Hello Fellow B2B Marketers, Marketing Monday (or a bit later on a holiday week) is a regular blog post highlighting our ongoing research focused on B2B revenue acceleration, as well as an exclusive look into what outputs you can expect soon. Kick off your week here to get a burst of support for your professional success.

Tis’ the season to look back on where you excelled during 2012, and forward to some things in your business to improve upon in the New Year. Whether you want to place a renewed focus on yourcustomer experience, you want to draw inspiration from some of the leaders in social strategy, or you are a B2B marketing professional focused on driving revenue (that should apply to all of our readers), Forrester has you covered. And because your competitors and your customers are more informed than ever, we aim to give you the leg up you will need to make 2013 a banner year for your company.

Graphic of the Week: Customer Experience Management (CXM) Solutions Will Emerge From The Convergence Of Many Solution Categories

 

August 10, 2011 “The Emergence Of Customer Experience Management Solutions” Forrester report.

Forrester’s latest book, Outside In by Harley Manning and Kerry Bodine, brings to the shelves of your local bookstore a philosophy that has long been espoused by Forrester: in the age of the empowered customer, companies must relentlessly structure their sales and marketing infrastructure and practices around the customer. With his latest works, Principal Analyst Peter O'Neill reminds us that B2B customers have a wealth of information available to them about your competitors, your product, and how their peers have addressed similar needs to their own before you have the opportunity to engage with them (or more accurately, they choose to engage with you), and your company must adapt to this reality. Therefore, the customer experience is more important than ever and should be a relentless focus of your business. Want to know how to do that? Start with Peter’s already available webinar Design All Your Customer Interactions For B2B Success, for a case study read Peter’s Q&A blog post with Jesper Thomsen of Maersk Line on B2B CX.

One of the most common questions we encounter from clients is “How do we get into and optimize social marketing?” Social marketing can be a powerful lever when you apply it effectively, and our research is here to guide you along the way. Many of your peers are already using social with exemplary results, as you can explore through the podcast and webinar of our 2012 B2B Groundswell Award Winners.  Kim Celestre details some of the social trends of 2012 in her December blog post Top Twelve B2B Tech Social Marketing Highlights of 2012 and Zachary Reiss-Davis blogs about the pitfalls of B2B marketers linking to Facebook from their corporate websites.

Media Shout-Out of the Week: 

 

Thanks to Mass Relevance for recognizing Analyst Zachary Reiss-Davis (and fellow Forrester analysts Melissa Parrish and Nate Elliott) as one of the  9 Industry Analysts Every Marketer Should Follow In 2013.

Join us this March 4th-5th at the upcoming Sales Enablement Forum in Scottsdale, Ariz. As Peter O'Neill notes in his December blog post, the forum, Accelerating Revenue In A Changed Economy, will be a must-attend experience for all B2B marketing professionals focused on driving revenue, including those responsible for your partner channel. Check out the agenda and reserve your ticket for a chance to learn some practical and actionable ideas, engage with your peers, hear from prominent industry and Forrester speakers, and  walk away with the latest research in revenue acceleration to get you and your team on track for success in 2013.                

Tweets of the Week:

                Kim Celestre:                     Follow @KCelestre, find this tweet, Forbes article

                Zachary Reiss-Davis:       Follow @ZacharyRD, find this tweet

                Lori Wizdo:                          Follow @loriwizdo , find this tweet, Lori's blog post

 

Check back next week for a retrospective on some of our very best work of 2012 (that will help you in 2013), as well as a spotlight on the Channel Partners Loyalty Playbook.

Happy holidays.

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If you wish to learn more about a topic, schedule an inquiry by visiting the respective analyst’s homepage.  Also, explore the linked content on this First Look and look at our Planned Researchto keep track of all the content being published over the next few months.