Rat Race Armaggeddon: B2BMX 2020 Wrap Up: B2B Marketing Evolved

Over the past 10 years that our marketing agency has been focused on B2B marketing, there have been many changes: From the advent of marketing automation and social media to the growing popularity of interactive content, ABM and influencer marketing. Staying on top of trends and best practices requires continuous innovation, education and cycles of marketing optimization. The reward for this continuous effort is staying one step ahead of the competition in the form of quality and performance. Events play a big role in the ongoing effort to draw on the collective wisdom of the B2B marketing industry and last week TopRank Marketing wrapped up speaking and attending our 8th B2B Marketing Exchange conference. In case you missed the conference, here are a few highlights: Award Winning B2B Influencer Marketing - I am very proud to say that our clients dominated the influencer marketing category of the B2BMX Killer Content Awards. Dell Outlet was a finalist with a campaign featuring small business influencers advocating on video, audio and test for the value of refurbished computers. Alcatel Lucent Enterprise was the influencer marketing category winner with an innovative awards campaign featuring influencer judges that generated millions in sales pipeline. Connecting the Dots Between ABM and Influence - For the 8th year in a row I had the opportunity to present at B2BMX and in 2020 it was about how ABM marketers can leverage influencer marketing to improve the performance of their programs. Josh Nite liveblogged the presentation here. The First Ever B2B Influencer Marketing Study - At B2BMX we announced the launch of the first B2B influencer marketing research study that aims to provide B2B marketers with a single source of data when it comes to business influencer marketing strategies, tactics, budgets, trends and future plans. Whether you’re just thinking about influencer marketing, have only piloted or are engaged with an ongoing program, we invite you to take the survey here: State of B2B Influencer Marketing Study 2020. Break Free B2B Marketing - Susan Misukanis and Josh Nite from our team spent much of the conference interviewing top B2B marketing executives from brands including on how they’re “breaking free” in their marketing. Interviews include senior marketing executives from Dell, Oracle, 6sense, SAP, ON24, Johnson Controls and more. Be sure to subscribe to TopRank Blog and catch Season 2 of Break Free B2B. Insights From Top B2B Marketing Speakers - When I present at conferences, especially B2B events, I try to attend presentations and below are a few highlights: Customers Are Your Best Marketers Vinay Bhagat - Trust Radius: What content can customers relate to better than content created by other customers? When you do awareness campaigns, reviews can make them more effective. To optimize customer reviews, ask questions that draw out your solution differentiators. Review can support lead generation activities by supporting buyer intent data, retargeting, content, nurture, website and landing pages. Adding reviews to a trial page increased conversions by 20%. Innovative Conversions Strategies Anamaria Alba, Dell Technologies: Dell needed something that would break through the noise and get the attention of IT buyers. The solution was to develop a Tech Score to meet the need of getting truly qualified, high quality leads. A Tech Score is an interactive assessment oriented demand gen product that requires users to self identify pain points, providing them the right content at the right time. Using the Tech Score has resulted in 3X higher more ROI and 5-10% higher conversions. A Modular, Multi-Touch Approach To Campaign Strategy Christine Cornwell - Equifax: Start with evergreen high value content, then figure out how you can pull it apart into snackable formats and work with your martech stack for publishing and promoting that content. Don’t retire content, reuse it.

Katie Fisher - JLL: Use a platform like Adobe to organize content, repurposing, and syndication. Be sure to listen to and learn from your partners about what’s reasonable and impactful for your marketing.

The Power of Experiential B2B Content Ryan Brown - Ceros: If the goal for marketers is to create things that are memorable to people, we must realize how much opportunity there is to avoid the mediocre middle. To start on the experiential content journey create content by thinking about what experience you want your customers to have, vs. making content and then adding experiential elements to it.

Darios Eslami - VMware Cabon Black: Experiential content is not just for prospect engagement but it’s a great internal tool to make you think about how you’re delivering all of your content. Commitment to thoughtful marketing, engaging opportunities and experiential content. If we can’t invest time into great experiences for our clients we can’t expect them to give us their time back. Sharon Shapiro & Paige Gildner - Bluecore: Experiential content is at the intersection of content an design. It’s essential to engage content and design early and often on programs. With experiential content, you have access to data about how users interact with elements of a content experience. From those data insights, future experiential content can be customized according to customer preferences. Josh Nite liveblogged the Experiential Content session here. A huge thank you to Andrew Gaffney and the team at B2B Marketing Exchange for the opportunity to present at this excellent event. The Scottsdale, Arizona location, the presentation content, the food, the full exhibit hall and after conference networking events were all first rate. B2B Marketing is not a place for marketers to "coast" and staying relevant means investing in education like B2BMX and expertise like the fountain of knowledge found amongst long time B2B marketing specialists like TopRank Marketing.

Eight More Event Opportunities to Boost Your B2B Marketing Smarts in 2020

March 9, 2020 Webinar Panel Are you ready to transform your B2B marketing? Featuring Joel Harrison for B2B Marketing, Doug Kessler from Velocity Partners, Me, and Mark Bornstein from ON24 Registration info here

March 19, 2020 Convergence Summit Minneapolis Lunch Keynote: In Search of Trust: How Authentic Content Drives Customer Experience Agenda and registration info March 24, 2020 Pubcon Florida B2B Influencer Marketing Workshop Register here March 25, 2020 Webinar Top B2B Marketing Challenges, Trends and Best Practices for 2020 Register here

April 22, 2020 - ContentTECH Summit How to Optimize Content Performance with Influence Session info and register here

April 23rd, 2020 - Content Marketing Conference How to Optimize Customer Experience with SEO and Influence Conference info and register here May 13 - 14, 2020 - Ceros Experience Matters How to Optimize for Customer Experience with Interactive Content Event and registration info here May 27-28, 2020 - B2B Ignite USA Keynote - In Marketing We Trust: How to build influence with the C-Suite and on the street Conference agenda and registration info here If you're going to attend any of these B2B marketing events, be sure to reach out beforehand, I'd love to connect.

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