The AV Marketer

Marketing in the digital age is no easy task—and it’s only getting harder. Your customers are researching and self-educating online long before they want to hear from your sales team. And even people who are visiting your site stay largely anonymous. That leaves you without enough information about the personality and needs of your potential customers.

We’ve had a lengthy love affair with buyer personas. I’ve created more than I care to count—analyzing pain points, interviewing customers or prospects, and making elegant charts to represent the target audience.

But I’m done. I can’t look at another stock photo representing Ian IT Director, Fran Facilities Manager or Homer Human Resource VP.

Many marketers think of their process as a funnel. You spend time and resources to attract a large group of potential customers at the top of your funnel, and then a much smaller group of people come out the bottom of the funnel as converted customers. Then you start again with a whole new group of people at the top, wash, rinse, repeat.
But the funnel model leaves out one key marketing reality. Unlike an actual funnel where what comes out the bottom has no impact on what goes into the top, the experience of customers at the bottom of your funnel can have a big impact on whether they come back—and whether they refer other people to your company.

For businesses focused on marketing themselves to other businesses, social media marketing might feel unnecessary or out of scope. Or maybe, since it’s a bit outside your normal tactics, you worry that your team doesn’t have the expertise to execute a social media marketing strategy successfully.

Well, do we have good news for you.

Not only can social media have a big impact on B2B marketing, it’s probably not as hard or time-consuming as you think. Here are five tips to maximize your business-to-business social media marketing efforts and grow your online presence.

Long before Siri and Alexa were on the scene as chatbots trying to act human, marketers were busy being humans trying to act like robots.

Even in the digital age, there is value in meeting customers, clients, and prospects in person, and trade shows offer excellent opportunities. Even with more digital marketing tools available than ever, 30 percent of companies reported plans to increase their trade show marketing budget last year. The only way to get a return on that investment, though, is to have a solid plan going into your trade shows, including a digital marketing plan that will give you all the bang your buck has to offer. Here are three marketing strategies to get the most out of your trade show budget and experience.

In the workplace of just a generation ago, the Rolodex was about as advanced as client management got. For some people, old habits die hard (my mom still swears by her Rolodex, and it is embarrassing). For the rest of us, there are plenty of digital tools and automated workstreams to help you track and cash in on big opportunities.

I’ve been a remote worker for over three years now, ever since I joined the wonderful team at Pivot. What exactly does that mean? The Cambridge Dictionary defines remote working as a “situation in which an employee works mainly from home and communicates with the company by email and telephone.”

But for me, the definition goes much further than that. Sure, I work from my house. But I’ve also worked in coffee shops, libraries, airports, hotel rooms, in houses of friends and family, and in multiple countries. My definition of a remote worker is someone who gets their tasks and projects done regardless of where they are located.

Pivot has embraced being a digital workplace and I am proud to be a part of a company that isn’t afraid of change.

But just embracing change doesn’t mean you are doing it well. So how can you not only work remotely but be a successful remote worker? Here are my top four tips.

While you may not be a sci-fi aficionado, you may be familiar with movies and TV shows that feature characters using voice commands as part of everyday life. Thanks to Siri, Alexa, and Cortana, using voice commands in your home is quite common and now it is showing up in the workplace. Fun fact: in 2018 there were 50 million Alexa and Google Home devices in the U.S. alone.

One of the companies that is bringing voice commands to the workplace is Amazon with their Alexa for Business solution. Most people know of Alexa from the TV commercials or because they have implemented it in their homes.

Alexa for Business is following the trend of consumer technology following you to work. Remember when Blackberry phones were the phone most commonly used for work, so everyone laughed at the idea of implementing iPhones in the workplace? Similar to iPhone’s launch in 2007, Alexa for Business wants to be a part of your workplace, yet some people are skeptical and resistant.

You may be asking yourself what Alexa for Business can do in the workplace. Think of Alexa for Business as being your own personal assistant. Think about the tasks that you do daily that you can now verbally ask Alexa to help you with:

You’ve started reading an article about 3 ways to increase your ROI when a notification pops up about another article—"10 Ways to Gain 100,000 Followers.” You’ve been thinking about your follower count, so you save the first article, just like you’ve saved dozens of others you plan to get to one day.