B2bmarketinginsider.com Content Audit

Content Marketing is hot! And while it has always been one of the ways businesses have tried to reach buyers, the emergence of digital, social and mobile platforms has produced an explosion of content. This has caused a fundamental change in the relationship between buyers and the B2B marketing and sales efforts competing for buyer attention.

Why does marketing innovation fail? With all the changes in the content and consumer landscape brought on by digital, social and mobile technology, you would think that innovation in marketing is a foregone conclusion. Marketing innovation fails at most companies simply because it isn't funded as part of a formal approach to testing new ideas.

lf we're going to focus on content marketing basics and deliver the kind of content our customers are looking for, then sooner or later we have to ask: is video an opportunity for marketers? I think visual content will play a much more prominent role in the future of marketing as more and more of us look for quick, consumable chunks of content.

Most people think marketing is the same thing as advertising. To me, it has always been about helping the buyer on their journey through customer-focused communication. Now social media networks and mobile internet access are making content the hot new thing in marketing. Content our customers want.

What is the biggest challenge in B2B Content Marketing? Creating content that our customers actually want to consume. That's one of the key findings of a report from the CMO Council on B2B Content Marketing. In partnership with the Netline Corporation, the CMO Council surveyed 400 B2B buyers and content seekers around the world.

The main finding from a survey of senior marketing executives conducted by Forrester and the Business Marketing Association was that there has never been a better time to be a CMO at business-to-business organizations. Two years ago, I predicted that changes brought on by digital, social and mobile technologies had placed the customer firmly at the center of marketing strategy.

Have you ever faced the Marketing Bridge of Death? You work on an important project with a motivated and talented team. You work towards a clearly defined goal with every ounce of knowledge and effort and teamwork you can muster. You stay up all night preparing for your "big reveal" - the final presentation to the executive team.

Well the year is half gone and we're all busy doing our 1st-half performance reviews, right? I know I am! And here at the B2B Marketing Insider site, I try to do the same. I look to figure out what articles drove the highest level of reach to the business and marketing audience.

Two weeks ago I took some time off from work. I was not on vacation. In fact, it was one of the hardest weeks of work of my whole life. We settled on a new house and it needs some pretty major renovations before my family can move in.

In marketing, we are always challenged with the question: how to generate more leads for the business. When you ask marketing leaders about their biggest challenges, demand generation is almost always at the top of the list.

The roles of the CMO and the CIO are evolving. We know this. Of this change, it is more critical that they both evolve into something with a common purpose, than the change in role itself. Big Data just might be the big idea that hastens the alignment of this purpose, but it won't, itself, deliver it.

Traditional forms of B2B Marketing are no longer enough in today's digital world. Our customers are looking for valuable and helpful information, not hype. Many B2B Marketers are becoming publishers and using the fine art of storytelling to attract and retain customers.

If you have read anything on this site, you know my main objective is to be helpful. As a result, I have created content that I think will help my audience. There are a bunch of slideshare decks you can use in your business, top Marketing Conferences, my favorite Marketing Quotes, Marketing Books and Blogs To Read and so much more.

For the third week in a row, I find myself at another amazing marketing conference. This time, it's the Social Media Strategies Summit (#SMSsummit) in New York City where hundreds of social-minded digital marketers are looking to learn top tips and tricks for how to be more effective with social media marketing.

I have covered Mary Meeker's Internet Trends charts for a couple of years, starting in 2010 when she talked about the commercial impact of the developing world getting on the internet. Mary claimed that Mobile accessibility was driving rapid changes in the way we advertise, sell and innovate.

According to the latest research from IDC, the amount of information we are all creating and sharing has grown 9 times in the last 5 years. The latest research from the Content Marketing Institute showed us that everyone is creating content and yet only about a third of us have a document content strategy.

Two years ago I wrote that Change is Coming To B2B Marketing. I predicted that changes brought on by digital, social and mobile technologies had placed the customer firmly at the center of marketing strategy. And it was straining traditional marketing strategy.

This week I am joining hundreds of B2B Marketing colleagues at the annual conference for the Business Marketing Association. Labeled "Blaze" this event is one of the largest global B2B Marketing event, bringing in more than 800 B2B Marketing professionals from 300+ companies and dozens of countries around the world.

What is the future of Marketing Innovation? I think we'll see more customer-centric CMOs. We'll see more human brands, interacting with their customers in a more personal. Businesses will utilize Big Data Marketing and the power of all the digital information to create more personalized customer experiences.

Talk about Big Data! Did you know there are already almost twice as many "things" connected on the internet than people? And that number is projected to rise to 50 Billion connected devices by 2020. This phenomenon is called the "internet of things," "Machine-to-Machine" or " M2M," communications.

In a recent conference, I was asked my opinion on what is the biggest opportunity in B2B Content Marketing? Without hesitation, I answered " Slideshare." With more than 50 Million visitors per month and more than 100 million pageviews, slideshare is one of the top websites in the world and should be a key focus of any B2B content marketing program.

Looking into a heavy topic today: Big Data for Marketing. "Heavy" because it's sorta philosophical. I think Big Data for Marketing is more about the questions than the answers. More about the insights than the technology. The opportunity lies in defining how Big Data can help you better reach your customers with your messages in a way that gets them to act.

In response to my post defining social selling, I realized that I needed to take a step back and define "What is a social business?" There is a lot of talk about the social business and too often it involves a discussion of social tools and channels.

Social selling is a hot buzzword being thrown around today. What is social selling and how do tomorrow's top sales people use social selling to become top performers? Social selling is not just about starting the sales process with social tools like Linkedin, Facebook or Twitter.

"Through the ages, technology and media...has dramatically influenced the way we communicate and tell stories." This was one of the main points on "the art of storytelling" presented by Julie Roehm, Chief Storyteller at SAP at the Inbound Marketing Summit on April 3, 2013.