B2B Marketing Blog

According to BtoB’s “2008 Marketing Priorities and Plans” survey, 60.1% of marketers plan to increase their overall marketing budgets next year… the biggest growth area??? Web site development…

BtoB’s survey showed that the online areas that will see increases next year are:

Web site development (cited by 74.0% of marketers)
E-mail (70.1%)
Search engine marketing (64.3%)
Video (39.5%)
Webcasting (39.1%)
Banners (36.4%)
Sponsorships (29.6%)
Social media (26.2%)

The exciting news is that with 1/3 of B2B marketers investing in web site development, the online brochure functionality of current B2B sites may be giving way to web sites that engage prospects and nurture them through the sales process.

Many B2B marketers have had their head in the sand when it comes to revising their web site. Many more B2B sales and marketing departments are still in the shackles of their IT department when it comes to updating content or modifying site structure.

Suddenly it as if B2B marketers are looking at their website for the first time as the sales machine it could become if only equipped to persuade, impress and motivate their prospects to buy, ahem…. even if those prospects can’t do it online.

One of the biggest objections I get when asking prospects if they would like to turn their B2B website in to a powerful sales machine is “We don’t need ecommerce. We don’t sell online.” Who said anything about ecommerce?

While many B2B sites don’t offer products to be ordered online and paid for with a credit card, like it or not they ARE selling online. 80% of B2B purchases began with an extensive online research phase and this is a statistic from 2005! With your website introducing your company to your prospects before your sales people even get a chance, it is imperative they come away with a good first impression. I liken a poorly designed, static web site to a sales man who is wearing a leisure suit with the personality of plywood- outdated, out of touch and uninteresting.

A B2B web site needs to have the same attributes of your top sales person- engaging, professional image, knowledgeable, consistently reaching out to prospects and thorough in following up. Your web site can do all of this and more and with today’s content management systems keeping your content fresh and up to date doesn’t require a technical genius.

The word is getting out- web sites sell. The question is- does yours?

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 20th, 2007 at 8:20 pm and is filed under Interactive, Interactive PR, Creative, Marketing, Advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.