B2B | Internet Marketing Blog

Three popular ways to sabotage your B2B social marketing strategy

Launching marketing messages onto social media? Stop. Telling your unique, compelling story and humanizing yourself online? Stop. Listening with social media... all in hopes of selling B2B professional services?

While most experts advise us to do these things on social media we're actually doing more harm than good. Here's why and what to do instead to create leads and sales and 3 things that can do more harm to your B2B company than good.

by Jeff Molander 30 November 2012 15:50pm 12 comments

Five tactics B2B companies can use to strengthen key customer relationships

Building a successful B2B business requires many things, from quality products and services to effective sales, marketing and distribution. But building a successful B2B business with staying power also typically requires something more: strong customer relationships.

Customer relationships are important for a variety of reasons. They can help ward off advances from competitors, for instance, and serve as the basis for something that can only be earned -- trust.

by Patricio Robles 21 November 2012 18:21pm 1 comment

B2B marketing: who should own the funnel?

After last week's FUNNEL B2B marketing event at The Emirates in London, we arranged a discussion with three of the speakers about who should own the funnel.

The speakers were Lisa Hutt, VP EMEA Marketing at Concur Technologies, Bob Apollo, Managing Partner at Inflexion Point and Jurgen Heyman, Director at SPI Sales.

I've added a transcript of the panel discussion from FUNNEL, or you can simply head for the video at the bottom of the post and watch the debate...

by Graham Charlton 20 November 2012 11:00am 1 comment

B2B insights: striking a balance in the age of big data

The greatest challenge for business brands seeking to drive customer value in today’s multichannel world is understanding.

Whilst consumer brands have historically taken a more forensic approach to mapping customer touch points, analysing behaviour and building personas in order to understand how, when and where people are engaging with them and where the opportunities lie, many of today’s business brands fail to explore customer needs closely enough.

The paradox? Data remains both one of the biggest opportunities and biggest headaches facing B2B marketers today. The sheer volume of data businesses have access to is seen by many as an obstacle.

How will we capture it? How will we measure it? What are the legalities? We can’t afford a failed organisation CRM effort!

by Jasper Bell 16 November 2012 09:21am 1 comment

Five tips for boosting your inbound B2B marketing leads

In theory inbound marketing leads should be cheaper than paid leads as customers are seeking you out rather than the other way around.

But just how much money do you stand to save by increasing your number of inbound leads?

In a talk at our Funnel B2B marketing conference HubSpot’s CMO Mike Volpe revealed that his company pays an average of $346 for each paid lead compared to $135 for inbound, a saving of 61%.

Not only that, but inbound leads also convert at three times the rate of paid leads.

And if you’re still not convinced, Volpe said that for every $1 HubSpot spends on inbound marketing it achieves a $6 lifetime value from the customer, whereas the same amount invested in paid marketing returns $2.50.

by David Moth 14 November 2012 09:54am 1 comment

What you can learn from 1.159bn B2B subject lines

What good is an email marketing campaign if your subject line sucks? If you truly want to increase response rates, make sure you’re using the right words.

Money words are in, personalisation can supercharge response, and “whitepapers” and “webinars” are over-used.

Focus on the outcomes of your product and people will respond.

I looked at 1.159bn B2B emails to find the words that work and those that don't. Check out a sneak preview of the statistics here...

by Parry Malm 12 November 2012 12:45pm 11 comments

Marketing automation: the rocket science of B2B marketing

It’s the ultimate marketing weapon. No wonder we have a guilty conscience.

To past generations of marketers, marketing automation is the equivalent of a lunar landing. Imagine a JFK Jr. CMO speaking at a marketing convention ca. 2005:

"Within a decade, we shall be able to determine exactly who does what with our web-page, our on-site and off-site content and our email campaigns. We shall be able to track our prospects' activity, and bring them back safely to valuable content and propositions that suit their specific needs and experiences. Then measure our impact on the bottom line".

Well, we’re there. It’s called marketing automation.

by Ryan Skinner 09 November 2012 16:11pm 13 comments

How do B2B companies use social media? [infographic]

Social media can be a useful tool for creating brand awareness, but are B2B marketers using it for demand generation as well?

According to a survey of more than 500 B2B marketers conducted by Eloqua, 64% of UK businesses use social media as a marketing tool, with the most popular reasons being for brand awareness (83%), encouraging social sharing (56%) and gaining trust and followers (55%).

Less than a third (32%) said they use social for lead generation and just 16% use social to assess market perception of their brand.

Further results from Eloqua’s survey can be seen below or on this dedicated minisite, and to find out more on this topic come to Econsultancy's B2B marketing conference, FUNNEL, at the Emirates Stadium next Tuesday, 13 November.

FUNNEL was created to help bring together sales and marketing teams to define better ways of turning awareness into interest and interest into revenue – while tracking the entire cycle.

by David Moth 08 November 2012 12:46pm 1 comment

Velocity's Stan Woods on B2B content marketing [video]

Stan Woods is the Managing Director of Velocity which he set up in 2001 with Econsultancy guest blogger Doug Kessler. Velocity specialises in B2B marketing for technology firms.

Stan will be speaking at Econusltancy's FUNNEL B2B marketing evebt next week, looking at using content marketing to segment and engage your audience.

In these videos, Stan speaks about his upcoming presentation and the relationship between sales and marketing...

by Graham Charlton 06 November 2012 10:25am 1 comment

Marketing automation wants to play matchmaker for B2B and social

Econsultancy has this month published the second edition of the Marketing Automation Buyer’s Guide, which contains an analysis of market trends, profiles of vendors and tips for marketers who want to invest in an automation platform.

Below, I've focused on one of the trends highlighted in the report: the integration of traditional prospect data with social data and the steps that marketing automation vendors have been taking in this area.

by Monica Savut 05 November 2012 09:51am 0 comments