Judging by the amount of online noise being generated, the idea of publishing
content is no longer considered to be an "edgy" proposition for many vendors.
But noise isn't going to help you meet your goals.
The thing about noise is that we've all become adept at tuning it out.
There's just so much of it that we've had to develop the survival skill of
discernment. We've become very swift judges of what's useful and what's
wasting our time. Time we have precious little of with all the social media
interaction, email, meetings and job responsibilities. Our lists are long and
our patience is waning.
To break through the noise and gain the attention of B2B prospects, our
content must be better than good. It needs to be exceptional. And that's hard
to do when you need so much of it to maintain a dialogue with your prospects
until they're ready to talk to your salespeople.... (more)
A new study on an often overlooked subject is fresh off the presses:
Demandbase and Focus.com 2011 National Website Demand Generation Study.
The B2B company website is growing in importance as buyers spend more time
researching and selecting the information they use during a complex buying
process.
Demandbase CEO, Chirs Golec, sums up the situation nicely in the press
release:
“Social media may be heralded as the silver bullet to bring B2B marketing
up to snuff but, despite its increasing influence, it’s important to keep
in mind that no business sale is made without the buyer g... (more)
When working on content strategies with clients, the question about which
content should be gated always comes up. Content — great content — takes
a lot of time, effort and resources to produce. It just makes sense that B2B
marketers want people to pay for it with their contact info. Or does it?
Regardless of how much has been said about giving to get, setting content
free, and sharing without restraint, what comes up for many corporate
marketers is that they're stuck in the cross hairs of corporate objectives
that don't give them a lot of wiggle room. Accountability and proof of ... (more)
According to the B2B Content Marketing: 2012 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends
report produced by CMI and Marketing Profs, the use of blogs has increased to
65% from 51% in 2010. From an effectiveness perspective, the use of blogs as
a marketing tactic increased by a whopping 45% during the last year. This is
terrific news!
For those of you who haven't yet jumped on the Blogging bandwagon, it's one
of the easiest formats for content marketing. Here are a few reasons why:
Ease of execution - the tools offer simplicity that even the most technically
challenged marketer can use to publ... (more)
I'll just come right out and say it. There is no such thing as a magic bullet
for B2B content marketing. This was a question brought up recently during a
B2B Year in Review roundtable where I was one of the panelists over on
Focus.com. I've been thinking quite a bit about it since then.
Carlos Hidalgo (@cahidalgo) posed the question:
Why are so many vendors & consultants making it sound as if B2B Marketing
(technology, content development, etc.) is simple & should be done in weeks?
The simple truth is that none of this is, well, simple.
I know this is probably not what you wanted t... (more)
Ardath Albee, CEO & B2B Marketing Strategist of her firm Marketing Interactions, helps companies with complex sales increase and quantify marketing effectiveness by developing and executing interactive eMarketing strategies driven by compelling content.
David Lucas
Cathy Lopez
Shaul Efraim
Terence Martin Breslin
Cory Marchand
David Hughes
James Carlini
John Iffert
Dan Stolts
Joe Zeto
