B2B Marketing, Digital Media and Marketing Strategy
“We will start with an awareness efforts for the four weeks. This will provide air cover and soften the market for our demand generation campaign.”
Theory, benchmarks and the wisdom of the marketing crowd would indicate that you have a sound strategy. This approach is common in B2B marketing, particularly for mid-sized marketers.
Unfortunately, when you dig into it, the strategy doesn’t hold water. It fails, consistently, for two reasons. [Read more…]
What happens when you survey 50 media buyers? You learn that media buyers have put a bit of social lipstick on their buys but they still don’t understand the potential of social media, the importance of content, and so much more.
About two weeks ago, two equity research analysts at Cowen & Co surveyed 50 ad buyers. 60% said Facebook delivers the best ROI, 25% picked LinkedIn and just 5% chose Twitter.
The analyst’s conclusion? Sell Twitter. They expect Twitter’s stock price to fall to $32 (it closed at $62.53 on 1/21).
My conclusion? The majority of media buyers are doomed. And Twitter will be just fine. [Read more…]
For all of the discussion of data in marketing, and Big Data in 2014, most B2B marketers are showing they are inept when it comes to actually using data to improve the majority of their marketing.
Yes, B2B marketers are doing a few things well when it comes to using data:
Sound ok? Before you give yourself a pat on the back, this isn’t even the tip of the iceberg! [Read more…]
I’ve had it! I’m sick of crappy content, fluffy sales claims and advice that ignores the real issue. And I hope you will help (more on that in a minute).
I’m tired of issues without examples, of the content marketers that are afraid of naming names and creating conflict.
Even worse, I’m tired of publishers that like to name drop and associate big brands with bad behaviors because it drives traffic, even when the brand was innocent.
The now common refrain says every company is a media company and every individual is a publisher. In one sense, it is true. [Read more…]
If you published 250 blog posts over the last year and saw no benefit to any area of your business from that effort, what would you do?
What if you were just getting started, you published 20 posts over the last quarter, and you already saw an immediate positive impact on your business?
That’s what I thought. [Read more…]
Programmatic buying, driven by real-time bidding (RTB), is the fastest growing segment of digital marketing today. But it isn’t ready yet for today’s enterprise B2B marketer.
Time and time again, B2B marketers fall prey to a wonderful sounding sales pitch for their demand generation plan that goes something like this:
“We use 100’s of data points and sophisticated technology that optimizes every single impression in your campaign. Through our connections to every major exchange, we evaluate billions of impressions across millions of sites every day to find the exact audience and inventory you need at a fraction of the cost you would otherwise pay.”
Wow, sign me up, right? Cost-effective, constantly optimized, highly targeted. Get this program live, I’m taking a vacation!
And then you see the results. [Read more…]
Stop grumbling about Facebook’s latest blow to marketers.
You’ve increased your likes 100-fold in the last two years, and many of your competitors have too. Others have finally jumped on the social media bandwagon, adding their own voice to the marketing cacophony of Facebook.
Of course your posts aren’t reaching as many people on Facebook! [Read more…]
Native advertising has been one of the hottest advertising topics of 2013. According to a recent survey, the majority of publishers now offer or plan to offer native advertising programs.
Two months ago, I examined the performance of more than 300 BrandVoice articles on Forbes, one of the most established native publishing platforms for B2B marketers.
One of the key reasons, however, is the surprising part. Google. [Read more…]
Everyone in B2B marketing says content marketing is important. Everyone is increasing content marketing’s share of the budget. And yet most B2B marketers don’t feel like their content marketing is effective. (Stats available from CMI’s benchmark report).
The outlook seems grim. Marketers are pouring more and more into something they aren’t confident in. These aren’t just small test budgets, content represents a big portion of overall marketing budgets as well. Yet confidence in the effectiveness of their content programs remains low.
So why do programs fail? Time and time again, B2B marketers keep making the same mistakes. Here are the top three reasons, based on my observations and conversations with other marketers, why content marketing initiatives fail. [Read more…]
“Paid search is slowly failing B2B marketers.”
I never expected to say that. For years paid search has been one of the most cost-effective media channels for B2B lead generation. But over the last year, I have seen or heard case after case of B2B marketers struggling to make paid search, and Google AdWords in particular, cost-effective. [Read more…]