25 Oct |
Social Media for B2B Marketers: Brand Recognition and What Else? |
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Several months ago, I commented on my blog about Dell’s social media initiatives and the much touted case study of their “success”. Any good marketer should learn from past mistakes and refine demand generation tactics to deliver greater results and ROI. I thought it worthwhile to look back and see if Dell’s strategy has evolved and improved. Dell has been running its Trade Secrets campaign using Twitter, Facebook and various blogs. The campaign encourages users to share their experiences and tips about the new Dell Vostro V130. With over 1500 contributions, Dell has gathered enough
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...04 Oct |
Lessons from Facebook Addicts |
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I’ve been seeing and hearing so much lately about how individuals can’t do without their daily (or is that hourly?) fix of Facebook that I decided to rock the boat a little bit. So I took an intended Facebook vacation last week. My “vacation” wasn’t as simple as just not logging into my account. I went as far as deactivating my account. Now did that rock the boat, and how! People were going crazy and asking me if I was okay or if they had done anything wrong. The reactions I got were so quick, so strong and so emphatic it was as though I had really done something unimaginable.
Read more...27 Sep |
Is Your Marketing Ready to Adapt to the Changing Business Landscape? |
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The crevasse between Sales and Marketing is commonly visible across all types of companies. Some choose to ignore it at their own peril and those that take cognizance of it are still struggling to find ways to bridge the gap. Despite earnest efforts by some B2B organizations to integrate sales and marketing, the gap still remains. In previous posts I have talked about ways to bring lead generation, sales and CRM together. In my opinion, even though sales and marketing teams may have started communicating more closely, the reason their combined effectiveness still falls short is because of a
Read more...20 Sep |
Infographics – Why and How You Should Use Them |
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People love stories. But in these days of digital mania where time is more precious than it ever was before, they love to “hear” and “see” stories much more than they like to read them. So if your company has a great story about what’s happening in your industry, or something interesting that your target audience would benefit from knowing about, you’ve got to find a way to say it in a simple, appealing and quick manner. Remember the KISS rule? The recent popularity of Infographics reinforces the old adage, “a picture is worth a thousand words”. As the term suggests, an
Read more...13 Sep |
Avoid Meaningless Metrics – Monitor Quality Leads Instead |
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After my post last week, I got some comments from my knowledgeable friends holding very senior corporate positions – apparently they felt I was undermining the value of metrics and reporting in sales in marketing. So let me explain that I am NOT against reporting and I DO realize that tracking revenue contribution by marketing is important. As a matter of fact, I have strongly advocated monitoring and measurement in previous blog posts too. What I AM against is the use of meaningless metrics that B2B companies spend so much time, effort and money to put together. Even more time is wasted
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...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
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