Live Now: 5 B2B Brands Winning With Live-Stream Content

How can B2B brands harness the increasing power of live-streaming content to build audience engagement? Over the course of the pandemic, live-streaming events have catapulted onto our screens and into many new areas of our business lives, and as 2022 looms, there’s no sign that live-stream content usage will dissipate. Quite the opposite appears to be in store, and with good reason, as our CEO Lee Odden outlined earlier this year in “How B2B Brands Can Boost Confidence in Livestream Video, Podcast and Clubhouse Marketing,” exploring how engaging B2B marketing experiences are more vital than ever. How are B2B brands achieving success with live-streaming today? Let’s turn on the cameras and mics and take a look at five global B2B brands that have had success through well-planned and innovative use of live-streaming content.

1 — SAP

With its Better Together, SuccessFactors, and other live-streaming initiatives, global enterprise software firm SAP* has brought digital transformation directly to its customers, partners, and thought leaders. For its Better Together: Customer Conversations series, live-streaming via LinkedIn Live has been utilized to foster communication around the SAP Business Technology Platform, with live-streaming also being tied together with accompanying podcast, blog, and social content. Recent episodes include looks at boosting sustainability and efficiency through digital transformation, sustainable IT for your business and bottom line, and success stories focused on turning customer service into customer experience. For its SuccessFactors’ Rise of HXM series, live-streaming using LinkedIn Live has also been featured, along with human experience management (HXM) content on YouTube, Facebook, and in other non-video digital content formats, with recent episodes bringing in industry subject experts to examine “Take Your Employee Experiences to the Next Level in the New World of Work,” “The 6 Steps to an Empowering Digital Learner Experience,” and “The Rise of HXM: How HR in the Cloud Accelerates Your People-first Strategy.”

2 — Vimeo

Video hosting, sharing, and services platform provider Vimeo has increasingly embraced the B2B landscape during the pandemic, recently launching its Vimeo Events platform with an array of powerful live-streaming features. With its VimeoEvents offering, Vimeo has worked to meet the increasing demands B2B firms have had when it comes to live-streaming, and with a robust feature set including tools to utilize before, during and after live events, there will likely be fascinating use cases in 2022 and beyond as the product matures. Vimeo CEO Anjali Sud recently shared news of the launch on LinkedIn, noting the platform’s ambitious goal of making webinars beautiful and democratizing events for marketers.

3 — Eaton

Global power management company Eaton has successfully utilized live-streaming to highlight a variety of topics, including a forthcoming LinkedIn Live broadcast focused on inclusion and diversity. Recent live-stream content has included episodes on “Enabling a digital mindset: what it is and how to get it,” “From engineering student to vice president, how to build your career,” and “Taking ownership of your career: Women leading the way at Eaton,” each showing how live-stream content can not only inform, but drive conversations and build thought leadership. Eaton’s live-streaming content has included an “Ask the Experts” series, and has also featured interactive social media elements to accompany live-streams, such as LinkedIn polls asking questions relating to upcoming episodes. Zari Venhaus, vice president of corporate marketing communications at Eaton, was featured on our Break Free B2B Marketing series of video and podcast interviews, in “Break Free B2B Series: Zari Venhaus on How to Scoot Your Way to Martech Transformation Through Storytelling,” which you can watch below.

4 — Oracle

With a variety of live-streaming content including Oracle Live and virtual events such as Oracle Database World, Oracle* has used live events to share insight from global thought leaders, also offering content archives for access once a stream has concluded. Recent Oracle Live events have included sessions on “The Future of CRM: Engineering Better Experiences,” “Connect Your Enterprise with AI-Driven Analytics,” and “Build the Future of Business with Oracle Cloud Applications,” among others. Srijana Angdembey, director of social media marketing at Oracle, sat down with our own CEO Lee Odden for a fascinating episode of our Inside B2B Influence show, “Inside Influence 8: Srijana Angdembey from Oracle on How Influence Creates Better B2B Customer Experiences,” including her insight on live-streaming video events and other interactive B2B content.

5 — SAS

Global analytics software firm SAS has increasingly used live-streaming content to help show the impact their products have on people’s lives, and has used the power of streaming to bring stories to life. SAS utilizes its SAS Events live-streaming content to connect with prospects, customers and its own team-members, such as in recent episodes “Be Curious. Be Innovative,” “Moments Matter More Than Ever as CX Goes Hybrid,” and “You Are In The Cloud! From Challenge to Decision,” along with both live and on-demand webinar content. Digital events platform Brightcove highlighted some of the creative ways that SAS has used live-streaming to bring to life what can be a rather intangible product, in its “How SAS Used Video to Show Their Products' Impact on People's Lives.”

Take Two — Live-Stream Content Can Live On

via GIPHY By itself, the type of live-streaming content we’ve seen here from SAP, Vimeo, Eaton, Oracle, and SAS, represents a powerful element for B2B content marketers to use. Don’t let the value of that content exist only during the live-streaming, however, as it has plenty more strength in an entire array of derivative forms. Live-streaming content can go on to lead a much longer life when it’s incorporated into digital assets such as:

• Blog articles built on live-stream transcriptions
• Round-up posts from multiple live-stream episodes all touching on a single topic
• Video content for a variety of social platforms
• Audio content for podcast sharing

Learn more about the benefits of repurposing B2B content in our “A Tasty, Strategic Addition to the Content Marketing Table: ‘Repurposed Content Cobbler’,” and “5 Tips for Promoting B2B Content Co-Created with Influencers.” No matter how you stream it, award-winning B2B marketing takes considerable time and effort to craft, which is why many firms choose to work with a top digital marketing agency such as TopRank Marketing. Contact us today to learn how we can help, as we’ve done for businesses ranging from LinkedIn, Dell and 3M to Adobe, Oracle, monday.com and others. * SAP and Oracle are TopRank Marketing clients.

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Weekend Favs November 6

Weekend Favs November 6 written by Karen Cutler 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.

• Engage Bay –  a single solution tool for all of your customer relationship management activities
• Creator Scout – the best way to discover people to follow on Twitter
• Jetoctopus – a tool to make technical SEO simple, visualized and doable

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

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B2B Marketing News: B2B Buyers Look To Amazon, Google Doubles Profit, Top SEO Challenges, & How Social Trust Affects Engagement

For US B2B Product Buyers, Amazon Business Proves Influential, but May Decline [Survey] Some 49 percent of B2B product buyers have said that they search for B2B items using Amazon Business, topping the 39 percent who say they use vendor websites and 37 percent who utilize other B2B marketplaces — one of several insights contained in recently-released preferred B2B buying channel survey data. MarketingCharts Google Nearly Doubles Profit, Capitalizing On Omnichannel Advertising Google parent firm Alphabet came close to doubling profit last quarter, representing its strongest quarterly rise in over a decade, with Google's YouTube seeing advertising revenue figures that climbed by 43 percent to $7.2 billion, while overall ad business sales topping $53 billion, the search giant recently announced. MediaPost Instagram Now Allows Anyone to Publicly Participate in Stories Facebook's Instagram platform has given all its users the ability to create public threads within its Stories-format content, through the use of a new "Add Yours" feature intended to help the platform increase engagement, Instagram recently announced. The change has given B2B marketers a new option for building brand engagement on the platform. PetaPixel Survey Says: Links The Most Challenging Area Of SEO Nearly 60 percent of search engine optimization (SEO) professionals have said that they view the process of link acquisition as more challenging than local, technical, or copy-writing SEO, according to recent survey data of interest to digital marketers. SEO Roundtable Predictions 2022: This Is A Year To Be Bold [Forrester Report] In 2022 just 10 percent of B2B buyers will pinpoint the correct metrics needed to gauge buyer value during the buying process, while 56 percent of U.S. consumers have said that by now firms should have found how to handle pandemic disruptions — two of numerous statistics of interest to online marketers contained in newly-released report data. Forrester How user trust in social media platforms could affect engagement with ads [Report] 52 percent of U.S. social media users have said that platforms offering plentiful data privacy have an extreme impact when it comes to their decision to interact with ads and sponsored content, with 38 percent noting that platforms that offer safe environments for participating are also key when it comes to their ad engagement decisions, according to newly-released survey data. eMarketer MRC Discloses 'Gap' Preventing Industry Standard Podcast Measurement The Media Rating Council (MRC) has identified some of the issues that have thus far made it difficult to standardized the measurement of podcast advertising, and has announced a push towards a more unified podcast advertising measurement system, the organization recently announced. MediaPost Amazon Advertising Unveils 8 New Tools and Features Amazon has launched an array of new advertising utilities for digital marketers, including new types of interactive video and audio ads through its Amazon Advertising product, along with additional brand following options, Amazon recently announced. Adweek Twitter Opens Up Super Follows to All Users on iOS Twitter has rolled out expanded subscription options for users with over 10K followers, as its “super followers” feature — which allow brands and creators to offer subscription-only bonus content on the platform — has been made available to all iOS Twitter users, in a move that could bring new reach to brand influencers, the firm recently announced. Social Media Today What B2B Executives Want From Thought Leadership Content Over half of B2B corporate executives have spent more time consuming thought leadership content than during pre-pandemic times, however 71 percent of decision-makers have said that less than half of that thought leadership content delivers valuable insights — two of numerous statistics of interest to digital marketers contained in newly-released report data from Edelman and LinkedIn (client) . MarketingProfs ON THE LIGHTER SIDE: A lighthearted look at the “targeted advertising and the end of third-party cookies” by Marketoonist Tom Fishburne — Marketoonist Family Spoils Grandma With 5-Minute Video Chat — The Onion 10 most-viewed Halloween ads — The Drum TOPRANK MARKETING & CLIENTS IN THE NEWS:

• Joshua Nite — What’s Trending: Raise the Bar for Content Marketing — LinkedIn (client)
• LinkedIn — 3 Big B2B Problems That Professional Identity Can Help Solve — AdExchanger

Have you found your own favorite B2B marketing news from the past week? Please drop us a line in the comments below. Thanks for taking the time to join us for the week's TopRank Marketing B2B marketing news, and we hope you'll come back again next Friday for more of the week's most relevant B2B and digital marketing industry news. In the meantime, you can follow us on our LinkedIn page, or at @toprank on Twitter for even more timely daily news.

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7 Approaches To Help You Generate More Referrals

7 Approaches To Help You Generate More Referrals written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with John Jantsch

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I’m doing part one of a solo show series on where I’m going to be covering one of my favorite topics: referrals.

Key Takeaway:

In a recent Texas Tech Survey, out of 2000 consumers, 89% of them claimed they had a business that they loved enough that they would gladly recommend — only 29% of them actually did it. Why is there such a gap? One of the main reasons is that they just aren’t being asked to.

In this series, I’m presenting what I’m calling the seven grades of referral fuel. I’m unpacking the first of seven specific tactics or approaches that are sure to help you generate more referrals for your business.

Topics I cover:

• [1:22] The seven grades of referral fuel
• [3:59] Why people don’t refer businesses they love
• [5:23] Referrals remove decision-making risk
• [6:54] How getting referrals affects the lifetime value of that newly acquired customer
• [8:53] Introduce the idea of referrals in the sales process
• [9:58] Figuring out your customer success quotient
• [12:42] Focusing on every customer interaction

Resources I mention:

• The Ultimate Marketing Engine: Five Steps to Ridiculously Consistent Growth

More About The Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network:

• Check it out here.

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

Duct Tape Transcript

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John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the duct tape marketing podcast is brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network. Hey, I want to give a shout out to another member of the HubSpot network, the success story podcast, hosted by Scott de Clair. It's one of the most useful podcasts in the world. Success story features Q and a sessions with successful business leaders, keynote presentations, conversations on sales marketing. Hey, and if you're a freelancer, his episode on how to make seven figures freelancing on Fiverr is a must listen to the success story podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.

John Jantsch (00:45): Hello, and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch. I'm doing a solo show. It's been a while. I'm going to talk about one of my favorite subjects referrals. And in fact, I'm going to do a three or four part series on this. So this is part one to tune in to we'll have them all hooked together in the show notes, but tune into the rest ones, rest of the episodes coming up. So let's, uh, let's dive into this topic of referrals. I'm actually in this series going to present what I'm calling the seven grades of referral fuel. So I'm going to unpack seven specific tactics or approaches to generating more referrals. I'm going to start with talking about kind of offers for all of your clients. You should just have a standard kind of anybody who's a client of yours should get a referral offer three, four times a year or an invitation, I should say three or four times a year to make referrals.

John Jantsch (01:50): But then there's those folks that are already making referrals. They're what I call your referral champions. And you need to treat them, uh, even differently. Then I want to talk about something that is a fairly new concept. Uh, actually you can read more about it in my book, the ultimate marketing engine, but it's something I call it ecosystem balancing. And the idea behind that is to take your existing client and think about everybody else who serves them and find ways to actually create relationships with those folks in an effort to kind of add even more value to your client. That'll make more sense when I get into it, let's face it internal referrals, not enough businesses take advantage of the fact that their employees could be generating referrals for customers. And today increasingly for new hires, uh, some of your best new hires will come from referrals from your existing employees.

John Jantsch (02:47): I talk a lot about strategic partnership networks. And so in that tactic, I'm really going to unpack kind of a very formal way to do it. And then the last two are something I call an expert club, uh, networking, we all know is a great way to generate referrals. So why not own your own networking club? Why not create your own approach to, uh, to bringing folks together. And then finally, I think most businesses, particularly in the B2B world, uh, can and should create what I call a referral mastermind. And this is Ruth. Essentially, you bringing your clients together, teaching them how to generate referrals and, and creating that get together. And that teaching, regardless of your industry, you don't have to be in marketing to do that. I think the financial planner who teaches his B2B clients, how to generate a business is going to actually be the recipient of a ton of referrals.

John Jantsch (03:44): All right. So before we get into today's first one now offer for all clients. I want to set the table kind of the framework for referrals. And I'm going to start by citing a, a recent Texas tech survey of 2000 consumers. 89% of them claimed that they had a business that they loved enough, that they would, that they would gladly refer gladly recommend and only 29% of them actually did it. And so that gap to me suggests that there are many, many businesses out there who have raving fans who have like satisfied, happy customers who are not necessarily telling their friends, neighbors, and colleagues. And I think mostly because they're just not being asked to do so. I think there are some things that, that business owners who are reluctant to ask need to understand, I think at its most basic level, we need to refer in order to survive.

John Jantsch (04:47): You think about, uh, about, uh, as crazy as this might sound, uh, back to caveman times, you know, if we, if we didn't, weren't able to, uh, help each other out, we're unable to tell people where water was, where the saber tooth tiger was hiding out. Um, it was certain depth. And so, uh, there, there is a sense of, of really, you know, I'm going to need some help at some point. So I'm going to, you know, I'm going to make sure that I'm helpful. I think some level we crave kind of the social currency of, oh, so-and-so, you know, always has good answers. You know, let's go find out who they would recommend or what they would do. And I think that's a level of social currency that, uh, at least some of us really enjoy. And then of course, we want to receive referrals as well as give referrals because our referrals remove risk.

John Jantsch (05:37): If I'm trying to make a decision about hiring a company and all I'm doing is looking at their brochure or talking to a salesperson or looking at their website, I might be able to make an assessment. But if a friend of mine says, oh no, they do exactly what they said. It's amazing. You'll enjoy the experience. I mean, that removes a lot of the decision-making risk from a business standpoint. I think Riverdale's matter so much because it actually makes it easy for you to attract ideal customers. Your ideal customers will probably refer somebody who is more likely at least to be in an ideal customer as well. And certainly shortens the sales cycle. I mean, regardless of what you're selling, if somebody can, somebody can go to somebody to say, oh yeah, no, they do this, they do this, they do this. You can trust them.

John Jantsch (06:26): I mean that in many cases allows somebody to say, I'm going to do it. I'm all in. I think when somebody refers a quite often, not only does price go down the list, I think in some ways, some cases they expect to pay a premium or at least at the very least, they're less likely to handle their friends. Sent me. My friend sent me, you know, to you, you've got a great result for them. You know, the last, at least the first thing I'm not going to ask for is, is a cheaper deal or a better deal. So it really pays a impact on pricing. And then, you know, the concept of lifetime value is something I don't think gets talked about enough, but if you have a customer and you acquire that customer and you're able to retain that customer for years, I mean, that means that the lifetime value of acquiring that customer is 10 times maybe what that first sale would be.

John Jantsch (07:18): And now a word from our sponsor with Q4 closing employee holiday travel and forecasting for 2022 underway, staying connected has never been more important. And HubSpot is consistently releasing new features to make your CRM platform more connected than ever with improved forecasting tools and custom report builders. See how your quarter is going, inspect new deals and use customizable data-driven reports to improve team performance. As you grow with custom behavioral events, you can track site behavior and understand your customer's buying habits all within the platform. And if you're looking for cleaner data with a centralized system, the all-new operations hub enterprise gives your ops leads. The ability to curate data sets for all users, meaning even faster and more consistent reporting, learn more about how a HubSpot CRM platform can help connect the dots of your business @ HubSpot.com. Well, so now throw into the mix that if that customer that is worth 10 times, what their first sale was also refers five new customers to you, what does that make their lifetime value?

John Jantsch (08:31): So I think that that, that kind of math is something that, you know, hopefully will give you the, the, you know, the real, um, posture, uh, to, uh, necessarily go out there and say, yeah, I, I, I should be talking about referrals. And if you are having a challenge with that, here's a couple of things I suggest first off, just start expecting referrals, start about it in the sales process. So there's not this awkward conversation, somewhere down the road where you come to them and say, Hey, I want to know if you know anybody who needs what we do. I mean, just start talking about it in the very beginning, we know you're going to be so thrilled. That was what we agreed to today, that in 90 days, we're going to come back and I'm going to make sure you're thrilled. And then I'm going to invite you to, uh, to tell me about a couple other people that you know, who need to get this result as well.

John Jantsch (09:24): It just makes the whole conversation so much easier. So talk about it, put it in your newsletter, you know, talk about the people that refer that did send you referrals. Thank them publicly. I mean, that's, that's how you, you kind of just started to get this posture. And really, if you, if you know what you do gets people amazing results. I think you almost owe it to the world to, to help, you know, people, you know, find you. Um, so one of the things that, that exercises that I have a lot of people go through is, is something that I call your customer success quotient, figuring out your customer success quotient. It's not really a hard math problem. Don't worry about it. Those of you that remember basic, basic math, you know, quotion is essentially the, you know, something divided by something. So if you think about the average results, and I know this is harder, if you sell a, a static product and you know, you're not really plugged into like, did somebody get a result, but certainly if you get testimonials, if you get reviews of your products, I mean that in some ways gives an implication of somebody getting the result or getting, you know, being satisfied with what they got, but certainly in service businesses, I mean, I, I sell marketing consulting.

John Jantsch (10:38): I help people grow their businesses. I can very tangibly point to the exact results, uh, uh, you know, over time in terms of growth or, or customer acquisition that they are receiving. And I know what I charge for that. So if you think about my average results divided, by my average fee, I can come up with a number 10 to one, five to one. Um, and when you start doing that, you start realizing, Hey, for every $5,000 you give me, you know, that is going to be worth, you know, some significantly larger amount than I think it makes it much easier for you to say, Hey, here's, here's my feet. You know, here's what I need to charge. One of the things that I th any even casual listener, uh, the show will realize is that I talk about this idea of the marketing hourglass all the time, the customer journey, having some, you know, seven stages, no, like trust, try, buy, repeat, and refer, notice that last stage refer.

John Jantsch (11:44): So the idea behind that is that that's really the ultimate goal of any customer journey is that we are getting people to the stage where, you know, every single one to one of them, you know, once to refer us. So I think that's a point of view that if you work backwards and think, okay, what would it take, uh, for every single one of our customers to want to refer us? The reason I bring this up is because, you know, a lot of times people, when they talk about referrals, they talk about some hack or some tactic. Um, and ultimately when I unpack all of the, in, in subsequent shows, when I unpack all of the approaches to generating referrals, they almost all, no. In fact, they all assume that you are referrable, that you have created an experience that people want to talk about that people want to refer.

John Jantsch (12:43): So if you think about that, hourglass know, like trust, try, buy, repeat, and refer, and you turn that around and say, okay, let's start with referral. What would it take? So that every single person who comes to know about our business, or certainly who becomes a customer of our business would want to talk about us, would want to refer us, because what it would do is not only have you focus on the referral tactics themselves, but what about the experience that somebody has when they first buy? What about their orientation, their onboarding, the communication. What about, uh, the going back in and actually measuring and communicating the results that they get so that they stay a customer so that they buy again and again and again, um, having those processes built are really what leads to your referrability. It doesn't matter how many times you ask somebody, if they know anybody who needs, what you do, if in fact, um, your customers, aren't really getting a result, and it's not just they're getting what they paid for, you're exceeding their expectations.

John Jantsch (13:52): You're surprising them. So that has to be part of any conversation about referral generation than it is simply part of the customer journey. All right, I'm going to be back, um, in subsequent episodes and I'm going to unpack all seven of these, what I call grades of referral fuels. So make sure that you, uh, if you're listening to this, uh, after the fact, uh, after all the shows will be recorded, you can come to the page, uh, the show notes page at duct tape, marketing.com and find links to the other shows. Otherwise, just make sure that you are queuing them up in your podcast, listening device. All right. Take care out there. Love your feedback. Send me email at John at duct tape, marketing.com. Let me know what you're thinking of this series.

John Jantsch (14:46): All right. So that wraps up another episode. I want to thank you so much for tuning in and, you know, we love those reviews and comments. And just generally tell me what you think also did you know that you could offer the duct tape marketing system, our system to your clients, and build a complete marketing consulting coaching business, or maybe level up an agency with some additional services. That's right. Check out the duct tape marketing consultant network. You can find it at duct tape, marketing.com and just scroll down a little and find that offer our system to your clients tab.

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This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network.

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4 Key Client Management Lessons I Learned The Hard Way

4 Key Client Management Lessons I Learned The Hard Way written by Sara Nay read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The 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. Check out the new Spark Lab Consulting website here!

About the episode:

In this first solo episode of the Agency Spark Podcast, Sara talks on her background and 4 key client management lessons learned over the past couple years. Sara Nay is the COO at Duct Tape Marketing and founder of Spark Lab Consulting with over 12 years of experience in the small business space. She oversees the day-to-day operations to support the growth of both businesses with a focus on strategic planning, consultant network coaching, and client success.

Core ideas:

• Clearly define your ideal client.
• Create your core packages.
• Find your people to help support you.
• Nail your tool stack and stick to it.

Show notes:

• Loomly
• Agency Analytics
• Monday.com
• Sara’s Email: sara@sparklabconsulting.com
• Sara’s LinkedIn

 

Like this show? Please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts here!

 

This episode of the Agency Spark Podcast is brought to you by Monday.com, a powerful project management platform. Monday.com helps teams easily build, run, and scale their dream workflows on one platform.  I personally am a user and big fan of Monday.com – I start my workday pulling up the platform and spend my day working within it for everything from task management to running client engagements. Learn more about Monday.com at ducttape.me/monday. 

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Preparing for Change: 5 Practical Tips For 2022 Marketing Budget Success

How can B2B marketers weigh confidence for the future with adequate caution and still plan thoroughly for 2022 budgeting success? Confidence is rising for 2022 marketing spending, and as B2B brands move forward after the turmoil and uncertainty of the pandemic, savvy marketers benefit from embracing budgeting optimism while simultaneously seasoning budgeting strategy with a healthy dose of vigilance and care. Digital advertising budget optimism has risen significantly since the initial months of the global health crisis, and recent report data is showing this increased confidence. A net 76 percent of marketers plan to expand their media budget for digital video during 2022, representing the top area of media expansion planned for next year, followed by branded content by influencers at 71 percent and social media story ads at 70 percent — several of many statistics of interest to B2B marketers contained in recently-released budget trend survey data from Kantar and MarketingCharts. When it comes to B2B-specific digital advertising spending, 2021 will see a jump of 25 percent, according to eMarketer's U.S. B2B Advertising Forecast data, and there has been a shift from search spending to display advertising, newly-released data from the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) shows. According to data from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), some 61 percent of U.S. advertising executives are confident or very confident in the stability of their advertising budget for the rest of 2021 — sharply higher than the 22 percent who expressed the same levels of confidence in November of 2020. Our own groundbreaking report, the 2020 State of B2B Influencer Marketing Report, revealed that B2B brands expected influencer marketing to weather the pandemic better than other forms of marketing. 90 percent of B2B brands said that they expected their budget for influencer marketing to increase or stay the same. If you’re currently among those utilizing B2B influencer marketing and haven’t yet taken our 2021 State of B2B Influencer Marketing Survey, make your voice heard and take a few minutes to complete it. The recently-released twelfth annual B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends research report from Content Marketing Institute (CMI), MarketingProfs, and ON24 also offers a look at budgeting trends. 75 percent of those at the most successful organizations expect content marketing budgets to increase in 2022. We took a look at this report recently in, “10 Actionable B2B Content Marketing Insights From New Research.” Where does this all lead for B2B marketers looking to prepare for these changes and build a successful 2022 marketing budget? Let’s step right up and examine five practical tips that will make your 2022 marketing budget a successful one.

1 — Strong Budgets Maximize ROI

Strong budget strategy pays attention to maximizing return on investment (ROI), through frequent performance monitoring and the ability to quickly jettison under-performing marketing elements. Measurement is key for learning what’s working and what isn’t, and for finding emerging growth opportunities. Having accurate performance data at hand can make budget decisions that much easier, yet many firms struggle with data overload — or worse yet — lack of any relevant performance data. Staying on top of the latest research to identify industry trends helps drive successful ad campaigns and typically leads to more informed business insights and budgeting decisions. B2B marketing industry news sources, such as our long-running weekly TopRank Marketing digital marketing news each Friday, can help marketers stay abreast of the shifts that show how budgets are being affected throughout the industry. Despite their best efforts, B2B marketers can find themselves facing forecasting difficulties, and often also come up against varying budgeting requirements among organizations. Keeping the future needs of marketers in mind, or even potential needs, can pay off, as Steve Petersen,  marketing technology operations manager at subscription-as-a-service (SaaS) platform Zuora recently shared with MarTech. “Marketers should think ahead to what they and their fellow marketers will potentially need in the next year or so.  While they may not know specifics yet, if budget hasn’t been set aside for such needs, acquiring new tech at the desired time will likely prove difficult,” Petersen observed. [bctt tweet="“Marketers should think ahead to what they and their fellow marketers will potentially need in the next year or so.” — Steve Petersen, Zuora" username="toprank"]

2 — Efficiency is a Timeless Investment

Budgets can oftentimes achieve higher levels of efficiency when the decision is made to partner with an agency — and with more report data than ever showing the benefits of such partnerships, in 2022 we’re likely to see even more of those looking to maximize their budget ROI begin new agency partnerships. Indeed, the previously mentioned CMI, MarketingProfs, and ON24 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends research report shows that 65 percent of B2B content marketers have said that finding partners with adequate topical expertise is their top challenge. A full 40 percent also said that budget issues were their top challenge, a decrease from 51 percent in 2020, yet still a major issue faced by B2B marketers today. Overall, some 66 percent of the B2B content marketers surveyed expected their 2022 content marketing budget to increase from 2021 levels. Getting the most marketing bang-for-the-buck is where the efficiency of forming agency partnerships really shines. Greater alignment with brand priorities brings increased value to agency partnerships, according to Forrester report data, which also showed that some 75 percent of brand decision-makers were satisfied or very satisfied with their agency rosters, and that over the next three years more functions are expected to be performed by external agencies.

3 — Agility & Swift-Footedness Speed Budget Planning Cycles

As our own vice president of client accounts Alexis Hall has encouraged in articles such as "Planning for Change: How to Set Your 2021 Marketing Budget," an agile and swift-footed approach to budget planning cycles offers numerous benefits — a strategy that will be as valuable as ever in 2022. Flexibility will be every bit as important in 2022 as it was during the most uncertain times over the past two unprecedented years, and savvy marketing budget planners have become aware that tactics aren’t ever likely to return to the way they were. With the market changing as rapidly as ever, and digital marketing shifts taking place daily — especially when it comes to social media platforms and advertising opportunities — a swift yet flexible budget planning cycle is crucial. Successful marketing budget plans are able to adjust on the fly to take into account industry changes, often accomplished through having annual, quarterly, monthly, or even more frequent reviews. Long-range budget planning on the annual level holds its own value, focusing on big goals, while more frequent reviews utilize a range of leading indicators, and together such reviews help budgets scale up or down as necessary. Optimizing and refining 2022 budgets offer many advantages, as James Delande, director of product marketing at enterprise software firm BrandMaker, recently told MarTech. “Finance and budget management allows organizations to plan, iterate, control and optimize budgets and spends aligned to their major strategic objectives,” Delande said. “This empowers CMOs, CFOs, and CEOs and their teams to optimize projects, saving time and money while improving efficiency, agility and performance,” Delande added. [bctt tweet="“Finance and budget management allows organizations to plan, iterate, control and optimize budgets and spends aligned to their major strategic objectives.” — James Delande, BrandMaker" username="toprank"]

4 — Build & Benefit From Long Term Brand Investment

B2B marketers are keenly aware of often lengthy buyer journeys, and when it comes to budgeting the same long-term outlook can successfully be incorporated. Budgets that allow for a regular cadence of marketing messages to continue on a long-term basis can be critical to success in the B2B environment, where always-on marketing efforts that utilize the power of influence have proven especially effective. Budgeting, too, should have a long-term scope element, to keep the bigger picture and major goals on track. [bctt tweet="“89% of B2B marketers implementing always-on influencer programs expect their budgets to increase or remain the same vs. 73% for marketers running campaign-based programs.” — Lee Odden @LeeOdden" username="toprank"]

5 — With Loss Comes Newfound Opportunity

When planned or unforeseen budget cuts come down the pike, it can be a great time to reassess past strategy and place newfound energy into opportunities ahead. By overcoming the challenges we've all faced over the past years, B2B marketers have gained a new type of resiliency and strength — qualities that may take time and reflection to fully appreciate. As we reach the end of 2021, it’s helpful to look back and reflect on the marketing hurdles we’ve faced and overcome during the past year, whether in budgeting or elsewhere, and use both our successes and failures to bring a fresh zest to 2022 efforts. Some find that making a comprehensive list of the obstacles they have survived helps to bring into clearer focus the progress that will infuse our 2022 marketing budget efforts with new strength and opportunity.

Strong Budgeting Creates Long-Term B2B Marketing Successes

via GIPHY When well-executed budgeting collides with smart planning and preparation, B2B marketers can achieve an energy that’s greater than the sum of all its individual elements. Even the best planning can face unforeseen challenges, as the world has witnessed since the global health crisis began. With a robust budget strategy in place, however — one that is open and pliable enough when such obstacles arise — you’ll be ahead of the game in making needed adjustments. By using the five elements we've explored — maximizing ROI and efficiency, the power of agility, holding a long-term outlook, and being open to new opportunities — in 2022 B2B marketers can be well-positioned ahead of the competition and poised for marketing budget success. No matter how you slice it, 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 to learn how we can help, as we’ve done for businesses ranging from LinkedIn, Dell and 3M to Adobe, Oracle, monday.com and others.

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Amp It Up: What B2B Marketers Need to Know about Social Influencer Amplification

Allow me one more scary story, even though Halloween is over… Once there was a marketer who created an eBook with content from ten respected influencers in their industry. The marketer released the eBook, sent an email to notify the contributors… And not one of them shared the content. Without amplification, the content was dead on arrival, and some say it haunts the marketer’s office to this very day… Whew! Spooky story, right? One of the big benefits of influencer marketing should be built-in amplification of the content.  But influencers don’t always hold up their end of the bargain. Fortunately, there are a few things that B2B content marketers can do throughout the content co-creation process to help influencers follow through on amplification. 

5 Tips for Social Influencer Amplification

Before you even choose influencers for your project, you can start strategizing for maximum amplification. Here are my top tips in chronological order.

1 — Pick Influencers Who Engage

If you’re relying on follower count to choose the right influencers, you may be missing the mark. Some B2B thought leaders have hundreds of thousands of followers, but very rarely interact with their audience. The biggest red flag: If someone only posts links to their own content, they’re not likely to promote yours, even if they contributed to it. Instead, look past follower count to find influencers who are enthusiastically engaging with their audience. They should be sharing other people’s valuable content, replying to comments on their posts, and generally treating social media like a conversation instead of a broadcast medium. That genuine enthusiasm for their chosen subject matter is irreplaceable. If you have to choose between a broadcaster with millions of followers and an engaging expert with thousands, pick the latter. [bctt tweet="“Look past follower count to find influencers who are enthusiastically engaging with their audience. If you have to choose between a broadcaster with millions of followers and an engaging expert with thousands, pick the latter.” @NiteWrites" username="toprank"]

2 — Give Before You Get

B2C influencer marketing is usually transactional: I give you these shoes, you post some videos of yourself skateboarding in them, I cut you a check. For B2B, however, we have an opportunity to build relationships that are mutually beneficial beyond just compensation. That’s not to say you shouldn’t pay influencers, of course — just that money shouldn’t be the only reason they’re on board. To make sure you’re going beyond the transactional, start by selflessly promoting the influencers you’re courting. Share their content with your audience. Curate quotes from them and link back to their blog. Make sure you include thoughtful commentary that demonstrates your admiration is genuine. In short, make sure the influencer knows you’re as dedicated to their success as you are to the brand’s — that’s how you build a relationship that makes influencers want to share your co-created content.

3 — Co-Create Something Awesome

Here’s a dispatch from the Stating the Obvious Department: If you want influencers to share your content, create content worth sharing.  What does shareworthy content look like? Among other things:

• It’s valuable to the influencer’s audience
• It’s visually stunning and creative
• It’s a topic the influencer is passionate about
• The influencer was an essential part of the creative process, not grafted on at the end

For example, our client Dell created an eBook about data management. But it’s not a dry, dull document. Beat the Data Paradox borrows from spy and heist movies for an undeniably cool, fun reading experience. The influencers involved feel proud of the end product and incentivized to share.

4 — Form a Community

Influencer marketing can be a one-and-done process, starting from scratch with every new project or asset. But forming a community of influencers that are tapped for multiple projects is much more efficient, and a much better experience for brand and influencer alike. When you feature multiple influencers in your content, make sure to introduce them to each other. Give them a dedicated space to interact and learn from each other, whether it’s a video call, a forum, or even an email chain. Encourage them to promote and lift each other up. [bctt tweet="“When you feature multiple influencers in your content, make sure to introduce them to each other. Give them a dedicated space to interact and learn from each other.” — Joshua Nite @NiteWrites" username="toprank"] When influencers feel like they’re part of a community, they’re more likely to share the co-created content. Provided, of course, that you...

5 — Make Sharing Easy & Beautiful

B2B thought leaders are busy folks. They may absolutely intend to amplify your content, but never get a chance to sit down and put a post together. You can help by providing a “social media kit” that removes as much friction as possible. Our agency always provides pre-written social messages and images for influencers. They’re welcome to create their own, of course — but this ensures they’ll have something that’s high-quality and ready to share with minimal effort. We’ve found that influencers appreciate the gesture, and are more likely to share even if they don’t make use of our resources.

Ensure Ample Amplification

Amplification isn’t the only reason to include influencers in your content, of course. There’s added credibility, increased relevance, the chance to feature potential clients — a host of benefits. But the ability to get great content in front of more eyeballs is a substantial benefit for influencer marketing. If your influencer contributors are enthusiastic about the topic, love the content you create together, and have resources on hand to make sharing easy, they’re far more likely to amplify. Check out our State of B2B Influencer Marketing report for more insights and best practices.

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