B2B marketers ahead of B2C on New Media Adoption

On August 13, BtoB Magazine announced the results of their research on new media conducted with the Association of National Advertisers.

In June, BtoB and the ANA interviewed 326 B2B and B2C marketers from their respective house files.

The research confirmed a number of tiers of new media tools. The top tier includes proprietary Web sites, e-mail marketing, online ads, search engine optimization, search engine marketing and webinars. The middle tier includes blogs, RSS feeds, podcasts and video on demand. The bottom tier consists of wikis, mobile, viral video, social networks and Second Life.

It was found that B2B marketers allocate a significantly higher proportion of their budget to new media than B2C marketers. While B2C marketers view new media as best suited for brand building, B2B marketers look to new media for demand generation.

As far as I see it, the irony for B2B marketers is that although their solutions require extensive communication (often through a sales force), the budgets and tools at their disposal for marketing are often inadequate. The opposite is true for B2C: humongous budgets to communicate simple messages.

With new media tools and in particular Web 2.0 tools, B2B marketers are bolstered by tools where the cost of entry is the development of content, rather than price of the tools or cost of the marketing medium.

For more details and a PowerPoint summary of the BtoB/ANA research, follow this link to the BtoB website.

Blogging - the new team demonstration sport at the Olympics?

What if we had a team of expert bloggers at our disposal?

KnowledgeStorm has recently launched a team blog at FindTechBlogs.com.

Matt Lohman, director of business development at KnowledgeStorm spoke with Paul Dunay and me after completing the our survey on Web 2.0 Tools.

The podcast from our discussion can be found on Paul's blog. Listen in and find out why KnowledgeStorm is a contender in team blogging and with other Web 2.0 tools.