PLAYBOOKPLAYBOOKPLAYBOOKTHE B2B ONLINE MARKETING

A CEO’S Guide to Risks and Rewards

1The B2B Online Marketing Playbook: A CEO’s Guide to Risks & Rewards |

“IntroductionCEOs at small and midsized B2B firms wear a lot of different hats. That makes it hard to stay on top of new technology – especially in the rapidly changing discipline of online marketing.

Marketing has always been vital to your company’s success, but the marketing mix has shifted in the last five years. Along with events, advertising, direct mail, and other traditional methods, it’s become extremely important to use online marketing to help your company identify, engage with, and convert today’s B2B buyers. These buyers play by new rules, using the web, social media, and a variety of new content channels to research and make purchasing decisions.

In fact, according to a study from Google and CEB, the average B2B buyer now gets nearly 60% of the way through the purchase process before engaging with a supplier sales rep.1 And for the most part, they take this journey online.

You need to know which online marketing tactics can help your company reach these buyers. You also need to know which tactics may not be a good fit for your business due to cost, complexity, or other factors. This playbook is a practical, easy-to-use guide to help you make these decisions. You’ll get a quick introduction to 10 key online marketing concepts with the information you need to make smart investments, generate higher quality leads and boost your company’s revenue.

Forrester Research shows that today’s B2B buyer will find three pieces of content about a vendor for every one piece that marketing can publish or sales can deliver. They are finding this content in an ever-expanding number and variety of channels. And they are accessing these channels from an increasingly diverse array of devices.

—Lori Wizdo, Forrester Research “Buyer Behavior Helps B2B Marketers Guide The Buyer’s Journey”

1Forbes: The Disappearing Sales Process

2The B2B Online Marketing Playbook: A CEO’s Guide to Risks & Rewards |

ContentsA Quick Overview of the Buyer’s Journey Framework 3

PLAY #1: Lead Generation 4

PLAY #2: Email Marketing 5

PLAY #3: Social Media Marketing 6

PLAY #4: Content Marketing 7

PLAY #5: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) 8

PLAY #6: Paid Online Advertising 9

PLAY #7: Sales Acceleration 11

TIME OUT: The Promise of Lead Scoring 12

PLAY #8: Lead Nurturing 13

PLAY #9: Marketing Analytics and ROI Calculation 14

PLAY #10: Mobile Marketing 15

Conclusion: Making the Right B2B Online Marketing Choices 16

Acclaim for Act-On 18

3The B2B Online Marketing Playbook: A CEO’s Guide to Risks & Rewards |

A Quick Overview of the Buyer’s Journey Framework

As we discuss the online marketing tactics in this playbook, you’ll find it useful to understand the modern B2B buyer’s journey: the process through which a prospect is identified first as a qualified lead, and eventually as a buyer and a loyal repeat customer. It’s a helpful framework for considering which tactics might best suit your own purposes.

Our model of this journey (you’ll find others from a variety of sources) is a cycle that moves prospects through five stages:

Attract: Earn a prospect’s attention with content that interests, educates, and builds awareness around a business challenge.

Capture: Get the prospect’s contact information and their permission to engage with them.

Nurture: Build a trusted relationship with the prospect using carefully crafted and timed content offers and decision-making resources. Prove that your company is the one to help them.

Convert: Help the prospect make, and justify, a purchasing decision.

Expand: Build loyalty to your brand and higher lifetime customer value with the right content, support, and empowerment tactics.

ATTRACT

CAPTURE

NURT

URE

CONVERT

EXPA

ND

MEASURE &REPORT

At every step of this process, modern marketers track, measure, and report key performance indicators (KPIs) for their online tactics. Whether you’re using a marketing automation platform, web analytics, or other tools, the ability to measure your marketing’s success – and revenue impact – is a powerful competitive advantage for three big reasons:

• They give you consistent and objective standards for measuring the effectiveness of your online marketing tactics.

• They make it possible to measure the ROI from your online marketing investments, rather than rely on gut feel for which ones are paying back your investments.

• Metrics allow you to test and experiment with different marketing tactics and assess which ones deliver the best results.

Every online marketing tactic can support measurement and analysis – and every tactic should be measured carefully when you assess its value, so you can decide whether the reward is worth the risk.

4The B2B Online Marketing Playbook: A CEO’s Guide to Risks & Rewards |

Lead Generation

THE PLAY: Lead generation is the process of finding and engaging with qualified potential customers of your B2B products or services. The goal is simple: Attract more (and better!) likely buyers, and get them into your sales pipeline.

In practice, lead generation isn’t so much a tactic as it is an outcome; most of the online marketing tactics we’ll discuss here will contribute to and accelerate the lead generation process. But we’re calling out lead generation for special attention because it’s such a fundamental concept in modern B2B marketing.

A wide range of activities contribute to lead generation, from content marketing to social media to advertising. It’s important to know which tactics work best together, and the costs of implementing various tactics, before you and your marketing team create a lead generation strategy.

RISKS: The most common risk is trying to do too many things, which can lead to doing nothing very well — wasting both time and money. Pick a few complementary tactics that your team has the bandwidth to execute on; make sure you can measure the results.

REWARDS: Over 75% of B2B marketers say generating high-quality leads is their top challenge.2 When planned and executed well, lead generation addresses that problem, delivering a steady stream of new, qualified prospects. Good lead generation supports a bigger sales pipeline, more closed deals, and higher revenue.

PLAY #1:

PRO TIP: When you weigh the pros and cons of any online marketing tactic, ask yourself: Will the benefits, measured in qualified leads and closed deals, outweigh the costs of my investment?

2MarketingSherpa Research Chart: What Is the Biggest B2B Marketing Challenge?

5The B2B Online Marketing Playbook: A CEO’s Guide to Risks & Rewards |

Email Marketing

THE PLAY: B2B marketers have been using email for 20 years; it’s both low-cost and effective. The goal today is to reach your prospect with targeted, useful, relevant offers (such as content or promotions) that win their attention and persuade them to engage with your company.

Helpful technologies: Email marketing services are designed to simplify and automate the process, but they can also do much more. A best-in-class email service can test email to ensure it won’t get caught in spam filters, analyze recipients’ response rates and website activity, supply templates that adhere to email design best practices, and segment subscriber lists, among many other features. With so many different choices, price levels, and feature sets, it pays to think carefully about the features you need today – as well as those you might need tomorrow as your company grows.

Stand alone or integrated? Many email marketing tools are stand alone software as a service (SaaS) applications. Others are packaged with marketing automation or CRM solutions (or are designed to integrate with them).

RISKS: • The biggest risk of using a stand alone tool is finding that you need to add other marketing tools, each of

which carries a separate cost in budget and time. They also produce disparate data, which may be hard to integrate and reconcile.

• The biggest risk of using an integrated platform is overbuying. You probably won’t need every bell and every whistle, but they do make a package look enticing. Some enterprise-level systems require a months-long implementation schedule and dedicated personnel.

In either case, some tools may be too complex, require too much attention, or simply be too expensive. You don’t want to pay for more power than you need now, but you also don’t want a tool you’ll outgrow in six months. The answer lies in having a thorough understanding of your existing and projected business requirements, and the processes you use to fulfill them. Once you know those, it’s easier to find the system that optimizes your processes with the most horsepower and headroom, and the least amount of extra baggage. As an example, if you have a long sales cycle, you may decide to implement a lead nurturing program. This would require the capability to automate multi-step email campaigns.

REWARDS: Email still delivers the highest return on investment: 4,300%, according to the Direct Marketing Association. In addition, email is overwhelmingly the way prospects and customers (77% of them) prefer that businesses like yours communicate with them. If a system makes it easier to do more campaigns in less time, adds segmentation and targeting capabilities, and provides more or better reports, you should get an excellent return on your investment.

PLAY #2:

6The B2B Online Marketing Playbook: A CEO’s Guide to Risks & Rewards |

Social Media Marketing

THE PLAY: We know it’s tempting to view social media as a frivolous activity; there are several reasons for that. First, the earliest adopters were students who used social for personal reasons. (That has changed.) Second: many companies’ social media marketing efforts are poorly focused and lack specific goals, so there are lots of stories of failed attempts. And, of course, social results can be hard to measure.

All that said, social may be a valuable tactic to consider. Try this: Ask your best customers (the ones you’d like to replicate) what their social media habits are. If you find significant usage, then your business should be active as well. Ask your marketing manager to browse the social channels looking for the types of businesses and customers you sell to (or would like to sell to). This research can help you determine not only whether you should be active in social media, but on which channels.

If you’re not using social yet, your competitors probably are: Best-in-class B2B firms generate an average of 17% of their leads from social media, and 84% of all B2B firms are using social media in some form.3 According to Forrester Research, fully 100% of business decision-makers use social media for work purposes.5

PLAY #3:

PRO TIP: Check out the social media engagement and monitoring tools that can help you. As with email, some are stand-alone and others come packaged with a marketing technology platform. Also: For most B2B companies, getting LinkedIn right should be your first priority. LinkedIn (over 313 million members as of fall 2014) is the social network most used purely for business purposes.4 Among B2B decision-makers, 81% use LinkedIn, with 26% using it primarily for business and 48% using it for both personal and business purposes.

3MarketingProfs: Top B2B Firms Gaining 230% More Leads via Social Media Than Peers 4Hootsuite, July 2013, Among Decision-Makers, LinkedIn The Most-Used Social Network for Work 5 Forrester Research blog post, In Business, Everybody Uses Social Media For Work; The Question Is How

RISKS: Without a thoughtful social media marketing strategy, it’s easy to spin your wheels and burn a lot of hours with not much to show for it. Make sure every social activity serves a well-defined goal beyond trying to get as many “shares” or “likes” as possible. Also, because social media moves so fast, one careless post can become a PR debacle. It takes experience and judgment to do social well; don’t risk your social branding by handing this program to the new intern. Give it instead to someone who’s articulate about your business and values, and has seasoned judgment. They can learn the technology; it’s not rocket science.

REWARDS: Social media marketing can turn followers into brand advocates. It can also amplify your content and website investments, allowing you to reach more potential buyers at a lower cost per lead. The key to social marketing success is to use it as a tool for achieving specific goals.

7The B2B Online Marketing Playbook: A CEO’s Guide to Risks & Rewards |

Content Marketing

THE PLAY: According to a recent study, 91% of B2B marketers now use content marketing, including white papers, blogs, infographics, eBooks, podcasts, videos, and other information assets as part of their lead generation strategy.6 That’s because content marketing is a proven, highly effective tactic for reaching and affecting buyers throughout the entire decision-making process – establishing your brand as a trustworthy source of information, and building relationships with key influencers and decision-makers.

Good content helps searchers find you, helps prospects understand your brand and offerings, and helps close deals. It’s the fuel of both inbound and outbound campaigns.

What it takes: A full-scale content marketing commitment means investing in quality content, effective campaign planning, an understanding of your buyers’ content preferences and business needs, and a systematic approach to distributing and promoting your content. But full-scale isn’t your only option. If money or time is a limiting factor, content marketing can also be as simple as a regularly updated blog that keeps your buyers up to date on a topic where your firm’s unique expertise shines through.

PLAY #4:

PRO TIPS:

Document your content strategy. Marketers who document their strategy are more effective in all aspects of content marketing than those who have not.8

Content marketing and social media marketing are perfect partners. Combine the two, and you’ll get more bang for the buck from every piece of content you create! That’s also true for content marketing and SEO, as we’ll explain next.

RISKS: The biggest risk is being too ambitious. Some B2B firms give up on content marketing because they can’t launch an all-out campaign with dozens of assets. Start small: Even a few quality pieces of content, or a regularly updated blog, can pay big dividends. Another risk: Outsourcing, and getting poor quality assets created by vendors who don’t really understand your market. Mitigate your content risks by spending the money to create one good white paper or eBook, and then take the time to turn it into multiple blog posts and perhaps a few webinars, which you can record and place on your website. Quality is far more important than quantity.

REWARDS: Quality content can help prospects discover your company, products and services, then move them through the decision-making process. You can calibrate content to appeal to buyers at all stages of the buying process, including your existing long-term customers. Quality content also gives your brand a stronger identity, and if you distribute it well, it extends your brand’s reach. Best of all, it offers an incredible value: Content marketing costs an average of 62% less than traditional marketing and, per dollar spent, generates about three times as many leads.7

6Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs, B2B Content Marketing, 2013 Benchmarks 7DemandMetric.com infographic, A Guide to Marketing Genius: Content Marketing 8Content Marketing Institute: New B2B Content Marketing Research: Focus on Documenting Your Strategy

8The B2B Online Marketing Playbook: A CEO’s Guide to Risks & Rewards |

THE PLAY: Web searches are the way B2B buyers begin their search for a business solution. Showing up prominently in search engine listings (especially Google’s) will have a profound impact on your marketing results.

Optimizing your content for the searcher (and Google) is the name of the SEO game. Google has one key objective: Making search results more satisfying to the searcher. Google and the other engines relentlessly tune their search algorithms to improve results and make search harder to game. There is only one dependable constant: high quality content. This is what searchers want most, so it is what search engines prize most. Metadata also matters, as it supports how your content is perceived by search engines.

As for the rest of it, ranking factors are in constant flux. At least one member of your marketing team should be assigned to stay on top of the latest SEO best practices, especially those concerning content creation. If you’re having serious SEO problems, such as sudden, surprisingly lower search result rankings, it might be time to call in a professional to analyze your site and content, and look for hidden problems.

RISKS: Taking shortcuts (like buying links) will come back to bite you. Don’t fall for SEO firms that promise quick miracles to improve your search placement. Credible SEO experts can certainly help, especially on the off-page factors. But if you focus consistently on the fundamentals – quality original content and keyword research – you’re on the road to get good long-term SEO results.

REWARDS: The top 10 listings in Google’s organic (non-paid) search results get 91% of the traffic.9 Enough said.

PLAY #5: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

9Search Engine Watch: No. 1 Position in Google Gets 33% of Search Traffic

9The B2B Online Marketing Playbook: A CEO’s Guide to Risks & Rewards |

Paid Online Advertising

THE PLAY: Like all forms of advertising, online ads are intended to encourage or persuade a defined target audience. With online advertising, however, your team can run three versions of the play, each with its own strengths and weaknesses.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC): A great example of PPC ads are the all-text ads that look like search results. These show up above (or next to) the top search results on Google and other search providers. In fact, Google AdWords represents about 80% of the PPC market. As the name suggests, you pay based on the number of viewers that click on the ad.

RISKS: PPC can be expensive if you simply throw money at a campaign without researching your audience and tracking your results. Every keyword you use can and should be tracked against the leads and revenue it generates in a PPC campaign.

REWARDS: A PPC campaign can give your firm great visibility on the first page of search results and the ability to reach a large, but targeted audience. In addition, firms that manage their PPC spend as data-driven business investments, backed by careful keyword research and analytics, can expect to drive quality leads and higher revenue.

PLAY #6:

Soccer Gear

10The B2B Online Marketing Playbook: A CEO’s Guide to Risks & Rewards |

Display Advertising: These are the banner ads you see on websites; they come in a variety of shapes and sizes, and some support audio/video or other rich media capabilities. You generally pay based on the number of times the ad is displayed (not clicked on) on host sites.

RISKS: Many firms buy display ads the same way they buy traditional ads: in broad and non-specific terms. As with PPC spending, a campaign that isn’t backed by careful research and constant tracking can be needlessly expensive.

REWARDS: Online display ads can be extremely effective at engaging with known prospects, thanks to a tactic known as retargeting. A retargeting campaign keeps track of viewers who have visited your website and then shows them your ads as they visit other sites. Retargeting can boost ad response by 400%, and website visitors who are retargeted with online ads are 70% more likely to convert on your website. With help from tracking tools, you can make online display ads an important part of your B2B marketing strategy – and a measureable source of leads and revenue.

Native Advertising: The newest kid on the advertising block, native advertising takes forms such as the “recommended reading” boxes you’ll see on some news and information websites. The term “native” comes from the fact that these ads are designed to look like editorial content. They often promote other content, such as articles or videos, created by consumer and B2B brands.

$5 OFFANY $20 PURCHASE

CLICK HERE FOR YOUR SAVINGS

RISKS: Some users don’t like viewing native advertising when it looks too much like traditional content; they consider it deceptive. Your choice of retargeting networks can go a long way towards addressing this risk.

REWARDS: Using native ads to promote content assets can be a good way to combine advertising and content marketing. As with other types of advertising, the ability to measure your ROI from leads and revenue generated is an important benefit that traditional media ads still cannot match.

NEWS SITE

We recommendFrom around the web

Play #6, Continued...

11The B2B Online Marketing Playbook: A CEO’s Guide to Risks & Rewards |

Sales Acceleration

THE PLAY: “Alignment” is not just another buzzword. While marketing is increasingly responsible for finding and nurturing leads from qualification to closure, those tasks are impossible unless sales and marketing learn to work closely together – speaking the same language and defining success the same way, with the same numbers. In fact, according to SiriusDecisions, B2B firms with tight sales and marketing alignment enjoyed 24% faster three-year revenue and 27% faster profit growth.10

Lead scoring is an important part of this shift towards sales and marketing alignment (see sidebar). So is the process of deciding what constitutes a “qualified” lead that is ready to be handed off to sales. Some sales and marketing organizations even set formal standards – service level agreements, or SLAs – for the number of leads being generated and the quality of those leads.

In addition, if sales and marketing teams don’t have a clear set of shared goals and speak the same language, your marketing team risks delivering sales enablement content that isn’t effective – and doesn’t get used. Sales will make their own materials, which may not represent your brand well.

A number of digital marketing solutions are available to help the B2B marketer with sales enablement activities, including those for scoring and nurturing leads, managing content, and tracking and measuring the conversion of marketing-qualified leads into closed deals. The most important sales enablement tool, however, is a shared commitment to collaborate and work towards a single set of goals.

PLAY #7:

10SAP Business Innovation blog post 50 Statistics About B2B Sales And Marketing (Mis)Alignment 11Ibid

PRO TIP: Sales and marketing alignment is far more likely to succeed when this process gets visible and vocal executive-level support. Given the potential payoff, it’s worth your time as a B2B CEO to make this a high priority.

RISKS: Sales and marketing alignment is easier said than done. At many companies, the two teams must overcome mutual mistrust and old rivalries to find common ground. And change is never easy. The beginning could be rocky.

REWARDS: Sales acceleration and enablement activities can generate higher-quality leads, move those leads more quickly through the sales pipeline, and ultimately drive higher revenue. Typically, sales and marketing teams that learn how to work together enjoy 38% higher sales win rates and 36% higher customer retention rates.11

12The B2B Online Marketing Playbook: A CEO’s Guide to Risks & Rewards |

The Promise of Lead Scoring

12Forbes: The Disappearing Sales Process

LEAD SCORING is the process of associating numerical

values with certain types of attributes and behavior in order to identify and prioritize hot, sales-ready leads.

A lead with the right title, in the right industry, looks good and should have a positive score. If this same lead

downloads several pieces of content from your website and requests a demo, these actions can be scored. Behavior that historically has indicated sales-readiness is scored more highly, and may raise the lead’s overall score high

enough to warrant sales’ immediate attention. A lead that identifies as a student, or is with a business

headquartered in a country you don’t do business with, can generate a negative score. This

identifies leads sales should not waste time on. (See How to Prioritize

Your Leads)

DIGITAL

BODY LANGUAGE can be observed using website visitor tracking,

and evaluated using marketing automation. When a prospect’s lead score crosses a certain threshold (one set by mutual agreement with the

sales team), the automation system will pass the lead to the sales team for follow-up; it may

also send sales an alert when a particular prospect (e.g. someone from a specific

company) visits a particular page (e.g., your pricing page).

As you can see, lead scoring can be a great tactic to help your sales team decide where to

focus their most precious asset –

TIME

13The B2B Online Marketing Playbook: A CEO’s Guide to Risks & Rewards |

Lead Nurturing

THE PLAY: At any given time, only a small fraction of your team’s leads are ready to engage with sales. What happens to the rest? How do you keep those leads engaged and moving along until more of them are ready to buy?

Lead nurturing can answer these questions. It’s the process of engaging in a series of ongoing communications with a prospect, delivering consistent messages and relevant content to inform and educate. It can also help identify when a lead has matured to the point of being sales-ready.

Lead nurturing requires B2B marketers to understand their buyers’ pain points and business needs (not coincidentally, the key to creating quality content marketing). It also requires an understanding of a lead’s buying process in order to deliver the right messages and offers at the right time.

A lead nurture campaign may require more or fewer contacts, or “touches,” based on a variety of factors. In many cases, lead nurturing is combined with some form of lead scoring (see sidebar) to track a potential buyer’s interest and readiness for a sales conversation. Lead nurturing, due to the complexity and timing of multi-touch campaigns, is one of the most common (and most fruitful) activities associated with marketing automation tools. It’s certainly possible to conduct basic nurture campaigns using manual processes, but it’s very easy for schedules to slip, and it’s very resource-intensive to scale.

RISKS: A lead nurturing campaign will probably fail if your marketing team doesn’t have a good understanding of your buyers’ business needs, buying process, and content and cadence preferences. Put these fundamentals into place before you consider investing in a lead nurturing strategy or the tools that support it. Nurturing programs are also easy to over-complicate. Start with a simple program and don’t get fancy without careful testing.

REWARDS: Nurtured leads are better-educated buyers. A 2012 survey of B2B marketing departments found that those using lead nurturing showed a 45% higher ROI than marketers that don’t use it.13 That number may be even higher for B2B firms with an especially long and complex sales process.

PLAY #8:

13MarketingSherpa Research Chart: The ROI of Lead Nurturing

14The B2B Online Marketing Playbook: A CEO’s Guide to Risks & Rewards |

Marketing Analytics and ROI Calculation

THE PLAY: Until very recently, marketers were hopelessly chained to a term every CEO loves to hate: “soft ROI.” Most people accept that marketing has some revenue impact, but it was impossible to know for sure which tactics worked or what their ROI might have been.

Today, that is rapidly changing. Lead scoring, marketing automation and web analytics data, for example, can tell a B2B marketer precisely which activities turn prospects into sales-qualified leads and, eventually, into closed deals. As a result, it’s also possible to know how many closed deals are sourced through marketing activities, as opposed to sales prospecting or other sources.

That’s a powerful draw for business executives who want hard data to justify their companies’ marketing budgets. It’s also putting more pressure on marketing teams to show results – since for the first time, it’s possible to know when and how they’re getting results.

Marketing analytics technology is a category unto itself; many of the best tools are linked to bigger marketing technology packages. Even a small B2B marketing team, however, can use basic web analytics, such as those provided by Google, to track the performance of key pages and assets. And on the high end, advanced analytics tools and big data analysis can uncover insights from website, email, social media, and other sources, delivering buyer intelligence that marketers could only dream about 10 years ago.

RISKS: These tools are still relatively new and immature, they can be extremely expensive to implement, and the process of setting up things to measure (such as lead nurture campaigns) add an extra level of cost and complexity. For most B2B firms, marketing analytics is an area where slow but steady progress makes more sense than buying into an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink solution. Pick just a few key performance indicators that map to revenue to begin with.

REWARDS: Analytics that tie marketing activity to sales pipeline and revenue finally put a B2B marketing team on a solid footing for making rational investment decisions. That’s a big reason why firms are expected to increase their spending on marketing analytics 73% in the next three years.14

PLAY #9:

14The CMO Survey, August 2014

15The B2B Online Marketing Playbook: A CEO’s Guide to Risks & Rewards |

Mobile Marketing

THE PLAY: You already know that smartphone in your pocket is a powerful tool for learning, playing and shopping – activities you and (and probably everyone you know) do every day. Yet many CEOs are surprised by just how big a role mobile now plays in the B2B buying process. Consider:

• 74% of marketers now say mobile-optimized websites are “very effective” or “somewhat effective” in increasing conversions.15

• 56% of B2B buyers use smartphones to access business-related content, and 42% use tablets for this purpose.16

• 90% of B2B buyers say that vendors need to provide mobile-friendly access to content.17

In other words, B2B buyers see mobile content as a valuable tool for making buying decisions – and they also think vendors aren’t doing enough to accommodate their mobile preferences.

“Mobile B2B marketing” is a broad concept, covering everything from trade-show apps to mobile search and banner ads. We think the biggest opportunity, however, lies in creating content that is accessible to B2B buyers using mobile devices. In an always-on marketing environment, your content has to adapt to your users’ needs. That means creating websites, email offers, landing pages and content assets that look just as good on a smartphone or tablet as they do on a desktop.

Creating a mobile-friendly website and content can require a significant investment of time and money. Yet it’s less expensive than it used to be, and if your site isn’t mobile-friendly, you’re giving competitors a huge advantage when it comes to reaching and engaging with buyers.

RISKS: Mobile optimization can be expansive and complex. Look for content, analytics and marketing automation tools that include built-in mobile capabilities, and you’ll achieve your mobile marketing goals, while also increasing the ROI you get from these tools. programs are also easy to over-complicate. Start with a simple program and don’t get fancy without careful testing.

REWARDS: As we noted above, B2B buyers now depend on their mobile devices to research and make buying decisions. Get your content in front of these buyers, and your firm can win a major competitive edge.

PLAY #10:

15Adobe: 2013 Digital Marketing Optimization Survey Results 16DemandGen Report B2B Content Preferences Survey: Buyers Want Short, Visual, Mobile-Optimized Content 17Ibid

16The B2B Online Marketing Playbook: A CEO’s Guide to Risks & Rewards |

Conclusion: Making the Right B2B Online Marketing ChoicesWe’ve covered a lot of ground here – hopefully we’ve answered a few of your questions about which online marketing tactics might be right for your company at this time.

Your next step should be meeting with your B2B marketing team to discuss these and other online marketing options. Define the business goals that online marketing can help you achieve. Outline your priorities, and chart your existing capabilities in content marketing, online advertising, marketing analytics and other key tactics. Given a tight budget or limited resources, pay particular attention to tactics where low-cost options (such as a basic content marketing plan or carefully targeted PPC ad campaign) can deliver better results.

And remember: Online marketing is still very much a work in progress. Pay close attention to what’s coming over the horizon; chances are next year’s list of top tactics will have a few new entries to think about.

THE RISKSof under-using online marketing: Missing out on new leads, disengaging with prospects, underserving your existing customers, being invisible to the media – and being outstripped by your competition.

THE REWARDSof online marketing are up to you and your goals, but at a minimum: More leads, better-qualified leads, more satisfied customers, greater brand awareness, more effective recruiting — and greater bottom-line revenue.

Want more information? Turn the page for an array of resources to help you gain knowledge and confidence in specific areas of online marketing.

17The B2B Online Marketing Playbook: A CEO’s Guide to Risks & Rewards |

Ready to make your next email campaign amazingly effective? Learn more about putting these tips into action in these resources:

Email Marketing Toolkit: This free toolkit guides you through the essentials of building, optimizing, and tracking a modern email marketing program.

Lead Nurturing Essentials Toolkit: With this toolkit, you will learn about the lead marketing lifecycle, lead nurturing segmentation, automated email programs, and lead scoring.

Learn More

Best Practices in Email Deliverability: This eBook will help you manage the critical factors that affect the deliverability of your email messages.

10 Tips for Creating Engaging Social Content: Learn to increase the attraction and stickiness of your social content, from the language you use to tailoring for specific platforms.

And be sure to visit the Marketing Action blog to get fresh insights every day for optimizing your marketing.

18The B2B Online Marketing Playbook: A CEO’s Guide to Risks & Rewards |©2015 Act-On Software, Inc. Trademarks belong to their respective owners. All rights reserved.

www.act-on.com | @ActOnSoftware | #ActOnSW

Act-On Software delivers cloud-based integrated marketing automation software. Marketers can manage all their online marketing efforts from a single dashboard that can be seamlessly integrated with CRM, giving sales access into various marketing functions. Act-On’s fresh approach to marketing automation gives its users full functionality without the complexity other systems impose, and makes campaign creation and program execution easier and faster.

ABOUT ACT-ON SOFTWARE

Acclaim for Act-On

See all of Act-On’s awards and accolades

Connect with us to learn more