Delivering the right content to a buyer at the right time is becoming increasingly difficult for B2B marketers. Crain’s BtoB Magazine and Bizo surveyed  B2B marketers and found that the sales cycle has lengthened for 43% of B2B companies (Tweet this!). This increases pressure on marketing organizations to boost brand awareness to help deliver leads and then effectively nurture them through a prolonged buying process. In order to meet the needs of sale staff and buyers as they move down the conversion funnel, marketers are focused on creating content and delivering this content at the right time in the buying process. Read the full entry

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Keeping users engaged in an increasingly fragmented environment isn’t easy, but by providing targeted, engaging content, businesses can build their audiences. Many businesses turn to other sites in an effort to place their content and brand in front of new eyes and new audiences. Recently, BtoB Magazine released their annual list of the best B2B advertising vehicles. Once again, Business.com has earned a spot in BtoB Magazine’s Media Power 50, in the Business News category, as we strive to help others grow their businesses. Read the full entry

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Nearly every business and every marketer are looking for ways to create compelling content that’s fresh, eye-catching and engaging. From customer acquisition to increasing customer retention, content is how businesses are looking to boost their bottom lines. Because of this, businesses are expanding their content libraries with blog posts, infographics and case studies. B2B marketers are increasingly becoming more visual to appeal to buyers. However, they aren’t limiting themselves to images or white papers.  Videos are becoming more popular among both B2B marketers and buyers. Read the full entry

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Lead generation is a term many B2B marketers are familiar with. However, the B2B buying process is shifting and just as sales and marketing funnels have shifted, so has the lead landscape. Lead generation is often broken into two areas: marketing, which generates leads, and sales, which follows up and closes with those same leads. This is where lead generation and demand generation differ. Demand generation involves multiple areas of marketing and is really an integrated suite of marketing programs coupled with a structured sales process. Eloqua found that an integrated demand generation program lead to 16.5% higher campaign response rates and conversion rates as well as a 50% decrease in the time it took to execute campaigns (Tweet this!). Dominating with demand generation requires two things: buyer-obsession and integrated marketing efforts.

Become Buyer-Obsessed

The first step in becoming buyer-obsessed is finding out who your buyers are and then getting your business and products/services in front of them. In this case, becoming buyer-obsessed means focusing more on the buyer than on your own product or business. Customers want to feel important, so place your priorities on making their experience and interactions with your business better. Here are 4 steps you can take to become more buyer-obsessed and more dominate with demand generation:

• Focus on the buyer network. You’ll want to ask yourself who is involved in the buying process? You want to reach the individual buyer and their network. Promote your products with new takes targeted to each person involved.
• Evaluate typical buyer behavior. What prompts your business’s average buyer to seek out information or make a purchase? Look for ways to reach the buyer during their decision making process with the right content based on their behaviors, industry and role within their company.
• Improve the buyer experience. Experience is everything. Customers who receive a bad experience will take their business elsewhere. Constantly be evaluating the experience you are providing customers and seek out ways to improve it.
• Accurately segment buyers. From email newsletters to sales follow-up calls, segment your buyers so that they are getting information that’s relevant and valuable. You also want to ensure that if a buyer is getting on the phone with someone from your business, your sales rep is the most qualified person to be speaking to this particular buyer.

Integrate Your Efforts

In order for your business to dominate with demand generation, you need to integrate your efforts. Paid media, owned media and earned media must be cohesive. Getting in front of the right audience is only part of what it takes to be successful with online marketing and demand generation. A cohesive and fluid customer experience is key!

• Paid Media – This includes forms of traditional and digital advertising such as online banner ads, pay-per-click search, advertorials, and sponsorships.
• Owned Media – This is corporate content owned by the business, including digital assets like websites, social media accounts and pages, branded blogs, and YouTube videos. Internal social marketing efforts fall in this category.
• Earned Media – This is content produced by users, including social media posts, product reviews, tweets, online communities, and media mentions.

A multi-channel marketing approach needs to be supported by analytics that can produce real-time data for sales and marketing to utilize in their real-time efforts. The indirect connections between these different channels and the platforms your business is active on can be better recognized and exploited for greater success. Integrating earned, paid and owned media will alter your customer acquisition cost, so be prepared to reallocate marketing budgets depending on which channels perform better.

B2B purchasing and marketing are transitioning from business focused to buyer focused. Those who want to be successful with their demand generation efforts need to recognize this and change their strategies. Becoming more buyer-obsessed and integrating marketing efforts have to be a focus for marketers who really want to make an impact and dominate with their demand generation efforts.

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Search marketing continues to evolve as search engines and algorithms become more customer-centric, focusing on what the individual searching is really after when they type a phrase or keyword into a search box. A recent study, the BrightEdge 2013 Search Marketer Survey, took a look at what trends are changing the strategies of search marketing professionals. In this post, we cover how data integration, mobile devices, social media and content are all impacting the efforts of search marketers.

Data Integration

Innovation in digital marketing platforms means B2B marketers are using a number of search and social media marketing platforms in order to be successful. Integrated marketing across multiple channels can help your business better understand the productivity of each channel as well as the interactions between each channel to drive conversions. 81% of participants in the BrightEdge survey responded that it will be more important to integrate marketing data across channels and measure cross-channel ROI than it was last year (Tweet this!). As marketers, we want to be able to measure all our efforts to prove what we’re doing has a purpose. Making data-driven decisions is crucial to a business’s success. Integrate your data across search engines, social media and online advertising to discover what is making an impact in branded search, keyword search and search marketing success overall.

• Takeaway: Big Data is a big word. While having a large amount of data to work with may seem like a big burden, integrating data across platforms is one project that must be tackled. Integrated data can help you determine the true value of each channel for more targeted decision making.

Mobile Devices and Smartphones

Smartphone and tablet use is on the rise, showing no signs of slowing. Optimizing a site for mobile/tablet search is becoming increasingly more important. Many businesses are finding that larger percentages of those coming to their page from search engines are on mobile devices. 52% of those polled responded that optimizing their site for mobile or tablet search will be much more important this year than last year (Tweet this!). Mobile optimization is a key aspect of effective marketing in 2013.

• Takeaway: Optimize your website for mobile devices now. Make sure you work with your tech team and design team so that the experience is a fluid, cohesive one for each and every customer. A mobile-friendly site will boost your mobile search performance.

Social Media

Search engines are beginning to rely on social channels to indicate whether or not the content a site is producing is valuable to consumers. Social signals, and social traction, influence how search engines decide to rank pages and sites. Because social sharing is influencing ranking, search marketers and social media teams need to work together. BrightEdge found that 80% of search marketers think the social sharing of content as a means to improve rank will be more important in 2013, compared to 2012. While goals differ from company, consider which networks you will be focusing on in 2013 and the topics trending on each of those – they won’t all be the same. In order to increase ranking, identify trending topics in social media and then look to drive social sharing for pages relevant to these same topics.

• Takeaway: Get active on social media and begin analyzing the trends to see how they directly correlate to your business, your products or services, and your audience. Social media trends can indicate the type of content your team should be sharing on social media at that moment and in the near future.

Content Marketing

Producing, sharing and managing content is a key priority for many in 2013 and moving forward. Content marketing is an inbound tactic that encourages businesses and brands to earn their customers. 41% of the BrightEdge respondents will spend much more time on content creation and management with another 42% saying they’ll spend more time than they did last year. The type of content that will benefit your business the most varies depending on your industry, but there is value in producing and managing more than one type. The types of content that will be most valuable are: social engagement (78%), blog article outreach (67%), infographics (43%) and thought leadership (43%). Content marketing builds brand awareness and encourages external linking from other sites, businesses and bloggers.

• Takeaway: While content marketing by nature is a form of inbound marketing, businesses that want to truly be successful with their content marketing efforts need to focus on creating content that is link-worthy. What types of content is your audience and the media most likely to link back to? Create that!

Full-Circle SEO

A successful SEO strategy includes a 360 degree analysis of what affects the rank of a page for targeted keywords. One of the biggest trends BrightEdge discovered in their survey is that 75% of search marketers think a page-based SEO approach (as opposed to a keyword-driven approach) will be more important in 2013 than in 2012. On-page and off-page parameters that affect linking need to be considered as business evaluate their search strategy for 2013. Internal linking structure and external link development are both important parts of any successful SEO strategy. Links help search engine bugs crawl pages for importance and navigation. Internal link analysis will be much more important to 30% of search marketers in 2013, compared to 2012 (Tweet this!). Marketers not only want to analyze their links, they want to know right away whether or not there is a problem with their page so they can take action faster.

• Takeaway: The linking structure of your business needs to be spot on. Invest in a consultant or SEO agency to help you ensure your site won’t be hit with penalties. SEO specialists and strategists need to pay attention to the entire linking structure, with internal and external links in mind.

Search is evolving as technological advancements take place. Social media and mobile devices, the emphasis on content, and a full-circle SEO and data approach are causing a shift in the search marketing landscape. Businesses need to appeal to search engines and the things that are being considered in their algorithms. Social signals, quality content, and internal and external links are all a part of that.

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Outbound marketing, where marketers and businesses push their content out to a wide audience, is no longer the most effective strategy – inbound marketing is on the rise. Inbound marketing is when a company essentially advertises themselves and engages their audience through content, such as white papers, newsletters and social media to earn their audience. HubSpot gives inbound marketing this definition:

Inbound marketing is a holistic, data-driven strategy that involves attracting and converting visitors into customers through personalized, relevant information and content –- not interruptive messages – and following them through the sales experience with ongoing engagement.

According to the HubSpot 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report, 65% of B2B companies report embracing inbound practices this year (Tweet this!). If your business is just getting started or is looking for new ways to improve its inbound marketing strategy, here are four insights that can help you evaluate and redefine your inbound strategies.

Measuring Inbound Marketing

Perhaps the most impactful insight worth noting is that of inbound marketing measurement. With their efforts to determine ROI, B2B marketing experts are struggling. B2B companies struggle to prove the ROI of inbound marketing much more than other companies, with 27% reporting this struggle versus the 21% average. Some marketers are unsure which of their tactics qualify as inbound marketing, and perhaps this is where part of their struggle in determining ROI lies. If you’re unsure about the metrics that matter the most to your executives, company revenue or customers/wins generated from inbound marketing is a great place to start. While marketers may be focusing on engagement more than ever before, it comes down to the numbers and according to this report, they’re not as clear as they could be.

Overcome Obstacles with Teamwork

Sales, marketing, IT and design all need to work together in order for a business to be successful with inbound marketing. Respondents from the study say that 26% of B2B IT groups impede inbound efforts. B2B firms likely struggle for IT resources because it’s harder to draw a direct line to ROI for lead generation efforts. B2B sales teams also lag in supporting B2B inbound efforts, with nearly 14% of responses. When it comes to allocating resources to support inbound efforts, only 11% of company executives and 17% of sales teams lend their full support. Testing inbound marketing, which requires an investment from your tech department, analysts and design team, is a team effort and companies who test are 75% more likely to show ROI for inbound marketing than those who don’t test. Get your team working together to test, execute, and measure your inbound marketing strategies.

Booming Inbound Marketing Budgets

Nearly 50% of all marketers are increasing their inbound marketing budgets in 2013. While determining ROI may be a difficult task, those who can do so are seeing success. When looking at budget ratings by business model, HubSpot found that success with inbound marketing nets a significant boost among B2B firms, with 45% indicating positive ROI as the reason to grow their inbound budgets (Tweet this!). Inbound marketing campaigns can generate new leads, incite new impressions, and build brand awareness. If you think lead generation is out of the question, consider the numbers. According to the HubSpot report, twice as many marketers say inbound delivers below average cost per lead vs. outbound strategies (Tweet this!). A white paper lead generation campaign is one example of inbound marketing perfect for B2B businesses.

Capitalize with Customer-Focused Initiatives

Content marketing isn’t news. Businesses need to tailor and personalize the content they’re sending out to prospects and leads. Inbound marketers need to focus on “content plus context” to truly add value to their audience and generate more business as the end result. According to HubSpot, “Customer-centric marketing directly works to meet and serve the needs of its customer base by offering them thought leadership content and educational material, rather than content that “pitches” your wares.” Customer-centric business will have less of a problem developing the best inbound content marketing strategies as they’ll understand the problems of their audience and should be able to provide solutions. 42% of customer-focused companies calculated positive ROI from inbound marketing compared to just 38% of sales-focused companies (Tweet this!)

Inbound marketing is growing. More businesses are adopting inbound strategies and directing larger portions of their budget towards these efforts. Inbound marketing is maturing as customers become more educated and involved before ever making a purchase. Make sure your business’s inbound efforts exceed expectations.

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This past we week, we had the opportunity to sit down with representatives from Google and Yahoo! to talk about trends in content marketing and online advertising campaigns. While there were several good takeaways from each of the sessions, one of the standouts came from our meeting with Google. They offer a Youtube playbook that outlines an approach for creating a video strategy to build and engage audiences. Even after reading through just the first few pages, I was confident that this would be educational for small and medium-sized business looking to build out their content marketing strategies and on-site content strategy. YouTube can serve as a great content platform for B2B marketers

YouTube as a Content Marketing Platform

The B2B Content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends — North America study from MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute found that video had the largest increase of any content marketing tactic in 2012, jumping by 70% from an already large 54% increase in 2011 (Tweet this!). A study from Searchmetrics can help explain this trend. They found that video appeared most frequently, being displayed in over 70% of all the content included in Google’s general results. It isn’t enough to have videos as a marketing tactic, however. We have to be able to measure the success of our efforts. If you don’t know much about the YouTube Creator Playbook, there is an abundance of features B2B marketers can utilize to determine whether or not they are successful in their strategy. Here are a few of my favorite features.

• Because Google understands the difference in clicks and watch-time, they’ve added “Captivate Your Audience” and “Channel Experience,” which provides you with tips and strategies to increase watch-time.
• The customer experience can and will impact a buyer’s behavior. “Channel Experience” allows users to build a cohesive channel experience for their viewers so they can build a loyal audience and drive subscriptions.
• We’re all looking for ways to rank higher in search engines. YouTube Analytics and the ability to create Metadata for each video will make it easier for you to optimize your videos for YouTube and search engine indexing.
• Paid advertising online and on social media sites is on the rise. The “Paid Promotion” section allows businesses to create promotional videos and use readily-available YouTube promotional tools to build a loyal audience.

Creating Effective B2B Video Content

Think video is a space only for B2C businesses? Think again. With the right purpose and strategy in mind, video marketing provides B2B companies with a great opportunity to generate new leads and continue nurturing current leads through the funnel. In fact, the CMI study also found that 58% of respondents believe video to be an effective form of B2B marketing (Tweet this!). While the target length of a video should be between 1 and three minutes, you shouldn’t feel limited by the topics you can create videos around. If you’re unsure of the type of videos that your audience is most interested in, you have a few budget-friendly options:

• Interviews – Have your content team interview experts within your business or answer common questions received from customers
• Presentations – Presentations can be repurposed into videos without too much trouble. Insert a voice over and some background music to add pizzazz.
• On-Location – B2B marketers spend a lot of time meeting with clients, partners and other businesses. Take these opportunities to showcase your employees at events.
• Product Demos – Just as you would perform a product demo in-person or over the phone, you can perform a demo in front of the camera or using a screen recording solution when applicabl.e
• Case Studies – Take a case study and turn it into a video with before and after shots, a voice over, charts, and more.

Our sessions with Google, Yahoo! and other partners in the Bay Area helped us gain new insight into digital marketing and demand generation trends for small and medium-sized enterprises. Because Business.com is focused on helping your business grow, we want to continue sharing our learnings from the tour with all of you. Stay tuned for more from the Business.com Growth Tour of America.

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We aim to bring you the latest tips, strategies, studies and reports when it comes to B2B marketing and sales. This Friday, we want to bring you some of the top marketing charts in recent weeks. A focus on optimizing strategies through personalization and targeted spending and marketing are just a few of the things on marketers’ minds.

The Adobe 2013 Digital Marketing Optimization Survey found that the majority of companies (53%) spend less than 5% of their total marketing budgets on optimization activities. In total, 86% of companies surveyed allocate 15% or less of their marketing budget to optimization activities, while at the other end of the scale only 3% of respondents allocate more than half of their marketing budget to optimization efforts. The data from this study shows that those who spend more on optimization are reaping the benefits in the form of higher conversion rates. Chart – What percentage of your total marketing budget is allocated to optimization activities (including agency fees, professional services, and technology)?

A new study from Accenture finds that digital marketing is going to get more of the overall marketing budget in upcoming years. Nearly 2 in 3 respondents said that they would be devoting at least 25% of their budgets to digital marketing next year (Tweet this!) and 23% indicated they would be assigning more than 50% of their budget to digital next year. However, many of the CMOs surveyed indicated that they feel more difficulty in improving the efficiency of their marketing operations and improving their workforce’s responsiveness to the consumer and digital shifts that are taking place. According to survey respondents, consumers’ experience expectations have the longest-term impact on marketing strategy (65%). Accenture found that CMOs in high-growth companies have found a less turbulent path by improving their digital focus.

Personalization is vital to the success of businesses, yet many companies are failing to deliver cross-channel personalized experiences to their customers. The Econsultancy/Monetate Realities of Personalisation Report finds that while 43% of companies currently deliver a personalized experience on desktops, this figure falls to just 14% on tablet and 13% on mobile. Product recommendations (42%) and on-site search results (40%) are the most common personalization tactics. Using the
data readily available, B2B businesses that can offer personalized experiences will find greater success. Chart – Which of the following channels are you using to deliver personalised experiences?

Ifbyphone’s 2013 State of Marketing Measurement Survey found that marketing analytics, in an effort to determine ROI more accurately, are on the rise. Software solutions, as well as in-house analysts, are just two of the changes businesses are making in an effort to measure their marketing efforts. Marketing tactics vary, i.e. they are online and offline, which causes obstacles to appear when it comes to measurement. When respondents were asked to rate a range of marketing tools for their effectiveness to generate sales leads the marketing channels that were rated most valuable were in-bound phone calls, in-person visits, and email inquiries followed by PPC clicks/website visits. With this mix of online and offline efforts, it makes sense that when asked about their marketing measurement investment priorities, respondents to the survey indicated a preference for investing future marketing budget dollars in emerging technologies that can contribute to a greater mix of online and offline marketing measurement. Chart – Most Effective Marketing Channels for Generating Sales Leads

The 2013 Online Advertising Performance Outlook from Nielsen and Vizu revealed a number of trends taking place in the digital marketing world. In 2013, 63% of marketers state they will increase their online brand advertising budgets, with 20% reporting that those budgets will grow by 20% or more (Tweet this!). Not only are ad budgets increasing, they are shifting to different channels at a greater pace. The report found that budgets are shifting as consumers move into and become more comfortable with the digital realm. 48% of brand marketers will shift dollars from television into online video and 70% will increase spend in both social media and mobile advertising (Tweet this!). Similar to the Ifbyphone study however, many marketers (45%) don’t feel adequately equipped to accurately measure their efforts.

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BtoB Online partnered with InterCall to reveal new insight into one online marketing tactic that is gaining ground: lead generation. Lead generation is becoming more mainstream as businesses are seeing potential and then success with this type of marketing tactic. According to this study, 74% of the B2B marketing professionals that responded are at least moderate participants in lead-gen practices (tweet this!), while 48% are “very” or “fully” involved. If your business wants to be more successful with lead generation programs, consider improving these three areas of your business.

Marketing-Sales Alignment

Lead generation efforts are the most successful when sales and marketing teams can work together effectively. On average, 66% of marketers are working relatively closely with sales. There is, however, a gap between those who are the most effective with lead generation and those who are not. 80% of highly effective marketers work closely with sales in the process of lead generation. Among the least-effective marketers, 57% work intimately with sales in developing lead-gen programs. Marketers and sales employees need to work together effectively, especially when it comes to lead generation. A lead can be more accurately scored when input is drawn from the different departments and both are able to create and deliver the right content at the right time. This brings us to the next point.

Lead Nurturing

Lead generation isn’t a one-step process. Leads need to be nurtured from the initial touch point up until they make a purchase. If you want that purchase to be with your business, become a thought leader and trusted resource. 74% of highly effective respondents from the study indicate that they use lead nurturing, compared with just 26% of low-effectiveness marketers. Among high-achievers, webcasts, email newsletters, white papers, thought leadership and videos are considered more valuable. With the low achievers, by contrast, sales calls, tele-prospecting, blogging and advertorial material are valued more highly. Different businesses and marketers will see different successes with the types of tactics they choose to use. If you’re unsure about what will yield the greatest ROI for your business, test different types of content and times to reconnect with each lead to develop the most effective lead nurturing strategy possible.

Overcoming LeadGen Obstacles

As with nearly every business process, there’s obstacles to overcome with the launch of a new program or the revamp of one that is failing. 67% of the BtoB survey cited a lack of resources as the biggest obstacle overall. This is followed by depth and accuracy of their customer database (40%). Without an accurate, unified database of prospects, it is very difficult to present compelling, personalized and timely content and offers, much less understand the meaning of responses and score prospects as leads. In order for a lead generation campaign to be successful, the entire company must be behind the process and participating in optimizing their lead generation and nurturing strategies with the best outreach, content, pitches and more. 55% of marketers who describe themselves as highly effective said they have “full participation” in lead-gen practices within their companies (tweet this!).

Lead generation programs offer small and large businesses the opportunity to connect with a new audience and prospects. However, in order for these types of campaigns to be successful, marketers need to work with sale to nurture leads effectively and efficiently. Not only that, as obstacles arise, marketers and sales professionals working on lead generation programs need to be able to count on their colleagues and be confident that they can reach out to the rest of the company for insight into how the business as a whole can be more successful with a lead generation campaign.

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