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Karlsbader Grotesk is a sans-serif typeface designed and published by Christian Gruber.
The design was inspired by the Swiss / International Style with its focus on modern and clean shapes and much attention to detail.
The family is available in five different weights with matching italics. It offers extensive language support, countless opentype features such as small caps, fractions, circled numbers, arrows and, of course, a variety of ligatures.
Source:: designmadeingermany.de
US B2B ad spend set to pass $30b in 2023, nearly half the dollars will go to digital
In the U.S. alone B2B advertising spending is expected to top $30 billion by 2023, with almost half going to digital, while display advertising spending is expected to surpass that of search advertising by 2023 — two of several insights of interest to digital marketers in newly-released forecast data. The Drum
Salesforce completes $27.7B Slack acquisition
Salesforce has put finishing touches on its $27.7 billion acquisition of business communication platform Slack, with the now-official purchase set to combine Salesforce’s data platform Customer 360 with Slack, Salesforce recently announced. Venture Beat
Zenith: Online Video To Lead 2021 Global Ad-Spend Growth, At +26%; Digital To Take 58% Share Of Total
2021’s most robust growth in global digital advertising spend is set to come from online video, climbing some 26 percent to $63 billion, according to recently-released forecast data. Overall ad spending growth is expected to reach 6.9 percent in 2022 and 5.6 percent in 2023, the forecast data also shows. MediaPost
Twitter Posts Steady Increases in Users and Revenue for Q2, with Good Growth in Ad Spend
Twitter saw an 11 percent rise in its monetizable daily active user (mDAU) count compared to last year, an increase of some 7 million users since the first quarter of 2021, while also recording a 69 percent increase in international revenue, Twitter recently announced. Social Media Today
C-Suite Survey: The Top 5 Marketing Org Deficiencies
84 percent of senior management executives say they are interacting either closely, regularly, or increasingly with marketing teams, while 52 percent noted that interim or fractional marketing leaders bring new thinking, ideas, and innovations to marketing departments, according to recently-released survey data. MarketingProfs
Clubhouse is now out of beta and open to everyone
After a year of restricted waiting-list access, and following up on May’s Android version release, audio-call-based communication app Clubhouse has opened its digital doors to the public, accompanied by an updated logo, the firm recently announced. TechCrunch
Consumers want control, not ad blocking, in online advertising
80 percent of consumers say they don’t trust online ads, and 74 percent report that they hate them, while 67 percent of the Gen Z demographic said that online ads serve an important purpose — two of several findings of interest to online marketers contained in recently-released survey data. AdAge
Google now shows why it ranked a specific search result
A new list of factors taken into account by Google for individual search results has been launched by the search giant, highlighting some of the top areas businesses can look to for improving their search rankings, Google recently announced. Search Engine Land
2021 U.S., Worldwide Consensus Jumps On Zenith Ad Revisions
Global and U.S. advertising spending forecasts for 2021 have recently gotten stronger, with worldwide ad spend growth predicted to reach 13.1 percent and U.S. growth 14.6 percent, each revised to greater levels than earlier predictions, according to joint forecast data from Dentsu, GroupM, Magna, and Zenith. MediaPost
What B2B Buyers Want From Vendor Websites
When it comes to B2B buyers seeking insight from online vendors, the top three criteria affecting purchase decisions include easy website access to relevant content, pricing and competitive information, and site content that directly demonstrates expertise around industry needs — one of numerous findings of interest to digital marketers contained in newly-released B2B buyer research. MarketingProfs
ON THE LIGHTER SIDE:
A lighthearted look at the “the personalization privacy paradox” by Marketoonist Tom Fishburne — Marketoonist
The Internet Is Rotting — The Atlantic
TOPRANK MARKETING & CLIENTS IN THE NEWS:
Have you come across your own top B2B marketing news item from the past week of industry news? Please drop us a line in the comments below.
Thanks for joining us for this week’s TopRank Marketing B2B marketing news, and we hope you’ll come back next Friday for more of the week’s 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.
The post B2B Marketing News: B2B Ad Spending Sizzles, Salesforce Slack Buy Complete, C-Suite Marketing Survey, & Clubhouse Opens To All appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog – TopRank®.
Source:: toprankblog.com
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The dynamic serif typeface Adelbrook is a typeface family that keeps calm. It is designed by Philip Lammert and published under his foundry name Vibrant Types. Typographically it enriches text with an archaic structure, because of its harmonious rhythm, the dynamic stroke, asymmetrical serifs and leaning stems. This humanist typeface has gravity and stands firmly on the baseline. Emphasized foot serifs and upward tapering stems define a heaviness. In fact, all the details are heftier the lower they are located. This shows especially in a subtle vertical hairline variation and in light or unapplied head serifs.
The restraining italic underlines the modern appeal of the type family. Although traditionally humanist italics are overly expressive, this semi-serif design integrates with a brush-like nature in a subtle way.
Typeface designer Philip Lammert tried his hand at drawing a lively design, which nevertheless maintains a constructedness. He consistently applied the design principle with the stem becoming narrower towards the top to the entire design. The tension accompanying these clear rules captivated him so much that he completed the font family seven months later in 2021. Although all decisions were conceptually predetermined, he revised the character set several times on the way to a coherent alphabet.
All these details result in a sophisticated text typeface with a contemporary sharpness. Adelbrook is available as five fixed weights from Light to Bold with corresponding italics, and also as variable fonts. The fonts offer features such as arrows or additional numbers and case-sensitive forms. Free test fonts can be downloaded at the foundry website www.vibrant-types.com, where commercial fonts can also be purchased.
Designer
Philip Lammert
Source:: designmadeingermany.de
If you feel like everything has already been written and you have no idea what else you can write about, here are six content ideas for you that help you come up with valuable and engaging content this year:
Keyword research is not just for SEO! They can give you in-depth insight into your audience’s interests, questions, and struggles. Research and address them in your content.
The key is to try a new tool from time to time. Why? Each tool uses a different data source or a different output or a different way to organize those keywords. Any of these will be enough to give you lots of content ideas.
Luckily, we have quite a few tools to choose from.
This tool will give you pretty much everything you need to create a good topic list. Or at least point you in the right direction. Look at the left-hand channel to find popular concepts around your main topic and build your content around those!
Source: Screenshot by the author
Kparser offers a premium version for $69 a month but I’ve always been using its free version which is great!
KeywordTool.io allows access to lots of data sources, including Google, Youtube, Amazon, Instagram, and Twitter.
(Content ideas sourced from Amazon)
Source: Screenshot made by the author
The tool will give you lots of ideas for free but to see each keyword analysis, you need to upgrade to one of the listed plans.
This one you may not have heard of. It features a man called ‘The Seeker‘, who impatiently awaits your questions. You put in keywords or phrases, he suggests some interesting topics.
Apart from being a great keyword research tool, this one is also great for question research (see my #5 tip on the list!) Using different ways to group and organize your keyword lists will likely uncover more ideas. These grouping techniques include keyword clustering and semantic research.
Source: Screenshot by the author
Answer the Public is freemium and comes at $79/month minimum if you pay for a year, but frankly I’ve never had to upgrade as the free version is simply awesome!
You know who you really need to listen to. Correct, your current and future customers. You want your content to make a difference for your bottom line, not just bring your word out there, no matter if anyone is there listening or not.
You don’t just want to be heard, you want to be heard by your target audience.
You can even gamify that process by building up your surveys with visualization tools, here are some extra tips on that.
You can offer a good mix of generic questions (like, ask about their lifestyle) which would help you build up your customers‘ personas and target them better. Then come your brand-specific questions:
The latter will help you improve your site performance too.
The cool thing is that you will also be able to use your survey results in site content and articles, making your site intent-rich, trustworthy, and linkable.
It’s also a wise idea to set up a well-defined routine to help you record your customers‘ questions as they come. This will help you in both content planning and social media goals.
Slack is a nice tool to help your in-team communication and idea-sharing. Simply set up a separate Slack channel and encourage your customer and support team to send your customers‘ questions there as soon as they come across any.
Using your web analytics is another way to listen to your customers and readers. Finteza is a great solution to better understand which content and on-page elements your site users respond to best. It supports a variety of events including mouse-overs, clicks, and downloads allowing you to measure which content does a better job engaging your readers:
Source: Finteza
There are holidays and seasonal trends to include in your content editorial plans. When you catch a trend, there’s always a huge boost of interactions, new followers, and clicks.
Source: Screenshot by the author
The great thing about seasonal trends is that you can plan your editorial calendar months in advance because they are easy to predict and repeat yearly. This means you’ll be able to re-use your calendar as a reference point to structure your seasonal content strategy and improvise for maximum success.
Simply sit down and plan your content assets for upcoming big holidays, seasonal events like spring cleaning season, summer holidays, Amazon Prime Day, and other noteworthy days that are relevant to your target customers.
Source: Screenshot by the author
You can use Google Spreadsheets to create your content roadmap. To better focus on ideation and get more inspired, I usually start with planning my seasonal content using a printable calendar which you can easily find using these steps.
There are handy calendar apps that can even integrate into WordPress to keep track of those holidays you may want to include in your social media editorial plan.
You can schedule social media updates as far as one year ahead to make sure there’s always something going on your brand channels no matter how busy you get.
We have a tendency to look for our inspiration online because we are targeting an internet-based audience, which is totally understandable: you can discover so many wonderful topics on the web. It just isn’t the only place we can look and purely searching online actually limits our scope, and so our returns.
The most popular piece of content is one that comes from the real world. People love personal stories!
Go out into the real world. Seek out events in your industry, or things that are tangentially related. Discover how everyday experiences connect to your niche and use your social media channels as a platform to explain and share with others.
Get out of cyberspace and into meet-space!
A good way is to engage with your local community (now in a safe and socially distanced way!)
This serves as a great way to understand the pulse of your audience/target customers, their intent, and personal experiences that impact their decisions. Plus, you also earn a chance to introduce new people to your brand.
You can also connect with other local brands, businesses, and business owners and potentially work out some topic ideas that way.
Question research offers a few important marketing opportunities:
So ask questions on social media often and engage with answers you receive.
If you are open to trying tools to bolster this exercise, Text Optimizer is a smart option. All you Just type your keyword into its “Topic Ideas” section and it will generate a list of topic ideas for you:
Source: Screenshot by the author
Every question is rated based on how many people are searching for it and how many sites are covering it – giving you a clear analysis of demand vs competition which informs your decision making.
The tool is paid and I am not aware of any alternatives. But the good thing is, question research will be mostly free. You will get some content ideas without the need to pay or register an account.
Quick tip: If you install their Google Chrome extension, most of that analysis will come for free as long as you use Google Chrome.
Source: Screenshot by the author
Right off the bat, re-packaging content is going to be the best weapon in your arsenal. It takes what you already have and makes it stretch, getting more out of every piece you write. A lot of those prolific writers are using this tactic, albeit at its extreme. That is how they manage to get so much out without others writing for them.
So what does re-packaging content entail? It is creating new content directly from the old. Some ways to do that are:
These are only a few examples, but you get a general idea. A piece of content should never remain on its own without some form of recycled item coming out of it.
Looking at that list of ideas for re-packaging old content, did any of them stand out as forms of media you have never tried before? It may be time to start expanding what you create and produce something brand new.
This will attract a new kind of audience, one that is drawn to the media in question. Do you usually write blog posts? Start making infographics or videos. Never done a Slideshare slideshow? Consider it now, and see if it gets any bites.
You will be able to recycle your content better this way, and it will keep you from being burnt out. That will inevitably have an impact on the speed and quality of your content creation.
Content ideation isn’t easy and moreover, it is a continuous struggle. Let’s hope these ideas will get you out of that writer’s block!
Ann Smarty is the Founder of Viral Content Bee, Brand and Community manager at Internet Marketing Ninjas. She can be found on Twitter @seosmarty.
The post Six content ideas to supercharge your marketing in 2021 appeared first on Search Engine Watch.
Source:: searchenginewatch.com
How has B2B marketing changed forever during the pandemic?
The voices and visions of B2B marketing have been forced to shift over the past few years, as have many of the goals and methods we strive for and use to connect with our current and potential customers.
Some of these changes are subtle while others are decidedly not, yet each brings with it both new opportunities for embracing the future of B2B marketing along with risks for those who don’t heed the call when the winds of digital change shift.
Let’s take a look at five of the most substantial changes in B2B marketing that the pandemic has driven, and explore new insights that can inform and inspire your efforts in the push towards 2022 and beyond.
The remote Zoom, Slack, phone and email communication we’ve all had to embrace over the course of the pandemic have surprisingly brought closer B2B relationships in many cases.
How being physically distanced from each other has actually brought us together in new and fascinating ways is a phenomenon that will likely be studied for years to come, yet successful B2B marketers have already embraced this shift and are doing everything they can to nurture our new world of remote business relationships in creative digital fashion.
The heart of online communication are the people at either end of the conversation. The particular tools they use come and go like the shifting seasons, and in my 37 years of online digital communication this fact has become more pronounced.
The way our communication tools today are generally able to work together seamlessly is a far cry from the days when I operated a 300-baud computer bulletin board system and each person had to take turns phoning in with their modem. Two formats carried over, however — email and chat — and both are still successfully used today by countless B2B marketers.
Relationships between brands and influential subject matter experts have also taken on new qualities since the pandemic began.
For Ann Handley, chief content officer at MarketingProfs, a new variety of these opportunities has been arising.
„I think in B2B what we’re seeing, and this has been fueled by the pandemic, is that we are seeing those relationships start to happen between brands and influencers like me where they’re reaching out to me proactively and saying, ‚Hey, we don’t have a thing right now, but we want to work with you. Can we sort of get to know each other?’” Ann recently told our chief executive and co-founder Lee Odden in „Inside B2B Influence 14: Ann Handley of MarketingProfs on Content Marketing and Influence.“
[bctt tweet=““Integrating influencer content is a direct line to building trust and customer confidence.” — Ann Handley @annhandley“ username=“toprank“]
Advertisers, consumers, brands and pretty much everyone in between have all had to vastly increase their use of digital communication during these challenging recent years, which has led to more competition than ever to be heard.
For advertisers, the pandemic propelled digital advertising past the 50 percent mark, and the margin between digital and all other formats is now only increasing.
Even among B2B marketers, in the U.S. advertising spending is expected to top $30 billion by 2023, with almost half of that going to digital advertising (eMarketer.)
Just because we have great tools for communicating, however, doesn’t mean we’re using them to full effect in our marketing efforts.
The combined art and science of effective B2B marketing communication is a subject we’ve explored in the following articles:
[bctt tweet=““Just because we have great tools for communicating, however, doesn’t mean we’re using them to full effect in our marketing efforts.” — Lane R. Ellis @lanerellis“ username=“toprank“]
The touch-points that B2B customers now look for along their purchasing journey in the coronavirus era run from well before the starting line to long past the finish line of sales.
Before the pandemic, B2B buyers had long-standing way-points for predictable interactions with brands.
Now, businesses that rely only on those traditional touch-points for customer interaction risk not being there for their potential customers in the new places buyers expect to find brands — whether it’s a new batch of social media platforms such at Clubhouse, human or chatbot live chat, or text messaging.
The more we can learn about our customers and the digital journeys they set out on today, the better we can get front and center at those key points where we want to provide the best-answer solutions our audience is searching for.
It’s rarely possible to truly be there at every possible spot in today’s vast and circuitous digital routes, even with substantial resources, so it’s important to pick the right locations for meeting your customer on their journey, and to make each one count.
One approach to tackling this complex issue is through the use of account based marketing (ABM), or better yet, account based experiences (ABX), as Lee recently explored in „Is ABX the Next Evolution of B2B Marketing?“
[bctt tweet=““In many ways, Account Based Experience (ABX) is the next generation of Account Based Marketing. ABX is a fundamental customer centric rethinking of an account based go-to-market.” — Jon Miller @JonMiller“ username=“toprank“]
One big winner the pandemic has surfaced for brands, marketers, and customers alike is the enduring power of influence.
It’s no wonder that U.S. influencer spending is set to surpass $3 billion in 2021, an increase of over 33 percent (eMarketer), and that paid branded content and influencer marketing have accounted for 20 percent of 2021 digital advertising budgets, while influence marketing has been seen as the second most important digital ad option for 2021, according to recently-released Advertiser Perceptions survey data.
These past two years are likely to go down as the turning point when influencer marketing truly showed its potential in the world of B2B industries.
We’ve examined this important shift to B2B influencer marketing recently in the following articles:
[bctt tweet=““Optimizing marketing experiences with influence represents one of the most important digital growth strategies in 2021 and beyond.” — Lee Odden @LeeOdden“ username=“toprank“]
I’ve worked remotely for the past 5,241 days — since March 23, 2007 — and one genie-from-the-bottle change the past two pandemic years has brought is the immense increase in the number of people working remotely around the world.
B2B brands that facilitate remote communication have undoubtedly thrived the past two years, with Zoom and clients such as Slack and monday.com upping their game to make hybrid and remote work a much more friction-free and less frustrating experience.
Digital video too has exploded since the pandemic began, a trend that newly-released forecast data clearly shows, with online video and eCommerce advertising expected to add $40 billion — some 11.2 percent — to advertising spending worldwide, an increase of more than six percent from its peak before the global health crisis.
Professional talent in all areas surrounding the great circle of B2B activity is now more global than ever, and successful firms are strengthening their teams by adding great and diverse voices from the four corners of the digital world.
[bctt tweet=““The more diverse your workforce is, the better your ideas, innovation, and problem solving are, because you don’t have a bunch of heads that look like one another nodding in agreement, which doesn’t get us anywhere.” — @TamaraMcCleary“ username=“toprank“]
Being mindful of these changes can help make the journey to 2022 and beyond a more successful one, as we move forward towards a future shaped not only by the pandemic but also by the many powerful changes and improvements B2B marketers have crafted.
By cranking up and embracing new closer B2B relationships and the digital realm where they largely reside, savvy marketers will meet those heightened customer journey expectations.
Utilizing the multifaceted power of influence will propel tomorrow’s most successful marketers and B2B brands, all in a new work landscape that will henceforth be far more hybrid and remote.
Crafting award-winning digital experiences and storytelling featuring each of these elements takes significant time, resources, and effort, which is why many of the world’s top B2B brands choose to partner with a leading B2B marketing agency. Contact us today and learn why for more than 20 years brands from LinkedIn and 3M to Dell and Adobe have chosen to work with TopRank Marketing.
The post 5 Ways the Pandemic Has Forever Changed the Voices & Visions of B2B Marketing appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog – TopRank®.
Source:: toprankblog.com