B2B marketing masterclass

Discover how MSPs can unlock sustainable growth by adopting Warren Buffett’s strategic advertising principles, focusing on brand visibility, consistency, and building emotional connections with their audience.

“Dull is expensive commercially,” says Adam Morgan, a seasoned advertising veteran and partner at Eatbigfish. Many MSPs appear indistinguishable from one another, so what is this lack of identity actually costing you?

Many MSPs find themselves caught in a frustrating cycle of uniformity. And the effort to differentiate from the competition can feel like an uphill battle. So how can you stand out in the sea of sameness?

Why MSPs thrive with strategy over tactics. 
Let's delve into why MSPs should prioritize strategy over tactics, and the immense opportunities this shift can unlock.

Listen to our strategy lead, Martin Bailie, discuss the challenges for MSPs, how to win your respective market, differentiation, positioning and go-to-market strategies…and how you can succeed as an MSP in today’s market.

Are B2B marketers really going to lose their jobs with the emergence of AI? We can't help but ask if all that remains for us humans in the marketing world are mundane tasks and crunching numbers. Read on to find out how exactly you can compete with automation’s increasing presence.

While AI tool comes with their own pros and cons, the five discussed here provide the best combination of features needed when it comes time to identify those potential high value customers quickly and efficiently. And the right AI toolset in place can ultimately lead to higher quality conversions overall.

There’s no denying that B2B marketing departments are starting to realise that, if done correctly, ABM can get them where they’re going much faster when integrated into a larger B2B marketing strategy. There’s data to back up this realisation: 97% of respondents say ABM generated a higher ROI than any other marketing strategy.

Content marketing/lead generation/inbound marketing/activation - whatever you want to call it - works better when you have already established a strong brand. When you have a strong brand you have built trust in your market so layering lead generation campaigns on top of a strong brand has a better chance of success.

There’s no getting round it. Brand building takes time and an investment that won’t see an immediate return. It won’t fit neatly into the quarterly sales quota. If your entire strategy has been predicated on closing with that 5%, you could well see an uncomfortable gap while you change tack. But then, then there’s the payoff.

At Squaredot, we’re all about helping B2B tech brands grow famous faster. If there is such a thing as a cheat sheet to generating leads, then ‘fame’ is this shortcut. It puts brands onto shortlists with less effort, helps salespeople get a direct line through to key stakeholders, shortens sales cycles and helps get them over the line...

There has been a definite shift towards humanising B2B marketing and this recognition has been long overdue. Talking to your audience purely in rational, logical terms simply won’t cut through the clutter. Also, we’ve all been handcuffed to short-term lead generation KPIs for years now while we ignore the benefits of longer-term brand building. 

We recently surveyed Irish B2B marketers on their plans, strategies, budgets, tools, and tactics for 2021 and beyond. We wanted to assess the health of the market in the wake of global lockdowns resulting from the pandemic and see how B2B marketers were faring.

Those of us of a certain vintage will remember the immortal lines from Saturday night telly: “I am not a number, I am a free man!” as Patrick McGoohan scampers round Portmeirion chased by a big balloon. If you could suspend your disbelief for long enough, you could identify with this chap desperate to escape the shackles – physical and metaphorical – of his anonymous existence and break out into full, individualistic technicolour. 

It takes bravery to back creativity over logic, right-brain over left-brain thinking with long-term over short-term objectives. There is no ceiling for really big brand-building ideas. You just need an open mind and the bravery to think big and act differently.

What do you think of when someone mentions ‘B2B Marketing’? A forest-worth of whitepapers and more gated content than Reading Gaol*? Perhaps it’s events with another suitcase, another conference hall and a three-day diet of danish pastries and a rubber chicken. Actually, right now we really miss the rubber chicken. 

Last year every industry witnessed unprecedented upheaval and disruption on a global scale. So how have Irish B2B marketers fared? What trends emerged? What happened to budgets? We had lots of questions and kept an open mind until we reviewed the results.

We got a lovely surprise this week when DesignRush published a blog about our very own website and said some lovely things about it -

Whether it’s the best a man can get, finger lickin’ good or probably the best lager in the world, one thing is for sure, consumer marketing always sought fame.

Not many B2B brands champion that zeitgeist. 

Most never try. 

Ferrari has recently been announced as the most valuable brand in the world for the second time by Brand Finance. And it got me thinking about what B2B marketers could learn from this Italian luxury sports car

Our story is telling yours.

As a B2B marketing agency, that’s our remit, but just for this blog we’ll delve into the story behind the story and tell you a little about us. Specifically how we pivoted our position in the market and broadened out our service offering. Perhaps it might spark some ideas for your own brand.

As kids, I doubt many of us ever wanted to grow up as B2B marketers. For a start, it never had the cool street cred of consumer marketing and secondly, there just weren’t many marketing courses and college modules dedicated to B2B.

Squaredot was very proud to feature recently in the acclaimed Catalyst magazine. In the article we go deep on why your strategic positioning is critical for B2B brand growth. 

On the contrary to the general belief, we think that there has never been a better time to inject imagination and creativity into your B2B brand building storytelling and seek fame.

In this eBook, we’ll show you just how much positioning matters, why it’s so difficult to grow without it, how to plan your positioning strategy and why it’s never too late to start.

One day, it was business as usual, the next day, an existential threat started banging at our doorstep. For many B2B tech companies, you may have no reason to pivot your offering. But you will need to be sensitive in your messaging.

What does a cold and wet morning, nearly 80 of Ireland’s top B2B marketers and a panel of esteemed business leaders make? In one word (or hashtag) the answer is #GreatB2BMarketing

We surveyed Irish B2B marketers on their priorities for 2020. Download the report to see how your strategies, budgets and tactics compare. Also discover also what our panel of industry experts say will be their ‘big bets’ for 2020.

What do you get if you combine a room full of dynamic SaaS professionals, pizza, drinks and some excellent presentations on growth? The launch of SaaStock Local of course!

I attended B2B Ignite in London yesterday (“the world biggest B2B marketing learning and networking event” - their words) and there is a definite shift towards creativity, storytelling and being brave in B2B marketing.

We’re proud and delighted (ok, ecstatic!) to have won Hubspot’s premier Impact Award for best Inbound Growth Story of 2018 for our continued collaboration with Travelport Digital.

Let’s talk about sales and marketing. While they should work together, harmony doesn’t always exist between them.

As a B2B marketer, you’ve been hearing a lot about account-based marketing (ABM). For one, it is often cited as one of 2019’s marketing trends. But what exactly is ABM?

It’s 2019. How should your B2B marketing strategies look? Brace yourselves for a year of fast-rising trends within the landscape. 

How have you been reaching out to your prospects and customers? You can do so with several distribution channels, but this doesn’t mean everything is for the taking. 

In 2018, videos became more accessible than ever. Newer tools and platforms drove down the costs of video creation and publishing. 

How do you capture your audience’s attention enough for them to freely hand over their precious contact info? As a B2B marketer, you must’ve explored a range of bold lead generation techniques.

The discipline of AI research has developed significantly in the past few decades. What was once a notion used exclusively by scientists and science fictions writers is now becoming a part of our everyday life.

Creating your business’s value proposition was up for discussion when Squaredot’s MD, Ian Blake, chatted with John Barron, Sales & Marketing Director, Vennetics, on The B2B Podcast recently.

So, how do Irish B2B marketers approach digital marketing? What are their priorities and challenges? Where does their budget go? The 2018 Irish B2B Digital Marketing Survey explains all.

Discover how Travelport Digital nail inbound marketing including content topic choices and timings, the importance of sales and marketing alignment.

B2B marketing strategy is kind of like a unicorn - no one is really quite sure it exists, but everyone wants one. But how can social listening and AI inform your B2B social media strategy?

Not everyone is a great interviewer. It takes time to learn the skills that will help you make a killer B2B podcast. Squaredot's 7 tips to creating B2B podcasts that will get you noticed (and heard.)

When Tristan Pelligrino got talking about storytelling and marketing strategy together, here at Squaredot we were all ears.

We highlight three key findings from our Irish Marketing Survey and question whether Irish marketers are struggling with strategy.

Soon we’ll be sharing findings from the 2018 Irish B2B Marketers survey. We’re excited to reveal Irish B2B marketing trends - and we think you will be, too.

Considering adding Twitter to your B2B marketing strategy? Read our guide on how to present your B2B brand through the medium of tweets.

Instagram is a force to be reckoned with in the world of social media. Could it lead to a better perception of your B2B branding and highlight the fact you’re all really nice people?

Ultimately, to get the most out of Facebook you must be aware of the goals your brand would like to achieve and plan accordingly. Here's our take on making Facebook work for B2B.

The GDPR wants to level the playing field for marketing and consumers in an increasingly digital world. We’ve blogged about personal data vs. business data, getting prepared, and why it might not all be as bad as it seems.

If you’re new to Hubspot, or inbound marketing in general, or maybe wondering why your campaigns to date are not performing, then we have just the workbook for you. Learn how to set up and start generating leads on Hubspot.

Read about what some of the biggest data processor are doing to prepare for the GDPR and why responsibility ultimately belongs to the data controllers - their clients.

The new EU Global Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has created a number of challenges and concerns for businesses across the world. We explore the possibility that the GDPR could change B2B inbound marketing for the better.

We discuss some of the approaches companies in Ireland can take for proper data husbandry before the GDPR comes into force.

Companies dealing with B2B marketing data aren’t getting off the hook when the GDPR rolls into town. But where do you draw the line between business data and personal data?

Squaredot explore the B2B marketing events we’d like to attend in 2018 (and explore why events marketing is the only tool that can give digital a run for its money.)

Here are 11 article that caught - and sustained - attention of our CEO Ian Blake in 2017. He explains why he read them and the value they had in steering Squaredot into 2018.

As 2017 takes its last gasp, marketers are already thinking about the 2018 B2B digital marketing trends that will occupy their headspace in the upcoming year. We also look at the trends that everyone in the industry will be talking about.

Discover why long form copywriting in B2B Content Marketing is important for ranking high in Google search results, in addition to other less obvious reasons...

The staff at Squaredot, B2B Inbound marketing focused agency in Dublin, pick their favourite B2B marketing campaigns of recent times

Read about the law of diminishing returns of content production in B2B inbound marketing and why you need to be clever in your content promotion and outreach.

Discover the two main reasons why Inbound Marketing fails to work for some B2B companies

If you’re new to Hubspot, or inbound marketing in general, or maybe wondering why your campaigns to date are not performing, then we have just the workbook for you. Learn how to set up and start generating leads on Hubspot.

We’ve dug deep into our years of experience and expertise, collected our thoughts and put together a marketing content masterclass to help you create content that delivers qualified leads.

Discover the code to organising google Drive by using Google Drive Scripts helping you create files and folders when creating large folder structures.

We've unpicked 5 cliches that will help you plan better B2B content marketing.

If you’re not seeing the returns on content that you have painstakingly written, complete with strategically inserted keywords, you need to question whether it is your strategy or your content that’s the problem.

Think you’re a content marketing maestro? These common mistakes could be burying your leads.

There’s something about setting goals that motivates people to take action. Let’s explain this better with an analogy.

For everything, we’re told, there’s an app for that.

Now thanks to mobile applets, that slogan is taking a literal twist and your world is about to get very ‘Black Mirror.’

Are you ready and willing to take the Squaredot mid-term marketing test? It also doubles as a B2B content marketing checklist that you can use to gauge your knowledge of the content marketing world.

Liz Weir is one of Ireland’s leading contemporary storytellers and writers. Her job is to teach the techniques of the Irish tradition to curious learners and listeners.

‘Will written media and content eventually become obsolete?’ asked a concerned Quora user on the Q&A website back in 2012.

‘The writing isn’t even really that good,’ you sigh when confronted with the triple-figure tally of social shares on a competitor’s B2B marketing blog.

Nobody really knows why a small, tribal country situated on the edge of Europe boasts such an illustrious mix of scribes, poets and novelists; but it’s true, Ireland has a reputation for producing great writers.

Google is currently training its ad bots to become more easily offended. Is this political correctness gone mad? Or is there something more sinister at hand?...

Discover the benefits of B2B content marketing outsourcing.

Read about our innovative inbound marketing campaign for Roomex

The runaway success of content marketing over traditional approaches to digital marketing has many people worrying that we’re heading for a content bubble.

Read all about our international award winning campaign for Roomex, the hotel booking platform for businesses.

There’s no one-size-fits-all social media platform for businesses. There’s not even a one-size-fits-all social media platform for your business.

Learn about what types of content can get your customers to do the selling for you.

Proof that not all Hubspot websites look the same. Squaredot Inbound Marketing Agency's innovation website was built entirely on Hubspot COS.

A solid content marketing strategy is crucial. But no amount of preparation can guarantee success.

Discover the 15 B2B Content Creation Commandments that generate leads, with each one backed up by startling industry stats and facts.

LinkedIn is your company's gateway to engaging conversations with targeted personas. Learn more about how to grow and impress your audience on this social media platform.

Learn how to generate leads using inbound methodologies. In this eBook we explore what Inbound is all about, in no nonsense, plain English.

Discover where to publish B2B content in 2016

3 B2B Marketing Strategies for festive content to send to clients at Christmas.

How to differentiate between the right and wrong type of Content Marketing Agency for your business.

How to convert Content Marketing Assets into real sales figures.

Uncover 6 content marketing facts and how they help plan and implement a great inbound marketing programme.

Discover how great B2B content marketing gets produced and shared when you ask clients to contribute. Ask and you shall receive.

Discover how to create and produce a great B2B podcast.

Wondering how to start content marketing? The answer is this: find your voice.

That might sound a bit “Happy Feet”, but it’s absolutely true.

Imagine that you’re driving down the road one day and there's a puzzled-looking guy standing next to a car, bonnet open, staring at it without a clue what to do next. You pull up next to him and ask him if he needs any help.

When you’ve spent ages working on a really great piece of B2B branded content, you want to get the most value out of it you possibly can. But how?

Want to know why your campaign isn’t working? Most likely, you’re letting your content marketing objectives get in the way of engaging content.

When you get it right, the value of content marketing is enormous.

Keen to get into content marketing but don’t know where to begin? You’ve come to the right place. 

Content marketing isn’t just a buzzword, it’s a proven way to boost lead generation and marketing ROI without breaking the bank. 

Timing is everything. Especially when it comes to content. We all want up to date, hot off the press content to hijack public sentiment. But without proper planning and strategic thinking, it can come across as irrelevant or inappropriate.

Sales! It’s a dirty word. However there is a light an the end of the funnel for our weary sales and marketing people. It involves the law of seduction and we outline the principles here 

If you’re still stuck in the traditional marketing mindset and wondering why your marketing budget is dwindling with disappointing results, then glance through our slideshare now. It’s everything you ever wanted to know about Sales and Marketing in the 21st century

If you’re using a “mixed bag” approach to marketing, and supplementing inbound marketing efforts with the marketing tactics of old, we’ve got one word for you: stop.

Learn how LinkedIn has evolved into one of the most effective distribution channels for businesses looking to expand their social media reach.

Convincing your CFO of certain marketing strategies, such as inbound marketing, always comes back to one thing: ROI.

What kind of ROI are you generating for your marketing efforts? Learn how inbound marketing tools can help you make smarter marketing decisions.

Learn what sets digital and inbound marketing apart, as well as what strategy is right for you based on your marketing needs.

How do you know if an inbound marketing agency really puts their money where their mouth is? The first step is to look into how the agency handles inbound.

Check out these 7 online services that are essential in any inbound marketing toolbox.

Learn what makes inbound one of the most powerful marketing strategies today, and how you can take advantage of it for long-term results.

Learn all about Ireland's first inbound marketing agency who specialise in B2B tech

Inbound marketing? SEO? Landing pages? Learn the inbound lingo advertisers and agencies use to describe this exciting new marketing world.