Ruth P. Stevens Articles and Columns: DIRECT Magazine

January 2008

What's New and Working, What's Not, and What's Got Real Potential for B-to-B Marketers
By Ruth P. Stevens

The great thing about marketing is that there are always more good ideas coming along than we know what to do with. Well, direct marketers know what to do: test anything that makes the remotest sense, and see whether it works.

In B-to-B there are some wonderful new tools and techniques available for you to consider for a test. Some are clearly working; others are still unproven, but show promise. Others are dead in the water.

What's New and Working

With all the over-hyping of Web 2.0, you might think it's a big nothing. But I am glad to report that Web 2.0 is already delivering real business value for B-to-B marketers. Have a look at these applications of Web 2.0 concepts to our world:

New sources of prospecting information. A number of interesting new databases have emerged recently, some of them composed of self-reported data from business people. The leading players are Jigsaw, which reports having 7 million complete records; Spoke, which claims 35 million business contacts; and the new kid, Salesconx, which is still in "alpha" form. Jigsaw started as a business card swap service, where sales and marketing people could trade—or buy—contacts. Spoke seeks to marry networking tools with contact info, and allow people to hook up within the site. A newcomer to the scene is ZoomInfo, which takes a different but fascinating approach. They harvest business people's names, addresses and titles from corporate websites, and are now making that data available to marketers. Of course, all of these new databases are compiled—versus response—files, but they deserves a look.

Rich media. Early experiments with rich media in banner advertising were hampered by their creators' lack of training in direct marketing basics—many ads had snazzy television-like creatives but lacked an offer or a call to action. But the snazzy creatives are now being done right—and making their way into the usually stodgy world of B-to-B. You can cruise around any B-to-B portal today and see all kinds of interesting examples of talking heads on video, "eye blaster" type extender ads, peeling pages and dancing figures. Have a look at CMP Media's TechWeb, for example. Cisco is on the cutting edge with this stuff, having tested a live video presentation embedded within a banner ad last year. And this year Cisco has pioneered the use of video to deliver customer testimonials and case studies—posting hundreds every month.

Social networking. B-to-B sales and marketing are all about relationships. So it's no surprise that carefully crafted strategies around web-enabled networking can make a powerful contribution to shortening sales cycles and enhancing customer value. ITtoolbox, for example, was created by a couple of IT consultants to allow tech professionals to share insights and ideas on hardware and software product problems. Another excellent example of social networking put to good use comes from Ingram Micro, which created a networking platform for its channel partners, who can connect to share sales leads, pitch business together, and troubleshoot product problems.

What's Not Working

While there are exciting new ideas on the radar, some others have simply failed us. Darn it. Let's look at a few:

Email for prospecting. Email should, by rights, be the greatest prospecting medium of all time. But spam killed it. Most B-to-B marketers are achieving lower cost per inquiry numbers from direct mail using rental lists than from rental email. You only have to look at the decline of B-to-B list rental prices to realize that these files are not working. According to Worldata's Summer 2007 List Price Index report, B-to-B email priced declined 1.42% between July 2006 and July 2007, while B-to-B controlled-circulation magazine subscriber list rental prices rose 4.26%.

Email deliverability. Who among us hasn't been frustrated to find that our outbound messages to colleagues get caught in a corporate spam filter. The worst thing is, we only find out about it through random luck or vigorous follow-up. In B-to-B the resulting waste, annoyed customers and loss of business are inestimable. So email is not being delivered, but what can we do about it? Experts say that the solutions, while not perfect, fall in two categories: 1) make sure your email structure and sending processes are as good as they can be, and 2) work with your technical teams to reach out to administrators in key target corporate domains, to establish a relationship and, with luck, improve delivery rates.

Social networking (the other kind, like Plaxo, Tribe, and Xing). I confess, I am a member of LinkedIn, and I have a page on Facebook. But I am not sure why. If I were in business development, I would value the chance to use these tools to get to people I want to do business with. But for marketing, I don't see the benefit.

What's Unproven, But Has Potential

Here are some new tactics that sound promising, but the jury is still out.

Online trade shows. The folks at Unisfair, who make the leading platform for online events that permit both attendees and exhibitors to interact from the comfort of their desks, are very enthusiastic about this subject. eComXpo and MarketingProfs, among others, have tested the medium and are coming back for more. I hope they are successful, since the benefits in convenience and cost saving are clear. To me, perhaps the best use of this platform is the user-group or client conference, where the attendees have a relatively strong desire to attend in the first place.

Blogs. The hype is still deafening on blogs. How many are there now? 55 million? 80 million? I don't know. But I suspect that much of the enthusiasm for blogs—at least as a B-to-B marketing tool—is based in ego or a simple desire to be part of the scene. The only obvious tangible benefits for business marketers are 1) thought leadership and 2) higher search engine rankings. Other than that, one of the best applications I've seen is when the blog is used for interested parties to collaborate and share ideas—a community activity that helps build relationships, but can be done other tools than blogs, as well.

In May 2007, ITtoolbox and PFA conducted a survey showing that business buyers are pretty enthusiastic about social networking.

Ruth P. Stevens is a visiting professor at Singapore Management University for the spring 2008 term. When in New York, she consults on customer acquisition & retention, and teaches marketing to graduate students at Columbia Business School. She is the author of The DMA Lead Generation Handbook and Trade Show and Event Marketing. Reach her at ruth@ruthstevens.com.

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© 2008 Ruth P. Stevens
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