Ruthless B-to-B Marketing
By Ruth P. Stevens
About Ruth
Ruth P. Stevens consults on customer acquisition and retention, and teaches marketing at companies and business schools around the world. She is past chair of the DMA Business-to-Business Council, and past president of the Direct Marketing Club of New York. Ruth was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in Business Marketing by Crain's BtoB magazine, and one of 20 Women to Watch by the Sales Lead Management Association. She is the author of Maximizing Lead Generation: The Complete Guide for B2B Marketers, and Trade Show and Event Marketing. Ruth serves as a director of Edmund Optics, Inc. She has held senior marketing positions at Time Warner, Ziff-Davis, and IBM and holds an MBA from Columbia University.
Ruth is a guest blogger at Biznology, the digital marketing blog. Email Ruth at ruth@ruthstevens.com, follow her on Twitter at @RuthPStevens, or visit her website, www.ruthstevens.com.
Think Mobility
Ask Yourself These 3 Questions Before Moving Forward With Any Mobile Solution
May 20, 2013I often get super excited when I see other businesses doing cool and innovative things in mobile. You read an...
Marketing Sustainably
Direct Mail Benchmarks From DMA
May 20, 2013In my years following the direct marketing field, one of the resources I've most appreciated is the Direct Marketing Association's...
The Power Punch
Hello, Complaint Department? My Friends Are Listening
May 17, 2013If it costs five times more to acquire a new customer than to keep one, why do brands continue to...
The Brand Matters Blog
The A-Z List of Stop That! Behaviors
May 16, 2013In the April issue of Target Marketing, I wrote about 26 verbs that sometimes get in our way when we're building brands...
Yblog
Wearable Mobile Devices Are the New Black
May 15, 2013This year's hot trend in fashion is computers. Whether at SXSW or in the tech and media hubs on the...
The Integrated Email
What Is the Best Day to Send Emails?
May 13, 2013Somewhere, in the world just on the other side of the rainbow, there is a magical day for sending emails....
Making Social Sell
Convince Prospects You Can Change Their Success Rates
May 10, 2013Is generating leads with LinkedIn proving frustrating and difficult? Probably because you're failing at tempting prospects to click more deeply...
Online Video Marketing Deep Dive
Top 10 Ways to Improve YouTube Video Search Ranking
May 8, 2013YouTube recently announced reaching a new milestone of 1 billion unique monthly visitors, or 15 percent of the planet. Those...
Triple Venti Dolce Data...
The Data Czar and His Ministers
May 1, 2013I live in a relatively small, rural town of 50,000 residents spread over 61 square miles. My specific neighborhood still...
Muscle Marketing
List-building 2.0: 7 Tips for Using ‘Power’ Polls For Prospecting
Apr 8, 2013Most people know Web 2.0 is simply the evolution of the Internet into an environment of interactivity, reader participation and...
Who's Your Data?
Instagram: Does It Matter That It Will Make Money on Your Pics?
Dec 19, 2012Instagram announced the company will soon begin using your content to sell targeted advertising products to the highest bidder. Does...
The Whole Magilla
What Marketers Can Learn From Maine's Political Email Idiocy
Feb 24, 2012It finally happened. Politicians' idiotic email practices had a measurable negative effect. "Maine Republican Party chairman Charlie Webster has admitted...
Denny Hatch's Blog
The Internet Can Make You a Chump—Forever!
Sep 25, 2010Trouble is, the Internet is rife with misinformation and if you get caught advertently or inadvertently propagating this nonsense in...
SEO & Content Marketing Revue
5 Tips for Top Positioning (And Converting) Page Titles
Aug 11, 2010Wondering about a SEO content strategy that offers the biggest impact in the shortest time? Try tweaking your page titles....
B-to-B Marketing Mythbusting, Redux
With a tip of the hat to Bob Bly, whose June article in Target Marketing magazine dispelled seven B-to-B marketing myths, I'd like to tackle some mythbusting of my own. Myth No. 1: Lead generation is the top job of B-to-B marketers. There is overwhelming evidence that B-to-B marketers consider lead generation their most important contribution. So why, you may rightly wonder, am I calling this a myth?
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B-to-B: Where Social Media Meets Direct Marketing
Business marketers have embraced social media with enthusiasm. One of the reasons social media is working so well in B-to-B, in my opinion, is that business marketers tend to wear their direct marketing hats when they strategize and plan how to apply social media to their marketing objectives. So they get a lot of measurable value from social media, and they pull it into their programs as a full-fledged member of the integrated marketing mix. In B-to-B, social media and direct marketing...
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The Thorny Question of Marketing Attribution: Does It Apply to B-to-B?
Have you noticed how marketers are focusing on attribution these days? "Which media channel is really driving the sale?" they ask. "What touch sequence is most productive?" "Where should we assign credit?" There is much confusion and gnashing of teeth on this subject. But I say in B-to-B these are the junior questions, and just building blocks to the bigger issues.
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Prospecting to IT Buyers: How Nine Data Vendors Stack Up
Buyers of information technology (IT) are one of the most valued audiences targeted by business marketers. Globally, these professionals spend $3.6 trillion on hardware, software and technology services. My colleague Bernice Grossman and I recently investigated the availability of prospecting data available to tech marketers for reaching this desirable group, and we found some surprises.
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How Performance Marketing Accelerates B-to-B Prospecting
Every time you turn around, a new "performance marketing" opportunity turns up for B-to-B marketers. What a treasure trove! And on the face of it, a real boon, because you only pay when your prospect takes the action you're looking for—the click, the download, the purchase, whatever. But there are some potholes to consider. Let's look at how marketers get value out of this approach to finding new customers.
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