The essential strategies you need to successfully win major B2B customers.
Although the phrase has been around for over a decade and arguably being deployed by smart marketers ever since B2B sales teams have focused on target/key accounts, in recent years account-based marketing (ABM) has become hotter than ever.
As far back as 1993, Peppers and Rogers proposed marketing would take an increased role in developing intelligence on key accounts: “When two marketers are competing for the same customer’s business, all other things being equal, the marketer with the greatest scope of information about that particular customer... will be the more efficient competitor.”[1]
In short, ABM is a strategic approach that coordinates personalised sales and marketing efforts, to target specific accounts for new business and create deeper and broader relationships with existing customers.[2]
It’s clear to see from Google Trends, the term account-based marketing, was being searched since the Information…
Chart of the day: Case studies, best practice advice and how to guides are the most effective types of content.
A recent survey of over 600 B2B marketing professionals reveals what types of content they found to be the most effective. The report makes for interesting reading, and as the chart below clearly shows, case studies stand out as the most effective content type for B2B marketers. Best practice advice was extremely close behind, whilst how to guides and market trends were also judged to be effective.
Other types of content were found to be useful by less than a quarter of B2B content marketers. This shows that the 'hard sell' and listing product features is no longer effective, and providing information such as case studies and guides is now the superior tactic.
Source: B2B Content Marketing Report
Sample:…
Chart of the Day: Most businesses address just three or more market segments with their content marketing
Marketers who are focused on campaigns, creative and marcomms can get a narrow view that marketing communications (that's content, social, ads, SEO, outdoor, video, you name it) are actually only one part of the marketing puzzle. But the smart marketer knows that spending time to develop accurate buyer personas and properly plan different strategies for targeting market segments and buyer states is also crucial.
The results of a survey which asked over 600 B2B Marketing professionals about their use of content marketing shows that plenty of content marketers are wising up to the need to properly segment their market and target different buyer personas and stages with different messaging and content formats.
Half of the companies were addressing three of more market segments, whilst almost half were addressing three or more buyer personas…
Chart of the Day: Content marketing continues to be a key tactic for B2B lead generation.
Over 600 B2B marketing professionals were asked "How is your content production going to change over the next 12 months?", a whopping 71% said they plan on increasing production, with a quarter saying they will increase production significantly.
Content marketing will continue being a major focus for B2B marketers in 2017. For those implementing an inbound marketing strategy in the year ahead, it is important that you find the right balance between quantity and quality. The production of only a handful of highly engaging pieces of content has the potential to keep you in leads for months with the right amount of promotion.
Source: BrightTalk
Data:over 600 survey responses from B2B marketing professionals.
Recommended Resource: Content Marketing Checklist
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How digital innovation is engaging audiences and improving customer experience in the airline / aviation sector
This is the first in a new series looking at digital innovation and transformation in different B2B sectors aimed to inspire business-to-business marketers, this post from regular B2B marketing commentator René Power looks at how digital technologies are being deployed within the blossoming air travel and aviation sector to enhance customer experiences at every stage of the process.
As you read, think about what ideas you might take forward into your own sector?
Air travel is a growing sector
There continues to be an explosion in air travel, which makes it a very lucrative industry to be in. Air travel numbers themselves are mind-boggling. Published forecasts predict the total number of people flying on U.S. airlines will increase by 0.8 percent from 2013 levels to 745.5 million in 2014 and grow to 1.15 billion in 2034.
But it's not just the U.S. The International Air Transport…
A B2B case study showing how to create relevant, personal emails on a global scale.
Email marketing has undergone a transformation lately. The giants of online retail have set a precedent for sending relevant, timely email communications with content tailored to each customer on an individual basis.
Now the rest of us must follow, meeting the high expectations to which online consumers have become accustomed.
No longer is it enough to ‘batch and blast’ a single message to a contact list and hope that some will find it exciting….we must learn what each individual customer finds interesting and send them content to meet their requirements. Email personalisation is undoubtedly here to stay.
Improving personalisation as part of your email strategy however is not straightforward. It requires a significant increase in content production and an even greater amount of data. Even for companies with simple business models and minimal product lines, the deployment of personalised email content can…
How to use a B2B blog to generate leads
Our last post on business blogging looked at seeding and distribution and how to get people to your blog.
However, the end goal of a business blog (or any customer facing content asset) must be to stimulate demand and generate enquiries.
In this final post of this business blogging series we look at how companies can use blogs to drive demand generation. For more information you can see our demand generation definition.
Create a compelling call-to-action
There needs to be a compelling call to action to take a visitor's fledgling interest in your business to the next level.
It is commonly accepted that it takes time to build traffic to a blog, and even longer for people to interact with it. So, assuming it is almost impossible to encourage blog visitors to engage with a corporate blog, how can you keep them there and get…
3 rules to inform your content marketing strategy
Many B2B companies are still adapting to the new opportunities of content marketing, and too many are still playing by the old rules. This involves with massively wordy, downloadable eBooks and content designed for the Desktop Era. Content marketing has changed along with the larger trends in technology and with shifting consumer preferences for how people access information and engage with content online, and your B2B content marketing strategies need to change along with it!
Here are some new rules of content marketing that any B2B firm can benefit from:
Make it "mobile first."
Mobile devices now represent a majority of internet usage, and many people are using smartphones as their primary device for accessing the Internet. But mobile devices aren’t just for teenagers or millennials, and they’re not just for consumers – more and more B2B buyers are using mobile devices to conduct research about…
Overcoming natural shyness on social media to encourage action
Today, inbound marketing is seen as THE approach to generate sales, particularly in B2B marketing. Directory listings, newspaper and magazine advertising, cold calling, all the 'in your face' marketing methods are dying a death - apparently. Content-based, relationship marketing is what we should all be doing now.
I agree with the benefits of the inbound marketing approach, but we should ask what happens if we move too far the other way? I have a real concern that salesmanship (or salespersonship if you prefer), in the B2B sector is a dying art and social media is becoming a crutch, for those less confident in their ability to sell. I want to make a stand right here and now and suggest that we mustn't lose this important skill and that social media can be used to support it.
Many articles advising on social media will suggest that social…
Benchmark your use of B2B automation to find out the most effective techniques
Given that Marketing Automation is now an established technique, business-to-business marketers know the power of using marketing automation to send more relevant communications to nurture leads while also saving costs and time.
The rise of marketing automation has been extremely rapid, so in our latest research survey on the effectiveness of B2B Marketing Automation we're keen to see how your efforts are turning into results. If you work in B2B marketing - Take our Survey and get a free report.
To help identify changing practices, we're doing a re-run of the survey which we did last year and we would be grateful for your input this time around also. Last year we saw that many businesses are at an early stage in using Marketing Automation and are interested to see how this and the marketing automation techniques used have…
