Last updated on February 14th, 2016 at 01:07 pm
Welcome back to B2B News Network’s Hashtag Team report, our weekly roundup of all the B2B news that’s fit to tweet. If it’s trending in B2B, you’ll hear about it here as we bring you the best of the business buzz with the help of Nexalogy, a cutting-edge social analysis platform.
This week, get ready to to dive into B2B marketing and sales, from understanding how marketing plans play a key role in enabling B2B sales to content marketing tips for B2B organizations and even a warning on why B2B content marketing fails.
TRENDING TOPICS
B2B Marketing
5 Reasons Why #Marketing Plays A Critical Role In Enabling #B2B Sales https://t.co/nRxfidFZun pic.twitter.com/G5aOUWrD0b
— Trapit (@trapit) February 10, 2016
How and why do marketing plans play a critical role in enabling B2B sales? In this insightful post on Sales for Life, Jamie Shanks identifies five core reasons why having a solid plan will boost your sales success. Sales enablement has evolved to the point where it is involved in the selection, training and education of B2B professionals who:
- recognize that it’s a buyer’s journey, not a sales funnel.
- create insights that spark sales conversations.
- organize and ensure content is “kept simple and stupid.”
- transform sales into a resource.
- evaluate engagement of new leads, and lead influence and attribution.
B2B Content Marketing
Why 80% of #B2B content #marketing failed https://t.co/S2uUp7p91g pic.twitter.com/WtV7QitdOK — Wellbelove (@wellbelove) February 4, 2016
Chris Sheen, head of marketing at SaleCycle, offers this cautionary tale detailing why 80 percent of his company’s B2B content marketing failed. Mainly focused on content production, Sheen’s firm wasn’t paying proper attention to the right metrics.
With the old Bill Gates mantra that “content is king” reigning supreme, Sheen’s B2B content marketing strategy missed an important question: Who cares? All the content in the world doesn’t mean much if it doesn’t resonate with an audience. Content that informs and educates should take precedent over corporate culture-type posts.
Finally, Sheen learned that “it’s important to focus less on the number of blogs we’re posting and more on the impact of those blogs themselves, whether that’s traffic, email sign-ups, product demos, upsell/cross-sell or of course acquiring new customers.”
B2B Sales:
#smallbusiness #news 3 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your B2B Sales Team https://t.co/beNDMvp5dI
— GMM Creative (@gmmcreative) February 9, 2016
Alumnify CEO A.J. Agrawal explores three ways to get the most out of your B2B sales team, the heart of your operation. Revenue maximization demands your sales team function optimally. How to achieve this? Agrawal advises you arm them with the technology they need to get the job done, tackle and solve decision complexity and use data to improve, as data-driven decision making increasingly becomes one of the most important techniques of our time. “The slick-haired sweet talking salesperson is a thing of the past,” Agrawal writes. “You are not trying to talk someone into doing something. A salesperson is simply showing what is already there. They are introducing someone to a product or service that is genuine.”
TOP MEDIA
B2B Infographic
57% of #B2B companies have secured a lead through blogging https://t.co/Vg9W8K0UnG #contentmarketing pic.twitter.com/GVADdj62y1
— Gerry Moran (@GerryMoran) February 4, 2016
This infographic from global social media and content marketing guru Gerry Moran is a blueprint for building the perfect B2B blog post. Did you know that fully 57 percent of B2B companies have secured a lead through blogging? Or that B2B companies that blog only once or twice monthly generate 70 percent more leads than those that don’t blog at all?
Moran lists three key components to building the perfect blog post: Create great content, have a solid blog structure and be passionate about what you write about.
If you missed last week’s edition of Hashtag Team written by Sarah Dawley, head here to check it out. As always, if you have any B2B content we think we should share next week, let us know below or via @b2bnewsnetwork.
