You are here: Home / Archives for B2B marketing

Buyers to Marketers: Don’t Call Me, I’ll Call You

By 8 Comments

“Why do you want my email and phone number again? So your sales consultant can contact me? No thanks, I’ll pass.”

Boonville Missing Bucky Walter PhoneMost B2B marketers are still fixated on capturing registration data, and no wonder. The marketing automation machine lives on a diet of email and your sales process is built on the telephone.

The problem is, your buyer’s process is not built on your email or your phone. According to research, buyers only engage with companies directly during the last 40% of their research process.

When you insist on registration, you are in effect telling prospects:

  • We don’t want to be involved in the first half of your research.
  • We are only willing to engage with you on our terms and timetable.

[Read more…]

Content Marketing and Choose Your Own Adventure Books

By Leave a Comment

Choose Your Own Adventure books were a staple when I was growing up. I could read them for hours, choosing different paths and seeing each outcome unfold.

Original Choose Your Own Adventure

As a child, these books gave me a sense of control, they engaged me with choices and opportunities throughout the book.

Today, B2B marketers use content to meet the information needs of their audiences. However, the experience is often built on the assumption the marketer knows best, with a carefully planned stream of content dictated for each person. [Read more…]

Are Smartphones Making Us Stupid?

By 3 Comments

Text On The BeachSmartphones always have a corner of our attention. When they beep, buzz or blink, we take notice. Walking down the sidewalk, on public transit, or while watching television, our smartphones are our sidekicks. Even during meetings, or maybe especially during meetings.

But our attention is rarely complete. Few people schedule smartphone time the way they schedule work time. For intensive tasks, most people still return to their desktop or laptop (ever try building a financial model on a smartphone? I wouldn’t recommend it).

Likewise, the attention mobile devices claim limits the attention we give other activity. [Read more…]

Optimizing Digital B2B Marketing Campaigns

By 2 Comments

Plans are carefully laid. The creative is impactful. The content is compelling. The media surrounds your audience. Search, social and email are integrated in support of the overarching program. But the results are not there.

Your plan is the result of your passion. When someone says it isn’t performing, it is nearly a personal affront, but it shouldn’t be. Doing something that doesn’t work is learning. Continuing to do something that doesn’t work is lunacy.

Let’s skip past setting goals and establishing your metrics. If you are still struggling with this, there are numerous good articles available. When should you optimize your campaign? When are you certain that making a change is better than waiting it out? [Read more…]

The Importance of Woozles in B2B Marketing

By 14 Comments

The role of brand in enterprise B2B marketing can be a subject of debate (my friend Maureen Blandford even wrote a book “Branding Doesn’t Work in B2B“). With complex buying processes, multiple stakeholders, and a high touch sales process, how important is a brand? And what does that have to do with a woozle?

Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

Woozle’s live in the hearts and minds of Pooh and his friends. And most importantly, woozle’s change behavior in the Hundred Acre Wood.

Like a woozle, your brand [Read more…]

3 Questions For When Mobile is the First Screen

By 4 Comments

my iPhone family pileMobile devices are expected to be the primary mode of internet access in the next three years. This is worth saying again: Your company’s digital experience will be primarily via mobile devices.

The current response from marketing falls woefully short of where they need to be in a few short months.

Discussions of mobile marketing quickly turn to apps, mobile sites and how to make content mobile-friendly. Even when embraced, this response is eerily similar to early websites, which extended brochures to the web by merely converting to HTML and adding hyperlinks. [Read more…]

Three Ways to Break Down Barriers to Strategic Planning in B2B Marketing

By Leave a Comment

BarricadesB2B marketers often face internal obstacles to strategic planning. Common barriers I outlined in Removing the Barriers to Strategic Planning in B2B Marketing are not valuing strategic planning, not having sufficient time and resources, lacking alignment around a strategy and a lack of internal expertise.

Strategic planning has to begin by addressing these barriers. As long as these issues are not addressed, your company is not ready for strategic planning.

Breaking down the barriers will likely be a bigger challenge than planning. Below are three steps you can take to begin breaking down these barriers in your organization. [Read more…]

Remove the Barriers to Strategic Planning in B2B Marketing

By 7 Comments

As B2B marketers enter the 2012 strategic planning season and begin shaping executional plans, it is important that we get it right. The goal is to create a strategy that survives the full year (and beyond) and gives you a framework for more tactical planning, execution and optimization.

Today, many companies have replaced strategic planning with a set of goals and tactics, without a formalized marketing strategy. [Read more…]

Thought Leadership Marketing is an Oxymoron

By 14 Comments

Thought leadership is a common marketing topic, but unfortunately thought leadership is not a common outcome of marketing. Part of the problem is that thought leadership marketing has lost all notions of actual thought leadership.

Gartner defines thought leadership marketing as “the giving — for free or at a nominal charge — of information or advice that a client will value so as to create awareness of the outcome that a company’s product or service can deliver, in order to position and differentiate that offering and stimulate demand for it.”

The problem is, knowledge of what a product or service can deliver or its differentiation does not establish real thought leadership. [Read more…]

It’s Not Rational, B2B Marketing Needs to Get Emotional!!

By 9 Comments

This post was sparked by a spirited, and at times emotional, debate during the #bizforum chat on Twitter yesterday evening. Thanks to @samfiorella for instigating and @chieflemonhead, @MaureenB2B, @PrashSabharwal and @josepf, among others, for a spirited discussion.

B2B buying is complex because the products are complex. Evaluating B2B solutions is hard, and the final decision is not made with absolute knowledge it is the right decision.

I submit as Exhibit A: the numerous regrettable ERP and CRM investments that have been made by large corporations.

In B2B, buyers are incredibly knowledgeable, but they simply cannot be certain. To confidently proceed, they must believe they are making the best decision. At its heart, it is an emotional decision. [Read more…]