June 12, 2000
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*** B-to-B MarketingBiz.com ***
Practical News & Tips for
B2B Marketing on the Internet
June 12, 2000 - Vol. I, Issue 5
NEWS & GOSSIP: Red Herring, eCommAero, MySAP, Inflight
CASE STUDY: QuestLink.com
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: VerticalNet’s Marketers
JOBS: 375 Marketing Jobs at Cisco (!)
EVENTS: DCI's eB2B World Conference
** Please forward this to your pals -- and sign up
for your own FREE subscription today at:
http://www.B2BMarketingBiz.com Thanks!
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NEWS
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!!!!!!!!!!!!DO YOUR CUSTOMERS FEEL NEGLECTED?!!!!!!!!!!!
Then your company could be LOSING SALES. Download the
LivePerson/Harris Interactive 4Q Customer Satisfaction
Report. Learn more about customer concerns, the
importance of online customer service, and the impact of
real-time interaction with your customers. Visit:
http://www.liveperson.com/corporate_site/html/harris/popup1_form.asp
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
* Red Herring’s Editorial Hiring Frenzy Means More Ears
for Your PR
Red Herring’s editorial staff is about to more than
double in size from 30-70 total to accommodate their
product expansion plans in print, online and overseas.
In addition to doubling its print magazine frequency and
online content, the company will open news bureaus in
Internet biz hotspots such as Scandinavia, Tokyo and
Israel. B-to-B marketers -- alert your PR firm so they can
closely track these additions and make “best friends”
with new staffers as they come on board.
* Your Vote Required to Pick This Year’s Best Business
News Editor - Deadline June 15
B2B marketing communications and PR pros are invited to
nominate their favorite business editors (including
vertical specialists and generalists) to TJFR’s annual
“Blue Chip Newsroom” competition by June 15th. Email
Dean Rotbart at rotbart@tjfr.com with your fave’s name
plus your own name and affiliation by June 15th.
(Note: your name will be kept confidential - Dean just
needs to make sure nobody’s mom is nominating them.)
Business journalists work long hours for a lot less pay
than most of the people they report on -- do the right
thing and nominate one of them today!
* Want to Reach Aerospace Execs? Two Great Places to
Post Your White Paper for Free
One of the best ways to influence execs in the aerospace
and airline industries is by publishing a white paper
that’s not too blatantly self-promotional. (Hint: make
sure somebody with a technical-sounding title is the
official author.) Two sites that will post your white
paper for their visitors to view for free:
1. First Conferences eCommAero.com
http://www.ecommaero.com/eaero/papers.html
2. Airfax2000.com
http://www.airfax2000.com/papers.asp
*Yea/Nay: MySAP
You’ve seen the TV commercials - the most famous being
the woman in an airport who nimbly books a new seat via
her PC before the milling herds about her can grab one.
But, like us, you may have been wondering what is “SAP”?
A Travelocity competitor? An online mall? The ads
don’t say. And they don’t give a compelling, specific
reason to visit their site to learn more right away.
The site itself - which opens with a confusing pop-up
message - is only a little better. It’s attractive
enough, but definitely written and designed from SAP’s
viewpoint, rather their visitors’. Two weeks ago SAP
announced they got their millionth registered user.
Maybe now they’ll improve their marketing campaigns.
Until that time, this one gets a “Nay” from us.
http://www.mysap.com
* Media Buy of the Week: Inflight Video
Inflight Video syndicate popular TV programming to major
domestic and international airlines. As part of their
fee from the airline, they receive advertising space on
the programs that they resell at discounted rates to
advertisers such as Microsoft and Hilton. Demographics
(66% mid-senior management, $81,000 median income, 38%
with buying power over their company’s computer or
telephony equipment) make this an attractive media buy
for companies marketing ecommerce-related goods and
services - or stuff for field sales reps. Cost $7/m
domestic, $10/m international. Go to:
http://www.in-flight.com
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CASE STUDY: QuestLink.com
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* Search-Engine Ads: How QuestLink.com Registered
230,000 Electronics Engineers
THE SITE: Founded in 1995, QuestLink.com is an Internet
marketplace that offers system design engineers product
info and purchasing services for a $3 billion inventory
of electronic components.
TARGET MARKET: 1 million system design engineers
worldwide, according to VP of Marketing Karen Zelina.
Half of them are concentrated in North America, she
tells us. To date, QuestLink has almost 230,000
engineers registered as users on its site, and 57% of
them are based in North America.
MARKETING MIX: “We know that 99.9 percent of our
audience are heavy Internet users, so we’ve been
aggressively marketing online for years.” Zelina says.
The company’s online activities include advertising and
email/viral campaigns. “We also extend our marketing to
print media and public relations, as an adjunct to what
we do online,” she adds.
ONLINE ADVERTISING: One of QuestLink’s most successful
(and long running) campaign tactics is placing banner
ads on electronics-related keywords at general-interest
search engines, Zelina says. “Engineers use a very
specific language, so we know that somebody searching on
Lycos for ‘semiconductor’ or ‘analog device’ is probably
an engineer.”
BANNER AD: The most successful banner the company has
used pops up on search-results pages when users input
QuestLink’s target words. The banner displays an
additional “interactive search bar” next to QuestLink’s
logo with more industry terminology scrolling across the
top “like a ticker tape,” Zelina says. The search bar
allows users to search QuestLink’s database, and drives
them to QuestLink.com for search results. The company
believes that technical users will gladly migrate from a
consumer-oriented search engine to one that is more
focused on their industry interests. “We still run this
campaign today, and it works.” Zelina tells us. “And we
usually buy the entire space, so there are no competing
ads on the page,” she notes.
DRIVING PURCHASES: Beyond traffic marketing, QuestLink’s
current focus is “turning registered users into buyers,”
Zelina says. “And there’s no direct marketing hook to
really do that,” she adds. “You have to do that with
actual tools on the site, although we use marketing to
build awareness of our functionality.”
“Engineers can’t buy anything without extensive
information, so we provide worksheets where they can
save their research results and compare products,”
Zelina says. “Engineers are more time-sensitive than
price-sensitive,” she says, so the convenience of buying
at one time the entire list of components they’ve
assembled on their QuestLink worksheet is in itself a
driver of sales, Zelina explains. To date, the company
has registered buyers “in the tens of thousands,” she
tells us.
http://www.questlink.com
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EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: VIPs at VerticalNet
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* VerticalNet Marketers Reveal Market Research,
Integrated Marketing and Storefront Success Tips
One of the coolest things about publishing a news
channel like B-to-B MarketingBiz.com is that we get to
personally chat with movers and shakers in the industry.
This week we spoke with Sharon O’Shea, VP of Marketing,
and Tim Law, Director of Research, at the company we
fondly call “The Biggie” -- VerticalNet.
Q: You guys are the kings of launching new B-to-B sites.
What’s your basic new-site launch plan?
VerticalNet: First we do a huge amount of pre-launch due
diligence. You have to understand your customer base on
both sides, what your visitors really want in terms of
content and what your suppliers want, so the site itself
is presented in a format that they feel comfortable and
at home in.
We research in multiple ways - including focus groups;
five-day, threaded online discussions; phone interviews
and email surveys. We research our target visitors’
purchasing methods, functional responsibilities,
departmental affiliations, pieces of content they
already get, what they want to see migrated to the Web,
etc. Then we also find out what the supply side of the
marketplace wants.
Q: OK, so you’ve done the research and created a site
the marketplace will adore - what’s next on your
marketing plan and how much does it cost?
VerticalNet: It’s not so much the amount of money
you’re spending, as it is the most effective way to
leverage the relationships that are out there. We
partner with trade associations, exchanging ads and
sometimes content. We send editors to trade shows so
people can put a face to the site. We’ve found that
current customer testimonials work well for online and
offline advertising. We drive some traffic through
direct mail campaigns to lists our partners own. So you
leverage existing customers, lists and marketplaces to
attract new traffic.
We also strongly believe in integrated marketing
campaigns. We coordinate PR, new media marketing and
offline advertising, doing them in a way so they
reinforce each other. Having that mix is important.
Q: B-to-B MarketingBiz.com’s recent survey showed most
business Web sites spent 80% or more of their marketing
budget offline. Does that hold true for you?
VerticalNet: We’re not sure because so much of our
marketing is through partnerships that show under
“marketing” in the budget. But given the marketing
efficiencies you can see online, we think you’ll
definitely see that mix change from 80/20 in favor of
offline marketing to 80/20 in favor of online marketing
someday.
Q: How do you recommend that suppliers running
storefronts at your sites maximize their sales?
VerticalNet: By updating their storefront frequently, as
frequently as their offerings and products change. You
can analogize it to a weekly supermarket circular - you
need to keep your storefront interesting by changing it
and offering different specials. You want the latest
and greatest information there, because that’s what the
visiting procurement engineers want to see. All the
good rules of industrial B-to-B marketing still apply to
marketing online.
Plus, we’re actively collecting data from focus groups
that we’ll feed back to storefront owners so they can
improve sales. Each storefront owner is also assigned
an account manager to help the drive traffic and with
premiums, promotions and direct marketing. This
position is increasing in importance.
Q: We heard that 40% of your traffic comes from outside
the U.S. Is that true, and how are you marketing
internationally?
VerticalNet: Yes, it’s true, and that was before we
really started marketing outside the U.S. We believe,
from a marketing perspective (and everything online is
considered to be marketing communications to some
extent), you need to understand each individual culture.
So to grow outside the U.S., we’ve been pursuing
partnerships with organizations like British Telecom and
Softbank, which are local to those other countries.
Q: In terms of hiring, what kinds of marketers are you
looking for?
VerticalNet: Somebody who is very self-motivated, very
creative, a good team player. They have to be
comfortable with technology as we’re transitioning from
a new media company to an ecommerce company with
increasing technology - distributed catalogs, exchanges,
auctions, reverse auctions, online RFPs, etc. There’s a
very steep learning curve as you come on board here.
Having a B-to-B background will only take you so far. You
have to be able to think outside the box and be
comfortable with an org chart that’s changing very
quickly. Talent is more important than specific B-to-B
experience - a talented person is a talented person.
They’ll thrive anywhere.
B2BMarketingBiz.com Note: By the way, VerticalNet
recently redesigned their corporate home page and we
think it’s a huge improvement. To admire it for
yourself go to:
http://www.verticalnet.com
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JOBS
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* 375 Marketing Jobs Open at Cisco
Yowser! That’s right, according to Cisco’s Web site 375
total marketing and field sales jobs are open right now,
including opportunities in Seoul, NC’s Research
Triangle, San Jose and France. We want to be invited to
the kegger when everybody gets hired. In the meantime,
we’re hoping Cisco hires a copywriter to redo some of
these job descriptions that make even the coolest jobs
sound deadly dull and horribly institutional.
http://www.cisco.com/pcgi-bin/jobs_search.pl?div=Marketing
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EVENTS
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* DCI's eB2B World Conference
June 27-29, 2000 - Santa Clara, CA
--Education and solutions for B-to-B ecommerce for
operating resources
--Best practices in procurement
--Increased awareness of the benefits of B-to-B ecommerce
for operating resource/eprocurement and buyer-centric
electronic commerce market
--Access to leading B-to-B technology providers so you can
build strong partnerships for B-to-B e-commerce
http://www.dci.com/brochure/eb2bsc/
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