"THE GROWTH BLOG" - A RESOURCE FOR B2B LEADERS, MARKETERS, SALES & SERVICE PROFESSIONALS

This post was originally published on the HubSpot Service blog.

Recommendations from colleagues, business peers and trusted advisors, even friends and family are incredibly valuable to your B2B customers. According to Nielsen's Global Trust in Advertising Report, 83% of respondents said they trust recommendations from family and friends more than any other form of advertising. 

This means that even if you do everything right - from your logo, your blog posts your marketing email subject line - Just one customer's bad experience with your brand could cost you that new piece of business. In fact, customers are more likely to talk about a bad experience with your brand than a good one -- and they tell almost 3X as many people when it happens.

Nowadays, via social media, your customers can quickly share recommendations -- and negative reviews -- with their entire networks with just the press of a button. This makes collecting customer feedback and identifying headaches as quickly as possible -- not only to prevent bad customer experiences and reviews, but also to make your customers so happy that they recommend your firm.

This is where the NPS®, or Net Promoter Score, comes in.

This article was originally published the LinkedIn Marketing Blog.

When it comes to modern content marketing one key challenge is creating content that's relevant for each decision maker, at scales, without killing yourself.  You’ve got your work cut out for you! Here's how to tackle the challenge.

Before we get started - some definitions:

Account Based Marketing: “ABM is all about shifting your focus from lots of leads to highly targeted accounts that are very specific organisations and companies that are the best possible fit for your product or service.” - Forbes

Inbound marketing: "Is a technique for drawing customers to products and services via content marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimisation and branding." - Wikipedia

Perhaps only a few of the most "experienced" B2B marketers (a.k.a. old) may remember Monty Python's classic Parrot sketch, when the shop owner declares "That parrot isn't dead...it's just resting!" Many B2B Content producers are openly questioning if content marketing is in fact dead. It certainly feels that content has failed to deliver the expected returns it promised in terms of brand awareness, new visitors and leads. Its under increasingly intense scrutiny from those who have to pay for it, and those who produce it.

Is B2B content dead or just resting?

g2m conducted some qualitative research in Q1 2018, where we asked firms how they grow. How do they set strategy, build a plan, and then execute successfully over time? Particularly, we wanted to understand how the organisation’s digital transformation was affecting their approach to growth and was forcing them to change how they went to market. Turns out it's a long journey and 3 clear themes emerged:

Plan right + Invest in your team + Build & measure processes

Here are the 7 best practices the research uncovered:

The purpose of g2m's research, conducted in Q1 2018, was to ask firms how they grow. How do they set strategy, build a plan, and then execute successfully? What’s worked well and where have there been issues? Particularly, we wanted to understand how the organisation’s digital transformation was affecting their approach to growth and forcing them to change.

This blog post details the top 10 challenges respondents identified.  

This article was originally posted on the databox blog.

It’s commonly quoted that B2B buyers have access to unlimited information at their digital fingertips so they aren't contacting vendors until they are 70% of the way along the purchase process. Are they really waltzing happily through their purchase process without the need for marketing information and sales calls?

This article was originally posted on the kapost blog and we love it!

Dear wise and illustrious CMO,

We know you’re busy. You’re rushing from meeting to meeting all day every day making sure that everything we do drives the strategic messaging of our company forward. You’re our fearless leader and we’re lucky to have you. But if you have a minute, here’s some thoughts on marketing leadership we think you'd find valuable.

This article was originally posted on the Spyralitics Performance Marketing Blog.

B2B Marketing budgets in Australia are being negotiated right now, as we get ready for the start of the new fiscal year. What are you doing about your content marketing in 2018?