B2B Marketing News: B2B MarTech Complexity, Experiential Marketing Use Rises, Twitter’s Multimedia Tweets, & B2B eCommerce Grows

Most Marketers Report Increase in Marketing and Sales Alignment After Implementing ABM 28 percent of B2B marketers have indicated that they had significantly better sales and marketing alignment after implementing an account-based marketing (ABM) program, with 47 percent observing a moderate increase in alignment between sales and marketing, while some 53 percent noted that ABM generated greater revenue than other marketing efforts, according to newly-released survey data. MarketingCharts [bctt tweet="“The best ABM strategies have a content component. When you combine ABM with content marketing, you’re doing account-based content marketing.” — Andy Crestodina @crestodina" username="toprank"] Report: 77 percent of marketers are planning metaverse experiments 94 percent of U.S. marketing decision-makers have said that they see the metaverse as a new opportunity for reaching potential customers, with 77 percent expecting to experiment with the developing technology, while some 73 percent said that social media was growing in importance, recently published survey data has shown. Mobile Marketing Twitter’s letting you combine photos, videos, and GIFs in one tweet Twitter has begun globally rolling out its new multimedia tweet feature, offering brands and B2B marketers alike new opportunities on the platform through the ability to uniquely mixing text, images, video and other digital assets such as animated GIFs into single tweet messages, the social media platform recently announced. The Verge Experiential Rebounds, Surges Double-Digits In Years Following Pandemic 2022 is expected to see a 13.7 percent increase in U.S. spending on experiential marketing, reaching $35.6 billion, with global spending up 11.1 percent to $75.1 billion, according to newly-published forecast data of interest to digital marketers. MediaPost YouTube Rolls Out Updated Analytics UI in YouTube Studio App Google-owned YouTube has given B2B marketers using its YouTube Studio app a new unified view of a variety of key channel performance analytics data, in the latest mobile update rolled out from the video platform, YouTube announced recently. Social Media Today Google Data Studio Is Now Looker Studio Search giant Google’s acquisition of data exploration and discovery platform Looker in 2020 has brought the business intelligence platform’s functionality to Google's Data Studio, now re-branded as Looker Studio, an enterprise business intelligence suite, Google recently announced. Search Engine Roundtable More digital buyers means more online sales for distributors — lots more B2B distributor e-commerce is expected to expand by 25 percent during 2022, reaching $1.4 trillion in sales, according to newly-published forecast data, ahead of 2021's 17 percent growth rate and $1.12 trillion in sales, and pointing to a continuing uptick in the number digital-first B2B buyers brought on during the pandemic. Digital Commerce 360 Reddit Rolls Out Updates to Ads Manager, Including New Targeting and Creation Tools Social news aggregator and discussion platform Reddit has rolled out an array of new features including live chat, expanded ad-targeting options, and other changes, all added in a new version of the platform's latest Ads Manager update, Reddit recently announced. Social Media Today Google Steps Up Automation To Create Assets For Ads From Website, Existing Ads Google has been testing an updated ad creation process in its flagship Google Ads platform that can pull in and use a variety of existing creative content from an organization's website, allowing marketers to test the performance of automatically created assets against traditional campaigns, Google recently announced. MediaPost Most B2B Marketers Say Their MarTech Stack is Too Complex 14 percent of U.S. B2B marketers have said that their marketing technology stack is exceedingly complex, with 40 percent having said their martech is too complex, while 23 percent noted a good balance in their martech solutions, according to newly-released survey data. Alongside too much complexity, less than half of B2B marketers said that they felt confident analyzing data, the survey showed. MarketingCharts ON THE LIGHTER SIDE: A lighthearted look at “Brand Naming” by Marketoonist Tom Fishburne — Marketoonist Canva Passes 100 Million Monthly Active Users, Nearly 4x That of Adobe — PetaPixel TOPRANK MARKETING & CLIENTS IN THE NEWS:

• TopRank Marketing — 4 SEO Factors to Consider Before Removing Outdated Website Content — Content Marketing Institute
• Lee Odden — Break Free of Boring B2B with Influencer Content Ft. Lee Odden [Podcast] — NetWise
• Lee Odden — How to Measure Social Media Marketing Success, According to 41 Experts — Sales Loves Marketing

Have you come across a B2B marketing news item this week that we haven't yet mentioned? If so, please don't hesitate to drop us a line in the comments below. Thank you for taking the time to tune in to this week's TopRank Marketing B2B marketing news, and we hope that you will join us again next Friday for another array of the most up-to-date and pertinent B2B and digital marketing industry news. In the meantime, you can follow us on our LinkedIn page, or at @toprank on Twitter for even more timely daily news.

The post B2B Marketing News: B2B MarTech Complexity, Experiential Marketing Use Rises, Twitter’s Multimedia Tweets, & B2B eCommerce Grows appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

5 Questions B2B Marketers Need To Ask: Top Take-Aways From My First #MPB2B Forum — Day #1

When asked to attend the MarketingProfs B2B Forum, I wasn't sure what to expect. I've been to conferences as an attendee, an exhibiting sponsor and as a speaker, but never specifically within the B2B content marketing space, and this group can be an intimidating one. Sure, I've admired the long list of content marketing rock-stars, storytellers and B2B influencers, but memories crept up from being the new kid in town. To no one's surprise, the marketers at this event in downtown Boston have embraced and welcomed newcomers like me into their conversations. I've been taking furious notes, engaging on social channels more than I have in years, and have soaked up every ounce of content and inspiration possible like a sponge. It is only day one and some major themes have been been top-of-mind around brand voice, authenticity and creativity, but my biggest take-aways looking down at my notes have been the questions asked. Here is a list of the questions I am asking myself and my team, and I encourage you to do the same:

1 — "If you cover up the logo, do others recognize you?" - Ann Handley, Marketing Profs

2 — "Is scale and efficiency the opposite of creativity within your brand?" - Pierce Ujjainwalla, Knack

3 — "If your content factory halts and you miss a blog post or are absent from social, who will miss your content? Is it just your team or your boss, or will your audiences notice?" - Robert Rose, The Content Advisory

4 — "How involved is and should AI be in your marketing process?" - Paul Roetzer, Marketing AI Institute

5 — "Since 2019, what changes has your audience made and are they permanent changes? What are you doing to meet them where they are now?" - Paul Ince, LikeMind Media Limited

Some answers are obvious, but others require a bit more homework. Thank you to all today's #MPB2B presenters. I'm hoping tomorrow's sessions bring as many answers as questions. Learn more about Ann, Robert, Paul, and other top speakers such as our CEO Lee Odden who are presenting during #MPB2B this week, in our annual list of B2B influencers to follow, "25 Top B2B Marketing Influencers, Experts and Speakers To Follow In 2023."

The post 5 Questions B2B Marketers Need To Ask: Top Take-Aways From My First #MPB2B Forum — Day #1 appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Introducing the Elevate B2B Marketing Podcast

It's no secret that we have made it our mission to elevate the world of B2B marketing. "Elevate B2B" has been the agency's theme and mantra of the year, and we don't see it going away anytime soon.  Our CEO Lee Odden shared in January, "from 'boring-to-boring' to being woefully behind B2C, there’s more than enough opportunity for us in the B2B marketing world to raise the bar." The TopRank Marketing team has been committed to elevating the industry, specifically targeting these three approaches: 

1 — EXPERIENTIAL CONTENT

What good is content if the target customer is not engaged? Just like B2C audiences, B2B marketers and decision-makers want to experience brands through thoughtful, creative and innovative content. In our digital-first world, personally and professionally, marketers are drawn to messages that reach them where they are with memorial content experiences.  “In a LinkedIn survey of 1,600 senior B2B marketers, 82% said ‘creative confidence’ is growing in B2B. Buyers want innovative experiences, and marketers are more than equipped to create them.” - Alexandra Rynne, Senior Content Marketing Manager, LinkedIn [bctt tweet="“In a LinkedIn survey of 1,600 senior B2B marketers, 82% said ‘creative confidence’ is growing in B2B. Buyers want innovative experiences, and marketers are more than equipped to create them.” — Alexandra Rynne of @LinkedInMktg" username="toprank"]

2 — LEADING WITH AUTHENTICITY

What does conversion come down to? Trust. What builds trust? A strategy that prioritizes credible, humanized content.  “Good content isn’t about good storytelling. It’s about telling a true story well.” - Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs The 2022 B2B Influencer Marketing Report found that 87% of B2B marketers rate trust as essential. This is getting to the heart of what a B2B influencer should be: Real and meaningful to the audience. Content collaborations between industry experts and internal subject matter experts and executives helps to humanize B2B brands by focusing on the real issues customers are dealing with. [bctt tweet="“Good content isn’t about good storytelling. It’s about telling a true story well.” — Ann Handley of @MarketingProfs" username="toprank"]

3 — BOLSTERING TALENT

The B2B content marketing world is full of talented voices. Our friends, clients, partners, peers… even our competitors. There is no lack of aptitude, but there can be a lack of opportunities. We believe that the loudest voices should not be the only ones heard and that doing the same things with the same people is not optimizing anyone’s bottom line.  “Inclusion is actually how we all win. And there’s a few reasons for that. One is the diversity of perspectives and viewpoints that drives innovation. You need new inputs to get new outputs.” - Christy Haubegger, EVP, Chief Enterprise Inclusion Officer at Warner Media [bctt tweet="“Inclusion is actually how we all win. And there’s a few reasons for that. One is the diversity of perspectives and viewpoints that drives innovation. You need new inputs to get new outputs.” — Christy Haubegger of @WarnerMedia" username="toprank"] Those that bring a new perspective, a fresh mindset and an alternative background to everyone else we may already be sitting in a room with challenge and inspire new ideas.  As an accumulation of these three pillars, we are here to say that while we're not satisfied with the current state of B2B marketing, we're committed to continuing to share real stories that are optimistic and ambitious with the launch of Elevate B2B, a podcast featuring conversations that inform, include and inspire the best of B2B marketing. Each episode will feature insights from a B2B marketing leader having a conversation with our very own Lee Odden. Elevate B2B is kicking off with the queen of content herself, Ann Handley of MarketingProfs. Ann is an incredible storyteller and sought-after keynote speaker, lover of Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, Wordle ninja and Wall Street Journal best-selling author of multiple books including the completely revised and expanded edition of Everybody Writes. Join as she talks about B2B marketers’ post-pandemic challenges, creativity, and inclusivity within the industry! Here are a few highlights and topics covered in the conversation between Ann and Lee:

• The "new normal" of B2B Marketing
• The continued emphasis on content marketing through empathy and emotion
• Elevating B2B brands beyond "boring-to-boring"
• DE&I within the B2B industry
• Sneak peeks and insights from MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute's newest research 
• and MORE!

Check out the full interview podcast here: Check out the full video interview with Ann Handley here: Listen & subscribe to the Elevate B2B Marketing Podcast now

The post Introducing the Elevate B2B Marketing Podcast appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

25 Top B2B Marketing Influencers, Experts and Speakers To Follow In 2023

The business landscape of 2022 includes a wealth of B2B influencers who are shaping and elevating the future of marketing for 2023 and beyond. To celebrate and honor our industry's B2B marketing subject matter experts, including many who happen to be speaking at this week's MarketingProfs B2B Forum event, we're delighted to publish our annual list of some of the world's leading B2B marketing influencers. Each year MarketingProfs B2B Forum is chock full of the latest insightful B2B marketing tactics and strategies presented by a stellar lineup of exceptional B2B influencers, and this year is no different. MPB2B will take place October 12 - 14, 2022 in Boston, Massachusetts, featuring an espcially strong group of B2B marketing professionals the programming team at MPB2B has carefully assembled, both in-person and virtually. In the spirit of helping B2B marketing professionals learn more and connect with new voices, we've compiled our newest list of B2B marketing influencers — all who will be speaking at #MPB2B — to follow and learn from in 2023 and beyond. List Methodology — Relevance Rules: Our starting point for this year's list is a focus on the increasing value of resonance in today's B2B marketing landscape, highlighting influencers with audiences that actively engage with their content centered around the practice of B2B marketing. Today's B2B marketing influencers face greater expectations for sharing content than ever, and the professionals on our list all rate especially well when it comes to audience engagement and resonance. Using a variety of ranking signals, we've identified and validated the credentials of a powerful group of B2B marketing experts, utilizing influencer marketing platform Traackr along with other metrics. Our list this year one again highlights the increasing importance of resonance over mere follower numbers, as audience size itself is not a predictor of a successful outcome, and we've also placed increased importance on the degree to which each influencer's social activity drives engagement on the topic of B2B marketing among their audience. A variety of criteria go into such a ranking, including:

• Audience resonance
• Topical relevance of the content each influencer publishes
• Network engagement with on-topic content

Online data for these rankings is pulled not only from Twitter, but also from blogs, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, SlideShare, and several other platforms — an important item to know, as many lists rely entirely on Twitter and don't take into account relevant influencer activity from additional platforms in the social media universe. Thanks go out to each of these generous B2B marketing influencers who provide industry-leading B2B marketing best practices, tips, and advice. In our list for 2022 you'll likely see a few familiar faces, along with new B2B marketing industry influencers and creators, together forming a refreshing mix of professionals to follow and learn from into 2023 and beyond. If you’d like to follow all 25 top B2B marketers in one shot, we’ve made a handy Twitter list for you. Enjoy!

25 Top B2B Marketing Influencers, Experts and Speakers To Follow In 2023

No list relating to the #MPB2B conference can be truly complete without keynote speaker Ann Handley, who has recently released the much-anticipated second edition of Everybody Writes: Your New and Improved Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content. Ann Handley @MarketingProfs Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs #MPB2B Speaker, Presenting: KEYNOTE: Taking the Numb Out of Numbers Michael J. Barber @michaeljbarber Brand Consultant and Marketing Strategist #MPB2B Speaker, Presenting: Future Guide to Email Marketing: How to Drive B2B Email Success in 2023 and Beyond Andy Crestodina @crestodina Co-Founder and CMO, Orbit Media Studios #MPB2B Speaker, Presenting: Lead Generation Best Practices (Learned From 500+ Website Redesigns) Melanie Deziel @mdeziel Co-Founder and Vice President of Marketing, The Convoy #MPB2B Speaker, Presenting: Exactly How B2B Marketers Earn Trust: Evidence-Based Content Christopher Penn @cspenn Co-Founder and Chief Data Scientist, Trust Insights #MPB2B Speaker, Presenting: Empower Your Marketing With Private Social Media Communities #MPB2B Speaker, Presenting: Workshop—Marketing Measurement and Analytics #MPB2B Speaker, Presenting: Speaker-led Roundtables Lee Odden @LeeOdden CEO and Co-Founder, TopRank Marketing #MPB2B Speaker, Presenting: 10 Creative Content Ideas You’ll Want to Try Today Jenn Herman @jenns_trends Social Media Speaker, Consultant and Trainer, Jenn's Trends #MPB2B Speaker, Presenting: [Roll Up Your Sleeves] Optimizing Your Instagram Profile and Content Allen Weiss @allenweiss Founder and CEO, MarketingProfs #MPB2B Speaker, Presenting: The Steps to a Credible and Defensible Market Position #MPB2B Speaker, Presenting: Speaker-led Roundtables #MPB2B Speaker, Presenting: Relax, Release, Realign: The Art of Mindful Living #MPB2B Speaker, Presenting: Workshop—Marketing Strategy and Planning for the Future John Jantsch @ducttape Founder and President, Duct Tape Marketing #MPB2B Speaker, Presenting: Innovative Strategies to Amp Up B2B Referral Generation Justin Levy @justinlevy Director, Social and Influencer Marketing, Demandbase #MPB2B Speaker, Presenting: The Impact of Streaming B2B Video Networks Paul Roetzer @paulroetzer Founder and CEO, Marketing AI Institute #MPB2B Speaker, Presenting: Dawn of the Next-Gen B2B Marketer with Paul Roetzer Ashley Faus @ashleyfaus Director of Integrated Product Marketing, Atlassian #MPB2B Speaker, Presenting: [Roll Up Your Sleeves] Start Your Thought Leadership Journey #MPB2B Speaker, Presenting: The 4 Pillars of Thought Leadership Tom Webster @webby2001 Partner, Sounds Profitable #MPB2B Speaker, Presenting: Branded Podcasts: The Ultimate Engagement Medium Pam Didner @PamDidner Sales Enablement and Content Marketing Keynote Speaker and Workshop Coach, Relentless Pursuit #MPB2B Speaker, Presenting: Integration 101: Technology and the Customer Journey #MPB2B Speaker, Presenting: Workshop — Aligning the Twin Hearts: Marketing and Sales Ashley Zeckman @azeckman Vice President of Strategy and Customer Success, Onalytica #MPB2B Speaker, Presenting: The Evolution of Influence: Rethinking How B2B Brands Partner With Experts Jay Acunzo @jayacunzo Author, Show Host, and Brand Consultant, Unthinkable Media #MPB2B Speaker, Presenting: The Urge to Act: How Masterful Marketers Mold Their Stories to Resonate Deeper and Earn Passionate Superfans Ursala Ringham @ursularingham Head of Global Influencer Marketing, SAP #MPB2B Speaker, Presenting: The Emperor Has No Content Without Good Storytellers Tyler Lessard @tylerlessard Vice President of Marketing and Chief Video Strategist, Vidyard #MPB2B Speaker, Presenting: TikToks, Shorts, Explainers, Oh My! B2B Video Strategies for 2023, Presented by Vidyard Zontee Hou @ZonteeHou President and Chief Strategist, Media Volery #MPB2B Speaker, Presenting: Show, Don’t Tell: Putting CX at the Center of Marketing #MPB2B Speaker, Presenting: Speaker-led Roundtables Nancy Harhut @nharhut Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer, HBT Marketing #MPB2B Speaker, Presenting: How to Overcome the Biggest B2B Buying Barriers Sydni Craig-Hart @SydniCraigHart CEO, Smart Simple Marketing #MPB2B Speaker, Presenting: Inclusive Marketing Strategy Techniques You Can’t Afford to Ignore AJ Wilcox @wilcoxaj Host of the LinkedIn Ads Show, Founder, B2Linked #MPB2B Speaker, Presenting: [Encore Roll up Your Sleeves] LinkedIn Ads: Double Your Performance by Avoiding These Costly Pitfalls Doug Kessler @dougkessler Co-Founder and Executive Creative Director, Velocity Partners #MPB2B Speaker, Presenting: The Great Shift in B2B: The Fundamental Change Everyone’s Missing Carlos Hidalgo @cahidalgo Chief Revenue Officer, Demand Spring #MPB2B Speaker, Presenting: Designing a Life You Love To Live By Rethinking Everything Michele Linn @michelelinn Co-Founder, Mantis Research #MPB2B Speaker, Presenting: How to Publish a Year’s Worth of Content From One Research Study BONUS: In addition to this list of 25 B2B marketing über-smarties, here is a list of five of our most insightful articles about B2B marketing from the past 12 months:

• 2022 B2B Influencer Marketing Report: New Data, Insights, Case Studies, Predictions
• How LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Uses Blogging to Power Its Growth Engine
• Cannes Creative B2B Lions: What Award-Winning B2B Marketing Looks Like In 2022
• The Secrets of Creating Inspired B2B Content Experiences, Revealed
• Listen Up: How B2B Marketers Are Expanding Social Listening Offline & Beyond

And here are the previous B2B marketing influencer lists we've published:

• B2B Marketing Influencers to Follow in 2022
• B2B Marketing Influencers to Follow in 2021
• B2B Marketing Influencers to Follow in 2020
• B2B Marketing Influencers to Follow in 2019
• B2B Marketing Influencers to Follow in 2018
• B2B Marketing Influencers to Follow in 2017

Thank you to influencer marketing platform Traackr for the use of their software to make this list possible, and to all of the amazing influencers on the list. Be sure to connect with TopRank Marketing CEO Lee Odden at the #MPB2B conference, as he presents "10 Creative Content Ideas You’ll Want to Try Today" on Thursday, October 13 at 5:10 p.m. Eastern, and stay tuned for more B2B marketing industry coverage here on TopRank's Online Marketing Blog.

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B2B Marketing News: B2B Buyers Value Brand Reputation, Business Video Benchmark Report, State of Blogging Trend Study, & LinkedIn’s New Features

What Delays the B2B Buying Process? 30.2 percent of B2B buyers have said that a business’ reputation both online and offline is the top factor when it comes to selecting a specific B2B service, with 20.9 percent pointing to online ratings, 18.6 noting price and service comparisons, and 14 percent who said client testimonials, according to newly-released survey data. Additionally, 29.3 percent of B2B buyers said that price disagreement was their top reason for buying process delays, the survey also found. MarketingCharts 2022 Video in Business Benchmark Report 2021 saw a 178 percent increase in the number of business videos created, with 80 percent being user-generated, recently-released business video report data has shown. Some 98 percent of business video users have said that video has a conversion rate that is the same or better than any other type of content, according to the report data. Vidyard [bctt tweet="“Online video is the Swiss army knife of internet marketing. It really can be used all over the customer lifecycle, whether it’s customer service, marketing, or even recruitment.” — Mark Robertson @MarkRRobertson" username="toprank"] Marketing effectiveness not a defined role in half of brands A scant 11.2 percent of brand-side marketers have said that their organization included a dedicated marketing effectiveness team, while 61.2 percent indicated that marketing effectiveness has been a bigger factor during that past three years — two of several findings of interest to B2B marketers contained in newly-released survey results. Marketing Week Marketers making less use of martech’s expanding capabilities When it comes to putting marketing technology capabilities to use, just 42 percent of marketers have noted that they fully utilized their martech tools in 2021, a drop from the 58 percent seen in 2020, according to recently-published report data. The Gartner report also noted that the decline was due largely to solution overlap, finding the right people to use tools, and an increasingly complex marketing technology ecosystem. MarTech LinkedIn Adds New Features for Company Pages, Including Post Templates and Link Stickers Microsoft-owned LinkedIn (client) has rolled out its latest update to the professional social platform, which has brought all company pages access to a variety of new post templates, the ability to pin comments, and more, LinkedIn recently announced. Social Media Today Virtually All B2B Exhibitions Are Now Going Ahead as Planned Just 2 percent of in-person B2B conference events were canceled during the second quarter of 2022 — a sharp decline from 66.2 percent a year earlier, study data has showed, according to newly-released survey data that has highlighted the increasing return of in-person business networking events. MarketingCharts The State of Blogging in 2022: Post Length and Writing Trends Bloggers who devote more time to writing blog posts have gotten better results, while B2B bloggers tend to both spend more time and write lengthier articles, recently-published survey results of interest to B2B marketers have shown. MarketingProfs Instagram Expands Test of Multiple Links in User Bios Meta-owned Instagram has begun testing changes including the ability to list numerous user biography links including to Facebook Groups, additional social platforms, or any website, Instagram recently announced in a change that could eventually help B2B brands seeking to drive Instagram traffic to brand destinations. Social Media Today Twitter expands access to its experimental Status feature…but not to its paid subscribers Twitter has including an array of additional status moods in an expanded test on the social platform — including "Hot take," "Breaking news," "Then and now," and others, which could bring more content posting options to marketers if fully rolled out, Twitter has announced. TechCrunch Brands are Driving Higher Reach and Engagement by Posting Instagram Reels Nearly half of brands using Instagram have published at least one piece of content using its Reels format, a rise from 30 percent a year ago, with Reels garnering 40 percent greater median interaction counts during the second quarter of 2022 — two of numerous statistics of interest to B2B marketers contained in newly-published report data. Social Media Today ON THE LIGHTER SIDE: A lighthearted look at “Hybrid Work” by Marketoonist Tom Fishburne — Marketoonist The Wild History of the Beloved Addams Family Pinball Machine — Wired TOPRANK MARKETING & CLIENTS IN THE NEWS:

• Lee Odden — Break Free of Boring B2B with Influencer Content Ft. Lee Odden [Podcast] — NetWise
• Lee Odden — How to Measure Social Media Marketing Success, According to 41 Experts — Sales Loves Marketing
• Lee Odden — Top 50 Marketing Influencers to Follow 2022 — The Awards Magazine

Do you have your own B2B marketing news item this week that we haven't yet mentioned? If so, please don't hesitate to drop us a line in the comments below. Thanks for tuning in to this week's TopRank Marketing B2B marketing news, and hope you'll come back again next Friday for another round of the most up-to-date and pertinent B2B and digital marketing industry news. In the meantime, you can follow us on our LinkedIn page, or at @toprank on Twitter for even more timely daily news.

The post B2B Marketing News: B2B Buyers Value Brand Reputation, Business Video Benchmark Report, State of Blogging Trend Study, & LinkedIn’s New Features appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Listen Up: How B2B Marketers Are Expanding Social Listening Offline & Beyond

How can B2B marketers amp up their social media listening strategy and put it to use in other areas to become better all-around listeners? Social listening is a vital aspect of modern B2B marketing, providing valuable insight into current and potential future customers, yet many marketers treat it almost as an afterthought. Fundamental listening skills outside of the social realm are also often given only lip service, leaving B2B marketers plenty of room to purposely hone a winning listening strategy. Whether online or in person, taking the time to build better listening habits can provide a sizable return on investment, so let’s take a look at five ways to expand your B2B listening ROI.

1 — Amp Up Your B2B Digital Listening First

Before tackling in-person listening improvements, it’s important to make sure that your social media listening efforts are in order, and that you’re doing all you can within each social environment relevant to your organization or brand. A few areas where social listening may be a good fit include the following:

• Established social channels including LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram
• Emerging online channels including BeReal, TikTok, Twitch, Reddit, and Discord
• Research tools and databases including the Internet Archive / Wayback Machine and JSTOR
• Search engines and third-party search tools such as Semrush, Meltwater, and BuzzSumo
• Question research tools including KeywordTool.io, Answer the Public, and others

When you’re looking to learn exactly what your audience thinks about a particular topic, taking a direct approach with polls either through social media platforms or on a brand website can also help efficiently get the job done. Learn more about the ins and outs of social media polls in our, "Survey Says: 2022 B2B Marketing Insight From Social Media Polls," and "Social Media Polls For Marketers: 6 B2B Brands Winning With LinkedIn Polls." Getting to the heart of the questions most important to your potential audience provides a powerful path to finding best-answer solutions. To learn more about why question research is such an important facet in marketing, and some of the primary ways to uncover precisely what people are using search engines and other search technology to ask and learn more about, check out our “10 Smart Question Research Tools for B2B Marketers.” [bctt tweet="“'Listen' means much more than hearing with ears. It means to pay attention. Synonyms include observe, be attentive, give attention to, hang on words, and take notice.” — Meryl Evans @MerylkEvans" username="toprank"] Not that you’ve put your social media listening house in order, or at least established a framework for making improvements, it’s time to take our listening skills in other areas to the next level.

2 — Put Your B2B Listening Skills To Use Beyond Social

Once you’ve ensured that your digital listening strategies are running smoothly and gathering B2B marketing insight, it’s time to focus on doing the same for all of those non-social interactions we conduct every day, including:

• Email communications
• Phone conversations
• Zoom or other video conferencing meetings
• In-person interactions and meeting
• Real-life professional networking events

One way to start changing the intensity of our listening is to make a point of specifically including it in every interaction, whether it’s reminding ourselves to look more closely at the email we’re responding to, devoting more time to listening on phone or video calls, or preparing a series of questions ahead of time to ask during in-person conversations and events. Remind yourself before each conversation — digital or otherwise — that time spent listening will offer insights that don’t easily come in any other way. Even a small increase in the amount of time you dedicate to better listening can reap vast rewards. [bctt tweet="“If you’re truly, truly listening to what these conversations are saying then ultimately the hope is that it opens the door to better content, better customer care, and more conversions.” — Kenneth Kinney @KennethKinney" username="toprank"]

3 — Devote More B2B Bandwidth To Listening & Taking Notes

We all have only so much bandwidth, both digital and offline, and in either case savvy B2B marketers gain dividends when they deliberately make listening more of a two-way street and less a one-way drag race. As we purposely focus on being better listeners, it’s important to keep track of all those newfound insights we’re gathering, so that when the immediate conversation ends, we have action items on which to act going forward. For some, making a mental note is adequate, while others will want to take notes, make lists, or use various online tools for managing and completing action items. B2B marketers can expand their influence in several areas through taking the time to be better listeners, as Nancy Duarte recently explored in, “Broaden Your Influence by Adapting How You Listen” for MIT Sloan Management Review. [bctt tweet="“Great listeners adapt the way they listen to help the person speaking accomplish their goals and meet their needs.” — Nancy Duarte @NancyDuarte" username="toprank"]

4 — Use Better Listening To Drive Marketing Change

Even the best listeners in B2B marketing can only get so far if they never put the insights they’ve gained to use. A good listening strategy goes beyond listening by building in mechanisms for taking feedback and delivering it to the right people in an organization, and at the opportune time. A good listener can take action items from their mental or physical notes and move them through an organization’s workflow to make sure each issue is handled by the right team or person, and it’s this additional step that significantly enhances the benefits of being a better listener. Using insight gained from smarter listening to drive B2B marketing change can elevate your professional effectiveness, and ultimately may be the difference between success and failure. [bctt tweet="“The true leader in a group is rarely the person who talks the most. It's usually the person who listens best.” — Adam Grant @AdamMGrant" username="toprank"]

5 — A Good Digital Or Offline Ear Can Make The Difference

When so much of the B2B marketing world can often be little more than chatter, a smart listening strategy is a great way to cut through the white-noise and show potential customers that you, your organization, and your brand are different. This seemingly small move can be the biggest differentiating factor when it comes time for B2B buyers to choose where to take their business. When it comes to communications, not everyone can listen in the same way, and those who have limited or no auditory hearing face additional hurdles, yet may also serve as stellar examples of how we can be better communicators and listeners. Meryl Evans, accessibility marketing consultant, speaker, and writer — a LinkedIn Top Voice in Disability Advocacy 2022 — has been elevating opportunities for more accessible communication since the days of the computer bulletin board. From the latest on improving video captioning to making video conferencing better, Meryl has also been a strong example of how we can always work to be better listeners, in B2B marketing and in life. [bctt tweet="“Accessible content marketing, email marketing, blog posts, web content, and social media help you better connect with your target market and expand your reach.” — Meryl Evans @merylkevans" username="toprank"]

Active Listening Meets B2B Marketing Needs Head On

via GIPHY By amping up your B2B digital listening, putting your listening skills to use beyond social, devoting greater bandwidth to listening and note-taking, and using observational skills to drive marketing change, B2B marketers can make a world of difference when it comes time to attract, engage, and convert audiences. We hope you’ve found these tips for being a better listener in B2B marketing helpful, and that some may help you on your own journey as we all make the transition to 2023 and beyond. Additionally, our own senior manager of social and influencer marketing Debbie Friez explored tips for active social media listening, in “Active Social Media Listening: Tips for a New Era of COVID-19,” and I took a look at listening as it relates to the kind of  information processing that B2B marketers do daily, in “Content Contemplations: How We Process Information & Why B2B Marketers Must Craft Content That Elevates.” More than ever before, creating award-winning B2B marketing that elevates, gives voice to talent, and humanizes with authenticity takes considerable time and effort, which is why more brands are choosing to work with a top digital marketing agency such as TopRank Marketing. Contact us today to learn how we can help, as we’ve done for over 20 years for businesses ranging from LinkedIn, Dell and 3M to Adobe, Oracle, monday.com and many others.

The post Listen Up: How B2B Marketers Are Expanding Social Listening Offline & Beyond appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

5 Podcasting Trends Every B2B Marketer Should Know

We may have mentioned a time or two that podcasts are a great way for B2B marketers to release content. But since my first B2B podcasting post (way back in the before times of 2018, how naive we were), the landscape has changed significantly. Part of the shift is due to the pandemic and the remote/hybrid work boom that followed. People who used to spend hours listening to podcasts on their commute suddenly found that the bedroom to home office commute required less entertainment.  But the other part is simply natural maturation and evolution over time. Podcasts are becoming even more plentiful, their creators more diverse, and the advertising more relevant. Here are the major trends that B2B podcasters should be aware of for 2022 and beyond.

Listener Demographics and Habits Are Changing

First, the good news: The popularity of podcasts still shows no signs of waning. In fact, there’s a large block of new listeners that have been at it for less than a year! People are still discovering and falling in love with the medium. According to SCM Media’s 2022 Podcast Report, these listeners have some important distinguishing factors, compared to the old guard. First, they’re younger: Over 66% are under 35 years old. Second, they’re split 50/50 gender-wise (the survey assumed a binary), versus the old guard’s 70/30 male split.  Podcasts are also diversifying, and audiences are as well. Black and Latine listener pools are growing fast. These groups are drawn by topical interests, but also by creators who share their life experiences. For example, over half of Black listeners say it’s important their content be presented by a Black creator. These listeners are putting in fewer hours a week — 4.4 versus 7.1 — but they’re also listening to more episodes of different podcasts. While the old guard used to listen to every episode of their favorite podcasts, the new folks are more likely to podcast hop based on topical interest. This is likely because…

Podcasts Are Getting Easier to Find & Search by Topic

For anyone who has ever hosted a podcast, let’s hear a great big, “FINALLY!” As major players like Apple, Spotify, Google and YouTube lean into podcasting, we’re starting to see better search engines and smarter recommendations. Like all machine learning implementations, these algorithms will continue to improve over time. In his podcast predictions for 2022, iHeartMedia’s CEO Conal Byrne explores the implications:  Podcasting will benefit from the engineers of these platforms [Google, Youtube and Facebook] aiming their best-in-class search and discovery tools on the podcasting medium. Long-tail shows will be discovered. Evergreen episodes will be highlighted whenever relevant. Perhaps more than anything, newsworthy podcast content will begin to surface more regularly in search results and recommendations on the platforms we all use all the time to stay up to speed. This development has two major implications for B2B podcasters: First, podcast SEO will be critical to capture “podcast hopper” attention. That means every episode should have relevant keywords in the title and description for maximum findability. Second, your podcast archive may be more valuable than you think. If podcast platforms will be recommending your older episodes, it’s worth making sure each episode is optimized for search and sounds its best.

There Are Exciting New Ways to Monetize & Repurpose Podcasts

Who says podcasts have to be a cost center for your brand? It’s getting more simple to serve relevant advertising to your podcast audience—adding revenue while your brand still gets the boost from the podcast content.  New podcast listeners are 19% more open to advertising than the old guard. As long as ads are relevant, they say, it’s okay to interrupt the content with advertising. This is partly due to the emergence of DAI (dynamic ad insertion) technology, which makes it easy to custom-fit relevant, timely ads into existing content. Livestreaming is another way to monetize an already popular podcast. Think of it as hosting a webinar, but with more audience participation and fewer slideshows. Some live podcast events (albeit for the most popular entertainment podcasts) can sell tickets for upwards of $50 a session. Currently, only 10% of podcasters take advantage of livestreams, so it’s a good way for your brand to make a splash. Research shows that listeners are hungry for podcast content outside of the podcast platform, too. Tools like Wavve, which helps create video from snippets of audio, have seen an explosion in popularity, with Wavve itself seeing 7000% growth since 2019. Short clips of your podcast on social media are a great way to expose your podcast to a new audience, and to give your existing subscribers something to snack on between episodes.

Creating and Editing Is Easier than Ever

The last few years has seen the rise of all-in-one podcasting platforms. Unlike services that simply host your content and syndicate it, these new tools feature audio and video calling capabilities, recording options, and even editing tools right in your browser. Tools like Riverside.fm and Zencastr make it easy to capture high-quality audio and get it ready for publication.  One new player that’s already getting a ton of attention is Descript, an all-in-one that generates transcripts automatically and lets you edit audio by editing the text. 

There’s Still Plenty of Room for Growth

There are currently over 2 million podcasts in the world right now. But there’s always room for more. Even with the current surge in new listeners, there’s still 50% of the adult U.S. population that have never listened to a podcast. They’re just waiting for the right sound or video clip to speak directly to their wants and needs. If you’ve been thinking about launching a podcast for your brand, now is a great time to start. And we can help! To get started, read how we helped SAP launch a podcast that smashed benchmarks with every episode.

The post 5 Podcasting Trends Every B2B Marketer Should Know appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®.