B2B Marketing News: Influencer Ad Budgets Rise, B2B Buyer Report, Stellar US Ad Market Spending Increase, Zoom’s Immersive View, & LinkedIn’s LXP

What B2B Buyers Say Sellers Can Do to Influence Their Purchase Decisions [Report] 71 percent of B2B buyers see client desires and needs as the leading influences on purchase decisions, while 68 consider showing what's possible or how to solve a problem as being the biggest influence — two of several statistics of interest to B2B marketers in recently-released survey data. MarketingCharts U.S. Ad Market Turns In Best March Ever: Up 25% Vs. 2020, 7% Vs. 2019 March saw the U.S. ad market grow nearly 25 percent since the same time last year, and even managed to increase 7.2 percent from pre-pandemic March 2019 levels, according to newly-released Standard Media Index (SMI) data. MediaPost Zoom launches Immersive View to unify participants in the same virtual room Zoom has announced that up to 25 people can virtually co-occupy shared environments using a recently-launched feature, in a move aimed at expanding the video conferencing firm's traditional participant presentation format of individual square streams. VentureBeat Study Finds Independent Agencies Make Strong Comeback In Q1 64 percent of independent agencies had increased first quarter revenue year-over-year, while 75 percent said that they expect remote working options to endure into post-pandemic routines — two of several findings in recently-released survey data. MediaPost LinkedIn Announces 'LinkedIn Learning Hub' to Provide More Comprehensive Skills Development Pathways Microsoft-owned LinkedIn (client) has announced that its forthcoming learning experience platform (LXP) will offer a variety of new community-based learning and other skill-boosting features of interest to digital marketers. Social Media Today IAB: Ad 'Confidence' Has Surged, Less Frequent Reviews Of Budgets 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 — sharpy higher than the 22 percent who expressed the same levels of confidence in November of last year, according to newly-released survey data. MediaPost Reddit unveils its Clubhouse clone, Reddit Talk Social news aggregator and discussion platform Reddit has launched Reddit Talk — its flavor of the audio-call-based communication app format popularized by Clubhouse, which Reddit has made available for both iOS and Android devices, the firm recently announced. TechCrunch Facebook Tests New Video Ad Options, Including Updated Targeting Categories and Instagram Reels Ads Facebook has announced testing of new in-stream ads with a variety of topic-based targeting features, utilizing machine learning to offer what the social media giant expects to be increased response rates. Social Media Today Microsoft Advertising Unleashes Ad Units And The Ability To Import Facebook Campaigns. What Else Is New? Digital advertisers can use a new feature being tested by Microsoft to more easily bring campaigns from Facebook Ads into Microsoft Advertising, and the firm also released an array of new ad formats including video ads for search results, Microsoft recently announced. AdExchanger Ad Execs: Paid Content/Influencers Now The Biggest Share Of Digital Budgets Paid branded content and influencer marketing have accounted for 20 percent of 2021 digital advertising budgets, while influence marketing was seen as the second most important digital ad option for 2021, according to recently-released survey data. MediaPost ON THE LIGHTER SIDE: A lighthearted look at “the state of digital advertising” by Marketoonist Tom Fishburne — Marketoonist How Pixar Uses Hyper-Colors to Hack Your Brain — Wired TOPRANK MARKETING & CLIENTS IN THE NEWS:

• Lee Odden — Finding Acceptance and Identity through Trail Running, even though I'm not a Runner [Video] — Tim Washer
• TopRank Marketing — Using Social Media Polls for Market Research — Utah State University

Have you located your own top B2B marketing story from the past week of industry news? Please let us know in the comments below. Thanks for joining us for the TopRank Marketing B2B marketing news, and we hope that you will return next Friday for more of the week's most relevant B2B and digital marketing industry news. In the meantime, you can follow us at @toprank on Twitter for even more timely daily news.

The post B2B Marketing News: Influencer Ad Budgets Rise, B2B Buyer Report, Stellar US Ad Market Spending Increase, Zoom’s Immersive View, & LinkedIn’s LXP appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Marketer’s Toolkit: 10+ New Tools To Enhance Your B2B Marketing Stack

How can B2B marketers improve their content in refreshing new ways, and also add to their stack of marketing skills? In 2021 most B2B marketers are busier than ever due to the pandemic, the challenges of remote work, and increased expectations to show results. This makes finding the time to research and locate useful new marketing-related software tools and services a challenge. Don’t worry, however, as we’ve got 10+ new or updated tools that can enhance your B2B marketing stack, from digital imaging and video to data insights and more. We’ll take a look at some of these helpful tools for today’s busy marketers, to help refine and augment your B2B marketing strategy now and into our post-pandemic future. Sorting through vast lists of seemingly endless marketing tools and platforms can be frustrating, as well as a hit and miss proposition, so we’ve put this collection together so that you can skip the search and get right into tools you can use today to help create memorable B2B marketing stories. Let’s start right in with our collection of 10+ handy tools to augment your marketing stack.

1 — MindMeister

With MindMeister, a mind mapping tool from MeisterLabs, marketers can visually organize and diagram all manner of information and uncover fascinating connections that might otherwise remain hidden. Brainstorm new ideas, map out project plans in a variety of ways, mark up information, all in a collaborative and sharing online environment — these are all areas where MindMeister can prove helpful in many B2B marketing efforts. MindMeister offers a free basic version that lets you create three mind maps, along with subscription plans suited for anywhere from personal to enterprise uses. Find @MindMeister on Twitter.

2 — Google Stack

Area 120 is Google’s in-house project incubator, which recently released Stack — an experimental document digitization and organization app that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze all scanned content. For B2B organizations that have found the move to paperless less of a paradise and more of a digital abyss, Google’s Stack and it’s AI technology — along with easy and secure integration with Google Drive — will be a welcome addition to the organization category. Conversion to PDF is done by taking snapshots of documents, and presently the app is available only for Android devices. Read Google’s Stack announcement on the Area 120 blog.

3 — CoSchedule’s Subject Line Tester Tool

Marketers looking for a fresh take on potential new email campaign or newsletter subject lines can try CoSchedule’s Subject Line Tester tool. This tool offers numerous recommendations, visual previews, and ratings for potential subject line choices, including sentiment and length analysis and keyword insight. It also offers a word balance feature showing a particular subject line’s emotional power and whether it is particularly common or on the rare side, in addition to other helpful analysis. Similar subject line analysis tools exist, and for those who haven’t yet tried CoSchedule’s implementation, running a test may point out new considerations for improving and optimizing your next email campaign. The tool is just one of CoSchedule’s sizable array of marketing organization features. Find @CoSchedule on Twitter.

4 — Keyword Insights

Keyword Insights is a combination keyword clustering, intent, context, and ranking tool presently in beta test status, providing a new glimpse into data that can help create a more informed content marketing strategy. Features offered by Keyword Insights include unique topic cluster reports and keyword search intent data, allowing marketers to import their keywords in nearly any format and see numerous data-backed suggestions. The tool can also show rank-tracked output with such information as search volume, suggestions on additional keywords to target, and which URLs may perform better if they were split into separate pages. Find @KeywordInsights on Twitter.

5 — Monster Mash

Google AI recently released Monster Mash, a tool that allows marketers to turn basic sketches into 3D animations without the involvement of designers or developers, creating an element which can add more visual excitement to top-notch marketing content. An online example of what the new Google AI tool can accomplish lets users draw online and then inflate and animate their two-dimensional sketches into moving 3D works. Find @GoogleAI on Twitter.

6 — WebVitals Cumulative Layout Shift Debugger (CLS)

WebVitals Cumulative Layout Shift Debugger (CLS) is a free tool built by former Google engineer Fili Wiese, allowing marketers to examine and find where to improve on Google’s CLS user-centric metric for webpage layouts. “The Cumulative Layout Shift Debugger uses the Layout Instability API in Chromium to detect and measure the layout shifts in the viewport between when a web page starts loading and when it finishes loading and calculates its cumulative layout shift score,” the utility’s instructions note, and the tool presents this information visually using squares. CLS is a key part of Google’s Core Web Vitals measurements, and brands can use WebVitals Cumulative Layout Shift Debugger to optimize existing mobile and desktop page layouts, or test new ones.

7 — Grammarly

Grammarly, while not necessarily a new tool, has continually refined and added to its online writing assistance product, which comes in plans ranging from free to those tailored to teams of up to 149 users. Going far beyond spelling grammar, and punctuation suggestions into areas including mobile writing tone detection, warnings to avoid overused language, and optimal formatting suggestions, the Grammarly of 2021 offers many new and helpful features for B2B marketers looking to take their writing to the next level. Find @Grammarly on Twitter. We’re also looking out for you on that front, and recently published “B2B Content Marketing: 10 Tips to Level Up Your Writing Skills,” by our senior content marketing manager Joshua Nite.

8 — Ryte’s Keyword Cannibalisation Report

Ryte’s Keyword Cannibalisation Report helps marketers track down multiple web pages that may be ranked by Google for the same keyword and which could potentially be digitally cannibalizing your own site, and instead allowing the pages to implement changes that avoid the issue. The Keyword Cannibalisation Report helps pinpoint situations including poor internal linking practices, similar or duplicate content, title or description markup, inconsistent anchor text use, and more. Find @Ryte_EN on Twitter. A similar free alternative Cannibalisation Explorer tool, using Google Data Studio and Google Search Console data, has been made available by SEO consultant Hannah Rampton, offering another take on this often-valuable data.

9 — Loom

Loom’s powerful video messaging tools have also been updated, especially during the pandemic, which has seen a massive increase in the use of online video communication. Recently passing the ten million user threshold, Loom has updated its cloud-based video editing capabilities, utilizing a real-time video transformation layer to make even the longest videos editable online. Loom has also continued to build integrations with other tools such as Miro and Pitch, creating new levels of dynamic collaboration opportunities for marketers who use the platforms. Find @Loom on Twitter.

10 — Agorapulse Power Reports

Agorapulse has added new premium Power Reports, advanced tools for handling multiple social media accounts, adding to the social media management system’s fine existing collection of helpful inbox, publishing, reporting, monitoring and team collaboration tools. The new Agorapulse Power Reports options allow marketers to report on up to 10 social media profiles, with scheduled reporting, problem area identification, content ideas and suggestions, customized comparison and demographic data, and more. Find @Agorapulse on Twitter.

Build Your Own B2B Marketing Super Stack Of Helpful Tools

via GIPHY It’s not the marketing tools alone that make for enchanting customer experiences. Skilled and creative use of the vast digital palette we’re all fortunate to have at our fingertips requires dedication, time, and a healthy dose of vision. B2B marketers can create great content by combining existing tools in new ways, building digital assets that sing a unique song that will help brands weave stories that truly stand out. We hope you’ve found our look at a handful of new and updated marketing tools helpful as you build new campaigns throughout 2021, and that they’ll also contribute to your own team’s knowledge and inspiration. Need more useful marketing tools? Here are several articles we’ve written exploring additional tools for B2B marketers:

• 5 More Handy Tools For 2021’s Busy B2B Marketers
• Inside Influence 11: Marshall Kirkpatrick from Sprinklr on Elevating B2B Content with Influencers
• Inside Influence 7: Pierre-Loïc Assayag from Traackr on Influencer Marketing Technology
• Inside Influence 13: Tim Williams from Onalytica on Optimizing B2B Influencer Experiences
• 5 Unheralded SEO Tools for Content Marketers
• 10 Fresh Social Media Marketing Tools To Boost Brand Storytelling
• 31 DIY Marketing Tools To Create Remarkable Experiences
• 10 Smart Question Research Tools for B2B Marketers
• How B2B Marketers Can Make the Most of Interactive Content Tools
• The Content Marketer’s Toolbox: 3 ‘Real-Life’ Tools for Gaining Insight, Inspiration, & Amplification

The post Marketer’s Toolkit: 10+ New Tools To Enhance Your B2B Marketing Stack appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

B2B Content Marketing: 10 Tips to Level Up Your Writing Skills

What is the biggest challenge a writer faces?  Nothing. Well, by “nothing,” I mean a blank white screen and a blinking cursor.  It mocks you with its unlimited potential. It fills you with fear that anything you put on that screen won’t be an improvement over its pristine emptiness. We content marketers have to face this challenge nearly every day, and somehow find a way to write content that connects, engages, and persuades. I’ve spent my entire adult life working in the content trenches — first as a comedy writer, and now as a content marketer. Here are a few tips I’ve picked up that can elevate your writing and make that blank screen less daunting.

10 Tips for B2B Marketers to Elevate Their Writing Skills

#1: READ In his excellent book On Writing, Stephen King says: “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have time to write.” And if one of the world’s most prolific and celebrated authors can take time to read, we can, too. Read marketing content, for sure, to see what the competition is up to. But don’t stop there. Read poems, novels, fiction, nonfiction, good stuff and guilty pleasures. Anything you read will help you continue to develop a distinct voice — even a bad example can show you what not to do. #2: Be Aware of Rhythm Now, I’m not saying you should write blog posts in iambic pentameter (but if you do, please link me). But it’s good to keep an eye on the rhythm of what you’re writing.  For example, watch out for parallel structures. In time, these will bore your reader. Soon enough, they’ll tune out completely.  Notice how all three of those sentences in the last paragraph have the same cadence? The same goes for short sentences. You put them one after the other. They’re all the same.  Vary the rhythm in your sentences — string them together with punctuation; let one stretch out like a rubber band. Then, snap! Put in a few short ones. Maybe a fragment, even. See how the writing comes alive? #3: Practice Introductions For many writers, just getting started is the hardest part of writing an article. Many will even write the entire body of the text and add the introduction after the fact.  Too many of us were scarred by high school English class, where an introduction had to introduce every point we were going to talk about, and had to start with something like, “Throughout recorded history,” or “Webster’s dictionary defines…”  Practice writing introductions that break the mold:

• Ask a question
• Make a controversial or otherwise intriguing statement
• Write a personal anecdote

In short, think less about introducing every talking point, and more about hooking the reader and pulling them in. #4: Don’t Tell the Audience What They Already Know This one goes along with the last point, because frequently introductions are all about stating the obvious. “Everyone knows that…” “We all understand that…” Whenever you find yourself lecturing the audience on something you both know, take a step back. What can you tell them that they haven’t heard yet? What’s the quickest way to get to the good stuff? #5: Let Go of Obsolete Rules And speaking of high school English class: It is better to be clear, natural and genuine in your prose than to follow archaic rules of grammar. Language is a living thing that is constantly changing. So don’t feel beholden to what Mrs. Funke told you back in 9th grade. For example:

• End sentences with prepositions
• Put commas where they feel natural
• Use sentence fragments
• Use. Weird. Punctuation. For. Emphasis!
• Embrace the singular ‘they’

And many more. Basically, you should sound like a real live person, not a textbook. #6: Read It Out Loud When we talk about writing in a “conversational tone,” we’re saying the writing should feel more like talking to a friend than reading something stiff and formal. What better way to make sure you’re conversational than actually reading your work out loud? Now that we’re all in home offices instead of open-concept half cubicles, this one’s easier to do. Back in the before times, I would sometimes duck into a conference room or huddle room to read my work out loud. It’s amazing how many opportunities you’ll find to make your writing sound more natural when you’re hearing it instead of reading it. #7: Experiment with Editing I love the way that Google Docs saves a version history of everything I write. It makes editing so much easier, and the stakes so much lower for making major changes. You can try something, and if it doesn’t work, it’s easy to revert to the previous draft. Experiment with the structure of your content — move paragraphs around and see if that improves the flow. Try cutting out the sentences you’re most proud of — odds are they’re the most self-indulgent and least likely to connect with your audience. Believe me, I speak from experience. One easy way to experiment with editing: Cut the first paragraph of your introduction and see if you miss it. I frequently find that first paragraph is either wheel-spinning or scene-setting that the audience doesn’t really need. #8: Write, Wait, Review, Revise Writing and revising require two different mindsets. If you’re trying to do both at the same time, you’re likely not doing either as well as you might. For your first draft, concentrate on getting the words on the screen. When you’re done, walk away and let it rest — overnight, if possible.  Then you can approach what you’ve written with fresh eyes, read it through, and revise. After that, make sure to have at least one other person review it before you publish, just to catch whatever you might have missed.  [bctt tweet="“Writing and revising require two different mindsets. If you’re trying to do both at the same time, you’re likely not doing either as well as you might.” — Joshua Nite @NiteWrites" username="toprank"] #9: Spice Up Your Conclusions Lastly, in conclusion, at the end of the day, finally… there are many ways to begin a conclusion, and most of them are (yet again) holdovers from high school. Ditto the idea that you shouldn’t introduce new information in a conclusion, but just rehash the points you’ve already made. Thankfully, we’re not writing five paragraph essays anymore, and a conclusion can be more than an awkward recap. In fact, for marketing, it’s essential to make every conclusion a launchpad, a call to action that compels the reader to take the next step. Bland, by-the-book conclusions won’t get that job done.

Beat the Blank Screen

If you feel anxious when faced with that blank screen and its judgmental blinking cursor, start by letting go of some preconceived notions about what business writing has to be. It turns out that B2B buyers are actual people, and they would rather read something personable and expressive than something stiff and by-the-book. My tenth tip: Give yourself permission to write the way you talk, and you’re more likely to make a human connection with your reader. Need help leveling up your content? Contact us today.

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Beyond SEO: B2B Content Optimization for Trust and Customer Experience

The post Beyond SEO: B2B Content Optimization for Trust and Customer Experience appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

B2B Marketing News: CMO Priorities Study, Global State of Media Report, Google Updates Ad Insights, & U.S. Ad Spending Surges

Twitter Launches Initial Test of 'Professional Profiles' for Brands and Creators Twitter has begun testing new brand and creator professional profiles, which include information about a business, verification badges, and which may feature galleries and other elements, the social media platform recently announced. Social Media Today These Are Marketers’ Top Organizational Priorities Right Now 45 percent of CMO Council members expect to upgrade or recruit for go-to-market execution and operations, while 38 percent say they'll do so for content and demand-gen, followed by some 33 percent who plan to upgrade digital interactive marketing efforts — the top three spots in recently-released CMO organizational priority survey data of interest to digital marketers. MarketingCharts Google Ads Insights Page Available To All Google has launched a global rollout of the latest incarnation of its popular Google Ads platform, including an array of updated Insights features for finding current and emerging trends tailored to each business' profile, the search giant recently announced. Search Engine Roundtable In First Year-Over-Year Pandemic Comp, U.S. Ad Spending Surges 22% In March Digital ad spending in the U.S. climbed by 27 percent in March compared to the same month in 2020, with overall ad spend rising by 22 percent year-over-year, according to newly-released Standard Media Index data. MediaPost YouTube Provides New Overview of How its Video Recommendation Systems Work Google's YouTube has rolled out its latest guide for brands and creators, including new information on certain aspects of its video recommendation system such as quality watch time and other engagement signals, the video platform recently announced. Social Media Today Instagram's new test lets you choose if you want to hide 'Likes,' Facebook test to follow Instagram has begun testing the ability to switch like counts on and off, along with an option for users to hide like counts on their own posts, the Facebook-owned social media platform announced, in a change that could impact how marketers measure content performance. TechCrunch Facebook Adds Scheduling for Stories, New Ad and Business Discovery Options Facebook has given its Business Suite users new Instagram and Facebook Story scheduling options, including the ability to save drafts, along with other updated features for business users, the firm recently announced. Social Media Today Is Your Team Solving Problems, or Just Identifying Them? There is a bigger difference between spotting problems and solving them than many may typically believe, and the Harvard Business Review explores how making creative collaborations can work to better solve problems together, and other issues of interest to online marketers. Harvard Business Review New Report Looks at the Most Effective Influencer Marketing Approaches, and Key Platforms of Focus 71 percent of enterprise marketers said their influencer marketing budgets will grow over 2020 levels, while 36 percent saw their influencer content outperform brand-created content — two of several findings of interest to digital marketers in newly-released survey data. Social Media Today ON THE LIGHTER SIDE: A lighthearted look at “customer experience friction” by Marketoonist Tom Fishburne — Marketoonist NFTs and AI Are Unsettling the Very Concept of History — Wired TOPRANK MARKETING & CLIENTS IN THE NEWS:

• Susan Misukanis — 192: Make content the cornerstone of your strategy, with TopRank Marketing — Let's Talk Supply Chain
• TopRank Marketing — 7 Engagement Boosting Interactive Content Marketing Examples — Peek & Poke

Have you come across your own top B2B marketing story from the past week of industry news? Please let us know in the comments below. Thank you for taking the time to join us for the TopRank Marketing B2B marketing news, and we hope you'll return again next Friday for more of the week's 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.

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Break Free B2B Marketing: Tamara McCleary of Thulium on Visions of the Future and Doing No Harm

When it comes to B2B influencer marketing, it's natural to wonder just what an industry influencer actually looks like? Our third season of Break Free B2B Marketing video interviews feature conversations with top B2B influencers, looking closely at the issues that each expert is influential about in their industry. For more than a decade our team at TopRank Marketing has fostered a strong community of leading influencers, developing close relationships with subject matter experts in many industries. Sometimes you meet a person who ticks all the boxes: they're smart, they're funny, they're connected, they're brave, and they're an expert — in not just one thing, but many. You can learn a lot from people like this: tips, tricks, advice, best practices, and more. The one thing they can teach you about more clearly than anyone else, however, is what’s going to happen next. Tamara McCleary, CEO of Thulium, is just this sort of person. She's been labeled a pioneer influencer of social media marketing for B2B, is the CEO of global digital social media marketing agency Thulium, and just recently enrolled to further her education at Harvard University. Tamara's favorite thing to talk about is the future — the future of marketing, work, artificial reality, trust, life, and belief. These insights are valuable to any B2B marketer trying to figure out the next steps toward new successes, and they're also the reason we asked her to speak with us for the latest episode of our Break Free B2B Marketing interview series.

Break Free B2B Interview with Tamara McCleary

If you’re interested in checking out a particular portion of the discussion, you can find a quick general outline below, as well as a few excerpts that stood out to us.

• 2:48 - Meet Tamara
• 4:05 - What does “do no harm” mean?
• 11:01 - Concerns about privacy in the modern world
• 12:33 - “Let’s talk 2030.”
• 17:04 - How do we approach the risks that come with adopting technology of the future?
• 22:15 - How do you think the global workforce will be operating in the next year and how has COVID influenced those changes?
• 29:11 - Tamara's experience pursuing further education at Harvard
• 32:49 - How Tamara feels about the word influencer
• 36:50 - Why should B2B marketers be working with influencers or thought leaders?
• 44:54 - How do you figure out what's important to your audiences?
• 48:46 - Have you seen any B2B tech campaigns you like or are involved in that are something special?
• 54:51 - How people can get ahold of Tamara
• 55:57 - In conclusion: how can B2B leaders break free?

Sue: Most of our clients are tech clients. And of course, we're all trying to rise to the next technology that eases our worlds. AI is massive, and for most of our clients, there's a vision of it. We have to be communicating what the benefits are as marketers. But at the same time, I think we all understand, though, there's a little bit of risk here. So how do we approach this? How do we reconcile ourselves to these things that are happening? What's our job in terms of protecting humanity as we bring these things forth? Tamara: You need the protection of policy, because I think it's really difficult to say that marketing is going to have to be the policing agent for organizations as to whether or not something that they're putting out there as proper, that's a lot of burden to put. Not only that, it's a conflict of interest. Because if that's your client, and you're running a business, and they're a business, now we're asking you to police. And that's not right. Instead, I say that you need to be protected by policies put in place that say that these things are okay and lawful to do. And these things are unlawful because in marketing, we saw this happen, even with technologies that came out for social listening and monitoring — there were things that you can do, there were back-doors. I remember even 10 years ago, backdoor ways where you could see who was sending that email, who was clicking on on that tweet, who's opening that Facebook ad? But the thing is, ethically, it's not right. As an organization, I think it's where you take a stand and go, you know — we will treat all people respectfully and within the law. And what's nice is when you do have the law behind you, and you say no to something, these organizations that you and I work with —  their legal teams would never go for something that was unlawful, never. I really feel that the companies we work with are those A-plus companies that do care about being law abiding citizens, but there are those out there that don't. And usually they don't bother to hire agencies like ours. Because if you're going to be underhanded, you're not really going to pay for top level advice that's going to tell you that you’re wrong. [bctt tweet="“The more diverse your workforce is, the better your ideas, innovation, and problem solving are, because you don't have a bunch of heads that look like one another nodding in agreement, which doesn't get us anywhere.” — @TamaraMcCleary" username="toprank"] Tamara: From an HR perspective, what's wonderful is the fact that we now are open to the ability to have much more diversity within the workforce, and what I mean by that is diversity of geographic location — diversity of education. Because I don't think it's about your education or your degree, as much as it's about your willingness and your hunger to learn, earn and be agile, because everything's changing, right? 85% of the jobs in 2030 haven't been invented yet. I need agile diversity of people and ethnicities because we can go outside of our zone. I think that just having a remote workforce gives us the ability to have a better mix within an organization of diversity of thought, because the more diverse your workforce is, the better your ideas, the better your innovation, the better your problem solves are, because you don't have a bunch of heads that look like one another nodding in agreement, which doesn't get us anywhere. So I love the fact that I think a year out from now we're going to see that a remote workforce is a good workforce, and it allows us to include more people than maybe might have been included when they had to come into a physical office. And then on the other side and perspective, I think what we're offering a year out from now is that people are going to be able to have a greater work experience, and the employee experience will be shifted, because you can get your work done and still do all the things in your life that you may need to do, whether that's your 12 noon yoga class, or having lunch with your kids, or expanding your mind with painting or clay or taking a writing class. With the flexibility of a remote workforce, we have the ability now to express ourselves more, versus having these compartments that have never worked — a compartment that says "this is our personal life," and the compartment that says "this is my work life." Then I think we can finally stop talking about that really annoying work life balance that never worked. Keep your eye on the TopRank Marketing Blog and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more Break Free B2B interviews. Also check out episodes from season 1 and season 2. Take your B2B marketing to new heights by checking out out previous season 3 episodes of Break Free B2B Marketing:

• Episode 1: Kevin L. Jackson, GC GlobalNet — The Future of Cloud Computing
• Episode 2: Tim Crawford, AVOA — The New Normal
• Episode 3: Oliver Christie, PertexaHealthTech — The Future of Artificial Intelligence
• Episode 4: Liam McIvor Martin, Time Doctor — Trends in Remote Work
• Episode 5: Sarah Barnes-Humphrey, SHIPZ — The Future of Supply Chain
• Episode 6: Eric Vanberburg, TCDI — The Changing Cybersecurity Landscape
• Episode 7: Nicole Brady, SAHM Reviews — The Importance of Empathy

The post Break Free B2B Marketing: Tamara McCleary of Thulium on Visions of the Future and Doing No Harm appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Hophead Marketing: What B2B Marketers Can Learn From The Craft Beer Industry

What can the wildly successful craft beer industry teach B2B marketers? From storytelling and keeping content fresh to making corporate campaigns delightfully crushable, there’s plenty the B2B marketing world can learn from taking a look at the craft beer industry and its emphasis on customer delight, engagement, and more. While the pandemic has slowed the growth of the craft beer industry with the largest disruption to the industry since the days of Prohibition — leading to an 8 percent decline in sales among small and independent craft brewers — its trajectory over the past decade has been undeniably admirable. The global health crisis has forced the craft beer industry to change, including an expansion of direct-to-consumer sales in the face of closed taprooms, yet there’s still much that B2B marketers can learn from the long-term ascendancy of the craft beer world. Let’s hop right in and take a look at a selection of the top things B2B marketers can learn from the craft beer industry.

Find Your B2B Tech or Finance Freshies

Among craft brewers, the fresh-hopped variety of seasonal beer features hops used as close to the time they’re harvested as possible, and the resulting India Pale Ave (IPA) freshies are highly desirable among hoppy beer fans, but they don’t retain their initial taste qualities long enough to be a year-round offering. In B2B marketing, we can make the equivalent of content freshies by offering existing and prospective customers any type or format of digital assets that don’t fit into the unchanging evergreen content category. Timely content can come from many sources in the B2B marketing world, however some of the most successful features elements that often revolve around:

• Virtual or real-world conferences
• Twitter chats and Reddit Ask-Me-Anything (AMA) sessions
• Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces audio-based calls
• Current events and so-called hashtag holidays
• Timely social media polls
• Live-stream events

Whether you’re in the B2B technology, finance, or another business industry, give your customers a generous pour of virtual freshies by including a fresh mix of seasonal and unique content in your marketing blend, to augment your evergreen information that doesn’t necessarily change throughout the year.

Make Your Corporate Channels Crushable

Crushable beers are generally considered easygoing lower-alcohol beers that make customers want more, a phenomenon that is also quite well-suited to B2B marketing. Crushable B2B marketing content isn’t bitter or hard to consume, instead focusing on providing customers an experience so smooth and pleasant that they’ll want to come back for more, whether it’s by subscribing to your brand’s newsletter, liking its LinkedIn company page, or becoming a regular listener to your firm’s podcast. Here’s a list of just a few of the elements that help make your B2B marketing content crushable:

• Easy-to-digest content that’s well-written and pleasantly positive
• Contains enough helpful information to make it relevant
• Makes it easy for customers to subscribe or otherwise get more of the content they find crushable

Sometimes the craft beer industry also considers crushable beer to have a session beer component — tying it in to a social occasion over a specific period of time, or session. Session content, similarly, gives customers an easy flow from one piece of information to the next, such as in the popular social media stories format, where text, images, and video all play in sequence, with little effort required on the part of the customer. Don’t be afraid to creatively use the stories format for B2B marketing content, and to serialize other forms of digital content — from B2B podcasts that customers can binge on while listening, or brand video playlists that can auto-play for binge watching.

Give the People More of What They Want: Humanize Your Customer Relationships with the Cheers Factor

via GIPHY The craft brewing industry fully recognizes and puts to good use the “Cheers” factor — a key selling point of pubs and taprooms going back centuries, long before the hit television comedy “Cheers” popularized that sense of camaraderie and desire to be “where everybody knows your name.” B2B marketers have made substantial inroads when it comes to personalizing both content and communication, yet in the post-pandemic landscape marketers looking for new ways to differentiate their brand would be well served by focusing even more on fostering the human connection between brand and customer. Some of the ways B2B marketers can make more personal connections include:

• Talk like a person and not a jargon-filled corporate chat-bot
• Feature your team in content
• Make your customers your superstars
• Harness the power of content co-creation with influential subject matter experts

Miri Rodriguez, storyteller and internship program head at Microsoft, recently explored how B2B marketers can use storytelling and empathy to move past numbers and facts, which I covered in "Microsoft’s Miri Rodriguez on How B2B Marketers Are Embracing Empathy For Better Customer Storytelling #B2BMX." Our senior content marketing manager Joshua Nite took a closer look at the increasing importance of adding more of the human touch to B2B content, in “5 Ways to Humanize Your B2B Content Marketing – And Why It Matters,” and I also offered up several insights into the subject in, “28 B2B Marketing Insights To Energize & Humanize Your 2021.” [bctt tweet="“You really have to think about how you build a long-term committed relationship with the user – it’s not a one-and-done. There’s never really an end to it. It’s continuous and iterative.” @amandatodo" username="toprank"]

Brew Better Storytelling with a Chill Haze of Communities

Another successful tactic employed by the craft beer industry that B2B marketers can learn from is the powerful messaging that comes when we explore the stories of the people behind the face of the business. Asking questions is a great way to begin, such as, “Who are you? What makes your brand, your people, and your story stand out?” One take on storytelling for B2B breaks down the work story by letter, with the S.T.O.R.Y. model including:

• Sizzle
• Tension
• Originality
• Relevance
• Yearning

It's a definition our content marketing manager Nick Nelson explores in, "Your Guide to Effective Storytelling in B2B Content Marketing." Just as in the craft beer industry they say that every beer and beer-drinker tells a story, brand storytelling offers a wealth of opportunity for B2B marketers to create content that makes a brand’s story — and that of its customers — come to life.

Be The Best Answer & Learn From Craft Industry Success

By engaging and delighting customers through serving up brand freshies, creating crushable content, and humanizing customer relationships with hopped up storytelling, your B2B marketing efforts will be poised to celebrate new levels of success. Creating award-winning B2B marketing content that delights and engages takes significant effort, which leads more firms than ever to choose working with a top digital marketing agency such as TopRank Marketing. Contact us today and let us know how we can help, as we’ve done for businesses ranging from LinkedIn, Dell and 3M to Adobe, Oracle, monday.com and others.

The post Hophead Marketing: What B2B Marketers Can Learn From The Craft Beer Industry appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

9 Questions to Ask When Hiring a B2B Influencer Marketing Agency

Confidence amongst B2B marketers in the role of influence, both externally and internally, has grown substantially in the past year. Following that growth is the number of B2B influencer marketing success stories inspiring marketers to investigate collaborative content strategies that include influencers. At the same time, the pandemic has had its effect on marketing budgets and one of the trends over the past year that has stuck is the need for greater accountability and demonstration of ROI for marketing investments. While research shows that 96% of B2B marketers that engage influencers consider their program to be successful, 60% of marketers overall do not feel they have the skills or expertise in-house to execute on influencer programs. The contrast of confidence and opportunity with the lack of in-house capabilities has drawn more marketers than ever to seek outside help for working with influencers. Agencies with deep expertise in B2B influencer marketing strategy, tactics, software and relationships with top influencers enables B2B brands to hit the ground running with confidence and acceleration that simply isn't possible working alone. Our research has found that B2B marketers that seek help from agencies often engage those experts to perform several key functions:

• Identify influencers 79%
• Manage influencer relationships 76%
• Develop influencer marketing strategy 71%
• Measure influencer program effectiveness 66%
• Integrate with other marketing efforts 63%
• Implement influencer marketing campaigns 60%
• Manage influencer marketing technology 44%

While the value agencies can provide B2B brands around working with influencers is clear, there are some things marketers should look for and ask in order to separate those with actual skills and capabilities vs. those agencies opportunistically adding another offering to their services mix. Here is a collection of important questions B2B marketers should ask when evaluating B2B marketing agencies for influencer content marketing programs:

How long have B2B companies engaged your agency to deliver influencer marketing services?

As with all marketing strategies that gain popularity, many agencies with tack them on to their services mix in order to capitalize on the trend without actually having the expertise (yet). Do you want to be a guinea pig for an agency or do you want to be another success story?

Have you provided influencer marketing services in our industry before? Please share an example:

Expertise in your industry matters enough that this question must be asked. While overall influencer marketing is newer to B2B than in consumer industries, there are a growing number of specialists that understand the nuances of the industries they focus on and have existing relationships with influencers in those industries. Influence requires authenticity and to create that kind of trusted credibility with industry influencers, it can be very beneficial if the agency has deep expertise and connections already.

What is the size and nature of your influencer network and how do you ensure we are only working with the most impactful influencers?

Experienced B2B marketing agencies that work with influencers understand the value of relationships. Therefore, they will not simply "use" influencers for campaigns, but work to create, maintain and elevate relationships with those influencers so when a new client project comes along, they are warm to the idea of an invitation to participate. The best influencers are very, very busy and in high demand. An existing relationship with the agency is often the reason a coveted influencer says yes to engage in a B2B brand they have not worked with before.

How do you go about identifying and activating the right influencers for us?

As mentioned above, our research found that the top task B2B brands get help with from agencies is influencer identification. It's important to understand if the agency takes a transactional approach or a more romantic/persuasive approach. Technology also plays a role and if the agency simply says they would use Twitter and LinkedIn vs. a software platform that uses algorithms and sometimes artificial intelligence to analyze vast amounts of social data to identify individuals most appropriate to your topics of relevance, audience resonance and reach - then there will be disappointment. Influence in B2B is more than social data and requires both technology and industry expertise to identify, qualify and activate.

What is your process for campaigns vs. always-on influencer programs?

Many agencies new to influencer content marketing don't really understand when campaign is right compared to an always-on program or even what an always-on program entails. It's important that the agency can describe the use case differences and how an influencer program can evolve over time to deliver substantially greater value.

What compensation or value exchange approach do you recommend when working with influencers?

In B2B, the majority of influencer engagement is organic value exchange where influencers participate in content collaboration in exchange for exposure or participation in a formal brand influencer program. However, there are a growing number of professional B2B influencers and that means more financial compensation. It is important to understand whether the agency defaults to simply paying influencers for every contribution or if they have the ability to recruit influencer organically as well as work with professional influencers for hire.

How do you integrate external influencers with internal executives and SMEs?

Influence is more important than ever for B2B brands to create, maintain and grow connections with their customers. Pairing external influencers with internal executives or subject matter experts creates value for the customer experience multiple levels. Including both internal and external influencers in brand content gives it more credibility as well as building the influence of internal brand staff through association with respected industry experts. Does the agency understand this opportunity and do they have expertise in convincing executives to be more social and influential?

What types of content do you specialize in for influencer collaboration?

A growing number of B2B influencer marketing resources offer both technology and services from an influencer identification and engagement standpoint. It is important to understand what outputs and outcomes are possible as a result of the expertise the agency brings. Content is one of the most valuable products from B2B brand and influencer collaborations and it will be important to understand whether the agency has experience in the formats that influencers favor: live video streaming, recorded video, podcasts, social audio, episodic "show" content, social media content, live events and of course all forms of text content - blog posts, research, reports, etc.

What software or technologies do you use to support influencer identification, management and performance measurement?

There simply is no scaling of impact when it comes to influencer marketing unless technologies are in place to support ongoing influencer identification, management and performance measurement. There are a handful of platforms that promise to do everything but the more likely scenario for a B2B brand is that there will be a combination of platform + specialist tools. It is important to know what the agency has deep experience with and what kinds of specialist tools are used and for what reason. The evaluation process for engaging a B2B marketing agency to provide influencer content marketing services will vary by the needs of the company, market, resources, timeframe and industry. But these questions should give B2B marketers that are considering engaging outside expertise in any industry the answers to identify the best possible partners. On the surface, partnering with influencers can seem pretty straightforward. But the reality is, the difference between a successful pilot that generates both results and the data to support scaled influencer marketing engagement and a waste of time and resources is whether marketers have invested getting help from those that have proven strategies, processes, relationships and technology savvy.

The post 9 Questions to Ask When Hiring a B2B Influencer Marketing Agency appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

B2B Marketing News: B2B Email Study, Marketing Leadership Gaps, Digital Ad Spend Surges, & High-Quality Creative Drives Brand Trust

The Buzz On B2B: Email Is Tops For Both Acquisition And Retention Half of B2B marketers have seen email click-through rates (CTRs) remain steady during the first quarter of 2021, while 28 percent saw higher CTR than during 2020, according to recently-released survey data, which also showed that by early 2022 some 40 percent of marketers expect to restore their marketing spending to regular levels, with 25 percent doing so in early 2021. MediaPost Vast Majority of Consumers Associate High-Quality Creative with Brand Trust 85 percent of U.S. adult consumers in a recent survey said that well-designed ads help build brand trust, while 64 percent said that brands with poor creative design were less trsutworthy, according to the Celta survey. MarketingCharts B2B Content Marketers Get Higher Salaries, Bonuses Than B2C B2B content editors and marketing professionals have earned more than their counterparts in B2C marketing, and were more likely to be paid cash bonuses, according to newly-published survey data of interest to digital marketers. MediaPost Google Launches Video Ad Experiments to Help Refine Marketing Approaches Google has announced a forthcoming feature that will allow brands to try various video ad approaches in its Google Ads program, offering video marketers new ways to experiment and observe how multiple ad variations resonate with their audiences, the search giant recently revealed. Social Media Today IAB: Digital Ads Grew 29% In Q4 In Pandemic Rebound Digital advertising spending grew to $45.6 billion during the fourth quarter of 2020, a 29 percent increase year-over-year that represented to top quarter in 20 years, while overall Internet ad spend climbed by 12.2 percent for 2020, reaching $139.8 billion, according to newly-released revenue report data from the Interactive Advertising Bureau. AdExchanger Facebook Tests Updated Up and Downvoting for Comments in Groups Facebook has experimented with comment voting, having added Reddit-like up and down rankings in an expanded Facebook group test, the social media giant recently announced. Social Media Today Nearly half of execs expect social marketing budgets to double in next 3 years, study finds 46 percent of business executives have said that the social media marketing budgets at their firms are expected to double within the next three years, while 91 percent said that their social marketing budgets will experience a rise of any level, according to recently-released survey data from The Harris Poll. Marketing Dive Facebook tests Hotline, a Q&A product that's a mashup of Clubhouse and Instagram Live Facebook has tested a mash-up that adds video into the mix for its new Hotline product, combining the functionality of Clubhouse and Instagram Live, the social media firm recently announced. TechCrunch Google Search Console adds regular expression support and more data filtering to Performance reports Google has updated its latest Search Console to include more comparison mode filtering options, along with the addition of more powerful regular expression search functionality, the search firm announced recently. Search Engine Land What Are Marketing Leadership’s Biggest Gaps? The customer journey along with its acquisition and conversion sits atop the list of marketing leadership deficiencies, according to a recently-released survey of chief marketing officers, followed closely by segmentation and personalized messaging at scale, with action on customer data insight occupying the third most frequently noted marketing leadership gap. MarketingCharts ON THE LIGHTER SIDE: A lighthearted look at “advertising without cookies” by Marketoonist Tom Fishburne — Marketoonist These Were the Most Effective Ads of 2020, According to Kantar — Adweek TOPRANK MARKETING & CLIENTS IN THE NEWS:

• Susan Misukanis — 10 Personal Development Tips to Help You Love Your Small Business Life — Small Business Trends

Have you come across your own favorite B2B marketing story from the past week of industry news? Please let us know in the comments below. Thanks for joining us for the TopRank Marketing B2B marketing news, and we hope that you'll return again next Friday for more of the week's most relevant B2B and digital marketing industry news. In the meantime, you can follow us at @toprank on Twitter for even more timely daily news.

The post B2B Marketing News: B2B Email Study, Marketing Leadership Gaps, Digital Ad Spend Surges, & High-Quality Creative Drives Brand Trust appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®.