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B2B Marketing & Lead Generation

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SEO in 10 Easy Tips. Having your site top-ranked for a hot keyword can effectively improve your traffic and therefore your profits as well. All you need to do is to optimize your content and create many links of different quality. But if you don’t have any money to start off, it’s hard but it can be done. You may also have the money it takes for reaching a top position, but are unsure if your money will be well spent or not. It may cost you a whole lot more than you thought in the beginning. Whether you have the money or not, considering a self-made budget SEO is a wise thing to do, because it’s both free and educating. Here’s 10 free ways to improve your rankings Related Resources from B2C» Free Webcast: The Future of Marketing: Social Listening + Action 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Fine-tune your content marketing strategy for B2B success. Do Not Confuse Customer Experience With Customer Service. Popular Today in Business: All Popular Articles There are too many people who use the customer experience and customer service/support terms interchangeably. Even well respected authors and customer centricity consultants, like Don Peppers, occasionally slip into this ambiguous trap. Here are some basic definitions found on the web with a simple query: “Customer experience (CX) is the sum of all experiences a customer has with a supplier of goods and/or services, over the duration of their relationship with that supplier. “Customer Service is the assistance and advice provided by a company to those people who buy or use its products or services Customer service is just one of the attributes that comprise customer experience, but it is most definitely not the same thing.

Here are some examples to make the distinctions a little more clear: • The most attentive waiter can’t improve a poorly cooked dish, but a scrumptious meal can be remarkably experienced in self-served establishment. 70% follow social media for business purposes – Can it be ignored ? | Marketing, Advertising, and Media News | Pitch Magazine India. Moneka Khurana, Digital Consultant and Trainer 70% social media visitors are frequenting platforms for business purposes which surely wants to make B2B marketers to want to sit up and take note. Lets start by understanding a few quick facts about B2B social media marketing Organisations set varied goals on social media which in descending order range from brand awareness, customer acquisition lead generation to customer retention.B2B marketers rate blogs & in person events as most effectiveAfter Twitter and Linkedin, Youtube and slideshare has been rated as second most effective marketing form for B2B content.On an average 30% of B2B marketing budgets are allocated to content marketing.

Platform choices should be decided based on nature of content to maximise conversation value and virality. Serious brand centric content is best placed on blogs, twitter, linkedin etc whilst casual customer centric content thrives on facebook/youtube etc. "Revenue and The CMO" Provides Case Study Worth Reading. “Revenue and The CMO” Provides Case Study Worth Reading Selecting a unique business book is difficult sometimes. Some topics require a lengthy treatment that may not fit into a busy schedule. Others are given too few pages to offer much insight on a topic. But some authors hit that perfect balance, short enough for the busy small business person and yet the perfect length … Content Usefulness Freshness Summary A concise aid for on-the-go marketers, sales teams, and managers.

Selecting a unique business book is difficult sometimes. But some authors hit that perfect balance, short enough for the busy small business person and yet the perfect length to deal with the subject matter effectively. The author Glenn Gow (@CrimsonCEO) addresses big data needs from the perspective of a company’s Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). This book is a short read – 90 pages – with half of that dedicated to a case study and half made up of lessons learned. Inspired B2B Marketing with Xerox's Leah Quesada. How B2B Marketers Will Spend Their Budgets In 2014. Popular Today in Business: All Popular Articles Marketing budget allocations should, of course, always be based on the unique a company’s unique situation: its specific needs, experiences, strengths, market position, market conditions and trends, etc.

That said, it can nevertheless be helpful to know how one’s competitors and peers in other industries are planning to split up their marketing dollars for the coming year. This knowledge can help marketing executives identify gaps and opportunities within their own plans, as well as providing “ammunition” for high-level budget battles. So it’s helpful that MarketingSherpa recently asked a large number of marketers how they planned to change tactical allocations for the coming year. Among the key findings: Related Resources from B2C» Free Webcast: The Future of Marketing: Social Listening + Action Digital budgets are growing. The top three areas for budget increases—and five of the top seven tactics—are focused on a company’s “owned” media. B2B Prospecting Data Just Keeps Getting Better. Popular Today in Business: All Popular Articles (Photo credit: Wikipedia) The most reliable and scalable approach to finding new B2B customers is outbound communications–whether one is using mail, phone, or email, or using rented or purchased lists.

B2B marketers typically select targets from prospecting lists based on such traditional variables as industry, company size, and job role/title. But new research indicates that B2B prospecting data is much more detailed these days and that it includes a plethora of variables to choose from: refining your targeting, for building predictive models, or picking your targets even more effectively. My colleague Bernice Grossman and I recently conducted a new study indicating that B2B marketers now have the opportunity to target prospects more efficiently than ever before. Related Resources from B2C» Free Webcast: The Future of Marketing: Social Listening + Action Some of the more intriguing fields now available to marketers include:

You're not safe: The uneven reinvention of marketing in B2B. As part of the The Reinvention of B2B Marketing Study, conducted with SparksGrove, Econsultancy looked at the Fortune 500 through a digital lens and found that perhaps 23% are safe from dramatic disruption. If an organization is a producer of chemicals, raw materials, food or energy products…if they have a very small universe of prospects…then they’re safe. For now. Even if you are in a protected sector, it’s not as simple as what you sell, it’s who you sell to. If your customers sell to consumers that’s a threat. Just ask suppliers in the areas of photography, transportation cartography, reference information or desktop peripherals how the smart phone affected their B2B businesses. If you have competitors who are taking advantage of advances in digital customer experience and customer journey analysis, marketing automation, or audience management, that’s a threat. So perhaps even that 23% isn’t safe.

At the macro view, medium-term credit pressures affect all sizes of company. 5 Ways BIG Data Can Be A BIG Deal For B2B. “Big data is the term for a collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using on-hand database management tools or traditional data processing applications.” (Source: Wikipedia) Let’s examine this definition, because I for one, don’t quite agree with it. Santa in particular has a huge data set to handle at this time of year and Christmas is a time when we all want the latest, shiniest, biggest new toy on the block. You do not need to be riding a sleigh around the world at breakneck speed in a single night to realize the benefits of using all the data you have within your business. Data provides opportunities to be smart, flexible, and proactive BUT, many companies do not need big data as it is described in the above definition. Big Data is not the statistics involving every car accident in your town.

The problem is, we cannot even manage the B2B data we have today! Click here to download a free eBooklet: 13 B2B Lead Generation Mistakes You’ve Made. Hey, Small Business Owner: Why Aren't You Blogging on Patch? - Business - Tolland, CT Patch. Run a local business? Wondering how to make a greater online presence for your company? Here's five reasons why starting a blog on Tolland Patch can help. You may have a business Web site, maybe even a Facebook page too. Perhaps you even have a Twitter account. But, are you still wondering how to get your local business noticed in the vastness of cyberspace? Here are five reasons why creating your own business blog space on Tolland Patch can help you stand out from your competitors:1. Search Engine Optimization: Known as SEO, this is the practice of ensuring that your website shows up at the top of search engines searches like Google or Yahoo.

Don't have SEO envy! Readers will start to look to you for advice and make your business look reputable and respected in your industry. Interesting Infographics: Who Is Your B2B Buyer? Popular Today in Business: All Popular Articles We know that understanding the behaviours of their prospects and buyers is important for a successful B2B lead generation play. But how well do you really know your B2B buyers? Earlier this year, the Acquity Group released an infographic titled “Who Is Your B2B Buyer?” Which is based on their 2013 State of B2B Procurement Study. I’m not sure if you viewed it already, but I thought this was worth sharing now; after all, B2B marketers must always remember to reflect on the profiles of their prospects and buyers. With that being said, consider the way the Acquity Group divides buyers into three groups: Up-and-comers Ages 18-35 According to the infographic, 89% of up-and-comers purchase corporate items online – in fact, they are 131% more likely to make corporate purchases on the web compared to those age 35+.

Up-and-comers spend a lengthy amount of time conducting web research. Note: Keep these buyer trends in mind 1. 2. How To Run A Successful B2B Social Media Marketing Campaign. Many marketers think of social media in the context of B2C companies: after all, 4 in 10 consumers buy products that they’ve favorited, liked, tweeted or pinned on various social networks. Yet, according to a recent study from MarketingProfs, 87% of B2B marketers use social media platforms in their content marketing efforts. In fact, of 13 tactics proposed from the content marketing arsenal, social media was the most popular.

So the question stands: how can a B2B marketer ensure that his or her social media inbound campaigns are the most effective they can be? Here’s a closer look at some of the lessons I have learned consulting for social media on behalf of clients in the last few years. Nexus Of Social Media & The B2B Business Model Take a close look at the nexus of B2B business models and the primary function and benefits of social media. The B2B buying process is a demanding one. It’s within this context that the concept of the buying funnel really takes root. Conclusion. B2B Marketing on Twitter: Turn Listening into Social Insights, Influence. At dinner the other night with a group of B2B marketers (sounds fun, I know) the conversation moved between discussing food delivery startups and ride sharing services, to all SaaS pricing, marketing automation and demand generation, all the time.

Now imagine you sell to B2B marketers and happened to be sitting nearby and listening in. Wouldn’t you have loved to pull up a chair and join our conversation? Sure you would. And maybe you’d have also wondered how to influence me or someone else at the dinner to recommend your company. These days you don’t need to hang out at San Francisco restaurants to listen in. Social Listening Isn’t Enough - You Need Social Insights Social listening without context isn’t helpful. Let’s say you're a B2B marketer and want to know what other B2B marketers are up to on social media. How B2B Marketers Engage on Twitter My company Leadtail recently put out a report in collaboration with DNN Software: How B2B Marketers Engage on Twitter.

What did we find out? The Rise of Slideshare, a Powerful B2B Lead Generation Tool. In this Forbes article, the magazine called Slideshare, the web’s leading slide-hosting service site, the “Quiet Giant of Content Marketing”. They have a point. The constant search for new ways to enhance B2B lead generation has been a major headache for marketers since the beginning, and they’ve found gems in videos, e-newsletters, blogs and infographics, and now, they’re leaning on using online slides.

SlideShare has been generally considered as the world’s largest professional content sharing community. “With 60 million monthly visitors and 130 million page views, it is amongst the most visited 200 websites in the world,” the article further claimed. Related Resources from B2C» Free Webcast: The Future of Marketing: Social Listening + Action David Brier, an award-winning branding expert and blogger, shared his insight on why Slideshare is such a hit among brands and marketers.

Does it work? Slideshare is owned by LinkedIn; therefore their potential for business exposure is unparalleled. Best of “42 Rules for B2B Social Media Marketing” B2B Lead Generation Trends for 2014: What's Hot and What's Not [Infographic] It's that time of year again: planning your marketing spend and projecting sales for the upcoming quarters. The challenge, however, is that there's too much conflicting information out there. Do you focus on a pure content marketing play, go heavy on social, spin up an outbound team, double down on your SEM and marketing automation, or just shotgun it, business as usual? No wonder a CMO's job security is often in question. There's a lot of pressure to get everything right while constantly seeking the next silver bullet that will drive profits for stakeholders. And every marketing activity can't be directly correlated to driving leads. But figuring out the most effective methods for generating B2B sales leads should be top of mind for companies looking to connect ROI to their marketing efforts.

Earlier this year, MarketingProfs ran a series of articles on B2B lead generation. The results may surprise you. What's working in your business? Blogging, SEO And Social Media – How B2B Sales Have Changed [INFOGRAPHIC] Five Ways B2C Marketers Can Utilize Mobile App Features For Lead Generation. I hope by now that everyone has at least considered how a mobile app can be used for lead generation or customer retention. It can be scary to pull the trigger on such a steep investment without having any history of ROI. And unfortunately not many developers share their stories – good or bad. Admittedly it’s scary, but an app that’s relevant and useful to your target audience can become a powerful vehicle for lead generation. The first thing to consider is what content you can put in an app that will attract your target audience.

So you give your target audience a reason to download. Geographic Location Smartphones always have a pretty good idea where they are. Related Resources from B2C» Free Webcast: The Future of Marketing: Social Listening + Action Say an app user is running errands downtown. Push Notifications Traditional advertising is becoming less effective. Push notifications can put marketing content literally in customers’ hands and pockets. Email Log-ins Loyal Users. B2B Marketing is Becoming More Like B2C Marketing – Or is it?

Five Myths Of B2B Lead Generation Campaigns.