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24
Apr

CEO’s Agree: Marketers don’t show Marketing ROI. How to regain trust?

 

blind for marketing ROI

Are we blind for our own Marketing ROI?
(image source: lifehacker.com)

Showing Marketing ROI and the ability to contribute to the growth of the business is in many ways the biggest challenge of every marketer.

Every so often reports show that B2B marketers have problems showing Marketing ROI. And then marketers have to do ‘more with less’.

 

Why is this? 

Why do we have problems in showing our Marketing ROI? What can we do to regain trust from our CEO?

Read more »

17
Apr

What it takes to become a Digital Marketer

digital marketer

What does it take to become a digital marketer?
(image : http://conqueranycourse.wordpress.com/)

This is my story of what it took to become a digital marketer… 

My story is not unique

My story is not unique. Hey, I’m sure if you Google a bit, you’ll find other people like me. Truckloads full of them.

But what I want to share with you is what it took for me personally to get to a level where I felt that I knew enough to start with digital, social and content marketing.

And then actually start doing that across the organization. And getting results.

A massive request for change

When I became convinced that digital, social and content was the way to go, the first step was to convince my management. Change was needed. Lots of change.

And that’s what we’ve gone through the last 2 years. And when looking back, the change that I was asking was massive: Read more »

11
Apr

How to build Epic Content as an Organization? 5 Key Tactics Explained

Image: courtesy of Intelsat.

Image: courtesy of Intelsat.

Successful organizations take on a content strategy as a centrepiece of their activities. It’s not an add-on. It’s strategic. Getting buy-in from the organization can be difficult, but doable. More difficult is getting people motivated to build that strategic content.

How do you get an organization to take on content as a strategic part of the business? Here are 5 key tactics that help building a culture of content.

How do you create a culture of content creation and education, internally and externally?

1. Find out what your colleagues care about?

When people do their job well, they get praised. Or get a raise. Or get promoted.

That’s what drives people.

A great way to make content creation a company wide activity is to embed it into what they care about.

  • Service engineers care about solving a customers’ problem 
  • Project managers care about delivering a project on time, within budget, above customer expectations
  • Training managers care about good feedback from trainees
  • Customer support care about how they excelled in helping customers 
  •  …

Find out what makes these people ‘tick’, and let them write it down. Let them know that you expect this from them. Help them in “airing” their personal success stories, insights and helpful stories. And if they do, praise them in public. Read more »

1
Apr

Bi-directional Vision alignment of Company and Buyers

vision alignment

How do you align with your buyers vision ?
Image source : Flicker @ Thomas Hawk

So many solutions are available to B2B companies today.

Increasingly products are being industrialized to be cheaper to produce, and cheaper to sell. In B2B, and in high value goods, pricing is less important. Value is more important. But value is increasingly brought by more and more competitors. Competitors with cheaper prices. And in the end price pressure comes back.

That’s got to end one day. One day your value doesn’t cut it anymore.

Where do you differentiate when market values and prices are converging? When your market is becoming a “red ocean” again?

B2B companies don’t buy your products. They buy your vision. 

Recently I had to choose a new website builder. After a short RFI procedure, three companies where selected. Pricing was ranging from low to mid to high.

Which company did I buy from?

  • Not the company with the best product.
  • Not the company with the best account manager.
  • Not the company with the best price.

I bought from the company that had a vision that aligned with my vision.

Or, their vision aligned with my vision.

How do you align your vision with the needs of your customers?

This might sound like a sales technique.

It’s not a sales technique.

  • Deloitte wants to excel in everything they do.
  • IBM wants to lead in IT technology that brings value to their customers
  • Cisco’s vision is to change the way people work, live, play and learn
  • Philips made simplicity part of their vision.
  • Apple made design and usability their vision.
  • Amazon made ease to buy and choice their vision.

These are the visions of these B2B and B2C companies.

Read more »