The Internet Marketing Newsletter: February 2020

Monday 17 February 2020

Create with Google: Inspiration, resources, and tools to fuel your next big idea

The case for creativity has never been greater. Big thinking and bold ideas are in high demand, and creative execution is consistently confirmed as the largest contributor to driving sales. And as we see from the brands we partner with, success occurs when data and technology inspire creativity.But that doesn't mean it's easy. There are more platforms, more signals, and more data sources informing creative than ever before. We want our clients and partners to grow and thrive on our platforms, and that’s why we've made it a priority to invest in resources and tools to support creative makers and agencies at every stage of the creative process.This year at Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, we’re expanding a new resource for the global creative community: Create with Google. Made for creatives by creatives, this platform is designed to inspire, inform and enable creative makers from ideation to execution. The global site is currently available in English, Spanish, Korean and Japanese, with a plan to expand to more languages throughout the year.Get inspired for your next big campaignWe’ve searched the globe to find the most innovative, intelligent, and imaginative work across Google’s creative canvas. Filter by format, vertical and platform, or search by keyword to inspire your creative thinking. Master Google’s platforms, formats and toolsRead up on a range of resources and get insider tips on how to build work across Google’s creative canvas—from ARCore to Display and YouTube Director Mix.Access tools to support your idea, from pitch to productionTwo new tools, Audience Connect and YouTube Mockup Tool, make it easier for you to create and sell in work on our platforms—from pitching in concepts right through production.Audience Connect transforms creative presentations from broadcast into conversation, by tracking client engagement in response to any video. When pitching in a TrueView concept, for example, the tool provides real-time feedback on when your audience is more leaned in and when they would skip. YouTube Mockup Tool lets you upload and showcase work to clients and colleagues in an authentic YouTube environment, simulating your creative across desktop, tablet and mobile.We want to champion and challenge creative makers to experiment and make better work, recognizing we only succeed when our partners do. We hope Create with Google can become a genuine global community where the industry comes together to find the inspiration, resources and tools for their next project.

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How To Optimize ABM With Influencer Marketing at #B2BMX With @LeeOdden

According to a new study from ITSMA / ABM Leadership Alliance, 73% of B2B marketers plan to increase ABM budgets in 2020 and 71% saw greater ROI within their ABM efforts compared to their traditional marketing initiatives. There is momentum behind ABM in the B2B marketing world and yet there is still opportunity optimize for effectiveness. Research from Demand Gen Report tells us that 95% of marketers prefer credible content from industry influencers (a 30% YoY increase) and most ABM playbooks include no mention of influencer integration at all. Are B2B brands' ABM programs leaving performance gains on the table by not considering the impact that influence plays on their target accounts? How can ambitious marketers optimize the performance of their account-based-marketing (ABM) programs? To answer that question, we invite you to join TopRank® Marketing chief executive and co-founder Lee Odden as he explores how influencer marketing can drives optimization of ABM performance, as he presents at the B2B Marketing Exchange 2020 conference on Wednesday, February 26, 2020 at 10:40 a.m. Mountain Time in Scottsdale, Arizona. The 2020 edition of the B2BMX conference will be the 8th year in a row that Lee has presented at this leading event for B2B marketers. Below is a video of Lee's co-keynote presentation at a past B2BMX with Alex Rynne of LinkedIn: To help make the decision to attend B2BMX 2020 easier, Lee has partnered with B2BMX to provide a 25% off discount code. Just use B2BMXODDEN when registering for the discount. B2B Marketing Exchange 2020 Lee's presentation at the 2020 B2BMX conference, "How To Optimize ABM Results With Influencer Marketing" will help B2B marketers understand how they can leverage the power of influence to connect more quickly and effectively with target accounts. For more details, here's the official presentation abstract: Focusing on accounts with the biggest revenue potential requires every competitive advantage. But ABM alone is not enough to break through to distracted and distrustful decision makers. To connect with accounts more effectively, B2B marketers are increasingly adopting influencer marketing to build trust, reach and engagement. This presentation from B2B and influencer marketing expert Lee Odden will share how B2B marketers can identify the influencers that resonate most with target account contacts, as well as create greater influence among client facing contacts. In this presentation you'll learn: <ul> <li>How an ABM and influencer marketing integration model inspires strategy</li> <li>How to determine what topics and content resonate with your target accounts</li> <li>How to identify who is influential to the people within your targeted accounts</li> <li>How to grow influence for sales and the brand</li> </ul> Registration and complete B2BMX conference details are available on the official event website. Be sure to use the 25% off discount code: B2BMXODDEN We hope you'll join us in Scottsdale for Lee's latest insightful presentation, and be sure to follow along on Twitter using the #B2BMX hashtag. In the meantime you can learn more from Lee and others on the TopRank Marketing team by connecting with our award-winning marketing blog. You can also watch this interview with Lee by the B2BMX editorial team as they talk about how B2B Shouldn't Be Boring and How To Revitalize Your Content: If you'd like to talk with us directly about how to improve your own influencer marketing performance like we have for B2B brands ranging from Adobe to LinkedIn, connect with us here. The post How To Optimize ABM With Influencer Marketing at #B2BMX With @LeeOdden appeared first on Newsroom.

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Wednesday 12 February 2020

5 Ways B2B Influencer Content Drives Marketing Success

B2B marketers trying to get their content seen and consumed face an uphill battle in 2020 as information overload competes with growing brand distrust to sabotage B2B marketing campaigns. So, how can B2B marketers take their content efforts to the next level of reach and engagement? Luckily for you, at TopRank Marketing we're experts at integrating B2B influencer marketing and content, and in a recent interview, our CEO Lee Odden spoke about how B2B marketers can benefit when these two aspects of marketing intersect. Lee spoke with Kristen Alexander, CMO at Certain, in a Masters of Events podcast that explores the many ways content and influencer marketing can benefit B2B marketers. Lee and Kristen discussed a wide array of opportunities for content and influencer marketing to help B2B marketers connect with customers more effectively and we've pulled out some of the most valuable insights below: 1 - Influencer Collaboration Creates Content Buyers Trust B2B companies have longer sales cycles and to feed the buyers need for more information, create sizable amounts of content for demand generation and lead generation. However, in this age of information overload and distrust of brand communications, much of that content is ignored. The way marketers can connect with distracted and distrustful buyers is through those who customers actually trust. Credible experts that have the ear of the buying customer can be excellent collaboration partners. Their influence adds credibility to the brand content and their networks provide a distribution channel that current brand marketing and advertising isn't reaching. Influencer collaboration is a subject near and dear to our hearts, that we've explored in detail in several recent articles: <ul> <li>Inspiring Examples of B2B Influencer Marketing in Action</li> <li>Break Free B2B Series: Janine Wegner on Building Brand Thought Leadership With the Help of Influencers</li> </ul> <blockquote>Overwhelming information choices and distrust of brand messaging make collaborating with industry experts that have the attention of audiences looking for solutions an ideal strategy. — @LeeOdden</blockquote> 2 - Combining Influencer Advocacy & Brand Messaging Drives B2B ROI By intermingling brand messaging with influencer advocacy and influencer expertise, you can create the kinds of content programs that get reach, better engagement, and conversion. By creating a content repository you can have a taxonomy of keywords associated with the different things people are saying, which becomes a source of ingredient content that you can use to re-purpose into a white paper, eBook, blog post, newsletter, or even transform it into an infographic. You can explore a variety of content re-purposing best-practices and real-world examples with these recently article we've published on the subject: <ul> <li>When & Why Net-New Content Creation Makes Sense—And When It Doesn’t</li> <li>Everything Old Is New Again: Why & How to Refresh B2B Content</li> <li>6 Steps for Making Delicious Meals Out of Your Content Marketing Leftovers</li> </ul> <blockquote>More advanced B2B marketers run always on influencer programs where there is a focus on developing alignment, relationships and advocacy. — @LeeOdden</blockquote> 3 - Break Free of Boring B2B With Co-Created Content B2B is more often associated with "boring" than it is with "exciting". While B2B brands want to be taken seriously, they can also "break free" of boring B2B. To break free of boring, reach out to industry influencers and ask them to give a relevant tip, asking questions very specific to the topics your customers actually care about. These tips these industry experts provide can then be packaged in an interesting, engaging and interactive aesthetic. Interactive content is more interesting for customers and it inspires contributing influencers to share, often multiple times. As an example of how influencer content can be optimized for interesting, take a look at how interactive content for B2B marking is described in "How B2B Brands Can Break Into Interactive Content," and how to turn around a low-performing campaign in "Ghosted: What’s a Content Marketer to Do When Your Audience Goes Silent?". <blockquote>Creating B2B content that isn’t boring requires more than a clever twist on the facts. Facts tell, but it’s stories that sell. Inspiration and motivation are what drive action out of content creation. But what stories should B2B brands tell, especially if the solution is complex? The answer is with your customers and understanding their pain, goals and preferences. — @LeeOdden</blockquote> 4 - Shining a Spotlight on Your Influencers Brightens Shared Content B2B marketers can create a variety of content types that highlight the insight and information individual influencers have provided. Giving people who contributed a spotlight means they are a part of something special, giving them increased credibility and visibility. As a result, the light brands shine on influencers will be passed on as social shares to their audiences. From episodic to interactive and experiential, there are more ways to share co-created content than ever before. We explore many of those ideas in the following articles: <ul> <li>Hungry for More: What B2B Marketers Need to Know About Episodic Content</li> <li>How B2B Brands Can Break Into Interactive Content</li> <li>What B2B Marketers Need to Know About Experiential Content</li> </ul> <blockquote>Provide influencers and content creators with topic clusters they can use in content and social shares. — @LeeOdden</blockquote> 5 - Mobile-Friendly is Key When it Comes to Sharing Because of how consumers find, consume and interact with information today, it is important to make co-created content mobile-friendly so it's easy for people to show and share. If influencer content can't be easily shared on mobile devices, a crucial element to campaign success will be missing. Making content easy-to-share and personalized doesn't have to be difficult or time-consuming, but it does require some initial planning and strategy, as we've outlined in the following articles: <ul> <li>B2B Content Marketing Lessons from 2019’s Nerdy Film & TV Franchise Finales</li> <li>Break Free B2B Series: Tom Treanor on Perfecting B2B Marketing Personalization</li> </ul> <blockquote>Every encounter with your brand should feel like it’s part of one ongoing story. — @NiteWrites</blockquote> Take Your B2B Influencer Collaboration Game To A New Level We hope you've learned several new ways to appreciate the value B2B influencers and content marketing collaboration to a new level, and encourage you read the companion article to this post: "5 Things You Must Know About Using Events For B2B Marketing." To learn more and take your influencer marketing for B2B to the next level, check out these content and influencer marketing resources and take advantage of Lee's upcoming speaking events where he'll be sharing strategies, best practices and case studies featuring B2B brands of all sizes: February 24-25, 2020 - B2BMX - Scottsdale, AZ How to Optimize ABM Results with Influencer Marketing March 19, 2020 - Convergence Summit - Minneapolis, MN In Search of Trust: How Authentic Content Drives Customer Experience March 24, 2020 - Pubcon - Miami, FL B2B Influencer Marketing Workshop April 20-22, 2020 - Content Tech - San Diego, CA How to Optimize Content Performance with Influence April 22-23, 2020 - Content Marketing Conference - Boston, MA Be Best Answer for Your Customers with SEO and Influence May 27 -28, 2020 - B2B Ignite USA - Chicago, IL In Marketing We Trust: How to Build Influence with the C-Suite and on the Street The post 5 Ways B2B Influencer Content Drives Marketing Success appeared first on Newsroom.

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Wednesday 5 February 2020

How to Remain Competitive in a Saturated Online Retail Market

Strategies for staying ahead amid a dizzying e-commerce landscape. 

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5 Things You Must Know About Using Events For B2B Marketing

B2B marketers face numerous challenges in connecting with customers in meaningful ways — perhaps more today than ever before. Events have traditionally been a go-to method for B2B companies to build real-world connections, however burdensome obstacles remain when it comes to achieving the best return-on-investment for industry conferences and events. Luckily, at TopRank Marketing we're experts at integrating events with B2B content and influencer marketing, and in a recent interview, our CEO Lee Odden recently spoke about how B2B marketers can benefit from using events in creative ways. Let's dig in and discover Lee's five key take-aways when it comes to events for B2B marketers. 1 - Events Are Great For B2B Influencer Collaboration Success Events are an ideal format for influencer content collaboration, a great reason to bring voices of credibility and authority together, to have real-world experiences, and to activate around content that a brand is putting out in the context of a larger event. In the B2B marketing world of 2020, search engine optimization (SEO) is not enough, and events offer a fantastic opportunity to optimize for trust using influence. 2 - Events Provide Real-World Interactions & Great Experiences There is no substitute for the real-world interactions that events provide, and they are also ideal for creating great experiences for your customers and prospects. Events allow you to do content campaigns where the actual activation of prospective customers is at the real-world event. Events are a gold mine of content before, during, and after. 3 - Events Allow Deepening Ongoing Collaborations By inviting speakers to contribute their expertise according to a particular theme, you can create infographics and social messages — the standard sort of stuff before the event — which at the event will open doors to new conversations with the people that are involved. Holding V.I.P. dinners, round-table meetings, or meet-the-experts gatherings all represent real-world activations warmed up by the content collaboration that happened before the event. Additionally, interviews, co-marketing events, and co-marketing initiatives can all be worthwhile to set up for events. 4 -Events Let You Connect in Real-Time and Plan Ahead of Time Live-blogging and real-time event coverage allows you to sit in on sessions and write articles based on what you're seeing live, including photos you take. You can even engage with the speakers beforehand so they know you're coming, which oftentimes allows you to get extra information from speakers. You can also write event preview posts covering the sessions you're looking forward to at the event, and then cross-link and let people know that they can look forward to following your coverage using the conference hashtag. You can also suggest they follow your Twitter handles, and then also put out reminders about other sessions you'll be covering during the conference. You can then take all that content and put it into an eBook after the conference, and of course add your own thought leadership, which becomes a great demand-gen content asset. 5- Events Provide Opportunities to Support Speakers Events are great for identifying lists of influencers who will be speaking, which can then be turned into a list of the top B2B marketing influencers, or the top content marketing influencers speaking at the conference. You can reach out to all of them and let them know that they made it on the list, which helps build interest and social sharing activity. These lists and the conversations involved when compiling them also provide a great opportunity to support speakers, and to connect with influencers for additional projects and collaborations in the future. Take Your B2B Marketing Events Game To The Next Level We hope you've learned plenty of new ways to take your event-related content marketing to the next level, and encourage you to listen to Lee and Kristen's complete interview, which digs in to a number of other B2B marketing areas. You can listen here to the full Masters of Events webinar from Certain, in episode 6: Why Influencers & Events Are Made for Each Other. To help you find the best events for your business, we've also compiled the "BIGLIST of 50 Top B2B Marketing Conferences in 2020," a handy resource for B2B marketers looking to plan out events for the year. Finally, here are three helpful articles our team at TopRank Marketing has written about using events to create stronger marketing efforts: <ul> <li>Content Marketing Gold Rush: How to Unearth Content Gold at Marketing Industry Events</li> <li>Learning Changes Lives: Top Insights from #MPB2B & 5 Tips for Rocking Marketing Events</li> <li>12 Helpful Tips for Effectively Using Social Media at Events</li> </ul> The post 5 Things You Must Know About Using Events For B2B Marketing appeared first on Newsroom.

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The Internet Marketing Newsletter

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