Focus On What Works: Mobile, Content & Trends

According to the 2015 State of Marketing Report from Salesforce, which surveyed 5,000 marketers worldwide, mobile marketing and social media are on the rise, with dedicated teams managing them, a far jump from a few years ago. Some highlights:

• 84 percent of marketers plan to increase social and mobile marketing spend
• More than 66 percent say mobile is integrated into their overall marketing strategy
• 58 percent now have a dedicated mobile marketing team

And for a twist on this tale, we take our statistics from the Australian version of CMO.com, presenting these findings:

• 56 percent see mobile as core to their business
• 64 percent of all the marketers say social media is critical; 57 percent Australian
• Budgets increased for social media advertising more than any digital marketing channel.
• Email is still important, 92 percent say it has a clear ROI
• Conversion rate is the most important email metric; traffic most important social metric.

Australian respondents cited budgetary constraints, new business developments and building stronger customer relationships as challenges. The three global challenges were new business development, the quality of leads and remaining up-to-date with technology and trends. To learn more, we recommend reading the original report (a simple form required to download it) as well.
In this very space, we often discuss how to deliver the right message at the right time and how important content is to B2B marketing initiatives. Marketingland.com reminds us that the type of content we deliver to C-suite decision makers is just as important because it has to address specific needs. Citing a report by The Economist Group, the desired executive audiences are looking for information and to solve problems, marketers are looking to brands to promote their solutions.
Rather than hoping to foster leads and nourish relationships at one tenuous meeting point, marketers can focus their B2B content on what the executive audiences want:

• Substance
  • Business executives seek more than marketing prose, they want information. The most useful types: “industry outlook on a matter, both sides of a complicated issue, and an area of business they weren’t apprised of.”
  • Focus on the audience and their needs rather than pushing a product.
  • Add value: Simplify a complex topic, inform on a new or controversial topic.
• Engagement
  • Make it resonate. Quality over quantity. Author Jim Yu makes a good point, what you put out there will live on Google and can help or hurt search rankings.
• Form and Function
  • Consider your executive reader persona and create content for how they’re reading it (laptop vs. mobile, no video, etc.)
• Measurement
  • Do we sound like a broken record yet? (Does anyone get that reference any more?) What good is all the best, most apt, target-hitting and serving content in the world if it is not measured?
  • 84 percent of marketers surveyed want to promote Branding, with Leads, Engagement, Sales, Lead Nurturing following. The article and report suggest focusing on the audience’s needs first; and goodwill and branding will follow… and as it’s occurring, measure!
  • As long as we’re focusing on positive B2B marketing, AdAge reports on some trends industry experts see in the coming year, following GE global creative director, Andy Goldberg’s urging to “be more human.”
• Be relevant.
  • In order to connect with their audience on a more personal level, B2B marketers will develop better storytelling and more emotional connections in their marketing.
• Sharable content, such as videos that simplify complex B2B messages, will dominate digital and social channels, per John Kennedy, CMO at Xerox. Considering the long selling cycle and high dollars of B2B transactions, the ideal “sweet spot” will be content that “educates the potential buyer, gains interest and goes mainstream.” Along with that, Adam Kleinberg, CEO of Traction, suggests “consumerization” for B2B to crossover into consumer experience.
• Seamless user experiences in product design and digital experience from merging of marketing, CIO and CTO strategies, per Eduardo Conrado, SVP, marketing and IT, Motorola.
• Reprioritization—“marketing within companies” (or “working with all the departments” as we often urge) to create parallel online and offline experiences, per Kathy Button Bell, CMO, Emerson.
• Connecting technologies—data management, predictive analytics and customer experience—to gain a deeper understanding of customers, per Tom Stein, CEO Stein IAS Americas.

We recognize that the last two articles conflict with each other because on one hand, we’re urging B2B marketers to distinguish themselves from B2C marketing, and then suggesting they steal some of its approaches by being more human, but, overall, it’s because the world has merged and they can both be effective using the same tools and applying them accordingly. B2B marketers can learn from consumer tips and strategies. As long as the focus is on the end user and audience, the marketing consistent and targeted, and the data measured and applied, B2B and B2C marketers will continue to improve techniques and results and borrow from each other’s successes.