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Thanks to Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, each year there’s a new report covering the latest trends in B2B content marketing.From insourcing vs. outsourcing to the most effective tactics, there is plenty of insight in this report to help guide B2B marketers in the right direction.As a blogger, public speaker and strategist, I know how convenient it can be for statistics in a report like this to be broken out. I did this once before with 100+ B2B Content Marketing Statistics for 2013 and it was well received. So here is the list updated according to the 2014 report...
Explore four major findings from research reports tracking social network trends in social media marketing and the content that works best on each.
Social Media is a fast growing industry and it can be hard to follow. So sometimes it is nice to take a step back and review who the big players are and what they actually do. The following infographic by Text Marketer takes a global look on 4 of the main players: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Pinterest – and compares it with more traditional media like email and SMS....
As opportunities for dynamic dialogue between business and consumer have multiplied exponentially, organizations are pushing to find ways to engage and elevate their associative value. Brands that get it right go beyond appealing to material needs; they transcend the superficial back-and-forth to engage with audiences not just around what people seek in a material sense, but on a deeper and more personal level....
Small businesses make the US economy tick. They create six out of every ten new jobs, and pumped about $3 trillion into the economy last year. If you’re a small business owner, you should stand tall and proud knowing this. But leading a small business isn’t always green pastures. Risk and uncertainty are present at every turn, and each decision you make can impact your company’s bottom line. LinkedIn wants to help take your business to the next level this year, so we conducted a study to investigate how small businesses are using social media, and whether it’s worth the investment....
Are you looking for rich and insightful blog posts to boost your social media marketing?
We asked our writers to share their favorite social media blog posts.
What follows is a gold mine of content you can apply to your marketing in 2014...
How can marketers help their organizations move from “social media marketing” to “social business”? Which emerging platforms are essential (or even worth investigating)? What role does social play in a brand’s overall online visibility? How does social media use differ in B2B vs. B2C companies? Between large and small businesses? Which content marketing tactics and formats are gaining or losing favor? How do marketers separate hype from reality in mobile?Find the answers to these questions and many, many more in this compilation of more than 100 compelling social media, content marketing and SEO stats, facts and observations....
American Giant was drowning in a river of digital praise.
Last December, Slate tech writer Farhad Manjoo published a story about the company’s signature product — a heavyweight hooded sweatshirt — calling it the “greatest hoodie ever made.” Orders flooded in — so many that American Giant couldn’t keep up with the demand.
As Christmas came and went, the orders kept rolling in, and the struggle to fill them continued. Unlike the massive multinationals making billions from fast fashion in sweatshops in Bangladesh, American Giant is selling an American-made ideal as much as a sweatshirt. It is making clothes you don’t wear for a season and shove to the back of your closet. It’s making durable, well-designed, good-looking sweatshirts you can wear for a decade and then pass down to your kid, the way American clothes used to be made — and they don’t cost much more than the disposable crap we’ve accepted as the standard for affordable apparel....
What if tomorrow you woke up and found out that you suddenly had to compete against a customer experience giant – the likes of Southwest, Apple, or the Ritz Carlton. What if one of these well known and deeply loved brands swooped into your marketplace? Would your customers stay? Or would they happily test out the new entrant? Would they be delighted to have options instead of being forced to do business with you and your usual group of hardly differentiated competitors? Could you compete against a customer experience giant?
This is exactly what happened to the B2B supply industry when Amazon joined the industrial distribution market last year. Product categories covered include: lab equipment, occupational health and safety, janitorial and sanitation, office, power and hand tools, and the list goes on. In true Amazon fashion, orders over $50 or more receive two day shipping. In addition, they offer free 365 day returns and financing through their corporate lines of credit. Overnight, B2B suppliers were faced with competing against a company with a notoriously delightful customer experience.
Not surprisingly, there’s been a healthy amount of debate around how willing customers will be to trade in personal service for faceless procurement. But new research by Acquity Group shows that buyers have been quite willing to at least give Amazon Supply a try. Now, to make matters worse, Google is joining Amazon in the fight for the B2B buyer as it rolls out services to the electrical and electronics industries....
This year, IDC has identified the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) community as the partner of choice and benefit for CIOs with mobility as the top technology spend category. Marketeers in Asia Pacific clearly understand that mobility is the online platform and customer engagement channel. Already more than one-fifth of the CMO respondents have direct IT budget and procurement authority in their organizations.
With the convergence of social media/business, mobility, business analytics and cloud, the power of CIO+CMO cannot be underestimated. Businesses and governments who are looking at finding innovative ideas to propel forward in a highly-competitive markets where economic growth is slowing and markets are becoming borderless, understand this and other CIO+LoB partnerships are critical....
An inevitable consequence of the push to achieve sales through multiple channels is that businesses must also be prepared to deliver multichannel customer service. But is social there yet?
An inevitable consequence of the push to achieve sales through multiple channels is that businesses must also be prepared to deliver multichannel customer service.
Poor levels of service can ruin the overall shopping experience and mean that the customer is lost forever, so online, in-store, mobile and all other channels must work together to deliver an excellent overall customer experience.New research from eDigitalResearch examined how consumers prefer to contact companies and then compared the various response times and satisfaction levels.
The survey asked more than 2,000 UK respondents how they expect to be able to contact a business - 92% selected email, followed by telephone (71%) and by post (45%). Fewer than one in four (22%) said live online chat and just 11% said social media....
Even if you’ve spent countless hours and dedicated resources to developing a thorough social media marketing strategy, you may find that you have overlooked some small, yet critical elements that could end up handicapping your efforts. For this reason, it’s always a good idea to get a second set of eyes to look over your internet marketing strategy, particularly a social media agency (heck, even having a friend look over it may dig up some missing elements).Mashable recently shared some of the most common elements missing from a social media marketing strategy. Check out some of these oversights below to see if your strategy needs some tweaking:...
U.S. consumers have fallen out of love with tech giants Apple and Google, according to recent market research by YouGov BrandIndex.The two companies have fallen off the top ten list of best-perceived brands in 2013. Google was listed at number 10 in the second half of 2012, while Apple had already dropped.
However, it doesn't seem to be technology the public has lost interest in: Amazon made two appearances in the list with its Kindle e-reader brand at number nine and Amazon, which took out the top spot for online retailing, came in at number two out of all brands....
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2013 was a year of exploration for brands on social media. From testing Vines to launching Instagram ads, many companies were dabbling in social media efforts across the Web just to see how customers would react. Now, in 2014, brands are geting serious. They’re using the wealth of data as well as the human connection that social media can provide to develop deeper relationships with customers.
Here are seven ways brands are using social media to increase customer loyalty this year....
Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC) asked some 150 CEOs about the trends they expected to be prevalent in the coming years as part of their 17th Annual CEO survey and found most bets were on technology. Some 86% of CEOs cited tech advances as the dominant global trend. But marketers beware! When it came to how well prepared their organizations are to capitalize on these transformative trends, only 36% of the CEOs surveyed considered that their corporate marketing capabilities were up to speed and ready to embrace change.
According to the report, more than half of the CEOs responding were planning to change their customer growth and retention strategies to address the situation. The next few years are likely to see a new kind of interaction with customers as organizations acknowledge how technological advances are changing their relationships with consumers.
The emphasis will no longer be on the single transaction—instead, the focus is shifting to a more sustainable “always on” relationship with customers. It’s what we’ve been preaching for longer than I can remember and it’s nice to see, even in a small study, that this mindset is catching on....
There is a major gap between what consumers expect and what retailers are providing them, according to a new study released today, with 94 percent of retail decision-makers surveyed saying that their companies are facing significant barriers to omni-channel commerce.“Customer Desires Vs. Retailer Capabilities: Minding the Omni-Channel Commerce Gap,” from Accenture and hybris software, an SAP company, peels back the onion to reveal that the difference between the omni-channel ideal and what retailers are currently able to achieve for customers is vast...
Two years ago Savannah Peterson worked as the head of marketing for a design firm in Silicon Valley. She was introduced to a company making a newfangled photo device. The gadget, called Instacube, ...
Instacube launched a Kickstarter campaign in August of 2012 with the promise of a March 2013 ship date. The Internet fell in love with Instacube, and the device raised nearly three times what it sought. Cut to March of 2014 and not one Instacube has been shipped. Today, at a one-on-one interview at South by Southwest, Peterson told her story....
It worked. Peterson was able to wrangle an article by Engadget, and from there the dominoes fell. Instacube was on CNET, Mashable, and TechCrunch. The campaign had intended to raise $250,000. Within the first 24 hours it had secured more than $100,000. By campaign’s end D2M had raked in $621,049.
Then D2M had to build it. This is where things begin to fall apart. The March 2013 deadline came and went and zero devices had been shipped. Backers, understandably, became impatient....
Are marketers facing a technology gap, or is there a gap in their ability and willingness to adapt to available software?
A recent study by Econsultancy and Adobe Quarterly Digital Intelligence Briefing, attempts to show that we — marketers — are facing a technology gap. This gap is making it especially hard for consultants and agencies to successfully monitor, manage and implement integrated marketing campaigns.
After reading the study I was able to make several correlations with the “technology gap” and our own experiences as a small marketing agency....
When a product or service doesn’t work as promised, some people get angry. Really angry. Cloud contact center provider Five9 released a report and infographic today looking at “customer rage” and what companies can do to prevent it.
Turns out 85℅ of consumers will retaliate against a company if their customer service needs are not met. 49℅ of all consumers will stop doing business with that company, and 18-34 year olds are three times as likely to vent their frustrations on social media....
I love case studies, and so do potential customers. In my offline portfolio I have several case studies that I walk prospects through so they can see exactly how I can help businesses with their blogging and social media. Case studies are powerful because they allow the customer to visualise the success you bring easily, and it makes you memorable.
You have a blog and you share content on your Facebook page, Twitter account, and the next step is to convert some of those fans to customers without going all scary-sales on them. That’s where the good ol’ case study on your blog comes in....
In our social media-infused world, traditional marketing logic just doesn't work.Traditional marketing — including advertising, public relations, branding and corporate communications — is dead. Many people in traditional marketing roles and organizations may not realize they're operating within a dead paradigm. But they are. The evidence is clear.
First, buyers are no longer paying much attention. Several studies have confirmed that in the "buyer's decision journey," traditional marketing communications just aren't relevant. Buyers are checking out product and service information in their own way, often through the Internet, and often from sources outside the firm such as word-of-mouth or customer reviews.Second, CEOs have lost all patience.
In a devastating 2011 study of 600 CEOs and decision makers by the London-based Fournaise Marketing Group, 73% of them said that CMOs lack business credibility and the ability to generate sufficient business growth, 72% are tired of being asked for money without explaining how it will generate increased business, and 77% have had it with all the talk about brand equity that can't be linked to actual firm equity or any other recognized financial metric...
...If you read the profiles of many of the heads of customer service on LinkedIn (or the service areas of their company’s websites), you might be forgiven for concluding that they were almost all focused on the lofty goals of “exceeding customer expectations” and/or “creating customer delight”. Maybe your organisation claims the same.
But ground-breaking recent research by the CEB (the organisation that brought you “The Challenger Sale”) makes a strong case for all this talk of delighting customers being a stupid and – for almost every company on the planet bar a few shining stars – ultimately unprofitable strategy. As anyone who has had cause to phone O2’s customer service line (note: other mobile phone companies offer an equally awful experience) will recognise, I think most of us would be prepared to sacrifice the occasional opportunity to have a truly “wow” experience in return for not ever having to suffer any more of the much more common “doh!’ experiences....
By identifying the differences between “innovators” and “laggards” and everything in between, Geoffrey Moore creates a roadmap for how new markets develop. While his book focuses on high tech, the lessons that he draws and the example he gives are applicable to every industry and business situation....
The show's over for TV: Adults set to spend more time using digital media than watching television by end of this year, claims study.
People will soon be spending more time using their smartphones and tablets for surfing the web, checking social networks and playing games than they do watching television, new research has found.The average adult will use a mobile device for five hours a day compared to just four and half hours watching television.A US marketing company has claimed the tipping point when digital devices surpass the popularity of TV will come later this year....
The 'love' button may be the most-clicked on ModCloth's platform. But with $100 M in 2012 revenue, 'checkout' is a close second....
“The ‘love’ button is the most used button on our site,” ModCloth CEO Eric Koger told me this June on a visit to the East Coast from the company’s San Francisco HQ. Tuesday’s announcement that the company he founded back in 2002 with wife Susan Gregg Korger has reached $100 million in 2012 revenue makes another thing clear: the check-out button is closing in on ‘Like’ for number one.
ModCloth’s commitment to a mobile-first, unabashedly social strategy is credited with getting them to the $100 million mark according to today’s press release. According to the founders nearly a third of their traffic is same-day repeat traffic, meaning they’ve visited the site more than once a day as a result of a roll-out of a slew of social features over the past 12 months. Among them: a virtual buyer program that allows users to vote samples into production and a style gallery of user-submitted photos that’s turned the e-commerce platform into its own internal social network. Since its launch last year more than 6,000 outfit photos have been shared through the site....
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Another valuable social media and social marketing resource from Lee Odden.