December, 2009

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$600 Discount on MarketingSherpa's Email Summit for my readers

markempa

I’m looking forward to heading down to Miami for the upcoming MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2010. Besides giving me a valid business reason to leave Minnesota in the winter (and if you’ve been here in January, you know why I'd want to), I’m even more excited about MarketingSherpa's new specific B2B track. As a reader of this blog, you should seriously consider attending the Summit for the B2B track.

Lead Gen 172
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Spredfast Offers Systematic Management for Social Media Campaigns

Customer Experience Matrix

Summary: Social Agency’s Spredfast helps marketers schedule social media campaigns the same way they schedule paid advertising. Cool. It seems like common courtesy to listen to an existing conversation before jumping in with a comment. If social media worked the same way, companies would first buy a monitoring system to track what’s being said, followed by tools to respond to comments made by others.

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Decision Makers Like Details

WriteSpark

I recently participated in a group to evaluate the effectiveness of sales materials produced by an insurance company. The group included people of diverse professions, ages, and life experience. Yet it was interesting to see how quickly they reached consensus on one factor: which document had the most appeal, especially for motivating a purchase decision.

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What's the Plan?

Ambal's Amusings

As you head into to 2010, no doubt you'll be thinking about business goals. Perhaps you already have a mental to-do list: blogging and Tweeting more, networking more, starting a Facebook group or uploading video content. Once New Year's has worn off, you just want to jump in and get started. They're great intentions, but you'll never achieve them without a plan.

Planning 122
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Sales & Marketing Alignment: How to Synergize for Success

Speaker: Carlos Hidalgo, Co-Founder & CEO of Digital Exhaust, Author, International Keynote & TEDx Speaker

Recent research shows that only 50% of B2B organizations state that they have good alignment between their marketing and sales teams. This lack of alignment tremendously impacts the ability to meet business goals, and is a limiting factor for building and maintaining customer relationships. While many B2B organizations continue to struggle with aligning their marketing and sales teams, they can take practical steps to unify both teams and simplify their overall approach.

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Top B2B marketing posts for 2009 (hint: social media)

Chris Koch

Who says B2B marketers are lagging in social media? If they are out there, they aren’t reading this blog. Of the top ten posts on my blog this year, only one did not involve social media. Though I’m supposed to be an objective researcher, I have to admit bias here. I think the social media phenomenon is the most exciting and important thing to hit communications in my lifetime.

More Trending

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Lead Generation Check list – Part 7: Effective lead management

markempa

My checklist for optimizing the lead generation process so far has included six steps: the mindset of not pushing ; repairing the rift between sales and marketing ; creating the ideal customer profile (and the un-ideal customer profile as well); agreeing upon a universal lead definition that fits your company’s goals and culture; importance of a well maintained database ; and, in step 6, I outlined a multi-modal approach and discussed its importance in the lead gen process.

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Fire your Director of Social Media!

Buzz Marketing for Technology

At a recent ANA conference I was interviewing Brian Wallace VP of Digital Marketing and Media for RIM when I heard him say “2 years from now- if I still have a Director of Social Media – I should be fired!&# and after thinking about that I can’t help but agree with him. The theory here is as CMO’s appoint a head of social media in their organizations, it fosters silo-like behavior and departmentalizes social which by definition runs counter to the behavior within the organization you are t

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5 Mistakes B2B Marketers Need to Avoid in 2010

Anything Goes Marketing

2009 has been a long year but as I reflect back on my many conversations, I've created a top 5 list of items to avoid in 2010: 1. Not having a defined social media strategy You would be surprised by the number of companies that say “yeah, social media is important but it’s not important to us at the moment”. In 2010 you will not have a choice but to make social media part of your overall marketing strategy.

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How Shopping Can Help You Become a Better Marketer

Ambal's Amusings

Love it or hate it, the holiday season is a largely commercial event. Those of us who dread shopping can at least look at the annual exercise as a good opportunity to analyze our own experiences as customers - then figure out how to replicate the positive experiences in our own marketing efforts. Your purchasing decisions are often made for reasons of convenience or affordability; but what kind of stores make you actually enjoy shopping?

Sample 126
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WorkCast's Ultimate Webinar Handbook 2024

Elevate your webinar game with WorkCast's Ultimate Webinar Handbook! Packed with insights from our seasoned webinar experts, this comprehensive guide is your go-to resource for mastering the art of B2B webinars. Learn the fundamentals, from defining webinars to exploring their benefits and diverse use cases. Discover the key elements of running a successful webinar, avoiding common mistakes, and making your sessions more engaging.

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Why B2B marketers need to embrace deal marketing

Chris Koch

Honestly, why do we think that sophisticated B2B buyers are going to follow our brands on Twitter or become our fans on Facebook? The answer is we don’t. Even if we believe deeply in the power of social media, we all have that gnawing feeling deep in our guts that says that there’s little reason for a busy, intelligent person to want to receive frequent updates about our brands when those brands produce complex services and products with two-year sales cycles.

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Lead Gen Call Center In The Cloud - Virtual Hybrid

Smashmouth Marketing

When we started Green Leads we set out to build the perfect Virtual Call Center. We accomplished it, and other than not seeing people face-to-face, the way we work is identical to a traditional call center. We can see people's dials, what CRM records they modify, listen in for training, etc. Of the many benefits, here are but a few: Working from home Distributed resources for disaster recovery (this happened with last year's ice storm) Flexible hours, allowing for a better work/life balance Redu

Lead Gen 140
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How to improve lead generation with prospecting 2.0

markempa

Cold calling. Feel a shiver move up your spine? Too bad. It’s a shame that you, like many others, choose to dismiss cold calling as a lead generation tool (there’s that shiver again). I’m not saying that its reputation hasn’t been earned. I just think everybody is going about it all wrong. I love this analogy from Mike Schultz, Publisher of RainToday.com : Fail at something enough, and it's easy to dismiss the whole tactic.

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Fire your Director of Social Media!

Buzz Marketing for Technology

At a recent ANA conference I was interviewing Brian Wallace VP of Digital Marketing and Media for RIM when I heard him say “2 years from now- if I still have a Director of Social Media - I should be fired!" and after thinking about that I can’t help but agree with him. The theory here is as CMO’s appoint a head of social media in their organizations, it fosters silo-like behavior and departmentalizes social which by definition runs counter to the behavior within the organization you are trying t

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The Top 3 Tips for Writing Successful White Papers

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.

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Lead Generation Checklist - Part 1: Conversations, Not Campaigns

Everything Technology Marketing

Lead generation tactis are changing rapidly. The previous transactional approach isn't working anymore, prospects dont want to be sold to but engaged in a conversation about their challenges and learn how a vendor can help solve problems. Think of lead generation as a series of conversations with your audience, not campaigns. Show your prospects that you understand their industry, and specific issues, and that you are interested in building a long term relationship.

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ClickInsights: What was your "Aha" moment in 2009? - Part 2

Ambal's Amusings

It’s almost the end of the year and we will soon start a fresh one. What is amazing about the end of the year is the festive mood it puts us in. It also puts us in a reflective mood as we ponder over what has transpired and how we have come out of this year stronger than we went in. I have invited our Panel of B2B Marketing Experts to reflect on 2009 and answer the following question: What was your aha moment in 2009 ?

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Eight reasons to monitor social media and a list of tools for doing it

Chris Koch

If you read this blog regularly, you know that I think that monitoring social media is one of four key aspects of a social media engagement strategy. Social media monitoring is a way to figure out what’s being said about your brand and reveals opportunities for engaging in conversations with customers and influencers. At its most basic, social media monitoring starts with what is known as the “vanity search.

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The Elves Are Making Appointments and Leads

Smashmouth Marketing

We hear this all the time, even from our own reps when they are having a slow week: "December is terrible for lead gen. End of year and the holidays.". True, people have other things on their minds. Some might be closing out the year, but many are willing to help those elves with their heads down making appointments. So I give you these thoughts to consider, and recommend you keep dialing with cheer: Prospects are thinking about next year.

Leads 147
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21 Advanced ChatGPT Prompts To Take Your Social Media to the Next Level

Upgrade your social media game with our in-depth playbook: "21 advanced ChatGPT prompts for social media managers". These powerful prompts are tailored to supercharge your content creation, strategy development, and results analysis. Say goodbye to writer's block and hello to endless creativity as you effortlessly generate engaging posts, come up with original strategies, and optimize your social media performance - all in a fraction of the time.

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More Free Marketing Knowledge

The Effective Marketer

The Effective Marketer Effectiveness is a discipline and it can be learned Home About the Effective Marketer Books Speaking More Free Marketing Knowledge I love the internet. Free stuff abound and sharing is easy. But there is so much out there that deciding on what to read is a job in itself. That’s why I liked when the Modern B2B Marketing blog posted a list of must-read B2B marketing ebooks.

Planning 108
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10 BtoB Marketers Predictions for 2010

Buzz Marketing for Technology

Around this time last year I wrote about some Predictions for 2009 and while I would say 8 out of 10 have already materialized and the other 2 are on their way, it has become clear that this year was the year we past the point of no return on Social Media. Recession or not Social Media was on a roll ignited by the visibility of events like Obama’s win and Iran’s election protests.

BtoB 178
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Fixing the Crisis in Marketing

Everything Technology Marketing

I ran across an interesting blog post " The Crisis in Marketing " by Erik Bower from MarketBright where he talks about current Marketing methodologies not keeping pace with the pressures in today’s business environments: volatile markets, pressure to prove marketing's impact on sales pipeline, reduced budgets and headcounts, new tactics such as social media, etc.

Planning 111
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ClickLaunch: What Matters NOW - Things to Think About and Do in 2010

Ambal's Amusings

Thunder. Rolling Thunder. You can hear and sense it coming. Similarly, I knew that some fantastic content was coming our way when a few weeks ago, over a cup of hot tea, Rajesh Setty had mentioned to me that he was contributing to an eBook that Seth Godin and Ishita Gupta were putting together. The eBook would include ideas from several thought leaders on what they think will matter in 2010 - somewhat similar to the special sections that Times runs just before the new year.

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Are Your Impact Comms Resonating With Stakeholders?

Whether your organization is at the start of its sustainability and impact journey or years into it, many brands share a common concern: the uncertainty of whether they are sending stakeholders mixed messages. Creating content that speaks to your audience's “love language” can be a tricky dance. But, worry not! 3BL has put together tips to ensure that your content not only finds its rhythm but also resonates with your target audiences.

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Why B2B marketers hate social media

Chris Koch

In a recent post, I offered some hard research data to support the growing importance of social media to B2B. But this time I want to address the legitimate concerns that ITSMA clients give us when we talk about the wonders of social media. The case for social media isn’t just about showing how buyers are flocking to social media. It’s also about addressing the very real concern that in a time of stretched budgets and lean staffs, social media becomes yet another channel to manage.

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Lead Gen Strategies: Sales People Should Be Selling, NOT Prospecting

Smashmouth Marketing

This past week a prospect commented that she wanted to explore a third-party lead gen program because their sales reps were spending too much time prospecting and not selling. She said that if they had enough leads they would be SELLING and CLOSING -- not having to do lead gen. How many sales reps are caught in the prospecting grind and not closing?

Lead Gen 148
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Aberdeen's B2B TeleServices: The 2009 Buyer's Guide

ViewPoint

B2B 131
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10 BtoB Marketers Predictions for 2010

Buzz Marketing for Technology

Around this time last year I wrote about some Predictions for 2009 and while I would say 8 out of 10 have already materialized and the other 2 are on their way, it has become clear that this year was the year we past the point of no return on Social Media. Recession or not Social Media was on a roll ignited by the visibility of events like Obama’s win and Iran’s election protests.

BtoB 138
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The Resurgence of Direct Mail as a Growth Marketing Strategy

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.

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Technology Marketing Collateral Trends

Everything Technology Marketing

Here is a recent survey report on B2B technology marketing collateral trends from Eccolo Media that you may find interesting: “ Eccolo Media 2009 B2B Technology Collateral Survey Report ”. Key findings in the report: • White papers – especially those that are long on expert content and light on sales jargon – continue to be the No. 1 form of collateral influencing technology purchasers.

Trends 102
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The Importance of Powerful Visuals in Content Marketing

Ambal's Amusings

Content isn’t just about text anymore. In fact, too much text can harm your efforts to engage an audience. With peoples’ shortening attention spans, you need to think visually, and use powerful visuals to attract and connect with your audience. People now post over 14 million photos a day on Facebook. Video content isn’t far behind.

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Why B2B marketing will become more visual, vocal, and mobile

Chris Koch

The mobile phone has long been an object of affection and obsession for people who like to talk incessantly. But now that mobile phones have become computers that happen to ring, they have become irresistible. There’s something about having this little device in our pocket that makes it so much more personal— dear, even—than any phone or laptop. (Desktops?