A cure for the common chaos
By Randy Mitchell A wise client once confided that a little chaos was good for creatives. She believed it forced us to think in unexpected ways. That was an eye-opening revelation and I embraced her sage guidance. However, in today’s turbulent B2B marketplace with labor shortages and global supply chain challenges, the last thing marketing managers need is more chaos. That’s particularly true when it comes to planning a major initiative. If you have a significant project coming in 2023, a marketing RFP is the logical starting point. However, the marketing RFP process, particularly on the B2B side, is an inexact science. It’s a complex, time-consuming, high-profile assignment that is initiated out of necessity.
The B2B website personality test
By Randy Mitchell Who is your B2B website? That’s not poor grammar. It’s one of the smartest questions you can ask your team or your client. It’s also one of the questions any good agency will answer when they develop a B2B website for you. Determining the personality of a website is a common-sense starting point for developing a strong digital presence. It should happen before you do the deep dive into sitemapping, content strategy, SEO and design options. Thankfully, you can mold the personality of your B2B website to ensure it makes the right impression when important visitors unexpectedly pop in. All you need to do is take the following test. B2B Website Personality
MOS is the new rule for B2B videos
By Randy Mitchell In the early days of filmmaking, an acronym was born that has come to represent the new standard for making B2B videos. Hollywood legend claims that a prominent German director wanted to shoot certain scenes without any audio. He kept barking out, “Mit out sound!” to his puzzled crew. The frustrated camera assistant struggled to translate the command, until he finally gave in and wrote the abbreviation “MOS” on the slate. The cameras rolled without sound, and the term has become part of the production vocabulary ever since. MOS has also come to define the most common video viewing experience. Today, up to 92% of social media videos are played
When B2B goes off the rails
By Randy Mitchell There are some moments when the world of B2B does not make sense. Thankfully, these meltdowns are few and far between. I had one of them last week and I’m still reeling. My moment of madness happened because I read the following statistics from Hubspot: 73 percent of B2B firms have increased their marketing spending in 2022 63 percent of B2B firms do not follow a formal marketing RFP process The first stat made perfect sense. The second one is stupefying. Let’s say you work at a B2B firm that’s planning a major marketing initiative like a social media program launch, website redesign, video production or full-on rebranding. What’s the first logical step
B2B marketing trends among friends
By Randy Mitchell What are your go-to resources for the latest B2B marketing trends? Popular options include HubSpot, Digiday, Forbes, the ANA and LinkedIn. But those industry experts only represent the top level of available insights. If you truly want to dive deeply into emerging B2B marketing trends, there is a data deluge just waiting to wash away a few hours of your day. For the sake of brevity and your busy schedule, I’m proposing an entirely different approach to trendspotting. Let’s call it: “B2B marketing trends among friends.” That title is appropriate because the driving forces behind these particular trends are our clients and contacts, and all of the topics we’ll cover are
The marketing elephant in the room
By Randy Mitchell It can crush budgets, trample timelines and smash strategies. It has a nasty habit of monopolizing planning meetings, status calls and your lunch hour. It packs about 13,000 pounds of angst, and it just landed squarely on your shoulders. What is it? The marketing elephant in the room. Every B2B marketer has one. I’m talking about the massive program that gets assigned to you as coworkers sigh audibly and avoid your glance. From that day forward, your pachyderm of a project will follow you around the office, onto the bus, and sometimes, it even comes home with you. Maybe your elephant is a social media program. It can be a beast to develop
What is the personality of your B2B website?
“This website is bland. It has no personality.” Recognize that criticism? You probably have heard it, said it, or at least thought it when visiting a B2B website. Who knows? It might even have been your own company’s site. With all due respect, that comment is simply not true. Every B2B website has a personality. They can be bold or geeky or verbose—some are even a little schizophrenic. In short, lack of personality is never the problem with B2B websites. The trouble starts when the site’s personality doesn’t match the brand you want to project. If that’s the case, your website will be an awkward representative for your company and it won’t speak
More Than Just A Pretty Site: Why You Need A B2B Website Strategy
What comes to mind when you think of “web design”? For most people, it’s something to do with the visual appearance of the site. When a business designs or redesigns its website, they often spend lots of time on fonts, images, colors, and other visual design elements. The goal is to create a beautiful site with an impactful appearance and maybe some of the cool graphics that are all the rage on competitors’ sites. While visuals are important, equally vital is the strategy behind every aspect of the website. It’s not enough to just look good—you also have to have a purpose. Here’s why you need to focus your attention on
Get Back On Track With These Four SEO Fixes
The Internet is full of guides for B2B marketers who are looking to get their start with search engine optimization (SEO). But what if you’ve made a commitment to SEO already…and it just sucks? Maybe you’ve analyzed your website with a tool like Hubspot’s Website Grader or Moz Pro’s Open Site Explorer and your score was dismal. Maybe your keywords were selected some time ago and search trends have moved on since then. Or maybe you see your competitors dominating search and are wondering how to keep from getting left behind. Whatever the case, you’re looking for some SEO fixes to help your website get back on track. While a total,
4 Questions to Answer Before Updating Your B2B Website Design
Your website is outdated, slow, and glitchy. You’re ready to bring your company up to speed by creating a beautiful, functional site that will engage your customers. So all you have to do is find a digital agency and get that redesign started, right? Not so fast. If you approach your B2B website design without a clear plan and goals in mind, your new website might look shiny, but it won’t help you connect with customers or keep up with your competition. Here are 4 questions to ask yourself to help you determine what you really want out of a new website: How can your website support your marketing strategy? A website