Online Marketing Blog

The importance of integrating earned, owned, paid and shared media couldn’t be any greater and this week I’ll be giving a track keynote at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum conference in Boston on just that. My presentation will focus on the essential strategies and tactics for sales funnel optimization success with content, search and social media marketing.

To get things started, here are some handy general stats on search, social and content marketing plus quite a few specifically for B2B marketing:

50 Billion – By 2020, Ericcson predicts there will be 50 billion internet connected devices. The world population is estimated to be at around 7 -8 billion.

Social Media Marketing:

60% of B2B decision makers use social media, according to a Global Web Index study reported by Social Media B2B, late 2011.

Most forms of online B2B marketing and advertising focus on attracting and engaging business customers through a sales cycle to create awareness and interest, through consideration and ultimately to purchase. That’s reasonable since there’s a clear investment and return.

While a lot of social media-savvy business to business companies are leveraging social channels to engage with communities and for customer service, most implementations of corporate social media marketing are no different than any other sales-focused marketing effort. Expectations are high to influence a social return on investment (ROI).

In fact, a recent survey by PulsePoint Group and The Economist Intelligence unit reports that, “Executives who said their companies had established an extensive social media presence reported a return on investment that was more than four times that of companies with little or no social network engagement activity.”

When you have a business that relies on attracting new business online the sheer volume of options can be confusing. Should offline advertising efforts transfer to online? Maybe email marketing? What about SEO or the hot topic, social media? So much focus is placed on tactics and channels, that a lot of misplaced digital marketing budget gets wasted or spent inefficiently.

To bring some clarity to the myriad online marketing options available, I think it’s worth marketers taking a holistic approach that starts with an essential understanding of goals and customers. Who are your best customers? Who are your worst? What do your best customers care about? What are their pain points and goals? While you’re answering those key questions, think about how your solutions meet the needs of your target audience and what stories you can tell to bring align those interests to a common goal.