Yet more indication that the internet is the future for much of our marketing spend: in the first quarter of 2010, internet advertising revenues in the United States reached $5.9 billion, a 7.5% year-on-year increase.

The new figures, from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers, show the highest ever first-quarter revenue levels for the online media industry, indicating that interactive advertising campaigns continue to prove their value and effectiveness – or at the very least their measurability.

These figures seem to tie in with recent Bellwether Report statistics, showing that UK digital budgets were revised upwards in the first quarter of 2010 for the third quarter in succession, with digital the fastest growing of all advertising mediums.

Meanwhile, eMarketer has revised upward to 10.8% (from 5.5% in December) its forecast for US internet advertising spend this year compared with 2009. It predicts that internet ad spending will total $25.1 billion in 2010, after declining 3.4% last year. In more specific terms, search spending is expected to increase 15.7%, banner ad spending 8.2%, and video spending a massive 48.1%.

The B2B sector is changing. However perceptions of this important area of marketing are often stuck.

Talented young people still want to work on consumer accounts because they perceive them as sexier… But, how can B2B show that, in reality, this is not ALWAYS the case. Could it be by encouraging creativity in the sector? Could it be through the migration to digital and even social media? And will the reduction in budgets across key B2B sectors (construction, automotive, etc) continue to push fresh thinking to react to the constant challenges, in turn, pushing creativity and driving a new age of talent coming through…

B2B International Director, Nick Hague, was recently interviewed by The Drum to get his views and below are the answers to some of the questions

• THE DRUM: How relevant is Social Media to B2B Marketing?

NH: At the moment, social media is definitely still in its infancy when compared to B2C marketing but I believe that social media usage within a B2B market can actually deliver greater rewards; especially because B2B marketers address a much smaller number of customers who spend larger amounts of money and personal relationships are of much more importance than in B2C markets. The first thing to understand is that social media for B2B markets is more about education, facilitating word of mouth referrals and driving traffic to your website as well as thought leadership and therefore requires deeper layers of interaction eg private brand blogs/communities rather than Facebook; Linkedin rather than Twitter and podcasts rather than YouTube. Here at B2B International we have embraced social media to play a role in brand building and positioning through the development of our blog since January 2006. Throughout the last 4 years we have concentrated our efforts on delivering new and fresh content with the end result now being a repository that holds a massive amount of information including podcasts, e-books, videos and white papers – http://www.b2binternational.com/b2b-blog/

• THE DRUM: How can the industry tackle the percieved lack of creativity in B2B Marketing?

NH: I think it is purely down to laziness of the industry not carrying out the necessary market research to get into the targets mind to understand what makes them tick. People in business are still human and do make business decisions based on emotion so this shouldn’t be lost in trying to develop a B2B marketing campaign. I think another misconception in B2B marketing is also the fact that too much attention is paid to the product rather than the bigger picture to hone in on people’s needs – has a picture of a new printer ever evoked a stirring need in you to go and order one for your office?

• THE DRUM: How do you convince talented new recruits that B2B can be just as sexy as consumer accounts?

NH: I think the plain answer is, because of the lack of creativity that has gone before in the industry, it is much easier to make your mark in B2B marketing than maybe it would be in B2C marketing. Also, I believe there is a greater incentive for being a bit riskier in B2B markets as there is so much staid marketing and advertising that goes on with stock images of laptops and handshakes. The bolder the message, the greater reward in the end.

• THE DRUM: Is B2B marketing now more important than ever?

NH: As Drucker once said “A time of turbulence is a dangerous time, but its greatest danger is a temptation to deny reality. However a time of turbulence is also one great opportunity for those who can understand, accept andexploit the new realities. It is above all a time of opportunity for leadership”. Whatever the marketing strategy being considered, one of the most difficult challenges faced by B2B marketers is convincing senior management of the value of marketing and the need to invest in it, especially in bad times (when budgets have no doubt been cut). Marketing teams need to prove the ROI of their actions at all times so as to obtain buy-in to marketing efforts and acknowledgement of the importance of marketing as a strategic approach to business which will in the end impact on the bottom line.

• THE DRUM: What are the biggest problems faced by business-to-business marketers?

NH: I think the problems that B2B marketers face today are the same as they have faced historically in the past. Small customer numbers, complex decision making units and complex products and applications throw the emphasis on close targeting and personal relationships, especially in the current economic climate. One of the problems in B2B marketing however is getting across the message that your product or service is different to those of the competition (especially as so many B2B markets are commodities with little differentiation). Therefore being able to truly understand customer needs is the starting point in any successful B2B marketing campaign.

For more information and the full article visit – http://www.thedrum.co.uk/

In today’s Thursday Night Insight, Caroline Harrison comes across a great example of why market research pays dividends.

A recent convert to Wikipedia, I was checking out this popular encyclopedia website just the other day. Probably the thing I love most about a half-hour surf on this site is the weird and wonderful voyage of discovery you will experience, as you quickly lose interest in the topic you had originally gone to read up on and spot a far more intriguing word or phrase to click on, thus jumping to a completely different subject.

You might go on there to learn more about the life and times of Winston Churchill (actually, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940-45 and then again from 1951-55), but two clicks of the mouse later you can be learning about the origins of the kiwi fruit (not originally from New Zealand, as the name might suggest); a couple of clicks after that you’ll be fascinated to learn about the performance of Spain at the Olympic Games (115 medals in all since first participating in the 1900 Games), and a few minutes after you can lose yourself in the riveting topic of pop music in Ukraine (the 1990s saw an explosion in the Ukrainian Pop music world – apparently).

Indeed, such a bizarre ‘Wiki-journey’ the other day led me to a list of the world’s largest shopping malls. And it was here that something caught my eye and amused me greatly. Let me enlighten you.

The world’s largest shopping mall, with a gross leasable area of 600,000m2 (or 6.46 million sq ft), is said to be the New South China Mall in Dongyuan, China, a city of more than 10 million inhabitants. The mall contains sufficient space for as many as 2,350 stores. It also boasts seven zones modelled on international cities, nations and regions, and features include an 85-foot (25 m) replica of the Arc de Triomphe, a replica of Venice’s St Mark’s bell tower, a 1.3 mile (2.1 km) canal with gondolas, and a 553-metre indoor-outdoor roller coaster. It opened in 2005. It has been 99.2% unoccupied since that time.

99.2% unoccupied??? So, we have here the world’s biggest shopping centre, but there have been more or less no shops (less than a dozen, I understand) in it for the past five years, and presumably very few shoppers either. Not exactly fit for purpose, is it? In fact, it sounds like it was an unbelievably bad idea in the first place.

Now I don’t want to sound like a broken record, once again hammering home the need for market research, but surely a little planning and investigation might have revealed this looked likely to be a white elephant of elephantine proportions?

Apparently, some people fault the mall’s location in the suburbs of Dongyuan, where it is only practical to travel by car, as the primary reason the mall is largely unoccupied. Dongyuan itself does not have an airport, and there are no major connecting highways adjacent to the mall’s location. Yes, all of these do sound like potential problems which should have been taken into consideration. But did the mall’s planners not also talk to the local population about whether they would be interested in shopping in a new mall? Did they not think about whether good public transport links would make a difference to visitor numbers? Did they not ask major retailers whether they would want to open another branch of their store in this new shopping centre? There are just so many things that should surely have been researched thoroughly before investing millions and millions of dollars in building what could conceivably be dubbed the world’s worst shopping mall, never mind the world’s biggest.

For companies too, there is no point in having huge scale, ambitious plans for seemingly amazing products or out-of-this-world services if they are not practical, affordable, attainable or required. Do your market research! Find out if there is a market for your proposed brainchild – and I mean really find out. The money and time it takes to do this will all be worth it when you are able to go ahead and launch your fantastic vision successfully. And, trust me, it will definitely be worth it when you realise you actually had better not go ahead and spend all that money on developing, packaging, promoting, distributing and launching your idea after all!

Everybody knows that 2009 was a tough year, with marketing budgets in particular feeling the strain. Yet things are looking more promising for 2010 already – and on both sides of the Atlantic!

A survey conducted at the end of 2010 in the United States showed good news for marketers after a year in which 60% of b-to-b marketers slashed their budgets. BtoB’s “2010 Outlook: Marketing Priorities and Plans” report, based on an online survey of 376 B2B marketers, found that although almost half plan to maintain their existing budgets, nearly 40% will increase spending in 2010. Just 13% will be reducing their marketing spend this year.

As with last year, online marketing – including website development, e-mail marketing, search, social media, online video and webcasts – looks set to see the biggest boosts. This medium is widely acknowledged as being both cost-effective and measurable. Spending on innovative direct marketing and customer events both look set to rise also. More about this report can be found here.

Meanwhile, in the UK, the latest IPA/BDO Bellwether report indicates that optimism and confidence are growing. In spite of the report showing a ninth consecutive quarter of declining marketing spend, the rate of decline is clearly slowing. Spend is down only 7% compared to 15% in the previous quarter.

Indeed, marketing budgets for 2010 have been set higher than those in 2009 and, with 35% of businesses surveyed seeing improved prospects, companies are the most optimistic they have been for the past five years.

As with the trends seen in the US, online advertising budgets were revised upwards for the second quarter running while direct marketing budgets have also increased (by 2.2%) for the first time since 2007.

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