http://blog.themarketingpractice.com 10 years, 10,000 campaigns: B2B marketing strategies that really drive sales Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:11:12 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en When we talk about objectives for marketing, it's easy to overlook 'speed to market'. But a few times in the last couple of weeks it's come up as a big opportunity - something that is relatively easy to improve and which can have a fundamental affect on business results. Three ... http://blog.themarketingpractice.com/indispensible-marketing-department/speed-to-market-turbo-charge-your-marketing At a strategic level, aligning sales and marketing can mean embarking on a major organisational change programme. Sometimes it only happens when there’s a change in personnel at the top. Waiting and hoping for that to happen can be very frustrating for professional marketers ‘stuck’ in a company that doesn’t ... http://blog.themarketingpractice.com/indispensible-marketing-department/sales-and-marketing-alignment-6-practical-steps Plenty of suppliers are focusing on 'consumerisation' as a topic of major interest to their customers and prospects. ('Consumerisation' is all about what it means to a business when employees would rather use their own personal devices for work, would rather select their own apps, and want to interact with ... http://blog.themarketingpractice.com/marketing-mit/predictions-for-2012-no-3-%e2%80%93-responding-to-consumerisation Tom Upfold, one of our very own senior copywriters, was invited to take part in a live, online Q&A with The Guardian this month on how to start a career in zoo keeping…only joking, copywriting. He joined a panel of enthusiastic and experienced copywriters from around the UK to give their ... http://blog.themarketingpractice.com/uncategorized/secrets-of-a-career-in-copywriting How many of us have been guilty in our careers of spending all our efforts creating fantastic content and then adding ‘for more information please call…’ at the end? Such a vague request makes the likelihood of a response extremely low. It’s wrong to assume that a prospect is going ... http://blog.themarketingpractice.com/how-to/creating-calls-to-action-that-really-engage-your-buyers Ahead of our next Sales & Marketing Forum - this session will be on Supplier Marketing in Times of Transformation - we thought it would be useful to highlight a few of the pressures/opportunities driving transformation in major UK industries. From a marketing perspective, the stresses of such changes may mean ... http://blog.themarketingpractice.com/uncategorized/transformational-opportunities-in-2012 "Content is King" - but maybe it's time to consider regicide? Wading through the morass of predictions for B2B marketing in 2012 (#irony), you can't move for hearing that "content is King". But I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling that there's already a near-overwhelming weight of content out there competing ... http://blog.themarketingpractice.com/indispensible-marketing-department/predictions-for-2012-no-2-the-progression-from-content-to-experience For me, the big innovation of 2012 in B2B Marketing isn't going to be about technology or channels or techniques: it'll be about revenue. I'm convinced that 2012 will be the last chance for many B2B marketers in large organisations to take more accountability for revenue (and so break out of ... http://blog.themarketingpractice.com/indispensible-marketing-department/predictions-for-2012-no-1-its-all-about-revenue It's possible to generate leads for pretty much any proposition. Not that you should, of course - if it's going to be impossible to sell, then it would be a good idea to reconsider the proposition. But let's assume that the proposition is a sound one, and that any right-thinking buyer ... http://blog.themarketingpractice.com/marketing-mit/for-successful-lead-generation-turn-your-proposition-into-a-campaign-message Why have 1 in 5 buyers been put off a supplier by information found through social media? This presentation gives a special focus on the critical issue of trust that came up in our decision-maker research on social media (see here for the full research overview). B2B Social Media Research: ... http://blog.themarketingpractice.com/marketing-mit/b2b-social-media-research-a-question-of-trust