B2B Online Marketing Budgets Set to Grow in ’07 – Will Yours?

February 28, 2007 by · Leave a Comment

BtoB Magazine’s 2007 Marketing Priorities and Plans survey of 569 B2B marketing executives is out, and contains some surprising results.  According to a nice summary of the study by the folks at MarketingVOX, more than three-fourths of B2B marketing executives say they plan to increase their online budgets next year.

Interestingly, the biggest slice of the larger online marketing budgets – nearly a third – will go toward website development.  The next-largest pieces are email at 21.8%, search (18.7%) and webcasts (8.8%).  Banner advertising and sponsorships are nearly off the radar screen, at under 6% each.  A combined 7.6% is expected to be allocated to online video, blogs, RSS, product listings and lead-generation programs. Probably no surprise on this:  customer acquisition will be the primary marketing goal for next year (said 60%+ of respondents), followed by brand awareness with less than 20% and customer retention at 11%. Among offline vehicles, direct mail and events will see increased spending, for 50 and 44 percent of respondents respectively.  The one-time Goliaths of print, broadcast and outdoor advertising will not see significant increases in ’07, says the survey.These results are consistent with an offline-to-online shift in marketing spending that we’ve noticed among our clients for some time now.  At this point, it would seem prudent for every B2B to ask themselves, “Are we on the train? …or on the tracks??”

Filed Under: B2B Web Strategy, Online Marketing, Web Design ·

Value of Thought-Leadership Offers (Not Just for Conversions Anymore)

February 14, 2007 by · Leave a Comment

OK, most of you probably know about using thought-leadership offers (white papers, webinars, blogs, newsletters, podcasts, etc., etc.) as “bait” for the purpose of converting your B2B site’s visitors to nurturable prospects.  It’s certainly something we’ve preached about (some may say harped on) in our various communications for years.

And we’re not the only ones.  Taking just the example of white papers, you might want to stop by Michael Stelzner’s Writing White Papers blog to find Need to Persuade? Try Using White Papers (along with a vast amount of other useful information).  The title nearly tells all;  but he describes how white papers tend to bypass the palace guard and gain direct access to key people …because they help those people make necessary decisions. [Read more...]

Filed Under: B2B Web Strategy, Conversion Metrics ·

Bringing Cold Callers in from the Cold

February 7, 2007 by · Leave a Comment

We sometimes gloss over the critical importance of telemarketing (aka cold calling) as a key step in prospect acquisition and nurturing …possibly because we here at eMagine do it as a matter of course, so we tend to imagine that other firms must, too.  But as we were reminded by Sandy O’Dell’s excellent post at RainToday, “Restoring Respect To Cold Callers, The Black Sheep Of Business Growth”, we’re actually in quite a small minority.  In fact, most B2Bs flat-out avoid telemarketing, either unconsciously or by design;  and those that don’t tend to do it poorly …in fact, they often set it up for failure, whether wittingly or unwittingly.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: B2B Web Strategy, Conversion Metrics, Lead Generation ·