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The digital space is providing a real challenge for companies, both large and small as we move towards web 3.0. The pace of change is fast and constant, with new social media platforms emerging almost on a monthly basis. With digital marketing innovation now central to most B2B strategies, the key question for any marketing professional or business owner is:
How can we make the most of these new innovations to position ourselves ahead of our competitors?
- ...whilst ensuring that we see a return on investment?
- ...whilst also not being too 'high risk' with our brand, not riding roughshod over current customer engagement initiatives and not abandoning tried-and-tested marketing channels.
To help you to plan out your digital roadmap, we put our very own digital natives to the test to identify the B2B digital marketing trends that we think will figure heavily in the next 12 months.
From the latest thinking on social media, to new ways of measuring visitor interaction and behaviour, we hope you'll find some food for thought in this series, starting with:
Companies' attitudes to social media will evolve
"Today nearly three out of four global internet users access social networking sites each month, making it one of the most ubiquitous activities across the web."
comScore Market Research
With a film based around the history of Facebook and with the people of Tunisia and Egypt using Twitter as a communication channel to support regime change, social media platforms have never been more omnipresent. In recent years, companies have felt the pressure to embrace this new communication channel to keep up with their peers :
"Our competitors are on Twitter and Facebook: why aren’t we?"
As a new technology area, many companies turned to their IT function to implement a quick social media presence, in an effort to avoid being left behind - a gold rush leading to more than a few tumbleweed Facebook pages. However, companies are now starting to view social media as a genuine communications channel that has to be strategically managed, rather than a technology bandwagon to jump on to.
This realisation is shifting responsibility away from IT and firmly into the domain of marketing departments. As they take control, many marketeers are asking the following:
"What are we doing with social media, why are we doing it, who are we trying to reach and what do we want to say?"
Any forward-looking company will have a structured marketing plan that identifies the year's objectives, breaks down their target market according to any relevant segmentation and identifies tactical steps that provide a guiding strategy.
However, marketers are now starting to also put together social media strategies and plans that identify how social media platforms fit in with these wider marketing objectives. And, more importantly they are looking at how 2.0 channels can assist in driving brand awareness, improving customer and prospect communications and ultimately nurturing the pipeline.
It's important to remember that social-media-as-a-channel is not just about external communication, but can also be used for collaborative work internally, or with partner organisations. Dell, an example of a company that has used social media well, attributed over $6.5 million of its revenue in 2010 to Twitter alone.
Moreover, the company has used its Direct2Dell blog and IdeaStorm community to become a more responsive and respected company, going beyond conversation and brand engagement to tap into the potential for crowdsourced product development.
So consequently, we identify our first trend of the series:
Companies will use social media more strategically in line with top-level business objectives and will look to social media to deliver bottom-line business results.
Next in the Digital Trends 2011 Series - "Recognising our digital lifestyle"
