Social Media – Driving Competitive Advantage for B2B Marketers

eMarketing Strategy’s Ruth Stevens, one of the nation’s foremost practitioners of B2B marketing, posted the above graphic on LinkedIn. Based on our experience speaking with many B2B organizations, these results pass the smell test. My only problem with the graphic is the 45 percent who claim they are “getting there.” This group could range from companies […]

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Eyeball Share Leads to Wallet Share

One of my favorite bloggers is Paul Castain, who produces excellent content for the Sales Playbook website.  Paul’s column this week, “A Deceptive Post About Cold Calling,” discussed important activities that can either replace or enhance cold calling. Here are a few of the statistics Castain points out: 67% of the buyer’s journey is now […]

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Social Media Marketing: What Not to Do

I’ve written a lot about the subject of what you need to do to be successful in social media and pull marketing.  The other side of this coin is a list of things that are harmful or counterproductive – in other words, stuff you should refrain from doing. Don’t become a nuisance.  Communicating with people […]

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Five Ways You Can Get Big Value from LinkedIn

I talk about social media quite a bit in my blog posts, articles and conference presentations.  Social media is a key component of a viable pull marketing mix, and should be part of most companies’ go-to-market strategy. But like everything else in life, there is always a first among equals.  And the first and most […]

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Pull Marketing vs. Push Marketing – The Shifting Battleground

Even though I make my living as a marketer, I get as bothered as any other consumer by the constant intrusiveness of unwanted promotions. The abundance of unsolicited marketing pitches from TV, radio, Internet ads and other media exasperates me daily. Yet, as hard as we try to get away from it (using tools like […]

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B2B Pull Marketing Takes the Guesswork Out of Timing

One of my favorite bloggers, Paul Castain, posted an excellent article titled The Patience/Urgency Conundrum in Sales on his Sales Playbook website. Using the “courtship” metaphor, Paul explains that sales relationships, just like romantic relationships, have a natural timing, and that it can sometimes be counterproductive to disrupt that timing by forcing the issue during […]

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