Here we cut the world of B2B marketing into digestible nuggets of inspiration, highlighting courageous individuals and ideas approximately two times a month. Want to contribute content to our blog?
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The Key to Your Brand’s Success: Highlight Its Problems
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January 10, 2019
The other day, I was speaking with storytelling guru and “father of modern branding,” David Aaker. One of the best ways to create a “signature story” for your brand, he said, is to magnify the problem that your product or service addresses. As David’s advice was kicking around my cranium, I came across the story of cloud backup and data...

How to Tackle High Expectations for New CMOs
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January 7, 2019
From the moment a new chief marketing officer starts a job, the expectations for improved marketing performance are outrageously high. The CEO is looking for simultaneous upticks in brand metrics and demand generation. The head of sales wants leads that almost close themselves. The HR chief is expecting instant improvements in Glassdoor ratings and an influx of highly qualified recruits....

You Show Me Yours…
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December 19, 2018
When was the last time you perused an article, read a book, watched a movie, or caught an episode of your favorite TV show? Chances are, you do one or more of those things every day. Although some may be dramatically better than others, they all tell a story. In fact, stories—in one form or another—are all around us, at...

Why a CMO Needs More Than One Job
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December 17, 2018
You don’t get to be a CMO by being afraid of adding yet another responsibility to your plate. Successful marketing programs often touch so many aspects of a business from customer experience to employee recruiting, investor relations to product development, that it is easy to imagine your above average CMO already being stretched beyond capacity. So, it is with some...

Nothing Beats a Face-to-Face Meeting
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December 12, 2018
About a month ago, a trusted advisor recommended that when we conduct online meetings—whether it’s with internal staff, clients, partners or prospects—that the medium should include a video link so that everyone can see everyone else on the call. We tested this out and found that once everyone gets over their initial (and natural) hesitation of being on-camera, the net...

Going High-Touch in a High-Tech World: Q&A with Zoom CMO Janine Pelosi
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December 10, 2018
Just about 50 years ago, futurist Alvin Toffler predicted that as our lives became increasingly dominated by technology, we’d feel an increased desire for human interactions. This “high-tech/high-touch” phenomenon is embodied in the rise of social networks, both of the virtual and physical variety (just look at the increase in associations and trade show attendance). It also helps explain the...

Hey B2B Marketer, You’re Doing Content All Wrong
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December 3, 2018
There is probably a point in one’s life when you stop having the dream about showing up late and unprepared for your final exam. I’m still waiting. And it doesn’t help when cognoscenti like Brent Adamson, principal executive advisor at Gartner, challenge the very definition of marketing—let alone the way most business-to-business brands approach the customer acquisition process. Of course,...

CMOs, Take a Walk on the Sales Side
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November 26, 2018
Despite all the advancements in lead generation, lead scoring and automated lead nurturing, the age-old tension between marketing and sales is alive and well. CMOs still complain that sales can’t keep to the script and close the deal, while sales directors still complain that many of the leads they get from marketing are useless garbage because the targeting and messaging...

The Business of Vacations
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November 19, 2018
Ensconced in the luxurious observation lounge of a brand-new 168,000-ton ship, Meg Lee, chief marketing officer of Norwegian Cruise Lines, greeted me with smiles and a champagne glass. This demonstration of the notion that travel should be fun ended with my first question about her definition of marketing. She responded: “filling ships.” “My job is to fill a fleet of...