Steven Wright says, “It’s tempting to think that with all the power of automation for marketing, sales enablement and a multitude of sales processes that marketing and sales work together smoothly. The vision is one of a well-oiled machine generating leads, qualifying opportunities, and winning deals. The reality is somewhat different. While marketing and sales have moved closer together, there are still significant gaps in understanding between the two. For B2B marketers, the challenge is to better understand how Sales Operations, as a set of processes more than technology, drives sellers... [...]

Steven Casey says, “We’ve all seen the ubiquitous martech slides: Thousands of company logos crammed into a single graphic that is both useless and illuminating. Useless as any sort of planning or evaluation tool — but also illuminating because it shows what we all know to be true from first-hand experience: The B2B marketing tech landscape is confusing, and getting worse every day. To help B2B marketers make smart technology choices in the midst of such chaos, Forrester has just published the TechRadar™: B2B Marketing Technologies, Q3 2016. In this report, we evaluate the current state... [...]

Peter O’Neill says, “We know you B2B marketing execs are not in denial. You get that 74% of business buyers conduct more than half of their research online before making an offline purchase — and that 59% of those same business buyers prefer not to interact with a sales rep as their primary source of information. You need to transform from an inside-out (company, product service) perspective to an outside-in (customer, outcome, context) view. Like all transformations, this is brilliant in theory but daunting in practice. Well, come to the Forrester B2B Marketing Forum on October... [...]

Allison Snow says, “There are a number of predictive analytics firms dedicated to helping B2B revenue leaders examine their own successes and losses to inform everything from account selection to next-step action analysis and recommendation. Last year, Laura Ramos introduced them to us in her report, New Technologies Emerge To Help Unearth Buyer Insight From Mountains Of B2B Data. Laura concluded this report with a recommendation to prepare to take the predictive analytics plunge. Well, many of you have “taken the plunge,” or are about to. Nearly two thirds of marketing decision... [...]

Renee Yeager says, “Delivering engaging, relevant content is the name of the game right now in marketing. Interestingly enough, as marketers center their efforts and investment on content-driven activities, most struggle with content creation. According to a 2015 study by Content Marketing Institute, 54 percent of B2B marketers and 50 percent of B2C marketers cited “producing engaging content” as a top challenge. This has been a consistent trend for the past five years. Like many aspects of marketing, content isn’t typically something you win with right away. A test and measure approach... [...]

Mark Eardley says, “In our B2B marketing guidebook Business-to-Business Marketing: A Step-by-Step Guide, published by Penguin Random House, my co-author Charlie Stewart and I write, “The purpose of B2B marketing is to attract and retain profitable customers.” The first step toward achieving that goal is to know who influences buying decisions—and then win their sale-creating trust. The first of this short series of articles offers straightforward guidance on how to… – Identify the buying-decision influencers in your market. – Define how your offering contributes... [...]

Ayaz Nanji says, “B2B marketers are hungry for information about marketing dashboards and lead generation, according to recent research from Bombora. The Surge Report was based on an analysis of the content consumption behavior of visitors to 2,500 B2B websites (4 billion monthly interactions). The researchers examined which content topics were being looked at compared with established benchmarks. Each topic was assigned a Surge Score of between zero (not trending) to 100 (highly in demand). Marketing dashboards are the hottest area of interest with B2B marketers, garnering a Surge Score... [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “For B2B demand marketers, media has until recently been synonymous with impressions, maybe clicks and hopefully, leads. Historically, marketing pros have turned to media companies to generate awareness and create demand. The focus over the last several years, however, has shifted to: “Impressions are a bonus; I expect leads.” Moreover, the definition of a lead and how it’s generated varies widely. Leads are good, especially when they engage with your brand(ed) content. Well, the bar and expectations are being reset. The next evolution is being driven by B2B marketers’... [...]

Peter Isaacson says, “We’re all competing to capture the attention of our best prospects and customers, and, let’s face it — that’s no easy feat. We’re bombarded daily with information from all sides and individually choose to let in what we care about in the moment and block out anything that just creates overload. With research and buying habits from our personal lives bleeding into and influencing our professional lives, there’s a battle for attention that’s getting tougher to fight every day. Just like we disregard a commercial on TV or an ad in a magazine due to its lack... [...]

Valerie Levin says, “In the last century, the world saw a massive revolution of innovation. Beyond modern marvels such as digital advancements and the evolution of the smartphone, artificial intelligence is gradually changing society and how people navigate their lives. Machine learning is gradually being integrated into nearly every aspect of life. It’s already used in machine translation, email spam filters, ATM check depositing and facial recognition – and that’s just what an average person uses day-to-day. Predictive intelligence is making businesses more efficient, effective... [...]