B2B marketing

Only 16% of CMOs are responsible for leading the execution of their firm’s digital transformation. Now is the time to rethink your role. Too few CMOs actively lead or are deeply involved in digital transformation. CIOs, COOs, CXOs, and CDOs have filled the gap but don’t represent the voice of the customer or bring the […]

A long time ago, Peter Drucker, a man whom Businessweek once called “the father of business management,” wrote: This was written a long time ago — a few years before I embarked on my long career as a B2B marketer. I can attest that for most of that long career, I didn’t feel like the […]

When account-based marketing (ABM) burst onto the scene in 2015, it was positioned by a number of vendors as the death of traditional marketing. And while that controversial approach might have been great for creating buzz and drawing attention, it created significant confusion for the mainstream B2B marketer. It’s taken a couple of years to […]

In 2013, Doug Kessler and the crew at Velocity Partners published “Crap: the single biggest threat to B2B content marketing” — a work of thought leadership genius that I still tell marketers to read today. In just 50 PowerPoint slides, Velocity Partners explains why the current deluge of marketing “content” won’t serve buyers and what you […]

Like most people, I consider November a good time to start thinking about the clean slate that a new year brings. There is lots of room to reflect on one year and get ready for the next one with a bit more, well, “resolve,” so to speak. I’ll be an all-around better person, for sure — […]

Many attendees of our B2B Marketing 2018 Forum remarked how the energy was high and the focus was driven — the marketing and sales leaders who joined us in Austin were on a mission to overdeliver on business expectations for their practice and figure out how to manage the conflicting priorities that 31% of respondents to […]

Customer experience (CX) was at the forefront of CMOs’ minds in 2018. They shifted ad budgets (under siege thanks to trust and transparency issues) to even more technology and CX initiatives. Good news: The focus is creating more emotionally resonant and useful brand experiences such as Disney’s MagicBand. Bad news: The competitive advantage these experiences […]

Maturing Into A Horizontal Channel Management Platform Aligned With CRM and Marketing Automation Channel and alliance leaders are known to be good jugglers. With the average partner program containing over 90 distinct components, encouraging channel growth while mediating conflict is a complex undertaking. Partner relationship management (PRM) connects the dots between partner planning, recruitment, onboarding, […]

Forrester’s customer experience Forums are in their 10th year — from our first one in 2009 in New York, they’ve grown and spread to San Francisco, London, Singapore, and other cities around the world and have become yearly destinations for CX pros far and wide. CX Europe 2018 is just 12 days from now — Tuesday and Wednesday, […]

Personas and journey maps have become key tools for the modern marketer. As my colleague Lori Wizdo expertly explains: It is the job of marketing to guide the buyer through the buying journey. Becoming a journey marketer is essential in this digital age. (Lori can help you get there — check out her workshop at our upcoming […]

“Say, Tom, let me whitewash a little.” “No — no — I reckon it wouldn’t hardly do, Ben. You see, Aunt Polly’s awful particular about this fence . . . it’s got to be done very careful; I reckon there ain’t one boy in a thousand, maybe two thousand, that can do it the way it’s got […]

I am still catching my breath. Adobe has agreed to acquire Marketo for $4.75 billion. The deal is the biggest in Adobe’s history and a massive encore to the acquisition of Magento for a mere $1.7 billion in May. On the one hand, I find myself proud to be a B2B marketer — to think that […]

  Influencer marketing is often characterized as a trendy tactic for B2C marketers to tap into the far-reaching audiences of the Insta-famous. As a result, the practice regularly receives negative coverage for short-term-oriented, poorly executed B2C campaigns where consumer brands pay vapid lifestyle influencers outrageous sums in exchange for questionable ROI. There’s no doubt that […]

B2B marketers get it. They know they need to operate across their sales and marketing silos to get beyond portfolio-centric campaigns to connect with buyers via specific, contextually relevant content that engages customers across the entire life cycle. The question is no longer why. The question is how. That’s why I am excited about the sessions […]

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect on May 25, 2018. It’s been a few months, and the repercussions are yet to be fully realized, leaving practitioners anxious and wondering if they have fully prepared. So far, GDPR compliance efforts have largely targeted customer data management, digital marketing, and security. However, […]

Journey mapping can be an energizing and eye-opening exercise in customer empathy. As advisors to B2B CX and marketing leaders in the Forrester Leadership Boards (FLB), we come along on many journey mapping “journeys.” The most common question we receive from executives is, “How do I ensure the journey mapping process is actionable and aligned […]

Can we address the elephant in the room? Account-based marketing (ABM) is not just about marketing. It’s about accounts — and how to win, serve, and retain them better than your competition. In our new research on the state of ABM, we found that B2B marketers are enjoying more measurable, substantial results from their account-based efforts this […]

Can we address the elephant in the room? Account-based marketing (ABM) is not just about marketing. It’s about accounts — and how to win, serve, and retain them better than your competition. In our new research on the state of ABM, we found that B2B marketers are enjoying more measurable, substantial results from their account-based efforts this […]

Last week, I had the opportunity to speak at a dinner event with 20-plus senior marketers and business partners that InsideView sponsored. We wanted to explore how well marketing and sales are facing up to new go-to-market (GTM) challenges associated with buyer behavior change in general, account-based marketing (ABM) specifically. To get the conversation going, […]