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• Event Attendance: IBM Gets Social
  When IBM suspected that a bad economy and widespread IT budget cuts would negatively affect attendance at its IMPACT 2009 SOA conference, it devised a strategy that used social networking ...
  Customer Relationships, High-Tech Marketing, Sales, Social Networking
• Shine Like the Star You Are
  As B2B companies vie for attention in a still-wary marketplace, one of the keys to profitability is differentiation. Take a moment to ask yourself: How does your company set itself ...
  B2B Marketing, Customer Experience, Sales
• I Wouldn't Do That if I Were You
  We may all have our Things to Do lists that we check off daily, but how about considering some Things to Not Do in 2010? In a recent post at ...
  B2B Marketing, Marketing Tips, Sales
• Confidence in Corporate, Sales Messaging Weak
  Although companies know they need a marketing message that stands out in the marketplace, 62% of executives rate their company's message as average to poor and only 38% say their ...
  Management, Research Summaries, Sales
• The Birth of a Blog
  When building an online community, there are some underlying principles that hold true whether a company is large or small, and among those is a genuine commitment to openness and ...
  Community, High-Tech Marketing, Sales
• Show Me That You Know Me
  "B2B marketing is harder than B2C marketing," says Kyle Flaherty at the Dance With Strangers blog. Why? Because "B2B marketing is really B2C2C2C2C2C marketing," he explains. On the surface, B2B marketing ...
  B2B Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Sales
• Selling Like Billy Mays: Five Essential Character Traits That Make a Product Easy to SellBarry Densa
  Billy Mays, who, sadly, passed away at age 50, was a potbellied, black-bearded Atlantic City carnival barker who wore a blue long-sleeve shirt and a white undershirt. And direct marketers ...
  Marketing Smarter, Marketing Tips, Product Marketing, Sales
• Tapping the Potential of Online Demos
  An online demo is a powerful tool that can connect your prospects with your software in minutes, showcasing a full array of features and helping you drive home the value ...
  High-Tech Marketing, Online Marketing, Sales
• B2B Goes 007
  "While most people think of social media as a non-business arena, many savvy marketers are ... leveraging [it] to gather intelligence about prospects," says Dan McDade in a recent post ...
  B2B Marketing, Sales, Social Media
• Is Your Sales Team Creating Real Differentiation?Tom Roth
  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 ...
  Customer Engagement, Customer Experience, Marketing Smarter, Sales
• Brewing up Great Social-Media Content
  IT buyers are among the most active participants in social media. In fact, over half of technology decision-makers employed some type of social media, according to Forrester Research. So there's ...
  High-Tech Marketing, Sales, Social Media, Writing
• Let's Move It, People!
  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 ...
  B2B Marketing, Creativity, Sales
• How Lead Management Pays Off
  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.
  B2B Marketing, Customer Acquisition, Lead Generation, Research Summaries, Sales
• A Guiding Light for Your Brand
  Whether your company is large or small, your brand is an important asset you can't afford to squander. Corporate giants like Microsoft commonly establish strict guidelines regarding the correct use ...
  Branding, High-Tech Marketing, Sales
• Put on a B2B Face
  It looks like Facebook is definitely here to stay. As of this writing, based on Alexa site rankings, it's the second-most-visited website on the Internet. That kind of reach can ...
  B2B Marketing, Facebook, Sales
• Sales: Strategic Calling to Find Hidden Opportunities in Your Current AccountsKen Valla
  What growth strategy is your sales organization pursuing as the economy begins to show signs of recovery? As the business climate improves, so do the opportunities for shifting from survival ...
  Creativity, Customer Engagement, Marketing Strategy, Sales
• Clean Up Your Act
  The number of leads generated by an outbound-marketing campaign should closely resemble the number of real customer opportunities you have waiting for follow-up, and the type of leads should mirror ...
  Collaboration, High-Tech Marketing, Lead Generation, Sales
• Chop That up Even Finer
  "The problem with the word 'segmentation' is that it has lost its meaning," says Andy Hasselwander in a recent post at the B2B Marketing Confidential blog. "Like [saying] 'analytics,' saying ...
  B2B Marketing, Management, Sales, Segmentation
• The Free-Trial Backfire
  It's become standard fare for software vendors to offer free trials to their prospects when they land on Web pages via search or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. This approach makes sense, ...
  High-Tech Marketing, Landing Pages, PPC Campaigns, Sales
• Same Old, Same Old
  Recently, we talked about what a frosty process B2B cold-calling can be. Well, the next step past the cold call can be just as icy: the cold onsite visit. Odds ...
  B2B Marketing, Customer Behavior, Marketing Tips, Sales