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An effective online presence
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B2B Inc Will Help You Develop Your Online Presence

B2b web marketing: the rules of marketing integration have changed

Components of an Online B2B Marketing Presence

There are many possible components of an online b2b marketing presence - and they are changing all the time - but they can be divided into the following categories:

Basic preparation / essentials

Your most basic objective in the online b2b marketing space is for your website (and not just your home page) to be found, organically (meaning, you don't pay for the results).

Pay attention to how people get information: traditional research is, for the most part, gone. People use the Internet to get information, research solutions, get opinions of others, and find suppliers.

If your website is not "optimized", you have almost no chance of being found. SEO, or search engine optimization, is not voodoo; it's a reality, and it comprises very specific, proven technical and non-technical means to an end.

So, SEO is your first step in developing an online b2b marketing presence. Learn more about SEO here.

Competitive analysis

Spend whatever time it takes to learn exactly what your competition is doing online. Dig into their websites, their blogs, how they contribute content online. Create "alerts" and monitor them for several months. Run their name, as well as relevant industry terms, and see how, where and why they show up. You can't compete with them in the b2b space online unless you learn about what they're doing.

Customer persona

Conduct a similar exercise of your prospects and customers. Discover where the hang out (online), what they search for, what they expect online from potential suppliers. This may require primary and secondary research.

Your sales force should be able to provide input also. Remember, in online b2b marketing, it's possible - and can benefit you a lot - if you're able to develop a persona profile of your typical customers and prospects.

Marketing messaging

Your website is a billboard: visitors will develop an impression of you in a matter of seconds. If you don't tell them exactly what you do and how it can benefit them - in a matter of seconds - you may lose them forever.

Offer / call to action

In online b2b marketing - just as in direct response advertising - you should ideally have an offer and a call to action: a free, helpful white paper or a free consultation, and an action command telling people to do something, now. This way you'll have a better chance of capturing an e-mail address and other information, before they leave your site. This applies not just to your home page, but to any page where they may land.

Content management

You may have heard the phrase, "Content is king". It's true, since content is how search engines determine whether pages are of value or not. Search engines also like it when content is refreshed, and when new content is added. Well-managed content is also content that has been well researched; it is relevant to the needs and wants of prospects and customers.

There is no such thing as too much content in the online b2b marketing space. Your content needs to reside not just on your website, but in other online places as well: in blogs, industry news-and-information resources, and in social media.

SEM (search engine marketing)

This is a broad discipline that is ever-changing. SEM's principal tactic is paid search: pay-per click (or PPC) advertising, including contextual ads. But SEM can also include sponsorship or banner ads, content placements, article submissions and the like.

Even e-mail marketing and e-news publication can be considered SEM if one of your goals (as it should always be with e-news) is to entice readers to link to the "full story" on a page in your website.

Regardless of how you define SEM, the fact is that search engine marketing is an important tactic in building an online presence. Think of SEM as you would your ancillary traditional tactics: part of the overall plan - and an important one in successful online b2b marketing.

The goal of search engine marketing, after all, is to be where your prospects and customers hang out, so you can then drive them to a page in your website . where, if you have visited our page on marketing messaging, you deliver your unique selling proposition and a call to action.

Social media

One of the latest tactics to be employed in the online b2b marketing space is social media. Don't dismiss social media as all-Twitter-like; it's much more than that. The fact is, people get information (and referrals for suppliers) by talking to other people - today more than ever. They may even be total strangers.

Another fact is, social media is growing faster than any other form of business communications today. When social meets technology, interesting things happen, and it's important to "be there" - just as it's critical to be found online.

For example, people love to read and contribute to blogs - and not just for hobbies or pets or consumer products, but for business solutions as well. There were over 9,000,000 blogs on the Internet as of Fall, 2009, with thousands popping up every day.

All serious business marketers should develop a social media strategy, even if it's a very basic one such as, "We'll monitor conversations over the next six months then take the next step."

Marketers who study social media - and study their competitors' online conversations - will be more adept at developing a social media strategy as part of their online b2b marketing plan.

Learn much more about social media - and about B2B Inc.'s social media process - here.

Mobile media

Get ready; mobile media is next. Websites begat search engine strategies. News sites begat online advertising. Google begat pay-per-click advertising and great analytics. Blogs and LinkedIn and Twitter begat social media.

Now, mobile phones are driving the opportunity for mobile advertising. As usual, consumer product marketers are leading the way in mobile ads, but many business marketers are adopting it - and not just for advertising but for delivering helpful, timely information to the cell phone of customers and prospects.

Stay tuned. Mobile media is coming to the online b2b marketing space, and is soon to be on the rise.

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