August 21, 2000
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*** MarketingSherpa.com’s B-to-B MarketingBiz.com ***
Practical News & Tips for B-to-B Marketing on the Internet
August 21, 2000 - Vol. I, Issue 13
PLEASE FORWARD(WITHOUT CUTTING)-- THANKS!!!
1. News: Ezines, Advertising.com, Gartner (Group?),
Forbes.com
2. More Headlines
3. Case Study: Alco Gets Contractors to Buy Online
4. Interview: HSR’s Richard Segal on what works for BIG
B2B’s online
* Get your own FREE subscription today -- Thank you!!!
Go to http://www.b2bmarketingbiz.com
*******
NEWS
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Developing & Integrating Strategic Plans for eBusiness:
October 23 & 24, 2000; Chicago, IL
Attend to gain understanding from those who have been
there: John Hancock, Toyota and Lycos.
For more information call IQPC 800.882. 8684 or go to:
http://www.iqpc.com/M221A/plansforebiz. Be sure to give
priority code: M221A when registering.
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Editor’s Note: We’re taking a break next week because
you’ll probably be on vacation anyway. Coming in
September, lots more exclusive Case Studies and expert
interviews!!!
* B-to-B Ezines Gaining Prominence as Top Media to Be Seen In
Business-to-business emailed newsletters (ezines) once
thought to be an amateurish “3rd rate” sort of media are
quickly becoming the most critical places to see and be
seen. “I just toss business magazines in a pile in the
corner of my office without cracking them,” one business
exec admitted to us, “but ezines are so quick and easy. I
always try to at least skim them before I hit delete.”
Unfortunately because this media is relatively new, no
complete directories exist yet. Therefore B-to-B marketers
should devote a regular time each week to seeking out
new ezines in their field. When you do find one, be sure
to pass the word along to both your PR firm and ad agency
who probably don’t have a complete list yet either.
Aside from industry-specific ezines, we recommend you also
track the following three regional ezines which cover local
B2B Web player news that could affect everyone nationwide.
Potomac Tech Wire: covers players located in the Washington
DC area http://www.potomactechwire.com
PrairieWire: covers players located in America’s heartland
http://www.prairiewire.com
The May Report: insider news from Chicago-land
http://www.themayreport.com
* Advertising.com to Launch B-to-B Ad Network - Publishers &
Advertisers Sought
OK it’s officially now a trend! Seems like all the major
consumer online ad networks are launching (or rapidly
growing) their B-to-B divisions. Latest in the chute is
Advertising.com who plan to launch a B-to-B ad network in
“early September” featuring six verticles:
- Medical & Pharmaceutical
- HR
- Sales & Marketing
- Education
- SOHO (small office/home office)
- Manufacturing & Industry
So far they’ve got 113 sites signed up under non-exclusive
agreements; and they say media buyers are expressing the
most interest in pharmaceuticals, SOHO and all job titles
starting with the word “chief.” Next step after this?
Yup, you guessed it -- a network of B-to-B ezines. Details
contact Dan Haas at dhaas@advertising.com 410.454.0307
http://www.advertising.com
* Jupiter/Media Metrix Study Shows B-to-B Online Advertising
Grew 94% First Quarter 2000
Today we’re breaking our policy of only bringing you
exclusive news, because this story is just too important.
In case you haven’t heard, Jupiter and Media Metrix just
released study results showing the B-to-B online ad sector is
growing at an astronomical 94% per quarter rate, and is
expected to hit $3 billion by 2005. For your own copy of
the report go to:
http://advertising.jup.com
* Campaign Review: Gartner’s Survey
OK, if you are a big famous company with a name brand such
as “Gartner Group”, would you send an email to thousands of
business executives calling yourself just “Gartner”? Would
you then link the email to a Web site with a logo reading
just “Gartner”? Then would you make site visitors have to
click through to your “About Gartner” site section before
you revealed that you were, yes indeed, the famous “Gartner
Group” they’ve heard of, instead of some other Gartner-
wannabe they haven’t?
Come on guys, in this world of zillions of start-ups with
similar names, don’t make us guess if indeed you are That
Gartner or not!
BTW: Really sucky surveying software too. NOT a fun user
experience.
* Media Buy of the Week: Forbes.com
Like many print publishers, Forbes’ site, Forbes.com, is
not a wonderful online experience. The design is dull.
And the navigation is more focused on getting you to
subscribe to their offline edition than it is with being a
useful destination in and of itself. That said, we highly
recommend this site to B-to-B advertisers trying to reach 50-
60-something top executives. Why? Because as they get
online they tend to go to name brands they already know and
trust … and to sites with short names they can type (we’re
not joking -- this is an entire generation of men who still
hunt and peck!) Forbes.com hits both marks with a
vengeance. Media kit at:
http://www.forbes.com/adbanners/mediajump/
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MORE MARKETINGSHERPA.COM HEADLINES
*******
* ZonFire Ad Network Says Sites Attracting Small Biz Are
“Hottest Inventory” Now
http://www.marketingtosmallbiz.com/sample.cfm?contentID=699
* Exhibitors Surprised by Positive Reactions at Jupiter’s
Online Ad Forum; Avenue A Wins Top Tchotchke
http://www.marketingtowebmarketers.com/sample.cfm?contentID=706
* CAMPAIGN REVIEW: AllBusiness.com Excels at Opt-In List
Growth
http://www.marketingtosmallbiz.com/sample.cfm?contentID=697
* Top 4 PR Tips to Reach Small Businesses Online: Dawn
Ringel, Gumpert Communications
http://www.marketingtosmallbiz.com/sample.cfm?contentID=694
* ePod's Tips on Closing Major Partnerships with Folks Like
Macromedia and DoubleClick
http://www.marketingtowebmarketers.com/sample.cfm?contentID=702
* FizzyLab Launches Regional Cross-Linked News Network
http://www.contentbiz.com/sample.cfm?contentID=689
* FREE MARKETING NEWS HEADLINES FOR YOUR SITE:
If you'd like to carry MarketingSherpa's headlines
on your site or Intranet, go to iSyndicate.com
http://www.isyndicate.com/directory/partners/all/marketingsherpa.html
*********
CASE STUDY: Alco Ventures
*********
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CHALLENGE
Custom railing and screen manufacturer Alco
Ventures has had a token, “brochureware” Web site since
1996. Last Fall, President Ben Hume decided to get serious
with his company’s online presence, “The cost of doing
business is driving us online.” By switching to an online
order process he hoped to save on order entry and data
management costs. Only problem, Hume’s customers are all
building contractors -- “They all have big fingers with
bumps and bruises on them!” -- not exactly computer-whiz
types.
CAMPAIGN
Hume realized his customers care about cost above
most other considerations. So to get them online, “we
kinda forced the issue by offering them discounts that made
it worth their time. We added a 5% Internet order
processing discount plus an additional 3% discount if they
used their credit card.”
Hume also added compelling content to his site, including
an order costing calculator, useful shop drawings, critical
sections from both the US and Canadian building code
manuals, and a picture gallery customers could use to
download graphics for their own marketing materials.
In addition Hume got his entire company, from the sales
department to product development, to become more Web-
centric. “We’ve made a huge cultural shift within the
company. When customers call in with questions, sales
refer them to the site. Production has a single source of
what’s correct, and that’s what’s on the site. Our print
catalog is generated from the Web.”
RESULTS
Alco ventures customers were so delighted with the
idea of saving money that within a few months almost 70%
made the switch from ordering by phone or fax to ordering
online. “We have customers who got an Internet hook-up
just for that discount!” At first the sales team had to do
a lot of handholding, “we got lots of phone calls for
customers’ first online orders.” They didn’t mind because
the Web made their jobs easier -- telling someone to go to
a Web page was easier than looking up and faxing over
building code by hand. The ability to take credit cards
online also “compressed our sales cycle.”
VENDORS: The company developed the site in-house, using
Multiactive Software’s Entice! e-business Suite to provide
Internet commerce solutions. Hume chose Multiactive
because his team was already using the Company’s Maximizer
software to manage accounts.
NOTES: Hume warns others that business customers expect
instant perfection online, “once customers get into the
Web, it really raises the bar in terms of their
expectations of your company. It saves them time but when
it doesn’t work they’re really unhappy with you. You’ve
got to be prepared for that. The bar gets raised
instantly, it’s not something that takes time.”
http://www.alpro.com
http://www.multiactive.com
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EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: HSR B-to-B ’s Richard Segal
*******
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Last week we were psyched to meet Richard Segal, CEO HSR
Business to Business Inc. HSR helps “blue chip” clients
including General Electric and Xerox figure out what
they’re doing online.
Q: How has the Internet changed PR strategies for the big
guys?
Segal: The universe of eligible editorial venues has
increased exponentially several orders of magnitude in past
few years. For every trade publication you had three years
ago, there are 10 if not 50 online editorial venues where
you can peddle your content.
There’s no Bacon’s directory to point you to these, so a
new discipline of searching and mining is required to find
relevant online venues. Given the rate at which the web
constantly changing, that is a process that requires
constant refreshment.
Q: A lot of people don’t take “digital ink” all that
seriously yet. Do you think getting stories in online-only
publications is worth the work?
Segal: We have found that work is more productive for B-to-B
markets than the banner ads we’re doing! Historically if
you go back and survey buyers and specifiers, the number
one source they rely on is contact from a sales rep; the
second has always been editorial mentions in respected
trade editorial venues. So, it will work if you can
succeed in getting it into these online editorial
environments.
But you need to do due diligence. Design is not always the
best criteria to judge by, there are some really nicely
designed sites that aren’t good and some really ugly ones
that are excellent venues because their content’s so rich.
Q: What other things have you done with content online that
have been successful?
Segal: Definitely affinity sites. For instance we may co-
brand some content online with a leading consultant in a
client’s industry, which we did for Hobart Corp.
Online seminars have also been especially good. We had
about 250 participants show up for a seminar with streaming
video we did for Synchrony Communications. It featured
roundtable discussions with experts in the field.
With this new technology you can have mini-seminars going
on almost all the time, they are much more efficient than
old fashioned trade magazine bingo cards. You can do
shorter 15 minute programs in infomercial kind of formats.
Get aggressive about archiving them so if customers missed
out they can get back to it. You can craft streaming
seminars around tightly defined prospective customer
profiles for just 15-20 people at a time. This solves one
of the problems with offline seminars, to make them work
you have to appeal to large audience to justify travel
expenses.
You can devise online seminars around smaller audiences --
target around a class of trade, vertical industries,
account size, etc. Costs are cascading there. It was
easily a $20,000 drill and now we’ve gotten that down to
the $5,000 range.
Q: Can you describe one of the most effective online B-to-B
campaigns you’ve executed?
Segal: Sure, Cincinnati Bell has a host of solutions for
today’s remote worker, mobile communications, mobile data
communications, etc. We created a “Cincinnati
Telecommuters Association” Web site for them that
aggregated lots of content about effective telecommuting
from lots of sites including Screaming Media. We drove
traffic with a public relations effort. There’s all this
stadium construction going on downtown so we focused on the
difficulty getting in and out of downtown with that going
on. It ran for 90 days, it had that event flavor.
Q: Email newsletters are a great corporate communications
and sales tool, what recommendations do you have on them?
Segal: Opt-in is the first fundamental. There’s an awful
lot of spam newsletters moving around out there. To get
started collecting opt-in names you may be able to use
trade association or trade magazine lists. Beyond that
it’s just good fundamental promotion on your Web site. The
sign up form’s gotta be conspicuous not only on your home
page but present on every page of your site.
Q: How much should medium-big businesses be budgeting for
online marketing these days?
Segal: That is such a variable situation. We work from
requirements backwards. Start building a set of
requirements; what will move the meter, demand creation,
reduction of distribution expenses, etc.
It’s very difficult to accomplish anything meaningful with
a budget less than a million dollar for major company.
You’re going to spend $250,000-$500,000 on professional
services fees before you even get into hardware and
software and things like that.
Q: Which B-to-B ad agencies are doing a great job online?
Segal: Regrettably for the most part most old-line ad
agencies have been slow to switch on this stuff. On the
other hand a lot of the IT and systems integration firms
know very little about promotion and brands. And purchase
decision cycles are terra incognita to them.
Q: Most really big companies are multinational. How do you
recommend companies handle an international Web presence?
Segal: English has emerged as international language of
ecommerce so I’m not sure if web site has to be in a dozen
different languages for starters. Instead the major issues
may be distribution and currency exchange.
The trend we’re seeing is US based companies having a
strong Web presence at the center that’s supported by
satellite web presences at periphery. The mother site is
made in US with a host of regional sites closer to their
people in respective regions in the world.
http://www.hsrb2b.com
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