Nobody has to tell you that the B2B sales cycle differs greatly from that of a B2C. For one, a B2B sale typically involves a much larger expense. It’s also a highly vetted decision, and not often an impulsive one. Specifiers, designers, engineers and choosy purchasing agents rarely rush to buy your product or service immediately after seeing an ad, direct mail or email.
As a managing director at AB&C, I often attend events on behalf of my firm, where I walk into a room and strike up a conversation with complete strangers, or give the opening remarks to a crowd of unfamiliar faces. Today, I get excited about these opportunities to promote our agency. But once upon a time, networking was an uncomfortable experience for me, characterized by nervous glances around the room, a sweaty brow and awkward silences.
Ever since there’s been the practice of marketing communications, there’s been a concept inseparable from it: the customer journey. If you understood your target audience and could communicate effectively at each stage of their purchasing journey, you’d do OK in the marcom profession.
More and more, job boards are publishing salary information. Should you include accurate salary information in your job postings?
As “candidate-friendly” websites like Glassdoor, Indeed, kununu, CareerBliss and Google publish salary estimates, companies are feeling the pressure to release competitive salary information.
If you’ve found that your outbound marketing efforts are becoming less effective over time, then read on.
You may have noticed that your email blasts to purchased lists of unqualified prospects, cold-calls and direct mailers are no longer generating the quantity and quality of leads needed to fill the top of your sales funnel—leaving your sales team twiddling their thumbs.
“The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.” This directive was identified by management consultant, educator and author Peter F. Drucker, whose writings contributed to the practical foundation of the modern business corporation.
Today, marketing plays an ever-increasing role in creating and growing businesses and brands by connecting organizations with current and potential purchasers along every step of the customer-experience journey. The role of marketers is to identify and research audiences, and then expertly reach and inform them about brands, products and services to facilitate the growth of business in today’s highly competitive environment. Marketers who embrace and combine the new tools of digital and social media with traditional and guerilla marketing will have greater success at connecting customers with their business.
Whether your organization is large or small, it can benefit from greater awareness, more leads and higher sales by unleashing the power of your employees to serve as business-building brand ambassadors. Your employees have their own network of friends and potential referrals with whom they can share your brand and marketing messages and stories. Employees can also act as emissaries on social media and provide a layer of authenticity and internal credibility that builds trust with your prospective and current customers.Read full post...
As marketers, we’re pretty good at defining audience groups within our target market, identifying their pain points and developing messaging that addresses those points. On a good day, we even come up with unique messaging for each audience segment. But there’s one segment that most marketers forget, ignore or consider to be “not our problem”—existing customers.Read full post...
The 2016 Olympics are now history and for a short time this summer we were witness to amazing athletic feats demonstrating perseverance, competitiveness, national pride, raw talent, strength, agility, beauty and grace. Always a marketer, I will remember these Olympics for the athletic achievements of the individuals and teams that competed, and their stories, both on and off the field.
That brings me to the power of storytelling in marketing communications—stories appeal to people and are often more easily remembered than facts.Read full post...
If you asked anyone during the Opening Ceremonies of the 2016 Summer Olympic Games who would be the most talked about U.S. athlete come the end of the games, we can guarantee you no one would’ve answered Ryan Lochte.
Yet, even with Michael Phelps swimming his final Olympic event, winning more gold medals than any other athlete in history, the worldwide stage that is the Olympics belonged to Ryan Lochte. And as everyone knows, the curtain came down on that stage with international criticism, disgrace and controversy.
Read full post...
Congratulations! You’ve completed an exhaustive RFP process and have a shiny new agency that you can’t wait to take for a spin. I’m sure you asked all the necessary questions, so there shouldn’t be any surprises now that it’s time to get down to solving all of your marketing communications challenges. The only question that matters is, “How do we get started?”
Read full post...
During my undergraduate years as a geography and economics major, a professor shared his belief that everything in the world can be related to geography, because geography is the spatial science focused on where things are and why they occur there. Geographers seek to answer questions related to location, place, spatial pattern and interaction when studying a cultural or physical environment.Read full post...
Inspiration is defined by the New Oxford American Dictionary as “the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative.”
Motivation, stimulation and encouragement are powerful forces for human beings. Together they lead to inspiration, which spurs creativity, inventiveness and brilliance. In my opinion, inspiration can motivate individuals to do things they would otherwise not think possible, to act in ways that allow them to achieve success, and to reach new heights far outside their comfort zone. I believe inspiration can come in many forms, but with a focus on creating something positive, inspiration always drives greatness.Read full post...
By David Brond and Samantha Oscar
Content marketing—the business process focused on creating and distributing relevant and valuable information to attract and engage target audiences with the objective of driving action—is one of today’s business-growth strategies getting a lot of attention from marketers in many organizations, including those in healthcare. And with good reason.Read full post...
June 1 marks the 119th anniversary of Mark Twain’s well-known quote: “The report of my death was an exaggeration.”
It seems an appropriate time then to report that any rumor suggesting that marketing is dead (and branding is meaningless) is also an exaggeration. Last month, SSRS, a full-service market and survey research firm (www.ssrs.com), completed 1,000 interviews with adults ages 18+ across the United States. The SSRS Omnibus Survey uses a dual-frame model (RDD and cell) with 60 percent of the sample cell-phone respondents. Two of the survey questions suggested by Aloysius Butler & Clark were related to consumers’ current opinions of marketing and branding.Read full post...
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