You are here: Home / Archives for B2B marketing

Three Questions for Measuring Social, Not Media

By 2 Comments

You Manage What You Measure.broken dreams, broken heart, broken relationship, broken key

This should be a call to ensure you measure your social media activities, and to measure them correctly.

One of the challenges of measuring social media ROI is the return comes in many different forms. As companies develop social media plans and programs, anticipating the ways social media will deliver ROI is a challenge few have addressed. Most companies quickly implement traditional media measurements, slightly adapted for social media.

Before you continue, ask the following questions: [Read more…]

Five Marketing Changes You Need to Make

By 6 Comments

CardsIf B2B marketing isn’t dead, it is changing very quickly. But the real change isn’t the marketing, it is how marketing has evolved in response to the evolving buyer.

The biggest factor driving the changes in today’s buyers is the accessibility of information technology has enabled. This change has turned demand creation upside down. In the past, your prospect held the budget cards and you held the information cards. Through the sales and negotiation dance, the cards were slowly revealed one at a time, with you and your prospect jockeying for advantage through the entire process. [Read more…]

Three Principles for the Future of Marketing

By 8 Comments

The TunnelIn the future, marketing must be valuable. But that isn’t enough.

Earlier this week, Michael Brenner outlined the future of marketing, drawing from last fall’s future of advertising article in Fast Company. It is a great perspective. The question is, how do you accomplish it? How do you, as Michael said, “create communities of customer advocates and evangelists”?

There are three principles to excel in the future of marketing that Michael presented and create the advocates and evangelists [Read more…]

A New Way to Understand Your Social Media Audience

By 4 Comments

Audience research is invaluable and well developed personas provide a broad array of insights into the lives and minds of your target audience, insights that form the basis for your social media plans.

Then, you put your social media plan in place, including sharing great content from others and creating your own. And you hit a fundamental disconnect. Your planning is based on your target audience, but you are measuring activity from everyone. Here are two questions that are difficult to answer.

  • Is the content you share via social media resonating with your target audience or a random audience?
  • What content is most popular with your target audience?

[Read more…]

Five Keys to Creating Content that Drives Awareness

By 20 Comments

StartCurrent marketing wisdom says content should be mapped to buying cycles. Yet according to a study from MarketingProfs and Junta42, 78% of B2B marketers say awareness is an objective of content marketing.

Question: Where is awareness most valuable in the buying cycle?
Answer: Early stage research and creation of a consideration set.

Question: Would it be better if prospects were aware of your company when they started the research process?
Answer: “Well, DUH!”

It is time to step back from planning content for the buying cycle and focus on Stage Zero Content. [Read more…]

Social Media Is Not Like Selling Used Cars

By 8 Comments

What makes you think you have a solution?

MustacheLast week I overheard a conversation about a technical roadblock between colleagues. I immediately jumped in with a solution. Big #FAIL. They did not want a solution from me, and as it turned out, I didn’t actually have a solution. The problem was way over my head.

Luckily, we are friends, or at least colleagues. This wasn’t my first conversation with them. But if we didn’t already know each other, this would be one of the worst ways to introduce myself. Yet this is exactly what social media marketers do every day.

[Read more…]

Three Reasons Mobile Changes Everything in Marketing

By 4 Comments

iPhone 3GS at the San Francisco Apple StoreThe research about mobile usage does not do mobile justice. Sure, 82% of executives have a smartphone. 49% of C-level executives search on a mobile device.

Yes, mobile is pervasive, but numbers alone don’t capture how much mobile can change marketing.

Many B2B marketers are catching on slowly, distracted by low mobile usage on corporate websites or a limited understanding of how mobile marketing and mobile accessibility contributes to goals. [Read more…]

Three Reasons to Give Me a Solution, Not a Sales Pitch

By 9 Comments

Closed for businessWe don’t want to be sold. When we expect a sales pitch, we put our defenses up, or just turn away.

We always need solutions to challenges. Lower cost, reduce risk, increase visibility. Your solution does that, right? The problem is, everyone else’s does too. Claims like these are so broadly used in marketing they have become cliche and have lost nearly all meaning.

The answer is to show me your solution. No, not the worn out demo, where I commit my time and you share a mostly canned view of your product. Skip the traditional positioning step and tell me what you will do specifically for me.

[Read more…]

What Comes After Lead Generation?

By 9 Comments

Steering WheelTwo weeks ago, I wrote Five Reasons Lead Generation is on its Last Legs, exploring the reasons why today’s common lead generation tactics are beginning to fail. However, the requirement that marketing deliver leads will not change.

Marketers need to move beyond today’s content for contact information exchange and embrace new ways to drive demand and capture more interested and qualified contacts. Underlying the new demand generation activities will be two key changes.
[Read more…]