10 Jan |
Automation Tools—Friend or Foe (or do you even know?) |
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I’m not an avid shopper and I stay away from the malls as much as I can; most definitely during the holiday shopping frenzy. So it’s natural that I thought the crowds would have thinned somewhat now that everyone is back to work and school. I had not taken into account the fact that now is the time all the duplicate gifts are being exchanged, new ones are being purchased with the generous gift cards received and everything that does not work the way it should is being returned by dejected consumers who had pinned their hopes on to that most exciting gadget, electronic item or appliance.
Read more...10 Nov |
Lead Conversion—the Biggest Challenge in the Marketing-Sales Funnel |
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A couple of weeks ago we purchased the comprehensive, 200 page MarketingSherpa 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report. This veritable source of marketing insights is a reminder of the B2B marketing industry’s key challenges and ways in which organizations are struggling to overcome them. Over the next few posts on my blog, I thought it may be worthwhile to focus on certain aspects of this report and how marketers can apply this intelligence to enhance lead generation strategies and processes. The study analyses how B2B organizations plan, execute and measure business activities such as lead
Read more...18 Oct |
B2B Marketing and Lead Generation Challenges – “The Q Continuum” |
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One of my all-time favourite television shows was Star Trek – the whole gamut of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Star Trek: Voyager. For those of you who didn’t fancy it or can’t remember trivial details like I do (am not ashamed to admit it!), let me remind you about the Q Continuum – an extra-dimensional plane of existence inhabited by a race of extremely powerful, hyper-intelligent beings known as the Q. They typically display indifference to most non-Q beings but have a deep interest in the development and progress of humanity. The Q character,
Read more...08 Sep |
“1 in 3 B2B marketers worldwide report financial contribution metrics to senior management” |
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…But Why Blame Marketing for this? Marketing has traditionally been the first to be blamed when things don’t quite work the way they should. Not much has changed in that respect over the years. What has changed, however, is the shrinking marketing budget across industries, across B2B organizations of all sizes, everywhere. With bigger targets to chase, tighter budgets and fewer resources to deploy, marketers are struggling to implement successful marketing programs. Even more challenging is the ability to track performance and report financial contributions to the bottom line. So it’s
Read more...01 Sep |
Ways to Leverage Video Marketing for B2B |
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A Guest Blog Post by Internet Marketing and Social Media Expert, Liana Ling I hope you enjoyed reading my guest post last week, the first in a short series on Internet marketing and social media. This week I’d like to draw your attention to a medium that has always been considered extremely powerful and yet, possibly the most under-utilized by marketers. Video marketing has yet to be explored to its full potential and definitely has a long way to go in the B2B marketing space. And yet, statistics clearly show the steadily increasing numbers as far as video viewing and penetration is
Read more...25 Aug |
SEO Fundamentals – Separating Jargon from What Really Works! |
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A Guest Blog Post by Internet Marketing and Social Media Expert, Liana Ling Louis invited me to be a guest blogger for a short series to share some insights into Internet marketing and social media. Although many people have written about it, I wanted to start this series off with some SEO basics (search engine optimization). With all the information (and mis-information!) available out there, we continue to see business owners who are not up to speed with SEO fundamentals and B2B marketing departments that have not invested adequate resources or strategic thought into optimizing their
Read more...09 Aug |
Who’s Running Your Marketing? |
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It’s not uncommon to see newbie, tech-savvy, social marketers display their impatience with the “grey brigade”. It’s equally common to see experienced, mature heads shaking disapprovingly at Generation Y who are “still green behind their ears”. The challenge in many B2B marketing situations is that it’s either the ‘grey’ or the ‘green’ in a position of power and calling the shots. Now ideally, the two should blend well so that new age technologies can be optimally leveraged with the valuable mingling of experience. Corporate America is seeing the increasing surge of
Read more...26 Jul |
Effectiveness of Social Media Marketing for B2B – The Debate Rages On |
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Popularity is a strange thing – whether it is a high visibility brand, a car, a pop star – as the popularity charts go up the numbers on the opposite side start to grow too. It’s true, die-hard fans will always have a community that looks down on them (their taste). Same is the case with Social Media Marketing (SMM). You can love it, hate it, but you can’t ignore it. And so it continues to be a topic of debate in the world of business. How effective really is it? Is it only the racehorse for the consumer market or can B2B marketers gain significant ROI from social media marketing? I
Read more...16 Nov |
The expanding social landscape – integral to lead generation? |
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Is Social Technology Integral to B2B Lead Generation? The scope of social technologies and their potential to help maximize B2B lead generation efforts is real and valid. But marketers must look beyond the eye-candy. Having a bunch of social media medals (logos and icons on your website) won’t do much for your sales team that’s out in the field trying to close the sale on a hot lead. But being active socially will definitely help establish greater credibility and increase visibility; both important factors that positively influence prospects about to make a purchase decision. It looks
Read more...09 Nov |
Is There More to Social Media than Meets the Eye? |
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Social Media and B2B Lead Generation In the spring this year, I wrote in one of my blog posts, that “social media is new and evolving”. That was in late April 2010. Today, in the fall of the same year, I have to say that social media has indeed evolved with great speed! This actually makes me want to caution marketers that social media isn’t like magic beans that will sprout into a lead generation beanstalk overnight. You still need a very strong foundation on which to build your demand generation efforts. Incorporating social tools and technologies into tried and tested target
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