These statistics probably didn’t make you raise your eyebrows in shock or surprise as you probably purchased something on your smartphone this morning like the majority of American consumers. Congratulations- you just contributed to the 38.4 billion dollars expected to be spent in mobile transactions this year.

Related: Showrooming: Mobile Shopping Takes Over Brick-and-Mortar

Mobile & B2B

With this amount steadily increasing each quarter, B2C companies are aptly reallocating budgets to mobile site development and devoting many of their marketing efforts to harvest untapped revenue from mobile customers. This is fine and dandy for these B2C vendors, but what is the B2B marketer to do? Do corporate shoppers making purchasing decisions for their business now expect the same convenience of mobile shopping as you experienced this morning while buying a cup of coffee on your smartphone?

Surprisingly enough, this rush to be mobile-ready is equally relevant to B2B companies. Research by State of Digital reveals 65% of C-level executives are completely comfortable with making a business purchase on a mobile device. This number is staggering (Tweet This!).

As business decision makers continue to feel more and more confident with mobile transactions, optimizing websites for mobile users will become a necessity for B2B companies as well. Grainger, a Fortune 500 industrial supply company and leader in B2B mobile eCommerce, launched a mobile app and readied their site for mobile use to allow businesses decision makers to access their products at any time or location. The company boasted about this new availability as they recognize that CEOs and business purchasers aren’t always making transactions at their desk. They’re working from home and on the run, so they need to peruse a mobile site with ease of a quick purchase.

Related: Turning B2B Mobile Skeptics Into Supporters: Slideshow & Video

But isn’t the buyer journey completely different with B2B than B2C?

Some may be quick to argue that B2B and B2C companies play in different arenas with website goals being entirely different. While the primary goal of most business-to-consumer websites may be to simply guide a potential customer from initial visit to product sale, the aim of a B2B website is to generate leads. This thesis can be theoretically applied to mobile marketing and mobile eCommerce.

Some companies using mobile well for leads are thinking through the user experience on mobile devices and making it easier for companies to convert. For example, Allstate is leading the way in click-to-call success by allowing their mobile traffic the opportunity to speak immediately with a sales rep rather than filling out a form. ReviMedia verifies a small amount of lead information gained from their mobile lead forms and matches the remaining information one would supply in a desktop lead form. With CEO’s and decision makers gravitating towards convenience and ease in today’s busy world, they are becoming increasingly familiar and comfortable with making purchase decisions on their mobile device- be it an iPhone, Android, or Tablet.

Like Grainger, it’s time for all companies to stop talking about mobile marketing, and just start doing it. Take a look at your analytics, look at how many visitors are coming from mobile, and don’t forget about that fancy tablet. Even if less than 20% of your traffic is coming from these devices, that is 20% of users looking for personalized content willing to give their information to learn more, or looking for a reason to buy from you. We all know that sometimes a small percentage of traffic can result in game-changing revenue increases. Make the move to mobile.

Related: Mobile Search & Organic Rankings: What You Need to Know

 (Image: adamr via freedigitalphotos.net)

Related: The 2013 B2B Marketing Outlook and 3 Questions to Consider

B2B Marketing Budget Allocation

Spending budget in the right areas is a must. If your business fails to focus on the areas that provide the greatest ROI (whether your objective is engagement, leads, etc.) you’ll be spending a lot and straining your resources. The top five areas of marketing spend, according to the survey’s respondents are: website development, online marketing, tradeshows and events, email marketing and advertising.

When it comes to top lead sources for B2B marketers, Sagefrog found that referrals, tradeshows and events, and email marketing produced the most leads while telemarketing and direct mail produced the least. Budget is being directed to the areas that producing leads, which make sense since lead generation in general is big focus for B2B businesses and not just their marketing teams.

Driving ROI with Digital Marketing

Digital channels provide the highest ROI, according to survey respondents. Online marketing and email marketing are two of the top contenders while advertising, direct mail and telemarketing resulted in the lowest ROI. The popularity of marketing tactic may vary by company, but there are some commonalities amongst modern marketers. The areas that drive the greatest ROI, according to the

• 85% have a business website
• 72% use email marketing to reach their customers
• 67% use social media to connect with buyers
• 56% have a focus on SEO
• 51% incorporate press releases into their marketing strategies

Related: Connect with your audience through content marketing and whitepaper distribution.

The Evolution of the B2B CMO

When technological advancements take place, so do advancements in advertising and marketing. This could mean the development of a brand new marketing medium. It could also mean new opportunities within current advertising or content distribution channels. However, small and medium-sized business budgets don’t often evolve at the same pace. These trends in spend and ROI indicate where CMOs should be directing their attention and budget spend. A Forrester report found that

• 97% of CMOs think marketing must do things that it hasn’t done ever before to be successful.
• 80% of CMOs feel more secure about their grasp of the skills needed to be successful in marketing.

When new networks, think about the rise of Pinterest and Instagram, begin to build followings and niche networks become even more influential in aiding buyers in their purchase process, CMOs have to pay attention to where and how their competitors are marketing and advertising products and services as well as where they can stand apart. More than ever, B2B CMOs have to flexible and agile to accommodate for planning cycles, purchase timelines and technology.

Related: Feeding the Flames of Email Marketing Success

Digital marketing is shifting; this is a fact. It is up to CMOs to see what marketing trends are taking place and to position themselves to make agile decisions on a moment’s notice when a new trend rises or an anomaly in a current stream takes place. What the Sagefrog report shows is that different mediums may be effective, but, as the Forrester report indicates, top-notch CMOs have to be able to take these trends and then move forward to do things that haven’t been done in order to be successful.

Related: How B2B Buyers Seek Information and How You Can Fill the Void

Goal: To Improve Productivity

Nearly every business is focused on making their teams, software, and reporting more efficient. Operations, marketing, and IT teams are all about automation and the goal of improving productivity is one reason B2B buyers begin searching for a new product or service. Over 51% of buyers from a recent B2B Marketing study gave improving productivity an 8 out of 10 or higher when asked about the importance of factors in prompting a purchase decision (Tweet this!)

What This Means for Your Business: When creating content, such as whitepapers and case studies, make sure to include information about how your product or service was able to improve the productivity or efficiency of the client or customer. Businesses are focused on streamlining their own process to save money AND time. Make sure you aren’t delivering on just one of these key goals.

Related: Find the products and services you need to become more efficient.

Need: For Business Expansion

The second biggest reason for investing in a new product or service is business expansion, according to the survey’s respondents. Over a third (36%) of B2B buyers polled rated this as at least 8 out of 10 (Tweet this!). New employees, a new office, or an influx of customers that must be managed all indicate business expansion and often prompt new business purchases.

What This Means for Your Business: Keep tabs on your current clients or similar businesses within the same industry. If a particular industry that your business services is expected to grow or on an upward swing, reach out to them directly, touch on possible expansion and provide a solution as to how your business can make the growth and purchase an easier process.

Want: To Leverage New Technology

Businesses want to be able to outshine competitors. In many instances, it’s the technology they utilize that enables this to happen. Businesses want to leverage new technology and over a third of buyers scored this as an 8 or above in terms of importance in instigating a new business purchase.

What This Means for Your Business: Have a new feature, service or product offering that will enable your buyers to get their hands on and make the most of the latest technology? That’s great! Now make sure you’re sharing that information with a buyer. Sometimes the opportunities afforded by new technology are overshadowed by price quotes and productivity stats. Don’t let this rock go unturned; you could acquire a new customer by leveraging technological features.

Related: The Future of Advertising from ad:tech San Francisco

Need: To Cut Costs

Businesses are always concerned about their bottom lines and are on the prowl for ways to save. Office equipment, software and costs associated with having a physical location add up – quickly. The need to cut costs as a reason for prompting a new purchase received 32% of scores over 8. Perhaps the reason just about third of respondents feel this way is because it isn’t just a lower cost businesses want; they also want more for their money. As B2B Marketing notes, “Less is good. But more for less is better.”

What This Means for Your Business: Work with buyers to find a price point that meets your needs and theirs. You should also be creating content, such as whitepapers, blog posts and case studies, which showcases how your product or service can reduce costs for businesses. You know your customers and you can likely gage where they are spending money. If your product or service can reduce costs in those areas, include that information in your marketing materials and sales pitches.

Buyers don’t begin shopping around for a new product or service for no reason. Improving productivity, cutting costs and leveraging new technologies are just three of the reasons a purchase process can begin. While some may see a slow economy, others are expanding and business expansion is yet another reason a new purchase could be taking place. When you pitch a business or buyer or craft sales-marketing content, make sure you address these factors when possible.

Digital technology has unleashed performance-marketing opportunities providing data, analytics and ROI metrics that have many marketers jumping for joy. However, it also has them running for cover. Marketing is more complex than ever. In fact, a recent BtoB study found that only 36% of marketers feel their current marketing programs effectively address all stakeholders and 40% feel targeting and segmentation tools are effective in helping them reach their target audience.

Marketing is  always on and customer’s want real-time content and responses from businesses they’re considering making a purchase from. Additionally, as marketing and technology become more intertwined, complexity in managing both has increased. Look to simplify things so you don’t become overwhelmed or lost in data. Some may be touting the accuracy of marketing funnels or if the same structure that’s existed in the past still applies. To deal with the complexity of the new purchase process, redefining your marketing funnel is a must so that you can align your efforts with the information buyers seek. Following a marketing funnel that accurately portrays the buying journey of your customers can help with marketing management.

Read the full post on managing marketing complexity from the Business.com CEO, Tony Uphoff, on our main blog.

Related: 3 Ways to Tap Into the B2B Buyer’s Behavior

What Type of Information Are Buyers After?

While every buyer and industry may be different, there are trends that emerge when you take a look at why types of information most buyers are interested in. A recent B2B Marketing report found that the most sought after information by buyers are pricing information (71%), technical/product/service specs (60%), and industry/competitive comparison (Tweet this!). While 32% of buyers sought the advice of a company expert, half that number looked for the opinion of their peers. Similarly, the most useful information according to respondents of the study came from a known friend or colleague.

What This Means for Your Business: When you create content, especially more robust pieces such as whitepapers and e-books, focus on these top 3 types of information. Blog posts with industry trends and what different businesses are using, a whitepaper with product specification differences, or an infographic with pricing information will all meet these needs.

Related: Behavioral Marketing: Best Practices for B2B Marketers

What Do Buyers Want the Information to Look Like?

The findings from the report suggest physical events are highly effective ways to communicate with prospective buyers. One in three buyers attended a live event, and they were rated the single most influential information type (Tweet this!). Buyers want decks, presentations and SlideShare documents and are likely to turn to online sites where they can find information in this format before even speaking to a sales rep. 21% of buyers download presentation decks and perhaps one of the reasons this type of formatting is popular is because buyers can scan slides for the specific information they find most valuable without investing a lot of time. Over half (55%) of the respondents considered presentation decks to be influential in their decision making process.

What This Means for Your Business: While attending or sponsoring an event could be costly, it also provides your business with a great opportunity to connect and influence buyers. Find ways to participate in or host in-person events such as meetings, conferences and demos. Look for ways to create or repurpose content in a slideshow or presentation format and make it easily accessible for potential buyers. Content marketing is a hot topic of 2013 and the ways in which your content is formatted can either appeal to or drive away buyers. Make sure yours is focused on the former and can be easily downloaded as a PDF or printed.

Where Do Buyers Go to Find Information?

The most popular way of finding information was to go directly to a supplier website and 47% of buyers in the B2B Marketing study did this (Tweet this!). Perhaps one of the most shocking stats from this study is that only 29% of buyers went via a search engine. Other methods of information collection include an industry specific intermediary, email newsletters, sought advice or recommendations from colleagues and friends, and industry specific online communities.

What This Means for Your Business: If your business’s website doesn’t have, or doesn’t feature, the types of content buyers are after, you could be losing out. You know the information they want and you now know that they are going directly to supplier or provider websites to acquire that information. Get your business website in gear and make sure you’re delivering the content and information your buyers are after directly on your site.

Related: Get started with a strategic, content distribution campaign.

Information that is too generic or vague, lacks in comparative analysis, or is too robust can deter buyers from working with your business. Look to find a balance between too little and too much information and focus on delivering content and information that is relevant, whether it’s through a SlideShare, an in-person event or on your own site. Buyers are becoming more educated and seeking the information that can help them make a decision. Make sure you’re delivering it.

Related: A Bright Outlook for Landing Page Optimization

Impact of Delayed Page Load Time

You’ve spent time, money and additional resources on developing stellar landing pages for your leads, right? However, if your page loads slowly or a customer has to wait to navigate to the next page, they could decide to leave and turn to a competitor’s website. Page abandonment rates increase greatly when a site is slow to load. 25% of users will abandon a site after 3 second of delay, and the longer a delay lasts, the more customers you’ll lose to competitors. Reducing load time can greatly affect revenue and your business’s bottom line. Some big business examples include:

• Bing, which found that a 2-second delay in load time led to a 4.3% reduction in revenue per visitor.
• Shopzilla, who optimized their site to reduce page load times from 6 seconds to 1.2 seconds and saw a revenue increase of 5-12%.

Related: Get these stats and more in our latest infographic: “The Need for Speed”

The Cause of Delays

No matter what kinds of sales, promotions or content you have on your site, if the page isn’t loading fast enough, your visitors are going to leave and they may not be in the mood take a second chance on it, or your business, later on. There are a number of factors that can impact the speed of your site including the number of images, as well as their size and format, and how you use Flash and JavaScript. Even how your site is coded can impact load times. Businesses that optimize their sites for speed had 17% fewer complaints about response time than companies that did not. Some site elements that can cause delay are:

• Server response time.
• CSS and JavaScript coding.
• Browser caching.
• Image size.

How to Increase Site Speed

Now that you know what can cause delay, here are a few steps your business and IT team can take in increasing site speed. While taking on all of these tactical changes at once can lead to a headache, begin by focusing on instant wins and then working towards the bigger projects. Establish a list of priorities and work through them one at a time. To get started, take a look at:

• Your images. Optimizing images with proper formatting and compression can save many bytes of data. Reducing the size of images can aid in increased site speed.
• Your “above the fold” content. Your above the fold content should load quickly, so look for ways to make that content top priority in loading. Try to defer or asynchronously load blocking resources or inline the critical portions of those resource directly in the HTML.
• Your expiry date. Setting an expiry date or a maximum age in the HTTP headers for static resources allows the browser to load previously downloaded resources from a local disk rather than over the network, increasing site load speed.
• Your CSS, JavaScript, and HTML coding. Compacting your code can save bytes of data, especially if you tackle on all three codes. Doing so will also speed up downloading, parsing and execution times.

Related: The Lasting Effect of Landing Pages

For a complete list of steps you can take to improve site speed, check out the tool Page Speed Online. Google created this tool to help webmasters and coders improve their sites. It will provide you with insights into what things are greatly impacting delays in page rendering as well as steps you can take, such as optimizing images and minifying CSS, to improve site performance.

Related: Business.com’s Small Business Pulse Report: 2013 Lead Generation Insights

Creating Content

There are posts all over the internet that talk about content creation. Without sounding like a broken record, let’s take a look at some innovative ways B2B companies, even those on a budget, can create valuable content that draws in great attention, new eyes, and current customers for deeper engagement. As you begin creating content to distribute and share, focus on:

• Your Goals. Establish end goals and develop a strategy around those objectives. Without goals set in place, how can you be sure you’ll see a positive ROI?
• Your Metrics. What metrics matter the most when it comes to your content strategy? Is it social shares, inbound links, page visits, unique visitors, or something else? Make sure you are measuring the success of each piece of content based on the metrics that help you meet your goals.
• Your Audience. Who is it you’re producing each piece of content for and what type of content will that audience best respond to? Be aware of who your audience is, the type of content they find valuable and the places where they will find and share it.
• Your Teams. Who will be using the content? Sales, marketing, or an upsell team? Make sure your content is being delivered in formats that your teams can use to grow your business and positively enhance customer relationships.

Related: Share your content on Business.com and start generating leads.

Distributing Content

As mentioned, creating content isn’t enough. Sure, a witty blog post or funny video could lead to a spike in attention, but it would only be temporary. For something to go viral, or even just gain some solid traction, it needs to be distributed properly and on more than one occassion. This could mean you share your videos or whitepapers through a partner network or it could mean posting an infographic on visual content sharing sites, such as Behance and Visual.ly.

Strategic Partnerships

The right partnerships can drive a greater content development ROI. A whitepaper distribution company or a solid affiliate marketing network can distribute your content to the right eyes, at the right time, and with the right ROI. Take a look at your current business connections and see who might be interested in sharing your content with their audience. Even a small fee initially could prove a valuable investment and lead to more email subscribers or prospects.

Social Media

This may seem like a given, but many B2B businesses are still neglecting the potential social media promotion offers. Sending out your piece of content in a Tweet with a title and the link can be a bit boring. Spice things up on social networks with an unknown stat, inspirational quote or quirky fact to catch the attention of your followers. That being said, don’t be afraid to share the same piece of content more than once and across multiple channels. Change up what other information is included the post and space the sharing updates appropriately.

Email Newsletters

We’ve written a lot about email marketing and newsletter distribution. One of the best ways to distribute your content is through your email newsletter. Just make sure you’re delivering the right content to the right people and are making the most of your email segments. Segmentation is a must and you can segment your email audience using their behaviors on your site, past content engagement, stage in the marketing funnel, and demographics.

Related: How You Can Make It or Break It with Content

In its most simplistic form, a successful content strategy has two components: creation and distribution. Your creation and distribution are dependent on your business objectives, your audience, your teams that will be using the content, and, often times, your budget. However, a lack of budget shouldn’t mean there is no content strategy. The above mentioned distribution channels can lend a hand in a low budget, cost-effective content marketing strategy.

Related: The Breakthrough of B2B Video Marketing

Who is Spending Money on Video Marketing and Advertising? Why?

Marketers, from a range of industries, are creating video content for marketing and advertising purposes. Video is now the 6^th most popular content marketing tactic and according to an Ascend2 report, 47% of those with successful content marketing strategies cite videos as the most effective type of content used for marketing purposes (Tweet this!). As more and more businesses are finding ways to produce high-quality videos, from slideshow and screencast presentations to commercial, more are making the transition to online video marketing and advertising.

When people see a video about a product or service, it’s likely they’ll seek out even more information. Video marketing can increase engagement and build brand awareness. Similar to display ads, even a non-click can lead to a search query and greater brand recognition.

Related: Get started with whitepaper content marketing campaigns.

What Types of Videos Should I Create?

Before making purchases or when looking for ways to make the most of a product, B2B decision makers are turning to online video. The type of videos you create should reflect what your business represents and the target audience you are trying to reach. It should also have a focus on helping your business meet its overall objectives, whether that’s a new email subscriber, a more informed customer, or new customer acquisition. Even if you don’t have a big budget, the right lighting, speaker and content can make your video successful. Here are a few suggestions:

• Product Demonstrations
• New Product Introductions
• How-To’s and Tutorials
• New Product/Service Teasers
• Customer Testimonials

Once you know the type of video to create, keep in mind the length of your video. Most executives prefer videos that are 3 to 5 minutes long (Tweet this!) and most of the highly-successful B2B videos are 90-120 seconds in length. No matter the content, try to keep the run time short to ensure you keep the attention of your viewers.

Related: Get the new infographic about site speed optimization.

How Do I Promote My Videos?

Once you’ve created a video, there are a number of ways you can promote your new content. From uploading the video to sites your audience is on to embedding it into an email or blog post, promoting your video is a must.

• Upload it to the right channels. Add your video to YouTube, Vimeo and other social video sites where your audience can be find.
• Use social media. Tweet out your video, share it as a status update on Facebook, and post it to your Google+ page. If your audience is on Pinterest, you can even Pin your new video to the site and a relevant board.
• Embed the video in blog posts and emails. Depending on the video content, you could find it valuable to add the video to prospecting or nurturing emails. You could also add it to a blog post for further elaboration or referencing.

Video marketing and video advertising are becoming more prominent. Customers and business buyers are online, watching videos and seeking out the information that can help them make decisions about the products they need and how to optimize that product use. By creating videos, your business can build brand awareness and engagement while driving searches and new customer acquisition. Video marketing is a must for B2B businesses looking to stand out from competitors.

With over 100,000 small-to-medium business leaders relying on us each day to discover, learn about and purchase the resources, products and services they need to run and grow their businesses, we are in a unique position to collect an extraordinary amount of data and turn it into actionable information for our audience and marketers. More than 36 million SMB (small and medium-sized business) buyers a year move through their purchase journey with Business.com, signaling their intentions via their digital body language, the registrations and lead forms they fill out, and their engagement with our suite of performance marketing products. We complete over five thousand phone calls with SMB leaders each month, as well as produce a monthly benchmark report detailing purchasing and vendor interaction.

In total, this data provides us with unique, ongoing insights into the trends of small- to medium-sized businesses today. This includes sales, marketing, finance, technology and entrepreneurial issues they encounter, as well as what products and services they are purchasing to run and grow their businesses.

We want to share these insights with you, our audience and marketing customers, in order to provide you with actionable insights and analysis you can apply to your own business. This month in the Small Business Pulse report, we’re focusing on the lifeblood of any business: generating marketing and sales leads.  Some interesting results from the study include:

• Over 50% of marketers are interested in leads generated through white paper downloads.
• 51.3 % of marketers cited purchasing time horizon as the most valuable additional data element, aside from name and email address, followed by company size.

In May of this year, we completed an in-depth survey with our lead generation customers to get a better understanding of how they are using lead generation advertising, content marketing and technology to reach, engage with, and ultimately sell to prospects and customers. We added to this our insights from the over 20,000 sales ready leads we generate each month and we asked lead generation expert Phil Brannon, formerly CEO of IT Business Edge and founder and president of Tech Republic, to provide his insights on the data we collected. You can download the white paper at http://www.business.com/pulse/ and view the video about lead generation on YouTube.

We look forward to hearing your thoughts on lead generation and how you like this month’s Small Business Pulse. Please also share your thoughts on other key areas that you’d like us to focus on in future Business.com Pulse reports.

Related: Hipsters Beware: Lead Generation Becoming Mainstream

Increase Measurable ROI

To increase the ROI of your lead generation campaigns, you have to have a solid lead scoring and nurturing system in place. An established, automated marketing system can also help you measure your lead generation efforts more accurately. As leads come in and move down the funnel, your automation software, as well as your scoring and nurturing system, can help you measure the ROI per lead and per lead generation source.

Optimize the Funnel

There’s no longer differentiation between a sales funnel and a marketing funnel. These two have integrated as a combination of efforts from both these teams lead to conversions. Your sales-marketing funnel is dependent on a few things. As you look to optimize your funnel, make sure you are including:

• Lead Source
• Average Purchase Timeline
• Content Relevance and Delivery Timing

Gain Greater Audience Insight

Do you know what information is the most valuable for your sales team? Ask them what data points can help them close more sales and optimize the forms on your site to include as much of the information as possible, without lowering conversion rates. For third-party efforts, communicate with your lead generation provider about the insight you are most interested in. If many advertisers are interested in the same thing and request it, changes in form fields or lead qualifications could be on the horizon.

Related: Get more information about pay-per-lead advertising.

Maximize the LTV of Customer

MarketingSherpa found that the LTV (lifetime value) of a customer is an important number for many marketers (47%). After all, we’ve all heard that it’s easier, and more cost-effective, to keep a current customer than it is to go out and get a new one. Businesses want to keep customers coming back to boost their recurring revenue. To start with maximizing the LTV of your customers, send out feedback questionnaires to find out what they like and dislike most about your business, products and the customer experience you deliver.

Implement Lead Tracking Systems

Understanding how customers move down that sales-marketing funnel we discussed earlier is crucial in its optimization success. A lead tracking system may be a top priority for many marketers because having one in place will allow them to see the steps leads take before finally making a purchase. Understanding what types of content are requested at each stage and what the average purchase timeline is for leads coming from different sources can help. In order to implement a lead tracking system, consider how you can integrate your current software solutions with one another to acquire a 360° of leads.

Related: How to Nurture Leads with Auto-Response Emails

Lead generation isn’t a one or two-step process. It requires lead generation acquisition efforts, scoring, nurturing and a strong sales-marketing funnel. Communication among your organization, software utilization and conversations with your third-party lead generation companies can help you be more successful with your lead generation efforts.