You are creating great content and your website delivers a great experience with a strong conversion rate. Your initial inbound marketing results are promising, but you need more. Inbound marketing represents a major investment for B2B marketers. Not only do you still need to create content to capture leads, nurture prospects and support sales, you need to create sharable and discoverable content also and then patiently wait before you see the return on this new investment. Traditional B2B marketers face a challenge. Meanwhile, newer competitors are at a distinct advantage. MORE >>

I don't know how many times I've had to shift a conversation into reverse when an initial business discussion about online communities begins with "We're thinking about starting an online community. What's your opinion of Platform X?" Too many companies decide they want to invest in an online community -- be it internal or externally-facing -- and then move right to making the community platform acquisition decision without EVER considering the mission, vision and goals for the community. It's like starting a business negotiation with "I want to buy something. What have you got to sell?" MORE >>

This is the second of two posts about CMOs and the challenges they face. In first post, we reviewed our thoughts about how CMOs obtain their jobs; and we posed a question about how to approach that first day in the office. In this post, we’ll try to answer that question, especially in the context of fixing a broken marketing organization. First – and most important – keep your finger off the “reboot” button. New executives sometimes feel a compulsion to clean house and start with a blank slate. Don’t do that. In spite what you heard in your interviews, offline gossip, etc., MORE >>

You’ve done all the hard work of optimizing (SEO) your industrial website and now you have a steady stream of traffic to your site. Congratulations! Sorry to rain on your parade but that is only half the equation. The other half is all about converting that traffic into leads and customers. find there is a strong but mistaken belief among industrial companies that somehow their site visitors will interrupt their online activities and pick up the phone to call their sales people. See my post, “Do You Believe in Industrial Websites?” ). Really? Prove it – are you always the lowest bidder? MORE >>

Three things your copywriter forgot to tell you. Planning on asking a UK copywriter to create content for your business – or already in conversation with a copywriter about your copy? Here are three things they might have forgotten to tell you: 1. Your content gets lonely without a strategy. Has your copywriter asked you about your overall plan for your content? If not, then it’s likely that the content they product won’t create the results you want. SEO copywriting is not a quick fix. Speaking to a general copywriter or a dedicated SEO copywriter? MORE >>