Latest Columns

71. The Scientific Impact Of Using Stories In Your B2B Marketing Content

    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. 

72. Are Your Marketing And Sales Adrift Because Of Your Technology?

    The Hudson River flows from the Adirondacks southward to New York Harbor. In some places it is peaceful and picturesque, in others, busy with large commercial ships, high winds, and changing tides. If you’re navigating the river in a small boat, it’s important to pay attention to your surroundings and keep an eye on your destination. A boat that is adrift poses a great danger to itself and its occupants. 

73. Making B2B Human Again!

    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.

74. Measuring The Results Of B2B Marketing: Looking Beyond Sales Lead Attribution

    While there is an overwhelming amount of data that tells us the buyer’s journey begins long before direct contact with a salesperson, most B2B solution providers attribute leads to something that occurred right before the direct contact. For example, they saw our booth at a tradeshow, or they contacted us right after visiting our website. However, a single piece of marketing collateral rarely, if ever, converts someone from knowing nothing about you to a sales qualified lead. 

75. Are Your Marketing Tactics Supporting Your Business Strategy? If You're Not Sure, Try Task And Purpose

    I speak with a lot of B2B marketing professionals who describe their work as trying to manage chaos. Unrealistic deadlines, constantly changing priorities, emergency press releases that never get approved for distribution, and tradeshow collateral that must be created and overnighted are all in a typical day’s work. I’ve been in newsrooms less frenzied.

    Marketing is intended to be the process organizations use to engage target audiences, nurture customer relationships, develop business, and, ultimately, generate revenue. But too many organizations are drowning in tactics that are not linked to their business strategy. To gain clarity, think task and purpose.

76. Reframing The Relationship Between B2B Sales And Marketing

    Exploring ways to improve the relationship between sales and marketing in B2B businesses is like venturing into the Sahara on foot without water. Rarely do business leaders intentionally set out to change marketing and sales operations, to include organizational structure and processes. We too easily retreat to the risk-free zone of “but that’s the way we’ve always done it.” However, the harsh truth is that this modus operandi is fraught with risk.  

77. Follow, Understand, And Help Your Buyer: The Modern Paradigm For B2B Marketing And Sales

    Paradigm is one of those big words that is packed with meaning. It is often used to introduce ideas intended to be epic and have a foundational impact on us. B2B marketing and sales is overserved with tactics and failproof processes to deliver better results. What we need is a modern paradigm, a different way to think about B2B marketing, sales, and our buyers. The paradigm is called follow, understand, and help.

78. To Gate Or Not To Gate, That Is The Question

    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.

79. What B2B Marketers Can Do About Bots, False Clicks, And Inaccurate Metrics

    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.

80. Bots, Clicks And Faulty Metrics: What Elon Musk's Bid For Twitter Has Exposed

    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.