hope you find these six tips helpful. For most people, the end of the year means enjoying holiday celebrations, taking time off work, and making sure tax items are in order before Dec. For B2B marketers, the last weeks and months of the year can also mean opportunity. Ending the year successfully—and gaining solid footing for 2013—starts with asking the right questions. Instead of waiting until late December, ask yourself these six essential questions to optimize your action plan: 1.  How does the holiday season affect your product or service? Are you responsive to clients and prospects? MORE >>

Lack of IT Support – The IT department usually has enough on its plate that the marketing department will have to stand in line to receive their help.  I just read an excellent article by Lauren Carlson titled Tailwinds for Marketing Automation Software. suggest you give it a read if you want to see the macro trends that are driving more companies to use technology to manage their marketing processes. Leo Tolstoy begins his novel Anna Karenina with the observation, “Every happy family is the same, but unhappy families are all different.” The project was a spectacular failure.  MORE >>

Use social networking – There are many social media tools available to help you move the needle of public perception, and gain far more awareness among your target audience. If it helps the company, create your own brand and establish thought leadership. Every B2B company has its own identity, target market and products or services.  But all have one thing in common.  Each wants to be perceived as a leader in its chosen market space, and each wants to gain as much publicity as possible while spending the least amount of time and money. Kelleher, founder of Southwest Airlines. MORE >>

This turns your boilerplate from a long-forgotten homework assignment to a vital strategic tool that helps you fashion a coherent, compelling brand and market more successfully together. Perhaps some of you have participated in scenes like this: your B2B company needs some marketing boilerplate copy—you know, the stuff that appears at the bottom of press releases, in the “About” section of your home page or on some evergreen sales collateral. Then nobody thinks about it ever again because you’ve all got more important things to do. Congratulations. MORE >>

But it is helpful to understand what not to do as well.  I talk a lot about what you need to do to be successful in B2B marketing.  Here are five habits to avoid in B2B lead generation. Lousy Habit 1: Waiting until conditions are “just right.” With some exception, the world can be divided into two classes of people, those who are prone to analysis and those who are prone to action.  You could also call these people the ready-aim-fire and the ready-fire-aim crowds.  When it comes to lead generation, I prefer to have the latter on my team simply because they generate more leads, faster.  MORE >>