Archive of B2B Marketing Posts

A recent survey from Penn State University's Institute for the Study of Business Markets (ISBM) and an Evanston, Illinois-based marketing agency looked at the importance of corporate marketing within B2B organizations, BtoB magazine reports.

For example, corporate B2B marketers should be able to drive marketing planning, which should be high-level enough to be used flexibly, but also enforce discipline.

Marketers should also be brand stewards, which involves making the team's strategy or vision obvious to stakeholders as well as making sure marketers can unify newly acquired companies to build a strong brand architecture.  ... Read the full post

Citing gaps in marketing investment growth, Forrester Research recently revealed that B2B marketers are less optimistic about budget growth in 2012 than they were in 2011.

The report, B2B Marketers Must Focus on Partnership and Experimentation as 2012 Budgets Rise, was intended to reveal major trends about B2B marketer's budget growth as a way to help senior marketers benchmark their budget allocations based on others in their industries. It also identified key drivers of marketing budget allocation decisions.  ... Read the full post

A recent Forrester Research report found that B2B marketers plan to increase their marketing budgets by 6.8 percent in 2012.

The report, B2B Marketers Must Focus on Partnership and Experimentation as 2012 Budgets Rise, notes that 27 percent of marketers will expand their budgets between 10 percent and 19 percent this year. What's more, 20 percent expect to increase by 5 percent to 9 percent, while 18 percent of respondents will grow budgets between 1 percent and 4 percent.  ... Read the full post

There is no "one-size-fits-all business plan for success anymore, the Northern Colorado Business report states. It's becoming more difficult for businesses to stay relevant as technology continues to advance at warp speed, so there needs to be a way to remain abreast of new buyer behavior, which is something Business 2 Community author David Dodd believes is the "single most significant issue facing B2B marketing and sales professionals.

Dodd points to a recent e-book written by Google managing director of U.S. sales and service called "Winning the Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT)." It explains that this moment is when potential buyers take initial steps to learn about the products they may be interested in purchasing.  ... Read the full post

According to a recent Forrester Research report, B2B marketers will increase their marketing operations budgets by 8.2 percent from 2011 to 2012, Marketing Pilgrim reports.

The report, B2B Marketers Must Focus On Partnership and Experimentation As 2012 Budgets Rise, made some surprising findings, as respondents said they actually planned to decrease spend for customer community management by 6.8 percent in 2012.

While this blanket statement of decreased customer engagement may not resonate across all industry sectors, it is interesting to note that other seemingly important functions such as channel enablement and branding are also projected to decrease, by 3.3 percent and 3.6 percent, respectively.  ... Read the full post

The 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report discussed in-depth the state of social media today. One aspect it hit on was the way social media worked differently for B2B marketers compared with B2C marketers, Social Media Examiner explains.

Researchers found, for instance, that while more than 93 percent of B2B marketers use social media to market their businesses, it still lags behind B2C (95.2 percent). However, this is still a slight improvement for B2B compared to the 2010 survey (88 percent).  ... Read the full post

In a recent survey of 65 B2B marketers by Pardot, researchers found that a fairly large amount (37 percent) of B2B marketers don't track the revenue generated by their marketing campaigns. What's more, 40 percent said they lack the time or resources to analyze reports.

Other findings include that 20 percent of marketers didn't measure marketing-sourced leads, 30 percent aren't tracking advanced metrics, 35 percent aren't using lead-nurturing tactics for less-qualified leads and nearly 30 percent lack the tools needed to track leads through the sales cycle.  ... Read the full post

Building a website may oftentimes one the single largest projects on a B2B firm's budget, Base One explains in a recent report.

However, if you fall victim to some common yet egregious mistakes, the funds invested will go for naught and your return on investment will be low.

One aspect that some B2B companies fail to include is a clear vision. This is probably the most important factor on a site, according to the report.

"Have a good collaborative team and a clear vision that everybody involved can buy into," author Paul Hatcher states.  ... Read the full post

According to a recent Forrester Research study, more than half of B2B marketers said that reaching decision makers is one of their top five issues. They also admit that time and money is wasted on tactics that fail to catch buyer interest.

Business 2 Community explains marketers must realize that most B2B buying decisions today involve more than one person – especially when significant purchases are on the table.

Consensus buying has become more common in the B2B purchasing process. The news source cites research from the Sales Executive Council of the Corporate Executive Board, which found that when buyers are evaluating purchases, widespread support from their organization is the "single most important" criteria for decision making.  ... Read the full post

Social Media Examiner's fourth annual social media study revealed that marketers used search engine optimization (SEO) 65 percent of the time in their marketing efforts, trailing only email (87 percent).

What's more, it was discovered that B2B social marketers were more likely to use SEO than B2C marketers – 67 percent to 62 percent, respectively.

Of the 3,800 social media marketers studied, respondents stated that they also used event marketing fairly often (64 percent), followed by press releases (55 percent), direct mail (41 percent), online ads such as Google Adwords (38 percent) and print display ads (36 percent).  ... Read the full post