How To Evolve as a B2B Marketer in Just 8 Weeks

How To Evolve as a B2B Marketer in Just 8 Weeks:from Business 2 Community by Douglas Burdett

B2B marketers who adapt to the tectonic shifts in marketing can reap enormous benefits to both their company and career.

As the apocryphal Chinese curse goes, “May you live in interesting times.”  Most B2B marketers can relate as they race to keep up with the new and ever-changing best practices of marketing effectiveness.
The current revolution from outbound to inbound marketing is akin to when the horse and buggy industry was faced with the automobile.  Some in that industry adapted to the sea change. Many did not.
The increasing changes in the marketing world makes professional evolution a challenge for many marketers. The change can be especially tough for marketers who have had years of experience and a successful track record in the more traditional, outbound marketing world.
Fortunately, Eloqua has produced a syllabus of real world knowledge to help marketers get up to speed with the new world of B2B marketing.
The “course” is eight weeks, but you can work ahead if you like.  Each section includes links to a collection of carefully chosen marketing articles, webinars and videos.
Some of the “course” highlights include…
Week 1: Personal and Corporate Branding in a Social World

• Being “top of mind” is worthless. What’s important is providing value.
• Content is the marketing. And the copy needs to be tuned for SEO and be able to convert.

Week 2: The Content Marketing Revolution

• You no longer set the agenda for the prospects’ education journey – the prospect does. And they can get their information from a variety of sources other than you.
• Content marketing must deliver compelling, informative content that keeps buyers engaged on their trip down the marketing and sales funnel.

Week 3: Generating and Managing Leads

• A marketer’s #1 priority is to help generate demand, manage leads and send high-quality opportunities to sales.
• Demand generation, lead management and lead nurturing need to be an integral part of any B2B marketer’s toolkit.

Week 4: The Packaging of Data

• Buyers have an insatiable demand for data. The problem (or opportunity) is there’s too much data now.
• Smart B2B marketers are becoming masters at presenting the right data at the right time, in a visually compelling way.

Week 5: Startup Marketing

• Marketing a startup is one of the most challenging yet rewarding jobs for a marketer.
• The only weapon needed: Knowledge.
• Foundational books to read:

1. Good to Great, Jim Collins
2. New Rules of Marketing & PR, David Meerman Scott
3. Positioning, Ries and Trout
4. Selling the Invisible, Harry Beckwith
5. The Innovator’s Dilemma, Clayton Christensen

Week 6: The Role of Search in a Real-Time Sales Cycle

• If your brand doesn’t rank on the first page of search engines, then you’re too hard to find.
• You need to create content and understand how that content is discovered in an ecosystem guided by search engines and social networks.

Week 7: Beyond Marketing: When Marketing Impacts Product, Support and More

• The advent of social media and ubiquitous, instant access to information forever changed the role of marketing.
• It’s not just an expansion of platforms and tools – it’s a dramatic expansion in the role of the marketer.
• Marketers now need to be able to work across a wide variety of functions.

Week 8: The New Mathematics of Marketing

• In today’s revenue-centric culture, marketing is increasingly data driven.
• Right brain thinking isn’t enough. You need to bring a fully engaged left brain to the table.

Click here to download a copy of the “Real World Marketing Syllabus” or see the SlideShare presentation below.
QUESTION: How do you stay abreast of all the changes going on in B2B marketing?

Real World Marketing Syllabus

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