Facebook is no longer all about B2C
The received wisdom in digital marketing circles has always been that Facebook is great for B2C marketing - and stalking old schoolmates - but not really worth the effort for B2B. This attitude is based on the assumption that the majority of people don’t want to see, much less share and engage with, work-related content on Facebook. After all, it’s where most of us go to blow off steam, watch cat videos, and catch up with friends.
Consequently, most marketers choose instead to focus their efforts on platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter - but they’re missing a trick. In a recent survey of B2B marketers, almost three-fifths of respondents reported that Facebook ads delivered the best ROI of any platform.
If 2016 has taught us anything, it’s that the received wisdom can’t always be trusted.…
The key trends that business-to-business marketers need to act on in 2017
Since we're now well into 2017, it's a natural time for all marketers to review the marketing tactics they've used this year and assess their approaches against other businesses in the sector. For marketers involved in the B2B sector, there are some particularly pressing issues which, if they can be addressed will help 'feed the funnel' and develop more quality leads.
A good starting point for reviewing the trends that will make an impact next year is to think through innovation across all the main digital marketing channels. In our article on marketing trends for 2017, we asked marketers to assess the techniques which would give them the biggest uplift on business in 2017. The results show that the top rated techniques which should get focus next year are closely aligned with B2B sector, which has for the past…
Predictive analytics and consultative selling among the most important trends for B2B sales strategy in 2017
As a marketer, you’re more than familiar with the importance of closing the gap between marketing and sales. It’s been proven over and over that the more these teams talk, the better the results.
Yet according to Aberdeen group, salespeople still spend an average of 440 hours a year searching for the right content to use. Furthermore, 65% of marketing content isn’t used by sales at all!
When looking at the most popular sales trends for 2017, three are crucial when bridging this gap. These trends are most likely to inform your sales enablement content over the next year and beyond
In this article, we’re going to analyse each trend to see not only how they will contribute to your sales enablement efforts, but your marketing strategy as a whole.
1. Subject Matter Experts will Play Salesperson & Marketer
The…
9 types of Email Marketing to engage B2B audiences
Email is the go-to form of customer and prospect communication for many businesses today, allowing clear, concise and detailed conversations. In fact, 73% of marketers agree that the email marketing is core to their business and 40x more effective than social media for lead generation.
Is your business capitalising on this B2B marketing opportunity?
The longer life-span of emails in comparison to social posts means there is more time for businesses to leverage on making a sale or closing a deal. With a current estimate of 100 billion business emails being sent every day, this number of business email accounts is expected to rise to 4.9 billion by 2017.
Overall, email marketing continues to be ranked as the best channel in terms of return on investment, with 68% of…
Chart of the Day: It's never good to compare yourself to others - except when it comes to Email Marketing.
Benchmarking your email marketing is extremely important. It is pivotal to know if you are outperforming your sector or if you need to adjust your tactics.
If you work in B2B then the key stat you need to pay attention to is the fact that B2B retail has an open rate of 24.24% and the click rate is 4.75%. Whereas B2C - Other is slightly lower with an open rate of 22.64% and click rate of 4.04%.
Email benchmarking is discussed in greater detail in our post, Email Statistics - 2017 update.
Source: Email marketing benchmark reports 2017
Sample Size: 1.5 billion emails over 2016
Recommended Resource: Email Marketing Guide
…
The why and how of omni-channel B2B marketing
Omni-channel marketing is a buzz phrase that is used interchangeably with other phrases such as cross-channel marketing; multichannel marketing and my preferred term integrated marketing.
Omni-channel is a complex, customer-centric approach to marketing. It's all about thinking holistically in terms of customer experience, interactions, and messaging.
From a B2B perspective, it is about being relevant in all the places a customer wants or expects to find you. This, although the use of ‘omni’ implies it, doesn’t necessarily mean everywhere!
A seamless omni-channel experience
What does a seamless omni-channel experience look like?
It looks connected and joined up. That is to say if, on a given day or week, you visited a website, a Facebook page, saw an ad (print, banner or retargeted), received an email, saw a POS in-store, they would be all be talking about the same thing.
Omni-channel marketing works totally irrespective of the channel rather than merely…
How to avoid the common pitfalls of B2B marketing campaigns
As a marketer with practical experience within the B2B space as well as working as a trainer, teaching a number of digital marketing subjects, means I have direct access to marketers and business owners. I've noticed a number of issues and themes have appeared quite frequently over the last 12 to 18 months. When coming up with the 10 mistakes for this guide I brainstormed with Dave and his team and it was a much wider list!
We boiled down to 10 themes that I have explored in detail, giving you some background into what they are and examples which you may sympathize with or are currently experiencing. The advice to tackle these issues includes a mini do to list to help shape your actions plans, and it goes without saying that there are more practical and detailed resources within the Smart Insights…
These B2B brands know a thing or two about video. Are your B2B videos as engaging?
B2C brands have been using video for decades. Ever since there has been TV there have been brands producing great videos to delight and entice consumers. Yet for B2B marketers video is still somewhat of a new field, even though the possibility of creating and sharing video online has been around for about ten years now.
[si_guide_block id="23343" title="Download Expert Member resource – Video and YouTube marketing guide" description="Our guide shows you how to review the full opportunities from video marketing whether you are a company looking to integrate video marketing more into your campaigns or a marketing agency looking to improve your video marketing services. Video examples from across different sectors will inspire ideas of how you can use video marketing to reach and influence a wider audience."/]
In this post, I want to highlight 5…
What is B2i marketing and how can it help you make your marketing smarter?
You’ve heard of B2B and B2C - But what about B2i? B2B marketers and strategists are quickly adopting this emerging trend that puts their businesses in direct contact with their clients’ end-consumers: from business to individual.
As the world becomes more interconnected, businesses are beginning to understand that they must think beyond the needs of their immediate clients and consider their clients’ clients as well. Sure, they still might sell directly to the CEOs, CIOs, and other C-suite executives. But their solutions must address their clients’ core needs, which always go back to the individual consumer.
Most people assume that the “I” in B2i is for “internet.” But B2i isn’t about online marketing. B2i demands a holistic view of a client’s business, especially as companies create new business models to…
Analysing your customers behaviour using buyer personas to improve your B2B E-commerce strategy
Is your B2B e-commerce strategy stagnating? If so, your buyer personas may be the weak link. A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer that’s created by studying demographics, attitudes and buying patterns. Detailed buyer personas guide everything from product development to marketing decisions, improving your business’s ability to identify, cultivate and convert the best leads into loyal customers. However, companies often get lazy about their buyer personas. When demographics steal the spotlight, businesses overlook the complex motivators, attitudes and behaviors that influence how individuals shop online.
The result: Your business wastes valuable resources investing in leads with a low probability for conversion, while missing out on higher utility leads.
The solution: build a smarter e-commerce strategy through an in-depth understanding of how buyer personas influence B2B…
