This month, Tech Crunch Disrupt in New York will be focusing on Design during their Office Hours segment. Six companies will have a chance to spend time on-stage with some talented design experts. Startups will get to go up on stage, show the TC experts their designs, and receive advice and feedback.

Pretty cool considering the level of expert advice and insight these companies will get to turn their ideas into killer products. Design is critical to the R&D process, so much so that companies like Apple have been preaching design throughout it’s corporate culture, ensuring engaging design philosophies are engrained throughout everything they do, even marketing.

That’s because Steve Jobs was a design fanatic and lead by example. Steve Jobs was a firm believer that people love nice things, whether it be B2B or B2C.

Case in point…

Over the past few years, we’ve heard that it’s not only hard to find engineers. It’s hard to find great design talent. And if Apple’s still unbelievable and mind-boggling rise over the last 15 years shows anything, it’s that design matters. Design and simplicity made the difference between Instagram and every other photo-sharing app. It revived Path. It made Square stand out among all of the other credit card readers.

- Office Hours At TC Disrupt This Year Will Be All About Design

Yes, design does matter. Even B2B companies with great products are beginning to understand that great design is a competitive advantage. Take Cisco for example. They made routers look fantastic with their Human Network campaign. Routers! Go figure.

Even the former Apple engineers over at Nest incorporated everything Steve Jobs taught them about the importance of integrating a culture of elegant design when they developed a new “learning” thermostat. But Nest didn’t just make an innovative thermostat that is going head-head with Honeywell, they also incorporated a high end design approach in ALL of their marketing tactics. For example, you don’t see crappy Apple ads. You don’t see crappy Dyson marketing. Likewise, Nest’s website is a fantastic experience. Watch the Nest video when you get a chance. It’s illustrates exactly what I’m talking about.

My point is this: If you’re engineering innovative products, then take a page out of Nest’s playbook (or, Path, Instagram, Square) and step up all your design initiatives so that a competitive design standard can be maintained throughout your corporate culture.

How does your company approach the design process? Let us know your thoughts.

Although B2B Marketing has made great strides in the last few years, it’s time for B2B Marketers to get serious about making their marketing programs strategic growth initiatives that focus on capturing market share and driving revenues, rather than wasting valuable dollars on disconnected marketing tactics.

Case in point: B2B Marketing budgets will increase by 6.8% in 2012

According to a recent Forrester research post on MarketingProfs, B2B Marketing budgets will increase by 6.8% in 2012, with high-tech still leading the charge (see chart above). Interestingly, pharmaceutical, medical, and biotech have shifted from cutting their marketing budgets in 2011, to increasing them in 2012. That’s good news because that means more B2B Companies are beginning to notice that they need to do things differently in order to get noticed. It also means B2B Marketers need to be smart about how these budgets are spent, because as budgets increase so should revenues.

The report also emphasizes that as budgets rise in 2012, B2B Marketers need to focus on partnership and experimentation. I love this because I have found that the best relationships between client and agency happen only when both are willing to try new things, go to bat for each other and help each other succeed. B2B Companies like Cisco, Intel, and SAP, for example, have established long-term strategic marketing partnerships that have set the creative bar higher than normal by experimenting with creative campaign ideas that go way beyond the traditional B2B “bland” creative – even borderline B2C ideas such as Cisco’s “Human Network” or Intel’s “Intel Inside”.

As a B2B Marketer, it’s encouraging to see that B2B Companies are willing to compete by thinking different, developing a unique voice and moving away from the traditional boring B2B Creative we’ve seen for far too long.

What are your experiences with B2B Marketing budgets? Are they increasing or decreasing? Are you partnering and experimenting? Let us know your thoughts.

IdeaPaint Rocks!

When I was a kid, I got into trouble for writing on walls and tables. Not any more! Thanks to IdeaPaint and some fabulous woodworking by my dad, Reinhold, our boardroom is not just a meeting place anymore, it’s also a creative space.

IdeaPaint is easy to apply and once cured it converts any surface into a whiteboard. Now we get to write on the wall and on the table without getting into trouble! Woot-Woot!

Write On! A custom table too…

My dad built this custom table completely by hand using 3/4-inch finished plywood, 1/2-inch plywood, cedar 2x4s, some glue and a few screws, all thanks to The Home Depot, in Langley, BC.  It can easily seat up to 10 people comfortably.

So next time you stop by, be sure to grab one of those dry markers and take notes right on the table!  How cool is that?

One of the tremendous aspects of RPM is the benefit of marketing automation – automating the marketing process can give CEOs real data to analyze performance, measure ROI and legitimize the marketing investment (notice I didn’t say “spend”?).

The infographic below, courtesy of HubSpot, shows how marketing automation uses technology and software to help move prospects and leads through the sales funnel. For example, leads generated from blogging, social media, and other inbound marketing sources, can now be more sales-ready. But marketing automation is not a silver bullet solution, and it’s important to understand when it can or can’t help grow your business.

My biggest take-away from the infographic is that customer relationships should be based on REAL interactions aided by technology like marketing automation. In other words, don’t hide behind technology and hope you’re going to make that sale.

Have a look at the infographic and then determine your own conclusions. Let us know your thoughts.

Getting on the same page will increase revenue

According to marketing automation solution providers like Eloqua and Marketo, Revenue Performance Management (RPM) gets everyone on the same page so that sales and marketing work towards a common business objective, rather than pointing fingers when things don’t happen. The video above, care of Eloqua, illustrates key insights into getting sales and marketing working together.

Here are the top 5 highlights from this excellent video…

1. 87% of marketers say current marketing techniques are not hitting performance targets
2. companies can gain 10% in annual sales if they focus on better insight into sales and marketing activities
3. smart companies are turning to RPM to examine how marketing dollars are spent
4. companies that utilize RPM outpace the S&P Index by as much as 78%
5. RPM tacks five essential metrics in real time: Reach, Value, Conversion, Velocity, Return

Essentially, marketing is still an art form but we can now apply science to it as well, thanks to technology like RPM.

Sharing the benefits of RPM

In support of this post, I recently moderated a fantastic panel of marketing gurus for BCAIM’s B2B Marketing luncheon at The Four Seasons Hotel in Vancouver. The panel featured B2B marketing experts from SAP, Sage Software, and Absolute Software.

Each panelist presented relevant and current topics…

• Christine Mykota, SAP’s Director of Business Analytics Marketing, discussed the benefits of strategic content marketing.
• Nancy Harris, Sage Simply Accounting’s Vice President and General Manager, spoke about automating sales and marketing.
• Stephen Midgley, Absolute Software’s Vice President of Global Marketing, delivered a great talk on customer engagement.

The common thread between each presentation, however, was a subject that Nancy touched on: That revenues can increase when you automate your sales and marketing with Revenue Performance Management strategies that deliver engaging solution-based content – content that drives real business value.

Do you have any experience with Revenue Performance Management? If so, does RPM benefit your company? If not, would you consider it? Share your thoughts below.

Dan’s advice is pretty simple: You should be creating a ton of interesting content and sharing it with your followers. The trick is to share content effectively.

Here are Dan’s top 8 effective ways to get more clicks on Twitter (based on Eastern Standard Time):

1. Keep tweets between 120-130 characters
2. Insert shortened links 30-35 characters in (about 25%)
3. Don’t tweet more than once every hour
4. Choose appropriate words and phrases
5. Test tweets using the paper.li system
6. Use verbs rather than nouns
7. Tweet later in the week*
8. Tweet in afternoons and evenings

* Note: Dan recommends tweeting on weekends but I believe he is referring to individual or personal Twitter accounts rather than company Twitter accounts. That said, if you or your company want to tweet Saturdays and Sundays, have at it!

For Dan’s complete post, see: http://danzarrella.com/infographic-how-to-get-more-clicks-on-twitter.html

Let us know your thoughts on getting more clicks from Twitter.  Enjoy!

This may surprise you, but according to eMarketer and BtoB Magazine, North Americans rely equally on traditional and digital media when researching information and making purchasing decisions.

Canadians prefer print, Americans prefer online… but only slightly.

According to a February eMarketer article, Traditional Trumps Social Media Influence in Canada, a study conducted by the Canadian Council of Public Relations Firms (CCPRF) showed that internet users in Canada preferred product information from traditional media like newspapers (86%), TV (83%) and radio (78%) over digital media sources like blogs (29%), Facebook (21%) and Twitter (15%).

Americans tend to rely on internet sources more but only by a 9% margin, according to a recent BtoB Magazine post, Using Digital Media: Marketers need to re-examine the marketing/media mix. The article sources a recent Harris Poll that shows Americans trust online news sources as much as local papers, and that Internet news and information sites received a higher “trust” rating (69%) than national newspapers (60%).

Don’t throw out that baby!

The two studies mentioned above illustrate an important point: traffic, likes, followers, friends, comments, etc. do not guarantee sales. In fact, many businesses lose sleep over the fact that they have thousands of friends and followers, yet little to show for it.

The thing is, marketing will always be about people, even in the B2B space. There is no silver bullet; you have to nurture leads with the appropriate digital and traditional mediums. When you balance traditional marketing with digital marketing, you not only engage your customers, you also give them reasons to want to do business with you.

What are your thoughts around balancing traditional and digital marketing?

• Overall, Facebook users are much older than I would have thought. If you look at the age groups, you can see that the largest groups are  35 -44 and 45+. I think most people would probably guess the numbers to be much higher in the younger age groups.
• Twitter users are very mobile. 54% of Twitter users access the site through mobile devices. This isn’t really a surprising statistic, given the nature of the site. (The original question on the status update was, “What are you doing?” People still use the site to share this information with people, often while they’re on the go.) It’s still a high number, which indicates that more people overall are accessing sites through mobile devices. If this is the case, businesses need to be thinking hard about their mobile strategies.
• Pinterest and Google+ seem to have completely opposite demographics. This is something we mentioned in a previous blog post, but it’s still and interesting statistic. Google+ is more popular with men, while Pinterest is preferred by women.

However, the most interesting information to me has to do with the reasons why people are using social media. The majority of people say they are using social media to stay in touch with people in their existing social circles (friends, family, old friends), whereas the numbers of people using social media to make new connections are much smaller. I imagine that these numbers will start to grow in the near future as people become more comfortable with the idea of expanding their social networks using online methods, especially for business use.

Have a closer look at the infographic below and let us know what you think. Do you find any of these numbers surprising? Do you agree with our thoughts on what these numbers mean? Share your thoughts with us in the comments. We would love to know what you think.

When you look at successful social media campaigns, they all seem to have one thing in common – they are easy to participate in. It’s something we touched on in last week’s post about the Kony 2012 campaign. The fact that all that was required of people was to click a few buttons in order to participate played a huge role in the success of the campaign. Whenever we’re talking about social media campaigns (or doing anything online, really) I always tell people to keep one thing in mind right from the start: people are lazy. As horrible as that sounds, it is true. Every day we are relying more on technology to perform regular tasks, because we can now do these things much quicker and easier than ever before. Why would you go to the bank and wait in line when you can get the job done right on your smartphone from wherever you are? Because of this, we are willing to do less in order to enter contests and participate in any kind of campaign.

Last week AMEX launched a new social media campaign that really takes this whole “people are lazy” idea to heart. By partnering with Twitter, they have developed a way for people to save money that is far easier than clipping coupons. Here’s how it works: First, the user uses the service to connect (or “sync”) their card to their Twitter account. After this is done, all they have to do is watch the @AmericanExpress Twitter account for the deals they want to participate in. In order to get the deal, all they have to do is tweet the associated hashtag (eg: #AmexMcDonalds) and the deal is added to their card. When they use the card at the retailer, the discount is then applied to the card as a credit. The whole process is easy to set up and easy to participate in, which is why it has been so successful in the first week since it launched. It gives people access to deals without having to clip coupons or remember to mention the deals when they’re out shopping. There are very few barriers to entry and the process is easy enough for people to continue to participate in as the campaign goes on.

AMEX pretty much did everything right with this campaign. They created a huge buzz at the launch and offered great incentives to sign up (they launched at the South By Southwest festival and offered tickets to a Jay-Z concert for festival attendees) and made sure the process was easy to make sure people would continue to participate after the initial launch. If they had made the process more complicated, it wouldn’t have taken off the way it did. If you want your social media campaign to be successful, you can’t forget this: People are lazy. Make it easy to participate in and easy to share, and you’ll be off to a good start.

Do you agree? Are we really that lazy? Do you think people would still participate in a complicated process if the incentive was really good, or would it fail? Leave us a comment and let us know what you think.