B2B Marketing Blog
December 2009 Archives

2009 was year zero for B2B social media

December 22, 2009 2:54 PM | By Joel Harrison
A year is a long time in social media. Way back in February 2009, at B2B Marketing’s first social media event, the audience were asked whether they used Twitter or not: only a tiny minority raised their hands.Fast forward ten months to December’s B2B event organised by Dell, and the proportions were reversed: it was only the minority who didn’t actively use Twitter.Amazing that inside 12 months this niche microblogging platform has become a mainstream B2B marketing platform. For anyone out there who is still has their head in the sand, it’s time to wake up and smell the coffee....
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Accenture turns tail on Tiger

December 22, 2009 2:49 PM | By Joel Harrison
How ironic that Accenture has decided to drop Tiger Woods as its long running brand ambassador just as he actually appears to be developing a personality.Don’t get me wrong: I understand the point of this multi-million dollar brand association was to relate Accenture’s safeness and security with Tiger’s tedious, ruthless and personality-free predictability. From Accenture’s point of view, it was a marriage made in heaven. That was, of course, until the rumours about his private life started flying about. However, from a personal perspective, I’m pleased to see the back of this campaign, which I found one of the most...
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Data Q&A: Sourcing marketing data from the web

December 22, 2009 2:43 PM | By Joel Harrison
Is it possible to gather relevant marketing data from the web? What are the issues with this approach to database management and what factors should marketers consider when seeking to use it?...
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B2B marketing: Don't forget it's a privilege!

December 21, 2009 9:48 AM | By Guest Blogger
By guest blogger Tim Hazelhurst, non-executive chairman, IAS b2b Marketing    As we enter the festivity period and we worry whether our post will be delivered or if we can fly for our Christmas break with BA. And the national debt and forthcoming cuts in the quality of our life weigh heavily on our shoulders And it would be easy to pessimistic about everything, consider this.......... A few days ago I came down to London to attend a CIM conference and the annual B2B Marketing/ABBA Christmas bash. I also took the opportunity to pop in on my youngest daughter Sophie who is working in...
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Too many customers?

December 19, 2009 7:45 PM | By Iain Lovatt
Would anyone agree with this statement? Could a business ever have too many customers?What do we mean by too many?For some time now I have been thinking the issue with UK businesses and the future is not having too few customers but having too many. Too many of the wrong sort and too few of the right sort in my view. Businesses have conducted economy of scale marketing programmes and reaped the reward they deserved. The majority of the customers they have acquired through blanket mailings, mass email campaigns and telephone marketing programmes are too small, not profitable, very expensive to service and distract companies from acquiring...
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Email’s Antisocial Sin - The impact of no-reply@email

December 15, 2009 12:17 PM | By Guest Blogger
By Peter McCormick, UK GM and co-founder of on-demand email and one-to-one marketing firm ExactTarget In all of the talk on social media and its influence on email marketing, it occurred to me that email marketers consistently commit an antisocial sin. Worse still, it is a sin often taught as ‘best practice’ in order to decrease the hassle of managing a large number of responses to marketing email messages. I am writing of the dreaded ‘no-reply@’ email address. Consider this near perfect email from Dropbox. The subject line ‘Come back to Dropbox!’ makes it clear why I received the message. True,...
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The Emperor’s New Clothes

December 14, 2009 3:57 PM | By Richard Robinson
I had the pleasure of speaking at an event dedicated to B2B marketers recently the theme of which was around digital marketing. I spend quite a lot of my time talking with B2B marketers and business owners, at events or in individual meetings, but it is rare that I have seen so much interest in one topic. That topic was social media. The whole room seemed obsessed about how to get out there and start ‘doing social media’. What really surprised me though was not the interest in the latest buzz phrase/‘must do’ marketing solution, but the fact that so many of the...
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Businesses need to start cashing in on the power of experience

December 11, 2009 10:09 AM | By Guest Blogger
By  Ian Irving, Director of Corporate at leading experiential agency RPM The B2B industry has a more wary approach to embracing new mediums in comparison to the B2C market.  Whilst consumer brands have been quick to jump on emerging communication methods, business brands have often relied on more traditional mediums. Whilst it can be argued that this approach has proved effective in the past, I don’t think that the traditional thinking behind B2B marketing and events has been challenged enough.  With the recession still taking hold, it's time for B2B marketers to reassess the marketing mix and take a closer look at...
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Calling a truce in the media wars

December 4, 2009 4:43 PM | By John Bottom
Media buyers and social media enthusiasts, put your weapons down and listen. I appreciate that traditional media people may feel threatened by social media, but I'd like to offer an idea that puts the two in a more harmonious context. It's easy to see the present situation in the marketing world as two extremes – a war between the guys who book conventional media and the social media evangelists – but if you step back a bit and look at media in general you see a different picture. Because there are not two but three types of media: •Paid media....
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2010: What are your marketing New Year's resolutions?

December 3, 2009 1:20 PM | By Guest Blogger
By Anna Goldie, online editor The time of year is upon us when some of us start thinking about our New Year’s resolutions and I want to hear about yours. No, I don’t want to hear about you resolving not to clean your finger nails with your pen lid anymore or finally admitting that you are more than a social smoker. I want to hear about the resolutions that are really important in 2010— the ones about the world of B2B marketing. Maybe you have learnt a valuable lesson in 2009 that you are determined to put into practice in...
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Forgetfulness of success

December 2, 2009 3:06 PM | By Richard Lloyd
I don’t think I’m the only one aware that as we turn out of recession there seems to be a forgetfulness of what went before.  I’m not talking about remembering or returning to the so called ‘good old days’ of extravagant marketing budgets, but memories seem remarkably short when it comes to recalling and putting back into action marketing that actually worked, and worked well.In some sectors, marketing was cut right across the board whether it was successful or not.  Yet, as many businesses pulled down the barricades and reduced marketing spend at the start of the recession, others beefed...
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