Business Week has a piece written by Steve McKee called “Five Common B2B Advertising Myths.” The five myths are,

1. B2B is different from B2C.
2. Information trumps emotion.
3. Creativity isn’t important.
4. Companies buy things.
5. You are your target.

McKee argues that, is there really a difference between B2B and B2C when it comes to marketing practice? How comes every time when we mention B2B, it instantly becomes a contrast to B2C. Yes, indeed, there should be many interesting applications interweaving both marketing realms. We definitely can do a lot more in B2B marketing.

I also know 90% of the B2B marketing spends on digital media in this region are paid for display advertising, less than 8% marketing spends are aimed at lead generation, and the rest of 2% are spent for customer fulfillment.

Also according to a global marketing effectiveness report on this site, which mentions,

… Just one in ten of all marketers worldwide have automated systems in place to track effectiveness of their communication spending. Of the 55% of marketers that even track the results of their spending at all, 80% do so manually, spending hours capturing, compiling and analysing data…. (but) when questioned on strategy, marketers believe that the short-term revenue-boosting and lead-generation campaigns were more important than long-term intangible brand building.

Alright, the picture presented here is 90% of the B2B digital marketing spends are paid for display advertising, expect to create tangible conversion result, but 9 in 10 of all marketers do not track effectiveness or feel tracking is an awfully time consuming job.

This is quite true in B2B marketing. The application, the goal, the metric and the practice, they all come into a false connection. I’ve seen a lot of B2B marketing campaigns being wrongly measured by the reach rather than preciseness. But in a market where the economy will gradually be integrated into the global community and the total B2B media revenue only accounts for merely 1% of the total B2B transaction volume, I see an imminent opportunity.

In searching for the answers to all the above, I’ve joined the team of Adam Murray, a renowned digital marketer in Europe and the founder of UK Mediarun Network; Luke Townsend, the former Head of Agency Sales of AOL UK; David Fischer, the former Managing Director of MySpace Europe, and a few more like-minded peers. We want to take part in the development of B2B digital marketing practice for this region.

I am excited to be part of the team. I will talk more about the new plan in my future posts.

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