Marketing Interactions

OCTOBER 5, 2022

When B2B marketers think “buyer,” they’re most often thinking about net-new buyers. But the biggest opportunity in an uncertain market is to focus on convincing customers to stay and customer expansion opportunities. Another report finds improving CX is a top three objective as well as a top 3 challenge for B2B marketers.

Ideal Customer Profiles 62

Ideal Customer Profiles B2B Marketing Enterprise Management Work Management 62

Marketing Interactions

DECEMBER 21, 2021

For some reason, B2B marketing content tends to lean more toward academia than literary license. We think our content must exude professionalism because we sell complex, high-ticket solutions to businesses. Emotion in B2B marketing content is more subtle. 9 Ways Emotion Plays in B2B Marketing Content. What if it fails?

B2B Marketing 80

B2B Marketing B2B Content Paid Search Agency 80

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. However, customer acquisition is where most marketing strategies stop. This singular focus is a double-edged sword in recurring revenue and subscription business models.

Marketing Funnels 87

Marketing Funnels Top of Funnel B2B Marketing Work Management 87

Marketing Interactions

MAY 21, 2018

With that said, what I see most is that B2B marketers tend to stick to traditional vanity metrics rather than doing the work to rethink what we’re measuring—and why. According to the latest email marketing benchmarks by MailChimp, I’m being generous in the example above. Email metrics are a great example.

Webinar Metrics 74

Webinar Metrics Marketing & Strategy Marketing Strategy Dwell 74

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. One of the key foundational elements to a content marketing strategy is a buyer persona.

Buyer Personas 74

Buyer Personas Enterprise Management B2B Marketing Marketing & Strategy 74

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

DECEMBER 26, 2016

Nearly all B2B companies are using content marketing to attract and engage buyers. This is because we haven’t formalized content marketing as a strategy or built sufficient process, workflow, and collaboration around its execution. 37% have a documented content marketing strategy. We’ve been doing this for quite some time.

Lead Scoring 72

Lead Scoring Lead Ranking B2B Marketing Planning 72

Marketing Interactions

SEPTEMBER 30, 2018

As I stated in my book, Digital Relevance, “…a process for continuous improvement will enable your marketing team to tweak and refine strategy progressively to keep your brand relevant in the face of change.”. 93% of marketers think personalization at scale is attainable but 58% aren’t sure how to do so. Bridge the Gap , 2018, Ytel].

Relevance 58

Relevance B2B Marketing B2B Broadcasting 58

Marketing Interactions

APRIL 21, 2017

One of the biggest values that come with content marketing operations maturity is the ability to say “no” to ad hoc content demands. As B2B marketers have adopted content marketing, many have found themselves on the hamster wheel of content production. But publishing content is not content marketing.

Content Marketing 60

Content Marketing Planning Marketing Management Paid Search Agency 60

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. Why would you ever want to give it to them?

B2B Marketing 73

B2B Marketing Marketing Strategy Marketing & Strategy Webinar Metrics 73

Marketing Interactions

JUNE 23, 2017

In this post, I’ll discuss how the details of a buyer persona inform a content marketing strategy. Examples: Automate processes to speed time to market by removing inefficient workflows. As applied to the three examples above, they might look like: Inefficient workflows make our products late to market, costing us market share.

Buyer Personas 64

Buyer Personas Marketing & Strategy B2B Marketing Marketing Strategy 64

Marketing Interactions

APRIL 26, 2022

What is it that puts the humanness in business 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. Marketing is all about perception. Think relatable, relevant, and empathetic.

Top of Funnel 91

Top of Funnel B2B Content Terms and Conditions 91

Marketing Interactions

JUNE 27, 2021

Year after year I read research where marketers report their biggest challenges include: Knowing who to target and how to engage buyers. Proving the ROI from content marketing. But the above three findings from 2021 reports indicate that’s not true for close to half of the marketers who participated in the research.

Buyer Personas 111

Buyer Personas B2B Ideal Customer Profiles Account Based Marketing 111

Marketing Interactions

SEPTEMBER 26, 2022

As the market shifts, much of what you thought was true about your buyer personas and ICPs may be different. These events in your target markets can quickly make your messaging irrelevant, rendering your marketing programs and sales plays ineffective. This is an indication that marketers are not telling the right stories.

Ideal Customer Profiles 80

Ideal Customer Profiles Buyer Personas Marketing Analytics Tools B2B 80

Marketing Interactions

JANUARY 9, 2022

So, let’s define what a sum of knowledge means: A sum of knowledge is the heft and focus you put behind your content achieving a goal that drives a business objective. And, with today’s business models that rely on subscription renewals, this is a never-ending need. Solution saturation makes marketing and selling even more challenging.

B2B Thought Leadership 62

B2B Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Content 62

Marketing Interactions

JANUARY 19, 2020

Which B2B buyer personas, when engaged, will help marketers drive contribution to revenues? The better question for discovery is, “Who can the marketing team reach and engage successfully? Note that this could be the reason marketers think they need a CXO persona. Let’s take on both of those questions. Why do the work twice?

Buyer Personas 121

Buyer Personas Enterprise Management Work Management B2B 121

Marketing Interactions

OCTOBER 8, 2020

One of the assumptions that marketers and sales reps make when people show interest in your website, content, or booth at a virtual summit or trade show is that they’re buyers. Unsure about the validity of their business case. The Opportunity for Marketers and Sales Teams. Uncertain they’ll get the outcome they want.

Buy 77

Buy Peer-to-peer B2B Work Management 77

Marketing Interactions

SEPTEMBER 9, 2021

One of the problems marketing and sales have as B2B buyers’ roles shift is that they start too late in the process. ABM is a terrific vehicle for enabling marketers and sellers to work in parallel to help B2B buyers do their own discovery and complete their pre-buying work to enable them to buy what you’re selling. What are they?

Ideal Customer Profiles 62

Ideal Customer Profiles Account Based Marketing B2B ABM 62

Marketing Interactions

FEBRUARY 20, 2022

In B2B marketing and sales, we talk a lot about our buyers’ pain or need. It’ll upend our workflows, disrupt our team, get pushback—and oh geez, the business case. Yet, given what your digital behavior indicates, this is when marketers are looking to get you to raise your hand for a demo or take a meeting with a sales rep.

Top of Funnel 88

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

Marketing Interactions

MAY 23, 2018

If the trend holds steady—which B2B marketers indicate it will—you’ll create even more content next year. While marketers have widely embraced content marketing, we’ve yet to give it the foundation of a content operations function to manage its effectiveness at scale. Building a Business Case for B2B Content Operations.

Top of Funnel 67

Top of Funnel Paid Search Agency Companies B2B 67

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. The people in this role must also be someone marketing can reach. People are busy and you’re not their priority. Building actionable personas takes a fair bit of time and effort.

Buyer Personas 69

Buyer Personas Effectiveness B2B B2B Thought Leadership 69

Marketing Interactions

FEBRUARY 17, 2020

Content marketing has been an ongoing practice for B2B marketers for more than a decade. Marketers are spending a boatload of money, time and effort producing and distributing content to their audiences. Get rid of the sales pitch and marketing fluff. B2B Marketers say: Our personalization efforts are mostly ineffective.

Work Management 96

Work Management Marketing Management B2B Thought Leadership B2B 96

Marketing Interactions

MARCH 22, 2022

Given that 94% of B2B Buyers say they are very well informed or somewhat informed before they talk to a sales rep, there’s a lot of opportunity for marketers to help buyers self-qualify as ¾ of them push off engaging with sales until the end of their change process. There’s only one of four components that marketers can weigh in on.

Work Management 62

Work Management Marketing Management Ideal Customer Profiles Sales Qualified Leads 62

Marketing Interactions

MAY 21, 2018

The intent to expand content marketing strategy and tactics is in every B2B marketing survey. B2B marketers plan to create more content, spend more on content marketing, increase the number of channels for content distribution, and add more technology to their marketing tech stack.

Cost 69

Cost Content Marketing Automation Services Work Management 69

Marketing Interactions

NOVEMBER 29, 2021

This is a question that comes up repeatedly for B2B marketers and one we can’t seem to answer definitively. Forrester finds that buyer interactions have increased to 27 (across both marketing and sales) from 17 only two years ago. Learn 5 things to build your business case for X during our customer panel. No dead ends.

B2B 62

B2B Work Management Marketing Management B2B Thought Leadership 62

Marketing Interactions

MAY 21, 2018

Text messaging in business is often thought of as purely transactional. They tend to be static, which can result in increasing the gap between your business and your customers. Every business has a need for transactional messages. But SMS messaging can have much more impact as a conversation.

SMS 48

SMS Business Class Ad Frequency 48

Marketing Interactions

JULY 25, 2019

But you also must convince HR, Product, Sales, Marketing, Service and the CFO that this is the solution they each need to ensure their departments are contributing to company growth objectives. Product needs regional teams to work better together to get products to market faster. Let’s take an example.

Relevance 73

Relevance Work Management Marketing Management B2B Sales 73

Marketing Interactions

JUNE 20, 2021

B2B messaging is a key component of doing business. All go-to-market and customer programs run on messaging. Marketing creates messaging to position the company in market, draw attention to the brand and create awareness and advancement for prospective buyers and across the customer continuum. That’s no longer true.

B2B 62

B2B Marketing Management Customer Satisfaction B2B Sales 62

Marketing Interactions

APRIL 11, 2019

I’ve been actively involved in content marketing for 20 years. There’s something new to learn every day and content marketing feels like it’s taken over marketing. I remember back when just putting up a blog post once or twice per week was a novel approach to content marketing. Seems like I just started. But we have to.

Peer-to-peer 53

Peer-to-peer Content Enterprise Management Broadcasting 53

Marketing Interactions

MAY 23, 2018

Text messaging is growing in preference as a communication channel between businesses, business professionals and consumers. However, conversational messaging for marketing is not the same as whipping out your smartphone to fire off a text to friends or family. In other words, what’s the business goal for your SMS campaign?

SMS 58

SMS Campaigns Marketing Automation Services Urgency Marketing 58

Marketing Interactions

MAY 23, 2018

As B2B marketers sprint forward, full of anticipation and excitement to help our companies grow and thrive based on the success of our customers, there are a few content marketing insights, 11 actually, that CMOs wish all marketers knew. I’ve been a marketer for a very long time. Tie Back to Business Priorities.

Planning 118

Planning Paid Search Agency Content Marketing Marketing & Strategy 118