How to Market and Sell to the Modern Buyer

modern buyerjpg

This week I moderated another Social Media Today webinar as part of their Best Thinker webinar series, this time on the topic of How to Market and Sell to the Modern Buyer. This webinar was sponsored by Act-on Software and featured Amber Armstrong (@ambarmstrong) Program Director of Commerce, Social and Mobile Amplification at IBM, Jeff Soriano (@sorianojeff) Senior Director of Demand Generation at Offerpop and Rachel Rosin (@rosin_rachel) Marketing Programs Manager at Act-On Software. We discussed the changes marketing departments need to make or address in order to keep up with today’s buying habits.

Here are three key takeaways from the webinar:

  1. Customer is driving not the marketer – Rachel laid out a 4 step content marketing plan (LINK) that really gets to the heart of the modern marketing department they include: creating buyer personas, developing a persona matrix, mapping the buyer journey and mapping your content to the buyer journey.
  2. Break with Brand Boredom – Amber discussed new ways to tell your story that are more engaging – more like a conversation than a brand talking. A great example was startup competition for millennials and entreprenuers which you can learn more about here: www.ibm.com/newwaytostartup
  3. Be Relevant – Jeff talked about the challenges associated with marketing the modern buyer and how to move your “suspects to prospects” with relevant content.

To get a copy of the slides or to listen to the replay, please click here. You can also scan the highlights of this webinar on Twitter by reading the Storify below.

Our next webinar is titled Social Data Made Simple: Getting Started with a Strategy; be sure to sign up for it or view the schedule of other upcoming webinars here.

Written by Paul Dunay
Paul Dunay is an award-winning B2B marketing expert with more than 20 years’ success in generating demand and creating awareness for leading technology, consumer products, financial services and professional services organizations. Paul is the global vice president of marketing for Maxymiser a leading web optimization firm, and author of four “Dummies” books: Facebook Marketing for Dummies (Wiley 2009), Social Media and the Contact Center for Dummies (Wiley Custom Publishing 2010), Facebook Advertising for Dummies (Wiley 2010) and Facebook Marketing for Dummies 2nd Edition (Wiley 2011). His unique approach to marketing has led to recognition of Paul as a BtoB Magazine Top 25 B2B Marketer of the Year for 2010 and 2009 and winner of the DemandGen Award for Utilizing Marketing Automation to Fuel Corporate Growth in 2008. He is also a finalist for the last six years in a row in the Marketing Excellence Awards competition of the Information Technology Services Marketing Association (ITSMA), and is a 2010 and 2005 gold award winner in Driving Demand. Buzz Marketing for Technology, Paul’s blog, has been recognized as a Top 20 Marketing Blog for 2009 and 2008, a Top Blog to Watch for 2009 and 2008, and an Advertising Age Power 150 blog in the “Daily Ranking of Marketing Blogs.” Paul has shared his marketing thought leadership as a featured speaker for the American Marketing Association, BtoB Magazine, CMO Club, MarketingProfs, Marketing Sherpa, Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG), and ITSMA. He has appeared on Fox News, and his articles have been featured in BusinessWeek, The New York Times, BtoB Magazine, MarketingProfs and MarketingSherpa. Paul holds an Executive Certificate in Strategy and Innovation from MIT’s Sloan School of Management and a bachelor’s degree in Marketing and Computer Science from Ithaca College.