Marketing Interactions

SEPTEMBER 30, 2018

Unfortunately, the following recent research findings indicate not a lot has changed since I wrote my book four years ago: 55% of B2B marketers somewhat or strongly agree that they have difficulty getting their message and content in front of their target audience. B2B buyers crave meaning and connection—not just utility or value.

Relevance 58

Relevance B2B Marketing B2B Broadcasting 58

Marketing Interactions

NOVEMBER 15, 2021

B2B Intent data is the latest tool in the marketing stack on the hype cycle. Therefore, we can expand the dependencies a bit further in B2B marketing and selling by recognizing that interest must be sustainable, and intent must include the ability and willingness to act (buy). The Rabbit Hole of B2B Intent Data.

Intent Data 124

Intent Data Intent B2B Marketing B2B 124

Marketing Interactions

APRIL 26, 2022

This is a huge opportunity for how we develop humanness in B2B content experiences. We can start by dropping the jargon and the “scripts” of how we think marketing and sales content should sound and just talk to our B2B buyers like the professionals they are—as people. Help them perceive the humanness of us as an organization.

Top of Funnel 91

Top of Funnel B2B Content Terms and Conditions 91

Marketing Interactions

OCTOBER 24, 2021

Every year, Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs release their latest B2B marketing research. This year the report includes a chart of current B2B content marketing challenges. Either it will be too high level to be helpful, or it will be irrelevant in the parts that speak to people other than that reader.

B2B Marketing 100

B2B Marketing Content Marketing Planning B2B 100

Marketing Interactions

FEBRUARY 20, 2022

In B2B marketing and sales, we talk a lot about our buyers’ pain or need. The Mandate to Help B2B Buyers with Problem Blindness. It’s also when we’re doing our buyers a disservice by helping them buy a band aid when they really need surgery. Drive Momentum by Helping B2B Buyers Understand the Problem.

Top of Funnel 88

Top of Funnel B2B Peer-to-peer Lead Scoring 88

Marketing Interactions

FEBRUARY 7, 2020

We need to size our B2B content to fit into those windows of opportunity in a way that’s meaningful and fuels purpose. Go Small and Deep with B2B Content. In other words, learning something when you need to know it so that you can apply it helps with retention of that information. The Power of One Applied to B2B Content.

B2B 114

B2B Content B2B Marketing Trust Marketing 114

Marketing Interactions

OCTOBER 8, 2020

Information to help buyers understand their problem and why to solve it. Sales content should help to build rapport and relationships and have buyers see sales reps as trusted advisors. Content is all about product features; none that helps sellers show value. Help Reps Use Sales Content to Advantage with Buyers.

Effectiveness 122

Effectiveness Work Management Content Marketing Management 122

Marketing Interactions

JULY 18, 2021

Personalization in B2B marketing has been on an upward intention trend for a while now. However, personalization remains a priority for B2B marketing executives, with 52% planning to increase spending on content marketing and personalization technology to get this right. 3 Primary B2B Personalization Components Guide Buyer Enablement.

B2B Marketing 75

B2B Marketing Personalization B2B Planning 75

Marketing Interactions

JANUARY 25, 2022

The beginning of the year is an appropriate time to take a stand about the payoffs of commitment in B2B marketing strategies. The beginning of the year is when a lot of B2B companies look at what they want to accomplish this year as a clean slate. Almost like you’re starting from scratch. They expect commitment. The entire route.

B2B Marketing 69

B2B Marketing B2B Budget Programs Marketing & Strategy 69

Marketing Interactions

OCTOBER 5, 2022

When B2B marketers think “buyer,” they’re most often thinking about net-new buyers. I’ve been involved in helping clients create a slew of retention programs—more so in the last few years—and I’d like to clear up a few things when thinking about and planning them: Retention programs and onboarding programs are not the same things.

Ideal Customer Profiles 62

Ideal Customer Profiles B2B Marketing Enterprise Management Work Management 62

Marketing Interactions

JANUARY 19, 2020

The average is three to five B2B buyer personas. Which B2B buyer personas, when engaged, will help marketers drive contribution to revenues? Which B2B Buyer Personas Should You Build? The answers to these questions will help you form an initial list of buyer personas for consideration. Why do the work twice?

Buyer Personas 121

Buyer Personas Enterprise Management Work Management B2B 121

Marketing Interactions

JULY 31, 2022

I’m hearing a lot of assertions about the B2B buyer journey. Content should be helpful for both customers and buyers…everyone consuming it. We created them to help us. They help us on the inside in many ways, including: Identifying gaps in the story our content shares. Marketers have no control over the buyer’s journey.

B2B 75

B2B Buyer's Journey Gartner B2B Sales 75

Marketing Interactions

AUGUST 15, 2022

With 8 to 15 buyers involved in a complex B2B purchase, ensuring a no-regret deal can be as difficult as herding cats. Together, the combo can help you combat the lack of consensus, the stallers, and the regret that looms large— at 56% of buying organizations —per Gartner’s research. I think of them as Organizational Personas.

Buyer Personas 75

Buyer Personas Ideal Customer Profiles B2B Gartner 75

Marketing Interactions

SEPTEMBER 26, 2022

Only 16% of B2B marketers rate their current lead nurturing initiatives as excellent, per the 2022 Lead Nurturing & Acceleration Benchmark Survey. Fifty percent (or more) B2B complex deals end in no decision. Do they use technology that will help them adapt? A Few Reasons an Update to Buyer Personas is Wise.

Ideal Customer Profiles 80

Ideal Customer Profiles Buyer Personas Marketing Analytics Tools B2B 80

Marketing Interactions

JANUARY 3, 2022

Your B2B nurturing programs must account for the dynamism of the customer lifecycle to be effective. Namely: In B2B complex purchases, the end users are often not the buyers you sold to, so your audience has shifted. Customers have solved that problem with your (your solutions) help. It’s not a static place in time.

B2B 69

B2B Paid Search Agency Lead Scoring Lead Ranking 69

Marketing Interactions

AUGUST 24, 2021

They need information that helps them understand what to ask, do, understand, and evaluate. And they benefit from B2B content that shows them how to do those things. I agree with Gartner that this is a huge opportunity for marketers to help buyers by creating content that assists them with job completion. We need to.

B2B Thought Leadership 62

B2B Thought Leadership Thought Leadership B2B Gartner 62

Marketing Interactions

NOVEMBER 29, 2021

To gate or not to gate your B2B content? This is a question that comes up repeatedly for B2B marketers and one we can’t seem to answer definitively. B2B buyers are not buyers until they decide they’re ready to solve the problem by buying a solution. Gartner calls this the biggest challenge in B2B buying. Based on context.

B2B 62

B2B Work Management Marketing Management B2B Thought Leadership 62

Marketing Interactions

FEBRUARY 17, 2020

Content marketing has been an ongoing practice for B2B marketers for more than a decade. But for many buyers, the B2B content they encounter is out of context. B2B Buyers say: Give me messaging I can understand. I want insights that help me see things relevant to me in new ways. Provide substance over style.

Work Management 96

Work Management Marketing Management B2B Thought Leadership B2B 96

Marketing Interactions

FEBRUARY 8, 2022

Customer centricity mostly misses the mark in B2B. Strangely, B2B companies use it to foster an inside-out perspective. This is true if you’re only interested in learning about your customers so that you can extract more revenue from them, instead of focusing on serving and helping them. B2B buying is hard. If they do.

B2B 69

B2B Peer-to-peer Gartner Top of Funnel 69

Marketing Interactions

JULY 25, 2021

Hyper-everything in B2B marketing! It’s pretty much a parallel to what I said in this post about a mindset reset for B2B personalization , although Robert is more eloquent than me. The post Why Is B2B Marketing So Hyper? Hyper-relevant. Hyper-personalized. Hyper-targeted. What is it with all the hyper? Just think about that.

B2B Marketing 69

B2B Marketing B2B Paid Search Agency Buying Cycle 69

Marketing Interactions

JANUARY 9, 2022

B2B content doesn’t create a sum of knowledge as one-off random acts of content. To create influence, your B2B content needs oomph, conviction, and purpose. I’ve written about the need for B2B content to have a point of view. Help B2B Buyers Think & Learn. But here’s where a lot of content goes wrong….

B2B Thought Leadership 62

B2B Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Content 62

Marketing Interactions

NOVEMBER 2, 2021

But, for marketers, questions are one key to B2B buyer enablement. The process of Q&A drives momentum based on addressing how context shifts with each new intake of relevant information that helps your buyers advance their thinking. B2B buyers facing a problem must find out how to fix it—or even if they should.

B2B 75

B2B B2B Sales Webinar Metrics Buy 75

Marketing Interactions

SEPTEMBER 21, 2021

And much of the B2B content produced is leaving buyers cold. Edelman and LinkedIn recently released the 2021 B2B Thought Leadership Impact Study. But, as I reviewed the findings in the report, I noticed many of the findings apply not just to thought leadership content, but to all B2B content. The noise is deafening.

B2B Thought Leadership 69

B2B Thought Leadership Thought Leadership B2B Content 69

Marketing Interactions

AUGUST 1, 2021

I just read a recommendation that B2B organizations should allocate 46% of budget to brand marketing and 54% to demand gen. According to Forrester, only 22% of B2B companies have fully integrated their brand and demand marketing functions. Fame helps build buyer confidence. B2B buyers are both emotional and rational.

Demand 69

Demand B2B Marketing Brand Identity Branding 69

Marketing Interactions

AUGUST 8, 2021

She’s been working to expose and close the gaps between buying and selling for years—and to share a process for helping people through their uncertainties so they can become buyers. This is because our marketing-to-sales models and processes are not built to help buyers buy. This is how Sharon Drew Morgen explains it.

Buy 62

Buy Work Management Lead Ranking Marketing Management 62

Marketing Interactions

OCTOBER 8, 2020

At a minimum, a B2B buyer is thought to: Understand the problem they’re trying to solve. Sales enablement, used well, helps sellers orchestrate better conversations, uniting buyers with sellers. The post Never Assume B2B Buyers Know How to Buy appeared first on Marketing Interactions. And that’s not usually a sales pitch.”.

Buy 77

Buy B2B Peer-to-peer Work Management 77

Marketing Interactions

AUGUST 15, 2021

B2B buyers consume at least 13 content assets during their buying process. Have they accessed pre-sales content that answers their change management questions and helps them decide to fix the problem? It’s also helpful to know if it’s one person or more than one, indicating account interest. Put Some Substance Behind Your MQLs.

Marketing Qualified Leads 62

Marketing Qualified Leads Lead Ranking Sales Qualified Leads High Quality Lead 62

Marketing Interactions

JUNE 20, 2021

B2B messaging is a key component of doing business. Customer success obsesses about helping customers find and sustain satisfaction from using your products, often tailoring messaging to each customer that may not reflect the overall brand message. Architect B2B Messaging and Stories Around Customers.

B2B 62

B2B Marketing Management Customer Satisfaction B2B Sales 62

Marketing Interactions

JANUARY 27, 2020

In a lot of the conversations I have with B2B marketers, many are overwhelmed when confronted with how to build truly actionable buyer personas. In my previous post, I discussed how to determine the which B2B buyer personas you really need. In my previous post, I discussed how to determine the which B2B buyer personas you really need.

Buyer Personas 69

Buyer Personas Effectiveness B2B B2B Thought Leadership 69

Marketing Interactions

APRIL 14, 2019

Marketing automation can help to orchestrate buying conversations and get salespeople in the conversation at the right time—if you use it as more than a glorified email blast tool. Marketing automation is the foundational solution in the Martech stack for many B2B marketers. Content-Driven Conversations Rely on Nuance.

Conversion 86

Conversion Marketing Automation Services B2B Trigger Marketing 86

Marketing Interactions

SEPTEMBER 20, 2018

This is why it’s imperative for B2B tech marketers to shift their focus from buying journey funnels to full-on customer lifecycle management. In this blog, I’ll cover best practices for B2B marketers to make the shift from funnels to lifecycles to increase ROI and help your customers stick with you for the long run.

Marketing Funnels 87

Marketing Funnels Top of Funnel B2B Marketing Work Management 87

Marketing Interactions

DECEMBER 26, 2016

Corporate Visions recently surveyed more than 400 B2B organizations to find out how one statistic is creating challenges at the intersection of content strategy, sales enablement, and lead conversion. But what I really want this report to help marketing and sales practitioners come to terms with is the consistency gap. It’s not easy.

Conversion 82

Conversion B2B Top of Funnel Stats 82

Marketing Interactions

DECEMBER 29, 2016

Using content for marketing in B2B companies has caught on with a fervor that continues unabated. And, even though only a small percentage of B2B marketers say they are consistently effective with it, most of them will produce more content next year. And now their sights are set on scale for B2B content marketing.

B2B Marketing 81

B2B Marketing Content Marketing B2B Content 81

Marketing Interactions

MAY 23, 2018

If the trend holds steady—which B2B marketers indicate it will—you’ll create even more content next year. A content operation in B2B acts as a unifying foundation for content strategy and content marketing strategy to bring order to the chaos that generally ensues from ad hoc efforts. You’re creating content—lots of it. Change is risk.

Top of Funnel 67

Top of Funnel Paid Search Agency Companies B2B 67

Marketing Interactions

JUNE 23, 2017

While 89% of B2B marketers have embraced content marketing, only 37% have a documented content marketing strategy, and only 22% say they are extremely successful with their overall approach to content marketing. Yet merely 57% of B2B marketers say they have a deep understanding of the buyer personas included in their strategy.

Buyer Personas 74

Buyer Personas Enterprise Management B2B Marketing Marketing Strategy 74

Marketing Interactions

JANUARY 30, 2017

This happens because B2B marketing is often based on a set of one-off, one-way interactions defined by what we believe the audience should do, whether it’s fill out our form, register for our webinar, share our blog post, follow us on social media, and more actions focused on us. And that’s just what we’re asking our audiences to do.

B2B Marketing 73

B2B Marketing Marketing Strategy Marketing & Strategy Webinar Metrics 73

Marketing Interactions

DECEMBER 26, 2016

Nearly all B2B companies are using content marketing to attract and engage buyers. 28% of B2B marketers describe their organization’s content marketing maturity as sophisticated/mature. 28% of B2B marketers describe their organization’s content marketing maturity as sophisticated/mature.

Lead Scoring 72

Lead Scoring Lead Ranking B2B Marketing Planning 72