6 Ways B2B Marketers Are Falling Short Today

Marketing Roller CoasterAs I came back from the B2B Marketing Innovation Summit, put on by Demandbase, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we aren’t doing enough. That I’m not doing enough.

Sure, marketing is changing faster today than it did yesterday. Blah blah blah. It doesn’t matter how fast marketing is changing! The real question is “how are you changing?”

Here are six areas that struck me. No, they aren’t new. But they are places many B2B marketers, including myself, should be doing so much more. [Read more…]

One change that dramatically improved B2B marketing results

Slice of a TractorYou can’t rely on your own data.

Your prospects spend the vast majority of their time doing everything except opening your emails, visiting your site or viewing your content.

Despite the magic of marketing automation and the ability to collect information on every mouse movement on every page of our sites, we only get a tiny window into the lives of our prospects. And that tiny window can turn out to be very misleading. [Read more…]

What Online Marketers Know About You

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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…]

LinkedIn: Do New Offerings Make It the King of B2B?

Picture of a Lion at the Oregon ZooIf you are in B2B advertising, you cannot ignore LinkedIn. With great reach (#22 US site in January 2013 according to ComScore), extensive profile data actively maintained by the audience and granular targeting options, LinkedIn is a powerhouse in the world of B2B advertising.

So when LinkedIn introduces a new advertising option, as a B2B advertiser, you need to pay attention. Here are two new offerings LinkedIn introduced in the last quarter that seem to have slipped under the radar of most B2B marketers. [Read more…]

3 Steps to Using Data in an Imperfect Data World

Archery target with arrows around the edgeData is reinventing the online advertising market. Today, algorithmic media buying is one of the fastest growing areas in online advertising and without data, it wouldn’t even exist.

This isn’t just a consumer advertising trend, increasingly B2B advertising is being driven by data as well.

However, the problem with online data is it is inherently dirty. Collected from registration forms, browsing behavior or appended offline data sources, collecting online data is an imperfect process at best.

So what is the smart way to use dirty data to improve your advertising? Glad you asked.

Here are three steps that will guide both media and creative. [Read more…]

A New Way To Connect Twitter To Lead Generation

B2B marketers are so anxious to generate leads from social media they are turning Twitter into a list for cold calls and mass email blasts.

In the last couple weeks, two companies have emailed or called me because I follow influential sales and marketing accounts on Twitter.

There is nothing social about this! Marketers are just turning social into a source of email or telemarketing lists for mass outbound marketing.

Here is a better way, along with actual results, that companies can use to drive leads through social media. [Read more…]

Why B2B Marketers Are Slow To Invest In Data

Join #B2BChat on Twitter every Thursday at 8:00 PM EasternGood data is essential for B2B marketing organizations to excel. Sirius Decisions research indicates that good data can increase revenue driven through marketing by 70%. It isn’t hard to believe, just ask any B2B marketer that has tried marketing to a bad prospect list.

Despite the positive impact data can have, B2B marketing organizations have been slow to embrace new sources and types of data.

In a recent #B2Bchat about new data available for B2B marketers, participants shared a number of concerns or barriers to using new data. [Read more…]