Forrester’s much awaited study on B-to-B Social Media participation released this week, giving key insight into just how active IT Buyers are in using social technology. According to the results, 91% of these users are at least “Spectators”, meaning they actively read blogs, watch videos, listen to podcasts, and visit ratings/review forums. 69% of these users indicate they view social media for business purposes. More importantly, 58% (37% business use) are “Critics”, meaning they post comments in blogs, leave ratings/reviews of products, contribute to wikis, etc. Not only are they viewing social media, they are highly active participants. Now that we have covered the statistics, let’s get to the crux of the issue:  If you are a marketer targeting IT Buyers, it is clear that YOU MUST consider social outlets as part of your marketing mix.

So why does most research point to slow adoption of social media among marketers? In working with many clients in the space, we have found that adoption is slow due to a number of reasons, most importantly being lack of insight into prospect’s social behavior, and measurement/ROI.

Forrester’s study provides the insight into social behavior, but embracing social media means adjusting your traditional view on marketing ROI. It is not about generating “leads” or “pageviews” but about ROMO - Return on Marketing Objectives. Before embarking on a social initiative you need to decide as an organization what you are looking to get out of it. Is it thought leadership, is it gaining customer insight/creating a direct pipeline to your customers or prospects, is it monitoring conversations around your brand? Regardless, according to Forrester, you need to start with the audience and not the technology. In other words, don’t just launch a blog, wiki, or forum because you want to get into social media - like traditional media, you need to go where your audience is.

How are you integrating social media into your marketing efforts? If you’re not, what are your main hesitations?

We have been discussing the ongoing shift in power in information technology purchasing from seller to the buyer in this blog for some time now. In this new era, a potential IT buyer can fully educate themselves about a company’s technology offerings and formulate purchase consideration before ever speaking to a sales rep. Therefore, it is no longer the IT marketer’s job to generate demand, but to facilitate demand. Facilitating demand is making certain that you are providing potential buyers with all of the content and information that they need to educate themselves about what you have to offer. Which means your marketing efforts will go only as far as the content you can provide.

In order to ensure you keep up with IT buyer demand for information, you need to get the most out of every piece of content you produce. For example, if you create a webcast, transcribe it and turn it into a white paper. Or edit the audio portion and turn it into a podcast. Or take your broad white paper and create multiple versions targeted to industries you work with/sell into. Possibilities are endless. This approach will allow you to most effectively use multiple distribution channels to capitalize on prospect media format/information consumption preference and maximize interaction opportunities. Also, do not be afraid to offer content in different formats together. Recent campaigns we have run that promoted a webcast and podcast on the same subject together have seen very low duplication rates.

Yesterday, comScore and the Kelsey Group released a study measuring the effect of online consumer-generated reviews on offline purchases. Findings showed that user-generated content is fast becoming a very influential source for driving purchase decisions. Highlights of the report include:

1. 1 in 4 internet users consulted an online consumer-generated review before making a purchase
2. 75% of users who consulted a review indicated that it had a significant impact on their decision to purchase
3. Majority indicated that consumer-generated reviews had more influence than professionally-generated reviews
4. Not only are users consulting reviews, but they also indicate that they are willing to spend more for a product/service if highly rated by fellow users.

While this report comes from the consumer market, it absolutely has application within the IT market where purchases are made in a group setting and are highly peer-driven. Whether it is reviews, forums, blogs, or wikis, users no longer rely on only vendors and publishers to find all of the information they need. If you have been hesitant to participate or market within this environment, these findings should give you confidence in the opportunity that exists. Now is the time to make the commitment to user-generated content. Your customers are already there.

In one of my recent posts, I spoke of a shift in control within the IT purchasing relationship from vendor to buyer and that successful marketing involves acknowledging this and aligning your marketing efforts to support this shift. New research released this week from MarketingSherpa suggests that if you have not yet acknowledged this, you better start soon or risk falling far behind. Findings showed that 80% of decision-makers who made a technology purchase believe that they found the vendor as opposed to the other way around. This is an absolutely imperative statistic to understand when evaluating current and future ROI on marketing efforts. To learn more about how the internet is driving the technology purchasing dynamic and key tactics that marketers need to consider in order to align marketing efforts to the buying process, check out this great post from Modern B2B Marketing Blog.

What is most marketer’s major focus when they invest in search engine optimization or search engine marketing? I would argue that 9 out of 10 would say Google - with the majority focusing all their efforts primarily on Google. But is this such a good idea? The short answer is yes. No marketer is going to get fired for investing in Google. And, frankly, it is hard to argue with the current US search engine rankings. With the majority of searches coming from Google, why consider Yahoo, MSN, or Ask?

New marketing research released this week by Dogpile and Infosearch suggests that you may be missing an opportunity if you aren’t expanding your search engine efforts and considering options outside of Google. According to the study, there is only a 1% overlap in organic first-page search findings on major search engines and only 3.6% of number one ranked search results were the same across all 4 major search engines. Furthermore, for direct marketing spend on sponsored results or keyword buys, there is only a 4.6% overlap on Yahoo and Google for any given search.

This was certainly eye-opening for me. We would love to hear more insight from you on your current search efforts.

Findings from a marketing study released yesterday by MarketingSherpa and KnowledgeStorm say that IT buyers are twice as likely to give vendors a valid email address than a valid phone number. Working with client demand generation programs in the IT market, these findings came as no surprise to me. It is a trend we have been seeing for quite some time, but these numbers do validate what has become a reality for many marketers – you are no longer in control of the IT Purchasing relationship. IT Buyers have more sources of information at their fingertips than ever before to perform research and educate themselves regarding your product – without ever speaking to a representative from the company. Armed with the information they need, IT Pros can afford to pick and choose when and in what format they want to engage with you – and by all reports its not via phone. If you have ever asked a question on a registration form that asks if you want to be contacted by a sales representative, you already know this.

So what are the new rules of engagement within a changed dynamic? There are many, but here are a few thoughts to start:

1. Understanding that the user is in control of the engagement dictates that content and marketing efforts be designed with utility in mind.
2. During initial follow-up to online responses, it is best to “stay within the medium.” Downstream lead nurturing should also be conducted online until you are able to build trust with your prospect. Again, utility is key to building trust throughout the nurturing process.
3. If at all possible, avoid blanket telequalification. There are certain “hot” leads that require immediate phone follow-up but as the study suggests, these are a smaller percentage of your leads. Putting all leads through telequalifying runs the risk of turning away many potential buyers downstream.

If you have any information or insight to share about marketing within this new buying framework, we would love to hear your thoughts.

Web 2.0 is upon us – or is it? The foundation is in place and all the offerings are there for marketers to take advantage of, but is the audience ready to freely participate? At this point, the answer seems to be no, or at least not without the proper incentive. To this point, people will read your blog, listen to your podcast, watch your video, view your wiki, but they are not generating content yet. On two of the largest user generated content outposts on the internet, YouTube and Wikipedia have only .2% and 5% users contributing content respectively. These stats look very Web 1.0 to me. So what is the hook? What else? Money. In an effort to provide more incentive for users to contribute videos to its site, YouTube announced that it was going to begin sharing ad revenue with content creators.

So this is the simple answer for IT marketers looking to drive user generated content and integrate into their marketing efforts, right? The truth is that most marketers do not have the traffic or the resources to reward users like YouTube can. But the other side of the argument is that YouTube is not a true community that would embrace an exchange of ideas and content – it’s an entertainment outlet. In the world of IT marketing, we don’t necessarily need monetary incentives because we deal in a different currency – information. Information is what will get people to your site and is what will keep them coming back. To take the next step and incentivize users to contribute, you must first listen to what they have to say and optimize their experiences based upon it. Then, you must recognize that even though they are on your site, they don’t just want to hear about you, they want to hear from you – give them a forum in which they can leverage information and experiences directly from you and also leverage experiences of their peers. Lastly, understand the above stats on user generated content (UCG) and be patient.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this and any successes (or failures) you are having with UCG.

While you were sleeping, Google made a move that solidifies its position as a media industry giant. Late Friday afternoon, Google announced that it was purchasing DoubleClick for $3.1 Billion, double what they paid for YouTube. Google beat Yahoo! and Microsoft to the punch in a true end-game move that extends its dominance in search to display advertising, essentially giving them ownership of a significant portion of the online advertising industry.

But they have not just stopped at online. This deal comes on the heels of aggressive partnerships to distribute the Google AdSense model to offline sources such as radio and TV, opportunities created in part by another Google acquisition, dMarc, a broadcast advertising management platform they purchased in 2006.  

As Google ventures into Orwellian territory (see this list of 17 Google acquisitions over the last few years), it will be interesting to see what kind of impact it will make on both media buying and ROI measurement for the industry as a whole. My senses tell me that it will be significant.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

You may be shocked to learn that it actually has an awful lot to do with marketing. To find out more, check out this marketing post from Seth Godin. In it, he raises an important question that marketers need to be asking themselves: Do I have a reactive platform based on the reasons why people don’t buy my product or does my platform focus on the reasons why people choose it? What is your focus?

Marilou introduced you to our new marketing research report put out in conjunction with the CMO Council last week. According to the findings, IT Vendor websites are one of the most frequently used sources for individuals looking for information about enterprise technology, alongside IT Publishers and Search Engines.

In this day and age, your website is the single strongest marketing platform and representation of your brand for any potential customers that you may have. And I would argue that no major technology purchase is made without first visiting that company’s website in some way, shape, or form.

At this point, you probably don’t need any research to understand the importance of having a website. However, it is critical to understand how to optimize your website so it meets your customer’s needs. They are already coming to find out information – but how do you get them to stay longer, come back, and interact with you?

This post from Vario Creative Blog has some great tips on how “humanizing” your business website will help you accomplish this.