Ever since the marcus evans B2B Summit in Colorado Springs in early November, I have been carrying around the list of all my tweets from the B2B Summit in my blogging notebook. Beyond the 20 strategic planning questions post the tweets prompted, there were a variety of brand experience, customer, and content marketing challenges issued worth sharing as we all think through what is ahead for 2012. The marketing challenges came from B2B Summit speakers:
- Atul Vohra (Solera Holdings, Inc.),
- Author, Mitch Joel
- Michael P. Guillory (Texas Instruments)
- Curt Porritt (Master Control Inc.)
- Content Marketing Institute Founder, Joe Pulizzi
Here are 10 marketing challenges to review where you stand now and where you want to prioritize your efforts for 2012.
Brand Experience
- Great brands put every single employee through brand training. They build an almost religious fervor over the delivering the brand experience flawlessly. (Atul Vohra)
- The brand should be the filter for every decision an organization makes. You have to invest enough time on your brand, because with advances in every other part of the world, branding is the only advantage Western countries still have. (Atul Vohra)
- You have to rethink the purchase experience for your brand in light of Amazon setting the bar with its one-fee, unlimited two-day shipping and no-hassle product return policy. Amazon has made every purchase an impulse buy, with ripple implications you can't ignore. (Mitch Joel)
Customer Targeting
- If you're in B2B, you have to make sure you're paying attention to the fact human beings are at the heart of B2B. A warm body signs the contract. (Atul Vohra)
- Target your messages to the right audience. Wasting your message on people who don't care simply damages your credibility. (Michael P. Guillory)
- In a world with young children growing up without keyboards and mice, you have to re-imagine the entire use experience for the youngest consumers. (Mitch Joel)
Content Marketing
- Re-think every page of your website as if it were your homepage, because since Google is where people are going to find you, that's exactly what every website page effectively is. (Mitch Joel)
- Content marketing can't be an afterthought if it's going to be effective in growing your business. It has to be process-based, include clear next steps on every piece of content, and include metrics throughout. (Curt Porritt)
- Don't satisfy yourself with generalized content for your audiences. The best content marketers are using personas and creating content for each one - or even creating content platforms targeted at each persona. (Joe Pulizzi)
- For each piece of content you create, look for 10 ways to repackage and market it. Start with individual blog posts and grow them into a book. (Joe Pulizzi)
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