Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Digital Marketing Remix Announces the Winners of the Inaugural Remixer B2B Display Advertising Awards

Digital Marketing Remix, a news and community website produced by Bizo that keeps B2B marketers up-to-date with the latest in digital marketing, today announced the winners of the inaugural Remixer B2B Display Advertising Awards. The awards recognize the best examples of B2B online display advertising creative in two categories: traditional static advertising and rich media advertising...[read more]

Sunday, December 1, 2013

Will 2014 bring free, ad-supported phones and data?

How would you like a free mobile phone with free calls, texts and data thrown in for good measure? In exchange, would you be willing to put up with advertising? In a recent AdExchanger column, Russell Glass, CEO of Bizo, said it's only a matter of time before someone develops and offers a "completely advertising-and content-supported phone." And that time, he believes, is coming soon -- as early as the end of next year...[read more]

Recognizing The Business Value Of Great Storytelling

There has been an enormous shift in how we value content today versus 20 years ago. (Admittedly, even the arrival of this column and the opportunity to write for it has the former English major in me rejoicing.) To what do we owe this increased focus and appreciation for content, and how can we continue to sustain its value within organizations? Here are a few thoughts...[read more]

Why We’ll See The First Ad-Supported Phone In 2014

Smartphones are dominating the mobile market. With 1.4 billion predicted to be in consumer hands by the end of 2013, the most valuable digital real estate in the world is no longer the homepage of an online search engine like Google.com, but the home screen of a smartphone. However, no one has figured out a way to monetize it yet. It’s only a matter of time before someone will make a play for this real estate and develop the first completely advertising- and content-supported phone...[read more]

Four Key Ingredients To A Winning 2014 Marketing Plan

'Tis the season when all modern marketers gather their data, rally their teams, push their CEOs and CFOs to lock down on budgets, and set about developing a marketing plan that will bring success in 2014. Yet not all marketing plans are created equal -- nor are the processes to go about developing these plans. Here are four planning ingredients that will set your marketing program up for success in 2014...[read more]

Thursday, October 24, 2013

Oracle Eloqua, Bizo To Fuel Each Other's Marketing Products

Oracle Eloqua is ramping up its paid media offering to marketers through a partnership with data-driven B2B display ad platform Bizo. And Bizo, in turn, has added marketing automation capabilities from Oracle. The Oracle Eloqua AdFocus application integrates display advertising into broader multichannel campaigns. Users can target personalized placements through the Bizo...[read more]

Oracle Partners with Bizo to Add Display, Social Ads to Multi-Channel Campaigns

Oracle continues to integrate the Eloqua technology it bought nearly a year ago. As it does, it's extending some of the existing Eloqua capability by partnering with Bizo to run multi-channel campaigns that include display ads and social media. Multi-channel campaigns help create a seamless customer experience across email, social media and other platforms...[read more]

Bizo Extends Marketing Automation with Online Display & Social Ads

Bizo today announced general availability of Bizo for Marketing Automation, a solution that allows marketers to seamlessly integrate online display and social media advertising into their marketing automation efforts for the first time. Eloqua users can now reach and nurture prospects far beyond their inbox with display and social ads that are synchronized with marketing campaigns...[read more]

Monday, October 21, 2013

Marketing Lexicon: Lead Nurturing

Today's B2B marketers are finding creative ways to deliver their marketing messaging to prospects as they progress along the long, complex B2B buying journey. Through full-funnel marketing, we deploy distinct strategies that help us find new audiences and build awareness of our products, and educate, engage, and convert them into new and returning customers. Here’s a quick look at what lead nurturing looks like today and other automation opportunities that are now emerging...[read more]

Monday, October 14, 2013

Forget Click-Through Rate: 10 Metrics To Track For Display Advertising

With the B2B sales cycle getting longer, it’s imperative that marketers measure programs based on what they want to achieve at each stage of the funnel. This will enable them to take a true pulse of their growth and stay focused on drawing new prospects into the funnel...[read more]

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Digital Marketing Remix Launches Remixer B2B Display Advertising Awards

Digital Marketing Remix, a news and community website produced by Bizo that keeps B2B marketers up-to-date with the latest in digital marketing, today announced the Remixer B2B Display Advertising Awards. The awards celebrate the best examples of B2B online display advertising creative, including traditional static advertising, rich media, video and text-based ads used on social media networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn...[read more]

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Bizo Rolls out B2B Analytics Platform to Evaluate Display Ad Performance

B2B marketing company Bizo is trying to make it easier for marketers to gauge the performance of display advertising campaigns with the launch of its Bizo Full-Funnel Analytics. "As the B2B buyer's journey has become more complex, marketers must employ a diverse set of programs that impact and influence prospects throughout the buying process—and be able to measure their efforts," said Russell Glass, CEO of Bizo...[read more]

Internet Privacy And The Lobotomy Of The Web

The online privacy debate has transitioned from a thoughtful discussion with progress on the shoulders of self-regulatory industry efforts, to the stalemate that currently exists between hardline privacy advocates, industry players and browser companies. A major factor in the breakdown of these discussions is the unilateral decisions made by the browsers to block part of the functionality that makes the Web function today—specifically, the Mozilla Firefox decision to wholesale block certain cookies from loading in the browser. This move was a complete surprise to the industry and is akin to 20th century doctors lobotomizing patients to cure a mental illness...[read more]

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

From Desks To Desktops: WSJ Office Net Brings Audience Retargeting To Digital Out-Of-Home

In another step toward emulating the way online media is bought and sold, a major digital out-of-home player has quietly developed a method of audience “retargeting” that can extend the reach of place-based consumers online. The initiative, which was developed by The Wall Street Journal Office Network and B2B audience data firm Bizo, enables advertisers who run ads on WSJON’s screens in office buildings to serve ads to those same office workers when they are subsequently on their online browsers...[read more]

Marketing Funnel Analytics for the New Customer Experience

If the customer journey has rendered the marketing funnel obsolete, can advanced web analytics bring it back to life, while helping marketers better understand and improve the customer experience? Thanks to Bizo Full-Funnel Analytics, new reporting capabilities in the Bizo Marketing Platform, marketers can identify and measure the impact of display advertising at every stage of the marketing funnel...[read more]

Will the Mobile Advertising Market Soar?

CCTV's Karina Huber sits down with Donnie Flood, Bizo Co-founder & CTO, to discuss the mobile advertising market outlook...[read more]

Bizo Launches "Full-Funnel Analytics" to Boost Visibility into Display Advertising Effectiveness

Bizo announced it has launched Bizo Full-Funnel Analytics, new reporting capabilities in the Bizo Marketing Platform that enable marketers to identify and measure the impact of display advertising at every stage of the marketing funnel for the first time. Using Bizo Full-Funnel Analytics, B2B marketers can more accurately measure the impact of their display advertising according to specific marketing objectives, rather than rely on "last-click" attribution...[read more]

Thursday, September 12, 2013

Marketing Lexicon: Full-Funnel Marketing

With a full-funnel approach, marketers must first understand the key objectives they need to hit at each stage of the funnel (top, mid-, and bottom-funnel) and then deploy the right programs to achieve them while pinning down the right metrics to measure progress against those objectives. Wondering how you measure up as a full-funnel marketer? Here are three questions...[read more]

Monday, September 9, 2013

Stacey Vanek Smith, this is your data profile

You could say this has been the summer of surveillance. A lot of facts came to light about how the government is tracking us. But this week, consumers can start to get a window into how marketers and retailers are tracking us. One of the largest data mining companies in the world, Acxiom, has just introduced a new website that will show people some of the details the company has collected on them... [read more]

Thursday, September 5, 2013

Apply Lifetime Value Targeting to Reach Customers Online

Online ad targeting has become pervasive over the past few years. It started with basic behavioral targeting, and it has moved to other forms of audience targeting, including business demographics, site retargeting, social graph targeting, and even CRM retargeting. All of these forms of targeting have helped marketers efficiently move spend to increasingly more valuable audiences, but ultimately the goal of all such capabilities is to drive greater awareness and then close the most valuable customers...[read more]

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

The Value of In-shoring

We have an interesting dichotomy in the U.S. today. The technology industry that I am a part of consistently complains about lack of talent and is begging for reforms in the H1-B visa program to bring more skilled foreign workers into the U.S., especially to help out in the tech industry. Expanding this program faces obvious political difficulties, however....[read more]

Monday, August 19, 2013

The battle for the marketing cloud

The tide can turn quickly in Silicon Valley. The hot, consumer startups of 18 months ago are now yesterday’s news, replaced in the public eye by a new generation of enterprise-focused startups attempting to disrupt the $304 billion that businesses are expected to spend this year on software. And no corner of the enterprise organization has been busier buying software than marketing...[read more]

Friday, August 16, 2013

10 Ways to Build a B2B Brand Online

It goes without saying that digital is important for any brand, and, increasingly, B2B marketers are entering the fray with impactful results. Yet, many are still new to the game and are looking for guidance on how to develop a strategy for success in the rapidly evolving world of digital marketing...[read more]

Thursday, August 15, 2013

San Francisco Chamber Of Commerce Announces Finalists For The 2013 Ebbies

The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce today announced the finalists for the 2013 Excellence in Business Awards (the "Ebbies"), San Francisco's preeminent awards competition honoring excellence in business.  Finalists for the Emerging Growth Award are Bizo...[read more]

Monday, August 12, 2013

Five Reasons Why Display Ads are Thriving

If you're selling online display advertising–and what publisher isn't these days?–you might have run into some occasional, er, pushback. For starters, the banner has many competitors when it comes to digital marketing budgets: search, social, email, mobile, webinars, virtual events...to name just a few. Plus, online advertising effectiveness is being attacked by a load of disinformation...[read more]

Friday, August 9, 2013

5 Tips for Hiring in an Aggressive Economy

With the economy on the uptick, the stock market flirting with all-time highs, and companies across multiple sectors aggressively hiring, firms in Silicon Valley and other tech hotspots like New York City are seeing competition for talent reach fever pitch. Startups and large technology companies alike are vying for the best candidates. So what can your company do to attract the best and brightest in such a competitive hiring environment?...[read more]

Marketing Funnel Lexicon: Social Advertising

Honing in on the mid-funnel, the goal is to fully educate your target audience on key subject areas and position your company as a trusted expert. In the world of B2B marketing, this translates to getting prospects to engage with your content -- and one of the most effective vehicles for nurturing and educating leads though the buying process is social advertising. In the world of B2B, some of the most effective social advertising programs where marketers are investing heavily include...[read more]

Friday, July 26, 2013

Why Wall Street Should Care About Marketing Data

Today’s CMOs are making major investments to reach their target audiences across dozens of touchpoints — on their own websites, through search, display advertising and email, and increasingly on social channels and mobile devices. The problem is, most of the technology platforms marketers are using to accomplish this don’t talk to each other...[read more]

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Bizo at Golden Gate Park

Over one-hundred Bizo employees spent a sunny afternoon volunteering in Golden Gate Park. While one group of volunteers pruned rose stems in the Rose Garden, another spruced up the Pioneer Meadow; spreading mulch along pathways, trimming shrubs and digging up weeds...[read more]

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Marketing Funnel Lexicon: Retargeting

As discussed in our previous columns, the marketing funnel is a useful paradigm for B2B marketers, as it reminds us of how our strategies, tactics, and metrics change depending on where we are looking to make an impact on the buying process. One of the best approaches to driving online conversions is retargeting, a display advertising technique that enables marketers to serve highly relevant display ads based on prospects’ previous interests. There are many flavors of retargeting, including...[read more]

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Bizo Grabs $12.5 Million in Debt Financing

Bizo has taken on $12.5 million in debt financing from City National Bank. The company expects to close the second quarter on a $40 million annualized revenue run rate and cross into profitability by year's end. As it stands, 60% of Bizo's revenue comes from its ad network. American Express, AT&T and General Motors are among the roughly 750 advertisers...[read more]

Bizo Announces $12.5 Million in Financing

Bizo announced it has raised $12.5 million in venture debt financing from City National Bank. With this funding, Bizo has raised almost $30 million in total equity and debt capital, providing the company with the financial flexibility to continue its rapid growth, further build out its technology platform and make strategic investments...[read more]

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Fine Tune Your B2B Targeting With Bizo Data Solutions

You’ve got Google Analytics, and you’ve read our Google Analytics 101 article, but you’re looking to soup things up for a more powerful marketing solution by fine tuning your B2B targeting. Well, Bizo just announced Bizo Data Solutions, a service that enables B2B companies to better understand and more efficiently engage target audiences across their entire marketing funnel. Bizo Data Solutions integrates with a company’s existing marketing technology “stack,” allowing marketers to use Bizo’s demographic data...[read more]

Friday, May 17, 2013

Interview: Chris Mann, VP Product Management at Bizo, on Targeting Business Audiences

Bizo has recently announced the launch of Bizo Data Solutions, enabling B2B companies to efficiently engage their target audiences across an entire marketing funnel. Can you tell us more about the type of company benefiting most from Bizo Data Solutions?...[read more]

Thursday, May 9, 2013

For B2B Marketers, The Future Is Behind The Firewall

Much of the attention of the digital marketing community seems to be focused on RTB and the endless debate about its effectiveness for advertisers, ad tech companies and publishers. While this tired RTB discussion self-perpetuates, a much more interesting and potentially disruptive movement is taking root. Marketers are now looking beyond tactical solutions like RTB that for the most part live outside the corporate firewall, and developing their own strategic solutions with technologies that live behind the corporate firewall...[read more]

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Marketing Funnel Lexicon: Mid-Funnel Programs

The mid-funnel is all about the important nurturing work that needs to be done to more deeply orient, educate, and influence a prospect after they are aware of your brand, but before they are necessarily ready to engage with a sales rep -- or before they are even ready to share their personal information (e.g., via a Web form). The mid-funnel offers a range of different programs you can employ to increase brand awareness...[read more]

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

B2B Audience Targeting Works On Facebook, Says Bizo's Russ Glass

In the past few years, Bizo CEO Russ Glass says that marketers have gotten smarter about using online data for targeting – and that’s a good thing, since his company’s success revolves around B2B audience segments gleaned from data partnerships with publishers. It’s less about “evangelizing the value of data,” says Glass, as the marketer brings specific desired outcomes that they want to effect with data’s help...[read more]

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

The Data-Driven Enterprise Marketing Revolution

Early on in the development of the Web, marketers talked about the promise of true “one-to-one marketing,” where the experience of interacting with a brand would be unique to the individual. Marketers eagerly proclaimed they would be able to deliver exactly the right message at the right place and at the right time. Fast-forward almost 20 years, and the promise of one-to-one marketing is still unfulfilled. While pieces of the vision have coalesced through technologies such as marketing automation, search marketing and audience targeting, these capabilities currently live in silos, and aren’t yet working together...[read more]

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Bizo Data Solutions Integrates, Optimizes Digital Experience (DX)

Yesterday, Katie Ingram wrote that by utilizing both marketing automation and digital marketing, companies can begin to grow alongside the consumer so that they can go where the customer goes. Today, Bizo introduces a new Data Solutions platform designed to let B2B companies better understand and engage with target audiences across their entire marketing funnel. We love it when the fates align...[read more]

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Bizo Data Solutions Fuels Performance of B2B Marketing Technology Stack

Bizo today announced the launch of Bizo Data Solutions, an extension of the company's existing digital marketing platform that now enables B2B companies to better understand and more efficiently engage target audiences across their entire marketing funnel. Bizo Data Solutions integrates with a company's existing marketing technology "stack," allowing marketers to use Bizo's demographic data on over 120 million business professionals to get more value out of their marketing programs and other technology investments...[read more]

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

B2Bs Struggling With Online Marketing Mix; Sales Cycle Gets Longer

US B2B marketers are struggling to optimize their online marketing mix, with many unable to segment and target the right decision-makers or measure program success across the entire marketing funnel, according to the results of a survey developed and fielded by Crain's BtoB magazine and business audience marketing company Bizo...[read more]

Salesforce.com, Smartling and Zurich Insurance Discuss Why Display Is Effective

This past week in Chicago, Bizo hosted its third Digital Marketing Remixer, an event that explored B2B online display advertising. Bizo hosted two previous Digital Marketing Remixers in San Francisco and New York in March. Presenters at the events have so far included executives from Salesforce.com, Hyatt Hotels Corp., Zurich Insurance, Smartling and other companies. What struck me about the deep, lively discussions is online advertising’s versatility and the wide variety of ways b2b marketers use it in their marketing mix...[read more]

Friday, April 12, 2013

At the Bizo Remixer: Online Display Advertising an Important Part of B2B Marketing Mix

"Branding is critical in B2B, but it is often seen as an afterthought," said Sean Callahan, marketing director at Bizo and editor of Bizo's Digital Marketing Remix. "It's important in B2B because business buyers want to research online just like anyone else" and having a strong brand is important in helping buyers find the product or service they are looking for." When you're buying a car," he quipped, "you don't go for a Yugo—you go with an established brand before you even begin your online research. This is often what we miss in B2B..."[read more]

Monday, April 8, 2013

Branding is key in filling the sales pipeline

Companies are increasingly tying marketing activities to leads and revenue. But marketers feel frustrated with their ability to drive enough leads to meet the demands of sales departments, according to a new study by BtoB. According to the report, “Priming the Pipeline: Driving Awareness, Conversions & Sales,” 60% of marketers said their most important goal was generating more leads...[read more]

Survey Shows B2B Sales Cycle Lengthening, Increasing Challenges For Online Marketers

Crain's BtoB Magazine today shared results of a comprehensive survey of business-to-business (B2B) marketers across the U.S. developed in conjunction with business audience marketing company Bizo. The data shows that the sales cycle has lengthened for many B2B companies, increasing pressure on the marketing organization to boost brand awareness to help deliver leads and effectively nurture them through a prolonged buying process...[read more]

Saturday, April 6, 2013

The 7 Biggest Misconceptions of Successful B2B Marketing

Businesses have been selling to businesses for quite some time now, but only recently has B2B marketing risen to a whole new level with advancements in online targeting, display advertising, and marketing automation.  However, what really drives success in B2B marketing can be hard to decipher. Here are seven misconceptions about what makes for truly successful B2B marketing—and ways you can steer your efforts in the right direction...[read more]

Marketing Funnel Lexicon: Top-Funnel Programs

Last month, we gave an introduction to the Marketing Funnel and discussed how marketers need a balanced mix of programs beyond email and search to effectively reach prospects wherever they may be traveling online. In this column we will focus on the top funnel and examine the different programs you can employ to increase brand awareness. The top funnel is where you focus to increase awareness and recall of your company and products, and to drive more of the right traffic to your Web site, corporate blog or landing pages...[read more]

How B2B Marketers Are Learning To Love Social Media For Lead Generation

Social networks like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn have quickly become viable if not mandatory channels for B2B marketers to generate new leads and build brand awareness. As 56% of B2B marketers gear up to increase spend on social media advertising in 2013, how can you ensure that you’re getting your ads in front of the right business audiences, while making reporting as easy as possible to measure and prove social ROI?...[read more]

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Demystifying The Marketing Funnel: Lexicon

Let's face it: our target customers are now spending only a small fraction of their time online looking at emails and Googling for information -- most of their time online is now spent visiting social networks and other sites across the Web. Marketers need a balanced mix of programs beyond email and search to effectively reach prospects wherever they may be. But getting to the right people wherever they may be consuming content is only one part of the equation...[read more]

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Bizo Hits the Road to Share Best Practices Around B2B Display Advertising

Bizo, the global leader in business audience marketing, today announced that it will be hosting the first B2B marketing event series dedicated to online display advertising. Bizo’s B2B Display Advertising “In the Raw” roadshow is an industry gathering focused on sharing best practices around effective B2B display advertising. The first event will take place on March 7th from 3-7pm at the Hyatt Embarcadero in San Francisco...[read more]