Posts Categorized: Strategy

Zombie Coffee: LinkedIn & Industrial Sales

How to use social media and caffeine to drum up new business.

Imagine: You find someone you’d like to connect with on LinkedIn. You email them to ask if you can “pick their brain.” A coffee date is set. You’ve just become part of the phenomenon that’s taking over industrial sales: Zombie Coffee. This no-frills networking strategy fueled by a lethal combination of LinkedIn, caffeine, and brain… Read more »

How Big Should Your B2B Marketing Budget Be?

The amount really depends on you, but here's what others are doing.

A big question that comes up in any discussion about marketing planning is, “How much should I be spending on marketing?” Of course, there’s the internal factor of how much your awesome marketing plan will cost to implement, but more often than not this question is about industry standards. In the industrial sector, there isn’t… Read more »

8 Things You Need in Your Marketing Plan

Everything you need to know to start writing a marketing plan.

You’ve put off creating a marketing plan for years. Now you’re noticing competitors becoming more discoverable online. You’re noticing your peers generating leads via LinkedIn. You’re noticing trade show ROI isn’t what it used to be. It’s time to make a plan. But how do you build one? The following 8 components will get you… Read more »

Turnkey Marketing for Industrial Companies: Yes, It’s Possible

For those who need out-of-the-box digital marketing, a turnkey solution is possible.

Today, almost every industrial company has a website. Many are finding, though, that merely showing up on the web isn’t enough to compete online. They need to supplement it with in-market activation, but they don’t know how to do it. They need a turnkey marketing solution. If a company hasn’t engaged in deliberate digital marketing… Read more »

Tools of the Trade: Email Marketing

With such great ROI, every industrial needs email marketing. Choose your tool.

“What’s important is that you have faith in people . . . and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them.” — Steve Jobs If you work in the industrial sector (and even if you don’t), you know how important it is to equip the right people with the right tools to… Read more »

Profit-Driven Marketing for Industrials

Stop thinking about marketing as an expense. Start using it to drive profits.

Earlier this year, Google began publishing content about profit-driven marketing on its “think with Google” site. For Google, recasting marketing in terms of profit is specifically about changing how marketers think about their search advertising spend. While it’s important to take heed of the world’s leading search engine’s official position on search marketing spending strategy,… Read more »

Tips for Developing Responsive Websites

A few suggestions and tools to help with responsive web development.

Whether you know it or not, you’ve visited a responsive website in the last week while surfing the wonderful World Wide Web. And even if you don’t know what a responsive website is, you’ve probably heard people throwing around the “responsive” buzzword for some time now. If you need to get up to speed, or… Read more »

5 Marketing Automation Mistakes to Avoid

Minding the gap between best intentions and practical applications.

We’ve all seen the stats and heard the grandiose claims. Indeed, marketing automation is much more than a trend or buzzword; it’s a bonafide technology solution and business strategy that will continue to redefine the future of marketing. SiriusDecisions estimates that nearly 50 percent of B2B companies will have purchased and implemented marketing automation by… Read more »