In the last few years, content marketing has evolved more than anything else on the online and inbound marketing landscape. That means the rules have changed as well – rewarding businesses that know what works, and punishing those that don’t.

In the old days when servers needed an entire climate-controlled room and people younger than 70 knew what the “Yellow Pages” were, marketing was a very lopsided contest between the haves and the have-nots.

Let’s start with this: inbound marketingworks. And you don’t have to take our word for it. Behold:

At Leap Clixx, one of the key commitments we make to our clients is reporting, reporting, and…wait for it…more reporting.

If you ask B2B sales reps what they want most in their professional life, it’s typically not a new device, an innovative software program, or even a bump in salary or an extra week of vacation. What they want are leads, leads and more leads, so that meeting -- or exceeding -- quota is the predictable norm; not the exception.

Inbound marketing isn’t so much an evolution of conventional (“interrupt”) marketing as it is a re-invention of it, and the reason is simple: conventional marketing results are notoriously difficult – and in some cases, impossible – to truly and accurately measure. Now, this doesn’t mean that conventional marketing is a useless money pit. It’s still alive and well, and there are scenarios where conventional marketing is the best (or sometimes, the only) way to reach target markets and build brand awareness.

There’s a strange thing about the phrase target market that is arguably responsible for more business failures than any other cause: focusing on the “market” part, and ignoring the “target” part.

If you run a B2B sales team, then the sales reps and channels partners on your roster have a message for you, and they’ve asked us to put it in capital letters because it’s pretty important: PLEASE GIVE US MORE QUALIFIED B2B LEADS!

A few millennia ago when Confucius declared that one should “hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles,” it’s certain that he wasn’t referring to business strategy (because there was no accompanying TED Talks and certification program). But his sage advice does apply to today’s business landscape; specifically when it comes to the topic of customer loyalty.

Millennials -- which is the cohort born from around 1980 to 2000 -- are known for many things. In terms of demographics, they’ve surpassed the Boomers as the largest generation. In terms of purchasing power, they’re in control of 21% -- or $1 trillion -- worth of consumer discretionary purchases. And in terms of marketing, they’re by far the biggest challenge that businesses have ever faced.