Welcome, or welcome back as the case may be, to The B2B Weekly Roundup, where we offer our take on some of the key developments affecting B2B marketing in bite-size form. Google’s I/O conference gave us all a glimpse into the firm’s integration plans; Godfrey’s Andy Hunt assesses the impact on B2B.  Separately, we note the opportunity to highlight your company’s deep expertise via web content for improved search results. Leanne Terpak poses a few key questions for marketers on the use of Big Data and suggests the most important thing is to turn insights gleaned into useful actions.  We share the inspiring story of a 17-year-old girl who won a Twitter hackathon as an example of the creativity that awaits B2B marketers in the social media space.  And finally, in case you missed BtoB Magazine’s Media Power 50 report, it’s worth a look; after The Wall Street Journal and WSJ.com, Google and LinkedIn occupy the #2 and #3 positions in the B2B media landscape.  No further comment on that one here, for now.  Enjoy and let us know how we’re doing.

As a B2B marketing pro, you have a lot to keep up with.  We’re right there with you.  Now we’re right here with you, too, offering our take on some of the week’s most interesting news and powerful insights in the world of business-to-business marketing and communications.  As we work out the schedule and topics I hope you’ll leave comments to let us know how to improve.  Out of the gate, we’re committed to covering Search, Analytics, Social Media and Content Marketing and providing an anchor Digital Trend Watch.  We know you’re busy.  We hope this helps by giving you a quick handle on the relevant trends.  Your feedback will help us do that better.  Thanks, and welcome.

Training for and completing an Ironman triathlon bares a lot of resemblance to the development and execution of a website project.

After reading the excellent blog by my colleague Leanne Terpak on establishing KPIs, my thoughts returned to a topic I had raised earlier: If KPIs and the analytics they drive are so important, why aren’t we doing better with them? What is stopping us?

How do you know if your social media program is really resonating with your audience? Which tweets have resulted in conversions on your website? The following blog gives some tips on how to begin setting up an analytics strategy.

Google Analytics has long been a great free tool that has helped B2B marketers review, analyze, interpret and make website improvements. Find out how a recent Google privacy policy change is affecting keyword reports and how you should continue to manage your organic search program.

To continue my series of blog posts on B2B web analytics basics, here we’re going to take a closer look at Key Performance Indicators and what you need to know about them.

One of the most discussed and challenging issues marketers face these days is measuring ROI.

The recent Wisconsin-Michigan State game was a perfect analogy to marketing communications. While the game-winning play got all the attention, every other play and decision had a part in the final outcome.

It all starts with a plan. Without it you can quickly find yourself careening down the rabbit hole with no bread crumb trail to help find your way out. Through my experience, I’m still amazed to see the number of companies that don’t value, or maybe appreciate, the power of well thought out and monitored analytics. 

There really is only one way to know. Test. We’ve been working with a number of clients conducting A/B testing and refining the best time to send their B2B campaign emails.  We have determined that certain times of day can, in fact, increase the open and response rate by a few percent. I’d tell you but it’s proprietary information. Actually, your audience will differ and our audience’s best time is not going to be your audience’s best time. So where do you start?

In its most recent issue, BtoB magazine published a survey of B2B marketing analytics in which most respondents confess relatively minimal involvement in analyzing their web data for marketing insights.

Do you own,  operate or plan on browsing a web site in the next 12 months? If you answered yes then there are some new privacy regulations coming out of the European Union which will affect you. We're still in the early stages of this but there are a few basic things you can do now to start preparing.

Marketers today need to create maximum value with a minimum budget. And yes, marketing analytics can definitely help. Over my next few blog posts, I plan to discuss the basics of B2B analytics in a series, providing some primary education on this topic and taking a look at the actionable information that can come out of crunching the numbers.

Back in March, Google announced the new version of Google Analytics, Version 5, as a closed beta to users who requested it. But on Wednesday, April 20th Google rolled out the update to all of their users.

In the early days of the Internet, there was tremendous enthusiasm (“irrational exuberance” was a term bandied about) for the potential of the new medium.

It used to be good enough to say, “We know who our customers are.” But now, it is important to challenge assumptions and make the effort to find out more about your customers. Technology has changed the game completely.

We are in the business of communication. So what happens when we don’t clearly communicate?

The audience information that media planners and buyers need in order to put together an effective media plan is a bit of a challenge when it comes to b2b online media channels.

Marketers are pressured every day for top-line growth and bottom-line results. You need to deliver measureable performance. Since the one constant we can all rely on is change, we need data-driven continuous feedback to design, execute and improve marketing campaigns to show that all-important ROI.  To do this properly, I recommend you develop an analytics strategy.  "A what?" you ask.

“Work smarter, not harder.” For brand managers caught between the time constraints and budgetary challenges of the present economic climate, this is sound advice. Another smart piece of advice is to revisit your marketing asset management (MAM) strategy.

It's easy to be overwhelmed by all the measurements that are available these days. Let's start the discussion about which are most actionable.

Based on what I think I know today, here’s what we can expect to see in the year ahead:

I love analyzing user behavior on websites and looking at outcomes through analytics. I think regularly about what does the user want to do when they get to a page on your site? And did they complete the task that they intended to do? Or more importantly, did they complete the task that YOU wanted them to do?

Online marketing continues to increase in popularity and % of marketing budgets spent. In this post, I will look at Online Lead Generation, which is essentially tracking the more than 97% of visitors who come to a site and leave without identifying themselves – the ones that got away… for now.

A recent Business Week article reports that AOL plans to create the "newsroom of the future" by using high-powered technology to revolutionize the business of gathering and presenting news.