Let’s face it; the current state of the economy has everyone, including IT marketers, concerned about their short- and long-term goals and the budget expenditures required to reach those goals.  A recent trend we’ve seen is IT marketers saying they only want to do highly filtered marketing campaigns to deliver only leads from a very limited demographic group that will deliver immediate sales.  And, if they have any funds earmarked for branding campaigns, many marketers think they should reallocate these branding dollars for use on lead generation programs.  While every online marketing campaign should deliver a percentage of immediately actionable leads, in many cases these short-term campaigns are being done to the exclusion of activities that will help generate sales over the long haul.

The danger of this approach is obvious — when the economy improves, marketers focusing exclusively on generating leads for immediate sales will have no supply of leads in their pipeline, and will have to start from scratch to rebuild one.  The situation gets worse if their competitors have been nurturing leads to generate sales over an extended period and now have a large pool of prospects at various stages of the research and purchase process.  If you find yourself on the wrong side of this situation - without leads in the pipeline — you can be certain of one thing: your competitors will be taking sales away from you for a very long time until you catch up, if you catch up.  The key lesson here: Even if your budget allocations are being scrutinized in the short-term, IT marketers need to think long term about future sales and be prepared to defend allocations of budget dollars to maintain a sales pipeline. 

An empty lead pipeline and loss of long-term sales are not the only problems associated with highly filtered campaigns.  If all or most of your competitors are also implementing this kind of limited marketing program — focusing on the exact same demographic profile at the exact same stage of the purchase process (ready to buy) — you are all competing for a limited universe of leads.  As a result, the volume of leads generated by campaigns will be smaller, the cost per lead will be higher, and everyone will be competing head to head for the attention - and dollars - of this limited group.  Under these circumstances, IT marketers should considering relaxing their demographic criteria to reach a broader group of potential customers engaged in the earlier stages of the purchase research process.  It’s also a good time to expand the range of content (broad industry-oriented, topic/issue-specific, product focused, etc) and the content types (white papers, Webcasts, Podcasts, downloads, etc) you offer to meet to the information needs of all the different decision makers involved all stages of the research and purchase process.

The upside of a down economy?  Current market conditions also offer companies - particularly smaller, less well-known ones - an opportunity to take market share away from their larger competitors.  In tight economic times at major companies, very often, the first marketing budget item to be cut or reallocated is branding.  If your company has had problems competing against bigger names — now is the time to get out there and seize market share by increasing your branding efforts.  If your competitor’s campaigns are focused on generating short-term results, focus your efforts on creating campaigns that will deliver consistent results over the long term.

What impact has the down economy had on your marketing campaigns and programs?  Is upper management questioning your budgeting decisions?  What due diligence actions are you taking to make sure your lead pipeline stays filled and delivers short- and long-term sales?  Let us know what you’re experiencing and seeing out there. 

With the release of Facebook’s new ad format, there is a lot of debate about whether or not this is a step in the right direction for social marketing or whether or not this type of marketing will just fall by the wayside as another more highly sophisticated version of “spam.”

As a Facebook user and a marketer, I can see both sides to this argument but I think the positives outweigh the negatives here.  As a user will I want to join every corporate “group” or sign-up for every application a “friend” sends my way?  Absolutely not.  But will I join a group like “Volkswagen” because I own one of their cars - yes.  In many cases, there are clear benefits for me joining a group that I have a vested interest in; such as special offers, messaging with other Volkswagen owners, etc.  In my opinion, Facebook is taking form as the new word of mouth of our generation. 

However, I do agree with Mark Hopkins that other more aggressive marketing tactics like “beacon” will have negative affects on the Facebook community and could cause increased abandonment.  I think advertisers and more importantly, Facebook, needs to be smart about the way this site is used.  Radically changing the site and intended use could cause a lot of backlash among the community of users.

The debate will go on, but regardless of the outcome, it will help pave the way for more creative ways of thinking about marketing in general. While the approach is novel in the consumer world, is IT ready for an environment such as this? IT buyers consistently rely on word of mouth recommendations from their colleagues, but remain skeptical of “vendor pitches”. B2B trends tend to follow consumer trends, so time will tell. I would love to hear your thoughts on this.