Segmentation is critical as vendors evolve from technology-focused business models to customer-needs driven product development, sales, marketing, and operations. 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. 2 – Content marketing Content marketing went mainstream in 2011. MORE >>

1) Focus on the business buyer One of the biggest changes in marketing SaaS vs on-premise software is the makeup of your target audience. While IT departments traditionally had a lot of influence over the software buying decision and acted as gate keepers, cloud solutions today often allow you to deal directly with the business problem owner and end user to make the decision and subscribe to your service (this obviously depends a great deal on the complexity, integration and scope of the solution). The cloud is all the rage these days. Here is why. But let's take a closer look. MORE >>

They educate themselves on the nature of their business problem, possible solution options, available vendors and products. Adapt to Stay Relevant Our entire approach to marketing has to change if we want to stay relevant and add value to the business in this new environment. Interestingly enough, the "new marketing world" will put more emphasis on traditional marketing concepts as they are now truly the foundation for the success of your business - so many of the concepts below will not be new to you. Your B2B markets are changing rapidly. More on this later. MORE >>

As you know, more and more corporate functions are moving to a service and subscription based model where companies aggressively outsource everything that is not core to the business in order to gain advantages related to cost, scalability, and agility. This not only reduces fixed cost and enables pay as you go models; it also helps marketing to get the job done more quickly, without having to rely on the IT department (which in too many companies is becoming a bottleneck instead of a business enabler – which is further accelerating the push towards SaaS). MORE >>

Marketing Operations to the Rescue – A 5 Step Program I believe this challenge is quite healthy as it provides strong incentives for marketing to become a truly performance driven and business critical function of the company. In my last post “ 5 Steps to B2B Marketing Success ” we established a simple approach to improving success in B2B marketing, starting with understanding your audience, building a strong value proposition, mapping out the buyer’s journey, building compelling messages and content, and finally, investing in robust marketing automation. Or add 20 percent? MORE >>