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What can B2B vendors, especially software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendors, learn from the way people buy bed sheets online? People in the market for bed sheets can go online and get thousands of search results for bed sheets from the major names in e-commerce. Large online retailers get strong search results in part because they replicate their product pages thousands of times, if not more, so they look familiar to search engines. Conversely, there are thousands of SaaS vendors in the market, but they each create their own product pages and sell their applications differently. This can work against their search engine optimization (SEO) because the crawlers haven’t seen these pages thousands of times. In this episode of B2B Nation, we talk to Geoff Atkinson, the founder and CEO of Huckabuy, which develops software to help vendors make their sites easier for search engines to read. Geoff got his start in B2C marketing at Overstock.com. And what he’s seen four years into his B2B experience is that many of the tactics and strategies from B2C are helping him grow his B2B SaaS company. Think about it: when software buyers start their buying process with a search engine query, complete most -- if not all -- of the buying journey online, and do their best to avoid phone calls, they’re acting quite a bit like a B2C shopper who is buying bed sheets. In this episode we discuss: - The convergence of B2B and B2C marketing - Why too many B2B SaaS firms start their SEO initiatives too late - SEO funnels - Google’s Page Experience Update and more.

It seems like we hear most about the manufacturing sector when we’re being told about the trouble it’s in. Politicians bemoan the loss of manufacturing jobs. Local economies suffer when manufacturers close their doors or re-locate their plants. Manufacturing in the US is not without challenges. The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) will tell you, however, that manufacturing output in the US has risen pretty consistently over the past decade. If you work in B2B marketing, or aspire to work in B2B marketing, there are some interesting things happening in the manufacturing sector that are worthy of your attention. First, digital transformation is taking hold in manufacturing, and it’s upending decades-old business models. In the past, manufacturers often sold through distributors. That meant brand awareness and end-user customer experience were not priorities for many manufacturers. But as manufacturers increasingly turn to the Internet to sell direct to customers, all of that is changing. In addition to transformation, there’s the global pandemic, which as it has in other sectors, is acting as an accelerant for change. One example: manufacturers that make personal protective equipment (PPE) needed to adapt from selling gloves and goggles to a select few businesses or distributors, to promoting products to a vastly expanded market when the pandemic arrived. Andrew Walker is the CEO of Shift7 Digital, a digital agency that specializes in helping manufacturers navigate digital transformation. Andrew has a front-row seat as digital marketing changes the manufacturing sector. He joins us to talk about it in this episode of B2B Nation.

Inbound marketing is one of the most popular revenue-generating strategies for B2B firms. When done well, inbound marketing turns your website visitors into prospects, and hopefully into customers. If you want to reap the rewards of inbound marketing, you need to be knowledgeable about the tactics that help drive people to your site, including SEO, social media and email marketing. Once you start attracting visitors, you need to keep them and convert them with your skills around quality content, forms, lead nurture cadences and tools that help you identify, measure and communicate with your prospects. Mastering inbound marketing requires most every tool in your marketing toolbox. In this episode of B2B Nation, we dive into inbound marketing with Andrea Moxham, founder of Horseshoe & Co. Andrea is an inbound marketing expert who specializes in helping clients use HubSpot to grow their revenue and turn their site visitors into customers. Among the topics we cover in this episode are content, forms, the gating of assets, social media, website experience, chatbots and more.

Media buying is almost as old as marketing itself and it’s undergone similar changes to the larger marketing landscape in recent years. There is, of course, the infusion of data into media buying. We collect it and analyze it in hopes that it will help us find our very niche audiences, which often consist of a very specific person who is part of a group of people deciding whether to make an investment. Other changes impacting media buying include media consumption itself, which has changed significantly in the past 10 to 20 years. Or has it? Because newsletters and podcasts -- neither of which is new -- are the current darlings of online media. And there’s the year 2020, which was defined by changes that may or may not stick now that we’re in a new year. We recorded this episode of B2B Nation at DemandFest, a half-day virtual event hosted by TechnologyAdvice. To discuss the state of media buying, we’re joined by Jason Gladu, president of Avani Media, a B2B media buying and demand gen agency, and by TechnologyAdvice CEO Rob Bellenfant, who takes some questions for Jason from the audience during the event.

It’s hard to grow your business without marketing. Businesses that have good products and services are great. And businesses with good products and services and a strong marketing strategy are even better. But marketing isn’t the only way to grow your business. Your business -- and even your marketing organization itself -- have hidden growth potential. If you take a look at your people, your processes, and your organizational structure, you might find it. If you’re spending most of your time planning email blasts and designing landing pages, then you might miss it. Can you do things more efficiently? Are you using out-dated processes that don’t meet your needs or goals? Is your organization full of ad-hoc processes that haven’t kept up with your tech stack? These are among the questions to ask as you look to become more efficient and more aligned. Joining us for this episode is Karen Kimsey-Sward, who has spent her career helping B2B leaders grow their businesses by better managing their people, their processes, and their profits. Among the topics covered in this episode: - What are the signs your organization isn’t reaching its true growth potential? - How do you evaluate and identify areas for process improvement? - What should businesses be thinking about as we head into 2021?

When a lot of marketers think about search engine optimization (SEO), they think about keywords, and maybe header tags, and backlinks. But SEO is evolving so it can keep up with developments at Google. To talk SEO today means talking about intent, clusters, reputation, and expertise. Harry Sanders leads an award-winning SEO agency in Australia, started an online learning resource for people who want to learn more about SEO, and has even done contractual work for Google, all by the age of 23. Harry and his agency, StudioHawk, are the developers of the DIRTy SEO approach to search engine optimization, which focuses on Delivery, Infrastructure, Reputation and Trust as the foundational elements of a modern SEO strategy. Among the topics we cover in this episode: What are the best resources available to learn about SEO? What is the concept of DIRTy SEO? What does Harry really think about Google? Learn more about Harry’s agency at studiohawk.com.au. Learn more about SEO training from HawkAcademy at hawkacademy.co.

There are more roles in marketing, open to more skillsets, and more areas of interest than ever before. The advent of marketing technology (martech), the rise of marketing operations (marketing ops), and the infusion of data and analytics into all things marketing are creating opportunities for people with talents who might not have found a home in marketing a decade ago. Where will your career in marketing take you next? In this episode of B2B Nation, we’re joined by Kate Carnevale of IBM, who shares her career journey, from journalism school, to political communications, to a marketing agency, to a small healthcare company, to managing global campaigns for one of the world’s most-recognized brands. Among the topics we discuss: --How does working for a large enterprise differ from a small business in addition to the budgets and resources? -- How does the marketing itself change when you go to work for a global enterprise? -- Can you still find opportunities to be entrepreneurial or “scrappy” in a large organization?

If your small business lacks the expertise to understand, master, monitor, and optimize campaigns across these tactics, you might turn to someone like John Mann. John is a consultant who specializes in helping small businesses and entrepreneurs find and execute online marketing strategies that grow their business. In this episode of B2B Nation, we talk to John about how he helps small business owners make sense of all the online marketing options available to them, the misconceptions his clients often have about digital marketing, his favorite tools, and what the future holds. You can learn more about John Mann here: http://www.nashvilleseoconsultants.com/

It takes a lot of time and energy to build a valuable brand. Your brand is more than a logo or a tagline. A good brand creates emotions and feelings, and it helps you define the moments and create the connections that lead to satisfied customers. Think about everything that goes into your brand: Your products and services, your company culture, your voice and your messages. And then look at how quickly all of that was disrupted in a few weeks in 2020. Suddenly your brand was dealing with a global pandemic and issues of racial injustice. You probably didn’t see that coming. Today, social media is the place where brands go to engage with customers, develop connections, and start conversations. Social media is also the place where B2B marketers can establish their own brand and share the knowledge they’ve accumulated in the field. In this episode of B2B Nation, we talk to Chantelle Marcelle, a marketing consultant with more than a decade of experience in marketing, branding, public relations, and communications, about what it takes to build your personal and corporate brand on social media. You can learn more from Chantelle at http://www.chantellemarcelle.com/.

Change is hardly a new concept to B2B marketers. You’re dealing with an influx of technology and data. You likely have responsibilities for revenue growth few marketers had a decade ago. The year 2020, of course, is delivering even more change, from remote working to a steep economic downturn that most people weren’t expecting. With all of this change around us, we started asking a few questions: --Why is it some people seem better wired to weather change than others? --Why do some people seem better equipped to effect change in their organization? --Are change agents born or developed? --Is there a connection between the way a prospect or client handles change and the types of messages that resonate with them? For answers to these questions and more, we spoke to change management expert Rob Bogue. As it turns out, an understanding of change management can help B2B marketers in a number of ways: --Change management helps B2B marketing leaders more quickly make changes their teams support --Change management helps team members understand how they can effect change --And understanding the science of change is critical to understanding your clients and prospects, who are looking to create change by adopting new products and services. Podcast Guest After two decades of getting frustrated that the technology solutions he was building weren’t always changing the way organizations communicated, collaborated, and worked, Rob Bogue started studying the successes and failures of his customers. He started reading about psychology, neurology, marketing, history, management, sales, leadership, innovation, engagement, and dozens of other topics. He realized that technology projects are almost always thinly veiled change projects, and without the discipline to introduce change management practices into the process, clients wouldn’t succeed. He now offers an online course called Confident Change Management, which is designed to help people understand the tricks, tips, tools, and techniques they need to successfully navigate change.

Sales and marketing organizations are both tasked with adding new clients and growing revenue, but despite these shared goals, their strategies are often out of alignment (at best) or completely at odds with one another (at worst). Research on the topic says that B2B firms that tightly align their marketing and sales teams are better at growing revenue, shortening the sales cycle, and increasing conversion rates. But sales and marketing often operate in different silos and report into different parts of the leadership team, making alignment a challenge that continues to work against their common goals. In this episode of the B2B Nation podcast, we look at the issue of sales and marketing alignment through the eyes of a veteran B2B sales leader. Bill Caskey has been training B2B sales teams for more than 30 years and hosts a pair of podcasts of his own on B2B selling. Our conversation covers: --The continuing disconnect between sales and marketing that haunts many B2B organizations --Account-based marketing (ABM), which aims to align sales and marketing efforts --A look to the future of B2B marketing and sales. Podcast Guest Bill Caskey has been training B2B sales teams for nearly 30 years. He works with sales and organizations to ensure their sales team is communicating the highest possible value to clients and prospects. He is the host of two podcasts, The Advanced Selling podcast and The Bill Caskey podcast. You can learn more at www.BillCaskey.com.

What is it that makes a B2B buyer receptive to your marketing? Is it who they are? Is it the situation they’re in? Or have they reached the point where the status quo -- the legacy software, the time-consuming manual process, the spreadsheets that connect data from various sources -- is simply no longer tenable? In this episode of B2B Nation, we talk to Tim Riesterer, Chief Strategy Officer at sales training firm Corporate Visions, about the science behind decision making. According to Tim, when you measure the effectiveness of marketing tools like personas against neuroscience and behavioral economics, you find personas might actually do more harm than good if you’re trying to identify your buyers. We also discuss another common mis-step: using the same messaging for new prospects and existing customers. Podcast Guests Tim Riesterer is Chief Strategy and Research Officer of marketing and sales consulting and training firm Corporate Visions. He is responsible for leading the strategic direction of the company in thought leadership, positioning and product development. He also leads the company's consulting team globally, including staff and certified contractors. Aimee Dunn is the Director of Sales Enablement at TechnologyAdvice. Prior to this role, she led the Customer Success team at QuinStreet B2B, which was acquired by TechnologyAdvice in early 2020.

For years, the IT channel consisted of value-added resellers and systems integrators that racked servers, connected brand offices, and made sure everyone had a working PC. As the industry moves to the cloud, the channel must follow. Many channel businesses are re-making themselves as manager service providers (MSPs), but the service provider business is a far cry from the days of old. In this episode, we talk to Howard Cohen, a 35-year veteran of the IT channel, about where channel businesses can get started with their marketing efforts, how they can differentiate in a crowded market, and how to identify their areas of specialization.

Gamification Talk Radio interview with Zach Jones. VP of Sales for TechnologyAdvice.

Scott Brinker: The Heart of Marketing Hasn't Changed by TechnologyAdvice

Kristen Wendel at Revenue Summit 2017 by TechnologyAdvice

Lincoln Murphy at Revenue Summit 2017 by TechnologyAdvice

Rob Jeppsen at Revenue Summit 2017 by TechnologyAdvice

Sean Ford: Improving and Using Buyer Personas by TechnologyAdvice

Bastiaan Janmaat At Revenue Summit 2017 by TechnologyAdvice