In the business-to-business world, the quest to connect with decision-makers has been and most likely will continue to be the main challenge confronting B2B leaders.  Meeting this challenge successfully is the essential lifeblood of survival for many B2B companies.  While today’s continuing convergence of the Internet, social technologies, and Enterprise 2.0 platforms are increasing B2B visibility like never before, connecting with buyers and decision-makers is becoming increasingly elusive.

It is very common to find marketing content from manufacturers and industrial companies that is all about how great their products are or that their technology is innovative. Sellers may be too close to the forest to see the trees and firmly believe their marketing content is helpful to their buyers.

Buyers can easily find information about your products and that of your competition from their online research. So ask yourself this question, “Is my industrial marketing content really helping my buyers make a more informed decision and is it moving them closer them to a RFQ?”

I suspect most of you already know the answer otherwise I wouldn’t be hearing and reading the same objections to content marketing from so many manufacturers and industrial companies. They know the “why” but are having a difficult time figuring out “how” publishing content will help them sell more of their industrial products.

IMO, the key to content marketing success is relevance. Sounds simple but it is not an easy task to put yourself in your buyers’ shoes and think from their perspective. Sooner or later you’ll slip back into talking about you and your products. The truth is that your buyers don’t care about you, they only care about what you can do for them (See my post, “Industrial Content Reengineering for Improving WIIFM Relevance”)

Where do most paid search (PPC) campaigns succeed or fail? Though it’s typical for marketers to invest more time and legwork in the mechanics of search (keywords, bid strategy, campaign structure), I’d argue that the majority of PPC campaigns are won or lost at the close: the landing page.

The rewards from making even slight improvements to your PPC landing pages can be dramatic. Improve conversion (click to lead) rates by just a percentage point or two and you can increase lead volume (and slash Cost Per Lead) disproportionately. Here are 7 tips that can make a difference:

1. Include a clear, specific call to action. Not “learn more.” No “For more information …” Make the reward specific and tangible. Information offers (white papers, ebooks, information kits) often work best because they appeal to prospects across a broad segment of the selling cycle.

2. Sell the offer. Once you’ve decided on the right offer, sell it. Remember, it’s not the company you’re selling, or the product, it’s that white paper or video or Webinar the prospect gets when he or she fills out the form. If the offer is a video, show screen shots. If it’s a white paper, include excerpts, Amazon-type page previews, even reader reviews. The more detail, the better.

One of the first steps in purchasing a new software system is buyer education. When it comes to marketing software, there is some confusion between email marketing and marketing automation solutions. Many buyers see the two as synonymous, but in reality, the systems are very different, with a varied feature set designed for different types of buyers.
First, let’s just break down the features:
EM vs. MA
From the feature list comparison, you can see that while there is functional parity in some areas, marketing automation is far more sophisticated. While email marketing systems are designed to track interactions related to email campaigns, marketing automation systems track the chain of interactions across multiple channels and can then make intelligent decisions based on the buyer’s behaviors.
Once you understand the features of each system, you have to reflect on your company and it’s needs to see what will work best for you. I suggest examining the three C’s: cost, complexity and content.