Everything Technology Marketing

New Report: Alliance Marketing Trends 2014

noreply@blogger.com (Holger Schulze) — Tue, 25 Mar 2014 15:56:00 +0000

The results from our new study on Alliance Marketing are now available! Download it here.

Our 60,000 member B2B Technology Marketing Community on LinkedIn conducted the 2014 study on alliance marketing to better understand how B2B marketers are adjusting to new alliance marketing challenges, and to identify new trends and best practices.

Here are the Top-5 Trends in Alliance Marketing (for more details download the report):

Revenue generation (87 percent), demand generation (72 percent) and joint sales engagement (66 percent) top the list of alliance marketing program goals.
Lack of partner commitment is the greatest alliance marketing challenge (42 percent), followed by lack of resources (39 percent).
The top three alliance marketing tactics are demand generation (68 percent), followed by content development (50 percent) and lead nurturing (50 percent).
A majority of alliance professionals (62 percent) expect the number of partners they work with to increase over the next 12 months.
Fifty percent of respondents expect alliance marketing budgets to increase over the next 24 months.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the survey.

PS: Many thanks to IDG Enterprise for sponsoring this research:

IDG Enterprise | http://www.idgenterprise.com/alliance-marketing-services

IDG Enterprise Alliance Marketing Services (AMS) provides leading-edge converged marketing solutions, enabling tech marketers to create, elevate and communicate the value of their partnerships. As a full consultative group, AMS offers a robust portfolio of turnkey solutions that can supplement ongoing alliance marketing initiatives including: research based programs, content development, brand messaging, social marketing services, lead generation and nurturing, custom executive events and more. By leveraging the combination of marketing services expertise with the full portfolio of the IDG Enterprise premium media brands (Computerworld, InfoWorld, Network World, CIO, DEMO, CSO, CIO Executive Council, ITworld, CFOworld and CITEworld), the AMS team creates valuable solutions to help our customers to succeed in their alliance marketing endeavors.

For more information visit our website, or contact Michael Latchford at mlatchford@idgenteprise.com or 508.766.5376.

New Infographic - Contact Forms for the Marketing Ninja (Minja)

noreply@blogger.com (Holger Schulze) — Wed, 18 Dec 2013 22:09:00 +0000

Check out this great new infographic about contact forms. Thank you Lisa Margetis at SingleHop.

Developing Your Marketing Analytics Strategy - A 3 Step Approach

noreply@blogger.com (Holger Schulze) — Thu, 12 Dec 2013 00:42:00 +0000

Guest post by Glenn Facey

We live in a new age of information superabundance: the burgeoning era of Big Data analytics. Never before have marketers had the opportunity to understand their audiences in such fine, precise, and comprehensive detail. But while it seems that answers to many persistent marketing challenges are rising to the surface in the constant churn of data from social, mobile, and other online activity, the core tenet of Big Data remains as true as ever: In order to gather useful answers, you have to ask the right questions.

Without actionable goals and insights, even the most data-rich, well-supported marketing analytics efforts can go awry. So how do you go about setting the stage for an effective marketing analytics strategy? We’ve identified three key steps.

1) Pair insight from inside and outside

What are you trying to accomplish with your marketing analytics efforts? In order to identify the right goals for your marketing analytics effort, you’ll need to draw on two crucial perspectives.

First, an insider from your firm will help ensure that your approach aligns with the needs and direction of the organization. This individual is responsible for keeping the process rooted in the path and realities of the firm. Second, an outside analyst will provide context through knowledge of related industry verticals — as well as third-party objectivity. With these two figures in partnership, you’re prepared to move to the next step.

2) Identify questions that drive your goals

Now that your company insider and outside analyst are in place, they’ll need to collaborate in order to identify questions that will drive growth for the firm — questions that may be answered through business intelligence (BI) and big data analytics. While these will differ from organization to organization, some common approaches include:

● What is the amount of revenue retained?

● How much revenue did newly converted leads bring in?

● What is the cost savings attributed to more efficient workflows?

● How do we identify which marketing activities contributed to the creation of a given lead?

● What is the percentage increase in our brand awareness?

By explicitly identifying goals and related questions for your marketing analytics, you may ensure that those goals are clear and achievable, as well as make it easier to select the right tools for the task. It’s difficult to overstate the importance of this stage — it creates the guidelines (and sometimes guardrails) for everything that comes after. From defining deliverables to knowing when you’ve achieved your goal and may proceed to the next phase, these questions touch the rest of your work in countless ways. And that brings us to the third key step in your strategy development.

3) Know your tools and prerequisites

You’re almost ready to think about the metrics you need to gather and analyze in order to answer your questions. But first, you’ll need to consider the tools available to you and the “facts on the ground” at your organization — in other words, the prerequisites of a successful marketing analytics effort. The top three include:

● Creating a consolidated data strategy

● Investment in analytics

● Continuous dedication to the effort at the highest levels of the organization

Big data marketing analytics aren’t a grab-and-go goodie bag of answers. They require serious, ongoing commitment from a firm that’s looking to better understand its own thoughtfully forged path — where it stands, and where it’s going. With a collaborative balance of internal and external minds, a robust set of tools and resources, and defined goals driving actionable questions, your firm will have everything in place to not only achieve an incisive understand of its marketing and audience, but the way forward to greater success.

About the Author:

Glenn Facey is the VP of Business Development and Marketing at Claraview, where he achieves business growth through his deep cross-functional experience in consulting, sales, business intelligence (BI) and analytics, marketing, organizational effectiveness, and working across organizations to ensure that business value is delivered to the organization.

Crossing the Divide: The Art of Closing the Sale

noreply@blogger.com (Holger Schulze) — Mon, 11 Nov 2013 21:44:00 +0000

We see it again and again: professional services sellers misread the real desires and priorities of their buyers, and consequently stumble in the art of closing the sale.

The Hinge Research Institute conducts regular research on the professional services marketplace. For our most recent study, we set out to examine how successful providers cross the perception gap between buyers and sellers. In cooperation with RAIN Group, we studied over 1500 matched buyers and sellers and analyzed 42 factors that distinguish the sellers who ultimately close deals from the also-rans.

The top three factors that correlated with successful sales also predicted buyers’ satisfaction with the purchasing process and intent to continue buying services from the seller. You can think of these three factors as a checklist to meeting professional services buyers’ true expectations.

1. Educate me with new ideas or perspectives

Producing educational content for your audiences pulls a lot of marketing weight -- and it contributes to sales, too. Say you’re a small accounting firm that works primarily with small businesses. You might write an ongoing blog about news around small business taxes, along with longer free guides or ebooks on topics like deducting a home office.

This may feel an awful lot like giving away your knowledge for free. And that’s because it’s exactly what you’re doing. By educating your audience with substantial, useful, and search-optimized content, you raise your visibility online while simultaneously raising your credibility with potential buyers. This kind of content helps folks get to know you, so that buy the time you’re closing the sale, the client feels that they already understand both your firm and its capabilities.

2. Collaborate with me

Many sellers will tell you that buyers are looking for a “trusted partner,” but that’s one of those phrases that gets tossed around so often it becomes vague and not particularly useful.

At the beginning of a relationship between buyer and seller, as you’re closing the sale, buyers report that they want to see a willingness to collaborate. They want a problem-solving dynamism in the relationship. Conversely, they don’t want a my-way-or-the-highway attitude from a seller, with rigid offerings and little willingness to find a tailored, cooperative solution to the buyer’s problem. Work with clients to solve their problems -- or chart a path toward the solution -- in a way that leverages both your strengths and the buyer’s in unison, creating a new and unique capability set.

3. Persuade me that you will achieve results

If you’ve produced educational material, your buyer may have learned to see their problem in a new light, or seen how your firm thinks about similar problems. If you’ve shared your collaborative flexibility, the buyer has seen that you’re willing to work toward the right solution for them. Now, they’ll want to see that you can carry out that solution.

There a number of ways you can make this clear. Case studies and client referrals are two effective methods. More broadly, it’s important to cultivate your reputation for results. By refusing to overpromise in one engagement, no matter how tempting, you avoid the risk of tainting your reputation...and you better position yourself for winning the next engagement.

The art of closing the sale isn’t a matter of magical hard-sells -- in fact, it isn’t a matter of “saying the right thing” at all. Instead, it’s a matter of managing buyers’ perceptions of your firm. Your knowledge and credibility, your willingness to collaborate, and your reputation for follow-through -- when these attributes of your firm are visible to the world, you’ll find increasingly that buyers come looking for you.

To read the full results of the study, download a free copy of the new book Inside the Buyer’s Brain.

About the Author: Elizabeth Harr is a partner at Hinge, a marketing and branding firm for professional services. Elizabeth is an accomplished entrepreneur and experienced executive with a background in strategic planning, management, communications, and alliance development. She is the coauthor of How Buyers Buy: Technology Services Edition and Online Marketing for Professional Services: Technology Services Edition.

Marketing Automation Trends - Download the Report

noreply@blogger.com (Holger Schulze) — Mon, 30 Sep 2013 20:35:00 +0000

Marketing automation is a hot topic as more B2B marketers are adopting the technology to generate more and better leads, improve marketing productivity, and increase conversion rates. But what are the current trends, challenges, and success factors for marketing automation?

We conducted a comprehensive survey, leveraging the combined wisdom of over 50,000 B2B marketers in the B2B Technology Marketing Community on LinkedIn to get answers to questions like:

What are the biggest barriers to marketing automation adoption?
What marketing automation benefits do marketers expect?
How do marketers evaluate marketing automation vendors?
How do marketers measure ROI of investments in marketing automation?

We received over 900 survey responses and distilled the survey findings into an easy to digest, information-rich report - you can download it right here.

Enjoy the report!

Why Your Technology Firm Needs a Content Marketing Strategy

noreply@blogger.com (Holger Schulze) — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 18:30:00 +0000

The key to marketing success online is educating prospects. If a technology firm is going to have a successful online marketing campaign, it needs to revolve around the educational content being produced. Content is king.

Why, you ask? It is through content that many other online marketing channels flow best. If you are producing high value content, it is much more likely to spread in social media, attract links from other websites, and rank well in Google. All of these lead to more web visitors through social media and SEO.

Winning the Business
Anything and everything can be found online. More and more decision makers are looking to educate themselves before making a buying decision, and it is through your content that they learn. The firm that does the best job educating them is often the one that wins the business. This educational process replaces the old golf course method of developing trust. Online trust is developed through the educational process, and therefore the most trusted firm is the one that gets selected.

Building this trust, however, can take time and a lot of content. So how do you manage time and produce a regular flow of content? This is where having a content marketing strategy comes in. If there is no strategy behind the content you are producing, when you are publishing it, and what channels you are using to promote it, then your entire operation could fail.

What Types of Content Exist?
A content marketing strategy needs to focus on building trust and engagement over time using multiple forms of content. There are many forms of content available to a marketing team including:

• Blogs
• Premium content pieces (whitepapers, ebooks, guides)
• Books
• Research Reports
• Webinars
• Email marketing

The key to developing an effective content marketing strategy is getting all of your content to work together, creating a lead generating machine for your firm. Your content must be engaging right off-the-bat to pull the reader in, entice them to become a lead, and finally nurture them until they are ready to buy.

Typically blogging is used to achieve the first goal of content marketing – drawing visitors in. In your content marketing strategy, you must decide what topics your blog posts will be focused on and what keywords you will use to attract people to your blog from search engines.

Becoming a Lead
Once someone is on your blog, the next step is for him or her to engage with your brand. This often means the visitor is willing to give out their email address. In content marketing, this occurs when a visitor wants a particular piece of downloadable content and are asked to exchange their email address for the download. Your content marketing strategy must determine what these downloadable pieces of content will be about and how you will promote them on your website.

Nurturing Your Leads
The last piece of the content marketing puzzle is nurturing a lead once you have their email address. Most people on the web are still educating themselves and aren’t quite ready to by when searching for information. However, once you have an email address, it is vital that you continue to educate your prospects until they are ready to buy. Webinars are often ideal for nurturing because it allows prospects to get “face to face” with you without feeling pressured.

Every firm needs a tailored content marketing strategy to be successful. Focus on the tips above when putting yours together. And remember that without a strategy behind your content marketing efforts, chances are, you are seeing much lower results than what’s truly possible.

For more information on putting together a content marketing strategy, check out Hinge’s B2B Content Marketing Guide.

About the Author: Elizabeth Harr is a partner at Hinge, a branding and marketing firm that focuses on professional services. Elizabeth is an accomplished entrepreneur and experienced executive with a background in strategic planning, management, communications, and alliance development. She is also a coauthor of Online Marketing for Professional Services: Technology Edition.

The Top-5 Content Marketing Trends in 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Holger Schulze) — Sun, 07 Jul 2013 00:08:00 +0000

Check out our latest B2B Content Marketing Report 2013 and find out what is going on in the world of content marketing. Here are five of the most interesting content marketing trends we identified:

Content marketing is going mainstream and is becoming more sophisticated to help marketers generate more leads and enable thought leadership.
The popularity of white papers as a content marketing format is declining relative to interactive, easily digestible formats such as video.
More than 82 percent of B2B marketers are increasing their content production over the next 12 months.
YouTube is gaining popularity as a social media platform to reach and engage B2B audiences – Facebook is losing ground.
Marketing automation is on the rise. 61 percent of marketers use marketing automation platforms, up from 43 percent last year.

For more details and charts, please download the full report.

Download the 2013 B2B Content Marketing Report

noreply@blogger.com (Holger Schulze) — Thu, 27 Jun 2013 15:06:00 +0000

Content marketing is going mainstream in 2013. B2B marketers are increasingly using content marketing tactics to engage B2B buyers with compelling content to educate, inform, entertain and guide them along their buying journey. But what’s behind the buzz and growing popularity of content marketing? Download the new B2B Content Marketing Report to find out.

Top-5 Content Marketing Trends in 2013

Content marketing is going mainstream and is becoming more sophisticated to help marketers generate more leads and enable thought leadership.
The popularity of white papers as a content marketing format is declining relative to interactive, easily digestible formats such as video.
More than 82 percent of B2B marketers are increasing their content production over the next 12 months.
YouTube is gaining popularity as a social media platform to reach and engage B2B audiences – Facebook is losing ground.
Marketing automation is on the rise. 61 percent of marketers use marketing automation platforms, up from 43 percent last year.

For more details and charts, please download the full report above.

Great Content Marketing Infographic from Demand Metric

noreply@blogger.com (Holger Schulze) — Fri, 31 May 2013 23:20:00 +0000

Did you know that 90% of all organizations use content in their marketing efforts?

Although the phrase "content marketing" is something of a buzzword amongst today's marketing teams, the reality is that this inbound marketing practice is both remarkably widespread and effective. To learn more about what content marketing is, how it can benefit your organization and how to get started using this technique to promote your company, check out the following infographic (click to enlarge):

New Marketing Report: B2B Lead Generation Trends 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Holger Schulze) — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 02:21:00 +0000

Finally, the new 2013 B2B Lead Generation Report is available! (Download it here: http://www.slideshare.net/hschulze/b2-b-lead-generation-report-2013)

The B2B Technology Marketing Community on LinkedIn conducted the 2013 lead generation survey to better understand how B2B marketers are adjusting to new challenges, and to identify new trends and best practices. The results are in.

Here are the Top-5 Trends in B2B Lead Generation (for more details download the report):

The number one challenge for B2B marketers: Generating high quality leads.
The most effective lead generation tactics used by marketers: Company website, email marketing and SEO.
The greatest barrier to lead generation success is lack of resources: Staff, budget and time.
B2B marketers’ top metrics to measure marketing ROI: Cost per lead, revenue and lead volume.
The secret to B2B email success: Provide compelling content for each stage in the buying process to move buyers from first touch to purchase.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the survey!

And many thanks to the co-sponsors of the B2B Lead Generation Report:

IDG Enterprise | http://www.idgenterprise.com
IDG Enterprise brings together the unique brands (Computerworld, InfoWorld, Network World, CIO, DEMO, CSO, CIO Executive Council, ITworld, CFOworld and CITEworld) to serve the information needs of our IT and security-focused audiences. By leveraging the strengths of each individual brand, while simultaneously harnessing their collective reach and audience affinity, we provide market leadership and media best practices for our marketing customers to engage their customers across our portfolio.

Eloqua | http://www.eloqua.com
Eloqua (NASDAQ: ELOQ) is the marketing system of record for modern marketers. The company’s cloud software, professional services and education programs provide marketers with the technology and expertise needed to help marketing drive revenue. More than 100,000 global users from companies both large and small, rely on the marketing automation power of Eloqua to improve demand generation and lead management while driving more qualified leads. Eloqua’s customers include AON, Dow Jones, ADP, Fidelity, Polycom, and National Instruments.

DiscoverOrg | http://www.discoverorg.com
DiscoverOrg is the leading IT marketing tool used by the top IT vendors targeting the IT departments of Fortune Ranked, Mid-Market, and SMB companies in North America. Offered in the form of a constantly refreshed database, DiscoverOrg maps out the IT Org Charts of 15,000 companies complete with verified email addresses, direct dial phone numbers, reporting structure, IT project updates and technology install base.

Optify | http://www.optify.net
Optify is a simple digital marketing software suite and the industry standard for agency marketers. Our complete cloud-based digital marketing platform eliminates the need for standalone tools and empowers agencies to easily create and manage demand generation programs across multiple websites, nurture and score the hottest prospects, prioritize the highest performing programs and streamline co-branded reporting of client results - all from one login.

Strand Marketing | http://www.strandmarketing.com
Strand is an award-winning, strategic marketing and advertising agency focused on the unique needs of growth-oriented high tech companies. Adept at building integrated inbound and outbound solutions, Strand’s strength is aligning strategy with creative content and Web technology to create engaging lead-generation and brand-building campaigns. They’re located North of Boston in Newburyport, MA.

Take the 2013 Lead Generation Survey and Receive Free Report

noreply@blogger.com (Holger Schulze) — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 20:29:00 +0000

Our 40,000+ member B2B technology marketing community on LinkedIn is conducting a lead generation survey to better understand how B2B marketers are adjusting to new challenges around lead gen, and to identify new trends and best practices for 2013.

Please follow this link to take the 5-minute survey now: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/B2B_LeadGen_Survey_2013

As a survey participant, you will receive an exclusive, free copy of the survey report before it is published to a broader audience. The published survey report will contain the critical data points and trends for busy B2B marketing professionals to inform your 2013 marketing plans, campaigns and budget allocations.

Thank you for participating in the survey!

PS: Many thanks to the co-sponsors of the survey:

IDG Enterprise (http://www.idgenterprise.com) | Eloqua (http://www.eloqua.com) | DiscoverOrg (http://www.discoverorg.com) | Strand Marketing (http://www.strandmarketing.com) | Optify (http://www.optify.net)

New Report: B2B Content Marketing Trends

noreply@blogger.com (Holger Schulze) — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 16:21:00 +0000

The new report "B2B Content Marketing Trends 2012" is now available on Slideshare. Be one of the first marketers to share the brand new report with your friends and colleagues via Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook (just go to Slideshare and use the social sharing feature)!

Earlier this year, we conducted our annual B2B content marketing survey with the 30,000+ members of the B2B Technology Marketing Community on LinkedIn to learn more about the latest trends in content marketing.

Here is a quick summary of the most important trends we found (more):

The Top-5 Trends in Content Marketing

1. Content marketing is expanding dramatically in terms of tactics, forms and volume of content
- 84 percent of marketers say content production is on the rise
- Over half of the participants are using 10 or more formats and tactics that they deem “effective”
- These same respondents are spreading content creation across 6 different functional roles

2. Content is at the heart of B2B marketers top 3 goals—lead generation, market education and brand awareness

3. The fastest growing content format is Infographics, whose use increased 1.5x from last year

4. The biggest challenge for marketers is time and bandwidth to create content
- 94 percent of B2B marketers create new content from scratch

5. Most B2B marketers are trying to measure content engagement
- Web traffic, views & downloads and lead quantity & quality are the top 3 measurements

For more details, download the full report "B2B Content Marketing Trends 2012".

We would also like to thank our sponsors for supporting the B2B Content Marketing Report:

IDG Enterprise | NetProspex | Optify | Maximizer Software | Solution Publishing

Thank you!

Today's Most Popular Content Marketing Tactics

noreply@blogger.com (Holger Schulze) — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 02:21:00 +0000

Here is another sneak preview of the new B2B Content Marketing Report that will be released later this month. We asked over 30,000 members of the B2B Technology Marketing Community on LinkedIn about their most popular content marketing tactics.

Here are the results (click to enlarge):

Leading the ranking are case studies (62 percent) followed by white papers / ebooks (61 percent) and press releases (58 percent). In contrast, the least commonly used content marketing tactics are advertorials (11 percent), community management & threading (12 percent), and virtual events (18 percent).

Survey Result: The Top-3 Goals of Content Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Holger Schulze) — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 02:11:00 +0000

Last month, we asked over 30,000 members of the B2B Technology Marketing Community on LinkedIn about content marketing. The results are in. Here is the first in our series of sneak previews of the survey results (the complete report will be available shortly). The first survey question was "What are your top-3 goals for content marketing?" and here is what 727 marketers say:

#1 Lead Generation
With 68 percent of responses, the most mentioned goal for content marketing is lead generation. This is up from 62 percent in last year's survey. No major surprises here considering that content marketing has emerged as a critical B2B strategy to drive inbound lead generation (in response to outbound B2B tactics becoming increasingly ineffective). In other words, lead generation is the ultimate promise of content marketing.

#2 Thought Leadership & Market Education
The next highest ranked content marketing goal is thought leadership and market education with 50 percent of responses (up from 37 percent in last year's survey). This pattern is also consistent with the promise of content marketing as a strategy to educate and influence buyer behavior in the vendor's favor.

#3 Brand Awareness
Brand awareness, with 39 percent of responses (up from 34 percent last year), has replaced last year's number three content marketing goal, lead nurturing.

See the chart for the complete ranking - and stay tuned for the next sneak preview of the content marketing survey results.

Take the 2012 B2B Content Marketing Survey

noreply@blogger.com (Holger Schulze) — Thu, 31 May 2012 01:15:00 +0000

B2B buyer behavior has been changing dramatically over the last few years as buyers increasingly refuse to be interrupted by traditional outbound marketing tactics. Content marketing has emerged as a highly effective strategy to engage the reluctant B2B buyer who is actively searching for guidance and information online, often involving social media, before making a complex purchase decision.

But as they embark on content marketing strategies, B2B marketers are asking themselves questions like: What types of content should I create? Should I outsource content creation? What forms of content work better than others?

The 30,000+ member B2B Technology Marketing Community on LinkedIn is conducting its annual B2B Content Marketing Survey to answer these questions, better understand the current state of content marketing in the B2B space, and to identify key challenges as well as best practices.

Follow this link to take the survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/b2bcontentmarketing2012

All survey participants will receive an exclusive, free copy of the survey report before it is published to a broader audience.

Thank you for participating in the B2B Content Marketing survey!

How Social Media Boosts Search Rankings (Infographic)

noreply@blogger.com (Holger Schulze) — Wed, 09 May 2012 16:55:00 +0000

Most B2B vendors have already optimized their websites for organic search engine rankings. While further optimization can yield some marginal improvements in rankings, B2B marketers have shifted their focus to offsite tactics such as back links on quality sites to deliver a significant impact on rankings and traffic.

With the explosion of social media, Google and other search engines have included social media activity into search results and into the algorithm used to calculate website ranking based on social popularity. And now we have proof that social activity actually impacts organic rankings: TastyPlacement (a SEO and digital design agency in Austin, TX) has created a great infographic based on a study to explore the relationship between social media activity and organic search engine rankings. And is anybody really surprised that Google+ has the biggest impact on Google rankings? Check it out:

Navigate the Marketing Technology Landscape with this Map

noreply@blogger.com (Holger Schulze) — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 01:24:00 +0000

The marketing technology landscape can be quite confusing. There are dozens of solution categories, each with dozens of great vendors. Where to start?

I ran across this great infographic by the guys over at WordStream that shows a map of the most important marketing technology categories and the leaders in each category.

I hope you find it helpful (click to enlarge or click here):

Don't Miss These Great B2B Marketing Webinars

noreply@blogger.com (Holger Schulze) — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 23:26:00 +0000

For B2B marketers, webinars are not only a great lead generator and essential part of a solid content marketing strategy, they can also offer a great educational opportunity to learn what other marketers are doing to drive awareness, engage prospects, and generate revenue.

Here are a couple of new marketing webinars you might enjoy. For a complete list of B2B marketing webinars, check out the B2B Technology Marketing Channel on BrightTalk.

Integrating Social Media into Sales and Marketing Automation
(Lydia Sugarman, CEO and founder of Venntive)
Apr 18 @ 11 am ET | 8:00 am PT
Register Here: http://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/7489/45175

The Shift to Social Business
(Michael Brito, SVP Social Business, Edelman Digital)
Apr 17 @ 5 pm ET | 2 pm PT
Register Here: http://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/7489/43503

Generating Demand that Actually Converts into Revenue - A Case Study
(Mark Martin, VP Marketing and Business Development, Avnet)
May 31 @ 1 pm ET | 10 am PT
Register Here: http://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/7489/43961

Available on-demand:
Mastering B2B Social Media
(Kipp Bodnar, Inbound Marketing , Hubspot)
Watch on-demand: http://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/7489/43061

I hope you'll enjoy the webinars. If you are interested in producing your own B2B marketing webinars and sharing it with over 30,000 members in the B2B Marketing Community, please contact me at hhschulze@gmail.com.

Thank you,
Holger Schulze

The Top-5 B2B Marketing Trends for 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Holger Schulze) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 01:56:00 +0000

Happy New Year! It is time again for our annual B2B Marketing "predictions". As every year, I asked the 25,000 marketing professionals in the B2B Technology Marketing Community on LinkedIn about their B2B marketing priorities for 2012.

And here are the results:

1 - Integration of social media
Social media remains the #1 topic in 2012. Social media has clearly evolved from the experimental stage to become an established marketing tactic and lead generator in 2011. Social media will continue to be more tightly integrated into traditional tactics such as email, webcasts, and content assets as an additional channel to broaden the reach of marketing messages and drive conversations with prospects.

2 – Content marketing
Content marketing went mainstream in 2011. If you are not thinking about (and implementing) a strategy that puts your buyers (with their persona and industry driven pain points, preferences, and buying stages) in the center of your marketing efforts - and create compelling content as the currency of your engagement with buyers that influences decisions along the buying process - now is the time. Marketers often struggle to create magnetic content in the right formats and quantities. Sophisticated marketers will apply systematic ways to re-purpose existing content (for example produce webinars and derive white papers, articles and blog posts from the webinar transcript), create bite-sized content for the short-attention span executive, and design an efficient "content waterfall" approach that accelerates production times, quality, and consistency.

3 - Focus on lead quality
In the past, it was difficult to gauge lead quality and lead gen's impact on sales pipeline, so in the absence of real quality indicators, more leads were considered better. This flood of leads overwhelmed sales and distracted from the selling part of the job. And marketing received the blame for creating poor leads and wasting valuable selling time. Now with marketing automation platforms maturing it is becoming easier to filter out the sales-ready leads and keep low-scoring leads in nurturing program until they rise to the level of sales readiness.

4 - Targeted segmentation & messaging
With much "distraction" by social media, marketing automation and new marketing tactics, marketers are re-discovering fundamentals such as market segmentation. The benefits of segmentation are substantial. Segmentation is critical as vendors evolve from technology-focused business models to customer-needs driven product development, sales, marketing, and operations. Because prospects in defined, targeted segments are a better fit with the vendor’s offering, these prospects are more likely to buy, they close faster, produce bigger deals, and remain more loyal. In short, they are more profitable. For marketing, well-defined segments means more targeted messages and programs that resonate with buyers. This approach results in higher response rates, better engagements, shorter conversion cycles, and overall better return on marketing investment.

5 – Focus on marketing automation
The fastest rising category since last year's survey is marketing automation. As predicted last year, marketing automation has gone mainstream in 2011 as companies are taking their online campaigns, lead scoring, and email automation to the next level.

What marketing areas are becoming relatively less important in 2012?

As telling as the areas of increased focus are the areas B2B marketers consider less important in 2012:

Tradeshows
Marketing cost reduction & outsourcing
Lead quantity (see increased focus on lead quality in the top 10 list)
Push marketing tactics (see focus on pull marketing in the top 10 list)
Marketing asset management (while still important, many marketers seem to have a better handle on this problem with asset and content management tools)

What are your thoughts? Does this reflect the reality in your organization going into 2011? Which of these focus areas match your priorities, which don’t?

Thank you for following and contributing to this blog. I hope the New Year will treat you well and that you have much success in your 2012 B2B marketing efforts!

Take the Survey: B2B Marketing Trends in 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Holger Schulze) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 01:10:00 +0000

With 2011 coming to a close, what do you think will be the major trends and priority shifts for B2B marketers in 2012?

Take the 2-minute survey to share your thoughts:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Marketing2012

You will receive a copy of the survey report as a thank you!

New Report: 2011 B2B Content Marketing Trends

noreply@blogger.com (Holger Schulze) — Tue, 31 May 2011 19:36:00 +0000

SlideShare views for the new report "2011 B2B Content Marketing Trends" are off the charts - looks like we have a topic that is really resonating with B2B marketers.

This new report is the result of a survey I conducted with the 20,000 member B2B Technology Marketing Community on LinkedIn to better understand the current state of content marketing, and to identify key challenges as well as best practices.

Survey Results

Here is a quick snapshot of the survey findings:

Content marketing is growing dramatically in popularity with over 71 percent of respondents doing more of it than a year ago (in contrast, only 2 percent are doing less).
The biggest motivator for content marketing is its ability to drive awareness, leads, and engagement with prospects to compensate where where traditional tactics are falling short.
The most popular content formats: case studies, presentations at live events, white papers, online articles and videos.
The biggest challenge: producing truly engaging content.
Companies spend an average of 20 percent of their budgets on content marketing.
The most popular channels to deliver content: website, live events, email.
The top performance metric for content marketers is leads.

Follow this link to read the complete 2011 B2B Content Marketing Trends report with lots of charts and data that will help you benchmark your own content marketing initiative (and don't forget to share the report with your friends and colleagues): http://www.slideshare.net/hschulze/b2b-content-marketing-report

Thanks to everyone who participated in the survey. Please share your content marketing ideas and questions with our readers in the comments section below.

Is Your Content Marketing Program a Success?

noreply@blogger.com (Holger Schulze) — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 01:05:00 +0000

Content marketing is one of the most popular strategies deployed by today's B2B marketers to attract and engage prospects, and guide them through the buying process.

But how do marketers measure content marketing success? We asked 20,000 members of the B2B Technology Marketing Community on LinkedIn what metrics they use to measure the success of their content marketing initiatives. Over 500 people responded - and here is a preview of the results.

Leads, leads, leads
With 73 percent of all responses, leads are the number one metric used to gauge content marketing success. This is followed by content views and downloads with 53 percent, and inquiries with 52 percent of responses respectively (multiple selections were allowed).

No social metrics
Surprisingly, the lowest responses came in for social media engagement and SEO impact. I assume this is partly due to the difficulty in precisely measuring these metrics and their intermediate rather than direct impact on pipeline results.

Who owns content marketing strategy?
Another question we asked is looking to identify ownership of content marketing strategy within the organization. No surprises here: 67 percent of content marketing strategies are owned by corporate marketing, followed at a distant 41 percent for product marketing, and 20 percent for field marketing. Very few respondents rely on product management (16 percent) or external agencies (8 percent) for content strategy.

This wraps up our content marketing survey preview for today. Stay tuned for more survey results! What metrics do you use in your content marketing initiative?

Related Resources:

Most popular B2B content marketing formats & channels

Why care about content marketing?

Top-3 B2B Content Marketing Formats & Channels

noreply@blogger.com (Holger Schulze) — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 00:53:00 +0000

In our last post we reviewed the key objectives of B2B content marketing initiatives as indicated by our 20,000 member survey.

Now, let's take a look at popular content formats and delivery channels. How well are they performing for B2B marketers?

What Content Formats Are Most Effective?

The chart below shows a blended ranking of the most popular content formats (BTW, not only the "effective" but also the "neutral" ratings influence the overall blended ranking).

Leading the ranking are case studies, live presentations (one could argue this is a content format as well as a channel), white papers, and online articles - these formats are most effective in engaging prospects (all other things being equal).

In contrast, the survey respondents consider podcasts, print articles, and infographics the least effective content formats.

What Content Delivery Channels Are Most Effective?

Now, let's take a look at the perceived effectiveness of delivery channels used by B2B marketers to get content in front of the target audience (either outbound or inbound). Again, this chart shows a blended ranking of the most effective content delivery channels.

The highest rated channels are website, live in-person event, and email. Newer channels such as social media and blogs are considered only moderately effective in comparison. At the bottom of the list we find online directories, online ads, and paid search. Not surprising as the effectiveness of these channels has been declining steadily over the last few years.

Do these findings reflect what you see in your marketing role? Looking forward to hear from you.

Now that we better understand what B2B marketers expect to get out of content marketing, and what formats and channels perform well, our next post will take a closer look at survey results regarding content performance metrics and key challenges - so stay tuned.

Related content:

Why care about B2B Content Marketing?

Take the 2011 B2B Content Marketing Survey

5 Steps to B2B Marketing Success

Why care about B2B Content Marketing?

noreply@blogger.com (Holger Schulze) — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 00:53:00 +0000

Our B2B content marketing survey is the most popular survey we have produced to date. We asked over 20,000 B2B marketing professionals to share their collective insight on B2B content marketing issues, trends, and preferences.

After the first couple of hundred responses, patterns and trends have stabilized - a clear sign that we are getting close to a representative sample size. Time to share some preliminary survey results!

The first survey question is designed to better understand the motivation of organizations engaging in content marketing as a B2B marketing strategy. In short: why do we care about content marketing? What are the main objectives? Let's take a look at the chart below.

Leads, leads, leads ...
By far the most mentioned objective for content marketing is lead generation (62 percent), followed by lead nurturing (39 percent). This finding doesn't come as a surprise considering that content marketing has emerged as a B2B strategy primarily to drive inbound lead generation (in response to outbound B2B tactics becoming increasingly ineffective). Lead generation and nurturing is the promise of content marketing, in conjunction with marketing automation tools to deliver compelling content in a targeted fashion, and to move buyers though their buying stages and to influence their decisions (our next sneak preview will explore the reality of content marketing in terms of outcomes and results.)

The next highest ranked objectives are thought leadership and brand awareness with 37 percent and 34 percent of responses, respectively. This is also consistent with the promise of content marketing as a strategy to educate and influence buyer behavior in the vendor's favor.

Content not critical for social media engagement?
The survey result I found most surprising, however, is how low (only 13 percent) social media engagement ranks as a main objective for content marketing. I believe content marketing is an ideal strategy to attract and engage audiences on social media platforms. It is also ideal for spreading your message by having great content shared across multiple social vectors. Perhaps in this context, our survey participants don't consider social media engagement a primary objective but a means to an end, i.e. lead generation/nurturing, thought leadership, and brand awareness - our top ranked objectives. I am curious to learn what you think about the results (especially if you participated in the survey).

Our next sneak preview will look at the effectiveness of content marketing - so stay tuned. The 2011 B2B content marketing survey is still open - take the survey and be among the first to receive a copy of the results!

Take the 2011 B2B Content Marketing Survey

noreply@blogger.com (Holger Schulze) — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 01:28:00 +0000

B2B buyer behavior has been changing dramatically over the last few years as buyers increasingly refuse to be interrupted by outbound marketing tactics. Content marketing has emerged as a highly effective strategy to engage the reluctant B2B buyer who is actively searching for guidance and information online before making a complex purchase decision.

The purpose of content marketing is to engage B2B buyers with compelling content (in the form of webcasts, videos, eBooks, white papers, blog posts, etc) to educate, inform, entertain, and guide them through each step in the buying cycle. And while you want to help buyers make pragmatic, informed decisions, your ultimate goal is to persuade buyers to select your solution over competing alternatives.

Take the 2011 B2B Content Marketing Survey

It may sound easy to create crisp definitions of market segments, buyer personas, and buying stages, and then to build compelling content for each relevant intersection of these three (or more) dimensions. However, the reality of implementing content marketing initiatives is a bit more complicated.

The 20,000 member B2B Technology Marketing Community on LinkedIn is conducting the 2011 B2B Content Marketing Survey to better understand the current state of content marketing in the B2B space, and to identify key challenges as well as best practices.

All survey participants will receive an exclusive, free copy of the survey results before they are published to a broader audience. I will also share sneak previews of the survey results on this blog.

The 2011 B2B Content Marketing Survey takes less than 5 minutes to complete - take it now.

Thank you!

Holger Schulze
hhschulze@gmail.com