David Fortino, SVP of Audience and Product at NetLine Corporation, has been leading the way when it comes to innovation at the company. Fortino believes customer centricity is the future of B2B marketing and practices what he preaches at NetLine.
Fortino has been working on creating new solutions that solve complex industry problems and enable B2B marketers to achieve a more buyer-focused strategy. For example, he pioneered NetLine’s “B2B Buyer Index.” The free tool is designed to sort through NetLine’s vast repository of content consumption data to help marketers identify real-time engagement from in-market buyers.
The is positioned to allow custom searches based on a marketer’s needs and provide critical buyer information that can better position B2B teams to improve their content, targeting and ABM strategies. Specific features include the ability to showcase content categories and title themes that are being searched in real time.
The B2B Buyer Index represents a larger shift in the NetLine brand towards first-party, data-focused buyer engagement through content. It is a prime example of how Fortino continuously pushes the boundaries of B2B and looks to productize the existing powerhouse of NetLine’s data in ways that make it easy to achieve objectives.
With the launch of the B2B Buyer Index product, the company anticipates improved engagement with prospects seeking critical thinking/logic surrounding the deployment of content and ways to better track buyer intent.
During his time at NetLine, Fortino has continuously provided B2B marketers, agencies and publishers with unique tools and personalized solutions to resolving their problems. Whether it’s adopting feedback from his own clients or innovating completely new technologies for marketers to use, Fortino truly believes in the notion that NetLine is democratizing lead gen, making it possible for all marketers to build pipeline with content.
In early 2018, Polly Leonard, U.S. Cellular (USCC) Marketing Brand Manager, knew it was time for a change. The company’s business content was buried within a hard-to-navigate section of its consumer website, lacking a true B2B story that resonated with potential buyers.
Leonard decided to overhaul the company’s website to focus more on the brand’s B2B buyers. She worked closely with her team to create a fully integrated, buyer-focused demand gen strategy, which required persona research and creation, best-in-class SEM, SEO and content marketing to connect with their target audience. She also led the charge to select a new B2B agency of record to help the company enhance its website and embark on a new B2B buyer-focused, demand-gen path. Leonard’s team is now working on a conversion testing and optimization program.
Under Leonard’s leadership and drive, the company successfully rolled out a brand new B2B website. The website includes relevant content for key persona challenges and goals, as well as messaging and content for upper- and lower-funnel conversion opportunities.
By better aligning content to buyer pain points and search terms, traffic across all channels has grown and the company has seen a lift in website engagement. Additionally, overall site conversions are double what the company saw in 2018, and USCC is seeing positive engagement metrics across key areas of the site, such as time spent on each page. Leonard’s team plans to continue personalizing and improving content based on buyer persona or previous behavior in the future.