Convince & Convert

JULY 3, 2011

Everyone’s all abuzz and atwitter about Plus, the new social network from a search engine company with which you might be familiar. I won’t break down all the features and how-tos and what-ifs, as other folks are better at that, including Jason Falls and Chris Brogan. My initial, abbreviated take is that Google’s new social toy is essentially a Facebook Twitter hybrid with outstanding ease-of-use and eye-popping potential.

Google 166

Google Lead Scoring Lead Ranking PageRank 166

Savanta

JULY 27, 2011

In the latest in my series of interviews with today’s leading business thinkers I spoke with Thomas Jelley, Corporate Citizenship Manager at support services giant Sodexo. But why, you may wonder, is a B2B marketing research agency like Circle talking about sustainability. Isn’t that the preserve of a niche team within corporations and NGOs? . Well, no.

Work Management 177

Work Management B2B Marketing Paid Search Agency Marketing Management 177

ViewPoint

JULY 25, 2011

This week's guest blog is co-written by Greg Alexander, Sales CEO of Sales Benchmark Index and John Kearney a Consultant with Sales Benchmark Index focusing on sales force effectiveness and inbound marketing. Hunters are sales people with an instinct for closing deals and acquiring new customers. Instinct cannot be taught so few salespeople become great hunters.

Advertising Benchmark 181

Advertising Benchmark Inbound Marketing Consulting Class 181

Customer Experience Matrix

JULY 22, 2011

The folks at HubSpot have been busy this summer, announcing their acquisition of Performable in June and their HubSpot App Marketplace last week. Both events mark a continued expansion of their product. The company gave me a brief preview of the App Marketplace back in May, when the public beta had just launched. App markets are quite the fashion right now, and HubSpot’s joins the Eloqua AppCloud announced in June.

Hubspot 160

Hubspot Marketing Automation Services Salesforce.com API 160

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In the B2B marketing toolkit, white papers can be a powerful option for reaching decision-makers and experts, presenting them with interesting information that improves their perception of your organization's competence and thought leadership. That said, a poorly executed whitepaper will not only be unable to influence your desired audience but will also come with significant costs that other assets won't incur.

Paper

NuSpark Consulting

JULY 30, 2011

The Google Adwords pay-per-click platform has a number of fairly new features that can contribute to lead generation and increased conversions. Google continues to add features and options to its search and display advertising platform with the goal to continually help its advertisers generate leads and produce efficient conversions. It’s my job to stay abreast of these new features and recommend to clients where appropriate.

Adwords 149

Adwords Lead Generation Lead Scoring Lead Ranking 149

Convince & Convert

JULY 26, 2011

Blogging isn’t free. Creating and sustaining a good blog for yourself or your company is a highly labor-intensive proposition. The people (maybe you) working on the blog could be doing something else that helps the company make money, save money, or both. Thus, blogging presents a serious opportunity cost to the company. Smart organizations methodically calculate the impact of blogging on the bottom line, making it easier to justify (or not) the resources allocated to the task.

ROI 153

ROI Allocation Work Management Landing Pages 153

Savanta

JULY 23, 2011

Have you ever wondered how other B2B marketers spend their digital marketing budgets? Where they invest the greatest amount of time? And how effective they feel different digital activities are? I certainly have so when Omobono and The Marketing Society asked Circle Research to survey B2B marketers and establish how they behave in relation to digital, we jumped at the chance.

Advertising Benchmark 160

Advertising Benchmark Activities Peer-to-peer Budget Programs 160

ViewPoint

JULY 11, 2011

Lauren Carlson, an analyst at Marketing Automation Software Guide , recently wrote an article that looks at marketing automation vendors like Marketo and Eloqua who are considering IPOs, their recent venture capital funding, and the type of financial performance they may need to warrant shareholder valuations comparable to publicly-held SaaS companies.

Enterprise Management 178

Enterprise Management Work Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation Services 178

Customer Experience Matrix

JULY 12, 2011

As I mentioned yesterday, our new B2B Marketing Automation Vendor Selection Tool (VEST) asks vendors to estimate the number of clients in each of four size categories. This provides an interesting overview of the industry. The segments are defined based on revenue. Installation counts are: Looking at the raw percentages doesn’t make much sense since businesses in each group are quite different.

Marketing Automation Services 190

Marketing Automation Services Segmentation Marketing Automation Automation 190

Speaker: Jeff Tarran, COO, Gunderson Direct & Margaret Pepe, Executive Director of Product Management, U.S. Postal Service

Learn the secrets to direct mail success for growth marketers! Industry veterans Jeff Tarran and Margaret Pepe are here to delve into how direct mail has completely evolved in recent years, and has rightfully earned a seat at the table alongside the email and digital marketing plans of SMBs, enterprise companies, and agencies as they look into strategy for 2024 and beyond.

Planning

NuSpark Consulting

JULY 30, 2011

The Google Adwords pay-per-click platform has a number of fairly new features that can contribute to lead generation and increased conversions. Google continues to add features and options to its search and display advertising platform with the goal to continually help its advertisers generate leads and produce efficient conversions. It’s my job to stay abreast of these new features and recommend to clients where appropriate.

Adwords 149

Adwords Lead Generation Lead Scoring Lead Ranking 149

Writing on the Web

JULY 29, 2011

What are the steps you need to follow to ensure each blog post is optimized for search engines as well as well-written for your readers’ interests ? Oh my… there are a lot. But to keep me out of overwhelm, I wrote them down, and put them into a flow chart. This is good for days when I’m brain dead and likely to forget something important.

Optimization 161

Optimization Tips Blogger SEO 161

Convince & Convert

JULY 18, 2011

I understand QR codes are the new “it&# thing, the Taylor Lautner of calls-to-action. And indeed, given the increasing ubiquity of smart phones ( 41% in the U.S. according to new research by my client ExactTarget), many of your potential customers have the capacity to interact with your QR code. But whether they will or not isn’t about technology adoption, it’s about design, relevance, ease-of-use, and suitability of purpose.

Analysis 150

Analysis SMS Tagging Mobile Marketing 150

B2B Marketing Traction

JULY 28, 2011

Tweet. Does your marketing consultant ask the right strategic questions? …think outside of the box when recommending tactics? If your answer is “No,” you could be wasting precious marketing money. Recently a business owner approached me and asked if I would assess his marketing programs and provide my recommendations. His business is not a technology or manufacturing company – the industries I normally target – but he wanted the perspective of an outsider to his ind

Consulting 102

Consulting Tactics Planning Differentiation 102

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Learn how to optimize email deliverability and drive greater email ROI. What lands your email in the customer’s inbox? Understanding those factors, otherwise known as email deliverability, is critical to getting the most return on your campaign investments. But the “rules” around which factors land you in the spam folder aren’t always easy to keep up with.

Deliverability

Digital B2B Marketing

JULY 28, 2011

KMart’s CMO made waves recently by saying TV, and other traditional channels, are easier to measure than social media. Social media proponents responded, defending social media’s measurability and highlight the data social media provides. My favorite was this tweet from Jay Baer (who I have a tremendous amount of respect for and I don’t disagree with lightly).

Social Media 115

Social Media Media CMO Marketing Mix 115

Customer Experience Matrix

JULY 11, 2011

You know that red-hot B2B marketing automation industry? Don’t look now, but growth is already slowing. Our just-released update to the B2B Marketing Automation Vendor Selection Toolkit (VEST) shows that client counts grew just over 50% over the year ending in June, compared with nearly 100% growth for the year ending last December. That’s a marked decline, and the pattern is consistent across individual vendors: although some grew faster than others, each grew slower than during the previous pe

Marketing Automation Services 191

Marketing Automation Services Manticore Marketing Automation ActiveConversion 191

ANNUITAS

JULY 28, 2011

One of the most memorable meetings I ever had during my tenure with the first software company I worked for was with my boss, the president of our division. I remember walking into his office, and before I could sit down, he handed me a brochure and asked somewhat accusingly, “Did your team produce this?” Luckily, I was able to answer, “No”, to which he replied, “Good, because if you had I was going to fire you.

Work Management 130

Work Management Marketing Management Advertising Agencies Sales Qualified Leads 130

Buzz Marketing for Technology

JULY 27, 2011

The first episode of a new TV season needs to grab the audience, and social media campaigns have become an integral part of doing just that. But counting the number of conversations won’t by itself tell a producer or network executive that a show is going to continue to attract viewers and remain popular. Instead, deeper analysis of social data is needed to gain insights into which promotional elements are working and which topics are creating buzz among viewers, including featured characters, p

Social Media 184

Social Media Media Television marketing Broadcasting 184

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Throughout Climate Week, a feeling of urgency on tackling the climate crisis was palpable. Yet, questions continue to linger about corporate progress. Are we truly moving the needle or are we stuck in a cycle of empty statements and a flood of reports and guidelines? In the latest edition of Navigating ESG Comms Through the Cosmos - Libra Edition , we use Climate Week outcomes to explore how brands can communicate progress credibly.

Content

Convince & Convert

JULY 7, 2011

I’m glad that more and more companies are putting significant effort into their social media programs. Really, I am. But, we can’t let enthusiasm obfuscate reality, and that seems to be occurring with alarming regularity these days in all corners of the social Web. The most recent example to cross my inbox is from restaurant chain Buca di Beppo.

Click Rate 150

Click Rate Facebook PR Social Media 150

Marketing Insider Group

JULY 27, 2011

What makes one company’s social media strategy successful while others #fail? Recently I have been speaking with a number of marketers, customer service folks and even sales people about social media strategies that produce real business results. I have spoken to a number of people at companies of all shapes and sizes. And I have seen a number of traits emerge.

Social Marketing 180

Social Marketing Work Management Marketing Management Urgency Marketing 180

Ambal's Amusings

JULY 27, 2011

If there is anybody who should write a book on how to launch and grow a new business, it should be Mike Stelzner. Mike is a white paper expert and social media rockstar who launched Social Media Examiner in late 2009. In less than 5 months after launch, Social Media Examiner was declared the #1 small business blog in the world by Technorati and had added more than 13,000 email subscribers.

Business 109

Business Sample Press Social Media 109

The Effective Marketer

JULY 26, 2011

A recent article on LifeHacker talks about tips to get faster email responses. They talk about: Write shorter emails. Write fewer emails. Ask for a response. Start with a deadline. Only email one person at a time. Those are good, but I’d like to expand a bit on them and also put it in the perspective of a marketing manager. Five Email Productivity Tips for Marketing Managers. 1.

Email Marketing 132

Email Marketing Product Tips Resource Management 132

Advertiser: ZoomInfo

One of the biggest challenges for any B2B marketer is understanding your prospects’ next move — who is most likely to buy and when. Without these insights, marketing campaigns can feel more like guesswork, with high investment and little return. We’re here to tell you there’s a better way. By tracking buyers’ digital footprints and online activity, such as website visits, product reviews, and spikes in content consumption, you can engage prospects with a message that really resonates.

Intent Data

Digital B2B Marketing

JULY 26, 2011

Stacey Herbert started a Niche Amnesty challenge on DIYBlogger last week and asked bloggers to share a more personal side for a change. To stop with the sales, the marketing or the technology, and share a bit more about who we are when we don’t put on a public face. Thank you, Stacey, for sharing this challenge, here is my #nicheamnesty contribution.

Paid Search Agency 101

Paid Search Agency Planning Advertising Agencies Ad Exchange 101

Writing on the Web

JULY 26, 2011

What do you do when you’re stuck and can’t write on your blog? Here are some blog writing tips. I diagrammed them out. It’s the rainy season here in Mexico – a great time to do a lot of reading and writing. At least, that’s what one would think…But…I’m having trouble. I’m stuck. I’ve got Blogger’s Block.

Tips 138

Tips Blogger Resources SEO 138

Convince & Convert

JULY 21, 2011

Mike Stelzner knows a little something about building a successful company from thin air. He’s the founder of Social Media Examiner , currently ranked the #8 marketing blog in the world on the AdAge Power 150 (we’re lagging at #19 here at Convince & Convert ). In just one year – from a standing start – SME became a multi-million dollar business.

SME 147

SME Google Content Social Media 147

B2B Memes

JULY 25, 2011

In a post today on The Wall , Tom Callow addressed the tricky question of ownership of journalists’ Twitter accounts. If employees use a Twitter ID that combines their names with those of their employers’ brands, whose account is it? The issue is more complicated than you might think, and isn’t likely to be resolved anytime soon. Until journalists and their employers alike see Twitter and other social media accounts as equivalent in importance to other brand channels and manage them accordingly

Twitter 157

Twitter Personalization Ethics Social Media 157

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How do 1st, 2nd, and 3rd party intent data compare? 1st, 2nd, and 3rd party data each have specific advantages and disadvantages. It comes down to four factors: accuracy, cost, control and quantity. This infographic explains the pros and cons of each and helps you understand which one is best for meeting your business objectives. Intent data can be a great way to fill your pipeline and close more deals.

Intent Data

Webbiquity

JULY 25, 2011

As online strategy increasingly is business strategy , web presence optimization (dominating the search results for your name and unique tagline) is now more important than ever. So I figured it was time to update my inaugural post on this blog, What is Webbiquity? How to Be Everywhere Online based on four questions that often come up: • Why is web presence optimization important?

Optimization 170

Optimization Microsite Digg Ideal Customer Profiles 170

Tony Zambito

JULY 24, 2011

Image via Wikipedia. From a B2B market view, the new social buyer ecosystem continues to undergo a rapid evolution.  The pace in 2011 has noticeably quickened.  While the social customer ecosystem in the B2C market space is still legions ahead of B2B, it behooves B2B executives to not fall prey to the false sense that the comparative differences means they have to pay little attention.  A new social buyer ecosystem is developing with implications on our conventional thinking ab

Peer-to-peer 159

Peer-to-peer Buyer Personas Allocation Social Networks 159

NuSpark Consulting

JULY 24, 2011

Been thinking about content marketing again and after some recent engagements with some clients, I thought I’d better shed some light on some important considerations as a further understanding of what content marketing is and how it is deployed. From an inbound marketing perspective, prospects can find you in a number of ways- here’s two: Via your website.

Landing Pages 163

Landing Pages Planning Lead Generation Lead Scoring 163