Ideas, insights and inspirations.

The goal of marketing is to win the hearts, minds and trust of people. If you win them over, you might win their business too. It has taken a lifetime of experiences to learn these timeless laws of marketing. Being the youngest of 11 kids, losing my Dad at 6, being raised primarily by women and becoming a bridge builder shaped my worldview towards human-centered marketing. I hope you find them beneficial. 1. The Law of Humanity Great brands always remember that prospects, customers, users, ambassadors and loyalists are real people, with real needs, wants, motivations and ambitions. They never forget that they are in the business of making the lives of their customers easier and helping them realize their ambitions. Be empathetic. Treat customers like human beings. Humanize your brand. 2.The Law of Findability If they can’t find you, they can’t buy you. If a prospect can’t find you on Google page 1, your product or service won’t be … Continue reading

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Today, more than any other touch point, a website is the digital soul of an organization. All roads lead to it. As one of Pittsburgh’s longest standing website design agencies, Elliance has been delivering prosperity with websites for regional, national and global clients for the past 30 years. Our arsenal of best practices includes: 1. Start with the Wise Strategy Revenue Strategy, Communication Strategy and Search Engine Ranking Strategy are the three building blocks of Website Strategy. Bake each of them into every stage of website development. 2. Make it Beautiful Strategy is invisible. Good design makes it visible. Milton Glaser, the iconic designer, once said “There are only three reactions to a piece of design: no, yes or WOW! Wow is one to aim for.” We couldn’t agree more. Create a beautiful website with contemporary aesthetics. And like retailers, refresh it periodically so if reflects the most current aesthetic. 3. Delight Prospects and Customers You can’t bore people into … Continue reading

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As one of Pittsburgh’s longest standing B2b and higher education branding agencies, Elliance has been delivering prosperity to regional and national clients for the past 28 years. Our arsenal of branding best practices includes: 1. Know Why You Brand When choices proliferate, branding ascends. Three reasons why successful organizations brand: In the sea of sameness, brands always win. Brands command premium prices. Financial markets value brands higher than generics. 2. Define “Brand” A brand is the sum of all experiences. It attaches an idea to a product or service e.g. achievement for Nike, freedom for Southwest Air, great books for St. John’s College, and engaged learning for Elon University. A brand creates expectations and promises around a product or a service while creating strong or even impenetrable differentiation in the marketplace. 3. Discover Your Brand Bring both a rational and an investigative mind to brand discoveries. Scour all available data to look for key insights. When listening to internal stakeholders, customers … Continue reading

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Ranked as one of the best B2B marketing agencies, we are frequently asked to share our thoughts about emerging marketing trends. We see three main forces impacting the B2B environment: First, Gen-Zers are entering the job market. In the past few years, there has been a generational shift from Boomers to Gen-Xers and Millennials. By 2025, 75% of the global workforce will be largely comprised of Millennials and Gen-Zers. Second, social justice movements with themes of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) are growing and increasingly fused together. Third, the release of Forrester Research’s 2023 Planning Guide for B2B Marketing Executives lays out new market trends. To grow their brand’s share of mind, voice and market, successful marketers are focused on the following initiatives for 2023: 1. Purpose First Since Millennials and Gen-Zers care deeply about corporate values, they are gravitating towards companies that embrace environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards and embody corporate social responsibility … Continue reading

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According to a recent Gallup report, 71 percent of B2B customers aren’t engaged. Meaning, they are readily willing to take their business elsewhere should an opportunity arise. Content marketing, a tactic that is widely used to boost engagement and aid many B2B challenges that underpin this problem — customer centricity, relationship building, strategic positioning, etc. — has hardly worked for B2B marketers, particularly those in midsize and small companies. In fact, according to a recent study by MarketingProfs, only 6 percent of B2B marketers rated their use of content marketing as very effective. Why? The answer lies in a number of factors that hold to be true across B2B companies. B2B marketers lack content production capacity Traditionally, B2B marketers have focused on analytics, sales and quantitative side of marketing to support their customer acquisition strategies, hence not needing superior writing talent. Forced to adapt to the rise of digital marketing, many scrambled to assume the role of content experts, with … Continue reading

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In looking at the B2B world of marketing, trends are indicating that Millennials are now very much in command of B2B research and decision-making. Who says? [1]Google partnered with Millward Brown Digital and conducted a B2B Path to Purchase Study in 2014. It’s a really interesting study chock full of information that indicates that these Millennials are fast becoming B2B influencers. What the study discovered is that a significant demographic shift has occurred from 2012 to 2014 as shown below:               Knowing this, will that change what you are doing to market your products and services? Reading or watching? Watching video. Period. For many B2B researchers, video is preferred for information gathering more than visiting a website. One of the most interesting statistics pulled from the Google/Millward Brown study is that that video has exploded as a medium, let me rephrase that, video has exploded as the medium that B2B researchers prefer throughout their search. … Continue reading

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Two months ago, I brought home an eight-week-old miniature schnauzer named Ellie. She only weighed four pounds. She needed to go outside in the wee hours of the morning. She prompted me to ask myself, “What have I done? How will I get through this? Will this get any easier?” Since this little bundle of cuteness is consuming a lot of my time, it’s only natural that she’d be the inspiration for my blog post. After all, I am sure there are many professionals – from owners of smart manufacturing companies to newly hired marketing directors – who occasionally ask themselves the same questions I mentioned in the above paragraph. With Ellie as my marketing muse, here’s some food (or kibble) for thought. Be yourself. If you search Google images for miniature schnauzers, you will find adorable dogs who are black, gray or salt and pepper. As you can see, Ellie is brown and white. She is called a liver … Continue reading

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Earlier I had posted my review and critique of Stephen Baker’s book ‘Numerati’, noting that he doesn’t give b2b examples. Since the, I have been on the hunt for b2b examples. I just found another one by Otis Elevator company, which offers the following service on their website: REM® Remote Elevator Monitoring Otis developed the REM system to optimize elevator performance and minimize elevator downtime. It is a sophisticated interconnected system of sensors, monitors, circuits, hardware and software to collect, record, analyze and communicate data about elevator operations 24/7. If the REM system detects a problem, it analyzes and diagnoses the cause and location, then makes the service call and helps an Otis mechanic identify the component causing the problem. Elevators are often back in service before owners or tenants even know there is a problem. Interesting indeed.

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I just finished Numerati by Stephen Baker. Enjoyed the book with chapters on how Numerati are watching, monitoring, and modeling people as workers, shoppers, voters, bloggers, terrorists, patients, and lovers. Not much here if you are interested in B2B space, but I met two people recently who I would classify as B2B Numerati. The first one works for a GE team, which monitors data streaming from worldwide turbine installations, and generates maintenance alerts and senses imminent GE engine and turbine failures. If you think that is cool, I met another person who works for Industrial Scientific who generates maintenance alerts and senses imminent failures of gas detection sensors in mission-critical applications. Love to hear any B2B Numerati stories and examples that you would like to share.

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