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?

Video is a “New” Media which has received a lot of attention from online marketers.  In the most recent Q3, 2007 Technology Buying and Media Consumption Survey (the third in a series of quarterly surveys to TechTarget’s IT Panel),  video has emerged as a leader as one of the most effective forms of media.

TechTarget, recently hosted the Online ROI Summit, where we gave a case study of how Sun Microsystems used video to educate developers about Java Business Integration.  The program created editorial interactive video with industry luminaries. Video proved to be a powerful branding tool, and appealed to the developer’s sense of community.

Sun was able to achieve their objective by using video to establish JBI brand in the developer market and to engage the developers in a peer-to-peer communication.  How has your company used video?

On September 20 and 21, TechTarget had the opportunity to host our first Online ROI Summit, and for those of you unable to attend, the discussions, presentations and the feedback were excellent. You can see a couple of our attendees’ independent, post-event blog posts here: PushtoTest: The Cohen Blog and The Scrappy Software Marketer

My intent for the event was to assist our technology vendor customers in understanding the latest online marketing best practices and to help them meet the ongoing challenge of proving ROI.

We got great validation on our overall content direction from the post event survey. It reinforced that IT marketers need help and guidance on how to customize their campaigns to effectively reach their specific technology market.

Both the market-specific breakout sessions, where we received 100% positive feedback on a survey, and the individual comments expressed great appreciation for explaining the specific differences between each technology market - such as Storage, Information Security, and Enterprise Apps.

Additionally, technology marketers are challenged by how to use “new” media and integrate them into their ongoing efforts.  Finally, and no surprise, the struggle to generate leads and get them through a useful sales pipeline persists and is as strong as ever - check out Brian Carroll’s presentation on nurturing leads through your sales pipeline. We specifically adressed the new ROI metrics that cover new media and emerging media.

As deeply immersed as my team and I are in online media, it was partly amazing to us that marketers still need as much support and guidance as they do.  But, in all these areas, I believe we delivered quite strongly and the survey feedback agrees with us.

Feel free to check out any of our presentations and see what the discussions were all about. We’d love to hear your feedback on this content too.

View them all here: TechTarget Online ROI Summit Presentations

Blogs are beginning to be the new trend in marketing. They can be an excellent tool to boost your reach and influence with a targeted audience.

In a recent WOMMA Summit in Chicago,  they spoke about four reasons companies should be blogging:

1. Blogging is Personal – You are hearing directly from another person what they think and how they feel
2. Linking – The more a site gets linked to, the more relevant search engines believe that content to be
3. Permanence – ‘conversations” that take place on blogs are permanent vs typical word-of-mouth marketing
4. Syndication

How has your company leveraged blogs ?  Do you find them to be an effective marketing tool?

The conference we are planning for our customers next fall, namely the TechTarget Online ROI Summit, is keen on addressing a pain point for marketers that is getting continual attention.

Since the advent of online as a viable marketing venue, marketers have been tasked with proving ROI on their online expenditures. For better or worse, proving ROI is now a key consideration as the web adds the dimension of exposing who visits, or clicks, or responds to our ad messages - something not as easily or readily accomplished with traditional media.

As a result there is an ever-present pressure on marketers to demonstrate what the exact performance of each online media investment is - especially when it comes to generating leads.

At the TechTarget Online ROI Summit, our goal will be to showcase to marketers what the benchmarks for acceptable performance should be on old and new media online, as well as set them up with information that will help them transcend the constant scrutiny of proving ROI.

If you have any specific frustrations related to this subject that you would like to share-please do.

Social Media has been poised as the next big thing for Online Marketing.  It helps connect users with one another as well as with the original publisher of content.  This has created an entire new way of marketing.  Social media comes in many forms, blogs, RSS feeds, podcasts, video, etc.  A recent eMarketing report quotes that a global survey of internal and corporate communication professionals found more than half use blogs, online video, and RSS, or plan to do so in the next 12 months. eMarketing also states that the data reveals that a lot of firms say they plan to start blogging  but that is a matter of intent, not reality.  Many companies do not have a policy in place relating to blogging or other social media tools, indicating that they are unprepared for public facing communication.
What are your company’s policies behind blogging?  How have you used social media in your marketing plans?

Last Friday marked the one year anniversary of My Educated Guess!  The Client Consulting team at TechTarget would like to thank all of our readers for their knowledge, comments and readership over the past year. 

As a recap for those who have found our blog recently, here are some of the posts that received the heaviest traffic and the most comments of this past year.

Media Product Performance Comparisons for Lead-Gen Campaigns, by Karen Lefkowitz
Podcasting for IT Pros, by Garrett Mann
The Making of a Global Brand, by Melissa Marron

Again, thank you all for a rewarding year of blogging and here’s to many more just like it!

Sincerely,
Marilou Barsam

Podcast usage grew tenfold in 2006, according to the latest report released by Forrester. Forrester analyst Brian Haven, the author of the report, reported in a recent interview with Beet.TV that 10% of North American individuals online download at least one podcast a month – up from the 1% Forrester reported based on the same survey data for 2005. Advertising revenue is following suit as well with podcasts foretasted to generate $400 million in advertising revenue by 2011, a fivefold increase over 2006.

I commented on the original report in this blog back in April. At that time, while there was much skepticism on the adoption of podcasts in the mainstream market, we did not share the same outlook for the IT market where we have seen healthy adoption rates. Now that this skepticism seems to have eroded in the mainstream market, this medium is really poised to take off. And the key driver? According to Mr. Haven, content availability - the more the content becomes available, the more it will be consumed. I agree with this point, especially considering that at this time, podcasts can be produced very affordably with few technological barriers to download.

What are your strategies regarding podcasts in 2007?

This past week, SearchCRM.com interviewed marketing guru Seth Godin in its recurring Voices of CRM podcast series. One of the main things discussed was the concept of a flatter world – meaning that marketers no longer wield all encompassing power. This is a concept I wholeheartedly agree with. Customers/consumers now have a much stronger voice and choice for that matter – in fact, according to Seth, over 80 million people now have blogs. Aligning marketing efforts with this new voice may make new media seem an obvious choice, but it really has nothing to do with it. To understand a successful marketing approach is to understand that your customers now have the ability and choice to tell you when and how they want to engage you – and as Seth says, don’t use marketing data to help your bottom line, use it to help your customers.

Over the last week, we have seen many marketers publish their 2007 marketing trends.

A recent BtoB article, Top trends for 2007: Marketers’ influence grows even as customers demand more control of the message proclaims there will be a boom in online video ads. By 2010, spending on online video ads will reach $2.9 billion, eMarketer projected. However, for 2007, eMarketers states that online video ads will make up only 4.2% of total online advertising in the U.S. next year.

At TechTarget, we have been investigating the use of online videos. We have also seen more and more interest from our clients.

Online video is another step on engaging with a prospect to shorten the sales customer. As we launch into 2007, marketers are looking at ways to create dialogue with their customers. Online videos can be an effective way to measure engagement levels.

Are you planning on utilizing online videos in your 2007 marketing plans?