If your creating B2B content for social, have you stopped and asked yourself what your audience actually uses social for?
You create content, you publish it and you promote it on social media. Create, Publish, Promote, Repeat. Yet have you ever thought to consider how your audience are actually using social media whilst they are at work? Are they using it to relax during a tea break? In which case humorous and easy to read content will do best. Or are they using it to learn more about their industry and discover new trends, in which case detailed thought leadership and posts providing industry specific stats will go down well.
New research from Pew Research Centre asked over 2000 American adults how they use social media at work, to discover what people are looking for when browsing during working hours. The results are interesting, and show how no one reason dominates.
The most common reason was…
What are senior B2B marketers using currently?
According to the research by Regalix B2B marketers are still mostly using basic analytics tools including web analysis (91%) and spreadsheets (80%), but more advanced tools this year have found to be of more interest.
[caption id="attachment_77084" align="alignnone" width="550"] These are the Marketing Analytics Tools Senior B2B Marketers Want to Pay More Attention to This Year[/caption]
Which technologies are expected to get the most attention in 2016?
Whilst web analysis which is a pretty basic method will get a lot of attention (50%), Predictive Analytics are expected to be most looked into by B2B marketers this year. Predictive analytics can help predict behaviour and in turn, reduce financial risk.
Business intelligence, mobile analytics and attribution tools are also expected to be popular.
According to the study by Regalix, B2B marketers expect to have extra cash for…
Essential lessons from the top B2B brands across different verticals
Trackmaven analysed the social media content from 316 leading B2B brands on the 5 largest social networks over the past 12 months, so you can benchmark your own B2B social media efforts against some of the best in the industry. If you work in B2C rather than B2B you can read our write up on the B2C social media report instead.
B2C Social Media audience size by industry
There are big differences between industries when it comes to audience size, but in large part these are probably explained by how well the industries are suited to social media . Professional services does so well because although it's B2B it is offering a product (jobs) which a massive number of people are going to be interested in. There are always going to be more people wanting to look at jobs postings than…
How to optimise your B2B website
Did you know that the average visitor spends only four seconds on a website, before deciding whether to stay on it, or return to the search results? As such, it is critical that a website homepage be high-impact, while also captivating visitors with useful cues and information. To achieve this, there are specific elements that website visitors immediately expect to see. These items are what make the visitor feel confident in the company and comfortable awarding their time to this one site, rather than the hundred others it is likely competing with. These elements span design techniques, optimization strategies, foundational information and call-to-actions that guide visitors throughout the site or to other relevant pages that support build the all important 'social proof'.
This infographic, “Top 10 Features Every B2B Homepage Must Have”, will take you on the journey of a business-to-business (B2B) website homepage, differentiating keenly between…
Join Dave Chaffey of Smart Insights in a new webinar highlighting the key success factors for marketing online in the business-to-business sector
Although digital marketing is not now a new discipline, it is evolving fast as the mega platforms like Facebook, Google and LinkedIn used by consumers and businesses offer new ways to engage their users and improve their monetisation .
But are you and your business keeping up? For a large number of businesses of different size, the challenges presented by online marketing are holding them back since they don't have a strategy. Falling behind with your digital strategy or not having a strategy at all means losing competitive advantage—something that no company can afford to do in today's fast-moving markets. So what can you do to improve the situation? How can you ensure that your online…
Your B2B customer deserves a B2C experience like these
Comparing B2B and B2C marketing used to be an Apples-to-Oranges situation, but they’re becoming increasingly comparable.
True, you don’t issue RFPs (Requests for Proposal) when you buy a Blu-ray player, and yes, a CRM decision requires a lot of research. But if you take some of the benefits that are common in B2C and implement them into your B2B space, you can create a customer experience that improves relationships and increases profits.
Three B2C Experiences to offer your business customers
Here are three things B2C experiences offer that your B2B customers might be missing out on:
1. Products or service reviews
B2B service reviews often consist of heavily starched long-form case studies and videos, which can’t hold an audience’s attention for long. Reducing the length of this information and implementing a real-time reviews feature like …
What is it? Does it matter? Do I already have one?
Marketing technology is exploding. Scott Brinker’s Marketing Technology Landscape showed 947 companies in 43 categories in 2014 – which seemed overwhelming. Then in 2015 it jumped to 1,876 companies. And we’ve learnt that 2016 has seen it double again, to a massive 3,500 companies. So what does this mean for marketers? What does it mean for IT managers? And how can we plan to make the most of the new technologies without getting lost in a sea of data?
The aim of this post is to introduce the core components and purpose of a Marketing Technology Stack. Most of the current literature is aimed clearly at large organisations whose CIO’s, CMO’s and CTO’s are very busy dealing with mega integrations of multi-user software solutions. It’s fascinating…
Optimise your customer journey to turn leads into sales
If your online B2B marketing is well tuned, a potential B2B customer that has conducted a Google search for a product, clicked on an ad, or read your newsletter and/or social media page, arrives at your B2B e-commerce site. As we all know however, simply reaching a landing page doesn’t mean the individual will stay there for long. In fact, according a recent Hubspot article, 55% of browsers will leave a site within just 15 seconds.
Obviously, those numbers aren’t great. To improve them, you need to focus on what drew users to your B2B e-commerce site initially and where your site went wrong in meeting their expectations. After you take the time to analyze this, you can optimize the user journey to convert a visitor from a prospect to…
Three B2B content marketing case studies
The increased focus on content marketing has continued , a trend highlighted by a number of studies surveying marketers’ top priorities:
The content marketing boom is also reflected in the relative search volume trends for phrases related to content marketing:
Content marketing can be defined as the strategy of providing valuable, relevant, quality content that customers want in order to attract and retain a clearly defined audience.
This definition certainly applies to a number of notable case studies, particularly those involving Coke, Disney and famously Red Bull and Felix Baumgartner's space jump in 2012. However, whilst these are all very valid and useful examples of content marketing at its best, they are all from consumer brands.
Content marketing is practiced…
An example of using humour in social media for B2B to build business and strengthen customer relationships
When I train people to use social media, I often have delegates complaining that it's "all very well for B2C companies, but our product is so boring, it's never going to work on social".
I'd argue that so long as your content is timely, relevant and compelling (yes I know - all those things can be a big ask), it's going to be interesting for someone. And if you manage that and can inject a dollop of humour along the way then you are onto a winner.
As a result I'm always on the look out for new case studies of B2B companies doing social media well, and if that's managed in house and on a small budget then even better.
I'm therefore delighted to share with you this guest post that my friend @LisaRobb of accounting (yes potentially…
