Break Free of Boring B2B Break Free of Boring B2B

B2BMX: Scottsdale, AZ - February 25-27, 2019

B2B doesn't need to mean "boring to boring" and yet much of business marketing has earned its reputation. In a world of information overload, buyers expect engaging, useful content that speaks to them as real people from sources they can trust. At TopRank Marketing we walk the talk and in this animated and interactive guide, we’re tapping the expertise of professionals like David Meerman Scott, Ardath Albee, Tim Washer and Michael Brenner as well as experts at major brands like 3M, Terminus, Demandbase, PTC and Google to help you create breakthrough B2B content. With insight organized into sections including B2B marketing planning, content creation, promotion and reporting you’ll be inspired to break free of boring B2B and never look back. Besides, those are lasers coming out of the bear’s eyes and we all know, you shouldn’t look at lasers. We encourage you to dig in to this guide, get inspired, do some sharing and best of all, see these experts live at the B2B Marketing Exchange conference in Scottsdale, Feb 25-27th.

Autopilot planning simply cannot inspire breakthrough content needed to stand out in a world of information overload. That’s a problem because undiscovered content is boring! Few things solve unremarkable marketing better than taking a stand to make your audience think in a new way or being bold and inspired like the marketing being done by non-profits and startups - some while saving the world. To break free towards more exciting and engaging marketing, B2B brands need to stop thinking only about themselves and connect on a more human level. Plan content that communicates with customers like real people and it will help build a strong community. A community that’s interested in what the B2B brand has to say. Click each expert below for more about B2B marketing content planning from Michael Brenner, Carlos Abler, Sangram Vajre and Peter Isaacson.

Creating B2B content that isn’t boring requires more than a clever twist on the facts. Facts tell, but it’s stories that sell. Inspiration and motivation are what drive action out of content creation. But what stories should B2B brands tell, especially if the solution is complex? The answer is with your customers and understanding their pain, goals and preferences. Worse than boring is the growing lack of trust amongst buyers. B2B brands need to be authentic and even use humor to connect in a meaningful way. Did you see the cat sipping the soda? Definitely not boring. Be real, be funny and show that your business brand has a personality. Click each expert below for more about B2B marketing content creation from Masha Finkelstein, David Meerman Scott, Ardath Albee and Tim Washer.

What great is B2B content if no one experiences it? Imagine all the time and resources invested in content planning and creation without equal time to promotion - incredibly boring. And the status quo approach of “build it and they will come“ is the lamest of marketing strategies. Knowing buyer preferences for information discovery and consumption leads marketing in the direction of more personalized engagement that engages and inspires. Not many B2B marketers realize it, but content promotion is a team sport. That’s why inviting industry experts to showcase their expertise inspires the pride that will motivate effective sharing to new audiences. Successful B2B marketers create those content experiences with a more visual, interactive approach. Click each expert below for more about B2B marketing content promotion from Brian Fanzo, Lee Odden and Michelle Liro.

Few things about marketing are more boring than meaningless metrics presented in tabular formats. Making B2B content marketing reporting more interesting starts by being able to succinctly explain why the information you’re sharing matters to the business. Marketing performance is exciting when you can use data visualization and stories about how your marketing has shortened the sales cycle, helped close more deals or improve customer satisfaction. Give context for the metrics you provide so the point of comparison can communicate the real value and impact of your marketing efforts. Click each expert above for more about B2B marketing content reporting from Amanda Maksymiw, Pam Didner and Andrew Spoeth.

Michael Brenner

CEO - Marketing Insider Group

@MichaelBrenner

B2B Brands can be so much more interesting if we stop talking about ourselves and our products and tap into raw human emotion. If we dig deep and think about what frustrates us, or what is interesting to our audience, we can create much more interesting content. Some of my most popular articles include provocative challenges, funny / not funny quotes. I once even asked my audience what their favorite TV show was and then wrote about it. The point is that we have to be bold and start realizing that the most interesting things around us are not our products or our companies. If we speak to our audience like real people and recognize that our content has to compete with all the noise out there, we will all end up creating much more interesting stuff.

Carlos Abler

Leader - Content Marketing & Strategy :: Global eTransformation - 3M

@Carlos_Abler

We admonish companies to ‘become publishers’. However, boredom is not PUBLISHING a problem, it’s a RELEVANCE problem, which is an INNOVATION problem. B2B's publish endless content, but studies show underperforming outcomes in aggregate. We must synthesize the throughput and format models of publishing with those of social innovation and entrepreneurship. As a juror for content marketing awards and for the WSA, a UN organization the awards content products that support the UN Sustainability Development Goals, I see the most relevant content marketing tactics, platforms, and business models are developed by non-profits, NGOs, students, and start-ups. Which B2B’s need to learn from and partner with, to not only end boredom but improve and even saves lives while driving unprecedented business results.

Sangram Vajre

Chief Evangelist and Co-Founder - Terminus

@sangramvajre

To go from boring to remarkable, marketing doesn't have to be loud or flashy. On the contrary, you need to be consistent, authentic, and value driven. You can easily start by doing this: Show up daily (consistent), be yourself (authentic), and become a guide (add value). And slowly but surely you will transform into a remarkable brand that is worth following. And if you are still not convinced, here’s the bottom line - If you don’t build a community, you will simply slip away as a commodity.

Peter Isaacson

Chief Marketing Officer - Demandbase

@peisaacson

The B2B world is awash in content. And technology companies are the problem, not the solution. We have fallen so in love with generating content, that most companies are on autopilot. We try to attach ourselves to the latest trends in hopes of boosting our SEO. Or default to our own products, because that is what is important to us. It’s no wonder that AI-generated content is about to replace most traditional content- because most content essentially scrambles 100 buzz words into a different order. But great content isn’t about platitudes. It’s about provocation. Incitement. Taking a stand and making your audience think in a new way. Giving the counter-argument to conventional wisdom. When we do that, we advance the dialogue, rather than diminish it.

Masha Finkelstein

Growth Marketing, Devices and Mobility, Google Cloud - Google

@masha3003

In my mind, the difference between boring and break-through marketing is the story. If you can come up with a way to inspire and motivate prospects, customers, users, or even other marketers with the story you are telling through your marketing - I would consider that a win! Sometimes we forget about that and focus on the features and benefits or addressing pain-points, when all it would take to bring the campaigns to the next level is a deeper narrative that triggers our target audience to take an action and positively change the world!

David Meerman Scott

Keynote Speaker & Bestselling Author, Freshspot Marketing

@dmscott

Most business-to-business marketing is dreadfully boring. Why is that? I think marketers get hung up on that “business” word and forget that they should be communicating to people. But it doesn’t have to be that way! Here are a few things you can do to take the boring out of B2B: Always remember that you are communicating to people. You need to understand your buyer personas. What are their problems? What words and phrases do they use? How can you connect with them? Doing this eliminates the common practice of just making stuff up. Stop being vague! Get specific. Be precise. Eliminate innovative, cutting-edge, mission-critical, best-of-breed gobbledygook from your writing. Using the same inane language as everybody else ensures you are lost in the crowd. Stock photos of people who you put forward as your customers and employees screams “I don’t care.” Get rid of those stock models. Use photos of real people - your customers and employees. You can use humor! Really, go ahead and show that you’ve got a personality.

Ardath Albee

CEO & B2B Marketing Strategist - Marketing Interactions

@ardath421

The challenge with a lot of B2B content is to help people grasp the meaning and purpose without needing a Ph.D. Metaphors are a great tool that can make B2B content more fun. If you’ve ever run a Flesh Kincaid readability test and seen a 10 for readability and a 27 for grade level, you know what I’m talking about. With some creativity and a metaphor, you can really draw attention and have people think differently. Think comparison and focus on creating a mind picture for an instant “aha.” Aim higher than a cliché. The objective is to transform mundane ideas into memorable ones. An iconic metaphor is “1,000 songs in your pocket” for iPod. One you use every day is the marketing “funnel.” What can you come up with?

Tim Washer

Keynote Speaker, Event Emcee, PowerPoint Comedian - Ridiculous Media

@timwasher

Whether a person identifies as B2B or B2C, many of us struggle with heightened anxiety because we don’t trust some of our leaders or companies that serve us. This is a time for brands to be authentic and vulnerable by telling stories of the failures they made along the way to success. It’s a time to use humor to connect with empathy. Brainstorm around the customer’s pain point , then exaggerates that battle to the level of absurdity. Customers will appreciate that we’ve listened closely enough to understand their plight, and that instead of pushing our product or a CTA, we’ve given them the gift of laughter.

Brian Fanzo

Founder & CEO - iSocialFanz LLC

@iSocialFanz

The field of dreams B2B marketing game is over in 2019. If you build it, launch it or just create it nobody is coming! It’s not only important to create a content strategy, tell great stories and solve customer problems but you must customize and personalize this content and bring it to your audience where they are currently engaging. With B2B in 2019, this should be easier now more than ever as you know who your customers are, should have the data on where they engage and should already be investing in bringing value to that community. Armed with this information you must now acknowledge that every customer consumes and learns differently requiring each piece of content to leverage multiple forms of media to create buzz and most important conversations. Examples for doing this can include creating live videos behind the scenes of a new product launch, exclusive Q&A access with executives, podcast previews or recaps of events or big announcements. This might seem overwhelming but if we shift our focus to creating content less often while spending more time creating conversations and leveraging strategic personalized content for that individual community it will inspire the audience to want more and have them excited about visiting your field of dreams.

Lee Odden

CEO - TopRank Marketing

@leeodden

Because much of B2B content promotion is an afterthought, it's often limited to routine brand social shares, ads and email blasts. The noise of status quo content promotion couldn't be more boring. To spice up content promotion, B2B marketers should optimize for experience by incorporating story, interactive content and influencers. Inviting influencer content collaboration inspires promotion of the finished product to bigger and more relevant audiences. When that content is interactive, it boosts shareability even more. The story ties it all together to create an experience that not only informs but inspires word of mouth and sharing by influencers and prospective customers alike.

Michelle Liro

Vice President of Demand Generation - PTC

@michelleliro

After the countless hours you’ve put in to create an engaging piece of content, don’t cut corners when it comes to creating a promotional plan. This same phenomenon happens with email marketing as well—hours of time crafting just the right copy and layout, with mere minutes spent on a subject line, which can be the most important element to the success of the campaign.The ubiquity of mobile devices, social channels, and online content means that your ability to draw someone’s attention is mostly visual now. Images, graphics, videos, color choice and layout are all key to grabbing someone’s attention in those two seconds as they scroll through a feed. To expand outside of your traditional promotional plan, focus on a “Show, don’t tell” approach. Your images need to convey meaning and value without using words. Boring, generic stock photos won’t cut it. Contrary to popular belief, people do still read traditional content forms like whitepapers, eBooks and case studies, but first you’ll need to pull them in with attention-grabbing visuals that show them what they’ll get before you tell them what they’ll get.

Amanda Maksymiw

Content Marketing Director - Fuze

@amandamaks

To make content marketing reporting less boring, avoid only showing meaningless metrics like views, likes, or shares. While they are important to track, leadership will often brush them off because they don’t demonstrate impact. The real excitement is in the engagement. Show off how your content has sped up the sales process, influenced opportunities, closed deals, built true awareness, created champions, or improved customer satisfaction. Then, provide recommendations showing how you are using the data to improve your strategy going forward. Don’t be afraid to admit failures and communicate what isn’t working.

Pam Didner

CEO, Author, Speaker - Relentless Pursuit

@PamDidner

The dress code of business professionals has moved from formal attire to business casual. It's time for B2B Marketing reporting to follow that same trend, moving from dry and boring to engaging and interesting. You still need to communicate KPIs and business outcomes of course. Then break through the boring clutter of tabular data and graphs with insights, data visualization and customer stories that reflect actionable opportunities. Think through your creative approach and the way you want to tell your story. Dress up your B2B marketing effort. #worthit

Andrew Spoeth

Board Advisor and Digital Marketing Executive, previously with CA Technologies

@andrewspoeth

Marketing executives today are inundated with data and reports. Digital transformation has made more aspects of our businesses measurable, which is great. But it has also opened up the floodgates. Here are a couple of ways to ensure your content marketing reports remain interesting and relevant. When presenting, be able to answer: Why does this report matter? Lead with this in one crisp sentence, or share this directly after presenting the key metric. If you have multiple metrics to show, stack rank them in order of importance to the organization’s marketing goals. This admittedly can be hard, but it demonstrates that you can think strategically, and deeply understand the business. And lastly, when showing a metric, give context. How good is this (compared to your baseline, industry benchmarks, and your forecast)? Contrasting your results with a competitor’s result can also be a quick way to get attention internally, especially if market share is a company goal.

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To truly break free from boring B2B, marketers must evaluate their approach: Is your planning thoughtful and data informed with customer insight? Is the content you’re creating visual and focused on stories that connect with customers as real people? Are you enlisting the help of industry experts for promotion? Is your marketing reporting telling data or selling stories about progress and opportunity? To learn more about breakthrough B2B content marketing, see all of the experts included in this guide at the #B2BMX conference including TopRank Marketing CEO Lee Odden, who will be presenting "Break Free of Boring B2B with Interactive Influencer Content” February 26th at 11:25am. Lee will highlight interactive content and influencer marketing best practices and case studies featuring B2B brands including 3M, SAP, Prophix and LinkedIn. Learn more about B2B Content and Influencer Marketing from the team at TopRank Marketing. Visit our website and let’s start a conversation!

See these speakers live at B2BMX

Scottsdale, AZ - February 25-27, 2019