Jude Fischer's blog

Last month I attended the Business Marketing Association’s 2010 Annual Conference.  Titled “Engage,” the conference presented innovative ways B2B marketers are engaging not only with customers and prospects, but also with employees, sales forced, and channel partners.

More and more B2B marketers are using technology to automate their lead nurturing process and enhance their demand generation efforts. Automated campaigns control and streamline prospect interactions, strategically offering relevant content and positioning your firm as a trusted resource until the target customer is ready to buy.

According to a new study released by GlobalSpec, the use of social media among engineering and technical professionals across manufacturing and industrial markets is showing some signs of growth, but overall, participation remains low.

In a study just released by Marketing Sherpa, lead-related issues continue to dominate the minds of B2B marketers.  Nearly 70% of all respondents indicated that generating high-quality sales leads is one of their greatest challenges; 35% are also challenged to generate higher volumes of leads.  Part of this need to push more numbers through the sales funnel may be a reflection of a lengthening life cycle.  Nearly 40% of all respondents indicated marketing, or nurturing, targets along this cyc

If you’re like a lot of other B2B marketing professionals, lead generation remains a top business objective this year. Business remains tight, and everybody is struggling to keep their sales funnel full of engaged prospects. But what are the best offer strategies to garner the attention of prospective customers and entice them inquire? What will make them raise their hand and open the door for future communication and personal follow-up?

In a rather abrupt conclusion to the divestment of its U.S.

After years of speculation on how it will make money, Twitter has finally answered with a new ad program called “Promoted Tweets.”  Announced today by COO Dick Costolo at the AdAge Digital Conference, Promoted Tweets is Twitter’s version of keyword-based ad programs like Google AdWords, although they make the distinction that these aren’t ads at all.  They are simply organic Tweets that an advertiser has paid to have shuffled to the top of the search results page.  Initial

According to figures released today by American Business Media and reported by BtoB Media Business, B2B ad pages declined 27.94% in December 2009 compared to December ’08.  Year-end totals fell 28.56% from 2008.  Should we be surprised by this news?  I can’t imagine why we would.  Our clients’ programs certainly reflected the trend.  Virtually all the media we placed on their beha

To say the past year has been challenging is a bit of an understatement, wouldn’t you say?  A tough economy caused us all to tighten our belts and scramble for every opportunity we found.  Budgets were cut to the bone, and programs that were approved needed to be justified before, during and after their implementation.  We’ve all had to work harder and smarter than ever before.

GlobalSpec just released a new white paper centered on a research study they conducted on Industrial Buying Cycles.  Among other things, the report covers the various stages and length of a typical buying cycle, the number of decision makers that get involved, the manner and frequency with which suppliers are exposed to buyers, the sources and types of information they use and the amount of content they review. It provides some good insight for B2B marketers as we continue to navigate the growing number of traditional and interactive communications tools available to us all.