With Q4 looming, along iwth company revenue targets for the year ahead, this company faced the perennial dilemma common to B2B marketers: how to fill the sales funnel with quality leads now to get a jump on sales-cycle activity in January. A classic direct-mail package and a brilliantly simple strategy ... more

Salespeople rely on strategies such as "sell the value" or to "value-add"—neither of which produces sustainable advantage. They do so because it's hard to achieve genuine differentiation based on something the customer values. But suppose salespeople were able to create highly differentiated offerings that provide real value that competitors can't ... more

Your own keyword analytics data is the most valuable marketing asset of your company, says WordStream’s Larry Kim in an article at MarketingProfs. The data contained in the keyword report from your Web-analytics application—which tells you how people are finding your site through paid and organic search—comprise a far more effective ... more

Ever wish you could take your favorite Web strategist with you wherever you roam? Well, sure enough, now you can. App developer MotherApp brings you the Web Strategy iPhone App, which lets users read blog posts, reviews, news and other updates from such names as Jeremiah Owyang (Altimeter Group), Brian Solis ... more

"Without some of us even noticing," writes Brian Carroll in an article at MarketingProfs, "[LinkedIn] has developed into a useful lead-generation tool for marketers and salespeople who are looking to build relationships with prospects." As with any networking tool, however, you must develop a solid strategy for getting the most from ... more

News flash: LinkedIn still boasts one of the largest, tightest-knit collections of professionals in the social-networking space. And now it wants to be even more useful to marketers. Custom Groups is a new feature at the site that lets users build sponsored collectives. Simply establishing a non-branded LinkedIn group is still ... more

It's a question that haunts B2B product retailers when sales are down: "How do we move this excess inventory?" Cutting prices, offering two-for-one deals, or announcing blow-out sales to regular clients may go only so far in a downturn. Well, take heart. In a recent post at What Works for Business, ... more

"I was at my bank earlier this week, making a deposit, when I saw a display for VISA gift cards," recounts Drew McLellan at his Marketing Minute blog. "I needed one for a gift, so I thought … great, I'll just get it here." Thus began the exasperating process of completing ... more

B2B marketers who develop consistent lead-management processes––along with careful investments in automation––achieve stronger, more qualified sales pipelines, according to interviews conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Silverpop. more

Happy New Year! It's a brand-new day—especially when it comes to the American consumer. And that may be good or bad news for marketers, depending on the products they sell and the marketing strategies they deploy. New research released late last year by McKinsey & Company suggests that the downturn may ... more

"Relationships don't just happen, they are built—one experience at a time," says Joel Book of ExactTarget. And lucky for us, Joel has mapped out the process of doing just that via email marketing. more

The economy still stinks. But only if during the long-gone good times your business was on cruise control and you saw your customers as dollar signs and not people. Some marketers are suffering far less than others, because they cared to look deep into their customers' eyes and not just ... more

How does an SMB owner run a business day to day, do his/her own marketing and promotion, and make sure the biz keeps going and growing? Just maybe, SEO+Sex=Success! more

As Max Starkov writes in an article at Hotel Interactive, the hotel industry is the perfect candidate for managing customer relations via mobile devices. "Using the mobile space to provide intelligent, unobtrusive and highly personalized services convinces customers that this is their service," says Starkov. And one of the hot tools ... more

You recently got the skinny on Square, the service that turns your iPhone into a card-swiping device. Here's another quick, easy and secure way to flow payments to your business via mobile (or even social networks): mPayy. Unlike Square, mPayy is more of a user tool than an enterprise one. It ... more

You probably use a lead-scoring system to answer a number of questions—for instance, to determine whether a lead is ready for your sales team or needs to be nurtured. "Much of the conversation around how best to set up lead scoring," says Digital Body Language's Steven Woods, "tends to focus around the ... more

Let's say you sell trendy furniture for family-friendly prices. What's the best way to push product and spread brand awareness? Well, you could try developing and offering: A showroom. Pros: People see products in context, and they can buy them right then and there! Cons: You don't reach potential buyers who aren't ... more

We've all done it: let out a groan when entering a grocery store packed with people. Ugh. But did we ever consider how a crowded shopping situation might affect our purchases? One group of researchers recently did, and their results are intriguing. In a number of experiments, both controlled and ... more

"Links allow your readers to select which offer or detail they want to understand better or read more about, without distracting them with information that may not be useful," writes Maria Pergolino in a post at the Marketo blog. Another benefit: They also enable marketers to gauge a reader's interest ... more

There's no question that online video is fast becoming a favorite of Internet users around the world. But the hit-or-miss nature of viral video, the brand quality considerations of user-generated content, and the general disdain for television commercials online have left marketers wondering, "How do I make video work for ... more

Finally, a barcode-scanning app that works like a charm. For a mere $1.99 at the App Store, RedLaser, an application developed by Occipital, turns any iPhone into a functional barcode scanner. All you have to do is open the app and snap a still picture of a product's barcode. Once ... more

For small and midsize businesses, the advent of social media has created a host of lead-generating opportunities. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media have leveled the playing field for SMBs with a variety of affordable, effective channels for initiating and nurturing the kinds of B2B relationships that produce sales ... more

Accurate and timely decision-making is a key component of creating competitive advantage, yet only 3% of business leaders describe their companies as "experts" in using business data to drive better decisions, and only 27% agree that their company makes better, faster decisions than their main competitors, according to a survey ... more

If you look at creating an effective presentation as a process rather than as an event, you'll quickly realize that it isn't a Sisyphean task. A process has the advantages of being both learnable and repeatable, so once you master it you can streamline development time and increase the returns. more

In a recent post at the Retail Email blog, Chad White highlights a host of interesting takeaways from this month's Winter Email Insider Summit. Among them are some hot email marketing tactics you may want to consider implementing, such as these: Give email credit where credit is due. "By withholding emails and monitoring sales," ... more