Trust is a Gift Only Your Customer Can Bestow. Take the Trust Gap Quiz.
Without your customer’s deep and abiding trust, a long-term relationship simply is not possible. It’s on top of confidence in your technology’s ability to deliver today’s goods. It is trust in you, the people that comprise your company, that sets the direction and...
Why Your Product Is Invisible to Buyers (Even If It’s Really Good)
This article explores why companies with genuinely good products but low brand awareness remain invisible to their ideal buyers, and what to do about it. It covers nine specific reasons companies stay unknown, including insufficient marketing budget, no analyst...
Trade Shows Can Be Revolutionary. Wait. What?
Booths matter less than people. At trade shows, the human connection is what makes a brand stand out, remain memorable, and lead to short- and long-term revenue. I love a good trade show. Meet. Greet. Profit. Repeat. Right? For a long time, trade shows have been...
The Top 5 L&D Trade Shows to Boost Your Business Success
I love a good trade show. I even love the slow parts of a good trade show. Honestly, I love the bad trade shows, too. I’ve asked myself often, why do I love trade shows even during the frantic organizing time, the hectic set-up time, the slow traffic time on the...
Your Future Profitability Requires Customer Trust. Here’s How To Earn It.
Trust is the dominant success factor in creating lasting customer relationships. Trust is the soil that grows customer lifetime value – the metric that means money. The more your customers trust you, the greater your profitability potential. Trust is required to...
Make ‘Em Laugh: The Power of Humor in B2B Marketing
"Make 'em laugh, make 'em laugh. Don't you know everyone wants to laugh?" Those are the first two lines of the show-stopping, song-and-dance performance by the inimitable, absolutely brilliant, impressively physical Donald O’Connor in the classic musical Singin’ in...
Why your B2B marketing strategy should start with a story that builds trust
In B2B marketing, trust is the real product — and storytelling is how you earn it. Here’s why every strategy should start with a story. By Scott Hornstein. These observations and recommendations are based on over 40 years of marketing consulting over many business...
How One Pillar Page Can Do the Work of 50 Blogs (and Transform Your SEO)
Summary A pillar page is a single, comprehensive guide on a core topic. It's the kind of page that ties all your expertise together. It’s the difference between being one voice in the crowd and becoming the go-to authority in your field. Done right, a pillar page...
The Stealth Ninja Sabotaging Your Emails
The stealth ninja of email marketing isn’t bad subject lines, boring copy, or weak calls-to-action. You could master all of those – craft irresistible subject lines, design gorgeous templates, segment lists with precision – and still find nothing but silence in your...
Why Your Perfect ICP Could Still Say “No” (and the Overlooked Factor That Says Yes)
The Point We Miss When We Only Chase ICPs An Ideal Customer Profile is like a compass. It tells you where to head. Company size, industry, tech stack, budget – all useful. But here’s the twist: two companies can look identical on paper and still make opposite buying...
The Hidden Gold Mine You’re Probably Ignoring: Past Customer Champions
If you’ve been in B2B for more than five minutes, you’ve probably had this happen. A customer loves your product. I mean really loves it. They sing your praises in meetings, they use your name like it’s a magic spell in budget discussions, and when someone complains...
Your Website Won’t Matter in 2 Years. Here’s What Will.
Wait—What Do You Mean My Website Won’t Matter? Okay, maybe not completely irrelevant. But let’s be honest: the role of your website in the B2B buyer journey is changing—fast. Not long ago, someone needed a new CRM, ERP, HRIS, or [insert your product here]. They’d...
How to increase your yield of qualified leads by 10-20%
Here’s how to make your prospecting a lot more productive. Marketing’s job is to spin gold from straw. The problem is, there’s less gold coming out of the loom than any of us would like, especially Sales. Good straw = gold. Mediocre straw = fool’s gold. Qualified...
Why Most Marketers Have Ditched PRWeb—And What They’re Doing Instead
Five or ten years ago, paying to distribute press releases was pretty standard fare. Most B2B marketing teams had a budget line for it. But today? Not so much. In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to find many modern marketing teams still going all-in on press release...
The Marketing Playbook for Custom Training Content Providers
Companies in the United States spend enormous sums on employee training – over $340 billion globally per year – fueling a highly competitive corporate learning industry. For providers of custom course development (e-learning and instructor-led training), the challenge...
How to Grow a Massive Audience for Your LinkedIn Newsletter
Learn how to grow your LinkedIn newsletter organically with smart content, timing, and engagement tactics—no ads or paid boosts needed. A LinkedIn newsletter can grow far more engagement than the same content on a standalone blog. In one case, an article on a website...
The whole world is changing. B2B marketing, not so much. Here’s a swift kick in the pants to get us going.
It is raining great buckets of technology. It is filling the rivers of innovation and forever changing the landscape of business. In the face of all this innovation, a modern B2B marketing strategy can no longer hide under an umbrella—we need to get wet and get in the...
eBook: Go-To-Market Strategies: The Secret Sauce Behind Learning Tech Products That Take Off
Market Overview: A Crowded Learning Tech Landscape Learning technology is a crowded space, with numerous platforms (LMS, LCMS, LXP) and service providers all vying for the same enterprise buyers. Compounding the challenge, only a small fraction of companies are...
When It Finally Clicked: The Day I Let Go of “Good Enough” Leads
I still remember the moment it clicked. I was on a sales call with a potential customer and was discussing a redesign for their omnichannel ads and social media. On paper, they looked like a perfect customer for us: right industry, good budget, and had some interest....
INFOGRAPHIC: 🔧 Build Your Learning Tech Marketing Engine
5 Proven Strategies to Drive Growth Without Wasting Budget Let’s face it — Marketing for learning technology can feel like a race with no finish line. So many tools. So many tactics. So many competitors shouting at full volume. If your team is being asked to do more...
Don’t Waste Another Dollar: 5 Marketing Strategies That Actually Work in Learning Tech
It’s Noisy Out There, Isn’t It? Let’s be real — the Learning Tech space is crowded. Some say there are over 1500 Learning Management Systems alone! There are certainly thousands of tools out there, all shouting for attention. And if you’re a newer, fast-growing brand?...
When You’re Getting Plenty of Leads … But Nothing’s Converting
Sound familiar? You’re running the campaigns, seeing downloads, and watching your CRM fill up with new contacts. But somehow, those leads are not converting and never quite seem to make it to the finish line. They ghost you. They fizzle out. Or they just weren’t a fit...
Profitability Starts with Identifying Your Ideal Customer Profile – ICP
Make no mistake, you are in a race to B2B profitability. You and your competitors are neck and neck. You need something extra to emerge from the pack: Your ICP. Your technology will only give you the lead for a few laps, until another company pulls ahead. And they...
Finding Your Authentic Brand Voice
How to Keep Your Company’s Messaging Consistent (With a Little Help from AI) by Scott Hornstein, Barbara Sanner & Gordon Johnson The late Lester Wunderman was known for many things, including saying the following about B2C marketing, “I am loyal to my family; I am...
5 Referral Hacks to Bring in More High-Value Customers
Your best leads don’t come from cold outreach, paid ads, or content marketing. They come from customer referrals. No other lead source comes close. When a client gives you a referral, they’re usually doing it because there’s a real opportunity—and the company they’re...
15 Ways to Make Your Marketing Stand Out in an AI-Driven World
In a world flooded with AI-generated content, buyers have become experts at tuning out the noise. While AI has brought efficiency and scale to marketing, it’s also made it more impersonal, leaving a gap for marketers who value authenticity. Human-centered marketing...
This Would be a Great Business if it Weren’t for all Those Annoying Customers
The first in our series of blogs on the key pillars of Human-Centered Marketing Honestly, I don’t believe most businesses care a whit about customer satisfaction (customer sat). Maybe if it was an app. A whit is a small tiny part of something larger; e.g., he...
Humans are the Stewards of a Brand’s Soul: 5 Tips to Stay Authentic while using AI in Marketing
As the use of AI in marketing continues to rise, so does the concern around maintaining authenticity. AI tools, particularly Generative AI (GenAI), are fast becoming indispensable in automating tasks, generating content, and analyzing data. However, there's growing...
Customer Satisfaction is the Pulse of Your Profitability
Here’s What’s Driving It, and How You Get in the Driver’s Seat Ah, Customer Satisfaction. The soft metric that bites hard. Especially in B2B, as we are not blessed with oceans of prospects and customers. Long-term B2B success is inextricably tied to the human...
A Novel Concept: Human-Centered Marketing in the Age of AI
Move from impersonal, AI-driven B2B marketing to authentic, human-centered strategies that build trust and foster genuine relationships with your prospects. Move Beyond Impersonal Marketing Marketers are now grappling with the challenge of finding an alternative...
Put a Face with Your Name: Personalizing B2B Emails
Every business works on building its brand with their audience. Whether you’re building from the ground up, with a new audience, or reinforcing it with your existing audience, it’s important to create a connection to your brand. Connections can be anything, from...
AI’s Competitive Advantage is Not What You Think
Generative AI's strategic advantage for B2B marketing lies in its ability to provide an authentic, human touch amidst a technology-focused environment. Generative AI presents B2B marketers with a rather unique opportunity – to establish an unassailable competitive...
Marketing L&D isn’t funny. But should it be?
Is there room for humor in the marketing of training, or for that matter, L&D (Learning & Development)? Or is that a bridge too far? Not a lot of humor going around. Maybe it’s time to rethink. It’s not about telling jokes We think humor is basic to human...
3 Plays to Boost Marketing Performance Now
https://youtu.be/hFq8yTYg4z0?si=M89aax13BUjjbosk Watch this on-demand webinar to see the three best marketing plays to boost marketing performance for your L&D or training company. We’ve tied them up in a nice bow for easy viewing. Check it out! In this post,...
Email Marketing: 4 Proven Steps to Increase Your ROI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOPL0KBX6EA&t=65s Check out Barbara Sanner's video to learn the four proven steps to increase email marketing ROI. In the past, managing our email inbox was a breeze. Now, it can be time-consuming and frustrating to keep up with all...
Account Based Marketing (ABM): Create Your Next, Best Customer
https://youtu.be/bC7Kj8GOdS4?si=iXC1U0qvE8UmayjS Check out Scott Hornstein's ten minute video to learn how ABM (Account-Based Marketing) will create your next, best customer. EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is being republished with permission from MarTech is Marketing....
The B2B Marketing Strategy Everyone Misses but You Can’t Afford To
https://youtu.be/hHtIJQYK3yw?si=wDwY9jkXS-in-jUh Customer Marketing is by far my favorite B2B marketing strategy. But sadly, it’s also the most overlooked by most marketing professionals! I have yet to walk into a company that had a proactive strategy for customer...
How to Grow a Training Business: Marketing Solutions for Your 5 Biggest Challenges
By Gordon Johnson Last month, we reached out to training company owners to get insights into the hurdles they encounter while trying to grow their businesses and the marketing strategies that prove effective for them. Here's a rundown of the top five takeaways gleaned...
Mastering Content Marketing: How One eBook Can Be Your Game Changer
To survive in the learning tech marketplace, you have to produce lots of free content to attract search engines and buyers to your website. But content marketing is extremely time-consuming and without a long term plan, it can consume all your resources. There is one...
The Guide to Supercharging Content Marketing with Generative AI
By embracing AI strategically and staying at the forefront of technological advancements, you can unlock the power of Generative AI and propel your content marketing efforts to new heights of success.
Developing Content with Generative AI: Expert Panel Insights
The rapid growth and development of artificial intelligence have birthed a subfield that’s reshaping content creation as we know it: generative AI.
5 Steps to Remove the “Scary” from Trade Show Selection
I've worked a lot of trade shows during my career, and I've been lucky to be in the booth when there was a long line of people waiting to talk to us. But I’ve also been in the booth where it feels like the show will never end. Most people fear the latter: waiting in...
The customer is not a moron. She’s your wife.
Selling training begins with respecting the customer. Thus, David Ogilvy, tycoon, founder of Ogilvy & Mather, known as the “Father of Advertising” threw shade on the marketing and ad practices of the 1950’s. He argued that the customer should be seen as...
Do Learning Engagement and Retention Suffer as Screens Get Smaller?
Each delivery of content, whether ILT, VILT, eLearning, video, pdf, or song and dance, whether on a laptop, tablet, smartphone, or IMAX, must deliver a unique and satisfying learning experience. Without that, there is no consumption, learning engagement, or retention.
Maximizing AI for Content Marketing Success in Training and Learning Tech Companies
To get good answers from AI, you need to ask the right questions.
10 Ways to Grow Your Training Business without Spending a Dime on Marketing
Years ago, the president of a small software training company asked if it was possible to grow a training business without spending any money on marketing. My gut reaction was simply, “No way!” However, knowing that wasn’t an appropriate answer, I gave it more thought...
5 Easy Steps for Home-Grown SEO
How to dramatically increase qualified traffic to your website, without spending a dime We’d like to suggest a minimal effort that can bring big traffic to your website. It’s called a Super Extraordinary Opportunity, or SEO. Most know this as Search Engine...
Marketing Tip #9: Every Email Must Add Value
Originally published on www.elearningindustry.com LMS eMail marketing is worth your time, for sure. But how do you do it in a positive way, so you don't annoy buyers and diminish your brand? 9 Tips for Using Email Marketing the Right Way LMS Email marketing is...
Marketing Tip #6: Spend 50% of Your Marketing Time on Your Value Proposition
A winning marketing strategy is built around a solid LMS value proposition. Is your message unique, compelling and believable? Are you giving customers solutions to their problems or features of your product? In this article I’ll share tips to craft targeted messaging...
Marketing Tip #7: Analyst Relations – The Best Word of Mouth
Although customer word-of-mouth is important, don't forget about LMS analyst relations. It's crucial to ally with industry analysts who can help you get the word out quickly. LMS Analyst Relations is a Critical Marketing Strategy The best marketers I know spend a...
6 Keys to Successful Tech Marketing in Europe
Originally published on www.learninglight.com Most of my first two years of LMS marketing in Europe were spent beating my head against a wall. I knew it would be hard, and different from marketing to US buyers, so I went in with an open mind and tried to not assume...
Infographic: 10 Ways to Grow Your Training Business without Spending a Dime on Marketing
Top 10 things to do with no marketing budget: Can you really make a training business grow without spending a dime on marketing? Some of the best marketing ideas I've come across didn't cost a thing. Plus, it's a good idea to start with these free methods because they...
How to Use Win-Loss Analysis to Grow Your LMS Business
Originally published at www.elearningindustry.com A Q&A with Win-Loss Expert Jen Berkley Jackson A typical LMS vendor loses many more deals than they win. And often, you have no idea why, and may not even know who you were up against. To learn from these losses,...
Know Thy Prospect. Know Thy Customer.
How using voice of customer and understanding the corporate training buyer persona will change your game By Scott Hornstein Originally published on http://www.hornsteinassociates.com/. The marketplace for professional learning is crowded and supremely competitive, but...
How ABM Can Give Professional Training Companies An Edge That Few Others Have
Originally published on http://www.hornsteinassociates.com/. If you are a for-profit learning marketer, ABM has to be an essential part of your marketing mix. The practical application of ABM (Account Based Marketing) is the penetration of a targeted client. To wit –...
The Best Trade Show Booths at the ATD Expo: LMS & Learning Platforms
A lot of time and resources go into exhibiting at a trade show. Everyone wants to get it right and show a return. But what does it take? Is it a beauty contest? Should you give away more swag? Do you need to staff the booth with aggressive salespeople? Or, as I...
Marketing Tip #8: Do Demo Webinars … Often!
Originally published on www.elearningindustry.com Are you making it super-easy for your prospects to see your product without getting locked into a one-on-one sales pitch? In this article, I’ll discuss the benefits of offering product demos for large groups and tips...
Marketing Tip #5: Exhibiting at LMS Conferences – Focus on Fewer and Better Leads
Originally published on www.elearningindustry.com It's important to market your Learning Management System at LMS conferences and trade shows. But you've got to do it well AND in moderation. Tradeshows are an LMS Marketing Staple Let me start by saying that a lot...
Marketing Tip #4: One Great Lead Is All It Takes
Is your marketing database full of hot prospects or lukewarm leads that simply won’t pan out? In this article, I’ll discuss the overwhelming importance of quality over quantity when it comes to LMS lead generation. Why Focusing Only on Quality Leads is a Make or Break...
LMS Marketing Tip #3: When customers succeed, so do you
There’s an amazing amount of competition out there, which means to be competitive, LMS vendors must be great at satisfying customers. One way to do it is through marketing. In this article, I’ll share ways that the marketing department can influence customer success....
LMS Marketing Tip #2 – Keep A Close Eye on Who Visits Your Website
Originally published on www.elearningindustry.com It’s not enough to merely draw visitors to your LMS site and hope for the best. You need to nurture your leads and develop an effective follow-up strategy. In this article I’ll discuss how to keep a close eye on who...
LMS Marketing Tip #1: SEO – Get your LMS on all of the software review sites
Originally published on www.elearningindustry.com Your Learning System may be the best there is, but it may get lost in the online crowd if you don't have a strong web presence. In this article I’ll share tips to make your learning system easy to find, even if the LMS...
Webinar Best Practices from Sharyn Fitzpatrick of Marcom Gurus
Webinars are a big part of all of our marketing plans, but few do them as well as Sharyn Fitzpatrick of Marcom Gurus. She helps companies run great webinars and has managed over 2000, so she's seen just about everything. I wanted to learn from Sharyn how to create a...
How to Engage Learners: 5 Proven Marketing Tactics
If you manage the budget of a corporate learning program, you probably wish you didn’t have to spend any of that money on marketing. People in training naturally want to focus their efforts on creating compelling learning experiences and content, not "selling" those...
5 Ways to Increase Your Best Leads: Customer Referrals
It doesn’t take long to learn that your best leads are referrals from your customers. No other lead source comes close. When one of your clients refers you, they’re usually doing it because there’s a real opportunity there. Also, their colleague’s company is usually...
