Four B-to-B Marketing Efforts That Can Improve Your Results

As B-to-B marketers, we are concerned about demand generation as our fundamental mission with lead generation being the primary way of measuring success. Here are four ways that will help you get better results.

I read an interesting article by Jim Leach, VP-Marketing, Harris Corp that outlines the CORE items you need to focus on. Here are some highlights:

  • Content – You have two challenges here for creating great content. One, the people who probably know the most about your product are probably terrible writers and two, your audience has no time to read. Jim suggests that a product engineer or possibly a customer service person might be the ones to tap to write content. His rules are simple: be brief, be brilliant, and be gone.
  • Outreach – Your best source of info is from your sales force. They are out in the trenches every day and know what the pain points are for customers and potentials. Take those insights and turn them into content nugget one pagers with common themes that might be used in a drip marketing program.
  • Response – Don’t lead your potential back to your home page on the web where they have to start the search over for the particular item that interested them in the first place. Create specific landing pages with tailored messages and the ability to collect info and download valuable info depending on where they are on the sales ladder – awareness, research, evaluation, selection or purchase – you should have items on that page that address each step in the process so the potential can find what they want easily.
  • Engagement – Most B-to-B sales have longer buying cycles so you need to keep your prospect engaged throughout the process. Make sure that when they come back at you with questions to be sure to ask them some as well so you can continually update their status.

CORE marketing can help you focus your efforts and close more sales. What are you doing to improve your marketing results?

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How Do You Share Content If You Don’t Have a Blog?

Doing a blog is a major commitment and lots of us haven’t pulled the trigger for just that reason. But I’m sure you’ve got good content to share, but how do you do it?

Jeffrey Cohen had an interesting post on socialmediab2b.com, 6 Ways to Create and Share B2B Social Media Content Without a Blog that I found to be interesting. You can house great content on your website and use links in social networks to bring them your info. Highlights from Jeff’s post include:

  • Email – When you’re at a trade show or industry conference, take notes of highlights and send them to your customer/client contact list.
  • YouTube – Shoot a quick video (use your phone) with a product manager highlighting one key feature of a product. Post on your YouTube channel and share a link on social sites.
  • LinkedIn – Post status updates. These will be visible to all those who follow you.
  • Google+ – Great place to have conversations and ask leading questions, not to mention the benefits of search results.

So you see, there are other ways to get your presence and expertise out in the marketplace. What are you doing to enhance your expertise?

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Why Content Sharing Should Be Part of Your Overall Marketing Program

Most of us spend a considerable amount of time online. Did you realize that almost half that time is spent with published content?

Over 27 million pieces of content are shared everyday according to AOL/Nielsen research. Most of the content is shared with family, friends and business associates. E-mail and social networking sites are the two most popular ways of sharing.

I recently read a post by Heidi Cohen that outlines 8 Tips to Share Content via Social Media and Email that’s worth the read. She explains that when it comes to sharing information, it’s critical to establish your organization as a trusted source so you can build relationships. Here are a few tips I like:

  • Create attention-getting headlines.
  • Share content your target audience wants to read.
  • Integrate a call to action to engage readers and hopefully they in turn will share.
  • Facilitate social sharing by giving readers options of ways to share.

Don’t miss out on the opportunity to share good content that’s already been published. You can enlighten the world and build credibility at the same time.

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