Digital B2B Marketing

DECEMBER 20, 2012

I’m sure it has happened to you too. You look someone up on LinkedIn only to find they are a third degree connection (or not even!) and you get a profile page with basically no information. LinkedIn profile access is even more restricted, today you now need a premium account to view third degree connections. Of course, you can solve this with a premium membership, but here is how to view the full public profile without a premium account.

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Profiling Research Information IT 104

Domo

JANUARY 25, 2012

I loved this recent post on The Data Doghouse , which underscores why “spreadsheets from hell” are still the most pervasive BI tool for business users. Last year’s TDWI study on Visual Reporting agrees. That survey found that nearly two-thirds of BI users are still staring at tables of numbers and text as their predominant form of analysis.

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Elegant BI

DECEMBER 30, 2012

Advice for ERP Vendors, Integrators, Consultants: Integrate ERP and BI for GREAT Customer Value! Every enterprise is cautious about IT investment. In this crazy, competitive business environment, everyone must consider the value, ROI and TCO of technology solutions. If ERP vendors want to market products and services to value conscious clients, they must provide innovative, cost-effective solutions to help the customer achieve business goals quickly and minimize investment.

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Digital B2B Marketing

SEPTEMBER 25, 2012

If you have viewed a LinkedIn profile in the last couple days, chances are you have seen a new box at the top of the page prompting you to endorse the individuals skills. Here is a screenshot of the endorse box on one of my connection’s profile page: With one click, I can endorse Lauren’s skills in these five areas simply because we are connected.

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Whether your organization is at the start of its sustainability and impact journey or years into it, many brands share a common concern: the uncertainty of whether they are sending stakeholders mixed messages. Creating content that speaks to your audience's “love language” can be a tricky dance. But, worry not! 3BL has put together tips to ensure that your content not only finds its rhythm but also resonates with your target audiences.

IT

Digital B2B Marketing

AUGUST 16, 2012

It seems there is another marketing infographic hiding around every corner of the web, and it will probably fall well short of its potential. Instead of making information easier to consume, many infographics make it harder to understand the information they present or even outright mislead. Here are 5 of the biggest infographic mistakes marketers make with an example of each. 1.

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Digital B2B Marketing

NOVEMBER 27, 2012

B2B marketers are so anxious to generate leads from social media they are turning Twitter into a list for cold calls and mass email blasts. In the last couple weeks, two companies have emailed or called me because I follow influential sales and marketing accounts on Twitter. There is nothing social about this! Marketers are just turning social into a source of email or telemarketing lists for mass outbound marketing.

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Digital B2B Marketing

MAY 23, 2012

If you measure or benchmark B2B demand generation activity across sales and marketing, one of the best benchmark resources just received a major facelift and a number of improvements. Yesterday Sirius Decisions unveiled their new demand waterfall at the annual Sirius Decisions Summit. The new waterfall (or funnel, to most of us) provides a framework for measuring and benchmarking demand generation from initial inquiry to close and across sales and marketing.

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Digital B2B Marketing

OCTOBER 9, 2012

You can share. You can publish. You can broadcast. You can spam. Today, communication is more accessible than ever before. Anyone with an internet connection can email or Tweet. With more people publishing and more competition for our attention, free and easy-to-use communication channels lead to spam. Even well-intentioned individuals, marketers and publishers can fall into the spam trap.

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Digital B2B Marketing

OCTOBER 31, 2012

What, it’s changing? Quick, call it dead! Write an article about how social media is killing advertising! Advertising is Dead. SEO is Dead. Television is Dead. Magazines are Dead. Newspapers are Dead. Websites are Dead. Agencies are Dead. Media companies are Dead. Did TV kill radio? After more than 50 years, radio is still here. Like everything else, it has changed.

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Leaders in competitive intel know that the employees who interact with customers and prospects every day hold valuable competitive insights that could help win sales. But they don’t have a good plan or system to gather, organize, and share these insights with the stakeholders who need them. In this eBook, we outline 7 strategies to make it easier to build and scale an employee sharing program that will drive competitive advantage.

Competitive

Digital B2B Marketing

JUNE 14, 2012

You are ready to take your content marketing to the next level. Until now, you have been producing mostly mid and late stage content. Your content supports the sales process and effectively communicates the value of your solutions to prospects. Now, you are ready to use content marketing to raise the profile of your company overall. Content that drives overall visibility for your company is different.

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Digital B2B Marketing

DECEMBER 4, 2012

Dan Zarella and Hubspot gave the “what is your social media audience worth” pot a good stir last week. It doesn’t matter if you like Hubspot’s formula or not (at least not for this article). One day many businesses will put a value on their social media audience, if it is in the form of monthly impact to their business or the average value of an audience member.

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Digital B2B Marketing

OCTOBER 30, 2012

Distraction is constant in our technology and communication-fueled lives. Email alerts, Facebook replies, tweets , Google’s red box, … Everything around us is competing for our attention. We may not have ADD, but we definitely act like it. How can B2B content marketers, who are often marketing complex products and need to share a meaningful level of detail, be effective in this environment?

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Digital B2B Marketing

JUNE 26, 2012

The following 9 terms are so overused or misused in B2B marketing that they have lost nearly all meaning. If you are using these terms today, it is time to stop and explain what you really mean. Otherwise, we may hear you, but we will think you mean something completely different. 1. Thought Leadership Almost any type of content has been labeled thought leadership marketing in recent years.

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Marketing Marketing Briefing IT 81

Advertiser: ZoomInfo

Marketing technology is essential for B2B marketers to stay competitive in a rapidly changing digital landscape — and with 53% of marketers experiencing legacy technology issues and limitations, they’re researching innovations to expand and refine their technology stacks. To help practitioners keep up with the rapidly evolving martech landscape, this special report will discuss: How practitioners are integrating technologies and systems to encourage information-sharing between departments and pr

Competitive

Digital B2B Marketing

JANUARY 19, 2012

Google, Plus Your World was rolled out just over a week ago, and the online world has adopted the rallying call to get onto Google+ for the SEO benefits. Multiple articles point to brand pages as the solution. Publications from mainstream (Mashable wrote “ get your Google+ brand page into as many influential people’s circles as possible “) to niche (HelloBloggerz.com wrote “ brands need to invest more time into promoting their Google Plus brand pages “) are misleading mar

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Digital B2B Marketing

MARCH 15, 2012

Last week, I made the case for a new definition of inbound marketing , or as Michael Brenner ( @brennermichael ) called it in the comments, a “call to arms” for inbound marketers. The new definition: Inbound marketing is marketing focused on being found through the recommendation of others and delighting everyone that finds you. As inbound marketing evolves, the components also need to change.

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Digital B2B Marketing

MAY 14, 2012

If it doesn’t benefit us, entertain us, educate us, solve our problems or advance our causes, we don’t want it. If we find something better, we switch. Today, our mantra is “What’s in it for me?” All too often, the answer is “Not much.” We are flooded with content. This blog post will be one of millions published today.

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Digital B2B Marketing

MAY 7, 2012

View original on Pinterest You are ready for social media. You have staff, tools and resources. You have a clear strategy, well-defined goals and an execution plan. You have executive support. But how long will it last? How long will you have the resources and support you need? Your social media program needs time. The old-fashioned time that is measured on a calendar, not in staff hours.

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ChatGPT has dominated boardroom conversations for months now. From drafting a stock trading program, to creating a SQL query to model data, there are practically no limits to the applications of the AI language model assistant. At ManageEngine, we have been working on our own AI-assistant, Zia. Zia is a fully-trained analytics assistant that can perform a range of functions such as creating and adding reports to dashboards, providing conversational support to data analysis, insight discovery, bu

IT

Digital B2B Marketing

AUGUST 28, 2012

If you are looking for another article that lists search, social media, persona development or lead management, this is not it. Those are skills that can easily be learned by the right person. The more important thing to know is what type of person can learn both the skills they need today and the new ones they will need tomorrow? Here are 7 key characteristics of B2B marketers that will be able to learn the skills needed today and tomorrow and will be able to identify and pursue new B2B marketi

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Marketing Marketing Knowledge Finance 79

Digital B2B Marketing

JUNE 11, 2012

B2B marketers are looking for a shortcut to thought leadership , but the shortcut many are taking lead somewhere else completely. According to a recent report on eMarketer , 85% of marketers curate content in order to establish thought leadership! Does sharing someone else’s content make you a thought leader? No. Marketers, in their race to the shortcut, are confusing respect and attention with thought leadership.

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Digital B2B Marketing

MAY 22, 2012

According to recent research from IDC, lead generation is a top B2B marketing priority , and in the next four years Sirius Decisions predicts 75% of all registrations will be captured online. (Sirius Decisions actually labels this as inbound marketing, however I use a more limited definition of inbound marketing.) One of the primary ways B2B marketers capture leads online is asking prospects to register for content.

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Digital B2B Marketing

JULY 31, 2012

B2B marketing is complex. Sales cycles are long, measurement can be convoluted, and segmentation, lead scoring and sales and marketing alignment take traditional marketers into uncomfortable spaces. Amid the details and uncomfortable spaces, the bigger marketing picture is often lost. Take a step back and consider the three bigger picture items below.

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Marketing Marketing Sales Information 78

Speaker: Marius Moscovici, CEO Metric Insights & Mike Smitheman, VP Metric Insights

While the proper governance of data is clearly critical to the success of any business intelligence organization, focusing on data governance alone is a huge mistake. Organizations continually fail to generate ROI on their governance initiatives because they are too narrow in scope. To be effective, Business Intelligence (BI) governance must cover both data and visualizations.

Business Intelligence

Digital B2B Marketing

NOVEMBER 8, 2012

Inbound marketing leads, according to Hubspot, cost 62% less than leads from outbound marketing. But don’t expect that cost advantage to last. One of two things is happening: Inbound isn’t really more cost effective. Maybe Hubspot’s sample is biased or methodology is bad, but for whatever reason, the 62% isn’t true. Inbound really is more cost effective today and early adopters are reaping the benefit.

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Digital B2B Marketing

OCTOBER 16, 2012

Outbound marketing is about interruption. Inbound marketing is about discovery. But so what? We have all been interrupted and had it lead to something wonderful. We have all turned to Google or social media and discovered things that are completely useless or misleading. So why is inbound marketing a better way to market? The difference is friction.

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Digital B2B Marketing

JUNE 19, 2012

That was the headline on the first page article when BtoB Magazine landed in my inbox last week. According to new research from IDC, only 18.6% of B2B technology buyers say social media has influenced their purchase decisions or interactions with vendors. So should B2B organizations shutter their social media efforts or reduce their investments? No.

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Digital B2B Marketing

NOVEMBER 6, 2012

Do you care if potential prospects see your services as high value or a complete rip-off? Of course you do. This is about the perception each individual has about you. This is about your brand. Perceptions are created by experience with your products, service and people, through what other people say about you (even competitors) and through your own marketing.

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Navigating the waters of sustainability reporting disclosures and regulations can be intimidating, to say the least. With various measures set in motion in 2023 to keep companies accountable, there is a lot in store for brands’ impact communication in the upcoming year. 3BL is kicking off this January with our Navigating ESG Comms Through the Cosmos - Capricorn Edition by highlighting the impact of: The U.S Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Climate disclosure rules The European Commission

Security

Digital B2B Marketing

APRIL 18, 2012

Sure, your content is excellent. It is unbiased, educates and provides valuable advice and perspectives. But is that how your audience sees it? Depending on your perspective, you may see an old hag or a young lady in the drawing at the right. And once you see one, it can be difficult to switch and see the other perspective. Marketers get caught in the same trap with their content.

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Digital B2B Marketing

FEBRUARY 21, 2012

Pinterest is the marketing flavor du jour. Media and press are tauting the ability of Pinterest to drive traffic and the time spent on Pinterest. Many B2B marketers do not have any presence on Pinterest. In my search for major B2B marketers on Pinterest, I only found a handful using it actively. Here are three of the better B2B marketing examples I found.

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Digital B2B Marketing

JUNE 28, 2012

Develop a relationship. Don’t propose on the first date. Relationships take time. You talk about relationships as a marketer. You use the same words and clichés. However, you don’t really mean a relationship. You won’t talk a walk in the park with me because we enjoy spending time together and share what we did today just because we want each other to know.

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