I attended a major semiconductor industry trade show last week. It’s always great to see the creativity and passion that B-to-B marketers pour into creating a positive trade show experience for their customers and prospects. Cool displays, working demo’s, educational seminars, even the hospitality functions. They are all part of the experience.

We are big believers in the personal selling power of trade shows. Unfortunately, many of these marketers miss a big opportunity by failing to put the same amount of effort and investment into creating a great web site experience for their customers and prospects. After all, a major industry trade show typically takes place once a year and lasts just a few days. The web, however, is 24/7/365. It deserves to be as creative, functional, educational and engaging as any trade show booth.

We go through an exercise with marketers where we walk through all of the elements of a successful trade show, and then apply
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New technologies. Media fragmentation. The changing marketing landscape. B-to-B marketing professionals are dealing with them – in many cases struggling with them – as day-to-day realities of the way we “do” marketing today.

One of the consequences of the new marketing landscape is that, as you necessarily devote ourselves to learning new technologies and media channels, you can lose focus on the big picture. It takes time and attention to learn how to properly execute a search engine optimization program, and keep it going continuously. It takes time and attention to implement and constantly tweak a search engine marketing program for continuous improvement. And to know, understand and leverage the continuing stream of new media opportunities and techniques available to B-to-B marketers.

There are endless details and procedures involved in optimizing press materials
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You may be reading this after clicking on our E-news item that 45% of integrated marketers in a recent study haven’t spent marketing dollars on emerging media like social networks, blogs, or word-of-mouth initiatives, but are interested in doing so. Of course, the other side of the coin is that 55% have implemented some kind of social media effort.

Why haven’t the 45% made the plunge…or at least stuck their toe in the water?

A new study by TNS Media Intelligence/Cymfony sheds some light on what we have found to be true through experience. The authors of the survey of 71 marketing professionals in the U.S., Canada, France and the U.K. say that many marketers, “particularly the slower-moving” ones (their words, not mine!), want “best practices” and “proven models.” That’s understandable,
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A recent article in B2B Magazine cites moves by B-to-B media companies Reed Elsevier, United Business Media and Ziff Davis that, collectively, point to the difficulties trade publishers are having in managing the migration from print to online.

Ziff Davis filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, citing a decrease in revenue from print advertising and subscriptions. UBM announced that it had restructured CMP and eliminated the CMP name. And Reed Elsevier put its Reed Business Information unit on the block.

While we are not happy to see reputable trade publishers suffering, the future belongs to those who leverage technology and find, or hold on to, the B-to-B audience. As we discuss in our white paper on this topic, trade magazine publishers once owned the franchise as aggregators of information.
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In the lead article in the December 10 issue of B2B magazine, Kate Maddox outlined “the top 10 marketing trends for 2008, based on interviews with marketers, ad agencies, media executives, analysts and other industry experts.” Read article.

The top 10 are green marketing, globalization, the shift to online, customer in control, embracing web 2.0, improving operations, targeted and personal events, integrating media platforms, going mobile and blended search.

The marketers interviewed include top tier marketers such as Boeing, Caterpillar, FedEx, GE, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, Siemens and UPS. But what about the rest of us? (Okay, we’re an agency but we came from and still serve primarily non-top-tier B-to-B marketers. You know – the real world.)

We think the top 10 list is on target.
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When was the last time you saw a company advertise itself as “combative and adversarial?” Have you seen any vision statements that say “We struggle with our customers for common ground?” How about a tagline that says, “Committed to losing your trust?”

Of course not. But more than half of b-to-b technology companies are branding themselves this way by their actions, according to a new study by the Chief Marketing Officer Council, reported in a recent online article in B2B Magazine.

According to the study, which surveyed 1,000 b-to-b technology buyers, IT marketing and customer relationship executives and their channel partners, 56% of vendors perceive themselves as being customer-centric, but only 12% of customers agree. Even more telling is that more than half of customers surveyed described their relationship with
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The B-to-B buying process usually involves buying teams representing all areas of the company with a stake in the success of the purchased product, service or solution. However, many B-to-B web sites today are designed for one type of generic user without considering the differentiated needs of customers or different job functions within the same customer.

The term “branding” is often misunderstood and not always warmly embraced in the business-to-business environment. But B-to-B branding is vital to a marketer’s success. It is the process of defining and differentiating your company and how you add value to your markets and customers. Good branding is part of every successful B-to-B marketing program. Sometimes it simply uses “code.” Over the past weeks, we have talked to prospective clients and heard many of the “code words” that reveal a branding issue.

“We can’t hire better sales reps or dealers because of our standing in the market.”

 “We don’t have top-of-mind awareness at customers.”

 “We need a consistent message that conveys our value
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Twice last week I heard about B-to-B marketing directors who were "ordered" to achieve the #1 ranking in Google search results for one or more keywords that were important to their company. That was the goal. Period. In one case, the company shelled out $75,000 over three months before they realized that they weren't getting significant results in terms of leads.

“Gotta be #1” might be a perfectly good move under the right circumstances, but absent strategy the mentality is reminiscent of the rush into e-commerce in the 1990s and that's a cautionary tale. If this approach catches on we’ll find ourselves in an auction situation and prices will soar. Hopefully that won’t happen, but until the search phenomenon matures a little, you might find yourself facing a similar dictate. You have to be responsive but, other than throwing money at it, what can you do?

First, if your management is stuck on buying their way into first place, you can ask if
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A business executive wakes up to an alarm clock he bought online, dresses in clothes he bought from on online catalog, and drives to work in a car he comparison shopped and bought online, listening to downloaded music. On arriving at his office, he powers up the computer he bought online, checks the online news and market updates, and reads one or two e-newsletters he subscribes to for work. He uses the web to search for places for an upcoming sales meeting, arranges the airline, hotel and rental car for a business trip, and taps into a Webinar on a new capability he thinks might help his company. Yet he refuses to invest in a web site for his company, saying he can’t see how a web site will help drive sales. Business declines; he uses the web to search for buyers and posts his resume on an online job board.

*With apologies to the source, lost to the ages, of the original fable about the value of advertising.