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- In a guest post at the Modern B2B Marketing blog, Joby Blume shares his lessons learned about implementing marketing automation in a B2B setting. First and foremost, he says, it's important to have a well-defined marketing process in place before adding any tech. "If you don't have a marketing process, marketing ... more
- You've got a strong marketing mix—but does it include public speaking? "Whether used to promote a company report or in-house expertise, or simply to engender brand awareness, public speaking is a powerful—and often economical and organic—way to get your message to key influencers and decision-makers," writes Heather Rast at MarketingProfs. ... more
- It became immediately apparent to Howard J. Sewell that something was terribly wrong with his client's lead scoring system. "The most glaring symptom was the absurdly high scores: hundreds of contacts had lead scores of more than 1,000, even though the supposed threshold for a sales-ready lead was a mere ... more
- These days, B2B sales teams are carrying their product demos, order forms, cool presentations—you name it—with them in handy tablet form. And the tablet of choice is often the iPad. Dealmaker 365 blogger Donal Daly has been using the iPad on sales calls since the first model was introduced—and over time, ... more
- How would you rate your company's all-around lead gen game? "Some companies are good at generating B2B sales leads [and] others are good at qualifying and closing those leads," writes Christopher Ryan at Great B2B Marketing, "but the top performing companies are those that leverage B2B lead management techniques and ... more
- Best-in-Class B2B companies generate on average 17% of their leads from social media channels, roughly 230% more marketing-generated leads than other companies (5%), according to a new report by Aberdeen Group, which examines the social marketing strategies of top-performing B2B companies. more
- "Lead generation is hard," writes Cliff Langston at MarketingProfs. "Why make it harder by doing it without a strategy?" But vague goals and loosely articulated objectives aren't enough—it's important to document what you plan to do, and how you plan to do it. Especially since you can craft a solid ... more
- Some 61% of B2B marketers say generating more leads is their biggest marketing challenge in 2012; however, nearly two-thirds say their marketing mix does not meet sales pipeline demands (32%) or they are unsure of whether their marketing mix is effective (31%), according to a new report by BtoB Online ... more
- "Nearly every marketing expert will agree: For a [website] visitor to become a customer, you must take the visitor through three basic stages," writes Sookie Shuen at MarketingProfs. "Those stages are know, like, and trust." In other words, a potential customer won't become a paying customer until she knows what ... more
- The use of social networks, particularly LinkedIn, among engineering, technical, manufacturing and industrial professionals continues to rise: 55% of surveyed tech professionals now use LinkedIn, up 18 percentage points, or 48.6%, from the 37% who did so a year earlier, according to a report by GlobalSpec. more
- So you've developed a groundbreaking inbound content marketing effort that's pulling in prospects in droves! Congratulations! But here's a question: Have you adapted your internal processes to match your prospects' newly acquired expectations? As Ardath Albee notes in a post at the Marketing Interactions blog, when a clever new outreach effort ... more
- "Email is still the most effective marketing technique," writes Bill Rice at the Better Closer blog. "It's easy to automate and highly efficient at bringing in qualified new leads." But a successful email program doesn't just happen. You must convince prospects to open your message, read it, and take action. ... more
- Conferences are ideal venues for plugging into the zeitgeist and networking with colleagues. But they're also expensive. "[And] if you happen to be an introverted marketer, which likely means a conference is not the most comfortable of settings, you'll need a strategy for ensuring your company gets its money's worth—in ... more
- "When consumers hear of a local business that is not well known, it's only natural that they conduct some research before making a purchase," writes Nathan Hanks in an article at MarketingProfs. And when they do, they're most likely to choose results that appear first. "Thus," Hanks continues, "'owning' the first page ... more
- Not every potential buyer approaches your business with the same enthusiasm or interest. In a MarketingProfs article, Paul McKeon identifies the four stages of the B2B buying cycle—and how to produce content specific to each one. The unaware buyer. "Content for the unaware buyer must be interruptive. It has to cause ... more
- Ah, the B2B sales pipeline. That mish-mash of possibilities that can surprise, delight, or infuriate at a moment's notice. Is there really any way to predict the true likelihood of a sale by crunching pipeline data? Thomas Barrieau says yes—if you know what to look for. Writing at the Sales Operations ... more
- Many marketers approach SEO by targeting the keywords in their industries with the largest monthly search volumes, but they often neglect the "long-tail" or low volume keywords, which when combined with multiple keywords can total, or exceed, the volume of the one desirable search term, according to a study by ... more