Top 10 B-to-B Web Marketing Lessons from 2000

*** MarketingSherpa.com's B-to-B MarketingBiz.com ***
Practical News & Tips for B-to-B Marketing on the Internet
Jan 2, 2001 Vol.II, Issue 1

SPECIAL REPORT: Top 10 B-to-B Online Marketing Tactics That
Really Worked in 2000

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*****
INTRODUCTION
*****

Here at B-to-B MarketingBiz.com we specialize in one thing:
bringing you practical news about what's really working for
your marketing peers online.

During 2000 we interviewed almost 100 B-to-B marketers from big
famous companies like IBM, VerticalNet and UPS, as well as
smaller innovative firms such as SilverStream and Wanted
Technologies. We also quizzed experts from leading B-to-B
interactive agencies including FolioZ and Passaic Parc.

They revealed their campaign results; what they have learned
from tests; who their favorite vendors are; and how they are
budgeting for the future.

This Special Report is a quick and useful wrap-up of the top
lessons we learned from these marketers in 2000. (To see our
entire archives, go to:
http://www.b2bmarketingbiz.com/archives.cfm)


*****
TOP 10 B-to-B ONLINE TACTICS THAT WORK
*****

TACTIC #1 BANNERS

Surprise! Yes, banners are on this list despite all the hype
you may have heard about them being "dead." The B-to-B marketers
who reported success with banners this year fell into three
camps:

a) Heavy testers
Just because a banner campaign can be quick and easy to
implement, doesn't mean it's easy to get good results. Banner
marketing is just as much a science as direct mail marketing.
Companies, such as Network Solutions, that aggressively tested
and continuously refined their use of media, offer and
creative saw average results ranging from 0.5-2.0% and
sometimes higher.

Although testing can be expensive in terms of money and
effort, two types of vendors can make it easier for you moving
into 2001. The first are research firms such as AdKnowledge
(http://www.adknowledge.com) that can tell you what campaigns
your competitors are consistently investing in. (And which
they drop.) The second are online direct response specialist
agencies such as Third Level Data
(http://www.thirdleveldata.com) that will run test campaigns
on your behalf and only charge you on the results that come
from them.

b) View-Thru Trackers
Research shows up to 33% of banner results come from visitors
who don't click on a banner. Instead they remember the site
and visit it later. These visitors are often more highly
qualified sales prospects for your company than regular click
throughs because they have taken the trouble to remember and
visit you, rather than just impulsively clicking.

B2B marketers who tracked their view-thru results were more
successful at banner marketing in general because they could
then adjust creative, offers and media buys to maximize their
share of these visitors. For more information on tracking
view-thrus go to:
http://www.b2bmarketingbiz.com/sample.cfm?contentID=1153

c) Super-Targeted Media Buyers
Marketer after marketer told us run-of-network or run-of-site
media buys are cheaper for a reason -- they don't always work
as well. Granular media buys, where you pick the exact page
and position you want your banner to be on, definitely produce
much higher results. The price tag may be higher, but results
more than make up for it.

The key in online media buying is not to pick sites with loads
of traffic, but to pick sites or pages with the right traffic.
The more you pre-qualify visitors by placing your banner on a
targeted page, the better your banner will do.


TACTIC #2 BLAST EMAIL

Blast (aka "broadcast") email campaigns took off this year as
every marketer's favorite tactic to test. Results can range
from 50-100% higher than average banner click throughs
(although you don't get the high view-thru or branding
benefits banners give you.)

In fact, email has been successful for so many B-to-B marketers
that the biggest complaint most people have is that they wish
there were more lists on the rental market. (If you have a
very niche product outside the IT industry or you're outside
the USA, you may be out of luck list-wise for now.) Just as
with banner media buys, broad, general email lists usually are
not worth the investment. You must hand-select every list and
list segment you email for good results. For more advice on
list selection and buying, go to:
http://www.b2bmarketingbiz.com/sample.cfm?contentID=1085

You can expect to see many more targeted B-to-B email lists come
on the rental market in 2001. However, the most important
thing you can do to ensure email success is to start gathering
your own opt-in "house list" immediately if you're not already
doing so.

On the creative front, B-to-B marketers with strong direct
response marketing backgrounds are getting the best results.
Blast email is truly a direct response medium (branding
messages belong elsewhere!) Marketers told us short,
straightforward messages that were about 1/2-3/4 pages long
with an offer pitched to appeal to the recipient worked the
best. HTML generally worked the better than text in the
States, although bandwidth in other countries can prohibit
good results with this.

Blast email success depended on targeting a message to the
recipient's needs. Any message that started with the word
"We" or "Our" didn't do well. Marketers who sent each
different list segment a different message, subtly altered to
appeal just to that segment, got much higher results.


TACTIC #3 NEWSLETTER SPONSORSHIPS

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Newsletter sponsorships were the big, surprise, winner tactic
for B-to-B marketers in 2000. In fact most media and analysts
covering online advertising didn't even bother to include
newsletter sponsorships as a category to watch prior to
October 2000! However, in dozens of interviews, B-to-B marketers
told us themselves that newsletter sponsorships worked for
them and they were planning to expand their budgets for 2001.

Newsletter sponsorships tended to pull a higher clickthrough
rate than banners but a lower rate than blast email. However,
they had the added advantage of serving as a branding vehicle,
and enabling a company to reach out to a target audience
repeatedly (while repeated blast email would become annoying.)
Best of all, highly targeted newsletters are much easier to
find than opt-in blast email lists. There are more than
25,000 opt-in B-to-B email newsletters versus perhaps 1,500 total
opt-in email lists available for rental.

Newsletter media buys generally cost about the same per
thousand as banner ads. Often the top position will cost a
bit more than ad positions further down. Generally this is
worth it because the top position can perform as much as 100%
better for you than any other. The only exception would be
an ad next to a particularly popular feature within a
newsletter that most recipients scroll to.

Although several major online ad networks (including B-to-B Works)
now offer newsletter ad placement, you'll need to contact most
newsletter publishers directly to place ads.

Most newsletters take text ads ranging from 4-8 lines long and
60-65 characters wide. Writing these small ads is not as easy
as you might think. Again, copywriters from a direct response
background do the best job. As Christopher Knight, CEO of
newsletter ad network Opt-Influence (http://www.opt-influence)
said, "50% of success lies in your headline." For more text-
ad writing tips go to:
http://www.marketingtowebmarketers.com/sample.cfm?contentID=1075


TACTIC #4 EMAILING YOUR CUSTOMERS & VISITORS

B2B Marketers have discovered that in email marketing, just as
any other kind of marketing, house lists work best. But there
are minefields to avoid.

Most importantly, avoid spam! Many B-to-B marketers still don't
realize they must get explicit permission to email their own
registered visitors and customers. Just because someone is
your customer, doesn't mean you can email them. Here's a link
for more information on this critical topic:
http://www.b2bmarketingbiz.com/sample.cfm?contentID=941

It's also important to respect the permission you've gotten.
As BeNOW's database marketing expert Andy Cutler told us, "Too
many people get permission and then turn on the electronic
megaphone." IBM has had enormous success by targeting each
email newsletter they send customers who have opted in. Their
marketers told us the most critical factor was in
personalizing each newsletter to its recipient. This doesn't
just mean sticking the customer's name at the top of the
message -- it means making sure the news inside the message is
specifically of interest to that individual.

Therefore, if you have more than one product, service or
target demographic, make sure your house list is set up to
gather and identify those separately. Nobody, even regular
customers, cares much about regular news from your company.
Everyone cares about news they need.

Last note -- does your corporate or product newsletter start
with a general subject line such as "News from X Corp" or
"January 2001 Newsletter"? You'll find your newsletters will
get a MUCH higher open-rate (i.e. recipients opening and
reading it vs. hitting delete) if your subject line is both
different with each issue and also more targeted to the
reader's interests.

TACTIC #5 SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

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Every B-to-B marketer we interviewed agreed that search engine
optimization (tweaking your site and making other adjustments
so you get high ranking in search engines) is always worth the
investment. Smaller companies optimized their sites in-house.
Many recommended the inexpensive software Web Position Gold
(http://www.webpositiongold) to help with this.

Marketers from medium-large companies preferred to outsource
search engine optimization tasks to an expert consultant.
The task is technical enough that you want an expert to be
focused on it for your entire company, rather than expecting
several of your own in-house marketers to learn how to do it.

B2BMarketingBiz.com will be running an exclusive interview
with a leading search engine specialist within the next two
weeks, so be sure to subscribe at our site
(http://www.b2bmarketingbiz.com) to get that issue, if you
haven't already!

Two of the most useful paid services for B-to-B marketers wishing
to raise search engine rankings are MediaDNA's eLuminator
(http://www.mediadna.com) and bitpipe
(http://www.bitpipe.com). Media DNA's eLuminator specializes
in getting sites with lots of content -- over 1,000 articles
or product listings -- listed very high in search engines.

bitpipe specializes in helping marketers for IT-related
products place links to their white papers very high in IT
reference sites searches. To learn more about using white
papers online, go to our interview with bitpipe's CEO at:
http://www.b2bmarketingbiz.com/sample.cfm?contentID=1022

Additional resources marketers recommended to us are the
Search Engine Watch newsletter from internet.com
(http://www.searchenginewatch.com) and the i-Search email
discussion group from Audette media
(http://www.audettemedia.com).


TACTIC #6 SEARCH ENGINE ADS

While general ads on search engines such as Yahoo didn't work
for most B-to-B marketers, ads linked to specific search terms
often pulled very well.

Most marketers found text ads, such as those that can appear
on Google (http://www.google.com) or Northern Light
(http://www.northernlight.com) did substantially better than
graphical banner ads. This is probably because the prospect
is actively looking for text to read to learn where they
should click next on their search for information.

Search engine text ads, much like newsletter sponsorships,
require careful copywriting to get the highest response rate
from a very limited space. These ads often do best when they
are very factual, mimicking the type of description you would
expect to see after a regular search engine site listing.

Here's a link to a recent Case Study B-to-B MarketingBiz's sister
site. MarketingtoWebMarketers ran on marketing via search
engine ads:
http://www.marketingtowebmarketers.com/sample.cfm?contentID=1261

TACTIC #7 SPECIAL CAMPAIGN LANDING PAGES

Time and again when we asked B-to-B online marketing experts what
was the biggest mistake they saw other marketers making,
experts said, "Banner ad and email campaign links that just go
to a regular home page."

Makes sense. If you're doing a campaign with a special offer,
people clicking through expect to be presented with
information pertaining to that offer -- not a home page they
have to surf through looking for where to go next. Experts
also say you only have 2-3 clicks to hold a prospect's
attention. If they have to click more than that to reach an
end objective, you'll probably lose them. So using a targeted
landing page that includes an order form or direct link to a
form is probably the smartest thing to do.

For an example of a company that creates special landing pages
for every targeted audience they market to, go to the Case
Study at:
http://www.marketingtosmallbiz.com/sample.cfm?contentID=1229


TACTIC #8 SITE NAVIGATION FROM THE USER'S PERSPECTIVE

Chances are your corporate Web site was developed from your
company's perspective. Perhaps the key navigational links or
tabs lead to your product lines or types.

As B-to-B online marketing consultant, Philippa Gamse
(http://www.CyberSpeaker.com) says, "Your web site should be
about your market, not about you." Gamse and many other B-to-B
experts recommend basing your site's navigational flow on the
needs that your most common visitor demographics have when
they enter a site.

For example, if you serve IT technicians and CIOs you might
have a site section labeled "IT Techs" and another labeled
"For CIOs." Next carefully watch your site visitor logs to
see what paths visitors take through it and which are the most
popular pages. Then redesign your home page and navigation
bar so it's even easier for new visitors to find these things.

Some companies even send their marketing navigation team into
their clients' offices to see how people use their site in
person ... and learn how it can be made even easier to use.
For an example of this, read our recent article on UPS.com:
http://www.b2bmarketingbiz.com/sample.cfm?contentID=1272


TACTIC #9 ONLINE DIRECTORIES LISTINGS

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According to Thomas Register, an online and offline industrial
buying guide (http://www.thomasregister.com), approximately
54% of business buyers find new suppliers through online
buying guides. That's a powerful reason to make sure your
company is listed in as many online directories and buying
guides as possible.

This Fall we interviewed Chuck McLeester, VP Marketing at
Roska Direct (http://www.roskadirect.com) to learn how B-to-B
marketers can maximize their company and product listings in
online directories at such sites as VerticalNet, Thomas
Register and others. For his top five tips, click here:
http://www.b2bmarketingbiz.com/sample.cfm?contentID=1051


TACTIC #10 INTEGRATED CAMPAIGNS

Last August when we interviewed Philip Mowris, Director of
Interactive and Media Services for FolioZ
(http://www.folioz.com), the Southeast’s first technology
marketing firm, he made a huge point of the importance of
integrated offline/online campaigns.

Mowris said, "The more often we can engage them [prospects] --
through direct mail, sales calls, banners, email -- when they
are actively looking for solutions, the better the chances of
success. The approach we take is to look at it from end to
end. ... So we couple the Internet with offline activities. We
package a campaign together so it works in multiple layers,
several tiers."

As we continued interviewing dozens of marketers in the Fall,
the words "integrated marketing" came up more and more
frequently. In fact we predict it will be the hot buzz phrase
for early 2001!

Currently most B-to-B marketers are trying to integrate the look
of their campaigns; for example, print ad and banner ad art
will be similar. Some are also dropping campaigns using a
variety of media such as email and direct mail at the same
time. Everyone who's done this says they feel it's made a
positive difference in their results.

Now it's time to take the next step -- test integrated
campaigns in different media with overlapping lists. For
example, a campaign using an email list, direct mail list and
banners from the same trade magazine. Although precisely
integrating specific online and offline media is still hard to
do, many sites are now offering package discounts for banner
advertisers who also run spots in their newsletters. We
highly recommend you test this. And then contact us with your
results!

Looking forward to continuing to serve your practical
information needs in 2001,

The Editors of B-to-B MarketingBiz.com

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