Howard Sewell
Career Advice for a Young Marketer
A few weeks ago I gave an informational interview to a local university student looking for advice on the best way to jump start his marketing career. The conversation was a handy excuse to catalog some of the lessons I’ve learned over 30 years in m...
The Myth of “What’s Working” in B2B Marketing
In the agency business, clients look to us, naturally enough, for advice on what’s working in the marketplace, on the assumption that an agency’s collective experience, providing it aligns with a client’s market or product category, can bring real w...
High Bar Offers: Why Your Campaign May Be Asking Too Much
In the demand generation business, we often talk about “low bar” and “high bar” offers. The bar in either case is the level of time, effort, and commitment required of the prospect or person registering for said offer. So, for example, on a spectrum...
Should You Use the Same Landing Page for Email and Online Ads?
A client asks: “Can I use the landing page from an email campaign for online ads, say: search or LinkedIn, if it’s promoting the same asset?”
My response:
In short: no. There’s an appeal to the economies of using one landing page across multiple cha...
4 Simple Reasons for Why this Webinar Invitation Works
Webinars are a dime a dozen. As a marketer, how do you make your Webinar invitations stand out from the crowd, a challenge made bigger when you’re presenting on a topic (say, GDPR) that is so commonplace as to be completely generic?
The key to Webin...
Can You Shortcut ABM and Still Make it Work?
In marketing circles, there’s little argument these days that a well-planned, well-executed Account-Based Marketing (ABM) strategy can pay real dividends. It’s also true, however, to say that, as a full-blown strategic initiative, ABM can be a major...
Forrester: B2B Companies Score Low in Marketing Best Practices
Earlier this year, Forrester Research conducted a detailed survey of more than 150 B2B marketing decision-makers with the intent of benchmarking the maturity of B2B marketing best practices, focused on revenue marketing and marketing automation.
At ...
The Dismal State of B2B Email Creative
I review B2B email campaigns regularly in this space, and though I’m not one to be sparing in my opinions, I do try to be conscious of the type and size of company responsible for the campaign, with the thought, I suppose, that some marketers just m...
Tips for a Successful Competitive Campaign
It’s a perennial fixture in any marketer’s calendar that, every so often, the boss will decide that it’s time to drop the proverbial gloves and go after the competition.
There are many, legitimate reasons for why it may make sense to mount a concert...
How to Best Leverage B2B Intent Data
In a world where demand generation, and marketing in general, is more data-driven than ever, one of the hottest topics in B2B circles is intent data.
The lure of intent data is learning which companies are going to buy from you and when. But is that...
5 Basic Things Every B2B Marketer Needs to Do to Prepare for GDPR
Following on the heels of CAN-SPAM (US) and CASL (Canada), the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the latest in a series of government regulations that promises to have a major impact on the way B2B marketers conduct business. Of these, GD...
People Don’t Read Your White Papers. Who Cares?
New marketing technologies like Uberflip make it increasingly easy to track content consumption beyond just clicks and downloads. This functionality not only generates additional insights for marketers as to just how much of their content prospects ...
5 Demand Generation Tips for Start-Ups
In a recent article on LinkedIn that I highly recommend for any tech entrepreneur, Jason Seeba and Ashu Garg spell out the key priorities, milestones, and pitfalls for early-stage companies seeking to acquire customers. In “The Startup’s Guide to De...
An Accident of Timing: The Case for Always On Marketing
There was a not too distant time when virtually all B2B demand generation was outbound. (You millennials won’t remember this.) You rented a list...
22 Potential Touchpoints for Your Next ABM Sales Play
When designing sales plays as part of your Account-Based Marketing (ABM) strategy, it pays to start with a few key questions:
1. What is the...
Email Copywriting: Drive Action at Every Opportunity
Sales experts preach the value of “asking for the sale.” Don’t assume that your customer will buy when the time is right. Make the...
ABM is a Strategy, Not a Campaign.
In the headlong rush to Account-Based Marketing, many B2B companies are, quite naturally, looking to implement ABM in a manner that allows them to...
Beware the Siren Call of Pre-Qualified Leads
There is a growing trend in the content syndication space, and among Cost Per Lead (CPL) programs in general, for media vendors to offer...
Do ABM Marketers Underestimate the Value of Messaging?
Steve Patti is a former B2B CMO, agency CEO, and CxO advisor with 30 years of international experience helping brands grow revenues. Earlier this...
Observations from the 2017 Marketo Summit
This week was my eighth consecutive Marketo Summit, all of them as a sponsor/exhibitor. The event has transformed since 2009, when the customer party...
