Where is Business-to-Business Marketing Headed?
Over the past ten years, as online options have increased 100 fold, the world of B2B marketing has reinvented itself several times. In order to be competitive, particularly in the Web 2.0 environment, businesses have to be ahead of the trends. According to the Direct Marketing Association, by 2008 online marketing efforts will be the dominant media for business-to-business initiatives. Think about that: traditional direct mail, industry print, and events and promotions will take a back seat to more efficient and sophisticated online efforts. A Forrester Research study in 2005 indicates that by 2008, online marketing will be more ubiquitous than anything except inperson events (including sales calls).
A quick look at business buying behavior underscores the importance of online marketing efforts. According to CMO Council/ KnowledgeStorm, more than 45% of all B2B decision makers spend five or more hours every week researching product and service information. They're attracted by the ease of access and availability, and breadth and depth of the information they can consume almost instantaneously. For most of them, their online research begins with a search engine. Perhaps most telling of all, 89% of business users and IT professionals state that online content has a moderate to major impact on their vendor preference and selection. Clearly, for B2B marketers, the ability to provide easily accessible, relevant, and in-depth information has never been greater.
But along with the opportunities come the challenges. For most marketers, those challenges are centered on lead generation, customer relationships, and measuring results more accurately.
So, if you are a B2B marketer with a need for better lead generation, relationship management, or tracking (or, more likely, all three), what are the critical factors you should consider? First of all, remember that tried and true B2C tactics may not necessarily work. Taking a strategy that's worked well in the consumer world doesn't generally translate into business audience success. For example, consumers are often motivated by impulse or status clearly emotional triggers. If they make the wrong decision, at worst they've wasted their money.
A business prospect, on the other hand, will spend far more time researching the product or service, weighing the risks and implications, and looking for possible alternatives. The easier you make it for them to get this information, the more likely they are to respond favorably. There are generally several decision makers or influencers involved, so the initial researcher needs to have information readily available to sell everybody else in the decision making path. So give them the depth and breadth of information they are likely to need, and make it easy for them to close the sale on their end.
Steps to Successful Online B2B Efforts
1. Better Lead Generation
One of the most common mistakes businesses make is jumping in to a program without fully defining the relevant key performance indicatiors (KPIs). If you think that the most important KPI is the number of leads generated, your VP of Sales thinks it's the conversion rate of leads to sales, and your CFO thinks it's the overall CPL, how will your company define success? An age-old rule of direct marketing is even more important when talking about online lead generation all leads are not created equal. If you treat them like they are, you are doomed from the beginning. That's why a successful lead generation model will rely on multiple KPIs to keep the program focused and effective and to keep you from wasting time and money on leads that just don't matter. Spend some time determining what your most important and most action able KPIs will be, understand the interaction between the KPIs, and then use that information to help you prioritize your leads.
Many online marketers spend considerable time qualifying and prioritizing leads, sometimes with mixed results. A tool, such as Omniture SiteCatalyst allows you to qualify prospects based on their site behaviors, and determine trends that identify best prospects for conversion. For example, if you know that 90% of all prospects that visit a certain page on your site will eventually convert to customer, it makes sense to cultivate those leads as a high priority and ensure that communication with them is consistent and relevant.
