Sat.Jul 25, 2015 - Fri.Jul 31, 2015

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"Marketing is too important to be left to marketers."

ViewPoint

This saying always amuses me. Partly because it’s true, partly because it’s funny, but also because it’s often misunderstood. It’s funny because it sounds like marketers are too stupid to be in charge of marketing. And, as a marketer, I love laughing at myself and those who do what I do. But my take on what it really means is that marketing is so important that it should be an integral part of the fabric of a company’s mindset, culture and strategy.

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VEST Report: Competition in B2B Marketing Automation Isn't About Features

Customer Experience Matrix

Yesterday I released the mid-year edition of the VEST Report on B2B marketing automation vendors, thereby meeting my self-imposed deadline of July 31. Look here for more information or to make a purchase. Updating the report gives a nice overview of recent industry developments. Here are some observations: - market positions are pretty stable. The only new vendor to make a splash recently has been SharpSpring , which went from zero to 500 agency clients in the past year.

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Cloud: Top 100 Influencers & Brands

Onalytica B2B

We are creating more and more content than ever before on our computers, notebooks, tablets and smart phones. 90% of the world’s content was generated in the last two years alone! From documents, music, television series, movie downloads; to emails and photographs, such a variety of data now exists that we want to access from any of our devices at any given time.

PageRank 219
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The Best Example You Will Find On The Value Of Storytelling

Marketing Insider Group

I hear it all the time: “you can talk all you want about thought leadership and content marketing , but we’re here to sell stuff.” Have you ever heard that line? Well I know there is more value to effective storytelling over hard selling and cold calling. I’ve proved it out in a variety of roles and in many different scenarios.

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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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Small Conversion Actions Are Better Than No Conversion Actions

KoMarketing Associates

While researching keywords for a client, I came across an excellent resource (from one of their competitors) that performed well in organic search for a particular keyword opportunity. Based on competitive SEO research from SEMRush, I’m pretty certain the site receives a fair amount of organic traffic for its position. However one critical issue arose in page evaluation: there was nothing left to do when I was finished reviewing the content marketing asset in question.

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4 Marketing Automation Must-Haves For Beginners

ANNUITAS

When I think about starting my career in marketing automation, I think of the complete confusion of how everything should be setup. This wasn’t just for our marketing team — it included our CRM admins, the sales team, communications and so many other parties. The hardest part of starting to work in an instance, whether it’s a new instance or you’re inheriting one from a previous admin, is understanding how to structure your instance in not only a consistent way, but a way that others can unders

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The 5 “Must-Do’s” For A Profitable B2B Social Media Strategy

Marketing Insider Group

Would you like your social media strategy to help increase website traffic, leads and sales? These five things can help make that happen. Despite social media’s ubiquity and adoption by people, there are a lot of B2B companies that have not done much to leverage its power. Most of those companies want to do more, but haven’t had the time or are uncertain of how best to get started to use social media to increase traffic, convert leads, nurture those leads toward a sale and delight their customer

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Effective Social Selling = Mindset over Tactics

NuSpark Consulting

What is it about the term “Social Selling” that gets people riled up? If you listen to enough conversations on LinkedIn surrounding sales, you’ll get lots of differing opinions. Many say that sales people should concentrate on honing their sales skills rather than social media skills. Some discount social altogether as a non-starter. Others swear by it as the holy grail of lead generation.

Tactics 163
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Why Your Website Matters and How to Make It Matter More

Biznology

With the rise of smart phones and social media, it can be easy to overlook the central role your website should be playing in your digital marketing. But these powerful tools, and even old-fashioned tools like email and, gasp, snail mail, work best when they are part of an integrated whole built around a unifying hub. Your website is that hub. Andrew Schulkind discusses how a marketing-focused website helps to amplify the strengths of social media, email marketing and other important digital mar

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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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3 Ways to Achieve Marketing Revenue and Demonstrate ROI (with Russ Mann, Nintex CMO)

Crimson Marketing

In the movie that inspired the name of this podcast—Moneyball—Billy Dean of the Oakland Athletics did not just observe the existing metrics of the day, such as RBI and Home Runs. Instead, he determined the metric that really mattered to the team—times on base—and used this as the A’s key metric. Finding the unique metric that matters for your organization, rallying the team around consistent observance of that metric and then using automation to scale up into a revenue generating machine are the

CMO 159
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10 Marketing Over Coffee Podcasts You Should Check Out

Marketing Insider Group

Podcasts (And Coffee) Are Hot! Recently I was interviewed by Marketing Over Coffee podcast host John J. Wall. So I checked out some of their episodes and found some really great stuff I’d like to share. What is Marketing Over Coffee ? According to their site, Marketing Over Coffee is “audio on demand” that covers both classic and new marketing.

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Where should you put your Call to Action?

Direct Response Coach

Advertising and marketing programs are supposed to generate results – measureable results. Too often, we forget that. Too often, we are led down the path of brand building and product awareness. We are seduced by creative ads, clever headlines and eye-grabbing graphics. And when we do, our results – and the strategies we use to [.]. The post Where should you put your Call to Action?

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5 do’s & don’ts of B2B lead qualification

Biznology

Lead qualification is one of the primary jobs for B2B marketers, and a great deal of time and money is spent on this step of the sales cycle. Now that I’ve stated the obvious, I see both good and bad lead qualification processes in the market. As an information junkie, I sign up for many webinars and download white papers on topics of interest, and subsequently am called by the sponsoring company to qualify me.

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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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Looking Outside In: Know Your Buyers First

ANNUITAS

*This post was first published in January 2015 via ANNUITAS.com. “There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It sounds pretty basic…getting to know your buyer before you build a Demand Generation program seems like common sense. Then why are so many Enterprise B2B marketers missing the mark? ANNUITAS recently published the first B2B Enterprise Demand Generation Study to understand what drives this unique group of marketers.

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Why Personas Fail

Marketing Insider Group

There’s plenty of fervor around the need for buyer personas; so why do some fail to deliver real value? From where I sit, we have entered a new phase in the evolution of buyer persona maturity in marketing– or maybe this has been the phase we’ve been stuck in ever since the phrase “buyer persona” was first coined years ago, first in the design movements of the 90’s, and later into marketing and sales.

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#BADMarketing from Starbucks

Crimson Marketing

Accidental #BADMarketing is still hilarious. . Image; Courtesy of DOSE. The post #BADMarketing from Starbucks appeared first on.

Marketing 162
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The content marketing book you should not miss

Biznology

Most of you know that I don’t do a lot of book reviews. The main reason for that is that I actually read all the books I review. If it wasn’t worth reading cover to cover, it isn’t worth recommending to you. I don’t write negative reviews, because why would you need to be warned away from a book? So, this review is a few months late becaise I am a slow reader.

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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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5 Reasons You Don’t Buy Likes with Facebook Advertising

Convince & Convert

“We use all of our Facebook ads budget to get more Likes on our page.” So said a new, corporate client in a recent kickoff meeting. “Is that how we should continue using those dollars?” he asked. My short answer was “No.” My medium answer was “Hell, no.” Here’s my longer answer, and the 5 reasons you shouldn’t use Facebook ads to drive new page Likes. 1.

Facebook 167
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Change Your LinkedIn Profile From A Resume To A Reputation Destination

Marketing Insider Group

What does a good craft beer bar have in common with a great LinkedIn profile? Both are great destinations that get more visits based on their reputation! If you’ve ever walked into a great craft beer bar, the bartender, or cicerone, can provide you an excellent customer experience by asking you a set of questions to lead you to what you should be drinking based on what you like.

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3 Ways to Achieve Marketing Revenue and Demonstrate ROI (with Russ Man, Nintex CMO)

Crimson Marketing

In the movie that inspired the name of this podcast—Moneyball—Billy Dean of the Oakland Athletics did not just observe the existing metrics of the day, such as RBI and Home Runs. Instead, he determined the metric that really mattered to the team—times on base—and used this as the A’s key metric. Finding the unique metric that matters for your organization, rallying the team around consistent observance of that metric and then using automation to scale up into a revenue generating machine are the

CMO 136
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Agile Marketing is an acquired taste

Biznology

I spent last week at the National Speaker’s Association annual convention. I was lucky to be named a Certified Speaking Professional and they gave me this medal to wear around my neck all week, so people naturally came up to congratulate me and ask me what you ask everyone at a speaker’s convention: “what do you speak about?” As soon as they heard that it was digital marketing, everyone had their favorite question to ask about their speaker website, social media, and YouT

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What Regulations Will Impact Sustainability Comms in 2024?

Navigating the waters of sustainability reporting disclosures and regulations can be intimidating, to say the least. With various measures set in motion in 2023 to keep companies accountable, there is a lot in store for brands’ impact communication in the upcoming year. 3BL is kicking off this January with our Navigating ESG Comms Through the Cosmos - Capricorn Edition by highlighting the impact of: The U.S Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Climate disclosure rules The European Commission

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Why Every Organization Needs a Story Strategy

Convince & Convert

Every organization and any business of any size (including entrepreneurs!) must tell a variety of stories. Most of what we hear lately focuses on the core purpose story, also known as the brand story. And that is a really important story because, if it is done well, it says to the world who we are and what we value. Well done, this core story allows customers to see themselves in that narrative.

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5 Signs You Don’t Know Your B2B Customer

Marketing Insider Group

Do you remember the board game Guess Who? You and your opponent would try to guess which character each other selected by confirming various features such as eye color, hair, hats, glasses, and more. As you narrowed down your choices by asking characteristic questions, the winner made the best guess, first. For a board game, this strategy works well.

B2B 171
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How Marketing Technology Can Help Bridge the Sales/Marketing Divide

Kaon

Original article posted on American Marketing Association. According to Marketo, 71% of CEOs at large companies say that they don’t see the payoff from CMOs’ technology investments. This means that while marketing technology may, indeed, deliver a worthwhile ROI, that return isn’t obvious to everyone in the C-suite. But this obviously isn’t the only pressure that CMOs face.

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[Ebook] How Marketing Automation Empowers Small Teams

Adobe Experience Cloud Blog

Author: Sesame Mish Let me ask you this: how big is your marketing team? One hundred people, 25 people, three people…or, perhaps, are you flying solo? For the 60% of us who work on teams of one to five people, we know what it means to be tasked with doing more—but be allotted fewer resources to do so. That, in essence, is the name of the game. Whether it’s creating batch and blast emails, working off of spreadsheets, or searching through data in order to understand which channels are the top per

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How to Improve Email Deliverability and Optimize Each Send

Learn how to optimize email deliverability and drive greater email ROI. What lands your email in the customer’s inbox? Understanding those factors, otherwise known as email deliverability, is critical to getting the most return on your campaign investments. But the “rules” around which factors land you in the spam folder aren’t always easy to keep up with.

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How One Social Campaign Drives Engagement Beyond the Screen

Convince & Convert

Sometimes you have to borrow from the past to drive innovation. Such was the case with Forever 21’s innovative new Thread Screen campaign, which takes an unlikely object—spools of thread—and re-imagines them in a futuristic way. True to its name, the Thread Screen was developed by Breakfast NY for Forever 21 and uses 6,400 mechanical spools of thread to display images and basic animations.

Campaigns 155
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15 Resources To Help Improve Your Personal Branding

Marketing Insider Group

Strong personal branding will help you sustain a solid career, develop a deeper relevant network and help you advance your agenda. You probably are not doing it as good as you could. You see, the biggest barrier to your personal branding success is the lack of planning, strategizing and goal-setting. You need to do a little soul searching, self-assessment and checking out what’s underneath your ‘hood’ to get the most out of your personal brand on LinkedIn, Twitter and blogging.

Resources 170
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Marketing Moves to Center Stage

Kaon

In previous generations, marketers have been thought of as “lead generators” for the sales department. But recent research into how corporate CEOs view the role of marketing reveals that now, more than ever, marketing is perceived to be strategic to a company’s success. CMOs Play a Comprehensive Role. Because of the powerful impact of marketing on multiple dimensions of corporate profitability and growth, C-suite leaders are developing broader expectations regarding how their internal organizati