LinkedIn & Company Blogs Generate Business-to-Business (BtoB) Leads per New Survey

DemandGen Report surveyed 218 BtoB sales and marketing professionals and found that social media is (actually) driving leads and helping to connect with prospects.  The study took place in June.  (DemandGen Report is an online publication that focuses on sales and marketing automation tools to help companies drive growth.)

Source: DemandGen Report
LinkedIn (58 percent) and company [...]

How Online Video Case Studies Help Market B2B Services

Successful business-to-business marketing is a tough road.  No matter how hard we try, most B2B products don’t have the sizzle of an iPod.
But one untapped resource all B2B companies have is real customers with authentic, from-the-trenches stories to tell about how your products and services helped them to be successful.  
So, how about putting a [...]

Social Media Marketing, Twitter Lesson from Guy Kawasaki

7-13-09 Update:  Here is link to Guy’s blog where he published all of the links he discussed at this event.
This morning 600 people gathered in La Jolla (San Diego) to hear Guy Kawasaki talk about “Social Media to Market Your Business”.
Photo source: Adjix TwitPic
Guy treated us to a powerful tutorial on how he uses social [...]

Bootstrapping Ideas for Startups and Small Businesses from Digital Media Center, Orange County

If you’re an entrepreneur–or are thinking like one–bootstrapping ideas that work for startups  (how to market, launch a new business or how to create partnerships) are also great for all small business owners, no matter how long you’ve been around.  So on Thursday, June 10 I spent an insightful afternoon at the Digital Media Center [...]

How Service-Now.com Attracts Customers, Grows Fast and Uses Word of Mouth Marketing All on a Shoestring Budget

If you’re looking for from-the-trenches B2B marketing strategies and tactics that work, you’ll want to check out what two marketing gurus from Service-Now.com have to share.
Tuesday night in San Diego, two marketing superstars from 4-year old startup Service-now.com delivered an in-depth, insightful view of a business and marketing success story.
Matt French, Brian Surritt, Marketing Director, [...]

Engineering Meets Web 2.0: A Temperature Measurement CEO Success (Part 1)

If you’re a CEO in manufacturing, engineering, or, well, a small to mid-sized business, you’ll want to dip into this Web 2.0 /social media (2-part) interview.  Find out from Jim Burns, the temperature expert CEO of Burns Engineering, the reasons he’s adopted social media, business blogging, Twitter and is building an online community for his [...]

How to Market Your Small Business Like a Legendary Guitar Player Entertains

Photo source: Wikipedia, Flickr
Thanks to our friends at ZZYZX Snapjack, a cool startup that designs and sells patented professional instrument cables, we attended a wonderful charity event last night.  It was NAMM’s (National Assn. of Music Merchants) 17th annual Muriel Anderson’s All Star Guitar Night.  Captivating guitarists entertained us with lovely, innovative music—often sounding like [...]

Small Business Marketing: Cost-Savings Idea from Microsoft?

Before Web 2.0 made the world of marketing (sort of) easier, small business could pick up marketing ideas from the big guys. Now we have social networking sites, blogs and online communities.
Humm—the tables have turned. Wall St. Journal today has article about how Microsoft is actually taking a page from small companies with its new [...]

Survival Marketing: Reaching Out To Your Community in a Time of Crisis

Thanks to the credit-crunch/growing-unemployment end of the recession, many small businesses are losing sales and customers. They’re in a crisis situation, in danger of closing.  Desperate times call for, well, any measure you can get your hands on.  So, I thought it might help you, or a small business owner you know, to revisit a [...]

Marketing Ideas for Tough Times: Sales VPs Share Insights

Photo Source: Flickr, Thorsten (TK)’s Photostream
Small businesses can always use more (lower cost) ideas for growing in this suckey economy.  So I’m always trolling for small business marketing (customer) strategies, tactics to beg, borrow or outright steal.  Yesterday I hit the marketing mother load.
At the San Diego AeA Sales roundtable discussion, Sales Strategies for Tough [...]