I recently sent my boyfriend to Tesco to buy some sugar. Twenty minutes later, the phone rang. A bemused voice, verging on panic, said, “There’s 257 different types of sugar in front of me. Which one shall I buy, which one, which one?” Two hours later, he returned home with four different bags of sugar, all of varying shades, three of which are destined to go mouldy in my cupboard.

I feel pretty much the same about the amount of words that we are bombarded with. Every single day, columns and columns of news, features, information, advice, analysis, commentary, profiles and reviews are printed on reams and reams of paper. How do I know which ones to read, which ones to discard, and which ones to cut out and stick on my wall?

And that was before the Internet. Now, it’s a hopeless cause. Cyberspace is jam packed with words, and increasingly: videos, virals, podcasts, webinars, wikis and games - official, as well as unofficial - with bloggers (including myself) writing their own opinion on anything and everything to anyone that will listen.

So, how do you know where to look and who to trust – and where to express your own opinions? As the Internet matures and the information on it becomes increasingly unmanageable, it looks like niche communities will become its mainstay. In the world of B2B, where ‘niche’ is a key word, such communities are already springing up led by the likes of companies such as the Financial Times and Quark.

Hopefully, this will be the future of online. Once we’ve found our own niche, online worlds (and I’m sure each one of us will have a few for each area of our lives), we’ll find lots of the information we need in one place. So, if like me, you’re having trouble seeing the wood for the trees, don’t despair, your days of trawling the Internet for hours in a blind panic, or building a tower of newspapers to sift through at the weekend, may be numbered. Your own special community website will help to filter the information and give it to you straight – perhaps with a few opinions thrown in for good measure. I’m thinking of launching one called ‘Sugar for Starters’. It’s bound to take off.

David Thomas (Base One Creative Director) and I were presenting the "How to produce engaging and outstanding creative" session on the IDM B2B Diploma course this week and it served to highlight the reality gap between the type of creative most marketers run with and the type of creative they think they should run with. We asked the 20 or so students to score the quality of their own creative from 1 to 10, 10 being engaging and outstanding. The results - only 5 scored themselves higher than 5/10, there were 7 scoring themselves exactly 5/10 and the remainder less than 5. Was this modesty are there some fundamental things restricting the quality of creative ...?

Over the last 18 months Base One Interactive have carried out over 50 Evaluator assessments of B2B websites for B2B Marketing Magazine. The sample has covered most of the key sectors within B2B equipment and services and includes both SME and Corporate businesses and it provides a useful snapshot of the state of B2B websites in the UK.

Evaluator results in a score out of 100 having considered what we believe to be the critical success factors. By succesful I mean - how effective is it in driving visitors down the purchase funnel. Looking at the results across all evaluations is revealing.

The highest score so far was awarded to the Xerox site and I recommend you take a look. With a total score of 78% it is the only site not to dip below 50% in any one area. Other very good scores have gone to Royal Mail, Mercedez, Lex, HP, Canon and a little know brand Cooper Lighting. All scoring above 60%. By the way, most sites (27 out of 50) scored less than 50%.

In the main there are four areas where B2B sites are under performing: Evaluator labels them as Intelligence, Interaction, Identification and Integration. The average across all these areas is between 30 and 37%. I'll explain what they mean:

By Intelligent we mean does the site deliver content appropriate to the needs of the visitor. Does it accomodate the differences between customer segments or decision makers within each segment. Interaction is simply how well the site uses "rich content" to engage the user and to encourage interaction. Identifcation covers the important process of somehow capturing visitor details so that you can have an ongoing dialogue and Integration is how well the site is integrated with other online and offline promotional activity.

To me (quoting a comedian I heard recently) it's not Rocket Surgery. So why is it that so many sites fail in these areas?

We can only blame the people developing the sites. Do they really understand how Buyers use the internet and how good is their basic marketing knowledge - do they understand what the client needs to achieve with the site to deliver on their marketing objectives? I suspect they dont, but I'd like to know more which is why we're sponsoring an upcoming survey with B2B Marketing looking at how clients feel about their sites and what their plans are to make them more effective. If you have a view please comment below or contact me directly

I have no doubt that this element of the marketing mix has the greatest potential to improve customer acquisition and retention if used properly. I'll comment on the results once we have them.

It’s amazing how many B2B companies I come across that still see Marketing as being the department that produces brochures. Thankfully it’s less frequent than it was a few years ago as most have recognised the value of the brand, the impact that lead generation and prospect management campaigns can have on sales effectiveness and the contribution of customer communications to retention rates. They’re beginning to see the value of marketing.

Why then do these same enlightened people restrict their use of the internet to a website and what’s more, a website that is no more than an online brochure (that’s actually out of date)?

A recent survey* highlighted to me why things need to change. It identified that corporate buyers felt that the first port of call when looking for potential suppliers was Search Engines – way ahead of exhibitions and trade magazines. So we should all do more Search Engine Optimisation? Well yes, but it means a lot more than that.

It means that B2B buyers have changed their behaviours and their buying processes and that we need to change our approaches accordingly. It’s great news as it means that we can make use of the attributes that make online marketing so compelling – low cost, high degrees of personalisation, immediacy, ease and speed of response, self fulfilment etc.

It does how ever require a new communications strategy. It’s only by reviewing the entire sales and marketing process that you can identify all the opportunities for increased effectiveness and efficiencies. Web response has been proved to improve both the quality and quantity of leads generated by advertising and direct mail and eBrochures can be built “on-the-fly” to provide exactly the information they need, whilst also saving on the print and fulfilment costs. Online datacapture is less prone to errors and facilitates self qualification and results in a higher submission rate of permission email addresses. Automatic email follow-up keeps them warm and encourages further action and can lead to a prospect management campaign that nurtures them until them enter the buying cycle. Similarly keeping customers informed to generate cross-selling opportunities as well as measuring customer satisfaction levels can all be moved online.

But, it’s not only the changes in buying behaviour that makes this the right time, it is also recent developments in technology and significant reductions in the cost of content management systems and the availability of Rich Internet Applications. We can now build an entire content managed website for as little as £5,000. And it’s viable to develop online applications to tell complex stories in a simple and easy to use format, to provide product selection tools that would enable an industrial buyer to find exactly the widget they need in no time at all and to give an online experience that really motivates people to buy from you.

There really is no excuse for us not to improve our results or to reduce our budgets – the buyers are ready, the technology is available and is affordable, we just need to open our minds and look afresh at how we use the internet.