3 Branded B2B News Services That Get It Right

Posted on May 13, 2016 by Paul

Most content marketing is currently delivered piecemeal in the form of white papers, e-books, webcasts and the like. While there’s nothing wrong with that, drive-by customers are hard to engage in conversation. What if you could go a step beyond the downloads and become a trusted and even indispensable information source that customers visit every day? Some B2B marketers have gone that. Here are three I think are worth emulating.

CMO.com

This site launched nearly seven years ago as part of a bigger Adobe plan to evangelize digital marketing to a core audience. CMO.com was originally a pure curation model; content consisted of brief summaries of articles and video from other sources on the Web. On other news, checkout this blog about airbnb and discrimination issues with their customers.

The site filled a need, however, and traffic has grown steadily to more than 350,000 monthly page views. Its popularity has enabled Adobe to invest in a growing amount of original content, and even sell some advertising space to cover costs.

Adobe wisely hired a professional editor at the outset – veteran tech journalist Tim Moran (right) – to oversee content at the outset, and the site has benefited from his steady and experienced hand. Navigation is clean, headlines are well-written and content is timely, with continuous updates throughout the day. Bonus points to Adobe for nabbing the domain. My only quibble is the need to click through twice to get from a homepage headline to a source story.

While Adobe uses CMO.com to build thought leadership, it maintains a strict church-state separation between ownership and the editorial product. Adobe doesn’t even have access to the 30,000-name newsletter mailing list. If the parent company ever misused its popular property it would violate reader trust, and that’s the most important asset CMO.com has.

Cisco Connected Futures

Cisco does a lot of things well with social media, from its expansive blog network to its innovative newsroom, The Network. Connected Futures is a little-known gem. This image-rich site features a smorgasbord of content about how technology is changing business and our way of life. It’s presented in a variety of formats, including research reports, articles and podcasts. The podcast library is particularly impressive.

Most of Connected Futures’ articles advocate a point of view, and many are written by influential thought leaders. The theme dovetails well with Cisco’s vision of a future in which all things and people are continuously connected and business moves at the speed of bits. There’s a lot of material here about digital business and corporate reinvention, but a fair amount of nuts-and-bolts management advice as well. The target audience is not Cisco’s traditional CIO customer but board room executives. The writing is lively and accessible.

Why Cisco keeps this light under a basket I don’t know. It gets almost no visibility on The Network, despite having content that is as good as that produced by The Network’s veteran journalists. In companies as large as Cisco, such siloed behavior is unfortunately common. Full disclosure: I am an occasional paid contributor to Connected Futures.

Knowledge@Wharton

True, a university has a bit of an unfair advantage in the subject matter expert department, but I would argue that a lot of companies have as many PhD’s and patents as Wharton does. This site is a terrific resource for anyone who wants to know what smart people are thinking about the most important things going on in the world. K@W is like Harvard Business Review, but with a much better web presence.

Wharton has every bit as much a business purpose for supporting this resource as Adobe and Cisco do. It’s trying to recruit the best students and faculty for its MBA program. It does that by showing off the skills of its faculty through a steady stream of articles and interviews in audio, video and written form. But this isn’t just about the faculty. The site always seems to have interviews with authors of the hottest new business books, and it makes them available in every format you can imagine.

Which is one thing I really, really like about K@W – its resourceful use of multiple media. Most Q&As are published both as audio podcasts and written transcripts; in some cases, video is used as well. The idea is to make it convenient for visitors to consume content in whatever format they prefer. The site also hosts a two-hour live radio program on SiriusXM each weekday and repackages that content into snackable podcast segments. I am addicted to K@W podcasts.

Yes, each of these efforts costs money, but each has attracted tens of thousands of regular visitors who have registered their approval with an email address. How valuable is that?

Five Often-Overlooked Reasons Senior Executives Should Use Social Media

Posted on February 10, 2016 by Paul

“I don’t have time to build my LinkedIn profile. I already get more useless messages than I can handle anyway.”

“Why would I want to be on Twitter? It’s a lot of noise, and no one cares about what I’m reading.”

“I want to be a thought leader, but I don’t have time for blogging.”

Sound familiar? I hear these objections all the time when speaking to top executives about social media. Their concerns are motivated by a basic misunderstanding of how people use tools like LinkedIn and Twitter. There is special value to these platforms for executives that don’t necessarily apply to the rest of us.

To follow my reasoning, you have to understand the concept of “connection points.” These are details of our lives that create opportunities to establish connections with others. We constantly seek connection points in all our interactions because they create a foundation for trust. That’s why the first few minutes of any meeting, even one with people we know very well, invariably consists of small talk about stuff that has nothing to do with business. Finding common ground puts everyone more at ease.

The same applies to online interactions, and that’s why social networks can be so powerful for executives. Here are five little-known benefits to consider.

1. Finding connection points with customers and prospects – Executives typically spend a lot of time meeting with customers and business partners. It’s a fair bet that most of the people they’re meeting with do some research in advance. Because of LinkedIn’s exceptional search performance, a search on nearly any executive’s name is likely to turn up a LinkedIn profile within the top three results. That profile should be rich with connection points.

A good LinkedIn profile is a lot more than just a resume. The summary statement should talk about accomplishments, motivations, passions, and turnoffs. It should also include some personal details, such as favorite sports teams or hobbies. Schools, professional memberships and volunteer activities should also be filled out. These connection points are built-in conversation starters. You never know where a connection point is going to surface.

Customers, partners, and employees also follow executives who matter to them. By updating your profile with new responsibilities, achievements, and publications you keep these important constituents up to date on your progress.

2. Alerting the media – Why do CEOs like Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Oprah Winfrey, Rupert Murdoch and Elon Musk waste time on Twitter? They certainly don’t need the publicity. One reason is because they know that the journalists, analysts and others who influence audiences they care about are following them. That means they can reach large numbers of people who matter to them quickly and without the overhead and expense of press releases.

The same applies to corporate executives. As the people who are called upon to represent their businesses in public, they can use media like Twitter to communicate important business news and reinforce the image and culture of the companies they represent to the people who matter most to them. Without the red tape.

3. Cementing business relationships – When Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins tweets an attagirl to his company’s head of executive talent or thanks a customer for a great meeting, he’s doing more than just casting off casual praise. He’s reinforcing a relationship that matters to his business. Compliments are one of the most powerful ways we had to support others and thereby earn their trust. Executives have special leverage in this respect. By recognizing an associates qualities or achievements in public, we not only do them a favor but issue a warning to competitors and interlopers to back off. That’s one of the values of having a large Twitter following. When Bill Gates compliments Code.org on Twitter, he’s giving that organization a publicity boost.

4. Building thought leadership – Most organizations want their executives to exhibit thought leadership, but placing articles in management magazines is both time-consuming and unpredictable. Many executives create thought-leading content all the time in emails and posts on the company intranet. With a little wordsmithing, these can be turned into essays on platforms like LinkedIn Publishing, Medium, and Svbtle. LinkedIn is particularly valuable in this respect, because it has a built-in promotion medium through notifications. And because executives tend to be followed by other influencers, their LinkedIn posts can spread particularly fast.

5. Recruiting – In the same way that customers and prospects research the people they do business with, so do prospective employees. People want to work for people they like and admire, so creating a LinkedIn profile that showcases both your accomplishments and personality presence enhances your ability to reach people who are a good fit for your culture. Conversely, it can dissuade people who are the wrong candidates from wasting your time.

In short, a social media profile that reflects who you are rather than simply what you do creates a trust foundation that pays off in many ways. You just have to look below the surface.

This post originally appeared on Biznology.

Photo by nzchrissy2 via Pixabay

Here’s What 25 B2B Marketers Think Are the Key Trends in 2016

Posted on January 26, 2016 by Paul

I was delighted when B2B Marketing Zone – a website and newsletter that I devour – asked me to be one of 25 contributors to its “B2B Marketing Trends for 2016” e-book.

I love this content concept, and it’s an idea more B2B marketers could adopt. Contact influencers in your market – or even your own customers or subject matter experts – and ask them for short paragraphs on a topic, then combine that content into an e-book.

Then do what Tom Pick and Tony Karrer of B2B Marketing Zone did – make it easy for people to compose posts like this one and share the book through their social networks. Your contributors will be flattered to be included and you will get to tap into their often substantial followings.

The authors identified three powerful trends driving B2B marketing right now:

–Changing buyer expectations fueled by the availability of rich information and ease of access and purchase;

–Pressure to demonstrate ROI as marketers learn to do more with less; and

–New tech tools and big data so that we can no longer say half our budget is wasted but we don’t know which half.

I picked a few quotes from the e-book that I really like. Download a free copy and find your own favorites.

“2016 will be the year where B2B marketers finally realize that, while they can always make more content, their customers can’t make any more time.” – Mike Moran (l.)

“Every B2B site should produce cornerstone reference content that is comprehensive and authoritative; something that people link to and return to read again and again.” – Steve Rayson

“A buyer persona is not a zombie—but a profile based on your understanding of a real customer and their real needs.” – Ambal Balakrishnan

“It’s time for B2B marketers to let go of their obsession with perfect production values and get on with just putting good content out there for customers and prospects.” – Elizabeth Williams (l.)

“Channels and tactics will come last, not first anymore, at last.” – J-P De Clerck

“Is 2016 the year of B2B brands finding a personality and sense of humor?” – Michael Brenner

“With marketing now responsible for helping to nurture and advance the buyer through 70% of the purchase cycle, there are monumental inefficiencies if the sales team is knocking on cold doors rather than closing sales-qualified, warm leads.” – Debra Andrews (l.)

“If you have 30 reps, each sharing just five pieces of content per week, that’s an opportunity to get your message out 7,200 times!” – Shannon Pham

“[Workforce brand ambassador programs are] a win/win. The company benefits from more authentic communication, and employees build personal brands.” – Cheryl Burgess

“The average click through rate is 0.1%, banners don’t work anymore and people are much more likely to trust peer to peer recommendations than traditional advertising.” – Joe Fields

“No longer will marketers schedule an email campaign for Wednesday morning at 10 AM. Rather, marketers will configure an email campaign and technology will determine the best time and day to deliver the message.” – Brian Neufeld (l.)

“The 2015 Annuitas B2B Enterprise study found that only 7.5 % of respondents reported the skill set of marketing personnel was highly effective. Clearly, we need to do better.” – Erika Goldwater

“If your marketing is great but your product is bad, that, ultimately, means your marketing is bad, too.” – Carla Johnson

And my own contribution:

I believe B2B marketers have finally realized that merely throwing content into the ether is both expensive and wasteful. They’re adopting buyer personas, content targeting and matching content to stages of the buying cycle. I think content marketing will continue to be a huge growth area for B2B in the coming years but we’re going to get a lot smarter about how we invest our resources. Marketers are beginning to realize the buyers are people, not demographic segments, and they are appealing more to the motivations that influence human behavior.

Engineering360 Joins Expanding World of Vertical B2B Communities

Posted on October 3, 2014 by Paul

The world of online B2B news services continues to expand with the introduction of Engineering360, which owner IHS calls “the world’s largest online destination for engineers.”

Edited by David Wagman, a journalist and analyst who’s covered engineering for more than 25 years, the site features news, analysis, product research and tools, events, product catalogs, an interactive community and other resources typical of professional networks. Formerly known as IHS GlobalSpec, it was relaunched last week with an expanded news and community focused. The site is posting original news daily, most of it written by freelancers with apparently good domain knowledge. Their feature stories are mixed with a steady stream of un-bylined news shorts.

IHS Engineering360 editorial “covers the entire engineering landscape, with key areas of focus such as automation and control, electronics, energy and natural resources, general engineering, manufacturing, materials, network and computing and process equipment,” IHS said in a press release. IHS is the biggest media company I’ve never heard of. Based in Englewood, CO, it had revenues of $1.8 billion last year providing information services for a wide variety of mostly heavy industries.

This is the latest in a series of 360 online platforms launched by IHS. Others include Electronics360.com, Janes360.com, IHSmaritime360.com, Datasheets360.com and IHSairport360.com. I’m working on getting an interview with some of the principals involved in these new communities for my FIR B2B podcast.

American Express Dreams Up a Potential Win-Win-Win

Posted on October 2, 2014 by Paul

Here’s an example of a B2B2C initiative that looks like a potential winner for all parties involved.

American Express OPEN, the hugely popular community for small businesses sponsored by the credit card company, and Etsy are partnering ahead of Small Business Saturday on Nov. 29 to encourage small business boutiques to support local Etsy sellers by hosting Trunk Shows.

According to a press release, “These events provide online sellers with the opportunity to put their products in front of customers in a traditional retail setting. For boutique owners, the trunk show is a chance to increase foot traffic into their store by providing diverse product all while supporting a local artisan in their community.” Each boutique that agrees to host a Trunk Show gets $75 worth of credits to buy supplies and a chance to win a $5,000 design consultation from Rue Magazine.

I’ve long been impressed by American Express OPEN. In addition to representing a large financial commitment on AmEx’s part, the community is a great example of a B2B initiative that really gets close to the customer. Small Business Saturday, which Amex invented four years ago, is one example of the energy and creativity that Amex has put into courting this audience. The Trunk Show idea is not only innovative, but it potentially benefits American Express, its small business merchants and independent crafters. That’s a rare win-win-win.

Marketo Tells How to Use Social Media for Lead Generation

Posted on April 11, 2014 by Paul

I often cite marketing automation vendor Marketo as a shining example of a company that gives away great information as a way to promote its business. Marketo recently contacted several B2B social media marketing pros to get their tips on how to generate leads with social platforms.

They report encouraging results. For example, 58% of marketers who have used social media for more than three years say it has helped boost sales. The marketers quoted here (I’m one of them) offer advice on how to create unique content that stimulates engagement, which is the currency of social media marketing.

Check out “How to Use Social Media for Lead Generation.” It’s a quick read and I think you’ll find some useful takeaways.

Constant Contact Colocates with Small Business Customers

Posted on January 16, 2014 by Paul

Great companies go beyond just providing a product or service. They think of themselves as partners in the success of their customers. Three companies that do an outstanding job of advocating for the small business customer are American Express (with its Open Forum small business community and annual Small Business Saturday promotion, among other things), Intuit and Constant Contact, the Massachusetts-based e-mail marketing company.

I often use Constant Contact’s Twitter and Facebook profiles as models for other B2B companies to follow. About 90% of the content the company posts in social networks is intended to help customers succeed in small business marketing. Less than 10% promotes Constant Contact products. It’s like that in the company’s remarkable Pinterest account as well.

Now the company is taking customer advocacy to the next level with the launch of the Small Business Innovation Loft. That’s a physical space within the company’s Waltham, Mass. offices were startups can set up shop for four months at no cost and get $10,000 to spend on marketing activities. They also get free meeting space and priority support from Constant Contact’s support team. This press release has more.

Innovation labs aren’t new, but they are usually sponsored by venture capital firms or real estate companies that hope to cash in on them. In contrast, won’t take equity in the startups it nurtures. The value to the company comes from the promotional benefit and the word-of-mouth awareness that will develop as some of these companies invariably succeed and set off on their own. What better way to put your money where your mouth is?

Constant Contact makes it a point to get inside the minds of its customers and understand their ambitions, fears and motivations. That’s the secret of content marketing, however you define it. Check out this clever year-end video the company put together to celebrate its customers.

A Nice Collection of B2B Marketing Stats and Videos

Posted on January 2, 2014 by Paul

Earnest is a U.K.-based B2B marketing agency that says its mission is, “to chase out the humdrum and bring a lot of love and passion to B2B marketing.” Its work certainly bears out that goal. Earnest’s B2B campaigns have a lot of B2C energy inside them. Its research and how-to presentations on SlideShare are an excellent resource for companies that want to get into content marketing.

Here’s its latest collection of recent trends and statistics: This is the year that was in B2B Marketing crunched. Be sure to check out the links to some of the year’s best B2B videos on slide 37. You can also download the presentation as a PowerPoint if you want to borrow a few of these stats.

paulgillin.com

Social Media and the Open Enterprise

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