Delivering Return On Marketing – What’s Your ROI?
What's Your ROI?
What is your return on marketing? This question can come up when you least expect it: while presenting your annual plan, while speaking to the CEO in the hallway, or maybe as one of those emails that lands in your inbox with a huge “thud!”
This question can come from sales, company leadership or even be debated within marketing. Many marketers cringe. Some run and dive into the closest trash bin. And some marketers rise up, fill their chest with air and answer with confidence. Here is my view and hopefully you will find something here that can help you face the firing squad.
Social Media Marketing: 2011 Trends Report
You may have seen my recent posts on how I think “The Future of B2B Marketing: It’s Social“ and also what I believe “Is The Future Of The Social Media Role?“ Over the holidays I was honored to learn that I was being included in the Focus 2011 Trends Report: Social Media Marketing. The report compiles the latest thinking on what’s next in social media marketing from B2B Marketers across a variety of industries and disciplines.
Along with my thoughts, the report includes contributions from Social Media pundits Jay Baer, Paul Dunay, Mark Schaefer, Tom Pick, Lee Traupel, Novell’s Frank Days, Social Media Group’s Maggie Fox and Cisco’s Stephanie Marx.
The Hottest B2B Marketing Insider Topics Of 2010
On May 7th, 2010 I started this journey to document my thoughts and perspective on B2B Marketing. Since that time, I have written 60 posts, nearly 10,000 of you have come to my site, from over 120 countries, viewing more than 20,000 pages of content.
So as I begin 2011, I want to start by thanking all of you for putting up with my yammering on about the trends, hot topics and occasional outbursts on the state of B2B Marketing today. I have made many new friends and learned so much — so thanks to you all!
What Is The Future Of The Social Media Role?
Recently, I’ve been reading how “the role of the social media strategist will be changing” to become much more operational and covering more “mundane” tasks. Jeremiah Owyang from Altimeter is calling “2011: The Year of [Social] Integration” where we leave formation and organizational ideas behind. And I have already described how organizations need to integrate social media engagement into the marketing mix as well as into the DNA of our organizations.
All this got me to wondering about the future of social media marketing roles. I have friends and colleagues who I respect, admire and in some cases hired. They are fully entrenched in social media. So what does the future hold for them?
The Secret To B2B Social Media?
Today I presented on the Focus webinar titled “The Secrets to B2B Social Media Success Revealed” where I discussed how to integrate social media into your marketing mix.
The bottom line: the question is no longer “Should we?” but rather “How?” we begin to align our organization around the new/old social world. I speak about this paradox in my presentation which you can access below.
Whatever Happened To The Business Case
There is a graveyard of good ideas in the corporate world. And fields overflowing with the weeds of bad ideas grown from the seeds of false assumptions…
A couple of months ago I experimented with a blog rant on Whatever Happened To Marketing Strategy. That post is still one of my most popular. All despite the fact that I did no keyword research. I didn’t base it off a recent study. It wasn’t inspired by anything other than the main challenges of my peers across the diverse world of corporate B2B Marketing. Well this is another one of those posts…
The Future of B2B Marketing: It’s Social
The Future's So Bright
I received a question on twitter yesterday from Billy Mitchell, Senior Creative Director at the MLT Creative agency: he asked me “What is the future of B2B Marketing?”
This got me to thinking. I’ve already published my B2B Marketing predictions for 2011 and while I think I captured a good mix of new and traditional issues, I realized that one thing was missing: a common theme. And so this led me to the conclusion that the broader future of B2B Marketing is Social! But what does that mean…?
Confessions Of A B2B Marketer
Just in case you are wondering, I am not going to start spilling crazy secrets that might put my job in jeopardy. I wish I knew all the secrets so I could transform the world of B2B Marketing forever with a tell-all book. What I do know is that B2B Marketers have a ton of options today.
But which ones are really working to drive our strategy and our business forward? In this post, I will offer a preview of the thoughts I will deliver during the Focus Interactive Summit on Progressive B2B Marketing. Here is a copy of the presentation Confessions of a B2B Marketer as well.
A B2B Marketing Manifesto?
The folks at Velocity Partners think that this is a great (and a scary) time to be a B2B marketer. So they’ve written a manifesto (reg. required) to prove it. The eBook offers a call to action for all B2B marketers to take a different path from the traditional “tried and true” marketing practices of old. The manifesto also makes a “plea for ambition.”
Setting aside the common discussions about tactics and channels like social media, the web, or email, they claim that the new age of B2B marketing is about a whole new mindset because we live in a new world of buyer behaviors with completely new ways to address them.
B2B Marketing Predictions For 2011
Whenever I start to see Thanksgiving turkeys flying out of the grocery store and Black Friday ads start to appear, I know it’s that time of year to prognosticate. So here is my list of B2B Marketing Insider predictions for 2011.
2010 was the year social media moved from cutting edge to mainstream (right?). And what a wild ride it has been. While some have predicted the consolidation of Twitter and Facebook or the demise of Foursquare, I am sticking to the practical topics most B2B Marketers I know are talking about:
