How do B2B communicators evaluate and integrate the changes happening from digital media? What are the top brands doing to maintain marketing and sales leadership? Who are the people shaping the ideas and thoughts around B2B brands and marketing ideas? If you think B2B social marketing is just a minor variation on the practices that work in consumer markets, then a new podcast added to the FIR Podcast Network will show you otherwise. Our new podcast is FIR B2B, debuting this week and next, then continuing every other week. Hosted by Paul Gillin and Allan Schoenberg, FIR B2B will cover the latest news in B2B communications, interview practitioners at innovative companies, and present weekly ideas and tips for making the […]
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FIR Interview: Oracle’s Jill Rowley on Social Selling and Social Business
“I think a social business at the foundation is a business that is collaborative, that is transparent; that is engaged with its constituents, whether they be employees, whether they be customers, whether they be partners or even influencers. “And I think a social business is a company that actually is very engaged in a two-way dialogue where that dialogue is happening and whether that be offline, whether that be online, it should be all of the time.” Jill Rowley of Oracle was interviewed by Michael J Procopio, our correspondent, to get her views on social selling and social business. She is well qualified on these topics as she teaches social selling to the Oracle sales teams and has been doing […]
The real challenge of content marketing is when you don’t have a strategy
Two reports were published this month by MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute that assess the state of content marketing in 2013 to project a picture for 2014 in the US from both the B2B and the B2C perspectives. Each report – The State of B2B Content Marketing: 2014 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends and 2014 B2C Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – are worth considered study to see what similarities and differences there are between two facets of marketing – to businesses, and to consumers. What I zeroed-in on in both reports are the challenges facing people in organizations, large and small, who communicate news and information about their businesses and the things they think will interest their customers […]
In B2B marketing, content is king
An interesting report was published last week by the Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs in the US on B2B content marketing and predictions for 2013 in the US market. Wikipedia defines “content marketing” thus: Content marketing is an umbrella term encompassing all marketing formats that involve the creation and sharing of content in order to attract, acquire and engage clearly defined and understood current and potential consumer bases with the objective of driving profitable customer action. Content marketing subscribes to the notion that delivering information to prospects and customers drives profitable consumer action. Content marketing has benefits in terms of retaining reader attention and improving brand loyalty. It’s as good a definition as any I’ve seen that focuses on […]