th, 2019     B2B Marketing, Marketing PR Conferences

Last week the TopRank Marketing team had the opportunity to attend the annual B2B Marketing Exchange conference in Scottsdale, AZ. This event featured insights from speakers on everything from marketing for the greater good to encouraging true alignment between sales and marketing teams.

For those of you who weren’t able to attend (or who attended but didn’t have a chance to see everything), here are our top insights from this great event.

B2B Doesn’t Have to Be Boring

TopRank Marketing CEO Lee Odden helped attendees break free of boring B2B marketing when he took the stage and shared examples of brands that are winning with content that excites their audience. Here are some of the key takeaways:


That’s A Wrap: Top Takeaways From 2019’s B2B Marketing Exchange
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Caitlin Burgess

The Real Value of Martech & Automation? The Humanization Potential, According to Liz Cope

Caitlin Burgess on Mar 1st, 2019     B2B Marketing, Marketing PR Conferences

Liz Cope at B2BMX

Standing before a room of eager-to-learn marketers at B2B Marketing Exchange, Liz Cope, Director of Marketing Technology and Operations at Ingersoll Rand, was an open, honest, vulnerable … human.

“This is so embarrassing,” she said, admitting that some fundamental marketing functions were missing the mark at her multi-billion-dollar company.

Liz’s candor helped audience members feel right at home and not alone. After all, we’ve all been disappointed to learn that one of our core marketing functions or strategies needed to be reworked, rebooted, or reimagined entirely. Her candid approach also tied well into her session’s theme: Martech, Process and People: Humanizing the Journey to Channel Transformation.

Liz’s presentation was robust, detailing key technologies, processes, and the organizational structure she and her team have put in place to transform their channel marketing strategy. But her message was simple: Automate to humanize.


The Real Value of Martech & Automation? The Humanization Potential, According to Liz Cope
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Lane Ellis

Digital Marketing News: Google AMP’s ROI Rise, Digital Ad Spend Now Dominant, & New B2B Marketing Studies

Lane Ellis on Mar 1st, 2019     Online Marketing News

2019 March 1 Slack Chart

Google touts ROI of AMP display ads, adding they perform best on AMP web pages
Google released data showing that advertisers who use Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) display ads have higher return on investment (ROI) and click-through-rates (CTR) when used on dedicated AMP pages, including a 12 percent increase over 2018. Marketing Land

Do Marketers Think Their Strategies Are Successful? [Study]
Marketing strategy success rates for marketers in both B2B and B2C fields are the subject of new report data, showing that 62 percent view their strategies as only somewhat successful when it comes to achieving primary campaign objectives, one of several key revelations contained in the report. MarketingProfs


Digital Marketing News: Google AMP’s ROI Rise, Digital Ad Spend Now Dominant, & New B2B Marketing Studies
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Ashley Zeckman

The Future (& Present) of Marketing: Collaboration, Technology & Innovation

Ashley Zeckman on Feb 28th, 2019     B2B Marketing, Digital Marketing, Marketing & PR Industry

What do you get when you combine an enterprise CMO and a partner at one of the world’s largest professional services firms?

I can’t speak for all scenarios but at B2BMX in Scottsdale this week, it led to an entertaining and insightful conversation, from two different perspectives.

Jeanniey Mullen, former CMO of Mercer and Vince Walden, Partner at Ernst and Young led an engaging discussion on the importance of innovation within organizations (large and small) as well as opportunities for better operationalizing your marketing department. Below are three ideas for how to future and present-proof your marketing.   

3 Ideas for Future-Proofing Your Marketing

Encourage Cross-Functional Collaboration

Often when brands talk about collaborating with others, it’s in the context of their own departments. Marketing teams look for insights from other marketers, salespeople look to a top seller and so on.


The Future (& Present) of Marketing: Collaboration, Technology & Innovation
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Caitlin Burgess

Sales & Marketing Alignment: Shahid Javed Shares How to Go from Hate to Love in 60 Days

Caitlin Burgess on Feb 28th, 2019     B2B Marketing, Marketing & PR Industry

It’s a tale as old as time. The marketing team is hyper-focused on awareness campaigns, events, and driving more leads to fill the funnel. Meanwhile, the sales team is hyper-focused on meeting sales and revenue goals, and nurturing relationships to empty the funnel.

These two teams occupy two very different functional areas within a company. They’re moving at completely different speeds. They’re operating under their own rules. And as a result, there’s tension, misunderstanding, and even … hate.

But according to Shahid Javed, Director of Enterprise Marketing for Hughes Network Systems, B2B marketers can be change agents here. They can give and get love from their sales teams. And they can do it in as little as 60 days.


Sales & Marketing Alignment: Shahid Javed Shares How to Go from Hate to Love in 60 Days
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Caitlin Burgess

Bye-Bye Boring B2B: Lee Odden Shows B2BMX Attendees the Power of Interactive Influencer Content

Caitlin Burgess on Feb 27th, 2019     B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Influencer Marketing, Interactive Marketing, Marketing PR Conferences

Interactive Influencer Content Marketing

Quick question, B2B marketers: How many of you wake up feeling like this about your B2B content?

via GIPHY

Not so much? Hey, it’s OK. You’re a passionate and proud B2B marketer. But finding a way to create exciting, inspiring, infotaining content that connects with your audience is hard work. After all, B2B isn’t innately sexy—it’s booooooring. Oh, and between content overload, changing consumer preferences for personalization, and diminishing audience trust, it’s increasingly hard to capture and keep attention.

So, here’s another question: Are you ready to say bye-bye to boring content and hello to exciting, inspiring, and infotaining content experiences?

Yes so much? Good. Because, as TopRank Marketing CEO Lee Odden told a packed room at B2B Marketing Exchange this week, you can.


Bye-Bye Boring B2B: Lee Odden Shows B2BMX Attendees the Power of Interactive Influencer Content
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Ashley Zeckman

Carlos Abler of 3M Asks B2BMX Attendees: Can Marketing Save the World?

Ashley Zeckman on Feb 26th, 2019     B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Marketing PR Conferences

For many B2B marketers, it can be so easy to get caught up in the day-to-day tactics of marketing to where we don’t take the time to pause and ask ourselves: Can marketing save the world?

To help us answer that question, Carlos Abler, Leader of Content Marketing & Strategy at 3M took the stage for a keynote at the B2B Marketing Exchange conference in Scottsdale, AZ.

In his keynote, Carlos shared a variety of ways that B2B marketers can approach marketing differently to increase their impact on customers, prospects and the world. Below are some of the key takeaways.

3 Ways Marketing Can Save the World

Marketers as Publishers

In the 21st century, it’s no surprise that the internet has become THE location for conducting business. We know that the majority of customer relations are done through content. Why? The internet allows consumers to self-serve.


Carlos Abler of 3M Asks B2BMX Attendees: Can Marketing Save the World?
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