Podcasts about demand gen report

In the ever-evolving world of B2B marketing, content is still king. But the generic, static content of the past will no longer resonate with the modern B2B buyer. It's time to connect with buyers on a personal level, and in this episode of the B2BMX Podcast, Unreal Digital Group's Dana Harder discussed the importance of creativity and AI-assisted content creation to maintain the unique voice and brand of the content creator. Today's episode takes us back to the B2B Marketing Exchange in Scottsdale, Ariz., where Harder sat down with co-host Kelly Lindenau on the show floor to dive into creativity, authenticity and human connection in B2B marketing. The conversation unraveled into various top-of-mind topics for content marketers, including: New and noteworthy formats to make content more accessible and engaging, including shorter, more digestible pieces and interactive content such as video and podcasts;The challenges with using AI for content creation, and how the human element can make or break AI-assisted content; How AI tools can help improve content creation for SEO and customer centricity; The importance of content audits using AI tools to inform content creation and identify gaps in a brand's content library; andMuch more! Tune in today to learn how to take your content to the next level! RELATED LINKS: Learn more about Unreal Digital Group here. Connect with Dana Harder on LinkedIn here. Check out Demand Gen Report's latest Content Preferences Survey Report here.Get all the information you need about our new event, B2BMX East, here;Register for B2BMX East using this special 15% off code just for our listeners: MXPOD15; andFollow us on LinkedIn and X.

The challenges of sales and marketing alignment are a tale as old as time. While research shows the gap is closing, many organizations have yet to master the art of cross-organizational alignment and collaboration. But what if we told you there are a few simple things you can do to work in better harmony with your fellow customer-focused marketers, sales reps and everyone in between? During an interview on the show floor of the 2023 B2B Sales & Marketing Exchange in Boston, Mass., host Kelly Lindenau sat down with Courtney Beasley, a long-time B2B marketer and Founder of cobe marketing, a Fractional CMO provider for B2B companies and startups, to pick her brain on sales and marketing alignment, as well as ABM and the intersection of the two. Beasley is a longtime member of the Demand Gen Report and B2BMX community with a solid resume of VP and C-level marketing roles under her belt at companies such as Walker Sands, United Way of Greenville County and FUEL for brands. She brings 15 years of experience helping companies develop a brand that resonates and fuels customer interest. During the interview, Beasley shares:How there is often a break in trust and communication patterns, resulting in poor alignment across organizations; Why the first thing to fix is the "relationship building" aspect of alignment; Why there is no better way to align items than through ABM; The key characteristics of successful ABM programs; How to identify and define the right ABM strategy for your organization; andMuch more.Tune into this candid and fun interview to get quick and easy tips toward true alignment. RELATED LINKS: Learn more about Courtney Beasley and cobe marketing here. Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.Register for the B2B Marketing Exchange in Scottsdale, Ariz. (It's not too late!) 

Looking forward to our eighth installment of the B2BMX podcast? Us too! So much so that we decided to spin things up on the show floor at our latest B2BMX event in Scottsdale, Ariz. At our recording booth on the show floor, we brought a delightful little wheel for the attendees and guests to spin. The wheel contained a mix of business inquiries and lighthearted questions. We may or may not have served cocktails to help unlock the answers…Check out this teaser to hear candid takes from B2B pros in the field and see what we plan on talking about during this season of the B2BMX Podcast! Also, be sure to submit questions below that we may include on our wheel for podcast guests to answer throughout the season! RELATED LINKS Submit questions you'd like to see added to our Wheel! Connect with Demand Gen Report on LinkedIn and Twitter. Read more about our Killer Content Awards. It's never too early to save your seat for B2BSMX 2023! Sign up for personal updates here.

THIS WEEK'S TOPIC:Gain insights on real-world examples of using AI to improve customer experience & drive revenue growth. Be inspired to embrace new technologies and work towards greater innovation and diversity.S ome key takeaways:You don't have to be techy to use AIYou deserve a seat at the tech tableDare to be youT HIS WEEK'S GUESTChristina Kay is the VP of Marketing at a leading B2B eCommerce tech company. With over 15 years of experience, Christina is an expert in driving growth through data-driven strategies and innovative technology solutions. Before joining ResellerRatings, Christina held leadership roles at several technology companies, where she led successful award-winning campaigns to increase brand awareness, increase customer satisfaction, and drive revenue growth. Christina is also a frequent speaker at industry events (i.e. Demand Gen Report's B2BSMX/B2BMX and HubSpot's INBOUND) and has been featured in various publications with ZoomInfo, Exceed.AI, HubSpot, and Retail TouchPoints on topics such as customer engagement, growth, demand gen, UGC, RevOps, data-driven marketing, and AI. She is an award recipient of Demand Gen Report's B2B Technologist of the Year, Zapier's First Marketing Ops Award, and Cleveland's Top 25 under 35. Follow Christina on: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinakay/Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChristinaKayTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thechristinakayRead more about the case studies mentioned in this episode:https://exceed.ai/blog/resellerratings-case-study/https://www.hubspot.com/case-studies/resellerratingsChristina's AI Zapier marketing walkthrough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUeO9QmEwG0&t=3sSponsored by: COhatchCOhatch is a new kind of shared work, social, and family space built on community. Members get access to workspace, amenities like rock walls and sports simulators, and more to live a fully integrated life that balances work, family, well-being, community, and giving back. COhatch has 31 locations open or under construction nationwide throughout Ohio, Indiana, Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee. Visit www.cohatch.com for more information.Support the show

What could a mindset shift do for you and your people? Lisa Sharapata, CMO of The Arbinger Institute - and one of the 10 most influential CMOs to follow in 2023 -  talks about how much a shift from an inward to an outward mindset matters, in social media, the modern buying experience, collaboration within the marketing community – and everyday life with Barbara Rozgonyi, host of Growing Social Now.Key HighlightsEmbracing Passion Over the "Growth at All Costs" MindsetFinding Your Inner Light and Strength for Positive ActionsSocial Media: The Game-Changer in the Buying Experience80% of the Buying Experience Happens Before Contacting SalesBuilding Communities to Stand Out from the CommodityUnlocking Human Potential in the Business WorldHaving inward and outward perspectives drives success in the business world, and life.When marketers prioritize collaboration, everyone works towards the common good.Set biases and egos aside to appreciate people's gifts, passions, and priorities.Chapters1 Exploring the Benefits of an Outward Mindset with Lisa Sharapata, Recognized by C I O Look as One of the Most 10 Influential CMOs to Follow in 202300:00 - 06:372 Bringing Humanity Back to the Workplace: Going Beyond Growth at All Costs06:37 - 13:143 The Mindset Shift: Exploring Social Media, Experiences, and Tapping Into Engagement13:15 - 18:554 The Power of Social Media and the Benefits of Connection Through Online Communities18:56 - 24:54About Lisa Sharapata, CMO of Arbinger InstituteWith over 20 years of marketing experience, Lisa is passionate about creating growth strategies, building brands, and executing comprehensive, customer-centric initiatives to create a predictable revenue model. Recognized by CIOLook as one of the 10 Most Influential CMO's to Follow in 2023, Demand Gen Report as the 2021 B2B Vanguard and B2B Innovator, and by DMN as a “Woman to Watch,” Lisa is leading the charge for a better B2B buying experience. Lisa is currently the CMO of The Arbinger Institute – a global leadership development and culture transformation organization that helps leaders and teams shift their mindsets to drive organizational changes that lead to exceptional results. Before this, Lisa was the CMO of BoostUp.ai, a Revenue Technology company with several marketing leadership roles in the B2B SaaS Tech space. She is also an advisor for Hushly and a Co-Founder and Board member of the PEAK Community.Thanks for listening, commenting, liking, sharing, and adding Growing Social Now to your podcast playlist!!Cheers to your success,Barbara RozgonyiFounder, CoryWest Media, Top PR Blogger, Host of Growing Social Now, International Speaker and Inspirational Storyteller, Creative Marketing Team Coach, LinkedIn Social Selling Trainer, Avid Hiker, Natural Photographer Barbara Rozgonyi on Facebook Barbara Rozgonyi on InstagramBarbara Rozgonyi on LinkedInBarbara Rozgonyi on TikTokBarbara Rozgonyi on TwitterYouTubeGrowing Social Now wiredPRworksBarbaraRozgonyi.com

Sometimes, a shared passion is all you need to create a spark that can fuel ongoing training and education within a growing B2B company. Tabitha Adams, Director of Performance Marketing, Analytics and Technology for the global consulting firm Slalom, used the power of the wizarding world to build fellowship and community at the company.In this episode, we chat with Tabitha about her experience creating a “Triwizard” training program for Slalom's global marketing team to build a better learning community within the group. The two-time B2B Innovator Award winner also shares her thoughts on prioritizing and promoting diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) in the B2B space.Listen to this episode to learn about: Why DE&I initiatives are essential for any business; Tabitha's work within Slalom to raise awareness and improve reproductive rights, along with other DE&I initiatives; and Way too many Harry Potter references! RELATED LINKS Check out the agenda and register for B2BMX 2023 — use the code PODCAST25 during checkout to get 25% off your ticket! Connect with Tabitha on LinkedIn! Read our coverage of B2B Diversity & Inclusion at Demand Gen Report!

It's certainly not a coincidence that so much of what we share online today is picture related. There's just so much information around us that we cannot possibly remember it all in a limited amount of time. Using infographics to convey figures and data will help people absorb information in a much more efficient way. A way of presenting information in a visually appealing and memorable form, infographics allow your audience to engage quickly, gain insight, and absorb relevant information in bite-sized pieces, while also offering a variation within your content marketing strategy. What is an infographic? Infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data, or knowledge, intended to present complex information quickly and clearly. There's a consensus that "a good infographic is worth a thousand words," providing an effective way to convert information into a memorable and visually appealing form. For marketers, infographics offer a different way to engage your audience. However, some information lends itself more to infographics than others and there are tips for using them to the best effect. Why are they so popular? In many ways, the infographic has been around since the dawn of time. Think about those paintings that cavemen etched into walls or the hieroglyphics used by the Egyptians. All these are infographics that tell a story or impart information using pictures. The last decade or so has seen a steady rise in the use of infographics for content marketing in a bid to educate, entertain and engage an audience. Infographics are now one of the most popular types of images for marketers, with 30% of content creators crafting their own original infographic images. Why? Because, according to statistics, infographics cater to the way we process information: •90% of information sent to the brain is visual. (MIT) •65% of people are visual learners. (Pearson) •99% of all sensory information is filtered out by the brain almost immediately. This means that only 1% of information actually gets through to the brain. Infographics are in this 1%. (QUE Publishing) Meanwhile, in content marketing terms: •Content with relevant images gets 94% more views than content without relevant images. (Quick Sprout) •42% of marketers reported that infographics and other original graphics were the most engaging. This was higher than any other form of visual content. (Venngage) •Infographics can increase web traffic by 12%. (Demand Gen Report) •81% of people only skim the content they read online. The average user reads 20-28% of words during an average visit. (NN Group) •Infographics are liked and shared on social media three times more than any other type of content. (NN Group) When to use an infographic? Like any content, using infographics is all about offering them in the right place at the right time. So here's a quick checklist of when you might consider using an infographic: •When there are lots of data - Infographics are a great way of converting data and statistics into a visually compelling form. •If the information is hard to understand in written form - If your information is complex when written or hard to get your head around due to the numbers and statistics involved, an infographic may be a more effective way to tell the story. •If you haven't used too many recently - Infographics are part of a wider content strategy, and as such should be used sparing...

This episode we welcome our fellow "Rethink Retail Top Influencers"  Nikki Baird, Ricardo Belmar, and Alicia Esposito. Julia Raymond Hare and Gabriella Bock also join us to explain what the Rethink Retail's list is all about. But first we take on the news of the week, including the continuing "profitless prosperity as exhibited by Warby Parker's expanding losses and the big drop in market capitalization among disruptive retail brands. We also unpack the National Retail Federation's annual forecast, including how to think about the impact of inflation, whether their e-commerce prediction is a bit optimistic and how impacts are likely to be bifurcated. Then we welcome our panel of experts and delve into what they as see as remarkably important for the future, including innovation within brick-and-mortar locations, how to drive innovation through iteration and the growing embrace of convenience. We also explore what our influencers see as important technologies and get their quick take on retailers (legacy and up-and-coming) to keep an eye on this year.  Rethink Retail's Top Influencers List.  Steve's recent Forbes articles related to our news segment After Earnings Whiff Maybe Warby Parker Can Learning Something From Old School DTC BrandsThe Profitless Prosperity of Retail Disruptor BrandsWayfair, Stitch Fix and Pure-play E-commerce's Scaling Problem. Relevant Past Podcast Episodes Why Does It Take a Crisis for Retailer's to Innovate? The Profitless Prosperity of Disruptor Brands Understanding Warby Parker and the Power of Customer-based Valuation To record a question for us to answer on a future episode go to speakpipe.com/remarkableretail About Nikki BairdNikki Baird is the vice president of strategy at Aptos, a retail enterprise solution provider. She is charged with accelerating retailers' ability to innovate. She has been a top global retail industry influencer for several years, with a background in retail and technology. She is a regular contributor to Forbes.com and has been quoted as a retail subject matter expert in The Economist, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Huffington Post, and National Public Radio, among many others. Nikki brings perspective from all sides of the retail technology equation: she has been an industry analyst for nearly fifteen years, co-founding Retail Systems Research, the premier boutique analyst firm focused on the retail industry. Prior to co-founding RSR, Nikki was an analyst at both Forrester Research and Retail Systems Alert Group, where she covered retail industry and technology topics. Prior to that, she was director of marketing for StorePerform, a store execution management software provider, and director of product marketing for Viewlocity, a supply chain software provider focusing on adaptive supply chain execution and exception management. Nikki came to Viewlocity from PwC Consulting, now IBM Global Services, where as a senior manager she led IT strategy consulting engagements for retail and CPG clients. Nikki has an M.B.A. from the University of Texas, Austin, focusing on operations and IT. She also holds a bachelor of arts in political science and Russian, with a minor in physics, from the University of Colorado, Boulder. About Ricardo BelmarRecently named a top 100 retail industry influencer by RETHINK Retail, Ricardo is a marketing strategist and digital transformation specialist. He founded Retail Razor, to advise retail tech organizations of all sizes with their go-to-market, brand strategy, and integrated marketing by leveraging his many years of tech industry experience, and media and industry analyst relationships. He also advises retailers on how to build & scale transformational customer experiences. Most recently, he joined Microsoft as Senior Partner Marketing Advisor for Retail & CPG where he strives to use his experience and network to strengthen Microsoft's retail tech partner community.A frequent contributor to blogs, podcasts, and publications in the retail, payments, and enterprise software industries, focusing on digital transformation and customer experience, Ricardo is a Top 10 social media influencer at the annual NRF Big Show. He is a featured member of RetailWire's BrainTrust panel, a previous ICX Association director, a RETHINK Retail Advisory Council member, and a founding Advisory Council member of George Mason University's Center for Retail Transformation. He has been named Social Media Mayor by RIS News four times at retail conferences and is a contributor to Retail Customer Experience, Mobile Payments Today, and The Robin Report. Ricardo is a supporter of the RetailROI charity organization and can be found leading industry discussions on Clubhouse in the Retail Razor Club and on Twitter and LinkedIn.Throughout the past two decades, Ricardo has worked for technology and managed services providers targeting the retail ecosystem in roles as head of their product, product marketing, or marketing organizations. Ricardo holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Virginia and is a Section4 Certified Strategist, Brand Strategist, Product, Platform, and Innovation Strategist. About Alicia EspositoWithin my eight-year tenure at G3 Communications, I have evolved extensively. Starting as an Associate Editor for our B2B retail publication, Retail TouchPoints, I have worked my way up the ranks, quickly becoming an expert and thought leader in all components of retail and customer experience. In my time as Associate Editor and Senior Editor of Retail TouchPoints, I interviewed some of the industry's top C-level executives from brands like Reebok and have covered a myriad of different "beats," including social marketing and commerce, mobile, omnichannel strategy and even supply chain management. I covered several key industry events nationwide, including NRF's BIG Show, Shop.org and eTail, and became a VIP press attendee at user events for vendors like Aptos, Demandware, JDA and Salesforce.Beyond my editorial obligations, I helped build the proprietary research and custom content division of Retail TouchPoints, helping our clients ideate, develop and roll out some of their top-performing assets. Now, as Content Strategist for G3 Communications, I help my internal team members create content, plan marketing campaigns and manage our family of events, including the B2B Marketing Exchange (Content2Conversion Conference) and the Retail Innovation Conference. I also help clients across all three of our brands (Retail TouchPoints, Demand Gen Report and Content4Demand) in several key areas of their content marketing journey, including: - Persona creation - Buyer-focused messaging - Content audits and gap analysis- Content ideation - Content creation - Repurposing and modularization- Content and design alignment - Long-term content strategy and nurture planning About Julia Raymond HareI ask a lot of questions - it's one of the most exciting parts of my career! I'm a podcast host, marketing professional and data nerd all in one. After spending 4 years in global marketing roles for the digital agency Valtech, I co-founded its media brand RETHINK Retail. By interviewing retail executives, academics and thought leaders, I deliver retail insights for leaders, from leaders.My "formal" 3rd-person description: Julia Raymond is passionate about marketing management, building connections with others, analytics and research, with a core focus on the retail industry. She earned her BSBA with honors from the University of Florida while she was a teenager. Her post-graduate degree is a Master of Science in Predictive Analytics from Northwestern University. Julia is knowledgeable about international markets from her experience in global roles reporting directly to the Chief Marketing Officer at Valtech where she led creative and marketing teams; she is the Editor in Chief and co-founder of its media brand RETHINK Retail, curating the latest content around the evolution of retail in today's connected world through mediums such as podcasts, research and periodicals.About Gabriella BockRETHINK Retail's Managing Editor + Writer/Producer of the Retail Rundown, an award-winning retail podcast featuring news, insights and interviews with the world's most influential retail thinkers. What does the future of retail look like to you? Pitch me at gabriella@rethink.industries. About UsSteve Dennis is an advisor, keynote speaker and author on strategic growth and business innovation. You can learn more about Steve on his       website.    The expanded and revised edition of his bestselling book  Remarkable Retail: How To Win & Keep Customers in the Age of Disruption is now available at  Amazon or just about anywhere else books are sold. Steve regularly shares his insights in his role as a      Forbes senior contributor and on       Twitter and       LinkedIn. You can also check out his speaker "sizzle" reel      here.Michael LeBlanc  is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice.   He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience, and has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career.  Michael is the producer and host of a network of leading podcasts including Canada's top retail industry podcast,       The Voice of Retail, plus  Global E-Commerce Tech Talks  ,      The Food Professor  with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois and now in its second season, Conversations with CommerceNext!  You can learn more about Michael   here  or on     LinkedIn. Be sure and check out Michael's latest venture for fun and influencer riches - Last Request Barbecue,  his YouTube BBQ cooking channel!

Tyler Lessard is widely recognized as an expert on online video for prospecting, selling, and B2B marketing. He is the Chief Video Strategist & VP of Marketing at Vidyard. He is also the author of The Visual Sale - How to Use Video to Explode Sales, Drive Marketing, and Grow Your Business in a Virtual World, along with co-author Marcus Sheridan. We discuss how to leverage video across all of the stages of a sales process to increase engagement, connection, and authenticity. Tyler provides some amazing examples of how to connect and stand out with buyers in a sea of email clutter. He also references some best practices for personalizing and humanizing your prospecting activities. Tyler's energy and enthusiasm for this topic are contagious. Besides co-authoring The Visual Sale, hosting the Creating Connections show, and speaking on topics ranging from selling with video to the customer experience, Tyler has been recognized by Demand Gen Report as the top Buyer-Focused B2B Marketer, and by Marketo as one of the top 50 Fearless Marketers. Highlights Visualizing: videos in the sales process. - 2:58 An inspiring story of using video. - 5:05 Planning your message ahead of time. - 6:13 Creating videos creates dynamic conversations. - 7:42 What CEOs, sales leaders, and salespeople need to learn from video. - 29:24 Are there any absolute things to avoid in a video? - 30:19 Episode Resources Connect with Mark Cox https://www.inthefunnel.com/ https://ca.linkedin.com/in/markandrewcox Connect with Tyler Lessard https://www.vidyard.com/ https://ca.linkedin.com/in/tylerlessard https://twitter.com/tylerlessard Amazon Books 

Once viewed simply as “outbound callers,” SDRs are increasingly playing more strategic roles for B2B revenue teams. Given their active role on the front lines of interacting with target buyers, many progressive organizations are positioning SDRs as a key bridge between sales, marketing and customer success.   During this B2BMX session replay episode, Demand Gen Report's Andrew Gaffney chats with experts Nikki Ivey of SDRdefenders, Brian Vital of ZoomInfo and Ken Amar of Outreach to discuss the changing role of SDRs, looking specifically at:    The changing approaches B2B companies are taking with SDRs to move beyond dialing for dollars;   The tools and tactics companies are arming their SDR teams with and how they are driving more & better intelligence across the org;    How companies are re-thinking the career path for SDRs; and   The new metrics SDRs are impacting across the customer lifecycle.   RELATED LINKS  Register for the B2B Sales & Marketing Exchange in Boston 

The role for video in modern business today in 2021 has never been more important. It’s no longer just about top of funnel video campaigns, advertising, and marketing with video, rather… video has become integrated into so much of the way we do business today. The way we communicate with prospects, educate our industry, and build relationships with our clients. Join me in today's episode as we explore the evolution of video in modern business today with Tyler Lessard. Tyler is VP Marketing at Vidyard where he helps sales and marketing teams embrace on-demand, one-to-one, and interactive video as a new way to connect with buyers. He's the co-author of the new book The Visual Sale, host of the Creating Connections show, and has been recognized by Demand Gen Report as one of the top Customer-Centric Marketers in B2B. Most importantly, he's the father of four wonderful children who inspire and teach him every day.  Support this podcast

In today's GROW B2B FASTER episode, our host Sammy, Managing Partner and founder of SAWOO catches up with Tyler Lessard, VP of Marketing & Chief Video strategist at Vidyard, a fast-growing company ($ 75m funding) headquartered in Ontario - Canada.That's in it for you1. How to improve B2B lead generation & book meetings with potential clients by using video 2. How Tyler got “more visual” in his marketing at Vidyard3. The future of marketing & sales in B2BAbout TylerTyler is a business leader with a passion for creative storytelling and exceptional customer experiences. Recognized by Demand Gen Report as the top Buyer-Focused B2B Marketer, and by Marketo as one of the top 50 Fearless Marketers, he's a frequent speaker and author on video marketing, content marketing, brand building, and demand generation. As VP Marketing at Vidyard, he's spent 6+ years helping businesses grow through the strategic use of video content.About VidyardVidyard offers a video marketing platform, enabling customers to create personalized videos and analyze their performance.Shownotes:Get in touch with Tyler on LinkedInTyler's company Vidyard, that creates software to host and analyze video performanceTyler's favourite business book: "They Ask You Answer" by Marcus SheridanTyler's favourite business leaders: Vala Afshar and Brian SolisTyler's Book "The Visual Sale" or find it on the website thevisualsale.comOne of the ultimate books for marketing "The New Rules of Marketing and PR" by David Meerman ScottTyler recommends this guide to learn more about how to utilize videos for your sales: The Ultimate Guide to Video and Sales

"Startups don't fail because they lack a product; they fail because they lack customers and a profitable business model." -Steve Blank, Entrepreneur A profitable monetization model is a key aspect of every business. In today's show, Johnny Hanna discusses some monetization models, and other strategies, that have attracted customers to his companies and helped him generate strong profits. Johnny Hanna is the CEO and co-founder of Homie, a company that is revolutionizing the home buying experience. Homie's mission is to simplify home buying and selling with a one-stop-shop experience. Prior to Homie, he was the president and co-founder of Entrata, a real estate software company. Johnny helped Entrata grow to more than $100 million in annual revenue.  The Freemium Model While Johnny ran Entrata, he and his coworkers recognized that if customers were using their platform, they could influence them to buy their other services such as their websites, online payment system, or revenue management system. So, they gave away their accounting software for free and then sold all of the other tools and services connected to that system.  This was a way to get their foot in the door using the highly-successful freemium model, providing one product or service for free, and then charging for something else. This freemium model is one of the most tried, tested, and proven successful digital monetization strategies. The freemium model has been the most successful monetization model in my career.  With this freemium model, Entrata has been able to reach more than $100 million in recurring annual revenue. “The freemium model allows users to experience and get hooked to products by removing initial barriers to adoption. As users realize incremental value over time, they are willing to pay for premium features and capabilities.” (Source: Chargebee.com) Loss Leader Similar to a freemium model, we can also use a loss leader strategy to attract new customers. A loss leader is when a company provides a huge discount on a product or service to get clients in the door. Homie does this by providing a highly-discounted flat fee for selling a home. This attracts many clients to them because they don't have to pay Homie a commission based on how much the house sells for. After the client becomes thrilled with their experience with Homie, they often buy the company's other products or services, which is where Homie generates its profits. “When customers buy other items in addition to the loss leader, you make a larger profit based on the volume of purchases from customers. By choosing your loss leaders and complementary products, you can actually use loss leaders to encourage purchases of other items in your store.” (Source: smallbiztrends.com) Homeownership as a Service Homie is rolling out a new model similar to the software as a service model. This “homeownership as a service” model is a new concept that would give Homie a recurring revenue stream. Johnny and Homie realized that with this model, they could take a lot of the headache, risk, and work off their customer's plate. So, they brainstormed homeownership services that the company could provide as a recurring service. They came up with services such as replacing air filters, trimming trees, mowing lawns, chlorinating the pool, spraying for bugs, or adding salt pellets for a water softener. The customer would pay a monthly fee and choose which services they would like, and the company would automatically send qualified people to perform these tasks. Just like Homie, we can create recurring revenue streams in nearly any niche. Using the “Kind-of-like” Comparison to Establish Credibility Describing a new product, service, or business can sometimes be hard and requires a long, detailed explanation, but it doesn't have to. During our conversation, Johnny described Volley, an app that he is excited for and planning to use in his business. Johnny said it is “kind of like Marco Polo for business.” This “kind-of-like…” description strategy is a powerful way to quickly describe a new product or service in a way that adds credibility. I already knew what Marco Polo was, and that it is very successful, so it was immediately easy for me to picture what this new app does. He used the kind-of-like strategy to compare something new to something I already trusted, and as a result, the credibility and understanding flowed through to the new thing he was trying to describe. This is a very effective strategy.  I have been told that when movie scriptwriters are pitching movies they often use a similar strategy, describing their movie as kind-of-like an existing movie, but with a specific difference. For example, the plot of Finding Nemo is kind-of-like Taken with an overprotective single father who gets into dangerous situations while searching for his abducted child, however finding Nemo is animated with fish. This kind-of-like description gets to the heart of what we are trying to describe in a simple way. It easily allows our customers to understand what our product or service is about without a lengthy description. Try it. What well-known and credible product or service is kind of like your product or service? How Volley Leverages the Tectonic Shift of Video Volley is an app that allows businesses to communicate with their customers through video. It is perfect for a business like Johnny's. Their realtors can record videos ahead of time to automatically send to new clients. These videos can introduce the agent and company, and then walk the new client through their process. The client can watch it any time and rewind it if they miss anything. Face-to-face interaction is the best way to interact with our customers and clients, but when that isn't possible, video is the next best thing. Volley is a great example of leveraging a tectonic shift to create a successful business. Consider Hiring a Firm to Help Create Advertisements One way Johnny has effectively utilized video is by hiring firms to create marketing videos for them. They hired people who had previously worked for the Harmon Brothers (a previous guest on the show, and the creators of advertising campaigns for Poo-Pourri, Purple Mattress, and more). As a result of this strategy, Johnny's videos have had several million views.  Nearly half of businesses (41%) reported spending at least a half-million dollars on digital marketing each year, and 81% spend at least $50,000 (Arora Project). Every business is going to have to advertise in some way. Experienced advertising firms can be a great way to ensure our advertising budgets are being put to good use. Seek Testimonial Videos from Customers Homie has also utilized video through testimonial videos from their customers. Many of Homie's clients are hesitant to share they used Homie on Facebook or social media because they have close realtor friends, and they don't want to hurt their feelings. They especially don't want to hurt their feelings by going with Homie and then brag about how wonderful their experience with Homie was on Facebook. One way that Homie has been able to work around this is with testimonial videos from their clients. Many of their clients were willing to do testimonial videos and let Homie promote them, instead of the client making the videos and promoting the videos on their social channels that the realtors are following. According to a 2014 Demand Gen Report, 97% of B2B buyers feel that user-generated content like consumer reviews is more credible than other types of content, and a 2014 study found customers spend 31% more with businesses who have good client testimonials (Source: Spectoos). Homie's Video Campaign with Their Realtors Homie is also doing testimonial videos with their own realtors. In response to some campaigns against them, saying that they aren't realtors or that they aren't professional, Homie has launched a video campaign with their realtors, saying “I'm a realtor, and I recommend that you go with Homie.” With these videos, they will be able to show potential clients that they are credible in a format that simulates a face-to-face interaction. Connect with Johnny If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Johnny or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnny-hanna

Can you imagine creating a company so successful that 95% of Fortune 500 companies purchased your product? In today's episode, I interviewed Robert Tietjen who helped start a company called PolicyTech, which was the leading global provider of online policy and procedure management software. The company was acquired by NAVEX Global, where Rob served as the vice president of product planning and management.  NAVEX Global is now the largest ethics and compliance software and the largest policy and procedure software in the world. It had 95% of the Fortune 500 as clients. More than 350 higher education institutions are NAVEX clients. It has more than 13 thousand customers and more than 70 million employees are protected by NAVEX.  After NAVEX, Rob was president of Bitesize, a company that joins psychology, mentorship, and technology. Then, Rob co-founded and ran Camtiva, which provided hospitals with a safeguard against improper billing. He now teaches entrepreneurial leadership, management, and strategy at BYU-Idaho. Here are some successful strategies Rob used to grow his organizations:  Inc. 5000 PolicyTech, the company that Rob and his brother started, created a niche software, providing clients with online policy and procedure management. This type of software was not on a lot of people's radar, so it was initially hard to get the word out in a credible way. Rob and his brother decided to go to Inc. 5000 and pay for them to evaluate their software. It was worth it. PolicyTech was able to put the Inc. review on their website, and it helped increase credibility and sales. When our products or services don't have a natural place for people to review them we can find credible organizations such as Inc. 5000 to review them to give our company credibility.  Case Studies and References from Current Clients One of Rob's mentors told him to never give away anything. When a customer wants something like a customer discount, always be prepared to do a quid pro quo. Rob and his associates, when faced with a situation like this, would take some time to think about it and talk about it. Then they would come back to the customer and say, “Yes, we can do this if you do this for us.”  Many customers shared case studies with them. They told Rob how their service impacted their organization with new metrics and much more. Rob's company could then publish those case studies so other clients could see them. Many clients were also willing to be references that potential clients could call or visit and discuss how this service has worked for them. “People influence people. Nothing influences people more than a recommendation from a trusted friend. A trusted referral influences people more than the best broadcast message. A trusted referral is the holy grail of advertising.” -Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook Video Marketing When one of Rob's companies was doing their website development, analyzing their SEO, and conversion tracking, they found that most people don't go beyond the first page of the website until after they have decided to purchase the product or service. They discovered that it was best to have a simple video explaining their service and the "free trial" or the "buy now" button on the front page. For them, video was the best way to give a description of the service because theirs was kind of a complex service. Rob found that people will watch a video more willingly than they will read a block of text. Develop Good Lead Nurturing Strategies Rob's company nurtured a lot of leads since they had long sales cycles. According to the 2020 Lead Nurturing & Acceleration Benchmark Survey by Demand Gen Report, 49% of respondents stated that their lead nurturing strategies need improvement. Rob's company nurtured their leads by giving them something of value for free. This kept prospective clients interested. The product or service they gave was always related to the job to be done or the clients' issues. For example, they created an ebook series on how to manage policies and procedures, and each week they would send a portion of the ebook to potential clients. At the bottom of the email, they'd say, “If you're looking to solve even more problems with policy and procedure management, come look here,” where they'd be directed to the company. Rob feels this tactic is highly effective, especially for companies with longer sales cycles. Work Hard to Show Clients New Models are Trustworthy Nowadays, using a software as a service (SaaS) business model is fairly common and trusted. 73% of organizations indicated nearly all their apps will be SaaS by this year. When Rob first started PolicyTech, this model wasn't used a lot, and they had a hard time selling the model. They had to build trust with their clients and prove that the software would work for them. The company eventually told their clients that they could do this software-as-a-service model for a specific amount on an annual basis and that it would fit in the client's budget. When the clients came back saying they needed proof that the software was going to always be accessible when they needed it, the company had to prove that the software would be up 99.9% of the time and that it wasn't going to have issues. It was a costly enterprise, but it was worth it.  Dream Big When Rob was starting PolicyTech, later NAVEX Global, he had some big goals for the company. One goal was to get a large unnamed company as a client. Another was to receive an endorsement from the American Hospital Association. He also had a vision of NAVEX Global being the largest policy and procedure software in the world. The company accomplished all of these goals and more, growing to have 95% of the Fortune 500 as clients. According to a Goal Setting and Task Performance Study, 90% of people perform better when they have relevant and challenging goals. Retirement In our conversation, Rob and I spoke about retiring. Society tells us that the ultimate goal is to retire, but Rob feels this is a perpetual lie. Rob has become a college professor and has found a lot of happiness and fulfillment in it.  “There is so much more joy in adding value to other people's lives and building them up, more than puttering around the house and going golfing.” - Rob Tietjan Rob found out quickly that he didn't want to retire. He found joy in the stress, the work, and especially in the teaching. If we don't feel ready to retire, there shouldn't be any shame in it.  It doesn't have to be about the money either. A lot of people think that having money is associated with being greedy, but money is the rocket fuel that helps propel us to do the things that God wants us to do in our lives. It helps us take care of the things that really matter, such as our family, our health, and our faith. And for Rob, because he successfully monetized businesses, he's able to teach and make the social contribution that matters to him.  Key Takeaways Here are a few of the key takeaways that stood out to me from today's episode: Use credible organizations to review our products or services to build credibility. Make it easy for clients to find information and make purchases on our websites. Establish good lead nurturing strategies. Work hard to show our clients our companies are trustworthy. Try out opportunities that you aren't sure you'll love. You may enjoy them or at least learn something from them. Find good mentors along the way. They'll help guide you and give you great advice. Don't be afraid to dream big. If you don't want to retire yet you don't have to. Use your time to share what you've learned with others. Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer? Did you like today's episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content: Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business Follow the Monetization Nation Blog. Subscribe to the Monetization eMagazine. Join our private Monetization Nation Facebook Group. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.  Connect with Nathan on Linkedin.  Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram.  Follow Monetization Nation on Twitter. Challenge If we desire monetization we have never before achieved, we must leverage strategies we have never before implemented. I challenge each of us to pick one thing that resonated with us from today's episode and implement it to help achieve our monetization goals. Share Your Story  What strategies can you share for growing a successful business? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers. Read at: https://www.monetizationnation.com/26-how-rob-tietjen-reached-95-of-the-fortune-500-as-paying-clients/  

We get it, everyone’s inboxes are flooded with webinar and virtual event invitations. So how do you stand out from competitors in a way that wows audiences and generates the engagement you’d expect from a physical event? Tactile marketing is the key (and we know from personal experience!). For this year’s B2B Sales & Marketing Exchange online experience, Demand Gen Report partnered with PFL to send attendees swag boxes filled with goodies to get people excited for the event. We sent more than 1,200 personalized packages to their homes and saw an outstanding 70% attendance rate! Plus, our attendees raved about the kits, sharing pictures online and engaging with us. In this episode, our Editorial Director Andrew Gaffney sits down with Nick Runyon, CMO of PFL, to discuss the planning behind the box and how we brought it to life.

What is video’s place in today’s business and selling world? Tyler is the VP of Marketing at Vidyard. He’s spent more than 6 years in the world of online video for sales, prospecting and B2B marketing. He’s the co-author of 'The Visual Sale', host of the 'Creating Connections' podcast, and frequent speaker on topics ranging from video marketing to customer experience. Tyler has been recognised by Demand Gen Report as the top Buyer-Focused B2B Marketer, and by Marketo as a top 50 Fearless Marketer. Tyler kindly gives his time to Sam as they cover the following topics;

Like many other event producers, Demand Gen Report had to completely reimagine its B2B Sales & Marketing Exchange event. As many teams know, this is not a copy-and-paste scenario. It's up to the content, marketing and customer success teams to collaborate and design an experience that's true to what makes the event great, while also embracing the best of digital. During this episode, hosts Alicia Esposito and Klaudia Tirico sit down with Sheri Butts, who is Demand Gen Report's Director of Demand Generation and Growth Marketing, to discuss their journey in reimagining the B2B Sales & Marketing Exchange...struggles and all.

A new study from Demand Gen Report validates what we have been experiencing over the past  3 months. The purchasing process has become more complex with buyers dramatically raising their expectations of sales reps. We walk through some of the eye-opening changes in Buyer Behavior and outline the steps you need to take to keep winning business in the COVID economy. Here is the link to our new blog https://dansixsmith.blogspot.com/ Sign up to join our mailing list: https://view.flodesk.com/pages/5ef11d5b877ab5002773f840 Peace   --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/dan-sixsmith/support

We often think of B2B as the opposite of B2C; where B2C is about serving people, B2B is serving a company. However, it is important to keep in mind that B2B is still B2H marketing- that is, Business to Human. I'm thrilled to take some time this week to unpack the nuances of the B2B world and the lessons we can learn from current B2B trends. Whether it's risk aversion, keeping up with fast-paced short-term behavior, or understanding your buyer, the evolution of B2B marketing is integral to understanding the shifts in modern day sales. Do emotions have a place in the branding for B2B? How can we look at other companies to understand buying behavior? Who do buyers envision as leaders?  To really unpack the B2B mindset I've brought on marketing expert, Andrew Gaffney. Andrew is the Editorial Director for G3 Communications, publishers of Demand Gen Report, ABM in Action and Channel Marketer, and producers of the B2B Marketing Exchange. Through targeted events and e-media publications, G3 Communications provides best practices performance marketing and customer acquisition strategies to more than 80,000 B2B marketing executives. To find out how to have the best B2B year yet, download this episode now.  THE ASSESSMENT WARRIOR  “Speak to the entire committee.” -Andrew Gaffney Highlights - Most B2B behavior is based around risk aversion. It may not always be best to be on the defense.  Customer experience and the customer life cycle is still important for B2B sales. Marketing behaviors are mirroring the self-navigating behavior of today.  It is important to prioritizing trust and credibility- in both B2B and B2C.  70% of B2B buyers believe content is more focused on style than substance.  It is important to find new ways to maximize buyer's time.  Identify who you can collaborate with, buyers want to experience that community feeling. Guest Contact - Andrew's Website Andrew's Twitter Learn more about the B2B Marketing Exchange Learn more about Content for Demand Contact Jeffrey - Website Coaching support My book, LINGO: Discover Your Ideal Customer's Secret Language and Make Your Business Irresistible is now available! Watch my TEDx LincolnSquare video and please share!  Mentions - Crossing the Chasm New Rules of Marketing and PR Resources - Have Your Website Brand Message Reviewed! Is your website and are all your marketing materials speaking the right LINGO of your ideal customers? Often it's not which is why you're not converting traffic and leads to clients and attracting your most profitable customers. Fill out the simple LINGO Review application and I'll take a look at your website. If I have suggestions for you to improve your brand message (I almost always do), we'll set up a complimentary 30-minute call to discuss. A select number of websites are also chosen for my LINGO Review Video Series. Fill out the application today and let's get your business speaking the right LINGO! Music by Jawn

For the season one finale of the B2B Marketing Exchange podcast, the Demand Gen Report team sits down with a few friends to reflect on how the event has grown and evolved. This jam-packed session, which is co-hosted by Alicia Esposito and Editor Klaudia Tirico includes three special guests: Andrew Gaffney, Editorial Director of Demand Gen Report; Christine Elliot, Global Leader, Demand Center and Content Strategy at JLL; and Dave Bruno, Marketing Director at Aptos.

How do companies like Dell, SAP and LinkedIn build successful B2B influencer marketing campaigns that translate into real business ROI? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, TopRank Marketing CEO and Co-Founder Lee Odden talks about B2B influencer marketing and what it takes to build influencer campaigns that deliver measurable marketing results.  Lee uses his own agency, TopRank Marketing, as a laboratory where he tests new influencer marketing strategies that he then rolls out to clients like SAP and Cherwell Software. In this episode, he shares advice on how businesses can partner with influencers, and what kinds of results to expect. Highlights from my conversation with Lee include: TopRank Marketing is a B2B digital marketing agency focused on content, search and influence. Lee sees B2B influencer marketing as an opportunity to give subject matter experts a platform to talk about things they're really passionate about, and do it in a way that is a win for both the influencer and the business with which they're partnering. The best influencer campaigns bring together and curate credible voices in a way that gives them value from an exposure standpoint and at the same time are very "infotaining" to experience on the consumer side. With B2C influencer marketing, very often brands are simply feeding the message to the influencer. By contrast, with B2B influencer marketing, brands are giving the influencers - who are experts on a topic - a platform to create and share a message of their own. For companies interested in using influencer marketing, Lee says it is important to begin by identifying the business or marketing problem they are trying to solve. The next step is then to identify the topic about which the business wants to be influential. This is often in the form of a topic cluster, much like you might see in SEO. Once that topic has been identified, Lee and his team use three criteria to identify the right influencers: 1) Topical relevance (the degree to which that individual's own content that they're publishing is a match at a relevance level to the topic of influence that they're targeting); 2) Resonance (the degree to which that topic of influence actually resonates with the influencer's first and second level network); and 3) Reach (network size). Lee says that the process of identifying influencers is similar in many ways to the process of search engine optimization because influencer marketing is optimizing for both findability and credibility. Unlike B2C influencer marketing, B2B influencers do not always expect payment. It really depends upon the type of influencer you are working with and the level of commitment you are looking for. Lee suggests starting small and working with unpaid influencers before committing to larger paid partnerships. Lee has built strong relationships with a variety of B2B influencers and credits his success to something he calls "influencer experience management," which is essentially the process of ensuring the influencer has a positive experience working with the brand while also obtaining a high return on their contribution. One way he does this is by shortening the time horizon between the influencer's investment and effort and the return that they see, as well as by delivering longer term value. When it comes time to promote influencer content, Lee says it is important to be emphathetic to the influencer in developing a mix of media and messaging that you can supply to them and which they will want to promote. Timing is also important and it is critical to have sufficient volume of promotion right at the launch of a campaign in order to trigger social algorithms to show the content at the top of the feed. In terms of results, Lee says that if you are new to influencer marketing, you shouldn't expect that your first campaign will deliver a large number of leads, BUT you should plan to use the assets you develop in your lead gen campaigns and over time, you will see results. He suggests thinking of your first campaign as a pilot, and then building from there. Resources from this episode: Visit the TopRank Marketing website Check out the TopRank Marketing blog Follow Lee on Twitter Connect with Lee on LinkedIn Listen to the podcast to learn how to build a successful B2B influencer marketing strategy. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm Kathleen Booth and I'm your host. And today, my guest is Lee Odden who is the CEO of TopRank Marketing. Welcome Lee. Lee Odden (Guest): Hey, it's great to be here, Kathleen. Lee and Kathleen recording this episode. Kathleen: I am so excited to have you here. I've been following you online for a very, very long time. And this is one of my favorite things about hosting a podcast, is it gives me an excuse to meet and talk to people who I would otherwise never have a reason to get to know and pick their brains on really interesting marketing subjects. So, looking forward to doing that with you today. Lee: Well, I'm going to have to reciprocate. I'm going to have to reciprocate because I'm really... I'm interested in picking your brain too, so. Kathleen: Well, let's do it. Let's get to the picking. Lee: All right. About Lee Odden and TopRank Marketing Kathleen: So, for my listeners who may not be familiar with you, can you tell my audience a little bit about yourself and who you are, what you do, what TopRank does and really how did you wind up where you are today? Lee: Well, that's quite a story and I'll make it short. So, I'm the CEO of TopRank Marketing. We're a B2B digital marketing agency focused on content, search and influence. We create experiences that inspire people basically. And we started as a PR firm in 2001. I joined as an SEO guy at the time and started to really explore the confluence of content and PR/earned media and earned media and owned media and how we can surface a relevant audience, not only buyers but also journalists, through optimization. And I remember that kind of combined into this sort of hybrid mix of services that we have today where we are serving clients like Dell, LinkedIn, SAP. We've done work for Oracle and Adobe and lots of other really cool B2B technology brands. We're based in Minneapolis where it is wonderfully cold and snowy. We are in the heart of winter a little bit earlier than normal, but that's okay. That makes for some a very fun running in the morning. And that's one thing about me, I've become a runner in the last 12 months or so. Kathleen: Do you have some of those tracks things for your running shoes that they have the little springs on the bottom? Lee: I didn't. So, I opted to get some... oh God, what are they called now? Something One One, Kona One One, anyway. So, these are some special shoes that are made - they're actually a trail running shoes made for the winter. Kathleen: Oh, wow. Lee: So, it's a hybrid between a trail running shoe and a hiking boot basically. So, it's got a huge foam foot bed but with super grippy Vibram soles. And I ran in the ice this morning and it worked great. So yeah, I'm an all-weather runner. Kathleen: Oh, that's great. I used to be a runner. But things have caught up with me and my knees decided that I would no longer be a runner. So, now, I am an avid spinner Lee: There you go. Kathleen: But I miss running and I missed it. I used to love running in the snow. It's so pretty and it's such a great way to experience, snowy world. Lee: Absolutely. I spent many years not doing very much at all being very much a computer geek type person sitting behind a desk. And so, while a lot of other people my age are in your seat... in the situation you described where their hips or their knees or their ankles or various tendons have gone caput, I don't have that. So, hopefully, I have another 20 years or so of the joy and the euphoria that comes right from the... all those endorphins firing after a great run. And what's really interesting about what I found about running and really a big fitness focus for me over the last year and a half or so is the parallels to marketing. You know what I mean? Because it's just kind of interesting and very curious. I think the people expect to lose weight overnight because they tried a new exercise program or meal or diet plan. And people sometimes look at marketing tactics and feel the same way. A lot of inbound marketing tactics actually like SEO and content. It just doesn't work that way. You've got to invest, you've got to commit and all those other things. So, there's a lot of interesting parallels I think between fitness and marketing performance. Kathleen: So true. And you just gave me the perfect segue into my next question, which is that you and I really first connected around this because you reached out and asked me to participate in your B2B marketing fitness guide, which was related to MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum. I was speaking there and you were putting together a guide that essentially did tie marketing and fitness together and were asking for almost sort of submissions around that. And it's funny because when I got that email from you, I was like, "Yes, I have always thought this too" that with fitness, we all know what we're supposed to do, right? We know that we're supposed to regularly exercise and this and that. It's just that so few people actually do it. And it's the same thing with marketing. We pretty much all know what we're supposed to do. But so, few companies and marketers actually managed to do it consistently on a regular basis over time. So, I thought that was genius. But the other thing that really what's interesting to me as I interfaced with you and your team around that project was just the whole process that you put together and how incredibly thorough it was, how thoughtful and detail oriented it was. Watching you execute that and the way that you worked with the different contributors and influencers on the project to me was fascinating. And so, that's what I was excited to dig into today since then I've learned that you do this kind of influence our work not just with your own company but with all kinds of clients. And so, I would love to talk about that with you. B2B influencer marketing Lee: Sure, sure. It's one of the joys of what I get to do and that is to shine a light on people with great talent. And it's in the context of Influencer Marketing. But really, it's interesting to me to have an opportunity, create conversations to create opportunities or architect opportunities where people can talk about things that they're really passionate about, situations where they can add value. And then, as puzzle pieces, pull them together into an experience that really showcases them in a really positive, optimistic light. And ultimately, I'm after a 360 win situation. This brings me great personal and professional joy to get to do that. So, there are opportunities for marketing obviously when trying to create thought leadership or customer acquisition or we have other obviously traditional marketing objectives. But how can we create value for people first? How can we bring together and curate super credible voices, experienced voices together in a way that gives them value from an exposure standpoint? But at the same time, because of the story behind it all, it's very infotaining to experience on the consumer side, right? And so, people enjoy consuming the information, they are inspired to share it, people that contribute enjoy consuming the information and they too are inspired to share it. And ultimately, becomes more successful as a result. Kathleen: So, this is really interesting to me because you think about this term "Influencer Marketing" and it's a very broad catchall for a lot of different things. And I think most people think of influencer marketing and they're probably thinking of things like somebody pays a Kardashian to plug a product on their Instagram feed or the Fyre festival. There is certainly that kind of influencer marketing where you're just really paying to put your product or service in front of that person's audience. But then, there's this whole other world that I think you've tapped into which I think is the more interesting one. And I love that you refer to it as an experience. But what I noticed about the way that you managed this particular project that, that got this going was that it wasn't the typical, "Hey, you have an audience. I want to get in front of it." What will it cost? It was, "We're creating something and we want you to be a part of it." And the big takeaway I had was that every... I kept speaking only for myself as somebody who participated. I felt like I had a sense of ownership in it, right? Because I played a part in creating it. And I think that's a very different angle to Influencer Marketing when your influencer has a feeling of ownership actually co-create the content with you seems to lead to a very different outcome. So, maybe you could just talk about that a little bit. Because I just feel the spectrum of Influencer Marketing. Lee: Absolutely. One of the big challenges of our time in the marketing world is the growing distrust consumers have of brands. And so, our opportunity as marketers is to bring forward as much authentic information and create as many authentic experiences as possible. So, rather than treating people who are credible experts -- and in the case of B2B influencers, we are really talking about credible experts as opposed to people who self-anoint them, an influencer who are really good at taking selfies and all that other silly stuff -- so, what we're looking at is inviting them to contribute to a thing that's bigger than ourselves, right? Where in some cases, it really is changing the world, it's a movement. Others' work, we've done with SAP and the United Nations around some initiatives around the United Nations around purpose. And it's like pretty remarkable. Where I mean, these influencers are just CEOs of major corporations and celebrities sometimes and then... and other folks. But on the other hand, it's other folks who are working in their industry and they've really established the respect. And they also have that domain expertise too. So, rather than feeding them a message, rather than treating them like an ad by which is where the B2C world tends to focus, we're rather trying to help them. First, we identify them as the credible person around the topic and that that topic resonates with their audience. That's our data informed homework we do beforehand. And then, once we invite that person because they are credible and there's evidence that they are credible, we do invite them to contribute and we want to hear their authentic, authentic voice. We want to hear what their opinion is in the context of an overall story. And then, whatever they say is perfect because it's real. And that's what people are looking for. And that's why I think it turns into that experience that is not only good for the contributors, but it's obviously a good experience for the audience that we're out there to attract and engage. Getting started with B2B influencer marketing Kathleen: I love that. And trust really is at the heart of business. When people are buying from you, they're buying because they trust you. And that authenticity is the biggest thing that fuels that... You named a lot of the different companies that you work with. It's an incredibly impressive list. I imagine there are many clients and prospective clients who come to TopRank and they talk about wanting to do some form of influencer marketing. Can you talk a little bit about what those first conversations look like -- when you engage with someone or consider engaging with someone? I imagine that influencer marketing is not necessarily right for everyone and, or you have to have the right set of expectations. So, how do you suss that out? Lee: Yeah, that's a great question because people come in from a variety of perspectives. So, a lot of the time people come in from a marketing or demand gen perspective. And in that case, they may say influencer marketing outright because they've pulled themselves through education, around industry information or conferences or whatever and have come to the conclusion that this is something that will help them get solve a marketing problem. And so, really, what we're after first is defining what that marketing problem is because it's not always an exact match. You know what I mean? Also, we have people who have interpreted what the expression influencer marketing means and then, for example, if they see it only as an ad. We had a company recently that said, "We have 30 days." There's been some positive news in our industry that would be good and a good reflection on our brand and the problem that we solve as a company. And so, we have 30 days to quickly... I want you to find some influencers, run a campaign and take advantage and sort of ride the wave of this positive news in the industry. It's like, "no." But we're very focused on organic and authentic advocacy and engagement, not on just paying people who are willing to say something nice and it's not legitimate or genuine, you know what I mean? And also, the timeframe makes no sense. 30 days is crazy, especially in a B2B context. So, the first thing we're looking for is to really understand what it is that business is... what's the business problem or the marketing problem they're trying to solve? And the degree to which partnering with credible experts can help solve that problem. And the interesting thing is, from a demand gen lead gen standpoint, that is totally reasonable. And it is possible within a short period of time to find people who the right kind of people who can contribute to that outcome. It's not always possible. You do have to look for data, you have to look for evidence of people who are already actively advocating for the brand and that actively publish, that are respected in the industry. And when you have the good fortune of finding those combination of traits, then, you can reach out to them, invite them to contribute to something and have a reasonable expectation that one of the outcomes from that content you collaborate on is going to result in some sort of MQL. And usually, in a B2B case, it's a download or a trial or demo or something like that. On the other hand, there are people from PR who come in. And it's influencer relations to them, not influencer marketing. So, they think of it from an analyst relations standpoint. They're thinking more thought leadership. They're not looking at conversions. They're not looking at lead gen per se. They're looking at building the influence of the brand, building the reputation of the company and even ways in which they can elevate the influence of their key opinion leaders and senior executives. Well, that's a very different approach and is also appropriate as a collaboration with industry influencers. It's just executed in a very different way. So, we find out what it is that it needs to be solved and then we apply the expertise and knowledge and the networks that we've already built with all these different influencers in the different industries, especially in B2B industries and then architect a plan on how to do that. Identifying the right influencers with whom to partner Kathleen Booth: So, if you get someone in who has the right expectations and it's a good fit and you think influencer marketing makes sense, one of the things I'm curious about is, how do you identify the right influencers? I assume there's obviously a component of, they need to have something of a following. But I imagine there's probably more to it than just that. Can you talk about that a little bit? Lee: Absolutely. In fact, one of the biggest failures that people make is, when they do focus only on popularity. It's easy to do that, but everyone's doing it. And of course, it can be faked. It doesn't happen as often in B2B as in B2C. So, to identify the right influencers, starts with topic specificity. What is it that you want to be influential about? What topics are going to matter to your customers or to the audience that you're after? The association of that topic of influence amongst influencers is something that can then elevate the brand and can give the marketing message more credibility, more reach and more engagement. So, we have to understand what those topic or topics are. Usually, it's a topic cluster. There's a primary and derivative topics -- something similar to what you might do with SEO for example. And once we identify those topics, then we use a variety of approaches to brainstorm influencers -- everything from interviewing people at the brand to looking at CRM data to social data. But ultimately, we're going to use a platform that is crawling the social web platforms like Traackr, T-R-A-A-C-K-R. I spell it just because it's easy that... not spell that right. And so, what they're doing is they have a database of millions and millions of people on all the things that they're sharing and what their followers are interacting with. And so, the minimum criteria, the data points that we're looking at are topical relevance, the degree to which that individual's own content that they're publishing is a match at a relevance level to the topic of influence that we're after. Second, we're looking at resonance, the degree to which that topic of influence actually resonates with their first and second level network, right? Because we don't want it to be weird that they start talking about Apple mice or something like that and they never talk about that. And then, the third thing is reach, of course, which is network size. There are other elements like audience characteristics and what kind... do they publish their own blog? Do they publish to industry websites? Do they speak at conferences? Are they a book author? And there are other sorts of signals that are both online and offline that we may consider according to the situation. And increasingly, we're starting to bring in SEO metrics. So, we want to know sometimes where there's someone isn't a recognized entity by Google, right? And so, are they on Wikipedia? Are they showing up in... from an SEO perspective provided that the reason why we're doing the campaign has SEO expectations. We'll look for those criteria. That's not always the case, but increasingly it is because there's a lot of congruence between topic specificity as it relates to SEO and topic specificity as it relates to influence. You want to help someone be the best answer. And what we like to say is we're optimizing for findability. But we're also optimizing for credibility. So, all those factors come into play and identifying well, who's the right match, right? And obviously, there are other things, and I know that I could probably write a book all just about this but we want to make sure that the type of content we have planned is a match for obviously what they publish. So, YouTubers -- video, right? Bloggers -- text. Podcasters -- audio, and so forth. And making sure that we're really aligning from a value standpoint what that influencer has demonstrated through their interactions with their community and the values that brand stands for. All those things factor in to picking the right person. And still, after a campaign or two, it may turn out to be that that person is not a fit because influence is temporal. It is not permanent. It goes up and down and it is very important to revisit these... some of these criteria on an ongoing basis and that's something most brands are not doing. Working with influencers Kathleen: I hear a lot of marketers talk about influencer marketing and they're intrigued by it. They love the idea of it. They see the potential. But I think sometimes what stumbles them or causes them to stumble is the actual, like, execution. How is this going to work? And for somebody who's listening and they're thinking, "This sounds great, I love this idea, I'm willing to go out and find these influencers that combine the credibility with the popularity and all of the other things you just mentioned", this is a two-part question. First of all, what kind of expectations should they have around, should I be paying these people? And if so, how much? And the second part is, if they're not getting paid, what are the odds they're going to actually say yes to participate? Lee: Sure. So, getting paid or not paid especially, now, we happen to focus on B2B, so that's where my most of my experience lies. In B2C, if someone has a significant level of popularity and experience being an influencer for brands, almost all the time they're going to want to be paid. In a B2C scenario, where people don't get paid, maybe you have a cause-oriented marketing initiative. So, the influencer is part of the same cause or initiative that your brand is interested in and you come together to make a big difference and that's something where they may just volunteer their time because you believe in the same thing. In B2B, it's less common for influencers to be paid. There's a lot more content and when you look at the full customer life cycle at a B2B scenario, there's just so much more content involved as increasingly buyers are pulling themselves through that sales cycle or through that process before they ever contact sales. So, what you would pay an influencer for is what you would pay a consultant for in a lot of cases. So, for example, well, let's look at this. When I reached out to you and some of the others, you know I mean, they were super credible, it was a really a great group of people that shared a quote, a 50 to a hundred words, that's not normally a paid thing. Plus, we have a great reputation in our industry for making people look really good. We put them in these interactive experiences and it really does showcase and everyone gets... it's really valuable for them and they can monetize that exposure in other ways by being more credible at their job. It could contribute to book deals, it could contribute to paid speaking gigs or consulting gigs and so on and so forth. So, on the other hand, if I asked someone to... well, for example, I'm working with Brian Solis on an industry report as an analyst. I'm paying him. I mean, he's an influencer but he's also an analyst. Kathleen: But that's what he does for a living, right? Lee: So, he's doing work. Yeah, exactly. And that's a good distinction too. So, there are different types of influencers. There are "brandividuals" and I would say Brian is one of them. These are professional influencers. They are making it their business to continually collect intelligence to do analysis, to be a thought leader in their industry. So, they also publish and they actively engage in the network. And they're able to do this in a way that creates much value that it just makes sense to engage them on a paid basis. So, I mean, sometimes this manifests as a keynote presentation or they may emcee a whole track at your user conference. They may do a webinar for you that is hyper focused on something that you can monetize through lead gen. Or they could create a whole eBook or they could do a video series. We engage influencers like Tamara McCleary for example, who is the host for a season of podcasts for SAP called Tech Unknown. And you've got to listen, if you get a chance to listen to season two, just the first episode just dropped. It is so cool. We're talking about supply chain management and it's actually interesting. It's actually, it's amazing. You go from a farm in Thailand somewhere to a coffee shop and it's all audio. It's like you're listening to an NPR well-produced show but it's a podcast. And influencers are involved both as a host and as guests. So, the host is probably a paid situation whereas the guests are not because they're only on for one show, for one interview or whatever. So, hopefully, that makes sense. So, I think a lot of people just starting out feeling optimistic. They can start off by identifying people who are already advocates for their brand that are also influential and simply invite them to do something simple, share a quote, share commentary about a report, share some insights. Or at this time of year, some trends. And start things that way and see how that goes. And you can build from there. Building win-win influencer partnerships Kathleen: Yeah. And if I hear you correctly, part of it is also making it a great experience for that person who contributes. It's not just asking and getting the information, it's the follow-up that you do, the way that you help that person leverage their involvement in order to achieve their own goals. Whether that's building their personal brand or as you... I think you mentioned publishing a book or getting a speaking gig. I feel like there's that whole, you called it earlier a 360 win. How do you make it a win for them as well? Lee: I think that absolutely. And we call that "influencer experience management." So, customer experience is so much of a, a term, or it's in the vernacular of marketers these days of selling platforms and marketing services or whatever. And we apply those same ideas to the influencers that we work with because so many of them are organic sorts of collaborations and value exchanges that we have to. It's very important that we make it easy for them to do their best for them to enjoy it and to get a disproportionately high return on their effort. And that spells a win for everyone. It really, really, really does. Examples of TopRank influencer campaigns Kathleen: So, assuming that I wanted to do an influencer campaign. I'd love to just talk through what... how this work, what are some of the better frameworks for them and what kinds of results I could expect. And I guess the best way to tackle this might be to do it through some examples because I know that you've used your own company as a bit of a laboratory to try out new strategies and figure out what is going to work well and what isn't. And then, you tend to roll that out to some of your clients. Maybe you could share some of those examples and talk through the kinds of results you've gotten? Lee: Sure. So, excuse me, one of the earlier examples, I think it was 2012 or so, we approached, or Joe Pulizzi and I were talking. So, he's the founder of Content Marketing Institute, Content Marketing World conference. We were talking about how we might collaborate together. Because previously, our blog is fairly popular and we had been a media sponsor for quite a few conferences as a blog which at the time was very... you had to be actual magazine or have a massive email list or something like that. So, I had great success with that kind of collaboration with events and publications. And we were talking about what we could do together. And I thought, well, how about if I do this? Now, today, this is going to sound so unique. But at the time it was fairly unique. So, I thought, well the conference has, I think it was a secret agent was a theme somehow. I don't know if that was a theme of the conference. But oh, know what it was. So, I suggested, how about if I reach out to somebody of the other speakers and invite them to share their expertise as a preview to the conference. We'll publish this before the event and it'll attract attention to the conference. At one level, that was like, "Yeah, duh, that makes sense. Okay, great." But what I knew as a speaker is that this is a multi-track conference. And nothing is more disappointing to showing up at a multi-track conference and finding out that three or four other super popular people are speaking at the same time as you and there's only 25 people in your seats. So, I empathized with the speakers in this way. And so that is part of the context of my invitation to some of the really popular speakers that I didn't have a relationship with as an invitation to give them exposure, immediate return on their effort, opportunity is really what that was. And I learned a lesson in this. So, I started out thinking, I would just do 10 question interviews and publish the interviews on our blog. That was the format of the content I had in mind. I sent out these 10 questions to quite a few of the speakers and only one responded. And that was a big failure. So, one of the questions was, can you share one secret about content marketing? And I thought, I'm going to try this again. And so, I repositioned a question. I said, I asked it as if I was a character, I said, "You're a secret agent and you've just returned from a meeting with your handler and now you have a secret that will save the content marketing world. What's that one secret?" And these people who had no time for the 10 questions rapidly responded, many in character, "This is agent 35. Here's my secret from technology company X, Y, Z." And we got, I don't know, 30s or 25 responses. And so, we use the vintage James Bond sort of theme where you have an aged folder with coffee stains on it. And the red-letter stamps secrets as an eBook aesthetic that Joe Kalinowski at Content Marketing World created the cover. And then, we took that cover's inspiration and created all the interior aesthetics and everyone loved it. They had all these graphics and we positioned them as the little Polaroid photos and all this stuff. So, it was, what is it, 40,000, 50,000 views over the weekend on SlideShare alone. It was the featured content on SlideShare and other speakers at the conference were talking about it because it dropped right before the conference. So, that really set the stage for events and content, the people speaking at events and content, as something where we could create immediate value for people, right? Because, the hypothesis was not what can we get from people, it was what value can we create for people. But we've got to shorten the time horizon between their investments and effort and the return that they see. And we also want there -- because it would be digital content -- we want there to be an ongoing or long-term return as well, hopefully. So, that was the framework for what we still do today. And actually, that was the framework for the project that you contributed to as well. Kathleen: Yeah, it sounded- Lee: And so, there's lots of other examples like that. Yeah. Kathleen: Yeah. And kudos to you for recognizing a huge pain point because yes, I have spoken at many a multi-track event and there's nothing worse than there being three tracks and the other two guys have packed rooms and you're like, "Okay, you five people, we're going to have a really interactive session because there are so few of us." Lee: Yeah, exactly. Promoting influencer marketing content Kathleen: So, that's great. What I thought was really interesting is, a lot of what you talked about is, it really is leveraging the classic principles of marketing. Because when you talked about reducing the number of questions that you asked, it's the same principle behind how many forms do you put in a... or fields you put in a form. If you asked for 15 things, not a lot of people are going to respond. You asked for two things, you're going to get a lot more. So that makes a lot of sense. But I think one of the most interesting aspects of this to me is, how you enabled the share-ability. Because I know you did this with the one I participated in as well. And you talked about the graphics and making it really cool kind of Polaroid picture like things. Can you maybe talk through how you... what happens once the piece is done? In other words, what assets do you deliver to the contributors and how do you follow up with them to encourage sharing? Lee: So, the, the magic of promotion starts in the planning. So, I talked about topic specificity as it relates to search and influence. So, we use search data as a reflection of demand and we use other data sources to kind of get an idea of what questions are people actually asking around the topic, the brand wants to be known for. And that actually informs the influencers we pick but also the questions we asked them to give insights about. So, there's information architecture if you will, to the way the content is curated and then structured that follows through then to the promotional assets that are delivered, right? So, for example, if I worked with you on a future project, I'm like, "Kathleen in inbound marketing, inbound marketing." So, I'm going to ask you about inbound marketing. And then, in a promotion asset it may be an infographic, it maybe an interactive infographic. We often repurpose content into promotional videos. Actually, I've got a great example for you to just... we did a conference, had a game theme. All right. So, we decided to use 8-bit video game as an aesthetic. And then, we did these promo videos where we literally turn the influencers who contributed into these 8-bit characters and you could... and then, it had the music like the Mario Brothers music... and the left to right and the scene moving behind them and whatever. And so, we use those as a promotional videos and we gave static images, we gave the video content to the influencers to share. And of course, we shared that on our own network as well. And obviously, we pre-write social messages. And that is an art all by itself because the social message you would give to the industry is a completely different social message you would give to someone that works at that brand or to the influencers themselves, right? People often mistake that influencers only want to self-promote and they'll give them a graphic with their own photo in it and it's like, no, in certain cases that is... the last thing in the world they want. But if you give them a graphic with a photo of all the influencers that they are participating with, now, that is motivating because by association, that'll lift their credibility. Otherwise, it just looks like gratuitous chest beating. Kathleen: It's so awkward when you're like, "Look at me. I'm doing this thing." Lee: Yeah. And so, it's being empathetic. That empathy is instrumental obviously in marketing but especially with promotion. And so, there are promotional assets that are a mix of media and messaging. There's also a timing that comes into play. As we all know, social algorithms will emphasize engagement within a very focused period of time. So, when there's a launch, we want to architect as much organic sharing as possible around that very specific launch time so that algorithms will respond and then feature that content higher in the feeds and that sort of thing. What kinds of results can you expect from B2B influencer marketing campaigns? Kathleen: So, at the end of the day, you run a campaign like this. What kind of results does it deliver? Lee: So, again, results and metrics and all that obviously are tied to the goals of the program. While some people will start with a campaign sort of idea, really what it is, it's a pilot. And what you should expect from a pilot where you don't have an influencer program in place already is simply to create great relationships with the influencers to have created content that you can repurpose for demand gen efforts, which could lead to the lead gen that you're after. But as far as the actual influencer content on that pilot, that is a top of funnel thought leadership type of expectation, that's the reasonable expectation. And again, like I say, you can repurpose that content for demand gen efforts. You can deconstruct that influencer content and use its ingredients to put in other demand gen and lead gen types of efforts long-term. But I wouldn't expect leads off of a pilot. I really wouldn't. That said, we have had pilots do really well. There's a company, it is an IT service management industry called Cherwell software. The very first pilot we did for them, or the pilot we did for them, I don't know, they're 15 influencers talking about... is reacting to a report, an industry trends report that they had produced. And so, the influencers are reacting to that data and the content of that report, we put it together as an eBook. We gave them compelling content to share that one campaign because obviously, you were encoding all those URLs that they're sharing. That one campaign was responsible for 22% of their pipeline for the entire year. Kathleen: Wow. Lee: It's an award-winning campaign. Demand Gen Report gave it the Killer Content Award offer that year. In fact, well anyway, I'll stop there. But we're continuing to work with them- Kathleen: I want a link to this campaign so I can check it out and put it in the show notes by the way. Lee: Absolutely. Yeah. And so, that can happen. But that's not typical. And the thing is, when you do a pilot like this and you don't have influence or relationships already, I mean, it only makes sense that you're just opening the door to this as a tactic. It's kind of like, if you know about SEO. Obviously, if we optimize something and we get a couple of links, we're not expecting a flood of leads after a month, that's crazy. Or even a quarter, it takes time to earn it. Now, if your starting point is one where you have a super mature website and you've got hundreds of thousands of links in all kinds of content and you're just making some technical mistakes, you can fix those things and have great expectations. Same sort of thing in influencer marketing. If you already have really great relationships and credibility with industry influencers, but you're just not activating them in an effective way, we can see that. And then, we can architect an experience for them that will result in the thing that you're actually after. So, it really depends on the goal. It depends on the starting point. But ultimately, no matter where you start, we can get there, right? There's a phased approach that you can take, a maturity escalation that you can follow or a path of escalation and maturity that you can follow that can take you from experimenting to being processed and transactional to be more relationship focused, ultimately, being... having momentum and being fully integrated. Companies that are nailing B2B influencer marketing Kathleen: Now, you mentioned Cherwell as an example of a really successful campaign. Are there other companies or specific campaigns that spring to mind if somebody is listening to this and they want to go out and see a living breathing example of how this was done in the wild? What should they look at? Lee: Absolutely. So, another great example is a SAP has as a Tech Unknown podcast. I mentioned that before. So, just if you Google "TechUnknown" as one word or "SAP Tech Unknown," you'll see season one has been out there and we just crushed it with the downloads or they crushed it with the downloads. And so, Tamara McCleary was the host inviting industry experts from within and with outside the organization and just really talking about topics of interest to their buying audience. Same thing with Dell technologies where Mark Shaffer and Douglas Carr, are the influencer hosts and they're interviewing people within Dell technologies, group of companies as well as outside experts about things that their audience will care about. Also, another podcast example I'd love to share is 3M. 3M publishes the largest study of science on the planet, right? It's the study, State of Science Index study. And as a complement to that, we started a podcast where their chief science evangelist, Jayshree Seth, I'm hoping I'm saying your name right, is the host. And then, she interviews people from astronauts to educators other intellectuals or practitioners in business that work in the field of science to help people understand how science impacts our lives. And again, I think we're on season two of that. So, audio wise it's a great opportunity. Episodic content bodes really well I think for influencer engagement because it creates a platform you to have guests. And it's a very natural metaphor for what people already know to be exposed to different ideas and for you to invite people who can add to your sort of portfolio of influencers. Because when you create that interview experience, the experience can inspire advocacy long after that episode has dropped for that person as they go about talking about things of interest in the industry. We also create a lot of interactive assets. So, the marketing, fitness, the B2B marketing fitness thing that you were part of was a slightly interactive. There was a conference where I... the topic, what was the topic? Break Free of Boring B2B. So, in fact if you search "Break Free Boring B2B," you'll find this. And so, I gave a challenge to my team and our designers came up with a couple of designs and one of them was basically, it would be 150-foot-tall grizzly bear with lasers coming out of his eyes lighting up the city. I was like, "Okay, that sounds great." And so, we used that as the aesthetic for this interactive infographic that featured experts in B2B talking about how to not be boring, how to break free of boring B2B marketing. And we also created a promotional video, which was as or more popular than the actual inner infographic. So, that went over. Well, people talked about it and I could show it on my mobile phone and people are like, "Oh, that's amazing. Can I take a picture of you holding that infographic on your phone." Which turned into new business for us. But that also instigated a series of interviews, which we are publishing twice a week now through January where we interviewed people about the series is called Break Free B2B or Break Free B2B Marketing. So, I mean, what a topic, right? It's universally interesting. How can we break free of status quo? How can we break free of legacy mindsets? How can we break free to greater results? So, there's so many things that we can talk about. So, that one influencer generated infographic initiated an ongoing series of episodic content. And it's really that episodic content that's creating all the momentum. So, I know that's a whole bunch of ideas there. But I think what's common amongst all of them is, one, topic specificity, meaning that we know the brand wants to... they stand for something that the customers care about and we find people who are influential around those ideas that have something of value to contribute. But first, we're creating value for them as a reason to contribute. And all of them are experiential, right? They're experiential at their audio capture, they're interactive if it's static capture or heck, we've even done virtual reality experiences that feature influencers. So, it's something that is experiential for the influencer and it's experiential for the consumer, the audience that you're after. And then, ultimately, because of those meaningful, relevant experiential characteristics, they are productive. They have impact and they deliver on a return on the investment. Kathleen: Those are all great examples. And I'm really actually looking forward to checking them out because I think there are lots of brands that kind of check the box and have a podcast for example. But as a podcaster myself, I've really come to appreciate how much strategy there needs to be behind what you're podcasting about and how that fits in with your broader goals and then how that informs who you have on. Like, there's a lot of work that needs to be done before you sit down in front of the microphone and start talking. And so, can't wait to check a couple of those out and see what they're all about. Repurposing influencer content Lee: Absolutely. And one of the great things about all of this is of course the re-purposing opportunities, because when you are planning to repurpose as part of the content planning itself, atomizing or deconstructing the influencer content into ingredient content is easier. And it gives you a library of a resource to draw from to add to your sort of recipes, if you will, to follow the metaphor of other content types that you're creating. So, if you're contributing an article to an industry publication, you go, "Oh yeah, I talked to Kathleen and she said that really smart thing and I've already got that saved. I'll pop that into that article and contributing to Forbes." And are you going to be disappointed that you show up in Forbes? Probably not. Six months after you actually gave the quote in the first place. So, it's something that is the repurposing opportunity is great because it creates more value from a marketing standpoint. But also, it's a way of showing love to your influencers long after their original contribution and it keeps that love alive, which is super, super important in an organic relationship. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: Absolutely. Well, I feel like I could talk about this forever with you because there are so many good nuggets here. But we do not have forever. And so, before we wrap up, there are two questions that I always ask all of my guests. We'd love to hear your answers on these. The first is that on this podcast we do talk a lot about inbound marketing. And I'm curious, having worked with so many different companies, is there one particular company or individual that really stands out who's just killing it with inbound marketing right now? Lee: I think I racked my brain around this a lot. And one company that I think that has had a long view of this and is doing really, really well that we work with is LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. So, about five years ago, Jason Miller, who was at LinkedIn at the time -- now he's at Microsoft, had tasked us with finding and interviewing influencers for a new guide he was putting together called The Sophisticated Marketer's Guide to LinkedIn. That one guide, five years ago, which had a 21,000% ROI, had become a sub-brand for LinkedIn. So, if you Google the expression Sophisticated Marketer's Hub, you will find an index of what that one guide has turned into. eBooks, podcasts, a video show, a print magazine, blog posts, obviously social -- they even repurposed the podcast into an actual book. They have learning courses. They verticalized a lot of this content for other specific industries and they're just... I think they're just doing an amazing job at creating a micro brand around this idea of the Sophisticated Marketer's Guide to fill in the blanks as it relates to LinkedIn as an inbound marketing exercise. Kathleen: It's fascinating how it has blossomed and sort of mushroomed into this other thing entirely over the years. Marketing is changing so quickly. That's the biggest complaint I hear from marketers is they can't keep up with it all. How do you personally stay educated and keep up with the changing landscape? Lee: Oh, that's a secret, Kathleen. I can't really... I'm just kidding. My network is the number one source for sure. Also, my team. One of my great joys in life is getting to meet with my team and talk about challenges and successes that they're having. And I learn an awful lot about that. I'm also afforded the opportunity to experiment with our agency. I'm still very much a marketing practitioner. So, whatever time I can carve out for experimentation is a great learning experience. I also subscribe to different topics, not so much websites but to topics so through social channels, there is content around marketing that surfaces to me. There are some individuals that I'll follow. Obviously, people like Ann Handley as an example. Certainly, I speak at a lot of events and rather than just... dine and dash as it were, I like to come in and I stay and I sit in on sessions. And also, competitive intelligence. I'm a big fan of understanding what the market is doing, not just direct... they're not just other marketing agencies, but also other businesses and really doing a lot of reflection and analysis on what seems to be working for other companies in the industry and creating some lessons at our company. We do quite a bit of knowledge transfer, lunch and learns and other structured learning opportunities. And so, all these sorts of things keep me accountable to sharing knowledge with my team and they are sharing knowledge with me as well, right? So, it's very dynamic situation, very symbiotic in that way. And yet, I still feel like I only know 10% of what I need to know. Kathleen: Oh amen. I have the same problem. There's never enough time. But, yes, it does definitely. I mean, you have an amazing network. And certainly, people like Ann Handley, et cetera, these are people that you can learn so much from. So, I love that idea. But I think for somebody who doesn't have a network, they could probably even approximate what you're doing by putting together a really curated Twitter feed or set of blogs they follow of people that clearly know a lot and absorb it that way as well. So, that's a great strategy. Lee: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I can't underestimate the value of experimentation. And whether you're able to do the experimentation yourself or if you happen to be working with an agency and you can carve out a little budget for experimentation, I highly recommend it. How to connect with Lee Kathleen: Yeah. Now, if someone's listening and they want to learn more about Influencer Marketing or they want to reach out and ask a question or somehow get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to connect with you online? Lee: Well, people can certainly come visit us at toprankmarketing.com. And there, they can find our blog, which has many, many articles over the last five or six, seven years around Influencer Marketing, especially B2B Influencer Marketing. And you can certainly connect with me on the Twitter, L-E-E-O-D-D-E-N on LinkedIn or lee@lee.to. You know what to do next... Kathleen: All right. Great. I will put all those links in the show notes. So, if you would like to learn more or connect with Lee, head over there and you'll find all of those contacts. And if you're listening and you liked what you heard or you learn something new, we always appreciate a five-star review on Apple podcasts so that other people can find the podcast as well. Kathleen: And if you know someone else doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next interview. Thank you so much, Lee. This was a lot of fun and very informative. Lee: Thanks Kathleen.

The intent data market is maturing at a fast pace and is an excellent source of customer intelligence. As the adoption and rollout of intent data becomes more prevalent, it's important for marketers to integrate these signals across other behavior channels to develop actionable marketing and sales strategies. Join Samantha and her guest, Andrew Gaffney, Content Director for B2B MX and Demand Gen Report, as they discuss the findings of a new intent data research study, the role intent data plays in planning, budgeting, and in truly understanding our buyer’s journey.

A recent survey by Demand Gen Report shows that the average purchaser consumes between three to five pieces of content before making a purchase. I recommend business coaches aim to double that number when engaging with a coaching prospect. The average coaching prospect is trusting you with more than just a one-time purchase. They want to know you have the expertise, skillset, and process to help them achieve the results they need for long-term success. So, what pieces of content would be great for business coaches to create and share? I recommend having a feature-length piece of content, whether that’s a blog article that’s around 2,000 words or a 30-minute video training. This piece of content serves as the greatest value-add for your audience. They need to get tremendous value from this content without having to pay you anything. You can connect a few smaller pieces of content beforehand, like a series of social media posts or an ask-me-anything session via Facebook Live, that all lead to the larger piece of content. You can then add a few more focused pieces of content, like a case study or a series of follow-up emails that guide towards a buying decision. That will easily give you between six to 10 different pieces of content to engage with your coaching prospect before they need to make a decision. Try a few different combinations and let me know what works. Have a great day today and remember, your Message matters! The Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders Flash Briefing is presented by Jon Cook, founder of Keynote Content. Jon and his team help thought leaders, namely speakers, coaches, and consultants, craft and share their messages to better serve their audiences. Connect with Jon and his team at Keynote Content by visiting keynotecontent.com. You can subscribe to The Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders Flash Briefing by visiting bit.ly/KeynoteClarity and enabling it there. Then, all you have to say is, “Alexa, what’s my flash briefing?”

This year’s Demand Generation Benchmark Survey showed that larger chunks of marketing budgets are now being allocated to demand generation initiatives and ABM adoption as the continued goal to drive more revenue grows at an alarming rate. (Music Credit) Romos - Catharsis: youtu.be/xsmlB4e1d00

This week, B2B marketers will gather in Boston for Brightcove’s annual PLAY event, taking place May 14-16. Brightcove CMO Sara Larsen sat down with Demand Gen Report prior to the event to discuss the short- and long-term goals she’s been working towards since joining the company in September, what attendees can expect at the event, how video marketing strategies are changing and more. “[We can] use video in B2B to move beyond some of the rational components of what we’re trying to talk about and really tell the story of what an enterprise solution can do and what impact it can have,” said Larsen. “Video is really the best place to do that because you can bring all the senses together to tell that story in a much more emotional way … The brands that have figured out how to tell a good story can now tell a great story with video because you can really amp up the connection with the viewer.”

New research from the Altimeter Group shows that 55% of marketers plan to spend more on influencer marketing in 2019. But according to Principal Analyst Brian Solis, marketers must rethink their approach and strategies to influencer marketing in order to be successful. In a conversation with Demand Gen Report, Solis shared what he has named “Influence 2.0,” a new approach that includes building long-term influencer relationships and working with influencers to engage buyers at every touchpoint. “Trust in companies, brands and executives plummets every year, but trust in peers or people ‘like me’ is always at the top,” said Solis. “At the end of the day, that’s what [influencers are] about … I think it is an under-appreciated strategy in the marketing arsenal.”

In a quick interview at INBOUND 2018, hosted by HubSpot earlier this September in Boston, Demand Gen Report’s Brian Anderson sat down with Scott Brinker, HubSpot’s VP of Platform Ecosystem. Brinker is also notoriously known for mapping out the martech landscape on the Chief Marketing Technologist blog. During the interview, Brinker shared how he has seen HubSpot’s partner ecosystem grow during his first year at HubSpot. He also discussed how the need for easily integrated solutions has grown evermore important over the past couple of years, as well as where he thinks partner ecosystems need to continue evolving to meet the needs of tech adopters in the space.

In an interview with Demand Gen Report’s Elise Schoening, Anne Gherini, VP of Marketing and Partnerships at Affinity, discusses the evolution of artificial intelligence. Gherini also breaks down common myths surrounding AI and explains how it can actually help marketers enhance and better manage customer relationships when used correctly.

During Uberflip’s Conex event, Demand Gen Report’s Klaudia Tirico sat down with Jay Baer, President of Convince & Convert, to chat all things content marketing. Baer dished on the top challenges for content marketers today, dived into the absurdity of not aligning sales and marketing under the same department and didn’t hold back when talking about the need for delivering relevant content experiences to buyers. “Every marketer in the world tells themselves the same lie: that our audience is just too busy. They’re too busy to read the blog, they’re too busy to tune into the webinar, they’re too busy to watch the video, they’re too busy to come to the conferences,” said Baer. “It’s not true. It’s not about time. When a prospect tells you that they are ‘too busy,’ what they really mean — but will not say — is that what you have offered them is not relevant enough.”

In an exclusive interview with Demand Gen Report’s Andrew Gaffney, Drift’s VP of Marketing, Dave Gerhardt, gave the publication an inside look at the company’s latest product announcements, including its new AI assistants for marketing and sales and a new ad-to-chat solution. Gerhardt also shared more details about their acquisition of SiftRock, an email reply management company, which positions Drift to help manage email replies at scale for B2B businesses and turn the email channel back into a two-way conversation.

In a quick-hitting conversation on the show floor at ConEx 2018, taking place in Toronto, Canada August 21-22, Demand Gen Report’s Klaudia Tirico and Randy Frisch, CMO of Uberflip, discuss the three key things that make up a true and effective content experience. They also discuss the challenges limiting marketers’ abilities to create great content experiences, as well as what the “infinite scroll” can do to further enhance how buyers experience a brand.

In a conversation on the show floor at #FlipMyFunnel in Boston last week, Demand Gen Report’s Brian Anderson sat down with Terminus CEO Eric Spett to discuss the latest updates to the company’s account-based platform and how aims to become a command center for end-to-end account-based strategies. Other topics covered include the current competitive landscape for account-based marketing and sales technologies as well as how the partner landscape will evolve with the current growth of account-based platforms.

Andrew has been covering the B2B Marketing landscape for the past decade as Publisher of Demand Gen Report, host of the B2B Marketing Exchange events, Content Director of Content4Demand, and responsible for ABM In Action, an online publication that spotlights real-world case studies of companies launching targeted account-strategies. Yeah, Andrew has his finger on the pulse of B2B marketing.  Andrew and I have collaborated on various projects since I founded DemandGen in 2007 and he’s the guy I turn to for an inside look at the vendors, strategies, and players in the space. Listen in as Andrew and I catch up on ABM, B2B Content Strategy, Audience Building, Channels, MarTech Stack Assessments, and even what’s in store for the 2018 B2B Marketing Exchange in Arizona where I will be running a workshop on MarTech strategy and assessment techniques. 

Are you creating evergreen content? Evergreen content is content that has an unlimited shelf life. Ideally, you wish to create content that is rising the Google search engine rankings. It takes a long time to get your pages ranked on Google. If you are producing content that is helpful to your prospects, then your content is always helpful. The longevity of most content, particularly if it is not related to a short term sale or a season means that many of your website pages are solving customer problems for a long time. Inbound marketing is the process of using content to guide your prospects down the sales funnel on your site. It's the process of attracting people, then engaging them with useful content, and converting them into appropriate actions and offers. Finally the process of then delighting them by actually having them as customers.   75% of HubSpot's blog views and 90% of blog leads come from old posts. (HubSpot, 2014) (Source: https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics) The first step it to always make sure you're answering people's questions, providing content that is relevant to the people coming to your website. Engaging, entertaining, educating, visually attractive, strong content, not just wishy-washy words on pages. Keyword focused, making sure that you're going to capture people's attention, I guess. If it's content that you're posting on social media, with a link back to your website, making sure that visual is strong, with really catchy headline   I think that's critical. If you're going to get ROI out of inbound marketing, you have to create content. Make sure that content is evergreen then you can use social media to post the content to the world on a regular and consistent schedule. The reason why we now have to take this on board and embrace it is that the world of sales has completely changed.   47% of buyers viewed 3-5 pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep. (Demand Gen Report, 2016) (Source: https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics)   The consumers have all the power. They're the ones who can read the websites, discover, and learn what's out there all the websites of the world. As business people, it's absolutely part of your job now to create content and provide information to the customers via your website. Most importantly, you've got to go ahead and go through the process of creating content for your website. If you want to get ROI, you've just got to do it. Let's put that into perspective. It's all well and good to say, "Let's create content," but let's talk about actual volumes of content. We're not talking about a page a month, a blog a month. We're talking about a blog a day, making it evergreen means the investment last for a long time.

  Is Inbound Marketing the same as Content Marketing? Is there such a thing as Inbound Content Marketing? So what is the difference? Should you do both inbound marketing and content marketing? Do you need both? Are you using traditional media and want to get better at digital advertising but are not sure where to start?     In Episode 39 of HubnSpoke, our inbound marketing expert team of Zaahn Johnson and Adam Steinhardt dig deep into the power of digital marketing and which marketing methods do what best. So what exactly is inbound marketing?   Inbound marketing is the process of using essential elements of your website to attract then guide your prospects down the sales funnel on your website. It's the process engaging them with helpful website information. With well placed and appropriate calls to action and relevant email nurturing offers, inbound marketing helps your prospects on their journey of trust.   Companies that published 16+ blog posts per month got almost 3.5X more traffic than companies that published 0-4 monthly posts. (HubSpot, 2015) (Source: https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics) This is where the HubSpot automated sales and marketing software is so strong, as it provides you with the tools to get digital marketing done more efficiently. Many users find that HubSpot is better than Wordpress for Inbound marketing. Wordpress is a common platform for creating websites.     Especially if you are wanting an automated sales and marketing platform with a CRM built in. So where does content marketing fit in? What is Content Marketing?   Wikipaedia defines content marketing as   Content marketing is a form of marketing focused on creating, publishing and distributing content for a targeted audience online. It is often used by businesses in order to: Attract attention and generate leads Expand their customer base Generate or Increase online sales Increase brand awareness or credibility Engage an online community of users Unlike other forms of online marketing, content marketing relies on anticipating and meeting an existing customer need for information, as opposed to creating demand for a new need. source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_marketing It's critical, if you're going to get ROI out of inbound marketing, you have to create content. The consumers have all the power. They're the ones who can read the websites, discover, and learn what's out there all the websites of the world.   96% of B2B buyers want content with more input from industry thought leaders.  (Demand Gen Report, 2016) (Source: https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics) For businesses, it's absolutely part of your job now to create content and provide information to the customers via your website. This week we look at two revamped tools, Basecamp and Wordswag. Plus our team of HubSpot experts dig deep into the HubSpot Workflows tool with bold new ways to make the tool more powerful.  

Content vs. marketing automation? What comes first? Our Inbound marketing experts, Adam Steinhardt and Zaahn Johnson discuss powerful marketing automation workflows, or is it content marketing? What should be created first? Discover five helpful workflows that your HubSpot portal must have to maximise your sales funnel activity. 47% of buyers viewed 3-5 pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep. (Demand Gen Report, 2016) (Source: https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics) Find out what the optimum level of content that you need in your HubSpot Sales and Marketing automation stack firing more sales leads for your business. Discover why lead scoring is so important for the HubSpot Pro and Enterprise portals. If you have it, then its a must have to use to maximise your automation processes. We discover some engaging ways to use the HubSpot CRM filters to ensure your deal pipeline is easily kept up to date. Zaahn has a brilliant idea of being able to download the HubSpot Academy accreditation content to watch offline. We also discovered a brand new quiz by the HubSpot Academy quiz. "Get in the game with the Inbound Speed Round! Are you ready to compete against the clock to become a digital marketing trivia all-star! In HubSpot Academy's first-ever trivia game, you get 2 minutes to answer as many digital marketing related questions as you can. Proud of your score? Publish it to the public leaderboard and challenge your friends!" Check it out here http://academy.hubspot.com/marketing-trivia-game

On the show with me today is Andrew Gaffney is the founder and CEO of Demand Gen Report, a digital publication covering best practices and engagement strategy for lead generation. Founded seven years ago, Demand Gen Report has experienced continuous growth and ranked on the Inc 5000 last year. Since then, their revenues are up another 70% this year. Andrew is a walking, talking example of developing content marketing strategies that work. Content marketing has played a pivotal role in his organizational growth. He shares how to figure out your buyer persona and how it affects content marketing strategy, what your marketing funnel should look like, and how to combine traditional outbound with content marketing to get much better results. Thank you so much for listening! Please subscribe rate and review on your favorite podcast listening app. To get to the show notes for today's episode, go to https://brightideas.co/xxx...and if you have any questions for me, you can leave me a voicemail at brightideas.co/asktrent