By Alexandra Reid
Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs recently released a report on the state of B2B content marketing in North America that declared, “B2B marketers are spending more, using more tactics, and distributing their content on more social networks than they have in years past,” but that they are also “more uncertain whether they are using various content marketing tactics effectively.”
The 2013 B2B content marketing benchmarks, budgets and trends survey was emailed to a sample of B2B marketers from among MarketingProfs and Content Marketing Institute members and subscribers. A total of 1,416 B2B marketers responded from North American companies in August this year, representing a full range of industries, functional areas, and company sizes. The majority of respondents were from advertising and marketing companies that have fewer than 10 employees.
The survey found that 91 percent of B2B marketers use content marketing, but most are challenged with producing enough content. This is different from previous years when the top challenge was producing engaging content.
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By Bob Bailly
Over a year ago I wrote a blog entitled Election emotion, where I looked at an article from Margaret Wente in the Globe and Mail. In it, she examined how decisions are made during elections. I’ve always been intrigued by electioneering, and must admit in my career to have managed five different communications campaigns for winning mayoral, Liberal and Conservative candidates in Alberta. As a “hired gun,” I’ve always looked at the challenge the same as I did for all my clients; it’s all about how customers — in this case the voting public — make decisions.
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By Alexandra Reid
As usual, we covered a lot of ground on our blog last month.
We explored why startups should focus on problems, not platforms, and why they shouldn’t outsource their core competencies. Francis explained why marketing involves much more than just creating a message and delivering that message with the tools of advertising and public relations. Mitch Joel supported that argument by stating that marketing is everything. Leo shared lots of great media relations advice, teaching us how to pitch to busy journalists without becoming a nuisance. Of course, these just scratch the surface of the topics we covered.
In case you missed any, here is a handy roundup of our posts last month, ranked by the enthusiasm of our readers:
October 16: Meet ..duo by Alexandra Reid
October 11: Montreal’s Notman House enters final funding stage by Francis Moran
October 10: Mitch Joel on why marketing is everything by Alexandra Reid
October 15: Social media gaffes: They can happen to anyone by Megan Totka
October 22: The plight of product managing myself by Peter Hanschke
October 24: ‘Put away the cozy image of the little old lady knitting a sweater for the grandkids’ by Alexandra Reid
October 9: Apple versus Samsung – Every patent owner’s dream by David French
October 2: Why I started learning code: a marketer’s perspective by Alexandra Reid
October 4: Marketing is about more than the colour of your new website by Francis Moran
October 23: Pitching to busy media figures in various media environments by Leo Valiquette
October 17: The thin line between being persistent and being a nuisance by Leo Valiquette
October 30: Make sure you’re barking up the right tree by Leo Valiquette
October 18: Canadian angel investors to gather in Halifax next week by Francis Moran
October 31: Pitch perfect: Startups should focus on problems, not platforms by Alexandra Reid
October 25: Communications planning: The principles by Caroline Kealey
October 3: Startups: Do not outsource your core competency by Leo Valiquette
October 29: The allure of building enterprise products by Jesse Rodgers
Image: 10Wallpaper.com
By Francis Moran
There’s been a growing amount of attention paid recently to the surge in interest by startups in working on enterprise-grade products and services rather than the quick-to-market consumer and web applications that for so long seemed to dominate pitch contests, accelerator program cohorts and media attention.
“Enterprise is getting sexy,” Kevin Rose of Google Ventures said recently. Bernard Lunn has done a 180 on his 10-year-old requiem for enterprise software, saying it didn’t die, it just went into a coma from which it is now recovering. Enterprises, Lunn said, “cannot simply empower every employee with consumer web type tools and hope they all pull together to grow the profits.” Our own Jesse Rodgers wrote earlier this week about the allure of building enterprise products, saying that opportunities in the enterprise are being driven by the BYOD movement that is requiring IT departments to deliver better tools, a higher expectation of a better user experience than that delivered by stodgy old enterprise software, and an easing of the once-onerous burden associated with the enterprise sale.
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This is the ninth article in a continuing monthly series chronicling the growth path of Screach, a startup based in Newcastle upon Tyne in England’s North East. Screach is an interactive digital media platform that allows users to create real-time, two-way interactive experiences between a smart device (through the Screach app) and any content, on any screen or just within the mobile device itself. We invite your feedback.
By Alexandra Reid
Not everyone understands a platform. But everyone understands a problem.
That’s a hard lesson a lot of startup teams fail to grasp.
You’ve seen this pitch before — The technical cofounder goes on at length about the ins and outs of the wonderful new technology his team is bringing to the world. He explains what it is, what it does, and shows you all of its cool features. But when you look to your left and right, you see your fellow audience members’ eyes glazing over, and before you know it your mind begins wandering to dinner plans.
He was enthusiastic in his pitch, and it’s awesome technology, yet he failed to reach you.
Why?
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Make sure you’re barking up the right tree
October 30, 2012 by Leo Valiquette
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about walking the fine line between being persistent and becoming a nuisance when it comes to pitching a story to the media, but there’s another consideration that goes into that – making certain that you are barking up […]
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The allure of building enterprise products
October 29, 2012 by Jesse Rodgers
There is no doubt that enterprise software is currently in fashion […]
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Great articles roundup: Startup customers, hypercycle planning, 2013 B2B content marketing report, marketing research, thought leadership, and innovation
October 26, 2012 by Alexandra Reid
As a regular feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of some of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are StartupCFO, Harvard Business Review, Content Marketing Institute, MarketingSherpa, Forbes, and Fast Company […]
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Communications planning: the principles
October 25, 2012 by Caroline Kealey
Here are my all-time top five principles for strategic communications planning […]
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‘Put away the cozy image of the little old lady knitting a sweater for the grandkids’
October 24, 2012 by Alexandra Reid
This is a story about a 70-year-old woman who wants nothing to do with social media but is doing it anyways, inspired by an article I read on ReadWriteWeb last week, “Why boomers won’t release their grip on technology […]
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Pitching to busy media figures in various media environments
October 23, 2012 by Leo Valiquette
Public relations, or, to be more exact, media relations for the purpose of getting a story told through some manner of media outlet, is a process that takes its cue from a basic tenet of marketing – understand who your potential customers are […]
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The plight of product managing myself
October 22, 2012 by Peter Hanschke
For many years now I’ve been writing blogs about all things product management. I’m not sure that there is a subject I haven’t talked about. I found that the majority of topics came from my interactions with software companies — large, small, new — as well as […]
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Great articles roundup: Steve Blank, Canadian startups, crowd funding, failure, biases, and advertising
October 19, 2012 by Alexandra Reid
As a regular feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of some of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are Forbes, Financial Post, iNova Capital, Inc., TechCrunch, MediaPost and Canadian Business […]
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