As far as SEO goes, there’s a wealth of business intelligence that can help you optimize your approach. We’ve discussed some of that in the past. Play your B2B marketing cards really well and you may just end up on page one of a Google search for your targeted keywords. However, that’s one battle, and not the end of the war.

Someone once said: “I could spend one million dollars on marketing, but that would be one million dollars wasted.”

We live in an imperfect world, and that means we can only have imperfect information. So, there is no sin in using inherent knowledge and a little imagination to finesse a marketing strategy or to get a decision just over the tipping point.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced us all to adjust the way we conduct business. In the new normal, there will be even more emails sent, online meetings had, virtual events attended, and digital opportunities leveraged to connect and network with leads. As you adjust your business processes, it is more important than ever to remember that how you communicate and everything you communicate contributes to the overall perception of your company’s brand.

The title of this blog might be a bit off-putting to some!

Many will immediately think “We don’t forget about our customers! They are continual purchasers of X every month!” or perhaps “They have a long-term contract with us. We speak to them frequently and work with them all of the time.”

A few weeks ago, we posted a blog that was ultimately about people making their business social media presence and profiles a little too personal and how that won’t yield your business the long-term results you really want.

When it comes to marketing, many people have opinions about the death or imminent death of an entire approach or tactic. But these opinions often miss the mark because they don’t consider evolution.

When we get into conversations about competitive marketing intelligence with our clients, they’ll often say something like, “Nope. No. We don’t need that. We just did that six months ago. We tore through all of the information on our competitor’s solution. Right down to the specifics of the hardware and software and how they’re listed. We know exactly what’s on the market now, and we have a pretty good guess about what competitors are going to bring to the market in the near future.” 

I was at the wrap-up meeting for a white paper we had just finished for a client.

Content marketing works. 

That’s probably why 91 percent of B2B marketers integrate it into their programs.¹