B2B Marketing in 2014: Content + Technology

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2014 will be a BIG year for Digital Marketing. AdAge’s annual survey of top B2B marketers found that 80% have boosted their digital marketing budgets, the highest proportion ever. A new wave of Israeli marketing technology [K1] startups, including Insightera (acquired by Marketo), Kenshoo, Tracx, Oktopost and others are helping CMOs get more bang for their digital buck. In 2014, those bucks will flow toward content marketing, social media lead-gen and analytics tools.

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The emphasis on technology has changed the perception of the CMO. Average tenures have nearly doubled since 2006 (from 23 to 45 months). CMOs such as Lynn Vojvodich at Salesforce, Marty St. George at JetBlue and Jane Lansing at Emerson have engineering backgrounds. These quants work with more vendors than ever, while building their own customized analytics engines. They are learning to balance the culture clash between IT and Marketing by augmenting measurable digital experiences like video, webinars and Mobile.

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 David Roman, CMO of Lenovo and a Keynote speaker at the upcoming Marketing & Ad: Tech Israel conference  cited two trends he is seeing among Lenovo CMO clients: Emphasis on content marketing and social media as a tool for generating sales leads.

Content Marketing: Good content is hardly an exotic marketing strategy. In fact, content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about 3 times as many leads. Google elevated the prominence of content marketing last year by dramatically modifying its algorithms to emphasize high-quality, original content. This transforms brands into content creators, re-purposing their original content across multiple platforms. AdAge’s sample found 75% of B2B marketers are poised to increase their content marketing budget.

For Lead-Generation, Social Media Is the New Black: Social media, measured by Cost Per Lead (CPL), has proven to be more efficient than traditional lead-gen sources like trade shows, telemarketing, direct mail and PPC. These tools, together with a disciplined SEO strategy, can complement organic search. The best results should undertake a two-prong strategy using paid search ads to bring targets to your original content.

“Marketers that embrace technologies such as marketing automation, content recommendation, business intelligence and smart lead tracking are outperforming their competition” says Kfir Pravda, CEO of Pravda Media Group and host of #B2BTalks.

CMO budgets, prestige and tenures are rising. Vendors that show results and can help automate the processes of digital marketing, stand to grow as well. CMOs from three prominent Israeli vendors, SiSense, Panaya and Incapsula talk about some of the technologies used by B2B marketers today: