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Marketing Sherpa’s B-to-B Demand Generation Summit - Summary

B2B or not B2B… if you are - then you must go to Marketing Sherpa’s B-to-B Demand Generation Summit (next one is Nov. 13/14 in San Fran – see http://www.sherpastore.com/Summits.html).   I was at the Boston event this week to learn, and also to meet key marketing decision-makers at Dow, Dupont, HP, IBM, TechTarget, Bearing Point, DoubleClick, etc.

This is a great event with insight from real marketers in the trenches telling you what worked for them. Ann Holland filled in like a champ with an impromptu international marketing presentation with tips like this: in your alphabetical drop down list of “what country are you from,” it is reeeeeally insulting to list United States first.

Here are Ann’s “5 Key Points” from the entire event (Thanks Tad Clark, Sherpa Editorial Director):

1. We heard the word “content” 100 million times. It's now the word in B2B. Not copywriting, not creative, not measurement, but the content… Journalism is king.

2. Personas. The average B2B marketer is building personas more than B2C, profiling everyone from pain points to pragmatists to their own CEOs.

3. Multitouch, drip irrigation. We need to stay in touch with people. When they're ready to buy we need to be in front of them. Should you spend all your money on a big splashy ad campaign or a little drip across a long period of time? Do the drip.

4. The days of the super big generic trade show are over. The trend is to do a niche show, private parties, road show, regional show. You’ll get more leads from those.

5. Measurement, measurement, measurement. At past shows it's been about open rates, click rates, drop-off rates. Now it's about measuring the results. Be less tactical and more goal based.

Way to B2B…!

David Cutler
Director of Business Development

DVR Flex

I'm coining a new word.

deaveyarflex - dee vee arr flex - The ability exhibited whereupon when fast-forwarding at the maximum speed setting through commercials a viewer is able to flip back to regular viewing speed at the precise instant when the commercial portion ends and his or her program resumes, thereby viewing no real advertising impression yet not missing one note of the watched show's lead-in music.

My deaveyarflexes are terrible.

Makes me kind of wonder, however -- what with the growing popularity of DVRs, and them being built directly into new cable and satellite boxes -- how in the short term the above issue affects the media cost of lead-in and lead-out TV ads versus ads sandwiched in the center of the block, and in the long term how the majority of 18-34-year-olds owning DVRs is going to affect core television advertising revenues.

A few predictions:

1. Five years. R.I.P. broadcast TV. By then the majority of consumed video content will be provided via the internet.
2. Much of the content will be purchased via a one-time per-episode payment (e.g., the iTunes model), but the majority will be purchased via a subscription basis, which will include a variety of different shows -- similar to the current cable TV model, but with different online media providers offering different content packages.
3. The big networks -- NBC, CBS, etc. -- will die a slow death, being replaced by HBO-like content bundlers who will serve only to find and finance the next big programs, then sell them to the online content providers.
4. For consumers who can afford internet access but not premium, commercial-free content, there will always be content bundles which include ads, but which eliminate the fast-forward and pause DVR features. Given a consumer's online profile, these ads will be tailored and versioned dynamically for relevancy.
5. iTunes will live on in some form, but the majority of online video revenue in the long run is going to go to Microsoft and Google. The former has already taken a tentative step into online media sales via the disturbingly-named "Urge" music service, and will likely continue to push their online content offering across handhelds and their Xbox platforms. With their recent purchase of YouTube, however, within 18 months Google will roll out an online video "premium" portal , in the beginning offering quality amateur films and television episodes online for a price... but eventually primetime television and major movies once the service starts to gain traction. At the same time they are going begin a much stronger push for adoption of their highly-touted Google Wallet, which will be aimed at replacing PayPal as the premium online payment service.

It's going to be fun, in the meantime it's just a matter of looking forward to seeing how the hardware providers start figuring out user-friendly ways to display online video on new HDTVs, along with how quickly Verizon FIOS and Comcast 16MB can start rolling their fiber offerings out at an acceptable cost to major markets.

Judges ruling in ADA suit is a wake up call

A recent article on law.com is something of a warning shot across the bow of web developers regarding federal ADA discrimination laws:

A federal judge's decision not to dismiss a discrimination case against retailer Target Corp. for operating a Web site inaccessible to the blind opens the door to Internet-related Americans with Disabilities Act claims.

The recent order is believed to the first ruling from a judge that the ADA can apply to the Internet, and lawyers from both sides of the bar anticipate more cases.

This is not the first attempt at a lawsuit against an online presence in the name of accessibility. While it is worth noting that the only ruling here is that the case not be dismissed and no injunction was set against Target, it should put all web developers on high alert going forward. Proper accessibility for the visually imparied is something that is generally treated as an afterthought, a "nice to have" or not considered at all, and as cases multiply, it is clear that the matter is being given more and more weight. This is the first suit that has been allowed to go forward, and will not likely be the last.

While retailer web sites certainly get the mass of traffic, and will therefore likely bear the brunt of the lawsuits, those of us dealing with the financial and life sciences verticals should keep this in mind going forward. It should keep us a bit more sober when our designs are faced with Flash detractors, and keep us mindful of properly formed tags when coding. Not that Flash or other non-crawlable technologies should be written off, but accessibility is going to become an issue more and more closely examined by the dreaded legal departments of our clients.

Take note... it looks like going forward, ADA = CYA.

Where Are All Those Clicks Going?

Last week Business Week decided to scare the world with a shocking cover: Click Fraud, The Dark Side of Advertising. This is about as timely as Roger Waters launching a tour where he plays the Dark Side of The Moon in full. If you recall, 12 years ago his fellow former Pink Floyd band mates had done the same. In both cases, you got to hear the Dark Side of The Moon but you didn’t get the full picture.  Which is more or less what you got in the Business Week article.  Yes, it’s true, there are cases in which as much as 15% of the clicks may be fraudulent, and yes, it’s true, the search engines may not be equipped to detect them.  However I felt very reassured when I read this article from an August issue of Fortune.  Apparently Nielsen has found a solution to the issue of measuring the impact of online advertising.  They have 30,000 households who will act as a sample, and they will be able to project from that sample the amount of  traffic that is really generated by online advertising.  Mmmm. Where have we seen this before?If you think I am taking the issue lightly I am not. 

These two articles point out a few major issues that as digital marketers we need to take extremely seriously.  First of all, whether we like it or not, the debate on the impact of digital marketing is now in the mass domain. The fact that mass media outlets are now covering the topic however does not change the fact that it is still a complex science. As an industry, we have a duty to set our standard higher than the standard expected by our clients or by the masses.  At the same time though it is extremely important to act as the voice of reason, and reframe the debate.  It is true that there are instances in which the measurement is not perfect, and it is true that there are instances of click fraud.  At the same time, for every 15% of fraudulent clicks, there is an 85% of legitimate, targeted and effective clicks.  The answer is not to go back and try to mirror the old media model, or even worse, to give up on Internet advertising. The answer is to keep working on improving the measurability of the web.