how to build your b2b marketing empire from the ground up
TRANSCRIPT
FROM THE GROUND UP
HOW TO BUILD YOURB2B Marketing Empire
How to Build Your B2B Marketing Empire From the Ground Up
BUILD TO LASTB2B Marketing That Stands the Test of Time
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Just imagine what might have happened if the architects for the Statue of Liberty had settled on wood instead of copper and iron for the Green Goddess. Or if the builders of the Eiffel Tower had been distracted
and missed a few of the over 18,000 iron pieces holding the structure together.
Moreover, each of these structures was designed and built on a solid foundation that has enabled them to stand the tests of time. Similarly, today’s B2B marketers, taking a page out of history, should focus on designing and building marketing programs that are based on sturdy B2B marketing foundations.
To help you build to last, we’ve partnered with TopRank Marketing to feature structurally sound advice from some of the top marketing architects speaking at the MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum in Boston, October 18-21.
As we celebrate and reflect on our 10th anniversary at the MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum, let’s look to the future with hope and excitement. Let’s learn from what has worked, and abandon what hasn’t. Let’s challenge one another to achieve epic results. Let’s build to last.
Ann HandleyChief Content OfficerMarketingProfs
How to Build Your B2B Marketing Empire From the Ground Up
“Good content isn’t about good storytelling. It’s about telling a true story well.” - Ann Handley
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How to Build Your B2B Marketing Empire From the Ground Up
Join other like-minded marketers for three days of learning and planning at the 10th annual MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum.
October 18 - 21st, 2016
LEARN HOW TO BUILD B2B MARKETING THAT LASTS
LEARN MORE
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How to Build Your B2B Marketing Empire From the Ground Up
BUILD YOUR
B2B Marketing Strategy
B2B Marketing StrategyLike pillars that hold up the Parthenon, your B2B marketing strategy needs structure. Unfortunately, even fewer B2B marketers say they have a documented strategy this year than last year. When research has shown that marketers with a documented strategy are more effective, why is that the case?
Today’s world of B2B marketing requires sophistication, advanced targeting, long-term relationship building and a new breed of creativity. However, planning for and implementing those sophisticated tactics is not always an easy undertaking. This section will provide helpful insights on how to effectively create a B2B marketing strategy.
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Balance Impact & Value of Marketing
MICHAEL BRENNERCEO, Marketing Insider Group
A successful B2B Marketing Strategy answers 3 important questions:
WHY does your marketing matter to the business and your customers?
WHAT impact will your marketing have?
HOW will that impact be measured?
These 3 questions should tie back to the overall goals of the business. The biggest challenge many B2B marketers face is focusing on the customer. So it’s a balance between defining the impact on the business and the value your marketing creates for your customers. Effective marketing programs focus on helping customers first. Great B2B marketing strategy supports the fact that “when you help your customers, you help the business”.
How to Build Your B2B Marketing Empire From the Ground Up
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ANDY CRESTODINACo-Founder, Orbit Media Studios, Inc.
Have you defined success? Can you measure it? If you haven’t set up Google Analytics, the sad answer is no. So here’s your foundation:
- Decide what success looks like in your Google Analytics (more social visits? More subscribers? Higher lead generation conversion rates?).
- Set up Google Analytics to track that goal specifically.
- Check those reports regularly, or have them emailed to you on a schedule.
This is your foundation: proper setup, accurate data and a commitment to taking action on the data. These are the building blocks of B2B growth. But if your marketing is based on opinion, you’re building on a foundation of sand.
How to Build Your B2B Marketing Empire From the Ground Up
How to Define B2B Marketing Success
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DOUG KESSLERCo-Founder, Velocity
The Ground Survey – A solid sense of the market context for your company, audience, products and competition.
The Concrete – A rich, detailed, nuanced, multi-dimensional understanding of your target audience including their hopes, dreams, prides, prejudices, senses, sensibilities and secret fantasies.
The Rebar – A clear, compelling sense of who you are and the unique things you bring to the table. The source of your authority. Your content sweet spot. The reasons WHY you do what you do.
The Damp-Proof Course – A clear sense of the content that’s competing for your audience’s time. Not just from competitors but from substitutes and adjacent categories. Mind the gaps. (And fill them).
How to Build Your B2B Empire From the Ground Up
DIY Guide to B2B Marketing Foundations
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The Spirit Level – A small set of metrics you’ll track to tell you if you’re doing enough of the right things. These should be agreed upon with your colleagues in sales and your executive stakeholders.
The Building Blocks – A program of content that your audience will value and that you can produce consistently, to a high standard.
Now your house will rest on something solid.
“Your B2B marketing “rebar” is a clear, compelling sense of who you are and the unique things you
bring to the table.”
How to Build Your B2B Marketing Empire From the Ground Up
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DIY Guide to B2B Marketing Foundations
CHRIS MOODYDirector, Content & Social Marketing, GE Digital
In five simple steps, you can have a solid foundation for your B2B marketing strategy.
1. Defining your mission (what’s your one thing). Everyone knows the one thing (one word even) for Apple (innovation) and Volvo (safety). What’s yours?
2. Identifying a singular goal (what’s most important?). For most, this will be qualified leads or a revenue target. Sure, you’ll have secondary goals, but find the most important one first.
3. Documenting your plan to accomplish that goal. Only 1 in 3 marketers have a documented content strategy (MarketingProfs/CMI). If it isn’t on paper (or digital), it isn’t happening.
How to Build Your B2B Marketing Empire From the Ground Up
5 Steps for Building a Solid B2B Strategy
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4. Deciding on the most relevant metrics for you. This isn’t one size fits all. Find what *you* need to track.
5. Establishing a baseline and start measuring against it to see what works. What changes? What’s working? What isn’t? Why?
From there, you can start marketing and gain insights from everything you do.
“If your marketing strategy isn’t on paper (or digital), it isn’t happening.”
How to Build Your B2B Marketing Empire From the Ground Up
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5 Steps for Building a Solid B2B Strategy
How to Build Your B2B Marketing Empire From the Ground Up
BUILD YOUR
Marketing Career
B2B Marketing StrategyLike a superhighway connecting a metropolis to the open road, your professional development needs a path to greatness. But your career needs more than just an open road. Building a career that lasts requires an appreciation for ongoing learning and development; a license to drive the many vehicles of the open road.
The professional world has never changed so drastically as in the past few years, and it requires new skills of us to keep up. You must network like mad, develop digital skills to last, and break down silos to create open lanes for your development.
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How to Build Your B2B Marketing Empire From the Ground Up
Rely on Your Creative Intuition
JAY ACUNZOHost & Creator, Unthinkable
A willingness to break from “best practices” and go craft your own is an essential part of building a B2B marketing strategy.
It’s never been harder to acquire, retain, and deepen attention, so we can’t merely copy a listicle or follow the trend -- yet B2B marketers too often do so. Instead, we need to rely more on our creative intuition. This allows us to synthesize all those thousands of best practices and data points out there and then contextualize it for the uniqueness of our situations. “Best practices” imply absolutes, but in reality, they’re just starting blocks. No two situations are identical.
Only when you start combining external information with your internal thoughts, beliefs, and interests can you can create something that stands out in this, the noisiest era in history.
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Constantly Yearn to Learn More
SCOTT MONTYCEO & Founder, Scott Monty Strategies
Without a doubt, one of the most important qualities for anyone in the marketing field is curiosity. It’s the aspect of the personality that will keep you wanting to learn more - about your customers, about your business, about your industry, and ultimately about marketing itself.
It’s the quality that makes you keep asking “Why?” and never letting up. It means your appetite for more information and insights will drive you to ask deeper and smarter questions than the next person. And ultimately, you’ll find that your questions indicate that you’re more concerned with those with whom you come in contact, rather than with yourself. If you constantly yearn to learn more, you’ll never be bored in this profession.
Dorothy Parker once wrote, “Curiosity is the cure for boredom. There is no cure for curiosity.”
How to Build Your B2B Marketing Empire From the Ground Up
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Know What You Want to Achieve
LEE ODDENCEO, TopRank Marketing
A successful career in B2B marketing requires a clear understanding of what you want to achieve, an honest assessment of your skills and a map of the gap you need to close in terms of experience, talent and ability.
B2B marketing involves a longer sales cycle and more content, so being able to use both data and empathy to form a strategy and a tactical plan that is measurable when implemented is essential. Test hypotheses about what will work and what won’t. Learn from failures and successes, and make a commitment to continuously learn from peers, experts, publications and experiments.
How to Build Your B2B Marketing Empire From the Ground Up
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How to Build Your B2B Marketing Empire From the Ground Up
BUILD YOUR
Marketing Squad
B2B Marketing StrategyJust like the Goonies, Hogwarts, or the crew from the Sandlot, you need a tight marketing squad that’s efficient, smart, and balanced.
But before you take out your Harry Potter wand and start casting spells, let’s cover some basics of building your marketing squad.
The modern professional workplace requires more of us than any previous generation. The channels, information and communication are all paramount to success.
Finding the right team of people to surround yourself with takes effort, but can become an essential part of your B2B marketing foundation.
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MITCH JOELPresident, Mirum
Marketers want everything (more sales, more awareness, more recall, more word of mouth, more contracts, more leads and more)… and they want it fast.
The initial run at digital marketing back in the early nineties was strategic, in one sense: “we can do it fast.” To this day, most B2B marketers embrace digital marketing because they believe it will be faster, cheaper and more cheerful. Take a handful of keywords, link it to some landing pages, buy some PPC, Facebook, LinkedIn, and watch the sales and leads ring up. Face it, you still believe email marketing as a faster (and cheaper) solution to direct marketing.
It’s all wrong.
How to Build Your B2B Marketing Empire From the Ground Up
TL;DR: Pace Yourself. Take it Slow.
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If you want to build a strong team of B2B Marketers, find people who understand and appreciate the long and winding road.
Find team members who can make fast decisions, but that take the optimal time to nurture the right results.
Remember this: evergreen works for your content and your team members. It’s not all about how fast you can post the latest news with the most cutting-edge insight. Think about building both a catalog of content with a team that “gets” the value that will be derived slowly and over time.
“Find team members who can make fast decisions, but take the time to nurture the right results.”
How to Build Your B2B Marketing Empire From the Ground Up
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TL;DR: Pace Yourself. Take it Slow.
Take a cue from KISS (the band) for inspiration in building a strong B2B marketing team. For example, KISS is made up of four band members each with a unique skill set syncing together beautifully to deliver a musical experience in the form of a song. Your marketing team should be structured the same way. Four unique team members (Social, Content, SEO, Demand Gen) sitting together, synced up beautifully to deliver a marketing experience in the form of a campaign.
But that’s not all. KISS manager Doc McGhee follows the band on tour to guide their vision as the world’s hottest band. And they have one of the most devout fan clubs, in the form of the KISS Army, to share and advocate for them. Is your PR team helping to guide the mission of your content team? Does your community feel like they are part of an army? Put on a copy of KISS Alive and break down the silos.
How to Build Your B2B Marketing Empire From the Ground Up
Build Your B2B Marketing Rock Band
JASON MILLERSenior Manager, Global Content MarketingLinkedIn
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How to Build Your B2B Marketing Empire From the Ground Up
Cultivate a Hearts & Charts DNA
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The essential foundational element for building a strong team of B2B marketers is to cultivate a “Hearts & Charts” DNA: hire people who are naturally passionate - people excited to apply their skills, knowledge, unique gifts and aspirations to creative risk taking. But instill the importance of always asking, “What’s our goal?”
Always measuring experiments so as to apply lessons-learned towards real goals. This killer combo of “inspiration + information” creates a virtuous cycle that keeps marketing fresh, yet also focused on having a meaningful business impact.
JEN SLASKIExecutive Director of Marketing CommunicationsSpiceworks
ANN HANDLEYChief Content Officer, MarketingProfs
How to Build Your B2B Marketing Empire From the Ground Up
Your B2B Marketing Job Posting
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Wanted: Strong team of B2B marketers who possess the following skills, traits, and idiosyncrasies:
Jargon-free communicators. You don’t just speak or write well. You convey ideas that lead, inspire, and instruct others—even if you are managing up. (Especially then.)
Great math skills. Not just any math, either. Can you solve for X here?X = (0.0002 kg)(300,000,000 oz.)2
Yes? Wait WHY ARE YOU IN MARKETING? No? Read on.
You understand how for one particular math equation—with multiplicand and multiplier content x marketing—the product is exponentially more powerful than either factor alone.
You pour foundations. You can’t build a marketing program without one.
You break new ground. You need the crazy idea people, too.
Pathological empathy. You don’t just walk in their customers’ shoes; you put on their underwear, socks, pants, and shirts and move around in those, too, trying to understand what it’s really like in their world.
Humility. There’s no “team” in “arrogant jackhole.”
Humor. Work should be fun and occasionally hilarious.
Willingness to buy the drinks every Friday. HR said we couldn’t include this. Maybe they won’t notice we slipped it in.
Apply within.
How to Build Your B2B Marketing Empire From the Ground Up
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Your B2B Marketing Job Posting
How to Build Your B2B Marketing Empire From the Ground Up
Register today for the MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum and obtain the foundation for a successful B2B marketing strategy.
October 18 - 21st, 2016 - Boston, MA
SET YOUR B2B MARKETING PLANS IN MOTION
REGISTER NOW
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How to Build Your B2B Marketing Empire From the Ground Up
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