The more change occurring the more questions arise. This year is no exception. B2B Marketers are experiencing ongoing as well as new challenges as we start to hit stride in 2013. What are the big future questions for B2B Marketers? Let's look at a few:
How do we generate more leads and keep them?
Survey after survey indicate B2B marketers have this issue top of mind. Creating demand and filling up a pipeline is loaded with pressure packed environments. In my qualitative buyer research work, I see shifts in behavior on the part of buyers. There are unique sets of goals and behaviors emerging in the area of nurturing. Calling into question how leads should be defined and segmented. Lead research and unique lead persona development will emerge to help B2B marketers address this most important question.
How do we use marketing automation effectively?
Marketing automation has crawled out of infancy stage and is being more widely adopted. Many organizations have been in the "let's just get started" phase. Experiencing the pain of implementation. The next level question is how to make marketing automation more effective to get better results.
How do we operationalize content marketing?
Content marketing has certainly arisen as one of the core capabilities B2B marketing... Read more
Tags: buyer experience, buyer persona, buyer personas, content marketing, demand generation, Digital Marketing, lead generation, lead nurturing, marketing, marketing automation, social media marketing, Tony Zambito
Posted in Creative Best Practices, Emerging Platforms, Opinions | No Comments »
Luxury brands have different needs than mass brands do. Even for affluent consumers, there’s a longer decision cycle for a pair of Prada loafers versus a pair of Weejuns, and for a Tag Heuer versus a Timex. Marketers familiar with the space know that they need to be more persuasive with their campaigns, and richer and more impactful with their ads. Luxury brands need to tell stories of quality and of lifestyles full of aspiration to convince consumers they’re worth the additional money.
Portrait ads make it easier for brands to tell those stories. The oversized, three-module units create rich-media canvases for brands to share HD video, audio, images, social media and other interactive elements. Many leading publishers are successfully creating native opportunities for advertisers by incorporating their own site content into one of the modules. The adjacency of premium publisher content to the advertiser’s own content is mutually beneficial and creates an effective, engaging ad unit that feels as if it’s part of the website. While the publisher content within the unit does not truly constitute an editorial endorsement of the advertiser’s product, it does serve to instill the consumer with a sense of trust for the brand advertised.
We know... Read more
Tags: affluent, Digital Marketing, luxury, rich media
Posted in Opinions | No Comments »
“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”
― Ernest Hemmingway
The concept of buyer personas, as a means for understanding buyers, has been around now for over a decade. It is an understatement to say many things have changed in the world of buying and selling since their beginning.
We have witnessed the changing dynamics of the buyer-seller relationship. The dynamics I refer to are buying behaviors and buyer goals. On the other side of the coin, we see marketing and sales making attempts to adapt. The concepts of content marketing, lead nurturing, insight-based selling, customer experience, and brand management emphasized. These practices have been introduced as gateways to connecting with buyers in the new digital age.
Adapting to New Realities
Personas, at their core, were introduced as a tool to communicate the goals and behaviors of users and buyers. Specifically for informing strategies related to product design and marketing to buyers. For B2B Marketing and Sales, a clearer picture has begun to emerge around the goals and behaviors of buyers. Yet, there are many more miles to go. My endeavor and work with organizations over the past decade lead me to... Read more
Tags: brand, buyer behavior, buyer experience, buyer journey, buyer persona, buyer personas, content marketing, customer, demand generation, Digital Marketing, lead generation, marketing, Sales, tonyzambito.com
Posted in Creative Best Practices, Emerging Platforms, Opinions, Research, Social Media, Targeting, Web Analytics, Websites, Wireless, Word of Mouth | No Comments »
Galvanized by Art (Photo credit: cobalt123)
The quest to uncover how and why people and businesses engage in the act of buying is becoming an endurance race. Spurred on by increasing social technologies advances. The result is many organizations, whether academia or business, have focused on the science of buying. What we may be losing is critical understanding of the art of buying.
What we are witnessing in the new digital age is the old rules of near total dependency on understanding processes and rules associated with buying is no longer the sole winning ticket. Buying processes and rules have been dissected and analyzed many times over throughout the past few decades. We clung to the belief of knowing the how will lead us to systematic knowledge of how to close more business with buyers. The problem marketing and selling organizations face today is the how – processes and rules – are not as easily defined or structured as in the past. Social technologies have made it possible for new networks and collaboration amongst buyers – causing plenty of flex in processes and rules.
The Why of Buying
If the science of buying has focused on the how of buying, the art of... Read more
Tags: b2b marketing, buyer persona, buyer personas, buying behavior, Digital Marketing, marketing, marketing effectiveness, qualitative analytics, qualitative research, Sales, sales effectiveness
Posted in Creative Best Practices, Email, Emerging Platforms, Opinions, Social Media, Targeting, Word of Mouth | No Comments »
Posted by
Tony Quin on May 1st, 2013 at 11:21 am
In the pre-digital days there really wasn’t a need for brands to produce more than the ads that went on traditional media. Now they need to produce an almost constant stream of fresh content to keep up with digital channels and social media.
Tags: advertising, brand, branding, buyer experience, content marketing, content strategy, creative, Digital Marketing, Video, youtube
Posted in Video | No Comments »
Copyright © 2013 iMedia Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
