Aaah, I remember the good old days. You remember them, don't you? You know, the days when creating good content was the key to successful content marketing and inbound marketing?

Don't get me wrong, you still need good content, but today it's a commodity. Let's admit the truth; there's more than enough good content out there on just about every subject. And while there's more bad content than good, and the volume of bad content is growing faster than good content; good content is simply not enough to drive your results.

But, before you jump to the obvious conclusion that this blog post is about the need to create great content, that is not what I'm suggesting. Frankly, as I've been studying the keys to success, I'm increasingly convinced that for most companies, creating great content is not the answer. Simply put, the investment of time and energy (and as a result - money) to get from good content to great content isn't justified - the juice isn't worth the squeeze.

How can I say this? Isn't this content marketing heresay? Look, I'm not saying having great content is bad. Instead what I'm saying is that if you're not utilizing your content (super) effectively, your focus should be on optimizing your process before enhancing your content.

Take a quick minute to think through your last online purchase…how did you hear about the item? Was it while talking face-to-face with a friend? Or because of picture your co-worker posted on Instagram? When was the last time you made a purchase because of an article posted on Facebook?

If you had any doubt about the impact that social media has on purchasing decisions, let it go. According to Nielsen, heavy users of social media spend more than three hours a day on social media. In addition, 39% of heavy social users believe that finding out about products and services is an important reason for using a social network.

Is social media a part of your sales plan? Maybe you’ve been on the social media bandwagon for a long time, but it’s not generating the results you’d expect? Following are three ways that your sales team can use social media to sell better and in turn, create new, more engaged customers for your business.

In Hubspot’s State of Inbound 2016 , both inbound and outbound marketing teams consider “converting contacts/leads to customers” as their top marketing priority over the next 12 months. It’s agreed upon that ensuring landing page conversion is critical.

If you’re not getting the response that you’d expect, or it’s taken a nose dive recently, following are three important keys that will help you refresh your pages. Read on to save time and generate the leads that will make your sales team – and your CEO – extremely happy.

Spring is in the air! It seems very appropriate to examine your lead nurturing program…are you nurturing enough to grow an abundant “harvest” of qualified leads? Lead nurturing, when done correctly, positively and directly impacts a business’ bottom line.

Following are some tips to improve your lead nurturing campaigns that will work to demonstrate the value of marketing, help further align your sales and marketing teams and arm you with data that shows the positive impact lead nurturing has on generating qualified leads.

There’s a lot of talk about the death of email as a marketing or sales tool. Everywhere I go, I hear people talking about how no one reads emails anymore, that there’s too much noise and that marketers/salespeople must give it up and find other tactics to succeed.

From my perspective, however, I think the death of email is much like the announcement of Mark Twain’s death...greatly exaggerated. Email is still a very important tool in the demand generation toolkit.  

While it is true that email trends are not good for most organizations, that does not mean that email is dead (or even near dead), or that preparation for its ending should be high on your list. What it means is that you have to up your game.  

Frankly, the primary reason that emails are losing their effectiveness for most organizations is because they’re too easy (and inexpensive) to use. The plethora of email marketing automation options has been joined by an explosion of email sales automation tools. While these tools make it much easier to send out exponentially more emails, it also means that more time and effort - not less - needs to be invested to make them successful.

If you’re looking to get more from your email efforts, be sure you’re not making these mistakes:

The following is an exerpt from our ebook The Executive's Guide to Effective Lead Nurturing

Lead nurturing has become a critical part to business success in today’s technology-savvy marketplace. Nurtured leads produce, on average, a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads. (DemandGen) Gone are the days of cold calling and waiting for customers to break down the doors for your product or service. Social media sharing and access to unlimited information online has allowed for businesses to conduct research on a product or service, and make a purchase decision on their own. Much research supports that buyers are typically 60-90% through their decision-making process before they actually speak to a live person; and even when they engage with a salesperson earlier there is more competition for their attention than ever before. How can your business stand out in this clutter of information and position itself as “the” best option for customers?

Earlier this year I wrote a post about why B2B marketers should be using video as part of their overall strategy. In that post, I talked about the versatility of video and how it can be used in a variety of ways. One of those ways is email.

Email remains one of the most effective channels available to B2B marketers. Did you know that the number of email users worldwide is currently 2.6 billion and is expected to grow to over 2.9 billion by 2019? That is nearly three times as many user accounts as Facebook and Twitter combined.

To support adding video to your email marketing strategy, consider this: according to the email marketing company Emma, adding video to your email campaigns can increase click rates by 300%. That sounds significant enough to give it a try, right?

Lead nurturing…all the cool kids (in this case, successful marketers) have a lead nurturing approach in place, right? After all, as many as 75% of leads aren’t ready to buy and it is up to marketing to help them along their buyer’s journey until they become real, paying customers.

Seems like a no brainer. Lead nurturing is the way to go. Just last week I was having a conversation with a former co-worker. She was talking about her company’s recently implemented lead nurturing approach and how excited they were about it.

I was glad to hear they were thinking about their leads this way. However, I walked away from the conversation wondering if their approach was going to leave their leads feeling nurtured or spammed.

Hooray! Visitors are coming to your site and converting! They are willingly filling out your forms to get the content you are offering. Congratulations on a job well done. But wait...isn’t that just step one?

What comes next is another opportunity to provide valuable information to your new contact. It’s up to you whether or not you capitalize on that opportunity or let it pass you by like many B2B companies do.

Blogging is a term that has taken off over the years but not just for moms who want to talk about their favorite recipes or 20 something’s who want to write about their summer Eurotrip. Recently, forward-thinking businesses have realized it’s true value as a lead generation and lead nurturing tool, driving significant web traffic and providing clients and prospects with important industry information. All items which lead to more sales.

This is not just my opinion, as the data exists to back me up. HubSpot’s 2014 State of Inbound report determined that marketers who have prioritized blogging are 13x more likely to enjoy positive ROI. Additionally, 82% of marketers who blogged daily acquired a customer using their blog and 57% of marketers who blogged monthly brought in new business as well.

While the blogs we write differ based on our target audience and the nature of our businesses, there are things that all B2B companies should pay attention to in their approach to blogging. Here are eight things to consider that will help you get the most bang for your buck from your blog.