It’s that time again! In honor of the big game, we’re reposting our top 10 Super Bowl ads of all time. Enjoy!

The Super Bowl is back—meaning it’s time to stock up on Buffalo Chicken dip, kick back in front of the TV and watch some of the best commercials you’ll see all year. Or, catch some football. Whether you’re a sports fanatic or not, the creative ads airing between tackles are always highly anticipated. As well they should be—advertisers shell out close to $3million for a 30-second spot.

While some ads miss the mark, many make such an impact that we still talk about them years later. We’ve compiled a list of our top Super Bowl ads ever for your very own trip down memory lane: Read More »

By Claire Tassin

It seems clear that, for a variety of reasons, energy and resource constraints will continue to be key concerns for small business owners for the foreseeable future. Those constraints take a few forms – sometimes they’re around environmental concerns, other times they’re around cost. But what language should you speak to business owners concerned about energy costs?

We know that green marketing can be effective in the B2C world, but how influential are environmental sustainability and corporate social responsibility on small businesses’ purchase behavior? This year, the Enterprise Council on Small Business tested the impact of a myriad of factors on small business owners. As it turns out, value alignment – such as on green – has only moderate influence on owners.

Source: ECSB Research, July 2011, n=1099 N.A.

So, if green marketing isn’t an effective way to reach small businesses, what is? ECSB recommends positioning how members’ products and services can alleviate business owners’ pain points. In a recent study, ECSB asked owners what their biggest pain points are in all areas of managing their businesses. In the area of building and office administration, the cost of utilities ranked highest – despite the majority of owners not anticipating price increases for 2012.

At the end of the day, messaging how your products and services can positively impact the bottom line is likely to be more effective than green marketing per se in targeting small businesses. So, rather than focusing on going green, show business owners how your company can help them save some green.

By Ana Lapter

People are an organization’s greatest asset.  No process, vision or tool can compensate for the lack of an adequate talent pool when elaborating or executing a strategic marketing initiative.   Having the right mix of capabilities and skills dishes up the key ingredient for any successful Marketing recipe.

Obviously, this is easier said than done.  To solve this challenge, a lot of marketers with whom I have spoken recently professed to employing previous talent planning experiences as a proxy for building a roadmap of future capabilities.  The major problem with this approach is that it assumes that the marketing organizations operate in relatively similar consumer, technology, business, regulatory and economic environments as in the past.

How can a Marketing organization design the right capability model that acknowledges radical change and forward looking planning? Read More »

By Ana Lapter

We often hear that “one size fits all” strategies don’t work. But when it comes to designing mid-funnel messaging strategies, many marketers hammer on undifferentiated, non-customer specific drivers of purchase.

But, why? The main reason is the novelty of the mid-funnel role for Marketers.  Traditionally, Marketing hasn’t owned this stage of the purchasing process.  Sales did the engagement work with buyers to identify their needs, while Marketing was mainly in charge with raising awareness about a product or a vendor’s thought leadership position in the industry.

Today’s environment is different.  As our research demonstrated, customers are delaying their contact with Sales until they are well into the mid-funnel.  As a result, Marketing now typically owns a new stage of the purchasing decision funnel and needs to address it with the right messaging strategy.  Such strategy requires customization of content and information based on buyers’ needs and outcomes associated with a purchase.

In our recent survey of 1,900 B2B customers, we identified four types of mid-funnel purchasing needs that require customized messaging. Read More »

By Ana Lapter

A deepening debt crisis in Europe is making “austerity” the word du jour. To avoid budget cuts, many executives are under increasing pressure to demonstrate the ROI on marketing expenditure.  Historically, this was never an easy thing to demonstrate; many marketing activities are designed to build brand awareness or engage customers, things that are hard to quantify in a strict ROI framework.  But continued economic softness heightens the need to increase marketing productivity – the amount of value we get for the work we do.

How can a marketing organization become more productive while avoiding unnecessary costs?

The easiest approach is to cut staff and expect the remaining employees to do more with less. This, however, is not a good solution from the perspective of staff engagement and retention.  As one MLC member put it: “We’ve freed up a lot of money by streamlining staffing expenses already; there’s nothing left to gain from further cutting.” In addition, hiring has become a difficult proposition. In fact, many organizations design hard-to-fill-jobs that require an individual to master multiple skill sets that were traditionally split among multiple employees or were built in- house via extensive training programs.

Redefining marketing productivity in this recessionary climate calls for different actions. Here are three ways to boost productivity – without cutting staff: Read More »

By Ana Lapter

B2B marketing – particularly in the technology space – is not an easy job. Due to the complexity and risks associated with the adoption of new business solutions, customers take more time to analyze options, exercise due diligence using third-party sources, are risk averse and engage larger groups in buying decisions.   Much of the traditional marketing “playbook” does not effectively address these challenges.

Not surprisingly, tech-industry marketers are ahead of other industries in terms of leveraging new techniques, channels and strategies, such as social, mobile and digital media as well as technology and predictive analytics.

Tech marketing has become increasingly digital and more sophisticated in terms of engaging users, tracking customer data, predicting buying behavior and generating leads.  In fact, tech marketing has probably the highest concentration of bloggers, content creators and data analysts.  While this is not bad news, it isn’t necessarily good news either.  With everyone in the industry seemingly taking the same approach, marketers have created a race about who produces more content, has better search optimization engines or captures the biggest share of digital conversations.

What are the key things that tech and other B2B marketers should consider to avoid an unproductive competition? Read More »

By Ana Lapter

Radical changes in the consumer, technology and business landscapes are forcing executives to rethink their approaches to marketing strategies.  But successful execution of these new strategies calls for an adequate pool of marketing talent.

Senior executives who are effective at talent management can generate up to 7% more in revenue than those less-focused on developing staff skills.  Unfortunately, more than 80% of executives are ineffective at talent management.  Part of the reason is that typical approaches to crafting future talent plans are infused with executive bias, as reflected in the adage “Old habits die hard”.  Acknowledging this problem, one member told us that “What got us here won’t get us there,” suggesting the need for new skills and capabilities road mapping.

We’ve been studying the evolution of marketing talent for the last few weeks, and trying to summarize my recent talent-related conversations with numerous MLC members, I came up with a list of 3 key competency areas that are necessary for the marketing function of the future: Read More »

By Ana Lapter

Rising event expenses, declining consumer attendance, and increased competition from suppliers of virtual event solutions: these are three factors forcing many B2B marketers to rethink whether trade shows are any longer worth the expense.

I certainly don’t believe that trade shows are worthless.  Our B2B research last year indicated that, if planned and executed correctly, trade shows are effective channels for enabling conversations with customers who are ready to buy.  MLC members – please click here if you want to see the full list of the most effective conversational channels that influence mid-funnel purchasing decisions.

So, what are the ingredients of an effective trade show strategy?  Our recent case study profiling Hill-Rom’s trade show approach illustrates a few critical ingredients that transform a trade event into a lead generation machine: Read More »

The following is a guest post from Matt Lind of our sister program, the Customer Contact Council.

It’s been just over a year since we brought you the “Funniest Customer Service Spoofs”, an entry that continues to rank among the most popular in Wide Angle’s history. And if we learned (or rather, confirmed) anything from this diversionary post, it’s that customer service professionals have a healthy sense of humor about themselves and their jobs—even though we seem to get more than our fair share of ridicule.

Let’s face it, though. Despite the fact that we all strive to eliminate poor experiences that are frustrating for customers, from an outsider’s perspective these situations can be…well…absolutely hilarious. And it’s not just standup comedians and sitcoms that are leveraging the comedic fodder to be had; on the contrary, more and more companies are pushing customer service to differentiate themselves—and using some spectacularly bad examples to illustrate their competitors’ allegedly inferior service.

With that in mind, we’ve dug up a few more customer service-related spoofs, pranks, and advertisements that are sure to keep you laughing…unless, of course, you’re that frustrated customer on the other end of the line:
Read More »