Demanding Views

Jeff Winsper, President, Black Ink

News flash everybody. Inbound marketing is so old school. Some claim even back to the 11^th century BC. I was being generous in my headline.

I get a chuckle when B2B marketing practitioners glom onto a fancy new name for some marketing principle that has been around for thousands of years. Then everybody rallies the wagons and wails on the bugles as if there some new magical way to create demand for consumers. Inbound marketing is in effect the same principle as “pull marketing.” Of course, we remember the classic “push, pull marketing” from our marketing 101 class. I’ll frame up the situation as a refresher to make the point.

By Richard Dym, CMO, Gagein

Once upon a time, a salesperson would knock on a door, shake some hands, and look his prospect right in the eye. Sales were all about building real, lasting relationships. Today, relationships matter more than ever. Friends do still buy from friends, but they do it online, not at the corner store. Social media may be “social,” but gone are the days of sitting over a cup of coffee for an hour with a prospect.

So, is all lost? Have personal relationships — the bread and butter of salespeople — been diminished in today’s virtual world? The answer is a resounding no. Indeed a study by the Word of Mouth Marketing Association for the first time quantified that word of mouth drives 13% of consumer sales. Digital Insights released its 2014 social media stats, noting that more than two users sign up for LinkedIn per second, and B2B marketers using blogs generate 67% more leads.

By Peter Friedman, CEO, LiveWorld

When big brands successfully launch themselves in social media and begin the shift toward being more customer-centric, they almost immediately find themselves facing two daunting challenges. First, if the relationships developed through social are going to be meaningful, marketing needs to be able to collaborate with other functions of the organization so that customer ideas and issues translate directly into improved products and services.

Second, there’s the scale problem: How can they keep those conversations personal and dynamic when interacting with hundreds, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of customers? (Note: These are problems every company should be thrilled to have.)