Tag: marketing strategy
#fail: How to Write B2B Blogs that Suck
There are a lot of ways to fail at B2B blogging and sometimes we feel as if we have seen them all, but then from out of the blue – and yes, the internet is in fact, mostly blue; we looked it up – will come a daring and original new form of just plain terrible blogging.
We’re looking at you,           .com
But you don’t have to be super creative to fail at B2B blogging. There are plenty of ordinary ways to create B2B blog content that is limp, unreadable, ineffective or that actively repels or offends your prospects.
We’re going to walk you through some of the best ways to accomplish all of those things,
… Continue Reading >>B2B Messaging Under Duress: 3 Recommendations for Managing COVID-19 Communications
Your clients have a lot of things to worry about right now. First of course, is protecting the health and safety of their employees and others around them.
But while that’s the priority, the economic risks are hard to separate from our other worries right now. Your clients, like all of us, are navigating the health threat while also scrambling to keep it from spilling over into a threat to their businesses.
How do you communicate with them without simply adding to the noise, or worse – creating the impression that you put profits ahead of public health?
Here are three recommendations on how to communicate with your customers or prospective customers during this crisis:
Share the State of Your Operations
Your customers need to know if there are changes to your capacity or availability.
… Continue Reading >>B2B Marketing Automation Software: The Case For & Against
Thanks 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.
Innovaxis Named to List of Chicago’s Top Marketing Consultants
As a B2B-focused digital marketing firm with a track record of creating lead-generating marketing content and strategy for a wide variety of businesses, we are proud to have been named to a list of the top marketing and consulting firms serving Chicago.
The ranking, created by Seattle-based research firm Expertise, used 25 variables across five categories that include reputation, credibility, experience, availability and professionalism to establish its list. The agencies on the list were culled from a starting point of more than 600 marketing consultants serving Chicago.
B2B Expertise that Drives Lead Generation
Our president Sean Parnell said the ranking reflects the hard work and specialized expertise that the Innovaxis Marketing team brings to its B2B clients both in Chicago and across the United States.
… Continue Reading >>3 Steps for Applying the Merlyn Principle in Business Planning
In T.H. White’s The Once & Future King, Merlyn explains how he predicts the future: “Now ordinary people are born forwards in Time… But I unfortunately was born at the wrong end of Time, and I have to live backwards from in front, while surrounded by a lot of people living forwards from behind. Some people call it having second sight.”
If you want to predict the future of your business, then start by developing your exit strategy and work backwards. Here are three steps for doing so.
Step 1: Create Your Exit Strategy
It can be uncomfortable to explore the answers to questions like, “How long will I live?
… Continue Reading >>5 Common Mistakes Made by Content Marketing Agencies
Content marketing is the foundation of inbound lead generation. When part of a strategic marketing plan leveraged with search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing can dramatically increase thought leadership, inbound lead generation, revenue and profits.
Effective content marketing can generate ROI of at least 300% within 9-18 months, sometimes sooner. Unfortunately, ineffective content marketing is more common, can cost several thousand per month and may only result in a handful of leads. How can you tell the good from the bad so you don’t waste a lot of time and money?
Here are five common mistakes made by content marketing agencies, and how to avoid them.
Mistake #1: Content in a VacuumAny content marketing agency who guarantees they can boost your online ranking with content alone is telling you a tired story.
… Continue Reading >>How to Unlock the Power of Your B2B Website with Structured Data
The first objective of any marketing effort is to get your message where it needs to go. In digital marketing, your first audience is often a search engine: the powerful, frequently misunderstood gatekeepers of the internet.
Search engines are designed to deliver the best possible results based on what you’re searching for. To do so, automatically, they have to decipher and reconcile thousands of formats, languages and vocabularies associated with website coding.
The addition of “structured data” – highly organized blocks of code added to web pages to provide search engines with additional page details – can streamline this process by “speaking” to search engines directly, in a vocabulary they can easily interpret.
… Continue Reading >>Leveraging B2B Sales and Marketing Efforts to Go Farther in 2018
The B2B sales and marketing landscape can be a murky place.
Visitors may flock to your website but create few qualified leads. A flurry of sales activity doesn’t necessarily lead to sustainable gains. You can flaunt your services at all the right trade shows and still go home with little to show for it. And every five minutes some new “must do” marketing platform or technology pops up on the scene.
It’s never been easier to sink time and money into marketing your business. What’s harder is creating a focused and disciplined strategy that’s tied to genuine and measurable ROI.
At Innovaxis, we specialize in helping B2B businesses develop and implement effective sales and marketing strategies specifically tailored for B2B success.
… Continue Reading >>Website Strategy: Performance vs. Design
Are You Satisfied with How Your Website Performs?
B2B buyers today spend a great deal of time educating themselves about a business issue and possible solutions. When a visitor lands on your site (if they can find it), you’ve only a few seconds to convey that your product or service is relevant and your company is an authority. If you do, you will generate quality sales leads. If you don’t, you’ll never make it to the shortlist.
It All Starts with Strategy
A website that delivers quality leads, a healthy conversion rate and increased sales, begins with strategic planning.
To perform, your website needs to go beyond looking good and being easy to navigate to making it possible to accomplish your business goals,
… Continue Reading >>B2B Marketing Automation Software: 3 Critical Factors for Success
When successful, marketing automation software can take your business-to-business (B2B) marketing and lead generation to the next level. Marketing automation can also cost you at least $7,000 to $15,000 per year and not produce a single lead.
So, how do you avoid an epic fail?
Don’t Believe the Hype
Remember Public Enemy? Before you fall for the hype, take a good look at your business to see if you’re ready for marketing automation. Even the most amazing software tool can’t help someone that without a written marketing plan, a compelling website and content that resonates with your target market.
I’m reminded of one of our clients that spent $10,000 on HubSpot and never used it because they had a dated WordPress website (actually blacklisted by Google because it got hacked and contained malware),
… Continue Reading >>