In March of 2011, the Siemens team launched Plantville, an online game that simulates the experience of being a plant manager. Learn the six steps the team took to get 23,000 engineering professionals to learn about its brand through gamification.
Continue readingOften marketers complain that they are in “boring” or difficult industry when it comes to content marketing. Read further to learn seven steps one marketer used to transform an electrical engineering firm’s website from a tired brochure into a highly effective lead generator.
Continue readingIn this Forbes article, “Content Marketing’s Dirty Little Secret,” Patrick Spenner, Managing Director of the CEB’s Marketing & Communications Practice, expresses his concern about the amount of content required for a targeted campaign. If you are targeting four personas, he estimates it would require 720 pieces to speak to every persona in multiple channels over […]
Continue readingWhat’s a marketer to do when leadership dismisses marketing and insists that a superior product will sell itself? Follow the lead of Jeremy Scully and take a high-stakes gamble: Put your reputation on the line to prove marketing’s value. Scully, the Business Development Manager for Planisware, a leading provider of project and portfolio management solutions, […]
Continue readingI received some news today that leaves me both humbled and honored. OpenView Labs named its top 25 sales influencers for 2012, and I am among them. This is especially meaningful for two reasons. First, I have tremendous respect for the people who have joined me on this list; I’m in great company. Learn more […]
Continue readingI can’t stress this enough: when it comes to marketing, if we’re not constantly learning, we’re going to find ourselves left behind faster than ever. Some people say I’m an expert in B2B lead generation because I wrote a book on it, but you know what? I am astonished by what I didn’t know then […]
Continue readingI’ve been having an identity crisis of sorts lately. I’ve spent my career working in B2B. This blog and the LinkedIn group to which it’s connected are all about B2B lead generation. Problem is, I don’t know if B2B is an accurate acronym anymore. David Meerman Scott in this interview insists that B2B and B2C […]
Continue readingWatch our latest B2B Lead Roundtable webinar for a powerful case study on how to execute content marketing strategy in the real world and discover how it can build powerful alignment between sales and marketing.
Continue readingGet over your fear of writing because, at some point in your career, some marketer is going to ask you to share your voice to support a content marketing campaign. Content marketing is transforming how we engage the marketplace by providing information customers can use at each stage of the buying cycle. What’s needed, however, is content. At the next B2B Lead Roundtable webinar, Michelle Levy, Associate Vice President of Marketing Programs for ECI Telecom, reveals how their content marketing program achieved a 78 percent email open rate and increased leads-to-sales conversions by 136 percent.
Continue readingAs you can see, my blog has a new look. That’s because it isn’t just my blog anymore. There are a multitude of thought-leading voices that deserve a platform, and I look forward to making sure this blog provides that opportunity. This will truly be a roundtable to discuss and explore the best ideas. Click […]
Continue readingDaniel Burstein, Director of Editorial Content for MECLABS, requested I publish my last blog post today. Of course, it isn’t my last post, but I am honored to join other top bloggers in sharing my most important message.
Continue readingAt a glance, The Blog Tree helps you see the scope of the best content in the marketing and sales blogosphere and how it all works together.
Continue readingRain Today, a great resource for those who market and sell services, selected their Best Books of the Decade for marketing and selling professional services. I was humbled to see that they picked my book, Lead Generation for the Complex Sale for their list. They write, “Brian Carroll’s book is chock-full of information to help […]
Continue readingEach month ClickDocuments asks industry experts a specific question on content marketing. This months question is, “What’s the biggest mistake to avoid in b2b content marketing.” I’m in good company again this month with Patsi Krakoff, Maria Pergolino, Ardath Albee, Rebel Brown and Mac McIntosh. If you want to improve your inbound marketing, social media […]
Continue readingA new B2B marketing community that I am participating in was just launched. The B2B Marketing Zone is a marketing community site that was launched as collaborative effort between Tom Pick and Tony Karrer. The community features content from other B2B marketing bloggers I enjoy such as Ardath Albee (Marketing Interactions), Paul Dunay (Buzz Marketing […]
Continue readingAs marketers look for ways to optimize lead generation, they are recognizing the value of using educational content and thought leadership to help attract more customers. I’ve written a number of times on using educational marketing and certain aspects of thought leadership to generate leads, and I thought this post by Dana VanDen Heuvel over […]
Continue readingB2B marketing efforts heavily rely on content as a lead generation incentive. To be effective in the lead gen cycle, this content has to be something your prospects yearn to read or view. You’ll want to create content that will actually help your sales team have a valid reason to follow-up. Marketers looking for ways […]
Continue readingI just heard that Lead Generation for the Complex Sale is now available on Kindle. It joins more than 200,000 books available via this service. Here’s an overview of Kindle: Kindle is a portable reading device from Amazon.com that allows you to download books, blogs, magazines, and newspapers in less than a minute. It’s a […]
Continue readingTo what extent can emails be used in place of phone calls and face-to-face meetings when maintaining and developing relationships with clients and other important network contacts? Four bloggers have all agreed to post their answers to the email question simultaneously, each offering a different perspective, with all responses linked. They are: Ford Harding, the […]
Continue readingLast year, I wrote a post on giving away ideas to proactively educate and attract future customers. I was surprised that it generated such a lively discussion. Michael Stelzner wrote the following comment on my post back then, “I have been giving away my trade secrets for years (against the advice of advisors). The results […]
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