B2B Marketing, Digital Media and Marketing Strategy
Banner ads work. Banner ads don’t work. Banner ads are just wallpaper.
It doesn’t matter what your opinion is of banner ads, someone out there has a study that will agree with your position.
However, as online publishers develop new “higher impact” online ads, recently published results should serve as a warning to both publishers and advertisers::
Don’t allow ads to come between your audience and the content they are looking for. [Read more…]
B2B advertisers generally target smaller, harder to define audiences than consumer advertisers, which puts a major premium on effective targeting in B2B advertising.
However, many B2B marketing groups are continuing to use the same targeting options they mastered in print and direct mail, simply applied to newer digital marketing tactics.
Today, B2B marketers have many new options available. Below are 7 options and potential providers for each one. [Read more…]
If you are in B2B advertising, you cannot ignore LinkedIn. With great reach (#22 US site in January 2013 according to ComScore), extensive profile data actively maintained by the audience and granular targeting options, LinkedIn is a powerhouse in the world of B2B advertising.
So when LinkedIn introduces a new advertising option, as a B2B advertiser, you need to pay attention. Here are two new offerings LinkedIn introduced in the last quarter that seem to have slipped under the radar of most B2B marketers. [Read more…]
If your goal is to deliver leads that you can tie back directly to your marketing investment, do not make banners the core of your enterprise B2B marketing program. Period.
Lead generation is still one of the top objectives of enterprise B2B marketers and many B2B publishers continue to propose banners as a way to deliver leads.
Publishers that continue to do this are doing a disservice to marketers that don’t know better and are losing the respect of those that do.
Banners don’t drive leads. Remember that. [Read more…]
Data is reinventing the online advertising market. Today, algorithmic media buying is one of the fastest growing areas in online advertising and without data, it wouldn’t even exist.
This isn’t just a consumer advertising trend, increasingly B2B advertising is being driven by data as well.
However, the problem with online data is it is inherently dirty. Collected from registration forms, browsing behavior or appended offline data sources, collecting online data is an imperfect process at best.
So what is the smart way to use dirty data to improve your advertising? Glad you asked.
Here are three steps that will guide both media and creative. [Read more…]
In B2B marketing, and particularly in enterprise technology marketing, publishers lean heavily on email lists for lead generation programs, including whitepaper and webcast promotions.
B2B email lists also still command high rental rates ($300+ CPMs are very common). Both directly or indirectly, email continues to be an important vehicle for B2B publishers.
But when you rent an email list, purchase an ad in an email newsletter or run a lead generation program with a publisher, do you know how much the publisher has used (or abused) their email list? [Read more…]
In order to deliver something more memorable than most advertising, marketers are turning to content that tells a story, engages the audience and delivers value.
But how do marketers reach a large audience with their content? Major publishers continue to have audiences that dwarf those of nearly every marketer, relying on just their own audience isn’t enough.
In the past, marketers relied on advertising and PR to get to these audiences, but those approaches mean the marketer’s own content is still a step removed. Today, there is an emerging third option that allows marketers to distribute quality content at scale: native advertising. [Read more…]
B2B advertising begins with the target audience. Until you know who you are targeting, you cannot identify the publications, sites or ad networks you should be working with.
However, one of the first things advertisers do is generalize their target audience. Here are a couple examples of how B2B target audiences are generalized for advertising:
What if you didn’t need to generalize your audience? Instead of targeting large companies or industries, what if Juniper could directly target companies with large data centers or UPS could directly target companies with complex logistics needs?
Today they can. [Read more…]
It sounds obvious, on point, and innocent, but the oft-told advice to “go where your audience is” is one of the worst pieces of advice B2B marketers receive.
This advice leaves B2B marketers looking at what their audience does. Do they watch the Super Bowl? Are they on Facebook? Do they read Sports Illustrated?
Media sales representatives perpetuate the problem, comparing reach to their competitors. The “more read our stuff” chart is in nearly every major media kit in one form or another and every day it leads marketers astray. [Read more…]
You have agonized over your copy, crafting something with depth and nuance. You tell the story around the table of how the message and design combine to illustrate your brand’s superiority.
As you explain it heads begin to nod, the connection becomes clear and the program moves forward.
The problem is, you expect your audience to find the same winding road from creative to communication objective, with no map or guide. [Read more…]