Ruth Stevens
Ruth Stevens
Ruth P. Stevens consults on customer acquisition and retention, teaches marketing at business schools in the U.S. and abroad, and is a guest blogger at Biznology and Target Marketing Magazine. Crain's BtoB magazine named Ruth one of the 100 Most Influential People in Business Marketing. Her newest book is B2B Data-Driven Marketing: Sources, Uses, Results. Ruth has held senior marketing positions at Time Warner, Ziff-Davis, and IBM and holds an MBA from Columbia University. Learn more at www.ruthstevens.com.
Six steps to success in B2B seller marketplaces
Amazon Business is expected to reach $52 billion in sales by 2023, and is growing faster than its consumer side. Alibaba and eBay are also…
Where is B2B marketing headed in 2020? 7 predictions
Forecasting the future is a dangerous but irresistible practice for observers like myself. So let me plunge ahead with 7 bets on likely new developments…
Five ways business buying is changing: Ignore these at your peril
If you’re a B2B marketer, especially a services provider, your environment is about to be upended. Customers are changing, and so are the ways they…
12 tips for successful lead qualification
B2B marketers understand the importance of qualifying a lead before it goes to a sales person, but sometimes the qualification process can get tricky. Today,…
Big B2B ideas from the #B2BSMX conference
Last summer, I picked up a score of great ideas from the FlipMyFunnel conference in Boston. This year, the conference has joined forces with two…
How to Turn Anonymous Website Visitors into Leads
Collecting information about website visitors, a standard practice in B2B marketing, is now becoming available to consumer marketers. I recently had a chat with Karl…
Prospect Experience Marketing: Find the Gold in Your Lead Generation Program
I recently caught up with Dan McDade, longtime B2B practitioner in lead qualification and nurturing. I’ve been a fan of Dan’s for years. Having sold…
Ratings and reviews sites: The new B2B marketing channel
A new mechanism has emerged to help B2B buyers who are searching online for products and solutions: Ratings and reviews sites, where searchers can find…
Where is B2B marketing headed now? 7 predictions for 2019
I am adding my voice to the chorus of observers who predict various developments in 2019 for B2B marketing. My policy is to avoid reflecting on…
B2B Marketing in India: Interview with Sudhi Seshadri
This fall, I enjoyed a few months of teaching at Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, and learning much about Indian business and life. To get…
What B2C marketers can learn from B2B
There’s a lot of talk in the B2B world about what we can learn from consumer marketers. We need to treat business buyers as individuals,…
Keeping up with ABM: tips from the FlipMyFunnel conference
I attended my first FlipMyFunnel conference this month, and picked up some fresh insights into Account Based Marketing (ABM). I’ve explored ABM before— with interviews…
Automating your marketing through the B2B customer journey: an interview with Rich Herbst
The other day, I had the chance to meet with Rich Herbst, founder and managing partner of Ascend Marketing, which is based in Dallas and…
How well do you know your customer data?
Some marketers seem to keep their distance from customer data. When I ask what kind of customer information they are working with, I hear things…
The B2B marketing ironies of our time
I’ve been noticing some ironies in the world of B2B marketing lately; you know what I mean. When the common wisdom is one thing, but…
Deepening B2B customer relationships with “the funnel beyond the funnel”
I’ve long observed that B2B marketers focus too much on lead generation, and not enough on current customer expansion and retention, which is, after all,…