B2B Marketing Consulting & Agency Services Blog

B2B Marketing Strategy & Managed Services Blog Tag: b2b

How to #Fail at B2B Marketing: The Only E-Book You Will Ever Read, Possibly

Sean Parnell - Tuesday, March 9, 2021

Innovaxis #Fail at B2B Marketing e-book cover, hand pushing over wooden blocks

Math: 80% of businesses fail 100% of the time.

While it may seem easy, failing at business-to-business (B2B) marketing requires more than just math. It takes a delicate blend of poor judgment and a robust lack of strategy.

But don’t worry. While the internet is crawling with so-called experts spewing complicated strategies for organic, gluten-free lead generation and viral cat videos, we’re here to make it easy.

Our brave new e-book, How to #Fail at B2B Marketing, provides the insights you need for no-results marketing that will tank your sales efforts faster than you can say “where did the leads go?”

The best part? Everything Some things in this guide may have been inspired by true events and a few mishaps we’ve encountered along the way.

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#fail: How to Create a Pandemic Marketing Strategy as Tactless as a Maskless Shopper Coughing in the Checkout Line

Raven Chapman - Thursday, October 15, 2020

Dumpster on fire floating down street

A global pandemic, civil unrest, out-of-control wildfires, economic disaster, locusts, hurricanes and marathon Zoom meetings: it’s been an apocalyptic year no matter how you spin it.

But marketing rests for no crisis – as they used to say in the marketing department at Pepsi – so let’s wade into some strategies that boldly go where angels fear to tread.

There’s always a “silver lining” if you ignore a substantial percentage of what used to be called “reality” before there was Facebook and the Kardashians.

Here are some tips designed to ensure that your marketing campaign lives up to the standards set by the hot mess inside a dumpster fire wrapped in a train wreck known as 2020.

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Innovaxis Is Your HubSpot Gold Partner

Sean Parnell - Tuesday, September 22, 2020

Innovaxis is Your HubSpot Gold Partner

After years of helping clients get the most out of their marketing automation capabilities, Innovaxis is proud to be taking the next step as an official HubSpot Gold Partner.

From Pardot to SharpSpring, Marketo, and more, we have worked in a lot of marketing automation platforms. And – simply put – HubSpot is the best.

As the most powerful and intuitive marketing automation software we’ve seen, HubSpot is flexible, agile, and scalable to a company’s needs. HubSpot is a great option for companies who do not have a CRM, but for those that do, the platform seamlessly integrates with existing CRMs for streamlined marketing efforts.

We have used HubSpot for years and have experienced the benefits of the platform firsthand.

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How to Cut B2B Marketing Costs and Increase Leads & Sales

Sean Parnell - Wednesday, July 29, 2020

“Reducing marketing spending will, in most cases, only make a bad financial situation worse. You can almost never save your way to profitability.”
Craig Bloem, Inc.

When the market falters or new obstacles cut into your business goals, are you tempted to cut marketing costs? Be careful not to cut your leads and sales as a result:

How to cut marketing costs and increase lead generation and sales

Not all outsourced marketing is effective, so how do you select the right partner?

The right marketing partner is a cost-effective way to control costs without losing the momentum that marketing provides for your sales efforts. Here are some key criteria for identifying the partner – and the ROI – that you need.

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How to Grow Your Business Out of Uncertainty

Sean Parnell - Friday, July 24, 2020

Grow Your Way Out of Uncertainty; diverging pathway with signs pointing in different directions

If you’re struggling to conduct “business as usual” right now, you’re not alone. Whether it’s a global pandemic or a more ordinary hurdle, uncertainty can be crippling.

If you think of your brand as a story, “uncertainty” is your new villain – your nemesis in times of crisis. But there is a path to a happy ending, and we can help you get there.

Here are four steps for growing your way out of uncertainty.

Step 1. Embrace the Situation

Uncertainty is often a product of unexpected change; finding your way out means accepting that things are different. You certainly don’t have to like it. But there’s a lot of opportunity out there—there always is—though it can be stressful as we work through the churn.

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#fail: How to Create Google Pay-Per-Click Campaigns that Pay Off … for Google

Raven Chapman - Saturday, July 18, 2020

How to Fail at Google Ads Campaigns

A whopping 90% of internet search traffic takes place through the magic of Google, a company so ambitious that it named itself for a mathematical concept that means a number so big we don’t have time to explain it to you.

But that’s no reason not to trust them to help you play the world’s most popular pay-per-click competition, The Game of Google Ads.

This wild bidding war is perfect for the marketer looking to spend as much time and money as possible for results that are as predictable as ripening avocados.

Will your ad strike the right note at the right time with the ripe prospects?

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#fail: How to Lose Friends & Influence Nobody with B2B Social Media

Raven Chapman - Wednesday, May 6, 2020

How to Fail at B2B Social Media

“Everyone” knows that social media is the key to #success. “Studies” have shown that harnessing the power of so-called social “influencers” can yield ROI that is like, literally, millions of times higher than other methods of outbound marketing.

We’re not sure what other forms of marketing these studies measure but the point is, when you consider the fact that the top nine or 10 influencers count 500 million people as followers, the open rate on your latest email campaign is not even worth talking about. So how do you get there?
Experts say it helps if you’re already famous:

“It helps to already be famous or to become famous to become a social media influencer…”

— 

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#fail: How to Repel Prospects with B2B Email Campaigns that Go Nowhere

Raven Chapman - Sunday, April 26, 2020

How to Fail at B2B Email Campaigns

To:  Email List [email protected]

From: Our New Marketing Intern

Subject: Re: Hi! Are you looking to COMPLETELY CRUSH your email marketing strategy?!! Read me! 😊

Dude:

Ever wondered why some email campaigns get results and others go so completely ignored that you find yourself googling the outage map? How is it possible for an email campaign to fail to connect to so many people?

It’s more than possible. With the right techniques, you can craft B2B email pitches so repellent they won’t even be opened by mistake. Here’s how:

  • Start with subject lines that are wordy,
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#fail: How to Completely Screw Up Your B2B SEO

Sean Parnell - Wednesday, April 15, 2020

B2B SEO Fail

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most thoroughly understood subjects in digital marketing – just ask 20 different SEO experts for help and you’ll get 20 different plans.

Hire them all and presto! You’ve got… a lot of plans.

If that seems confusing, you could try to learn it on your own. Keeping up with Google is fun – there are only 500-600 ranking algorithm updates per year.

We’ve Seen It All

With a landscape that changes every couple of clicks, SEO know-how requires a lot of keeping up. But SEO know-how-not-to is its own kind of expertise as well.

We’ve optimized websites since the days of Lycos and AltaVista.

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B2B Marketing Automation Software: The Case For & Against

Sean Parnell - Monday, January 27, 2020

B2B Marketing Automation Software: The Case for & AgainstThanks to aggressive sales reps from HubSpot, Pardot, Act-On, Marketo, SharpSpring, and others, many businesses get excited about B2B marketing automation software. It’s the definition of the proverbial “shiny object.”

However, the vast majority of businesses, especially SMBs, are not ready to take advantage of marketing automation software and its myriad features. Why?

When Marketing Automation Makes Perfect Sense

  • You have a written marketing plan at least for this year that connects the dots between your financial goals and marketing activities
  • You have a website that already generates good search engine rankings for keywords and subsequent lead generation
  • You have good website content and some higher level marketing collateral (e.g.
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