Every year the MarketingProfs B2B conference is organized. The MarketingProfs B2B is more than just a conference. It is a place where leaders, innovators and people who can get something done come together to learn about the latest developments in B2B marketing and share the secrets to success. In order not to miss the key insights from the conference, in this blog we share the 7 insights given by various speakers at the event.
Creating and implementing an influencer marketing program that gets results within a business organization is not easy. A CMI/MarketingProfs survey found that 50% of B2B companies believe that creating content on a consistent basis is one of their biggest challenges. Hiring industry specialists who have both content creation skills and an active audience hungry for content has become one of the biggest opportunities to improve B2B marketing. Working with relevant influencers, B2B organizations can execute the most important elements of successful content marketing programs: creating quality content that reaches people and engages people.
One of the biggest barriers to advocacy marketing is adoption. Advocacy happens when the culture is there to support it and when there are people you can engage in it. This is not only within the employee culture, but also the customer experience and transparency makes us want to be a "brand advocate. When you have the right culture, it comes down to increasing and strengthening participation by keeping it simple and focusing on delivering personal value. The personal value piece is the hardest, especially on a large scale. But don't try to remove the emotional connection from your advocacy marketing program, which has translated into authentic and influential word of mouth in the first place.
It's no secret that video has become an essential part of content marketing. Many platforms (such as LinkedIn) prioritize good videos over other types of content. The one thing to remember about video is that you can use your cell phone to create engaging videos for a business audience for "next to nothing." A good example in this is Allen Gannet, who is the CSO of Skyword. Allen Gannet creates regular and "Question & Answer" videos with his cell phone and films short interview sessions with his customers, employees and influencers. He posts these videos on LinkedIn where he has nearly 70,000 followers. Video works and it doesn't take much. It requires some imagination, some dedication and content that is useful to your audience.
Start small and simple to find out what works for your audience. And remember that a video shot on mobile (with good lighting and sound) can be just as effective as a video made with a big budget. Finally, video creation (and promotion on social media) is free in its simplest form.
B2B marketers struggle to get results from the large amount of time and resources they spend developing content. Fortunately, there is a way to approach content more strategically in a way that can help brands become more profitable. The best way is to think of content as an internal business model.
How can you develop a complete business model for content? A great content marketing strategy develops an audience that you can leverage in a variety of ways. An audience can help you facilitate more efficient or effective campaign-focused goals such as more or better leads. However, perhaps the best strategic content programs do more. It is an integrated business strategy that helps make the organization smarter and more efficient, develop better products and serve customers more effectively.
All artificial intelligence and machine learning is based on data. Data is what machine learning learns from and trains on. The most important question for any company considering the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence is the same:
In what state is the available data?
If the data is corrupted, incomplete or biased, no amount of machine learning or artificial intelligence can fix it. The data must be clean, complete and quality-checked before conducting their own trial or concept for an artificial intelligence project, otherwise the results could be disastrous.
One of the B2B content marketing trends of 2018 was the use of artificial intelligence. The use of artificial intelligence is expected to increase 53% over the next two years. Thus, artificial intelligence will continue to be a trend within B2B content marketing in the coming years. 
Why is it important to work with different influencers and create B2B content with them? Not all influencers are the same! Every person has the potential to influence something or about someone and thus can be an influencer.
Depending on your content goals, you should work with a few types of influencers. Well-known experts with a large social reach can lead a new audience to your content. But what if you want to create a narrower network and reach a very targeted audience? Then make sure you use niche influencers with very deep expertise on a particular topic. From the person sitting next to you to a great customer, they all have the potential to influence your audience in a meaningful way.
What if someone told you to throw away all the knowledge you possess about B2B marketing? Well that's exactly what companies like SnapApp have done. And believe it or not. Their results improved significantly afterwards. What habit or process do marketers need to break to not end up killing their marketing? And why do they need to break it?
The short answer to this is: incremental thinking.
These days, there is a lot of talk about new models and how some of the old approaches in B2B marketing have seen their day. Aaron Dun agrees with me there. Aaron Dun is a big proponent of looking beyond the inbound related content approach to lead attraction. The work people are doing with ABM and "conversational marketing" are great steps in a positive direction. However, in Aaron Dun's view, there is a bigger issue that goes far beyond the tactical implementation of a particular approach or approach. It becomes core to how we think about growth opportunities and how we measure results. Too many of the marketers are content to deliver incremental profits from year to year. But this crushes our ability to create real transformation within the operations in our businesses.
Aaron Dun is startled by the amount of change required to continue meeting growth goals, and yet organizations remain stuck in their old habits. By growing incrementally and making changes, the results achieved from current activities can become 5x more efficient. We must teach ourselves to think incrementally and at the entire scale of the organization to create real change.
Would you like to know more about the topics of the MPB2B 2018 or would you like to learn more about online marketing within B2B? Get in touch with one of our specialists!
