Category: B2B Marketing Collateral

  • 7 “Rs” for B2B Marketing Content Planning

    [This is a guest post by Ardath Albee and is a great follow up to my earlier post, Focus on Content in B2B Marketing and my own 5Rs for creating content]

    Content is the fuel for eMarketing. With a majority of marketing efforts going digital, that means even more content is needed. The instant gratification mindset of B2B content consumers means they’re demanding more content, faster. Not just any content, but ideas, information and expertise they find relevant and helpful for answering questions they have about problems they’re trying to solve.

    Designing content for 1X use is wasteful. Marketers need to create a process for content planning that helps them maximize the return from their investments in developing the content resources that fuel their online marketing programs.

    To get the most from your content, embrace the 7 “R”s of B2B Marketing Content Planning:

    1. Re-use – ideas for content development must be expanded to create multiple assets. See my post Rule of 5 for B2B content development. Additionally, when marketers create a nurturing program across the buying process, each new lead should start at the beginning of the program with touch 1. By feeding new leads into the beginning of a program (instead of just adding them to the list for the next send) you’ll get much more use out of your nurturing program content and tell your leads a consistent story at the same time. (more…)

  • Focus on Content in B2B Marketing

    Lately all the talk in B2B marketing has centered on social media. However, to be successful with social media, you have to provide real value and that usually comes from great content.

    Paul Dunay in his blog post, “4 C’s of B2B Marketing” has defined this very nicely. His 4C’s are:

    • Content – the creation of a steady stream of engaging content
    • Connection – connecting with the audience you wish to attract
    • Communication – communicating with them in an ongoing conversation
    • Conversion – and then converting them at the illusive moment of need

    What is content marketing?

    Wikipedia defines content marketing as “an umbrella term encompassing all marketing formats that involve the creation or sharing of content for the purpose of engaging current and potential consumer bases.”

    The old ways of pushing out content is no longer effective. Now, B2B content marketing’s agenda is to educate and inform customers and prospects. Content Marketing’s slogan is – “Don’t pitch. Don’t sell. Don’t interrupt. Educate, inform and provide value to customers and prospects. Your business will grow.” (See Content Marketing – The Ultimate Cheat Sheet).

    Here’s a short but highly informative slide show that explains how to use content effectively as inbound marketing. (more…)

  • Generating More “Educated Leads” on a Small Budget

    Doing more with less is pretty much the mantra du jour in industrial and B2B marketing these days. How does one generate high quality, educated leads, not just site visitors on a marketing budget that is less than 1% of the projected revenue?

    To find answers to that question, I went to HubSpot’s Lead Generation Marketing Hub and I found an incredible video featuring Holly Allison, vice president of marketing at Vico Software, a successful Boston-area startup that provides construction software to engineers and contractors.

    Instead of spending most of their marketing budget on traditional industrial marketing channels like trade shows or direct mail, Vico produces webinars and creates content that site visitors download and others link to. In short, they are doing things that help them get found online. (more…)

  • Boost Marketing Results with Integrated Campaigns

    Integrated campaigns could be the answer to improving your marketing results in this tough economy. It was one of the recommendations made by a panel of marketers and analysts at B-to-B Outlook 2009.

    I am big fan of Integrated Marketing. See "Integrated Marketing – Creating and Delivering Compelling Marketing Messages that Sell" on our website.

    Here's some good news to come out of the same conference. Bob Felsenthal, BtoB publisher and conference moderator said, “Our research indicates that 31% of b-to-b marketers plan to boost their marketing budgets this year, with 62% citing customer acquisition as their primary goal.”

    Online advertising remains the fastest-growing channel for b-to-b marketers, although its growth rate has moderated to between 3% and 10% for 2009, compared with robust double-digit growth in past years, panelist Geoff Ramsey, co-founder and CEO of market research company eMarketer, added, “But flat is the new up.”

    Read the entire news article here.

  • Your Company Web Site Must Be the Hub of Your Online Marketing

    Your company Web site is the top online marketing option when it comes to marketing to engineers, technical, industrial and manufacturing professionals. This is according to a new white paper from GlobalSpec called "Marketing to Engineering, Technical, Industrial and Manufacturing Professionals: What’s Working Best Today."

    The white paper cites statistics from their recent surveys of their target audience, which show that:

    • 90% have used the Internet to find components and suppliers
    • 85% go online to obtain product specifications
    • 74% use the Internet to conduct research
    • 68% use the Internet to search for technical application ideas

    (more…)