Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category
Tuesday, August 10th, 2010
Figures from the B2B Barometer1 show that the economic situation for B2B marketers looks optimistic for the future:
Business optimism gradually returning amongst B2B marketers
On the client side:
- Three fifths (60%) anticipate economic recovery within the next 12 months
- Two thirds (66%) expect their own organisation to grow in the next 12 months (up from 50%)
- Three quarters (73%) expect marketing spend to increase; up from one half (48%) last wave.
Agencies are more optimistic, with four fifths (79%) anticipating that they will grow over the next 12 months. For many agencies this represents a significant turnaround in their fortunes; 45% report that revenues have declined in the last 12 months. For others it represents a continuation of an existing trend; 34% report growth in the last 12 months.
Newer media continue to increase share of wallet
Client-side marketers continue to allocate a significant proportion of their budgets to three channels; trade shows (16%), direct mail (13%) and email marketing (16%). ‘Newer’ media channels continue their rise and now account for 41% of total marketing spend (up from 39% last wave).
Increased focus on measuring ROMI
There is a noticeable trend towards measuring the Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI)
from this spend. Two thirds of client-side marketers (65%) now measure return compared
with one half (49%) last wave. Unsurprisingly given this focus on accountability, two fifths
(39%) of agencies report that some or all of their clients measure agency performance using
ROMI measures.
Social media relevant …but B2B marketers lack understanding
Two trends have received extensive coverage in the B2B press in recent months:
- The alignment of marketing with sales
- Social media in a B2B context.
The B2B Barometer sought to explore each area in some depth and has brought fact to an
area where opinion dominated:
- Sales and marketing are becoming more closely aligned. Although 50% of client side and agency side marketers believe marketing still plays a secondary role to sales in B2B organisations, three quarters (70%) of clients report that the two functions are actually effectively aligned. Marketing may play second fiddle but it supports sales well
- Social media is perceived to be relevant in a B2B context. Three fifths (60%) of client-side marketers feel it is relevant to them and two thirds (66%) of agencies feel it is relevant to their clients. And social media is not a fad. Approximately three quarters of both clients and agencies disagree that social media in a B2B context is a passing phase
- However social media is still an area which puzzles many marketers. Two thirds of client-side marketers (63%) have no social media strategy in place; two fifths (41%) cite ‘insufficient understanding’ as the reason for this
For more information visit http://www.abba.co.uk/
1The B2B Barometer is compiled by the Institute of Direct Marketing (IDM), the Association of B2B Agencies (ABBA) and Circle Research
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B2B Marketing, Business, Business To Business, Marketing, Social Networking |
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Monday, July 26th, 2010
With online marketing seemingly growing in importance all the time, we found it interesting to assess how much this really is the case. Emedia recently published results of its 2010 Online Marketing Strategy Survey conducted among marketers and digital marketers, some of the key findings of which are published below:
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48% of respondents dedicate a minimal amount (i.e. less than 25%) of their marketing spend to online activity; only 12% allocate more than half of their budget to online activity. However, interestingly, the higher the commitment to online marketing activity, the lower the overall marketing spend. However, online marketing is generally considered much more ‘cost effective’ – or simply ‘cheaper’ depending on your point of view – than many other forms of marketing, and therefore offers a good solution to those with limited marketing budgets.
- 66% consider email marketing to be the most important aspect of online promotion, followed closely by organic search engine traffic and SEO strategies. Social networking, with a score of 41%, was also quite highly regarded. Paid search strategies ranked lowest in the findings.
- 40% already value using thought leadership collateral to engage more fully with their target audience.
- 57% of respondents have an internal sales team wanting marketing to provide new leads, and 33% have aggressive new business lead generation targets. Just 16% remain focused on their existing customers to grow their revenue streams.
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Marketing, Online Marketing |
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Wednesday, July 21st, 2010
Good news this month for many of our clients! According to a new report, Trends in Industrial Marketing 2010: How Manufacturers are Marketing Today – incidentally published by one of our clients, GlobalSpec – 70% of sales and marketing professionals in the industrial sector expect their companies to increase sales this year, compared with a mere 16% in 2009. However, the online survey of 464 respondents found that only 31% had an increased marketing budget.
For 42% of sales and marketing professionals questioned, customer acquisition is their primary goal this year. One-third is focusing on lead generation and 13% specified branding as their main aim.
More than two-thirds (68%) plan to increase spending on social media. The same percentage intends to increase their spend on online video this year. Conversely, a quarter plans to decrease spend on trade magazine advertising and 24% will decrease use of printed directories.
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Industrial Research, Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Social Networking, Surveys, Trends |
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Friday, July 16th, 2010
Reflecting on a month of non-stop football coverage, Alex Clements this week mulls over the effectiveness of high profile advertising and sponsorship.
The World Cup is now over and things are, once again, returning to normal. Wives get their husbands back, kids get the right to watch TV back and the men are in recovery for another four years until the next World Cup. I will confess, I’m not a huge fan of grown men kicking a ball around a pitch (I’d rather watch grown men beat the life out of each other in a cage!). I did, however, watch a few games of the World Cup, including the England vs. Germany game, which was an interesting one to watch with Vanessa, my fiancée who, just to make things more interesting, comes from Wuppertal in Germany!
Despite not really caring who won the World Cup, I found myself subconsciously supporting Spain in the final. The only reason I can think of for this is that I quite like visiting Spain on my holidays. The least I can do is support their football team in return for their hospitality.
I’m quite easily distracted at times and my mind can wander to a vast array of weird and wonderful things. The example I’m going to share with you on this occasion came to me during this football (or “soccer” for those of you in the US) match between Spain and the Netherlands. As I watched the ball go back and forth between opposing players – and on occasion directly from one goalie to the other – my mind wandered as I noticed the multitude of banners advertising different companies around the pitch. There were banners for Adidas, Sony, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Budweiser to name a few. I sat there and wondered to myself, “How effective are these adverts?”
I decided that some of these adverts must be more effective than others when using this platform to reach their target market. I praise the strategic placement by Adidas because it is a company that manufactures sports clothing, which is likely to be of interest to a considerable percentage of football fans who will be watching. Similarly, people watching the game on TV at home or in a public bar could see the banners for Budweiser or Coca-Cola and as a result think “I could really do with a Budweiser!” – just as I did! Unfortunately, however, I was sitting at home with no access to any Budweiser… Of course, this is the aim of the banner and I’m sure it works quite effectively.
In my mind, I compared the effectiveness of the ‘drinks’ banners to that of ‘electrical goods’ banners which have used the exact same method to reach their target market. Let’s first think about the platform for advertising here: The World Cup final. A quick search on the internet suggests there were over 18 million viewers in the UK watching the game on British television. Before the game took place, FIFA expected an audience of 700 million worldwide to watch the final. Even if viewers turned out to be significantly fewer than this prediction, it would undoubtedly still reach a considerable number of potential customers. As a means of embedding your brand in the minds of your target market, I say this is a very effective way to reach millions globally.
Maybe the decision to advertise in this way would be more straight-forward for companies such as Coca-Cola as they are presumably targeting anyone who drinks liquid – which I shouldn’t need tell you is a pretty high percentage of the world’s population! However, for companies that specialise in electrical goods – which are not necessities of life (don’t tell my fiancée I said that) – as high value and infrequent purchases, from a consumer point of view there is more at stake and a bigger purchase decision to be made. Such companies must assess who they are targeting and who they would reach by each method of advertising before deciding on a platform.
At first, I questioned whether electrical goods companies would see as much return on investment as drinks companies would. Will people see these banners and think, “I could really do with a new TV”? My guess would be that the need for a beer would come before the need for a new TV, but then again, I was watching the game in high-definition on a 40-inch screen! Despite this, this approach still does the job of raising awareness and embeds the brand in the minds of millions. Not bad for something as simple as a banner with your logo on, is it? Not that a pitch-side banner at the final of the World Cup will be within every company’s budget, mind!
I’ll leave you now with one final example, which truly shows how effective advertising and sponsorship can be. Domino’s Pizza sponsored television coverage of the World Cup and Britain’s Got Talent, and it has been reported that the company has seen sales rise to 237.1 million – an increase of 21% in the last half year leading up to June 27, making a £17.5m pre-tax profit. Even more impressive, sales were said to have been up 65% on the day of England’s only World Cup win, increasing by a whopping 333% during the hours the match was shown! To find out more about Domino’s recent successes, click here to read Domino’s Pizza Plc Half Yearly Report.
- If you would like to find out more about measuring and monitoring the effectiveness of advertising, please click here.
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Advertising Research, Alex Clements, Marketing, Marketing Strategy, ROI, Return On Investment, Sponsorship, Sport, Thursday Night Insight |
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Friday, June 25th, 2010
Nick Hague this week delves into the world of social media to determine its relevance for B2B marketers.
When our IT Manager spoke to me back in 2005 about Web 2.0 and the way it was going to change not only how we did business at B2B International but also how we communicate to our customers, my eyes glazed over as I was lost in hi-tech babble.
However, I duly took a lot of what was said on board and we implemented our blog that has not only played a major role in our brand building and positioning but also has been a key element in our continued SEO push. Throughout the last 5 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. However, that was then and this is now (back then there was no such things as tweeting).
With many businesses these days venturing into the ‘Wild West’ of social media, trying their hand at Twitter and creating a company profile on Facebook, I felt it worthwhile diving back into the world of social media to see if there are other learnings we B2B marketers can take from our consumer cousins.
Firstly I did some digging into the Twitter phenomenon to see if this truly was something for us to look into, since our main foray into the world of social media had principally been blogging. I found from a recent study with B2B marketers that Twitter didn’t transpire to be the groundbreaking trend that I had been led to believe. So much so that nearly a half of the 400 people surveyed stated they were dissatisfied with their return on tweets and four out of five couldn’t directly attribute any increase in revenue from their Twitter activity. ‘Hold on a minute’ I thought, ‘are these consumer marketers or B2B marketers?’ (After all, this was meant to be a study of B2B marketers.)
Do they not know that the sales cycle for B2B products is not instantaneous and is often a very long process involving numerous decision makers from financial and operative through to production and technical? When was the last time you spent $500,000 on a new software platform without some serious consideration from multiple parties? B2C marketing is all about ‘here today and gone tomorrow’ – just look at the number of celebrities that are using Twitter to bolster their waning status.
B2B marketing is very much more about a relationship lifecycle that numbers years, not months, but this is where I think B2B companies can take advantage of social media more so than consumer companies. Twitter is just part of the armoury at our disposal that contributes to building brand awareness and engaging in the many continuous touch-points we look to generate; we shouldn’t ignore the tried and tested methods of direct mail. By way of example, one of my colleagues recently received an e-mail from a previous client with whom we hadn’t done business for over 5 years but had continued to communicate with through a mixture of direct marketing:
Subject: direct mails from B2B
Hi Paul, hope all is well.
Just received this afternoon one of the almost legendary direct mails from B2B – unfortunately the Belgium team did not make it to South-Africa…
Nevertheless, I hope to get in touch with you soon regarding picking up brand awareness survey again (that’s five years ago!)
cheers
w.
Would this person have got back in touch if we hadn’t continued to engage with him over the years? – maybe, but his head could have been quite easily turned by another research agency if we hadn’t continued to put our brand in front of him.
It is true to say that, at the moment, social media is definitely still in its infancy when relating 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 – we just need to be clever with it.
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. For example, concentrate on company blogs and communities rather than Facebook; place more effort on relationship marketing through Linkedin rather than Twittering away; and deliver useful, relevant podcasts rather than spouting lyrical about anything and everything on YouTube.
And that brings me to my final point on social media. On the same day last week, one of my colleagues sent through an amusing link to the BP spills coffee video on YouTube whilst a ‘loose friend’ on Facebook sent me a request to join the group ‘I hate BP’. The video is very funny and I recommend you search it out as it will definitely make you laugh. This then triggered me to view the ‘I hate BP’ page on Facebook and saw that 9,009 people had already joined this crusade. It made me realise the power of the internet and social media that can very quickly either work in your favour or dramatically against you, as in BP’s case.
How your business is perceived in the Web 2.0 world will affect your reputation and your ability to connect with customers, associates and potential customers (just look at the BP example). If you are a B2B company just about to take the plunge into the creation of your social media blog, first of all determine if you have or can produce enough relevant content for the media and customers to justify the development in the first place. Content is king!
Secondly, make sure it looks good. Branding, design and user experience matter when you are interacting with social media and the main objective is to deliver relevant information, quickly.
Finally, make sure it is up-to-date. Social media is the first step in content marketing. The value of the content lies in being able to aggregate information in one place that helps build search traffic while serving as a clearing house for information relevant to the media, customers and employees. For social media to have value you have to have more than news releases to post; you need other information such as images, video and social links that provide an added layer of information and perspective about the organisation. Remember, who wants to commission a company that can’t even manage an engaging, thought-provoking blog?
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B2B Marketing, B2C, Business To Business, Marketing, Nick Hague, Social Networking, Thursday Night Insight, eBook |
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