Become Buyer-Obsessed

The first step in becoming buyer-obsessed is finding out who your buyers are and then getting your business and products/services in front of them. In this case, becoming buyer-obsessed means focusing more on the buyer than on your own product or business. Customers want to feel important, so place your priorities on making their experience and interactions with your business better. Here are 4 steps you can take to become more buyer-obsessed and more dominate with demand generation:

• Focus on the buyer network. You’ll want to ask yourself who is involved in the buying process? You want to reach the individual buyer and their network. Promote your products with new takes targeted to each person involved.
• Evaluate typical buyer behavior. What prompts your business’s average buyer to seek out information or make a purchase? Look for ways to reach the buyer during their decision making process with the right content based on their behaviors, industry and role within their company.
• Improve the buyer experience. Experience is everything. Customers who receive a bad experience will take their business elsewhere. Constantly be evaluating the experience you are providing customers and seek out ways to improve it.
• Accurately segment buyers. From email newsletters to sales follow-up calls, segment your buyers so that they are getting information that’s relevant and valuable. You also want to ensure that if a buyer is getting on the phone with someone from your business, your sales rep is the most qualified person to be speaking to this particular buyer.

Integrate Your Efforts

In order for your business to dominate with demand generation, you need to integrate your efforts. Paid media, owned media and earned media must be cohesive. Getting in front of the right audience is only part of what it takes to be successful with online marketing and demand generation. A cohesive and fluid customer experience is key!

• Paid Media – This includes forms of traditional and digital advertising such as online banner ads, pay-per-click search, advertorials, and sponsorships.
• Owned Media – This is corporate content owned by the business, including digital assets like websites, social media accounts and pages, branded blogs, and YouTube videos. Internal social marketing efforts fall in this category.
• Earned Media – This is content produced by users, including social media posts, product reviews, tweets, online communities, and media mentions.

A multi-channel marketing approach needs to be supported by analytics that can produce real-time data for sales and marketing to utilize in their real-time efforts. The indirect connections between these different channels and the platforms your business is active on can be better recognized and exploited for greater success. Integrating earned, paid and owned media will alter your customer acquisition cost, so be prepared to reallocate marketing budgets depending on which channels perform better.

B2B purchasing and marketing are transitioning from business focused to buyer focused. Those who want to be successful with their demand generation efforts need to recognize this and change their strategies. Becoming more buyer-obsessed and integrating marketing efforts have to be a focus for marketers who really want to make an impact and dominate with their demand generation efforts.

Data Integration

Innovation in digital marketing platforms means B2B marketers are using a number of search and social media marketing platforms in order to be successful. Integrated marketing across multiple channels can help your business better understand the productivity of each channel as well as the interactions between each channel to drive conversions. 81% of participants in the BrightEdge survey responded that it will be more important to integrate marketing data across channels and measure cross-channel ROI than it was last year (Tweet this!). As marketers, we want to be able to measure all our efforts to prove what we’re doing has a purpose. Making data-driven decisions is crucial to a business’s success. Integrate your data across search engines, social media and online advertising to discover what is making an impact in branded search, keyword search and search marketing success overall.

• Takeaway: Big Data is a big word. While having a large amount of data to work with may seem like a big burden, integrating data across platforms is one project that must be tackled. Integrated data can help you determine the true value of each channel for more targeted decision making.

Mobile Devices and Smartphones

Smartphone and tablet use is on the rise, showing no signs of slowing. Optimizing a site for mobile/tablet search is becoming increasingly more important. Many businesses are finding that larger percentages of those coming to their page from search engines are on mobile devices. 52% of those polled responded that optimizing their site for mobile or tablet search will be much more important this year than last year (Tweet this!). Mobile optimization is a key aspect of effective marketing in 2013.

• Takeaway: Optimize your website for mobile devices now. Make sure you work with your tech team and design team so that the experience is a fluid, cohesive one for each and every customer. A mobile-friendly site will boost your mobile search performance.

Social Media

Search engines are beginning to rely on social channels to indicate whether or not the content a site is producing is valuable to consumers. Social signals, and social traction, influence how search engines decide to rank pages and sites. Because social sharing is influencing ranking, search marketers and social media teams need to work together. BrightEdge found that 80% of search marketers think the social sharing of content as a means to improve rank will be more important in 2013, compared to 2012. While goals differ from company, consider which networks you will be focusing on in 2013 and the topics trending on each of those – they won’t all be the same. In order to increase ranking, identify trending topics in social media and then look to drive social sharing for pages relevant to these same topics.

• Takeaway: Get active on social media and begin analyzing the trends to see how they directly correlate to your business, your products or services, and your audience. Social media trends can indicate the type of content your team should be sharing on social media at that moment and in the near future.

Content Marketing

Producing, sharing and managing content is a key priority for many in 2013 and moving forward. Content marketing is an inbound tactic that encourages businesses and brands to earn their customers. 41% of the BrightEdge respondents will spend much more time on content creation and management with another 42% saying they’ll spend more time than they did last year. The type of content that will benefit your business the most varies depending on your industry, but there is value in producing and managing more than one type. The types of content that will be most valuable are: social engagement (78%), blog article outreach (67%), infographics (43%) and thought leadership (43%). Content marketing builds brand awareness and encourages external linking from other sites, businesses and bloggers.

• Takeaway: While content marketing by nature is a form of inbound marketing, businesses that want to truly be successful with their content marketing efforts need to focus on creating content that is link-worthy. What types of content is your audience and the media most likely to link back to? Create that!

Full-Circle SEO

A successful SEO strategy includes a 360 degree analysis of what affects the rank of a page for targeted keywords. One of the biggest trends BrightEdge discovered in their survey is that 75% of search marketers think a page-based SEO approach (as opposed to a keyword-driven approach) will be more important in 2013 than in 2012. On-page and off-page parameters that affect linking need to be considered as business evaluate their search strategy for 2013. Internal linking structure and external link development are both important parts of any successful SEO strategy. Links help search engine bugs crawl pages for importance and navigation. Internal link analysis will be much more important to 30% of search marketers in 2013, compared to 2012 (Tweet this!). Marketers not only want to analyze their links, they want to know right away whether or not there is a problem with their page so they can take action faster.

• Takeaway: The linking structure of your business needs to be spot on. Invest in a consultant or SEO agency to help you ensure your site won’t be hit with penalties. SEO specialists and strategists need to pay attention to the entire linking structure, with internal and external links in mind.

Search is evolving as technological advancements take place. Social media and mobile devices, the emphasis on content, and a full-circle SEO and data approach are causing a shift in the search marketing landscape. Businesses need to appeal to search engines and the things that are being considered in their algorithms. Social signals, quality content, and internal and external links are all a part of that.

Inbound marketing is a holistic, data-driven strategy that involves attracting and converting visitors into customers through personalized, relevant information and content –- not interruptive messages – and following them through the sales experience with ongoing engagement.

According to the HubSpot 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report, 65% of B2B companies report embracing inbound practices this year (Tweet this!). If your business is just getting started or is looking for new ways to improve its inbound marketing strategy, here are four insights that can help you evaluate and redefine your inbound strategies.

Measuring Inbound Marketing

Perhaps the most impactful insight worth noting is that of inbound marketing measurement. With their efforts to determine ROI, B2B marketing experts are struggling. B2B companies struggle to prove the ROI of inbound marketing much more than other companies, with 27% reporting this struggle versus the 21% average. Some marketers are unsure which of their tactics qualify as inbound marketing, and perhaps this is where part of their struggle in determining ROI lies. If you’re unsure about the metrics that matter the most to your executives, company revenue or customers/wins generated from inbound marketing is a great place to start. While marketers may be focusing on engagement more than ever before, it comes down to the numbers and according to this report, they’re not as clear as they could be.

Overcome Obstacles with Teamwork

Sales, marketing, IT and design all need to work together in order for a business to be successful with inbound marketing. Respondents from the study say that 26% of B2B IT groups impede inbound efforts. B2B firms likely struggle for IT resources because it’s harder to draw a direct line to ROI for lead generation efforts. B2B sales teams also lag in supporting B2B inbound efforts, with nearly 14% of responses. When it comes to allocating resources to support inbound efforts, only 11% of company executives and 17% of sales teams lend their full support. Testing inbound marketing, which requires an investment from your tech department, analysts and design team, is a team effort and companies who test are 75% more likely to show ROI for inbound marketing than those who don’t test. Get your team working together to test, execute, and measure your inbound marketing strategies.

Booming Inbound Marketing Budgets

Nearly 50% of all marketers are increasing their inbound marketing budgets in 2013. While determining ROI may be a difficult task, those who can do so are seeing success. When looking at budget ratings by business model, HubSpot found that success with inbound marketing nets a significant boost among B2B firms, with 45% indicating positive ROI as the reason to grow their inbound budgets (Tweet this!). Inbound marketing campaigns can generate new leads, incite new impressions, and build brand awareness. If you think lead generation is out of the question, consider the numbers. According to the HubSpot report, twice as many marketers say inbound delivers below average cost per lead vs. outbound strategies (Tweet this!). A white paper lead generation campaign is one example of inbound marketing perfect for B2B businesses.

Capitalize with Customer-Focused Initiatives

Content marketing isn’t news. Businesses need to tailor and personalize the content they’re sending out to prospects and leads. Inbound marketers need to focus on “content plus context” to truly add value to their audience and generate more business as the end result. According to HubSpot, “Customer-centric marketing directly works to meet and serve the needs of its customer base by offering them thought leadership content and educational material, rather than content that “pitches” your wares.” Customer-centric business will have less of a problem developing the best inbound content marketing strategies as they’ll understand the problems of their audience and should be able to provide solutions. 42% of customer-focused companies calculated positive ROI from inbound marketing compared to just 38% of sales-focused companies (Tweet this!)

Inbound marketing is growing. More businesses are adopting inbound strategies and directing larger portions of their budget towards these efforts. Inbound marketing is maturing as customers become more educated and involved before ever making a purchase. Make sure your business’s inbound efforts exceed expectations.

YouTube as a Content Marketing Platform

The B2B Content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends — North America study from MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute found that video had the largest increase of any content marketing tactic in 2012, jumping by 70% from an already large 54% increase in 2011 (Tweet this!). A study from Searchmetrics can help explain this trend. They found that video appeared most frequently, being displayed in over 70% of all the content included in Google’s general results. It isn’t enough to have videos as a marketing tactic, however. We have to be able to measure the success of our efforts. If you don’t know much about the YouTube Creator Playbook, there is an abundance of features B2B marketers can utilize to determine whether or not they are successful in their strategy. Here are a few of my favorite features.

• Because Google understands the difference in clicks and watch-time, they’ve added “Captivate Your Audience” and “Channel Experience,” which provides you with tips and strategies to increase watch-time.
• The customer experience can and will impact a buyer’s behavior. “Channel Experience” allows users to build a cohesive channel experience for their viewers so they can build a loyal audience and drive subscriptions.
• We’re all looking for ways to rank higher in search engines. YouTube Analytics and the ability to create Metadata for each video will make it easier for you to optimize your videos for YouTube and search engine indexing.
• Paid advertising online and on social media sites is on the rise. The “Paid Promotion” section allows businesses to create promotional videos and use readily-available YouTube promotional tools to build a loyal audience.

Creating Effective B2B Video Content

Think video is a space only for B2C businesses? Think again. With the right purpose and strategy in mind, video marketing provides B2B companies with a great opportunity to generate new leads and continue nurturing current leads through the funnel. In fact, the CMI study also found that 58% of respondents believe video to be an effective form of B2B marketing (Tweet this!). While the target length of a video should be between 1 and three minutes, you shouldn’t feel limited by the topics you can create videos around. If you’re unsure of the type of videos that your audience is most interested in, you have a few budget-friendly options:

• Interviews – Have your content team interview experts within your business or answer common questions received from customers
• Presentations – Presentations can be repurposed into videos without too much trouble. Insert a voice over and some background music to add pizzazz.
• On-Location – B2B marketers spend a lot of time meeting with clients, partners and other businesses. Take these opportunities to showcase your employees at events.
• Product Demos – Just as you would perform a product demo in-person or over the phone, you can perform a demo in front of the camera or using a screen recording solution when applicabl.e
• Case Studies – Take a case study and turn it into a video with before and after shots, a voice over, charts, and more.

Our sessions with Google, Yahoo! and other partners in the Bay Area helped us gain new insight into digital marketing and demand generation trends for small and medium-sized enterprises. Because Business.com is focused on helping your business grow, we want to continue sharing our learnings from the tour with all of you. Stay tuned for more from the Business.com Growth Tour of America.

The Adobe 2013 Digital Marketing Optimization Survey found that the majority of companies (53%) spend less than 5% of their total marketing budgets on optimization activities. In total, 86% of companies surveyed allocate 15% or less of their marketing budget to optimization activities, while at the other end of the scale only 3% of respondents allocate more than half of their marketing budget to optimization efforts. The data from this study shows that those who spend more on optimization are reaping the benefits in the form of higher conversion rates. Chart – What percentage of your total marketing budget is allocated to optimization activities (including agency fees, professional services, and technology)?

A new study from Accenture finds that digital marketing is going to get more of the overall marketing budget in upcoming years. Nearly 2 in 3 respondents said that they would be devoting at least 25% of their budgets to digital marketing next year (Tweet this!) and 23% indicated they would be assigning more than 50% of their budget to digital next year. However, many of the CMOs surveyed indicated that they feel more difficulty in improving the efficiency of their marketing operations and improving their workforce’s responsiveness to the consumer and digital shifts that are taking place. According to survey respondents, consumers’ experience expectations have the longest-term impact on marketing strategy (65%). Accenture found that CMOs in high-growth companies have found a less turbulent path by improving their digital focus.

Personalization is vital to the success of businesses, yet many companies are failing to deliver cross-channel personalized experiences to their customers. The Econsultancy/Monetate Realities of Personalisation Report finds that while 43% of companies currently deliver a personalized experience on desktops, this figure falls to just 14% on tablet and 13% on mobile. Product recommendations (42%) and on-site search results (40%) are the most common personalization tactics. Using the
data readily available, B2B businesses that can offer personalized experiences will find greater success. Chart – Which of the following channels are you using to deliver personalised experiences?

Ifbyphone’s 2013 State of Marketing Measurement Survey found that marketing analytics, in an effort to determine ROI more accurately, are on the rise. Software solutions, as well as in-house analysts, are just two of the changes businesses are making in an effort to measure their marketing efforts. Marketing tactics vary, i.e. they are online and offline, which causes obstacles to appear when it comes to measurement. When respondents were asked to rate a range of marketing tools for their effectiveness to generate sales leads the marketing channels that were rated most valuable were in-bound phone calls, in-person visits, and email inquiries followed by PPC clicks/website visits. With this mix of online and offline efforts, it makes sense that when asked about their marketing measurement investment priorities, respondents to the survey indicated a preference for investing future marketing budget dollars in emerging technologies that can contribute to a greater mix of online and offline marketing measurement. Chart – Most Effective Marketing Channels for Generating Sales Leads

The 2013 Online Advertising Performance Outlook from Nielsen and Vizu revealed a number of trends taking place in the digital marketing world. In 2013, 63% of marketers state they will increase their online brand advertising budgets, with 20% reporting that those budgets will grow by 20% or more (Tweet this!). Not only are ad budgets increasing, they are shifting to different channels at a greater pace. The report found that budgets are shifting as consumers move into and become more comfortable with the digital realm. 48% of brand marketers will shift dollars from television into online video and 70% will increase spend in both social media and mobile advertising (Tweet this!). Similar to the Ifbyphone study however, many marketers (45%) don’t feel adequately equipped to accurately measure their efforts.

Marketing-Sales Alignment

Lead generation efforts are the most successful when sales and marketing teams can work together effectively. On average, 66% of marketers are working relatively closely with sales. There is, however, a gap between those who are the most effective with lead generation and those who are not. 80% of highly effective marketers work closely with sales in the process of lead generation. Among the least-effective marketers, 57% work intimately with sales in developing lead-gen programs. Marketers and sales employees need to work together effectively, especially when it comes to lead generation. A lead can be more accurately scored when input is drawn from the different departments and both are able to create and deliver the right content at the right time. This brings us to the next point.

Lead Nurturing

Lead generation isn’t a one-step process. Leads need to be nurtured from the initial touch point up until they make a purchase. If you want that purchase to be with your business, become a thought leader and trusted resource. 74% of highly effective respondents from the study indicate that they use lead nurturing, compared with just 26% of low-effectiveness marketers. Among high-achievers, webcasts, email newsletters, white papers, thought leadership and videos are considered more valuable. With the low achievers, by contrast, sales calls, tele-prospecting, blogging and advertorial material are valued more highly. Different businesses and marketers will see different successes with the types of tactics they choose to use. If you’re unsure about what will yield the greatest ROI for your business, test different types of content and times to reconnect with each lead to develop the most effective lead nurturing strategy possible.

Overcoming LeadGen Obstacles

As with nearly every business process, there’s obstacles to overcome with the launch of a new program or the revamp of one that is failing. 67% of the BtoB survey cited a lack of resources as the biggest obstacle overall. This is followed by depth and accuracy of their customer database (40%). Without an accurate, unified database of prospects, it is very difficult to present compelling, personalized and timely content and offers, much less understand the meaning of responses and score prospects as leads. In order for a lead generation campaign to be successful, the entire company must be behind the process and participating in optimizing their lead generation and nurturing strategies with the best outreach, content, pitches and more. 55% of marketers who describe themselves as highly effective said they have “full participation” in lead-gen practices within their companies (tweet this!).

Lead generation programs offer small and large businesses the opportunity to connect with a new audience and prospects. However, in order for these types of campaigns to be successful, marketers need to work with sale to nurture leads effectively and efficiently. Not only that, as obstacles arise, marketers and sales professionals working on lead generation programs need to be able to count on their colleagues and be confident that they can reach out to the rest of the company for insight into how the business as a whole can be more successful with a lead generation campaign.

Our meetings in New York City illuminated that we are at an inflection point in digital media and marketing. The convergence of marketing automation and media has created a time of complexity and transformation yet also a time of incredible opportunity. Marketers are looking to figure out several key things:

1. How to balance branding and lead generation marketing initiatives?
2. How to deal with too many marketing options?
3. How to shift from pushing products to providing solutions?
4. How to identify and engage prospects?
5. How to deal with complex and costly analytics?
6. How to accurately evaluate campaign effectiveness?

Media partners are also working through several key questions:

1. How to drive subscriptions and engagement with audiences in an increasingly digital world?
2. How to balance digital display and brand advertising with lead generation?
3. How to evaluate the role of ad networks and exchanges?
4. How to harness the myriad of advertising technology platforms and services?
5. How to deal with Social, Local and Mobile technologies?
6. How to better leverage data?

My thanks to our friends at Digitas, iProspect, MEC and Performix, MediaVest as well as Bloomberg, Dow Jones Conde Nast and Penton for their time and input. We learned a ton. We had a blast.

My next stop is the American Business Media Conference where I’ll be leading a panel on “The B-to-B Media Company of the Future.” Clearly I’m biased as I think we’ve already answered that question with the new Business.com. I’ll be learning from my panelists – Bizo, Scount Analytics, Penton, 1105 Media and Desilva Philips – and will share what I learn in a future post.

Simply put our mission is to help people grow their businesses and we feel it’s time to broaden the discussion so we can learn more, share more and ultimately serve our customers better.

We look forward to continuing to work with our customers and partners to help them answer these questions as they continue to grow their businesses. To view the learnings from our Director of User Experience at a recent design conference, click here. And, as always, feel free to offer your thoughts and follow the tour via @b2bonlinemktg.

Use Videos to Tell User Stories

With a little creativity, videos can be produced with very little labor and time. A picture is worth a thousand words and videos are more powerful than pictures. Building good products starts with building empathy with our target users. During the user research phase, user experience designers and product managers go out to the field or learn a lot about our users, but the bottleneck is how to communicate it back to the team and allow the bigger product team to be on the same page of who we are building the products for. Video can be very effective at this stage. In fact, a recent CMI study found that 60% of B2B marketers find videos to be an effective content marketing tactic and the use of video has risen from 52% in 2011 to 70% in 2012. People usually associate videos as labor intensive and expensive projects. They don’t have to be such an investment in order to be successful. Cooper shared a few methods to produce high quality videos with a microphone and simple PowerPoint.

Work like a Team, Share like Wildfire

Building user empathy is no easy task. Deeply involve users in the everyday business routine and in the entire product development cycle without losing focus is no easy task. One of the tactics the Cooper consultants shared with us is “working out loud,” which basically means that artifacts produced in the product design stage, such as personas, design prototypes, user stories, videos, snapshots, should be widely shared within the company. It gets people to be more familiar with the target audience and create an immersive user-centered environment. Team members with distinct business functions are moving towards the same goal: delight the customers.

Participation Leads to Buy-In

Decisions cannot be made in silos. No matter how glorious the product manager’s vision, or how great a user experience designer’s wireframe is, it won’t go anywhere if they are unable to build rapport within the company and get buy-in on that vision. Business buy-in and design decision making involves more people than ever before. Crain’s BtoB magazine found that the 81% of B2B marketers must contend with multiple decision-makers during the sales process. To get everyone involved, conduct workshops and ideation sessions that encourage contributions from different functional teams. Getting insight from different perspectives and departments is a good way to show that you are taking into consideration the opinions of all the business units in the development process. Hearing different perspectives and the rationale behind those opinions pulls the team toward a shared vision.

Think About the Entire Online Ecosystem

For online product offerings, thinking just about the landing page user experience isn’t enough. Marketers would be smart to take the entire online experience into consideration, beginning with where the users come from (SEO, SEM, referral, direct and etc.). You’ll want to ask yourself about the route someone took to get to your page as well as:

• What other touch points beyond your website – such as email, social media, display ads, and offline interaction – are available and is the prospect using?
• What kind of customer journey has the prospect been through and what stage are they at in that process?
• What needs are specific to their background, industry and position within a company?
• What needs are their more general needs that apply to others as well

Keeping all these questions and collaboration strategies in mind help us as user experience designers, marketers and product managers build a clear mind map on how and where our new offerings and solutions can make the biggest impact.

Stay up-to-date with the Business.com Growth Tour of America!

Why Create White Papers?

Building brand awareness is a top priority for B2B businesses of all sizes. 84% of the respondents in the CMI survey cited brand awareness as the number one goal of their content marketing efforts. Giving away a free white paper can build brand awareness and is an excellent way to reach a customer who may not have otherwise considered you.

Tailored content is going to be more successful than generic blog posts or email newsletters. 92% of B2B enterprise marketers tailor their content in at least one way, compared with 91% of their B2B peers overall. Whitepapers allow your marketing team to tailor downloadable content for greater success. If a prospect downloads a whitepaper, you’re getting an automatic signal of what that person is interested in and where they are in the buying process.

How Do I Create Great Content?

The most effective B2B marketers are able to tailor content to specific profiles/personas more frequently and whitepapers can aid a business in this process. If you get stuck creating fresh, relevant content, have no fear! Here are just a few examples of content you can incorporate into your white papers that help the sales team address the various issues buyers come across in each stage of the process:

• Provide a perspective on individual markets and solutions, such as tips for shipping and receiving items internationally
• Content written by subject matter experts that discusses benchmarks and best practices, including survey results
• Enable prospects to understand alternative solutions, like product comparisons, analyst reports
• Offer advice about making the decision, such as case studies for those in similar situations and ROI calculators
• Annotated content or case studies that call out relevant discussions and decision points they can use in their customer interactions

Where Can I Use My White Papers?

White papers can be featured on your site, in blog posts and weekly round-ups and shared on social media. However, if you’re looking for a way to get a new site of eyes on your company copy, there are more options you can consider. The new Business.com white paper content marketing solution delivers high-quality white paper leads to your business while placing your brand in front of a qualified audience of buyers actively researching solutions, products and services.

We connect advertisers with buyers in the discovery and comparison stages of the purchasing cycle utilizing our unique intention- and relevance-based targeting capabilities. Advertisers can effectively demonstrate thought leadership to this concentrated audience of business decision makers with our distribution of their whitepapers. Our content marketing program focuses on helping advertisers reach the buyer at the right place and the right time to close more sales. Exclusive white paper content marketing leads from Business.com and the unique audience provided by the Business.com network can be filtered by industry, location, company size, buyer’s title and more (priced accordingly). If you’re interested in connecting with buyers and reaching a new audience via the white paper offering from Business.com, email sales@business.com

If you’re looking to step up your content marketing strategy with new content and a new audience, consider white papers. You can target relevant demographics and engage with buyers, no matter where they are in the purchase process, with tailored content. Once you’ve created a captivating white paper, share and promote your white paper with partners and on social networks to generate qualified leads.

How does your business tailor its white paper content?

Our mission is simple. We help people grow their businesses, whether it’s the users who come to our site to find the products and services they need to run their businesses or the >10k advertisers who turn to Business.com every year to connect with this premium audience. While we have some insights into what advertisers want and what buyers are looking for, we are continually looking for ways to better serve all of our customers including the users who come to our site as well as the advertisers.  We are taking it another step forward to figure out just what it is that will help small and medium-sized enterprises all over the country grow.  From visiting sole proprietors to Fortune 500 companies, Business.com is going on tour.

What We Want to Know

During the Business.com Growth Tour of America, we want to learn about the challenges businesses are currently facing as well as where they are seeing success. From what’s working to best practices, we want to gather and share information that other businesses can learn from. Business.com is interested in hearing what you have to say. Speak up and make your voice heard on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook.

Where You Can Find Us

We’ll be visiting major cities from coast to coast including New York, Florida, Chicago, Austin,  San Francisco Los Angeles, and of course San Diego. We’ll be kicking off the tour this week in the big apple (stay tuned for more details) and next week our CEO, Tony Uphoff, will be speaking at ABM’s Annual Conference, themed “The B-to-B Company: A Fully Integrated Enterprise.” He’ll be moderating the conference kickoff panel to discuss and debate the emerging role and value proposition of B2B media when it comes to connecting buyers and sellers.

Stay tuned for the latest from The Business.com Growth Tour of America by following the tour tag on our blog.