Blog – Page 9 – ANA Business Marketing of Northern California

Return of the Roundtables — New Series Kickoff in April

March 29, 2016/in News /by Venkat Raman

We are pleased to resume our roundtables -- cozy, small group of marketing professionals (limited to 25 attendees) exploring a specific discipline of the field in an interactive setting, guided by a featured speaker.

NorCal BMA has a history of holding roundtables but this new and improved series is totally revamped. Tanya Salah, our Director of Roundtables, has carefully researched the needs of today's marketers and put together this program to serve...YOU!
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Ted Kohnen joins the board as Treasurer

March 17, 2016/in News /by Venkat Raman

We are pleased to announce that we have a new treasurer on our board, Ted Kohnen.

Ted is Managing Director at the San Francisco Office of Stein IAS. He has been an active BMA member and involved with the New York chapter before moving here last fall.

Ted has a graduate degree in Technology Management from Columbia University; he is a graduate of Dickinson College with a degree in International Business. He has extensive experience in Marketing and Advertising and has been at Stein IAS for over 8 years.
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Recap: Fishing with Spears: All About Account-Based Marketing

March 10, 2016/0 Comments/in Recap /by Venkat Raman

It was the second month in a row that attendance exceeded the original conference room we had been using for our monthly talks.

Fortunately, we could double the room size and the oversized room was filled well to hear Jon Miller, CEO of Engagio, Inc. speak about Account-Based Marketing.

The video below captures the presentation. Read more

Seven Steps to Success with Account-Based Marketing

February 26, 2016/in Buzz /by Venkat Raman

The Buzz

Information Technology Services Marketing Association (ITSMA) established this definitive finding in 2013:

Account-Based Marketing (ABM) delivers the highest ROI of any B2B marketing strategy or tactic.

ABM has been gaining traction ever since. It's touted as the next big thing.

As exciting as ABM's prospects are, Read more

Recap: Data Insights for Marketers

January 14, 2016/in Recap /by Venkat Raman

If you time-travel to 1950 and meet someone who is curious about what 2016 is like, what would you tell them?

Perhaps that we have this little thing that fits in the palm of our hands that has access to all the information in this entire world; you will likely add that what we do with it the most is to look at pictures of cats.

This is the crux of the big data paradox. It is often not how much data you have, but what you do with it that drives success. Depending on your need, the right small data may be more valuable to you than big data. Read more

Data Insights for Marketers

January 7, 2016/in Buzz /by Venkat Raman

"Out of the 10000 or so reports we looked at, 3500 had never been accessed. Not once!" exclaimed Theresa Kushner.

Theresa and her team were working on a project to create an Enterprise Data Warehouse that included previously generated marketing reports. 35% of those reports had never been opened!

Now, why would that be?
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Recap: Evolution of a Virtual Sales Rep

November 19, 2015/in Recap /by Venkat Raman

Picture Robert, sitting among a bank of similar professionals, in a city near Provo, Utah. He is busy looking at different monitors that provide him data in real time, and typing on his keyboard and speaking into his headphone mic. No, he is not an air traffic controller.

He is a virtual salesman. He is chatting with a potential customer, aiming to convert him into a buyer.

This is what is shaping up to be the future of business-to-business marketing and sales.

What is Virtual Sales?

Virtual Sales is the model where a single human contact inside a company, the virtual sales rep, provides personalized, anticipatory, concierge-level service a business buyer needs to make purchase decisions. These virtual sales reps are marketers, salespeople, and service technicians, all rolled into one.

An excellent example of this model is already available in the B2C marketplace today: Read more

Virtual sales rep: A recipe for marketing to the self-sufficient buyer

November 9, 2015/in Buzz /by Venkat Raman

Selling to a business buyer is a whole new ball game today.

decision-1013752_1920 Look at the evidence:

IDC studies show that most IT buyers are half way through the purchase timeline before they agree to meet with a saleperson. 1 in 7 of the buyers push it even further: they wait until they are 75% of the way in before agreeing to an initial contact! The pattern is similar with most business buyers of today.

How do you market to this new breed of buyers? How do you make the sale?
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Recap: Leading a Digital Transformation: 5 Keys to Help Your Partners Succeed

October 8, 2015/2 Comments/in Recap /by Venkat Raman

We live in the 21st century and enjoy its benefits. We take the Internet for granted, for the most part. During my recent trip to Peru, not a day went by when I didn't check my smartphone for messages and updates.

Social media is the name of the game; emails are bread and butter. Serious businesses without websites are a thing of the past.

To have a presence where potential customers are, marketing departments have embraced digital media for sending out the messages.

This digital marketing, at its core, is a method of interactive marketing using digital technologies to convert leads into customers.

Challenges of Digital Transformation

But it goes well beyond change of technologies. Read more

How to Get Returns of 5, 10, or Even 1000 Times Your Marketing Dollars: A Data Scientist’s View

June 12, 2015/in Buzz /by Venkat Raman

It's a marketer's dream to conceive a blockbuster marketing campaign that blasts sales through the roof.

But how do you get there from the initial duds?

By diligently gathering data during all your campaigns, and then extracting and analyzing this data to obtain nuggets of information to guide future campaigns, says a veteran data scientist.
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