Top 3 Media Buying Mistakes B2B Marketers Make

Wrong Way -- B2B Marketing Mistakes

Sometimes the best advice and perspective doesn’t come from the public figures we hear at conferences or see quoted in publications. It comes from the people who are hands on, doing the work in a wide range of situations.

Toby HudsonToby is one of those guys. You probably don’t know Toby, but maybe you should. He recently joined Business Insider as the Sales Director for the Southeast, after a number of years with CBSi, parent to B2B technology focused properties ZDNet and TechRepublic (among others). Like many of the people I work with at publishers, Toby works on more programs in a month than many of us work on in a year and that position gives him first hand insight into what is working, and what isn’t, at scale. [Read more…]

What Online Marketers Know About You

Rubble
According to many in the digital advertising industry, at some point in the future digital marketing will be so targeted that consumers will want to see the ads. Advertising will tell us about the products we want to know about, give us a direct path to the content we need and provide access to discounts on products we want.

How will marketers do this? Data, of course. Information marketers can use to determine what you are interested in. [Read more…]

A Simple Trick To Improve Your LinkedIn Campaign Performance

Missing
If you are a B2B marketer, you are paying attention to LinkedIn. You almost can’t ignore it today.

LinkedIn has become a powerhouse media company for B2B marketers, from opportunities for direct engagement (it does still have a few social media trappings) to publishing, content promotion and advertising. Not to mention the targeting data (but we’ll come back to that). [Read more…]

The Lie of B2B Brand Advertising

Don't Believe the Lies T-Shirt“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…]

Why The Analysts Are Wrong About Twitter’s Ad Platform

Media Buyers Are Dinosaurs: Picture of a FossilWhat 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…]

Why Most B2B Advertising Doesn’t Matter (And Steps To Fix It)

AttentionIf your marketing requires an explanation to your audience, it has missed the point.

If you expect your audience to stop and think about your ad, you don’t comprehend yet just how unimportant ads are to your audience.

As marketers, you agonize over creative and messaging. You study it. You dissect it. You inspect every nuance. You treat it like a piece of art, to be savored slowly. [Read more…]

No, Content Will Not Kill Advertising

Stop SignsAdvertising is dead (again). The latest killers are the social media and content marketing stars.

Not so fast.

Marketing is a spectrum. At one end might be the experience someone has using your product or service as you intended. At the other might be a tiny mobile banner or a transit bench on a side street.

Advertising isn’t dead. Comparing different parts of the marketing spectrum is like comparing visible light to X-rays; “better” is entirely dependent on your purpose. [Read more…]

7 B2B Advertising Opportunities You Are Missing

B2B advertisers generally target smaller, harder to define audiences than consumer advertisers, which puts a major premium on effective targeting in B2B advertising.

However, many B2B marketing groups are continuing to use the same targeting options they mastered in print and direct mail, simply applied to newer digital marketing tactics.

Today, B2B marketers have many new options available. Below are 7 options and potential providers for each one. [Read more…]

B2B Marketing Has a Perception Problem

Do you care if potential prospects see your services as high value or a complete rip-off? Of course you do.

This is about the perception each individual has about you. This is about your brand.

Perceptions are created by experience with your products, service and people, through what other people say about you (even competitors) and through your own marketing.

No one buys from a company they distrust or pays a premium for a solution they see as a low cost provider.

However, in B2B, the value of perceptions have been set aside, in favor of the new holy grail of B2B marketing: lead generation. [Read more…]