It’s a theme that’s gotten gradually louder across 2012, and we’d expect it to continue into the end of the year: a growing (and, in our opinion, appropriate) skepticism over the business value of social and digital media. Here are a few numbers to keep an eye on: digital CPMs, major corporate pullouts from social advertising platforms, Facebook’s share price. For the last few years, we’ve been hearing from our friends in B2B marketing that B2C-like tactics – such as social media – are increasingly effective in the B2B environment. MORE >>

Cisco knew it needed to shift this perception, so it first listened to existing conversations on social media for about a month to establish a strong baseline knowledge of current trends and customer language.  When social media was new, many of our members set up teams to focus on Facebook and other social platforms; we found, though, that social must be integrated with the rest of the company’s marketing efforts and coordinated by a Ringmaster (you can read more about our HBR article here ).Just Lead back to your unique benefits. MORE >>

Let’s look at last year’s ad for Chatter.com, Salesforce’s enterprise social media platform: There’s an emotional message here: the cloud, as embodied by Chatter, is a futuristic, quasi-magical solution for keeping far-flung, overworked teams on the same page. B2B marketers typically don’t get to participate in the Super Bowl hoopla – at least, not in the same way that their B2C colleagues do. But if you’ve got the budget for it, there’s a smart way that Super Bowl ads can fit into B2B marketing plans. Let us know in the comments. MORE >>

And these customers aren’t even being faithful to Marketing: In addition to using supplier information, these customers are educating themselves through third-party content, social media, and other non-supplier-owned communications. Last year, we found that B2B customers are waiting until they are (on average) 57% of the way through their purchase journeys before they engage in serious contact with Sales.  But barraging your prospects with information isn’t enough; in fact, sending too many emails can damage a relationship.  Tracking lead handoff and ensuring follow-up by Sales. MORE >>

Customers and potential customers talk all the time on social media, blogs, etc. Around Valentine’s Day, what could be worse than unreciprocated love? For many marketers, this seems to be a year-round pain – the leads they so painstakingly manage to generate do not convert to actual purchases. MLC research shows, on an average only 25% of marketing-generated leads result in desired follow up and results. It is but natural that marketers would try to enhance the quantity and quality of leads they generate, to result in higher conversion. MORE >>