Social Media Spending 2012: Forrester & a VC Weigh In
How does your 2012 social media spending compare to spending levels at similar companies? Is your B2B social media strategy based on hard data, or guesswork? It’s often hard to know how to budget effectively, but two new reports may help marketers with their B2B social media strategy for the remainder of 2012 and beyond. Forrester analyst Kim Celestre just published a new research report titled “Social Media Amplifies Your B2B Buyer’s Experience“. The $499 report is filled with new data on how business to business marketers (primarily those who sell technology products) view social media, as well as how business Read More
New Research on Driving Revenue via Email
Gleanster Research recently published a new report titled Deep Dive: Email Marketing in the Distributed Enterprise. A PDF of the entire report is available for free download, but here are five email marketing best practices for marketers who work in companies with a distributed marketing model. In a study that showed that 76% of marketers use 3 or more technology solutions, top performers were twice as likely as everyone else to use a central marketing platform that manages email marketing best practices for corporate and local/partner campaigns. “Internal” communication — between corporate marketing and the “external” distributed marketing and sales Read More
Optimize Customer Engagement via Data & Technology
Forrester Research Analyst Ellen Carney teamed up with KBM Group’s Lindsey Resnick last week for a webinar titled, “Marketing Life Insurance in a Customer-Driven Environment: Optimize Customer Engagement via Data & Technology.” Don’t let the long title fool you: it was one of the most important webinars we’ve seen this year in terms of providing great data that marketers need right now. You can view the entire webinar online by clicking here, but here are a few of the highlights that we thought would be of special interest to marketers. Consumer Experience Emerges as a Key Revenue Driver Ellen Carney presented quite Read More
Best-in-Class Distributed Marketing Management
We are partnering with the Aberdeen Group on an important new survey on distributed marketing management. Individuals who take the 20-minute survey will receive a complimentary copy of the $399 research report on empowering local marketing through distributed marketing best practices when it is published. Individual responses are kept strictly confidential, and data is used only in the aggregate. The survey is open to corporate and field marketing professionals who work in a distributed marketing environment (where strategy and creative is managed centrally, but campaigns are executed at both the national and local level). To participate, click on this link. Distributed Read More
Marketing Sherpa Features Our Blog
David Kirkpatrick, a reporter with industry research firm MEC Labs’ popular Marketing Sherpa blog, today featured The Distributed Marketing Blog and its parent company, Distribion, in a case study. Case Study #CS32133: Overall Content Marketing Strategy Leads to 2,000% Lift in Blog Traffic, 40% Boost in Revenue looks at the blog and its success over the past 12 months. Kirkpatrick points out some of the unique pain points associated with distributed marketing, and explains how the content marketing strategy that Distribion adopted contributed to the company’s growth. With the focus on distributed marketing best practices and industry news, the company Read More
Predicting Consumer Behavior
As marketers, we all want to “build a better mousetrap” — that is, to market a product or service that’s perfectly positioned to entice and encourage customers to buy it. So market research, and predicting consumer behavior is a critical part of our jobs. On February 16, 2012, Forbes carried an article titled, “How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant before Her Father Did.” It stirred up a lot of controversy about the data that retailers collect, and how it’s used. Scott Anthony’s book The Little Black Book Of Innovation: How It Works, How to Do It hasn’t Read More
What 6 Months Has Taught Us About Google+
In June, 2011, the search giant Google launched Google+. At the time, many people thought it was a challenge to Facebook’s domination of the social media space, and treated it as little more than one more social media channel among many. Just over six months later, Google+ marketing best practices are starting to emerge. It’s already clear that two things make Google+ quite different than other social media platforms. One of them is the “Hangouts” feature that allows companies to engage with fans, prospects, and customers through video conference calls. Of all the Google+ basics for corporate marketers, this feature Read More
Leveraging Email & Social Media for PR Results
Journalists and PR professionals are increasingly using all forms of media in their day-to-day reporting and now see them as legitimate channels for communication. MyPRGenie, a leading PR and marketing platform, recently conducted a research survey to see which of these channels are most popular among reporters and how they can be used effectively. The findings of this survey, to which over 2400 journalists and PR professionals responded, clearly point out that most reporters prefer to receive releases through email. Here are some tips for making sure that your email pitch stands out among the thousands of emails reporters receive Read More
Studies say LinkedIn Beats Twitter, Ad Spending Shifts
Several year-end studies point out a gap in lead generation performance among social media sites plus significant changes ahead for social media advertisers and the websites that rely on social advertising revenue. According to a new study published in the Media Bistro blog, 91% of business to business marketers use Twitter, but LinkedIn generates twice as many leads. Facebook ranked #2 in terms of leads, followed by company blogs, the story reports, while Twitter came in fourth. The survey results arrived at the same time that two different companies announced new lead generation tools for LinkedIn. One, according to the Digital Journal, Read More
Influence Marketing Tips from Hobbiton & Hogwarts
Most marketers would agree that finding and persuading the individuals who shape markets is critical. Word of mouse — the online buzz that comes when key influencers are tweeting, chatting, and posting about a product – is often the difference between an industry leading brand and a laggard. If you’re looking for a bit of magic to boost results in your 2012 marketing efforts, you might want to follow the lead of magic makers like J.K. Rowling and Peter Jackson, who ignored traditional media in favor of wooing and winning the hearts of social media and Internet influencers. Author J.K. Rowling Read More
