Web Business Marketing Blog

The mix of marketing communications is expanding and changing. Web-based marketing appear promising to complement or replace conventional marketing channels, but there are some caveats:

1. the quality of leads: this can be more easily assessed from trade fairs, seminars or sales visits, rather thanfrom visitors leaving their e-mail address on a website
2. only sales count: does electronic marketing lead to actual sales, or only image and reputation building?
3. going against the tide: with a massive move from printed to electronic newsletters, the printed newsletter is the one that sticks out

Marketing communications designed to support field sales staff will be difficult to move to the web. But for activities to establish thought leadership, image building and technical marketing, web-based communications can provide a much larger impact per amount spent. Also ngo’s, trade associations and governments are increasingly finding their way to the internet.

The emerging mix will differ by region, industry and with time. But some trends can be observed:

1. decline of information trade fairs - but fairs for networking and brokering deals are thriving as before
2. attracting technicians to attend seminars is getting more difficult. Webinars offer an alternative, but to many suppliers or customers, this new marketing technique does not come naturally. Webcasts are more promising to reach users, but less suitable for lead generation
3. printed newsletters have been replaced by electronic ones, but e-mail marketing seems to be going through a dip for the moment
4. move from printed to online catalogs
5. a move from brochures to white papers, driven by ever better informed customers
6. a move from trade press to web advertising
7. conferences, often in combination with fairs thrive, especially when they succeed to offer a level of interaction second to none, while covering everything new in a sector
8. and a few new elements in the mix which do not have their equivalent in conventional media: interactive animations, blogs, online video, wiki’s, online communities.

Reference

What’s working in b2b?