Software AG Chief Marketing Officer Paz Macdonald talks about how a complete rebrand helped the business-to-business company build a 100,000-plus LinkedIn following, increase mobile engagement and generate quality leads. "People started to notice us and that, for us, started to translate to more marketing qualified leads," Macdonald says.

Agile marketing requires focused attention on a limited number of projects, a backlog system that ranks new work by organizational priority and time to pause, review and readjust as necessary, writes AgileSherpa's Andrea Fryrear. "We don't need to go faster, we need to proceed with discipline and deliberation," Fryrear writes, adding, "That's where real agility, and really effective marketing, comes from."

Microsoft is launching holiday event ad targeting options, initially in English-speaking markets, beginning with Black Friday and has plans to include Cyber Monday, Mother's Day, tax, travel, back-to-school and other shopping-related seasons and events. Brands will be able to include information in text ads such as promoting dates and deals.

Mix up business-to-business content formats to engage with buyers at different stages of their buying journey -- using video for product demonstrations, webinars and podcasts to nurture leads and white papers or industry reports to attract new prospects, advises Attrock's Shane Barker. Barker explains how to identify the right content topics using keyword research and how to convert leads using social proof.

Business-to-business marketers can improve their return on investment from content marketing by basing strategy on insights related to target audiences, the sales funnel and content trends, writes Attrock co-founder Shane Barker. Barker explains how to gather such insights and offers advice on various content distribution channels such as LinkedIn, blogs and other social platforms, email and industry websites.