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The Definitive Playbook to B2B Inbound Marketing

June 5, 2019 No Comments

The B2B marketing landscape of 2019 is a brave new world for business – one virtually unrecognizable from years past.

If we go back to the start of the decade, concepts like content marketing, social media marketing, influencer marketing, and inbound marketing were years away from conception.

At the time, buyer demographic and behavioral data was difficult to find, marketing campaigns were more expensive to launch and harder to track, and market pulse was tougher to discern.

All that has now changed.

Replacing the old world of B2B marketing is a new landscape that is highly favorable to creative and strategic marketers. Instead of creating big and expensive ad campaigns, marketers are creating thoughtful content that attract inbound customers.

Generating quality inbound leads is the key to the success of B2B marketing. Not only does it help accelerate your sales cycle – it also creates happier sales reps, and bolster revenue growth.

We developed this playbook to help you accelerate sales cycle velocity, and retain and expand its existing client base. Let’s dive in.

The Organic Inbound Marketing Playbook for B2B Companies

The thrust of this playbook is simple: launching an inbound B2B marketing strategy does not need to be expensive.

It doesn’t require tons of money for Google AdWords and PPC. Neither does it require that you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on large-scale events and sponsorships.

However, it does require the implementation of thoughtful content that truly engages your buyer. To do this, use the nine techniques we share below to help you build recurring organic inbound traffic.

Technique #1. Dial into your target audience

Every great inbound marketing strategy starts with a perfect understanding of your target audience – your ideal client profile.

If you don’t have a clear picture of your target audience or ideal client profile (ICP), use these two simple tactics to master and understand your ICP:

Make a list of your existing client base, enrich their data, and map their buyer journey.
Interview your best clients and ask them about their specific use cases, needs, and experience with your product.

Phase I. Account-level research

This research starts at the account level, where you need to identify insights about the companies that buy you and start building a list of target accounts. It includes a few steps:

The Basics – Businesses often overlook tremendous value in determining their ideal customer profile by neglecting to dig deeper. Within this space, you’re only discovering topical information such as employee count, revenue, location, or industry. This is just a starting point, not where your research should end.

Account-Based Research – Here is where you determine what are key strategic priorities for the accounts you’re targeting. You’ll also want to ask questions such as: how does your solution help them achieve their goals? What can the technology stack of your target customer tell you? Account-based research gives you an extra level of targeting above and beyond company size, revenue, and industry.

Buying Triggers – Here is where you’ll want to find out about your customers: which activities inside an organization indicate your solution could be a fit for them?

For example; at OutboundView, when organizations are hiring inside salespeople, it typically means our services could be a fit. When a new VP of Sales is hired, that is a good time for our team to reach out and discuss their lead generation strategies, because they’re typically reviewing new sales processes. If we can tell a company isn’t getting any inbound traffic, that tells us that the target needs outbound marketing.

Identifying the triggers that drive organizations to buy is absolutely critical for top of funnel targeting. Finding target accounts that are showing “buying triggers” for your business should be the highest priority for your top of funnel outreach efforts.

Phase II. Buyer research

Who’s your buyer? Not ideal company – we’re talking the customer writing the checks or using your products. We think about buyer personas in two main categories: Decision Makers and Doers.

Decision Makers are the individuals focused on high-level, strategic outcomes, and are usually writing the check for your product or service.

Doers are your users focused on the day to day tactics supporting your product or service.

Why is this an important distinction? Each requires different strategies to spark interest in your product or service; but most importantly, each requires a different messaging to initiate a discussion.

Buyer personas outline the specific value proposition, thought-provoking questions, and resources needed to lead efforts toward an opportunity for each type of Doer or Decision Maker.

Here is a simple list of steps to follow when building your buyer personas:

Start small with a goal of 2-3 buyer personas.
Think pain points – What makes your customer’s job difficult? Keep in mind these pain points need to be related to their overall job, not just pain points your solution solves for.
Perform customer interviews and ask your buyer the tough questions, don’t just make assumptions.
Make them tangible! Create bio pages for “Bill the Buyer”, ”Sally Seller” and have fun with it!
Think “Personally” and “Professionally” – How does your solution help your buyer reach their goals, both personally and professionally?
Create a unique value proposition for each type of persona.
End with messaging – As the last step in the process, build messaging that aligns with the customer’s pain points and helps differentiate your solution.

To see who is engaging with and responding to your content, create an updated database of people who are following you on social media and subscribed to your email list.

This includes adding calls-to-actions for your blog, events, and gated content on your website to passively capture emails over time. Then, use tools like Clearbit or DiscoverOrg to enrich the data you collect with detailed firmographic information about who your audience is and how well they fit your ideal client persona. Or, have someone curate the list for you by hand.

Doing so will enable you to build an audience over time and get maximum return-on-investment for your publishing efforts.

This may take a little bit of work, but it will pay huge dividends in the short-term and long-term. You’ll learn which topics and personas to lock in on and focus your future efforts appropriately.

Technique #2. Create epic content in two Forms

Content creation is cheaper and easier to produce than ever.

But your time and resources are precious – so we recommend fixating content on one of two areas: thought leadership on your philosophy and storytelling about client success.

What is thought leadership, you ask? Two things:

An annoyingly-named and often-abused piece of business terminology.
Content that explains the philosophy behind the product or service you offer.

Once you find your target audience, you should use BuzzSumo or Ahrefs to find topics relevant to your buyer that have high Google search volume and a high volume of social media mentions.

Why use thought leadership? Because like Simon (Sinek) says, “The best way to inspire action is to ‘start with ‘why.’’”

Think back to Mitch and Murray’s favorite acronym: AIDA.

Lastly, recall that people buy products and services (especially expensive B2B solutions) from brands they know, like, and trust. Thought leadership builds trust and awareness and table-sets future action from your buyers.

The second type of content you should create is flywheel storytelling: telling client stories in evocative fashion by placing them on the Hero’s Journey.

In these stories, your client (note: not your product) is the hero. They are facing a challenge or obstacle to overcome, and your product aids their success.

Here, it’s important to build up your client as a subject matter expert in their field. This means establishing their credentials, backstory, philosophy, challenges, and how they discovered your product or service.

From there, you can chart their path to success and use their words to describe your product or service’s role in getting them from A to B.

Technique #3. Package content for maximum distribution

To maximize efficiency when it comes to content creation, we recommend repurposing and repackaging content as much as possible.

For example, you can turn a webinar with a client into a video interview on YouTube, a podcast episode, and an article that can be shared in various formats across social media.

The idea here is expediency. Rather than churning out a bunch of unique, disjointed pieces of content, you can turn one epic piece of content into a multi-purpose series of articles, videos, and podcasts.

Remember – not everyone consumes content in the same format. The beauty of this method is that you can create content in the format of best-fit for your entire audience.

To gain maximum exposure for your content, focus on the best distribution channels. For B2B, a solid email newsletter featuring valuable thought leadership, industry research, and client-led insights is a great way to connect with buyers and build trust.

We also advise supplementing email with social media posts on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, et cetera, depending on how much time your ICP spends on those networks.

Finally, we recommend uploading video, audio, and presentation content to social media networks like YouTube, SoundCloud, and SlideShare. Optimize the content for SEO so that it can be found via search and gain the maximum visibility over time.

Technique #4. Create trust and credibility with consistent output

James Carbary has built a seven-figure business around the concept of “Content-Based Networking.”

We found similar value in the concept of leveraging content to create and enhance authentic relationships with clients and audience.

An important best practice for this method is customer storytelling.

You should foreground your clients in your content as much as possible. Make them the heroes of articles and case studies capturing their success story with your product or service in grand detail. Explain their background, philosophy, challenges, success path, and subsequent gains from choosing you as a vendor.

From there, you should map the distribution of these stories to the audience of best-fit. If the hero in your client success story is a VP of Sales for a SaaS company, then route that story to similarly-situated prospects and clients in your sales, marketing, and client success funnel.

The bottom line is – you should always seek to route content to your audience of the best fit. Use data and well developed personas to make this happen.

Technique #5. Leverage content to build authentic relationships

Once you commit to a content-driven inbound marketing game plan, it’s important to know that you’re playing the long game.

Content publishing pays back exponentially over time. It may take months or years – but you’ll see it. Provided you commit to publishing steadily and consistently.

Let’s say you publish 3 articles per week – and two out of three posts feature a client or a key ally in your industry. You’re setting yourself up for success.

Think of it this way – publishing 2 articles each week that cross-promote a client or peer leads to 104 goodwill relationships over the course of a year, possibly more if you publish content that features multiple clients or peers.

Content creation is a long-term investment with escalating payoffs in the form of heightened SEO, a strong database, referral-minded channel partners, and powerful press relationships.

These, in turn, lead to increased qualified lead velocity from content you’ve already created.

Technique #6. Build your brand on what others say about you

Every brand needs to cultivate reviews and testimonials that describe their value.

As Daniel Pink and HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan discuss in this must-listen podcast interview, for the first time in history your buyers have as much access to information about your company as your sellers do.

In other words, your brand is your reputation. It’s not what you say it is. It’s what others say about you.

Creating a committed campaign that incentivizes happy customers to review your company is an incredibly powerful, worthwhile investment in this day and age. Whether it’s Google Reviews, Yelp!, G2Crowd, or another vendor, it’s important to have your clients affirming your value publicly on the internet.

The second component to building your brand is creating clear statements of philosophy, or why you exist. This can be accomplished through published mission statements and consistent thought leadership output that dials into your purpose as a company, which we covered in Technique One.

Last and not least, always be aware of what is being said about your brand across the web and social media. This means using a powerful media monitoring tool to help you stay on top of real-time mentions.

Technique #7. Serve the entire customer lifecycle

Content should serve the entire customer lifecycle – from first touch to renewal.

This ensures maximum value from your publishing efforts and total artillery coverage for sales development, account executives, and customer support.

Again, we look back to Technique One. The goal is to provide content with the breadth and depth to add value across as much of your audience as possible. This includes:

Cold prospects
Warm prospects
Lost prospects
New clients
Long-term clients
Lost clients

The broader the scope of impact a piece of content has, the better it serves your bottom-line. If you are only creating content designed to impact the top-of-funnel, you are vastly under-serving your audience, your company, and yourself.

Technique #8. Track and analyze the entire funnel

This technique is a critical component that should be applied to everything you do.

To get the most benefit from your content-driven inbound marketing efforts, you should use a tool to analyze what content and channels drive results.

Invest in a marketing automation system – HubSpot, Marketo, and Pardot (especially if you use Salesforce) are all great options.

Devote a few dollars to a content tracking tool like Guru to build your internal knowledge base.

Use Outreach, Cirrus Insight, or SalesLoft to send trackable content at scale and give your sales reps the ability to see what messaging, links, and attachments get prospects to respond.

Keep track of the data-driven insights these tools give you. Then triple down on what is working and fix areas that need improvement.

Technique #9. Emphasize process, details, and fundamentals

The final technique is also a ‘must apply’ for all aspects of the content-driven inbound marketing playbook.

The key mantras here are to:

Create transparent, consistent workflows.
Strike balance between speed and quality control.

To accomplish the former, use a project management tool like Asana or Trello to keep your team on the same page. These tools will also help you strike the balance between speed and quality control.

Being detail oriented when is comes to content means doing every little action that will help you maximize SEO.

This includes adding alt titles to your images, using the proper text formatting with headers, et cetera, and using an SEO tool (we love Ahrefs) to discover the best keyword opportunities for high Google rank.

Here’s a high-performing blog post whose title was chosen specifically for its high search volume (400 per month) and low keyword difficulty (less than 5 backlinks were needed for a top search ranking).

Going the extra mile is as simple as emailing a partner or client you feature prominently in a piece of content to:

Give them a heads up they are being recognized.
Gently ask if they can share it across their channels.

The biggest driver of content is the willingness to do these two things. Once you do, you can guarantee a sound return-on-investment in your content marketing efforts to drive inbound leads

By Blake Johnston

Sourced from Mention

In News

IBM CMO Michelle Peluso Shares Her Top 3 Trends In B2B Influencer Marketing

May 13, 2019 No Comments

By Kate Talbot

YouTube stars and the Kardashians are not what you’d typically expect to discuss with one of the most sought-after marketers, who spends her days thinking about how to help people better understand how technology will shape our lives.

However, if from my interview with IBM’s Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Michelle Peluso, reinforced one core theme, it is that sometimes your most powerful influencers come from unexpected places.

IBM

Influencer marketing has become commonplace within B2C marketing. Now, more than ever B2B companies are racing to do to the same. The fact is that influencers are pivotal to brand success and remain a growth lever to promote products and inspire community. B2B influencers might just look different than a stereotypical fashion influencer posing in front of the Coachella Ferris wheel or the fitness trainer promoting protein powder.

Peluso has the task of marketing a legacy brand within a world of digital content and consumption. This new wave of consumerism leans heavily on influencer marketing; especially as the next generation of millennial and Gen Z buyers and consumers look at technology through a more digitally savvy lens:

“When you have a company that has reinvented itself over 100 years many, many times, there’s a legacy that’s quite attractive. But we have to tell our story in the right way – we’re always working on the latest, most cutting-edge technology, and helping clients make a difference in their companies and in the world.”

Peluso and I talked at length about a topic that is integral to the future of B2B marketing. Here are three takeaways about the current state of B2B influencer marketing gleaned from IBM’s strategy.

It’s all about authenticity.

Similarly to B2C trends of using nano influencers over macro influencers, Peluso encourages quality over volume, “It’s not necessarily about how many followers someone has, but rather what makes them valuable and interesting to their audience. It’s crucial that B2B companies commit to preserving an influencer’s authenticity as credibility is paramount.”

IBM’s ad campaign, “Dear Tech, Let’s Talk,” features an array of celebrities, influencers, and IBM employees and advocates. This includes IBMer, Lisa Deluca — a Distinguished Engineer and mother of four. She wants the world to know that STEM isn’t just a boys club. Peluso is determined to show that, “Whoever you choose to associate with your brand – they have to have that authentic connection. It simply can’t be manufactured or bought.”

Enterprise marketers must remain focused on finding influencers that relate to their products and values, and in turn, whose personal communities and followers will do the same.

B2B influencers differ than B2C influencers, and that’s awesome.

B2B influencers engage and thrive across a variety of offline and online channels – both inside the workforce and online through communities like LinkedIn or Reddit. These influencers are able to on their unique ability to convert non-physical concepts like artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing into consumable and exciting ideas for the masses…not just techies.

This is extremely important as content creation has a huge effect on the sales cycle as 80% of B2B buyers consume at least three pieces of content before talking to a salesperson.

“Employees are often an untapped influencer base for enterprise companies. Companies must find a way to identify these people, learn about their audience, and then support them to expand their mission and goals,” Peluso shared.

“In regards to external brand advocates, IBM works with this one developer, for example, Tanmay, who started learning how to use IBM’s AI platform (Watson) when he was a little kid. He has this uncanny ability to break down the technology in ways that people can understand. He does Facebook Live, YouTube, attends our events, and is becoming incredibly influential in his sphere.”

B2B influencers have a different audience than their consumer counterparts, which requires a different approach to content creation. Luckily, their audiences are passionate and drive results that can have a huge impact on the bottom line.

Give life to the intangible.

With sophisticated technologies like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and blockchain in their technology stack, IBM brings abstract products to life through creative content. “What I think is really interesting is that, even now, a lot of what we do, you can’t see and touch. There are so many ways that AI and Cloud are touching people’s lives that you can start to make real,” Peluso explained.

One of the most famous examples of this is when IBM Watson won Jeopardy in 2011, defeating super champion Ken Jennings. This event brought the topic of artificial intelligence into mainstream conversation. And more recently with Project Debater, which showcased how AI could effectively debate a world-class human debater.

Another includes IBM engineer, Benin Saffo, who used machine learning and cognitive computing when she built a custom model to define different hair types through Watson Visual Recognition. By taking photos of hair, she could classify the unique characteristics associated with different hair types and further demonstrate the power of Watson.

By illustrating complex technologies in a digestible way for the modern audience, B2B influencers can share product vision and capabilities in an entertaining manner.

In the end, storytelling delivers.

Through understanding the importance of authentic storytelling and humanizing complex technologies, B2B companies can use influencer marketing for brand affinity and sales. The companies that get influencer marketing and social media right are those that consistently create engaging stories and compelling visual content, all with genuine intent for the audiences and stakeholders they serve.

Fortunately, B2B companies of all sizes have more opportunities than ever to connect with like-minded people through the power of influencer marketing.

I’m a content marketing consultant in Silicon Valley and millennial marketing expert. My book “Oh Snap! You Can Use Snapchat For Business” can be found here. Check out my website too!

By Kate Talbot

I’m a freelance content marketer, author, and entrepreneur who helps brands engage millennials. I’ve been featured on the Nasdaq, NPR, NBC News, CNBC, Huffington Post, VentureBeat and named an Instagram Marketing Expert from Foundr Magazine and Social Media Examiner. I wrote a best-selling book, “Oh Snap! You Can Use Snapchat for Business” which IBM named their ‘Book of the Month.’ My strong understanding of the digital landscape comes from my career managing social media for Virgin America and Kiva. I’m also a millennial marketing post-graduate lecturer at Ireland’s Digital Marketing Institute and social media expert witness. When not snapping, I spend my free time at Burn Pilates, reading at Dolores Park, and hosting art and charity events.

Sourced from Forbes

In News

10 B2B Lead Generation Strategies for 2019

February 26, 2019 No Comments

By Johanna Rivard

The beginning of the year always signals a reevaluation of old strategies and the hunt for newer ones to stay competitive in your industry. We’ll be ringing in 2019 no differently with a new set of B2B lead generation strategies you should watch out for.

The digital marketing landscape is constantly changing, which means B2B lead generation tactics are evolving as well. Other brands are getting better at converting their prospects while some are stuck doing their old ways, perhaps unsure how to spice things up.

61% percent of businesses are saying that lead generation is their biggest marketing challenge, as per HubSpot’s State of Inbound report.

There are many free lead generation tactics out there, but a few will help you maximize your ROI. Here are effective B2B lead generation strategies that will play up your game in 2019.

1. Gate Your Content Strategically

Not every marketer is confident whether or not they should gate their content. However, this is one of the most effective ways to attract and identify leads who care about your business.

When done right, gated content can increase leads and conversions. Case in point: Finance and trade website Trading Strategy Guides added almost 11,000 targeted subscribers to their email list in just one month by using a content locking script. Unbounce’s gated content stats reveal more campaigns with conversion rates that fall between 19 and 45%.

Putting out gated content is wise if you’ve already built a library of content that you are sure your audience is enjoying. This way, loyal readers won’t be bothered to give you their names and email addresses to read what you wrote.

2. Personalize More Touch Points

One-size-fits-all marketing is dead. Users are now craving for that human touch that allows them to cultivate deeper connection and more meaningful relationships with brands. In a Salesforce survey of 7,000 consumers, 57% of the respondents said they are willing to share their data in exchange for personalized offers, 53% for personalized product recommendations, and 52% for customized shopping experiences.

3. Produce Evergreen Content

Moment marketing is a great way to stay relevant or go viral for a certain period but sticking to evergreen topics in your niche is a sure way to get noticed no matter what stage your potential clients are in the sales funnel.

Evergreen content works hand in hand with your SEO strategy, allowing you to stay fresh on search engines. In a case study by Miles Anthony Smith, he presented a growth of 575% in organic traffic after adding evergreen content on his blog. It’s helpful, informative, and shareable—all the things people love about high-quality content. Plus, it never goes out of style.

4. Build Social Media Communities

Social media is no longer just an extra channel of publishing or promoting your content. This is your chance to engage with your audience. The average person has 7.6 active social media accounts and spends more than 2 hours a day on them. Take advantage of this.

You can start a Facebook group where you can have regular discussions on pressing issues relevant in your industry. Use hashtags on Twitter and Instagram to connect with like-minded individuals or specific causes or topics. LinkedIn is also a great platform to communicate with prospects and tell them more about your brand.

5. Launch an Incentive-Based Referral Program

Don’t take word-of-mouth marketing for granted—it’s still the primary factor behind almost 50% of buying decisions. More stats show that B2B companies with referrals reportedly have 70% higher conversion rates and a similar faster close time on sales.

Your satisfied clients are the best people who can market your business to others. Incentivize referrals! Make it more exciting for them by creating customized referral codes that entitle them to discounts. This also makes it easier for you to track where your leads are coming from, and which are converting.

6. Optimize Your Landing Pages and CTA

Did you know that a lot of landing pages contain more than one offer? If yours falls into this category, it’s time to rethink your CRO strategy. Marketing Experiments found that multiple offers in one page can decrease conversion rates by up to 266%. Focus on a single goal for each landing page and be clear with your messaging in your CTA to reduce distractions. Your primary goal is to convert your visitors into leads, so make sure your landing pages and CTAs are convincing. Make it an engaging, straightforward, and natural experience for them to type in their information on your forms.

7. Record the Actions of Your Website Visitors

An excellent way to diagnose why your website visitors aren’t converting is through analyzing their actions on your website. Tools like Hotjar or Mouseflow can allow you to record user sessions and plot heatmaps on most-clicked buttons on your site.

Many CRO experts swear by this step and maintain that it’s one of the fastest ways you can uncover the “whys” in your process:

Why are they not converting?
Why are they not filling up my forms?
Why do they like this webpage so much?

From here, you can rectify a situation or apply more of the same strategy to your other pages. This is helpful for A/B testing as well.

8. Encourage Online Reviews

A study by RevLocal found that 92% of consumers read online reviews when considering a product or service. If your website doesn’t have a testimonials page or a reviews feature, it could be hurting your chances to get contacted. Create opportunities for your clients and customers to add a review and post it on your website.

Reviews build consumer trust, improve your local search ranking, and ultimately improve conversions. The RevLocal study also found that consumers are likely to spend 31% more on businesses with stellar reviews.

9. Expand Your Online Presence

The persona of your brand is not limited to your website and social channels only. Branch out and appear on other sites to grow your credibility, such as guest blogging, getting interviewed, or answering questions on Quora.

Quora alone can help you gain thousands of leads if you answer the relevant questions in your industry. Developing your brand as subject-matter experts can increase brand awareness and also help first-time learners about your brand build trust faster.

10. Use Gmail Ads to Target Your Competitors’ Audience

Email is still the most popular lead generation channel—77% of B2B marketers use email marketing to drive leads, according to SuperOffice’s State of B2B Email Marketing report.

In B2B, there is a lot of value at drawing the attention of your competition’s customers. Gmail ads allow you to target your Google Ads campaign to people who have received emails from your competitor. Sounds sneaky? It is, but it’s effective. It gives you direct access to people who are already familiar with the nature of your service.

Use this opportunity to show what sets you apart from the competitor. Use familiar language, optimize your email marketing layout, and give them an offer they can’t refuse.

The Takeaway

In the world of digital marketing, you can expect each year to get even more competitive than the last. However, that’s a good thing—your business gets pushed to aim higher and get more creative regarding devising tactics or building tools that work best for you.

Nailing your lead generation strategies is the foundation of all your other moves along the sales cycle. Be smart and creative in getting your visitors to engage and convert.

The post 10 B2B Lead Generation Strategies for 2019 appeared first on PureB2B.com.

By Johanna Rivard

Sourced from Marketing Inside Group

In News

The web design trends brands need to prepare for in 2019

December 21, 2018 No Comments

By James Pruden

2019 is set to see ecommerce sales increase by 19.5% globally, offering an opportunity to savvy brands who are up to speed on the latest web design trends and developments to drive significant additional market share.

But what do brands need to bear in mind in 2019 to ensure that they continue to deliver relevant standout online design, and therefore sales?

Mobile First

It’s vital to implement mobile first design in 2019. In 2015 mobile searches overtook those on desktop, making mobile search the highest search form worldwide. In accordance with this, Google has changed which sites they index first — they now prioritise mobile sites over those that aren’t mobile friendly.

However, it’s worth bearing in mind that this push toward mobile first design isn’t just based on ranking factors or SEO, the visual result must enhance the user’s experience on the device that they will most likely be searching from.

This focus on mobile first requires a fundamental shift in the way that websites are designed. It used to be that a site would only be created for a desktop or laptop computer and a mobile-friendly or mobile responsive design might be added as well. Today, it’s critical to design the site for the mobile user first, before creating a version that will also standout for those on desktops.

Micro-animations/movement

Using moving micro-animations along with feedback loops – that deliver movement when hovering over an icon – help make websites more usable and engaging. The details of the micro-interactions: the button clicks and the page transitions can greatly improve a user’s experience on your site, meaning they are far more likely to return. It’s this meaningful motion, connecting an action with a reaction, that satisfies a user’s desire for interactivity. And with touch interfaces, especially on small screens, it has never been more important to deliver motion in micro-animations and feedback loops to make the interaction smooth and guide users on their journey to checkout.

Custom and classic fonts

Expect a move back to custom and classic font design – clean but formal – with bigger and bolder typefaces, and a move away from humanist fonts as brands aim to standout against the proliferation of humanist typefaces.

Colour

Bright colours should be used more liberally in 2019 to deliver greater standout. The last two years has seen an explosion of big, bold colour across the internet with an increasing number of brands choosing to use their core packaging brand colours as backing for their graphics, with clashing tones moving away from the edgy start-ups into the mainstream. Those who have embraced arresting colours include The Premier League, Sky and eBay. Though bear in mind a classic font design and bright colours won’t be suitable for all. The choice of font and colours has to be right for the values of the brand and resonate with the audience they are targeting.

Optimise for search

As is always the case, making sure the design of your website is optimised for search algorithms is vital. Developments in web design will be driven by what Google’s constantly evolving search algorithm looks for. To this end, make sure that the content being communicated is relevant to your target audience and written as naturally as possible. Google looks for honest, human generated content. Of course, this must be quality content to encourage others to have weblinks back to your site to aid your SEO efforts. If users want to share your copy this highlights to Google that you are a valuable resource and the reward for your efforts will be an improved organic search ranking.

Speed

With research revealing over half of consumers leave a website if it takes more than three seconds to load, websites must be designed with speed in mind. Also, the faster your site loads the better it will rank in search results, particularly in Google search. This is not to say that websites should be sparse affairs with limited content and imagery for the purposes of speed. With better broadband it’s much easier to have image and content heavy sites that can load quickly. However if you have an app it’s seriously worth considering hosting it on a Progressive Web App (PWA) for speed purposes. A PWA can be launched from a home screen and can be ready in less than a second, often beating native apps in load times.

All brands need to constantly evolve their web design to continue to standout and deliver an engaging experience to their users that generates sales. By recognising and having these six web design points front of mind, brands will be well placed for a profitable 2019 online.

By James Pruden

James Pruden is studio director at Xigen

Sourced from The Drum

In News

Making the most of a post privacy world

August 29, 2018 No Comments

By Tom Goodwin

A generation of people have now grown up seemingly constantly broadcasting their lives on Instagram, sharing their innermost thoughts on Twitter, intimate details of life on Facebook and yet the world seems shocked that we’ve lost any sense of privacy. We now live in an age when it seems every Instagram user wants to be an influencer, to be popular and envied and to not have anyone know anything about them.

Ever more apps continuously ask us to share location data, software updates ask us to share our personal details, messaging apps want to scan the most personal communications we can imagine and access our friends lists too. And all in an era where security breaches are common, where nefarious companies seek to sway elections, where our data seems to be used to target us with ads that are designed to be as personal as possible, but never creepy, and yet haunt and chase us in on online lives.

Our homes are now wire tapped, not secretly and against our will, but we pay money and eagerly await delivery of connected smart speakers. We now volunteer all manner of information to Google, our location, photos, our calendar invites, our intentions are known by a global sentient network, more than our own selves.

It’s easy to think this is all a relentless march towards the dreadful future where our personal lives are invaded, where privacy is dead, where we can’t escape the filter bubble, where personalized ads follow us around like Minority Report, with few marketers aware it was a film about a dystopian future, not what should be done.

While we may hate personalization, the only thing we dislike more is irrelevance. We hate it when we phone up credit card companies and they don’t immediately know it’s us. We can’t imagine a world without Google offering us better search results based on our browsing history, we like that our weather is automatically shown in our location. Most people would happily swap mesothelioma class action lawsuit TV ads for a well-made commercial for some trendy new jeans.

The marketing and business world has long tip toed around the edge of the privacy debate. We take as much data as we can, whenever we can, we store it badly and hope to never awake the beast that is the customer. If we were to work around earning data from people, by giving them trust that we will use it wisely, not sell it, keep it massively securely and offer clear value in exchange, then life would be very different.

I’d love to see the world embrace privacy trading. How do we maximize the value offered to people in return for storing limited and intimate data about people in a transparent and trusted manner?

Uber knows that the only way for the app to work is to know where you are precisely and in real-time and we understand that and allow it. We know Google Traffic knows our location but uses it anonymously to process all traffic conditions and we’re fine with the net benefit. Dating apps track our location because sharing that is a small price to pay for life or evening long romance.

I like the thought experience of a post privacy world. Maybe I’m naive but if my airline knew exactly where I was at all times then it would be able to serve me better, to come and find me if I’m in the lounge and keep the plane from leaving without me. If my credit card company knew the same could it stop declining payments because I’m abroad and didn’t tell them? If my TV set knew I was in the market for a new car, new auto insurance and I liked leather manbags, is that a terrible world to live in? What if retailers had my face stored on file and I could pay for things with a smile? What if Uber could access my calendar and offer me cars when I’m running late? What if a hotel company could tell from my voice on phone calls I’m stressed and suggest a spa for me? What if a burger joint could tell I was hungry and not been there and entice me in with a special offer? What if a clothing retailer knew my size?

It’s easy to use the slippery slope argument against this and to assume that we can’t control a precise level of privacy. A company knowing you’ve bought a TV is one thing; knowing your blood test results or genetic code is absolutely another. If health insurers, for example, could ever access some of this information, we’d have absolute mayhem.

Yet the privacy debate is rooted in paranoia. It assumes companies want to know everything and not merely enough and likely in an anonymous way. It assumes advertisers want to build rich personal files and harass customers near endlessly. And given this has been so far how we’ve acted it’s easy to see why.

I’d love a discussion driven less by technology and language like targeting, and one driven by empathy and about serving people better. I’d love to see how we can start the process of asking permission, clear opt ins, clear trust, world class security protocols, and above all else a way to maximize the value exchange over a lifetime for all. Privacy is a recent invention, it’s perhaps the ultimate luxury for the future, but will it matter. Will our kids miss something like privacy, a concept they’ve probably never known.

Feature Image Credit: online information being given freely – picture from Pexels

By Tom Goodwin

Tom Goodwin is head of innovation at Zenith Media. A writer and speaker, Goodwin is the author of Digital Darwinism: Survival of the Fittest in the Age of Business Disruption. Previously, he has spoken at leading conferences and industry events around world, including Cannes Lions and CES.

Sourced from The Drum

In News

Email Leads In B2B, But Search Is Coming Up On The Inside: Study

July 3, 2018 No Comments

By Ray Schultz

Email is the top tool for driving leads into the pipeline — it is now being used by 67% of B2B marketers, according to Tapping Multi-Channel Marketing & Data As Key Engines For Growth, a study by DemandGen. Websites are used by 60%,and search by 50%. But search grew by almost 10% from last year.

Email is also the most effective channel — 59% say it works well for driving early-stage engagement. Search is second, and is cited by 56%. But email has no real competition in producing conversions later in the funnel — 81% say it’s effective, compared to 50%, who cite web sites and

No wonder the report calls email “the go-to channel.”

Overall, the study paints an optimistic picture — 70% of B2B marketers plan to increase their demand-gen budgets this year. Moreover, 22% expect hikes of over 20% and 12% anticipate 30% rises. Another 36% are allocating 1-10%.

In addition, 63% project revenue growth of more than 20%, and 25% foresee 30% increases. Also, 28% now have specific revenue-based quotas, a 5% over 2017. An 30% say pipeline influence is their main metric, for a 3% rise year-over-year. The study suggests that these are positive developments. Only 11% say accounts engaged is their primary measurement tool.

What are B2B marketers trying to do? Their main goals are focusing on lead quality over lead quantity (73%) and improving conversion rates and campaign results (72%).

Other objectives include increased lead volume (62%) and improving their ability to measure and analyze marketing impact (61%). Another 60% hope to improve their sales-marketing alignment, and 48% to improve their database accuracy.

Drilling down, case studies are best at converting and accelerating leads at the middle and late stages of the funnel (73%). Lead-nurturing campaigns are second (63%). But events are most useful in generating qualified leads at the top of the funnel.

B2B marketers are also seeking new MarTech tools, with 49% picking account-based technology (a slight decline from last year). Also, they plan to test multichannel lead nurturing (41%), content planning (37%), syndication, retargeting (37%) marketing automation (33%) and predictive lead scoring (29%).

That said, many may be hampered by the challenge of attributing and measuring campaign influence. Their databases are hardly complete, judging by this list of priorities:

We are actively reviewing our database to ensure we have full and complete contacts — 38%
Our database has good coverage, but many contacts are incomplete or inaccurate — 31%
Our contact database is inaccurate/is not adequate in covering our target markets — 18%
Our database is current and provides complete coverage of key segments — 10%
Not sure — 3%

As the study infers, all of this should lead to more accurate email marketing.

DemandGen surveyed 160 marketing executives. The study is sponsored by Content Demand, Integrate and Selling Simplified.

By Ray Schultz ,

Sourced from MediaPost

In News

B2B Marketing Has Evolved Into Something Beautiful, And It’s Time For Marketers To Adapt

June 29, 2018 No Comments

By John Gerzema

When I started out (around the time Duran Duran roamed the planet), business-to-business (B2B) marketing was confined to the domain of the literal. The customer was deemed rational and analytical, so the messaging was bland and unimaginative. B2B meant “boring-to-boring.” All the communications felt like PowerPoint presentations. We spoke in the native language of sales collateral and trade show jargon. And a bulk of the work seemed dependent on sales teams’ connections and cold calling target clients.

Yet, over the past decade, we’ve seen B2B marketing evolve into “business-to-beautiful” marketing — marketing that illuminates the beautiful stories behind businesses today, expressing their visions and values in society. Suddenly, some of the best work is aimed at procurement executives through thought leadership, branded content, social media and content marketing strategies that drive a wonderful overhead appeal to shareholders and lovers of great narratives.

The shift was inevitable, in my opinion, given the rise of the internet and social media. What we’ve realized through social is that businesses are inherently emotional beings, they are creations of our imaginations, rivers of human growth and determiners of where we build our future communities. B2B marketing is no longer isolated in the ivory tower, creating empires unknown by the general public. Instead, “B2Beautiful” marketing has made the connection between B2B storytelling and our human growth potential. These B2Beautiful stories captivate our imaginations and trigger emotional resonance — key ingredients in building that residual stickiness factor in an attention-deficit world.

My company, The Harris Poll, recently released the Reputation Quotient study (registration required), which reports that contemporary drivers are found in today’s consumer desires, and many of the storytelling strategies employed by B2C marketers are becoming increasingly applicable to B2B marketing.

We see brilliant examples of brands implementing B2Beautiful campaigns today and engaging communities even in functional, low-interest categories. Maersk, for instance, is humanizing logistics services by personifying its giant cargo ships and documenting their travels through stunning visual images on Instagram. Cisco’s award-winning documentary, The Network Effect, highlights telecom development stories, while companies such as Salesforce and The Mosaic Company have created engaging podcasts. The Mosaic Company’s podcast, “The Great Yield Mystery,” featured a dramatic audio play about two farmers trying to understand why their harvest came short — it even offered listeners clues to solve the mystery and win prizes.

These companies understand that brands are stories in and of themselves and every aspect of who they are — from their work culture, logistics, products and services, to how they think and operate behind the scenes — is essential to creating an effective B2Beautiful marketing strategy. Their strategies provide five crucial takeaways that marketers should keep in mind while creating B2Beautiful marketing, regardless of if you’re a startup or a large corporation.

1. Pinpoint Your Story

Use your mission and objectives to frame your values and use those components to create your story. Interestingly, The Harris Poll’s RQ survey also shows that there is a new market opportunity for B2B companies to take action on social issues. A new class of what we call “humanity brands” — companies that stand up for what they believe in and walk their talk. These brands are solving social ills, despite their political affiliation.

Successful B2Beautiful marketing, especially in the age of consumer activism, involves being able to identify issues that resonate with your brand and weave them into your story.

2. Weaponize Your Culture

A 2015 FORTUNE Knowledge Group report showed that corporate culture is incredibly important to building B2B relationships. Furthermore, 59% of executives surveyed rated knowing what a company stands for as more important when choosing a partner to work with, ranking higher than market dominance and innovation.

Depending on its mission, each company’s culture is unique. Once you know who you are and what you stand for as a company, you can then find engaging ways to share those convictions through the right media platforms. WeWork, for instance, uses its Instagram account to showcase their offices around the world, with photos of workers doing yoga or wearing stormtrooper helmets. They are motivating people around their motto to “make a life, not just a living.”

3. Don’t Be Constrained By Your Category

At its core, B2Beautiful marketing involves building emotional equity. Every story you set out to tell about your company should be crafted to evoke empathy. This is how you inspire B2B buyers, (who, by the way, are consumers just like you and me) to be emotionally invested in your brand.

Some of the most emotionally engaging and brilliant work is coming from a few of the lowest-interest categories. In fact, it’s there where the biggest white space is found.

4. Diversify Your Channels And Forms Of Content

As a 21st-century business, there are key owned-media platforms that are imperative for B2Beautiful marketing — a blog for brand storytelling, social media platforms (LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) and a newsletter. However, in addition to those channels, there are other platforms such as podcasts, videos, infographics and even gifs.

Work with creative partners to determine the right channels to use, depending on the stories you want to tell about the company, its products and services and core truths.

5. Ensure Your Strategy Is Buyer-Focused

We still are selling, after all, so be mindful of your target audience (B2B buyers) when you create your B2Beautiful marketing. What are their needs? Not just the tangible ones in terms of products or services, but also their values, triggers and unmet needs. What are their goals and how can you help them meet those goals?

Think about how your services amplify their missions, visions and values. Through your strategy, you can even educate buyers on ways to better connect with the end consumer and build substantial relationships that grow over time.

In the coming years, B2B marketing will, inevitably, continue to evolve in this direction. Therefore, it is important for marketers to adapt to these rules in order to differentiate their brands and remain attractive and relevant in the eyes of buyers.

By John Gerzema

CEO of The Harris Poll (Harris Insights & Analytics), a public opinion, corporate & brand reputation firm. NYT bestselling author.

Sourced from Forbes

In News

Social CRM: Top Three Business Benefits

June 22, 2018 No Comments

By Emma James

These days, it seems like an increasing number of people are using social media for one reason or another. Is your business taking the best advantage of social media to promote company products and services? No? Then, it’s time to take the best advantage of social media with the help of social customer relationship management tool.

Use social CRM tools for a better customer engagement, monitor and track the conversations of your customers’ and clients on social media platforms in real-time, respond quickly to customer complaints and queries, identify industry trends through real-time social monitoring, actively analyse the social media data to make well informed business decisions, as well as enhance your brand image.

Social CRM software is helpful for your business to provide personalized customer service in real-time as well as to improve customer loyalty. Moreover, the social CRM system fosters in developing strong customer relationships by enabling your business to track the right customer conversations in real-time on various social media platforms, as well as analyse what type of content your competitors are sharing on their social networking platforms.

Additionally, social media platforms offer several advantages to businesses of all sizes. Here are the top three business benefits of social CRM:

1. Builds Profitable Customer Relationships

Do you want your business to build a strong brand presence on social media? Do you want to reap maximum profits as well as high return on investments through social channels? Social CRM tool will help you reach all your business goals. It will enable you to reach a higher number of potential customers’ as well as to reap the maximum profits through effective tracking of clients, customers’, as well as your competitors’ social influences. By analysing the customers’ tastes and interest, the marketing team can produce relevant and engaging content, which can surely impress your customers’ and followers. Thus, the producing of highly impressive marketing content can enable your audience to instantly like your content, share it across their friends and family members on various social media channels, as well as the ability to foster healthy and profitable customer relationships.

2. Identify the Right Platforms

Obviously, it takes a lot of time and dedication to produce high-quality, engaging, and original content. However, if the produced content doesn’t reach the right social media channels; then all the hard work you put in generating the relevant content will go vanish. You can avoid this if you can invest your money in the right social CRM solution. It helps in identifying the right social media networking channel as per your business needs and requirements.

An appropriate social CRM tool will tell your company – which social channels are correct for your brand, where you can find the targeted audience, as well as at what time your potential audience groups are active on the social networking channels. All this information will help your business to produce the content on the right social channels and at the right time, which can aid in gaining more momentum on the various social platforms.

3. Boosts Your Business SEO Activities

Earlier, it was difficult for businesses to create the customer-centric content. However, with the help of social CRM software, businesses can easily analyse the digital footprints of customers’ as well as identify the targeted and potential audience groups. Using the solutions of social CRM software, businesses can have a comprehensive understanding of what their targeted audience is searching on social networking channels, their likes, and dislikes, as well as what type of content they are liking and sharing by analysing the type of keywords your customers’ are using to search for content on the various social platforms.

Using this information, businesses can create targeted, shareable, and engaging content that your followers and customers’ would find interesting. While generating the content, you can even add the specified keywords used by your audience so that they can easily find your business content in their relevant searches. If your generated content is truly engaging and valuable, then your customers’ will surely like and share the content across various social media channels, which can ultimately boost your website SEO. Moreover, if your content has a higher number of shares, likes, and comments it will send a positive signal to the Google that your content is highly impressive and original, which can enable your website to be top-ranked on the Google search engine results page.

So, what are you waiting for? Empower your business today with the right social CRM technology to grasp hold of the wonderful business opportunities present in the market today!

By Emma James

Sourced from Digital Doughnut

In News

Native Video study on open web highlights consumer shift

June 20, 2018 No Comments

By Dale Lovell

he power of video advertising may be well documented, but as consumer behaviour changes amid familiarity with video browsing on mobile devices, marketers who think the rules of engagement for digital video have already been written – and that there is a one size fits all approach – should think again.

The rise and effectiveness of native video on social media has been well researched to date. Engagement rates, reach, frequency and return on investment studies all show positive associations. But until now, there have been few studies showing the rise and performance of native video formats across the open web, specifically on premium publisher environments, where in-feed native video formats are becoming increasingly common.

We recently sought to fill that void through an analysis of more than 30 million in-feed video views run across our platform from January to April 2018. While we expected to be able to report findings on native video on the open web that were in line with the positive findings in social media, we didn’t expect that our findings would challenge the very notion of ‘what works’ in native video. But that’s precisely what happened.

Conventional wisdom in the video space, based on social data, has indicated that less is more when it comes to native video advertising, with many espousing that anything longer than 6 seconds in native video is simply too long. However, our findings would seem to contradict the perceived wisdom that mobile users have limited attention spans and are only interested in short video content.

According to our findings, smartphone users are more likely to spend time engaging with long-form video ads compared to 6-second ads when executed correctly. In fact, 72% of mobile users who have watched 6 seconds will continue to watch and engage with video up to 22 seconds. When native video reaches 15 to 22 seconds in length across premium publisher environments, mobile and tablet users that have watched this far are significantly more engaged than desktop users.

The evolution of our ‘mobile minds’

Perhaps it shouldn’t be all that surprising that people’s attention spans for native video seem to be growing longer. While the findings in our report represent the first of their kind in native video, there have been several studies undertaken around the attention of mobile phone users when it comes to reading. Over time, conclusions have shifted.

One study in 2010 found that reading on a mobile device was impaired when content was presented on a mobile-size screen versus a larger computer screen. But a similar study, undertaken six years later in 2016, showed different results. This study, conducted by the Nielsen Norman Group, concluded that there were no practical differences in the comprehension scores of participants, whether they were reading on a mobile device or a computer. In fact, the study found comprehension on mobile was about 3% higher than on a computer for content that was just over 400 words in length, and at an easier level to read.

Why the difference in results? It’s very possible that, over the period between 2010 and 2016 — the exact period during which smartphones became ubiquitous — we’ve all become more accustomed to reading on smaller screens. It’s reasonable to assume that the challenges the average person had reading on a small screen back in 2010 no longer apply now that people have adjusted to life on those smaller screens.

In a similar manner, it would appear that user behavior is changing around video consumption on mobile devices as well.

Well-held assumptions that less-is-more for video length and the broader worries about a crisis in user attention spans very well may prove to have been misplaced.

Creating compelling video content

As attention spans for native video lengthen, marketers would do well to reassess their best practices as it relates to creating content for mobile consumption. In particular, native video creators should think carefully about improving video performance during the key drop-off periods on a specific device.

For videos that will be consumed on mobile or tablet, videos should be edited to pack a punch in the first 6 seconds, in order to draw in users. The latest data suggests that the optimal length for native video content on mobile and tablet should be between 15 and 22 seconds. After 22 seconds, user interest does wane. If videos have to be longer, marketers should ensure that there are more-exciting sequences and enticing calls to action around 22 seconds, in order to maintain viewer interest up to 30 seconds.

If nothing else, these recent findings demonstrate that marketers must remain fluid in their understanding of how users engage with content on their devices. Behaviour is shifting, and yesterday’s best practices won’t necessarily apply tomorrow.

By Dale Lovell

Dale Lovell is co-founder of Adyoulike

Sourced from THE DRUM

In News

How to maintain a healthy B2B marketing budget

June 8, 2018 No Comments

By Ruth Connor

Back in the land of B2C marketing, I could build a water-tight business case for TV using insight from Think Box, present a strong argument for redeveloping my e-commerce process by pointing to indisputable benchmarking data, and get under the skin of my target customers using a bucket-load of comms planning tools.

Best of all, I could prove the impact of my efforts to senior management.

“Just look at those numbers! No, seriously. Look. At. Those. Numbers.”

Before long I was up for a fresh challenge, so I jumped ship and embraced the B2B world.

Things were, shall we say, different.

My tried and tested methods didn’t land in the same way.

And it got worse.

The finance director said the B2B marketing budget was discretionary.

And if that wasn’t enough, the sales team got all the credit for the revenue generated.

10 years down the line and again things are different – only this time in a good way. I still use insight and benchmarking to inform my marketing planning where I can – but I’ve learned other ways to convince the board of the importance of investing in B2B.

Fingers crossed you never hear the dreaded words: “The B2B budget is discretionary.”

But if you do, these seven tips will help you present the case that a healthy B2B budget is a must-have, not a nice-to-have.

Get closer to your business

Marketing shouldn’t be a silo. Get to know the various levers in your business – the things that influence the outcomes your business is trying to achieve.

For example, the marketing budget is an important lever as it influences how many leads are generated. The pricing of your product and the effectiveness of your sales team will influence conversions. While your customer relationship management will impact how long customers stay with you and how much they spend.

Understanding these levers will help shape your marketing strategy – and improve its effectiveness.

Know the magic number to ask for

It’s hard knowing what a realistic B2B marketing budget looks like, so it’s useful having some credible research in your back pocket. The CMO Survey Highlights and Insights Report 2017 from Deloitte, Duke University and the American Marketing Association found organisations spend, on average, 7.9% of their revenue on marketing and 11% of their total company budget. While according to the Gartner CMO Spend Survey 2017-2018, the number’s higher – organisations dedicate 11.3% of their overall revenue to marketing.

Understand buyer-behaviour trends – and make sure your spend mirrors them

Then you can justify exactly how you plan to spend your budget. Online is making its presence felt across every phase of the B2B buying journey – according to a study by Earnest and Imperial College London, it accounts for 49% and 58% respectively of the ‘research’ and ‘purchase’ stages.

No surprise, then, that we’re seeing an increase in digital marketing spend.

Check what you’re doing matters to people other than you

Do your metrics turn the heads of people outside of marketing? That stuff you’re tracking and reporting on – is it in sync with broader business goals and key performance indicators? Truth is, your board probably doesn’t care about the same things you do. So make sure your KPIs demonstrate your marketing is having an impact on the stuff they do care about.

Incorporate alternative measurement models

It may seem counter-intuitive, but it’s not all about directly attributing sales to your marketing activity. Assists matter too. If your content marketing strategy aligns with your customer journey, you can use your marketing automation platform to see how the buyer engaged with it in the lead-up to the deal.

Be proud of your results – you worked hard for them

Don’t hide your numbers away. Make a visually striking dashboard or scorecard that makes it really easy for your board to understand what you’ve achieved. And don’t forget to highlight where your marketing successes align with the wider business goals.

Use the lingo being used right now

More and more we’re seeing the marketing department being relabelled the ‘growth department’. Who knows, maybe next year we’ll be relabelled as a chief growth officer. Or head of growth.

But that’s OK, because marketers are good at growth. We grow brand engagement. We grow customer bases. We grow revenue.

So choose your words wisely because sometimes it pays to use the latest buzz word.