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Showing posts from February, 2019

The Future (& Present) of Marketing: Collaboration, Technology & Innovation

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Sales & Marketing Alignment: Shahid Javed Shares How to Go from Hate to Love in 60 Days

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It’s a tale as old as time. The marketing team is hyper-focused on awareness campaigns, events, and driving more leads to fill the funnel. Meanwhile, the sales team is hyper-focused on meeting sales and revenue goals, and nurturing relationships to empty the funnel. These two teams occupy two very different functional areas within a company. They’re moving at completely different speeds. They’re operating under their own rules. And as a result, there’s tension, misunderstanding, and even … hate . But according to Shahid Javed , Director of Enterprise Marketing for Hughes Network Systems, B2B marketers can be change agents here. They can give and get love from their sales teams. And they can do it in as little as 60 days. How? Shahid says you need a short- and long-term strategy to foster the collaboration, love, and alignment needed to drive results. In his session at B2B Marketing Exhange in Scottsdale, AZ, he focused on the short-term strategy to help marketers understand where ...

Kelvin Gee Delves Into Key Learnings from Oracle’s Account-Based (Marketing) Initiative

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Account-based marketing (ABM) has been a rising trend for B2B brands for roughly a decade. And it’s appeal (and effectiveness when done right) is rooted in thinking differently—in transforming your traditional approach to targeting, engagement, and nurturing to drive results. But for Kelvin Gee , Oracle’s Senior Director of Modern Marketing Business Transformation, and his team, thinking differently has led to piloting an account-based framework. (Notice, “marketing” is missing.) “We believe words matter,” he told a packed room at B2B Marketing Exchange in Scottsdale, AZ. “[If we called our initiative ‘account-based marketing’], sales would think it was just another campaign of the month.” “So, we just call it ‘account-based’ because we’re all in it together,” he said. “It’s not a tactic or event. It’s a go-to-market strategy.” This all-in-it-together mantra should resonate with B2B marketers. Simply put, if we want to scale our marketing efforts and drive tangible and transf...

Bye-Bye Boring B2B: Lee Odden Shows B2BMX Attendees the Power of Interactive Influencer Content

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Quick question, B2B marketers: How many of you wake up feeling like this about your B2B content? via GIPHY Not so much? Hey, it’s OK. You’re a passionate and proud B2B marketer. But finding a way to create exciting, inspiring, infotaining content that connects with your audience is hard work. After all, B2B isn’t innately sexy—it’s booooooring. Oh, and between content overload, changing consumer preferences for personalization, and diminishing audience trust, it’s increasingly hard to capture and keep attention. So, here’s another question: Are you ready to say bye-bye to boring content and hello to exciting, inspiring, and infotaining content experiences? Yes so much? Good. Because, as TopRank Marketing CEO Lee Odden told a packed room at B2B Marketing Exchange this week, you can . How? By bringing two incredibly powerful content marketing tactics together: interactive content and influencer content. Why interactive? Why influencers? Why interactive and influencers?...

Carlos Abler of 3M Asks B2BMX Attendees: Can Marketing Save the World?

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The post Carlos Abler of 3M Asks B2BMX Attendees: Can Marketing Save the World? appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank® . from Online Marketing Blog – TopRank® https://ift.tt/2U5D8A8

How B2B Marketers Can Make the Most of Interactive Content Tools

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Informative. Engaging. Entertaining. Inspiring. Interactive content is a rising B2B marketing star , allowing brands to break free of their “boring-to-boring” reputations to give their audiences bold, beautiful, badass experiences. And to make it increasingly easy for B2B content marketers to deliver those interactive experiences, interactive content tools —from simple web-based tools to robust platforms—have proliferated. But here’s the thing: From upping marketing efficiency to collecting unique audience data insights, the beauty and utility of many interactive content tools extends well beyond content creation and delivery. So, if you truly want to make the most of your interactive content investments, you should take care in making the most of your tools of choice. How? Here are a few tips. #1 - Take advantage of templates to boost efficiency. You’re busy —and so is your graphic designer or design team. And unfortunately, when you’re strapped for time and resources, con...

Can’t-Miss Sessions at 2019’s B2B Marketing Exchange Conference #B2BMX

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The post Can’t-Miss Sessions at 2019’s B2B Marketing Exchange Conference #B2BMX appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank® . from Online Marketing Blog – TopRank® https://ift.tt/2IAzDQQ

Digital Marketing News: HubSpot’s Email Lead Capture Report, Adobe’s Content Survey, Facebook & Google Tops for Mobile Ads

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The post Digital Marketing News: HubSpot’s Email Lead Capture Report, Adobe’s Content Survey, Facebook & Google Tops for Mobile Ads appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank® . from Online Marketing Blog – TopRank® https://ift.tt/2GIayBI

How B2B Marketers Can Win at Search with Best Answer Content

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Marketers are engaged in a continuous battle to gain an edge when it comes to SEO, seeking those crucial advantages provided by top visibility where customers are looking. Multiple disciplines from technical SEO to creative content can be leveraged to win the search marketing game. At TopRank Marketing, we believe the best answer to this quandary is… well, to be the Best Answer . To simplify and clarify, it might be helpful to take a step back. In October of 2000, Larry Page laid out his ambitious vision for Google , a company he’d founded along with Sergey Brin just two years earlier. Page foresaw his creation as “the ultimate search engine that would understand everything on the Web. It would understand exactly what you wanted, and it would give you the right thing.” “We’re nowhere near doing that now,” he admitted. “However, we can get incrementally closer to that, and that is basically what we work on.” At the time, here’s what the Google homepage looked liked (prepare for...

B2B Brands Go Bold: 7 Great Examples of Interactive B2B Content

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If you’re not convinced that interactive content in the B2B space can work: Well, first check out these interactive content stats . If you’re still on the fence, here’s an object lesson from a master of audience engagement: Freddie plays that 100,000-person crowd like an instrument. You can feel the energy, even through a tiny YouTube window. When you invite your audience to be part of the show, the results can be magical. Now, odds are your brand can’t match the raw charisma of Freddie Mercury in tight jeans. But you can still get your audience cheering with interactive B2B content . Here are a few great examples to light your creative fires and open your B2B minds to the possibilities of interactive. 7 Great Examples of B2B Interactive Content What do we mean by interactive content? Generally speaking, it’s any content that requires more input from the user than simply scrolling or clicking links. In practice, there are a few broad categories: Interactive infographics ...