Here at Launch Marketing we strive to continually share our B2B marketing expertise through regular blog postings and articles on our website. Below are Launch Marketing’s ten most popular B2B marketing resources, covering various B2B marketing topics such as email marketing, social media and lead generation.

 

1. A Client’s Bill of Rights: Ten Key Points to Consider When Selecting a Marketing Firm
   Once you’ve identified the need for a marketing firm, how do you decide which firm to engage with? There are several qualities that you should look for, and this article lists the top 10 to consider when evaluating a firm.

    

2. Thinking Outside the (Mail)box: Insightful Tips for Creating Better Emails
   Since email is an essential aspect of many B2B marketing campaigns, it is important to ensure that you are deriving the greatest value from your email campaigns. Read our blog post for tips and takeaways we learned while attending the 2012 Marketo user conference.

    

3. 4 Best Practices for Google AdWords
   While Google AdWords is a useful marketing tactic for many companies, successful campaigns take an extensive amount of knowledge and effort. Read our blog post to learn some of the best practices we utilize in AdWords campaign management.

    

4. Back To Basics: Spotting Common Grammar and Punctuation Mistakes in Your Copy
   There are a few common grammar and punctuation mistakes that occur frequently in marketing copy. Understanding how to avoid these mistakes is essential in order to present a professional image. This article lists a few of the mistakes we come across most often, as well as ways to avoid them.

    

5. Utilizing Infographics to Break Through the Chatter
   Images are becoming an increasingly popular avenue for content marketing, and infographics specifically have increased in popularity recently. Our article lists several best practices to ensure that you are deriving the greatest marketing value from your infographics.

    

6. Extend Your Reach: Use a LinkedIn Company Page to Increase Exposure
   LinkedIn continues to grow in usage and has expanded beyond just a way to connect with your personal network. This article covers the capabilities of company pages on LinkedIn as well as several tips to maximize their impact.

    

7. Timeline for Brands: What’s Changing and Best Practices
   When Facebook introduced Timeline for Company pages, there were many changes that occurred. Read our blog post for tips on how to make the most of these changes and drive results from your company’s Facebook page.

    

8. Fourth Quarter Fire Up: The Importance of End of Year Marketing
   During the last few months of the year, it is important to continue your marketing efforts in order to derive even greater results from your campaigns. This article lists the top 3 reasons why this is important and the best ways to effectively utilize your remaining marketing budget.

    

9. Send a Package, Capture Attention: Generating Qualified Leads with Three Dimensional Campaigns
   To stand out from the crowded marketplace, make sure that your marketing materials are impactful. One way to catch prospects’ attention is by utilizing a three-dimensional marketing campaign. Read our article to learn more about the benefits and components of effective three-dimensional campaigns.

    

10. The Most Critical 50% Of Event Marketing: 4 Tips to Maximize Event Impact
    Successful B2B events require a great deal of planning and preparation prior to the event. However, the activities that occur after an event are just as important. This article highlights several best practices to follow after an event in order to maximize your lead generation results.

     

Looking for more B2B marketing resources? Visit the resource center on our website to read all of our blogs and articles, and be sure to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter to keep up with the latest B2B marketing tips and trends.

Photo by: Robin~All Things Heart and Home

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Maintaining a social media presence can produce many benefits for a company, including increasing brand awareness and industry credibility, as well as generating leads and website traffic. In order to obtain the greatest benefits from social media, you should first develop a strategy for utilizing social media according to the goals that you wish to achieve. In addition to aligning your activity on social media to this strategy, here are a few additional tips:

• Post content that is both relevant and interesting to your customers
• Post regularly, but don’t overwhelm your followers with a constant stream of updates
• Curate original content on a blog and direct your followers there. Ideally this would be on your company’s website.

Unfortunately, not all marketers follow these best practices. Here are a few classic examples of what not to do, followed by ways each could improve.

1. Overwhelming Omar
He posts over 20 random updates on Facebook every day, but is surprised that his fan numbers keep falling.

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I recently attended the Marketo Summit 2012 in San Francisco.  While I really enjoyed the opportunity to learn more about Marketo’s marketing automation software, I also was thrilled at the number of sessions focused on general marketing tips, tricks and best practices.

Some of the takeaways served as reminders, but many were inventive new ideas with case studies and testing to back them up! One of my favorite sessions was “Writing Better Emails and Landing Pages.” While crafting better emails for lead generation and lead nurturing is an age-old marketing topic, the presenter did an excellent job of really providing outside the box ideas for moving marketing emails from delivery, to open, to click thru!

Without further ado, here are some key takeaways from that session:

Email Marketing Timing:

• Send emails early in the morning if possible.  Studies have shown that emails sent first thing in the morning are more likely to be read.
• Schedule automated emails to be sent in a more human-like fashion. For example, rather than scheduling an immediate follow up email from sales prompted by a case study download (e.g., “Thank you for your interest in our services – would you like a demo? ”), schedule it to send out the next morning.  This makes the email appear less automated and more personable.

Email Marketing Subject Lines:

• Keep your subject line to eight words or less – this keeps subjects short and sweet and more likely to be opened!
• Use brackets in your subject line when possible to call out your offer.  This goal is to make it stand out in an inbox e.g., “[Webcast Tomorrow] Register Now!”.  Differentiating your email is key.
• Address your recipient directly in the email and subject line – e.g., “What You Need to Know about Marketing Automation” versus “What CMOs Need to Know about Marketing Automation.”
• Want to avoid being marked as spam? Don’t use “free” in the subject line.

Email Marketing Content:

• Use bullets or numbered lists at the top of your email – people skim emails and you want your message as clear and concise as possible.
• Always use clickable links versus URLs.  What does this mean? It’s the difference between “Visit our website” (hyperlinking to the site) versus “www.launch-marketing.com.” The first is a clear call to action and much more compelling.
• Don’t use URL shorteners in your clickable links in emails. Sites like Bitly are awesome for Twitter or other places where you are limited to a word count, but using a shortened URL in your email links could mark it as spam and affect deliverability.
• Always use a greeting/salutation such as “Hello [First Name].”  This makes your email appear more personal, and less like spam.
• Here’s a new one – include typos in emails intentionally!  This typo tactic is used often by sales teams when sending out automated emails. Their goal is to appear as if they were typing the email at 7am at their desk and they happened to make a few typos as they were following up with each prospect individually.
• Last but not least – have ONE call to action.  The best way to ensure your most important link is clicked is by providing only one option to click!

I hope you found these tips as insightful as I did.  If you have any to add, let me know – I’d love to add them to the list!

Interested in more B2B marketing tips and tricks? Read these tips to increase demand generation email response rates.  Also, follow Launch on Twitter & Facebook!

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Over the years we’ve found a handful of marketing resources that we turn to again and again. In the spirit of the giving season we thought it was time to share them with you!

1. Marketo – An excellent marketing automation solution, Marketo also delivers value with their blog which covers revenue performance, B2B marketing and sales strategy and tactics, and the latest news about the marketing automation and revenue performance industry.

2. Search Engine Land – A great online resource for the latest news, research/analysis, and advice on search. Between their blog, news stories and special featured articles they’ve got this topic well covered.

3. Grammar Girl – Always witty and very precise, Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing is a great resource for any kind of punctuation, grammar and word usage questions. Confused about what a brouhaha is, or when to use sometime, some time or sometimes?  Grammar Girl is, er, your girl!

4. HubSpot – If you haven’t heard of or checked out HubSpot make it a priority to do so. While the company offers great value with their inbound marketing software, even better are their super smart people that continually publish great best practices, analytics and tools on website optimization, blogging, SEO, lead nurturing and more.

5. MarketingProfs – With a tagline that says, “Smart thinking…pass it on,” MarketingProfs is doing just that. Offering “one-stop” shopping on marketing strategy and best practices, MarketingProfs enables you  to get your marketing fix through their blog, live events, online forum, webcasts and more.

6. MarketingSherpa – Similarly, MarketingSherpa has a wealth of blog posts, case studies, analytics, research studies and more, all on marketing best practices.

7. Urban Dictionary – Thinking about a new name for your business, product or service, or even a social media handle? Race on over to Urban Dictionary to see what it really means…nuf said!

8. Mashable – A wealth of information on social media, technology and the world in general, Mashable is a great way to stay caught up on what’s happening around you.

9. Social Media Examiner – With 450,000 people reading Social Media Examiner, it’s clear they’ve figured out what people need/want to hear about the world of social media and how to leverage it effectively for brand awareness and sales. On this site you’ll find articles and videos on social media tools, industry research reviews and advice from social media experts.

10. CMO Network – An active discussion group on Linkedin, CMO Network  covers a wide variety of topics of interest to marketing executives. This is a great place to see what’s top of mind for marketing people and even contribute your opinion/expertise.

Last, but definitely not least, don’t forget about Launch Marketing. Need help with your marketing strategy, branding, website, lead generation and online optimization? Just let us know. Happy Holidays everyone!

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