Digital Marketing News: B2B Content Lifecycle Study, LinkedIn’s New Featured Section, B2B Millennial Report, & Facebook Adds Story Discovery Feature

Millennial buyers want better content from B2B marketers Better B2B content is a top concern among Millennial buyers, as the demographic accounts for some 33 percent of overall B2B buyers, a portion Forrester's newly-released report expects to grow to 44 percent by 2025. Digital Commerce 360 LinkedIn Launches New 'Featured' Section on Profiles to Highlight Key Achievements and Links LinkedIn (client) began a gradual roll-out of a new "Featured" section, where users' key achievements will appear near the top of profiles when starred from updates, the Microsoft-owned platform recently announced. Social Media Today How the Fastest-Growing US Companies Are Using Social Media 87 percent of Inc. 500 firms used LinkedIn for social media during 2019, topping a list of how the fastest-growing U.S. firms are using social media, outlined in a recently-released UMass Dartmouth report of interest to digital marketers. MarketingProfs The Best Times to Post on Social Media According to Research [Infographic] B2B businesses find that the best posting times on LinkedIn are before noon and around 6:00 p.m., one of numerous social media platform most effective posting time statistics outlined in a recently-released infographic. Social Media Today Gen Z Craves Multifaceted Content, Audio - And Even Likes (Relevant) Long-Form Ads Digital media consumption habits vary by generation, with members of the Gen Z demographic more often seeking out multifaceted content comprised of interactive elements such as polls and quizzes, according to recently-released content consumption preference data. MediaPost Are Brands Getting Smarter About Social? New Data Reveals Surprising Trends Across Platforms 2019 saw U.S. brands receiving an average of five percent more social engagement that during 2018, with video engagement achieving an even higher eight percent growth rate — two of numerous statistics of interest to online marketers contained in recent social media activity study data. Forbes How Businesses Handle Customer Reviews [Infographic] Over 35 percent of businesses often or always use positive reviews in their marketing efforts, with Google, Facebook, and Yelp being the three platforms most often monitored for online reviews, according to recently-released survey data focusing on how reviews are used by businesses. Social Media Today IAB: Programmatic Now 85% Of All U.S. Digital Advertising By 2021 programmatic advertising spending will exceed $91 billion in the U.S. alone, and account for 86 percent of overall digital ad spend — two of several items of interest to digital marketers in newly-released Interactive Advertising Bureau report data. MediaPost Facebook Tests New Format for Separate Facebook Stories Discovery Page Facebook has continued to ramp up its support for content shared in the Stories format, announcing recently that certain Stories will receive larger images in a test of a distinct new Facebook Stories discovery page, according to the social media giant. Social Media Today From Consistent Publishing to Performance Peaks: What You Need to Know About the Life Span of Content Digital B2B content assets often bring peak value two months after publishing, while going on to achieve steady endurance among consumers, two of many findings of interest to digital marketers contained in new B2B content lifespan report data. Skyword ON THE LIGHTER SIDE: A lighthearted look at what is digital transformation? by Marketoonist Tom Fishburne — Marketoonist Jif Partnered With Giphy to Make a Limited-Edition Peanut Butter No One Can Pronounce — Adweek TOPRANK MARKETING & CLIENTS IN THE NEWS:

• Lee Odden — Not Another State of Marketing Report — HubSpot
• Lee Odden — What’s Trending: Aim for Excellence — LinkedIn (client)
• TopRank Marketing / Prophix — B2B Campaign Spotlight: Prophix Strikes a Chord with Visual Storytelling — LinkedIn (client)
• Lane R. Ellis — 10 Tips to Help You Better Understand Your Small Business Customers — Small Business Trends
• Lee Odden — How to Create Trustworthy Content That People Want to Read — Aweber
• Lee Odden — Speaker Spotlight: Lee Odden — Content Marketing Conference

Do you have your own top B2B content marketing or digital advertising stories from the past week? Please let us know in the comments below. Thank you for joining us, and please return next week for a new selection 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. Also, don't miss the full video summary on our TopRank Marketing TV YouTube Channel.

The post Digital Marketing News: B2B Content Lifecycle Study, LinkedIn’s New Featured Section, B2B Millennial Report, & Facebook Adds Story Discovery Feature appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Optimizing ABM with Influencer Marketing at #B2BMX

Account based marketing (ABM) is the hybrid sales/marketing/revenue discipline that is shaking up the status quo for marketers and sales pros alike. There are as many definitions of ABM as there are accounts to target, but I’m partial to this one from LinkedIn’s Megan Golden: 

“ABM is a strategy that directs marketing resources to engaging a specific set of target accounts. Instead of casting a wide net with their lead-generation efforts, marketers using ABM work closely with sales to identify key prospects and then tailor customized programs and messages to the buying team within target accounts.” Megan Golden, Group Manager, Global Content & Social Media Marketing, LinkedIn*

It’s all about earning the trust of — and ultimately influencing — members of specific buying committees. In other words, it’s the distillation of what all B2B marketers should be doing. Or as Sangram Vajre, CEO of Terminus, put it (embroidered on his sneakers, no less): Marketers who practice ABM are seeing impressive results. A recent report from ITSMA and the ABM Leadership Alliance found that 73% of marketers plan to increase ABM budgets in the coming year, and 71% saw greater ROI compared to traditional marketing. Yet as much success as marketers are seeing with ABM, most are missing a crucial part of the strategy: Building trust through external influence. In his B2BMX presentation, Lee Odden observed that ABM marketers tend to focus on internal influence — which members of the buying committee have a say in the purchase decision. But… Here’s what is possible when B2B marketers include influencer marketing in their ABM strategy.

Influence in ABM: It’s All About Trust

According to Lee, “Trust is one of the most paramount matters in marketing today.” If buyers don’t trust your brand, it’s hard to even get a message through, let alone close a sale. The problem is, buyers overall don’t trust brands. In the CSO Insights report from Marketing Charts, brands were near the bottom for trust: And who is at the top of the list? Subject matter experts from the industry or third parties. These are the people your audience wants to hear from...which means they’re the voices you want to highlight in your content. [bctt tweet="“Trust is one of the most paramount matters in marketing today.” @LeeOdden" username="toprank"]

Dell Outlet Builds Trust & Brand Awareness with B2B Influence

For his first example of the power of influence in B2B, Lee shared a success story from Dell Outlet*, a 2020 Killer Content Award Finalist. Dell Outlet needed to build awareness as an entity distinct from their parent brand. With a focus on refurbished hardware and a commitment to a more sustainable, circular economy, Dell Outlet has a unique personality, purpose and value proposition. But they needed to both establish themselves as their own brand, and educate a small business audience on the value of refurbished equipment. With targeted research and outreach, Dell Outlet was able to connect and co-create content with small business influencers that had relevance and resonance with the brand’s target audience. The full campaign, featuring videos, a landing page, and social promotion, achieved amazing results that were only possible with influencer marketing: Of particular interest is that the campaign was 175% over goal for traffic to product pages. Even though this was primarily an awareness campaign, the influencer contributions actually drove conversions. That’s a powerful testament to how successfully the campaign built trust with its target audience.

Cherwell Employs Influence Across the Customer Lifecycle

For his next example, Lee shared a success story from software company Cherwell*. Their story highlights the importance of a diverse influencer mix to appeal to buyers across the lifecycle, from awareness to engagement to decision. Cherwell needed to create awareness around their brand, build trust with IT executives, and ultimately drive leads and sales. This full-funnel approach required different types of influencers for each stage: At the top of the funnel, brandividuals with large networks and enthusiastic audiences help drive awareness. Further down, subject matter experts add even more substance to the conversation, contributing to meatier content. Finally, at the bottom of the funnel, brand advocates help with the final push to conversion. This type of strategic co-creation, with influencers at every stage of the funnel, generated unbelievable results for Cherwell. The campaign achieved over 400% more social reach than any previous campaign, and influenced 22% of their sales pipeline for the year.

ALE Creates a New Industry Award

Lee’s final example shows just how powerful influencer marketing can be not only for awareness, engagement, and conversion, but also for creating goodwill among influencers, prospects, and customers. Alcatel Lucent Enterprise (ALE)* wanted to raise awareness and add credibility with prospects to accelerate sales discussions. Their solution: With the help of influencers, create a new award to honor and uplift the IT professionals in their target audience. The 2020 IT Vanguard Awards started by selecting judges, influencers in the IT space, as well as a subject matter expert from ALE. These judges shared their thoughts on what qualities defined the best IT leaders. Then ALE asked their target audience to nominate their co-workers and peers for the award. The resulting campaign saw unprecedented levels of engagement and influencer promotion for ALE, along with earned media reporting in industry publications. The resultant flood of goodwill from IT professionals firmly established ALE’s credibility and added deals worth millions of dollars to their pipeline. And for a finishing touch, the campaign won ALE an award of its own: A Killer Content Award (“Finny”) for 2020.

Optimizing ABM with Influencer Marketing

Looking to get some of those results for yourself? Lee offered a 5-step plan to integrating influencer marketing into your ABM strategy: #1: Find Your Ideal Customer Topics. Use tools like SEMrush, Brandwatch and BuzzSumo to identify your customers’ burning questions — and how they search for answers. Seek out the topics that align with your brand’s expertise and your customers’ need to know. #2: Find Your Ideal Customer Influencers. With the help of tools like Traackr, identify the people who are influential about your topics. You’re looking for those who care about these topics, whose audience cares about them too, and who are regularly publishing content. #3: Identify, Qualify and Recruit. The three key considerations for an influencer are:

• Popularity: How large of a following does the influencer have?
• Resonance: How well does the influencer actually move their audience to take action?
• Relevance: How closely aligned is the influencer’s output with your values, audience, and topics?

For top of funnel influencers, popularity is the #1 consideration. For middle of funnel, it’s relevance, then popularity. For the bottom of the funnel, resonance and relevance rule. And also look for the five key traits of the best B2B influencers: Proficiency, Popularity, Personality, Publishing and Promotion.  #4: Create Content & Activate Influencers. Plan your content types, platforms and media —based on your audience research. Once you co-create content with your influencers, activate them to share the fruits of your collaboration. #5: Practice Ongoing Engagement. Don’t make your influencer involvement a one-and-done. Keep following and engaging with your influencers, helping promote them and developing a community. Better yet, introduce influencers to each other! They’ll have your brand to thank for meaningful connections they make with their peers.

Understanding Influence, Influencing Understanding

In closing, Lee urged account-based marketers to include influencer marketing in their ABM strategy. In addition to your brandividuals, advocates, and experts, he also recommended adding prospects into your influencer mix. Promote your most valued potential customers right alongside leaders in the industry, help them become influential, and you can begin a mutually profitable relationship. Is influencer marketing part of your B2B marketing mix? Whether you’re running multiple campaigns, or just thinking about testing the waters, we want to hear from you. Take our quick B2B Influencer Marketing Survey to share your experience, and have a chance to win a $500 Amazon gift card! * LinkedIn, Dell Outlet, Cherwell, and Alcatel Lucent Enterprise are TopRank Marketing clients.

The post Optimizing ABM with Influencer Marketing at #B2BMX appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

The B2B Marketer’s Journey To Experiential Content at #B2BMX

What makes an experience an... ? Full disclosure: I am not on the design team at TopRank Marketing. But you know what I mean. You’ve eaten dinner at dozens, if not hundreds of restaurants in your lifetime. But there are likely one or two that stick out in your memory. What makes them memorable? That question drove an intriguing presentation at B2B Marketing Exchange, led by four expert marketers:

• Ryan Brown, Ceros
• Darius Eslami, Carbon Black
• Paige Gildner, Bluecore
• Sharon Shapiro, Bluecore

Short answer: What makes experiences different and memorable is if they’re really good… or really bad. Anything in the middle tends to blur together in our recollection. Only the extremes stand out. [bctt tweet="“What makes experiences different and memorable is if they’re really good… or really bad. Anything in the middle tends to blur together in our recollection. Only the extremes stand out.” @NiteWrites" username="toprank"] Case in point: The vast majority of B2B content. It’s...fine! But maybe not so memorable. 

The Five Levels of Memorable Content

Ryan observed that, when a B2B business has customers or clients in the office, we offer amazing experiences: Everything from go-kart rides to monogrammed socks.  So why do we offer blocks of black-and-white text in a PDF to our digital customers? Not only does our static content fail to be memorable, it isn’t measurable, either. Interactive, immersive content can provide a better experience and help marketers optimize at the same time.  According to Ryan, there are five levels of “memorability” for great content:

1. Narrative. This is text content at its most elemental: ad copy, blog posts, stories, scripts.

 

2. Visual Elements. Images, graphics, photos and videos liven up the text, but are still static assets on the page.

 

3. Integrated elements. Forms, maps, chat, embedded content. This level pulls in multiple different types of content from external sources, like a lead gen form or a Google map.

 

4. Interactive Elements. This type of content solicits and rewards active engagement, versus passive consumption. It can include content you click, touch, or hover over to open content paths and customize the experience.

 

5. Immersive Elements. This type of content comes alive as the audience moves through it, with animation, actions triggered on scroll and click, parallax effects to give depth, and multiple layers of content.

Most B2B marketers are proficient in the first two levels, and many are getting comfortable with the third. But truly interactive and immersive experiences aren’t as common.

Barriers to Immersive Content

Workflow

According to Ryan, one reason we get stuck with same-old content is the workflow between teams. Typically, content teams create the copy and hand it off to design. The design team isn’t consulted in the planning or execution of the copy.  Then, the design team takes the copy and goes through the design process in their silo. There’s no collaboration; it’s content + design.  To fix that workflow, Bluecore’s Paige and Sharon recommend that content and design teams work together, from planning to execution to optimization, in order to:

• Engage early
• Partner on content development
• Frequently sync on milestones

To illustrate how their process leads to more engaging experiences, Paige and Shannon showed off their Content Concierge, an interactive recommendation engine for their content library. Versus their static content, Bluecore's Content Concierge achieved a 93% higher interaction rate, and 80% more dwell time. Tools The other major roadblock for interactive experiences is the tools marketers use to create content. These tools tend to reinforce the divide between content and design, Ryan says. More complex multimedia experiences also require a third cook in the kitchen: A web development team or vendor partner. The solution is to seek out tools that empower content and design to work together on interactive, immersive experiences. Darius from Carbon Black shared how his team used Ceros to design different types of experiences for their customers. They created a choose-your-own-adventure style game for an immersive, long-form experience. But they also created a snackable March Madness-inspired tournament game that people could play in under a minute.

Memorable & Measurable Experiences

According to Ryan, downloadable assets — like a typical white paper — miss the opportunity to provide a memorable experience. What’s worse, they’re not measurable once downloaded. Did the downloader make it past the front page? Was there an infographic that really hit with your target audience? It’s impossible to tell.  With the right type of interactive content, you can be a fly on the wall as people go through the experience. You can tell where people are clicking, how deep they’re scrolling, and when they’re likely to drop off. That means more opportunities to optimize and engage more deeply.  Darius encouraged marketers to invest their time and energy in creating and optimizing these memorable experiences. “If we’re not putting the time in with our customers, we can’t expect them to give us their time back,” he said. [bctt tweet="“If we’re not putting the time in with our customers, we can’t expect them to give us their time back.” — Darius Eslami, Carbon Black" username="toprank"]

Getting Started with Experiential Content

Creating memorable content experiences requires a shift in mindset and operations. Making the change can be tricky, Sharon and Paige warned. They offered a three-step approach to getting started:

1. Create a business case to get buy-in
2. Do a proof of concept — have a clear outline, objectives and measurable goals.
3. Prioritize where you will get the most impact 

That last point is crucial, Sharon said. Without a clear set of priorities, you can get option paralysis with the possibilities. Or, as she put it, “It’s like going to the Cheesecake Factory hungry and trying to navigate that massive menu.”

Be the Architect of Your Brand

Ryan ended the session on an aspirational note. He reminds marketers that we are responsible for designing the ways that customers encounter and perceive our brands. “Take pride in the experiences you create,” he said. “Stop ‘writing at’ your customer, and start ‘creating for’ them.” Dynamic, interactive, immersive content is more engaging for customers, gets better results for marketers, and can even lead to quicker sales and more revenue for the company. It’s well worth making your content experience into an… See how interactive content made for a memorable experience that smashed benchmarks for our client Prophix.

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Award Winning B2B Influencer Marketing at B2BMX

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The Influence of ABM in B2B Marketing: Top B2BMX Sessions & Speaker Insights

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Digital Marketing News: How B2B Buyers Pick Vendors, BuzzSumo’s New YouTube Insights, ABM Brings B2B Improvements, & How Brands Use Direct Messaging

B2B buyers consume an average of 13 content pieces before deciding on a vendor B2B buyers say that they take in an average of 13 pieces of online content before choosing a vendor, consisting of eight vendor-made and five third-party elements, according to newly-released survey data from FocusVision, containing a number of additional insights of interest to digital marketers. Marketing Land B2B Firms Are Failing To Integrate Sales, Marketing And Customer Success Teams: Study Revenue growth is a top challenge for B2B brands, and some 84 percent of B2B sales and marketing professionals say that revenue responsibility rests with both sales and marketing, however 37 percent say the two functions aren't optimally aligned — some of the findings in new survey data from Leandata and Sales Hacker. MediaPost Content Analysis App BuzzSumo Adds YouTube Insights BuzzSumo's array of content data tools recently expanded with an addition that brings YouTube content discovery, performance data, and YouTube influencer information to the platform, with its new YouTube Analyzer feature, the firm announced. Social Media Today The State of B2B Account-Based Marketing Account-based marketing (ABM) has driven success for B2B marketers, and some 92 percent plan to ramp up the scale of their ABM campaigns during the coming year, some of the many findings of interest to B2B marketers in a recently-released report from the Information Technology Services Marketing Association (ITSMA) and the ABM Leadership Alliance. MarketingProfs 70% of Customers Believe In-App Chat Helps to Simplify Customer Experience, Reveals UJET Report Offering in-app chat features helps customer experience according to 70 percent of consumers in recently-released survey data, with the majority also wanting the ability to upload images and screen-shots to help explain their needs, the survey noted. MarTech Advisor FTC votes to review influencer marketing rules & penalties The U.S. Federal Trade Commission will reexamine its recommendations, rules, and penalties relating to influencer marketing in its non-binding Endorsement Guides. The FTC said it will also look at how influencer marketing affects and is understood by children. TechCrunch How Email Responsiveness Builds Trust [Infographic] Despite or perhaps because of its long digital history, U.S. consumer email use still sits around 90 percent, with people aged 24-44 using it most at 93 percent, while 33 percent of Gen X and Baby Boomers expect an email response in less than one hour — some of numerous statistics of interest to marketers in newly-released infographic data. Social Media Today California AG Publishes Updated CCPA Regs With Far More Clarity Than The First Draft With implementation and compliance of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) still far from universal, the California attorney general's office recently released a new regulations draft document and has solicited feedback from marketers and others through February 25, 2020. AdExchanger How brands are using Apple, Google, Facebook and texting to chat up consumers Care is key for brands using direct messaging to connect with consumers, and AdAge looks at how Google, Apple and other large brands are skipping the need for custom apps and turning instead to direct messaging and mobile marketing. AdAge 10 LinkedIn Stats to Guide Your Social Media Marketing Strategy in 2020 [Infographic] LinkedIn (client) has an average user session length of over six minutes, with 52 percent of buyers listing the Microsoft-owned platform as the most influential channel during the research process — some of the information contained in a recent infographic. Social Media Today Instagram overtakes Facebook in audience of top 50 brands, study says Instagram advertising spending overtook that of parent company Facebook when it comes to 50 top brands, according to newly-released report data, with influencer marketing also showing swift growth. Mobile Marketer Here’s How PR Pros Are Using Social Listening 67 percent of global marketing communications professionals now see influencer marketing within their scope, while some 77 percent say the same about content marketing, and 56 percent about search engine optimization (SEO), according to newly-released marcomm survey data from Talkwalker. MarketingCharts ON THE LIGHTER SIDE: A lighthearted look at the art of project management by Marketoonist Tom Fishburne — Marketoonist Check the attic! These 8 old tech items could be worth a lot of money — USA Today TOPRANK MARKETING & CLIENTS IN THE NEWS:

• Lee Odden / TopRank Marketing — TopRank References Brian Solis as an Influencer Role Model in Its New List, 5 Key Traits of the Best B2B Influencers — Brian Solis
• Lee Odden — 25 Experts Share Their Tips on Winning the Hearts of Your Customers in 2020 — Nimble
• Nick Nelson — What’s Trending: Organize and Focus — LinkedIn (client)
• Lee Odden — How to Curate Social Media Content Like a Professional — Business 2 Community
• TopRank Marketing — 30 Leading Influencer Marketing Agencies to Work With In 2020 — Influencer Marketing Hub

Do you have your own top B2B content marketing or digital advertising stories from the past week? Please let us know in the comments below. Thanks for making time to join us, and we hope you'll return next week for a new selection 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. Also, don't miss the full video summary on our TopRank Marketing TV YouTube Channel.

The post Digital Marketing News: How B2B Buyers Pick Vendors, BuzzSumo’s New YouTube Insights, ABM Brings B2B Improvements, & How Brands Use Direct Messaging appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

4 Questions to Drive More Productive Marketing Meetings

Allow me to paint a picture.

SCENE

INTERIOR - OFFICE

The CAMERA pans to a worker, furiously typing on their computer. Headphones on. The keys CLACK with productivity until-- -- A LOUD CHIME rings out. The CAMERA zooms slowly to the computer screen. A meeting alert flashes across the monitor. -- The worker’s head hits the desk with a soft THUD. We CUT back to the worker. Head hung in exasperation, the worker stops their typing, rises, and departs to attend their call.

END SCENE

It’s happened to all of us. Stop work. Attend meeting. Rinse and repeat. According to a recent study from Workfront, 62% of workers believe meetings are the No. 1 thing that gets in the way of work. And following the above scenario, it’s easy to see why. Meetings can be productivity killers. They interrupt. They accomplish little. They take up time. But they’re also necessary. They improve collaboration. Align the team. Increase information sharing. The problem, however, is when a meeting does none of those things and interrupts your workflow. So how do you make sure you are asking your team to attend a productive meeting? One that will help them do their job rather than hinder them? Below, I outline several questions you need to ask yourself before you send your next meeting invite.

Question #1: Do You Have a Meeting Agenda?

There’s a reason this question appears first on our list: It will quickly weed out unnecessary or ill-planned meetings. If you answered “Yes” to this question, continue on to our next question. But if you answered “No” — cancel the meeting. Do not pass go. If there is no plan for the meeting, how are you going to accomplish anything? Based on my own experiences, a meeting with no plan leads to talking in circles and more questions than answers. No plan means no meeting. End of story. Bonus Tip: To ensure your meeting is as productive as possible always document the agenda within the invite for all attendees to see. This allows attendees to prepare and contribute to the agenda in a meaningful way.

Question #2: Is Progress Dependent on Others?

Considering where you are on your current project: Do you need others to move forward? Or can you achieve progress on your own? If you’re able to take the next step without the input of other team members, a meeting should not be held. Instead, message the team to let them know you’ve moved forward and outline next steps for them (if there are any). If you do need other team members to complete the project’s next steps, you might need a meeting. Our next couple of questions can help you decide.

Question #3: Do You Need a Conversation or a Meeting?

According to the Oxford Dictionary, a conversation is “a talk, especially an informal one, between two or more people, in which news and ideas are exchanged.” A meeting is “an assembly of people, especially the members of a society or committee, for discussion.” Which one do you need? If you’re able to receive the input you need with a simple email, message, or phone call, don’t bother interrupting the whole team with an in-person meeting. However, if you need to discuss your plan of attack, brainstorm new ideas, or collaborate with several team members, a meeting sounds like a great idea. Just make sure you document your agenda and define clear roles for each person you need to attend. As Neen James, author of Folding Time™ and Attention Pays™, recently told us in an interview, “As a leader, every time you ask someone to attend a meeting with you, you're stealing minutes from them. So you'd better make it worthwhile.” [bctt tweet="“As a leader, every time you ask someone to attend a meeting with you, you're stealing minutes from them. So you'd better make it worthwhile.” @NeenJames" username="toprank"]

Question #4: Is This a Recurring Meeting?

Recurring meetings show up on everyone’s calendar. Whether it’s for status updates or results reviews, they pop up often and usually have the same agenda. Which spells bad news in terms of productivity. A recurring meeting should only occur if you have something new to discuss. Have a weekly meeting scheduled but no updates to give the team? Cancel it. Have a short update that can be summarized in an email? Cancel it. Need to review several updates with the whole team? Have it.

If You Need to Have This Meeting…

… You’re gonna want to follow a few rules. From setting the agenda to meeting preparation to inviting the right people, there are a few tricks to hosting meetings that drive results. So, if you answered the questions above and concluded “Yes, I do need to have this meeting,” here are a few meeting best practices you should follow beforehand. Want your organization’s productivity to soar? Optimize your workflow with these prioritization tips.

The post 4 Questions to Drive More Productive Marketing Meetings appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

24 Essential B2B Influencer Marketing Statistics

How important is influencer marketing to businesses in 2020? Influencer marketing will see global brand spending of up to $15 billion by 2022 (Business Insider Intelligence), and B2B marketers who haven’t yet experienced its many benefits now have more research data than ever to make the case for starting an influencer marketing program. Even if you’ve already developed an influencer marketing strategy, the wealth of new information coming out about its power to build trust and inspire action is growing, which is why we wanted to share 24 significant B2B influencer marketing statistics that combine to tell a compelling story that will alter your future campaigns. Let’s jump right in with a look at some of the latest influencer marketing statistics.

Making The Statistical Case For B2B Influencer Marketing

It Makes Financial Sense

Among B2B buyers the type of influencer content with the most value is the venerable case study. 47 percent of B2B buyers found case studies to be the most valuable type of influencer content, ahead of webinars at 39 percent, third-party or analyst reports at 35 percent, and user reviews and video content, each at 32 percent, according to survey data from MarketingCharts as shown below. Influencer marketing has also delivered impressive value, beginning in 2018 when analyst data showed that each dollar spent for influencer marketing yielded $5.20 return in media value. From that point forward influencer spending increased, as in 2019 it saw the highest growth of all online channels, reaching some $2.6 billion in the U.S. alone, and a growth rate of a whopping 70.5 percent year-over-year, according to report data from MarketingCharts. The same forecast predicts $3.4 billion for influencer spending in 2020 in the U.S. alone.

It Builds Trust & Credibility

[bctt tweet="“Partnering with relevant influencers to co-create content can open doors for brands trying to engage hard to reach and increasingly skeptical audiences.” @LeeOdden" username="toprank"] The recent Edelman Trust Barometer report placed influencer trust above that from delivered from brands. 63 percent of survey respondents said that they trust influencers more than what a brand says about itself. A compelling case for influencer marketing in the B2B world also comes from the aforementioned MarketingCharts B2B buyer survey, which found that 95 percent of B2B marketers say they prefer credible content from industry influencers. Separate survey data of senior level marketers, also from MarketingCharts, revealed that 65 percent of B2B buyers said their consumption habits have changed to prefer credible content from industry influencers. When done well, influencer marketing builds levels of trust that exceed traditional campaign methods, however consumers need to feel confidence in the influencers they follow. 82 percent of U.S. consumers believe that influencers should disclose their history of personal use of a product or service. (Influence.co) Consumers are also wary of influencers who post too frequently. The same survey found that 74 percent of consumers say they would sever ties with influencers who post too often, a statistic savvy B2B influencer marketers take into account.

It’s Being Rapidly Adopted For Good Reason

In several 2019 surveys influencer marketing was cited as one of the top marketing trends expected to have a sizable impact in 2020, a prediction that during the first two months of the year has materialized according to initial influencer marketing spending figures that we’ll examine. By the end of 2019 survey data forecast that influencer marketing adoption among B2B tech marketers was expected to expand by 31 percent from 2018 implementation levels, a prediction that now appears on the conservative side as influencer marketing has continued to swiftly evolve. At our client SAP’s annual conference, a group of only 15 influencers drove 25 percent of all social media impressions, which our CEO Lee Odden explores in more detail in a recent article examining how even a small number of influencers experiencing a brand event can make a big impact, with “25 B2B Influencer Marketing Campaign & Engagement Ideas for 2020.” Another positive signal for the growth of influencer marketing is that 21 percent of marketers plan to make influencer posts the focus of their 2020 social media strategy, according to Social Media Today poll data. Additionally, 88 percent of consumers have found purchasing inspiration from viewing influencer content. (Rakuten 2019 global influencer marketing survey.)

It Spans Global Boundaries & Generations

The global nature of online advertising has proven to mesh well with influencer marketing, as nearly 70 percent of consumers follow at least one influencer from a country not their own (Rakuten), which plays especially well in the hands of B2B businesses that often include multinational units. Globally during 2019 some 59 percent of marketers said their budget for influencers has increased, while 39 percent of brands in the U.S. say they would be encouraged to invest even more in influencer marketing programs if they were better able to see the impact it has in the broader scope of the customer purchasing journey, the same survey noted. [bctt tweet="“Influencer marketing for B2B offers impressive options to optimize marketing performance across the entire customer lifecycle.” — Lee Odden @LeeOdden" username="toprank"] Implementation of influencer marketing has grown not only among pure B2B marketers, but also in the marcomm sector. 67 percent of global marcomm professionals now see influencer marketing within their scope, according to recent data from Talkwalker and MarketingCharts. Influencer marketing’s power has been seen not only in its global scale, but also its multi-generational pull, as 18 percent of Gen Z consumers say they discover brands via influencers (GlobalWebIndex). When an influencer recommends a product, 51 percent of Millennials say they are more likely to try it, according to survey data from Valassis and Kantar.

Influencer Marketing & Social Platforms

When it comes to the under-10,000-follower micro-influencer niche, Instagram is the clear top social media platform of choice at 75.9 percent, according to recent survey data, which offers a look at the top social network choices among micro-influencers. We recently published a list of “31 DIY Marketing Tools To Create Remarkable Experiences,” which includes some of the tools used most frequently by micro-influencers to create content targeting Instagram. Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, blogs, Twitter, and LinkedIn (client) top one recent list of most popular social media platforms for influencer marketing. 89 percent of marketers said that Instagram was important for their influencer marketing strategy. (Fourstarzz Media)

How Do I Begin An Influencer Marketing Program?

Finding the ideal influencers for your audience is a challenge most marketers consider significant, as 51 percent of marketers have reported difficulty finding the right influencers. (Visme.) At TopRank Marketing we’ve specialized in influencer marketing for years now, and were named by Forrester as the only B2B marketing agency offering influencer marketing as a top capability in its “B2B Marketing Agencies, North America, Q1 2019” report.” To help you along your influencer marketing journey, including suggestions for finding the right influencers for your particular audience, here are five articles we’ve written that dig in to the nuances of the process:

• 11 Qualities You Should be Looking for to Find Your B2B Influencer Match
• How to Intertwine Online & Offline Tactics to Cultivate B2B Influencer Relationships
• Do Your Homework: Selecting the Right Influencers for Your B2B Brand With Tips from the Experts
• 5 Essential Questions to Guide Your B2B Influencer Marketing Strategy
• What B2B CMOs Need to Know About Successful Influencer Marketing

Learn More From TopRank Marketing Online & In Person

Statistics tell an important story that can help direct B2B marketers along a data-and-research-based journey. No matter how revealing statistics may be, however, they don’t tell the entire story, as the human elements are what drive real progress in successful influencer marketing programs. [bctt tweet="“Stories are just data with a soul.” @BreneBrown" username="toprank"] B2B marketing's use of influencer marketing to bring a human touch is the focus of a Break Free B2B video interview we held with our client LinkedIn's Marketing Manager Judy Tian. You can learn more about how B2B marketers are benefiting from influencer marketing, whether it’s through building better customer experiences (CX) or building trust, by attending one or all of the speaking events our CEO Lee Odden has lined up in the coming months, which are listed below. February 24-25, 2020 - B2BMX - Scottsdale, AZ How to Optimize ABM Results with Influencer Marketing March 19, 2020 - Convergence Summit - Minneapolis, MN In Search of Trust: How Authentic Content Drives Customer Experience March 24, 2020 - Pubcon - Miami, FL B2B Influencer Marketing Workshop April 20-22, 2020 - Content Tech - San Diego, CA How to Optimize Content Performance with Influence April 22-23, 2020 - Content Marketing Conference - Boston, MA Be Best Answer for Your Customers with SEO and Influence May 27 -28, 2020 - B2B Ignite USA - Chicago, IL In Marketing We Trust: How to Build Influence with the C-Suite and on the Street

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