B2B Marketing, Digital Media and Marketing Strategy
If online advertising isn’t a meaningful part of your B2B marketing program, you may have dismissed the recent uproar caused by Firefox’s decision to block third party cookies.
However, it doesn’t just impact online advertisers. Many B2B marketers will be impacted as well.
One of the biggest casualties will be your campaign microsites. [Read more…]
Looking at most B2B marketing, the answer is clearly “no, you don’t.” You do not trust your content to tell your story, grow your audience or sell your solutions. Instead, you put your trust in your outbound marketing and sales process.
Don’t trumpet your content as your communication king, as the key way you connect with your audience, if the real way you connect with your audience comes after they fill out a registration form.
Your content is like the teen that still needs a chaperone, you aren’t willing to send it out on its own yet. And that is ok! [Read more…]
In B2B marketing, and particularly in enterprise technology marketing, publishers lean heavily on email lists for lead generation programs, including whitepaper and webcast promotions.
B2B email lists also still command high rental rates ($300+ CPMs are very common). Both directly or indirectly, email continues to be an important vehicle for B2B publishers.
But when you rent an email list, purchase an ad in an email newsletter or run a lead generation program with a publisher, do you know how much the publisher has used (or abused) their email list? [Read more…]
Look around you. There is a coffee shop on nearly every corner. Supermarkets offer one-stop shopping for all your needs. Your favorite TV shows are recorded or are available on demand, conveniently available anytime you want. Google and Wikipedia have put information on nearly any subject just a keystroke or click away.
In our personal lives, convenience is all around us and we expect it at every turn.
The question is, are you delivering convenience for your audience at every stage of the the buying process?
[Read more…]
In B2B marketing, bad data represents a huge lost opportunity. According to SiriusDecisions, companies with the best quality data drive 70% more revenue through marketing programs than those with simply average data quality.
Despite the cost of bad data, the practice of the average marketer guarantees bad data, and it may be getting worse each year. With a growing body of research showing current marketing practices are consistently delivering bad data, it is time for change. [Read more…]
Lead generation and demand generation, although related, are at odds with each other. When many B2B marketers say demand generation, they mean lead generation, and the program will be measured on leads and the value of those leads.
The problem is, one is focused on changing the audience’s perspective, the other is focused on capturing their information. [Read more…]
Many B2B marketers look to content marketing as a key part of establishing thought leadership. However, companies frequently expect the same content marketing program to capture contacts or leads as well.
The problem is, registration and thought leadership are at odds with each other. Thought leadership requires your point of view to be broadly distributed and recognized across a peer group, where it can drive discussion and shape opinions. [Read more…]
“Why do you want my email and phone number again? So your sales consultant can contact me? No thanks, I’ll pass.”
Most 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:
A quick definition. Lead generation, for purposes of this post, is collecting registration information for content, in order to build a marketing database or deliver leads to telemarketing and then on to sales.
Delivering leads for sales drives today’s B2B marketing organization. According to a study from Fusion B2B on 2011 B2B marketing priorities, lead generation is the single top priority of B2B marketers, at 26%. By comparison, awareness only captures 7%, near the end of the list. B2B marketing is all about lead generation.
But lead generation is breaking, and if your marketing relies heavily on lead generation, it will slowly break too. Here are the five things breaking lead generation today.
You have committed to content marketing, you have invested in creating content, and your website has turned into a veritable content hub. At every turn, you offer related content to entice a registration and get someone to opt in to to your drip and nurture program. You have enough traffic, but you need more registrations to fuel your nurture program.
What you really need is a new mindset. Your content is not free. You are selling it for contact information.