MarketingSherpa Blog

According to the MarketingSherpa Inbound Marketing Handbook, companies that create content “produce higher-quality leads that are more likely to convert than organizations that do not.” Although effective, content creation is difficult.

At B2B Summit 2012, Daniel Burstein, Director of Editorial Content, MECLABS, sat down with a panel of marketing experts: Eddie Smith, Chief Revenue Officer, Topsy Labs; Nichole Kelly, President, SME Digital; and Chris Baggott, Chairman, Compendium. They exchanged insights on content creation, the importance of genuine content and how marketers can kill their career with inauthentic content they create or repurpose.

Watch as the panel discussed the value of harnessing a company’s internal email power, verifying sources and using a human tone with customers. Discover why Nichole said, “Email is the biggest wasted content resource,” and what marketers can do to utilize it.

Creating inauthentic content was one of the five career killers the panel discussed. Watch the full free presentation to see the rest of this discussion as well as the other four social media career killers, including:

• Thinking your CFO is your nemesis
• Single-use content
• Treating social media as “special”
• Not soliciting outside content

Read more…

“You’re not the people we want to sit down with,” Karyn Scott, Director of Enterprise Marketing, Cisco Systems, Inc., said during her B2B Summit 2012 presentation, echoing the voice of her target customers.

Years prior, Cisco’s reputation had perpetuated sales, but it was now losing sales on the margin.

According to the MarketingSherpa 2013 Marketing Analytics Benchmark Report, 42% of software companies relied on gut instinct for its non-analytical decision making, which is exactly what the team at Cisco was doing. When Karyn and her team began to investigate, they discovered the company’s target customers found only 3% of what the sales team had to say was useful to them.

The marketing strategy had to change.

The above video excerpt from B2B Summit 2012 underscores the importance of identifying customers and Karyn’s team’s goals to strategize marketing around customer motivations.

Once Karyn’s team identified their audience, they had to completely rebuild their strategy to create a relevant sale.

In the above video excerpt, you’ll see how the marketing team equipped the sales department and gave them the supplies they needed to make convincing sales, help the customer and incorporate a two-way conversation into the overall strategy.

To see the rest of Karyn’s presentation and see how she integrated role targeting into marketing strategy, watch the entire free presentation. See her metrics, what her sales team had to say and the new ways Sales appealed to diverse customer segments.

Read more…

Originally published on B2B LeadBlog

Content marketing is one of the most effective and widely used lead generation tactics, according to the MarketingSherpa 2012 Lead Generation Benchmark Report. Although it is one of the most difficult forms of marketing, second only to trade shows, 62% of marketing budgeters expect an increase for content marketing, according to the same report. Developing a content marketing strategy remains a big undertaking.

To help you learn more about content marketing ideas and tactics at Lead Gen Summit 2013 in San Francisco, we’re sharing this video replay of Edwin Jansen, Director of Business Development, The Ian Martin Group, presenting on content marketing from B2B Summit 2012.

Jansen explained by generating content from within Softchoice, a technology solutions and services provider, it empowered employees throughout the company to become advocates of the content they created. Educating departments on the use of social media and recognizing talents and abilities within the team increased the quality and reputation of the content that the company generated.

This clip features the first of four lessons that Jansen learned in his quest to transform his company’s marketing strategy into a content-rich experience for customers. Others include:

• Managing processes that best serve customers
• Using the right tools
• The one thing he wished he knew before he started.

To hear the rest of Jansen’s lessons and confessions in his journey towards “pull” marketing, watch the full, free presentation from last year’s B2B Summit in the MarketingSherpa Video Archive.

Related Resources:

Lead Gen Summit 2013: Sept. 30 – Oct. 3, San Francisco

Event Recap: MarketingSherpa B2B Summit 2012

Content Marketing: Your questions on B2B online lead gen, metrics, content from SMEs and more

Content Marketing: Targeted persona strategy lists sales leads 124%

Content Marketing How-to: 7 steps for creating and optimizing content in any size organization

Originally published on B2B LeadBlog

When John Johnston, Director of Digital Marketing, began his journey at Volvo Construction, he knew things had to be completely rebuilt, starting with the website and branching out into everything else. In this excerpt of a full video session from B2B Summit 2012, see how customer service topped the list for Volvo Construction when it began an overhaul on digital marketing, where email would bring customers to the website, and the website would convert them.

2:45 First, Volvo Construction created a website that acted as a useful and current resource for customers and dealers. Johnston wanted the website to be the ultimate guide for the visitor, so they could find everything they needed, including its social media posts, without leaving the site.

4:21 Subsequently, Johnston’s team structured digital marketing around the website so that PPC, SEO and email would attract customers and the website would be helpful enough for them to stay.

5:33 He also decided that email is how they would “primarily drive traffic to the website.”

Crafting the email to serve customer needs was vital to this plan. Since customer needs vary so greatly, Johnston’s team needed “to make sure the content changes,” to match customer needs and. The emails also needed to contain dynamic content and interactive functionality the customers appreciated, as well as the analytics that the company could use.

Related Resources:

Click here to watch the full free presentation to see the rest of Johnston’s digital marketing strategy and answer more questions from the audience.

Lead Gen Summit 2013: September 30 — October 3, 2013 in San Francisco

Email Summit 2014 in Las Vegas Call for Speakers — Bonus: Enter the MarketingSherpa Email Awards using the same form

Event Recap: MarketingSherpa B2B Summit 2012

Customer Connection: Does your entire marketing process connect to your customers’ motivations?

Email Marketing: Segmentation, triggered sends generate twice the revenue with half as many email sends for furniture company