Ruth P. Stevens consults on customer acquisition and retention, teaches marketing at Columbia Business School and is a guest blogger at Biznology. Crain’s BtoB magazine named Ruth one of the 100 Most Influential People in Business Marketing. She is the author of Maximizing Lead Generation: The Complete Guide for B2B Marketers, and Trade Show and Event Marketing. Ruth serves as a director of Edmund Optics, Inc., the HIMMS Media Group, and the Business Information Industry Association. She also serves as a mentor to fledgling companies at the ERA business accelerator in New York City. She has held senior marketing positions at Time Warner, Ziff-Davis, and IBM and holds an MBA from Columbia University.
by Ruth Stevens - I am adding my voice to the chorus of observers who predict various developments in 2019 for B2B marketing. My…
by Ruth Stevens - I’m always running around saying how much I enjoy B2B marketing, because it’s complex, high ticket, and the results can…
by Ruth Stevens - There’s a lot of talk in the B2B world about what we can learn from consumer marketers. We need to…
by Ruth Stevens - Having been happily self-employed for half my marketing career, I hesitate to give career advice. But when asked, I have…
by Ruth Stevens - Some marketers seem to keep their distance from customer data. When I ask what kind of customer information they are…
by Ruth Stevens - I’ve been noticing some ironies in the world of B2B marketing lately; you know what I mean. When the common…
by Ruth Stevens - I’ve long observed that B2B marketers focus too much on lead generation, and not enough on current customer expansion and…
by Ruth Stevens - End-of-the-year predictions are a dangerous business. I will take the risk and just hope that at the end of 2018,…
by Ruth Stevens - Everyone is aware that B2B buying is complex. It involves multiple parties over long decision-making cycles. In a large enterprise,…
by Ruth Stevens - There are so many great new techniques in B2B marketing today, it’s hard to keep up. I hereby offer a…
by Ruth Stevens - What metrics do you use to define digital marketing success today? Clicks? Traffic? Followers? Leads? Sales? ROI? Notice what these…
by Ruth Stevens - As marketing advances, most professionals are well aware by now of the importance of retention and reactivation in optimizing the…
by Ruth Stevens - Marketers put a lot of effort into campaign planning, but sometimes their data selection comes as an afterthought. They may…
by Ruth Stevens - Marketers looking to acquire new customers, or generate sales leads, typically rely on outside data providers for lists and contact…
by Ruth Stevens - B2B selling is a complicated affair, but you can simplify your marketing strategies dramatically with buying process analysis. This means…
by Ruth Stevens - I was teaching B2B digital marketing in Buenos Aires this month, and found some of my students to be dismayed…
by Ruth Stevens - Most brands and companies today have some sort of social media presence. Even in industrial and technical sectors, Twitter and…
by Ruth Stevens - Good news: B2B prospecting data is more accurate than you may think. Business marketers are always complaining about their customer…
by Ruth Stevens - Most B2B lead generation campaigns involve multiple touches via multiple media channels. But how do you decide which media are…
by Ruth Stevens - Content is king, to be sure. But how did we end up on this crazy treadwheel, cranking out B2B content…
by Ruth Stevens - The Millennial generation has been out in the workforce for a while now, and this cohort is now entering the…
by Ruth Stevens - When planning a B2B lead generation program, you need to deliver leads to your sales team at an affordable price.…
by Ruth Stevens - Have you noticed how so many B2B companies seem to be running their own proprietary conferences these days? I can’t…
by Ruth Stevens - For us B2B marketers, the world is changing about as fast as we can stand. My head spins at the…
by Ruth Stevens - Ask any business marketer about the importance of data, and you’ll get plenty of good answers. “It’s essential,” they’ll say.…
by Ruth Stevens - Data drives B2B marketing today, and it’s a fast-evolving arena. New tools, new technologies, and most importantly, new buying behavior…
by Ruth Stevens - Business-to-business data continues to challenge marketers, who need to identify and communicate with customers and prospects, but who run into…
by Ruth Stevens - Business-to-business marketers are plagued by data problems. Business data is complex and fast-changing. Customers interact with us through a variety…
by Ruth Stevens - Finding new customers is a lot easier these days, what with innovative, digitally based ways to capture and collect data.…
by Ruth Stevens - Some B2B marketers know exactly what accounts are in their target market. What a luxury! These marketers can eliminate the…
by Ruth Stevens - I heard an arresting comment at the LeadsCon conference in New York in August. The speaker claimed that inside sales…
by Ruth Stevens - I thought it was widely understood by now that staying in touch with a prospect who has shown some interest…
Join over 100,000 of your peers and receive our weekly newsletter which features the top trends, news and expert analysis to help keep you ahead of the curve