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Top B2B Marketing Experts to Follow

b2b marketing experts

What does it take to be recognized as a high-profile B2B marketing expert?

Opinions vary, but most marketers agree on one important element, and it has nothing to do with followers, likes, education, or qualifications.

B2B marketing experts earn their titles as influencers by sharing valuable insight with others consistently. And they share their thought leadership online and offline where other people want to listen to what they have to say.

So what exactly gives B2B Marketing Experts credibility and makes them valuable?

The fact is, all of the most prominent B2B marketing influencers have a significant amount of experience to back up their opinions.

Each one has managed their own projects and have had to test various concepts, analyze the results, implement best practices, and continually evolve their strategies to meet the needs of an ever-changing industry.

With the unpredictable circumstances our society is facing, these B2B marketing influencers have kept their content consistent and relevant. Just like any good brand content marketing strategy.

They carefully craft and manage their personal brand. They have a LinkedIn marketing strategy for themselves and their content.

They have used the Covid-19 pandemic as a catalyst to change and improve their means of sharing what they know with an increasingly digital world.

Consistency is Key to Marketing Influencer

These B2B Marketing experts have grown their following and their influence in difficult times by sharing their success and helping other people. And all it took was a commitment to sharing regularly.

For top-tier B2B marketers, the insights that they share offer a unique value that you won’t find elsewhere, either because:

  • They’re pioneers of their trade
  • They are amazing at what they do
  • They share more often or in more creative ways

The most successful influencers in the game are aware and proactive when it comes to this digital media shift. These marketing experts have accordingly adjusted their approach to sharing their insights with fellow and upcoming marketers.

Social Media Is One Tool – But They Start With Platforms They Own

An important aspect of these B2B marketing experts is the use of their digital platforms. Twitter, instagram, and TikTok have become a crucial element of our society.

Most of these influencers start with their own websites or personal blogs. They don’t “build their house on rented land” as B2B Marketing expert Joe Pulizzi would say.

Yes, their presence on social media has set them apart from other marketers in the way that they efficiently utilize their platforms to spread information.

But they don’t rely on social media to deliver marketing outcomes and business growth.

Another characteristic that distinguishes the best B2B marketers is that they never stop learning or sharing their insights with others.

Storytelling and Marketing Influence

Ann Handley once said that to become successful in marketing, you need to “make your audience the hero of your stories!”

These folks are constantly testing new stories, better jokes, developing new ideas, and sharing their discoveries. They keep their content and media up to date and relevant to the happenings of the ever changing marketing world.

And they don’t make their content all about themselves! They put their audience first!

If you want to learn the best ways to achieve success, you have to learn from the best. So follow these amazing B2B Marketing experts. Watch and learn and emulate what they do if you want to become known as an expert in your field.

Here are our picks for the top B2B marketing Influencers

Ann Handley

Ann Handley is Chief Content Officer for MarketingProfs.com, one of the best online resources to develop your marketing skills . She claims to wage a war against mediocre content and is a veteran at creating and managing digital material that helps build relationships for both businesses and individuals.

Joe Pulizzi

Joe Pulizzi is the founder of Tilt, a content community for content creators and content entrepreneurs. He is also the founder of the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), since sold to UBM and considered by many to be the godfather of content marketing.

Jay Baer

Jay is the president of strategy consulting firm, Convince & Convert, and is a regular contributor to various marketing websites and platforms online. Baer is also a sought after keynote speaker and New York Times best-selling author whose expertise lies within marketing and sales.

michael brenner b2b marketing influencerMichael Brenner

Michael Brenner is the former VP of Digital Marketing at SAP, he’s been a CMO of multiple high-growth startups, is a top Content Marketing influencer and now runs this fast-growing content marketing agency, Marketing Insider Group. He is also the author of The Content Formula, and Mean People Suck. When he’s not running after his 4 kids, Michael enjoys helping small companies, SaaS startups and larger brands grow their business through content marketing.

Doug Kessler

Doug Kessler is Velocity Partners’ creative director and co-founder, a well-established digital marketing company that focuses on branding, demand generation, strategy, and content marketing. He takes a refreshingly honest standpoint on not only content marketing, but also global issues, and politics.

John Hall

John Hall is the co-founder and president of Calendar, a scheduling and time management app. He’s also the strategic adviser for Relevance, a company that helps brands differentiate themselves and lead their industry online. You can book him as a keynote speaker here and you can check out his best-selling book “Top of Mind.”

Ardath Albee

Ardath Albee is a B2B marketing strategist with tons of speaking, writing, and workshop experience. She is the CEO for the consulting firm Marketing Interactions, Inc.. On top of being a B2B Marketing Strategist, Ardath is also author of eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale. Ardath worked for companies such as Cisco, Adobe and Teradata.

Douglas Burdett

Douglas Burdett is a marketing agency founder, and a former Madison Avenue ad man and U.S. Army artillery officer. … As the host of The Marketing Book Podcast, each week he interviews authors of new marketing and sales book. He’s done over 225 interviews and has read every single book on the show.

Pam Didner

Pam Didner is a skilled marketer, speaker and writer in the digital and tech marketing field. She helps her clients turn content into sales efficiently and effectively. She’s the author of several books, Global Content Marketing, Effective Sales Enablement, and The Modern AI Marketer.

Nancy Duarte

Nancy Duarte is a communication expert who has been featured in every major magazine you can imagine. Her firm, Duarte, Inc., is the global leader behind some of the most influential visual messages in business and culture.

Carla Johnson

Carla Johnson is a global keynote speaker, a best-selling author of more than 10 books and a recognized marketing and innovation strategist. Having lived, worked, and studied on five continents, she’s partnered with top brands and conferences to train thousands of people how to rethink the work that they do and the impact they can have.

Andrew Davis

Andrew Davis is one of the best keynote speakers you will ever see. He’s written several books such as Brandscaping, Town Inc., and Digital Marketing Growth Hacks and he regularly posts podcasts and videos about The Loyalty Loop!

Stephanie Stahl

As General Manager of CMI, she lead the brand’s event and digital operations. Previously, she served as VP of Content Marketing for UBM’s Technology portfolio, providing strategic guidance on content development, content optimization, audience engagement, and go-to-market platforms for our technology clients.

Sarah Goodall

Sarah Goodall is the founder of Tribal Impact – a company specializing in B2B social business and employee advocacy.  She has spent 20+ years in B2B Marketing, most recently leading social business for SAP in Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Robert Rose

Robert Rose is a sought-after consultant, best-selling author, keynote speaker, and one of the world’s most recognized experts in digital content strategy and marketing. … For more than 12 years, Robert and his firm The Content Advisory has worked with more than 500 companies, including 15 of the Fortune 100.

Tim Washer

Tim Washer spent 20 years at IBM, Cisco and Accenture, mostly feigning interest on conference calls. Moonlighting as a comedy writer/actor on SNL, Conan and The Late Show equipped him to use humor to humanize some of the world’s most boring brands. He uses laughter to help corporations capture attention, show empathy, build rapport and make a persuasive case with B2B technology audiences on topics such as the Internet of Things and mainframe computers, where the comedy writes itself.  Check out Tim’s Comedy reel.

Avinash Kaushik

He’s the Digital Marketing Evangelist for Google, and a passionate teacher who shares his perspective frequently via multiple channels: a weekly newsletter (The Marketing Analytics Intersect), a bi-monthly blog (Occam’s Razor) and two best-selling books that have been translated into over a dozen languages (Web Analytics: An Hour A Day and Web Analytics 2.0).

Matt Heinz

Matt is President and Founder of Heinz Marketing with 15+ years of marketing, business development and sales experience from a variety of organizations and industries. He is a dynamic speaker, memorable not only for his keen insight and humor, but his actionable and motivating takeaways.

Simon Sinek

Simon may be best known for popularizing the concept of The golden circle and thew power of WHY in his first TED Talk in 2009. Since then he has authored (global bestsellers Start With Why , Leaders Eat Last, Together is Better, Find Your Why and The Infinite Game.

Marcus Sheridan

Marcus Sheridan is an amazing keynote speaker known for his unique ability to excite, engage and motivate live audiences and in 2017 Forbes names Marcus one of 20 “Speakers You Don’t Want to Miss.”  Marcus is the author of the content marketing guidebook, “They Ask, you Answer,” and Marcus has been featured in the New York Times, Inc., The Globe and Mail, Content Marketing Institute, Social Media Examiner, and more.

Juntae DeLane

Juntae DeLane is the founder of Digital Branding Institute, Sr. Digital Brand Manager for the University of Southern California, and principal consultant for DIGITAL DELANE. He frequently delivers talks around the country advancing the practice of digital branding. Juntae not only writes the premier digital branding blog, but also shares his expertise through his podcast “The Digital Branding Podcast.”

Gini Dietrich

Gini Dietrich is the founder and CEO of Arment Dietrich, an integrated marketing communications firm. She is the author of Spin Sucks, co-author of Marketing in the Round, and co-host of Inside PR. She also is the lead blogger at Spin Sucks and is the founder of Spin Sucks Pro.

Christopher Penn

Christopher S. Penn is an authority on analytics, digital marketing, marketing technology, data science, and machine learning. … Prior to co-founding Trust Insights, he built the marketing for a series of startups with a 100% successful exit rate in the financial services, SaaS software, and public relations industries.

Deanna Ransom

Deanna Ransom is the Executive Director for Women in Revenue. She is a revenue and brand innovator, business transformation leader, and storyteller, who is passionate about diversity, equity and inclusion and empowering women to succeed.

Tequia Burt

Tequia Burt is the editor-in-cheif of the Linked Marketing Solution blog and she is the founder and CEO of Content[Ed.], is a veteran editor and writer with more than 15 years of experience covering the B2B marketing landscape.

Oli Gardner

Unbounce co-founder Oli Gardner is a globally recognized thought leader on the topics of digital marketing, conversion optimization, and user experience. In an expansive 20 year career, he has crossed the boundaries between software development, graphic design, usability, interaction design, information architecture, and of course his core discipline of marketing optimization.

Lauren Goldstein

Lauren is the Managing Director at Winning by Design helping growth stage SaaS companies scale. She is also Co-Founder at Women in Revenue, a Board Member & Advisor for several organizations. Lauren has been a leader in the B2B Marketing industry her entire career working in agencies such as Babcock Jenkins and Annuitas where she served as Chief Revenue Officer and now serves on the board.

Andy Crestodina

Andy Crestodina is a co-founder and the Strategic Director of Orbit Media, an award-winning web design company in Chicago. Over the past 16 years, Andy has provided web strategy and advice to more than a thousand businesses.

Tracy Eiler

Tracy is Chief Marketing Officer at Alation. She is one of the 15 Most Influential Women in B2B Marketing and a B2B Demand Marketing Game Changer. She is a best-selling author on sales and marketing alignment and a founding member of Women in Revenue. She holds a BA from the University of Michigan.

Carlos Hidalgo

Carlos Hidalgo is the co-founder of B2B marketing agency Annuitas and has reinvented his life as a Life Design Coach helping people (and their teams) establish healthy boundaries so they can achieve balance and thrive in their relationships and their work. He is also an Advisor, Author, Speaker, Marketer, and Consultant.

John Jantsch

John Jantsch is a small business marketing speaker, marketing consultant, and bestselling author of Duct Tape Marketing, The Referral Engine, The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur, and The Ultimate Marketing Engine. John was blogging about small business and b2b Marketing for as long as anyone.

Tyler Lessard

Tyler leads the marketing team at Vidyard. He’s a passionate content marketer and storyteller at heart who thrives on creating exceptional customer experiences. Prior to Vidyard he led Global Alliances and Business Development at BlackBerry.

Brian Dean

Brian Dean is the founder of Backlinko, a marketing website that specializes in SEO training and link building strategies. Brian is also a regular contributor to a number of high-profile digital marketing portals and he has established a name for himself as the go-to guy for quality link building practices.

Lilach Bullock

Lilach Bullock is one of Forbes Top 20 Women Social Media Influencers. She was also named the #1 Digital Marketer by Career Experts, and the top Social Influencer by Oracle. She is extremely active across social media, frequently using her profiles to repost and link to her numerous blog posts that reach across the digital marketing spectrum.

Michele Linn

Michele Linn is the founder of Linn Communications and a pioneer in the content marketing space since 2010 when she joined Content Marketing Institute (CMI) as their first employee. Since that time, she has not only written and spoken about content marketing, but she used these very principles to help build CMI into a company worth millions.

Marissa Pick

Marissa is a Senior Marketing Director at PROS with a demonstrated track record of achievement in digital marketing, social media advertising, B2B and multichannel marketing, content development, campaign planning and management, brand communications, audience development, and community building.

Tamara McCleary

Tamara McCleary is an internationally recognized expert on relationships, influence and conscious business. Tamara is also an IBM Futurist. She presents keynotes and workshops on the topics of Conscious Business, Social Influence, Women’s Empowerment, Marketing to Millennials and Women, Women’s Leadership, Diversity, and Social Economics in a Sharing Economy.

Danielle Guzman

Danielle Guzman is the Global Head of Social Media for Mercer. She is a seasoned financial services and insurance industry professional with rich experience in leadership positions spanning product development, marketing, customer insights and training. She has over 15 years of experience in international, multilingual and multicultural work.

Melanie Deziel

Melanie Deziel is the founder and Chief Content Officer of StoryFuel, and the author of the best selling marketing and business communications book “The Story Fuel.” She is a content strategist, consultant and speaker who has won multiple awards in marketing and advertising. She travels the country educating marketers, journalists and students on the role that native advertising and branded content can play in their overall business strategy.

Tom Pick

Tom Pick helps B2B technology clients increase their visibility, credibility, and business success online. His expertise in SEO, search marketing, social media, content marketing and influencer marketing has helped clients of all shapes and sizes. His Webbiquity B2B marketing blog covers B2B lead generation, web presence optimization, social media, influencer marketing, SEO, and search engine marketing.

Kyle Lacy

Kyle is SVP Marketing at Seismic (which acquired his former company Lessonly). He applies the lessons learned while working at a venture capital firm, an IPO, an acquisition by one of the largest software companies in the world to drive revenue at Lessonly / Seismic.

Katie Martell

Katie is a keynote speaker, PR and communications consultant, startup CMO and SaaS entrepreneur, and B2B “Director of Buzz” working on “Woke-Washed,” a forthcoming book and documentary project exploring the collision of marketing and social movements.

Rand Fishkin

Rand is an entrepreneur and digital marketing / SEO expert. He is the author of “Lost and Founder” and co-founder of SparkToro, and previous founder and CEO of MOZ, one of the leading SEO tools on the market. His whiteboard Friday videos helped many B2B marketing experts understand the value of SEO.

Jay Acunzo

Jay Acunzo is a speaker, comedian, author of “Break The Wheel” and podcaster who travels the world and posts on Instagram to help creative people find their voices. His content is humorous and will be sure to get you thinking about what you do and why you do it.

Michaela Alexis

Michaela Alexis is a speaker on topics related to personal branding on social media, particularly LinkedIn. Michaela has also co-authored a video marketing book, Think Video, appeared on season one of Amazon Prime series “The Social Movement” and became an official LinkedIn Learning instructor with her course, “Grow your Business with LinkedIn Pages”.

Jacquie Chakirelis

A national public speaker, networker and entrepreneur with more than twenty years of experience working in marketing, social media, digital consumer content, user-generated content, and women leadership. As founder of the Online Platform Institute and host of the weekly podcast Platform FM, Jacquie speaks with digital media entrepreneurs about simple but powerful media strategies to grow and monetize an online platform.

Michael Barber

Michael is an award-winning brand and marketing strategist with significant experience developing impactful marketing strategies and delightful customer experiences. Builder of world-class teams who believes leaders must have a growth mindset and project it onto their team, create clarity, energize their team, and leverage their team’s diversity by creating safe environments where everyone feels welcomed.

Jason Miller

Jason Miller is the Marketing Director at CreativeX, former marketer at ActiveCampaign, LinkedIn, Microsoft, and Marketo. He write the book “Welcome To The Funnel” and is frequently seen and heard at the best marketing conferences around the globe an on marketing podcasts.

Nancy Harhut

Nancy Harhut is passionate about the impact of behavioral science on marketing. An Online Marketing Institute Top 40 Digital Strategist, Social Top 50 email marketing leader, and the winner of numerous International ECHO awards for marketing effectiveness, she has creative directed integrated campaigns for clients such as IBM, Dell, Nationwide, Sheraton, TripAdvisor, American Express, and more.

Carmen Hill

Carmen Hill is a content strategist and writer for Chill Content, where she helps companies plan, create and manage customer-focused content that aligns with their business goals and brand strategy while making the most of modern marketing technology such as marketing automation, personalization and account-based marketing platforms.

A. Lee Judge

A. Lee Judge is the Co-Founder and CMO of Content Monsta, a digital content agency. He also serves as Global Digital Marketing Manager, at Hexagon Geosystems. Previously, Lee served as Sr. Digital Marketing Director at B2B customer service software company Jacada, connecting the organization’s Sales and Marketing Operations.

Lee Odden

Lee Odden is a B2B marketing strategist, author, international speaker and CEO of TopRank Marketing. His work integrating search, social, content, and influencer marketing for B2B brands has been recognized by the Wall Street Journal, The Economist and Forbes as well as CMO.com and MarketingProfs.

Nick Westergaard

Nick Westergaard is a strategist, speaker, author, and educator. He is Chief Brand Strategist at Brand Driven Digital, where he helps organizations of all shapes and sizes build better brands online. He also teaches at the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business, is a regular columnist for The Gazette, and is the host of the popular On Brand podcast.

Craig Rosenberg

Craig is a Distinguished Vice President, Analyst, serving heads of sales and marketing for Gartner. In this role, Mr. Rosenberg develops research and advises customers on the strategy, people, process, technology, and tactics across their sales and marketing that are required to drive repeatable, scalable growth.

Adele Revella

Adele Revella is the CEO and Founder of Buyer Persona Institute and a leading authority on buyer personas. Through her company’s research and workshops, Adele’s buyer persona methodology has become the gold standard for thousands of marketers in hundreds of global companies.

April Dunford

April advises growing tech companies after a 25-year career as a startup executive, running marketing, product, and sales teams. She led teams at 7 successful B2B technology startups. Most of those startups were acquired, and she ran big teams at IBM, Siebel, Sybase, and others.

Dave Parks

Dave Parks is a Vice President of Product Marketing at ContractLogix where he manages the company’s overall marketing strategy and initiatives including product marketing, demand gen, digital, content, and public relations. Dave has over two decades of strong product and content experience having served in senior marketing roles with Progress, Ciena, Lucent, and Cascade Communications and as an industry analyst with the Yankee Group.

Brian Shanahan

Brian Shanahan is the President and Founder of Shanahan Strategy which provides innovative digital marketing strategies for industrial manufacturers and sales consulting for small to mid-sized industrial and manufacturing businesses. Brian’s career in marketing has served companies like Cummins West and Armstrong World Industries.

Top B2B CMO Experts

Ann Lewnes (Adobe)

Ann Lewnes is Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Vice President, Corporate Strategy & Development of Adobe, one of the largest and most diversified software companies in the world. Prior to Adobe, Ann spent 20 years building the iconic Intel Inside brand as VP of Marketing.

Chris Capossela (MSFT)

Chris Capossela is Microsoft’s chief marketing officer and executive vice president of worldwide consumer business. Capossela joined Microsoft in 1991 as a marketing manager for the Windows Seminar Team. In his more than 25 years at Microsoft, Capossela has held a variety of leadership positions and oversaw the creation of new business opportunities and consumer experiences, including the transition of Microsoft Office on-premises products to Office 365. Prior to taking on his role as CMO and EVP, he served as the worldwide leader of the Consumer Channels Group, responsible for sales and marketing activities with OEM, operator and retail partners.

Linda Boff (GE)

Linda Boff has been the Chief Marketing Officer of General Electric Company since September 2015 and has been its Vice President since May 1, 2016. Ms. Boff leads the General Electric Company’s digital industrial marketing strategy, intensify commercial and customer impact and continue to accelerate GE’s brand.

Jon Miller

Jon is a marketing entrepreneur and thought leader. He is currently the Chief Marketing Officer at Demandbase, the leading account-based marketing platform. Previously, Jon was the CEO and founder of Engagio (acquired by Demandbase) and was co-founder at Marketo (acquired by Adobe), a leader in marketing automation.

Heidi Bullock (Tealium)

Heidi Bullock is the Chief Marketing Officer at Tealium. Prior to joining Tealium she was CMO at Engagio (acquired by DemandBase) and she served as Group VP of Global Marketing at Marketo (acquired by Adobe). Heidi has been a leader in defining modern B2B Marketing through her leadership and success.

Stephanie Buscemi (Confluent)

Stephanie Buscemi is the Chief Marketing Officer at Confluent. Stephanie joined Confluent from Salesforce where she most recently served as global CMO. Over her career, she has served in executive leadership and senior marketing roles within the enterprise technology space including stints at IHS Markit, SAP and Hyperion.

Kathy Button Bell (Emerson)

Kathy Button Bell is senior vice president and chief marketing officer for Emerson. In 2016, she was named to Emerson’s Office of the Chief Executive, which helps develop and guide the company’s global business strategies. Before joining Emerson, Button Bell was president of her own marketing consulting firm specializing in market planning, brand building and marketing training for Fortune 500 manufacturers. Prior to that, she was executive director of worldwide marketing communications for Converse Inc. and director of advertising and public relations for Wilson Sporting Goods.

Amisha Gandhi (Tipalti)

Amisha is the SVP, Marketing at Tipalti. Previously, she was VP of influencer marketing at SAP Ariba and also led mobile product marketing. She’s worked in public relations firms and marketing roles in Silicon Valley for the past 15 years, working for everyone from startups to large enterprises such as HP, Google, Accenture and Time-Warner.

Siddharth Taparia (JLL)

Siddharth Taparia is the CMO of Jones Lang LaSalle. Prior to this, Taparia was the Senior Vice President and Global Head of Corporate Brand and Experience Marketing at SAP, the market leader in enterprise application software. During his career to date, he has held several leadership positions across marketing, strategy, consulting, product management, and mergers and acquisitions.

Kirsten Allegri Williams (Optimizely)

Kirsten Allegri Williams is Chief Marketing Officer of Optimizely, where she leads global marketing and communication strategy. Prior to joining Optimizely, Kirsten was Chief Marketing Officer for SAP SuccessFactors, the world’s leading provider of technology solutions for Human Resources

Ben Gibson (Nutanix)

Ben Gibson is the Chief Marketing Officer at Nutanix where he oversees the company’s global marketing strategy to accelerate customer adoption of its enterprise cloud solutions. Before joining Nutanix, Ben was Chief Marketing Officer at F5 Networks, Veritas, and Aruba Networks. Earlier in his career, Ben held several marketing leadership roles at Cisco.

Scott Anderson (Intermedia)

Scott Anderson serves as the Chief Marketing Officer of Intermedia. Scott started at Intermedia in Oct of 2018. Most recently, as Chief Marketing Officer for marketing cloud company, Sitecore, Anderson has served in executive marketing roles at Hewlett Packard (now HPE), Sun Microsystems (now Oracle), Bazaarvoice, Weyerhaesuer, and CNN International.

Mark Wilson (Blackberry)

Mark Wilson is the Chief Marketing Officer for BlackBerry, where he leads the company’s corporate, product and field marketing functions. Mark brings with him extensive experience building brand preference, driving integrated marketing for a number of well-known companies.

Final Thoughts

These 75 B2B Marketing experts, influencers and CMOs are a treasure trove of valuable information, which is why B2B marketers should be looking to them for tips, tricks, best practices, and inspiration.

Whether you’re trying to establish your brand online or develop an effective content marketing programs, these experts are excellent sources of inspiration who impart an abundance of awesome content online, so don’t miss out on what they have to say.

The post Top B2B Marketing Experts to Follow appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

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How Long Does It Take for Content Marketing to Actually Work?

how long content marketing takes image

“Does content marketing work? How long does it take to start seeing the results I want? Why does content marketing take so long?” We get these types of questions a lot.

And yes, content marketing works. It can take around four to five months to start seeing substantial results.

Keep in mind that the answer for your business could look very different. You might see Content Marketing ROI more quickly, depending on how much effort you put into strategy, production, and promotion.

Conversely, it may take you much longer to see the same results based on your content output and focus. Your timeline will depend on these factors:

  • Business model
  • Industry and market
  • Goals and strategies
  • How you define success

Content marketing takes time to work. It’s a long-term strategy. If you desire immediate results, you may not find them this way. But if you want to build your business on a firm foundation and grow confidently into the future, content marketing is one of your best options.

Here are some stats that prove the value of content marketing:

  • Over 90% of B2B marketers and 86% of B2C marketers use Content Marketing
  • Traditional marketing costs 62% more than Content Marketing
  • Businesses that blog produce 67% more leads than those that don’t

Quick Takeaways:

  • Every business will have different results based on efforts. How content marketing works for your business will depend on your goals and execution.
  • Content marketing is a long-term strategy. It can be discouraging and expensive in the beginning, but the results can be significant and compound over time.
  • Consistently producing quality content is crucial.

How to Tell If Your Content Marketing Strategy is Working

Learn how to set your content marketing team up for success and measure your results to see how well your strategies work over time. Here’s a basic blueprint.

1. Define Success for Your Content Marketing Efforts

To know “if content marketing is working for you,” you first need to define what success looks like for your business.

Does success begin when you make the first dollar? Are your efforts successful once you meet a benchmark for traffic or leads? Is it when you make a certain number of sales? Number of shares on Facebook or LinkedIn? Engagement? Month-over-month growth?

If your efforts achieve the goals you set, your brand will be successful. But content marketing requires consistency.

chart showing content marketing roi

As you can see from the chart above that includes 15 of our clients, content marketing shows an increase in leads and revenue almost right away! But the real growth starts around month 6. So when is the best time to start content marketing? Yesterday!

At SAP, it took us a year to achieve $1 million in sales. But the ROI was evident on day one when our sales team used the content to generate conversations with prospects!

2. Use the Right Metrics

Before you begin setting goals and building content marketing strategies to grow your business, you must define your key performance indicators (KPIs). Make sure you choose the best metrics for your industry and business.

For example, your key metrics might include website traffic, email subscribers, and brand awareness if you’re a startup. If you’ve been in business for over ten years, you may want to focus on metrics like revenue and sales-qualified leads (SQLs).

We recommend including the following two metrics when building a Content Marketing plan, regardless of your business’s size or scope.

  • Traffic: Traffic is the lifeblood of a website. Without consistently growing your traffic, your content marketing efforts will fall flat.
  • Leads: Ultimately, the reason you’re driving traffic to your website is to generate interest and leads in your business or content.

But if you’re looking for a more detailed view, click here right now to download a FREE content marketing measurement template.

3. Research Your Target Audience and Create Buyer Personas

How will you build effective strategies if you don’t know who you’re targeting?

One of the first steps to building a solid content marketing plan is researching your audience. Develop reader personas to target your ideal consumers through your content.

Don’t create personas that have no actionability. When building personas, include things like:

  • Basic demographics (age, gender, income, etc.)
  • Background information (career, position, work history)
  • Personality/unique traits
  • Pain points/challenges
  • How they search for answers (where they can find your business)

After researching online, conducting interviews for more insight, and learning where your target audience spends time online, you can form your reader personas and determine what types of content they’re seeking. This will play directly into your goal setting and marketing strategies.

4. Set SMART Goals

If you don’t set goals and define what “success” looks like for your business, you’ll never know if you’re getting desirable results from your content creation and marketing efforts. Before defining and implementing content marketing strategies, set some SMART goals for your business.

Use appropriate metrics for your industry and business, as we mentioned above. Semrush found that some of the top content marketing goals include generating more quality leads, attracting more traffic to the website, improving brand awareness, and improving customer loyalty and engagement.

Here are a few examples of what SMART goals for your business could resemble.

  • Grow my newsletter subscription list by 500 contacts by June 1, 2023.
  • Increase blog traffic to 10,000 monthly visitors by the end of Q1.
  • Generate 100 marketing-qualified leads per month on average in Q2.

5. Analyze Results Regularly

You’ve started implementing your strategies, developing and publishing quality content, and working toward your SMART goals. Now you need to start tracking your results so you can see your progress. By measuring performance, you can see whether the initial goals you set are realistic or if you should adjust them for the next period.

Revisit your overarching goals every three to six months to ensure you’re on track. If you’ve exceeded your plans early, develop new ones to facilitate more remarkable growth moving forward.

Make sure you’re getting the feedback you need to know how effective your CM is working. You can email your contact list or send out a survey. Determine which tactics are helping you reach your SMART goals and which you should leave behind moving forward. Refresh your goals, adjust your strategies, and continue building momentum.

6. Be Patient and Consistent

Don’t rush the process or expect results prematurely. If you do, you’ll be disappointed and quit too early. It takes time for content to gain traction on search engines and your business brand to build authority and awareness online.

You may also see spikes and drops in traffic to your website. This is normal. Concentrate on the gradual and steady climb. Content marketing results grow exponentially, as opposed to linearly. What may seem like a slog at the beginning can turn into tangible progress and revenue over time.

Remember that content marketing is hard work. The top-performing articles online are long (over 3,000 words). But they get three times the traffic, four times the shares, and three-and-a-half times the backlinks of average-length articles (901-1200 words). That’s why many businesses outsource their content marketing – so they can focus on their business and leave the legwork to those who live and breathe SEO and content creation.

If you want results, you must put in the work. Invest in the right resources, and be patient – especially in the beginning. If you do, you should see sustainable and substantial results over time.

Effective content marketing will grow your online presence, boost brand awareness, drive traffic and sales, and increase revenue. Here are several additional benefits:

  • Gain more traction on social media platforms
  • Capture your target audience’s attention
  • Build trust and loyalty
  • Boost conversions
  • Become a thought leader in your industry
  • Build a foundation of quality, authoritative content to rank higher on SERPs
  • Gain higher and sustained traffic and lead volume

8 Reasons Content Marketing Isn’t Working for Your Business

If you do not see the results you want, consider the following list of reasons content marketing doesn’t work for some businesses. You may resonate with one or more of them, which means there’s hope. Make strategic adjustments to improve your efforts and results moving forward.

1. Your Budget is Too Low

If you don’t invest enough time and resources into CM, you won’t see the results you want. A larger budget can afford higher quality content and quicker results. More succinctly, you get what you pay for.

Make sure you’re consistent, regardless of publishing frequency and budget. You can focus on less expensive tactics, like blogging and free social media promotion. Skip more expensive strategies like paid ads and video marketing until you can afford them.

Keep track of which efforts have the most significant ROI for your business, and then spend more of your budget there. Decide if outsourcing CM would be more efficient and cost-effective than trying to juggle all tasks in-house with limited resources – or hiring an expert to take it over.

While content marketing can be expensive, it can have a high return on investment. It generates around three times the number of leads per dollar spent as traditional marketing (Demand Metric).

2. You’re Not Producing the Right Types of Content

59% of B2B marketers believe blogs are the most valuable channel for content marketing. Companies that blog produce 67% more leads monthly than those that don’t (Demand Metric). However, it’s not the only viable or profitable option.

If you’re not already blogging, you should start. If you are, here are some other forms of content to consider adding to your marketing plan:

  • Ebooks
  • Pillar pages
  • Video
  • Infographics
  • Case studies
  • Guides
  • Checklists
  • White papers
  • Podcasts
  • Interviews
  • Webinars
  • Courses
  • Slide decks
  • Social media posts
  • Testimonials and reviews
  • Paid ad content
  • User-generated content

3. You Aren’t Promoting Enough

Are you promoting your content after you create it? This step of the process is as critical as the creation process. Without promotion, you’ll have a hard time building engagement. Engagement leads to more traffic and higher rankings on search engines.

Start promoting your content on social media, in emails and newsletters, and on other websites or blogs when appropriate. Also consider working with influencers. Ask them to share your content with their audience and expand your reach. Just make sure you have the same target consumers.

4. Content is Low Quality or Doesn’t Provide Value

Does your content engage your target audience? Does it address their specific needs and provide value?

To be considered high quality, your content must be relevant, engaging, and well written. It also must demonstrate authoritativeness, expertise, and trustworthiness on the given topic (Google). It should encourage your readers to act – like to fill out a form or download a PDF.

If your content isn’t providing the right value to readers, it’s insufficient. If any of these statements are true, your content may be of low quality.

  • Your content is dull when it should be engaging.
  • Your writers don’t understand your market or buyer personas.
  • The content you’re producing doesn’t connect with or excite your ideal audience.
  • Your writers are inexperienced. Shoddy work will produce shoddy results.
  • Your content is vague or too broad rather than focused. It doesn’t have depth.

5. You Don’t Publish Consistently

We’ve already touched on this. The more frequently you can produce quality content your audience loves, the better and faster your results will be. Ensure consistency long term to build confidence with your followers. Commit to a plan you can fulfill.

6. SEO Isn’t a Priority

Are you doing keyword research and tracking your progress? Are you optimizing every new piece of content for search engines? Are you keeping old content updated so that your website stays fresh and timely? If not, you won’t succeed.

If you need help with SEO, hire an expert consultant or marketing agency. They can conduct an audit to identify SEO gaps or weaknesses and tell you how to fix them (or fix them for you).

7. The Landscape is Extremely Competitive

If you’re in a niche with steep competition, it may take longer to rank on search engines and attract the traffic you want. Here are a few tips for staying in the game if you’re in an aggressive industry:

  • Keep producing consistent, quality content.
  • Conduct content gap analysis and fill those gaps.
  • Go more in-depth than your competitors.
  • Target a more specific audience and treat them like royalty to build a raving fanbase.

To compete with much larger and more established competitors, you must be strategic, work hard, and build a devoted following.

8. You’ve Set the Wrong Expectations

If your expectations are too high, you’ll never be satisfied – even with stellar results. Don’t compare your results to other businesses or your competitors. You’ll get discouraged if you can’t reach your goals.

Instead, compare your results with how you performed this time last year or even six months ago. If you haven’t been producing consistent content that long, give it more time to gain traction.

We Can Make Content Marketing Work for Your Business

Marketing Insider Group is a content marketing agency and business thought leader. We exist to deliver strategy, ROI, content creation, branding, coaching, and more for our clients. We designed our Content Builder Service to craft custom content marketing strategies to help businesses win new customers fast.

MIG will do all the legwork for you. We’ll devise a content plan, implement crucial strategies, and help you reach your SMART goals. We’ll craft quality content that draws in the right traffic and converts leads. You can focus on growing your business.

Learn more about our Content Builder Services.

The post How Long Does It Take for Content Marketing to Actually Work? appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

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How to Keep Content Moving This Summer

content marketing calendar

The internet never sleeps, nor does it ever go on vacation. If you’ve been marketing your product or service online, you know how difficult it can be to come up with fresh, insightful content.

The online world’s appetite for valuable content is insatiable.

However, you also know that even the best of your employees are human and, therefore, finite. Whenever your top performers need a break, it’s in your best interest to ensure they get vacation time. Still, you need to keep the production line rolling in their absence. This is where the usefulness and effectiveness of your content marketing calendar come into play.

Which type of content marketing calendar works best?

Nowadays, there are many social media calendars, tools, and templates your business can purchase, download, or mimic to get started. The absence of tools is not the problem, not anymore. Many are free! Instead, the most common problems are a lack of adequate planning and failure to assign adequate coverage.

Many managers make the rookie mistake of severely underestimating both the creative process and the sheer drudgery associated with content publication. Your best bet is to start small and build as you go.

One helpful rule of thumb is to adopt the belief that one high-quality post is far better than 10 bland posts. Cranking out “Meh” messages is likely to do more harm than good for the reputation of your business.

Just starting? No problem, here’s a step-by-step guide.

You might be feeling some anxiety or even panic as summer marches on. However, for your own benefit, resist the urge to skip to step No. 6. If steps 1-5 represent little more than ticking off a few checkboxes for you, that’s great. Just make sure these undergirding content marketing calendaring practices have been fully addressed prior to cranking out messages and automating any of your feeds.

1. Start with clear, written content marketing objectives.

Yes, the temptation to dive in and get going is huge. However, entering into a content marketing calendar with any degree of hurry will come back to bite you.

Sketch out a quick one-pager that says something a little bit more than “increase sales.” Your mission statement, which you’ll memorize, should be less than 50 words. Make sure every member of your marketing team knows the underlying objectives. Without a “true north” that everyone understands 100%, your content trajectory will drift.

2. Conduct a pre-existing content inventory.

What do you have already on hand that could be repurposed for online eCommerce?

Did your team write a printed marketing piece last year? Maybe your technicians created a how-to video for YouTube? When someone walks in your door or calls, what materials do your employees gravitate toward to help them answer questions? Any one of those existing go-to resources represents an opportunity to market your product or service online.

But republishing fliers or promotional pieces you’ve received from vendors won’t cut it. Plenty of competitors offer your product or service. Why should someone choose to come to your store?

3. Create at least three customer personas.

A customer persona is a fictional representation of your “average” customer or client. As your team develops messages, they should run everything through this grid.

Invest the time to create at least a handful of diverse personas. This is especially useful if your product appeals to a wide spectrum of customers. Many businesses make the mistake of targeting messages to a narrow slice of humanity. For example, a snarky response on social media might score some points with Millennials but fall flat with your base.

4. Pick and use your preferred marketing channels carefully.

Where are your prospective customers gathering and exchanging information? It’s become common knowledge that Facebook long ago became the preferred hangout for people 25-35. Today, it can be tricky to pick your format and channels, but a lack of intentionality in this regard carries with it the potential to kill any campaign as soon as it launches.

In addition to making sure you are on the right channel, you will want to avoid “channel overkill.” Consumers see this a lot and it gets old fast. For example, content created for Instagram should focus on visuals whereas content created for Twitter relies primarily on the clever use of words. Copying and pasting from one channel to another doesn’t work.

5. Seek to create bulletproof content.

In a rush to get something out on the internet, it’s all too easy to forget its permanence. As soon as you press the “Publish” button, you have effectively lost all control over your content. Users often take screenshots and keep them stored on their smartphones (and their cloud accounts) forever. This is especially true when businesses publish online content that is tone-deaf, inaccurate, or just plain cringeworthy.

While they were on location in Spain shooting the 1982 version of Conan the Barbarian, director and screenwriter John Milius once told star Arnold Schwarzenegger that “Pain is temporary, but the film is permanent.” Perhaps not the most sensitive thing to say to someone enduring a punishing workout doing all his own stunts, but it stuck. As you move forward, consider adopting “The internet is permanent” as your team’s rallying cry.

6. Choose a calendaring template and start scheduling.

If you’re just starting to publish online content, use a manual-posts-only approach. Observe which features you will need to accommodate on your social media calendar. Keep careful notes as you go along. There are a plethora of calendaring templates available, but choosing one and then switching to another later on will only waste more time.

How often do you need to publish? What times of day seem to be most favorable for your industry? Do you have the right people in place to support your production schedule? Only by starting small and building will you get actionable answers to these key questions. Then you can pick your best template.

7. Moderate, moderate, moderate.

Another rookie mistake to avoid is treating your messaging channels as a one-way avenue. Yes, you are publishing valuable information, but success demands that you allow the world to interact. More than one communication initiative has failed for a lack of staff to respond to emails, comments, and complaints.

When your campaign takes off, you might well find that you are spending more time interacting with interested consumers than you are crafting new messages.

8. Slowly begin automating your marketing.

Following up on the “start small and build” approach, be careful not to move into automation software too soon. Ensure that more than one employee has “the keys to the car.” It’s on you as a manager to make sure that you are 100% familiar with all of the creation and posting processes before you turn your people loose with automation.

For example, even the best copywriter occasionally misses a typo. Sometimes we copy and paste the mistake across multiple channels. Say that your singular social media person sets up 10 days of communications that contain an error. He or she then jets off to a remote locale. You will very much want to get into your accounts and fix future inaccuracies.

9. Gather and filter response data.

As your team moves deeper into communicating online, it can be tempting to put too much focus on various responses. For example, an exceptionally poor review on Amazon might put your team into a funk. This is where the importance of data-driven decisions comes into play. Pivoting your approach in response to a handful of grumblers might be a serious mistake.

Are sales inching up, even incrementally? Are an increasing number of people visiting your site? Have interactions been by and large positive? Gather hard data — website analytics, financial numbers, etc. — to serve as your benchmarks before making even small shifts in your approach.

10. Adopt, adapt, and improve.

Don’t allow yourself to get discouraged as you seek to establish a regular rhythm, tone, and voice. Own all of your misfires and mistakes. Learn from the comments you receive. Of course, not every voice should assume an equal weight in your deliberations.

As you track what works for you, maintain an authenticity that is palpable as customers begin to interact with your company online and perhaps even visit your storefront. You’ll get there!

The post How to Keep Content Moving This Summer appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

Did you miss our previous article…
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