It’s that time of year again. To coincide with Microsoft’s annual flagship partner conference, Microsoft Inspire, we are launching the fourth edition of our Top 50 Inbound Marketing Excellence report.
If you haven’t heard about our report before, this blog is a great place to start. It will serve as an introduction to the Top 50, answering several key questions and highlighting its wider importance for the Microsoft Partner Network.
What is the Top 50?
Every year we rank the digital marketing efforts of Microsoft Partners and present the results in our industry-acclaimed Top 50 Inbound Marketing Excellence report. The report analyses and assesses the top Microsoft Partners’ blogging output, website quality, and social media engagement. We use three independent tools to measure these scores: Maya for blogging, Sitebeam for websites, and Kred for social media.
The Top 50 showcases the best digital marketing across the entire Partner Network. But don’t take our word for it. In her foreword of this year’s report Gavriella Schuster has celebrated the report in its ability to drive exceptional digital marketing:
The content marketing examples in this report show how organizations are positioning themselves as thought leaders and industry experts, which strengthens their relationships with customers… The report showcases the best marketing going on in Microsoft’s partner channel and celebrates the hard work of the teams using inbound marketing to engage their audiences and provide real value and insight.
This year, the report is bigger than ever before. For our fourth edition we have increased the number of partners analysed – assessing the marketing of 39,000 companies this year. All the big names you’d expect are in there – plus a few dark horses that have had great success during the past 12 months with a content marketing strategy that has engaged and inspired their target audience.
But it’s not just about finding the top Microsoft Partners
The Top 50 Inbound Marketing Excellence report is much more than just a league table. It’s also a guide for partners to help improve their inbound marketing. Not only can partners use the blogs, social channels and websites of the companies that made the Top 50 as benchmarks to follow; there are also insights and advice from the Fifty Five and Five team and other marketing experts.
As mentioned earlier, the Top 50 also includes a foreword from Microsoft’s Gavriella Schuster, Corporate Vice President, Commercial Partner Channels & Programs, and an interview with Mitchell Feldman, Chief Digital Officer at RedPixie, who reveals what it takes to build an unbeatable marketing strategy.
The Top 50 showcases marketing excellence, highlighting what partners should be doing to improve their digital marketing. As Gavriella says in the foreword:
We are living through a period of digital change like the world has never seen… It is time to be bold and loud.
If you are looking to be ‘bold and loud’ over the coming year, then grabbing a copy of the Top 50 is a great place to start.
What can we tell you about this year’s report?
Unfortunately, we can’t say much until Monday 16th July. We keep the results under wraps until we launch the report at Inspire in Vegas, NV.
What we can say is that, as always, there was a lot of movement in the Top 50. This includes some big new entries right at the top. But you will have to wait to see for yourself.
Microsoft Inspire 2018
Microsoft Inspire takes place from the 16th – 18th July in Las Vegas. You can pick up a copy of the report from Fifty Five and Five at booth #1622. Or, if you won’t be attending Inspire in person, you can register here to read the report online once it is released.
Chris Wright, Founder of Fifty Five and Five, will also be giving several talks at Inspire, exploring many of the themes touched on in the report, including the specific marketing challenges facing Microsoft Partners, the science behind marketing and a special talk about the value of social selling. The talks will take place on Monday 16th July at 12:00PM and 1:00PM and on Tuesday 17th July. We hope to see you there.
Who are Fifty Five and Five?
Fifty Five and Five is a digital marketing agency based in Central London that specialises in working with Microsoft Partners. We know the Microsoft Partner Network back to front and understand that partners face a unique set of challenges when it comes to B2B marketing.
Fifty Five and Five helps partners communicate more effectively, reach new audiences and drive more leads. Our services include SEO, social media management, web design and build, email marketing/automation, analytics, marketing strategy, PPC, video, design, research and more.
You can read more about the team here.
Fifty Five and Five specialise in B2B marketing for tech companies around the world. Get in touch with us today to find out how we can help you multiply your leads with proven B2B marketing tactics.