Friday, July 24

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".

Thursday, July 16

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.

Tuesday, July 7

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