Follow #B2Bchat on twitter

In today’s B2Bchat (Thursday June 9) we’ll discuss what it takes to have a successful eCommerce business for B2B companies.

We’ll cover the following questions:

• Q1. Do you currently have an eCommerce program? If not, are you researching or evaluating approaches?
• Q2. What are your goals regarding eCommerce? Will it a sizable portion of your business?
• Q3. Do you have any reservation re eCommerce? If yes, what are they?
• Q4. Are you looking at B2C for best practices? What B2C eCommerce strategies work in B2B?
• Q5. What tools, blogs, or publications have you found useful in your eCommerce planning/implementation?

Join fellow B2B marketers for #b2bchat this Thursday June 9 – 8 pm ET/5 pm PT! Follow @b2b_chat on Twitter and join the discussion using #b2bchat hash tag.

Follow #B2Bchat on twitter

In a recent post “Buyers vs Influencers: Who really controls the deal?” Fred McClimans (@fredmcclimas) discussed the role of influencers in the B2B sector, and the role that analysts, consultants and analyst relations professionals can play in establishing a strong B2B strategy. Increasingly, analysts (along with consultants and strategic advisors) are playing a larger role in influencing purchasing decisions and partnerships in the vendor/B2B space, an expansion of their more traditional role as advisors to the end-user consumer community.

Much of this is as a result of the increased pace of technology development, as well as economic uncertainty and a desire on the part of both vendors and end-users alike to mitigate risk in purchasing/partnership decisions. As a result, the importance of Analyst Relations (AR), in terms of identifying key analysts and influencers, has increased considerably over the past few years.

On Thursday Oct 7, we’ll take a look at this topic a bit deeper with a joint #ARchat/#B2Bchat session. Specifically, what role can, or should, Analyst and Influencer Relations have in the B2B sector.

The questions we will discuss include:

• Q1. What role do analyst relations/analysts play in your B2B strategy today?
• Q2. What’s the best approach to identify the key analyst/influencer in a particular business sector or deal?
• Q3. How can analyst relations and marketing work more closely to identify market/customer/channel opportunities?
• Q4. What are reasonable metrics and measures of success (i.e. tools) you use to value the impact of a B2B strategy or analyst relations strategy?
• Q5. What role can social media play in expanding your reach into the analyst/influencer market?
• Q6. Are bloggers “influencers”? Why or why not? What other categories of influencers do you track?

#ARchat was started and moderated by Fred (@fredmcclimans) and Steve Loudermilk (@loudyoutloud).  Fred is an Information, Technology and Business Analyst with over 20 years of experience, including starting several business ventures, and hardware/software product development, strategic marketing, company/product launch strategies, business partnerships, investment evaluations, fund-raising and acquisition strategies. Steve is the head of Industry Analyst Relations for Alcatel-Lucent’s Services group. Steve is also a leader of PRSA/GA and has over 20 years experience in media and analyst relations.

A few words on the format:

• This is the first “chat mixer” we are doing, and I hope we’ll have a great session by bringing together attendees of #B2Bchat and #ARchat. Don’t worry, we are keeping our existing format of a group discussion, just with the addition of perspectives from the AR experts and analyst community who participate in #ARchat.
• Please use #b2bchat hash tag as your primary tag (for tracking purposes). If you wish, add #archat as a secondary hash tag to your tweets, but be aware that “double hash tagging” will decrease the amount of characters available to you. Transcript will be based off #b2bchat hash tag, so please use it!
• If you enjoy the discussion this coming Thursday, be sure to check out the #ARchat proper, which takes place on Tuesdays 12 pm ET. (I personally find it hard to attend on a regular basis, since the time slot is 9 am Pacific, but the times I attended I learned a lot and had a great experience.)

Join us on Thursday October 7 at 8 pm Eastern, 5 pm Pacific! Be sure to follow @B2B_chat for updates.

About the B2Bblogger:

An ASIS member (an international association for security professionals), she is a frequent speaker at industry events, including ASIS workshops and IWCE conferences. Ksenia launched @Firetide – with 800+ followers, it’s is one of the most active Twitter accounts in physical security and wireless infrastructure space. You can read more from Ksenia at Mesh Without Wires blog.

While I may have spent nearly all of 1982 and 1983 playing definition B, the definition that matters to B2B marketers today is the “not easily recognized dangers” of corporate blogging. Here is a list of 10  issues that you should be aware of when launching your company’s blog.

1.Not gaining buy in

The first step to ensuring the success of your investment in B2B blogging is to gain organizational buy-in. Corporate blogging is not a one time event. It’s a long term commitment to ongoing dialog and communication with your customers, prospects, investors, partners, employees, and press. Without buy-in and a full understanding of the impact a blog can have (both positively and negatively) for the organization, in times of need, you will busy gaining buy-in rather then solving the issue at hand. Start off on the right foot. Build consensus, get commitment from the key stakeholders within the company, and then and only then, start.

2.Flying by the seat of your pants

In order for a blog to be successful you need goals, knowledge of your audience (buyer personas), and an editorial strategy to connect and engage them. Does that sound like winging it? Of course not. Spend the time and do the up front work to ensure you achieve your desired results.

3.Swinging for the fences

Corporate blogging is a long term commitment. You should not expect to hit it out of the park with every post. You wanna be a singles hitter. Hit for average, not home runs. Sure there will be articles that you publish that will be super popular, but that is not the point. Your blog is a channel for you to use to communicate, connect, and grow and influence your community. This is accomplished over time by providing helpful, useful information that will serve your readers at every level – emotionally, rationally, and logically.

4.Forgetting to have FUN (and a personality)

FUN. Have some. Actually make it a loads of fun to be involved with your blog. Corporate blogs often require resources from across the organization to write, to make design changes, to handle comments, etc. Keeping employees engaged and interested is ALWAYS easier when the job is fun. If it’s boring and a burden, your long term blogging success is doomed.

5.Thinking a blog is just for marketing

Enough said.

6.Failing to measure

Facts are friends. Without them you have nothing to guide your future actions. You won’t know what’s working, what’s not, and even worse, anything to support your future requests for additional resources to support your growing community.

7.Failing to communicate

The good, the bad, and the ugly. Success or failure. Whatever the message, just be sure to spread the word. Make it a point to keep the company informed of your progress. Remember that buy-in you received before you launched, keep the stakeholders in the know. You’ll need their support when you would like to make additional investments in social media and content marketing.

8.Believing everyone can write well

Just don’t do it. For a corporate blog, you are likely going to have contributions from multiple people. Some will be up for the task others not so much. Having that understanding going in will help you plan for the copy editing process. Also, remember when you get that poorly written draft, the person submitting it likely believes it is their best work. Don’t be harmful with your feedback, be helpful.

9.Being lax on deadlines

If you read our eBook, How to Think And Act Like A Publisher, you know you need deadlines. Lots of them. Not just for the publication dates of your articles, but all the additional dates and milestones in the the article writing and blog posting process. Once you establish them, make people accountable for them. Why? If you become known as someone that is lax on deadlines, you’ll forever be in a place that you are chasing the work, rather that it being submitted to you on time, every time. It’s just not a good place to be (or a way to run a successful corporate blog).

10. Failing to have a pre-defined process for handling negative comments

It is going to happen. You will receive negative and disparaging comments / complaints on your blog posts. Get over it. Instead of being afraid, be prepared. Establish a process for handling the negative comments with professionalism and tact. Be sure the appropriate people are involved.  Having the process pre-defined helps you react rationally and logically. It also helps ease the emotional impact and panic that could occur if you are not prepared.

That’s my list, what’s yours? Do you have any other corporate blogging pitfalls to share with B2B marketers?

B2B companies who invest in using Twitter for business marketing and use it more frequently, experience greater success and satisfaction with Twitter.

Reminds me of growing up on the Gulf Coast of southern Alabama. Back when the beach sand was white and the water crystal blue, our family would go to the beach on the weekends. We’d often go to the “still water” side where the fresh water lakes were. Dad would launch our boat, attach the ski lines, toss out the flotation devices, and splash the skis in the water to the waiting skier.

The first time I clamped the skis to my feet, gripped the ski rope, and leaned back in the water waiting for the boat engine to roar to life, I was scared to death. Any second the 185hp Evinrude motor would jump from idle to full power in just a few seconds. When it did, all of that power would flow into the ski rope and into my 11-year old body, violently yanking me to the surface.

To successfully ski, I would have to focus that energy away from what felt natural—my upper body, arms and hands, which were clinging to the ski rope for dear life—and toward what felt quite awkward—my feet. I had watched many other beginning skiers go through the same routine. They’d get in the appropriate posture, signal they were ready, the boat engine with roar, thrusting the boat forward and yanking the ski rope out of the would-be athlete’s hands.

The boat would circle around and we’d go through the process all over again. Eventually, the skier would transfer the energy, rise up out of the water, briefly. They’d look like a catapult springing to fire but never releasing its payload. Just as the catapult would smash the unlaunched projectile straight into the ground, the sudden force of the boat engine would propel the skier face-first into the water.

It’d make my story better to tell you I went through the same thing. However, because I studied other newbie skiers from the time I was six, just waiting (and begging) for my chance to ski, I was determined to get up the first time. When my chance finally came, I leaned back against the natural flow of energy and refocused it into my feet. At first it was unbelievably awkward. It was far from natural. I didn’t know if it would rip my arms out of their sockets or simply drag me through the water.

After the few eternal seconds of awkward resistance, I came up out of the water and was soon gliding effortlessly along the surface.

Many B2B companies jump into the Twitter water right away. Though they may have watched a few other firms jump in, they probably haven’t seen too many succeed. They’ll try out Twitter just long enough to have the rope jerked out of their hands—maybe they’ll experience a Twitter storm of angry customers posting negative tweets or links to embarrassing content about the company. When they quit Twitter, they’ll say, “Twitter is a waste of time,” or “Twitter just doesn’t make sense for our company.”

Those that hang in there longer maintain their grip on the rope but begin to feel the unnatural energy of social media pulling them along. The natural energy for them has always flowed out from the marketing department into a mass market. That’s the way they’ve done things for generations. It’s the way the PhD professor in grad school told them (and still tells them, sadly) the world works. (Don’t believe me? Watch any political campaign, for example. Count the number of times a candidate says, “We just need to get our message out.”) Because the friction of the water is so intense, and the movement through the water feels so unnatural, many first time skiers and Twitter newbies purposefully let go before they reach the surface.

Successful skiers hold onto the rope and keep the tremendous energy of the boat engine focused on their feet—the leading edge of contact with the water. The resistance is intense and feels like it won’t go away. I remember feeling that if my arms did stay in their sockets, then my legs would probably snap in two. Eventually all the energy and forces of nature aligned and I enjoyed the exhilarating sensation of water skiing.

BtoB’s B2B Twitter Research Report suggests companies who hold on long enough, and stay focused on giving value to recipients, not only experience greater satisfaction with Twitter, they also get new customers and make money!

If you want to be successful with Twitter for business:

• put more into it
• stay with it longer
• focus on your audience and away from yourself.

If you do, you’ll:

• get more out of it
• enjoy it more
• be more successful.

It really is just that simple.

[The learning to ski story is adapted from my upcoming book Spitball Marketing: Using what you’ve got to get more of what you want.]

His book, Spitball Marketing: Using What You’ve Got to Get More of What You Want is due out in 2010. You can read more from Trey now at his blog www.treypennington.com.

image source: Ines Hegedus-Garcia Creative Commons

Start 4:20 PM EST

Content Marketing is:

• An approach for interacting, influencing, and attracting today’s modern working professional that sources products using search engines, social networks, industry specific web sites, word of mouth and more.

• A methodology for developing helpful, useful information that can be used to market your products and/or services during the multiple stages of today’s B2B buying process.

• Driven by the fact that sales and marketing organizations can do very little to hasten today’s B2B buyers. Today’s buyers move at their pace – content marketing enables your organization to have the right information available at the moment they are ready.

• Designed to help you produce information for all the people involved in the buying process. For years, we’ve instructed sales people to get the DM (decision maker); this approach ignores the vital roles of the users, influencers, and project champion. An effective content marketing strategy speaks to all the people involved in the buying process.

• A discipline that requires study. It’s not a fad, a buzzword, or anything like that. It’s a skill that needs to be developed and mastered.

• Personal. It educates. It’s marketing that (by way of buyer personas) speaks to someone, not everyone.

• Your next competitive advantage.

End Time 4:40 PM My time is up. How did I do?

What is content marketing to you?

In today’s #B2Bchat, we’ll tackle the tricky issues of resource management and utilizing outside contractors and agencies.

• If you are looking for job/projects now, what skills are most in demand? What are the best ways to find new business/job?
• What does it mean to be a great client? A great agency?
• Have you parted ways with an agency? What is the best way to go about that?
• On the agency side, have you ever ‘fired’ a client? What are the reasons to do so?
• What are the benefits of using contractors vs agencies? Employees vs interns?
• What is the best use for a marketing intern? What’s the balance of learning vs getting the results?
• What tools have you found useful to manage workloads and teams?

Join fellow B2B marketers for a discussion on B2B Marketing Resource Management.

About the B2Bblogger:

An ASIS member (an international association for security professionals), she is a frequent speaker at industry events, including ASIS workshops and IWCE conferences. Ksenia launched @Firetide – with 800+ followers, it’s is one of the most active Twitter accounts in physical security and wireless infrastructure space. You can read more from Ksenia at Mesh Without Wires blog.

Caffeine – something I use to give myself a boost quite regularly

Seem like harmless words that have nothing in the world to do with B2B social media and content marketing, right? Think again.

In recent weeks, Google completed two rather significant changes; one, Mayday, is related to how Google handles search queries and the other, Caffeine, deals with how Google indexes the web. If you are outside the world of search engines, the only Google changes you may have noticed over the past couple of weeks were either the Google Pacman doodle or the day Google choose to be like Bing.

However, Mayday and Caffeine have meaningful impacts on search results, both from a relevance and real-time perspective that in my mind further solidify the need for you to begin participating in B2B social media and content marketing.

The question is no longer, “if we should get started?” but, “when will our B2B social media and content marketing strategy be completed and ready for execution?”

Without getting technical, I’ll do my best to highlight the changes and why this is important to you as a B2B marketer, who may be either struggling with the B2B social media decision yourself, or working to gain executive buy-in for your B2B social media strategy.

MAYDAY

Think; search quality. Think; provide users a better search experience by improving results through better matching of websites with user’s search queries.

The project was completed by Google’s search quality team and is independent of Caffeine. A wee bit of technical talk – it is a change to Google’s algorithm – i.e. the code that determines the relevance and ranking of a page. It was rolled out April 28^th – May 3^rd (around May 1^st – hence the name – credit to Webmasterworld).

It’s been tested, and there is no turning back. This is a permanent change.

Here’s Google’s Matt Cutts with an explanation:

Click here to view the embedded video.

CAFFIENE

Think; search timeliness. Think; provide users a better search experience by improving results through providing the freshest, most recently published content about the user’s search query.

Source: The Official Google Blog

This project was completed in an effort to better enable Google to handle the increasing amount of content (video, images, news, blog posts, etc) that is being published every minute and make more of it available as close to possible when it is published.

An excerpt, from the June 8^th article, Our new search index: Caffeine on The Official Google Blog.

Today, we’re announcing the completion of a new web indexing system called Caffeine. Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it’s the largest collection of web content we’ve offered. Whether it’s a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published than was possible ever before.

Why it matters to you as a B2B marketer

Mayday and Caffeine is Google’s way of telling us that quality, relevant, real-time content is what matters to their users (and your buyers) and content published today is far more meaningful to their users (and your buyers) then content published months if not years ago.

Kinda makes you think about your static HTML website that was last updated a few years ago, no? Adds a bunch of weight to the need to be producing regular, ongoing content too, right?

If or When

That’s the question. I think you know my answer, what’s yours?

Early on you saw the potential power of social media through direct engagement with customers – and now you’re tasked with setting the social strategy and direction for your company. After all, who else can lead your company down the path to social media success but you?

The good news is that you are not alone! There are numerous articles and tips out there to help you. In this post, I will try to break it all down to help you get started with a step-by-step approach.

Step 1: Help them see the new reality.

The world has changed – almost overnight. Social media is powerful in its numbers, influential in its reach, and has gone beyond the so-called “Tipping Point” according to this latest eMarketer report.

Executives like hard numbers and facts but they also like to be entertained. Show them the popular video Socialnomics: The Social Media Revolution, now in its 2^nd release.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Are they still unconvinced? According to this Hitwise Intelligence report, social media is now bigger than search. And according to Morgan Stanley, social media users surpassed email users in July of 2009 but social media usage surpassed email in November of 2007 (based on time spent).  Bottom line message: social media is important, is here to stay, and your company risks falling behind.

Step 2: Demonstrate that social media is influencing business decisions.

The discussion should not be about the technologies or the tools. It is about relationships. And because of the connections they are making online, your customers are using social media now more than ever to make business decisions, according to this report from Forrester.  Or you can check out this report Inside the Mind of the B2B Tech Buyer from Chris Herbert, B2B Specialist & Founder of Marketing Integration firm Mi6.  In the report, Chris condenses research from Forrester, IDG, and others on the influence of social media on B2B buyers.

Step 3: Be ready to answer the hard questions.

A good pitchman is ready for the standard objections: “Yeah but where’s the ROI?” is usually the first. You can see my answer to this and more in The 7 Burning Social Media Questions but don’t take my word for it. Show this B2B example: How IBM Uncovers “Millions of Dollars” Worth of Sales Leads with Social Media.  It is important to convey that the opportunity cost of not participating in social media is real, but the bottom line value is in what can be gained from customer interaction and engagement.

Step 4: Show them the way.

One great example of a social roadmap is the Altimeter Group’s Social CRM: The New Rules of Relationship Management. But for me, it breaks down into these simple stages:

• Listen – Report the news by monitoring the conversations as they are happening on social channels.
• Respond – Be prepared to mitigate brand risk and employ crisis management, resolve customer complaints, or even deliver on a request for a proposal.
• Amplify – Gear up your internal teams to share good news, success stories, or customer passion about your brand.
• Engage – When ready, begin to orchestrate across all departments to incorporate social media into the fabric of all customer outreach in campaigns, events, sales, and support.

Step 5: Social media adoption.

The biggest leap of all may be convincing your executive team to not only embrace the power of B2B Social Media, but to use it themselves to bring a more open and authentic image to your company and brand. You can cite Altimeter Group’s founder Charlene Li who has recently written a book on the subject called Open Leadership expertly reviewed by Jeremy Victor. Or better yet, invite Charlene or Jeremy to work with your company. Nothing can humanize your brand more than getting the top leaders of your company to speak in an authentic way straight to your customers.

With executive buy-in of your b2b social media strategy, you are now on your way to becoming a social media rock star.

You will certainly have many more questions along the way. So for additional support, I have included some of my favorite experts’ tips in the links below:

• Shannon Paul’s 28 Step How To Develop A Social Media Strategy.
• Jay Baer’s Develop a Social Media Strategy in Seven Steps
• Jason Falls’  The Key to Developing a Social Media Strategy

Image Credit: Some Rights Reserved

This post is brought to you through a partnership between B2Bbloggers.com and the B2B Search Strategy Summit.

In this week’s #B2BChat, we’ll share ideas and thoughts about LinkedIn. To help lead the discussion, we’ll be joined by three leading LinkedIn pros, Lewis Howes (@lewishowes), Viveka von Rosen (@linkedinexpert), and Eve Orsburn (@linkedinqueen). Some questions we’ll pose to help guide the conversation include:

• Do you have a LinkedIn strategy?
• How much time do you spend on LinkedIn each week? Is it enough?
• Do you maintain both a personal and company profile on LinkedIn? Why or why not?
• Do you use LinkedIn for prospecting?
• What automation tools do you recommend using with LinkedIn?
• Has your investment in LinkedIn (time, money, or other resources) paid off?  How?
• What’s the greatest benefit of your activity on LinkedIn?
• Do you plan to increase or decrease your LinkedIn activity in the coming weeks and months? Why?
• What’s your best advice about how to get the most out of LinkedIn?

Join us for this week’s #B2Bchat about LinkedIn on Thursday, June 10 at 8:00 p.m. Eastern (5:00 p.m. Pacific). Follow @B2B_chat for updates.

That’s good news for publishers, and as you will read, marketers are using both channels, print and online, to compliment one another.

Enjoy the read and special thanks go to @KentHuffman for moderating this week for me.

Where should print advertising fit into today’s B2B marketing mix?

• @NathanRKing: Print advertising should be there along side of the digital elements – everything should work cohesively.
• @lewiswebs: Still finding some old-school thought that print is necessary in the marketing mix.
• @b2bento: Nowhere! Without exceptional creative use (like augmented reality, QR) – print advertising is dead.
• @fearlesscomp: Print should be in the mix for one simple reason. The mail box is empty today.
  • @NathanRKing I see @fearlesscomp’s point – less clutter in the mailbox = more visibility for direct mail.
• @kseniacoffman: I treat print as a way to support the pubs in our space; sad I know. Though research @chuckmartin1 shared today suggests 66% of b2b buyers rely on trade press for information – http://bit.ly/d2JKr3.
• @joezuc: Print remains important as one of several media available to marketers that can be optimized for a particular opportunity. With variable print publishing, the same level of personalization that goes in web based communications can now be in print.
• @mentormarketing: I have seen @Vocus use Print to drive Social Media to some success [from my outside perspective].
• @anetah: Understand your customers/prospects preferred marcom channels … Print may or may not be a right fit. Must know your audience.
• @MikeTek: Depends on your market. Some are best reached online. Print has its place, but its shrinking.
• @evoklarry: Print advertising is not dead. Many choose to reach industry professionals through their trade publications.
• @BrennerMichael: Print will always be part of integrated mix but influence is down for sure.
• @martinehunter: Print not dead. Trade pubs still relevant to many b2b buyers, should be in the cohesive mix.
• @ChuckMartin1 Anyone look at the thinness of the B-B pubs lately? Not sure there is a strong print fit.

How have your expectations from print advertising changed?

• @lewiswebs: Never expected much from print – such a low conversion rate – wouldn’t expect that to improve now.
• @fearlesscomp: Print should be part of the mix, but a small part. Buyer personas should drive media selection. Again, buyer personas should drive media selection. Go where buyers go.
• @joezuc: Once again, with variable print publishing, we can have higher expectations again. Anyone here get a postcard with a PURL on it?
• @anetah: Must be relevant w/ print advertising… Targeting, personalization, geo targeting…RELEVANCY is key.

Will the percentage of spending in print advertising increase or decrease in the next 12 months? Why?

• @Karimacatherine: It will decrease but I see print become more relevant because they are competing with so many other media.
• @NathanRKing: Less advertisers could mean better placement in publications for the same cost. Better visibility.
• @Renbor: Stay about the same if you consider pubs and direct mail.
• @fearlesscomp: Print is declining and will continue to decline. I recommend we develop personas and allow users to set preferences. Want print – ok. Want Twitter-OK, want email-OK
• @joezuc: I believe it will decrease, but the money that remains in print will be optimized as it is integrated with online campaigns.
• @EVOKLarry: Print medium doesn’t allow for the same level of creativity as interactive, nor immediacy of return.
  • @NathanRKing: @evoklarry but keep in mind that good print has such high visibility, thus better brand recognition.
• @BrennerMichael: Down for certain! Not dead. I still read print and I have a budget!

What is the main benefit you get today from print advertising?

• @ToniGoSaintsRou:  The value of print ads is not always in immediate sales, but more in reputation & trust building.
• @lewiswebs: Reaching that lead you haven’t reached otherwise, but that’s fading fast.
• @janetdmiller: Print helps establish brand. As a search marketer, without traditional media, it’s tough to get brand searches.
• @NathanRKing: Print is still reaching customers and allows you to target by location (local pubs) & interests (industry/trade mags). Print also allows businesses to reach consumers who aren’t that into social media. (not everyone checks facebook daily).
• @EVOKLarry: Prints biggest benefit may be the targeted approach.
• @mentormarketing: I see the benefit in the shelf life of a print piece which exceeds the tweet lifecycle just started tracking.
• @ckburgess: Longer attention span for print! Longer shelf life.
• @ cuferg: Print increases brand awareness if done well and into targeted trade pubs.
• @EeeGeee You can’t click the escape button… Print is visually friendly, but the downfall is its price efficiency.

What drives the continued decision to advertise in print? Safety? Target Audience? Results?

• @lewiswebs: Target audience should dictate using print and should drive the results you want.
• @EVOKLarry: Clients who invest in their brands, invest in print. Those who are willing to forgo long tail for short gain don’t.
• @ChuckMartin1: Well-accepted measurements (BPA audits, etc.) and habits.
• @ Karimacatherine: What drives print advertiser is known territory. they’ve been doing it for ages.
• @phylliskhare: For my clients still using print – it’s about age demographics

How do you define the success of a print campaign?

• @Renbor: Success is always defined in terms of sales and/or new customers.
• @janetdmiller: Tough to measure offline (print) to online, but I like to try to measure via offers and online signup.
• @cuferg: Most print, the results are nearly impossible to track. WOM results play into it, target audience readership most certainly.
• @lewiswebs: All roads lead to lead gen – did it bring the prospects we expected.
• @fearlesscomp: Measure results against business goals.

What ways do print and online advertising work best together?

• @lewiswebs: Integrated approach with consistent message and branding is best
• @eeegeee: As mentioned before, direction to website & also print ads can have promotions and benefits (as well as special online promos)
• @NathanRKing: Print can work brand awareness, digital can help close the sale.
• @b2bspecialist: Print & online will work well if they are integrated. Ad in print goes to ad on site/ Article in print goes to article on site
• @janetdmiller: I think print (and other traditional media) do a nice job at driving awareness and brand searches.
• @SUPPORT2point0: Q9: Print and digital like PB&J. Can’t make a quality sandwich with half.

Has the introduction the iPad had any impact of your thinking?

• @Renbor:  It will enhance print ads as more people read traditional print on iPad.
• @fredmcclimans:    Yes, the iPad has me rethinking the way that journalism is created (melding of medias). Can’t wait til the markets full of iPads, dPads (droid pads) & mPads (msft pads). New energy for publishers!
• @NathanRKing: iPad will allow for more interactive ads in digital publications.
• @jeremyvictor: It certainly has impacted my thought process relative to contributing content to publications – more interested now.

As I said, it was a lively discussion, and a lot of good thoughts were shared. Thanks to all who participated. Join us for next week’s #B2Bchat on LinkedIn, Thursday, June 10th at 8pm Eastern (5pm Pacific) by following the hashtag #B2Bchat! Follow @B2B_chat for updates.