B-to-B General Advice

SUMMARY: One fun, and maybe a little frightening, aspect of marketing is undertaking a new effort. How about trying out a new channel -- one completely untested within your industry?

Discover how a B2B marketer in the traditional finance sector executed a gamification strategy to launch a new website. The entire campaign involved multiple marketing channels, but the heart of the effort was a B2B game that outperformed the goal and led to a 108.5% increase in visits to the new site, achieving a 9.38% conversion rate on the lead capture form. read the complete case study

SUMMARY: To wrap up another year of B2B marketing, we’ve reached out to seven marketers and industry experts to offer you six tactics based on marketing lessons learned in 2011.

Read on to find out what our expert sources said about lead generation, lead scoring and lead nurturing; inbound SEO; letting your customer tell you how to market to them; and making that personal touch truly personal. read the complete article

SUMMARY: Your best-laid marketing campaigns can suffer when disaster strikes. You still have to get your message out, but you face a state of crisis and turmoil.

Discover strategies you can use in a time of crisis. Two marketing vets of two of the largest nonprofit disaster-relief agencies in the U.S share how they continue to solicit donations and get their messages out even when disaster strikes. read the complete interview

SUMMARY: In a struggling economy, organizations often feel pressure to accelerate sales pipelines and close deals that are currently in their systems. This week’s marketing research chart looks at the impact of this pressure on the average deal sizes of B2B companies. read the complete article

By Anne Holland, Founder

I woke with a start at four in the morning in a hotel room in Scottsdale, Arizona, where I was conducting research at a marketing trade show in October 1999.

Back then, as now, marketing, PR and advertising professionals were nearly deafened by a deluge of media "serving" them. Magazines, events, newsletters, etc., etc. But, as a 20-year veteran, I felt that huge amount of content hadn't been terribly... read the complete blog post