Kerry will be speaking about “Business to Business Search Marketing” at Searchfest 2009 which will be held March 10th in Portland, Oregon. Get your tickets now.
1) Please give me your background and tell us what you do for a living.
I’ve worked the past twenty-plus years in business-to-business (BtoB) technology marketing, all of it spent on the agency side. Today, I’m CEO of McClenahan Bruer Communications, aka McBru, a full-service agency exclusively focused on the deep technology space. Specialist firms like ours need to develop significant expertise with the audiences they market to. To that end, McBru has pioneered some pretty interesting psychographic research among electronics engineers, the results of which validate the importance of search in the overall marketing mix, among other things. At McBru, we’re constantly looking for new ways to meet clients’ business and marketing objectives. Some of our thoughts on BtoB marketing can be found at our blog.
2) What challenges do “traditional” B to B marketers face in understanding B to B online lead generation?
The single biggest obstacle to success BtoB marketers face with regard to online lead generation is not creating a process for nurturing leads once they are generated. It is relatively easy to generate leads. Turning them into something sales-ready takes careful planning, rigorous monitoring and measuring, then strategic use of offers and assets to keep them moving through the funnel. Without defining and measuring conversion, lead generation can be an expensive waste of time.
3) How important is online reputation management in the B to B context?
In the BtoB space, particularly the deep tech arena we play in, peer recommendations are taken very seriously when it comes to evaluating new products and services. Reputation gets companies on the short list. Therefore, online reputation monitoring is essential. That which doesn’t get measured doesn’t get managed.
Todd Mintz knows PPC…knows Social Media…knows SEO…knows Blogging…knows Domaining…and knows them all real well. He runs growth marketing for )and is also a Director & Founding Member of SEMpdx: Portland, Oregon’s Search Engine Marketing Association, and he can be found here on Twitter and Facebook.