B2B RoundUp - Gatekeepers, Change Afoot, Tips to Get Ready for Next Year

Change is in the air in this weeks roundup. First up we have a great story that provides some tips on getting past the content gatekeeper. The focus being getting your content to the person or people who can make a decision:

Get Your B2B Content Past the Gatekeeper We’ve all felt the frustration of calling a vendor and trying to get through to the right person. First you must navigate the automated attendant to get to the right department. Then you punch in your account number. Finally you get to a human being on the other end, and it turns out they’re not even in the right department. They transfer you to the correct one, and that agent asks you for the information you punched in earlier.

Is B2B marketing even a thing? Is there really a difference between b2C and B2B? Do we really have to have separate thinking and plans for these different (or not so different) types of advertising?

Via tfmainsights.com You won’t pick up on this from talking to the B2B agencies, or reading the B2B media. But speak to your customers; pick up the phone and actually speak to them, and you’ll quickly come to realise that there’s change afoot, and that change is responsible for the encroaching death of B2B marketing as we know it.

That’s quite a bold claim – so I’d better back it up. But first let me really put my neck out there – you see, I’ve never truly believed that B2B existed in the first place.

Here’s a few tips from Skyword on taking your marketing to the next level:

http://www.skyword.com/contentstandard/blog/5-ways-to-harness-b2b-content-marketings-tipping-point/Via skyword.com Business-to-business (B2B) tech companies have access to something every enterprise wants: Big dollars. Of course, B2B content marketing dramatically influences how aggressively they can win these dollars, since it guides over half of the buying cycle. Yet, this is precisely where most B2B content marketers struggle.

1. Transform Your Investment In Quality Content To Scale
2. Build Specialized And Dedicated Teams, That Function As An Extension Of Your Marketing Arm
3. Create Breakthroughs With Stories
4. Perfect Your Service-Technology Power Punch
5. Develop Deeply Quantifiable Distribution And Feedback Loops

It’s surprising but 2015 is just around the corner. Maybe now is the time to start thinking about what plans and initiatives you’ll knock out next year. Here’s a few items to get you started:

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/235502?utm_content=buffer849ef&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=bufferVia entrepreneur.com We may have barely crossed into the second half of 2014, but if you want to have a big year in 2015, you should jump on your game plan now. As you lay the foundation of your 2015 marketing strategy, here are five marketing trends to give you a jumpstart on your big projects for the rest of this year and next:

1. Micro-Targeting: Its Time To Get To Know Your Customers.
2. Paid Placements Are Here To Stay: Spend Your Money On The Right Content And Platform.
3. Mobile Will Dominate: Master It.
4. Marketing Automation Tools Will Change The Way You Play.
5. The Need For Quality. Content Will Spotlight The Importance Of Professional Writers.

Finally, Something all B2B marketers should keep in mind:

Images from business2community.com, tfmainsights.com, skyword.com, entrepreneur.com