Reaching B-2-B target audiences with Web 2.0 tools

Much online marketing discussion today revolves around the world of blogs and social networks. Most client discussions don’t. In the B-2-B marketing space, adoption of new ideas is notoriously slow. Despite often being technology leaders in their own field, typical industrial and commercial client companies are rarely early adopters of new marketing methods. This was certainly the case with web sites. There was a distinct process starting with ‘we don’t need it’, or ‘our competitors don’t do it’ to a sudden realisation that their competitors had been developing an implementation and now they were in catch up mode and being asked why they do not have one. B-2-B with smaller budgets has been more cautious in allocating resources to new ideas, often until the evidence is compelling, then looking to cheap solutions. In some ways the Web 2.0 opportunity is different. Many tools are free. It is instead the time commitment. Emarketer wrote that ‘corporations are using blogs to build solid relationships with customers’ and offered the information that some 47% of the online population read blogs and there has been a 300% increase in blog readership over the last 4 years. Further that blogs have more impact on purchasing decisions than social networks and 40% take action after reading a blog. Another writer quoted a question being debated, ’is Facebook is a tool to use in your leisure time or more of a tool to communicate.’ It has also been suggested that a ‘narrow topical appeal draws highly engaged users’ by cornering the market in information no doubt, on a topic relevant to the company product. On the other hand unless it is also a fast changing topic keeping the momentum going could prove a challenge when it comes to content. Consider the typical widget maker – getting regular PR content is a challenge, keeping a blog or social network site supplied with content is going to require a lot of inspiration. Unlike posting photos of a night out on Facebook, B-2-B content needs to be relevant and professional. Then again, do engineers, architects, contractors and the like actually follow blogs or connect to Facebook – it would interesting to know.