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?

The mobile phone industry is growing and marketers are taking advantage of this growth with mobile adverting.

In a recent Juniper Research study, they found that 30% of mobile phone users would be interested in receiving coupons through their cell phones.  Trends predict that the market will see an increase in this demand for advertising, and spending will reach $11 billion by 2011. 

While only a few retailers can actually read coupons off a cell phone, kinks can be worked out where retailers manually enter in key codes to make this effective. As retailers try to catch up to technology - there is a great opportunity for growth in mobile marketing for consumer companies but what about B2B advertisers?

B2B advertising is very different from B2C.  This blog outlines the best practices for B2B mobile email marketing.

As marketing professional, what are your thoughts and have you had any experience with mobile marketing in either the consumer or B2B markets?  Please share your comments and opinions.

I first heard of Twitter about 3 weeks ago and was immediately intrigued. Twitter is a tool whose original use was a way to keep in touch with contacts en mass and at the same time.  Groups are formed by signing up at http://twitter.com/ and a person is either “followed” or is “following” someone.  If you are followed, any messages you send out will be received by members of the group that are following you. The messages are limited to 140 characters, however this is just enough to keep contacts updated on what is going on at any given moment. In terms of Social Networking, this is an excellent tool to get in touch and stay in touch with a large group at the same time via cell phone, IM or email.

Could this new media format and technology have other uses as well? Companies such as Woot.com, Amazon.com and Dell Outlet think it does. These companies are sending messages about hot deals that require quick response times. This is a way to immediately reach customers FREE of charge with hot deals or fire sales. I signed up for woot.com and Dell Outlet and receive deals via my cell phone. As an example from Woot.com I received “woot: $49.99: SanDisk Sansa e260 4GB Media Player http://www.woot.com/”

Dell uses Twitter not only for sales, but as a PR tool as well. In one particular message they released information about an award they received as well as sending out a link to a survey to find out more information from clients to better serve their needs:
“DellOutlet: Cool! We were honored with an award by http://sncr.org/. Thanks for the support. Pls let us know what you want > of: http://tinyurl.com/25db33”

In this survey Dell Outlet asked questions like “What kind of Tweets do you want to see from Dell Outlet?”

• Twitter-only discounts

• Other Dell Outlet offers & promotions (not Twitter exclusive)

• Dell Outlet new product arrivals

• A way to provide feedback on design/usability of Dell Outlet web site changes

• Other (please write suggestions in comment box below)

This quick delivery of the message and the ability to quickly turn around a response could be a very valuable marketing tool for retailers.

Could this also work with the launch of a new product? In combination with other media outlets, this would be an effective and efficient means to communicate the release of a new product to a large audience all at the same time and very quickly.  Would this be something that could be used in your company? Is Twitter the next big thing? What other uses could it have for e-commerce?

For more information go to: http://twitter.com/ or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

Web 2.0 is changing the face of branding. Now it is all about creating an online community in which your brand can grow and achieve affinity. Social Signal, a specialist in building online communities, had a recent marketing blog post that introduced reflective glory marketing (RGM). They define this form of new marketing as using Web 2.0 to create an online community that has intrinsic value, and let the activities of that community reflect positively on the parent company’s brand.

How will this marketing strategy impact technology branding? Are there specific types of IT professionals who respond better to user generated content? Developers were the first group of technology professionals to grow and develop user generated content. How do network admins respond? Are security professionals comfortable in contributing to UGC? These type of questions need to be answered to determine the most effective way to grow a community of technology pros who are aligned with your brand.