Chief Business Marketer

So, you’re a business-to-business marketer. You must think you know your audience, right? Professionals in industry X who use your widget/service/thingamabob? That’s all you need to know, right? No need to get personal, because, after all, this is business.

Not so fast. B-to-B marketers who want to boost their sales need to focus on helping their customers buy. At a seminar on marketing automation last week, M.H (Mac) McIntosh, partner in North Kingston, RI-based AcquireB2B, noted that means developing personas of who really are the people who comprise your target audience.

For example, if your audience is mostly professionals over the age of 40, don’t fill your web page designs with microprint and hip colors. But, if you’re trying to reach young designers—who have big computer monitors and good eyesight—go for it.

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So, what do you do in your off hours? American Time and Signal marketing manager Ronda Anderson writes children’s books. Her first, “Weezer the Sneezer Finds a Home,” was published in 2009.

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A new piece of research from Accenture suggests that marketing executives are increasingly handicapped by internal corporate hurdles, such as inefficient organizational practices, budget constraints and poor integration with other business functions, among others. Some of you might be thinking right now, “I didn’t need Accenture to tell me that.”

Meanwhile, the research also pointed out that customer expectations are applying more external pressure on marketers. It turns out that customers want more value for money, have higher quality expectations and want lower prices. Again, maybe not a news flash.

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In the past few years, environmentally-friendly manufacturing processes that once were difficult to even get approved at some companies have become something worth celebrating. The green movement has gone from being a niche cause to a popular trend to a whole new way of doing business.

For B-to-B marketers, the best advice is: If you are green, start talking about it.

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Do big industry trade shows have a future?

There are many reasons why B-to-B companies might be growing tired of their industry-specific trade shows:

–Travel is both expensive and an increasingly huge hassle

–It’s hard to figure out if/how the thousands of dollars you spent on a booth and materials and a cocktail reception actually will make its way back into your pocket as revenue.

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Apple announced its newest iPhone this week, which means business folks will soon have a new gadget that they can’t put down day or night. Along with earlier generations of the iPhone, the Droid, the ever-expanding family of BlackBerrys and other mobile devices like the Apple iPad, mobile technology is rapidly changing how productive business people can be while away from the office. In fact, it’s changing the very definition of the word “office.” The office, nowadays, is everywhere and anywhere—and always.

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