Marketing Strategy

Content marketing success lessons I learned from conversations with Joe Pulizzi, Robert Rose, Matt Heinz, and Michael Brenner.  Recently I found my notes from conversations I had last year with several content marketing leaders, including Joe Pulizzi, Robert Rose, Matt Heinz, and Michael Brenner. When I started my own consulting business and before we launched the B2B Marketing Academy, one of the first (and […]

I recently shared a list of 7 favorite blog sites which started with a longer list. Why not share them all at once? Glad you asked! Let’s face it – who can really get through long lists? 101 top books to read, 35 things to know, 50 social media tools for bloggers…they all sound better in concept than practice. Inspiring B2B bloggers deserve better than to be buried in […]

Customer experience (CX) is what sets the best B2B brands apart. Marketers increasingly lead the charge in aligning brand strategy and customer targeting with customer experience design. It’s a hard craft. There’s a lot of hype to wade through to find good CX content. Having slogged through a lot of articles, I’ve found these particularly useful articles and sites. Written by real practitioners, these content pieces are for […]

We all know it’s important for marketing and sales teams to go to market with an aligned strategy. Many organizations have shared revenue goals between sales and marketing. According to Forrester, 82% of CMOs report that their goals are aligned to revenue targets. Gartner reports that CMOs now spend more on technology than CIOs and most CMOs own or share profit responsibility. Marketing as […]

When considering a content marketing platform, or any marketing technology for that matter, there are several key questions to ask prospective vendors. Here is a simple checklist to help you through the process. Vendor Evaluation Checklist History. How long has this business (product) been in the market? The martech space is nearly doubling every year, which means many new tools have flooded the market. […]

Innovative B2B marketers are fluent in newer digital and content marketing practices. We’re constantly adding a new spin to classic tactics. And, we’re grooving on the opportunity to entertain and engage customers as we find the great story in our B2B solutions and people. This makes it fun and keeps the craft interesting. But what’s new can be hard. And noise levels are increasing […]

Sirius Decisions’ Megan Heuer wrote about five myths in account based marketing, including the myth that the sales team already knows everything about their accounts. We assume our sales team has a full understanding of their accounts, yet we often overlook the amount of knowledge owned by our post-sale customer success teams. I’m encouraging you to take a full funnel approach to ABM. Consider aligning your […]

When working with B2B marketers to execute content against a persona strategy, several pitfalls can emerge during the execution phase. Here is how to avoid these  common pitfalls when you execute a content strategy against your persona information: Beware of Persona-itis. We know that -itis is a medical term for inflammation or swelling. In this case, I mean the affliction of creating too many personas. Don’t get carried away […]

We’re all tech companies Technology is borderless. Every region, industry, and job role is using or affected by technology. Even if you’re trying to remain off the grid, there are people and bots working to figure you out. Something as basic as having a driver’s license or a phone number makes you findable in our techno-age.   The era of “tech companies” is over; there are […]