Raab Associates has been gradually relocating from New York to Pennsylvania over the past two weeks. I won’t subject you to a post like “what B2B marketers can learn from moving companies”, which is one of my least favorite ploys for repackaging old advice in a “fun” format. In fact, I only mention it to explain why I haven’t been writing with my usual frequency and why this post is relatively brief.
Still, I did want to let you know that I’ll be giving a Webinar next Tuesday, March 19 at 2 p.m. Eastern on “Making the Most of Social and Behavioral Data for B2B Marketing”. It’s sponsored by Mintigo, a hard-to-classify vendor with technology to scan the Web for prospects and predict their interests. You can register here.
The chaos of moving has slowed down my slide preparations, which are made even harder by the fact that our 100-year-old house has such uneven floors that my chair keeps rolling away frrrrom mmmy desssssk. But I did finish my research before they packed up our computers, so the content itself will be solid. Without giving away all the goodies, some of the more interesting things we’ll cover include:
- where social and behavioral data are used in the marketing process. This actually matters quite a bit: there are some things that social and behavioral sources can provide, and others they can’t. You have to be sure you’re using them correctly and supplementing with other sources where appropriate.
- what to do once you capture the data. Traditional marketing data was pretty easy to manage because there wasn’t that much of it. With social and behavioral, you’re surfing a flood. We’ll talk about how to keep your head above water.
- how to deal with the ephemeral nature of much social and behavioral data: without belaboring the flood analogy, conditions change rapidly and marketers must react quickly. We'll discuss what this means and how to do it.
- which data elements are available from different sources. It isn’t news that each social network works differently, but it’s still eye-opening to see just how distinct they are. We'll talk about which network is best for different purposes.
- what all this looks like from a sales person’s viewpoint. Most marketers will try to swim in this data despite the rough surf. Sales people are more likely to leave the water and have a hot dog. We’ll talk about ways to keep them immersed.
I’m more curious than anyone to see my final slides, but have no doubt that the session will be useful and interesting. It’s an important topic: join me if you can.