Category: B2BeCommerce

B2BeCommerce

Forrester Looks At The Hows And Whys Of B2B Ecommerce

Forrester has a new report out looking at B2B ecommerce finding what it describes as “solid evidences on the impressive financial successes achieved by companies that have taken the lead in implementing B2B ecommerce.”

The report found that 89% of respondents agreed that implementing ecommerce increased annual company revenue by an average of 55%. 98% all of them said their ecommerce solution was important in meeting their goals to grow revenue, and 90% said it was for attracting new customers. 90% also said it was important to improving customer retention/satisfaction. 92% said it was important in lowering costs, and 89% said it helped them gain a competitive market advantage.

88% of respondents said they agreed that implementing ecommerce drove higher profitability per order, and 84% agreed that it drove lower cost per order. 81% said it increased average order value.

12% said 50% of their revenue booked by their ecommerce system is incremental revenue for the company. 16% said 40% to 49% of it was. 27% said 20% to 29%, and only 2% said 0% to 9%.

“While the value of eCommerce solutions for selling to businesses online is undeniable, many B2B companies balk at the thought of a complex and costly implementation process,” the firm says. “B2B companies should carefully define project goals and objectives, involve users throughout the implementation process, and engage with knowledgeable experts, both internally and externally.”

42% of respondents said they have deployed their current core ecommerce solution as software-as-a-service (SaaS)/platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and hosted off site. 24% said theirs is a hybrid (started SaaS, plan to transition to on-premises). 17% said on-premises. 8% said they started as SaaS and have already transitioned to on-premises. 9% started on premises and have either already transitioned to SaaS or are doing so.

You can find the study available for download here.

Image via Forrester

May 29, 2014
Which Social Networks & Types Of Posts Are Working For B2B?

B2B Marketing recently released its Social Media Benchmarking Report for 2014, and pulled some key findings together into an interesting infographic.

It looks at the social networks and types of posts that B2B businesses are using, and what’s working. LinkedIn has a sizable lead over Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Google+ in the “most used” department, and LinkedIn is helping these companies drive revenue far more than the other platforms, though it’s second to Twitter when it comes to boosting brand awareness.

After many years of businesses facing this challenge, difficulty proving ROI is still the biggest challenge by far. Only 16% are able to demonstrate ROI completely or most of the time, though 44% said they can some of the time compared to 34% who said rarely or not at all.

Video was found to be the best performing content, followed by written copy, then images. The marketing team is posting to the social channels much more often than experts within the companies or the senior management team.

The entire report is for sale here.

Via Marketing Charts

Image via B2B Marketing

May 2, 2014
Survey: Businesses Not Satisfied With Their B2B Lead Generation Processes

A recent survey from Salesfusion and Demand Metric found that most small and mid-sized companies have lead generation processes in place, but few (less than 10%) think they’re highly effective. Over half (58%) say they don’t produce enough leads.

The survey of 200 businesses also indicates that the most common approaches include email marketing (78%), tradeshow or event marketing (73%), and content marketing (67%).

“Lead generation is quite often the greatest point of friction in the marketing and sales relationship, and a goal of our study was to understand what marketers are doing, and what kind of success they are having,” said Demand Metric Chief Analyst Jerry Rackley. “The marketing team experiences constant pressure to produce more and better leads, and when they do generate them, where they’re stored has much to do with overall process effectiveness. Almost 60 percent of organizations whose leads are stored in CRM or marketing automation systems report that their lead generation process is moderately or highly effective. Less than half of organizations that store their leads in spreadsheets, in-house databases, email folders or other places report this same level of process effectiveness. CRM and marketing automation systems provide marketing and sales with the tools needed to more effectively execute, measure and improve the lead generation process.”

“The study verified what we’ve been hearing,” said Salesfusion CEO Christian Nahas. “Marketers need an easier way to accurately identify leads as interested and qualified and they need to deliver those leads to their sales teams at the right time. Marketing professionals are being held increasingly more accountable for budgets and business impact. As the demand for data on marketers continues to increase, smarter tools and more accurate and easy-to-read data will also be increasingly important.”

Content marketing, based on the survey’s findings, is the lead generation tactic targeted for the greatest increase in investment (70%). Tradeshow and event marketing will see the biggest decrease in investment among these companies (40%).

Web forms were found to be the most common mechanism for capturing leads (73%), followed by data entry (66%). The most common lead storage repository is a CRM system (45%) followed by spreadsheets (17%).

According to the report, only 16% of those using and storing their leads in CRM or marketing automation systems say they have no standard for lead quality. 62% say their standard or definition is moderate to very effective.

Hat tip to Direct Marketing News

Image via Thinkstock

April 2, 2014
Report: B2B Trending Towards Mobile Before PC

eMarketer has a new report out called, “B2B Mobile Marketing: As Buyers Harken to Mobility, Sellers Hasten to Keep up.” The firm references data from Forrester Research, Forbes Insights, and Google.

For one, it says (citing Forrester) that 91% of “connected employees” used a computer at their work desk in Q4 2012, and 64% also used a smartphone. We can only imagine that percentage has grown significantly over the past year.

eMarketer looks at locations where connected employees use their tablets, smartphones and computers. Again, this data is over a year old, so it’s likely to have skewed to increased mobility.

It then looks at data from a year ago from Forbes and Google, showing that over half of business executives in the U.S. said that within the next three years, they’d be using mobile devices as their primary business platform as opposed to PCs.

The paid report delves into the role mobile tech is playing in informing B2B buying decisions, how B2B marketers are factoring mobile into their budgets, strategies and tactics, and how these marketers are integrating mobile at different phases of the buying process.

Image via eMarketer

April 2, 2014
Report: Content Sharing Circles Have Big Impact On B2B Vendor Selection
The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council and NetLine Corporation recently put out a report (via MarketingProfs) finding that customer content sharing circles strongly impact pre-sale vendor selection. More and more, “insight-hungry” businesses are relying on trusted third-party information to make their decisions.

It also found that buyers are often clustered in “distinctly different content sharing circles”.

The report is based on data from 352 business buyers during January. Participants came from all executive levels across 30 different industries. It identifies three primary types of sharing circles:

From the middle out (35 percent): Content sourcing and purchase decisions are driven by tactically focused executives, but senior management is informed about how and why key decisions were made.

From the bottom up (30 percent): Junior or mid-level managers source primary content and share upstream to members of senior management, who then make the final purchase decision.

From the top down (29 percent): Senior management consumes content, sending information downstream for product identification and final purchase and execution.

These circles are being powered by three segments of content personas, the report suggests:

Researchers: Primarily seek out the most broad and expansive content and are focused on new industry reports and research to inform them of advancements in solutions, trends impacting the market and opportunities for improvement

Influencers: Interested in both the broad thought leadership consumed through trusted third-party channels, as well as vendor-branded technology specifications, data sheets and use cases. This group emerges as the segment most interested in summarized content, including infographics, video and blog commentary.

Decision Makers: Want to stay informed through research reports and analyst commentary but also expect to have access to data in order to speed and enable better decision making in the tail end of the decision funnel

According to the report, the web is the main place business buyers begin their path to purchase with 68% starting at search engines. It also found that while buyers are seeking out input from trusted third-parties, facts and data-driven insights from vendors are the second most valued source of content in purchasing decisions.

“B2B marketers annually invest an estimated $16.6 billion in digital content publishing to acquire business leads, influence customer specification and consideration, as well as educate and engage prospects,” says Donovan Neale-May, Executive Director of the CMO Council. “Despite spending about 25 percent of their marketing budgets on content creation, most companies lack the necessary strategies, competencies and best practices to effectively engage their markets, and very few have content performance metrics in place to measure effectiveness and calculate ROI.”

As far as the actual reasons buyers are using content, the top five were: identifying best practices/best-of-breed solutions, determining where competitive differentiation can be achieved, clarifying the position of a specific vendor or partner, setting the strategic agenda and assessing areas of need and prioritization, and providing perspective from trusted/neutral sources.

You can find the complete report here.

Image via CMO Council
March 31, 2014
Infographic Looks At B2B Social Media Potential For 2014

UK-based Real Business Rescue has gathered some findings about B2B social media use to project what’s in store for the remainder of the year. Data comes from a bunch of sources including eMarketer, Social Media Examiner, InternetRetailer, BusinessInsider, MediaBistro, AdAge and others.

Among said projections is that social media advertising will see “explosive growth” throughout the year and into the future.

It looks at the top social media sites by unique monthly visitors, as well as those adopted by B2B businesses (guess which one is tied with Facebook). It goes on to examine B2B social media budgets, marketing tactics and marketing goals, and throws in a few tips for good measure.

Take a look.

Source: How B2B Businesses Are Tackling Social Media In 2014

[via Social Media Today]

Image via Real Business Rescue

March 20, 2014
Does LinkedIn Intro Give You ‘Shivers’ Or B2B Email Optimism?

LinkedIn launched a new email tool this week that is actually pretty innovative, and could have a significant impact on business to business email communications. Security experts are not sold on it, however, with one notable industry voice saying that from a security and privacy point of view, it “sends shivers down my spine.”

The tool is called LinkedIn Intro, and essentially adds LinkedIn profile info to email messages you’d already be receiving with the goal of making the email more actionable, and making it seem more legit when it is.

Do you see business benefits of LinkedIn Intro? Are you concerned about the privacy and/or security implications? Let us know in the comments.

LinkedIn Intro And What It Does

LinkedIn Intro is not a new email client. You’re not signing up and getting an email address. Rather, it’s a LinkedIn layer, which you can opt in to have added to your current email client. It supports Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL Mail and iCloud. It’s currently only available for iPhone, but I expect it will expand in time. Probably to support more email products as well.

If you give LinkedIn Intro your phone number, you can set it up, so you can use it via your iPhone Mail app.

Intro is the direct result of LinkedIn acquiring Rapportive last year. Rapportive co-founder Rahul Vohra announced the feature in a blog post earlier this week, saying, “The growth of mobile email is simply staggering. Four years ago, less than 4% of emails were read on mobile. Today, half of all emails are read on a mobile device! So we set ourselves the challenge: bring the power of LinkedIn, and the technology of Rapportive, straight to the Apple Mail app on your iPhone.”

Here’s the difference between an email without Intro and one with it:

When you tap on the displayed LinkedIn info (“CEO at Crosswise, Past: Commona, Dynamics Inc.” in this example), you get more info from LinkedIn including location info, the site the user has connected to their LinkedIn profile, information about how you’re connected to that person, etc.

The idea is that seeing this kind of info in emails you receive, particularly from people you’re unfamiliar with, lends more credibility to the email. You’re more likely to not dismiss it as spam. It could also provide you more context and info for messages from people you are aware of.

This is actually a pretty interesting mash-up of social media and email, and the kind of thing we can envision seeing more of from social networks going forward. Google already does something similar to an extent. In Gmail, if you get an email from someone with a Google profile, it will display their picture from that profile, along with where they work (if they’ve provided that info), and any Google+ circles you have them in. Google could easily expand this to include more info (like connections you have in common and more bio info), similar to what LinkedIn is doing, though it would still be strictly from Google’s own data in Google to Google email exchanges.

While Google and certainly Facebook have tons of data on people that could be used in a similar way to what LinkedIn is doing, LinkedIn is in a unique position as the “professional” social network, making Intro a potentially very effective business to business tool.

How LinkedIn Intro Works

To LinkedIn’s credit, it managed to do something on the iPhone that most developers probably didn’t think could be done. Even some of Intro’s critics have acknowledged being impressed by how they did it.

“Ask any iOS engineer: there is no API for extending the built-in mail app on the iPhone,” says Martin Kleppmnann from Rapportive and now a software engineer for LinkedIn. “If you wanted to build something like Rapportive, most people would tell you that it is impossible. Yet we figured it out.”

In a blog post, he explains how LinkedIn was able to overcome four “impossibilities,” including: extending the iOS mail client, an interactive UI in email, dynamic content in email and easy installation.

About Those “Shivers”

Graham Cluley, the seasoned security industry veteran who recently shared his criticisms of Yahoo email address recycling program with us, and made the comment about Intro sending shivers down his spine, had this to say on his blog:

Rather than your iPhone connecting directly to your email provider’s servers (Gmail, Yahoo, etc), it will be connecting via LinkedIn’s proxy server instead – which will act as a middle-man in your email communications.LinkedIn will then look at your email messages, and insert Intro information into each one.

In case you’ve forgotten, LinkedIn is the company which lost the passwords of over six million users last year. LinkedIn also scooped up the contents of users’ iOS calendars, including sensitive information such as confidential meeting notes and call-in numbers – which they then transmitted in plain text, not encrypted.

He goes on to mention the lawsuit the company is currently battling, which alleges that they hacked into email accounts to mine address books. LinkedIn calls such accusations false. More on that story here.

The Wall Street Journal ran some additional comments from security experts expressing similar concerns.

Suffice it to say, LinkedIn, like its social network peers, has had its fair share of the spotlight when it comes to privacy issues. There may be legitimate concerns when they’re essentially intercepting emails to “linkedinify” them.

In an update to his blog post, Kleppmann did respond to such concerns. He listed five points for people to keep in mind:

1. You have to opt-in and install Intro before you see LinkedIn profiles in any email.

2. Usernames, passwords, OAuth tokens, and email contents are not permanently stored anywhere inside LinkedIn data centers. Instead, these are stored on your iPhone.

3. Once you install Intro, a new Mail account is created on your iPhone. Only the email in this new Intro Mail account goes via LinkedIn; other Mail accounts are not affected in any way.

4. All communication from the Mail app to the LinkedIn Intro servers is fully encrypted. Likewise, all communication from the LinkedIn Intro servers to your email provider (e.g. Gmail or Yahoo! Mail) is fully encrypted.

5. Your emails are only accessed when the Mail app is retrieving emails from your email provider. LinkedIn servers automatically look up the “From” email address, so that Intro can then be inserted into the email.

Basically whether or not you trust LinkedIn Intro is going to come down to whether or not you trust LinkedIn with your data. Either way, people who send emails to people who happen to be using Intro are going to have those routed through LinkedIn.

Cluley says security is not in LinkedIn’s DNA. The company did at least take a step in the right direction earlier this year with the launch of two-step verification.

LinkedIn For Business

Regardless of the security implications of any of LinkedIn’s offerings, there is no denying that the company has had businesses in mind throughout 2013. The company, in its tenth year, has made a lot of improvements.

LinkedIn has updated its jobs search engine, improved its recruiting tools in a variety of ways, added more insights and analytics, launched sponsored updates, and opened up company page APIs, to name a few.

LinkedIn announced in its earnings report for Q2 that its membership reached 238 million, with growth accelerated to 37% year-over-year. Q3’s report is due out on Tuesday, so we’ll see how that has progressed over the last few months.

Do you think LinkedIn has a legitimate business tool on its hands with LinkedIn Intro? Do you think critics like Cluley make valid points? Share your thoughts, questions or concerns about Intro in the comments.

Images: LinkedIn

October 25, 2013
Kodak Bankruptcy: Company’s B2B Transition

Eastman Kodak Company, in a 20 August decision filed by the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, received approval for a reorganization plan that may eject Kodak from Chapter 11 bankruptcy as soon as 3 September. Kodak filed under Chapter 11 on 19 January 2012. In the interim, Kodak has been at work selling off what it could to resolve creditor debts. This offloading includes the Kodak digital imaging patent portfolio for $527 million, less than a third of what was originally anticipated. The largest creditor settlement was with the UK Kodak Pension Plan, resolved by selling the company’s personalized and document imaging businesses to the Plan for $650 million.

Kodak shareholders are walking away without their investment dollars. The Court denied a shareholder motion for an equity committee to investigate concerns that the company was undervalued and shareholders were being inadequately represented. As stated in the Court Memorandum: “The Court recognizes that if Kodak’s current plan is confirmed, its shareholders will lose their entire investment… its creditors, who include employees who may have lost their jobs, retirees who worked for Kodak for their entire careers, and small suppliers who may have been dependent on Kodak for their business, will also suffer great losses.”

Today Kodak filed for reorganization through Chapter 11 process. Questions? Naturally. Read here for details http://t.co/R00wT8BI

— Eastman Kodak (@Kodak) January 19, 2012

Kodak is spinning the development as a step in the right direction for intended reorganization objectives. Antonio M. Perez, Chairman and CEO, says of the planned transformation to a B2B company, “Next, we move on to emergence as a technology leader serving large and growing commercial imaging markets—such as commercial printing, packaging, functional printing and professional services.” We should note that Kodak has already announced that Perez will see Kodak through the bankruptcy but, come 2014, will step down from his position as CEO.

Since January 2012, Kodak has worked on their social media presence. For the general public, company social media sites are promoting forward-looking creative content rather than tugging at Kodachrome heartstrings—though a B2B transition makes one wonder about future audience interfaces. Current campaigns include Picture of the Day, promotions of World Photography Day (19 August apparently) and the Kodak 1000 Words Blog where “the people of Kodak,” can share their own stories and enthusiasm about, “imaging and its power to influence our world”—contributors appear primarily to be company execs.

Kodak has maintained exposure to professional clients. Yesterday, the Facebook page for Kodak Motion Picture Film endorsed late summer movies shot on Kodak film. These include Lee Daniels’ The Butler and The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones. The company has won 19 Scientific and Technical Academy Awards plus an Honorary Academy Award for innovations during the first century of film history.

August 21, 2013
Google May Soon Get Better For B2B Sales
Google may soon become a better tool for businesses who sell products for other businesses. Google has a new product in beta called Google Shopping For Suppliers, which is essentially a B2B version of Google Shopping.

Do you think the Google Shopping model will work for B2B? Let us know what you think.

A Google spokesperson tells WebProNews, “Google Shopping for Suppliers is a beta that helps users searching for B2B products to quickly find what they’re looking for, evaluate options and connect with suppliers to make their purchases.”

Google has made no formal announcements about the product, but the company tells us the beta launched about two weeks ago, and is U.S. only (for now). It requires listings to be in US dollars by default (though a few European sites have already picked up on the launch), and adheres to the same policies as Google Shopping, but with a handful of exceptions.

For example, most Pricing and Payments policies for Google Shopping don’t apply, because, as Google notes in a help center article, suppliers and buyers frequently negotiate their price based on item quantity. The same goes for shipping policies.

“Given that tax requirements vary by buyer’s country and buyers may come from any location, tax practices are not governed by Google policy,” Google also notes. “Suppliers and buyers are expected to abide by local law.”

Additionally, Google doesn’t require suppliers to post return/refund policies on their sites, which is a departure from Google Shopping’s terms, though it does maintain a requirement that suppliers “conspicuously” post terms for returns/refunds in their Google Shopping for Suppliers listings.

Finally, Google Shopping For Suppliers doesn’t rely on Google Merchant Center technology.

The full policies for Google Shopping For Suppliers can be found here.

So far, the product only returns results for electrical and electronic products, but Google says to check back soon for more product types. It’s easy to imagine a large pool of B2B products populating the results in time.

It looks like all the merchants that are listed come with the “Google Verified Supplier” label. Google does say that if you become a Google Verified Supplier you can have your products appear higher in the Sponsored results section on Google and on www.google.com/shopping/suppliers. “More product visibility leads to more sales,” the company says.

Other benefits Google says come with being a verified supplier include:
- Results from Verified Suppliers show an eye-catching badge that highlights the supplier’s verified status to potential buyers.
- Products from Verified Suppliers show first in the listings, before those from unverified suppliers, so your products will noticed by interested buyers.
- As a Verified Supplier, you’ll have a public company profile to add key information to, such as certifications and locations.
- You’ll be able to add information to your listings that’s critical for the buyer’s purchase decision, such as photos, attributes, customization availability, and lead time.
- Potential buyers can contact you easily through a form available on all your Verified Supplier product and company profile pages.
There is an annual verification fee of US$1,000.

Andrew Davis makes a few additional observations:

– It looks like Google has not made this a CPC engine yet and after you submit your verification fee you should be able to sell your products in bulk.

– It looks like the data feed requirements are very different than that for Google Shopping. Make sure you take a close look at them. Namely Price, Shipping, Tax, and Returns and Refunds policies have changed.

Considering how well Google Shopping has been doing for Google, this could turn out to be an important product for the company in capturing B2B ad dollars.

Google Product Listing Ads, upon which Google Shopping is based, have been proving way more effective than text ads. Multiple reports have come out recently showing this.

According to recent Kenshoo findings, “eye-catching” PLAs draw about one and a half times the clickthrough rate of regular text ads, and convert 23% better, resulting in a 31% higher return on advertising spending (ROAS).

A report from Adobe found that Google increased its marketshare of retail spend by 0.6% in a year to 86.5%, and that almost all its growth came from PLAs. In Q4, PLAs accounted for 10.7% of overall spend, according to the company, indicating that Google’s PLA program is only a little smaller than the Yahoo Bing network, which is 13.8% of total retail ad spend, the company said.

Just this week, Wired ran a report looking at data from Marin Software finding that advertisers managing $4 billion annually in ad campaigns spent 600% more on Google PLAs after Google’s transition to Google Shopping in October, and that the PLAs were generating 210% higher clickthrough rates than the text ads from the previous year.

Bing has noticed how well product listing ads have been doing for Google, and will soon be launching some of its own.

Have you had luck with Google Shopping? Do you think Google Shopping For Suppliers has potential to be a game-changer in B2B? Share your thoughts here.

[Thanks to Andrew Davis for the tip]
January 30, 2013
T-Mobile Announces New Mobile B2B Solutions

T-mobile announced today that it intends to ease further into business-to-business (B2B) services with some new service offerings.

T-Mobile Office Connect is the mobile carrier’s communications solution for businesses. It will integrate T-Mobile’s 4G network to enable “desk phone features on mobile devices. The carrier claims that employees will then only need one number and voicemail box to manage all of their business contacts, and that desk phone to mobile transfers will be smooth. The service will also allow customers to route international calls through “the least expensive option” and bills long-distance calls at business rates.

T-Mobile is pricing Office Connect at $9.95 per month per line, which includes hardware, software licenses, and installation costs.

“Today, mobile devices are critical extensions of an organization’s business infrastructure,” said Frank Sickinger, T-Mobile’s SVP of B2B. “Therefore, making and protecting strategic mobile investments are more pivotal than ever before. Our new unified communications and equipment financing solutions demonstrate T-Mobile’s commitment, as the ‘Un-Carrier’, to challenge the status quo for our B2B customers.”

T-Mobile also announced its Mobile Device Payment Solution (MDPS), a service designed to allow business to finance the cost of devices over time. The carrier claims the service has “competitive rates” and can be offered at no interest with the proper credit approval. Qualified Corporate Liable (CL) businesses will be able to reserve capital and finance upfront costs through third-party lender CFS.

January 24, 2013
Here’s What’s Working For B2B Businesses In Search And Social

It’s an ongoing struggle for businesses to figure out how to get the most out of their marketing budgets. While email has proven time and time again to be an incredibly effective channel, there’s still a lot of question as to how to maximize ROI in channels like search and social. Here, you’ll find a look at what seems to be working for a great deal of B2B businesses.

Do you get a bigger bang from your buck from SEO, PPC or social media marketing? Let us know in the comments.

Webmarketing123 has put out some interesting survey results for its State of Digital Marketing 2012 report. It looks at B2B vs. B2C marketing efforts in terms of SEO, PPC and social media. We’ll focus on the B2B side of things here. Among other things, it looks specifically at the satisfaction levels of in-house/agency search marketing and social media efforts, as well as how much money businesses are putting into different social networks, and how much they’re getting back.

The survey included companies like Sony, Olympus, Phillips, IBM, Hitatchi, Cisco, Agilent, Microsoft, Citrix, Medtronic, Merck, Novo Nordisk, Blue Shield, ADP, Pitney Bowes, Monster.com, Angie’s List, GE, John Deere, Aramark, Thomson Reuters, Federal Express, Bose, and Nestlé. In all, over 500 marketing professionals from the U.S. responded to the survey.

The main B2B takeaways appear to be that lead generation is the top objective among brands, and SEO is found to be twice as effective as either PPC or social media marketing. This is quite interesting, considering that it is getting harder and harder to get on the first page of Google results. Of course, there are some major brands that took this survey, and they likely don’t struggle with rankings as much as some smaller businesses.

According to the survey, about 50% more B2Bs now consider social media as having the most impact on lead generation, compared to last year, though SEO is still significantly ahead.

Based on the surveys findings, most B2B businesses engage in SEO, and do so in-house, rather than hiring agencies. Almost all of them either intend to increase their SEO budgets in 2013 or at least maintain their current budgets.

According to the survey, the most common measures of SEO performance are the volume of traffic, organic traffic, and the number of keywords appearing on page 1, “which give no insight into financial impact.” Fewer marketers, Webmaketing123 says, are employing “more sophisticated measures,” like number of qualified leads or sales attributable to organic search.

Here’s a look at how businesses are doing their PPC, and what their budget plans look like:

Here’s a similar look at how businesses are doing social media, and what their budget plans look like:

Interestingly, while in-house dominates the efforts of businesses across SEO, PPC and social media, the satisfaction levels are significantly higher when outside agencies are hired, according to the survey:

According to the survey, B2C businesses are getting more engagement than B2B businesses from their social media efforts, but the gap is narrowing. B2B businesses are getting better at social media.

“B2C marketers are ahead with 70% moderately to highly engaged (40% highly engaged), but B2B is catching up, with 63% at those levels of engagement (27% highly engaged), overall, only 1 in 10 have no social media program,” the firm says.

It probably helps that the social networks are putting out more business-oriented products. Facebook, since the IPO, has certainly had businesses on the brain (even at the cost of user-friendliness, perhaps), launching more and more ad products and targeting capabilities for posts. Twitter, just this past week, announced new ad targeting options of its own, as well as the Certified Product Program for businesses. Google also announced some new business-specific features for Google+ this past week.

As these networks continue to cater more to businesses, businesses are likely to find them more valuable, and perhaps find more room in their budgets to take advantage. However, it is the social network that has always been business-oriented, that currently seems to be providing the biggest bang for B2B business’ bucks.

Last, but not least, Webmarketing123 provides a look at the break down of dollars spent among popular social networks, and money made from them. It looks like businesses are getting the most out of their dollars spent with LinkedIn, though for B2C, Facebook blows LinkedIn out of the water. This makes sense, however, if you consider the professional nature of LinkedIn.

Businesses may soon be able to get even more out of LinkedIn, as the company just expanded LinkedIn ads into 17 new languages. The company is also improving its developer platform, which could lead to some more business opportunities.

From which social networks are you getting the most ROI? Are you getting more from SEO or PPC? In-house or agency? Let us know what’s working for your business.

August 31, 2012
Social Media Sells More B2B Leads [Infographic]

If you’re not using social media to get your products and services recognized, you have to explore this social media business to business infographic from Insideview.Com.

Why bother you say? For one, IBM reported a 400% increase in sales after implementing a pilot program to explore the advantages of marketing via social media.

Another reason? Almost 70% of a salespersons time is spent doing things other than selling, social media can cut that time down significantly.

Over 90% of business to business companies are using at least Facebook. That’s almost everyone! LinkedIn generates more leads than a company blog, Twitter, or Facebook and less than half the businesses are using it. Can you say opportunity!

If you’re aren’t taking advantage of these trends, you might as well reserve a spot in the museum because you have become a dinosaur. Selling B2B via social networking helps you build new relationships with ease, gives you broader coverage, and allows new clients the ability to seek you out 24/7. It’s worth a try, in fact, it’s a no-brainer!

March 27, 2012
B2B Marketing: Facebook vs. LinkedIn

You would think that businesses would use LinkedIn more than any other social media site because it is built for them. Facebook is the everyman social networking site.

This infographic finds that LinkedIn may not be all that it’s cut out to be. Sure, it’s great for business, but people only use it for that – business.

They found that people of the business mindset are still in that mindset even when on Facebook. Using it effectively could tremendously help your business. We’ll let the infographic give you the rest of the details:

February 6, 2012
AOL Industry – AOL Goes Niche and B2B, Starting with Energy, Government, Defense

AOL has announced the launch of AOL Industry, a new trade media unit, which will see the growing media juggernaut tackling specific industry niches. This will begin with sites in the Energy, Government, and Defense sectors, but there’s no telling how broadly the net will stretch before it’s all said and done.

While the announcement doesn’t make any mention of expansion beyond these three industries, it would only make sense. The company already has strong footholds in a variety of sectors with sites like The Huffington Post, Engadget, AOL Autos, etc.

It does say, “AOL Industry will offer subject-specific news, information, tools, video and analysis, and foster niche communities that enable professionals, experts and government employees to engage each other.”

The new initiative makes interesting use of LinkedIn. Users can use the social network integration to see personal connections to people and companies that are making news in a particular industry.

“Launching AOL Industry allows us to bring to specific business sectors the same sense of community for which AOL Huffington Post Media Group consumer sites are well-known,” said President of the recently formed AOL Huffington Post Media Group, Arianna Huffington. “We’re applying a blend of news, opinion and engagement to industries that have their own unique audiences, and creating a forum for influencers to connect and communicate with one another. We’re excited to launch AOL Energy today and see the site as an original offering for decision-makers and experts looking to keep up with a fascinating, fast-moving and complex field.”

The AOL Industry unit is being led by VP and General Manager Jay Kirsch. He says, “We believe there’s a great opportunity in creating targeted platforms by and for influencers in distinct industries and government. These sites will combine the best of news and information with the social, visual and personal aspects of today’s web. In fast-moving, specialized industries, decision-makers need an easy to use, authoritative source to stay on top of the news and to connect with one another.”

Naturally, the whole thing creates some new advertising opportunities for the company. “This is not only an incredible opportunity for industry experts and thought-leaders to take advantage of a unique platform, but it’s also a new way for advertisers to connect directly with executives and influencers in these sectors,” said AOL Advertising President Jeff Levick.

AOL Energy is up and running, while AOL Defense and AOL Government will be “launching soon”. Peter Gardett, Colin Clark, and Wyatt Kash (respectively) have been appointed as editors.

May 16, 2011
3 Good Reasons to Sharpen Your B2B Marketing Accountability Now
It is fairly safe to say that most –if not all- B2B Marketers agree that it is important to measure and communicate the value marketing brings to their organizations. However from speaking with fellow B2B Marketers, many are looking to improve their marketing accountability in a practical way without getting bogged down into complex dashboards with more dials than they can shake a stick at. Here are a number of key pointers for a practical set up and why now may be the best time to further sharpen existing B2B Marketing metrics.

Why Sharpen Your B2B Marketing Accountability?

There are many reasons why it makes sense to sharpen the measurement of the value marketing brings to your company, but 3 key reasons I like to focus on for this post are:
1. Measurement is at the basis of improvement – this goes for any performance related activity whether in business, or for example in sports;
2. Measuring how marketing results contribute to the overall business or corporate objectives provides the ultimate argument for the ‘raison d’etre’ or reason of existence of a marketing department –and related budgets- in your company;
3. Most marketers prefer marketing to be seen as an investment rather than an expense; and investments are normally measured on the return they provide.
These are quite fundamental arguments, so why is B2B Marketing Accountability still identified as a weak spot in many B2B Marketing research papers? As I know from personal experience, it can be a challenging route to embark on. However if you feel you do want to take -even a small- step in advancing your B2B Marketing Accountability, now may be the best time to do it.

Why Now?

Now, or any time outside the annual planning season of your company may be the best time to review and sharpen your marketing accountability. By the time everybody starts to speak about the annual plan and budget, most marketing professionals will have little time to reflect on an improved measurement structure.

By taking the time now to think about your planning and related metrics you can create the opportunity to:
- Sharpen or set up your measurement system;
- See how it works in relation to your current business and marketing objectives;
- Adjust where necessary before the new budget-round comes along.
How To Go About It?

An effective approach to sharpening B2B Marketing Accountability includes 2 key elements:

1. START WITH BUSINESS OBJECTIVES

As a principle, marketing objectives should in the basis always be directly related to the overall business objectives of the company as:
1. Delivering a measureable contribution to the corporate strategic/business objectives is a prerequisite to B2B Marketing success;
2. In terms of internal communication: explicit links of marketing results to the overall business objectives resonate remarkably well with senior (financial) management.
The issue here is that the above sounds so blatantly obvious you could actually forget to make this link really explicit and instead focus on process related metrics, which are not always that relevant to senior management.

2. START SIMPLE

Some companies have developed marketing dashboards with some 150 metrics and dials feeding into it. For (very) large marketing departments (often also in the B2C arena) this may be a necessary solution. For many B2B companies though it could mean spending too much resource on a means that becomes an end in itself.

In order to build a simple yet logical structure it may help to define your B2B Marketing metrics on 3 levels:
- Level 1: Start on a high level with the overall business objectives. What are the key areas where marketing will provide value?
- Level 2: For each of these areas indicate the key projects/activities with their objectives and desired outcomes. The key question here is: what will success look like for this project or process?
- Level 3: Where relevant, dive into further detail – for example into specific process metrics such as website or social media statistics.
Again, don’t make it too complex to start with, but treat it as a development process. A good sanity check on your metrics includes verifying if they are really actionable.

Once you have set up a good foundation, you can always move into more sophisticated ROMI (Return on Marketing Investment) metrics including NPV (Net Present Value), CLV (Client Lifetime Value) metrics and other interesting acronyms.

How You Will Benefit

Starting the process of sharpening your B2B Marketing Accountability will give you a better overview of where you (want to) deliver marketing value to your company. Other benefits include:
- The increased transparency caused by a sharper measurement of what marketing really contributes to the business may be slightly uncomfortable at first. However once used to this, it will be a great asset in profiling the marketing department -and yourself- in terms of value contributed to the business;
- A balanced set of metrics as part of the marketing plan will also greatly help in focusing yourself and your team in terms of priorities and activities – next to the many ad-hoc requests most B2B Marketers receive on a daily (or hourly) basis;
- There is a lot of benefit into experimenting with these metrics for the sake of your own learning. Once you have a few planning cycles under your belt it will also greatly help to predict what you resources you need to achieve your next set of challenging objectives.
Originally published on B2Bbloggers.com
May 3, 2011
Making B2B Marketing More Social

B2B marketers have joined the social media marketing movement in droves. In fact, Forrester Research predicts that B2B firms will spend $54 million on social media marketing in 2014, up from just $11 million in 2009 (eMarketer B2B Social Media Marketing Heats Up).

Unfortunately, many of those efforts are entirely tactical, methodical and without a true understanding of the “social” aspect of social media marketing. B2B marketers that are early in their social media marketing maturity level tend to focus on message distribution such as Tweeting or posting Facebook links mostly to their own content vs. engaging with customers on a human level. That one-way communication profile doesn’t engender discussions and sharing, so social traffic level increases tend to plateau pretty early.

In order to grow and scale the return on social media marketing investments, B2B marketers need to think more about the “social” than the marketing. Here are a few thoughts on that:

Decide What You Stand for Topically

The social SEO benefits of being intentional about language that reflects your key business areas of focus as well as the conversations happening within your target community are essential. Topically fragmented blog and social networking content dilutes a company’s ability to “stand out” to customers amongst the sea of noise in social conversations as well as to search engines.

Practically, that means a strategy that identifies goals, customer personas, content & editorial plans and search/social keyword glossaries. A content marketing strategy is the plan that executes what your company and brand stand for as well as how it will communicate those key messages. A social SEO keyword or topic plan filters into all relevant web and social content creation. It can also flavor social network topic engagement and conversations. That means a guide for which blogs to comment on, which influentials to network with, word choices for Tweets, blog posts and tags.

Do: Create and participate where your customers and influentials spend their time and with a content plan that supports your key topics of focus. Be useful and share social content that’s worth sharing (whether it’s your content or others’).

Don’t: Overly self promote and publish social content that is not directly or indirectly in alignment with your key topics of focus. That doesn’t mean everything you create is keyword optimized. It means everything you create and promote is thoughtful about where it fits in your social & content marketing plan.

The outcome and benefit is that your own content creation and promotion efforts are aligned to inspire discussion, sharing and links according to topics and keywords that are important to brand, business and marketing goals. An ideal manifestation is that your target audience sees your brand in a positive way everywhere they look for topics XYZ and 123 on social channels, when they search and even offline (inspired by online) word of mouth.

Plan to Win

If you enter a competition half-assed, guess what? No matter what your talent is, the chances of a win are pretty slim. Unfortunately a lot of B2B companies approach social media participation with an attitude of using the least amount of resources possible. Oftentimes this means following structured best practices list from some self-professed social media guru. Checklist marketing works to make redundant tasks more efficient, but it’s no way to engage a community.

For example, one of the most common “plan to be mediocre” mistakes I see with B2B marketers is predictable social profile creation and publishing focused solely on LinkedIn, Twitter and a blog without researching those channels. Such a plan also involves a focus on promoting company content and superficial (at best) engagement with the community.

Planning to win means having a plan for networking into influentials’ sphere of influence and knowing what to do once you get on their radar. It means creating social content that will inspire engagement and outcomes to further your business goals. It also means providing training within your organization to distribute and grow the role of social participation within your brand.

Practically, this means forecasting resources (people, process and technology) for social media marketing as significant marketing channel, not just an experiment or a checked box on a list. It means an integrated plan to dominate your category through growing social influence & networking, content, search, word of mouth and media plus the resources to execute and measure.

Do: Hypothesize, forecast and commit resources to test, develop processes and scale social media engagement within your business. What starts as social media marketing can turn into social business as the impact of social media engagement propagates from marketing to other departments and throughout the organization. Winning the social media game for B2B marketing doesn’t just mean increased sales, it means dominating your category.

Don’t: Think that social media content promotion as part of a Search Engine Optimization program is the same thing as social media marketing or social business. It is not.

The outcome and benefit of planning to win in B2B social media is that you have enough resources to provide value to customers throughout the B2B buying and customer lifecycle, facilitating awareness, trust, confidence, word of mouth, sales and referrals. It also means developing a community in alignment with your company’s goals.

Originally published at the Online Marketing Blog

April 4, 2011
Will Local B2B Be the Next Web Trend?

Most of you would probably agree that local is one of the biggest trends on the web these days, fueled by a variety of factors: increased mobile and smartphone usage, localized deals services (like Groupon), and of course search. Local is a major focus of Google right now, as evidenced by an increasing number of local results being returned for queries, as well as products like Google Places, Hotpot and Google Offers.

Much of this trend has been based upon B2C offerings, however, and where B2C trends occur, B2B trends tend to follow. It’s happened with email, social media, and will likely come around again full circle with local and even local email.

It’s all about the next Groupon or "the Groupon of…fill in the blank" these days, it seems. Google and Facebook, for example, have products on the way like Google Offers and Facebook’s Buy With Friends that could rival Groupon in the niche of localized deals and group buying.

Everywhere you look, you see Groupon clones or some niche variation on the concept. For instance, you’ve got:

– "The Groupon for Good"
– "The Groupon for Casual Games"
– "The Groupon for Green Shoppers"
– "The Groupon for Travel"
– "The Groupon for Publishers and Bookstores"
– "The Groupon for Cause Marketing"
– "The Groupon for Moms"
– Etc.
– Etc.
– Etc.

Groupon is about group buying, but even more so, it’s about localized content and email marketing. How do I know what Groupon offer is available in my area every day? I get an email from Groupon letting me know, and I know it’s personalized to me based on geography, which makes it much more likely to be something I’ll actually use, than if it were something available to all Groupon customers around the world.

Now apply that concept on a B2B (that’s business-to-business) level – perhaps an office supplies vendor, a business that cleans uniforms. In fact, you can apply it to B2C businesses as well, because the businesses have employees, and they’re all consumers.

B2B works for consumer-facing businesses too. A restaurant, for example, could offer a business a way to give their employees discounts on meals, or a golf club or gym could do the same with discounted memberships.

In fact, the concept works even for national brands (which could spend a lot of money with such a service) that have local locations. Much of the appeal of local is on the consumer side anyway. A consumer (or business on the receiving end) is likely to feel a deal is more personalized to them as long as the local angle is there (this is an area Groupon could improve upon itself, by the way).

Email marketing works for B2B. It stands to reason that local email marketing, of the sort Groupon caters to, would work extremely well for small and local businesses. It also stands to reason that we’ll see more startups looking to fill this void in the Groupon-mania induced gold rush of 2011.

Expect to see more "The Groupon of…" verticals aimed at local businesses. Groupon calls itself the "savior for small business". There’s room for such a savior for local B2B business too, which isn’t the kind of business you normally see in your daily Groupon emails.

January 29, 2011
LinkedIn to Acquire B2B Ratings Provider ChoiceVendor

LinkedIn announced that it has agreed to acquire ChoiceVendor, which is a company that provides ratings and reviews of B2B service providers in more than 70 categories across the United States.

ChoiceVendor is based in San Francisco and was founded by CEO Yan-David Erlich and VP of engineering Rama Ranganath.

"Our acquisition of ChoiceVendor is right in line with our top priority to build a world-class team at LinkedIn, says LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner. "We’ve admired the work that Yan-David, Rama, and the talented ChoiceVendor team have done for some time now and are excited to have them join us, especially given their highly relevant work experience."

"Since Yan-David and I worked with members of the LinkedIn team in the past during our time at Google, we’ve kept a sharp eye on the company’s phenomenal growth," said Rama Ranganath, one of ChoiceVendor’s co-founders. "We’re excited about the direction that LinkedIn is headed, particularly in terms of helping its members derive valuable business insights from the site, and are looking forward to joining the team."

LinkedIn currently has over 75 million users. Financial terms of the acquisition weren’t disclosed.

According to BusinessWeek, Weiner is hinting at an IPO, saying it would be an option for the company has it adds talent and technology tools that appeal to businesses. According to that article, the company expects to have 900 employees by the end of the year.

September 23, 2010