According to Forrester research, B2B interactive market spending will increase to $4.8 billion in 2014.

Your goal, as a marketer, is to use those dollars wisely and ensure your strategies are attracting a large audience. One of the biggest challenges to B2B marketers is finding that perfect strategy that rides the line between being entertaining and informative.

What will draw in that new customer and keep him? Luckily, with an accurate analysis of what works well and what doesn’t work at all, you can make sure you are appealing to your audience and taking care of their needs.

Remember to do the following:

• Know your audience – Every marketer must know the marketplace. Demographics play a key role in what tone to take with your audience. Age, gender, income, social class, and lifestyle are highly influential in how a customer will respond. Keep these in mind when creating your plan. Use the tools at your disposal to see what email messaging works for you in certain demographics. Use Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) on your website. Many times, the things that seem like surefire methods miss the mark. Other times, those little details that seemed inconsequential brought in your biggest on-site audience. Know your data, and use it to grow your business.

• Engage your audience – See which landing pages are serving up high bounce rates via your analytics tool. Don’t guess! Know what performs well, and what needs change. You have a limited amount of time to truly grab your new customers, so use it wisely. Be direct in your messaging, especially when email marketing, and then test that marketing strategy. Videos that explain a product or service can be a great tool to concisely communicate to an audience, and they decrease bounce rate at the same time. Animations and pictures help to split up pages with large amounts of copy into reader-friendly chunks. It is also crucial to make sure you have the latest news possible. No one wants to read yesterday’s news.

• Entertain your audience – Gamification is the next big thing. Like the leader boards at a sporting event, leader boards in business are a universal way to convey to your fans and customers that a “game” is actively being played, and they are a major part of it. Reward users with points, or prizes, for carrying out simple tasks. You’re depending on the social network of business, so make sure that your customers are recognized on social sites for their skills. A demonstrable, fun reward for a specific activity can easily be socialized with others. You can create an almost limitless set of attractive visual objects that can be “sewn” on to a user’s social graph, such as a Facebook wall or Twitter stream, so that you can maximize their participation. More recognition means they will be more likely to communicate how great your site or product is to all of their contacts. It’s a win-win situation.

• Respect your audience – It seems simple, but remember this. Do not add users to a mailing list without their permission. Do not say a product is free to get people signed on, and then charge for the product. Do not send big, bold sales letters promising the earth and all the treasures upon it. Do not play annoying ads over videos. Recognize what strategies would send you bolting the other way – chances are, your potential customers feel the same way. Think about what you enjoy about your browsing and site experiences, and incorporate those into your plan. Remember that a solid and unique business model and reliable research form the true foundation that can lead you to your goals.

If you’re going to spend more on B2B marketing strategies – and it seems apparent that we all will – make sure your dollars count. Maximize the return on your investment by truly putting yourself in your customers’ shoes.

The more engaging you are with them, the more engaging they’ll be with you.

Photo credit: activerain.com

About the Author: Louis Rix is the marketing director for Netcars.com, one of the fastest-growing online automotive sites in the UK. He is also director of Carfinance247.co.uk, the UK’s leading car finance broker.

0 Comments

B2B marketers know that finding leads is one of if not the biggest challenge when it comes to adding new business.

With that being said, how is your company going about acquiring solid leads to enhance your B2B marketing ROI?

It all starts with a solid strategy that has been well thought out and clearly defining your target audience.

According to a MarketingSherpa, the prime concerns of B2B marketers remain in obtaining additional value and income while dealing with limited resources. The company even went so far as to put together its own methodology known as FUEL, standing for:

F: Find and attract leads – Strategy to personas to tactical plan.
U: Uncover qualified leads – Lead scoring, nurturing and management.
E: Establish automated marketing processes – Automate for efficiency and scale.
L: Lift results – Continuous improvement and C-Level reporting.

To keep your marketing tank full, keep some of these ideas in mind as you look to get the most drive for your dollar:

• Truly define your customers – Many marketers think they know who they need to market to, but don’t get complacent. Use surveys and research to stay up to speed with who your defined target clearly is, what their needs are, and how the economic factors may or may not be impacting their buying choices. Also take note of your customer’s buying cycle so that you know the approximate time of when they’re most apt to buy so you can target them then. Make sure that you have a regularly scheduled flow of campaigns in order to best achieve program mix success. Lastly, include running A/B tests in your repertoire so you know what drives the most income;
• Log the info into an updated data base – Following an initial or second discussion with a lead; determine if they’re ready to be sent over to sales. You need to find the opportune time to send them to sales, meaning not too early where you may lose them because they feel you’re too pushy, while not too late where they may turn to a competitor, feeling you can’t help them. Lastly, give the prospect a reason to want to continue their conversation with you, be it some form of an offer;
• Content is key – At the end of the day, the strength of your content is crucial to improving your odds of driving lead generation registrations. Make sure any and all content on your company site or emails you send out to prospects including articles, infographics, white papers, and guides is updated and provides impact. Make sure that the content will be beneficial to the prospect, i.e. how will this material help the prospect? Also look to cross-promote your content, i.e. what was onetime a blog can be re-purposed into a podcast or a more expanded guide or white paper, fresh with statistics that serve a purpose to the prospect;
• Mix and match – Use a variety of programs to enhance the chances of converting a lead into a sale. As noted above, content is critical to improving the odds of a sale, but it should not center on just one area. Mix in webinars, white papers, e-mail marketing, trade shows, display advertising, video, podcasts and more so you reach as many as possible in your targeted market area;
• Get social beyond Facebook and Twitter – While Facebook and Twitter command the largest number of users, they are but two of a number of social media networks B2B marketers should be involved in. LinkedIn, often thought of as just a site for job seekers, is much more than that. With more than 100 million members worldwide, it too is a site to consider when you look to drive leads your way. As part of your social media efforts, know the best times to tweet and share so that you increase the odds of maximizing your audience numbers. In general, social media usage hits its peak during Monday through Fridays from noon to 3 p.m. Don’t necessarily discount weekends, however, as you may be surprised to learn that many business owners take an hour here and an hour there on Saturdays and Sundays to shop for good buys to support their companies.

As a B2B marketer, what has proven to best drive you in acquiring lead generation registrations?

Photo credit: lithosphere.lithium.com

0 Comments

While we are only a month and a half into 2012, it isn’t too early to see if some projected B2B marketing trends for the New Year are taking hold.

According to analysis from Global Spec, five trends will shape the B2B marketing landscape now and over the next 10 and a half months, including content formation, online marketing, and technology:

• Content is king – Global Spec points out that as added content becomes available online to assist B2B buyers in constructing internal business cases and justifying acquisition decisions, the demand for relevant content will only get bigger. Given that is the case, the translation is simply that B2B marketers will be required to continue providing quality content or face losing business prospects. If coming up with fresh content continuously is proving an issue, consider repackaging such items or spreading it out over several issues of newsletters, blog posts or white papers. This will also give the readers a reason to come back for pertinent information;
• An online pedigree –B2B marketers must continue to utilize the Internet to stay in touch with customers who are online for such things as tapping into  search engines, directories, online catalogs, e-newsletters, white papers and more. If you’re not staying in touch online with what customers are seeking, you stand a good chance of finding that business going elsewhere;

• Technology is a keeper – In this technologically-driven age, having the latest technological tools at your side will only help increase your attractiveness to clients. Remember to spend the needed resources for marketing automation software in order to better segment your clients and deliver relevant content. If the right message is going to the wrong person or vice-versa, are you accomplishing anything?
• Results don’t lie – As company heads slowly pry their hands off the purse strings, it becomes ever more important that marketers show them their dollars are being well spent. One area that company leaders often turn their noses up at in the marketing process is social media. The reason for many of them for such actions is that they claim they cannot see the true return on investment (ROI), so why spend the time and energy on it? When you show those in charge that your marketing efforts are truly delivering the goods for the company, you stand a much better chance of getting more of what you ask for;
• Target appropriate social media – While many company leaders may question the value of social media, they are foolish to deny that it works. The key for marketers is to zero in on the best social media sites to promote their product. Take the time to analyze the different sites out there to determine which would be best for your products. As the GlobalSpec research points out, social media provides a valuable tool when it comes to constructing relationships, networking and overall providing engagement with both clients and potential clients. At the end of the day, however, social media is not the be all and end all for one’s B2B marketing solutions;

As a B2B marketer, are fully engrossed in the five trends mentioned above? If not, which area/s are you not as active in as you should be and why?

Lastly, what advice would you have for newer B2B marketers who look to the more experienced person that has seen different trends come and go over time?

Photo credit: socialmediacouncil.eu

0 Comments

As a B2B marketer, how do you go about measuring the rate of engagement with your customers? If the answer is we’re not sure, then you definitely have some work to do.

As a recent study from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute (EBI) points out, a mere 1.3 percent of fans of the top brands on Facebook actually take the time to engage with the brands (200 top brands were followed for six weeks). If you’re like me, you scratched your head a bit and thought that number couldn’t be so low.

In arriving at the percentage, study organizers relied on one of Facebook’s own metrics to note the comments, posts, likes, tags and more that define how a user on the social network can spend time with branded pages.

According to one researcher for EBI, the small percentage recorded is not the end of the world.

In her comments following the release of the report, Karen Nelson-Field noted, “I don’t think it’s a bad thing. People need to understand what it can do for a brand and what it can’t do. Facebook doesn’t really differ from mass media. It’s great to get decent reach, but to change the way people interact with a brand overnight is just unrealistic.”

The going notion that rings true more often than not is that most individuals who favor a brand can already be classified as loyal customers. In the event they don’t leave a comment, post and/or like, does not mean they are not buying the brand.

For B2B marketers, getting customers to engage in and buy their brand is crucial.

If your engagement efforts have been a little off lately, consider the following:

• Better usage of social media – Speaking of Facebook earlier, B2B marketers should definitely be socially engaged. Compile a list of the main social networking tools and be able to check off those that you are presently on. If the list is minimal, it is time to beef it up. Cross-promoting your engagement efforts on a wide array of sites opens you up to new customers and a greater perception of being authoritative in your respective niche;
• Improved content delivery – We all know that fresh content is critical here, but how can you best spread the news? Make sure your efforts are directed towards not only the content that goes on your site, but also by participating in online forums, responding to comments from those who visit your site and more. When you engage current and potential customers online, they are more apt to come to you the next time for business or assistance. Most importantly, know who your customers are;
• Lead the way to a sale – The combination of marketing and purchasing are not exactly rocket science. Make sure that sales are tagged with qualified leads that continue to flow more often than those that are perhaps going to lead to business. If a lead just fills out an online form but it ends there, you’re left with marketing pros wondering why it didn’t lead to a sale, while sales folks ponder if marketing really provided them with a solid lead in the first place.

As the recent Facebook study points out, the numbers don’t always truly tell the story.

Being a B2B marketer, what are some tips you could share with your fellow marketers on how you go about successfully engaging others?

Photo credit: mashable.com

0 Comments

By Jeanine Leder, Business.com Account Manager

Running a successful PPC (Pay-Per-Click) campaign in today’s highly competitive marketplace requires specific knowledge about the demand and marketability of the product or service you are selling. To achieve the very best ROI on your advertising dollar, it is important to make sure your PPC campaigns are closely monitored and optimized.

Here are the Top 5 best practices Business.com follows to optimize our advertisers’ Pay-Per-Click campaigns:

1)      Data Analysis – Allocate a set period of time each day to collect and analyze keyword data, click volume, conversion rates, sources of traffic and daily uptime of the campaign to determine where the client’s budget is best spent.  Compare how these metrics measure up against the advertiser’s individual goals to ensure that we are delivering the highest ROI.

1. Keyword Data – Business.com performs keyword research at the campaign level to draw the most appropriate audience to achieve the optimal CPL.  Account managers have narrow, specific keyword lists for those clients focused on low CPL and profitability, as well as large broad keyword lists for those clients desiring high traffic and brand awareness. Using the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, relevant keyword lists can be produced using “exact match”, “phrase match”, or “broad match” options to generate the keywords to match the campaign goals.
2. Conversion Rates/Sources of Traffic – Using some form of conversion tracking is critical to track metrics down to the keyword and category levels. It also provides you with visibility into how individual traffic sources are performing so that you can focus on those  sources that are delivering the highest ROI.

2)      Category Relevance – We find that campaign goals and target audience can vary wildly depending on the advertiser, the product or service and so on. Identifying your goals before launching a new campaign ensures that you are starting out your campaign on the right foot.  When we launch a new advertiser campaign on Business.com, we spend time getting to know the client’s business and their specific goals for the marketing campaign. Based on the information gathered from the client, we recommend all categories that may produce high conversions.

3)      Landing Page Evaluation – A landing page is the page that a potential customer comes to after he/she clicks on an ad. High quality, relevant landing pages drive the highest conversion rates.  Our team of account managers are trained to recognize the features of an effective landing page and work with clients to optimize the landing page to maximize ROI on the campaign. For more information on landing page optimization, read our earlier blog post.

4)      Ad Copy – Writing effective ad copy to reach the targeted audience(s) is not an exact science. Account managers work with clients to test different ad copy to find out what converts.  When writing ad copy, put yourself in the shoes of your audience. How do they think?  What would persuade them to click on your ad?  Be sure that your ad copy is clear and relevant to your landing page, but don’t hesitate to get creative and use an eye grabbing phrase that will lure the audience in and get the click.

5)      Budget –Close monitoring of budgets is key to ensuring that your company’s marketing dollars are being used effectively.  All of the steps above will give you the information that you need to make budgeting decisions based on your ROI.

A successful online marketing campaign does not happen overnight. It is rarely a case of “hitting the bullseye” right out of the gates.  It takes time, trial and error, close analysis and a bit of money to get things running smoothly and profitably.  Following the 5 tips listed above will help to get you rolling in the right direction. Tell us where you’ve found success with your PPC campaigns.

2 Comments

With the recent numbers showing tremendous growth for Apple, many marketers may want to stop and take a look at the formula the tech giant has put together to become so successful.

Reports indicate that Apple registered a whopping $13.06 billion profit last quarter, meaning the company has close to $100 billion in cash and securities. To show you how quickly funds have risen in the company’s bank account, it had some $15.4 billion in reserves just four years ago. Not a bad rainy day fund if you will.

Late co-founder Steve Jobs was great at creating demand for the company’s products, be it the iPod, Macbook, iPad or iPhone.

Even with his passing last fall, the company did not skip a beat financially, reporting earnings for the first fiscal quarter of 2012 of $46.33 billion in revenue.

Needless to say, Apple has done a great job of marketing its products for some time now.

For the everyday B2B marketer, take a bite out of Apple’s success and transfer it to your business.

Among the ways to improve how you do this is by:

• Driving demand and value from top to bottom. Make sure that everyone in the company is engaged and buys into what you are marketing;
• Studying your present customer base. When you study those already in your base, you increase the chances of locating new businesses or sections of your industry that can open the doors to more business. By studying current and potential customers, you enhance your ability to adapt to changes in the industry at a much quicker pace. One of the reasons advertisers choose Business.com is they want to reach business decision makers. Millions of businesses come to Business.com every month to save time and money monthly through our 50,000+ how-to-guides, price comparison tools, leading online B2B directory, and much more;
• Testing through various means. Marketers should branch out and supplement   general search campaigns with a Business.com pay-per-click or pay-per-lead campaign.  Decision makers come to Business.com at every stage of the purchasing cycle, whether they are just beginning their research or ready to make a purchase.
• Tracking your data constantly. Among the ways to most successfully do this is looking at the before and after results of your campaigns, identifying what was of most  interest to such prospects, keeping the pre and post-marketing visual of such data, and looking for patterns over time that may emerge. By using relevant landing pages, B2B marketers can achieve improved quality scores, attain a better ranking, and have much better conversion rates as compared to sending clicks to their home page.

As many who have followed Apple can tell you following their most recent revenue report, their momentum is only going to get better as more of their new products hit the market.

Having created many more win than fail product ventures, Apple is a prime example of a company that has marketed to the demands of consumers, something that is at the core of its success.

Photo credit: thebiggestnews.com

0 Comments

If your B2B content cross-promoting efforts have been falling on deaf ears in recent times, there are measures you can take to improve such results.

The first and foremost issue to deal with is admitting your cross-promotion efforts have not been working. Yes, admit some failure in this area in order to correct the problem and move on.

When you attempt to cross-promote online content, you are reaching out to other marketers who’ve already shown interest in your material, making it easier to get their attention than someone who you have never had any worthwhile dealings with.

Let’s say your best content work to date was done several months ago and you’re putting together a new online marketing plan.

In that case, cross-promoting the older content that registered with your audience is a great way to promote then and now. You prove yourself to be an authoritative marketer with your past achievements, thereby improving the chances of having this newer marketing content register with the visitor to your site.

As part of the cross-promoting effort, be sure to draw a link between old and new content so that the visitor sees the connection.  Relevancy is key here at all times as you map out then and now.

Some other tips to successful content cross-promotion include:

• Don’t inundate your audience – While you may feel like you need to throw everything but the kitchen sink at your audience, don’t overload them. You want to lead your audience to a desired action and not overwhelm them with decisions;
• Take the opportunity to thank them and offer them something new at the same time. If you’ve gotten a visitor to make a purchase or sign up for a newsletter for example, use the ‘thank you’ message to introduce them to something new, i.e. “We wanted to thank you for signing up for our marketing newsletter. Did you know that we have an upcoming webinar on how to market your small business?”
• Combine your production efforts – In the event you have a blog and a podcast or video production that tie together a common theme, by all means cross-promote them. While they both may be strong individually, they stand to be even better together. Use the blog to get the written message out, while the podcast and/or video piece can bring sound and sight to the message. This is also a good idea in that it allows those who prefer the written word to go to that message, while those choosing audio and/or video can select that medium. As visitors cross back-and-forth, you build up a larger audience, in turn, increase your search engine rankings;
• Partner up – If you are working with others to promote, be sure to promote their products and/or services and request them to do likewise. Especially in challenging economic times, cross-promoting each other’s goods can cut down on promotional costs and subject you to an expanded audience;
• Enjoy benefits of social media – As social media tools continue to expand, so do the opportunities for B2B marketers to cross-promote through a variety of different channels. When it comes to Twitter for example, there are ample opportunities to cross-promote, most notably through retweeting. For example, you have two marketing companies that guest blog on marketing-related topics. Sharing each other’s content opens the door to new audience members for both parties, thereby increasing business opportunities.

Lead Others to a Sale When Ready

Along with your cross-promoting efforts, you want to make sure you properly manage those leads once they arrive and register on your landing page.

Oftentimes, the prospect’s data will be put in a computer system, and then your sales team is on to the new lead. This step is important due to the fact you do not want to have the client and/or the sales rep speaking just yet if one or both are not ready for such a conversation.

Make sure that you properly manage the lead once it comes to your site via a whitepaper download, webinar, etc. and are only ready to speak to the potential customer when he or she is prepared for such a conversation. This is where lead nurturing comes into play.

With such a system in place, marketing can nurture the lead and inform the prospect, then passing along to sales only when the time is right.

As a B2B marketer, what do you find to be your best cross-promotion and lead nurturing efforts?

Which ones are you still thinking about trying and why haven’t you done them before?

1 Comment

As any marketer knows, having a good landing page optimization strategy goes a long way in determining whether or not one is receiving a good return on investment (ROI).

It is important to remember that consistently testing and optimizing your landing pages is key to achieving better ROI and improving the bottom line. With so much attention given to this area of your marketing efforts, the better the customized or dedicated landing pages in all likelihood means the more visitors.

A recent Marketing Sherpa report looked at a number of landing page optimization benchmarks, including the usage of customized or dedicated landing pages for each source of traffic in 2010. When asked to compare to sending traffic to the default site, 49 percent rated using dedicated landing pages somewhat effective, 43 percent rated it very effective, while 8 percent said it was not effective.

Having kicked off the New Year, perhaps you’re looking back on 2011 and wondering how your landing page optimization efforts could have been better. If that’s the case, keep several of these factors in mind as you strive for optimal performance:

• Remain focused – It bears repeating that you want your landing page to be focused and as simple as possible, given visitors to your page are more than likely looking to get in and get out in a relative short amount of time. Among the tactics to employ are concise paragraphs, bullet points to highlight important items, and an easy manner in which the visitor can act or attain additional information;
• Don’t crowd visitors out – Keep in mind that everyone who comes to your landing page is not a computer guru by any means. If your page is too complex, too crowded and above all too hard to navigate, you stand a good chance of not only losing the visitor at that time, but having them not return. As mentioned in the first tip, don’t make it an adventure for your visitors and save the special effects for the movie theaters;
• Employ useful metrics – Identify the key metrics that you are going to be measuring and set a benchmark so you can measure the impact of the changes. You want to see from start to finish where the visitor goes, at what point where they may be having issues, and where you may be losing them. Assuming you sell items online, start at the shopping cart and follow your visitors all the way through to the checkout point to make sure the visit was successful;
• Be resolute when it comes to success – Marketers also need to zero in on their registration page, wherein visitors provide their information to obtain a white paper, request a demo or make an acquisition. At this point in the process, make sure you give them a call to action, be it a survey, subscribing to your newsletter, or even some form of sale;
• Test, test, and test some more – Another important item to remember is that you need to test your landing pages. Among the things to test are using various subject headers, test the number of questions you provide in a request form, and make sure what products and/or services you are offering visitors are clearly defined. When possible, use A/B/ testing or multivariate testing in order to decipher those page elements that are showing more propensities to convert. The bottom line, leave no stone unturned;
• Keep an open mind – While you have hopefully had success with your landing pages, there is always room for improvement. Be open to changes, but don’t make one after another where it looks like you’ve lost control of the landing page. Changes should be made for a reason, not just for the sake of change;
• Review, review, and review – Last but not least, make sure two or more sets of eyes peruse the landing page before it goes live. Nothing cries out louder when it comes to questioning a company’s ability to deliver than misinformation, spelling errors with content, site navigation issues, etc. Your landing pages should sparkle from start to finish, don’t leave it up to chance. If you have even the slightest question about whether or not this page is ready for public viewing, hold it back until you feel 100 percent confidence in it.

If you are still not entirely clear on how to avoid mistakes when creating your landing pages, then by all means take the time to do it right instead of rushing something out there that may or may not work.

With the right landing pages, your business stands a better chance of landing in the black in 2012.

When it comes to your business, what processes are in place for creating dynamic landing pages?

Also, what do you find to be the biggest challenges with creating stellar landing pages?

1 Comment

The digital, print and trade show sectors of B2B media all witnessed increases in Q3 2011 compared with the year-earlier period, according to Business Information Network data from American Business Media.

The numbers point out that digital grew 22% in the third quarter, to $1.6 billion. Print witnessed a growth of 4.6%, to $5.7 billion, and trade shows jumped higher by 1.1%, to $7.7 billion.

Mergers and Acquisitions See Uptick

The mergers and acquisition side of things has also seen a lot of activity over the last 12 months.
Overall, M&A deal value in the media, information, marketing services and technology sectors grew 9% to $47.0 billion in 2011, according to investment bank Jordan, Edmiston Group (JEG). The number of deals in these sectors increased 2% to 896.

Marketing and interactive services turned out to be the most active category surveyed by JEG, with 291 deals (an increase of 17% over 2010) and $15.1 billion in deal value (increase of 33%).

“Overall, the interactive markets, including B2B and B2C online media and technology, and mobile media and technology, as well as marketing and interactive services, accounted for 71% of M&A deal activity for the year and 65% of the value,” JEG said in a statement.

The B2B online media and technology category witnessed an increase of 3% in the number of deals, to 63, and a 132% gain in deal value, to $6.0 billion. Among the biggest transactions was Oracle Corp.’s $1.1 billion acquisition of Endeca Technologies, which markets software to assist marketers’ better e-commerce efficiency.

Where is Digital Advertising Spending Headed in 2012?

For 2012, eMarketer is predicting that digital advertising spending will increase 18 percent to $36.8 billion, a figure that does not include spending on marketers’ own Web sites, something which Outsell Inc. projects at more than $60 billion on a yearly basis.

While the nation’s economy still seems to be sputtering, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the B2B marketing industry will be watching from the sidelines when it comes to spending habits.

As a B2B marketer, what are your budgeting plans for this year?

Are you expecting to:

1. Spend more on advertising?
2. Spend less on advertising?
3. Spend about the same amount spent in 2011?

Most importantly, are you optimistic that 2012 will be a good year for you in your B2B marketing endeavors?

Photo credit: windmillnetworking.com

0 Comments

As we get set to usher in 2012, it is worth taking a few minutes to look back on the year that was 2011, seeing what transpired in the world of B2B social media marketing.

For starters, a number of surveys pointed out that more and more B2B marketers planned to and did incorporate additional social media efforts into their online marketing campaigns over the last 12 months.

According to a mid-year survey from iTracks, close to 90 percent of domestic B2B companies were incorporating social media marketing into their game plans. Sagefrog Marketing Group reported over the summer that close to 60 percent of national B2B marketers would identify themselves as LinkedIn users, 50 percent Facebook users and nearly 45 percent Twitter aficionados.

Among findings from a Social Media Examiner study of more than 3,300 marketers:

• Ninety percent of marketers reported that social media is critical for their business;
• One-third of all social media marketers want to understand how to oversee and measure the return on investment (ROI) of social media and integrate their social media activities;
• A majority of marketers (58%) are using social media for 6 hours or more on a weekly basis, and more than a third (34%) invest 11 or more hours each week;
• Just 28 percent of companies are outsourcing some degree of their social media marketing.

Meantime, a BtoB Magazine report stated that 93 percent of all B2B marketers took part in 2011 in some manner of social media marketing, the majority of who concentrate their efforts on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

That being said, more than two-thirds (70 percent) of B2B marketers claimed a shortage of resources was their greatest challenge to successfully integrating social media into their 2011 marketing campaigns. Marketers also reported ill-informed success metrics and critical performance indicators (57%), lack of depth regarding social media (44%) and management resistance (22%) as challenges they have faced this year. Maybe the most tell all stat was that close to three-fourths of those surveyed said they fail to measure the ROI in their social marketing programs.

As you go into 2012, stop and think about the impact a well-designed social media campaign can have on your B2B marketing efforts.

Odds are your business has regular contact with potential customers numerous times in trying to educate them on what your company has to offer. With a well-structured social media program, your business can interact with the potential client and nurture those interactions, making them more inclined to go with you at the time of purchase.

If you are still skeptical as to whether or not your B2B marketing campaigns should be employing more and not less social media, take note that Forrester Research forecasts B2B companies will allocate $54 million towards social media marketing in 2014, an increase of more than $40 million from as recently as 2009.

Still think the social media marketing world doesn’t have room to grow?

Tell us how you incorporated social media into your B2B marketing plan over the last 12 months.

Photo credit: mltcreative.com

0 Comments