marketing, web development, graphic design blog

Written by: Carl Da-Costa-Greaves

It’s often a given that business-to-business (B2B) marketing is the less glamorous and less sophisticated sister in the marketing family. But why is this assumption quite often being made when B2B marketers are also embracing the latest digital innovations in marketing practices?

Digital is central and top of most agendas for B2B, being favoured over more traditional channels such as direct mail, but while the technologies being used in digital are at a similar level of development across B2B and Business to Consumer (B2C) marketing, it’s WHY they are being used, and what is deemed a satisfactory return on investment, that differs between the two sectors.

For example, traditional B2B clients would see the potential for digital media as a ‘tactical’ way to influence a campaign, in order to help build awareness or to promote the campaign itself; if more people are aware, or ‘click through’ because of a viral message, then the click rate goes up and the target is achieved.

Where I think it differs between consumer and business marketing, is how that same tool is being used in B2C to strategically engage with the brand over the long term, using rich media and microsites, consequently increasing lead generation as a result.

It is exactly here; the focus of ‘measurement on activity’ instead of ‘measurement on return’ where B2B campaigns need to play catch up against B2C. Consumer marketing has been successfully ‘measuring on return’ using a range of different metrics to gauge the impact of efforts on areas such as brand building.

In order to close this gap we have a responsibility as marketers to demonstrate that much more sophisticated digital metrics can be engaged in B2B to enable measurement on total return by considering the longer term impact of what takes place say, after an email is opened, rather than how many times users ‘clicked through’.