The 19 Most Interesting Articles and Interviews in 2015

These 19 articles and interviews, written by the best product marketing experts, discuss the challenges marketers today face, upon the shifting world of marketing, and offer great tips and solutions. Inside, you can find insights on topics such as storytelling, marketing styles, and branding, alongside fascinating interviews.  

1. Moving Toward Sales & Marketing Alignment with Hubspot CRM & Sidekick

In this article, Jeffrey Russo outlines the gaps between the marketing and sales teams in both communication and cohesive strategy and planning. He then points out some things marketers can do to start inching toward a better relationship with their sales teams. Russo also uses Sidekick and Hubspot CRM as examples of tools that can help turn his advice into actions.  

2. How to Manage Your Freelance Content Providers

In this Neil Patel article, he challenges us to better manage freelance content providers in order to receive the best possible work. In particular he outlines key ways that you can connect and better know your freelancers in order to get the very best work from them, for your business. His tips include taking to them on the phone, being more clear with them, and also listening to them.  

3. How to Cater Your Content to Your Audience’s Learning Styles with Rich Media

In Brian Watson’s article, he outlines the requirements of the most successful thought leaders in engaging with different learning styles. He presents 7 types of learners, including the Kinesthetic Learner and the Visual Learner, and then presents the content mapping approach by demonstrating it on an interesting case study.  

4. Interview: Virginia Tourism CEO on Using Love to Sell a State

Branding a state, now that is something worth mentioning in my top 5. This interview covers the strategies used by Virginia’s Rita McClenny, the CEO of the Virginia Tourism Corporation. The best thing about this interview is the fact that Rita shows how effective branding campaigns can become once you set your eyes on a certain status – in Virginia’s case, it is the state for lovers.  

5. The Five Keys to Marketing An Emerging Service or Product

A company’s ability to create demand is dependent on five key factors. In this Forbes article, Steve Olenski presents these ways, which can help create consumer demand for a product. From performance to pedigree, his five keys to marketing an emerging service or product is sure to provide you with some new insights.  

6. How to Position Your Brand for Successful Transcreation of Product Marketing

Every single aspect of a brand is important when it comes to upholding its carefully crafted identity. Whether it’s the tagline, logo, website graphics or tenor of the marketing copy—all of it must roll up into one cohesive brand voice. However, highly conceptual and creative elements can’t always be translated word for word, because there’s often no direct equivalent in the target country. In this article, Courtney Huber outlines just how to position your brand to uphold its fully crafted identity.

7. Small Business Spotlight: How Marketing and Sales Alignment Helped Us Grow More than 1000% in 2 years

Here, Michael Litt’s article tackles the challenge of marketing and sales alignment, and offers up some solid advice that helped his company grow more than 1000% in just 2 years. In a very clear, simple way, Litt draws “The What,” “The How,” and “The Who” for sales alignment success.  

8. Bessemer’s Byron Deeter Talks Mobile Enterprise Apps: “Tens of Billions of Dollars” To Be Created

This interview with Byron Deeter takes an in-depth look at the next billion-dollar market opportunity: mobile enterprise business apps. He states that in the next five years, a large portion of the enterprise landscape will see tablets and phones as the primary interface. Check out this article to see where mobile enterprise is really headed.  

9. Visual Storytelling: New Language for the Information Age

From hand-drawn diagrams to sophisticated data visualization, by way of graphic design, illustration, photography, and information architecture, this article by Maria Popova is simply beautiful. It highlights countless examples of visual storytelling and the marketing power it entails.  

10. What Brands Need to Survive in a Digital World

World Renowned France’s INSEAD University published an article by Affiliate Professor Joerg Niessing about the concept of branding in the digital world. Despite its academic outset I particularly liked the fact he nailed down three principles that keep the brand relevant and sustainable.  

11. Why Content Is Essential for B2B Product Marketing

Customer support is becoming quite an important function in the B2B world, which undergoes a significant paradigm shift. Content is very essential for B2B product marketing, as it is needed for continued engagement, customer onboarding and customer development. In this article, Ritika Puri gives 3 reasons as to why content is an essential factor for B2B product marketing, and can prevent customer churn.  

12. Emergence Capital, Long A Top SaaS Investor, Shifts Focus To The Next Big Thing

In this interview, Kevin Spain talks to TechCrunch about the potential in the field of mobile enterprise. He explains that mobile enterprise is going through the same process that SaaS did 20-15 years ago. As mobile enterprise emerges in the business world, the 80% of the untapped population that does not physically sit at a desk can be reached via mobile devices.  

13. Online Lenders Rely on Old-School Marketing

Banks aren’t the only ones lending money, and no I am not talking about black markets and likes, I am talking Peer 2 Peer lending. Lending Club, Propser, and many other marketplaces are services that offer individuals a direct channel to lend to other individuals. This platforms are booming as people find this method as a way to enjoy a steady income on their savings while avoiding risk. As mentioned here by Peter Rudegeair, this “fintech” companies are devoting most of their marketing resources to the traditional personal mail effort, for example in July 2015 alone Lending Club mailed 33.9 personal loan offers according to Mintel Comperemedia research. I am talking hard paper old fashioned mail and not the electronic version of it. The article also discusses the downside and upside of this method and reminds us that good ol’ paper can actually work!

14. How Word of Mouth Marketing is Transforming Brand Storytelling

This article by Ashu Garg looks at the way in which the world of marketing is shifting, due to the power of word of mouth. Consumers have access to a world of information about every product and service available, and they share information and opinions with other customers via countless channels. In order to succeed, Garg stresses that brands must understand the ways consumers gather their information, and learn how to present a story to their customers.  

15. Retail’s New Marketing Buzzword: ‘Community’

Marketing agencies have many ways to measures success in selling a product, but the favorite one is community – a group of devoted individuals who sell the product for them. The article explores the power of brands and how it fuels two major trends in recent years: authentic storytelling and cross-channel capabilities. 92% of all transaction still takes place in physical retail store locations and that it why communities of supporters must be used to market this stores and keep them busy with customers. In this article, Hilary Milnes explores just that and offers innovative market strategies for stores. The author even offers insights on how to combine the digital realm with the physical store place.  

16. Arif Janmohamed Partner At Lightspeed Ventures, BizCloud® Session™ With Vahid Razavi

What a venture capitalist is looking for in the growing, almost bursting, SaaS industry? Arif Janmohamed, partner at Lightspeed, shares in this great video his thoughts about the current market, and his recommendations for the SaaS startup. Throughout the interview, led by BizCloud, Janmohamed discusses, among other topics, his decision-making process, and the ability to find the “Unicorn” in an overloaded market.  

17. Here’s How Adobe’s Director of Product Marketing Navigates the Paradox of Choice

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. In this article, Adobe’s product marketing manager is explaining the strategic level dilemma faced by many corporations when it comes to targeting the right audience and personalizing the product for them.

18. How the Latest Unicorn is Changing The Social Landscape

 “Back in 2006, Facebook had not opened up its platform beyond colleges and really had not focused on monetization yet. However, it was abundantly clear that targeted advertising was the likely path of monetization, given all of the valuable information its users freely volunteered.” In this article, Carey Lai discusses the advancement of social networks, and Facebook in particular, in the past few years, and the changes they’ve been through in order to adjust to the changing market. He then introduces Sprinklr, which, in light of the competitive landscape, has emerged as the true leader with escape velocity, with the best-in-class SaaS metrics he had ever seen.  

19. Unlocking the Power of Content Marketing in Financial Services

Many financial institutions adopt a personal approach to content marketing that will engage the right person with the right message at the right time. But if you are in the financial industry you also know that you must create content that is entirely different than your competition. This article by The Financial Brand offers some great tips and trick to help you create your very own content marketing brand and help you company skyrocket.