Latest Columns

1. What’s Your B2B Marketing Superpower? 1/11/2023

   Maurice Davis has a superpower, and it is understanding customers. I don’t mean the surface level demographics of age, gender, location, and business. He can see the world from a prospect’s point of view and apply that empathy in helping businesses develop marketing strategies, create content that attracts customers, and grow their businesses beyond their expectations.

2. The Scientific Impact Of Using Stories In Your B2B Marketing Content 1/4/2023

   According to Katarina Gajdacsova, Chief Marketing Officer at Kiz Digital, including a good story in our marketing content mix helps to connect your products or services with a prospect on an emotional level. After all, we’re human and try as we might to remain logical when making purchases, there is a significant emotional component to big B2B buying decisions. 

3. Are Your Customers Everywhere In Your Marketing Content? 12/7/2022

   Chevy introduced their 2023 electric vehicle (EV) fleet in September, a traditional time when automakers unveil their new models. The timing of the campaign, done by ad agency Commonwealth//McCann, isn’t unusual, but it is a great ad that offers a lesson in customer-centric messaging. 

4. Making B2B Human Again! 11/30/2022

   At some point we sucked the life out of our B2B marketing communications. Maybe it’s the way we over automate our outgoing messages or that we’ve turned our marketing departments into impersonal content production centers.

5. When The Truth Speaks, Take Good Notes! 11/7/2022

   Email marketing is a primary way B2B companies communicate their value and promote their services and products, but when one was the last time you did some list maintenance?

6. What B2B Marketers Can Do About Bots, False Clicks, And Inaccurate Metrics 11/4/2022

   For B2B companies, email marketing is the largest and most common channel used to reach target audiences. The most common way we determine the success of our email campaigns is by tracking open and click-through data. While this data is often woefully inaccurate, there are things we can do to improve our email marketing efforts and transform the way we measure results.

7. Bots, Clicks And Faulty Metrics: What Elon Musk’s Bid For Twitter Has Exposed 10/26/2022

   Six months ago, Elon Musk grabbed headlines with his bid to buy Twitter and this acquisition has been grabbing headlines ever since. The latest headlines indicate the deal has closed. While being drawn toward the drama of the story around money, wealth, conflict, potential litigation, and politics, we may have missed an important lesson.

8. To Gate Or Not To Gate, That Is The Question 9/21/2022

   Think back to the last time your interest was piqued by an article or study with an interesting title. It may have had a compelling introduction that caused you to want to read more. So, you clicked on the “read more” button only to be met by a gate that required you to provide a half dozen pieces of personal contact information. Whether to gate or not gate content is a common question posed by B2B content marketers. It is a great question and worth some thought.

9. Measuring Results 9/12/2022

   This is the time of the year when B2B marketing teams begin planning for the next year, assuming you operate on a calendar-year planning budget. Before you begin planning, you’ll likely give some thought to how things went, and are still going, this year. 

10. Are Your Marketing Team’s Skills Keeping Pace With The Real World? 9/7/2022

    I’ve referenced Marketing Week’s 2022 Career and Salary Survey several times in the past couple of months because it contains some troubling data related to the high turn-over rate among marketers. I know what you’re thinking! That’s just the way it is, but I don’t accept that. Employee turnover is disruptive and bad for business, we should do our best to retain quality personnel.