Top 10 B2B Marketing Trends

If you haven't read Ed Brice's blog post on Top B2B Marketing Trends for 2010, you should. It's long, but for good reason -- it's packed with terrific insight and ideas to ponder. I was particularly intrigued by his point about community thought leadership, something we've been experimenting with at Avanade (though we didn't call it out as such) to advance our views on key trends.

The other point that got my attention was on social media measurement. Not sure the origin of the attached graphic from his blog post, but his point that social media should focus on building trust, advocate points of view and influence ideas is exactly how we've been building our social media program at Avanade. I also appreciate his progression of B2B social media. Whether Ed meant it as a progression as such, I don't know, but the idea of moving from awareness to engagement to listening and finally to innovation is dead on, IMO.

Image source: Marketing-Gimbal