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January 31, 2008 | Greg Ness: Branding And The Rise of I-to-I

Marketers and marketing firms are accustomed to categorizing the world of commerce into business-to-consumer (B-to-C or B2C) or business-to-business (B-to-B or B2B). All of this neatly assumes that the marketer is the sender of the brand message to a specific audience. It also assumes you can classify individuals into a giant segment of spenders called consumers.

This is old world, mass-media, marketer-in-control thinking. Today, a good portion of brand communication goes on at the individual-to-individual (I-to-I) level. Smart companies know this, but there still remains a substantial amount of marketing rooted in the antiquated command-and-control style.

December 16, 2007 | Greg Ness: The Webcentric World Of B2B Marketing

There has been a sizable shift to an online marketing emphasis in many company budgets in the last several years, and according to results of a new study from B-to-B Magazine (2008 Marketing Priorities and Plans), that shift is continuing unabated. The B-to-B world is rapidly reorganizing around a webcentric nucleus because that model still has all the advantages of the old analog world of marketing, along with a host of advantages that can only be realized in a “digitally-remastered” new marketing universe.

September 22, 2007 | Greg Ness: B2B Advertising Growing And Changing

According to a story at BtoB Magazine, overall B2B spending in the first half of 2006 was up a total of 1.6 percent over the previous year’s figures. It was up 3 percent among the top 100 B2B advertisers.

Similar to recently released B2C figures for 2007, most of the growth in B2B advertising is directed at the Internet (up 21.4 percent among the top 100 B2B advertisers).

September 21, 2007 | Greg Ness: Nielsen Figures Confirm Changing Media Landscape

A new report released yesterday from Nielsen Media Research continues to illustrate the changing media environment. Overall, it showed advertising spending in the first half of 2007 declining 0.5 percent over last year’s figures. The biggest gainer was Internet advertising which increased 23.2 percent, and the media showing the most substantial decline was network radio which lost 8.5 percent.

May 18, 2007 | Ron Lee: Wells Fargo Launches Mobile Business Banking

Recent postings here have highlighted mobile banking developments for consumers. Now Wells Fargo has launched its CEO Mobile for a select group of commercial banking customers.

April 26, 2007 | Greg Ness: B-to-B Companies Look For Firms To Mesh Marketing & Technology

An article in this month’s B to B Magazine details how companies are increasingly turning to interactive marketing firms to help them manage the growing role of technology in the marketing process. Brand architecture, content/database integration, business intelligence, CRM, salesforce automation, lead generation systems and Web 2.0 practices are all part of the new and growing overlap between what was once the separate “silos” of marketing and IT.

January 30, 2007 | Greg Ness: Don’t Let High Involvement Products Be Hamstrung By A Not-Ready-For-Primetime Website

The Web is becoming the prime brand touchpoint for most high involvement products, and an inferior website can seriously cripple your chance for success (or your dealers’/distributors’ chances) right out of the gate.

If your company sells high involvement products or services, you will need a capable, differentiating website that helps customers or prospects make big purchasing decisions in your favor. Recent research by Yahoo and OMD shows the product purchase behavior for high involvement products often exhibits a pattern called the long and winding path. This path represents consumers hungry for information, and when buyers are in this mode, marketers stand the best chance to convert prospects to purchasers. The research goes on to point out the Web is the ideal place to intersect with people on this long and winding path.

December 27, 2006 | Greg Ness: Top 10 Marketing Trends For B2B Marketers In 2007

B2B Magazine has listed ten important trends for business-to-business marketers in 2007.  While this list is similar to other 2007 marketing predictions we’ve mentioned here recently, the B2B story makes it clear that marketing is becoming increasingly dependent on new media creativity and sophisticated data-driven insight to succeed. Here’s the list:

1. The rising influence of CMOs. Marketing’s importance is on the rise and B2B Magazine reports a new third generation of CMOs will arise with “much higher levels of accountability and influence.”
2. Web 2.0 will continue to explode. The opportunity here for B2B marketers will be “to connect with customers and build loyal communities of users.”

December 15, 2006 | Greg Ness: B2B Marketers To Focus On Customer Acquisition and More Online in 2007

The 2007 Marketing Priorities and Plans survey conducted by B2B Magazine reveals a couple of important trends. Here is what B2B marketing managers listed as their primary goal in 2007:

New customer acquisition (62.3%)
Brand awareness (19.5%)
Customer retention (11.0%)
Other goals (7.3%)

December 11, 2006 | Ron Lee: Online Grinches out to Swindle

So you think you’ve been working your mouse and broadband connection overtime this holiday shopping season? Chances are, there are some criminals too who are working even harder, and it appears that smaller online retailers are the focus of this fraudulent holiday attention.

November 07, 2006 | Greg Ness: B2B Marketers: Five Critical Principles

A new Omniture white paper (free registration required) summarizes five important steps to success for B2B marketers:

1. Better Lead Generation
2. Nurturing Prospects and Customers
3. Retaining Customers With Better Customer Support
4. Tracking and Measuring Success
5. Measuring Five B2B Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

1) Leads Generated
2) Lead Conversion Ratio
3) Cost per Lead
4) Web Inquiries
5) Web Inquiry Failure Rate