BtoB Marketing

Takeaways from B to B’s NetMarketing Breakfast

By Yael K. Penn, President and CEO, Imagine 360 Marketing

I attended the BtoB NetMarketing Breakfast on February 25^th at the Grand Hyatt hotel in New York City.  The Panel consisted of Emily Riley, Research Director of Interactive Marketing for Forrester Research, Matt Preschern, Vice President of NA Demand Programs for IBM North America Marketing, Brian Nizinsky, Online Marketing Manager for Eastman Kodak Company, and Mike Hardy, Social Media Manager for Pitney Bowes.

Below are a few of the key takeaways:

• With so many new digital marketing channels available, too many marketers are focusing on tactics rather than overall marketing objectives.  Marketers need to start employing a holistic approach to effectively use both digital and traditional channels.

• Though email will continue to be an important marketing medium, especially in the B-to-B space, database fatigue is likely to occur at higher rates and response rates will drop due to mailbox clutter.  For this reason, companies should consolidate their databases at the corporate level and frequency-cap their marketing email communications.  Lower response rates may also necessitate that marketers focus more attention on nurturing individual leads—behavioral triggers are often a great tool for this.

• Social media continues to be extremely popular; however, marketers should look to leverage these tools for more than just buzz.  Many companies are monitoring social media to understand how people are using their products, what consumers like and don’t like, and spot potential “PR disasters” (and proactively work to turn the situation around).  Others are using tools like twitter for real-time customer service.

• Niche communities with specific interests are an extremely powerful tool.  If developed correctly, these communities can provide a wealth of knowledge for both marketing and product development purposes.

• Search engines are “broken.”  New content has exploded on the web and there is no longer a search technique that allows people to easily find what they are looking for.  Panelists called this a transition period for search engines that would likely lead to more efficient search-tools and technology.

• Though attendees were noticeably curious about how to leverage video on the web — and panelists all agreed video is becoming increasingly more important — there were no real “revelations.”  Common uses for video included: marketing videos, branding videos, user-question videos, and instructional videos.  Panelists also stressed that videos should be named and tagged with the appropriate key words to enhance video-search performance.

• 2010 will be a year of “rebuilding.” Although most marketing budgets probably won’t be cut this year, it’s unlikely they will see great increases either.  Most companies will continue shifting their marketing budgets towards digital initiatives.