The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

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New digital channels changes B2B marketing landscape

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By The Drum Team, Editorial

October 1, 2011 | 5 min read

David Cooper, MD of Happy Giraffe talks, to THE DRUM about the role that digital marketing is now playing in B2B Marketing

How has digital changed the B2B marketing landscape?Digital is changing the way companies communicate, advertise and promote themselves to target markets. How we interact with customers and potential customers has changed forever and that’s down to the digital revolution. Digital in many ways has made marketing channels with mass reach available not just to the big corporation but to everyone, from the small company upwards. Everyone can access the medium. In the past you needed massive budgets to advertise on TV and billboards. Now with YouTube and Twitter we have the democratisation of marketing. It’s resulted in a more fluid, open and level playing field for companies to interact and compete. If you get it right you can be up there with the big players. So for me it’s a real revolution that’s still in its infancy.B2B sectors have been slow to adopt social media channels do you see this now changing?In a nutshell, yes. I think for the consumer market it’s been quite easy to develop interesting and interactive campaigns that engage the end user. Brands are now waking up to the importance of communicating in a more informal way using social media. In B2B we are also seeing a move to establish more thought leadership and content rich approaches to social media. I think it’s taken the sector some time to understand that people who follow you do so because they want to learn something from you not simply to be entertained with recycled content. Those that put effort into informing and leading their sectors will be those that build a consistent following that will lead into real brand loyalty and income flow.What opportunities do you see for B2B sectors to exploit digital channels?I think there are huge opportunities for companies to be creative about generating interesting content. Video ‘how to’ guides, product information, education and training content, thought leadership pieces and integrated campaigns that drive traffic to blog content all provide big opportunities. The price of producing good content is falling all the time and if companies are prepared to invest in good quality content then they will see the benefits in terms of long-term revenue streams.Everyone is racing to develop mobile apps, is this hype or should companies be looking at how to get involved?This is a difficult question to answer. I think there is, and continues to be a lot of hype about mobile apps. But I think you have to stand back and evaluate and make sure that whatever you do links to your core business and marketing objectives. There are very few companies who are going to make millions of pounds from selling apps. In my view, companies need to evaluate their mobile strategy and develop apps that either build brand, streamline business processes or link to lead generation activity. B2B apps that provide clients with access to your core business proposition and help build revenue will be the winners. Using ‘chatbots’ to engage and inform users is a good example of how interactive content works.How do you see B2B websites changing over the next few years?I think we are currently moving away from the brochure website to the personality website. What I mean is that B2B sites are being brought to life with news feeds, Blog content, Twitter feeds and chatbots. The development of dynamic content is moving B2B companies into addressing their long-term online strategy and this in turn is being fueled by Google rankings placing higher value on such content.If you don’t have dynamic content on your website you are going to be left behind. For me this is a huge challenge for many small and medium companies who don’t have the resources to develop content. But in my view it’s an unstoppable trend.From a website design perspective I also think that we will see a move away from the constraints of standards. We are not just building for one device anymore we are building for web and mobile. So I think there is a big opportunity to be more creative with web design as we move forward. This is again being fueled with the increasing ease in which you can design and build for mobile. A trend that is set to continue with the new version of CS5.5. The main changes here have been in the creation and integration of mobile tools to aid design for mobile apps.It’s an exciting time to be in digital marketing as there is so much change taking place. It means that businesses of all sizes can take advantage of the technology and tools to gain market share and increase sales.With 20 years experience developing and implementing marketing strategy and over 10 years working to utilise and exploit digital channels within both public and private sector clients, David Cooper is MD of Happy Giraffe, a full service branding agency.

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