B-to-B Companies Use Technology to Market Themselves

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Business-to-business (B2B) marketers have traditionally been stepchildren to their consumer marketing counterparts in terms of ad budget size and household brand name recognition. But no longer. On Wall Street B2B brands like IBM, Microsoft and Cisco carry significant clout, and the enormous valuations of Internet brands such as Amazon and AOL have catapulted many Web-based technology companies into the spotlight.

The next big opportunity for B2B is in e-commerce, where industry analysts such as Forrester Research predict revenue growth from $43 billion in 1998 to over $1 trillion in 2003. Suddenly, we have a new crop of venture capitalists and entrepreneurs eager to get in on the business marketing e-commerce bonanza.

As the computer-related goods and services market has grown to enormous proportions, B2B technology marketing now represents the largest single segment of business marketing. Here are just some of the ways leading companies are using technology to improve marketing return on investment and productivity.

SFA & CRM

Traditionally, business-to-business goods and services were sold by a professional sales force to specialized markets. This was an inefficient luxury compared to modern retailing and the superstore phenomenon.

To improve sales force efficiency, many companies invested in Sales Force Automation (SFA) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software to better organize and utilize their sales force. These robust programs provide almost everything a sales force needs from territory delineation, sales leads and presentation materials to inventory data, online ordering links and comprehensive customer sales data. This data may be continuously updated and available on a notebook computer, or in some cases, a PDA such as a Palm Pilot.

New Media Outlets

To advertise to specialized vertical markets such as aircraft companies, or horizontal markets such as accountants, business marketers relied upon specialized business magazine publishers such as Cahners, Penton and CMP to deliver their advertising and public relations messages. Today, these publishers and other media companies offer, and are continuously developing, websites and Web portals to serve the news and information needs of every type of business or profession.

One advantage of a Website is its interactive capability to immediately link buyers with sellers. It used to take weeks for sellers to provide specifications and information. Now it takes just minutes from their Website.

Consequently, Website sponsorships, affilitations, banner ads, and publicity announcements are producing strong results for many companies. As a result, these ‘ad’ rates are steadily increasing as Websites produce greater results.

Purchasing Power

The Internet will have the most profound impact on B2B marketing in the area of procurement. In every business category there are online companies creating new paradigms to streamline the inefficient and expensive procurement process. Wherever substantial efficiencies can be realized, there is a new Website eager to help out.

Internet E-Marketing Options

With so much dependence on the Internet for marketing communications and e-commerce transactions, some business marketers are practicing what’s called e-marketing. Essentially, this is marketing activity deployed over the Internet, designed specifically to draw prospects to a company’s Website.

These e-marketing programs begin with web site assessment and enhancement, improving layout, design and flow, leading your site visitor to take some type of action, whether that be site registration or purchase. It then focuses on search engine optimization to improve the likelihood that, when key words are entered, your Website shows up near the top of the options list. In addition, online promotions and advertising in online newsletters are a cost-effective means of attracting new prospects.

Another new high-tech marketing tool is the opt-in e-mail campaign. This is where business decision-makers give permission to certain advertisers to have those advertisers send information to them via e-mail. With opt-in e-mail campaigns, business marketers are realizing return rates from 5 to 25%, which is consistently higher than direct mail campaigns. Like any direct response medium, there are a number of rules and techniques that need to be followed to obtain good results.

Building a prospect and customer database, including e-mail addresses, is both an art and a science. Yes, names and e-mail addresses are for sale, but for the names of customers and prospects you want most, you’ll need to practice the art of persuading your sales force to share them with you. And then you must carefully ask for your customers’ and prospects’ permission to market to them.

Although building a highly potent database is far more difficult and expensive than most people imagine, it is an investment that pays for itself many times over if used effectively.

Other Technology Applications

Another business marketing technology application is found at trade shows, where each attendee wears a unique name badge that is scanned by exhibitors, giving them a prospect profile which can be evaluated before sending out expensive literature or notifying a sales representative.

New teleconferencing options for marketing and sales presentations, and online training or sales seminars, are additional technology options being used more often to help promote products and services.

Today’s business marketer is leveraging the efficiencies technology offers like never before. Because of the inherent inefficiencies of one-to-one selling and the large margins business products offer, there is tremendous room for technology to lower selling costs and boost the profitability of business marketers globally.

Bart Young is CEO and Rick Jorgensen is Director of E-Marketing with Young Company, a high-technology business marketing agency based in Santa Monica.

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