Posts

An action figure of bigfoot walking through the forest signifying millennials.

Breaking News: Millennials Don’t Exist!

A few weeks ago I was shown a presentation by Adam Conover entitled “Millennials Don’t Exist!” that changed the way I think about generations. His presentation offers a humorous counter argument to the widely held stereotype of the millennial. In this post, I’ll share my reactions to his presentation, discuss the place of generational stereotypes in marketing, give you some of my biggest takeaways from Adam’s talk and give you the link to the video of his presentation to form your own opinion.

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9 cartoon b2b buyer persona headshots

Essential Buyer Persona Resources For B2B Marketers: A Complete Guide

Buyer Personas can be a complex thing to get your head around. Marketers are all over the place when it comes to understanding them. This post will point you towards some resources for understanding, creating and improving your b2b buyer personas no matter where you are in your persona journey. Enjoy.

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B2B Marketing ROI

Why You Need B2B Buyer Personas and How To Create Them

Buyer personas are a fundamental part of understanding your audience and your b2b buyers. Despite their importance, only 44% of b2b marketers are using buyer personas (ITSMA). They can take a lot of time and effort to get right and a lot of times companies bypass creating personas all together. This post is dedicated to convincing you that buyer personas are imperative to your business. In it I’ll present to you the benefits of creating accurate buyer personas, how to create them and how to use them.

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A sign cautioning of the dangers of b2b buyer personas

4 Common Pitfalls of B2B Buyer Personas

There are a number of guides out there on creating B2B buyer personas. We have one, HubSpot has one, Moz has a lengthy article by Mike King about it. Personas are touted by marketing gurus as being a must have for your content strategy. But if you’re careless, personas can lead you down a bad road or have you following behind your competitors. I’d like to alert you to these 3 Warning Signs of B2B Marketing Persona Misdirection. In your drive for developing buyer personas, follow the signs of success and avoid these hazards:

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Cartoon b2b marketing personas

B2B Marketing: Buyer Personas, Jung and Video Games

When I first started learning about inbound marketing, I was introduced to the concept of ‘buyer personas’. At first I thought it was just a typo. It sounded a bit silly to me, and as I learned more about inbound strategies, it started to look like I was going to have to learn a whole new language. Despite the fact that I’d been in the advertising/marketing biz for over 20 years, I’d never heard the term ‘buyer persona’. I wondered about the etymology of the phrase. Was it the same as ‘person’? Well, not exactly.

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A man in a chair

Answer The Man In The Chair With Your B2B Marketing Content

In 1958, an advertisement ran in Business Week Magazine that marketers still talk about today. I first became aware of the ad, referred to as The Man In The Chair, when I was studying graphic design and art direction twenty years after it was first published. (Click here to view the original ad)

It wasn’t the creative design of the ad that struck me, it was the message. And as I look at it now, I realize it was the first true B2B ad I remember and it’s still relevant for B2B marketing professionals today.

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b2b content ideas

2 Quick Tips: Creating B2B Content

B2B Inbound Marketing is all about content, and beginning the process can be difficult if you don’t know how. So here are two quick tips for getting started creating your own B2B content.

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Augustus gloop

Musings on Building Better B2B Buyer Personas and Augustus Gloop

As a B2B marketing creative, stepping away from the grindstone where my nose is placed directly each day, to spend a few hours with my children is a welcome reward. The past few evenings I have been reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl, to my five year old son each evening before he goes to bed.

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You vs. Them

B2B Buyer Personas: YOU versus THEM

I was recently reading Joe Pulizzi’s book Epic Content Marketing: How to Tell a Different Story, Break through the Clutter, and Win More Customers by Marketing Less, and loved the opening line to Chapter 10, which is all about buyer personas. It stated: Repeat this sentence: I am not the target for my content.

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a crowd of b2b buyers

Do Demographics Matter in B2B Buyer Personas?

We are in the process of updating our B2B buyer personas for our Atlanta-based agency, and it really got me thinking: Do demographics really matter (specifically, age and gender) when creating your B2B buyer personas?

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