Vier Jahre nach ihrem Debüt ergänzt Christoph Koeberlin sein beliebtes Schriftsystem Pangea um engere Schriftschnitte: dank SemiCondensed, Condensed und XCondensed – jeweils für beide optischen Größen Pangea und Pangea Text – vervierfacht sich das stilistische Angebot. Damit wird das System insbesondere in redaktionellen, responsiven, Branding- und Verpackungsbereichen ein noch mächtigeres Werkzeug. Christoph Koeberlin ist nicht […]
Source:: designmadeingermany.de
Embracing a new era of inspiration: Speculative design tool fosters inspiration research to further examine the concept of co-creation with AI Berlin. In the age of artificial intelligence, the concept of inspiration takes on new dimensions as we explore the potential of human-AI collaboration. By engaging in a creative dialogue with AI, we open ourselves […]
Source:: designmadeingermany.de
B2B thought leadership shows potential buyers that your brand is a credible authority. It helps keep you top of mind even when a buyer isn’t in market yet. Essentially, it earns equity that will mature into sales and repeat business.
The 2024 Edelman-LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report shows that thought leadership is more crucial now than ever. The report says that 90% of decision makers are more likely to be receptive to sales and marketing outreach from companies that produce high-quality thought leadership. More than half of CEOs and other decision makers spend an hour or more per week reading thought leadership content.
But there’s a catch: The overall quality of thought leadership isn’t filling these decision makers‘ hunger for new and useful ideas. Only 15% of those surveyed said the quality of thought leadership they read is “very good” or “excellent.” This represents a major opportunity to do thought leadership better than your competition.
The term ‘thought leadership‘ can mean everything from ‘scrupulously sourced original research‘ to ‘an opinion article from our CEO.‘ Here’s how to make sure yours fits your potential buyer’s definition of great thought leadership.
B2B thought leadership is content created to showcase a company’s unique insights, ideas and best practices. It’s intended to provide meaningful value to a specific audience in order to build relationships with potential buyers.
You can contrast thought leadership content with:
At first glance, thought leadership seems like a purely top-of-funnel tactic. But when it’s executed properly, it can affect business outcomes all the way through the buyer journey. It can:
With this list of benefits, it’s not hard to see why B2B companies are prioritizing thought leadership. But it takes a strategic effort to hit the mark for high-quality content that earns these results.
Great thought leadership can take many forms: Videos, ebooks, resource hubs, and even social media posts. Regardless of the format, these elements can elevate your thought leadership above the rest.
Cites credible data
Original research is the holy grail of credible data; if your team has the resources to partner with a credible researcher to produce a brand-exclusive report, you’re golden.
Even if you can’t create your own report, however, you can still establish credibility through the sources you use. Look to peers in the industry, research firms like Forrester and Edelman, and public resources like government agencies to inform your thought leadership.
Includes NOVEL insights
Too often, brands forget the ‘leader‘ part of thought leadership. It’s easy to write a detailed piece on the current best practices in your industry—easy enough that anyone could do it and already has.
True thought leadership should question the status quo, suggest new ways of doing things, or explore how and why the current methods are successful and how they can be optimized. It doesn’t always have to be contrarian or reactionary, but it does need to be something new.
Speaks from experience
If a grocery store clerk wrote a book about being a successful CEO, their conclusions might seem suspect. Ditto if a CEO wrote a book about being a better grocery store clerk. In either case, speculation and supposition are no substitute for actual, lived experience.
In other words, if you’re trying to write useful content for CEOs, your C-suite should be contributing their own insights. If your executives aren’t keen on writing their own content, try for at least a brief interview or two that can inform your drafting.
Is genuinely helpful
I vividly remember the first eBook I downloaded as a newbie marketer. It promised useful insights on marketing—something I desperately needed. But it was mostly platitudes and a heaping helping of brand promotion. This type of “helpful” content is all too common.
Truly helpful content begins with the intention of being helpful. Ask yourself: How will this content benefit someone who has never bought from us, and may never buy from us in the future? Starting with this question ensures your content will be useful to potential buyers as well.
Here’s a quick overview of how to approach thought leadership planning, conception, creation and promotion.
#1 Understand your audience
Conduct market research to understand the needs, challenges, and interests of your audience. Use keyword research, social listening, input from your customer service and sales departments, and direct customer feedback to inform your personas.
#2 Define your objectives
Determine what you want to achieve with your thought leadership efforts. Common goals include raising awareness, share of voice, engagement with thought leadership content, and even sales leads generated.
Key metrics for top-of-funnel might include website traffic, social media interactions, new social media followers, and content shares. Lower-funnel metrics might include lead quality, the ratio of MQLs converted to SQLs, and increase in repeat business.
#3 Identify key topics and themes
A mix of internal and external sources can help ensure your content is relevant, knowledgeable and topical. Tap into the knowledge and experience of your executive and managerial teams, as well as those on the front lines with your customers.
You can augment that internal research with external—look at competitors‘ content, third-party research and social media posts from industry leaders.
#4 Create high-quality content
Outline a schedule for content creation and publication, ensuring consistency and variety in formats (blogs, whitepapers, webinars, podcasts, etc.). It’s better to publish a smaller amount of higher-quality content at a less frequent cadence than to opt for speed and quantity over quality.
It’s also crucial to ensure your content has useful, actionable advice designed to help your audience excel at their work.
#5 Engage and collaborate
One easy way to expand your reach and help establish credibility is to partner with industry influencers, guest bloggers, and other thought leaders.
As your content earns comments and engagement, continue to interact with your audience and encourage them to participate in a dialog. These conversations can help fuel the next round of thought leadership content.
#6 Promote across channels
It’s important that the right audience sees your thought leadership—without promotion, even the best content can fail to connect. Start by optimizing text content for SEO. Then use social media to share the content organically, and consider paid promotion for more relevant reach.
LinkedIn is most likely the best place to sponsor your content. You’re most likely to find the executive audience you’re looking for on their platform.
#7 Monitor and adjust
As with any content, it’s important to track performance and continually optimize. It’s a good idea to supplement your quantifiable metrics with actual audience feedback.
It’s also important to make thought leadership a long-term commitment. It takes value and consistency to build credibility and stake out real estate in your audience’s minds.
Ask anyone on the sales team: Relationship-building is a key part of turning browsers into buyers into repeat customers. Thought leadership can help kickstart a profitable relationship by showing buyers exactly who they should be working with.
Need help with content that converts? Explore our content marketing services.
The post What Makes B2B Thought Leadership Actually Work? appeared first on TopRank® Marketing.
Source:: toprankblog.com
The most successful marketers are lifelong learners who thrive by adapting to change. And the last decade has given us plenty of opportunity to practice flexibility and adaptability. As we get used to the idea that there will be no “new normal,” we can still learn from what other marketers are doing (or not doing, for that matter).
Our client LinkedIn just published their 2024 B2B Marketing Benchmark. It’s just the kind of data we marketers need to move our art and science further.
LinkedIn surveyed 2,000+ B2B marketers in management, leadership or executive positions to find out what teams are doing now and what they’re planning for the future.
Here are the key takeaways our team spotted.
Despite the tumultuous economic times of the past few years, the 2024 Benchmark finds marketers adapting and preparing for what comes next. Let’s dig into the data and what it means for your team’s future success.
Without a continuously-developed strategy, marketers are left to react instead of act. The data shows that most marketers got that message: Over two-thirds plan to reorganize their teams this year to be more effective.
Marketers are also carefully allocating resources across channels, with a strong focus on digital. In fact, of the top five most valuable channels, only one (trade shows/live events) is non-digital.
Strategic marketers are seeing the biggest returns from:
However nearly half of marketers plan to increase investments in video, influencer content and case studies in the coming year. It’ll be intriguing to see how these investments paid off, when we’re looking at next year’s data.
All this strategizing is paying off: a whopping 90% said they feel good about their ability to drive revenue. This confidence is rubbing off on the finance department as well: 51% say their budget increased this year, and 54% expect an increase next year. Within that 54%, 18% say they expect a substantial increase.
Room for improvement: Acquisition vs. retention
CMOs report they’re spending 60% of resources on acquiring new customers, and only 40% on retention. That balance could shift in favor of retention with a focus on customer lifetime value for even better results.
It’s hard to believe that just a few years ago, we were chuckling at AI’s awkwardness. Now it’s becoming an essential part of the marketing toolkit.
Over two-thirds of respondents said they’re using Gen AI for marketing. What’s more, over half have official guidelines for its use, and over half are actively training their teams on the technology.
It isn’t an unqualified embrace of the technology, however. Marketers report misgivings including:
However, these misgivings appear to be outweighed by the potential benefits of increased efficiency, smarter targeting, and automated processes.
Room for improvement: Training and experience
Given how new these AI tools are, it’s not surprising that many marketers don’t feel adequately trained to get the most out of them. Of LinkedIn’s respondents, 43% say that insufficient skills are a major factor holding back adoption. And only 25% said they have an ‘extremely good understanding‘ of how to use Gen AI.
B2B marketers are finally getting the license to be as bold and creative as their B2C counterparts. Ninety percent of LinkedIn’s survey respondents said they are advocating for bolder, more creative campaigns, including 88% of the CMOs surveyed.
These types of campaigns are intended to build brand equity by earning attention, raising awareness, establishing credibility and staying top-of-mind. Over two-thirds of respondents said they’re increasing their brand-building budget in the coming year.
Marketers agree that bold creative can lead to impressive outcomes like:
Room for improvement: Adopting new tech for bolder creative
Marketers have the opportunity to embrace new channels like CTV (connected TV, like Roku and Google Chromecast) and new formats like AR and VR to take their creative campaigns to the next level.
Marketers win and lose by the quality of their data analytics. It’s not just having the right data — it’s being able to glean insights from that data and act on it.
It’s worth noting that data skills are in top demand for marketers: “Data Analysis” ranked #1 among top digital skills added to LinkedIn profiles globally, and “Analytics” was the sixth-most in-demand skill overall.
Most of LinkedIn’s respondents say they’re on the right track with data and measurement. Seventy percent say they have the right tech to measure marketing activities, and 82% say they can demonstrate the impact of their marketing to the C-suite. Only 6% reported they could not prove their results.
Even with a high degree of data confidence, marketers are still feeling pressure:
Room for improvement: Consolidate data for deeper insights
Marketing teams still tend to work in silos, with data stored in different platforms, applications, even in different cloud providers. Bringing data together is a crucial first step to generating better insights.
Sales and marketing teams are finally doing the hard work of aligning on shared goals, KPIs and terminology.
Alignment is a crucial part of increasing efficiency and improving results; it means less time spent arguing about what a sales-qualified lead means, and more time reaching people with the right messaging.
Only 10% of those surveyed said there is no sales and marketing alignment in their organization. More than half said there are at least some synergies between departments.
Room for improvement: Communication skills
Communication is the top skill that B2B marketers are seeking to add to their resumes. The ability to communicate clearly and professionally is a learned skill, not an inherent trait, and it’s well worth marketers‘ time to learn it.
Part of the Benchmark focuses on how CMOs are facing challenges and preparing their departments for the future. But it’s not just about managing marketing: The CMO’s sphere of influence is growing.
Seventy-five percent of CMOs say they are trying to involve more C-suite members in decisions, and 90% say relationship building is essential to succeed. Overall, 69% say their role has grown in importance over the last year.
CMOs reported a number of fundamental changes to their position:
Room for improvement: Balancing long and short-term goals
Marketing strategies like SEO and brand building are long plays; if you try to measure ROI too soon, it will look like they’re ineffective. CMOs need to develop their storytelling skills to argue the benefits of a long- and short-term goal balance. After all, without upper-funnel activities like brand building, there won’t be a bottom of the funnel to market to.
It’s clear that diverse marketing teams are better at reaching diverse audiences. Diversity includes gender, age, ethnicity, race, religion and more.
The news on DEI is mostly positive: 80% said their teams are gender diverse, and 75% said their teams are racial and age diverse. And leaders are still investing for the future, with 60% of CMOs saying their investment in DEI has increased in the past year.
Room for improvement: Diversity in hiring
The one sour note for DEI: Only 7% say they prioritize DEI when hiring. Building a diverse and inclusive environment starts with hiring practices; when DEI isn’t a priority, hiring will inevitably reflect bias.
The 2024 B2B Marketing Benchmark shows impressive progress in the art and science of marketing. More data-driven strategy, bolder creative, more collaboration and diversity—the future looks bright.
For the year to come, marketing leaders say they’re focusing on three key priorities/challenges:
If you need help meeting these challenges, our boldly creative, data-driven agency is here to help. Contact us today to get started.
The post 7 Essential Takeaways from LinkedIn’s 2024 B2B Marketing Benchmark appeared first on TopRank® Marketing.
Source:: toprankblog.com
Die Challenge Pesch ist die erste Adresse, wenn es um exklusives Interior Design geht und hat seine Wurzeln in einer 120-jährigen Geschichte in Köln. Als marktführende Marke für zeitloses Interieur hat Pesch bereits mit weltberühmten Persönlichkeiten wie Andy Warhol und Pablo Picasso zusammengearbeitet. Es war an der Zeit, Pesch ein anspruchsvolles Design-Update zu verpassen, um […]
Source:: designmadeingermany.de