The answer is Technology Content Marketing.
The internet has changed the way we buy everything whether it’s for business or personal use, and we no longer wait for sales people to send us information. Instead, we now use Google and other search engines to research what we’re thinking about and find out how other people have satisfied their needs.
A personal example of this is I recently realised I trust Tripadvisor, when it comes to making decisions on where to stay when on holiday or where to eat out, over and above any well-known travel company. If you haven’t heard of Tripadvisor it’s a site that allows anyone to share their own personal experiences on places they’ve visited around the world. I read these reviews from good experiences to not so good experiences and make an informed decision based on what feels right for me based on what I want from my trip.
Why choose e-learning?
E-learning is catching on. If done right, it can produce great results for users and at the same time lower costs. You can reach students across the world with little or no geographical barriers. You are not restricted to training rooms or classrooms, and you can benefit from instant sharing of documents, audio-visual assets and automated testing.
How can I generate more sales?
This is a question we live and breathe in business on a daily basis – an hourly basis, even!
What we also need to ask is: How can I generate more leads?
Leads are the stuff sales are made of and without a constant and consistent stream of leads we do not have a constant and consistent stream of sales.
Each time we begin the process of change with a new software, IT services or MSP client we are faced with the same dilemma: which prospect customers to target and which messages to offer them.
The change process we are starting with them is one of moving their lead generation online.
In most cases our new clients have had ever-diminishing returns from traditional lead generation methods such as direct mail, trade shows, cold calling and even email blasts.
They have usually seen what some of our other technology clients are achieving online (thousands of new visitors every month and a 4% conversion rate to lead) and want to change how they do their marketing to get the same results. (more…)
In today’s multi channel world to reach increasingly connected prospects, a company needs to provide a user journey across channels and platforms that are part of their target audience’s world.
Indeed, marketers are increasingly aware of the need to connect with so-called “consumers of information” through the savvy use of data and targeted engagement strategies. But are they doing it effectively?
The Digiday/Acxiom State of the Industry study found that while most marketers want to understand their customers and engage with them with bespoke experiences “in this era of the empowered consumer”, the majority haven’t yet found the optimal way of tapping into user data effectively.
B2B marketers believe the key to effective content lies in powerful storytelling. This is one of the major takeaways from B2B Content Marketing Trends 2012 – an industry survey conducted within the B2B Technology Marketing Community on LinkedIn.
81% of the respondents identified compelling storytelling as the most effective content tactic, followed by originality (52%), customized content (52%) and professional writing (39%). In terms of the content formats used, case studies, white papers and e-books lead the way, with infographics picking up speed as the fastest growing content type. (more…)
There is some scepticism in the B2B world about the use of video for content marketing. We have all seen the benefits of video content for B2C companies but does and can video actually work for B2B, too?
Well, we are not going to lie – adding video to your content marketing arsenal is no plain sailing but with a pinch of insight, creativity and inspiration, and, of course, spot-on implementation, it can turn it into your most valuable marketing tool.
If your business offers software technology solutions, it is highly likely that, focused on promoting the product features, your website takes a user directly to a page where they can download a demo or a trial of your product, thus putting an untimely end to the web user journey for 95% of your users. If this situation was to be translated into a dating dialogue, it would be something like this:
- Hi, we have never met before.
- But I would like you to demo my product.
Does this sound familiar? If so, then your online offering must suffer from what we call “premature demonstration disorder”, a condition more common among software technology companies than you may think. (more…)
There is some evidence suggesting that marketing automation is the next target market for enterprise software vendors. Here are a few recent signs that something is afoot:
• Dell’s announcement in June that it has added Pardot marketing automation to its list of Dell Cloud Business Software applications.
• Intuit’s acquisition in May of local marketing vendor Demandforce.
• FICO’s announcement in May of its purchase of Entiera, one of the few remaining enterprise class marketing automation products for the B2C market.
• Salesforce’s and Google’s investment of $32m last year into HubSpot.
• IBM’s acquisition of Coremetrics in 2010, as well as Unica and Netezza.
• Oracle’s acquisition of Market2Lead in 2010.
