The Five Questions Every B2B Marketer Should Ask

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For any of the teams that I’ve worked closely with over the past few years, they may already know where I’m headed with this blog entry. For several years now, I have held tightly to the belief that there are five questions that the sales and marketing efforts of every B2B technology company must address in order to attract, land and retain customers. For each of these questions, where customers find deficiencies, companies should apply greater marketing effort. In fact, in many cases they may find their sales efforts stall until they can successfully answer each of the five questions.

Talk To Me!

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During a recent client get-together conversation drifted to Facebook, Twitter and social media. This seems to be the norm these days and at one point one of the participants mentioned that it was "easier" to write a quick Facebook update than to call each person that would be interested to know how her day went.

After a few back and forth comments including my exaggerated "I don't need to know who baked cupcakes or walked their dog" exasperation, I offered up that as individuals we are forgetting how to TALK. Conversation used to take place face-to-face and you learned how to carry on a conversation, how to get your point across, how to take criticism without capitulating or exploding in a rage, and most of all, you learned how to LISTEN.

All Marketing is a Con...

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“All marketing is a con…”

I came across this comment recently following an article I read recently. What struck me, and stayed with me, is how this comment sparked many comments slamming the ethics and value of marketing. Had I read far enough, I’m quite sure that marketing would have been blamed for the economic crisis of 2008/2009, the Nashville floods, BP’s disaster in the Gulf, and volcanic ash clouds. As a marketing ‘lifer’ I’m more than accustomed to marketing taking a beating as less important than other functions. As such, I wasn’t really thrown by the initial description of marketing as a con, nor did I see it as inspiration for a blog post. Reality is reality. A is A. Deal with it and move on.

If Content is King...

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If content is truly king, as so many would have us all believe, why do so many marketers still get it wrong? Companies right and left seem to have adopted a knee-jerk reaction to the explosion in social media. Anything and everything makes its way to YouTube and Facebook, and some companies have added Twitter statistics to annual performance reviews. In their defense, abusers cry out that ‘content is king’ and that producing content in wild abandon is the key to success, leads and world peace.