Content Tops Marketing Chiefs' Budget Plans

To keep up with leading marketers, plan to expand spending and refocus on content marketing, with an accent on social media. More than half of marketers not only plan to boost their budgets in the next few years, they will give content the biggest piece of the pie, according to a recent Advertising Age magazine report on a study by IBM and the CMO Club. The online survey of 100 chief marketing officers at b-to-b and b-to-c companies found that 57% plan to boost marketing budgets over the next two to three years. Content development will make up the largest portion of future marketing budgets (13.3%), followed by traditional advertising (11.5%), per the study. Other top areas of investment will be online advertising (11.1%), events (10.9%), website development (10.5%) and public relations (9.6%). Content leads marketing budgets explained Jay Henderson, director of strategy at IBM Commerce, to Ad Age because CMOs are focused on investing across the customer journey, and content requirements differ for the growing number of channels and devices at each stage, plus there is a demand for increased personalization at every stage. The survey divided the customer journey into six phases: discover (initial search), learn (research), try (testing and product comparisons), buy, use (requiring customer support) and advocate (recommending to others). The "discover" and "buy" phases currently receive the most marketer attention (20% and 21% of budget allocations, respectively), compared with the "learn" and "try" phases (16% each) and the "use" and "advocate" phases (13% and 14% respectively). But when it comes to prioritizing by channels, marketing attention is less evenly distributed, with social leading for all but the "buy" phase, when the website becomes the focus. See the full article at http://adage.com/article/btob/cmos-spending-content-buying-cycle/300181/

B2B Online Success Is Still Built on the Basics

Distracted by the buzz of new tech toys and tactics, B2B marketers sometimes need to be reminded of the basics of online success. For a review of B2B online fundamentals, check out Lee Odden's recent TopRankBlog post. Here are just the first four of the 21 basic tactics that he lists, and note that they are not high-tech investments but offline efforts with online impact: client testimonials that speak to the target audience; case studies that show the brand's problem-solving breadth and depth; industry recognition to enhance credibility; media relations to get quoted, profiled and linked in the press and blogosphere. Other, more online-specific basics include quality website design and functionality, targeted online advertising, search engine visibility on competitive terms, and so on. To further aid online success, we'd also like to remind of the basic marketing disciplines -- targeting, testing, tracking, updating and optimizing. Analyze your customer and make sure an event presentation, news release or social post offers useful content in a format likely to be shared by the target audience, for example. And avoid wasting ad, design and search dollars by implementing targeted, measurable response testing. For Odden's complete article, see http://www.toprankblog.com/2014/07/21-b2b-online-marketing-tactics/