FIR B2B #18: John Fox on Why Marketers Need to Get Out of the Office

FIR B2BIn this episode:

News & Trends

Only a minority of marketers are satisfied with their content marketing efforts, according to the annual Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs survey. But only about one-third have a documented content marketing strategy and even fewer measure ROI. Could there be a correlation there? If you don’t have measures of success, your program will fail.

New research by The Economist Group and Peppercomm finds that B2B buyers define “quality content” as that which “contains timely or unique information,” “helps me to understand a complex issue in simple terms” is interesting or presents a unique perspective. So there are some guidelines marketers can run with.

Marketo continues its creative series of e-books with a new one called Real Marketer Stories that presents one tip from each from 20 marketers. What’s cool is how Marketo packaged the piece in a colorful comic book format and designated each marketer with a “superpower.” Creativity often comes from taking a different approach.

It’s perhaps not surprising that 94% of B2B buyers report conducting some degree of research online before making a business purchase, and that 55% do so for at least half of their purchases. But what’s really interesting about this new research from Acquity Group is that more than 83% of buyers say they use supplier websites to conduct research. The bad news: only 37% say those resources are useful.

In an excellent example of how a company is getting outside its comfort zone to reach a new market, IBM is teaming up with Wharton to offer CMO education. Perhaps the forecast that CMOs will soon spend more on technology than CIOs has something to do with that.

Special Guest: John Fox

This week’s guest is John Fox, president and founder of Venture Marketing and a self-described CMO-for-hire. John has led the launch or re-launch of 44 companies, resulting in double and triple-digit growth for every client served. He’s also author of Marketing-Playbook, 102 Proven Strategies to Grow B2B Sales and 99 Questions to Jump Start Your Partner Channel Brain. John thinks all the talk of a radically new B2B buyer journey is overblown. The process hasn’t really changed all that much, he says in this interview. He has provocative thoughts on what content really motivates buyers.

Follow John on Twitter.

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About Your Host

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.

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Posted by Paul Gillin on 10/28 at 04:32 AM

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