Wednesday, April 02, 2014

FIR B2B Show #6: Marketers Struggle With Reinvention; Plus Euromoney’s Marissa Pick

FIR B2BPaul Gillin and Allan Schoenberg host the FIR B2B podcast. In this episode:

News & Trends

It’s our “bad news for marketers” show, although the theme was unintentional. It’s just that a lot of recent news we’ve seen has cast B2B marketers in a rather unfavorable light. Highlights:

Even though most B2B companies have a lead-generation process in place, just 9% of B2B marketers say they are highly effective at generating leads, according to a study from research firm Demand Metric. This tends to confirm comments made by Dan McDade in FIR B2B #5 about how marketing often drops the ball on lead quality.

Even though CMOs believe that advanced analytics will play a significant role in helping them reach their goals, most feel their organizations are not in a position to leverage data to its full extent to gain a deeper understanding of the customer, according to a new study from IBM. Here’s a link to the report.

A new Adobe study says marketers see a need to reinvent themselves but don’t know how to do it. Data analytics skills are seen as vital. “A majority of marketers (76 percent) reported they need to be more data-focused to succeed; however, 49 percent said they rely on ‘trusting my gut’ when making budget decisions. Seventy-two percent of marketers said their long-term success is tied to proving marketing return on investment.”

A new research study of 350 business buyers by the CMO Council and Netline finds that third-party sources heavily influence B2B buying decisions. That’s not surprising, but what’s depressing is that only 9% said vendors are trusted sources of content. “Marketing executives unanimously agreed that a solid content strategy is imperative for building awareness it requires them to position themselves as trusted experts in their field,” the report concludes.

LinkedIn has launched new tools to help B2B marketers gauge content performance. They give brands a single score to gauge the effectiveness of multiple pieces of paid and organic content on LinkedIn, including company pages, LinkedIn groups, Influencer posts, employee updates and Sponsored Updates. It’s another useful new service from the B2B social network of choice. BTW, listen to the latest episode of Chuck Hester’s Linked Conversations to learn what LinkedIn’s “retirement” of the Products & Services tab in company profiles means to marketers.

Special Guest: Marissa Pick

Our special guest this week is Marissa Pick, Senior Social Media Marketing Manager at Euromoney Institutional Investor.  Marissa advises more than 100 global businesses internally on best practices to help drive traffic, membership, engagement, and ROI from social media effort across publications, events businesses, and other internal programs. Her internal clients span a huge range of market-specific publications and services. Marissa talks about the many channels Euromoney uses for promotion and the surprising power of Facebook as both a word-of-mouth and paid advertising channel.  Follow Marissa on Twitter.

Closing Rant

In our closing rant Paul Gillin picks up on a post by Danny Sullivan that calls out Google for penalizing a blogger’s entire site because of one allegedly spammy link posted nearly a year ago. Paul supports Google’s focus on quality content but believes the search giant needs to be more transparent about what is and isn’t permissible.


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About Your Hosts

Paul GillinPaul Gillin is a veteran technology journalist and a thought leader in new media. Since 2005, he has advised marketers and business executives on strategies to optimize their use of social media and online channels to reach buyers cost-effectively. He is the author or co-author of five books, including Social Marketing to the Business Customer (2011), the first book devoted entirely to B2B social media marketing. He is also a social media trainer and coach at Profitecture, a training firm for B2B companies and their channel partners.

Allan SchoenbergAllan Schoenberg is based in London and responsible for managing the international media relations, issues management and brand communications for CME Group, the world’s leading and most diverse financial marketplace. He was instrumental in launching the company’s social media activity in 2007 and continues to lead its social strategy and online community engagement. He has more than 20 years of experience in B2B communications, including his work for Accenture, Edelman Worldwide and Fleishman Hillard.

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Posted by Paul Gillin on 04/02 at 10:35 AM
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