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B2B Marketing Budgets Are on the Rise in 2013—Is Yours?

February 6th, 2013 :: Rieva Lesonsky

By Rieva Lesonsky

If your small business markets products or services to other businesses, you may want to consider boosting your marketing budget for 2013 if you haven’t already. A new survey from BtoB Online found that nearly half of B2B companies are increasing their marketing spending for this year.

BtoB’s 2013 Outlook: Marketing Priorities and Plans report polled over 300 B2B marketers and found:

What are marketers spending?

Some 48.7 percent of marketers say they will increase their budgets this year, up from 40.1 percent last year. About 41 percent will keep their budgets the same, down from 48.4 percent last year. Meanwhile, 9.5 percent will cut their budgets, down from 10.8 percent in 2012.

Where are they spending it?

Some 67.2 percent of marketers say they will increase their spending on digital marketing this year. Of those, 70.1 percent will spend more on website development, 61.9 percent on email marketing, 56 percent on social media, 55.8 percent on online video and 52.5 percent on search.

In addition, 72.2 percent of B2B marketers say content marketing is part of their marketing plan. The most popular platforms for content marketing are websites (93 percent), social media (65.4 percent), print (47.5 percent) and mobile (20.9 percent).

What do marketers hope to achieve?

B2B marketers report their number-one marketing goal this year is demand generation/customer acquisition, cited by 69.3 percent. The second most important goal, increasing brand awareness, was way behind, cited by 17.6 percent. In third place: customer retention, cited by 13.1 percent.

Who’s going mobile?

More B2B marketers are integrating mobile marketing, but there’s still a way to go. Some 32.7 percent of respondents say they currently use mobile in their marketing strategy, while 35.5 percent say they plan to spend more on mobile marketing this year.

What are they automating?

Better aligning marketing and sales is a key goal for B2B marketers this year. Some 52.3 percent say they will spend money on sales enablement platforms, while 50.8 percent plan to invest in marketing automation systems.

What old-fashioned marketing method still matters?

It’s not all digital and mobile. For many B2B companies, events are still crucial to their marketing strategy. In fact, some 41.5 percent of survey respondents say they will increase their event budgets for 2013.

Editor’s Note: Network Solutions offers an easy way to build a website for mobile devices in mere minutes: goMobi™, powered by dotMobi.

Image by Flickr user Andy Roberts Images (Creative Commons)

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Tags: B2B marketing, Marketing, Search Marketing, small business, social media
Posted in Branding, Business Development, Marketing, Sales Process, Search Marketing, Small Business, small business, Social Media, Web Design | No Comments »

How to Stand Out on Pinterest If You’re a B2B Business

January 16th, 2013 :: Monika Jansen

If you’re a B2B small business or offer a service instead of a product, you can still use Pinterest. All it takes is a little thought and creativity. Here’s how to get started:

Use your own images

While it is very important to repin images that others have shared on Pinterest, it is also good to create and share your own images. As they are repinned, they will always be sourced back to you, helping you attract new followers.

Create personas

If you don’t already have a persona for your ideal customer, create one so you know what kinds of images will be most appealing to them. What is your ideal customer’s gender, age, location, household income, education level? Get as detailed as possible (you will probably have more than one persona).

Pin based on customer interests

Of course, you can also ask your customers what they care about, both personally and professionally. What are their hobbies, interests, favorite sports, favorite foods, top travel destinations?

Start boards based on your own interests

If you’re a travel junkie, coffee fanatic, or just love the color orange, create boards around those themes. It will help humanize you and your business and let your customers and potential customers get to know you better.

Create boards related to your business

Whether you are an attorney, software developer or SEO expert, you can create boards that are related to the service you offer. Let’s say you’re an accountant who specializes in personal finance. You could create a board of fabulous vacation homes since you help your clients save for specific goals.

Add details to board names

Don’t just name a board “Chocolate Desserts” or “Beaches” – they are too flat and boring. Get creative – think “Death By Chocolate” and “Exotic Beach Destinations.” You want to grab people’s attention so they’re eager to see more. Just be sure to keep the names short so people will remember them.

Pin clients – potential and current

You could create an entire board out of current clients and use their testimonials in the description – a very clever marketing idea. Or, you could make a board of clients you’d like to have, even huge companies. You never know who will see it and who can make an introduction.

Do you use Pinterest? What boards have been most popular?

Image courtesy of greenbuildermag.com

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Tags: B2B marketing, Marketing, Pinterest
Posted in Marketing, Social Media | 7 Comments »

B2B Social Media Beats B2C: Let Us Count the Ways

August 22nd, 2011 :: Monika Jansen

I’ve written about the differences between B2B and B2C companies before, so I decided to do a little more research into how they’re different when it comes to social media marketing. From what I can tell, B2B companies have the edge over B2C’s when it comes to effectively reaching customers through social media.

1. You can bet on it

Because B2B product lines change less frequently, you can bet that the social media content you’re producing today will be around a lot longer. The longer shelf life of B2B products means your marketing efforts will continue to create value longer, making them more effective and less expensive than their B2C counterparts.

B2B social media marketing is more reliable in another way, too. In general, fewer people are talking about B2B companies online than B2C’s, so you have more control over what is being said about your brand. It follows that B2B’s generate less negativity online as well, so you have less negative content to handle. Sure, buzz is great, but only if it is enhancing the value of your brand, rather than keeping you running in circles trying to put the lid on any negative vibes.

2. You can’t beat the relationships

While B2C relationships are rife with impulsive or emotional buying decisions, B2B purchasing decisions are more relationship-driven. Businesses tend to interact directly with customers many times to educate prospects about their products and services. They can engage prospects throughout the entire sales cycle and can continue after a sale is finalized, through support, upgrades and continuing education.

The B2B buying process usually involves multiple colleagues and is reliant on recommendations, so it evolves over time, helping to solidify relationships. This emphasis on building relationships suits social media to a tee.

3. The community is smaller and tighter

The B2B market is a smaller, more focused market, compared to the B2C. As a result, you can use social media to connect with prospects and start building relationships faster and easier. B2B buyers also tend to rely on recommendations and feedback from this smaller community. You can use social media to generate product feedback, helping to influence purchasing decisions.

B2B social media practices also create an opportunity for you to demonstrate your business value. Show the community you are reliable, responsive, and knowledgeable, and watch your sales grow!

In your experience, does B2B or B2C social media win? How have you found them to be different?

Image by Flickr user ivanpw (Creative Commons)

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Tags: B2B marketing, B2C marketing, Branding, content, Marketing, social media, Social networking
Posted in Marketing, Social Media | No Comments »

How to Manage Twitter When You Have a Zillion Followers

October 28th, 2010 :: Monika Jansen

By Monika Jansen

Every time I get a new Twitter follower, I look to see how many people they follow and how many people follow them (I’m at twitter.com/monikacjansen—feel free to look me up). When I see numbers in the tens of thousands, I think, how the heck do they manage all those followers?

I did some research and found the answer. Three answers, actually:

Good tools
Selective communication
Regular housecleaning

1. Good Tools

An online application or platform that helps you manage your social networks is absolutely essential, because it will organize your Twitter feed for you. I thought everyone used one, but based on what I read, that is definitely not the case! I happen to use Hootsuite, which I really like. Every morning, I log in to check Twitter and Facebook. My direct messages (DMs) and mentions (@s) on Twitter are aggregated in their own columns, so I look there first. I’ll briefly skim what other people are posting, too, but I only visit Twitter briefly and once a day since I also have to work.

Two other popular tools that can help you manage Twitter are Seesmic and Tweetdeck. It doesn’t matter what you use, just use something!

2. Selective Communication

I do not strike up a conversation with everyone who follows me. I use Twitter to share information on B2B, social media, and small business marketing, not to make friends. The first thing I do every morning is check my personal and professional e-mail. Then I spend around 10-15 minutes checking Twitter and Facebook. I reply to most DMs and mentions, which doesn’t take long, and look for new people to follow.

3. Regular Housecleaning

Because quality, not quantity, of Twitter followers is important, it’s a good idea to regularly clean your Twitter house. Friend or Follow creates three lists for you: who is not following you back, who you are not following back, and who your mutual friends are. Simply plug in your Twitter user name, and the first thing that pops up is a list of people who are not following you back. (I was shocked by who was not following me! But then I realized most of them are not active on Twitter.)

Use Who Follows Whom to find more people whom the power users in your circle follow. It is a really great way to increase the quality of your followers. You can type in up to five names.

Image by Flickr user yushimoto_02 (Creative Commons)

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Tags: B2B marketing, small business, social media, Twitter
Posted in Marketing, small business, social media | 3 Comments »

How to Use Delicious for B2B Marketing

October 25th, 2010 :: Monika Jansen

Next in my monthly series on unsung social media platforms is Delicious. If you missed my first two posts in the series, check out what I had to say about using Digg and Reddit for B2B marketing.

Delicious is a social bookmarking site that serves up “The Tastiest Bookmarks on the Web.” (Until their recent acquisition by Yahoo, they were called Del.icio.us.) Their goal is to help you find cool stuff online and save it in one place that can be accessed from any computer. You can share your bookmarks with others, see what other people are bookmarking, and search for the most popular bookmarks across a range of topics and interests. To categorize all of your bookmarks, you use tags rather than folders. So if you like to bookmark funny videos, you can tag videos with both words and they’ll be findable under both terms.

Even before I did research on using Delicious for marketing purposes, it became obvious to me that you can build quite a reputation on Delicious for interesting and useful information. If your website, articles and blog posts get bookmarked on Delicious often enough, they’ll make it to the front page of Delicious, deliver a lot of traffic to your website, and brand you and/or your company as a source of great information.

With that said, your popularity on Delicious is dependent on the quality of your online content rather than your popularity among other Delicious users (no voting here!).

After you create a free account, here’s how to get going:

1. Create a network. A network allows you to collect your favorite users’ bookmarks in one spot—and vice versa. You can organize your network in to “bundles” to separate friends from colleagues, etc.

2. Subscribe to tags. Make a list of your favorite tags. As bookmarks are added with those tags, they’ll be delivered to your subscriptions page. It’s a great way to find new users to add to your network. (You can also create subscription “bundles” to keep things organized.)

And here’s how to get use Delicious for marketing purposes:

Post information that makes users’ lives easier. I found a great blog post about Delicious on Traffikd’s blog. To get a lot of bookmarks, they suggest posting resource lists, guides and tutorials, online tools and useful services. Avoid humor, gossip, videos, news and opinions.

Spread the word. Add a Delicious badge to your website and blog. Invite friends, colleagues, and people in your professional circle to join your network, and ask people to bookmark your website, blog, articles, etc.

Integrate your Delicious strategy with your SEO strategy. Make sure the pages, articles and blogs posts you want to be bookmarked (and become popular) on Delicious use the keywords or phrases that you are currently found for on search engines.

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Tags: B2B marketing, Branding, content creation, Delicious, seo, social media
Posted in Branding, Marketing, Search Marketing, social media | No Comments »