Remember Y2K? Things were much simpler then. In the last 15-20 years we’ve been hit with a few major market shifts due to some amazing innovations in technology and communications. But the mother of all marketing tsunamis hit us in 2008: social media. In four years we have witnessed unprecedented change in a very short […]
Seth Godin is the Peter Drucker of our generation. Since the 1940’s, Drucker was well-known for his management and business savvy, especially when it came to innovation and marketing. And although Seth Godin speaks of marketing in general consumer terms, a recent Inc.com post is chalk-full of fantastic insight that is just as relevant and […]
For B2B companies, email is considered the number one B2B Marketing platform. Why? Email was designed for business, unlike social media platforms like Facebook and Pinterest. That being said, savvy businesses are integrating email into their social marketing strategy, using social tools to boost visibility, SEO ranking, and customer engagement, and using email to nurture […]
For B2B leaders who see the potential upside of social marketing, many still struggle with how and when to craft social content in order to generate demand and nurture relationships. Mainstream social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest) were not specifically built for the business-to-business audience so the task can be overwhelming and appear pointless. Indeed, a […]
Since 2008, social media marketing has transformed everything we used to know about creating awareness and generating leads. Gone are the days of “push” marketing. Today it is all about “pull” or “peer-peer” marketing. We see consumer package brands promoted on social sites like Facebook and Pinterest all the time. Sure, it makes sense to […]
Small businesses in the B2B space can learn from a recent VerticalResponse survey summed up nicely by VentureBeat’s John Koetsier, showing 66% of small businesses have invested more on social media marketing activities in 2012 than in 2011. I think most B2B business owners reading this would find it surprising that over 43% of small businesses […]
There is a fantastic SlideShare by Velocity Partners on the use of metaphors in B2B Marketing (or misuse, rather). As I wrote in my previous post, business marketing is about relationships because the journey (more on that below) that B2B companies take their customers on is all about finding a solution to their problem, not […]
B2B Marketing is a marathon Although both business-to-business and business-to-consumer marketing targets people, there is a fundamental difference between B2B and B2C marketing. At the core, businesses that market to other businesses are relationship driven, whereas businesses that market to consumers are product driven. Think of B2C as a sprint and B2B as a marathon. […]
According to a recent 2012 State of Digital Marketing report published by WebMarketing 123, B2B Marketers are closing the gap on B2C Marketers when it comes to SEO, PPC and Social Media. The infographic below is a snapshot of the report and illustrates a few key nuggets that every B2B company should consider when planning […]
Content marketing is critically important for any company that wants to maintain leadership or position for growth, whether by increasing existing market share or by capturing new markets. B2B companies such as SAP, Cisco and Intel do an outstanding job at offering consistently fresh content that not only builds awareness, but also creates connections that […]
