When your business is about selling complex technology products to business buyers, some people are sceptical about the relevance of social media. But there are huge differences between the social media platforms and who uses them. LinkedIn is unashamedly a business to business platform, optimised for people who want to build business relationships.

All great marketing is based on one thing: customer insight. The more you (and your marketing people) can see the world through your customers’ eyes, the more your marketing will be tuned in to their priorities.

When you have limited time and resources to dedicate to marketing, it pays to focus on things that will really make a difference. Near the top of the marketing priority list is a good set of customer success stories or case studies.

Before you plan your next direct marketing or sales campaign, think carefully about how many people you need to contact. If you have previously run campaigns that return, say, 20 sales leads per 1000 prospects, then your focus now should be designing a campaign that improves on that ratio.

How well is your marketing working? It’s not possible to measure everything in marketing, but you can still achieve great value by measuring what you can and using this as a basis for managing your marketing focus and expenditure.