When was the last time you got excited about a White House petition?

Up until a few months ago, that would have been a tough question for most Americans. However, in the course of only a few months, the white house has managed to change decades of disinterest in the petition process into a tidal wave of enthusiasm and involvement.

How did they manage such a feat? With a simple but significant addition to the White House website: Now anyone with an internet connection has the ability to submit a petition to the white house. And this is no PR stunt. This is real “power to the people” outreach and any petition that racks up enough support is addressed directly by the white house. And yes, that list has already included a petition to create a Death Star.

The Right Solution for the Time

Although a government initiative, the petition platform, “We the People,” was actually created as an ingenious solution to a problem faced by marketers everywhere: our audience is evolving. Where millions of people would have tuned in to a presidential address just 10 years ago, now only a fraction of that number even bother to tune into the news at all.

With consumers now scattered over dozens of different channels, and content they prefer to consume on each, marketers can no longer force their messages on their audience. Marketing success these days is all about providing real value through inbound marketing, and the White House gets it.

Lets take a look at what marketers can learn from the White House’s new petition platform.

Content is Key

The We the People platform is designed to bridge the gap between the White House and unengaged citizens by providing great content. The posted petitions have garnered viral social sharing, articles, and even websites, but the real show-stopping content has been the White House’s responses. Well-crafted and designed to foster engagement, these responses are what keep people interested. For example, part of the White House’s official response to the petition to build a Death Star included, “Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that could be exploited by a one-man starship?”

Marketing Lesson: Content has become a crucial tool for the modern marketer. Like citizens easily growing bored with government, consumers are becoming less and less interested in marketing messages. Content has become a marketer’s best weapon to stand out from the crowd and form real relationships with their audience. Providing real value and entertaining your audience with content will deliver far greater results than any advertising campaign.

Understand Your Audience

What many don’t realize about the We the People platform is that when you sign a petition, you implicitly agree that the White House has a right to communicate with you about that matter by email. No matter what petitions roll in, the White House couldn’t be happier. Not only do they receive thousands of emails from the petitioners, they know what those petitioners are passionate about. They are able to create genuine, helpful dialogue with audiences that may not have even tuned in to a State of the Union otherwise.

Marketing Lesson: Understanding your audience and their pain points is equally important for marketers. Marketing automation platforms allow you to track prospect behavior on your site and pull in data from professional and social profiles. This data paints a detailed picture of what matters most to a prospect, allowing your sales team to tailor their approach and take the chill out of cold calls.

Focus on Relationships

Underneath the humor and media coverage, the petition platform is about openness. Macon Phillips, the digital director in charge of the platform said, “We wanted a system that is as open as possible so people can use it as they will.” Turning over this sense of ownership to the site’s audience is what has truly allowed people to connect with the site and keep coming back.

Marketing Lesson: Modern marketing needs to take a similar approach to building relationships. Marketing is no longer a one-way conversation. Marketing should be a dialogue, allowing for and encouraging co-creation, idea sharing, and personalization. Create a petition-style platform of your own for customers to share and vote on ideas, like the Pardot Idea Exchange. Use segmentation and dynamic content to make each email seem like a personal note. You have more tools than ever to deliver exceptional experiences to your audience.

What do you think of the We the People platform? Let us know in the comments below!

A variation of this article originally appeared on the Pardot blog.

Marketing is changing before our eyes. As technology provides marketers with more reach, more control, and more information, marketing departments are becoming increasingly technical and data-driven. As a result, marketing operations are absorbing more responsibilities and control from their creative counterparts. However, the rise of the calculating marketing scientists should be viewed as an opportunity for more traditional marketing artists.

In a recent article, Stan Woods of Velocity Partners uses the scientist and artist monikers to distinguish between the creative-driven and data-driven marketers of the modern marketing department. Although a slight oversimplification, these distinctions hold a lot of truth about the current divide that exists within many marketing teams.

While these two differently-minded marketers take very different approaches to their duties, the marketing departments that will truly excel in this new age of marketing are those that recognize the value in both approaches. Companies need the data-driven approach of marketing scientists to track, measure, and optimize performance like never before, but they also need marketing artists to deliver innovative, creative campaigns that cut through the crowded marketplace.

We have put together the infographic below to help highlight the tremendous assets marketing artists and marketing scientists can bring to the table, and the advantage of finding a balance between the two.

Nearly 200 years after it was first published, Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol” still resonates with audiences everywhere. Its message of self reflection still hits home for audiences around the world.

The holiday season is the perfect time for this type of self-assessment. You should take time to reflect on the past, take stock of the present, and start making predictions for the future. This applies as much to your professional life as it does to your personal one.

The pace of marketing evolution has become a runaway train, and it’s all most marketers can do just to hold on. With things moving so fast, it is more important than ever to take a step back and evaluate your progress to make sure your marketing is still on the right track.

To help you take stock of how far you’ve come and the distance you have left to go, we’ve created an infographic illustrating the past, present, and future of the marketing industry. Just as Scrooge was shown visions of these three perspectives in Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” this infographic can help you keep your marketing headed in the right direction. Lets take a look!

If you have even been within 10 feet of a bar or beer isle in the last few years, you’ve probably heard the term “craft beer.” Craft beer refers to beer produced by smaller, often independent breweries, and it is quickly making it’s presence known in the U.S. beer market.

In 2011, craft brewing saw growth of 13% by volume while overall U.S. beer sales were down an estimated 1.3% by volume. Not bad for a small business product!

This trend toward smaller craft breweries is part of a much larger shift in consumer tastes away from large corporations and impersonal products. Consumers are willing to pay more for products from companies they feel like they know — companies with a personality and a story.

This trend should be encouraging for small businesses. The SMB market is the alternative to the faceless corporations and has the ability to produce marketing that is genuine and has real personality; marketing consumers are craving. However, SMBs aren’t spending their time fighting off large corporations pretending to be small businesses. Many are spending most of their time mimicking and pretending to be a big business.

Seriously? Why are we so focused on being Bud Light when we are already something so much better? We are better than Bud Light!

Why are we so focused on being Bud Light when we are already something so much better?

SMB marketers are in a position to capitalize on the characteristics of their businesses that may have once been viewed as flaws. It’s time to step up and own these elements of SMBs and deliver marketing that consumers actually want.

Authenticity

Consumer tastes are changing quickly. Outbound marketing strategies are becoming a thing of the past as consumers become more and more desensitized to the messages pushed on them each day. Inbound marketing has become the new dominant strategy, with earned media and content strategies successfully building relationships and earning consumer trust. Large businesses are spending billions to make inbound work for them, but SMBs already have a huge head start.

SMBs don’t need to spend big to create personalities and a story for their brands the way big business does. The story is already there, SMBs just need to tell it! Share your struggles and success with your audience. Share your mission and what drives you. This honesty and authenticity will help to make your brand more trustworthy, and trust is the foundation of every relationship.

Creativity

Big business marketing is pretty boring. They are working under tight guidelines and regulations. This is especially true when it comes to beer. How many ads can you really target at tailgaters? SMBs lack the budget for national ad spots and traditional media buys. This forces marketers to think outside the box.

SMBs are ideally set up to pursue new, exciting marketing ideas and tactics. You should be pushing the traditional boundaries, taking risks, and setting the trends for larger brands to follow. Before your next campaign, think about using a new channel or pursuing a new strategy that will differentiate you from the competition. The risks are lower and the rewards greater. Think bigger!

Connection

Anyone that has seen a local brewery grow into a successful business probably feels a connection to that brand. Small businesses have a story and a connection to their neighborhoods, cities, and states. When marketed well, consumers feel as if they know their community’s small businesses and share a connection.

This is a tremendous advantage SMBs have over their competition. Don’t be afraid to show your people and personality. Give your audience a look behind the scenes and showcase the people behind your brand. Take advantage of opportunities to participate in local events and causes. Although the short term gain of these events is limited, the long term relationships and connections are a significant advantage over larger companies.

The craft brewing movement is bravely breaking from the norm set by traditional larger breweries, and consumers have responded with overwhelming support. Craft breweries are standing up to big business and trying to be something different, something better. If their bold message, strong values, and devout followings are not enough to inspire your marketing, then their snowballing financial success should definitely get your attention!

Do you have any additional thoughts on craft brewing or SMB marketing? What’s your favorite craft brew? Let us know in the comments below!

For some, the morning trek down to the local Starbucks is a daily pilgrimage. For others, a $5 latte sums up everything wrong with capitalism these days.

Regardless of which group you fall into, Starbucks likely succeeded in polarizing you even further last week when they introduced a new $7 cup of coffee. No really, I’m serious. The stuff is about as expensive as what you’ll spend on your entire lunch today.

Although the new brew is a limited run for a select few west coast stores, Starbucks has been generating a lot of buzz with the new coffee. It’s pretty clear their marketing department knows exactly what they’re doing. As I’ve written before, scarcity and exclusivity are almost irresistible pulls on our psyche, and this new “Geisha” coffee has both.

Although coffee experts agree that the rare brew’s taste is unique and complex, the new starbucks brew has received underwhelming reviews, and not just from Jimmy Kimmel’s blind taste test bit last week. However, it might be no fault of the coffee itself, but of the Starbucks infrastructure.

The coffee giant’s production process is likely not designed for the attention and care required to roast smaller batches of beans. The company may lack the capacity to prepare the beans correctly and their supply chain may be too long to deliver the beans fast enough to keep them fresh. In short, Starbucks may be selling an exceptional product, but that product is nothing without great support.

An exceptional product is nothing without great support.

This is true for companies in any industry, from coffee to technology. Here are a few ways companies can learn from Starbucks’ mistake and design their service and support to deliver the best possible product every time.

Preparation

Just as coffee beans need to be carefully roasted and prepared before they can be shipped, customers need to be set up and trained on your product. Rushing this step in either case will only deliver a sub-par product experience.

Your great product will do your customers no good if they are not prepared to use it correctly. If your product is complex, you should be providing setup and training to every new client and you might consider continued education through webinars or refresher courses.

Timeliness

In the case of coffee, spending too much time in the supply chain leads to loss of quality and flavor. The same goes for your customer support. The longer a customer is forced to wait in your support queue, the more patience they will lose and the less forgiving they will be of any issues you may have.

Do your best to address every support case early. Even if their problem is not a quick fix, let them know that you are at least working on it. Knowing that their problem is at least on your radar does wonders to calm anxious clients.

Follow-through

The most important quality in your service and support is follow-through. Your support should be delivering on what your salesmen are promising. In the case of Starbucks, they are promising an exceptional cup of coffee, and anything less than dazzling could ruin a customer’s experience with their brand.

Make sure all parts of your organization are on the same page when it comes to your products capabilities. It is always better to underpromise and overdeliver than to fall short of your sales pitch. Follow-through helps to build customer trust and loyalty, giving your company an immense amount of credibility.

Whether you are peddling America’s most expensive cup of coffee or a B2B product or service, that product is nothing without great service. Have you tried the new Starbucks brew? Do you have some additional thoughts on customer service? Let us know!

If you are a marketing professional, you probably follow a number of blogs to stay up to date with your industry. And with companies of all types launching their own blogs, you certainly have options.

At the end of 2011, NM Incite was tracking more than 189 million blogs worldwide, 5x the number just 5 years earlier.

Blogs are the newsstands of a new generation of business professionals. Newspapers have been replaced with blogs like Mashable and FastCompany and trade publications have given way to specialty blogs of all kinds. Blogs are an integral part of every marketer’s daily routine and are here to stay.

For this reason, over the past few weeks, Pardot has been covering our favorite blogs on a number of different subjects, from thought leaders to social media, to help readers find valuable resources they may have missed. We have compiled all of our favorite blogs into one infographic, to provide a comprehensive resource for all of your reading needs. Check it out below and let us know what we should include for the next edition!

It’s that time of the year again to embrace your fears, dress up in your favorite costume, and possibly prepare to fight some zombies. To help you celebrate, Pardot has created a guide to help you fend off one of the most troublesome terrors for B2B marketers and sales reps: the difficult, or “Zombie,” lead.

Any expereinced B2B professional knows that not all leads are created equal, and eventually, you are bound to run into a zombie lead. These leads can drag their feet, moan constantly, and wander aimlessly. They will devour your time, resources, and if your not careful, your sanity!

But fear not! The guide we’ve created below can help you identify these zombie leads early, show you what to expect when you encounter one, and teach you how to cure them. We’ll also show you how to put up defenses to add an extra level of protection between you and any zombie leads that might be lurking. So put on your halloween costume and gear up to go fend off some zombie leads!

Content marketing has exploded on the marketing scene this year with companies of all sizes scrambling to implement content in their marketing mix. In our present social era, customers are better informed and more averse to traditional marketing than ever before. When it comes to building relationships with these modern consumers, content marketing has become one of the most powerful tactics in a company’s marketing arsenal.

However, with so much to be gained, many companies have rushed blindly into content with no thought given to their strategy and approach. Without defined objectives, it is nearly impossible to measure the effectiveness of a content strategy. With analytics giving marketing departments so much accountability and control over their budgets, this seems like a significant step in the wrong direction.

To help marketers improve their content marketing efforts, Econsultancy set out to assess the current state of content marketing strategy and how marketers are attempting to measure their results by conducting a survey of over 1,000 marketing professionals. Pardot has put together the infographic below based on some of the survey’s key findings to create a clearer picture of where marketers are performing well and where they need to improve.

Easily share with one of our precomposed Tweetables:

With the battle of social networks still raging hard, it seems curious that nobody has heard much of Myspace in the last year. Those few that even noticed the platform’s absence were left wondering in Myspace had finally given up and thrown in the towel. Late last month, those curious few received the surprising answer to that question: not yet.

It seems Myspace has been taking advantage of it’s time out of the spotlight. With a single tweet from co-owner Justin Timberlake, Myspace was back on the tech world’s radar.

THIS IS MYSPACE vimeo.com/myspace/the-ne… #NEWMYSPACE

— Justin Timberlake(@jtimberlake) September 24, 2012

The tweet linked to a video showcasing a completely redesigned Myspace. To everyone’s surprise, the redesigned social network was stunning. Despite having tried, and failed, to previously redesign their image, the new video garnered mostly positive feedback from the tech community. Not bad for a social platform whose user base is dwarfed almost sevenfold by Google+.

Myspace, now styled with a lowercase “s”, may be on to a bold new direction for their company. But how did they get to this point, positioned on the edge of a potential resurgence? Let’s take a look at the basic marketing strategies driving the company’s new direction.

Focus on Your Purpose

One of the things that led Myspace, and many other companies, astray in the past was trying to be just like their competitors. By veering further and further from their core competencies, Myspace quickly put itself in a dangerous position. By the time Myspace started to really lag behind competitors like Facebook and Google+, the platform was in desperate need of much more than a redesign. Tim Vanderhook, Myspace CEO, told FastCompany “You really had to build everything from scratch, you had to rethink what the brand was actually going to stand for, and then you had to give people a totally different experience.”

Myspace appears to have done just that, with a renewed focus on the music community. Music has always been a distinguishing factor for Myspace, and Facebook’s integration with services like Spotify leaves much to be desired of the social music experience. With music as the core offering driving the platform, Myspace was reimagined with the entire information structure designed to support and enhance the music experience. With dynamic artist pages and a slick drag-and-drop playlist tool, their designers have hit the bullseye.

Give the Data to the People!

Myspace also showed off well styled in-page analytics tools unlike any offered by competitors. Maps of followers, sharing data, and fan behavior are all highlighted in attractive infographics throughout the page. Analytics are designed to be easily understood at a glance and positioned where they are most needed.

Where many platforms are more eager to employ user data internally, owner Chris Vanderhook explained “We’re really trying to take all that data we’ve collected and put it in the hands of our community.” In addition to the attractive in-page analytics, the new Myspace is rumored to have advanced targeting options for posts and special offers.

Design Matters

As the business world continues to evolve, we are seeing good design making a real impact on the bottom line of companies big and small. Slick user interfaces and well-crafted web experiences are no longer an afterthought, but a major requirement for products and services.

The new Myspace delivers best in class web design in spades. With a new horizontal timeline layout, a modern profile design reminiscent of pinterest, and a gorgeous posting interface, Myspace may be the new standard for social platform design. Even if it doesn’t draw users by the millions, the new design sets the platform apart from the competition and is focused on the sites purpose: music.

What do you think of the new redesign? Will you give Myspace another spin? Let us know what you think!

No matter the industry, audience, or company size, all marketers are kindred spirits of a sort. Across the board, we face many of the same demands, challenges, joys, and triumphs. True, job functions, daily tasks, and campaigns vary greatly from company to company, but there is one truth universal to all true marketers:

We as marketers are fiercely passionate about our jobs, and love what we do.

It is for these driven marketers that Pardot has created a series of original posters featuring inspirational marketing quotes from some of the marketing industry’s most insightful thought leaders. These posters are designed to be printed and proudly displayed at your desk or in your office to remind you that while marketing is hard work, we’re in it because we love what we do.

Whether you are producing content, managing campaigns, or creating social communities, a little inspration can help keep you motivated and passionate. The more passion you put into a project, the higher quality the final product will ultimately be. Higher quality means more shares, more traffic, more coverage and more success!

Check out the new poster series below:

These posters represent only a small portion of the tremendous collection of inspiration out there: the quotes and thought leaders that influence us here at Pardot. What inspires us most is often unique to each person or group so we would love to hear what inspires you.

Is there a quote that truly inspires your marketing that didn’t make it into this poster series? Something you know would inspire your fellow marketers to perform their very best? Please leave a comment and tell us about it! The posters above are just the first in a larger poster series and we would love to have your help creating the next batch!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License, ©Pardot, LLC.

The first time I had to create a landing page, I spent endless hours editing and tweaking. “Was the copy the most persuasive it could be? Does my form have too many fields? Does it have too few? Is my layout drawing the visitors eye to the call to action?”

Even today, my process has not streamlined much more and the torrent of doubts and second guesses is as present as ever. With so many variables at play, I suppose those worries go with the territory and I would venture a guess that I am not alone in my landing page process.

Any inbound marketer that has ever been tasked with designing a landing page has had these questions and a hundred others swirling around in their head before they push a page live. With so many variables affecting conversion, the opportunities to second guess and endlessly tweak are virtually limitless.

Thankfully, marketers have the ability to automate this endless tweaking to determine the best possible layout for maximum impact. The process is called Multivariate testing.

What is Multivariate Testing?

Similar to A/B testing, multivariate tests automate the process of determining the optimal mix of multiple variables by randomly assigning visitors to different variations of the same page and tracking which iteration performs the best. Although the process takes more time than A/B testing, multivariate testing returns far more accurate results. See the diagram below for a more in-depth look at the process.

The Multivariate Testing Process

Services like Pardot make the process of multivariate testing extremely straightforward. Below are the three basic steps required for effective multivariate testing.

Identify Your Variables

Obviously your multivariate tests would take an unreasonable amount of time if you test every variation you can think of. It is important to narrow your test down to a few key variables. Some of the most common areas for variations include:

• Headline
• Call to Action
• Layout

Create Page Variations

Each variable needs to have its own iteration of the landing page. Users will be sent randomly to a given iteration upon visiting the page.  Visitors are cookied so that if they were to return to the same page again, they would see the version originally assigned to them. Return visitors will never be left wondering why your page keeps changing.

View Results

It is important to keep your multivariate test live for a long enough period of time to receive a substantial sample size. Once your page has received enough visitors, you will be able to view the results of your tests. Different services record different information, but Pardot allows you to track views, conversions, conversion rate, and will automatically determine the best page  for you.

You may go through several stages of testing, manipulating different elements at different times to pinpoint the best headline, the most attractive layout, and the most compelling call to action. Though testing may take time, the payoff can be huge.

Nurturing leads to a sales-ready state can often be one of the most time consuming and tedious parts of the sales process. You need to worry about providing content that is relevant to a lead’s needs at that particular moment. You need to be able to stay in touch without coming on too strong. Most challenging of all, you need to be able to do this for hundreds of leads at once.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have all of that work taken care of for you? Your emails to leads would always be relevant, your sales pipeline would have fewer leaks, and you would have more time to focus on projects that matter, all without having to lift a finger. Sounds pretty good right? Well drip marketing campaigns do all of that and more for marketing and sales teams everyday.

Want a deeper look at drip marketing? Pardot has put together the infographic below to showcase just a piece of what you can do with drip campaigns. Review several popular types of drip campaigns, hone your skills with best practices, and see for yourself what a drip campaign can do with an illustrated example. Take a look!

Download this infographic.

I’d venture a guess that a majority of today’s marketers spend at least a portion of their day on Twitter. The microblogging site has become an invaluable tool for engaging with customers, listening in on conversations around your company, and keeping an eye on the marketing industry. However, with over 100,000 new tweets per minute (no seriously – that is the real statistic!) trying to glean useful marketing information from the network can be like drinking from a fire hose.

An easy way to categorize and organize all of this information is through hashtags. You’ve probably heard the term used liberally across the internet and seen it pop up in more than a few tweets, but what exactly are hashtags and how do we use them? We’ve put together a quick guide below to answer these questions.

What is a Hashtag?

Hashtags are unique identifying words or phrases, preempted by a pound sign (#), and spelled out with no spaces. These hashtags serve as unique identifiers to tie together conversations around a topic. For example, if I were to tweet out this article, I could add the hashtag #twittertips to have my tweet grouped with other helpful posts regarding twitter. You can search for hashtags in the twitter search bar or through services like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite.

Why use a Hashtag?

Using an appropriate hashtag can give your tweet added visibility after it’s posted. Your tweet will not only show up in your own activity feed, but also in the feed associated with a given hashtag. This gives you access to a relevant audience that may not have even been aware of your company.

Hashtags are pretty helpful, right? They can be a quick and easy way to widen your reach while staying focused on relevant topics and conversations. But before you get started, look at the best practices Pardot put together below to help you maximize your hashtag’s impact and keep you out of trouble:

Research the Hashtag
With thousands of new hashtags created every day, the odds are fairly good that a hashtag is already in use. Before adding a hashtag to your tweet, use search.twitter.com to see whether or not the hashtag is being used. Assess the hashtag’s use to see if it’s a conversation you would like your tweet to be included in. An overused hashtag may dilute your message through sheer numbers, so always be open to creating one of your own.

Keep it Relevant
If you’ve been creating content and engaging with your audience for any length of time, you hopefully have a good understanding of the keywords that are most relevant to your industry. Just as tagging your content with these keywords raises visibility to your target audience, tagging tweets with these keywords can get your posts in front of the right people.

Short and Sweet
Remember, the best and worst thing about twitter is that your message real estate is limited. With 140 characters, you don’t have a lot of room to add additional hashtags, so try to keep them reasonably sized. This will make it easier for you to work the hashtag into your tweets, and will make it more appealing for your audience to begin including the hashtag in their tweets as well.

You can download these tips and more in Pardot’s useful Best Practices Guide, featured below:

Hashtags can be a dead simple way to give your tweets some much needed visibility and to find new and relevant audiences. As long as you are careful about the process and follow the suggested best practices (you don’t want to end up like RIM!), you should see a rise in twitter engagement. All because of a simple addition that takes a matter of seconds!

Are you using hashtags? I would love to hear your thoughts and stories in the comments down below!

That is why I cringe every time I hear content marketing defined in terms of media types, such as eBooks, videos, and infographics. Not only are these definitions too narrow, they also ignore the key motivation behind content marketing: going beyond traditional “push” strategies to entice people to engage with your company on their own terms. Content marketing that is aimed at this goal, by definition, must be media agnostic.

Some of the most successful content marketers use their audience needs and interests as the starting point and then work backwards to create the content. Not only has this approach seen tremendous engagement from audiences, it has also been the catalyst to an unprecedented level of campaign creativity.

Below, I list a few of the strategies you can use to lead a creative evolution in your content, as well as a few standout examples.

Showcase your talents

No matter your industry, your company’s success hinges on the talent of your employees. In no field is this more true than with advertising agencies. Not only is employee talent a key factor for success, it is the product that agencies are selling. With this is mind, illustration agency Handsome Frank came up with an ingenious way of showcasing its product.

For a recent exhibition, the agency turned to its twitter followers for creative direction. Handsome Frank asked its followers to tweet creative briefs they would like to see the agency’s staff respond to. Each artist on the agency’s roster chose a project from the responses and used it as the basis for creating a unique work of art.

The agency received hundreds of tweets, inspiring a fascinatingly diverse exhibition. The accurately named “Tweet-A-Brief” exhibition, received rave reviews before closing this past July. Handsome Frank co-founder Jon Cockly says of the project, “The Tweet-a-Brief concept not only helped us to spread the agency’s name and make new friends and contacts, it really pushed our artists creatively, and it’s resulted in some of the best work they’ve ever produced.”

Takeaways: You don’t need to have a skilled team of artists at your disposal to create a showcase of talent that will drive customer interest. Your staff is already extremely talented and full of expertise on your products and industry, so why not use them as the focus of some of your content. For example:

• Give people an inside look at your work process by asking staffers to write an entry for your blog, or create a brief video.
• Show-off a fun side-project a department is working on
• Or, just showcase the wonderful people that work tirelessly behind the scenes by posting a brief, personalized profile of each staff member (like CMI did in the example below).

Get your audience involved

No, I’m not talking about crowdsourcing content from your audience to cut down on content costs. I’m talking about developing unique content ideas that allow people to interact with your company in unexpected and exciting ways.

Collaboration software company MindJet is an excellent example of companies that put this into practice. Mindjet is currently running its “Between Minds” content campaign, which they describe as, “an ongoing taxonomy of team dynamics.” The campaign focuses on a series of illustrations (created in collaboration with creative agency JESS3) that compare two types of people (such as East Coast vs. West Coast, or and Optimists vs. Pessimists). These illustrations are featured on the company blog, as well as being used as its cover photo on Facebook. The audience is encouraged to tag connections that they feel fit a particular group. Mindjet then publishes follow-up illustrations that include a few of those tagged on Facebook.

This campaign is ingenious for two reasons: The first is that Mindjet is creating a tremendous amount of social engagement from this campaign — increasing its visibility, making new connections, and strengthening its relationships. The second is that this campaign provides a fantastic introduction to the company’s products: Mindjet is a provider of collaboration software, and this campaign not only gets its audience talking about the dynamics of collaboration, it actually gets them involved in the collaborative process.

Takeaways: There are many ways to get more social with your content. For example:

• Give your existing channels a new dimension by encouraging audience input on content.
• Find topics that your audience is passionate about by tracking their comments on your social outposts, like Twitter and Facebook.
• Speaking of your outposts, start thinking of your social media pages as more than just content distribution centers by capitalizing on features such as liking, tagging, and sharing to get your audience engaged.

Think beyond the product

Almost all truly breakthrough content has one thing in common: It thinks beyond the product to focus on the audience itself. That’s the philosophy that led startup eyewear company WarbyParker to create a blog that focuses on much more than eyewear.

When it comes to brand building, Warby Parker has been anything but traditional. Founded with an eye toward working with non-profit organizations, the eyewear company has gone from relative unknown to one of the most admired brands in fashion. Considering this reputation, it might surprise you that the company’s blog doesn’t restrict its focus to its own company products and activities, nor does it even bear its own company name on the page.

“Zagg Pepper,” the Warby Parker blog, focuses on the lifestyle surrounding its product. Shirking the platform norm of WordPress, the blog is set up on Tumblr, with a heavy focus on images, which range from fashion items to illustrations. In an interview with Contently, social media manager Jen Rubio explained its approach: “I think it’s important for our blog to not be so promotional and to have a space where customers can see the things that inspire us.”

Takeaway: We have been conditioned for years to focus solely on product in our marketing campaigns, pushing our messages onto consumers. Content marketing is about a shift in this perspective. Focus on the interests, problems, and passions of your audience. When content is genuinely focused on helping its audience, purchase, loyalty, and advocacy will follow.

Great content is media agnostic, customer centric, and value focused. When content marketing is not bound to traditional media channels and focused purely on product, it frees up marketing departments to create truly creative campaigns. It is this unbridled creativity that not only drives breakthrough content, but real engagement from your audience.

Want more content marketing inspiration? Download our ultimate eBook with 100 content marketing examples.

Despite being one of the most familiar channels to marketers, email is also one of the most complex and can be notoriously hard to master. From subject lines to send times, there are hundreds of variables that affect the success or failure of a given email campaign. In a recent Pardot survey, respondents reported using email marketing for a number of different purposes as well. With so many elements to consider, email can be overwhelming for many marketers. It’s for this reason that we have created the infographic below to help marketers design successful campaigns quickly, by focusing on the steps that matter the most.

Download this infographic.

In a recent study of over 1,200 C-level executives, the Fournaise Group found that “80% of CEOs ‘admit they do not really trust and are not very impressed’ by their CMOs. That’s compared to the 90% of CEOs who say they do trust and value their CFOs and CIOs.”

Now, are all CMOs naturally dishonest underperformers? Probably not. The disconnect likely lies with the fact that CFOs and CIOs are more strongly tied to ROI and the bottom line than their marketing counterparts. The subjective nature of marketing has always made it difficult to tie campaigns to financial growth.

Fortunately for marketers, the industry is in the middle of a renaissance of sorts. Social media has given rise to more empowered consumers that respond only to inbound marketing that’s focused on value, rendering the large ad budgets of giant corporations less powerful and effectively leveling the playing field for all marketers. At the same time, marketing automation solutions are providing unprecedented access to true marketing ROI and campaign performance.

The New Age of Marketing

Inbound, not Outbound
The days of blasting your message to millions through high-priced advertisements are waning. The new consumer is social, well informed, and tech savvy. Paid advertising is not only glanced over by consumers, but is starting to escape their notice altogether. Your marketing tactics need to evolve with your consumers. Focus on inbound strategies that will build relationships with your customers. Create content that provides value by doing one of the following:

• solving a problem
• educating on a certain topic
• making life easier for your audience.

This content will also serve as the fuel for your content marketing engine by attracting, converting, and nurturing leads.

Close the Loop on Reporting
The uncertainty and error that have always prevented marketing from demonstrating concrete impact on revenue are becoming things of the past. Marketing automation solutions allow you to attribute a closed sale back to the campaign that originally brought that prospect in and the campaign that prompted them to convert. You can see the whole process illustrated in a recent Pardot snapshot. Accurate attribution allows marketers to demonstrate concrete ROI numbers, determine campaign effectiveness, and better understand the sales funnel.

Big Data Yields Big Results
With more data and analytics at the fingertips of marketers than ever before, we will start to see data driven decisions leading to:

• more accurate segmentation
• campaigns with more impact
• a better marketing mix
• and much more.

Marketers are an extremely adaptable class of professionals– with the rapid pace of technological innovation, they have to be. Marketers will begin to put their data from analytics and marketing automation services to work to sculpt more efficient, more accountable, and more trustworthy marketing departments than ever before.

What do you think of the Fournaise Group’s findings? Do you agree that marketing is on the verge of becoming a much more trusted department? Let us know what you think in the comments below!

For years, marketers have focused time and resources on building and sustaining a strong brand identity in hopes of creating a meaningful experience around their products. Branding was designed as a crutch to help marketers form real connections between customers and the otherwise cold and impersonal companies. And it has worked better than anyone could have expected. The most successful brands have added billions of dollars to their valuations, and to their bottom lines.
But the rise of more personal communication channels and the proliferation of internet access has made this early function of branding obsolete. Through content, you can now connect with your customers in a very real way: to tell your stories, learn about your customers, and form more enduring human relationships. This generation of more informed consumers not only expects this new form of engagement, but is able to see through the facade created by traditional branding strategies.

Branding for its own sake is no longer an advantage, but a liability.

A lot has been written lately about the downfall of branding in this new business environment that places so much esteem on genuine relationships — and with good reason. The concept of branding has certainly been thrown into flux over the past few years. However, I don’t believe branding and content strategy have become mutually exclusive. Savvy companies are slowly adapting their brand strategies to coexist with content strategies to increase the effectiveness of both.

To truly understand if your brand can elevate to these new customer expectations, you need to ask:

1. Does your brand truly represent the values of your company?
2. Do your customers believe your brand is genuine?
3. Is your brand creating the strong customer relationships?

If your brand falls short in any of these areas, your content strategy may be the best way to elevate your brand to a higher standard.

Below are two examples that offer valuable insight into ways to raise the bar for your brand and deliver better customer experiences, better products and services, and better returns through content.

Nike+

Nike has consistently been listed near the top of Interbrand’s list of the most valuable brands for years and is the archetype of pure product marketing. However, the company is setting their “Just do it” tagline aside to head in a more human direction. With their new Nike+ service, what started as an experimental initiative has turned into a company-redefining focus on customer-centric content.

“It used to be that when you bought a product, that was the end of the relationship… Now, the purchase of any Nike product needs to be the beginning of the relationship we have with the consumer,” Stefan Olander, VP of Digital Sport at Nike, explained at the Cannes Lions festival earlier this month.

Nike Fuelband, a product that tracks a user’s activity throughout the day, has spawned a whole new direction for the Nike+ brand. Nike+ sprung up around the data being collected by Fuelband users, and has grown exponentially. The company has started to use the platform to deliver customized content that’s focused on a user’s activity, fitness goals, and much more.

This personalized content has moved Nike from one of the most well-known product companies in the world to a customer-focused service provider.

Branding lesson: Your brand needs to stand for more than just your products themselves. Creating compelling brand content and experiences that benefit your customers will help you develop better solutions, better relationships and, in the case of Nike, dramatically disrupt your industry.

Starbucks

For much of the late ’90s and early 2000s, there were very few retailers that could rival Starbucks in terms of inaccessibility, impersonality, and cold capitalist reputation. The company expanded too rapidly, squandered its core competency, and sacrificed the customer experience. (And this is coming from someone who loves Starbucks!)

But today it is a different story. At the corporate level, we are seeing more measured decision-making since Howard Schultz retook the helm of Starbucks in 2008. The company has invested in smarter product development, focusing on brand values and, most importantly, developing a multichannel content strategy focused on redefining the relationship its customers have with the Starbucks brand.

Starbucks was one of the first large companies to adopt a customer-centric web strategy with sites like MyStarbucksIdea — an online forum for customers to share and discuss their ideas for improving the Starbucks experience — and engaging Twitter and Facebook accounts. My Starbucks Idea has generated hundreds of thousands of ideas and discussions about the company, as well as a stronger sense of ownership in the brand itself.

Today, Starbucks remains a standout example of how companies can craft meaningful experiences and use social media to give customers a voice. Starbucks is constantly expanding its content channels and exploring new formats to connect with its customers. I believe it is also one of the best companies out there when it comes to the use of video to tell its brand story. The company’s YouTube channel has over 250 videos that focus on the company’s values, give “behind the scenes” insight, and share customer’s personal experiences.

In his book Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time, Schultz shared his theory that, “mass advertising can help build brands, but authenticity is what makes them last. If people believe they share values with a company, they will stay loyal to the brand.” His bet on authentic content has paid off in a big way, and Starbucks remains one of the most valuable companies and brands.

Branding lesson: The easiest way to give your brand a real personality is by telling real stories. Give your customers a voice. Show the world what your company is all about. Your customers will recognize and appreciate the transparency and help to start reshaping your brand.

As customers continue to push for more genuine experiences and the strategies of larger companies like Nike and Starbucks become more mainstream, I would expect to see the branding conversation elevate to a more honest, and ultimately more effective level.

Want more content marketing inspiration? Download our ultimate eBook with 100 content marketing examples.

In its 5 year run, AMC’s hit show Mad Men has both glamorized and misrepresented the advertising and marketing industry. Though the drama and intrigue has made the show a must-watch for millions of avid viewers, the TV show depicts an advertising and marketing profession that is far removed from the marketers we know today.

Marketing has been forced to change and adapt alongside changing technologies and evolving consumer tastes. Better informed and more engaged consumers have compelled marketers to change strategies from pushing marketing messages out to audiences, to pulling them in with valuable content, personal contact via social media, and personalized sales experiences via marketing automation.

The infographic below from Pardot illustrates just how the advances in technology, communication, and strategy have led to a modern day marketer that the 1960s Mad Men would find almost unrecognizable.

Download this infographic.

Google Now is designed to automatically present the information you need throughout the day – even before you ask for it. Based on the initial demonstrations, Google Now dramatically raises the bar on personalized technology. The results were impressive: from providing relevant sports scores to routing around heavy traffic for your morning commute. See the product in action below:

Google Now is firmly aimed at consumer use, but serves as a great example of how you should be nurturing your leads and how dramatic the impact of timely and actionable information can be.

Data Driven
Google Now tries to organize your life by presenting information Google thinks you’ll need at a specific moment, in a context that it hopes you’ll find useful. This insight is based on the information Google has collected on how you use their various services, including search, calendar and email.

When it comes to nurturing your leads, your strategy needs to be driven by data in the same way as Google Now. Services like Pardot allow you to track the activity of a prospect on your site, providing insight into consumer behavior and buying patterns. You should use this information to provide only the most relevant information to your prospects.

Highly Personalized
Google Now would be nothing new if it sent the same updates in bulk to all of its users — its true value lies in the highly personalized nature of the information it is providing. Google has access to detailed information about your interests and they are putting that information to work.

Just as no one would be moved by a mass, impersonal update sent to all Google users, no one is going to be excited to receive a generic marketing email from your company. Use your data on a prospect’s behavior to provide information personalized to their needs. If you are using an automated email service, use dynamic fields and variable tags to address readers by their names and provide customized content.

Ultra Timely
For me, the biggest selling point of Google Now is the timeliness of the information it provides. Having the information you need, provided to you before you even ask is truly incredible (albeit a bit creepy). Google Now will put a personal assistant in every Android user’s pocket.

You need to approach your lead nurturing in the same way. You should focus less on being a salesperson and more on being a personal assistant to your prospects, always there at the right time to help them through the buying process. Drip campaigns allow you to automate this process by providing information to prospects only after a certain period of time or after a certain action is taken.

As companies become better at utilizing the troves on consumer data available to them, our interactions with these companies will become highly personalized. While the debate over privacy and consumer tracking rages on, it is near impossible to deny the benefit of a more personalized nurturing and sales process. Use the data available to you to create a highly personalized and timely experience for your leads.

The Guardian recently called it the “Holy Grail of digital campaigning.” Huffington Post is calling it “ingenious” and “a game-changer.”

Whether it lives up to the hype or not has yet to be seen, but the Obama campaign’s new digital tool, simply called The Dashboard, is receiving a lot of media attention. It’s being viewed as a major evolution of the volunteer organizing process for political campaigns.

As more and more details are released, this game-changing new tool may start to sound familiar to some B2B marketers. Early reports portrayed Dashboard as a comprehensive database of volunteer activity. Any visitor who registers on the campaign’s website is automatically included in the Dashboard database. Campaign organizers have access to registrant location, skill sets, and even their social media data. This allows organizers to know exactly which volunteers to tap for specific initiatives.

Sound familiar? If you’re a marketing automation user, it should. Dashboard is a marketing automation platform.

Obviously, Dashboard is not geared towards marketing in the same manner as marketing automation, but it serves many of the same basic functions. Let’s take a look:

Better Understand Your Leads
While traditional political campaigns rely on volunteer sign-ups on a per-event basis, Dashboard is capturing volunteer information once, at the point of registration, and using volunteers’ digital footprints to pull in additional information. This benefits both organizers and volunteers by only requiring registration once and building in-depth profiles of volunteers to ensure that they’re used in the most relevant way possible.

Marketing Equivalent: Like Dashboard, marketing automation solutions use landing pages and forms to capture lead information. They pull in relevant information like location, job title, company, and social profiles. This allows automation solutions to grade your leads so you can determine the best opportunities to pursue.

Only Focus on the Best Leads
In past campaigns, supervisors and organizers would have to invest an immense amount of time and effort to track down qualified volunteers. Dashboard automates this process for organizers, saving time and valuable resources.

For example, if a supervisor needs four volunteers to go door-to-door before a last minute rally, he or she can look at Dashboard to find out which volunteers have significant door-to-door experience. No need to ask each volunteer in the database. The supervisor can simply find his or her qualified volunteers and ask them to put on their walking shoes.

Marketing Equivalent: Similarly, marketing automation solutions allow sales reps to identify the leads that best match their criteria for company size, annual revenue, industry and other relevant criteria. This can save you time and make your sales cycle more efficient.

Comprehensive Reporting
The value of a system like Dashboard goes well beyond organization. The Obama camp has been reluctant to release details of the platform beyond volunteer organization, but it seems like a safe bet that the platform will have robust reporting capabilities as well.

The Guardian reports that the information gathered by a volunteer at the community level will be immediately synced with campaign data from across the country and online. This sort of data recording will give the Obama campaign leaders insight into the re-election efforts in staggering detail.

Marketing Equivalent: Marketing automation solutions like Pardot are designed to provide a level of reporting and ROI that marketers have always dreamed of. By providing closed-loop reporting on each prospect, you can get a better insight into campaign performance than ever before.

While it is too soon to tell how Dashboard will impact the 2012 presidential campaign, it certainly seems poised to turn traditional campaign management on its head. Dashboard also marks an interesting point in the development of marketing automation solutions. The principles that have made it such a success for businesses are becoming attractive to those outside the business world. Although marketing automation is still in its infancy, it seems only a matter of time before it too is labeled the holy grail of digital campaigns.

While content marketing has only recently exploded onto the business scene, many people have been making careers out of producing content for years. Kanye West is one of those people.

As a successful musician, music producer, film director, and fashion designer, Kanye has perfected the art of crafting content that sells. Although the artist has become increasingly private in recent years, we were able to gain insight into his content creation process and expertise on the most intimate level: through his tweets.

It’s probably no surprise that Kanye West has a lot to say on his Twitter account, but we’ve sifted through hundreds of tweets to find a few valuable insights into content strategy. Here are just a few of the 140 character content lessons we gleaned from Kanye:

Aesthetics matter:

She asked when is fashion week…. uuuum…I thought it was every week??!!

— Kanye West (@kanyewest) August 31, 2010

Kanye takes pride in always looking his best. You need to take the same approach in your content strategy. Your consumers are exposed to hundreds of pieces of content every day, and the pieces that most often draw their attention are those that are well designed and appealing. Make sure your content can not only catch the eye of your audience, but hold their attention.

Create standards:

Tell everyone at the label only use Gothic or Helvetic fonts for email blast unless I otherwise approve

— Kanye West (@kanyewest) August 4, 2010

As you begin to produce more content in varying forms and for different channels, it is important that your audience is able to distinguish which content is yours. Create a standardized format for your content, from a general color palette all the way down to the fonts that can be used. In addition to making your content more recognizable, content standards will help streamline your creation process.

Work with what you have:

I know this is not a very rapper thing to say but I haven’t bought a new car or piece of jewelry in about 2 years… — Kanye West (@kanyewest) January 5, 2012

Just as Kanye is making the most out of the cars and jewelry he already has, you too can get more out of your existing content. Any large piece of content can, and should, be used to create smaller pieces to multiply that content’s impact. Convert your white papers into multiple blog posts, podcasts, or even an infographic. Get the most out of the resources you already have. Also, don’t be afraid to reuse older content. Just because a blog post is a month old, that doesn’t mean it’s no longer relevant.

Make it Visible:

Hard to be humble when you stunting on a jumbotron

— Kanye West (@kanyewest) February 6, 2011

Kanye knows that the bigger the stage, the greater the exposure. It’s your job to create the stage for your content. Share your content on your blog, social networks, and other industry news sites. Exposure acts as a multiplier for the effectiveness of your content. The more people that view your content, the better that content will serve your overall goals, whether it’s thought leadership, site traffic, or lead generation.

This was the scene on Saturday at the Red Bull Soapbox race in Piedmont Park here in Atlanta. A crowd of almost 50,000 turned out to see the latest installment in Red Bull’s ongoing tour of exciting — and often unconventional — sporting events.

Although the energy drink maker still has only one core product, Red Bull spends millions each year on signature events like Saturday’s soapbox race. With a majority share in a multi-billion dollar industry (and growing!), one certainly can’t argue with the results of their strategy.

Red Bull has these large scale events down to a science. Although entirely consumer-facing, Red Bull has a few great lessons to teach B2B marketers about crafting content that generates crowds of excited fans and devout followers.

Know Your Audience

Although Red Bull’s events can often seem a little random or unusual, I guarantee that they are carefully vetted and selected by the Red Bull marketing team. As I looked around at my fellow spectators on Saturday, many of them were young adults and 20-somethings with their families. In other terms, Red Bull’s prime demographic. Red Bull has clearly zeroed-in on which events will bring their target market in to engage with the brand.

Content Lesson: Truly great content will garner interest regardless of the topic. But that interest will do your business no good unless it is from your target audience. Make sure you fully understand your audience and what type of content they will be most interested in. Combining great content creation with an idea or event that interests your target market is a home run for a B2B marketer.

Make it Fun

Whether you are at Red Bull’s recent cliff diving competition or their annual Flugtag event, one thing is certain: it’s going to be fun and exciting. Red Bull has gone to great lengths to associate their brand with the most extreme, exciting and interesting sports the world has to offer. This has allowed them to stand out from their ever-growing number of competitors and breed a loyal following.

Content Lesson: The proliferation of video and infographics in recent years is not a coincidence. Your audience is exposed to thousands of pieces of content every day, many of which are more interesting than your most recent buyers guide. This doesn’t mean you need to abandon your case studies or white papers–they’re both still valuable–but you should be making a concerted effort to make your content stand out from the rest of the pack. Explore more visual channels like infographics or video and rework your existing content to be more exciting and compelling.

Promote, Promote, Promote

I spent much of the race in awe of Red Bull’s promotional process. From television commercials to street light banners, they took every possible opportunity to get the word out about their event.

Content Lesson: Shamelessly promote your content wherever you can. The more visible you can make your content, the better it will serve your goals. Post on your social media outlets, seek out industry influencers and submit it to thought-leading blogs in your industry. Great content is nothing without great exposure.

While a consumer-facing brand like Red Bull may seem like an unlikely role model for B2B marketers, we can learn a lot from the promotional juggernaut. Follow the above suggestions and you can bring the excitement and energy to your content that Red Bull injects into each one of their marketing initiatives.

There have been dozens of post dedicated  to making your landing pages successful and how to avoid common landing page mistakes. Pardot has assembled these posts and other resources into a comprehensive infographic to help you create a landing page that will take your lead generation to the next level. Take a look:

For more on landing pages, check out Pardot’s Best Practices Guide to Landing Pages or 8 Quick Steps to Double Your B2B Conversions (registration required).

Embed The Complete Guide to Successful Landing Pages on your site: copy and paste the code below.

<img src=”http://www2.pardot.com/landing-pages-infographic” width=”600″>
<p>The Complete Guide to Successful Landing Pages – An infographic by the team at <a href=”http://www.pardot.com/blog/”>Pardot Marketing Automation</a></p>

As marketers, we work hard. There’s no doubt about it. We put in the long hours, do the work, and we love it. But once we leave the office, we need to relax. Many of us have our own routines, but after we are finished with our evening run, playing with the kids or preparing dinner, most of us wind down in the same place — in front of the TV. After a day spent writing, worrying, strategizing and planning, television is a welcome break. We can let the information and entertainment wash over us without having to actively engage. We are just passive participants in an incredibly diverse set of evening options. However, this doesn’t mean we can’t benefit from our evening routines.There are several shows on the air now that not only play into our interests as marketers, but also have valuable lessons for us to learn. So sit back, relax and take a look at a few shows you may want to check out:

Mad Men

This is probably the most obvious pick for this list so I figured we should just get it out of the way. Despite being based in the 50’s and 60’s, Mad Men still exhibits many of the fundamentals of marketing that will never change. Don Draper and company are always striving to be original and create advertising that truly resonates with their audience. You should be doing the same everyday with your marketing.

The Pitch If you could look inside some of the world’s most innovative agencies once a week and learn how they operate and generate breakthrough ideas, you would right? Well that’s what AMC offers with their show, The Pitch. In the new show, two agencies compete to win a new client by going head-to-head in a cut-throat, winner-takes-all showdown. It’s a surefire way to get your creative juices flowing and get excited to take your marketing to the next level.

TechStars Created by Bloomberg, TechStars allows you to watch the grueling process of building a business from the ground up in an elite startup boot camp. Guided by top names in tech (Google, Microsoft, Twitter and more), startups are judged every step of the way. Even if you don’t work for a startup, the lessons learned by contestants and the wisdom imparted by the judges each week resonate with all marketers.

Shark Tank ABC’s Shark Tank continues to grow in popularity as startups and entrepreneurs become the rockstars of the business world. The show focuses on entrepreneurs looking to attract venture capitalists and investors for equity in their company. It is a great way to tune into disruptive ideas, overcoming obstacles and marketing a product in the current market. So next time you spend an evening relaxing in front of the TV, don’t feel guilty. You can learn valuable marketing lessons or find inspiration for that project you’ve been stuck on- you just need to watch the right shows.

Did we miss your favorite show? Something you think should be added to this list? Let us know! We’d love to hear about it (and watch it!).

Just over a week ago, Oracle purchased Vitrue, a social relationship management service. Salesforce.com quickly countered by purchasing Buddy Media, a social enterprise company. Not to be outdone, Oracle finalized terms for a second acquisition of Collective Intellect, a social intelligence company. In total, the past week has seen well over a billion dollars in social acquisitions.

The recent surge in acquisitions has finally brought a social CRM within reach. Let’s take a look at the acquisitions that have moved both companies to this point:

Many of the past year’s acquisitions have already been productized, but the most recent acquisitions will take some time to be fully integrated into each platform. As two of the largest CRMs, Oracle and salesforce.com are likely to set a trend for competitors like Microsoft Dynamics and SugarCRM. Expect to see several more acquisitions in the next few months.

Marketing automation solutions like Pardot have been building robust social integration into their products for years in anticipation of a more social CRM and sales process. In the near future, expect to have more impact and influence over your social networks than ever before .

We are the midst of a very exciting time for sales enablement technologies. What do you think of this recent string of acquisitions? Are you excited to see your CRM become more social? Let us know!

Download this infographic.

Embed “The Social CRM Arms Race: A Timeline” on your site: copy and paste the code below.

<img src="http://www2.pardot.com/socialCRMinfographic" width="600">
<p>The Social CRM Arms Race: A Timeline - An infographic by the team at <a href="http://www.pardot.com/blog/">Pardot Marketing Automation</a></p>