After the 2008 financial crisis, the Wall Street banks were clearly one of the largest and most hated industries in the country. The recession erased all of the positive impressions people had for this industry. If the business of big banking had a tagline during this tumultuous period, it would be "You suffer, we sail."

The novelist and short story writer Ernest Hemingway is known for his famous Iceberg Theory—to only explicitly include one-eighth of the details in the story, and leave the other seven-eighths implicit and underwater. For example, his story “Hills Like White Elephants” is about a man convincing his significant other to have an abortion, but the word abortion is never mentioned.

The senses are a near-universal way to connect with people. They are anchors for memory, and that is the goal of marketing—to get ideas related to your company to live in people’s brains.

How do you present yourself when you meet a client, or even a date? Imagine if you never made eye contact with them or didn’t offer a handshake. They probably wouldn’t want to deal with you, even if your product was impeccable or you were incredibly good looking. 

The most important part of your interaction is taking the small risk to engage. The same rules apply to your B2B marketing strategy. The market is saturated with content—heartless, cookie-cutter content. Make your campaign stand out by making it human. Here are three ideas to consider in that process.

If you are still trying to figure out how your company will stand out amongst your competitors online, you need to revisit the Inbound Marketing method. This method will allow you to identify the right kind of prospects online and turn them into satisfied customers and brand loyalists.

Before you dive into business as usual in the new year, take the time to map out a content marketing strategy that identifies new insights and inspirations that improve upon last year’s results.

Have you ever written a blog post, social media post or email that was never opened or read? This could be happening if you don’t have a content strategy that is specifically mapped to your buyer personas. Personas are a semi fictional representation of your real customer base that comes from industry research and your professional experiences.

Buyer personas are an important part of your inbound marketing strategy because they tie your online sales and marketing efforts together. A buyer persona is a semi fictional representation of your real customer base that comes from industry research and your professional experiences. It is a profile of your ideal customer that provides insight into who you are selling to.

Regardless of how small the task, every marketing action needs a bigger plan. While it is easy to dive right into, say, social media or lead generation, without a big picture plan it is like going for a drive without a destination or a road map to get there.

Here are the essentials of creating a B2B digital marketing plan to help give you a clear target and directions.

Many business owners are asking, why marketing automation, is it really valuable? The answer is yes! Marketing automation allows business owners and marketers to strategize, create and implement successful campaigns. More importantly it enables them to measure their work, which creates benchmarks and true guidance instead of shooting in the dark.

Here are 4 myths and the facts so that business owners can make informed decisions before incorporating marketing automation into their marketing strategy: