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While the purchase funnel has served B2B marketers well over the years, a recent study conducted by Latitude found 87% of buyers now travel a less linear, more complex pathway to final purchase. The four key pillars of the funnel­–attract, convert, close, and delight–are still relevant but, you may want to start thinking about the mental state and behaviors of your buyers during the purchase cycle.

Latitude’s study uncovered six behavioral and mental states buyers will experience:

It's 2016, what are you doing?! Your outbound marketing efforts are making everyone rip their hair out. Many marketers still think, “Hmm let us just keep shoving these emails and ads in their faces and they will feel obligated to check us out.”

If you are one of these marketing “professionals” it is time to look up inbound marketing. Just like anything else in this world its adapt, or die. The buyers journey has significantly changed since businesses began marketing to their targeted customer demographics. Thanks to the internet, potential buyers are more informed than ever before.

In the initial post, we talked about why every inbound marketer should blog. If you are thinking about clicking away, just know this isn’t a reiteration of part 1.

This post will help you understand blogging from a business standpoint and, will help you fully understand the benefits of adopting a blogging plan into your organization’s inbound marketing strategy. Below are 3 more reasons as to why blogging can be an asset to any business.

Since blogging has proven to be such a useful tool, we’ve decided to divide up everything we love about blogging into two parts.

As you may have guessed, we take blogging very seriously, which is why I am currently blogging about blogging inside of a blog post. Here are 3 reasons why every inbound marketer should tackle blogging in their everyday marketing efforts. 

Being observant of the lingo the customer is using can help strengthen a company’s SEO/SXO marketing efforts as well as maintain their customer base. And customer language doesn’t have to be complicated or foreign; it should be simple, informative, and straight to the point. After all, if they don’t understand you, they won’t buy from you.

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 marketing automation isn’t part of your b2b marketing strategy, you might want to invest in it this  year. In fact, according to a 2015 survey by Ascend2, 42% of businesses are now using marketing automation, which is a significant jump up from previous years. Here are a few ways marketing automation can impact your marketing strategy in 2016.

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.