Less than half of B2B organizations are using their small, often one-person content marketing resource to grow an audience of subscribers and only 52 per cent are using it to drive attendance at the in-person events that tend to drive revenue, according to the most recent research from the Content Marketing Institute. The Cleveland-based organization […]
Author: Shane Schick
Chief communications officers vs. ‘the dinosaurs’
This article originally appeared in our newsletter, the B2B Briefing, which comes out every two weeks and focuses on a specific monthly theme. Sign up to get more of this kind of content before anyone else. A lot of PR people I know tend to have impeccable manners and can deal diplomatically with the most […]
Terminus expands Bombora partnership and boosts ABM targeting and reporting
Terminus has updated its account-based marketing platform with artificial intelligence features and capabilities it said would allow B2B firms to improve customer targeting and reporting. The Atlanta-based firm this week paired its latest release with an expanded partnership with Bombora, whose intent data can now be tied to Terminus’ B2B Account Graph database and a […]
SAS offers advisory services to assist marketers and others to overcome analytics challenges
SAS Inc. is offering to help marketers and other lines of business frustrated by the results of analytics projects with a set of advisory services and a “health check” to optimize applications before they’re deployed. Although Cary, N.C.-based SAS already offers a product called SAS Model Manager to help brands streamline the way analytics tools […]
Nintex research shows Gen Z have influenced purchases in 80% of businesses
Seventy-two per cent of managers believe their Gen Z employees are more tech-savvy than they are, which may explain why the vast majority of them are weighing on the kind of buying decisions that preoccupy those in B2B sales and marketing, a recent study from Nintex suggests. In its report, The Gen Z Effect On […]
Oracle TV spot shows blind and visually impaired people taking roles in customer service, finance and more
Oracle is challenging the old axiom that seeing is believing with a TV commercial that showcases how its cloud technology is allowing blind and visually impaired people to take on jobs that once required considerable assistance from others. The 30-second spot showcases Industries for the Blind and Visually Impaired (IBVI), a West Allis, Wisc.-based organization that […]
Editor’s Note: The B2B chief communications officer’s challenges are like no one else’s
When my colleagues in journalism decided to switch careers and take on PR jobs, we used to refer to it as “going over to the Dark Side.” Which means, by implication, that the chief communications officer for a brand represented Darth Vader. I should probably be more careful about making such jokes, given what I’ve […]
Demandbase to pair B2B marketers with agencies and other ABM expert partners
Demandbase on Thursday is extending what it calls its ABM Ecosystem with a channel program that aims to match B2B brands with agencies, consultancies, systems integrators and other service providers that can help them achieve their account-based marketing goals. Ogilvy, gyro, Quarry and Edelman will be among the first partners in the “premier” tier of […]
ServiceNow CIO argues against use of CRM as a tool to support customer needs
Customer relationship management applications are failing to help enterprises deliver the kinds of experiences customers want and need, the chief information officer of ServiceNow told a local Canadian user conference on Tuesday. In a keynote presentation that focused on ServiceNow’s recently-introduced mobile app and the “New York” release of its flagship suite, Chris Bedi said […]
Engagio Orchestrate will move ABM marketers from sales ‘baton pass’ to ‘soccer play,’ CEO says
Engagio has launched a tool called Engagio Orchestrate which its CEO said will allow B2B sales and marketing teams to work better together on the activities that win more deals in targeted accounts. The San Mateo, Calif.-based firm announced Engagio Orchestrate last week, describing it as a platform that will combine traditional lead-based demand generation […]
BoxWorks 2019 provides a digital transformation progress check from execs and enterprises
When your company is 97 years old and grows in part through mergers and acquisitions, you’re going to have a variety of technology products running the business — or as Bob Burkhart puts it, “We have just about one of every solution and several of many.” As the mobile and collaboration infrastructure leader at Nationwide […]
Chief product officers from Box, Zoom, Slack and PagerDuty share their ‘best of breed’ best practices
There are some people who don’t really understand the term “best of breed,” but in the case of one customer, all it took was a botched video call for Jeetu Patel to educate them. The chief product officer at Box recalled the incident during a panel discussion with his peers ahead of BoxWorks, the company’s […]
AI could replace B2B marketing jobs within three years, based on Episerver research
The work of B2B marketing team members will be replaced, at least in part, by artificial intelligence tools within the next three years as enterprises focus on things like personalized experiences for their customers, according to a research study from Episerver. In the Nashua, N.H.-based firm’s B2B Digital Experiences Report 2019: How Companies Are Meeting Rising […]
BrightTalk offers machine learning to help B2B marketers pick the most relevant topics to present
BrightTalk on Monday said it would help B2B marketers develop more relevant webinars to host on its platform by opening up a tool that uses machine learning to identify the most popular topics among its more than eight million professional users. The San Francisco-based firm has already been arming B2B marketers with Intent Leads, which […]
Elastic Path, Apptus survey B2B buyers to make the case for improved commerce experiences
B2B vendors can see the size of a deal shrink by 20 per cent if buyers aren’t satisfied with their experience, and nearly half are losing customers due to poor commerce capabilities, according to studies from Apptus and Elastic Path. In an effort to demonstrate the value of automated processes and more streamlined ways to […]
What tech pros will spend on IT in 2020 — and where they’re struggling
Eighty-eight per cent of businesses say their technology budgets will stay the same or grow over the next year according to new research from Spiceworks, but but tech buyers at its SpiceWorld conference said they are juggling purchase decisions along with difficult communications issues with senior leadership and a quest to improve their personal brand. […]
Spiceworks gives tech vendors AI-based account intelligence and a self-serve dashboard
Spiceworks used its 2019 SpiceWorld event to discuss its recent acquisition by Ziff-Davis B2B and introduce a console along with artificial intelligence tools it said would help its tech vendor customers create more relevant and engaging marketing campaigns to IT decision makers who are ready to make purchases. Austin-based SpiceWorld is nominally an event for the […]
A B2B industry association takes only 15 seconds of TV time to show the value of its certification
One of the hardest challenges for any industry association is convincing non-members (and even members) to pursue its professional certification program. This often involves a lot of e-mail campaigns, web site landing pages, in-person events and more. The Institute of Management Accountants, on the other hand, managed to make a convincing case in only a […]
IBM’s CHRO demonstrates how to position yourself as the voice of HR transformation
This article originally appeared in our bi-weekly newsletter, the B2B Briefing. Sign up using the fields to the right of this page to get this kind of content before anyone else. It’s not like IBM has a shortage of experts to talk about technology and its impact on the workforce, so the choice of Diane […]
Yesler research reveals 77% of tech buyers act as private advocates of their favorite vendors
B2B firms should focusing on driving advocacy via their existing customers earlier in the marketing process, according to research from Yesler that shows 77 per cent of tech buyers are privately recommending vendors to their peers. The Seattle-based marketing firm released the results of its survey of more than 400 CIOs and similar decision-makers as […]