As b2b marketing strategist Ardath Albee states, “a persona takes a segment of your company’s aggregate customer profile and fleshes it out with detailed information that represents real prospects in specific circumstances”. However, once you sit down to develop your b2b buyer persona, it can be difficult converting the concept into something tangible to work from.

Researching your target audience is an integral part of any B2B marketing plan, and online surveys can be an efficient way of gathering data. However, a recent blog post from Tom Webster (@BrandSavant) brought up some great points regarding the possible biases in online surveys.

A little over a year ago MLT Creative asked me to become the company expert on the geo-location check-in mobile app, foursquare. Though I was reluctant at first (it sounds like a perfect app for creepy stalkers, amiright?), I am now a total convert and find foursquare to be one of the more frequently used apps on my iPhone. The ”explore” function alone has resulted in many great finds when I travel in unfamiliar territory.

The Problem: Research suggests “facts vs. myths” documents do not deliver information effectively due to the way our brains process that information. Though it may be comprehensible initially, as time passes, the readers may remember the material but not remember whether the statements were labeled as true or false. Even worse, recalling the statements may make the reader think he or she remembers those statements because they were true. 

I love hearing about B2B companies that have decided to adopt a content marketing approach. They’ve loosened their grip on the hard-sell, call-now ads and brochures. And they’re now delivering useful and frequent information that customers and prospects actually find interesting.

Ramping up your program, though, isn’t easy. The road to effective content marketing is so often met with skepticism from within the organization: “If we’re giving free advice, why would anyone want to hire us?”, “What if people post negative comments on our new blog?”, etc. Fortunately, more companies are getting past the skepticism.

It’s also not surprising that in the early stages of a content program, it can take a while to find your voice and build a cohesive and engaging program. But it’s at this formative stage that a healthy dynamic takes over – and the “content marketing mindset” inspires companies to:

A few days ago, in the lead-up to Social Media Day, our friends at Savvy B2B Marketing posted some valuable lessons they’ve learned about social media along the way. Now, with Social Media Day upon us, a few of us here at MLT Creative thought we’d do the same thing. Here are some select insights, ruminations and realizations we’ve had about social media over the past year:

The most recent experiment on Which Test Won involved B2C marketing but, as is often the case, the findings are equally useful in B2B. The experiment tested two separate application installer pages to determine which one was more effective at keeping visitors on a designated site long enough to download an accompanying app. The page that came out on top had a more “marketing-style design,” but also featured another key difference that I think may have been its greatest advantage: It told visitors upfront that there would be a four-step download process. Telling people outright what they can expect in terms of download time allows them to decide whether or not they’re interested – which, in turn, can affect their behavior.

Ever since the recent LinkedIn IPO catapulted the business social-networking platform into the financial stratosphere, B2B marketing has emerged from the shadows of its flashy, highly funded B2C counterpart. According to Russell Glass of Bizo, LinkedIn is propelling B2B marketers' visibility with its evolved, sexy -- and rich -- social network. Read the full article...

The BMA Atlanta had the pleasure of having Ashley Kuhnmuench, account executive for B2B markets, of Google  at our April 14 luncheon at Maggiano's Little Italy in Buckhead.  Ashley presented to a rapt audience “The Business Buyer of the Future – Engaging Your Audience at the Zero Moment of Truth.” She shared, to a capacity crowd, Google’s perspective on Procter & Gamble’s “First Moment of Truth,” which describes the first few seconds in a store aisle, when a marketer has the most influence to convince a customer to choose their brand.  But B2B buyers are different; they don’t walk in the wind turbine store to compare solutions off the shelf.   Online research has forever changed the B2B sales game. 

 I frequent a very interesting site called Which Test Won, which experiments with various ways to present messages in online marketing. The site’s test this week contained an interesting finding, and though it was a B2C scenario, it demonstrated an important B2B marketing lesson from which I think we can all benefit.