Today more and more businesses are enhancing their online presence with a blog. Marketers are discovering that a blog is great way to keep their websites fresh, continually attract new visitors, and generate new sales leads. However, you probably won’t see a significant and sustained increase in traffic by just adding a blog to your website. And even if you do, the visitors that you attract may not necessarily be ideal prospects for your business. Blogging, in and of itself, is not the solution to all your marketing objectives. An effective blog requires a well-thought-out content strategy and disciplined execution. The subject matter of the content that you write and publish does matter. It’s the content that dictates the success of your blog. 

Each year, HubSpot conducts a survey of 6000+ executives in companies across the globe to learn their marketing challenges and priorities. The State of Inbound 2017 report is chock-full of stats and facts that will inform your own marketing, making you more effective. Here's a summary.

If you’re using inbound marketing, coming up with blog post ideas is a constant challenge. If you’ve developed your buyer personas and have done your research, you know the general topics of interest to your audience, but what specific things should you write about?

Here are our top 10 favorites for B2B blogs that we use regularly here at LeadG2:

In the work we do with media companies, staffing firms, and other professional service businesses, two topics consistently appearing on our clients’ radar screens are how to accelerate prospects’ movement through their sales pipeline and how to close more sales, faster.

There are basically two areas we focus on as causes for a slow sales process.

First, we look for key infrastructure that may be missing or misused or underused. This can range from lack of sales training programs to missing technology like a CRM or marketing automation platform.

Second, we look at micro-level factors focused mainly on how the firm engages with prospects on a one-to-one or customized level. We know to a high degree of certainty that if a firm is using a one-size-fits-all approach to closing a sale, then a more customizable approach may be just the ticket for reaching sales goals quicker.

In this post, I’ve summarized what's holding you back from making your sales process faster.

By now, it’s a cliché that sales departments and marketing departments are typically at each other’s throats—that there’s serious mistrust and distrust even during periods of supposed peace. But the fact that this is hardly news means we absolutely can’t ignore it, or for even a moment throw up our hands and entertain the thought of simply giving up.

Sales and marketing alignment is a hot topic. As companies grow and invest more into both their sales and marketing departments, what used to be a team of two or three people becomes a team of many — and communication is a bit more difficult.

Before they started working with LeadG2, none of our clients had a line item in their budget for inbound marketing. Nor did they have extra unaccounted for dollars in their budget. It’d be a nice problem to have, but who has extra money just laying around dreaming of a new way to be spent? The truth is that businesses are running as lean as they ever have. Organizations are being asked to do more and more with fewer and fewer resources.

In this type of economic environment, the easy thing to do is just try to maintain the status quo. Don’t try anything new that might draw the attention of the “budget cutters”. Just fight for the same funding levels you got last year and try to maintain the same budget allocations.

While this may seem like the easiest and safest way to manage the finances of your business unit or department, it leaves little room for process and performance improvement. This restrictive financial management fosters an environment of complacency, which results in the acceptance of reduced expectations that allow for only incremental performance improvements.

Wouldn't it be fantastic if you had a steady stream of leads coming into your sales department? Wouldn't it be even better if this steady stream were filled with qualified sales leads? This is possible, and it's often achieved by businesses actively working a lead generation strategy that includes both inbound marketing and thought leadership marketing.  

Case studies are a powerful form of social proof. A study by MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute found that 77% of the B2B companies surveyed ranked case studies as an essential lead gen tool.

Why Are Case Studies Effective?

• They’re credible. Rather than tooting your own horn, so to speak, you’re letting your customers’ experiences do the talking. Not only this, but you’re also supplementing your story with facts and numbers. These two elements combine to form trust.
• Prospects can envision themselves in your case studies. Because you’re not relying on abstract concepts, but instead describing real-life situations, prospects can more easily see themselves benefitting from your products and services.
• They allow you to talk about ROI “in the wild.” When prospects can see just how much ROI others in their industry are experiencing using your products or services, they get excited and motivated to sign on.

Are you asking your sales team to perform with one hand tied behind their back or blindfolded? Maybe you’re not hindering their ability to sell to that extreme, but many organizations are creating unproductive environments when they don’t provide their sales teams with the resources they need. Often the scarcest resource of all is content the sales person can use to at various stages of the sales process. Research indicates that sales reps can spend up to 30% of their day looking for or creating content (KnowledgeTree). It’s getting more and more challenging to capture the attention of a prospect; uncover a need and opportunity; demonstrate value; and maneuver through the increasingly complex decision-making processes of our prospects. Having the right content to share with a prospect in just the right format and at just the right time can be invaluable.