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Today—the first workday of 2013—represents a fresh start for individuals and businesses alike. The New Year is a chance to look back to the past, figure out what worked and what didn’t, and adjust for the future. It’s an opportunity to put new plans into action, recognize new metrics for success, and strive for new heights.
This first day back in the office may be hectic, but we hope you won’t miss the opportunity to take a few simple steps that will help you start 2013 off on the right note at work:
- Get really clear on your goals. It’s tough to reach new heights if you don’t know what you’re aiming for. Take the time to develop a short list of SMART goals (3-5 max) that you will focus on exclusively this year. Make sure you have total clarity about what success will look like by attaching a quantitative measure and a timeline for each goal. Our recent post on goal setting is a great resource.
- Make an “only me” list. Most of the tasks we complete at work fit into one of four buckets: things we enjoy doing and are extremely effective at, things we enjoy doing but aren’t all that effective at, things we dislike doing but are effective at, and things we dislike and are ineffective at. Make it your mission to find a way to make the majority of your work fall into the first bucket in 2013. Start this task now by creating an “only me” list of the tasks that you must complete, whether you like doing them or not. Then, begin thinking about ways you can delegate anything that is not on the list. As the year goes on, you should begin delegating the tasks from your “only me” list that you dislike or are ineffective at as well, with the end goal of filling your plate only with tasks you enjoy and are effective at.
- Prioritize the tactics that matter most. If your company is like most B2B businesses, your 2013 marketing plan is filled with a long list of channels and tactics that will play a role in building your brand in 2013. It’s easy to get overwhelmed. To make sure you are able to stay focused in the year ahead, pick 2-3 tactics to prioritize in 2013, either for your company as a whole if you work for a small business, or for yourself as an individual if you’re part of a larger marketing department. Think about which tactics have the most potential to help you achieve your larger business objectives and which ones you are most capable of executing well when deciding what to prioritize.
What else are you doing to make sure you start the year off on a positive note?
Image credit: Sebastiaan ter Burg
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As 2012 comes to a close, we’d like to take the opportunity to reflect back on a year of monthly “faves” posts here on Get There. While we typically share a short list of recent posts that caught our attention at the end of each month, this month, we’d like to share our top 12 favorites from the year as a whole. Here they are, in no particular order:
Jargon and metaphor are commonplace in most industries, and B2B marketing is no exception. We’re loving this Slideshare from Velocity Partners that pulls apart common B2B marketing metaphors (think sales funnels and the customer journeys) and challenges us to rethink them.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again. Content marketing is tough. Effective content marketers are a unique breed. Chris Horton did a great job of summarizing the traits shared by the most successful content marketers — things like a willingness to commit resources, and a strong network of support. Read the full post to learn about the other three traits.
This is a great overview of the buyer personas for those who are less familiar with the concept (which, according to this post, is a lot of you). Filp through the SlideShare highlights from the recent #B2BChat to get a well-rounded perspective on the use of personas across our industry.
We all know that the B2B buyer is changing, and now we finally have a resource that will help us adapt. Learn how to reach a buyer that is “more connected, more impatient, more elusive, more impulsive, and more informed than its pre-millennium ancestors,” with this excellent e-book.
5. The Balancing Act of Email Marketing via BuyerZone’s About Leads
We believe that strategy and planning is a necessary ingredient of any successful marketing effort, but it’s especially essential in complex email marketing campaigns. That’s why this article, which focuses on the importance of defining goals, behavioral triggers, targets and messaging before embarking on an email marketing campaign, is right up our alley.
Some have been quick to dismiss content marketing as a passing trend, but we agree with Joe that it’s here to stay. We especially like his point that the industry is over 100 years old and began when John Deere put out its first publication in 1895. Doesn’t sound like a passing trend to us!
7. Can’t Create? Curate! How Content Curation Can Work From You via BuyerZone
Limited manpower is no excuse for failing to engage in content marketing. Even if you don’t have the staff on hand to create a ton of original content, content curation can work wonders for your business. This post from BuyerZone has some great tips to get you started.
It’s no secret that content marketing is tough. But rather than complaining about the difficulties, this post presents each challenge along with a solution that should help marketers overcome various common content marketing hurdles.
9. B2B Marketing Automation: Is it really worth the effort? via B2B Marketing Smarts
Marketing automation and lead nurturing have been key priorities for many of our clients lately, so this article caught our attention right away. The post points out that, according to Forrester Research, companies that excel at lead nurturing are able to generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost per lead, which is a big push toward lead nurturing for companies that have been hesitant to adopt it into their marketing plans.
While it’s not strictly about B2B marketing, we think this post from Seth Godin (who some of us are seeing speak live next month!) takes an interesting look at how the “when” of marketing has changed from the Mad Men era to today. Do you agree that marketing should be the first thing today’s businesses do?
We all know that B2B lags behind B2C when it comes to social media, but we were still surprised to see that only 5% of B2B marketers say that social media marketing has become a “fairly mature and well-optimized” part of their marketing mix. This article asks an important question that many have ignored in their haste to complain about social media in the B2B space: Are B2B companies smart to adopt social media slowly and cautiously, or should they get with the times and make social media an integral part of their strategies?
Our industry is guiltier than most of overusing trendy buzzwords. Think “engagement,” “relevance” and “relationships.” Marketing Interactions tackles all these and then some in a recent series that aims to give meaning to the many buzzwords that get thrown around in B2B marketing. We found the discussion on conversation (especially on the contrast between a conversation and a dialogue) to be particularly insightful.
These highlights are just a tiny taste of the many of great posts that have been written about B2B marketing in 2012. What did you enjoy reading most this year? And what are you looking forward to seeing more of in 2013?
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Did you see that our very own Kevin Randall was quoted in a recent Fast Company article on the expansion of the Trump brand to South America? In case you haven’t heard, The Donald just announced his plans to build a new development in Punta del Este, a high-end resort town off the coast of Uruguay.
According to Kevin, Trump made a smart decision by extending his brand to a new international market where he has few of the image problems that exist for him here in the US. Here’s what he had to say:
“I think there’s a little bit more cache because there’s less supply. There’s so much over-saturation here.” … “We, including liberal elites, get all consumed with the political baggage, which doesn’t exist overseas: the fights in New York City with the mayor. The bankruptcies, the four that he’s had. He’s more Teflon-y overseas. All they see is the celebrity Apprentice and deals getting done.”
We think Kevin raises an interesting point that could be applied to not just to personal brands like Trump’s, but also to regular big name B2B brands: getting out of town (quite literally) can be a smart move for a brand that’s in trouble. What do you think? Should companies that are having brand problems here at home look to move into international markets in order to stay viable?
Featured image via: Ian Fernando
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We talk a lot about creating high quality content here on Get There, but one thing we haven’t discussed much (until now) is the importance of promoting that content. You can create all the white papers, videos and podcasts you want, but unless you have a sound promotional plan in place to get your content in front of people, it won’t be worth the time it takes to develop.
You should put just as much time into developing a promotional plan for your content as you put into developing the content itself.
Here are xx elements to consider including in your promotional plan:
- Where will your content live? Are you creating a landing page, placing your content on your blog, emailing it directly to people who sign up to receive it? The location and accessibility of your content will have a major impact on how you promote it. Consider how your plans for deploying your content will impact the way you talk about it and who can access it.
- What is your message? You should be able to boil down every piece of content you create into one core message that explains exactly why people should care about what you have to say. Let’s say you’ve created a white paper that focuses on the performance implications of cloud computing for large organizations. Your core message is likely the fact that could computing can improve productivity and collaboration for large teams. Make sure you know this message like the back of your hand and commit to baking it into every promotional tactic you utilize.
- Who are you trying to reach? We suggest developing a few target audience personas to describe the kind of people you hope will consume your content. Then, when it comes time to actually promote your content, imagine you’re speaking directly to these people.
- What tactics make the most sense for our content, message and audience? The tactics you choose to promote your content should be determined in large part by earlier decisions about structure, messaging and audience. Here are a few of our favorite content promotion tactics and notes on the situations that they make the most sense for.
- Influencer outreach and guest posting – Ask influential bloggers to promote your content on their sites before it goes live to the general public. This works well for content topics that are already buzzed about among niche audiences.
- Email marketing – send a series of emails to a subset of your list to build excitement up to the release of your conetnt. This works well when you have a piece of content that you want to release via email to a list of loyal subscribers.
- Social media promotion – build excitement for your content by “teasing” its release on your social channels. This works best when you can easily identify an interested community online (say, through the use of a hashtag) and then promote your content directly to them. Using a combination of organic social media promotion and paid social ads makes this tactic even more effective.
Do you put as much energy into promoting your content as you do into creating it? Tell us why or why not in the comments.
Featured image via: Writeaholic
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Have you noticed how many 2013 B2B marketing predictions have been popping up across the web lately? We always see a lot of conjecture about what will happen next in our changing industry at this time of year, but the sheer volume of predictions we’ve come across lately feels a bit overwhelming. We’ve also noticed that many of the predictions we’ve seen lately seem too vague or too obvious to be useful. It’s enough to make us want to give up reading industry forecasts all together.
Instead, we’ve done something more proactive. We’ve waded through all the clutter and identified a list of just five B2B marketing predictions that we think actually deserve attention in the coming year. Here’s our short list:
- “Create once, publish everywhere – again This has been the mantra before in marketing circles. Now this means creating highly adaptable modular copy and image formats that can help make the expensive practice of winning content creation more efficient. Content management systems (CMS) will begin to adapt to this broader need, and marketing teams and budgets will too. Some new CMS offerings will emerge in 2013 that will help with multi-channel content management and deployment as well.” – D Custom
We’ve been embracing the “COPE” mindset for a long time, so we’re excited that 2013 might bring new tools that simplify the process of content creation, publishing and repurposing. While new offerings might emerge, we also expect to see current big players, like HootSuite and and WordPress, get stronger in their cross-channel publishing capabilities.”
2. Taking The Brand Out Of The Story– “We have to provide value. We have to be interesting, human and trustworthy. We have to answer customer questions without the backhanded used-car salesmen pitch at the end. Customers are looking for what’s in it for them and they are highly skeptical of brands looking out only for themselves.” – B2B Marketing Insider
Smaller businesses have long been aware of the power of authenticity and are integrating personal stories into their marketing messages to great effect. Admittedly, getting personal is much harder for major global brands, and it will be interesting to see how they approach this challenge in 2013.
3. Distribution with social media has increased– “This year, 87 percent of marketers are using social media to distribute content, as compared to the rate of 74 percent that was reported last year. Unlike last year, however, LinkedIn is the channel that now has the highest adoption rate, beating out last year’s leader, Twitter.” – Content Marketing Institute
LinkedIn has made some really interesting changes that will allow brands to get more creative with the site just as they’re beginning to use it in larger numbers. We look forward to finding new ways to use the site ourselves and seeing how others do the same in 2013.
4. What? No mobile website?- “According to the IAB, a large percentage of businesses don’t have a mobile-friendly website. In 2013 there will suddenly be a big wake-up call for businesses who will launch smartphone and tablet versions of their website. This will also correspond with a move over to HTML5, which will see some harmonization between our internet properties.” –Another Way of Thinking
We expect mobile to be a big driver of our business in 2013 as more businesses recognize the importance of optimizing their content for the mobile web, and look forward to staying on the cutting edge of mobile technology throughout 2013 and beyond.
5. Tailored consumer content experience- “Social networks are expanding faster than anyone can really quantify, and mobile is illuminating the problems of content-hopping and short attention spans. Watch for an exponential increase in demand for content that engages in near real-time with relevant content to keep the audience interested.”- D Custom
Creating high quality content at a fast pace is tough, and keeping up with people’s short attention spans is even tougher. We hope new tools will be released in 2013 that will make real-time content development and deployment a reality for more brands.
What 2013 trends are you paying attention to?
Featured image via: All Exam Guru
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If you follow us on Twitter or Facebook, you know that we’ve been asking you to submit your burning B2B marketing questions to our experts for the last few weeks. Thanks for joining in on the fun and sending your questions our way!
Now, the time has come to choose the question we’re going to answer this month.
It comes from Adrienne, one of our Twitter followers. She asks:
“What’s the best way to make sure a website site is optimized for mobile? Any tips and tricks or ways to test?”
Mobile is a hot topic among marketers, and we’ve developed our fair share of highly effective mobile sites here at Movéo, so we think we’re highly qualified to talk on this topic.
To answer Adrienne’s question, we’re bringing our resident web and mobile expert Dave Cannon in front of the camera. He’ll share a few easy ways to make sure you’re optimizing your site for mobile from the beginning of the development process, and will show you exactly how we test mobile sites here at Movéo. Our approach is more obvious than you might think.
Check back here on January 4, 2013 for the full video!
Featured image via: All Things D
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We’ve been talking a lot about planning and preparation for 2013 on Get There, so you might have guessed we’ve been doing a bit of behind-the-scenes planning of our own here at Movéo.
As we do, we’re giving a lot of thought to the direction we want to take this blog in 2013 and beyond. We have a few great ideas and new features up our sleeves, but we’re also interested in hearing more about what you want.
Is there a specific topic you’d like to learn more about? Social media? Lead generation? Marketing automation?
Would you like to see more practical, how-to type posts, or do you prefer more industry analysis and opinion?
Are you interested in new types of content like videos and podcasts?
Are there specific practice areas or members of our team you’d like hear from more often?
Whatever you’re thinking, feel free to share it in the comments or email it to Alyssa@moveo.com and we’ll be sure to take it into consideration. After all, this blog is for you.
Check back here soon for the full video!
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Are you feeling overwhelmed by the sheer number of tactics you need to consider and plan for as you prepare for 2013? If so, you’re not alone. B2B companies can reach prospective buyers in many ways, and finding a focus can be tough. But, at least when it comes to social media, there is one tactic that stands out above the rest. That’s LinkedIn marketing.
Here are five reasons why LinkedIn must be a key element of your 2013 marketing strategy:
- Lead conversion. Have you heard the new statistic? A recent study from HubSpot found that LinkedIn is 4x better than Twitter and 7x better than Facebook at converting visitors to leads for B2B companies. Do you really need any more reason to get focused than that?
- A decision maker audience. According to one of LinkedIn’s own studies, 88% of IT decision makers visit LinkedIn monthly. High level decision makers have historically been a difficult audience to identify and interact with on social media, but it seems that they’re more likely to be on LinkedIn than anywhere else.
- Targeting. There’s no other social network where you can narrowly target users based on company, job profiles and what we like to call “employment demographics” as well as on LinkedIn. This means you’ll have better luck finding your ideal customer on LinkedIn than on other social networks. Once you’ve identified your customers on LinkedIn, you can always start interacting with them on Facebook and Twitter if you like.
- Thought leadership comes naturally. In our opinion, the biggest value of LinkedIn is in the groups functionality. There are professionally minded groups in almost every niche imaginable, where you can go to ask questions, share information and generally establish yourself as an expert in your industry. LinkedIn also has built in capabilities for distributing thought leadership assets like white papers that will help build your expertise further.
- New functionality. As if all of the above weren’t enough reason to prioritize LinkedIn, the site recently unveiled a new API program that makes it easier to target specific customers, uncover leads, automate campaigns, distribute and determine ROI. The new API is currently in beta but will be released in 2013.
How are you planning to use LinkedIn in the year ahead?
Featured image via: HubSpot
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There’s an unwritten rule among many B2B marketers that December is not a time to launch new campaigns, programs or products. The rationale is that, between regular holiday vacation and last minute days off before the end of the year, there is hardly anyone in the office to receive our emails, hear our sales pitches and get on board with our new initiatives.
We want to challenge this rationale. It’s true that offices will be emptier in December, but being out of the office is no longer the same thing as not working. Thanks to technology, many will be working from home and on the road this holiday season. Despite this fact, many B2B marketers slow down during the holidays, meaning your message will have an easier time breaking through if you do decide to stay active with marketing in December.
As we pointed out in our Black Friday post, recent studies have shown that most people check their work email over the holidays, and yet the volume of inbound marketing email is much lower during holiday weeks. That sounds like the perfect reason to schedule your email campaign for late December if you ask us.
The same could go for making sales calls, hosting webinars, interacting on social media, and participating in a number of other marketing-related tasks over the holidays. Since everything else will have slowed down, there’s a good chance your target will actually have time to hear what you have to say.
So if you’re considering making a marketing push this December, we say go for it! Just don’t all follow our advice at once 😉
Featured image via: Student Life & Leadership
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Last week, BtoB Magazine covered a study that found only 27% of B2B companies had a staff member exclusively devoted to social media.
We found that number a little bit surprising given the fact that B2B spending on social media marketing is expected to grow to $54 million by 2014 (just over a year from now) and 41% of B2B marketers are increasing their social budgets in 2013. This begs the question: if you’re not spending your social budget on full-time staff, what are you spending it on?
Are you hiring an outside agency or consultant to run your social media programs? If so, are you satisfied with the relationship?
Are you distributing social media work amongst employees who have many other responsibilities? Do they have enough time and focus to handle competing priorities?
Are you paying for analytics, development and design? If so, has it improved your ability meet your goals?
Are you spending your budget on social advertising through channels like LinkedIn and Facebook? If so, has the investment been worth it?
