B2B Marketing with Social Media 0 comments

Social Media refers to the content by the people using highly user friendly technologies. This fusion of sociology and technology caught like wildfire among people all over the world. B2B Marketers who were earlier a bit skeptical about the media have started catching on to the social media as a means of promotion.

BtoB and the ANA conducted a survey 2 years ago which was updated recently. The study showed a dramatic growth in the use of social media as a marketing tactic. According to the updates published by btobonline.com

Sixty-six percent of the marketers surveyed said they are now using social media, up from 20% of respondents to the 2007 survey. Among b-to-b marketers specifically, 57% are now using social media channels, up from just 15% in the earlier survey.

The study shows a marked improvement in the usage of social media, the most popular media being Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. What every B2B marketer is concerned about is the ROI that this media can deliver. With a lesser percentage of marketers being able to achieve a higher ROI with the social media it translates to the fact that though Social Media can be a great for promotion but it doesnt provide a "Magic Solution". In fact harnessing the social media properly requires a higher degreee of care in creating the marketing campaign.

What one can be sure of is that Social Media will take no "Push Messages".

Who Manages your Online Sales? 1 comments

In many B2B companies the online marketing tasks are handled by the IT department. Brian made addressed this issue in his recent post Big 80s marketing will not return big online conversions saying:

...you need to change the culture, just ask your IT manager to write a press release for you. You’ll probably get a blank stare. It’s equally absurd to have them handling your company’s most valuable communications tool – your Web site.

The marketing department of a company should be the holding the pole position as far as the non technical issues of website are considered. The online marketing strategy has to be in coherence with the overall marketing strategy.

As per a study done some time back nearly 67% of people said that their online search was a result of the offline marketing channels. This necessitates a certain degree of integration between online and offline marketing campaigns which cannot be possible till the time the online marketing is handled by dedicated marketing department.

Email Marketing for B2B Businesses 0 comments

We again continue on the topic of Email Marketing. Here is a video on Email Marketing with the author putting forward an interesting view on Email marketing

B2B Marketing with Emails and Newsletters 2 comments

Being featured in search engines is a powerful marketing strategy, but does not reach all potential customers. Emails and newsletters are a widely used way to market. Various B2B companies use email marketing efforts to serve various purposes.

* Reaching our to new prospects
* Advertising New Products
* Providing updates on the existing products and services

However how effective your email marketing program depends on how well it is formulated. A recent Marketing Sherpa survey of email recipients found that 58% of those who stop reading, disengage, or unsubscribe cite "lack of relevance" as a key factor. This should not come as a surprise because most of the emails or newsletters are just created by the sales people and contain a generic marketing propaganda. Here are a few things you should know as a B2B marketer to make your email marketing program a success.

Know your subscriber. The content of the email depends should depend on your subscriber. An important factor in determining content is ‘What stage of buying process is the subscriber in’ Is your subscriber interested in new product launches or updates to your existing products. Similarly know what step of the organizational hierarchy your subscriber belongs to. A marketing manager won’t be interested in same things as a Marketing executive.

Add value. It is simple human nature that people will be more apt to read something if it offers them something of value. Uniqueness and Usefulness of the content is what will make your subscriber stay and in fact become more interested in your offerings.

Keep it simple. Adding value to your email is one thing but make sure your email is not bogged down because of the extra graphics or endless paragraphs. The content should be of a digestible size other wise the subscriber would be more likely to simply delete such emails. If email becomes bulky it’s highly probable that it will most definitely find its way to the Junk Box.

Technology. As your subscription list increases it becomes difficult to manage the newsletters with commonly used tools. There are many Email Newsletter tools and services that make the process simpler. These email marketing services provide various facilities to optimize and tune up your marketing efforts.

Measure success. Is your email marketing program producing the desired result? As with other b2b marketing efforts the email marketing programs also needs to be measures and quantified. Most of the email marketing programs offer various tools and reports to measure the effectiveness of the emails. What percentage of people actually clicks on your links, how many subscribers did actually read your email and so on. These statistics help your tune up your emails and newsletters.

What every B2B Marketer should know about SEO 3 comments

Search Engines form the backbone of the information based online market. With most of the people going to Google or some other search engines a suitable position on search engine results is what is every B2B marketer vies for. But easier said than done, search engines are a tough nut to crack even for the people in Search Business.

The specific branch of Online Marketing that works on this aspect is called as the Search Engine Optimization. Search engine optimization involves various technical and marketing concepts. The technical aspects range from optimizing the website HTML to optimizing the content. As a B2B marketer how much do you really need to focus on all these technicalities? As a marketing person it is good to have a working knowledge of the technical aspects of search engine optimization but you should be more focused on the how to generate more leads. There are various marketing related aspects a B2B marketer should be more concerned with. Some of these are as follows:

What is your niche and what keywords belong to that niche?
You cannot create some product which satisfies all segments of the market. Instead of offering something which every customer will find less than satisfactory, offer some product which some of them will find exclusively designed for themselves. Isn’t it better to have a few loyal customers in the initial stage of your business than having little more unsatisfied ones, who will never buy from you again?

How do you measure a “conversion”?
Conversion is an action that you want your visitor to perform. It can range from a simple download of a brochure to filling out an inquiry form. A wrongful definition of conversion may affect the measure lead conversion.

What is your Conversion Rate?
This would be a measure of the people who actually do what you want them to do through the website that is a measure of how what percentage of the Search engine traffic actually converts. This measure is a way to track how effective is your marketing effort. Do not be surprised to learn that as much as 99 percent of this traffic is not taking the desired action. Pulling in the right traffic and converting it into bona fide leads is a never-ending challenge. Knowing how well (or poorly) you’re doing in this area is a big first step.

What is the “Bounce Rate”?
Bounce rate is the percentages of people leave your website with in 10 seconds of reaching it to the total traffic. This way you can check which keyword searches provide the most conversion rate or have you optimized the website for the right niche keywords? It also shows that is your website good enough to hook the visitors on for an extended stay.

Analyze your competition
Competitors are as important in search market as they are in say real world. You have to track your competitor and the efforts they are putting in to attain the top position or the efforts they are putting in to maintain their positions. A critical study of competitors can provide you an insight to the ways you can improve your own website and the lead generation process.

Many B2B marketers simply do not spend that much of time on these basic factors. If these basic things are not looked after then your total search engine marketing campaign may be just putting more cost on your budget rather than helping your lead generation program.