Last week, Michael Stelzner wrote an interesting article in MarketingProfs about the effectiveness of white papers. The article states, “New research shows that white papers are among the most compelling way to attract leads.”  He also comments on how to write effective white papers such as starting with a problem or need faced by the reader rather than the product or service offered.

After running thousands of campaings on our network, the results prove over and over again that education content combined with integrated media is the key to a successful lead generation program.  We have seen that product/sales focused papers result in poor performance. TechTarget also ran a recent study that points to White Papers as the most effective source when researching new technologies/vendors.  It shows that the majority of IT Professionals download between 10 and 24 white papers per year.

All these data points suggest, to garner success in your lead generation programs, invest in compelling white papers.

I spoke about the potential of social networking in the IT space in my last entry, but what do you make of Red Hat’s current project? Red Hat, known primarily as an enterprise Linux provider, has launched Mugshot.org, a still-in-beta social networking site which will compete with the likes of MySpace in the consumer market. On one level, this is no surprise. The Linux operating system is an open source technology built on collaboration, so a social network in which people can share web pages, music, and other media follows the model. Red Hat long ago abandoned the retail channel to focus on enterprise Linux. Will this take away from that focus?

BtoB Online had a recent article on the new found relationship of CMOs and CFOs.
The article talks about how marketing accountability has risen as a corporate priority.  In the past, the relationship between these two roles has been somewhat adversarial. Now these two groups work closely together to develop metrics to account for all marketing spend.

What metrics have you put in place with your finance department to prove ROI?

This past week, MarketingVOX discussed the announcement that Jeep is turning to social peer networks MySpace and Facebook to help it launch Jeep Compass, its new vehicle aimed at young adults. Jeep’s agency noted that they will not be using them to drive traffic back to Jeep.com. Instead, they have set up profile pages on each that they will use as a destination page for the banners they are buying. Jeep is leveraging these brands to build a community and drive purchase consideration and they are not the only ones who see the business potential here.

Peer networking is clearly here to stay in the consumer market (Fox just bet $580 million on it), but will we see this take off in the IT market anytime soon? P2P has been discussed for quite some time in IT, but has yet to be fully embraced. This is no surprise as IT marketing trends typically follow consumer trends (see podcasts), but the way decisions are made in the IT market (outside of publishers and search engines, we all know that IT people rely heavily on colleagues and peers) suggests a market that is ready for P2P sooner rather than later.

As we grow our media to cater even more to the international audience, I have begun to see trends in how specific cultures react to different types of online media.  From a consumer standpoint, the UK has seen a significant jump in online advertising consumption overall.  According to the UK Office of Communications, online is now worth three times the radio advertising market.  From a B2B standpoint, clients have shared with me that UK users are drawn to podcasts.  Have you seen the same trends?

Marketers are always looking for innovative channels to convey their advertising message.  New research conducted by KnowledgeStorm and Universal McCann state that B2B technology buyers are not only interested in new delivery channels but they are using them to gather information and make decisions.  27% of respondents said “Yes” when asked if podcasts have influenced their purchasing decision.

Through experience, I have seen successful podcasts give you the opportunity to:

- Speak directly to interested prospects
- Create buzz in the industry about your latest technology
- Enhance your brand
- Align your company with leading industry experts
- Generate high quality leads

What is your experience with incorporating podcasts into your marketing mix?

Today Online Media Daily ran an interesting and “long-time coming”story on how eight major consumer companies are demanding that Internet publishers provide consistent audited ad impression reports for online ad campaigns.  

The article also cited that other companies including HP would soon place the same requirement on publishers. Marketers anticipate that reporting formats should be in line with guidelines clearly established by the Internet Advertising Bureau.

Of course, as a publisher, we’d be interested in hearing from our audience as to where you stand with this issue. Let us know.

This post is a follow-up to Marilou’s blog on the growing popularity of video content.  We just finished up an extensive research study on IT pros media use.  Our results show that, although a large majority of IT pros have not used video content yet (around 73%), those who have thought the content was as effective as webcasts and software downloads.  Here’s a gap anaylsis chart showing our findings.

Source: Media Consumption Survey, TechTarget, July 2006

With video content on MySpace and YouTube receiving significant traction in the consumer space, this is a convenient time to consider where video content fits into the BtoB landscape.  And more specifically, does video have a significant role to play in IT media?

If you ask me, video has huge potential for IT professionals and our experience shows they eat it up.  With constant exposure to long, written documents, such as product collateral and (gasp) technical manuals, it’s obvious why engaging video content is such a strong new medium.

So what does this mean for you as IT marketers?  I’m hearing from that many of you do not have available video ad units to run today, but that will change in the coming months. Still, some recent articles have implied there are greater obstacles to embracing the ad format.

How about the insertion of sponsored video clips that are highly contextual to the underlying content?  Would that ability make you more likely to develop video ads?

In terms of branding, I have noticed vendors are looking for an alternative to running site banner placements. Recently, we had a client in the Storage space that wanted to brand their product as the leader in network area storage (NAS) and align with a highly qualified audience of NAS professionals.  We have seen the branding is extremely effective when there is a targeted alignment between vendor and editorial content.  In order to brand this client’s product as a leader in NAS – our editorial team compiled relevant editorial articles and then promoted them across a highly qualified audience of storage IT pros.  Sponsor ads were placed prominently through the articles providing great content alignment and branding.  As an exclusive sponsor, this vendor was able to surround their target market with their product message at a time when they are actively engaged with a target.  What branding vehicles have you found to be effective?