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Back in the saddle, and just in time as there are two significant developments. First, Gartner is tackling with earnest the world of digital marketing with its brand new and fresh Digital Marketing Transit Map as well as its new take on categorizing Digital Marketing. The Transit Map is interactive: you’ll need to click through to fully understand its direction. Word of caution: your head might explode. The other development is the acquisition of Neolane by Adobe. In addition, we’ve collected the usual collection of excellent information to exercise your cranium.
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Featured Marketing Automation Article
Free Gartner Research: Digital Marketing Transit Map
From www.gartner.com - Today, 8:57 AM
Explanation...
Using the Map
The Digital Marketing Transit Map is designed to identify the best sources for your needs and acquire systems that work well together. It will help you:
Identify the connections among business functions, application tracks and providers.Find additional research or structure questions about strategy and best practices as well as providers, products, and selection criteria.Mediate discussions between marketing and IT.
Interpreting the Map
Navigate the complexity of a fragmented and confusing digital marketing landscape. Elements of the map include:
Neighborhoods represent functional regions that can be thought of as practice areas within an organization.Tracks connect these regions, and can be thought of as application services that share common objectives and information.Stations represent interaction points that can be thought of as vendor and product categories that provide platforms and point solutions.Intersections represent transfer points where solutions may serve more than one business area.
iNeoMarketing's insight:
I'm sorry we missed this while on vacation. This is a significant piece of work by Gartner, and we encourage you to click through to use the graphic's interactivity so as to understand the marketplace. This map may be better than the recent LUMAscape or Scott Brinker's graphic.
As a companion piece, you may want to view the recent Gartner webinar
"Making Sense of the Digital Marketing Landscape", where you can view it at http://my.gartner.com/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=202&mode=2&PageID=5553&ref=webinar-rss&resId=2483515&srcId=1-3147426801&pcp=wb_gml
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Debunking the Myth of the Digital Marketing Platform - Gartner
From blogs.gartner.com - Today, 9:44 AM
Tools feel tactical, lower value. Suites sound cobbled together and clumsy, a slapdash vestige of 2003. Platforms, on the other hand, feel substantial—and, more importantly, foundational. Platforms enable ecosystems, where third-parties add value atop your foundation. Here, your product enables an ecosystem that propagates and accelerates your value and growth.
Utilizing the vernacular of the transit map:
Point tools—are limited to a single neighborhood and offer very limited extensibility in the form of APIs and frameworks for building custom integrations and extensions.Platforms—are also limited to a single neighborhood, but offer more flexibility to integrate with existing processes and data sources and the ability to build custom extensions and applications.Suites—are broader, spanning multiple neighborhoods, but offering limited integration and extensibility.Hubs—also span multiple neighborhoods, are often extensible, and provide converged capabilities and experiences in four key areas: collaboration and workflow, data integration, analytics and administration. Hubs, as the transit map suggests, are where the neighborhoods meet.
iNeoMarketing's insight:
This goes hand-in-hand with the digital marketing transit map. Finally, someone is tackling the flotsam and jetsam of the digital marketing landscape so that we can separate and define providers by category and type. We'll need to keep an eye on the Gartner output.
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Customer Experience Matrix: Adobe Buys B2C Marketing Automation Leader Neolane: One Gap Filled, But Where's CRM?
From customerexperiencematrix.blogspot.com - Today, 8:41 AM
Condensed...
Adobe today announced plans to acquire Neolane, the largest remaining independent B2C marketing automation vendor (excluding email-focused providers like Responsys and Silverpop). Price was $600 million, which is roughly in line with the 8x revenue paid for ExactTarget and Eloqua recently. (Neolane announced $58 million revenue in 2012 and has been growing around 40% per year, which would yield about $80 million 2013 revenue.)
Neolane is more of a mid-tier solution than an enterprise product, which may be a slight mismatch with Adobe. I’d say that reflects a lack of enterprise systems available for Adobe to purchase, more than any particular desire to target the mid-market.
Predictable or not, this deal does fill a gaping hole in Adobe’s marketing cloud. It still doesn’t put Adobe on equal footing with Oracle, Salesforce, SAP or Microsoft, since they all have major CRM platforms which Adobe does not. Adobe obviously has a leadership position in content creation, although I’ve never felt that does much good in selling customer management systems.
iNeoMarketing's insight:
Saw this while on vacation last week, and given the role Neolane plays in the B2B space (small), I thought to hold off on scooping this for you. Not a major move for the B2B marketers, but news nevertheless.
But with the consolidation, I wouldn't be surprised if marketing automation goes away as a term/market segment. Time to consider changing the title of this blog.
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Five Tips for Using Social Media in B-to-B Demand Creation | SiriusDecisions Blog
From www.siriusdecisions.com - Today, 8:28 AM
Excerpt...
Here are five tips from Block and Ross on effectively adding social media tactics to demand creation efforts:
1. Build personas. Marketing professionals regularly build and organize personas in order to understand potential buyers. This essential step also applies to social media marketing. “We’re basically building personas – social personas,” Block explained. “That means we understand by role or industry how these individuals are using social.”
2. Interact. This step may appear obvious to some social media marketers, but interactions must be purposeful. Organizations should seek to find out their audience’s specific pain points and business problems, as well as where individuals are within the buying cycle, Block said. The more that is understood about individuals, the more interaction can take place, allowing the most useful content to be presented and facilitating the buyer’s journey.
3. Leverage and adapt existing content. Existing assets such as white papers and influencer pieces can be used in social media marketing. Based on the audience’s status in the buying cycle, key data points and other elements from these assets can be extracted and repurposed.
4. Be consistent. Block and Ross recommended using multiple social channels to share content. However, organizations must be careful to maintain consistent branding across all of the outlets used. Incorporating uniform creative elements, for example, provides a consistent look and feel, improving the viewer experience and reinforcing brand image.
5. Track. Finally, organizations must determine the impact of their social media activities within their overall demand creation programs. Look beyond frequently overemphasized metrics such as clicks, video views or white paper downloads and examine users’ actions after they access the social media content, Ross and Block emphasized. The most relevant metrics will vary depending on buyer personas.
iNeoMarketing's insight:
Now take the aforementioned and overlay it to LinkedIn (and, using the Filter function, see past Scoops that are LinkedIn focused): these two components should be the basis for your lead gen efforts using Social.
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7 steps to a better B2B landing page - Biznology
From www.biznology.com - Today, 8:21 AM
Summary...
Here is my seven-step checklist to ensure your landing pages adhere to B2B best practices:
Connect the landing page directly to the outbound message. Create a fresh landing page for each variable in your campaign. Mobile-enable your landing page. Pre-populate the form where possible. Ask for the minimal amount of information you need to take the next step in the relationship.Develop a culture of constant testing. Follow landing page design best practices.
iNeoMarketing's insight:
I'll add a few more items: (1) Keep form questions at no more than 7; (2) See Unbounce for landing page design best practices (actually, everything related to landing pages best practices).
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Why a Picture is Worth a Thousand Clicks: Visuals Boost Your SEO - Biznology
From www.biznology.com - Today, 8:16 AM
Condensed...
Here are a few tips to help you get started improving the visuals across your web presence:
Place high-quality images for your products and services across your web presence.Where possible, leverage existing assets.Encourage your customers to create visual contentSize matters.Develop quick, clear titles and useful alt text.When using video, keep things simple. Obviously, a picture is worth a thousand words, so your images already represent a simpler offering than a lengthy article or post. But if you’re considering video along with your images, Rob Petersen noted that videos of “…15 seconds or shorter are shared 37 percent more often than those that last between 30 seconds and 1 minute. If you make your video longer, that stat goes down.”
iNeoMarketing's insight:
At this point, I think we're all aware of the importance of images AND video (and if you need further reasoning, click through for details). The impact is significant: from responses to SERP placement. These tips should help.
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Content Curation Scorecard for Content Marketing Success - CMI
From www.slideshare.net - Today, 7:52 AM
Excerpt...
As Joe Pulizzi emphasized in a recent article describing the 5 essentials involved in creating content perfection, success involves both the creation and curation of helpful, relevant content.
To help you gauge the quality and consistency of your content curation efforts, I’ve created the simple worksheet below. Here, find out how you can use it to score your ability to discover, share, and improve your efforts to create “the best content marketing on the planet” on an ongoing basis.
iNeoMarketing's insight:
Well, this pretty much summarizes what you need to do with your content curation output! We'd like to think we have these areas covered with The Marketing Automation Alert.
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7 Nurture Programs You Need To Have - B2B Digital Marketing
From b2bdigital.net - Today, 7:47 AM
Many B2B marketers are missing the long-term opportunity available in their marketing automation and nurture programs. Here are 7 different nurture programs or scenarios you need to consider.
Summary...
Long-Term Nurture Programs
These programs reach potential prospects that are not in market today and may run for years. Rather than identifying every piece of content and communication that will be sent (which 24 months later may be completely out of date), you will need to define the structure and criteria for your content and communications and continue to update individual touches.
1. Background Nurture
2. Lost Opportunities
Short-Term Nurture Programs
What happens once someone begins to actively engage with your long-term nurture programs? That’s when all of the short term nurture campaigns you have likely already created kicks in!
Here is a snapshot of the short-term nurture scenarios you will need to accommodate.
3. Welcome Track
4. Event Followup
5. Active Prospects
6. Sales Triggered
7. Warm Up
iNeoMarketing's insight:
Generally speaking, this covers it. However, there are nuture programs that are specific to your business and your vertical that may not be listed above. So please be open-minded and creative about your programs.
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Want To Better Understand Data And Metrics? A Recommended Reading List | Forrester Blogs
From blogs.forrester.com - Today, 7:25 AM
Overview...
Here are five I think might help you too:
The Tiger That Isn’t.Web Analytics For Dummies.Keep Up with Your Quants Information Is Beautiful. Forrester’s own Customer Insights Blog.
iNeoMarketing's insight:
You'll want to click through for a summary of each. Better than taking a refresher stat course.
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Acquity Group Study Finds B2B Suppliers Unprepared for Gen Y Procurement Preferences | Acquity Group
From www.acquitygroup.com - Today, 7:22 AM
Excerpt...
The study revealed Gen Y buyers are more likely to shop online than their older counterparts, with a consistent trend of online purchase increasing in younger generations:
90 percent of buyers age 18-35 make company purchases online
68 percent of buyers age 36-45 make company purchases online
45 percent of buyers age 46-60 make company purchases online
29 percent of buyers age 60+ make company purchases online
iNeoMarketing's insight:
Not often when you see pertinent B2B demographic data. Fascinating information that makes you pause.
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[FREE] SEO Ranking Factors - Rank Correlation 2013 for Google USA 2013 - Searchmetrics
From www.searchmetrics.com - Today, 7:18 AM
The study deals with the definition and evaluation of ranking factors that have a positive correlation with the front rank in Google organic search results.
iNeoMarketing's insight:
We think you'll want this report. We were amazed by the impact of Google +1.
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[FREE] Everything Technology Marketing: Download the 2013 B2B Content Marketing Report
From everythingtechnologymarketing.blogspot.com - Today, 7:10 AM
Content marketing is going mainstream in 2013. B2B marketers are increasingly using content marketing tactics to engage B2B buyers with compelling content to educate, inform, entertain and guide them along their buying journey. But what’s behind the buzz and growing popularity of content marketing? Download the new B2B Content Marketing Report to find out.
iNeoMarketing's insight:
Free report ALERT.
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[FREE] Email Design Lookbook - Pardot
From www.pardot.com - Today, 7:00 AM
With some help from ten Pardot clients, we've put together an Email Design Lookbook that's filled with example templates and email marketing best practices. Download your free copy today to see what other B2B marketers are doing for their email templates, and find out how you can put their advice to good use. The Lookbook includes:
10 example email templates, from newsletters to event emails to drip emailsan explanation of plain text versus HTML emailsbest practices tips that cover template design, calls to action, content organization, and morea detailed analysis of all ten example templates provided by Pardot clients
iNeoMarketing's insight:
There's also a SlideShare deck for some select examples: http://www.slideshare.net/pardot/lookbook-slideshare-23513285
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Email Subject Lines: Which Terms Work, and Which Don’t - Marketing Charts
From www.marketingcharts.com - Today, 7:08 AM
Adestra has released its latest email subject line analysis report, looking at the keywords and phrases that fare best and worst across a number of sectors.
iNeoMarketing's insight:
Some excellent information in this report which will sway you to test different terms in your Subject Line. Click through for a summary.
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Are You in Spreadsheet Hell or Budgeting Bliss? [Infographic] - Marketo
From blog.marketo.com - Today, 6:51 AM
Are you stuck in spreadsheet hell or have you made your way to budgeting bliss? Check out our infographic and find out how you can make the switch.
iNeoMarketing's insight:
Yup...guilty.
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INFOGRAPHIC: Who is Your B2B Buyer? - Acquity Group
From blog.acquitygroup.com - Today, 6:53 AM
Corporate buyers apply B2C purchasing preferences to B2B transactions, meaning suppliers must provide a highly-targeted, easy-to-use online experience. Do you understand your buyer?
Via Marteq, Steven Hughes
