How to Market to Marketers

3 minute read

Upland Admin

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been talking about best practices for marketing to tough crowds, including IT pros and your own CEO. Now it’s time to take on the dreaded final boss of tough crowds: other marketers.

Kapost knows a thing or two about marketing to marketers (evidence: you’re here!), and to take advantage of our highly targeted audience, we did a survey last year to find out what tactics marketers were responding to most.

Here’s what we learned:

1. You Can Reach Marketers Most Easily on LinkedIn

Ninety-one percent of the marketing professionals surveyed said they used LinkedIn to find professional news. What’s even more interesting is how resoundingly LinkedIn beat out online news sites (61%), Twitter (29%), and Facebook (27%) for marketers’ attention.

In addition to sharing content on your own LinkedIn page and company page, make sure to add it to LinkedIn’s Pulse feed. Pulse started as a newsreader before being purchased by LinkedIn and now serves as a content hub where anyone can post and share content to LinkedIn’s 347 million users.

2. Once You’ve Made a Deeper Connection, Email Is Your Best Friend

As powerful as LinkedIn is, there’s one place marketers would rather receive your content: their inbox. It turns out that most enterprise marketers prefer to use email to share (77%) and receive (69%) content. This channel dwarfs social platforms when it comes to these measures, and it also outweighs marketers’ desire to research on their own.

Kapost has found that consistent lead-nurturing campaigns result in much higher open rates than one-off email blasts (~40% vs. ~8%). If your email strategy is stale or non-existent, these tips might help.

most marketers prefer to use email to share (77%) and receive (69%) content

3. If You’re Trying to Influence Large Companies, Try Traditional Media

Interestingly, marketers who worked for large companies (5,000+ employees) turned to traditional media for news and information more often than smaller companies did. Their top five news sources were Forbes, Harvard Business Review, MarketingProfs, Huffington Post, and the Wall Street Journal.

So if your target audience consists of marketing decision makers at larger enterprises, public relations might be an important component of your communications strategy. Landing a byline, interview, or mention in one of these traditional media publications could mean a ton of targeted exposure to your key audience.

4. Anything a Thought Leader Says > Your Blog

Corporate blogs are what you might call “table stakes” these days. They’re a necessary aspect of marketing, but they’re not where the game is won or lost. Thought leader buy-in, on the other hand, can help you put major points on the board.

Kapost learned that enterprise marketers trust thought leaders ten times more than corporate blogs. If you’re going to market to marketers, it’s important to know, follow, and be in communication with the top thinkers in the game. Not sure who they are? Here’s a good list to start from.

5. Make ‘Em Laugh

When in doubt, entertain. Kapost discovered that marketers were slightly more likely (67%) to share playful or fun news compared with factual or data-heavy content (63%).

Let’s be clear: whitepapers are still the most important piece of content marketers use when deciding on a purchase (78% said so). But if you want your message to spread, light, fun, and visual content should definitely be part of your mix.

marketers are more likely (67%) to share playful or fun news compared with factual or data-heavy content (63%)

Still feeling intimidated by your marketing brethren? Check out our 5-Minute Guide: B2B Marketer Content Preferences or download the full 2014 Enterprise Marketing Research report.

Reliable products. Real results.

Every day, thousands of companies rely on Upland to get their jobs done simply and effectively. See how brands are putting Upland to work.

View Success Stories