Uncertainty for some is opportunity for others. While much is being said about changes in influencer marketing approach and B2C influencers losing work at scale because events are now cancelled and industries like retail, travel and hospitality have been disrupted due to COVID-19, consumer behavior has decidedly shifted towards digital experiences.

While in-person events have been a staple for B2B marketers, we've seen how working with digital influencers on co-created content can be a sound alternative.

How brands approach marketing during a crisis makes the issue of trust even more important. When planned and implemented effectively, B2B influencer marketing programs build trust and confidence for buyers, influencers and the brand.

At the same time B2B marketers are emphasizing purpose and people over profit in their marketing messages, the need to deliver on new business and revenue hasn't gone away. Here are 4 considerations on how B2B influencer programs can be optimized, while still being empathetic and thoughtful to the new normal.

1. Find the opportunity gap.

Any marketing investment during a time of crisis will be under scrutiny. Whether your business has had to pivot or you reacting to changes in buyer behavior, it's essential to find opportunities to provide value in ways that are truly empathetic to customers and that can drive business performance. Many companies are meeting a boost in demand for information by engaging influencers to provide thought leadership, insights and how-to content.

Also, as you plan what kind of influencer program to run, think about what goal represents an opportunity for the best ratio of importance for executives to business and customer impact relative to resources and time frame? What metrics best represents that goal?

2. Build amplification in the creation.

If you are able to secure budget and support for a business influencer campaign or program, make sure you are realizing the full value of the content reach. Structure the influencer content for easy deconstruction to shareable formats including social messages, graphics, animations and repurposed content. Also, work with business influencers who have proven distribution channels and can republish brand content on their own networks and sites. The great content you can co-create with influencers won't be so great if the right audiences are not seeing it.

3. Maximize the content experience.

One of the big trends in B2B influencer marketing has been more interesting content formats. Think outside the box of ebooks and blog posts to visually rich and interactive content including audio, video and even VR/AR. There has been a rush of business influencers livestreaming video on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Brands should think about how they can differentiate the content experience they are creating for their customers and influencers alike. Impressive content inspires influencers to share even more plus it improves customer engagement.

4. Deliver a better influencer experience.

Experience is more important than ever, not just for customers but for influencers as well. Far too often, B2B companies treat influencers as a commodity and only think of what the brand wants. Here's a novel idea: Provide top shelf service to your influencers to help them be more successful concomitant to the success of your influencer program. Find out what the influencers' goals are and build a community around shared values with your influencers. Share promotion messages and goals with influencers and encourage a team approach vs one to one communications. Think more "we" vs. "me".

Rani Mani, Monica Grant and the team at Adobe do a fantastic job of this with the #AdobeInsiders program.

These opportunities to optimize B2B marketing performance are not unique to marketing during a time of crisis. They are universally useful in any environment. But with so many companies and individuals facing uncertainty. it's essential that businesses optimize for trust and what better way than to work with those who already have the trust and attention of customers?

The post Four Ways to Optimize the Marketing Performance of a B2B Influencer Program appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

What do we mean when we talk about a transformation in marketing?

Let me put it this way. The switch from horses to cars was a transformation. It was a fundamental rethinking of the way that humans move. We went from, “Find an animal that can go further and faster than you can and ride on it,” to “Burn fuel and use the energy to turn a motor that transfers the power to wheels.”

Every improvement since then — from V8 engines to power steering — has just been an iteration on the theme. A little faster, a little more efficient, a little safer, but iteration, not transformation.

Marketers are fantastic at iteration. It’s part of the job! We’re great at A/B testing, optimization, and continuous improvement. But at the heart of it, a lot of us are still working with a souped-up version of the same old tactics we’ve always used. Yes, we’ve gone digital. Yes, we’ve automated X and Y and we’re on Z and W channels. But we’re not inventing the engine; we’re just breeding faster horses.

That’s why I get excited when I see something genuinely novel in our profession. And Lisa Sharapata and her colleagues at 6sense have the goods. 

We had the privilege of interviewing Lisa during B2BMX, and she discussed some big ideas that we’re still wrapping our heads around. The death of the MQL. The “dark funnel.” It’s nothing less than a fundamental rethinking of the theory and practice of marketing, one that brings together sales and marketing and refocuses both around revenue.

[bctt tweet="“When we say, ‘we're gonna give you this amount of pipeline, we're gonna generate this amount of revenue,’ and we can actually see it coming and help deliver it in a predictable way, they are never going to want to go back to a #MQL again.” -Lisa Sharapata, @6senseinc" username="toprank"]

You can watch our full interview with Lisa below, or listen to the podcast version (and don’t forget to subscribe). Scroll down past the embeds for a few highlights from the conversation.

Break Free B2B Interview with Lisa Sharapata

Timeline and Highlights

1:00 Account engagement platforms and the dark funnel

4:30 The role of the BDR for inbound marketing

6:00 Sales and marketing: Together at last

7:15 Content strategy & SEO in dynamic marketing

10:15 Engagement is the new oil, but are we ready to drill?

15:30 The end of MQLs

Lisa: We'll create a segment based on our ICP, our ideal customer profile and keywords, depending on how we want to set it up, what they're searching for, what stage they're in. 

We have multiple different campaigns running all the time and it's dynamic, so we're seeing what these groups are searching. And they're in consideration right now, so we're gonna run this type of content and this type of display to them. 

And then lo and behold, they're starting to engage. More and more people are engaging, more of them have come to our website, they're now familiar with us, so we're gonna change up the content. And it's all dynamic and running based on how we've set the segments up to run and what content we've set up to target those accounts. 

So it moves dynamically, as they shift what they're doing, we can do all that from our platform. And then on the flip side this all feeds into Salesforce and you see this, basically this map and timeline of everything that's happening. We have a persona map that fills out this grid and you can see in your targets who's doing what, green, yellow, red, who's engaged who's not, who do you need to engage, who clicked on what, when, what keyword did they search for, what brought them to your website, what pages did they go to. 

You can look at all this information, but then it's also aggregating that and turning it into data that you can use to say, "Here's the next best action, here's someone in that account that is probably a key decision-maker, that you should buy their contact information". So it's like this whole 360 of what you do with that account.

Susan: That's awesome. Okay so the technology is obviously extremely strong, but it can't be done without humans.

Lisa: very true, very true. Like you can see my I love BDR t-shirt, we actually declared this week BDR appreciation week. I kind of started from the marketing background because that's my background, but a salesperson comes in, they have a dashboard in the morning telling them here's the accounts that are hot, here's the ones that are engaging, here's the ones that you should go after today and here's now what you should do and it breaks it down into next best actions.

And typically that would be a BDR or SDR role, that needs to figure out "Okay, I'm gonna make a video for them and send them as email, what should I talk to them about? Okay they were searching these keywords, so they must be interested and have this problem, here's how I can offer value." 

Instead of just the shot in the dark like guessing, hoping that they're saying the right thing, or just spraying as many emails out there, phone calls as they can make in a day. We're getting really strategic and helping them and it takes all the legwork out too, like they don't have to spend thirds of their day doing research, it cuts that way down so that they have it all their fingertips and then they can just start taking action when they come in in the morning.

Susan: so then do the BDR's love marketing? 

Lisa: So, I have never in my career, been in an organization where sales and marketing work hand in hand, I mean it's truly a night and day difference, because first of all we agree on "Here's the best accounts", because you can see what they're doing in the dark funnel, you know they are in my ideal customer profile but they're also in market. They're in market, before they even come inbound, we know they're in market. So sales loves marketing and marketing loves sales, because we are working together toward the same goal now.

Susan: Okay can we get back to the MQL's? Because you have declared 2020 as the year of no MQL's, so to sales execs, senior execs that sometimes can mean no accountability. 

Lisa: Yeah, so I mean here's the thing: If you talk to most sales execs and you ask them "How valuable do you think the MQL's really are?" and "How often do they turn into an SQL?" and “When marketing says they're gonna give you this many MQL's, how meaningful is that truly to you?" Most of the time they're like "Yeah, marketing is gonna throw these scans from their event over the fence and tell us to work on them." 

And they don't really put a lot of value in them. But when we say we're gonna give you this amount of pipeline, we're gonna generate this amount of revenue, and we can start to show that predictability, in saying this is what of your accounts are in market right now, that is worth this amount of pipeline to you and we can actually see it coming and help deliver it in a predictable way.. I'll tell you what, they are never going to want to go back to a MQL again. 

Stay tuned to the TopRank Marketing Blog and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more Break Free B2B interviews. Here are a few interviews to whet your appetite:

• Break Free B2B Marketing: Enterprise-Level ABM with Oracle’s Kelvin Gee
• Break Free B2B Marketing: Gary Gerber on Scaling ABM without Losing Focus
• Break Free B2B Series: Jon Miller on How ABM Can Help Marketers Keep Their ‘Ship’ Together
• Break Free B2B Series: Adi Bachar-Reske on Taking the Lead in the Evolution of B2B Content Marketing

The post Break Free B2B Marketing: Lisa Sharapata of 6sense on the End of the MQL appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

B2B marketing is boring, doesn’t feature influencers, and uses only monotonous white papers and lifeless case studies — we’ve all heard these stereotypes, but what is the reality of B2B marketing in 2020?

The traditional image of dull B2B marketing has been turned on its head in recent years, and we wanted to explore 10 top myths and show how the state of B2B marketing has gone from bland to unforgettable.

Let’s dig in and break down the biggest B2B marketing myths, and look at how your brand can benefit from the new era of business marketing.

1 — B2B Marketing Goes From Boring-2-Boringest

The Myth:

The grand-daddy of all B2B marketing myths — dating back nearly to when the term business-to-business was coined — is the notion that it stands for boring-to-boring, with marketing about as exciting as forty shades of dreary gray.

The Myth-Buster:

As we’ll explore throughout this post, the B2B marketing of 2020 has left boring in the dust, replaced with exciting and truly memorable content experiences.

As the B2B marketing landscape continues progressing from its dusty Boring-To-Boring roots, business customers are expecting content and experiences that are increasingly similar to what B2C efforts have long provided.

Today’s B2B customers expect to find all of the relevant information they seek brought to life through an online interface that’s not only easy to search and navigate, but one that’s also chock full of interactive and story-rich user experience features that make interacting an entertaining experience, such as our “Laser Bear.”

Click Here to see the Break Free from Boring B2B Guide in Full Screen Mode

[bctt tweet="“Tell the truth, but make the truth fascinating. You know you can’t bore people into buying your product, you can only interest them into buying it.” — David Ogilvy" username="toprank"]

2 — B2B Marketing Doesn’t Use the Cool Social Media Platforms

The Myth:

You won’t find B2B brands actively sharing content and interacting on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, Pinterest, Twitch, or other fun and fresh social media platforms.

The Myth-Buster:

Fortune 500 firms regularly now have social media presences on fashionable social channels such as Giphy, Snapchat, and even Facebook Horizons — the social media giant’s foray into the virtual reality (VR) world — all gaining new B2B brands at a faster pace than you might imagine.

Our senior content marketing manager Joshua Nite recently took a look at “6 Unconventional Social Channels for B2B Marketing,” showing how B2B brands can gain a competitive edge by adopting unconventional social channels.

Out client Dell Technologies offers a fine example of how B2B brands are embracing nontraditional social channels, with its Dell Technologies Giphy page.

via GIPHY

Despite using social media more than any other demographic, Gen Z is most at home not on traditional mainstream social platforms but increasingly on gaming platforms, according to recent Kantar study data, which showed that 90 percent of the demographic use gaming platforms to serve roles similar to those social media does for some 59 percent of the general population.

To learn more, we’ve also looked at how B2B brands are successfully using various social media platforms:

• 5 Top B2B Brands Mastering Facebook Engagement
• 5 Top B2B Brands Delivering Exemplary Twitter Engagement
• 5 Top B2B Brands Maximizing LinkedIn Engagement
• How 5 B2B Brands Are Using Snapchat and Instagram Stories

[bctt tweet="“B2B marketers should be exploring any channel where their audience is. While it’s easy to feel like the more younger-skewing platforms are optional, we ignore them at our peril.” — Joshua Nite @NiteWrites" username="toprank"]

3 — B2B Marketing Doesn’t Relate to Real People & Their Stories

The Myth:

B2B marketing isn’t about me or my real challenges, and never even attempts to appeal to people like me — instead it just continues to put forth insincere messages targeting people who don’t exist in the real world.

The Myth-Buster:

Telling real stories about actual people has catapulted B2B influencer marketing to the forefront of business marketing success, while B2B marketing in general has also continued to embrace the importance of storytelling.

We’ve set out to tell the intriguing stories of many top B2B marketers in our Break Free B2B video interview series, to date featuring 23 industry professionals such as Amisha Gandhi of client SAP Ariba and Kelvin Gee of client Oracle,  sharing their insights and passions.

Some, such as Eaton’s director of corporate marketing Zari Venhaus have explored the importance of storytelling.

Another benefit of telling the stories of real people in B2B industries is that it lends itself well to the creation of episodic content, as our senior content strategist Nick Nelson explored in “Hungry for More: What B2B Marketers Need to Know About Episodic Content.”

Additional takes on how storytelling benefits B2B marketers are available in our following related articles:

• Once Upon a Time: Storytelling in Today’s B2B Content Marketing Landscape
• Be Like Honest Abe: How Content Marketers Can Build Trust Through Storytelling
• You Have 8 Seconds – GO! Brand Messaging Secrets With Debra Jasper at #Pubcon

[bctt tweet="“The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller.” — Steve Jobs" username="toprank"]

4 — B2B Marketing Never Gets Heard, or If it Does It’s Quickly Ignored and Forgotten

The Myth:

B2B marketing is just wasted effort, since nobody ever really reads it or pays any attention to its boring business-suit-and-briefcase imagery. Who would ever remember a B2B advertising message, anyway?

The Myth-Buster:

Study after study continues to show that real emotion makes us remember digital content and messaging, and smart B2B marketing has grown significantly in its use of the kind of authentic storytelling that people will remember.

The most-shared ads during the last Olympics were all loaded with hard-hitting emotion from brands like Panasonic and Apple, and the Super Bowl perennially features similarly emotion-packed spots from brands like Google and Microsoft.

[bctt tweet="“Stories are just data with a soul.” @BreneBrown" username="toprank"]

5 — B2B Marketing is For Stodgy Old People

The Myth:

B2B marketing is for stodgy old fuddy-duddies, and has no relevance for anyone under 40 or 50.

The Myth-Buster:

B2B marketers freshly out of college are having tremendous impact in today’s professional brand messaging, and are bringing with them their younger takes on B2B marketing, which will increasingly drive the industry.

Thanks in large part to the successful inroads B2B influencer marketing have made for brands looking to reach younger audiences, when an influencer recommends a product, 51 percent of Millennials say they are more likely to try it, according to research data from Valassis and Kantar.

Gen Z and Millennial B2B marketers who have grown up with newer social media platforms are occupying ever-more positions of power all the way up to corporate marketing management — a move that has helped today's B2B marketing look decidedly different from that of even five years ago.

Snapchat recently published a study exploring brand expectations among Gen Z, finding that 82 percent of the demographic want brands to act on customer feedback, while a similar report from Campaign Monitor also found Gen Z's social media platform preferences to differ from those of older generations.

[bctt tweet="“The B2B marketing of 2020 has left boring in the dust, replaced with exciting and truly memorable content experiences.” — Lane R. Ellis @lanerellis" username="toprank"]

6 — B2B Marketing Should Never Include Interactive or Experiential Content

The Myth:

B2B audiences don’t expect or even want interactive or experiential content when it comes to brand messaging — they want only dense black-and-white case studies of at least 200 pages, or white papers filled with serious professional business information.

The Myth-Buster:

B2B audiences have been starved for interactive and experiential content for far too long, and in recent years have come to expect much more B2C-like digital experiences which incorporate truly entertaining, memorable, and interactive elements.

With 98 percent of consumers more likely to make a purchase after an experience (Limelight), and 77 percent having chosen, recommended, or paid more for a brand that delivers a personalized service or experience (Forrester), more B2B marketers have begun to use experiential content.

In 2020 experiential content comes in many forms, with just a few examples being:

• Virtual Reality (VR)
• Augmented Reality (AR)
• Cloud-Based Digital Assets from Ceros and Other Platforms
• Quizzes and Polls
• Interactive Flipbooks and eBooks

Experiential content is also intertwined with both storytelling and customer experience (CX), together becoming an extremely powerful triptych of B2B marketing strategy.

You can take a closer look at the growing field of B2B experiential marketing here:

• What B2B Marketers Need to Know About Experiential Content
• The B2B Marketer’s Journey To Experiential Content at #B2BMX
• Break Free B2B Marketing: Sruthi Kumar on Creating Memorable Experiences
• 31 DIY Marketing Tools To Create Remarkable Experiences
• Top 10 B2B Digital Marketing Trends in 2020

[bctt tweet="“Experiential content makes us a central part of a story, and not just a passive subject receiving a one-way brand message.” — Lane R. Ellis @lanerellis" username="toprank"]

7 — B2B Marketing Doesn’t Have Influencers

The Myth:

Influencers don’t exist in B2B marketing, because they are only for hawking cosmetics and pushing designer clothing lines on Instagram — what relevance could influencers really have in the professional B2B world?

The Myth-Buster:

Influencer marketing in the business world has never been more vibrant and thriving, especially the kind of always-on B2B influencer marketing our CEO Lee Odden has explored in articles including “Always On Influence: Definition and Why B2B Brands Need it to Succeed.”

Influencer marketing will see global brand spending up to $15 billion by 2022 (Business Insider Intelligence), and with more people using social media and spending greater amounts of time doing so, B2B influencers have a bigger audience than ever.

This may explain why influencers are seeing rising engagements with a variety of firms, as even the World Health Organization recently worked with influencers for its latest “Safe Hands Challenge” hand-washing campaign.

B2C and B2B influencer marketing are undoubtedly very different – and ever-evolving – undertakings, as we recently explored in “B2C vs. B2B Influencer Marketing – What’s the Difference?”

[bctt tweet="“The output of B2B influencer collaboration can be in any form that the brand is currently publishing content: text, video, visual, audio, interactive and even VR.” @LeeOdden" username="toprank"]

Learn more about B2B influencer marketing with these insightful looks at how brands are using it to achieve success, and dig in to recent influencer marketing statistics here:

• Four Ways to Optimize the Marketing Performance of a B2B Influencer Program
• 24 Essential B2B Influencer Marketing Statistics
• How B2B Influencer Marketing Offers Brands an Ideal Alternative to In-Person Events
• Jumpstarting a Pilot B2B Influencer Marketing Program in 5 Steps
• 5 Key Traits of the Best B2B Influencers

8 — B2B Marketing is Pointless & Impossible For Brands Than Aren’t Billion-Dollar Firms

The Myth:

B2B marketing is only for billion-dollar mega-corporations looking to attract other massive Fortune 500 firms — and it doesn’t have any relevance for a company with less than 10,000 employees.

The Myth-Buster:

It doesn’t take billion-dollar firms to create priceless B2B marketing efforts. Indeed, some of the most successful and memorable B2B marketing campaigns are coming from small-to-midsize firms, especially those that are using B2B influencer marketing.

Our content strategist Anne Leuman recently took a look at “5 Examples of Effective B2B Content Marketing in Times of Crisis,” featuring several smaller firms including HealthcareSource and our client monday.com, showing how they are putting out timely and helpful marketing messages during the pandemic.

Social media and influencer marketing have helped level the playing field not only among large B2C and B2B firms, but smaller B2B businesses as well.

Being savvy and nimble can propel a business a long way in the B2B marketing world — perhaps even over land and water, as Shakespeare once noted.

[bctt tweet="“Nimble thought can jump both sea and land.” — William Shakespeare" username="toprank"]

9 — B2B Marketing Isn’t Even Well-Suited for Social Media

The Myth:

B2B marketers shouldn’t even use social media, since business audiences don’t use social platforms, or if they do, they’re not there to find serious B2B information.

The Myth-Buster:

Nearly everyone uses social media in 2020, with global active social media users topping the 3.8 billion mark recently, and that includes almost all the business professionals in every B2B industry.

Social media and B2B marketing go hand-in-hand these days, and smart marketers recognize the importance of this intertwined system, and work hard to inform and delight on every social channel where their brand's customers are actively engaging.

[bctt tweet="“It doesn’t take billion-dollar firms to create priceless B2B marketing efforts.” — Lane R. Ellis @lanerellis" username="toprank"]

10 — B2B Marketing’s Only Real Channel is LinkedIn

The Myth:

LinkedIn is the only social media platform B2B marketers ever need to use, because it’s the only one those in B2B industries ever really utilize.

The Myth-Buster:

While it’s true that LinkedIn is the top social media platform for B2B marketers and professionals in general, and still represents the go-to source for business information when it comes to social — and we’re not just saying that because they are a TopRank Marketing client — if you’re limiting your efforts solely to LinkedIn you’re missing out on key industry players who happen to spend the majority of their social media time on other platforms.

As we've shown above, there are a wide array of social media channels B2B marketers are finding vital to their brand efforts. With every Fortune 500 firm now represented on LinkedIn, however, it's a platform that should be included in every B2B marketer's mix.

Soar Beyond B2B Myths With Powerful Marketing Tactics

Now that we've made an effort to dispel these 10 common B2B marketing myths, we hope that you'll be better able to power your next marketing campaign using the tactics we've looked at, and create B2B content that inspires and enchants while also providing best-answer solutions.

The post B2B Marketing Mythbusters: Dispelling 10 Common Myths with Extraordinary Marketing appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

While their importance pales in comparison to many other things taken away by our society’s ongoing lockdown, I do find myself missing sports. Going without them during a difficult time causes me to appreciate the comfortable routine and reliable distraction they provide all the more.

Those who know me will not be surprised to learn that I’m longing for baseball especially — everything from strikeouts and singles to slides and steals. But there is no part of the game I miss more than home runs.

Home runs are among the most satisfying individual achievements in sports. When a batter goes deep, he takes care of everything, going from home plate to home plate and putting a run — or more — on the board single-handedly. It is the literal representation of “covering all your bases.”

via GIPHY

With baseball and many other cherished forms of entertainment amiss, content marketers can help fill the void by focusing on experiential content, which is characterized by its ability to pull in a user through immersive, interactive, impactful elements. These kinds of deeper digital experiences are also more valuable from an engagement and awareness standpoint, at a time where in-person events are off the table.

“Because people are figuring out how to thrive in an almost entirely online world, their expectations towards a brand's digital experience [are] also changing. It's no longer about clicks, downloads, and impressions,” writes Diginomica’s Barb Mosher Zinck in recapping Mark Bornstein’s chat from the Discover Martech Virtual Event last month. “It's about engagement. It's about experiential marketing.”

With this context in mind, how can marketers hit a home run with experiential content, covering all the bases for both their audience and their business?

Covering Every Base with Experiential Content

Reflecting the baseball diamond, I see four key aspects of knocking it out of the park with experiential content, at a time where doing so might be especially beneficial for marketers.

Base 1: Entertaining and Effective

The proverbial square one (or first base, in this case) is that experiential content needs to be compelling and engaging. If you aren’t getting someone’s attention and piquing their interest quickly with the content, you’re out before you’ve left the batter’s box.

Technology is always offering new ways to increase the allure of experiential content, including tools like virtual reality, augmented reality, feature integration, and interactive functionality. Small touches like the animations and clickable elements in TopRank Marketing’s Break Free of Boring B2B infographic, for example, can go a long way. The more you bring the user into the experience and make them feel like part of the story, the more successful your content will be.

It’s not just about the entertainment factor. That second word — effective — is equally important, if not more so. Your content should effect the person consuming it, be it emotionally or attitudinally. Ideally, the person consuming this experience will feel something, and come away thinking differently about its subject.

Once you accomplish this, you’re rounding first base and heading into second.

[bctt tweet="“If you aren’t getting someone’s attention and piquing their interest quickly with the content, you’re out before you’ve left the batter’s box.” @NickNelsonMN" username="toprank"]

Base 2: Educational and Informative

Most marketing content is designed to inform in some way, satisfying the curiosities of its audience while intertwining a distinct point of view. The experiential dynamic is particularly valuable for this purpose. As the old saying goes: “Show me and I’ll forget. Teach me and I may remember. Involve me and I’ll learn.”

AT&T is one example of a company that’s using emerging experiential technologies for employee training purposes, taking advantage of the heightened ability to make information stick. As you plan a content marketing initiative, think not just about ways to entertain your audience, but also ways to memorably imprint the messages and revelations you want them to take away.

By this point, you’re already halfway home.

Base 3: Collaborative and Orchestrated

Hey, there’s nothing wrong with a solo home run. But the feat is far more exciting when there are runners on base to drive in. Teamwork comes into play in multiple ways when it comes to maximizing the value of experiential content.

via GIPHY

First and foremost, your efforts should be strategically orchestrated throughout the organization. While marketing drives the bus, plenty of others ought to be riding along. By nature, experiential content is intended to address a nonlinear customer journey in which B2B buyers average 17 meaningful interactions on the way to completing a purchase (per SiriusDecisions). How do all those interactions come together around your experience in a consistent, unified, personalized way? How will you ensure that every customer-facing function is aligned?

Secondly, there is the importance of collaboration within the marketing department itself. Generally speaking, a great piece of experiential content is shaped by many different talents and skills: writers and strategists shaping the content, designers and artists bringing it to life visually, search and social specialists making it easily discoverable, etc.

And finally, there is the influencer aspect. While not always a fit, influencers can usually power up experiential content in profound ways:

• Adding unique insight and perspective from their expert point of view
• Bringing built-in credibility and trust with their own established audiences
• Amplifying promotion of the content through their own networks

One example of interactive influencer content in action can be found in the self-guided experience around AI and finance that TopRank Marketing put together with Prophix. The asset beat engagement benchmarks by 642%.

[bctt tweet="“Great experiential content is shaped by many different talents: writers and strategists shaping the content, designers and artists bringing it to life visually, search and social specialists making it easily discoverable.” @NickNelsonMN" username="toprank"]

Bringing It Home: Impactful for the Business

The three components above all focus on making experiential content valuable to the audience. This is a worthy point of emphasis, since strengthening relationships and building trust are essential objectives for modern brands, especially in our current climate.

But of course, investing the time and resources into creating a high-caliber content experience also needs to be justified by bottom-line business impact. The good news is that bringing users into the experience lends itself to driving action; for example, statistics show that interactive content generates twice the conversions of passive content.

At all comes back to the overarching strategy. What specific business results are you hoping to achieve? How will you facilitate them in a user-friendly way that nurtures trust and builds momentum in the customer journey? Which other tactics will support these goals?

It’s important to think about setting up positive outcomes beyond the direct conversion. A person interacting with your content may not be inclined to fill out a form at that moment, but if they remember the experience, and the way it altered their thinking, and it brings them into your marketing funnel weeks or months later, that’s a win. This reinforces the value of getting it right with items one and two on this list — effect and educate.

Make Your Experiential Content Campaign a Round-Tripper

We may not have sports, but we still have sports metaphors. I’ll keep seeing to that. And the home run serves as a perfectly fitting allegory for experiential content, which can produce so much value for a brand on its own, with one swing of the proverbial bat.

When you combine immersive entertainment with memorable learnings, collaborative clout, and measurable business impact, you’ve got yourself a marketing moonshot. All that’s left at that point is the bat flip.

via GIPHY

For more practical tips and guidance on this subject, I encourage you to check out Joshua Nite’s recap of the B2B Marketer’s Journey To Experiential Content presentation from B2B Marketing Exchange in February.

The post How to Hit a Marketing Home Run with Experiential Content appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

How COVID-19 Is Impacting Business Event Planning
70 percent of business event planners have changed previously-planned in-person events to virtual platforms due to the pandemic, and 47 percent expect that once it ends people will still be hesitant to travel, with 27 percent expecting a swift uptick in real-world events due to pent-up demand, according to newly-released survey data from the Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA). MarketingProfs

Google ad sales steady after coronavirus drop; Alphabet leads tech share rally
2020 first-quarter advertising sales at Google tallied $33.8 billion, with 73 percent coming from search and 12 percent from its YouTube property, and Google's ad business accounting for some 83 percent of revenue for parent firm Alphabet, according to newly-released financial results. Reuters

Spotify-owned Anchor can now turn your video chats into podcasts
Spotify will utilize its Anchor property to make it possible to convert video meeting content into podcasts, offering marketers new options for making use of a virtual hangout video content podcast conversion feature, Spotify recently announced. TechCrunch

Google’s new Podcasts Manager tool offers deeper data on listener behavior
Google has rolled out a new podcast analytics data feature — Podcasts Manager — that provides marketers an assortment of new podcast listening data, the search giant recently announced. Marketing Land

LinkedIn's up to 690 Million Members, Reports 26% Growth in User Sessions
LinkedIn (client) saw its user base increase to 690 million members — up from 675 in January — with an accompanying 26 percent increase in user sessions, and LinkedIn Live streams that increased by some 158 percent since February, according to parent firm Microsoft’s latest earnings release. Social Media Today

Advertisers Continued to Gravitate to Instagram in Q1
Advertisers moved to spend more on Instagram during the first quarter of 2020, with ad spending up 39 percent year-over-year on the platform, holding steady at 27 percent of parent company Facebook’s total ad spend, according to recently-released Merkle data. MarketingCharts

Brands Are Using More Data And Spending More On It: Study
B2B marketers are making greater use of data and spending increasingly to gather it, according to recent report data from Ascend2, showing that 47 percent use engagement data to make marketing decisions, one of several report statistics of interest to digital marketers. MediaPost

Most consumers are trying new brands during social distancing, study finds
Brands are seeing newfound levels of audience interest, with an uptick in consumer interest for trying new brands that has been observed during the pandemic, with members of the Gen Z and Millennial demographic seeing the biggest increases, according to recently-released survey data. Campaign US

Marketers Ante Up for In-Game Advertising
A $3 billion in-game advertising market in the U.S. alone has attracted additional advertisers, and a new Association of National Advertisers (ANA) examination of data from eMarketer found some surprises in that most mobile gamers were over 35, with 20 percent being over 50, while the majority were female, several of the in-game advertising statistics of interest to digital marketers. ANA

Data Hub: Coronavirus and Marketing [Updated]
Digital marketing has fared better than traditional campaigns in the face of the global health crisis, according to newly-released survey data from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) exploring the differences between the pandemic and the 2008 recession. MarketingCharts

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE:

A lighthearted look at generic advertising “in these uncertain times” by Marketoonist Tom Fishburne — Marketoonist

WHO Releases New Guidelines to Avoid Being Nominated for Viral Challenges — The Hard Times

Major Relief: Microsoft Has Confirmed That The Xbox Series X Will Play Video Games — The Onion

TOPRANK MARKETING & CLIENTS IN THE NEWS:

• Lee Odden — What’s Trending: Embracing Data — LinkedIn (client)
• Lee Odden — 10 Expert Tips for Marketing During a Crisis — Oracle (client)
• Lee Odden — Klear Interviews Lee Odden, CEO, TopRank Marketing [Video] — Klear
• Lee Odden and TopRank Marketing — Pandemic Cross-Country Skiing in Duluth, Minnesota: A Personal Timeline — Lane R. Ellis

Have you got your own top B2B content marketing or digital advertising stories from the past week of news? Please let us know in the comments below.

Thanks for taking time to join us, and we hope you will join us again next Friday for more of the most relevant B2B and digital marketing industry news. In the meantime, you can follow us at @toprank on Twitter for even more timely daily news. Also, don't miss the full video summary on our TopRank Marketing TV YouTube Channel.

The post B2B Marketing News: Brands Spending More on Data, Spotify Turns Video Chats into Podcasts, & Consumers Trying More New Brands appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Health workers face a growing tide of hostility in Brazil for potentially spreading COVID-19.

A series of studies of the genomes of thousands of samples of the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 show that it is mutating and evolving as it adapts to its human hosts. Soraya Ali reports.

U.S. President Donald Trump described his former national security adviser Michael Flynn as an 'innocent man' after learning that the U.S. Justice Department on Thursday abruptly sought to drop the criminal charges against Flynn.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday said it's "one of those things" after he learned that a White House valet tested positive for the coronavirus, noting contact with that person was limited. Gavino Garay has more.

In Washington State and Boston, two initiatives are helping prevent potatoes from being thrown out and milk from being poured down the drain. Gavino Garay has more.

A white former police officer and his son were arrested in Georgia on Thursday and charged with murder in the death of an unarmed black man, an incident that has sparked furor in the community and among civil rights activists across the United States. Gloria Tso reports.

Tara Reade, the woman who alleges Joe Biden sexually assaulted her in 1993, said in a video interview on Thursday that he should withdraw from the White House race. Gloria Tso reports.

The sting of the Asian giant hornet can kill and that's not just an expression of speech. Since their discovery in 2019 in the US, traps have been set to see if Asian giant "murder hornets" have settled in the state. Libby Hogan has more.

Priest Don Giuseppe Castelvecchio hasn't been able to conduct services in his San Fiorano church for two months. In the town where restrictions are easing, his sermons delivered from a loud speaker in a car are a welcome relief. Joe Davies reports.

Rival lawmakers scuffled in Hong Kong's legislature on Friday in a row over electing the chairman of a key committee, a fresh sign of rising political tension as the coronavirus pandemic tapers off in the Chinese-ruled city. Francesca Lynagh reports.

Australia will ease social distancing restrictions implemented to slow the spread of the coronavirus in a three-step process, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Friday, with the aim of removing all curbs by July. Lauren Anthony reports.

Syria's government allowed mosques to open on Friday for worshipers willing to perform prayers. The mosque had remained closed as part of the measures taken to contain the spread of coronavirus.

The latest figures from the Labor Department released on Friday showed the U.S. economy losing 20.5 million jobs in April, the steepest plunge in payrolls since the Great Depression. Colette Luke has more.

Britons stood in silence and Queen Elizabeth addressed the nation on Friday's 75th anniversary of "Victory in Europe" Day, though the coronavirus dampened commemorations for the end of World War Two on the continent. Lauren Anthony reports.

Across Africa, centuries-old cultural traditions are being foregone in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has seen governments impose restrictions on gatherings and other practices around death and burial. Francesca Lynagh reports.

Britain's Queen Elizabeth honored those who died in World War Two on Friday, the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day, and used the occasion to say she was proud of how people had responded to the coronavirus pandemic.

A campaign in Mexico City to get residents to wear face masks is now reinforced with a new secret weapon: clowns. They're telling metro riders, 'Wear a face mask -- don't be a clown!' as they spray riders' hands with disinfectant. Gavino Garay has more.

Stone by stone, digital artists and game developers from Mosul are rebuilding Nineveh's heritage sites in the digital world. Francis Maguire reports.

The grunts, groans and the sound of pulsing music and crashing weights has returned to some of Beijing's gyms after being closed for nearly three months due to the coronavirus outbreak. Ciara Lee reports.

Russia marked 75 years since the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two on Saturday, but the coronavirus outbreak forced it to scale back celebrations. Olivia Chan reports.

आईआईटी इंदौर के प्रोफेसर कोरोना की दवा खोजने के लिए सीवियर अक्यूट रेस्पिरेटरी सिंड्रोम (सार्स) को फैलाने वाले सार्स कोव-2 वायरस का अध्ययन कर रहे हैं। संस्थान के बायोसाइंस और बायोमेडिकल इंजीनियरिंग के प्रोफेसर इस काम में जुटे हैं। आईआईटी अमेरिका, नॉर्वे, स्वीडन, फ्रांस, डेनमार्क के रिसर्च ग्रुप के साथ मिलकर स्टॉप कोविड-19 पैंडेमिक प्रोजेक्ट पर भी काम कर रहा है। नॉर्वेजियन रिसर्च काउंसिल इस प्रोजेक्ट को फंड कर रही है। देश के कई संस्थानों के इस इंडियन रिसर्च ग्रुप के प्रमुख आईआईटी इंदौर के डॉ. अविनाश सोनवाने होंगे। आईआईटी के डॉ. अमित कुमार ने बताया- हम सार्स कोव-2 वायरस के 16 तरह के प्रोटींस पर अध्ययन कर रहे हैं। इसके जरिए एक साल में कोरोना की असरकारक वैक्सीन तैयार की जाएगी।
थ्रीडी प्रिंटिंग से बना रहे दोबारा उपयोग किए जा सकने वाले मास्क
पुलिस और मेडिकल स्टाफ के पर्स, मोबाइल और चाबियों को संक्रमण रहित करने के लिए आईआईटी, आईजी विवेक शर्मा के सुझाव पर स्टरलाइजेशन चैंबर भी बना रही है। इसमें 254 एनएम की यूवी किरणों से सामान को डिसइंफेक्ट किया जा सकेगा। संस्थान के डॉ. आईए पलानी और डॉ. इंद्रसेन सिंह थ्रीडी प्रिंटिंग मशीन के जरिए कपड़े के मास्क तैयार कर रहे हैं। डॉ. विपुल सिंह और डॉ. पलानी ने ऑप्टिकल टेंपरेचर सेंसर तैयार किया है। मरीज के कपड़ों पर लगाने से शरीर के तापमान पर लगातार नजर रखी जा सकेगी।
विशेष ईंटों से बने कमरों में ट्रकों का संक्रमण भी होगा दूर
बड़े सामान, मशीन और हर बड़े आकार की चीजों को संक्रमण रहित करने के लिए आईआईटी ने विशेष प्रकार की ईंटें और मोर्टार बनाए हैं। सिविल इंजीनियरिंग विभाग के संदीप चौधरी और राजेश कुमार ने बताया, ईंट और कोटिंग वाले मोर्टार से बनी टनल में सामान को यूवी लाइट से संक्रमण मुक्त करेंगे। इसमें सामान से परावर्तित किरणों को विशेष ईंट सोख लेंगी।

With a home office like no other, when Red Bull mountain biker Fabio Wibmer 'works', you can expect an array of insane tricks and stunts to keep his roommates company.

With a home office like no other, when Red Bull mountain biker Fabio Wibmer 'works', you can expect an array of insane tricks and stunts to keep his roommates company.

Tennis in the time of coronavirus serves up a new sort of court as World Club players take their game to Munich's now empty squares and boulevards.

At a ceremony honoring nurses at the White House on Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump contradicted a New Orleans nurse who said the availability of personal protective equipment has been 'sporadic.'

A young boy chooses a nurse as the superhero he wants to play with over Batman and Spiderman in a new artwork by Banksy that encapsulates the gratitude Britons have felt toward the country's National Health Service during the coronavirus crisis.

Not to be beaten by the virus, Landshut pub-owner Patrick Schmidt took his tent, rolled up the sides and condensed the annual Bavarian 'Dult' experience, where locals feast and drink on local specialities to their heart's content, into a drive-through culinary delight.

Two Humboldt penguins, Nacho and Goat, went on a field trip in the forest accompanied by their keepers at Oregon Zoo on Friday (May 1) in Portland, United States.

Not to be beaten by the virus, Landshut pub-owner Patrick Schmidt took his tent, rolled up the sides and condensed the annual Bavarian 'Dult' experience, where locals feast and drink on local specialities to their heart's content, into a drive-through culinary delight.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday described a valet of his reportedly testing positive for the coronavirus as "one of those things" and said that he and Vice President Mike Pence have since been tested and they are both negative.

In Washington State and Boston, two initiatives are helping prevent potatoes from being thrown out and milk from being poured down the drain. Gavino Garay has more.

Arizona State University's Thunderbird School of Global Management utilizes robots to give its students a virtual graduation ceremony. Freddie Joyner has more.

Brazil's Bela Vista Biological Refuge Veterinarian Pedro Enrrique Ferreira says the Harpy Eagle hatchling born on April 26 only weighs 150 grams now but could one day grow to weigh some 20 pounds.

A campaign in Mexico City to get residents to wear face masks is now reinforced with a new secret weapon: clowns. They're telling metro riders, 'Wear a face mask -- don't be a clown!' as they spray riders' hands with disinfectant. Gavino Garay has more.

Sunny days and warm weather are proving to be as challenging to manage as restaurants, hair salons and other businesses as about half of U.S. states partially reopen their economies after the coronavirus lockdown. This report produced by Zachary Goelman.

The president once again raised his forecast for how many Americans may die from COVID-19 as the toll continues to climb. This report produced by Zachary Goelman.

The coronavirus outbreak has forced many dentists and orthodontists to hang up their drills. But a father-and-son practice in Sacramento is getting ready to see patients again.

The Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica won the Pulitzer Prize for public service journalism on Monday for revealing one-third of Alaska's villages had no police protection, while the photography staff of Reuters won the breaking news photography award for documenting last year's violent protests in Hong Kong.

Sources tell Reuters the White House will soon propose an international agreement governing mining and commerce on the moon, aiming to attract like-minded space-faring countries to update a 1967 agreement on space law.

General Motors on Wednesday outlined plans for a May 18 restart of most of its North American plants shut down by the coronavirus pandemic as it reported a huge plunge in first-quarter profit. This report produced by Yahaira Jacquez.

Facebook's new content oversight board will include a former prime minister, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and several constitutional law experts and rights advocates in its first 20 members.

Aides to U.S. President Trump say their 2020 campaign will now be focus on two themes: Trump is the only candidate who can resurrect the economy and that Democrats will not be as tough on China, a country Trump is blaming for the pandemic.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday described a valet of his reportedly testing positive for the coronavirus as "one of those things" and said that he and Vice President Mike Pence have since been tested and they are both negative.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday said it's "one of those things" after he learned that a White House valet tested positive for the coronavirus, noting contact with that person was limited. Gavino Garay has more.

Forrest Galante, a host of 'Extinct or Alive' on the 'Animal Planet,' recounts the locating of the Fernandina Island tortoise that hasn't been heard from since 1906. (Dan Fastenberg reports.)