Tap Blogging

What B2B Buyers Want From Tech Vendors Right Now 55 percent of B2B buyers say it's appropriate for marketing efforts to continue during these challenging times, and 53 percent are presently in the market for B2B products and services, with most of those having recent new purchasing interests, according to newly-released survey data. MarketingProfs Programmatic Ad Spend Down 9% Since Beginning of 2020, Driven by Travel and Auto Amidst an overall fall of 9 percent in April, ad spending for the technology vertical and the education and training segment were up 70 percent and 63 percent for the year, with streaming ad spend also up by some 18 percent, according to recently-released report data. Adweek Exclusive: New York Times phasing out all 3rd-party advertising data The New York Times has begun eliminating all third-party advertising targeting information, and by July the firm will instead use a fully-proprietary platform, the company recently announced. Axios Google’s digit...

I’m not here to lie to you: Sheltering in place is getting pretty old.  I do count my blessings, of course. My family and I are healthy. My wife and I both can work from home; our kids are pretty great; we actually enjoy each others’ company.  Still. There are only so many loaves of bread you can bake, puzzles you can solve, board games you can play before the ennui sets in.  If you’re like me, you could use a laugh right now. And I need to exercise my comedy muscles before they atrophy. And in a world where people are still writing articles called, “Should You Include Humor in Your B2B Content,” we need constant reminders that people like jokes. People like to laugh. Laughter brings you closer to your audience and creates a connection. Not that any of these jokes will make you laugh, of course — but I’ve heard that a smile and a groan is almost as good for you. 20 More Jokes Only a Marketer Could Love 1: Q: How many agile marketers does it take to change a ligh...

What can marketers in 2020 learn from the low-resolution stand-up video arcade games of the 1980s? Here are five surprisingly-modern marketing lessons that we can learn from and implement today, with roots that come directly from vintage ‘80s arcade games. Slap that fire button and let's warp ahead and take a nostalgic look back at a simpler time in both video gaming and marketing, and then hyperspace ahead to today's vastly different landscape. 1 — Defender: Fire & Forget for a Constant Content Cadence [caption id="attachment_28500" align="alignnone" width="600"] Photo by Author[/caption] Williams Electronics’ Defender is my all-time favorite stand-up video arcade game, an insidiously difficult side-scrolling spaceship-protecting-the-world shooting match juggernaut from 1981 programmed by early video game legend Eugene Jarvis. I played Defender so much that I eventually won a local video game competition, and can still almost feel where I ...

Like many other digital experiences, the webinar has traditionally been viewed as a means to an end: Create something that seems valuable to your audience, and use it as a vehicle to acquire contact information for lead generation purposes. But marketers like Mark Bornstein take a different angle: What if we view the webinar itself as an end — an extremely valuable marketing tool on its own? What if we’re just muddying it up with all these mandatory form-fills and sales-y follow-ups? “You need the name once, you need the demographic information one time,” he observes. “But why do we keep putting forms together again and again? What matters is the experience.” [bctt tweet="“Why do we keep putting lead gen forms together again and again? What matters is the experience.” — @4markb on #BreakFreeB2B #DigitalExperiences" username="toprank"] Mark elaborates: “It's the experience you give, it's the way you're able to connect and interact with audiences that m...

The post Why SEO & Influence are Critical to Pandemic Era Content Marketing appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank® . from Online Marketing Blog – TopRank® https://ift.tt/2ZvGEJD

B2B Decision-Maker Survey: COVID-19's Impact on Marketing, Buying, and Sales 65 percent of enterprise B2B buyers now view online interactions as being more important than traditional vendor conversations, one of several findings of interest to digital marketers contained in newly-released U.S. B2B pandemic response survey data. MarketingProfs Facebook just bought Giphy Facebook has acquired popular animated GIF image platform Giphy in a $400 million move that will likely bring deeper integration with both Facebook-owned Instagram and its messaging features, the social media giant announced. Engadget LinkedIn Stories Is Almost Here: Will It Reinvent the B2B Social Media Landscape? LinkedIn (client) has tested its variation of the popular ephemeral stories format. When rolled out to the Microsoft-owned platform's 690 million users, LinkedIn Stories would bring B2B marketers on the platform a new digital storytelling tool option. MarketingProfs Brand Awareness is Top of Mi...

In recent months, I’ve been listening to Paramore’s song “Hard Times” a lot. Their 2017 hit talks about struggling to overcome challenging circumstances above '80s-inspired new wave pop. It’s a bop, as the kids say, and confronts hardship — truthful and emphatic with a spoonful of sugar. via GIPHY During this global health crisis, I’m sure most marketers want to wake up fine, be told that they’re alright, and — in their weakest moments — have “wonder[ed] why [we] even try.” While we have no control over the state of the world, we do have control over how we react or work in tandem with it. With data, we get a glimpse into how our respective markets have been impacted, and it can inform a new perspective and next steps. Let’s take a look at how the pandemic affects data and analytics, and if B2B marketers need to shift their pre-pandemic goals. Examine Pre- & Post-Crisis Data, Then Decide If Goals Need Updating This may be the first time in our lifetimes where the whole wor...

Today is day 4,777. Not days quarantined, but days working remotely. On Monday, March 23, 2007 I started working remotely, and 4,777 days later I still do. A staple aspect of my daily work life that had been the exception for most marketers is now — at least temporarily — the rule, with most people working from home due to the global health crisis. Having been a remote worker for a long time, I wanted to share the helpful practices that I wish I’d known when first starting out, and expand on my previous article “ Remote Communication Opportunities For B2B Marketers .” Many have been working remotely much longer than me, and each one will have their own stories of remote work successes and snafus. According to my “days-since” calculator, my 4,777 days of remote work has been comprised of: 412,732,800 seconds 6,878,880 minutes 114,648 hours 4777 days 682 weeks and 3 days 13.08 years That’s a lot of remote work time, yet for me I wouldn’t want it any other way, as I’ve found tha...

What’s in a job title? In my tenure as a marketer, I’ve met gurus who don’t live on mountaintops, ninjas who don’t know martial arts, and evangelists who don’t preach on Sunday.  At worst, these creative job titles are pure puffery. But at best, they serve as a statement of purpose. I’m thinking of titles like Shep Hyken’s Chief Amazement Officer, or Ann Handley as Chief Content Officer: They tell us something about what the person — and their organization — values. Latne Conant from 6sense has a subtly unusual job title: Chief Market Officer. She dropped the ‘ing’ from ‘Marketing,’ and that tiny change signals a major shift in the way she approaches her job. Instead of focusing on the verb of marketing — what tactics to deploy to reach an audience —  her job is to deeply understand the market, the people her brand is trying to reach. For Latane, getting rid of that ‘ing’ makes all the difference in turning marketers into revenue-generating dynamos. In her Break Free B2B...

When it comes to sharing B2B marketing advice, I prefer not to clown around too much and do my best to line up on the positive and optimistic side with trends, insights and how to's focused on looking forward towards best practices and getting better results. Marketers expect serious results but unfortunatley, many B2B marketers insist on clowning around with half-hearted or incomplete influencer marketing efforts. Instead, they choose to ignore experience, best practices and even common sense when it comes to B2B influencer marketing. I know this from stories told by brand marketers that have worked with other agencies and from being on the receiving end of clueless pitches, minimum viable engagement efforts and willfully ignorant attempts to get me to promote something I really have no business caring about. I've heard much of the same from other people who are often engaged as influencers as well. What better day than today for an appeal to B2B marketers to stop clowning a...