How to Make Your B2B Marketing Breakthrough During the Holidays

How Google AdWords is Becoming More Social
It’s becoming more and more difficult to lie in Google AdWords advertising, and social media is to blame. Let me start to explain this through a hypothetical. Imagine you are the advertising manager for Jif, the peanut butter brand. Jif’s brand slogan is “Choosy Mothers Choose Jif.” It’s a brilliant slogan – after all, what mom would dare serve just any peanut butter to their precious children?  [Read full story at JeffBullas.com]

40 Awesome Marketing Tweets From 2011
“These are a few of my favorite things…” Now that you have that song in your head, let me tell you a little bit about how I come up with some of my blog content. I try to follow as many really interesting people who write about (or simply share) interesting stuff in the world of B2B Marketing. And when I see a topic that I think I could cover in a new or fun or exciting way, I write about it.  [Read full story at B2B Marketing Insider]

10 Key Strategies To Make Your Website an Inbound Online Marketing Machine

Applying Science to B2B Marketing & Online Testing
The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) suggests that our ability to persuade someone lies in their ability to elaborate on the issue at hand, and one factor that can motivate a someone to engage in elaboration is personal relevance. Recently I came across a B2B marketing case study on WhichTestWon.com regarding this topic that revealed just how important personal relevance may be in motivating buying behavior.  [Read full story at B2B Ideas at Work Blog]

Does Your 2012 Internet Marketing Plan Include SEO?
In one day alone, millions of people search the Internet, looking for information about companies, products and services. If your Website is not fully optimized on an ongoing basis, you are losing out on a large pool of potential customers. Even if you have a great Website, it must be optimized so it can be found.  [Read full story at Business2Community]

SaaS Marketing Lessons from ShamWow!

B2B Marketing: Testing in Today’s World
Social and behavioral scientists have found that the increase in available communication methods (such as smart phones) has changed how we process information. Basically, many of us today have continual partial attention due to our lessened mind share. This week’s WhichTestWon.com case study was a great example of the need for testing in order to see what works best to combat this continual partial attention and more effectively motivate your target audience to buy.  [Read full story at MLT Creative]

3 B2B SEO Assumptions You Should Never Make
You know what they say when you assume something? It makes a [expletive] of U and ME. The old saying holds true in a lot of situations, including B2B SEO. As marketing professionals, it’s never a good idea to assume you understand your target audience perfectly, assume you know everything your competition is doing or assume you aren’t missing the mark in some way.  [Read full story at Business2Community]

Move Over, CRM: CEM Is Transforming Marketing ROI

12 CRM Best Practices for 2012
Constant evolution of your CRM platform is important, but waiting until New Years day 2012 is not a recognised best practice. So if you are looking for practical steps you can take to get the best out of your current investment then look no further.  [Read full story at Collier Pickard]

A Bait Shop Lesson in B2B CRM: “Crickets Self-Serve”
whatever you’re doing in the B2B marketplace, please be sure the customer and prospect engagement experience is well thought out, lest it be you or a client who ends up with “crickets in your hair.” By that, I mean lackluster results or bad outcomes originating from CRM strategies that lacked sufficient customer input, resulting in lack of interest, lost repeat business and/or a damaged reputation.  [Read full story at B2B Ideas at Work Blog]

4 B2B Social Media & SEO Blunders to Avoid

Content Marketing Key to B2B Sales Funnel
With the average cost per lead increasing and marketers competing for buyer attention, traditional lead generation tactics are no longer enough. Business-to-business (B2B) companies are looking to content marketing to boost their lead generation efforts.  [Read full story at eMarketer]

B2B Marketers Moving Toward Online Content Strategies
B2B marketers are moving away from traditional marketing tactics toward online content marketing: 82% now use content marketing in their programs, making it more popular than search marketing (70%), events (68%), and public relations (64%), according to a report by HiveFire.  [Read full story at MarketingProfs]

Mobile Beats Browsers for Ad CTRs

12 Tweetable Statistics Prove B2B Social Media ROCKS
Fiction: Social media offers limited value to B2B marketers. Fact: 86% of B2B companies are using social media. B2B companies are absolutely using social media to generate leads, connect with customers, and reach business goals. We compiled twelve tweetable facts about the prolific use – and success – of social media among B2B marketers. Dispel the myth that social media isn’t for B2B and tweet the truth.  [Read full story at pwb marketing communications]

LinkedIn is crawling with reporters. How can you connect?
A new survey by Arketi Group reveals that 92 percent of journalists have a LinkedIn account, up from 85 percent in 2009. The question, then, with so many journalists in that space, is this: How can communicators use LinkedIn to become sources or to promote their clients to journalists? Arketi Group, a high-tech public relations and digital marketing firm, also found that…  [Read full story at Ragan's PR Daily]

12 Tips To Jumpstart Your Next Brainstorming Session

Shelf Life of Social Media Links Only 3 Hours [Data]
When it comes to link sharing in social media, it turns out it’s not about where you share it — it’s about what you share. New research from URL shortening service bitly focuses on how long a link is “alive” before people stop engaging with it and whether it matters what kind of content it is or where it was shared.  [Read full story at HubSpot]

12 Most Essential Attributes of the Best B2B Salespeople
There are certain attributes that B2B salespeople must possess in order to succeed. Most of the attributes are the very same attributes that are shared by all successful people across many endeavors. With these attributes, you are certain to succeed in sales. Without them, selling well is difficult (and without a few of them, impossible).  [Read full story at 12Most.com]

What’s Your Social Media Marketing IQ?

The Do’s and Don’ts of Twitter Hashtags
It’s difficult to express how annoying the misuse of hashtags on Twitter is. While there are definitely some upsides to using the popular conversation-tracking feature, there are many of us on Twitter who either simply don’t understand how to use them appropriately, or think it’s funny to overuse them.  [Read full story at SouthSideAdGuy.com]

B2B Marketing Predictions For 2011
Whenever I start to see Thanksgiving turkeys flying out of the grocery store and Black Friday ads start to appear, I know it’s that time of year to prognosticate. So here is my list of B2B Marketing Insider predictions for 2011.  [Read full story at B2B Marketing Insider]

5 Steps To Improve Your Customer Driven B2B Lead Generation

Setting Up a Personalized Lead Nurturing Campaign
You probably have guides, whitepapers, presentations, case studies or videos that visitors can download. You’re promoting the content and its helping your business generate leads. But, are you using the content in personalized lead nurturing campaigns? [Read full story at HubSpot]

Why does my Business need Lead Nurturing?
It is a shocking reality that 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales opportunities. (Source: Marketing Sherpa). B2B marketing and lead generation experts point to the lack of efficient lead nurturing process as the primary cause of the poor stats. It’s a fact that the bulk of website visitors and prospects…
[Read full story at Think About CRM]

Lose the SEO Lingo and Optimize for Customers

4 Ways to Improve Quotes in Press Releases
What will sink your press release faster than an iceberg on a foggy night? Well, besides clichés, superlatives, and meaningless terms such as “cutting-edge,” using poorly worded quotes will have reporters hitting the delete button before they read your third paragraph. Don’t fall victim to this problem. Consider the following tips as you are crafting your press release.  [Read full story at Impertinent Remarks]

How to Become an Expert on Your Client’s Industry
Great business-to-business PR advisors aren’t know-it-alls; they are intellectually curious. Here are a few tips I’ve received over the years that I now pass along to my younger colleagues…
[Read full story at Ragan's PR Daily]