Web Business Marketing Blog

Inspired by an article from Junta42 [1], hereby the ultimate list of web-based methods to provide relevant content to users. These can be used for business development, non-profit marketing or to build strong reputations and brands online.

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We know the internet saves us trips to the library and to bookshops. It helps us in doing research. And we can no longer imagine communications and networking without it.

To know how big exactly is the internet, and who is using it for what, the Pew Internet project provides good information for USA. Although there seems to be an education, income and race bias [1], internet use is pretty big across all demographic strata.

Business uses are relatively lower than typical private uses, but that’s just because they address a subset of population. I’m impressed to note that [2]:

• 91% of internet users (71% of American adults) use search engines
• 78% use internet for product information
• 51% use internet for research for their job
• 28% use internet for searching information on someone they might meet
• a staggering 19% create content online
• 12% download podcasts
• 12% take online classes for credit

Some of above metrics date back from 2005, others are more recent.

A wealth on more specific trends on internet use and its broader ramifications can be found on the site.

References

[1] Demographics of Internet Users
[2] Internet Activities

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Since Kotler, marketing has been about the 4 Ps: Product, Price, Place, Promotion. But for content marketers, the actual 4 Ps are Planning, Production, Publishing, Promotion (see PodWorx ‘the 4 Ps of podcasting‘), bringing the total to 7. A recent question at MarketingProfs asks about the 7 Ps of marketing, adding Policy, Partnership and Politics, bringing us to 10.

Wikipedia’s 7 Ps add People, Process and Physical evidence. And new marketing’s 4 Ps are Personalisation, Participation, Peer-to-peer and Predictive Modelling. But marketing is also rePutation, Packaging, Perspective, …

An article at MarketingProfs this week covers woman’s buying power, defining Pearls, Pumps, Purses and Power as the current 4 Ps.

I guess marketing is all these 21 Ps and much more. For each marketing challenge, some, all or none of above concepts will be relevant. Let’s think about each problem on a case by case basis, irrespective of whether its dimensions start with a P or not.

Welcome to the November edition of this carnival. A selection of contributions are presented below in 5 themes:

• Market intelligence, knowledge management, surveys, networking, … All business marketing starts from what you know, and who you know. (3 contributions)
• Production, i.e. converting intelligence in collateral materials to support marketing and sales campaigns. (1 contribution)
• Marketing & Communications (including media relations and public relations) (19 contributions)
• Sales & after-sales support (9 contributions)
• Other topics (5 contributions)

Top stories this month:

Joe Pulizzi presents 42 Content Building Ways to Attract and Retain Customers posted at Junta42 blog: Content Marketing, saying, “The ultimate list of ways to create original content that will drive customer relationships”

edithyeung presents 33 Dos and Don’ts for Your Next Presentation posted at Edith Yeung.Com: Dream. Think. Act..

Issue #6 of the carnival is planned for early January.  Contributions welcome from now.

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As user of the Adsense advertising service, I tried out the other side, using Adsense as a publisher (a.o. on this blog). While I must say that Google’s revenue sharing practice with its content network seems fair, this is how the math of revenue generation works out:

• There’s a dramatic difference in the traffic observed by Adsense, and the one reported by analytical packages such as Awstats. I presume this is because Adsense counts only visits of a minimum duration. In my case, the difference is a factor 10, but for this sake of this post, let’s take a factor 3.
• The next factor determining revenue is click-through rate (CTR). Shall we agree that 1% is already a very good rate?
• Finally, the revenue per click: let’s make it 0.25 $ for a subject with a salient internet presence.

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Microblogging services such as Twitter, Jaiku or Pownce allow users to post short messages (140 characters) on their message board. Regular posting allows you to acquire a list of followers, and of course you can reciprocate by following others. You can promote your microblog in your blog, or vice versa.

The typical use of a microblog is frequent daily posting - bloggers and social media marketeers interleave announcements about a new blog post with a comment about their visit to the gym.

Are microblogs a type of blog? The answer depends on your definition, but at least microblogs are a very restrictive type of blogs. Some do not allow comments (like Twitter) or other forms of feedback. Microblogs are personal, not collaborative. There is no tagging or archiving. Posts are quickly produced and consumed.

In business marketing, microblogs are at present sparsely used. The limit of 140 characters is simply too short to pass complex messages. And target audiences for business marketeers may be largely outside the micro-blogosphere.

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Welcome to the November edition of this carnival. This month, we’ve received 56 contributions demonstrating the breadth and depth of our topic. Fourty of these are presented below in 6 themes:

• Market intelligence, knowledge management, surveys, networking, … All business marketing starts from what you know, and who you know. (2 contributions)
• Production, i.e. converting intelligence in collateral materials to support marketing and sales campaigns. (1 contribution)
• Marketing & Communications (including media relations and public relations) (13 contributions)
• Sales & after-sales support (18 contributions)
• Impact appraisal, usual return on investment, but not always (1 contribution)
• Other topics (5 contributions)

This time round, I would appreciate some feedback on this carnival. What expectations do you have? What themes would you like to see covered more? What other themes need to be included?

Issue #5 of the carnival is planned for early December. Contributions welcome from now.

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The 4th edition of the carnival is imminent. You have still a few days, until Nov 1 to make a contribution (45 articles received so far). To contribute an article, use this link.

For this editions, the themes are:

• intelligence
• production
• marketing
• impact
• other

View the archive of the previous 3 editions.

Welcome to the third edition of B2B Marketing Carnival. New submissions remain welcome and I’ll post a new digest once in a while (approximately monthly). As long as contributions are related to business marketing, meet a minimum standard (language, novelty) and do not use abrasive language, they’re likely to be included. A few fringe topics may be listed in the ‘other topics’ section. Use at your own discretion.

This month, the carnival received 39 submissions, but management practice, productivity, network marketing, franchises, SEO, home business, personal relationships or graphic design are not business marketing subjects. 75% off-topic submissions is a bit much. So again, only contributions related to industrial or business marketing please. For definitions, see b2bridge.

Also, I’d be interested for candidates to host the 4th edition of the carnival early November. Please contact me.

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