B2B marketers Archives

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How B2B marketers can adapt to a privacy-first world

July 2, 2024 No Comments

Need for precision marketing amidst the cookie apocalypse

For years, B2B marketers have used the data and technology at their fingertips and leveraged cookies to target the right people at the right time. Yet, the reliance on third-party cookies and the consequent data privacy concerns have spotlighted the fragile balance between personalization and privacy. A growing number of people are concerned about how much of their online activity is tracked—72% feel almost everything they do online is monitored by advertisers or technology firms, while 81% believe the risks associated with data collection outweigh the benefits. The message is clear — the future of B2B marketing lies in respecting and protecting user privacy.

Google‘s 2020 announcement to block third-party cookies by 2024 sent shockwaves through the industry, compelling B2B marketers to rethink their approach to user tracking and targeted advertising. And while Google has once again delayed the phase-out timeline, it serves as a stark reminder that the end of third-party cookies is near, and organizations must use this extra time to adapt to a privacy-focused landscape. The cookie deprecation delay offers a critical opportunity to explore sustainable marketing practices while underlining the need for a strategic pivot.

Allie Kelly, Chief Marketing Officer at Intensify.

A privacy-first approach

While the end of cookies may seem daunting, many emerging technologies and strategies can help maintain effective and ethical audience targeting while meeting evolving privacy standards. With a clear understanding of the changing data privacy landscape and a focus on compliance, here’s how marketers can prepare for the imminent phase-out of third-party cookies, often referred to as the “Cookie Apocalypse,” ensuring marketing programs remain effective:

Prioritize first-party data

The deprecation of third-party cookies elevates the importance of first-party data — data collected directly from interactions with customers and prospects. This includes everything from contact information and purchase history to user behavior on an organization’s website. Leveraging zero-party data, information that customers willingly share, will also become increasingly crucial. By offering value in exchange for data through ebooks, webinars, and free trials, businesses can build a rich, consent-based data repository.

Implementing a robust Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system can further help organize and analyse this data, fostering personalized marketing initiatives and enriched customer experiences.

Expand intent signal coverage

Some intent data vendors are adjusting to the cookie-less world by using alternative identifiers to monitor buyer research activities and behaviours. This broader spectrum of buying signals allows B2B marketers to capture a more comprehensive view of intent, facilitating targeted lead generation and digital advertising. Building comprehensive identity graphs that integrate multi-source intent signals can significantly enhance the quality of intent intelligence at our disposal.

Stay informed and compliant

The landscape of data privacy regulations is continually evolving. Staying abreast of regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) is imperative for compliance and maintaining consumer trust. Regular training sessions on privacy practices for your team can go a long way in avoiding pitfalls and demonstrating your commitment to user privacy.

The future is intent-driven

As the digital marketing landscape shifts towards a cookie-less world, intent data emerges as a crucial asset for targeted marketing. With the delay in Google’s cookie deprecation timeline, it’s clear that marketing leaders must proactively adapt to the evolving environment. Traditional targeting methods, like IP-based strategies, are becoming less reliable, with 80% of marketers expressing doubts about their ability to reach the right audiences programmatically, and one in three citing wasted ad spending as a significant concern.

To navigate this change, B2B marketers are turning to AI-powered solutions that merge multiple sources of intent data to pinpoint in-market accounts with remarkable accuracy. This precision allows for more effective targeting and ultimately leads to improved conversion rates and accelerated sales pipelines. Intent data helps determine an account’s research stage and key topics of interest, enabling marketers to deliver personalized, relevant ads to specific personas within prioritized accounts. This shift towards AI-enabled, intent-based targeting not only offers a higher return on investment but also aligns with growing demands for privacy and compliance. By focusing on first-party data, expanding intent signal coverage, and embracing AI-driven identity graphs, marketers can create more resilient and sustainable marketing strategies in a world that’s rapidly moving beyond third-party cookies.

Building a future-resistant marketing strategy

The “Cookie Apocalypse,” demands a strategic and proactive approach to future-proof marketing strategies. Organizations must first undertake a comprehensive assessment of their current systems and data collection practices to identify their reliance on third-party cookies. This evaluation helps gauge the potential impact of digital and privacy regulation changes and guides the development of a flexible strategy that addresses both immediate and long-term challenges.

Collaboration with existing vendors is a crucial step in understanding their preparedness and exploring alternative solutions that comply with upcoming privacy norms. This process requires an innovative mindset, encouraging businesses to tap into new tools and technologies that align with the evolving privacy-focused digital landscape. By fostering a culture of collaboration, organizations can leverage external expertise while exploring adaptive strategies to ensure compliance and operational continuity.

Ultimately, the goal is to build a resilient marketing framework that not only survives but thrives in a post-cookie world. Staying informed about industry trends, engaging stakeholders, and maintaining flexibility are key to ensuring business success in this new environment. By embracing the shift towards a cookie-less future, businesses can position themselves for sustainable growth and a more privacy-conscious marketing approach. This strategic evolution will not only help organizations navigate the transition but will also set them on a path toward a more innovative and adaptable future in digital marketing.

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By Allie Kelly

Allie Kelly is a Chief Marketing Officer with over 20 years of experience in both B2B and B2C companies. Currently, she holds the CMO position at Intensify.

Sourced from techradar.pro

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3 Questions B2B Marketers Should Ask About the Dark Funnel in 2023

February 22, 2023 No Comments

By Chitra Iyer

What you need to ask if you want to better understand, influence and measure your own dark funnel in 2023.

Remember the quote of debatable origins that goes something like this (I’m paraphrasing), “I know half of my advertising works. I just don’t know which half.”

The conversation around the “dark funnel” is giving B2B marketing a similar identity crisis.

The carefully constructed and measurable B2B buying funnel is not as linear and clear-cut as marketers would like to think. There are multiple nonlinear touchpoints, that we cannot control, influence or measure, but which significantly impact the buying decision. And they make up 75% or more of the path to purchase. All such unknowable, unmeasurable, un-influenceable touchpoints are, in a nutshell, the “dark funnel.”

Naysayers say what can’t be measured can’t be managed or improved. Supporters say it’s a part of the buying process, accept it or not. So, what’s an already overwhelmed B2B marketer to do?

My money is on the “don’t ignore it” camp. If you embrace the dark funnel, then you have a shot at understanding it, and indeed, making it less unknowable, uninfluenceable and even perhaps less unmeasurable.

As Paul Slack, founder and CEO of B2B digital marketing agency Vende Digital wrote in a recent LinkedIn article, the dark funnel and dark social are simply where buyers learn to buy. He added not to be afraid of the dark funnel, but adapt instead and recommended becoming part of the learning and discovery journey by educating buyers with social posts, community, monthly Zoom meetings and podcasts.

To help understand the dark funnel, I dove into — (where else?) — the dark social. I trawled dozens of conversations, comments and resources to pick these three questions you should be asking if you want to better understand, influence and measure your own dark funnel in 2023.

1. Does Our Organization Have a Clear Understanding of the Dark Funnel?

Two areas of confusion emerged repeatedly across conversations on this topic.

Does the Dark Funnel Mean Word-of-Mouth?

The dark funnel is not just word-of-mouth (WoM). It is also ads people see but don’t click on, podcast mentions that they later Google, or event sponsorships, swag and conversations filed away in the prospect’s mind for a later time.

But WoM matters too. Perhaps more than ever in an age when it’s become hard for prospects to tell what’s an advertisement and what’s real, unbiased feedback. People trust other people over brands, but the nature of “known and trusted” has changed. Digital WoM is often “one-to-many” conversations on social or private channels, communities, Q&A forums, webinars and events, product review sites, webinar chat boxes and so on. The enabling space for this digital WoM is the dark funnel.

Is Dark Social the Same as the Dark Funnel?

Chris Walker, founder and CEO of Refine Labs, makes a clear distinction. He calls “dark social” the places where “everyone in B2B hangs out right now” — communities such as Pavilion, Peak and DGMG; internal company communication platforms like Slack and Discord channels, private channels and closed Facebook groups; third-party events and meetups, social platforms, podcasts, etc.

In dark social, the buyer is likely not yet “ready to buy” but is soaking in peer-to-peer learning. Together, via discussions, shares, DMs and content consumption, people are discovering problems, opportunities, solutions and products, evaluating their own performance, learning how others are solving similar problems and so much more. “The dark social does not show obvious intent. But if you are waiting for intent signals to start your engagement and nurturing, you are already too late,” said Walker.

So where does the dark funnel begin? After spending a long period on dark social, when learning, shortlisting and evaluation have already happened, people often transition to the dark funnel. They then come to organic search and review sites — aka the dark funnel, and finally on to your website. This shows up as “direct traffic,” “other sources” and “organic search traffic” on your Google Analytics reports.

Note that this is not a linear transition — prospects may weave in and out of both for a long time before they respond to any inbound marketing tactic if they do at all.

Expert tip: On an episode of the Demand Gen Live podcast, Chris Walker highlights a common mistake — not recognizing that much of their site traffic has already been through the dark social and the dark funnel. That means knowledgeable visitors are automatically pushed into nurture workflows when in reality, this prospect is close to a decision.

What can you do instead? Replace standard form fills and nurtures with bot-powered contextual conversations to give each visitor what they want at that moment. I came across The Bot Lab’s Helium platform, which claims to let advertisers have contextual conversations with readers right on the publisher’s page, instead of having to click out with an ad link. Ungated bottom-funnel content also helps makes it easier and friction-free for prospects to ask for a trial or demo.

2. How Can I Better Integrate Dark Funnel Traffic Into My Attribution and Analytics?

Attribution has its challenges, but it’s still one of the most powerful tools for revenue-driven marketers. You can’t give up on it — especially when revenue attribution and intelligence solutions are getting smarter by the day, several with the capability to track full-funnel customer journeys (and not just individual contacts or accounts).

At the same time, ignoring what dark social and the dark funnel have to tell us is impractical. In this LinkedIn post, Ryan Reisert of Phone Ready Leads shares how a comment left on another post received just about 22 engagements on LinkedIn. On the same day, the company’s website traffic showed a 10 times surge. A clear indicator of the impact dark social can have on web traffic, but which will show up as “direct traffic” on the analytics.

Here are some ways to get a better understanding of the dark funnel:

Correlate: if direct traffic or organic search is going up, understand what could be causing those spikes. Have you sponsored a podcast or event recently that had a lot of listens?

Set your conversational intelligence platforms such as Gong, Chorus or Outreach to listen for dark funnel keywords such as “podcast” or “LinkedIn,” and set your CRM to mark these as “dark funnel” sources.
Connect social monitoring tools such as Oktopost or Meltwater to your CRM to track brand mentions and other solution or category-related keywords to track spikes.
Get paid subscriptions to review sites for more insights into who reviewed your products or category. When combined with other intent data, this may provide stronger context and signals.
Sort out your UTM processes. Missed or messed up UTM codes often end up unleashing a big dump of “other” or “direct” traffic, especially if hundreds of campaigns leading to hundreds of landing pages are on in parallel. A solid UTM workflow narrows the dark funnel by ensuring as much traffic as possible is tagged to the right source.
Institutionalize a self-reported attribution process. Ask mid and late-stage prospects, converted customers, and even churned customers how they heard about you and why they chose your brand. Make it scalable with onboarding and off-boarding microsurveys.

LinkedIn post by Strategic ABM/ Dan Mulkeen

Do these enough times, with a consistent process, and patterns will start to emerge about dark sources that are helping generate demand. Declan Mulkeen, CEO of Strategic ABM, who calls it the dark iceberg in his viral LinkedIn post, reminds us that our B2B marketing metrics need a better balance between what can and cannot be seen.

Expert tip: in this post titled “Why B2B revenue attribution is broken,” B2B marketing leader Naseef KPO shares the reasons why single-touch, first-and-last touch and multitouch attribution models are all problematic. The issue, he says, is that most of them “focus on demand capture alone and not demand creation or generation,” referring to the dark social and dark funnel. Instead, he suggests a ‘mixed attribution model’ composed of:

The hybrid attribution model, which focuses on a combination of self-reported attribution and software-based attribution.
The influencer attribution method, where you look at the contribution of multiple demand capture channels and attribute revenue proportionately.

The core principle of this approach, KPO added, is to separate demand generation and demand capture channels and attribute revenue among these channels in such a way that “you are able to come up with the right budget allocation for future marketing activities.”

Ultimately, marketing strategy should be based on where customers are, not which channels can be measured. Even Google is moving away from last-click attribution toward an intelligent data-driven system.

3. What Mindset Shifts Can Help Leverage Dark Funnel Insights Better?

Mindset is a key part of winning the dark funnel. Needless to say, dark social, dark web and almost all B2B marketing itself today should be not about selling, but about helping people buy.

You cannot track the dark social or the dark funnel 100 percent, so stop focusing on that. Instead, focus on how you can best be a part of it and influence it by providing genuine value.

Train employees to fan out across dark social and amplify — without selling — that value, with meaningful insights, comments and content about the category, problem and solution rather than the brand. When it comes to communities, do not think of prospects as “us” and “them.” Instead, be a member of the community, giving and taking value from it.

To drive leadership buy-in and help sales open more doors, track and share screen-shots of useful engagements and DMs, including those of competitors. The currency here is not conversion, but attention and engagement from the right people.

Expert tip: In this episode of Insightly’s Closing Time podcast, Shama Hyder, founder and CEO of Zen Media, makes a great case for why marketers should spend more time on dark social and the dark funnel. The problem, she says, is a marketers’ work today is more about working on known intent. They end up as an on-demand collateral factory for sales, churning out white papers and brochures for the 5% of people already showing intent and ready to buy.

Instead, marketing should focus on creating demand. They should be on dark social and dark funnel channels, interacting with the 95% of potential customers who are not yet “ready to buy,” but are in the process of learning, collaborating and evaluating with peers. That is where the real opportunity to create demand exists. But you can’t rush it. When it comes to creating value and engagement on dark social, Hyder advised, play the long game.

Like all great marketing, content, conversations, context and connections are the key to getting the most out of the dark funnel as well.

youtube screengrab — Screengrab showing how most marketing is focused on converting high-intent prospects instead of creating demand across the dark social. Closing Time Podcast episode: Dark Social in B2B Marketing: What it is and How to Harness it.

By Chitra Iyer

Chitra is a seasoned freelance B2B content writer with over 10 years of enterprise marketing experience. Having spent the first half of her career in senior corporate marketing roles for companies such as Timken Steel, Tata Sky Satellite TV, and Procter & Gamble, Chitra brings that experience to her writing. She has authored over 500 articles, white papers, eBooks, guides, and research reports on customer experience, martech, salestech, adtech, retailtech, and customer data and privacy. She holds a Masters in global media & communications from the London School of Economics and Political Science and an MBA in marketing.

Sourced from CMSWire

In News

The ‘Flippening’ will usher in a Golden Age of B2B marketing

May 3, 2022 No Comments

By Peter Weinberg & Jon Lombardo

Brand marketing creates more financial value than short-term performance marketing – the sooner B2B marketers flip their perspective and start allocating budgets accordingly, the better it will be for everyone in B2B.

Should you be optimistic about the future of B2B marketing?

We are optimists, believe it or not. We believe B2B marketing is on the cusp of a Golden Age, a glorious revolution that shall be ushered in by a momentous event.

And we call this event…the Flippening.

To understand the Flippening, first you must understand the three numbers that explain everything that’s wrong with the B2B marketing industry.

80%, 95% and 8%.

First, 80%. If you talk to a financial analyst, they’ll tell you something like 80% of your share price is based on cash flows that are 10n years out into the future. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Wall Street is not short term. The market values businesses on their future cash flows.

Second, 95%. According to our research with the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, something like 95% of buyers are not ‘in-market’ to buy your products right now. That means effective marketing works primarily by reaching the 95% of customers who are not yet in-market, increasing the odds your brand gets remembered when those customers do enter the market in some future period.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, delivering short-term sales isn’t the most important job for B2B marketers, because only 5% of customers are ready to buy today. The most important job is influencing the 95% of future buyers who generate future cash flows.

And finally, 8%. According to LinkedIn data, B2B marketers spend around 8% of their budgets on brand awareness objectives. Something like 92% of B2B budgets are dedicated to short term, bottom funnel objectives like lead generation.

This so-called performance marketing may capture sales from in-market buyers, but it has little to no effect on future buyers. Brand marketing is much better at building the lasting memory structures that determine future sales.

85%. 95%. 8%.

One of these numbers makes 0% sense. If 80% of your stock price is based on future cash flows and 95% of your buyers are future buyers, why would you spend only 8% of your budget on brand marketing, which increases future sales from future buyers? Why would you spend 92% of your money chasing after 5% of your customers? Isn’t that a massive misallocation of capital?

Yup!

But don’t worry, the correction is coming.

Brace yourself for the Flippening.

The Flippening: When 8% brand becomes 51% brand

So what the flip is the Flippening?

The Flippening is that magical moment when B2B businesses realise that brand marketing creates more financial value than short term performance marketing, and B2B CMOs begin to allocate at least 51% of their budgets to brand marketing.

The Flippening will spark a positive chain reaction, which will be good for everyone in B2B.

The shift to brand will benefit businesses, since brand 1) increases long- and short-term sales, 2) improves pricing power, 3) reduces talent acquisition and retention costs, 4) unlocks growth in new categories, and much more.

Sales does not share power. The bottom of the funnel is the land of Mordor, where sales torments marketing for all eternity.

By creating more commercial value, marketing will enhance its status within B2B organisations. Instead of sitting in the basement, colouring in our whitepapers and sales collateral, marketing will get back to the boardroom with the decision makers.

Moving up the funnel will also make the job of B2B marketing a million times more enjoyable. The problem with the bottom of the funnel is that marketing has to ‘share’ its success with sales. And as Gandalf once said to us: “There is only one Lord of the Rings, and he does not share power.”

There is only one department that will ever get credit for delivering short-term sales, and it’s the sales department. Sales does not share power. The bottom of the funnel is the land of Mordor, where sales torments marketing for all eternity. The top of the funnel is the Shire, where marketers can frolic like happy little hobbits. Marketing has a monopoly at the top of the funnel. Only we can influence future buyers at scale through brand advertising.

The Flippening will even benefit performance marketers, both by lowering their precious cost-per-leads and by increasing their budgets. That’s right – we don’t believe brands’ growth will come at the expense of lead generation. It’s incremental. Businesses need to both influence ‘out-market’ buyers and capture in-market buyers. The Flippening will grow the overall marketing budget. Performance marketing will receive a smaller slice of a much bigger pie.

Yum!

Feature Image Credit: Shutterstock

By Peter Weinberg & Jon Lombardo

Sourced from MarketingWeek

In News

B2B brands must embrace digital tools to thrive in ‘the great reshuffle’

January 24, 2022 No Comments

By Penry Price

The pandemic and emergent technologies are transforming the future of work. LinkedIn’s Penry Price writes about how B2B brands can leverage existing tools in order to remain ahead of the curve.

People are actively rethinking their careers, including where, how and why they work. We are in the middle of a ’great reshuffle’ and B2B brands are facing new challenges, including targeting prospective buyers who are leaving jobs for new opportunities.

B2B marketers have to face what’s in front of them: thousands of moving or vanishing sales targets. As of August 2021, 55% of the workforce was looking for another job. For B2B players that have spent the last few years building out prospects lists, such employee migration means many of the targets in which they have invested time and resources to identify have since left or are thinking about leaving their current employer.

For B2B advertisers, this employee migration can be frustrating because you’re starting over from scratch for a decent chunk of your target audience. For B2B sales managers, it brings up another conundrum – are your top sales pros taking their lists with them? While these issues may keep some B2B players up at night, this industry is prepared to adjust and thrive during the great reshuffle.

Investing in digital

In the past year and a half, marketers have gone from in-person conferences to online marketing outreach, webinars, paid advertising and more. That means that today’s B2B marketers need digital engagement tools that build relationships with groups of buyers and other decision makers. Marketers also need to invest in tactics to reach business prospects with meaningful, relevant content that drives interest and sales faster than traditional wining and dining.

B2B brands need to know how to reach the right audience with the right message to show their value, drive connection and demonstrate consideration in ways that are only possible with the frequency that online content and advertising makes possible. Therefore, B2B marketers must invest more in digital tools today than ever before, not only because of the global shift we’ve made online, but also because it’s efficient, personalized and measurable.

Leaning into buyer intent

At the same time, that crash course in all things digital prepared B2B players for this moment. B2B marketers think more and more about leveraging first-party data on their owned digital properties and combine it with the intelligence of other digital platforms to organize customers and prospects into buyer groups based on professional attributes, similar to how B2C segments online audiences.

But buying groups are only one piece. Given that only 5% of potential buyers are in-market to make a purchase, marketers and sales professionals must rely on signals to understand how, when and where to reach their audiences. That’s where buyer intent becomes even more critical.

Buyer intent allows marketing and sales teams to better understand how likely customers and prospects are to purchase a product. For instance, let’s say the marketing and sales team works for a retail-focused chatbot supplier. This intelligence allows them to avoid taking a list of 1,000 and making an irrelevant offer to most of them, wasting time and resources, and instead focus on the right 100 retail CTOs with the right message.

This precision can transform full-funnel strategies in significant ways. Since casting a wide net to capture as many leads as possible is a thing of the past, B2B marketers can now spend their budget more wisely and deliver a more targeted cohort of prospects, enabling sales teams to more efficiently build relationships with qualified leads rather than going from one proverbial fishing hole to the next. All of this allows B2B players to move prospects down the funnel in a more efficient, nurturing way for both parties, which should lead to more deals being closed.

For those who spend their days thinking more about B2C marketing, buyer intent is essentially the equivalent to the purchase intent that revolutionized the retail and CPG space 15 years ago with the advent of online search advertising via Bing, Google and other platforms. Indeed, buyer intent, coupled with a real understanding of buyer groups, is a powerful data point that B2B marketers need not only in this post-pandemic world, but also in the privacy-first environment that we live in.

Connecting with smarter conversations

The players that made it through the steep learning curve of the last 20 months should feel heartened. Even if they’re concerned about reaching the right buyers at the right time as a result of the great reshuffle, we’re in the middle of a pivotal moment for both marketing and sales professionals. The good news is, marketers can now target in a much smarter way.

Indeed, stronger marketing efforts are in reach, which will make buyer-seller conversations more intelligent and efficient. And that seems to be an underlying lesson of the last 20 months – everyone wants their time to be well spent.

For more, sign up for The Drum’s daily US newsletter here.

By Penry Price

Penry Price is vice-president of marketing solutions at LinkedIn.

Sourced from The Drum

In News

B2B Marketing News: Global Social Trends Study, What B2B Marketers Are Investing In, LinkedIn Product Pages, & New Google Search CTR Study

December 16, 2021 No Comments

By Lane Ellis

Here’s What B2B Content Marketers Will be Investing in Next Year
69 percent of B2B content marketers have said that videos will be their top area of content marketing investment in 2022, with 61 percent saying that events will lead their investment areas next year, while 57 said that owned-media assets will top their content marketing spending in 2022 — two of several statistics of interest to digital marketing contained in recently-released survey data. MarketingCharts

New LinkedIn data shows how gen Z is recalibrating the norms of work
Gen Z comprises the fastest growing audience demographic on the LinkedIn (client) platform, with 63 percent visiting the Microsoft-owner professional network at least once a week, and 74 percent saying they use LinkedIn to learn new skills, according to newly-released report data. . The Drum

YouTube gives dislikes the thumbs-down, hides public counts
Google’s YouTube video platform has done away with the default display of thumbs-down count data, moving instead to make that information available only as private feedback to video content publishers, in an effort to foster more respectful interactions between creators and video viewers, YouTube recently announced. The Verge

B2B Buyers Say They’re Engaging Salespeople Late in the Process, But Are Open to Doing So Earlier
The solution identification stage is the most frequent point of first engagement B2B buyers use with sellers, followed by the identification and clarification stage, with the evaluation of solutions phase rounding out the top three first engagement points, according to newly-released survey data of interest to online marketers. MarketingCharts

Making the Business Case for Your Marketing Budget
Building a collaborative relationship with corporate suite peers is a leading way to make the case for marketing budgets, and the Harvard Business Review looks at how CMOs can show the effectiveness of marketing in driving business, using data, trust, and more. Harvard Business Review

Massive CTR Study Reveals Actionable Insights
Differences in Google search desktop and mobile click-through-rate (CTR) insights garnered from 750 billion impressions are featured in newly-released third-party study data, which reveal that in the business and industrial sectors more searches for business-related content are conducted on mobile devices than on traditional desktops. Search Engine Journal

LinkedIn Quietly Experiments With Product Pages To Boost Conversations
Microsoft-owned LinkedIn has undergone testing of specialized business product pages on the platform, as part of ongoing efforts to increase engagement between members, brands, and brand product development teams, the social network recently announced. MediaPost

25% of marketers cite sustainability as ‘general goal’ rather than employ specific metrics
Gauging the success of sustainability efforts is a top challenge among marketers, with some 42 percent having said that they need to make new technology investments in the area, according to recently-released survey data of interest to digital marketers. The Drum

ON24 teams up with HubSpot in app marketplace
B2B users will be able to better integrate the features of the HubSpot platform and cloud-based hybrid engagement service ON24, with new event data-sharing options available in a forthcoming upgrade to the platforms, ON24 recently announced. MarTech

Budgets Show Spending Across All Social Networks: Trends For 2022
Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn are the three top social media platforms when it comes to effectively reaching business goals, according to Hootsuite’s newly-released annual social trends report, which has also shown that younger people are increasingly using social networks to research brands instead of traditional search engines. MediaPost

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE:

A light-hearted look at the “inflation, shrinkflation, and skimpflation” by Marketoonist Tom Fishburne — Marketoonist

Instagram is Paying Up to $35,000 to Lure Creators Away From TikTok — PetaPixel

Atari Unveils New Logo, Games, And More For 50th Anniversary — Forbes

TOPRANK MARKETING & CLIENTS IN THE NEWS:

Lee Odden — 5 Questions 4 With Lee Odden — Demandbase
Lane R. Ellis — What’s Trending: Embrace Your Inner Tinker — LinkedIn
Lee Odden — Membership Update Fall 2021 [Digital Marketing Institute] — Digital Marketing Institute

Have you found your own top B2B marketing news from the past week? Please drop us a line in the comments below.

Thanks for taking the time to join us for the week’s TopRank Marketing B2B marketing news, and we hope you’ll return next Friday for more of the week’s most relevant B2B and digital marketing industry news. In the meantime, you can follow us on our LinkedIn page, or at @toprank on Twitter for even more timely daily news.

By Lane Ellis

Sourced from TopRank Marketing

In News

What Most B2B Marketers Get Wrong About SEO And LinkedIn

July 20, 2021 No Comments

By Kevin Kruse,

In an age where all B2B marketing is digital yet very little of it actually works, it’s tough to know whose advice you can trust. Perhaps the first clue is when they acknowledge, up front, just how ineffective most marketing really is.

Alex Boyd, founder and CEO of RevenueZen, isn’t shy about sharing what most B2B marketers get wrong about SEO and LinkedIn. But he’s hesitant to give advice without first understanding the context and nuance of a particular situation, which is usually a sign someone has earned their chops.

I recently caught up with Boyd to hear his thoughts on SEO strategy, demand gen philosophy, LinkedIn spam, and why, at the end of the day, a simple phone call can go a long way.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Kevin Kruse: What have you seen change or shift in marketing and demand generation in the last several years?

Alex Boyd: Anything “mass” has decreased in effectiveness as well as anything easy to measure with a low barrier to entry. Those types of activities have less value because everyone presses the buttons that are easy to press, like sending a lot of emails and running a lot of very general ads. When you think about what marketers need to do to justify their tactics, it’s usually putting up big numbers on a dashboard to show to the CEO who doesn’t always “get it.” And so the easier something is to measure and show on that dashboard, the more marketers will do it, even if the channel is saturated and the leads aren’t converting.

Kruse: What’s a common misconception people have about demand generation?

Boyd: A lot of people think all leads are created equal, but they’re not. How you got that lead in the first place is so important. On paper, a lead is an object in a CRM with an email address. But how would a salesperson define a “lead”? It’s somebody who’s gotten more interested in your product than they were before. The person who says, “I saw your CEO in that great Forbes article and I have a few friends that use your company. I’m ready to sign,” is a lead. But, to many marketers, so is the person who entered their email address just to download a checklist and always dodges your calls when you follow up. Those two leads are not equal. Demand generation isn’t about the quantity of leads. It’s focusing on how the lead got to your company, and whether or not the environment in which they arrived warmed them up to what you sell.

Kruse: In general, what’s working in B2B marketing, assuming “working” means generating a lead that comes to you in the right way and with some interest to potentially buy?

Boyd: You already know it depends, but I’ll share what I’m seeing: first, founder-driven, brand marketing—meaning sharing the perspective of what the leadership team believes in a personal, organic way. LinkedIn is a good example, but this could also look like the CEO giving a fireside chat, or speaking at an event. People want to know what the people behind the product believe because that tells them more than a list of features. The feature list is static, but what the founders and leadership team believe is dynamic—it tells you about the future and where the company is headed. CEOs shouldn’t fool themselves into thinking that managing their social media accounts is “below them”: many prominent CxOs of tech unicorns are very active on social.

Secondly, organic search still has a lot of potential. Most SEO is still done quite badly, even by experts. The biggest thing that Software-as-a-Service companies in particular get wrong about SEO is they think they need to optimize for people searching for exactly what they do. That’s table stakes. What the SaaS companies who see massive growth through organic search do is they compete for the attention of their buyer. It’s not a game of what your product does, it’s a game of attention. And if you get in front of people and put your name, brand and insights in front of them while they’re looking for related content and they happen to encounter your product that way, you’re going to show them a new way of doing things. And that’s the core of SaaS marketing: showing someone a new way of doing things.

Kruse: Do you have a real-world example of how that kind of attention-grabbing SEO works?

Boyd: One of the best ways of doing SEO at first is to talk about the basics. Most companies will create a blog for announcements and news, but nobody is searching for your company. So why not rank for keywords they’re already searching for? A company called lightyear.ai is a great example. They’re a marketplace for IT and networking solutions—kind of like a kayak.com for IT. They don’t assume that people are searching for “IT product marketplace”, because they’re not. They rank for things that people search for to educate themselves on how to buy IT. It’s a subtle shift in thinking: when you’re a small start-up, your new idea is not the centre of your prospects’ universe.

Kruse: How should you approach SEO if you’re trying to sell something new?

Boyd: When you’re selling a brand-new product, the way you do SEO should change. Nobody is searching for your unique new product category – yet. If you sell something new, you need to rank for things that are related to what you do but aren’t your product. If you’re building an AI to help recruiters sort through resumes, you don’t want to rank for “AI resume screener”, you want to write about the Top 10 Ways to Screen Candidates, or How To Write An Amazing EEO Statement. Once your company is larger, this game changes and you then want to focus on people who are already looking for exactly what you do.

Kruse: You’ve been creating a new product for LinkedIn. Tell me about that.

Boyd: The way that people engage on LinkedIn has been broken for a long time. A lot of people see relationship-building as transactional: “I liked your posts, please take a meeting.” There’s a feeling of entitlement. That needs to change.

The right way to engage on LinkedIn involves writing good content, engaging with others, networking, and actually building community. Our product shows you which of your target accounts are talking to your competitors, customers and strong connections. And it tells you exactly which important conversations to take part in. The whole point of our product – Aware – is to give people the ability to send a LOW volume of hyper-targeted messages that have 60%+ conversion rate: unheard of.

Kruse: What’s one piece of advice you’d like to leave marketers with?

Boyd: Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty. Tech marketers spend so much time geeking out on growth-hacking funnel jockeying, but sometimes you just need to pick up the phone and call a prospect instead of waiting around for an answer. I think we need to spend more time building relationships with people, which sometimes means just calling them up.

Feature Image Credit: Founder of RevenueZen: Alex Boyd

By Kevin Kruse

Kevin Kruse is the Founder + CEO of LEADx, a platform that scales and sustains leadership habits throughout an organization. Kevin is also a New York Times bestselling author of Great Leaders Have No Rules, 15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management, and Employee Engagement 2.0. Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website or some of my other work here.

Sourced from Forbes

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B2B Content Marketing Credibility Study, LinkedIn’s New Company Engagement Report, Global Social Trends & Microsoft’s Free UX Tool

December 11, 2020 No Comments

By Lane Ellis

Both B2B Marketers and Buyers Increasingly Sold on Conversational Marketing
B2B marketing professionals have found email, online live chat, social media, and chatbots have all seen increased usage in 2020, while phone and video call use has fallen by more than 10 percent, according to recently-released B2B buyer communication survey data of interest to digital marketers. MarketingCharts

B2B Tech Firms Cut Marketing Budgets Due To Pandemic: Study
Despite an overall drop in marketing spending due to the global health crisis, budgeting for digital and content marketing are the most likely to see increased spending, while some 60 percent of B2B technology firm executives say that their key performance indicators (KPIs) haven’t undergone change. MediaPost

Subject Matter Expertise A Growing Factor for B2B Buyers When Evaluating Vendors
In 2020 over 32 percent of B2B and professional services buyers see subject matter expertise and industry knowledge as the top attribute when evaluating firms, a rate over 11 percent higher than 2018 figures, with client service flexibility the only other element that became more important during the past two years — two of several statistics of interest to online marketers in recently-released survey data. MarketingCharts

7 ways COVID-19 has changed B2B customer experience forever
The pandemic has blurred the lines between B2B and B2C marketing, brought more intelligent automation to customer experience (CX), and made trust a more important factor, and Adobe has taken a look at how these changes will play out in 2021 and beyond. Adobe (client)

Linked Rolls Out Company Engagement Report
LinkedIn (client) has launched a Company Engagement Report offering new insights for B2B marketers, especially those using account based marketing (ABM), featuring a variety of organic and ad engagement metrics, the Microsoft-owned professional social platform recently announced. Adweek

Facebook Once Again Experiments with Up and Down Votes for Comments to Optimize Engagement
Facebook has begun limited testing of Reddit-like upvoting and downvoting options among certain Facebook Groups, with an eye towards boosting relevant content and engagement levels, recent observations of the social media giant have shown. Social Media Today

Google’s Working on a New Process Which Would Convert Static Website Assets into Video Content
Google has launched URL2Video, a new prototype utility that incorporates some of Google’s AI systems to turn static website digital assets into video content, in a move that could lead to new digital marketing opportunities, the search giant recently announced. Social Media Today

Social Media Trends 2021 Global Report
Content remixing, memetic media, and nostalgia marketing are among the trends marketers are likely to see more of during 2021, according to recently-released global social media survey trend data from HubSpot and Talkwalker. Talkwalker

Microsoft Clarity, the company’s tool for visualizing user experience, is out of beta
Microsoft has widely released Clarity, a free service offering a variety of user engagement and other metrics using site JavaScript, previously available only in beta form, the firm recently announced. Marketing Land

B2B Content Marketers Getting More Successful in Building Credibility
B2B content marketers say they have found creating brand awareness, educating audiences, and building credibility and trust as the top three benefits of B2B content marketing over the past year, followed by lead generation and building loyalty with existing customers, according to recently-released survey data of interest to digital marketers. MarketingCharts

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE:

A lighthearted look at “CX is more than a department” by Marketoonist Tom Fishburne — Marketoonist

New Photo Filter Shows What You Would Look Like in Facial-Recognition Database — The Hard Times

TOPRANK MARKETING & CLIENTS IN THE NEWS:

Lee Odden — #TimTalk – The Business of B2B Influence with Lee Odden — Timothy Hughes
Lane R. Ellis — 10 Tips for Prioritizing Tasks to Make the Most of Limited Small Business Resources — Small Business Trends
Lee Odden — 40 Marketing Quotes to Provoke Thought and Inspire — Visitor Queue

Have you found your own top B2B marketing stories from the past week of industry news? Please let us know in the comments below.

Thanks for taking the time to join us for our weekly B2B marketing news, and we hope that you’ll return again next Friday for another examination of the most relevant B2B and digital marketing industry news. In the meantime, you can follow us at @toprank on Twitter for even more timely daily news.

By Lane Ellis

Lane R. Ellis (@lanerellis), TopRank Marketing Social Media and Content Marketing Manager, has over 36 years’ experience working with and writing about the Internet. Lane spent more than a decade as Lead Editor for prestigious conference firm Pubcon. When he’s not writing, Lane enjoys distance running (11 marathons including two ultras so far), genealogical research, cross-country skate skiing, vegetarian cooking, and spending time with his wonderful wife Julie Ahasay and their three cats in beautiful Duluth, Minnesota.

Sourced from TopRank Marketing

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6 Dynamic Tactics For Solving The Post-Pandemic Marketing Rubik’s Cube

September 9, 2020 No Comments

By Lane Ellis.

What will successful B2B marketing look like in a post-pandemic world, and what can marketers do today to be ready?

B2B marketers are facing daunting and unprecedented challenges — not unlike a Rubik’s Cube — during the global health crisis. Each impediment, however, also offers valuable lessons that can help us as we transition to 2021 and the future opportunities that await.

Let’s begin unraveling the mysteries of the post-pandemic marketing world, with six dynamic tactics B2B marketers can use today to prepare for the future business landscape.

1 — Influencer Intensification: Subject Matter Experts

Post-pandemic marketing will likely feature a noticeable intensification when it comes to the use of B2B influencers. As one of the most pandemic-proof marketing practices during the global health crisis, B2B influencer marketing is poised to continue growing in 2021 and beyond, due in part to the value industry experts bring to everyone involved.

“Traditional marketing channels are drying up and even trade shows are imperiled in 2021,” Mark Schaefer, chief operating officer at B Squared Media observed. “The influence marketing trend will be amplified as businesses seek trusted voices to join industry conversations,” Mark added.

Mark’s prediction is among dozens of insightful influencer marketing statistics in our recent 2020 State of B2B Influencer Marketing Research Report, and the following data points speak to the strength of industry influencers and point to increased use as we move into 2021:

90% of B2B marketers expect their influencer marketing budget to increase or stay the same
78% of B2B marketers believe prospects rely on advice from influencers
74% of B2B marketers say that influencer marketing improves customer and prospect experiences with a brand, and 90% plan to increase their budget in the near future
63% agree that marketing would have better results if it included an influencer marketing program

“Digging into the results, one can quickly see a trend in B2B marketers who are optimistic about influencer marketing yet not confident about their ability to execute,” Shama Hyder, chief executive at Zen Media recently observed in her Forbes interview with our co-founder and chief executive Lee Odden, “New Report Says B2B Influencer Marketing Still Has Massive Room For Growth.”

“With the pandemic causing a loss of in-person B2B tactics — field marketing, in-person trade shows, and experiential marketing efforts, for example — much of where buyers focus for information are digital channels,” Lee noted.

“This is exactly where influencers provide valuable and trusted perspectives. Trust, reach and engagement are always challenges for B2B brands, and collaborating with trusted industry experts that have the attention and respect of buyer audiences has proven to be an effective solution,” Lee added — a sentiment also expressed by Sarita Rao, senior vice president of marketing at AT&T Business*.

“Working with credible B2B influencers helps to build brand authority through real, human conversations and interactions.” — @saritasayso of @ATTBusinessCLICK TO TWEET

According to research conducted by Forrester the pandemic has seen new opportunities for influencer marketing, as 63 percent of U.S. consumers have spent more time using social media platforms, 58 percent have noticed more content from influencers, and 51 percent have had a positive attitude about influencer content and found it valuable.

Additionally, between March and July 2020 sponsored influencer posts saw a five-fold increase in interactions, reaching 57 million in July, according to report data from Shareablee.

Among U.S. and U.K. consumers who follow social media influencers, 72 percent said they have spent more time using social platforms during the pandemic, and 64 percent also said that they are likely to continue the same level of usage during post-pandemic times, according to GlobalWebIndex survey data.

Aside from its resilience during the pandemic, influencer marketing has for some time been poised to see more mainstream B2B usage, a move that is likely to steadily increase in our post-pandemic marketing world.

To learn more about B2B influencer marketing or beginning a pilot program, here are six additional recent resources we’ve compiled:

2 — Persistent Programs: Always-On Marketing

Studies have shown the increased effectiveness of always-on marketing programs that replace one-and-done single-use campaigns with ongoing efforts that match the always-on nature of today’s consumer.

The case for a post-pandemic shift to always-on marketing programs is bolstered by compelling recent data from our report, such as:

76% of B2B marketers find that the strategy of working with influencers through always-on engagement or when combined with campaigns delivers results
75% saw increased views of brand content using always-on influencer marketing
60% saw an increased share of voice, 55% saw more media brand mentions, and 50% saw increased brand advocacy through always-on influencer marketing
89% of B2B marketers using always-on influencer programs expect their budgets to increase or remain the same, versus 73% for marketers running traditional campaign-based programs

This all points to persistent B2B marketing programs becoming more widespread among successful B2B marketers in the post-pandemic era, and it’s easy to see why, as the partnerships formed through always-on programs build ongoing brand credibility and trust that can be difficult or impossible to achieve using one-and-done campaigns.

“With brand trust at a low, it’s important for B2B companies to invest in relationships with credible experts that buyers do trust.” — Lee Odden @LeeOddenCLICK TO TWEET

If you’re looking to learn more about why always-on programs achieve better results and how you can implement them, check out the following recent articles we’ve written about a topic that will only become more important in 2021 and beyond:

“Being ‘always-on’ has allowed our team to build meaningful relationships with influencers.” — Garnor Morantes of @LinkedInCLICK TO TWEET

3 — Shifting Search: New Challenges & Opportunities

Like blowing dunes, the sands of the search technology landscape change often, and in the post-pandemic environment marketers will see a shift as Apple seeks to make inroads with its own search experience and whittle away at Google’s long-standing dominance.

Paid and organic search marketing efforts are a vital part of most B2B firms’ strategy, and pandemic or not these efforts would have continued for the majority of businesses. The global health crisis has given us a newfound appreciation of the importance of findability and how valuable a sound search plan is for businesses today, and this will continue into the foreseeable future.

Search strategies no longer involve only a website and traditional search engines, as more people than ever also search for answers and information from within social media platforms’ own often-lackluster search mechanisms, which some see as presenting new challenges, as well through the increasing use of voice search.

66 percent of B2B chief marketing officers said that their 2021 budgets would see an increase in spending on search engine optimization (SEO), with the same percentage also planning to boost spending on paid search, according to Gartner’s annual CMO spending survey.

I expect a growth in importance and usage of structured data, an increase in predictive search features, and a shift to a more technical SEO ecosystem. @aleydaCLICK TO TWEET

Recently I took an in-depth look at why search is more important than ever, in “SEO Strategy: 5 Reasons Why It’s More Important Than Ever For B2B Marketers,” and we’ve also explored other aspects of SEO in B2B marketing in these articles:

4 — Virtual Variations: Social VR Landscapes

This year the world has spent more time using both traditional social media platforms and social virtual reality worlds, and when our lives return to some semblance of normal, all flavors of VR will seek to capitalize on an audience that — although no longer captive at home — has come to know and expect that brands use the technology.

51 percent of U.S. adults have increased their use of social media during the global health crisis according to eMarketer, and nearly a third have spent an additional one to two hours of time on social platforms during the pandemic, leaving more time for audiences to explore the new virtual worlds being created by social firms, such as Facebook’s Horizon VR experience.

“The convergence of both the physical and virtual worlds will create new opportunities in the future in the way friends, families, and even colleagues connect,” Cathy Hackl, author and futurist recently noted in Forbes.

By 2022 some forecasts predict over 95 million augmented reality (AR) users in the U.S. alone, including over 60 percent using VR with more than 30 percent using VR headsets, a trend that savvy B2B marketers are keeping a close eye on for post-pandemic marketing spending.

Other survey data has shown that 39 percent of B2B professionals expect to install new AR and VR technology in the next 12 months.

With in-game, AR, and VR marketing opportunities seeing greater interest in 2021 and beyond, B2B marketers can learn more about the importance of experiential storytelling in the following pieces we’ve written about these and related subjects:

5 — Evolving Marketing Events: In-Person & Virtual

How will marketing events change in a post-COVID19 world?

There’s no question that in-person marketing events are win-win experiences for the many parties involved, from speakers and attendees to exhibitors, sponsors, and others, yet during the pandemic creative new takes on virtual conferences have presented viable alternatives that are likely to be with us for good, continuing to augment in-person events once the health crisis ends.

The pandemic has seen Facebook begin offering paid event options for businesses, with direct in-stream purchases available for eligible Facebook business pages in 20 countries including the U.S., offering digital marketers new monetization and event marketing options.

Virtual events help traditional in-person conferences expand their reach and gain new online audiences — people who may eventually also attend an organization’s physical events.

Similarly, in-person events such as marketing conferences may — in post-pandemic times — serve as good examples for some of the purely virtual events that have come into existence this year out of necessity, pushing them to begin their own new physical events.

92 percent of marketers have said that they believe putting on successful virtual events will be important until the pandemic ends, and some brands have already chosen to postpone or cancel their events all the way through the middle of 2021, including major players Facebook and Microsoft.

73 percent of B2B event organizers have had to cancel a physical event because of the pandemic, and 81 percent have provided virtual alternatives, according to survey data from The Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR).

The time is bound to arrive when in-person events return, however, and smart B2B marketers will be prepared to incorporate both virtual and physical conference experiences for learning, networking, and selling.

Having an influencer marketing strategy makes sense for taking full advantage of both virtual and in-person events.

“Partnering with influencers is more important now than it ever has been,” our president and co-founder Susan Misukanis explained. “Targeting the right influencer communities can be the best way to expand virtual event attendance and reach into a broader audience — who may not have planned to travel to your live event or conference,” Susan added.

Partnering with influencers is more important now than it ever has been. Targeting the right influencer communities can be the best way to expand virtual event attendance and reach into a broader audience.” @smisukanisCLICK TO TWEET

To level-up your event game for both virtual and physical conferences, here are six articles we’ve published to help:

6 — Delivery Diversity: New Communication Channels

The pandemic has both driven us apart and brought us together in new ways, and given us creative methods to both tell and hear compelling digital stories.

New communication channels have arisen, such as the virtual worlds of Facebook’s Horizon and others we’ve already explored, along with the huge rise in online video communication through Zoom, Slack, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and others.

The mass turn to video conferencing has also helped drive a large increase in both mobile app usage and advertising spending, highlighting the importance of making mobile a part of any well-rounded B2B marketing strategy.

Engagement among mobile ads has climbed by some 15 percent during the global health crisis according to survey data, and despite an overall drop in ad spending for the year, mobile ad spend has fared the best, as its 15 percent decrease was less than the 25 percent seen for desktop ad buying, according to additional data.

Business app opens saw a 26 percent year-over-year increase from March through June, report data shows, as seen here.

“We’re all the same size rectangle on the Zoom screen.” — Vanessa Colella of @CitiCLICK TO TWEET

A rare pandemic silver lining is how we’ve all found new ways to communicate and — more importantly — the stories we’re telling. Storytelling will be key in the post-pandemic marketing landscape, and to help you weave authentic messages that audiences will remember here are six recent articles we have available on this important topic:

Don’t Forget Your B2B Marketing Gravity

via GIPHY

The post-pandemic world will see intensified use of B2B influencer marketing, the growth of always-on programs, shifts in the world of search, more social VR, the evolution of events, and new communication channels, and we hope that by exploring these areas here your future marketing efforts will achieve newfound success — even if you’re no closer to solving that Rubik’s Cube.

Succeeding in any of these areas takes considerable time, effort and experience, which is why many firms choose a top marketing agency like TopRank Marketing.

Contact us and find out why firms including Adobe, LinkedIn, AT&T, 3M, Dell, Oracle, monday.com and many others have chosen us for award-winning marketing.

By Lane Ellis.

Lane R. Ellis (@lanerellis), TopRank Marketing Social Media and Content Marketing Manager, has over 36 years’ experience working with and writing about the Internet. Lane spent more than a decade as Lead Editor for prestigious conference firm Pubcon. When he’s not writing, Lane enjoys distance running (11 marathons including two ultras so far), genealogical research, cross-country skate skiing, vegetarian cooking, and spending time with his wonderful wife Julie Ahasay and their three cats in beautiful Duluth, Minnesota.

Sourced from TopRank Marketing

In News

How To Appear in Google Featured Snippets: 5 Tips for B2B Marketers

June 5, 2020 No Comments

By Ryan Young

“Google it.” If your friends, families, or colleagues are anything like mine, there’s a good chance you hear this phrase on a daily or at the very least, weekly basis. While it’s sometimes used in jest, the reality is, we can count on Google to help us answer all types of questions.

Much of this thanks can be given to Google’s “Hummingbird” algorithm update, which focused on improving “conversational search” at its core. At the time of the announcement, Google said that Hummingbird would be paying closer attention to every word in a query, to better understand the true meaning behind the user’s intent.

Since Hummingbird, featured snippets have become much more prominent in search as Google has become smarter and aims to provide information quicker and more effectively than before.

Google’s featured snippets have been a welcomed addition to the SEO community as well. As a content marketer, I see these as empty plots of prime real estate calling my name. If you’re unfamiliar with what I’m referring to, let’s take a look at what appears when we search “what is B2B content marketing?” in Google.

The image below is an example of a featured snippet:

What are Google Featured Snippets?

Google says “featured snippets are special boxes where the format of regular listings is reversed, showing the descriptive snippet first.” Content for featured snippets is automatically pulled by Google from indexed webpages that Google believes matches the user’s intent.

For SEOs looking for ways to simply mark a page to be featured, Google says, “You can’t.” Not surprisingly, they aren’t offering up much more detail than that.

In translation: If you want to appear in Google featured snippets, you have to get out there, do some research of your own, put on your content marketing hardhat, and get to work.

That’s exactly what we have done here at KoMarketing for a number of our clients, and we can proudly say that we have had success.

Why Featured Snippets are Important for SEO

There are a few difference-makers when thinking about how featured snippet listings can impact SEO performance and results.

First, let’s go back to our above-mentioned definition of featured snippets, where we say “content for featured snippets is automatically pulled by Google from indexed webpages.” It’s important to note that your page does not have to be in the top position of organic results to be displayed in featured snippets. We have seen many client examples where blog pages or other educational site content that ranks further down page one begins to rank for featured snippet results.

Why is this so important? Well, oftentimes, the top few spots of organic rankings, especially for competitive terms, are taken up by websites with a massive business (and domain authority) behind them. Featured snippets allow smaller websites and organizations to compete for that essential search real estate.

The second primary benefit of featured snippets to SEO is simply the clicks and traffic that come from organic search when appearing in a listing. Industry research shows that about 9% of clicks go to featured snippets when there is a listing present.

At KoMarketing, we have been able to validate this research with several case examples. In fact, we recently landed a client’s webpage in featured snippets for a competitive question-based result, and have seen click-through-rates average between 10-25% for a variety of queries.

Here’s a snapshot of organic traffic to this page since it was picked up by featured snippets.

And finally, once you have pulled visitors to your site via featured snippets, you should capitalize by adding CTAs where they naturally fit. Since most of the queries that serve up featured snippets are considered to be “top of the sales funnel,” we often suggest adding banners to related whitepapers or other more buyer-centric content. Doing so allows us to push the site visitor further down the sales funnel, and will hopefully get them more interested in the organization’s offerings.

What are the Different Types of Featured Snippets?

To date, we have seen three primary types of featured snippets. These include:

1. Definitions: These snippets provide the user with a clear and concise explanation, specifically relating to the search term(s). We often see definitions appear for “what is” queries.

2. Tables: Google also commonly serves up tables as featured snippet results. Users are most likely to find these types of results when searching for dimensions of a certain item.

3. Lists: When information can be easily presented in a series of data points, or steps to explain a process, Google will use lists in featured snippets. You will find both ordered (numbered) or unordered (non-numbered) lists depending on the result.

Google Featured Snippets: SEO Best Practices

Here are the steps we have learned to be critical (content marketing-specific), regardless of the query being searched.

Select a Relevant Query
Create Relevant Content
Focus on Structure
Remember SEO Best Practices
Be Patient

Step 1: Select a Relevant Query

Before anything else is done, you must first identify a query to target. Since questions are very common featured snippets results, one place to start is working across the organization (sales, marketing, customer service) to identify a handful of frequently asked customer questions.

From there, look for long-tail search queries that have volume (Keyword Planner is a helpful tool) and can be included in the question itself. Make sure this is a question that requires an answer with some depth, as Google is starting to bake answers to questions like “what time is it in California?” directly into its results, with no SEO value.

If you’re looking for some other ways to identify common customer questions, type a keyword associated with your business into Google and look for the “People also ask” results (see below) or use this tool, which is one of our favorites here at KoMarketing.

Step 2: Create Relevant Content

When creating content for featured snippets, you must first and foremost focus on the query at hand. Make sure the piece of content (whether it’s a blog post or a landing page) is created with only the most relevant material and supporting detail specific to that query in mind.

Sprinkling bits and pieces of an answer throughout a less-targeted post will cause Google to work harder to decipher your content and will reduce your chances of appearing in the featured snippet for the query.

The “quality over quantity” rule also comes into play here. Your piece of content does not have to be thousands of words long for it to appear. We’ve had content with less than 500 words appear and drive an abundance of traffic to our clients’ websites.

Step 3: Focus on Structure

In addition to the overall quality of the content, we believe the format of the post is just as critical.

Before creating your content, research your query and see what formats (if any) are appearing in the featured snippet. Regardless of the query you’re targeting, make sure you include it in the title of the content. Ideally, the title of the content (including the H1 tag) will be the target query itself.

If you decide it’s best to use a list-style post, be sure to include the list towards the beginning of the post. If you think the answer to the question is best suited to be presented in a paragraph format, make sure the answer is offered as early in the post as possible and in the most concise manner possible. ‘

To summarize:

Include the question in the URL, title, and appropriate SEO tags
Present the most critical information at the start (no fluff!)
Think about using lists when answering “How” queries
Think about using paragraph format when answering “What” queries

Step 4: Remember SEO Best Practices

While Google suggests they are simply looking for the best content with this initiative, SEO best practices should not be forgotten. Include things like links to reputable sources, well-optimized titles and tags, and Schema markup. Schema markup is code that’s put on a website to help search engines return more informative results. (For more information on Schema, give Derek’s post a read).

Most of the results we see appearing in featured snippets come from a result on the first page of SERPs. However, as we mentioned, you don’t have to be in the first organic spot to get the answer box result:

With this in mind, broader SEO factors like mobile-friendliness, link profiles, and domain authority also play a factor in the bigger picture.

Step 5: Be Patient

As is the case with most things related to SEO and content marketing, patience is critical. One of our clients was recently placed in featured snippets for a competitive query a full year after the content went live. If you consider these above steps and do the work to identify an opportunity that can be attained, there’s a good chance your content will be featured in what some now are calling “position zero,” and the benefits can be substantial.

Final Thoughts

There are many other posts on the web that speak to the best ways to be featured in Google’s featured snippets, and we encourage you to check those out as well. But, from our experience in the field, the steps listed in this post are essential to success.

By Ryan Young

Sourced from KM KOMARKETING

In News

Challenge Accepted: The Top 5 Obstacles B2B Marketers Face

February 6, 2020 No Comments

By Shannon Prager

Business-to-business marketers are responsible for raising awareness, generating leads to drive revenue and differentiating their organization from its competitors. A B2B marketer faces a different set of challenges with each campaign. If these challenges are not combatted, they can significantly lower the business’s efficiency and revenue.

As the president of a marketing agency, here are the top challenges I’ve observed B2B marketers are facing today and how you and your team can combat them:

1. Generating Quality Leads

In today’s digital era, many platforms exist to publish and promote marketing content. The digital space is so cluttered with content, consumers no longer have to seek out information. Push notifications, geo-targeting, customized ads and messages, and site pop-ups deliver tailored content to every user.

B2B marketers can struggle to create enough demand for their content. Because of the plethora of content syndication opportunities available today, B2B marketers often lack understanding of which channel is right for their message.

An effective way to address this problem is doing research on the type of content your target audience actually wants — such as video, blogs, etc. — about the topics that are keeping them up at night. Creating high-quality content that provides the reader with value will gain their trust, and they will come back for more.

2. Knowing The Right Target Audience

Strong marketing strategies should satisfy the needs of customers at every level of the customer journey. You must know your audience and what they care about in order to reach them. But, there’s a lot that goes into a B2B buyer’s decision-making process, such as how their company does business and their personal preferences. This can make it challenging to determine your target audience.

Studying your customers’ buying process enables you to segment your buyers by their pains and their needs, so you can deliver a more personalized experience when communicating and marketing to them.

3. Proving ROI

Return on investment attribution remains one of the most common challenges facing many B2B marketers. In order for a marketer to comprehend the effectiveness of each piece of content, each campaign and the overall strategy, a marketer must be able to attribute a relatively accurate amount of revenue to them.

B2B organizations often find it difficult to prove ROI because of the multiple points of contact a marketer must make before a business purchases their product or service. B2B purchasing decisions often involve interacting with a number of professionals within a company in a variety of ways, so the sales cycle is much longer and more complex. Tracking the revenue that these interactions generate can be extremely time-consuming and convoluted, as the purchase process is not linear and the financial benefits of the marketing effort are often not reaped until long after their execution.

I advise organizations to tackle this issue by facilitating two-way communication between your company’s marketing and sales teams, in addition to implementing reporting tools into your regular analysis.

4. Optimizing Your Website

A B2B company’s website is a marketing asset that is working all day, every day, to generate traffic and convert prospects into customers. Keeping your site functional, fast and user-friendly is essential for any B2B business.

This is an umbrella issue that encompasses a variety of challenges, including:

• Optimizing SEO;

• Producing strong messaging that speaks to the pains of your buyers;

• Engaging website users with your content;

• Designing pages in an easy-to-read, yet appealing style.

It takes different skill sets to effectively manage all these types of projects, so having strong marketing partners is important to ensure you can get the right skill for the right role.

5. Strategic Marketing Planning

To plan or not to plan? While it takes time, I firmly believe that to effectively market to your customers, you must know them inside and out and plan accordingly.

Ask yourself the following questions about your customers:

• How do your customers form their plans?

• How do they evaluate solutions?

• Where else do they search for information to educate and later purchase?

• Where do they get recommendations and purchasing advice?

I believe by conducting buyer persona research, you can overcome the common challenge of marketing to the wrong consumer or marketing with the wrong message at the wrong time. Customers’ answers to these questions can inform email marketing, social media, outreach to influencers and more.

So, you have some or all of these challenges. Now what?

From creating a personalized website experience to generating quality leads, marketers face a different set of challenges. A seasoned team of marketing strategists can help you identify and overcome the marketing challenges your B2B is facing. Whether it is an in-house marketer at your organization or employing a marketing agency to fill your unique gaps, surround yourself with those who are professionals in the space so you can get the results you need.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Shannon Prager

Shannon Prager is President of Leadit Marketing, a marketing and demand gen agency focused on B2B tech and professional services companies. Read Shannon Prager’s full executive profile here.

Sourced from Forbes