Sunday, 28 February 2021

Weekend Favs February 27

Weekend Favs February 27 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

I don’t go into depth about the finds, but encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one that I took out there on the road.

  • GPT-3 Demo– GPT-3 is the world’s most sophisticated natural language technology. Discover how companies are implementing the OpenAI GPT-3 API to power new use cases.
  • AddEvent -Add to Calendar and event tools for websites and newsletters. Event with RSVP. Use in email campaigns, MailChimp, Marketo. Used by Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, HubSpot.
  • Type Studio – Type Studio translates your videos into many different languages. The video translation runs online in your browser with over 240 translation possibilities.

These are my weekend favs, I would love to hear about some of yours – Tweet me @ducttape



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Saturday, 27 February 2021

9 Smart Apps to Stay Connected with Your Team and Coworkers

9 Smart Apps to Stay Connected with Your Team and Coworkers written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in July 2017 and has been revamped and updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

There’s been a massive transition to remote work in the last few years — especially in the last 12 months. The quick shift from in-person to virtual has pushed us to learn how to connect with our team and coworkers online.

Whether you’re in the office or online, effective communication is the key component to working together successfully. If you don’t communicate, how do you resolve problems and achieve your goals? 

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” – Helen Keller

Luckily for us, today there are so many applications that can help you optimize your team’s communication, workflow, project management, and more.

In this article, you’ll find 9 smart tools and apps to help you stay in touch with and work effectively with your team, no matter where they are.

1. Zoom

zoom dashboard

It’s safe to say that virtual meetings aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. The beauty of a virtual meeting is that you can join from essentially anywhere in the world – as long as there’s an internet connection.

Zoom takes the cake for being one of the best group meeting apps. Zoom is incredibly easy to use, has high-quality video, integrates with tons of other apps, and can record your sessions for anyone who wasn’t able to make the meeting. 

Not only is Zoom great for meetings, but it also has other solutions like Zoom Video webinars, Zoom Room, and Zoom Phone.

For solopreneurs and small businesses just starting out, Zoom has a forever-free plan with unlimited one-on-one meetings. There are three levels of paid plans: Pro, Business, and Zoom United Business.

If you haven’t already, give Zoom a try for your next meeting.

2. Slack

Slack is one of the best apps for communication and collaboration. As their tagline says: Where Work Happens.

Slack is a fit for businesses of any size. There are channels that you can create to keep your work organized. You can create a private channel for a particular project or team, as well as a public channel for everyone to view. Slack also allows you to send direct messages to a group or a particular person. Not only can you use Slack for your business, but you can create shared channels to communicate with other vendors or businesses that you work with who also use Slack.

It isn’t just a messaging platform, it also supports voice and video calls. You can share your files, images, folders, and documents with anyone at any time from anywhere. Slack has these three plans: Free, Standard, Plus, and Enterprise Grid. 

Try Slack to make communication easy and improve your team productivity.

3. Asana

Asana is a great app for collaboration and productivity. It has a clear interface, it’s easy to understand, and the functions are simple.

It allows you to create a team, track the team, and manage your important projects. You can see the status of any ongoing project without sending an email.

You can easily create tasks and assign one to a team member. You can use their Free basic version. With a Free account, you’ll get a basic dashboard where you can add up to 15 team members, create unlimited tasks, projects, and conversations.

Try Asana. You’ll love its simplicity and how it creates transparency among your team.

4. Calendly

Calendly is an automated scheduling software built to help you eliminate the back and forth of setting up any meeting of any kind. There are multiple types of meetings that Calendly works with like one-on-one meetings, round-robin scheduling, group meetings, and collective meetings.

The software integrates with many other apps and can connect with up to six of your calendars to automatically check availability and help you connect with your team, prospects, and clients.

Calendly has three pricing plans: Basic (always free), Premium, Pro.

Try Calendly to streamline your meeting scheduling process within your organization or with your clients. 

5. Harvest

Harvest is a modern time tracking tool that can help businesses of any kind track time. From consultancies to internal departments, you can plan and estimate projects with real data, manage your team’s capacity and workflow, and invoice seamlessly.

The platform is simple to use. You can track time from your desktop or mobile and integrate time tracking into your existing workflow. Harvest integrates with some of the great tools on this list like Asana and Slack.

There’s also a large selection of visual dashboards you can create that helps you keep your projects moving smoothly.

Try Harvest to make the most out of your time.

6. Google Meet

If your business is using Google Workspace, Google Meet is a great app that’s already integrated that you can use for secure video meetings for businesses of all sizes.

Google Meet takes the headaches out of joining a video call at work. All you have to do is just set up a meeting and share a link. There’s no worrying about whether teammates, clients, or customers have the right accounts or plug-ins. It makes multi-person video calls a breeze.

You can also join meetings directly from a Calendar event, an email, or directly from Gmail.

Work easier and give Google Meet a try.

7. Monday

Are you a busy team? Are you managing multiple clients?

Monday can help you with managing teams, clients, freelancers, and important projects. 

It will make it easy to track project status, prioritize tasks, add updates on projects, communicate with team members, create automations to streamline your processes, build visual dashboards, and so much more.

You can easily track who’s working on which task (or project) and assign the task to someone on your team. It also allows you to integrate your favorite apps and tools.

Try Monday and it will keep your team organized.

8. LastPass

LastPass homepage

LastPass makes sharing and managing passwords across team members easy. LastPass offers secure password storage giving employees their own vault for storing every app and web login they use. It allows you to easily share logins while keeping your data safe and revoke access if needed.

LastPass has multiple solutions and plans to choose from. There are two plans for businesses – the Teams or Enterprise. This is great for businesses managing multiple users. There are also two personal plans you can choose from – Free or Premium.

If you want smart password storage, convenient password sharing, and an easy-to-manage dashboard, give LastPass a try.

9. Basecamp

Basecamp homepage

Basecamp is a project management and communication app that helps you to organize your projects and teams in one place.

It allows you to break a project into multiple portions and assign it to your team members. The 6 core tools it provides are:

  • Group Chat: start a quick chat (or group chat) with your team.
  • Message Boards: Post important announcements, updates, and ideas.
  • To-dos: Make a list of work or tasks and track it.
  • Schedule: For posting deadlines and milestones.
  • Automatic Check-ins: Get insights from your team.
  • Docs & Files: Team members can access the files, documents, and folders.

Basecamp offers a free account for verified teachers and students. For businesses, it’s $99 per month. They also have a 30-day free trial.

Try Basecamp and organize everything you need in one place.

Thanks for reading this post! Now it’s your turn – which one is your favorite app? How do you communicate with your team? Let me know in the comments.



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Friday, 26 February 2021

Making Brands More Human

Making Brands More Human written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Jacqueline Lieberman

Headshot of Jacqueline Lieberman who was a guest on the Duct Tape Marketing PodcastIn this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Jacqueline Lieberman. Jacqueline is the former Managing Partner and the Head of Strategy Story Worldwide and current founder of BrandCrudo.

Questions I ask Jacqueline Lieberman:

  • One of the things you’re talking about often is making brands more human and putting purpose into practice – can you talk about taking it beyond the tagline?
  • Some companies brand themselves in a way that has nothing to do with their product – like insurance companies for example. Is creating a brand personality an effective approach?
  • How do brands address the fact that there are so many channels to reach consumers that are in a lot of ways are out of their full control?
  • What’s generally going on when a business calls in an outside brand strategist, what’s your process, and then what do you do to try to turn the ship?
  • What role does internal politics play in bigger companies when it comes to branding?
  • How often do you get the chance to go deeper than marketing?
  • Do you have any examples where typical gaps happen and there’s no internal communication that is creating a bad experience?
  • 2021 is still going to be a year where people are reeling from 2020. Is there a message of trends, behaviors, or things that people need to be aware of?

More About Jacqueline Lieberman:

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!

 



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How to Fully Optimize Your Google My Business Listing

How to Fully Optimize Your Google My Business Listing written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Sherry Bonelli

Headshot of Sherry Bonelli who is a guest on the Duct Tape Marketing PodcastIn this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Sherry Bonelli. Sherry is the owner of Early Bird Digital Marketing. She writes on all things SEO for Search Engine Land, MOZ, Search Engine Journal, SEMrush, BrightLocal, SCORE, and others.

Questions I ask Sherry Bonelli:

  • Does Google My Business have any value for national brands that don’t have a local office?
  • Who is Google My Business really meant for and who needs to have it?
  • How do I get the most out of my Google My Business Listing?
  • In most cases, there are only three listings that show up in search. How do I get my listing to show up in that three-pack?
  • Let’s say I’m a business with a physical location, but I want to let everybody know that I can travel 25 miles to come to service you (for example, a waterproofing or plumbing company) – do I want a service area business, or do I want to use the local business address?
  • From an SEO standpoint, is there a better approach to show up in more map listings for places like the suburbs?
  • How much review spam is Google trying to fight?
  • What’s the best way to respond to a negative review? Should you respond?
  • What do we do about reviews that come from people who aren’t really customers – maybe they’re a competitor or someone who has too much time on their hands?
  • What’s the best reach Google My Business support right now?
  • What do you know about any new features coming in the future for Google My Business?

More About Sherry Bonelli:

 

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!

 



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B2B Marketing News: Trust Tops Brand Marketer Study, Top Email Engagement Day Shifts, YouTube’s New Comparative Data, & Ad Prices Rise

2021 February 26 ANA MediaPost Chart

2021 February 26 ANA MediaPost Chart Brand marketers stick to trust-building strategies forged in 2020's fires, study finds 91 percent of brand marketers will keep focusing on the strategies aimed at building trust they developed in 2020 as a response to the pandemic, according to recently-released survey data of interest to digital marketers. Marketing Dive Ad Prices Forecast To Inflate 3% This Year Digital display ad price inflation for 2021 is expected to be 3.4 percent, with digital video slightly higher at 3.6 percent, while this year is expected to hold some recovery from the impact of the pandemic in 2020, according to newly-released forecast data. MediaPost In Engagement Shift, Friday Proves Top Day for Email Response Rates in 2020 With an 18.9 percent click-to-open (CTO) rate, marketing emails sent on Friday lead the way when it comes to engagement levels, according to recently-released survey data, with Saturday coming in as having the lowest engagement rates. MarketingCharts YouTube Adds New Comparative Data Tools in YouTube Studio, and Info on Other Channels Your Audience Watches Google's YouTube platform has launched new features that allow digital marketers to compare the performance of their video content from between 24 hours up to 28 days, offering a new glimpse into a variety of performance metrics, the video giant recently announced. Social Media Today Nielsen Launches Identity Sync, New Global Attribution System Nielsen has rolled out a new global attribution system, Identity Sync, the firm's identity-backed solution to the loss of cookie-based tracking systems, the firm recently announced. MediaPost LinkedIn's Developing a New Freelance Marketplace Platform to Facilitate New Opportunities LinkedIn has been testing features which could expand on the platform's existing ProFinder tool, adding enhanced professional freelancer connection functionality, according to an industry report. Social Media Today 2021 February 26 Statistics Image How IT Buyers' Researching Behaviors Changed in 2020 More than 54 percent of information technology buyers spent more time researching solutions during the second half of 2020, with some 24 percent reporting research time staying flat — two of several findings of interest to digital marketers in recently-released survey data. MarketingProfs 3 Steps to Better Virtual Meetings A clear definition of the behaviors an organization is trying to encourage will help forge more productive virtual meetings, as will finding and overcoming behavioral blockers, according to The Harvard Business Review, which recently took a look at how to make today's online meetings more collaborative and engaging. Harvard Business Review The Most Important Email Marketing Optimizations [Survey] 43 percent of marketers consider personalization the top characteristic to improve when it comes to email optimization, followed by data quality at 39 percent and email design at 34 percent, according to recently-released survey data. MarketingProfs ANA Finds Half Of Ad Execs Have No Plans To Travel/Attend In-Person Events In 2021 Just 2.5 percent of advertising executives have said that they’re willing to fly for business in 2021, according to newly-released Association of National Advertisers (ANA) survey data of interest to online marketers. MediaPost ON THE LIGHTER SIDE: 2021 February 26 Marketoonist Comic A lighthearted look at “finding your brand purpose” by Marketoonist Tom Fishburne — Marketoonist YouTube Reveals 2020 US Bumper Ads Leaderboard of Top 6-Second Ads — Adweek TOPRANK MARKETING & CLIENTS IN THE NEWS:
  • Lee Odden — What’s Trending: Revamping Content Marketing — LinkedIn (client)
  • LinkedIn / TopRank Marketing — Debunking Full-Funnel Myths that Send Marketing Strategies Off Course — LinkedIn (client)
  • Joshua Nite — What Should Be Your First Steps When Starting a Business? Consider These 10 Tips — Small Business Trends
  • Lee Odden — 50 Quotes That Will Change The Way You Do SEO — SERPed
Have you found your own key B2B marketing story from the past week of industry news? Please let us know in the comments below. Thanks for joining us for the weekly TopRank Marketing B2B marketing news, and we hope that you will return next Friday for more of the most relevant B2B and digital marketing industry news. In the meantime, you can follow us at @toprank on Twitter for even more timely daily news.

The post B2B Marketing News: Trust Tops Brand Marketer Study, Top Email Engagement Day Shifts, YouTube’s New Comparative Data, & Ad Prices Rise appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®.



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Thursday, 25 February 2021

Find, Engage and Close: Demandbase’s Jon Miller on Recasting the B2B Marketing Automation Journey #B2BMX

Smiling bearded businessman holding production slate image.

Smiling bearded businessman holding production slate image. How can B2B marketers recast the marketing automation journey to meet today's challenges and be ready for those to come? Jon Miller, chief marketing officer at Demandbase, recently presented a session at the 2021 B2B Marketing Exchange Experience virtual conference, and explored new account-based marketing best practices. Although this pandemic year at #B2BMX won’t see B2B marketers gathered in the event’s usual sunny Scottsdale, Arizona location, many new attendee opportunities were on tap virtually. Refresh, renew, remix has been the conference’s theme this year, and to help ease the lack of physical networking, #B2BMX included a Spotify music playlist, live music performances, and even various charitable elements. Jon began by looking back at his journey starting Marketo — acquired by Adobe in 2018 for $4.75 billion — nearly 15 years ago, when marketers had a need to capture and manage online leads, a need that the company’s service met, allowing marketers to communicate and send leads to the appropriate departments. Marketo’s efforts during this era helped marketing build credibility and respect, Jon noted, as marketers became a part of their firms’ revenue engines. Today however, the world is changing and marketing automation tools aren’t necessarily keeping pace. We’ve reached the end of the era of traditional demand generation, which has become shipwrecked, Jon explained. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other global data protection efforts have made it more challenging for marketers to send emails in the way they were once able to, while in some instances sales teams are sending greater amounts of email now than marketers. “Marketers lost the keys to being the sole owners of communications,” Jon said, and noted that today’s larger buying committees also present challenges when trying to hold one-on-one interactions. This is where marketing can play a larger role, he noted. Firms today are often generating more revenue after the sale in the form of recurring revenue and a focus on expansion, Jon observed. There’s a strong bias in marketing automation tools against net-new business, while at the same time increasing revenue is being generated after the sale, which led Jon to share some of the limitations of traditional lead-based approaches:
  • It doesn’t make sense for marketers to be looking at leads while salespeople look at accounts
  • Buyers have become harder than ever to reach, and have a greater reluctance to filling out forms than ever before
  • Greater quantities of research that once took place on a business’ website are now done elsewhere, making the tools that track on-site activities less effective
  • Buyer intent signals are hidden to traditional marketing automation software, as the digital body language has moved to third-party sites
Jon also pointed out a number of other factors that have contributed to the shipwreck that traditional demand generation has found itself in, including:
  • Missed pipeline goals
  • Poor alignment between marketing and sales
  • Obstacles to moving upmarket
  • Sluggish expansion revenue
  • Inefficient complexity and wasted time
Jon then explored how B2B marketers can move from this to a dynamic process where sales and marketing work as a team, each able to access relevant information from today’s more complex buyer journey. Leaving behind the traditional marketing technology built more than a decade ago is a key step, Jon noted. Jon then asked, “So what’s next, and how do we move forward?”

Modern Sales & Marketing Alignment: Find, Engage, and Close

1 — Finding The Most Valuable Accounts

The first step in adapting to the new realities of B2B marketing and sales alignment is to find, by focusing efforts on locating the most valuable accounts, Jon explained. “When it comes to finding target accounts, one size does not fit all,” Jon said, and marketers should do deep-dive one-to-one level account research, using highly-customized programs for each major strategic account — a process that is often a significant investment. Another segment, one-to-few, focuses on moderately personalized deep cluster research — using micro-clusters of accounts focused on similar business issues, Jon explained. An additional level with a broader scope is the one-to-many level, which is where many account-based programs exist, with a basic level of light personalization and much less investment per account, Jon noted. The one-to-many level often benefits from greater use of technology such as intent data, making it more scalable. The broadest category of all is the targeted demand generation segment, Jon explained, usually using traditional marketing tactics to go after specific accounts. When considering which of these four levels to use for your business, the key is to find which one is truly the best fit for your selling style, Jon noted, and encouraged organizations to get creative and use custom level names such as tiers. Jon urged businesses to find their entitlements — the contract of how marketing and sales agree to treat each account and what each department will do — in order to learn how many accounts your organization can handle. Entitlements can be evergreen — offering continuing qualities that persist — or of the triggered and in-market variety, such as when an account is in an active buying process or has a new corporate executive, Jon explained. Businesses often place greater focus on these triggered entitlements. The process of finding your firm’s entitlements is a great way to bring sales and marketing teams together, Jon noted. Once the number of entitlements have been determined and you know how many accounts you can have, you can begin to use science and technology to focus on the key ones, and Jon shared the F.I.R.E. acronym:
  • (F)it — how close is this account to your ideal customer profile
  • (I)ntent — the interest accounts have in your products or those of your competitors
  • (R)elationship — is this an account your salespeople are already talking with
  • (E)ngagement — is this account coming to you and spending time on your website or attending your firm’s events
Combined, these form what Jon refers to as pipeline prediction, used to determine which accounts should be moved up to the next level, and find the accounts that really matter. [bctt tweet="“When it comes to finding target accounts, one size does not fit all.” — Jon Miller @jonmiller" username="toprank"]

2 — Engaging Identified Accounts

The second step in utilizing the new realities of B2B marketing and sales alignment is engagement, where the identified accounts are engaged, aligning your interactions with the buyer’s journey, Jon explained. Jon noted how in the past he has likened the use of ABM processes to fishing with spears for the big fish, while demand generation is more like fishing with a net. An overlooked issue when using those ABM spears, however, is that “Getting poked by a spear doesn’t feel very good,” Jon said. Smart ABM processes can overcome the reluctance and pain traditional methods often generate, by understanding where a buyer is on their journey and aligning all interactions appropriately, Jon explained. Jon then shared Gartner’s “Six Buying Jobs,” that all accounts ought to go through, to ensure that everyone on the buying team is working together. Gartner Image It’s important to have content that’s aligned to each of these six buying jobs, Jon noted, and also suggested keeping in mind that buyers don’t travel on their journey in an orderly or linear fashion, instead bouncing around in typically unpredictable and even chaotic directions. In the non-linear buying process Jon suggested using a football field’s yard line grid to determine how close to the scoring or buying point a buyer is, and considering the path that a football takes as it moves in many directions on the playing field. The buyer’s yard-lines tell us where in the journey they are, as well as the likelihood of an imminent score or purchase, Jon noted, and they can also inform our decisions as to which plays or plan of business approach we should execute. Gartner Image Screenshot Businesses should create their own buyer journey definitions, and Jon shared how Demandbase organizes theirs, with:
  • Qualified — ideal customer profiles
  • Awareness — showing awareness and intent for our category, especially on third-party sites
  • Engaged — engaging with our website, events, and programs
  • MQA — Marketing Qualified Account, using intent data and the pipeline prediction process to know whether an account is in-market or in a buying cycle
  • Opportunity
  • Customer — A closed/won opportunity
  • Post-Sale — Adoption and expansion
At this point sales and marketing teams can align their interactions to the buyer’s journey, such as building brand trust early in the journey in the “qualified” stage, to thought leadership in the middle stages, all the way through enhancing the post-sale experience by finding expansion opportunities, Jon noted. The MQA stage is especially well-suited for utilizing a multi-channel approach, Jon suggested, from customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation to ad platforms, direct mail, account-based chat, and sales engagement, among several other channel opportunities. [bctt tweet="“The explosion of digital noise means that traditional marketing channels like ads are becoming less and less effective. What marketers need to think about is, how do I orchestrate multiple channels together?” — Jon Miller @jonmiller" username="toprank"]

3 — Closing As An Orchestrated Team

The third major strategy Jon shared during his insightful and energetic #B2BMX presentation was the closing element, with a focus on working as an orchestrated team and not merely the outdated hand-off of the account baton. How can businesses have sales and marketing work together in a new way? With today’s B2B buyer journey being so complicated, the baton hand-off approach doesn’t work, Jon observed, and encouraged a team approach more like the way a soccer team functions, passing customer engagement back and forth as needed, in a coordinated way. Comprised of three levels, the type of marketing and sales alignment that Jon spoke about can be broken down into:
  1. Aligning data — Assuring that sales and marketing teams are looking at the same data
  2. Sharing insights — Teams proactively alerting each other about relevant insights
  3. Coordinating interactions — Working together as an orchestrated team
[bctt tweet="Marketers need to break free over the next 10 years by radically changing how they work with sales, stopping the baton hand-off model and moving much more of an integrated team. ” — Jon Miller @jonmiller" username="toprank"] Jon then shared a favorite tip, which he called a secret weapon for marketing and sales alignment — account standups. In these deceivingly simple account standup events, every few weeks the marketing and sales account teams meet without any executives or managers present, and talk about what’s happening and strategize. Jon explained that account standups are one of the best and simplest ways to move ahead with quality coordinated ABM strategies and tactics. Jon then shared the TOPO account-based technology stack, with its intent, account, and contact data all the way through to the processes of execution, measurement, infrastructure, and application workflow. TOPO Image Screenshot Jon shared how the execution stage features many channels, which typically won’t all be used but each serve a specific purpose, and the overall chart is helpful for determining where to focus time and energy, he explained. Jon concluded his session by reiterating that account automation tools were built for a different time than the more complicated B2B buying landscape that we face today, which is much better met using the orchestrated methods he dug into during his presentation. It’s time to start thinking about new processes and technologies, especially those in the F.I.R.E. strategy, and to define your business’ entitlements and tiers, Jon urged. Learn more from Jon by watching our Break Free B2B Marketing video interview, and be sure to connect with him on Twitter and LinkedIn. Creating award-winning B2B marketing takes considerable time and effort, which is why many firms choose to work with a top digital marketing agency such as TopRank Marketing. Contact us today and let us know how we can help, as we’ve done for businesses ranging from LinkedIn, Dell and 3M to Adobe, Oracle, monday.com and others.

The post Find, Engage and Close: Demandbase’s Jon Miller on Recasting the B2B Marketing Automation Journey #B2BMX appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®.



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10 Marketing and Communications Leaders to Inspire You in 2021

10 inspiring women in marketing 2021

10 inspiring women in marketing 2021 Even the best of marketers can be challenged in times like those we've all experienced over the past 12 months. But it is those who rise above those challenges that fuel the inspiration we all need to succeed in our industry. On this blog, we've made a point to highlight inspirational marketing voices with lists of top marketers by discipline (B2B marketing, social media marketing, content marketing) and our famous lists of Women Who Rock in Marketing since 2010. Over the past few years, we've tried (not hard enough) to be more inclusive in these lists to represent women and people of color. During Black History month, many brands have made efforts to shine a light on contributions made in the world by individuals the black community. But why should honoring such contributions be limited to one month? For our small part, how we represent marketers of color in the content on our blog, on social networks and in marketing content as well as the influencers we work with has changed significantly over the past few years. It's not enough, but we're continuing to learn and grow our awareness, understanding and action when it comes to the importance of diversity and inclusion. As I reflect on those who inspire me on a daily basis to be more, to be better as a marketer and marketing leader, the following list of women of color stand out. I encourage you to learn more about their backgrounds, achievements and to pay attention to the contributions they are making to the world of marketing and communications in both B2C and B2B. Beverly Jackson Beverly Jackson @BevJack - in/beverlyjackson/ Vice President Global Brand and Consumer Marketing at Twitter With past experience working at The GRAMMY Awards, Yahoo!, MGM Resorts and Activision Blizzard, Beverly now serves as Vice President of Global Brand and Consumer Marketing at Twitter. Beverly is a dynamic, senior marketing executive adept at building, mentoring and managing high performance entertainment and digital marketing teams while establishing long-term strategic relationships to drive revenue. Beverly has extensive agency and in-house experience launching brand extensions and new products, utilizing metrics to analyze growth, developing innovative digital strategies to drive brand loyalty and awareness via social media, mobile and community engagement. We've interviewed Beverly in the past and recognized her several times on our lists of top marketers over the years. She joined Twitter as VP in January 2021. Bozoma Saint John Bozoma Saint John @badassboz - in/bozoma-saint-john/ Chief Marketing Officer at Netflix Boz got her start in marketing at Spike Lee’s advertising agency, Spike DDB. She then went on to manage brands within the PepsiCo beverages portfolio, before becoming Head of Music and Entertainment Marketing at the CPG giant; followed by Head of Global Consumer Marketing at Apple Music & iTunes; then went on to serve as Chief Brand Officer at Uber; before taking on the CMO role for Endeavor (including WME, IMG, UFC, Miss Universe, 160over90 etc). Boz launched a podcast alongside award-winning journalist Katie Couric, “Back to Biz with Katie and Boz,” which explores the ways thought leaders, CEOs and innovators are responding to the societal shifts that have been ushered in by the coronavirus pandemic. Boz’s philanthropic efforts include representing Pencils of Promise as a Global Ambassador to Ghana and serving on the boards of Girls Who Code and Vital Voices. With such contributions, Boz was an easy pick to recognize in our Women Who Rock in Marketing list. She took on the CMO role at Netflix in June 2020. Candace Steele Flippin Dr. Candace Steele Flippin @CSteeleFlippin - in/candacesteeleflippin/ Senior Vice President and Chief Communications Officer at Acuity Brands Candace has 20+ years serving B2B and B2C domestic and international companies in the financial services, medical device, biopharmaceuticals and pharmaceuticals industries before taking on the role as SVP and Chief Communications Officer at Acuity Brands. Candace is a globally recognized multigenerational workplace scholar, TEDx speaker, industry thought leader and author that specializes in development and implementation of Corporate Communication and Public Relations strategies that support business growth, navigate change and mitigate crises. She has a Doctorate in Management from and is also a Research Fellow at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. Candace took on the SVP role at Acuity Brands in November 2020. Dara Treseder Dara Treseder @daratreseder - in/daratreseder/ SVP, Head of Global Marketing & Communications at Peloton Interactive A veteran Chief Marketing Officer, Dara was previously the CMO of Carbon and the CMO of GE Business Innovations & GE Ventures. Earlier in her career, she led marketing and growth efforts at Apple and Goldman Sachs. A champion of public health, women's issues, and diversity initiatives, Dara is the Vice Chair of the board of the Public Health Institute (PHI). Dara also serves on the board of PG&E. Dara graduated cum laude from Harvard University with highest honors in field and holds an MBA from Stanford University. We were happy to recognize Dara in our 10 year anniversary list of women who rock in marketing. She joined Peleton as SVP and Head of Global Marketing and Communications in August 2020. Deirdre Findlay Deirdre Findlay @deirdre_findlay - in/deirdre-findlay/ Global Chief Marketing Officer & Consumer Revenue at Condé Nast  As a former Google, Stitch Fix and eBay marketing executive, Deirdre is a passionate marketer with progressive experience in integrated marketing – brand, product, customer relationship marketing, loyalty, offline and online direct marketing, business to consumer, and business to business. Deirdre serves on the boards at Sonos, Olaplex and Effie Worldwide and has an MBA from Dartmouth. She joined Condé Nast as CMO in January 2020. Gail Moody-Byrd Gail Moody-Byrd @gailmoody - in/gailmoodybyrd/ Chief Marketing Officer at Noodle.ai Gail's experience at McKinsey & Company, The World Bank, Levi Strauss, and over 10 years at SAP lead her to the CMO role at Noodle.ai. There, she is responsible for delivering awesome brand, demand, digital marketing, events, sales enablement, product marketing and AR/PR by motivating her team to let the world know how great a company Noodle.ai is. An MBA graduate of Harvard Business School, Gail serves on the Board of Directors at Juma Ventures. focused on empowering low-income youth to transcend challenging circumstances, fulfill their inherent potential, and positively impact their communities. Gail appeared in our 2020 list of Women Who Rock in Marketing. She joined Noodle.ai as CMO in November 2018. Jeanine Liburd Jeanine Liburd @JeanineLiburd - in/jeanine-liburd/ Chief Social Impact and Communications Officer at BET Networks Previously serving as VP Communications at MTV, SVP of Corporate Communications at Viacom and Chief Marketing & Communications Officer at BET Networks, Jeanine is now Chief Social Impact and Communications Officer at BET Networks where her responsibilities include leading and elevating a portfolio of multi-platform social change initiatives that empower BET Networks' audiences to have an impact on the critical issues facing the black community today. Her current role also focuses on utilizing content as a catalyst to create awareness and build action oriented impact campaigns globally. She also oversees strategic partnerships and community engagement at the local and national levels. Jeanine has been recognized in our annual list as a Women Who Rocks in Marketing. She has been in her current position at BET Networks since September 2019. Leah Frazier Leah Frazier @TheLeahFrazier - in/theleahfrazier/ President at Think Three Media Leah is an experienced Publicist, Content and Influencer Marketing Consultant with a demonstrated history of working with brands in the fashion, apparel, beauty and lifestyle industries. As a 2X Emmy Award-Winner, Best Selling Author, TEDx Speaker, and publisher of a top 30 Podcast In Marketing, she is skilled in Media Outreach and Relations, Entrepreneurship, Public Relations, Influencer Campaigns, Strategic Planning, and Marketing Strategy. She is also a strong business development professional with a Juris Doctor (J.D.) focused in Law from Texas Wesleyan University School of Law. Leah has been president of Think Three Media since June 2016. Lisa Maxwell Lisa Maxwell @LisaMaxwe11 - in/itslisamaxwell/ Vice President Marketing, Data & Services at Mastercard Lisa Maxwell has a proven track record of reinventing and reinvigorating brands through business turnarounds and creating business reinventions grounded in consumer insights. Lisa orchestrated the successful turnaround, from negative to sustainable double digit growth, on recognizable brands like Nicorette, NicoDerm CQ, Abreva and K-Y brand. She has created several innovating and long lasting omni-channel campaigns that included TV, public relations, electronic consumer relationship marketing (ECRM), social media, digital and shopper marketing. In her current role at Mastercard, she develops integrated campaigns that highlight Mastercard Data & Services solutions across Loyalty & Engagement and Advisor offerings. Lisa is a recipient of the 2012 Tribute to Women in Industry (TWIN) Award, an alumnae W.O.M.E.N. in America and a Committee of 200 Scholar. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of GrassROOTS Community Foundation. Lisa was promoted to her VP of Marketing role at Mastercard in April 2020. Ty Heath Tyrona (Ty) Heath @tyrona - in/tyronaheath/ Director, Market Engagement, The B2B Institute at LinkedIn With more than 17 years of experience in digital and product marketing education at Google Inc, consulting within IBM as a social business manager and leading a B2B agency consulting practice, Ty now serves as the Global Lead for the B2B Institute @ LinkedIn where she delivers thought leadership to help marketers stay on top of the latest in B2B marketing strategy through research, teaching and writing about B2B marketing, social selling as well as leadership, diversity and inclusion. Ty is also the former President of LinkedIn's Black Inclusion Group (BIG), Co-Founder of LinkedIn's annual TransformHER conferences, author of "Marketers of Tomorrow: A Step by Step Toolkit for Inbound Marketing" and a two time Olympic Trials qualifier in track and field. Ty has made numerous appearances on our blog through interviews, covering her industry presentations and recognition on our lists of Women Who Rock in Marketing. She joined the B2B Institute at LinkedIn in September 2020. (LinkedIn is a client of TopRank Marketing) I am fortunate to call several of these top marketers friends and I appreciate their direct and indirect influence on my efforts to be a better marketer myself. Above all, I hope that this list provides both recognition for their contributions as well as inspiration to our readers when it comes to marketing leadership, best practices and achievement. Who would you add to this list? Please share in the comments or post a reply to us on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.

The post 10 Marketing and Communications Leaders to Inspire You in 2021 appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®.



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Wednesday, 24 February 2021

Helping the Underdogs Rise Through Local SEO with Justin Sturges

Helping the Underdogs Rise Through Local SEO with Justin Sturges written by Sara Nay read more at Duct Tape Marketing

 

 

Agency Spark Podcast with Justin Sturges 

Headshot of Justin Sturges who is a guest on the Agency Spark PodcastThe Agency Spark Podcast, hosted by Sara Nay, is a collection of interviews from thought leaders in the marketing consultancy and agency space. Each episode is designed to spark ideas you can put into practice for your agency today.

In this episode, Sara interviews Justin Sturges. Justin is an award-winning author on the topic of local lead generation and is the go-to guy for local SEO in the Duct Tape Marketing Network. He runs local SEO trainings and provides services to a variety of local service-based businesses across the country.

Questions Sara asks Justin Sturges:

  • What inspired your recent move to Mexico?
  • Did you have any fear in terms of how moving to Mexico would impact your business?
  • How was it transitioning from the corporate world to establishing your own agency?
  • What draws you to working with the ‘underdog’ businesses of the world?
  • What are some examples of different systems, processes, and automations that you’ve put in place that directly relate to local SEO?
  • What’s the first step that someone should take when they’re just getting started with documenting their systems and processes?
  • What should a small business with a somewhat limited budget focus on as their key priorities when it comes to local SEO?
  • What are the most important results that a small, service-based business owner should be focusing on?
  • What do you know now that you wish you would’ve known when you first started your agency in 2001?

Where you can learn more about Justin Sturges:



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Microsoft’s Miri Rodriguez on How B2B Marketers Are Embracing Empathy For Better Customer Storytelling #B2BMX

Happy woman embracing herself image

Happy woman embracing herself image How do B2B marketers who fully embrace empathy build stronger relationships? Miri Rodriguez, storyteller and internship program head at Microsoft, recently presented the opening keynote at the 2021 B2B Marketing Exchange Experience virtual conference, and asked this important question. Although this pandemic year at #B2BMX won’t see B2B marketers gathered in the event’s usual sunny Scottsdale, Arizona location, plenty of new attendee opportunities were on tap virtually. Refresh, renew, remix has been the conference’s theme this year, and to help ease the lack of physical networking #B2BMX included a Spotify music playlist, live music performances, and even various charitable elements. Miri began by looking back at the history of empathy in B2B marketing, to when empathy was new to the B2B space, especially the practice of considering it a leading component of the digital experience.

Storytelling Uses Empathy to Move Past Numbers and Facts

Storytelling is not just the telling of stories, Miri explained, it’s also a design approach to stories that work on the human-to-human level of business marketing. Telling stories in such compelling and connected ways that your messages are then also easily and willingly transmitted to your audience’s customers is a goal of B2B marketing that infuses genuine empathy, Miri said, and then began exploring empathy’s important role in brand storytelling. Miri explained how in her role at Microsoft she began an examination of empathy by looking at what storytelling is not, asking industry brand professionals at many different levels for their insight. Storytelling isn’t so much information, data, facts, or numbers, but the emotional transfer of that information using memorable characters, plots, and conclusions which all foster empathy, she noted. Miri Rodriguez image. The emotional transaction is the glue that binds customers to a brand’s message, making them feel connected at the most human level, Miri explained, and mentioned LinkedIn’s January 2020 report which found that empathy was the platform's top 2019 theme — one that offers strength to both brands and customers. “Brands want to transact with people who are showing high levels of empathy,” Miri noted. [bctt tweet="“Brands want to transact with people who are showing high levels of empathy.” — Miri Rodriguez @MiriRod #B2BMX" username="toprank"] Since the pandemic began, empathy has only increased in its importance for B2B brands, and increasingly employees want to work for brands that include high levels of empathy, she noted. How can you begin leading with empathy? Miri mentioned the oft-used Bill Gates “content is king” adage as a jumping off point for all that exists beyond content for today’s B2B marketers seeking to infuse greater empathy in their brand storytelling efforts. One key is finding a universal truth, especially when it’s an actionable emotion that your brand lives by, and Miri suggested that these types of truths often derive from a brand’s mission statement.

What Feeling Is Your Brand Story Sparking?

During her #B2BMX opening keynote Miri also put out the question, “What feeling is my brand story seeking to spark?” Sometimes examining or even rethinking a brand’s mission can help B2B marketers find these key feelings, she suggested. In her example from Microsoft, Miri shared how the firm came up with empowerment as its new mission several years back — a feeling that CEO Satya Nadella and the organization have embraced in many ways since. Miri then asked, “Is your brand leading with a feeling that they can share with their customers?” She urged B2B marketers to make brand stories easy to consume, which in turn will make them convenient for customers to pass on to their own associates and customers. Miri also explored cognitive empathy, and the importance of seeing your customer first and foremost as a human. She urged B2B marketers to always keep in mind that there is a human on the other side of the screen, the other side of every email, in a physical room, or wherever you communicate with a customer. It’s important for B2B marketers to allow themselves to recognize the type of emotional empathy that reaches out and makes connections on a more human level, and Miri shared how marketers can benefit when they retrain their brain to think about your humans instead of your customers. Having conversations that go beyond the mere facts about a product or service and its features, to instead form deeper and more empathetic connections, will build the kind of trust that makes business transaction elements more meaningful, Miri observed. She also looked at the type of compassionate empathy that can begin when B2B marketers take the time to assess themselves introspectively, examining personal vulnerabilities. Empathize by being cognizant of the experiences your customers are going through, and recognize that especially those in the GenZ and millennial demographics frequently make connections that are more on the emotional side with the brands they do business with, Miri noted, and explained that these younger customers also aren’t necessarily buying a product merely for the product alone. Often they are looking at a brand’s mission before deciding to do business with them, and some will even refuse to work with a brand that defaults to having no public mission or stance on social and other important issues, she said.

Seeing The Humans Behind The Brand

Miri spoke about the importance of allowing B2B customers to see the humans behind the brand, and urged marketers to pay attention to who they’re delivering a B2B brand’s story to, being mindful of the fact that an audience isn’t just your customer in B2B, but also the audiences of those customers. Miri then asked several key questions:
  • Why should your end-user care about your story?
  • What insight does your content include?
  • Does it educate and otherwise help your customers, beyond simply helping with a particular feature of a product or service?
For every B2B marketing story you set out to tell, Miri recommends first asking yourself who the story is dedicated to, how it can help them, and how it will hopefully make them feel, especially when the story is tied in to one of your brand’s universal truths. Showing the origin of your brand’s story is important, Miri said, as is reminding your customer why your brand is important to them. An ideation phase includes finding the solutions your customers want in the formats they prefer, and Miri shared an example from Microsoft in which customers pointed out that they preferred blog content written not so much by marketers but by people directly involved a particular area of expertise. Low-cost and low-effort story prototyping can also be a great way to test a variety of creative concepts, Miri noted, before moving on to the testing and implementation stages.

Making Genuine Audience Connections That Evoke Emotion

Are your brand storytelling efforts evoking the type of emotion you want to foster with your content? Miri explained that reach and engagement are both helpful in determining which efforts are making genuine connections with your audience. Miri concluded her insightful and energetic #B2BMX keynote presentation by reinforcing the notion that genuine B2B brand stories always contain a character, plot, story, and conclusion, and that powerful storytelling only happens in the B2B space when marketers tell their stories for their audiences, and not to them — ideally with empathy, creativity, authenticity, and heart. Empathy in B2B marketing is a topic near and dear to our team at TopRank Marketing, and to learn more about bringing it to life in your own marketing efforts, contact us, and check out the following five recent resources we've published:

The post Microsoft’s Miri Rodriguez on How B2B Marketers Are Embracing Empathy For Better Customer Storytelling #B2BMX appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®.



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Tuesday, 23 February 2021

Problem Solved: Increase B2B Content Marketing Success by Conquering 4 Conundrums

Content Marketer Deep in Thought Image

Content Marketer Deep in Thought Image In his recently-published book, What’s Your Problem: Become a Better B2B Marketer by Enhancing Your Problem-Solving Skills, Steve Goldhaber argues that the discipline of content marketing boils down to a simple consistent objective: solving problems. It’s a reasonable framing. Almost every piece of marketing content is essentially aimed at solving a problem. This really gets to the fundamental intent of B2B content marketing as a practice: by helping our audience solve day-to-day problems and overcome business challenges, we hope that they’ll eventually consider using our product or service to solve a bigger problem. But content marketers can’t focus solely on solving problems for customers. We also need to look inward and address key challenges that threaten the value and impact of our problem-solving content. The old saying about “getting your own house in order” comes to mind. Here’s a look at four prevalent conundrums faced by B2B content marketers today, and how I recommend confronting and conquering them.

How to Overcome 4 Vexing B2B Marketing Conundrums

Content marketers need to reckon with these stumbling blocks before they can race to big success with their strategies. Conundrum #1 ? More brands and platforms than ever are competing for the diminishing currency of attention. On the surface, it seems like a clear positive: Fueled by social distancing and a lack of in-person experiences, audiences flocked online more than ever in 2020. Usage of mobile devices and social media apps has risen dramatically. In theory, this means it should be easier than ever to attract eyeballs and engage users via digital marketing. So, why the conundrum? Two reasons. First: every brand and content-creating entity is aware of this trend, so there’s been a widespread increase in supply to meet the demand. That means more competition. Second (and not unrelated), audiences are fatigued after a year of being necessarily glued to their screens. Without question, it’s growing more difficult to earn and sustain someone’s attention, not to mention drive action and engagement. What To Do?  It has never been more important to adopt a quality-over-quantity approach. Zero in on a narrowly defined audience whose problems you can help solve. Create highly focused and directly relevant content. Personalization holds the key to breaking through with a clear message in an online environment full of buzzing static. [bctt tweet="“Personalization holds the key to breaking through with a clear message in an online environment full of buzzing static.” @NickNelsonMN #B2Bmarketing #personalization" username="toprank"] Of course, the heightened competition also calls for a re-emphasis on capturing the attention of a scrolling user. Go against the grain and deliver something your audience isn’t expecting. Rock the boat in a sea of sameness. Our clients at LinkedIn Marketing Solutions recently shared tips for thumb-stopping content that catches a user mid-scroll and invites engagement, including examples. I especially like the bear ad example from eCornell. Conundrum #2 ? Measuring results is difficult when direct links to revenue aren’t always clear or straightforward. During times of economic duress, there is a natural inclination for businesses to scale back on discretionary spending. In its early days, content marketing was often viewed as discretionary, or a complementary aspect of business development. While that perception has generally changed, marketing leaders still can face an uphill battle when vying for a fair share of reduced budgets. What To Do? The connection between content marketing and revenue is not as overt or direct as some other investments, that’s true. But it is undeniable. The ability to map content to revenue is becoming a key asset for marketing departments, and in some cases it may require rethinking conventions. For example, some organizations need to slow down their campaign measurement, to align with a complex and lengthy buying cycle. Another opportunity: refining attribution methods to deliver more clarity and comprehensiveness. Do you track user actions across channels? Are you accounting for both post-click and post-view conversions? Are you quantifiably measuring brand awareness and engagement? If not, these are worthy aspirations in a results-oriented business landscape. Conundrum #3 ? It’s tough to authentically integrate influencers into content when audiences are suspicious of brand sponsorships. Influencer marketing is a broadly-applied term, and in some applications it can feel a little sketchy. When people relate the concept with Kylie Jenner shilling for Pepsi in a tone-deaf Super Bowl ad, or Instagram celebrities promoting a disastrous tropical festival, it’s understandable how they’d become skeptical. The credibility gained by associating your brand with a respected figure is negated (and then some) when the influencer isn’t genuinely interested or invested. When done right, influencer marketing is highly effective. But more than ever, marketers need to be strategic, and mindful of optics. [bctt tweet="“When done right, influencer marketing is highly effective. But more than ever, marketers need to be strategic, and mindful of optics.” @NickNelsonMN #B2Bmarketing #personalization" username="toprank"] What To Do? It all starts with selecting the right influencers. Identify voices with strong topical and audience alignment. Aim to be more relationship-based than transactional in your partnerships. Deliver clear value to the people you work with to spur enthusiastic participation. Co-create content and find interesting ways to incorporate influencers’ expertise, perspectives, and stories. Above all, make transparency a fixture. You don’t want your audience left to wonder about the motivations of people involved — or worse yet, feel misled. Conundrum #4 ? Fast-rising new channels don’t have obvious applicability for B2B marketing purposes. When glancing at recent trends and stats in content marketing, it’s hard not to notice the meteoric rise in usage of apps like TikTok and WhatsApp. Brands are gravitating toward Instagram Stories. These channels are intriguing, but they don’t intuitively have much applicability in B2B marketing. What To Do? The last thing you want to do is jam a square peg in a round hole for the sake of seeming cool or hip. But that’s not to say there aren’t creative and contextually-fitting ways to market a B2B brand on B2C-centric platforms. Doing so effectively is an opportunity to stand out and differentiate, in accordance with our solution to Conundrum #1. [bctt tweet="“Finding creative and contextually-fitting ways to market a #B2B brand on B2C-centric platforms is an opportunity to stand out and differentiate.” @NickNelsonMN #B2Bmarketing #personalization" username="toprank"] For inspiration, courtesy of PixelMe, here are 10 creative Instagram ads from B2B companies (led off by our clients at monday.com).

Break Down B2B Content Marketing Barriers

Both challenge and opportunity can be found within each of the conundrums presented. Those B2B marketers who take the right steps to solve them will enjoy a more smooth and frictionless path to success. Keep four things top-of-mind as you venture ahead:
  • Create with a purpose (and flair)
  • Measure robustly
  • Partner strategically
  • Experiment away from the beaten path
For more advice on overcoming obstacles to resonate with your audience, check out my recent post on five B2B content marketing pitfalls to avoid.

The post Problem Solved: Increase B2B Content Marketing Success by Conquering 4 Conundrums appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®.



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