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Archive for September, 2006

Content-level marketing in practice

September 28th, 2006 | Marilou Barsam

Last month Media Business (a BtoB publication) interviewed one of our product directors on our new email strategy that targets subscribers based on their topical interests. Not only does this focus represent a shift in TechTarget’s email strategy, it represents an overall shift in how we will organize our member database and then position media products and/or editorial content that they consume.

We are referring to this as “content-level targeting” also known as “contextual marketing”. As Agata cites in the article, targeting content accurately to an audience that has explicitly indicated interest in this topic has resulted in a 10% lift in raw leads from lists that are 30% to 60% smaller. The net take away from an ROI perspective is that we are seeing two times the normal response rate. So, even though the audiences are smaller because of their topical content interest, their interest level in our advertisers’ offers are actually much higher.

I wondered if anyone else has experimented with topical targeting and if you have experienced similar results?

Posted in Lead-Gen Strategies, Integrated Media, Best practices, Email marketing, Lead quality | Post or View Comments (0)

Engagement Level - A New Metric of Success for Online Advertising

September 21st, 2006 | Melissa Marron

For marketers everywhere, showcasing the number of qualified leads they receive from a campaign isn’t enough anymore to prove success.  Although revenue accrued might be the main metric of success, engagement levels throughout a campaign are also important.  I offer clients the average time spent with their content, number of pages viewed, and even whether or not it was saved on their hard drive.  And with online branding campaigns, I can share average time spent per page.  Is it important to showcase engagement with your (vendor) content or engagement with the topic overall (editorial and vendor)?  What are your benchmarks for time spent?  And how do you measure engagement with your branding and lead gen campaigns?

Posted in Integrated Media, Best practices, Lead quality | Post or View Comments (2)

Personas in business technology marketing

September 19th, 2006 | Marilou Barsam

I recently came across an intersting article on MarketingSherpa about the growing use of personas in advertising. In fact, their study says 40% of business technology hardware marketers use personas for their marketing. My comment to the author was that I agreed they are tricky because it’s really important to make sure the way you are depicting your target audience is “dead-on” with how they see themselves. I wondered if any of our visitors have had experiences with using perosnas in their recent ad campaigns — online or print. If so, tell us about them….and check out the story with this link.

Posted in Customized Media, Lead-Gen Strategies, Integrated Media, Best practices | Post or View Comments (1)

What’s your experience with blogs?

September 18th, 2006 | Marilou Barsam

Should we look at blogging as a marketing channel? A recent study conducted by KnowledgeStorm and Universal McCann proves that blogs are extremely effective. According to the study blogs are a perfect forum for business and IT Professionals.  More than 53% of survey respondents felt that content they read in blogs already impacts their work-related purchasing decisions.  As marketers we are always looking for new and effective media.
What has been your experience with blog marketing?

Posted in Podcasts, Blogs & Video, Integrated Media | Post or View Comments (3)

Considerations for Marketing to the Chinese Market

September 14th, 2006 | Garrett Mann

Recently, Melissa discussed the increase in online consumption in the UK. In its most recent global online spending outlook, Merrill Lynch predicts that global online ad spending will reach $11.6 Billion in 2006, an increase of 35% over 2005. Internationally, online spending growth rate is set to match consumption in the UK at 46%, but the highest growth rate by far is expected to be in China at 50%. Leveraging this growth can sometimes come at a price for online publishers and marketers alike. As businesses flock to leverage the tremendous potential in this market, marketers should be aware of challenges as well as the many localized factors that need to be taken into consideration before marketing in China. MarketingSherpa outlines a few here.

Posted in Webcasts, Podcasts, Blogs & Video, Best practices, Email marketing, International marketing | Post or View Comments (2)

Integrated marketing

September 11th, 2006 | Marilou Barsam

BtoB Online recently posted an article highlighting integrated marketing success stories.  They talk about how it is more important than ever for marketers to create integrated campaigns that communicate their brand message consistently across multiple platforms.  I completely agree that integrated marketing has many benefits.  Some of the most important are: Wider appeal to all buying team members through use of tailored messages; Greater recall rate – your message will resonate with the right audience in the right environment at the right time and ROI – you create top of mind awareness and higher response rates.  What has your experience been with integrated marketing?

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Posted in Integrated Media, Best practices, ROI, Branding | Post or View Comments (0)

Targeting the midmarket

September 7th, 2006 | Melissa Marron

Over the past year, many IT organizations have named midmarket organizations as the sweet spot of their lead generation goals.  Gartner has even showcased this segment as the fastest growing in ‘06 - ‘07.  Last year, TechTarget even launched a C-level magazine targeted to the Midmarket (CIO Decisions).  With this growth, I began researching what the best way was to reach these midmarket companies.  Better yet, what is the definition of a midmarket company?  By our standards, midsize is qualified as $50 M to $1B in annual revenue or 100 to 5,000 employees (for more information visit “Seizing the Midmarket Opportunity for IT”).  How have you defined it?  Is it revenue based or determined by the number of workstations?  Have you seen trends in how midmarket’s consume information (i.e. specific types of content)?

Posted in Best practices, Midmarket CIO Marketing | Post or View Comments (1)

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