Inbound Marketing - B2B Marketing Zone

Marketing Automation vs. Inbound Marketing

Industrial Marketing Today

OCTOBER 21, 2010

If you believe everything you read (and lately there’s been a lot) about marketing automation, you’d think it is the killer app to solve all your lead generation problems. Then there are scores of B2B marketers who swear by inbound marketing as the path to lead generation nirvana. How manufacturers are marketing today.

Marketing Automation Services

Marketing Automation Services Inbound Marketing Marketing Automation Top of Funnel

Inbound Marketing Must Set the Table for Industrial Sales

Industrial Marketing Today

OCTOBER 1, 2011

In my conversations with industrial companies about inbound marketing, I find my audience agreeing with me up to a certain point and then there is a big disconnect. I see heads nodding in face-to-face meetings or hear plenty of “Uh-huhs” on the phone when I talk about the benefits of inbound marketing.

Top of Funnel

Top of Funnel Inbound Marketing Bulldog Solutions Lead Scoring

Inbound Marketing Alone May Not Be Enough for Industrial Companies

Industrial Marketing Today

AUGUST 26, 2011

Inbound marketing with content has been getting all the attention lately. Consultants and practitioners of “pull” marketing want marketers to abandon “push” marketing because they say it is old school and no longer effective. Inbound marketing requires prospects to be actively searching for products and solutions.

Inbound Marketing

Inbound Marketing Paid Search Agency Companies Ad Frequency

Webinars

How to Leverage Behavioral Science Insights for Direct Mail Success

MORE WEBINARS

Inbound Marketing Tactics to Get Bulk of B2B Marketing Budgets in 2011

Industrial Marketing Today

OCTOBER 26, 2010

While low cost is very important, I think there are other key reasons for the shift towards inbound marketing. They are: Change in buyer behavior – the B2B buyer is now in control and will only interact with your salespeople on their preferred schedule, probably towards the tail end of their buying cycle.

Marketing Budget Creation

Marketing Budget Creation Marketing Budget Inbound Marketing Tactics

Content Marketing Delivers Lead Insight to Sales

Industrial Marketing Today

NOVEMBER 10, 2011

See my earlier post, “Inbound Marketing Must Set the Table for Industrial Sales.”. Content marketing or if you prefer, inbound marketing with content brings them qualified sales opportunities to do what they do best – win more deals, build stronger relationships and become a valuable resource.

Sales Qualified Leads

Sales Qualified Leads Content Marketing Leads Lead

Use Content Marketing to Manage Industrial Sales Funnels

Industrial Marketing Today

OCTOBER 25, 2011

Content marketing helps industrial and manufacturing marketers manage their sales funnels from ToFU to MoFU. Use optimized content for inbound marketing to attract qualified prospects (ToFU) and then nurture them with engaging content to convert them into “sales ready” leads (MoFU).

Top of Funnel

Top of Funnel Marketing Funnels Content Marketing High Quality Lead

Subscribers to Free Content are NOT Leads

Industrial Marketing Today

JUNE 22, 2011

I’ve also read articles by other industrial marketers where they recommend using free content to generate new leads. That is good advice and it is a proven tactic for inbound marketing. See SAL is the Glue that Binds Sales and Marketing in Lead Generation ). One example would be inviting them to a webinar.

Sales Qualified Leads

Sales Qualified Leads Lead Scoring Lead Ranking Top of Funnel

Is Your Industrial Content Marketing Reaching a Dead End?

Industrial Marketing Today

JUNE 5, 2012

In my daily interactions with manufacturing, engineering and industrial companies, inbound marketing or content marketing is a popular topic of discussion.

Top of Funnel

Top of Funnel Content Marketing Planning Buying Cycle

You’ve Got Traffic. Now What?

Industrial Marketing Today

MAY 1, 2012

Even though this behavior is contrary to how they themselves interact online, they expect their target audience to behave differently. See me earlier posts, “Industrial Marketing Content that Helps Buyers” and “Creating Digital Content for Industrial Marketing” ). See my post, “Do You Believe in Industrial Websites?” ).

Traffic

Traffic Marketing Analytics Tools Buying Cycle Lead Scoring

7 Strategies for Using Content to Market Industrial Products

Industrial Marketing Today

MAY 14, 2010

Home Marketing Matters About Contact B2B Marketing Store Company Website 7 Strategies for Using Content to Market Industrial Products by Achinta Mitra on May 14, 2010 in Content Marketing , Industrial Marketing & Web 2.0 , Industrial Marketing Blog I am a big fan of Content Marketing or as some people like to refer to it as Inbound Marketing.

Webinar Metrics

Webinar Metrics Marketing & Strategy Marketing Strategy Product

Lead Nurturing Is Not A Marketing Option, It’s A Sales Necessity

Industrial Marketing Today

MARCH 1, 2011

Results: Very little response, wasted time and money in producing marketing collateral and even more frustrations. After lead nurturing: Salespeople only call those prospects that have sent a clear signal of their readiness to buy with their online interactions with your marketing content.

Lead Nurturing

Lead Nurturing Cold Calling Leads Lead

Using Content to Move Prospects Forward in the Sales Cycle

Industrial Marketing Today

MAY 5, 2010

Ardath Albee, CEO of Marketing Interactions, Inc. said it best when she wrote, “Passive reading of your content is not going to help online marketing initiatives shorten buying cycles or increase customer acquisition and revenues.” Your prospects are at different stages of their decision making process when they visit your site.

Sales Cycle

Sales Cycle Web 2.0 Buying Cycle Privacy Policies

Are You Creating Irresistible Offers with Your Email Marketing?

Industrial Marketing Today

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

by Achinta Mitra on November 16, 2009 in B2B E-Mail Marketing Do you know the key component of email marketing that generates more high-quality leads and drives sales? Marketing gurus tend to talk about opt-in pages, sign up forms, calls to action and interactive squeeze pages to boost your click through and conversion rates.

Email Marketing

Email Marketing Web 2.0 Planning Opt-in

Lead Generation for Industrial Companies is a Process not a Campaign

Industrial Marketing Today

JUNE 18, 2015

Buyers are looking for information online and interacting with sales people on […] The post Lead Generation for Industrial Companies is a Process not a Campaign by Achinta Mitra appeared first on Industrial Marketing Today. This is only a content summary.

Lead Generation

Lead Generation Process Campaigns Paid Search Agency

Industrial and B2B Customer Engagement Simplified

Industrial Marketing Today

AUGUST 3, 2010

According to them , “customer engagement is the level of involvement, interaction, intimacy, and influence that an individual has with a brand over time.&# In essence, to measure customer engagement accurately, we need to track four components — involvement, interaction, intimacy and influence.

B2B

B2B Marketing Analytics Tools Web 2.0 Buying Cycle

How Relevant Marketing Content Helps B2B Branding

Industrial Marketing Today

JUNE 29, 2010

Use social media selectively to engage with your target audience in a more personal way and humanize an otherwise impersonal interaction that is purely transactional. Create an expertise blog to showcase your internal subject matter experts and allow your prospects and site visitors to interact with them directly.

Relevance

Relevance B2B Marketing Web 2.0 Brand Identity

5 Rules of Website Redesign for Engaging Engineers and Industrial.

Industrial Marketing Today

JULY 23, 2010

Rule #3: Create interaction and shareability Nothing happens until your site visitor takes some sort of action. To improve engagement, build interaction into your site. See rule #4 for other ideas on creating interaction. This will lead to your visitors bookmarking your site for future reference and becoming a valuable resource.

Rules

Rules Marketing Websites Marketing Automation Services Web 2.0

Don’t Underestimate Industrial Marketing’s Contribution to Sales

Industrial Marketing Today

JUNE 22, 2012

It should be apparent that industrial marketing plays a vital role in the buyer’s journey that ultimately leads to the coveted RFQ. It is very important to tie together marketing activities with a robust set of analytics to help you track every online interaction.

Top of Funnel

Top of Funnel BtoB Buying Cycle Advertising Funnels

Have Digital Marketing and Social Media Killed the Industrial.

Industrial Marketing Today

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

They are time-challenged and want to interact with salespeople based only on their needs and schedules. The impact of digital marketing on complex sales I am deliberately making a distinction here between simple transactional sales and complex industrial or technical sales.

Social Media

Social Media Social Marketing Media Planning

Content Auditing and Mapping it to the Industrial Buy Cycle

Industrial Marketing Today

SEPTEMBER 3, 2010

While conversion may be the ultimate goal, building trust, increasing awareness, improving the company’s reputation, expertise and credibility and encouraging social sharing are all worthy content marketing goals too. Ardath Albee of Marketing Interactions, Inc.

Buying Cycle

Buying Cycle Buy Marketing Budget Web 2.0

Industrial E-mail Marketing: Use Application Notes to Engage Engineers

Industrial Marketing Today

JULY 1, 2011

Measuring post-click interactions are important to gathering lead generation intelligence, improving conversion rates and gaining a deeper understanding of Web site interactions. Consider integrating Web analytics into your email marketing.

Peer-to-peer

Peer-to-peer Planning Marketing Analytics Tools CTR

7 “Rs” for B2B Marketing Content Planning

Industrial Marketing Today

APRIL 30, 2010

The sooner marketers start thinking about content as strategic assets that must be managed accordingly, the more traction they’ll start to gain from the ways in which they use it. Ardath Albee is a B2B Marketing Strategist and the CEO of her firm, Marketing Interactions, Inc.

Planning

Planning B2B Marketing Emarketing B2B

High-Performance Email Marketing for Attracting and Engaging.

Industrial Marketing Today

OCTOBER 2, 2010

They are combining video, audio and sophisticated tracking tools to deliver email campaigns with highly customized messages that engage prospects in their preferred format and measure interactions beyond just open and click-thru rates and well into website behavior.

Email Marketing

Email Marketing Planning Web 2.0 BtoB

Translate Features into Benefits if You Want Your Marketing.

Industrial Marketing Today

JULY 6, 2010

I have come across two tools for helping you dig deeper and create marketing content that focuses on benefits over features. The first tool is the Product Analysis Worksheet from the book Personal Selling: An Interactive Approach by Ronald Marks, Ph.D., and professor of marketing at the University of Missouri.

Features

Features Web 2.0 Planning Work Management

Content Can Differentiate Industrial Companies When There’s Parity in Value Propositions

Industrial Marketing Today

OCTOBER 9, 2012

Blog posts to highlight knowledge of the subject matter(s), create thought leadership and provide direct interaction between readers and in-house experts such as engineers. Application notes and articles for more in-depth technical content (See my post, Thought Leadership: Marketing Engineering Services with Technical Articles ).

Top of Funnel

Top of Funnel Differentiation Lead Scoring Lead Ranking

How to Use a B2B Blog to Win Customers and Influence Prospects

Industrial Marketing Today

MAY 21, 2010

Navigation and your calls to action play a major role in how your visitors interact with your blog. webinars website design White Paper Marketing whitepapers YouTube Marketing Matters Marketing Matters is our monthly e-newsletter on best practices in industrial and B2B marketing.

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 Buying Cycle B2B Blogger

Industrial Marketing Content that Helps Buyers

Industrial Marketing Today

JANUARY 25, 2012

Online interactive and real-time design tools. I am not minimizing the value of more conventional marketing content such as product data sheets, application notes, case studies, whitepapers and blog posts to name just a few. Parametric part number search application. Valve sizing programs. 2D CAD Drawings and 3D CAD Models.

Top of Funnel

Top of Funnel Buying Cycle Lead Ranking Digital Marketing Funnels

Why a Content BOM is Crucial to a Successful Industrial Web Design

Industrial Marketing Today

SEPTEMBER 2, 2012

To create a good content BOM, you or your site design company must have a clear understanding of the following: How engineers and industrial professionals think and want to interact with your site (Make their jobs easier). What kind of content will educate your customers and help them make an informed buying decision (Move away from price).

Design

Design Wikipedia Content Sales Qualified Leads

How Manufacturers can Resurrect Product Content from the Dead Zone

Industrial Marketing Today

MAY 26, 2011

Convert static “How to Order” to an interactive configurator: It is standard practice to add a “How to Order” schematic on the back of product data sheets. Convert that very useful piece of content from a static printed application into a real-time online application.

Product

Product B2B Thought Leadership Cross-Selling Thought Leadership

Digital Marketing for Control Engineers, Machine Builders and Designers

Industrial Marketing Today

MAY 6, 2011

As an industrial marketing consultant, I interact on a daily basis with engineers and technical professionals from the Automation and Process Control industry. I receive valuable firsthand feedback on what this audience wants and needs from their digital marketing initiatives.

Design

Design Work Management Marketing Management Paid Search Agency

Making Industrial E-mail Marketing More Relevant

Industrial Marketing Today

SEPTEMBER 1, 2011

You can refine your segmentation by demographics, website interactions, product lines, purchase history and length of time on the list to mention just a few ways to slice and dice your list for better relevance. I see too many marketers in the industrial sector that still use a “batch-and-blast” e-mail marketing strategy.

Relevance

Relevance List Brokers Opt-out Marketing Analytics Tools

Innovative Uses of QR Codes by the AEC Industry

Industrial Marketing Today

JUNE 1, 2011

The codes link to Web pages or blog posts where concerned citizens can read details about the proposed project, traffic control issues, planned street and sidewalk improvements, interactive 3D renditions of the project once completed and even post their concerns and complaints. Municipalities and local governments are using QR codes.

Marketing Proposals

Marketing Proposals Comparison Mobile Marketing Communities

SAL is the Glue that Binds Sales and Marketing in Lead Generation

Industrial Marketing Today

DECEMBER 12, 2010

Even though we B2B marketers like to think of marketing as more science and less art, lead generation is not an exact science. Human intervention and interactions are the oils that grease the wheels of B2B lead generation.

Lead Ranking

Lead Ranking Marketing Qualified Leads Sales Qualified Leads Lead Scoring

What Not To Do For Better B2B Customer Relationships

Industrial Marketing Today

JULY 1, 2010

webinars website design White Paper Marketing whitepapers YouTube Marketing Matters Marketing Matters is our monthly e-newsletter on best practices in industrial and B2B marketing.

Marketing Automation Services

Marketing Automation Services Web 2.0 B2B Lead Ranking

Details Matter in Creating Content for Engineers

Industrial Marketing Today

APRIL 11, 2011

Create an online product configurator that engineers can interact with in real-time to aid in rapid prototyping using different design parameters. Use online interactive product demos to demonstrate complex functionalities. Create short videos of how your product is used in various industrial applications.

Content

Content Marketing Proposals Case Studies Case Study

Thought Leadership: Marketing Engineering Services with Technical Articles

Industrial Marketing Today

MAY 11, 2011

Add video and audio to PowerPoint slides and create a more interactive content for the web. Convert articles into short informative slides and post them on social sharing networks like SlideShare to reach a wider audience. Convert articles into Podcasts to offer an audio version to people who don’t like reading a lot of text online.

Thought Leadership

Thought Leadership Marketing Management Peer-to-peer Service

Dawning of the Age of Content Marketing in the Industrial Sector

Industrial Marketing Today

NOVEMBER 17, 2010

If you are a B2B marketer who deals with engineering companies, you know how difficult it is to explain the true value of content marketing to upper management and the C-suite. As a result, many industrial companies remain in the dark about the power of content for inbound marketing.

Co-Registration

Co-Registration Content Marketing Paid Search Agency Content

Industrial Marketing Today

Marketing Automation vs. Inbound Marketing

Inbound Marketing Must Set the Table for Industrial Sales

Webinars

Trending Sources

Inbound Marketing Alone May Not Be Enough for Industrial Companies

Webinars

Inbound Marketing Tactics to Get Bulk of B2B Marketing Budgets in 2011

Content Marketing Delivers Lead Insight to Sales

Use Content Marketing to Manage Industrial Sales Funnels

Subscribers to Free Content are NOT Leads

Is Your Industrial Content Marketing Reaching a Dead End?

You’ve Got Traffic. Now What?

7 Strategies for Using Content to Market Industrial Products

Lead Nurturing Is Not A Marketing Option, It’s A Sales Necessity

Using Content to Move Prospects Forward in the Sales Cycle

Are You Creating Irresistible Offers with Your Email Marketing?

Lead Generation for Industrial Companies is a Process not a Campaign

Industrial and B2B Customer Engagement Simplified

How Relevant Marketing Content Helps B2B Branding

5 Rules of Website Redesign for Engaging Engineers and Industrial.

Don’t Underestimate Industrial Marketing’s Contribution to Sales

Have Digital Marketing and Social Media Killed the Industrial.

Content Auditing and Mapping it to the Industrial Buy Cycle

Industrial E-mail Marketing: Use Application Notes to Engage Engineers

7 “Rs” for B2B Marketing Content Planning

High-Performance Email Marketing for Attracting and Engaging.

Translate Features into Benefits if You Want Your Marketing.

Content Can Differentiate Industrial Companies When There’s Parity in Value Propositions

How to Use a B2B Blog to Win Customers and Influence Prospects

Industrial Marketing Content that Helps Buyers

Why a Content BOM is Crucial to a Successful Industrial Web Design

How Manufacturers can Resurrect Product Content from the Dead Zone

Digital Marketing for Control Engineers, Machine Builders and Designers

Making Industrial E-mail Marketing More Relevant

Innovative Uses of QR Codes by the AEC Industry

SAL is the Glue that Binds Sales and Marketing in Lead Generation

What Not To Do For Better B2B Customer Relationships

Details Matter in Creating Content for Engineers

Thought Leadership: Marketing Engineering Services with Technical Articles

Dawning of the Age of Content Marketing in the Industrial Sector

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