Many marketers are trying to achieve brand lift by executing co-branded campaigns with outside partners.  They spend time, energy and most of all dollars.  But does it work? How effective is it in increasing brand lift and if so, how?

I’ll cite a great example of a campaign that really did work.  TechTarget just partnered with a national nonprofit organization that provides IT services and training to nonprofits and young adults.  The goal was to create ‘branding awareness’ for this leading non-profit organization and for TechTarget to be positioned as a committed supporter of IT volunteerism.  We also tested ‘brand awareness’ of the Volunteerism space, all fully supported by various media types to stage a lead gen, branding, and social campaign.  We then ran a controlled vs. exposed study to examine the effectiveness of a ‘co-branded’ campaign for the sole purpose of increasing awareness and consideration intent for this organization and TechTarget related to the topic of IT Volunteerism.

We’ve discovered that through an interactive banner ad campaign consisting of assets such as a social community, video and marketing white papers were instrumental in achieving brand lift by 160% for TechTarget, 58% for Purchase Intent and a 24% aided brand awareness for this organization.  That leads us into the discussion of Brand Convergence, the hottest topic in the industry right now.  Marketers and their agencies are realizing that the new reality of online marketing requires your branding, social media, and demand generation efforts to be fully integrated.

At our first NYC TechTarget Online ROI Summit, we unraveled the importance and urgency of having your social, lead gen and branding efforts merge together to create the ultimate brand campaign and experience. We saw examples from top marketers and their agencies on how crucial having a social element is which will make or break a campaign, as well has having a direct impact on lead generation. So the bottom line is that you can’t have one without the other.  Lead Gen, Social and Branding go hand in hand.

As we enter our next TechTarget Online ROI Summit in September in San Francisco, we’ll hear from top Industry experts, including one of the most popular social media outlets, on how B2B marketers are using social to advance their lead generation efforts as well as how they are integrating social vehicles in their B2B initiatives.  Social Media is not just for your friends anymore…

A colleague of mine and I recently had the pleasure of presenting to the entire TechTarget client consulting team about how online advertising has changed over the last 2 decades- ‘Digital Media: 2 Decades of Change’.  The objective was to raise awareness and further educate the team about the evolution of online advertising, understand the various influences that impact the market’s direction and explore new paths of creativity.  Through my research we noticed a common theme or trigger that seemed to be part of the root cause of all these changes and developments of innovative ads and online tools/resources.  The driving force is the very same person reading this blog post.  That’s right, the consumer.

I’m sure you’re thinking, well duh.  But start digging deeper into all the new innovations and realize just how ‘under the consumer influence’ marketers have been and you will really appreciate how far digital media has come in just under 2 decades.   Another key point drawn from our research, is that as online ads continue to evolve at a rapid pace, that it’s important for us as digital marketers to remember that the ‘IT  Pro / Consumer Will Always Be One Step Ahead’.  This notion presents all marketers with the opportunity to push the digital media industry even further in every aspect, from innovative online ads to new online tracking applications (Hootsuite, TweetDeck, etc.) and social sharing abilities (Add This, Share This, etc.) or as one of my colleagues, Ben Bradley, refers to in his recent blog ‘Socializing’.

We’ve already seen adaption of new online tools, such as social widgets, that are used to consume and share information, which has further developed a new breed of digital consumers and brand evangelists. In a recent Wall Street Journal article about ‘Like’ Button Follow Web Users, these widgets not only make it easier “to share content with friends and help attract visitors”, these widgets are a “potentially powerful way to track internet users.”  We’ve gone from a time of CPM, Open Rates, CTR, CPC to the era of CPE, cost per engagement or what is also known as CPA cost per action.

These more robust engagement metrics have allowed marketers to gather what TechTarget identifies as Activity Intelligence and has influenced the way marketers communicate their message and get users to engage with their brand on a new level.  Now in my last blog post, The Power of Customer Intelligence, I discussed leveraging customer intelligence from a high level, so I think it’s time we take it a step further.  What happens when you take the core of customer intelligence (behavior, demographics and basic activity- clicks and downloads) and add it with all this robust rich media engagement activity (time in ad, % viewed, # of tweets or shares)?

You now get a more refined set of marketing programs that are purely focused on user engagement, which provides greater insight into the behaviors and thought processes of a potential buyer or prospect.

Already out in the digital space we are seeing these new programs come to fruition.  You can find examples in the ‘Digital Media: 2 Decades of Change’ presentation, in the Things Your Mother Doesn’t Even Know About section.  These examples showcase three different types of engagement ads that take users beyond the click and immerse them with an interactive brand experience.

Overall, the era of engagement is an exciting place for all marketers to be in.  We’ve already begun to see the influence this new breed of consumers has had on the digital ad space.  And with every innovative interactive ad, comes a new set of metrics that provides marketers with a more robust set of activity intelligence. The combination of the two is pushing marketers to look beyond the click and make us venture onto new paths of creativity.  This will sure be an amazing trip and something tells me we are just scratching the surface of what is yet to come.

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A recent BtoB study titled “Emerging Trends in B-to-B Social Media Marketing: Insights From the Field,” indicates that 93% of b2b marketers are engaged to some extent in social media marketing.  Twenty-six percent of respondents to BtoB’s survey cited LinkedIn as their most important social channel, followed by Facebook (20%), blogging (19%), customer communities (14%) and YouTube (7%).

Survey participants indicated that social sites are useful overall in supporting branding efforts, although different channels are considered to have their own unique strengths. LinkedIn, for example, was cited primarily for supporting lead generation.  Facebook was considered strong in promoting products and events.  Twitter was noted for its website traffic-building qualities.

With all this activity around social media marketing, companies should take advantage of using this media vehicle to aid with their overall branding and lead generation efforts, however some companies do come across obstacles when trying to adopt this strategy.   The B2b study then went on to explain three major obstacles seen when trying to adopt social media marketing in their company.  The single most pressing obstacle was due to “lack of resources,” cited by 70% of survey respondents.  Other hurdles uncovered were that 57% of respondents cited “poorly defined success metrics and key performance indicators” as preventing them from adopting this strategy in their organization.  Lastly, 44% indicated that “lack of knowledge about social media” was holding them and their companies back from adoption.

Social media is said to be one of the most powerful influencers on buyer behavior, and is “poised for hyper-growth,” according to B2B online.  According to a 2011 Social Media Marketing Trends blog post on Webbiquity, just 5% of Americans said they were familiar with Twitter in 2008; by the Fall of 2010, that figure was up to 87%, and Twitter is now adding 300,000 new users per day.  Facebook also added more than 150 million new users in 2010.

Has your company adopted social media marketing?   What are you waiting for?

How often do we really think of getting involved in volunteering from a corporate perspective? Corporate Volunteerism in the US can trace its roots back more than 25 years.  During this time, a growing number of companies have encouraged their employees to support charitable endeavors and non profit organizations through a variety of sponsored activities, events and promotions.

It is of little surprise then that corporations are increasingly engaged in volunteerism. Now, however they are refocusing their programs around their respective core business competencies to drive benefits that transcend philanthropic goals and ultimately support their bottom lines.

This shift has also allowed volunteerism to extend into largely untapped areas such as IT-based services.  The move to facilitate IT volunteerism has come thanks in large part to groups such as NPower which matches pro bono IT services through The Community Corps.  They not only match skilled IT volunteers with nonprofits in need of help, it manages the entire process allowing corporations to more effectively track each employee’s impact and contribution which is known as Soft ROI.

The ability to track, measure and manage a sponsored volunteer program successfully addresses a critical issue facing corporate volunteerism, clearing the way for IT and tech centric companies such as TechTarget to participate.

April 6, 2011 may mark the beginning of a new way of doing business on the internet. California becomes the first State to introduce a bill that has the potential to radically change how and what information is collected about end-users – making marketing to them even harder,  California Senate Introduces Internet ‘Do Not Track’ Bill

This is also being taken up on a National level across bipartisan lines with Senators Kerry and McCain joining forces to send a message to online advertisers on being sensitive to the private data they collect.

The FTC is getting involved to “ensure that the growing, changing, thriving information marketplace is built on a framework that promotes privacy, transparency, business innovation and consumer choice.”

This is obviously a big issue for us on-line marketers to watch and see how it plays out. How would this affect your marketing efforts on-line?

Marketers have always walked a thin line between collecting as much information about a lead as possible and asking for so much that it scares them away. While nobody wants to incur high drop off rates for their assets, marketers struggle to learn as much as possible about users who are interested in their content.  Recently, this struggle has eased a little as online lead generation moves away from information collection and more toward activity monitoring.

Activity monitoring allows marketers to make use of a “show, don’t tell” approach, where rather than relying on a lead to provide data about themselves, information is gathered though watching the real time behavior of the lead. Most marketers find that knowing that a particular user has recently looked at a high volume of assets around a given topic is far more valuable than that user’s answer to a question about whether or not there is a project in place.

But as with any new technology, as certain challenges are alleviated, new ones appear in its place. While marketers are very familiar with how to bucket leads into categories based on answers to custom questions, dealing with the intricacies of an activity-based approach to lead prioritization is a new frontier. Smaller companies are often better equipped to make qualitative decisions about each lead on a case-by-case basis; larger companies are dependent on CRM tools and quantitative scoring methods. This is where it becomes extremely important for marketers to work with their lead generation vendor to come up with the best possible methods for using this new kind of data.  Because a good leads is only as good as the follow up process.

A great additional resource that explores this topic in more depth is: How to Capitalize on Highly Active Leads from TechTarget

Blogs are a great way to establish thought leadership amongst both current and prospective clients.  In a recent TechTarget Media Consumption Benchmark Report titled, “Closing the Gap between IT Buyers and IT Marketers,” this report uncovered that marketers and IT buyers find that information from unbiased sources (like blogs, online communities, and social networks) are more useful during the awareness and consideration stages of the buying process.  What better time to get in front of prospective buyers researching technology solutions than now?

Blogs could even be considered yet another vehicle in which organizations use to nurture  prospects with information needed to help them get closer to make a purchasing decision.   If your organization has not entered the world of blogging, now might be a good time to pursue this initiative, but before you do, make sure your blog content is worthy of attracting and keeping loyal followers.

A recent blog post from March 2010 titled, “5 Ways to Write a Killer B2B Blog post” talks about key strategies for writing blog posts, like making a list.  These are very effective in that they are easily scanned and readers know exactly what they are getting when they read further.  Examples I would suggest to come of my clients would include posts titled, “Ten Signs That You Need a Server,”  “Top 10 Reasons for a Server Refresh,” and “Five Best Practices to Optimize Server Infrastructure Costs with Virtualization.”  Other tips include playing off current events like a recent technology conference / trade show, or even leveraging someone else’s thoughts.

While this doesn’t cover every concept that could be used for a B2B blogging strategy, these are just some ideas that have proven to be successful for organizations.  Has your organization entered the Blogosphere, and what is your strategy?

Step 3: Socializing

Socializing is the art of listening and speaking - blending Steps 1 & 2 at the same time. The best way to socialize within the B2B marketplace is through social media as this enables conversations to happen naturally. Part of any good content marking plan should include some aspect of social media, whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, a blog or focused user community.

As marketers one of the biggest lessons learned in 2009/2010 was that social media is often times complicated and requires a large time investment. As a user of social media, one of the most frustrating experiences is going to a Facebook or Twitter page of an organization to post comments or questions and getting no response. Social media is about being able to connect with people and having conversations, so don’t leave them feeling ignored.

The best way to avoid this is to do your homework - going back to Step 1 of this series, listening. Listen to where your ideal users are having conversations. Are your potential clients chatting on technology focused user communities, like IT Knowledge Exchange, or are they posting comments on more general social sites, like Twitter? Your job is to find that concentration of users and focus your resources there. There are far too many social networking websites out there to try to be active on all of them. Find you audience then start your conversations there. With the onslaught of Web 2.0 everyone is producing content. It is no longer about page views or eyeballs, according to the blog series Scalable Intimacy, it’s about meaningful conversations. If you don’t have the resources to engage in conversations directly, make sure you are in the room when these conversations are happening with banners and other branding placements.

If you follow the three steps to a content marketing plan that I set out for you in this series then you should be producing content pieces that speak directly to your ideal audience. You will have content that can capture leads and nurture them though the buying phases. If you get into the social media game as well, you will be able to have meaningful conversations with the right people at the right time.

With online social media’s importance expanding every day and online media as TechTarget’s foundation, many people have asked why we run the TechTarget Online ROI Summit as live events.

The answer is community. In fact, that’s the same answer to the questions, why is social media important?, and why does the TechTarget network have such tightly focused websites?  Audiences need information from you and from their peers – social media and targeted collections of practical content empowers technology buyers and enables their community.

TechTarget’s ROI Consulting department engages in many conversations with the community of technology marketers through our ROI Advisory Board of select clients, Twitter, this blog, the IT Agenda research series and blog, and other communities but the live Online ROI Summit is the most social of any of these.

Search engine results, social media, and syndicated content will never replace live events. In fact, the overwhelming amount of information available online increases the value of live events for all audiences – technology marketers and technology buyers alike.  Events allow people the ability to interact and really understand the information, not just download and read by themselves in isolation from the real world – that’s community. It’s also why so many media companies are increasing their event roster recently, as Sean Callahan documented last month in Trade shows exhibit enduring appeal, BtoB Magazine.

The goals for our Online ROI Summits are to create the chance for us to talk face-to-face with technology marketers like you about what we see working, to listen to and learn from your insightful questions, and, most importantly, to help the technology marketing community grow by connecting you with your peers. Year-after-year the events have proven themselves useful to us in refining our ROI consulting practices and we continuously hear from clients that the people they meet and things they learn are invaluable in their daily marketing work.

Integration and cooperation between all the available media is your best way to build an audience community and live events are just as much of an important element today as they have ever been.

Technology is changing the world at a fast clip. You can watch movies instantly from NetFlix instead of renting DVDs. You can read e-books on your iPad instead of buying books from Borders. And smartphones provide the same capabilities and features as your computer.

Mobile is taking off faster than predicted, said Google CEO Eric Schmidt. As keynote speaker at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s annual leadership meeting, Schmidt shared these facts:

• Mobile searches related to Chrysler, a Super Bowl advertiser, were 102 times higher after the ad was televised; desktop searches for Chrysler increased only 48 times more than usual.

• 78 percent of smartphone users shop on their device.

Schmidt predicted that digital display advertising could grow to $200 billion a year, up from about $9 billion in the United States and $20 billion worldwide.

Will this trend affect B2B advertising? According to Softchoice Corp. and Cisco Systems, buyers increasingly rely on mobile to research IT solutions.

• 74% of mobile users visit Websites from their mobile device

• 60% of smart phone owners use their device for IT research

• 55% of director+ titles research IT on their mobile device

• The more senior the role, the more likely smart phones will be used for IT research

• Global mobile data traffic will increase 26-fold between 2010 and 2015

TechTarget provides new mobile media opportunities that will allow you to reach those IT buyers. Opportunities include mobile microsites, downloadable apps, cloud-based widgets and more.

Source for Eric Schmidt quotes, article on ClickZ 2/28/11